Month: January 2022

The Doomsday Clock, 100 and counting.

It seems that politics can do what it likes, the change is underway regardless.https://reneweconomy.com.au/plans-approved-for-biggest-battery-storage-system-in-victoria/

Being sane is surely a threshold issue to indicate that any particular politician is worthy of your vote. But to that I would add ‘decent and competent’ for we have myriad examples of, when neither of these is present, we are in more whatisname than a Werribee duck. That’s where Australia is right now.https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/590209-dicaprio-on-climate-change-vote-for-people-that-are-sane

“It won’t tow your trailer. It’s not going to tow your boat”, he said. The high torque output means most electric vehicles have plenty of pulling power. They could tow just as they can replace conventional delivery trucks. But why let the facts get in the way of deriding a political opponent, eh?https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/federal/make-trucks-electric-to-lift-suburban-curfews-and-ease-congestion-trucking-industry-20220114-p59oa0.html

The nights must have been particularly windy in SA over that time. Or have the fossil fools been having a lend of us with their claims that renewables, with battery back-up, can never replace carbon-based energy?https://www.watoday.com.au/environment/climate-change/south-australia-breaks-record-running-for-a-week-on-renewable-energy-20220116-p59omi.html

Catryna Bilyk and Andrew Leigh have long pushed for a fair go for charities when they have a go – at fundraising and contributing to public debate, for example. Planting trees but being stopped from speaking out about deforestation is just plain silly. What about getting a go when you have a go?https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/15/charities-are-sick-of-fighting-off-attacks-by-the-morrison-government

Here is a tweet I received yesterday:Overnight @NOAA released its 2021 climate data, showing that last year was the 6th hottest on record – despite being a La Niña – with the last 9 years all being in the top 10 hottest recorded.I’ve made an animated month-by-month summary of the change since 1880. It’s not happy.https://twitter.com/timinclimate/status/1481835802976190469?s=21MirageNews is not all government media releases. The article below shows the reality of the above animation.https://www.miragenews.com/australias-hottest-temperature-this-century-706952/

Here, ladies and gentlemen, is the choice before us. It would be handy to know what is in the Coalition agreement that binds the Liberals to the National’s antediluvian coal policies. Without knowing the detail we can only vote on what we see them do, and that’s not pretty.https://reneweconomy.com.au/federal-labor-pledges-climate-resilience-funding-nationals-pledge-allegiance-to-coal/

When the desire for power trumps the truth, and the media is either silent or complicit, we see where the Republicans are now. In our context, lies in public debate and blatant pork-barrelling to buy votes, allowed to go unexamined by a captive media, is where we see government in Australia. Little wonder the challenging implications of climate change are unaddressed, the trust in government that is needed just isn’t there.https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/10/democracy-big-lie-climate-crisis

When there’s so much darkness about, the dying days of the nuclear energy industry offer a glimmer of light. It’s not the environmental argument that won the day, it was the economics of generation that is driving the change. Hey, we’ll take it but we must keep pushing science as the basis for energy policy – nuclear as well as fossil-fuel.https://reneweconomy.com.au/in-2022-nuclear-powers-future-is-grimmer-than-ever/