18/03/2019

Donald Trump’s Climate Denial Gets More Ridiculous By The Day

Newsweek - Michael E. Mann



Michael E. Mann
Michael E. Mann is Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science at Pennsylvania State University. His most recent book, with Tom Toles, is The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy (Columbia University Press, 2016.)
Once upon a time, Donald Trump accepted the scientific reality that human activity, primarily burning fossil fuels, causes climate change.
He signed on to an ad calling on President Obama to take action on climate change.
That was 2009. In the decade since, Trump’s Fox News fixation has led him down a steep path of dangerous denial, culminating in his quoting of an industry PR flack who appeared on Fox and Friends to make some profoundly ridiculous claims.
Patrick Moore, who falsely claims to be a co-founder of Greenpeace, claimed that the “climate crisis” is “Fake Science” and that “carbon dioxide is the main building block of all life.”
First off, the people who call Puerto Rico home, or Paradise, California, or any number of cities and towns across the country and indeed the planet who have felt the already devastating impacts of climate change would beg to differ. Climate change is already making the heat waves that cause heat strokes worse.
It’s already raised sea levels, making coastal flooding more common and problematic. It’s already doubled the area burned by wildfires in the past few decades. My own research, in fact, shows that state-of-the-art climate models, if anything, are underestimating the impact climate change is having on extreme weather events.
Unlike Moore, I’m actually a climate scientist. But even if I weren’t, these findings are readily apparent in even a cursory reading of the National Climate Assessment. That’s the major climate report Trump’s own administration released last year, and it goes into detail about how climate change is already hurting American communities from coast to coast.
Those details aren’t even necessary to point out how ludicrous Moore’s other suggestion is, that carbon dioxide is “the main building block of all life.” While we are certainly carbon-based lifeforms, it is proteins and nucleic acid, not carbon dioxide, that are the building blocks. In fact, it is classified as a deadly toxin at high concentrations. I’d challenge Moore to prove he believes what he’s saying by trying to survive on carbon dioxide.
It wouldn’t be the first time someone challenged Moore to prove he means what he says. Back in 2015 Moore told an interviewer that one of Monsanto’s pesticides (Roundup) is not only not cancer-causing, but in fact that “you could drink a whole quart of it and it won’t hurt you.” When the interviewer offered some to Moore to drink, and prove his point, Moore of course became agitated and angry and stormed out in a huff.
This is the sort of person Trump is apparently turning to for advice. A man who has spent decades doing the industry’s dirty work while trading off a youthful involvement in Greenpeace. A man who, in response to Trump, tweeted to indicate that he, too was in DC, attending a meeting of William Happer’s CO2 coalition, a fossil-fuel funded pro-pollution advocacy organization.
William Happer is also the man chosen by Trump to potentially lead a panel to conduct an “adversarial” review of climate science. Happer is a former physics professor who was caught in a sting in 2015 agreeing to take money from unknown oil and gas interests in exchange for writing a report full of climate denial.
As to the quality of Happer’s climate science, well that’s hard to speak to because he doesn’t actually do any climate science, and never has. What he has done, though, is say insane (and offensive) things, like comparing the treatment of carbon dioxide to the “demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler.”
That’s the quality of advice Trump is seeking.
It’s one thing for Fox’s primary audience, with their failing faculties and dulled critical thinking skills, to be suckered in by their constant barrage of alternative facts and persuasive fictions. It’s quite another for the supposed leader of the free world, who has a thousand scientists at his disposal, to embrace such obviously unscientific claims with such conviction.
Fortunately, some in his party appear to now recognize that outright denial of human-caused climate change has no place in honest political discourse and they seem to be embracing a pivot to the more worthy debate over what we do to address it. Let us encourage this shift and allow climate change deniers to become increasingly isolated as the fringe, irrelevant relic that they are.

