Fake News And Climate Change: Young People Debate Key Issues On Q&A Special

ABC News - Mazoe Ford

From top L to R, Q&A panellists Daniel Yim, Maya Sathiamoorthy, Geordie Brown, Pinidu Chandrasekera, Solli Raphael and Zahra Bilal. (ABC News: Mazoe Ford)

Why aren't young people listened to? Are kids doing enough to pressure adults to address climate change? And how do you combat fake news?

These were just some of the questions tackled by the first ever Behind the News Q&A kids panel on the ABC.
Six young Australians aged between 13 and 19 formed the panel to debate some of the biggest issues facing their generation, watched by an audience filled with children, some as young as eight.

School students also made up the Q&A audience. (ABC News: Mazoe Ford )

 On climate change, they were adamant that young people must do more to force adults into action.
"I definitely think kids should try to spread their opinions on climate change because this is the world that we're going be living in, this is what we have to take care of, so we should really take responsibility for our world," Maya Sathiamoorthy, 14, said.
Solli Raphael, 13, said young people should take action now with small steps and not wait for adults to act.

"You don't have to be a prime minister or someone powerful to make a change on climate change," he said.

"Like just if we see [rubbish]… pick it up and put it in the bin — it's a small thing but it does make a difference to climate change."

'Fake news teaching us to be more critical'
In the half-hour special, the panel tackled other important issues such as bullying, whether to raise the voting age, social media, and fake news.
"Headlines and flashy news get a lot of clicks and get a lot of attention but … you need to read from different sources and you need to read lots before you can be sure that you've understood and know what the truth is," Daniel Yim, 17, said.
Zahra Bilal, 15, added that young people have developed a level of distrust in the news.

"I think we have had to learn that facts have many faces and not everything we read is true," she said.

"So I think it's good that fake news has come out because it has taught us to be so much more critical of what we read," she said.

The special is the first Behind the News Q&A panel. (ABC News: Mazoe Ford )

The panel also spoke about why they believe adults in positions of power need to listen more to young people's voices.
"There are adults out there who don't necessarily know what we're going through as kids and they don't know the sort of experiences we are having," Geordie Brown, 19, said.
"We have to come together and create a voice … we have [to] create [opportunities] for each other and ourselves, and what that does is it gains the respect of adults and it shows them we do care and we want to make a difference."
Pinidu Chandrasekera, 16, said he felt inspired by young people in other countries who were making their voices heard.
"We only have to go to America where kids our age are all banding together and really driving a huge movement for gun reform and I think we've seen it before back in the 1970s against the Vietnam war," he said.
"It's an adult world, they dominate the news and they dominate politics, but as kids we have a powerful voice if we can come together and really show society what we want to change."

Links

• Behind the News Q&A Special
• Dear Leaders: You've Failed Your Children On Climate Change
• ‘We Are Not A Force To Be Ignored’: Young People Take Up Climate Activism
• Don't Ignore Young People – We're Key To Fighting Climate Change
• Climate Change And Poverty Are As Much Of A Threat As Terrorism For Many Young People

Scientists Urged To 'Speak The Same Language' As Public On Climate

Reuters - Zoe Tabary

Use the "huge reach and knowledge" of TV weather presenters to make technical information easy to understand, experts say.

Children and youth are seen during climate march prior to the opening session of the COP23 UN Climate Change Conference 2017, hosted by Fiji but held in Bonn, in World Conference Center Bonn, Germany, November 6, 2017. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay

PARIS - Scientists must "speak the same language as the public" if they are to spur action that will help the world recover from the worsening impacts of climate change, experts said on Wednesday.
With hurricanes, floods and other impacts of climate change becoming increasingly destructive, scientists say countries urgently need to step up their ambitions to cut emissions to keep global warming within safe limits.
But weather experts at the International Weather and Climate Forum in Paris said efforts to adapt to climate change would fall on deaf ears unless scientists did a better job of explaining climate issues.
"It can be hard to get the public to care about (the) climate," said Helga van Leur, a Dutch weather presenter and TV personality.
"They see it as complicated, distant, and just not at the top of their list of priorities."
One way to remedy this is to make use of the "huge reach and knowledge" of TV weather presenters to make technical information easy to understand, said Jill Peeters, a Belgian weather presenter and meteorologist.
Last year she set up Climate Without Borders, a network of over 140 weather presenters from 110 countries, who exchange information on a daily basis on a WhatsApp group about world weather and climate.
"Weather presenters aren't just handsome and popular, they can have a voice on climate as the public trusts them," Peeters told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Through data and training, she aims to equip them with a "backpack of tools" so they can better communicate to the public about climate and weather issues.
Clare Nullis, spokeswoman for the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization (WMO), said weather agencies should move from "predicting what the weather will be to what (damage) it will do" to help authorities prepare for disasters.
"In Puerto Rico, for example, the official death toll of Hurricane Maria was relatively limited, but it had a significant cascading effect – people didn't have electricity, homes were destroyed."
Weather scientists, the public and authorities that issue warnings like public health bodies should "speak the same language ... or disasters will be more expensive and difficult to manage," she added.

