I am impressed that the Labor Environment Action Network (LEAN) found itself with a few disappointments at the NSW Labor Party Conference. NSW is already going the way out in approving new coal and gas mining projects.
Like all fossil fuel addicts, the ALP can and has ticked a large number of boxes on restoring environment, circular economy, supporting sustainable industries, becoming a clean energy superpower. But it refuses to have any measures to prevent new coal and gas mining expansions. This undoes any and all good work that can possibly be achieved with "bright green-wash" measures. All of them are going to be undone by global heating.
The relative importance of green-wash, compared to the subsidies of coal oil and gas, is clearly measured by the size of the money flows allocated to each. Green-washing has relatively smaller costs, but a larger public relations impact, and just has to sound good. Some of them, like a truely "circular economy" will likely never be fully achieved, as we chew up our non-renewable resources and spread them as waste all over our planet.
I am advised that it is good social media practise not to point out the defects in bad posts, because that only feeds the trolls, and boosts the social media algorithms detection of interest from the most addicted ignorant. I would have followed this advice but then I would have to entirely ignore the "new" smoking "Australian Way" climate plan, to be presented at COP26 in Glasgow. This government needs to be sacked immediately.
you might be wondering what our government actually hopes to achieve by showing up in Glasgow? The short answer, as one of our Australian friends put it well, is “to get away with it”. That’s right, through the miracle of marketing, to get away with a plan to double down on fossil fuels and evade all responsibility for tackling the climate crisis. - Dr Simon Bradshaw – Director of Research (Projects) Australian Climate Council
Registration Link https://parracan.org/register/oct24 -- to get zoom link details.
Climate For Change - networked presentation online on October 24th 2021. Sunday at 3 - 6pm.
This "Climate for change" , using the latest Online "Climate for Change" movement, as facillitated by ParraCAN. It is to present our climate predicaments as a global problem. Sorry to say, but that makes all of us in Australia a global problem.
We need to subvert the conventional and social media tropes, that remove responsibility for carbon emissions from our government and society, and protect ourselves from climate denial propaganda. Global heating already changes how we live. It should be changing how we lobby and vote for our politicians.
We should not ever complaining about the use of models in predicting the future, especially by the sciences. Models are all really we have got. Models are us, models are consciousness. We have models in our heads and we use them all the time, especially when they are weighted by our feelings. Governments and politicians usually have their implicit simple models in mind as they make their legislation, even if it isn't made explicit. Governments and corporations keep secret models which they attempt never to reveal, hence not amenable to corrective feedback from other people. Secret models usually involves obscene projections of institutional growth and power or planned harm to others. Hence the extreme measures taken against whistle-blowers and unofficial leakers. Secrecy means bad intentions, and national insecurity.
Our bodies and brains contain computational models. Our brains have heuristics and symbolism. Our bodies are model-mapped in our brains, to make them useful. Models require information flows from reality, but can never be the external reality. The world does not exist inside our heads, only its representations of our senses in coded forms, including our language and visual processing. Our construction and updating of models from our birth is called "learning". Our internal models are always checked. Surprise is the shock we receive that leads us to update our internal models. The question is always which models are appropriate and useful, and which can be harmful. For models to be useful, a lot of external information has to be sifted and selected, chosen without bias to be coded into data. Data needs to processed in valid statistical ways to derive knowledge conclusions, and knowledge has to be integrated with other relevant experiential knowledge in order to choose actions wisely. We cannot safely regulate any part of reality for which we do not possess an accurate working model.
The Liberal National Parties and Australian Labor Party take millions of dollars in donations from public subsidized corporations that don't even get taxed. How is that for self interest?
Are the political parties just extensions of the foreign corporations, or are these corporations vehicles for private interests of the politicians. I cannot say, it can be both at the same time.
Adam Bandt speech youtube excepts - "We don't have time left. ...This is not just a climate crime, this is state sanctioned corruption".
Probably our political corruption has to be typical of all nations in late industrial civilisation.
Tune: I'm just a girl who can't say no.
Solists in lip sync synchrony: Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese.
It ain't so much a question of not knowing what do,
Climate Science told us long ago.
We know what soon will happen as we play the fossil fool,
The end of everything we love and know.
Author of this article acknowledges the recent CounterPunch article on this same topic, "Planet Earth is Heating Up Faster" by Manuel Garcia, Jr. A good article, but I want to do my own version using the original referred science article, "Satellite and Ocean Data Reveal Marked Increase in Earth's Heating Rate". It deserves as much political attention as possible.
A civilization shrink is required, so let us start with some serious psychiatric therapy.
Talking about ambitious goals of reducing carbon emissions by another industrial revolution, might help our bad case of multiple double-thinks.
From the recent IEA report overview, the current state of the global art of global emissions reduction is "promises, promises", while global energy demand and carbon emissions continue to grow. CO2 emissions are in rebound to catchup to normal growth rates after the global COVID impact. Adding more renewable energy just results in more growth by Jevon's Effect. Renewable energy brings down the total energy bill. Renewable energy makes it easier to increase total energy consumption, with more coal and gas. The IEA has a separate report, no doubt incompatible with the regular general progress report. "Net zero by 2050" It asks for dramatic overall changes. Global civilization shows no inclination to change its inherent cancerous nature and will never make a big voluntary effort to even slow growth. Technology change is promoted as the path forwards, while behavior change has the least scope.