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Malcolm Farr: ‘The Public Debate On The Existence Of Climate Change Is Over And We Are Owed An Apology’

NEWS.com.au - Malcolm Farr


School Strike for Climate Change: Thousands of students skip school for protests

The public debate on the existence of climate change is over and we are owed an apology from those who prolonged it for self-serving political purposes.
They might acknowledge their disrespect for science, or for driving rejection as a vehicle for “brutal retail politics”.
Voices as varied as the schoolchildren who marched on Friday, the top ranks of Australia’s central bank, and federal department chiefs are warning of the consequences of those changes.
The debate continues, but it now is centred on measuring the urgency of a response to increasing climate instability, and the detail of that response.
Emergency services, diplomats and farmers are all seeking the best answers to climate change effects — effects which some of their flecked representatives for the better part of a decade said didn’t exist.
Military and intelligence agency leaders have warned climate change is a national security threat to Australia.
There still are holdouts, including a few reactionary MPs who continue to embrace Tony Abbott’s belief just over nine years ago that the science was “absolute crap”.
And there is a fringe which make cases which can only be resolved by outlandish conspiracy theories, often along the dubious lines of the United Nations and One World Government.
And there are credible sources moving in the other direction.
Deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia Guy Debelle last week made clear climate change is now a factor in tracking and guiding the economy; he gave no hint it was a UN plot.
But he did stress the need for an orderly transition to clean energy; a need for greater backing of renewable energy projects; preparing for new ways we work and the jobs available to us; and the broader task of readying the entire economy for change.
“Financial stability will be better served by an orderly transition rather than an abrupt disorderly one,” he said.
Last week, secretary of the Department of Home Affairs Mike Pezzullo mentioned climate change in a speech — Seven Gathering Storms — to a think tank.
Mr Pezzullo warned of states which might become ungovernable and a possibility of “mass displacement of people”.
Contributions to this displacement could be “poverty, hunger, water and resource scarcity, and a changing climate, which will have to be thought of as a systemic risk factor”.
These are just a few elements of government which have appreciated the existence and impact of climate change in ways some elected politicians have been too frightened or deliberately manipulative to acknowledge.
These are the folk who might consider an apology.
Tony Abbott is not the only denier in parliament but over a decade he has been the pacesetter if not the leader of that block of ignorance.
“The argument is absolute crap. However, the politics of this are tough for us,” he told a regional audience in December 2009.
“Eighty per cent of people believe climate change is a real and present danger.”
Just as Mr Abbott scorned majority views on same sex marriage, he early on resolved to ignore voters on climate change.
He used that rejection of evidence and local opinion to wreck the carbon price policy of Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard, his offensive from Opposition against the so-called “carbon tax”.
His chief adviser in Opposition and when he became prime minister, Peta Credlin, in 2017 put that campaign into context.
“That was brutal retail politics, and it took Abbott six months to cut through and when he did cut through Gillard was gone,” she told Sky News.
And, Ms Credlin said, “It wasn’t a carbon tax, as you know.”
However, Mr Abbott was “hugely unconvinced” in 2009 and continued to harness his rejection of climate change science in 2017 in a speech he made in along on.
“Primitive people once killed goats to appease the volcano gods. We are more sophisticated now but are still sacrificing our industries and our living standards to the climate gods to little more effect,” he said.
But something happened 10 days ago.
Mr Abbott abruptly endorsed the UN backed Paris agreement on emission reduction, a process aimed at limiting climate change.
A sudden convert, he has yet to say sorry for his past rejection.


We're not pleased with ScoMo's climate plan: striking students

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The RBA Has Sounded The Climate Change Alarm. Time To Sit Up And Take Notice