Links

• Is Climate Change Really Too Hard To Understand?
• How To Change The Climate Story: Paul Hawken
• Why Some Conservatives Are Blind To Climate Change
• Need To Explain To People What Climate Change Means In Daily Life: UN Environ Chief
• How Can We Best Communicate The Impacts Of Climate Change?
• Which Works Better: Climate Fear, Or Climate Hope? Well, It's Complicated
• Five Graphics To Start A Conversation About Climate Change

Farmers Challenge Nationals' Claim Drought Unrelated To Climate Change

The Guardian - Lisa Cox

Farmers and National party voters say they are ‘increasingly frustrated’ at the lack of action on climate change

The Climate Council has identified an 11% decline in the growing-season rainfall in south-east Australia since the mid-90s. Photograph: Andrew Munro

Farmers have challenged National party claims that conditions in drought-stricken regions in eastern Australia should not be politicised by attributing them to climate change.
Farmer and former Nationals leader John Anderson said this week that while the drought was the worst he had experienced, it was not unprecedented.
He told the Financial Review farming records for his property, which had been in his family for more than a century, showed droughts of equal severity between 1902 and 1904 and again in 1940.
“I’m not a climate change denier but I would be very wary about using this as a political device,” he said.
The deputy prime minister and Nationals leader, Michael McCormack, also said: “I’m a believer that the climate is always changing and it’s been changing since Moses was a boy.”

Verity Morgan-Schmidt is from a multigeneration farming family in Western Australia and is CEO of Farmers for Climate Action.
She said the comments were “a disservice to many of our farmers who are already facing the reality of climate change”.
“My family has been on properties out in Western Australia for over 100 years. We can say this has well and truly moved beyond natural cyclical patterns,” she said.
“The idea that we could be accused of playing politics by accepting reality is a bitter pill to swallow. The science is clear. Climate change is increasing the severity of extreme weather events that include drought.
“The vast majority of farmers and National party voters that we speak to are growing increasingly frustrated at the lack of action on climate change at a federal level.”
The south-east of Australia has experienced record high temperatures this year during an unseasonably dry and hot autumn, prompting fire bans and warnings from authorities.
In its latest winter outlook, the Bureau of Meteorology is forecasting warmer and drier than average conditions across large parts of the country.
Richie Merzian, the Australia Institute’s climate and energy program director, said: “There is a well-established link between climate change and the frequency and harshness of droughts in Australia.”
In its latest drought statement, the Bureau of Meteorology listed May 2018 as the third-driest May on record.
The Climate Council has identified an 11% decline in the growing-season rainfall (April–October) in south-east Australia since the mid-90s, the period including the millennium drought.
It has highlighted “particularly strong drying trends” in south and southwestern Australia in the months of May and July and says it is likely climate change is making drought worse in both south-east and south-west Australia, some of the most productive farmland in the country.
“The bottom line is climate change is making weather patterns more extreme and unpredictable and that has serious consequences for Australia’s agriculture production,” the Climate Council’s research director and acting CEO, Martin Rice, said.
“In southern Australia we are seeing the influence of climate change and drought. We’re seeing less cool season rainfall and that’s having an impact on agriculture.
Rice said hotter than average conditions and heatwave conditions in northern parts of New South Wales were leading to drier conditions and there had been an “abject failure” in climate policy at a federal level.
“Hot temperatures bring dry conditions and we can expect to see an increase in drought if we don’t reduce emissions,” he said.
“Farmers generally are on the frontline of climate change and they are experiencing worsening extreme weather events, particularly heat-related events and that has an impact on their business.”
The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, who is touring drought-affected regions, and the agriculture minister, David Littleproud, have acknowledged climate change is a factor.

