That renewables are smashing records for uptake, 2017 pretty good and 2018 set to be better, is a very good thing, making Frydenberg’s tussle with Abbott and the troglodytes of the Monash Forum almost an irrelevance. It would help if he wins it though.
Check this URL for the image showing annual global temperatures from 1850-2017. Notice anything?http://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/files/2018/05/globalcore.png
Research tells us that the number one driver for environmentally-preferred behaviours is convenience. It is probably the biggest driver for buying Maccas too. We might not at all surprised that their shareholders didn’t even want a report on their single-use plastic straws as they might find convenience should be trumped by environmental concern. Well done to the consumer group for getting the issue on the agenda and how long will it before they succeed? There is momentum on straws.
The dusty rainfall records that reveal a new understanding of the long-term climate may be quite significant, but at least as significant is what they tell us about the scientific process. The science of climate change is always under review, which is not to say that what we know now can be discarded, for that is a misunderstanding of how science works. Pay heed, Bolter and fellow travellers.
When politics proves useless, try the law. Litigation as a weapon against polluters is on the rise as the costs of protecting infrastructure, health and human rights are attributable to the free-riding corporations causing the problems. Bring it on!
At plus four degrees, the world is a vastly different place than the one we know and not for the better (unless you are Russian or Scandinavian perhaps). Don’t even think of surviving the heat in the Middle East. Yet hitting the Paris targets will save the world thirty trillion dollars. What are our leaders thinking?
Tooth decay rates in Oberon compared with rates in Bathurst, 48 kms away, show the problems when we prefer emotion over reason. We have much to lose when we depart from science and the evidence-base.
As if alpine environments didn’t have enough problems with climate change-induced diminution. NSW’s no-cull brumby bill is based on emotive claptrap. The heritage value arising from two hundred years of brumbies is minuscule compared with the environmental value of national parks devoid of bog-wallowing brumbies. Over the millions of years of alpine environment evolution, they weren’t there, they shouldn’t be there now.
Re Eunice Foote and her seminal work on the role of CO2 in warming the atmosphere, we all lose when half of humanity is kept out of contributing.