The Guardian - 

Students are striking, the central bank is warning of ‘damaging outcomes’ and denialism has to be met with scorn
RBA deputy governor Guy Debelle: ‘both the physical impact of climate change and the transition are likely to have first-order economic effects.’ Photograph: David Moir/AAP 
On Friday tens of thousands of school students around the country took to the streets to voice their anger over inaction on climate change. It came three days after the assistant governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia warned about the impact of climate change on our economy. This week really should mark the end of the line for anyone within politics or the media being able to spout climate-change denialism without being met with scorn and jeers. It also should mark the time when boldness and verve becomes the norm for any climate-change policy.
For most people with common sense, our current climate-change policy debate remains utterly frustrating. The problem is there are some in the conservative media and politics who, either due to gross stupidity or a willing desire to fake stupidity, are determined to continue that frustration.
Now one might wonder why someone would actively choose to peddle lies merely to get a gig in the Liberal party or on some unwatched show on Sky News, or to be paid to write poorly some column or blog for News Corp papers.
But at this point, who cares?
Those people have tied themselves to the rotting carcass of climate-change denialism for reasons of profit. We should not now pretend that their views are not redolent with the putrid stench of obtuse irrelevance – an irrelevance made abundantly clear when on Tuesday the deputy governor of the Reserve Bank, Guy Debelle, delivered a speech titled “Climate Change and the Economy”.
It was a landmark speech that sets a precise point from which you can say you are with reality or you have thrown in your lot with idiocy and avarice.
The RBA is not an institution given to radicalism, and so when one of its most senior members states that “both the physical impact of climate change and the transition are likely to have first-order economic effects” it’s a big deal.
Central bankers don’t talk about impacts on the economy lightly or just to please protesting school kids. They only address climate change because they have assessed it has and will continue to have real impacts on the economy.
What Debelle had to say was quite sobering.
He stated that “we need to reassess the frequency of climate events ... and our assumptions about the severity and longevity of the climatic events”.
This, he noted, is not news to the insurance industry. Those companies whose entire profit is based around risk have long been factoring in climate change, because unlike the denialist crew who get paid to be ignorant, insurers actually have to factor in reality when assessing risk.
The Reserve Bank also has to factor in risk and Debelle noted that there are many forces affecting our economy and financial stability, but “few of these forces have the scale, persistence and systemic risk of climate change”.
Debelle also noted the difficulties we face are not small.
He acknowledged the difficulties with the transition to a lower-carbon-intensity world will clearly depend upon “whether it is managed as a gradual process or is abrupt”. But he suggested “the trend changes aren’t likely to be smooth.
“There is likely to be volatility around the trend, with the potential for damaging outcomes from spikes above the trend,” he said.
Central bankers prefer to say 10 words of fudge than two of bluntness. So when a central banker starts talking about “damaging outcomes” that’s the time to sit up and take notice.
He also noted that, just in case you were thinking we only need to worry about more droughts and extreme heat events, there is also the problem “where two (or more) climatic events combine to produce an outcome that is worse than the effect of one of them occurring individually”.
And that is bad because “combined with the increased volatility, this increases the likelihood of non-linear impacts on the economy”.
That is, we can’t just say climate change could have a linear impact on our economy – where it reduces growth by a set percentage each year. Rather, the impact could get progressively worse over time.
Debelle acknowledged that we have always had to deal with droughts and cyclones. He noted that “the current drought has already reduced farm output by around 6% and total GDP by about 0.15%” and that even if we return to average rainfall it will continue to weigh on the economy through this year.
So we know weather affects the economy. But Debelle noted that climate change is a trend, not a cycle like weather, where you experience good and bad times.
“What if,” Debelle asked, “droughts are more frequent, or cyclones happen more often?” The shock to the economy “is no longer temporary but close to permanent”.
Permanent shocks to the economy, damaging outcomes, first-order economic events.
At this point anyone still spouting denialist bile in newspaper columns or on the campaign trail needs to be treated like an anti-vaccer at a healthcare expo.
It also means our major political parties need to step up. The Liberal party will most likely need a major defeat (or two) before facing reality, but the ALP also needs to realise that now is not the time for timidity – which Shorten displayed with his rather weak support of the student’s strike on Thursday.
Leadership requires boldness – a boldness now supported by very clear warnings from our most sober economic institution.
The RBA cannot do anything to limit climate change; it can only assess the risks and act appropriately. It is up to governments to take action and it is time to leave the lies and vindictive ignorance of climate change deniers, in the media and in politics, behind us.
Our central bank has warned of inaction. Our children this week took to the streets to demand action. It is time for our governments to deliver.