Links

• 'No doubt our climate is getting warmer,' Malcolm Turnbull says
• Grapes shrivel as Spanish farmers lament a relentless drought
• Climate change: 90% of rural Australians say their lives are already affected
• Climate change blamed for severe drought hitting Vietnam's coffee crops
• Tony Abbott dismisses link between drought and climate change
• America's drought of political will on climate change
• Tuvalu drought could be dry run for dealing with climate change
• Yangtze delta warned to prepare for effects of climate change
• Climate change will devastate Africa, top UK scientist warns

'No Doubt Our Climate Is Getting Warmer,' Malcolm Turnbull Says

The Guardian - Katharine Murphy

Despite the PM’s declaration, it is unclear how current climate policy will ensure Australia reaches its Paris commitment

Turnbull: ‘I don’t know many people in rural NSW that I talk to that don’t think the climate is getting drier.’ Photograph: Ivan McDonnell/AAP 

Malcolm Turnbull, on a tour of drought-stricken areas in New South Wales and Queensland, has declared there is “no doubt that our climate is getting warmer”.
Flanked by Nationals on Monday in Trangie, Turnbull acknowledged climate change remained a live political debate but he said: “I don’t know many people in rural New South Wales that I talk to that don’t think the climate is getting drier and rainfall is becoming more volatile.”
The minister for agriculture, David Littleproud, said the last agricultural ministerial council had agreed to help transition farmers into a changing environment and a changing climate.
The south-east of Australia this year has experienced record high temperatures during an unseasonably dry and hot autumn, prompting fire bans and warnings from authorities.
In its latest winter outlook, the Bureau of Meteorology is forecasting warmer and drier than average conditions across large parts of the country. It suggests winter rainfall is likely to be below average for NSW, South Australia, northern Victoria and western parts of Western Australia.
The bureau says the dry is likely to be particularly intense in areas around the Murray-Darling Basin and in eastern NSW, with a 70-80% chance of below average rainfall. “Elsewhere around the country, the chances of exceeding average rainfall are roughly 50%,” the new forecast said.
The overwhelming consensus among climate scientists is climate change is accelerating and human activity is making a contribution. If greenhouse gas emissions aren’t reduced, human populations become more exposed to the negative effects of warming, which include extreme weather events – such as prolonged drought, heatwaves, wildfires and storms.
Emissions in Australia fell during the carbon pricing scheme implemented by the Labor government but the Abbott government repealed that scheme and emissions are now trending upwards year-on-year.
The latest official emissions data shows pollution increased by 1.5% in the year to December 2017. Australia’s emissions levels are now higher than they were in 2012 and have climbed 3.6% since the carbon price was repealed in 2014.
Emissions are increasing in most sectors of the economy – in waste, agriculture and transport. Only one sector of the economy has recorded a decrease – the electricity sector – because ageing coal-fired power plants have exited the system, and new renewables projects are coming on stream.
The Turnbull government is trying to implement a policy in electricity that would see emissions come down by 26% on 2005 levels by 2030 – a target many analysts say is too low for Australia to meet its commitments under the Paris agreement – but even that target is being gainsaid by government conservatives who have not ruled out crossing the floor to oppose it.
Analysis from Green Energy Markets says the national energy guarantee (Neg) will deliver no meaningful emissions reductions in its own right unless the target is made more ambitious, because the capacity of renewable projects now under construction already exceeds what is required to achieve the 2030 target.
While battling internal pressures over the Neg, the government has also been stalling on new vehicle emissions standards for vehicles, bracing for more internal ructions. Australia no longer has a domestic car manufacturing industry but motoring groups have been lobbying against a 105gCO2/km emissions target.
It is unclear how Australia will meet its emissions reduction commitments under the Paris agreement without a policy roadmap to get there.
Ahead of a meeting of the G7 in Canada, a coalition of institutional investors has meanwhile sounded the alarm that countries are falling short of their Paris commitments.
A group of institutional investors with $26 trillion in assets under management – including Australia’s Investor Group on Climate Change – presented a statement of concern to G7 leaders and it was delivered to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The joint statement said: “We are concerned that the implementation of the Paris agreement is currently falling short of the agreed goal of holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels”.
Emma Herd, the chief executive officer of the Investor Group on Climate Change, said investors were “stepping up in unprecedented numbers to act on climate change”.
“Investors could do even more if governments delivered the policies required to effectively manage climate risk and accelerate investment in low-carbon solutions,” Herd said.