It is our feelings and deeper understandings that should motivate us to take our best survival actions for our life here and now. These come down to the personal level. Can we can recognize the same conciousness in other people? This film screening requires another 23 tickets to be bought before April 26th, in order to go ahead. There is also to be a Q & A discussion after the screening.
A new analysis of energy finance, available online at RethinkX, shows that Conventional Power Plants (CPP) have been losing out rapidly to renewable energy, and are now seriously over-priced. Convential energy overvaluations have created a large and rapidly expanding global financial bubble. The total lifetime energy production minus their total costs for conventional coal, gas, nuclear and hydro power assets has been grossly over-estimated.
Professor Mark Howden from ANU zoom broadcasted this excellent hour and a half presentation. It is an expert and comprehensive overall view of the current global warming processes, and what we should be doing now. Three other speakers followed, giving valuable insights into the responses of government, people and environment in NSW. This was all recorded along with responses and questions. My summary of the points made is not verbatim, and my own personal response below this, is what I feel are implications for everyone. The pictures and graphics shown in the youtube video can tell us much more than mere words.
There has been news of a large backlog of ships full of Australian coal waiting in line to unload at Chinese ports. This has been mentioned in the news a while ago. It is now officially acknowledged, since Scott Morrison has spoken up with umbrage. What ever he said was not very interesting. The claim that other nations coal is "50% dirtier" than Australian coal could only come direct from the Minerals Council of Australia, who probably told the Prime Minister to appear to "do something".
In response to a recent article at "resilience.org" from Will Steffen, Emeritus Professor at Australia National University. How can we alter our future reality faster? By seeking new answers to it every day.
The momentum of global heating heating is a now fully activated threat. It has a predictive timetable, set by our rate of global heating that is getting worse. Effective survival responses are required now. For many nations and species, our fastest institutional responses will be too slow to survive. Our current wasteful way of life is as good as gone now. We are among so many dead systems still working without lasting purpose. Sad, because there our energy, transport and production systems seem to have started adapting. The rate of climate change is much faster.
Global heating continues to accelerate. We continue to add greenhouse gases to global solar radiation imbalance. We lose a little more ice every year. Permafrost systems thaw.
This is all so slowly incremental, the warming pot syndrome, that to refer to it becomes "alarmism". Too many of our conventional politicians and media can deny we have a global climate emergency. After all, all the people that matter to elites are mostly still here, and those falling off into the unemployment social abyss can still be ignored. Denial of slow social collapse is a national behavioral blind spot, only felt by those on the margins.
Overgrown global Humpty Dumpty is not ready for his big fall. He is much bigger after 3 decades of global growth since the first IPCC report of 1990. But everything I read adds up to more growth.
Above is the mission statement for "Climate for Change" - https://climateforchange.org.au -.
The need for political climate action is now much more dire than mentioned in media.
There are too many distractions in our everyday cares and concerns.
More people are needed to come together for review and talk, about successful political intervention.
The country of which I became an adopted citizen of, Australia, has a federal government which always claims that Australia "is a unique case" when negotiating in international forums for climate action. It is the most unique crime case. Like many selfish anti-social crimes justice must ensure hurt rebounds on the criminal more at the end. The uniqueness involves an extreme belligerent hard-nosed attitude with carbon accounting combined with public denial of climate change when it comes to action. This is very much opposite to the global behavior required to have a safe global climate system. This is being done on behalf of global fossil fuel corporations, that are totally into colonial exploitation, and our government is helping them every way it can, because - money.
After a record year in 2019 of drought, record temperatures, and record bush-fire damages, Australian government climate policy is still operates much as if it is the year 1970. Perhaps 1950 even, in the case of the Liberal - National Party coalition. Australia is still into expanding coal and gas exports like it is all the rage. Money still trumps science.
Dr Ye Tao, at "The Rowland Institute" at Harvard, is explicit about what we need to do in order to escape our near-term extinction. We need to reverse the temperature rise caused by our rapid production of greenhouse gases, and also negate the hidden part of its temperature rise that is currently masked by all of our transient aerosol pollution. The challenge and its difficulty is made clear in this you-tube presentation.
If the global reduction of fossil fuel burning goes down as fast as needs to, lack of demand for them should soon drop their selling price below their production cost floor. Everyone knows the target of 50% reduction by 2030, as required for even a two thirds chance of keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees C. Many nations targets are being set by this.
Climate for Change news-letter reported the following news items in recognition and encouragement of those many already ahead of the rushing crowd. Don't be the last institution or the last laggard nation left holding stranded assets!
"The Conversation" has some detailed articles with strong criticisms of the recent Australian Governments Climate and Energy road map, and budget. I find these articles to be rather lame in their criticism. They do not scream out "climate emergency", which ought to be considered a rational response by now.
Again the enormous subsidies to Coal and Gas mining in Australia are mentioned.