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17/03/2019

Students Worldwide Skip School To Demand Tough Action On Climate Change

CBS News - CBS | AP



From the South Pacific to the edge of the Arctic Circle, students mobilized by social media and word of mouth skipped class Friday to protest what they believe are their governments' failure to take tough action against global warming. The rallies were one of the biggest international actions yet, involving hundreds of thousands of students in more than 100 countries around the globe.
The coordinated "school strikes" were inspired by 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who began holding solitary demonstrations outside the Swedish parliament last year. Since then, the weekly protests have snowballed from a handful of cities to hundreds, fueled by dramatic headlines about the impact of climate change during the students' lifetime.
Thunberg, who was recently nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, said as protesters cheered her name at a rally in Stockholm that the world faces an "existential crisis, the biggest crisis humanity ever has faced, and still it has been ignored for decades by those that have known about it. And you know who you are, you that have ignored this and are most guilty of this."
Across the globe, protests big and small urged politicians to act against climate change while also highlighting local environmental problems.
  • Speakers at the U.S. Capitol in Washington stood behind a banner that said "We don't want to die." 
  • In New York City, students chanted "Save our planet" and "Climate change has got to go" near an entrance to Central Park.
  • In San Francisco, hundreds of students disrupted downtown traffic as they marched from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office to Sen. Dianne Feinstein's office, CBS San Francisco reported.
  • In St. Paul, Minnesota, about 1,000 students gathered before the state Capitol, chanting "Stop denying the earth is dying."
  • In Berlin, police said as many as 20,000 protesters, most of them young students, gathered in a downtown square, waving signs with slogans such as "March now or swim later" and "Climate Protection Report Card: F" before marching through the capital's government quarter with a stop in front of Chancellor Angela Merkel's office.
  • In Poland, thousands marched in rainy Warsaw and other cities to demand a ban on the burning of coal, which is a major source of carbon dioxide. Some wore face masks as they carried banners that read "Today's Air Smells Like the Planet's Last Days" and "Make Love Not CO2."
  • In India's capital New Delhi, schoolchildren protested inaction on climate change and rising air pollution levels that often far exceeds World Health Organization limits.
  • "Now or Never" was among signs brandished by enthusiastic teenagers thronging cobblestoned streets around the domed Pantheon building, which rises above the Left Bank in Paris. Several thousand students gathered peacefully around the landmark. Some targeted French President Emmanuel Macron, who sees himself as the guarantor of the Paris climate accord but is criticized by activists for being too business friendly and not ambitious enough in efforts to reduce French emissions.
  • About 50 students protested in South Africa's capital, Pretoria, chanting "There's No Planet B." One protester held a sign reading "You'll Miss The Rains Down in Africa." Experts say Africa, with its population of more than 1 billion people, is expected to be hardest hit by global warming even though it contributes least to the greenhouse gas emissions that cause it.
  • Police in Vienna said about 10,000 students rallied in the Austrian capital, while in neighboring Switzerland a similar number protested in the western city of Lausanne. Last month, lawmakers in the northern Swiss canton of Basel symbolically declared a "climate emergency."
  • In Helsinki, police said about 3,000 students had gathered in front of Finland's Parliament sporting placards such as: "Dinosaurs thought they had time too!"
  • Thousands marched through Madrid and more than 50 other Spanish cities. Spain is vulnerable to rising sea levels and rapid desertification.
Students protest to demand action on climate change in Lisbon, Portugal. RAFAEL MARCHANTE/REUTERS
A website used to coordinate the rallies listed events in over 2,000 cities. In the U.S., Alexandria Villasenor founded Youth Climate Strike U.S. along with 12-year-old Haven Coleman and 16-year-old Isra Hirsi.
They're calling for, among other things, "100 percent renewable energy by 2030," CBS News correspondent Tony Dokoupil reported. For more than three months, Villasenor has been playing hooky from the 7th grade on Fridays and going to U.N. headquarters in New York in hopes of pushing adults into action against global warming.
"Since climate change will be a global problem, I decided that this would be the best place to strike," she told CBS News. She expected students to be striking in all 50 states Friday.
In a speech Friday outside the U.N., Villasenor said world leaders weren't listening. "Our world leaders are the ones acting like children," she said. "They are the ones having tantrums, arguing with each other and refusing to take responsibility for their actions while the planet burns."