Links

• Bureau of Meteorology: Drought
• Turnbull knows better than to deny fire weather link to climate change
• Weather warnings as parts of Australia bake in record autumn temperatures
• Farming Needs To Adapt To Climate Change: PM
• On climate policy and power prices Turnbull is talking rubbish. Here are some facts
• Turnbull says own rooftop solar not inconsistent with 'clean-coal' message
• Don't turn to the military to solve the climate-change crisis
• Up in smoke: what did taxpayers get for the $2bn emissions fund?
• Australia's emissions rise again in 2017, putting Paris targets in doubt
• Coalition watering down Finkel review climate ambitions, leaked document reveals
• Renewable energy spike led to sharp drop in emissions in Australia, study shows
• 'Clean coal', CCS and CSG will not save fossil fuels – their game is up
• Shorten fails to specify cost of Labor's renewables policy when asked four times
• Direct Action review: Coalition leaves carbon trading option open

Farming Needs To Adapt To Climate Change: PM

AFR - Phillip Coorey

Malcolm Turnbull on his rural property on Sunday. Supplied

The federal government will lean on the states to help communities suffering from prolonged drought but Malcolm Turnbull says farmers will ultimately have to adapt to the consequences of climate change.
With drought threatening much of the east coast grain crop as well as large swaths of Western Australia, Mr Turnbull said the rural sector needed to become more "resilient" to adapt to what was "clearly a drier, hotter and more variable climate".
"That's what we've got to plan for, resilience is the key," the Prime Minister said.
"The climate is changing. I know it becomes a political debate. But there's no doubt that our climate is getting warmer.

Malcolm Turnbull during a visit to Strathmore Farm in Trangie NSW, on Monday. Ivan McDonnell

"I don't know many people in rural NSW that I talk to that don't think the climate is getting drier and rainfall is becoming more volatile."
Mr Turnbull said while income support and associated measures like counselling were important for short-term relief, ultimately "you've got to ensure we can do everything we can to ensure that farmers are resilient".
This could range from greater incentives for building feed and grain storage facilities to even running fewer stock.
"The reality that you face is that rainfall has always been variable in Australia, it appears to be getting more variable," he said.
He was speaking on the first day of a three-day listening tour of NSW and Queensland with his senior agricultural ministers including Nationals leader Michael McCormack and Agriculture Minister David Littleproud, whose Queensland seat of Maranoa is in its seventh year of drought.

Waiting patiently
Other areas on the east coast are in there third or fourth year without a crop. This year, some farmers have not seeded while others have sown dry and are praying for rain by the end of June.
"We've all been awaiting patiently and looking to the sky. You don't want to cast doom and gloom but the fact is we really desperately need rain in the next three or four weeks," Mr McCormack told The Australian Financial Review.
"We'll wait patiently over the the next three or four weeks and then see what we can do.
"For some its already too late. For them we'll need to work out something in conjunction with the states."
Under the current Farm Household Allowance Scheme, eligible farm families receive the equivalent of the dole for three years plus financial and other counselling. Concessional loans are also available.
While the government may be prepared to extend such assistance, it also wants the states to chip in. This could be in the form of more assistance to regional towns, the businesses and community facilities of which suffer when the farm sector has no money.
KPMG agribusiness economist Robert Poole said the value of food and fibre at the farm gate was $50 billion which, while significant, was not a huge proportion of the national economy.
"But it's a significant sector with a big multiplier effect," he said.
"You've always got to take it seriously."
A spokesman for the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences said it was too early to estimate the economic impact of the current dry season.
"Farmers are only part way through sowing this season's crop the final outcome depends on what actually ends up being sown, what in-crop rainfall is received and when," he said.
On the other hand, commodity prices were still high.
Shadow agriculture minister Joel Fitzgibbon said now was not the tie to saddle farmers with more debt and he government had been remiss in its planning.
"No support is in place for farming families about to exhaust their three-year long entitlement to the Farm Household Allowance," he said.

Links

• Bureau of Meteorology: Drought
• Turnbull knows better than to deny fire weather link to climate change
• 'No doubt our climate is getting warmer,' Malcolm Turnbull says
• Weather warnings as parts of Australia bake in record autumn temperatures
• On climate policy and power prices Turnbull is talking rubbish. Here are some facts
• Turnbull says own rooftop solar not inconsistent with 'clean-coal' message
• Don't turn to the military to solve the climate-change crisis
• Up in smoke: what did taxpayers get for the $2bn emissions fund?
• Australia's emissions rise again in 2017, putting Paris targets in doubt
• Coalition watering down Finkel review climate ambitions, leaked document reveals
• Renewable energy spike led to sharp drop in emissions in Australia, study shows
• 'Clean coal', CCS and CSG will not save fossil fuels – their game is up
• Shorten fails to specify cost of Labor's renewables policy when asked four times
• Direct Action review: Coalition leaves carbon trading option open