Month: April 2022

When you are hard at work pork-barreling with big dam-building projects, the last thing you’d want is independent scrutiny that tells you that you are wasting billions. So, what to do? Abolish the National Water Grid Advisory Body, that’s what. And of course, it is quite coincidental that one of the dam- building companies is an LNP donor. What do we want? A National Integrity Commission. When do we want it? Yesterday!https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/apr/02/abolition-of-advisory-body-criticised-after-morrison-government-promises-59bn-for-queensland-dams

Here’s an example of why truth in advertising must be extended to political advertising. Angus ‘Fantastic’ Taylor has form in dodgy dealings. Who could forget the doctored document supposedly detailing Sydney City Council’s travel expenditure? To ‘Grassgate’ and Eastern Australian Irrigation, domiciled in the Caymans, add his made-up modelling on electricity bills.https://www.watoday.com.au/politics/federal/labor-launches-attack-over-climate-as-coalition-questions-clean-energy-plan-20220419-p5aegr.html

As bleak as things are, Michael Moore suggests that we ain’t seen nothing yet. With the advances in Artificial Intelligence, there is a fear that it won’t be long before they, AI itself, will figure out that we humans are the problem and act accordingly. Michael Moore suggests that ‘they’ is Mother Nature’, she has it already figured out and is now ‘acting accordingly’. Moore always tells a good story.https://www.michaelmoore.com/p/at-earth-days-end?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo0MzQxOTA3NywicG9zdF9pZCI6NTI0MTAyMjMsIl8iOiJJQ1I0cCIsImlhdCI6MTY1MDMxODk2MSwiZXhwIjoxNjUwMzIyNTYxLCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMzIwOTc0Iiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.ytvU-eiqOki-8AHvz3H6euL8FDPjZVC6cToMmccq5f8&s=r

Even before a temperature increase of 1.5 degrees, we can’t say climate havoc is ‘unprecedented’, we’re seeing it now. At 1.5 the climate will doom many ecosystems and species, as well as result in millions of refugees fleeing no longer habitable homes. At 2 degrees, we’re back to the Werribee Duck scenario, as in we’re in more sh*t than one. Has Andrew Bolt, Matteo Canavani or Angus ‘Fantastic’ Taylor ever heard of, let alone understand, a concept such as ‘gravitational self-attraction’ or a word such as ‘solastalgia’?https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2022-04-18/1-5-vs-2c-degrees-warming-difference-climate-global/100981866

If the height of our ambition is to keep warming below 2 degrees, we are in trouble. There goes the Great Barrier Reef, Kakadu, much of our dry land cropping and the biodiversity loss doesn’t bear thinking about.https://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/global-warming-limit-of-2-degrees-still-possible-if-paris-agreement-pledges-are-met-say-researchers-20220412-p5acwl.html

Science says build planes like this and they’ll fly, so they did, and they do. Science says microwave appliances will boil water, and they do. Science says put silicon chips, semiconductors, circuits and display screens together, call them computers and hey, they compute – bigly! Science says pump CO2 into the atmosphere, climate systems will turbo-charge and we’ll see more extreme weather – and we do, double bigly! So what leads the LNP to accept some of what science says, but not all? Donors from the fossil fool lobby, that’s what? Remember this on May 21.https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/signals-of-a-warmed-world-endless-australian-rain-and-20-years-of-american-drought-20220408-p5abwk.html

Juice Media’s honest advertisement on carbon credits is simultaneously profane and accurate. This and their many other ‘honest ads’ from the Australien Government unmask the nonsense and lies we are being told. Watch the whole 4 minutes if you are up for it.https://www.thejuicemedia.com/carboncredits/

Politics is too fraught just at the moment, try birdwatching instead. The number of vagrant bird species that send us birders twitching with delight is on the rise, in adaptation to the changes we are wreaking upon this earth. I don’t want major environmental change but I do want to build my life list, the number of different species I have seen. Birdwatching too is fraught.https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/07/science/vagrants-lost-birds.html?smid=tw-nytimesscience&smtyp=cur

Here’s something to think about for May 21. It’s a bit more serious than anything that 17 billion dollars of ‘decisions taken but not yet announced’ will buy, particularly by a science-denying party of a ruthlessness we only guess at.https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/04/07/dozens-arrested-scientists-worldwide-mobilize-demand-climate-revolution utm_term=Autofeed&utm_campaign=echobox&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1649392570