Later, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was inspired by the students to call a special summit in September to deal with what he called "the climate emergency." "My generation has failed to respond properly to the dramatic challenge of climate change," Guterres wrote in an opinion piece in The Guardian. "This is deeply felt by young people. No wonder they are angry."
Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen showed up at a protest in Copenhagen and tweeted Friday "We must listen to the youth. Especially when they're right: the climate must be one of our top priorities."
IMAGE
Carla Reemtsma, a 20-year-old university student who helped organize the protest in Berlin, said she's part of about 50 WhatsApp groups devoted to discussing climate change. "A lot happens on social media because you can reach a lot of young people very quickly and show them: look there's lot of us," she told the Associated Press. "There's a very low threshold so we reach a huge number of people."
"I think that's how we managed to get so big," said Reemtsma. Many protesters in Berlin took aim at politicians such as the leader of Germany's pro-business Free Democratic Party, Christian Lindner, for suggesting that complicated issues such as climate change were "a matter for professionals" not students.
Others, including Germany's economy minister, Peter Altmaier, have urged students to stage the protests outside school hours.
Volker Quaschning, a professor of engineering at Berlin's University of Applied Sciences, said it was easy for politicians to belittle students. "That's why they need our support," he said. "If we do nothing then parts of this planet could become uninhabitable by the end of the century."



Scientists have backed the protests, with thousands signing petitions in support of the students in Britain, Finland, Germany and the U.S. "It gives me great hope," environmentalist Bill McKibben told CBS News contributing meteorologist Jeff Berardelli. "This new generation is doing all it can to make sure that we older people don't foreclose their chance for a decent life. It's beautiful to see their courage, their passion -- if anyone ever thought 'kids today' don't care about the world, or are spending all their time on video games, the photos from around the world should renew their faith."
Scientists have warned for decades that current levels of greenhouse gas emissions are unsustainable, so far with little effect. In 2015, world leaders agreed in Paris to a goal of keeping the Earth's global temperature rise by the end of the century well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).
Yet at present, the world is on track for an increase of 4 degrees Celsius, which experts said would have far-reaching consequences for life on the planet. In Germany, environmental groups and experts have attacked government plans to continue using coal and natural gas for decades to come.
Quaschning, who was one of more than 23,000 German-speaking scientists to sign a letter of support this week, said Germany should aim to fully "decarbonize" by 2040. This would give less-advanced nations a bit more time to wean themselves off fossil fuels while still meeting the Paris goal globally.
"This is going to require radical measures and there isn't the slightest sign of that happening yet," said Quaschning.



A poll published Friday by German public broadcaster ZDF found that 67 percent of respondents backed the students' protests during school hours, with 32 percent opposed. The representative telephone poll conducted between March 12 and 14 involved 1,290 randomly selected voters. The margin of error was about 3 percentage points.
In Stockholm, Greta Thunberg predicted that students won't let up their protests. "There are a crisis in front of us that we have to live with, that we will have to live with for all our lives, our children, our grandchildren and all future generations," she said.
"We won't accept that, we won't let that happen and that's why we go on strike. We are on strike because we do want a future, we will carry on," she said.

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Remember Morrison's Black-Rock Stunt? Well, Look Who's Scared Now

The Guardian - 

With their clash over coal, the Coalition partners are making the case for voters to show them the exit
“Scott Morrison’s brandishing of a lump of coal during question time in 2017 is one of the most boneheaded performances ever to grace the bear pit.” Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP 
It’s always unwise to call peak farce when we are dealing with Australia’s torturous climate and energy debate, so perhaps we can just categorise the following incident as mildly surreal.
Scott Morrison was in Melbourne for much of this past week. On Wednesday he was out on the hustings with Daniel Andrews, one of the most progressive political leaders in the country, and a premier who has recently secured an emphatic mandate from the people.
By stapling himself to Andrews, by cooperating mightily in a state where the Liberals are in deep political trouble, perhaps Morrison was hoping for a small measure of reflected goodwill.
Whatever his aspirations, Morrison was asked about coal, as he has been every day since a group of Queensland Nationals decided to go to war with their leader Michael McCormack. The brawl that has fractured the government was unleashed just over a week ago, and it relates to McCormack’s failure to shirt-front the Liberals on coal plants and on divestiture powers to break up energy companies.
For some of the rebels, this is a proxy war about Barnaby Joyce returning to the leadership (yes, really). For others, coal and energy really is the burning issue.
Reporters inquired on Wednesday how Morrison could tolerate the Nationals defying his leadership by banging on relentlessly about wanting new coal plants. He calmly mouthed the responses prime ministers mouth in trying situations.
Morrison noted that Joyce (“a passionate fellow”) had returned the red cordial to the fridge and was now sequestered, spent after a spell of thrashing, on the time-out step. Joyce had “settled” the insurrection, Morrison said, by acknowledging it had been a “misstep” to describe himself as the “elected deputy prime minister”.
Having declared peace in our time (and I deploy that phrase in the Neville Chamberlain sense), Morrison then rolled around to energy projects. He said the government was about “supporting the development of commercially viable and feasible baseload power all around the country”. These projects could be “gas, it could be hydrogen … it could be hydro”.
There’s a word missing there, right? It starts with c and ends in l.
The prime minister declined to utter the word coal. As well as gas, hydrogen and hydro, Morrison noted there could be “other traditional sources”. C-o-a-l could not pass his lips.
This omission would be of only glancing interest, or perhaps zero interest, had the prime minister not been the same bloke who, seemingly five minutes ago, had brought a lump of coal into the Australian parliament and brandished it lustily during question time, in one of the most boneheaded performances ever to grace the bear pit.
“This is coal,” the then treasurer declared triumphantly in February 2017, brandishing his prop as if he’d just stumbled across an exotic species previously thought to be extinct. “Don’t be afraid,” Morrison said, soothingly, to his political opponents, waving the black rock kindly supplied by the Minerals Council of Australia. “Don’t be scared.”
Just for the record, no one was scared then – except perhaps members of the voting public transiently in the visitors galleries of the House of Representatives witnessing the sudden onset of shark-jumping as a parliamentary sport.
But perhaps the strange coal seance of 2017 was all a harbinger, more omen than stunt, because it’s pretty clear that Morrison, to borrow from himself, is a bit scared now. Being trepidatious is entirely reasonable, because it’s clear to anyone watching that there is a schism inside the government.
Put simply, the schism is this.
The Nationals want Morrison to produce a shortlist that commits the Coalition to supporting new coal projects. They want an explicit commitment made in public before the federal election, because they believe that commitment pays political dividends in central Queensland.
To underscore this point, Joyce noted during one of his interventions that he was intent on protecting the interests of his regional heartland, and didn’t give a stuff about the climate-induced anxieties of voters in Melbourne. (In case you are wondering, this isn’t the normal Joyce word salad; this is a deliberate smack at the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg. The Nationals believe Frydenberg is running most of the internal interference on this issue, because he’s worried about his inner city seat, and others like it.)
The Liberals have made it equally clear that they do n-o-t (underlined) want the government to put taxpayers on the hook by supporting coal before the election, because that is the equivalent of cordially inviting their small-l liberal heartland to take out their baseball bats and start swinging come May – not just in Melbourne, but right around the country.
If you are Morrison, that’s not an easy difference to split.
Unless there’s some grand bargain in the offing – Morrison supporting a north Queensland coal project, then sealing the border allowing any Liberals south of Noosa plausible deniability – this is a straight win/loss proposition.
Either the Nationals win, or the Liberals win, and while this unresolved roiling persists (and I predict the Nationals will persist), the bottom line is the government loses. While the priority is internal death match politics, the government makes its own compelling case for why Australian voters should show it the door.
Just to summarise the general ludicrousness, in the space of seven months the government has gone from rolling Malcolm Turnbull in large part because he was too progressive on climate change, and dumping the national energy guarantee that might have given them all a measure of electoral protection on this issue, to the prime minister being unable to utter the word coal in public, for fear of offending voters worried about climate change.
As the kids say, life comes at you fast. You wouldn’t believe it had you not seen it with your own eyes.
Meanwhile, as the numpty show rolled on, and on, a deputy governor of the Reserve Bank stood amid the clamour of the week and said what anyone with any respect for facts and evidence now says: climate change is real. It’s not cyclical, it’s a trend, and if we don’t start factoring it into our policy settings and our business decisions (meaning the prudent management of carbon risk), then Australia’s financial stability is at risk.
It was an important speech from Guy Debelle, both in terms of the content, and in terms of the signal. Debelle speaks for an institution apparently intent on telling the public it does not intend to drop the ball on this most important of policy issues, which might give the students who demonstrated around the country on Friday some measure of comfort that the failure of their parents isn’t absolute.
Eyes will also be on Labor over the coming weeks. The party that wants to form the next government is expected to release the remaining elements of its policy on climate change: what it will do to reduce pollution from heavy emitters, in transport and agriculture.
Given the diabolical history of this issue, there is nervousness in Labor’s ranks about the onset of yet another cheap scare campaign once the policy is subjected to scrutiny, and the policy will be heavily scrutinised, not only by journalists but also by the stakeholders now assuming Labor wins the contest in May.
Polling, both private and public, makes clear that a majority of Australians want action on climate change. Many voters see the cheapjack opportunism of the past decade as symptomatic of a political system that has lost its way.
While political actors who favour rational action on climate change have the wind at their back in a way I haven’t seen since the federal campaign of 2007, there’s only one way to get a mandate to decarbonise the Australian economy.
It’s not complicated. You have to seek one, and be brave enough to do that without fudges or strategic omissions or weasel words.

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'Monster' El Nino A Chance Later This Year, Pointing To Extended Dry Times

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Relief for Australia's drought-hit regions could be a long way off, with climate influences in the Pacific and Indian oceans tilting towards drier conditions and a "monster" El Nino a possibility by year's end.
Climate scientists said the conditions in the Pacific were particularly concerning given an unusual build-up of equatorial heat below the surface that could provide the fuel for a significant El Nino.

Sea surface warmth
El Ninos are marked by unusually warm sea surface temperatures that typically result in rainfall patterns shifting eastwards away from south-east Asia and the Australian continent.
Source: NOAA

If such an event transpires, the Great Barrier Reef would face another bout of mass coral bleaching while the drought gripping southern and eastern Australia could intensify.
Agus Santoso, a senior scientist at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, said there were two likely outcomes from the developments in the Pacific.
"We could have an El Nino fully formed by the end of May and then it could dissipate," Dr Santoso said.
"The other is that by May it’s already formed and it still keeps building up... and by the end of the year we could have a monster El Nino."
During El Ninos, the normal easterly winds blowing along the equator slow and even reverse. Rainfall patterns tend to shift eastwards away from south-east Asia and Australia, setting up conditions favourable for below-average rainfall and bushfires.

'Very exciting'- but not in a good way
The prospect of a big El Nino later this year was raised at an international conference of climate scientists in Chile earlier this month.
They considered parallel years, such as 2014 when a near-El Nino was reached before conditions revived a year later, creating one of the three most powerful such events in the past half century.
"There is more heat now below the surface waiting to be tapped than there was in early 2015," said Michael McPhaden, a senior scientist with US National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration who attended the Chilean event.
"If westerly wind bursts of sufficient amplitude, duration and zonal extent develop along the equator in the next couple of months, 2019-20 could be very exciting," he said.
The scientists stress that a "predictability barrier" that falls during the southern hemisphere autumn means model reliability is lower than at other times of the year.

What lies beneath
Scientists have identified particularly warm waters just below the surface in a section of the El Nino 3.4 region. This pool of warmth could provide the fuel for a powerful El Nino re-forming by the end of 2019.
Source: NOAA
"While it's not a slam dunk that El Nino is going to persist, I think that the odds have certainly increased over one to two months ago," Phil Klotzbach, a research scientist at Colorado State University, said. " We've had a big build up of heat in the eastern and central Pacific."

'Not a great starting place'
Andrew Watkins, head of long-range forecasting at the Bureau of Meteorology, said "all models are suggesting an El Nino the over next month", with several having it peaking in autumn and dropping off.
The bureau has a higher threshold than NOAA - which has already declared an El Nino - but may announce one at its update next week.
Dr Watkins said "it's too early to say there'll be an extreme event", but he noted other influences - especially from the Indian Ocean - may also favour below-average rainfall during the spring for southern Australia.
The so-called Indian Ocean Dipole - which gauges relative warmth between the east and western Indian Ocean - is forecast to become positive by mid-winter, the bureau said.
“The odds are [favouring] on the drivers that create dry conditions for eastern and southern Australia," Dr Watkins said.
“We’re not starting from a great place," Dr Watkins said, noting inland reservoirs are dropping and near-term stream-flow forecasts are for below-average flows for much of the country.
Cai Wenju, a senior CSIRO scientist who has published widely on the El Nino Southern Oscillation climate pattern, said the chance of El Nino returning is high.
A return of westerlies by about June to halt the easterly tradewinds “could spark the fire and there’s a lot of fuel", Dr Cai said.
“If it’s similar to 2015, the impact this time will be big," he said. "We are already so dry.”

Climate change and big events
Dr Santoso's research, including a paper published late last year, has found the frequency of big El Ninos will increase with climate change.
That result is "quite concerning", particularly for ecosystems sensitive to heat spikes such as coral reefs that suffered mass bleaching during the 2015-16 big El Nino.
"If we get one or two bleaching events, [the Great Barrier Reef] can recover, but if we keep having these events coming up then maybe the corals are not going to be able to adapt," Dr Santoso said.
During El Ninos, the Pacific Ocean takes less heat from the atmosphere and even gives some up, giving global surface temperatures a bump up.
The trialling years of big El Ninos, especially 1998 and 2016 - the current holder of the world's hottest year on record - are particularly warm.
An event later this year would likely see temperatures next year "spike up, and that's not very helpful for global warming", Dr Santoso said.
Farmers have been already been hit hard by drought - with the Bureau of Meteorology saying rainfall totals in Australia in 2018 were the lowest since 2005. Credit: Joe Armao
 
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16/03/2019

Climate Change Strikes Across Australia See Student Protesters Defy Calls To Stay In School

ABC News


Students strike for climate change (ABC News)

Key points:
  • Students have used a combination of humour, passion and urgency in protests across the country
  • The protests were inspired by the actions of a 16-year-old Swedish student, Greta Thunberg, in Stockholm
  • PM Scott Morrison objected to a previous similar protest, saying he didn't want to see "schools being turned into parliaments"
Tens of thousands of young Australians have walked out of their classrooms today to stage protests in capital cities demanding action on climate change.
Rallies began in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Canberra and Hobart outside state parliament buildings and town halls.
Students have also marched at rallies across regional Australia, with large crowds protesting at Geelong, Byron Bay, Coffs Harbour, Cairns and Townsville.
Many used humour to get their point across, with posters referencing internet memes and suggesting fail grades for the nation's political efforts on climate change policy.
Others were more serious — one poster urged politicians to "panic" about addressing climate change and another warned "there is no Planet B".
Melbourne protest organisers said about 20,000 people attended the rally outside Parliament House. (ABC News: Stephanie Anderson)
In Melbourne, protesters filled Spring Street in the CBD, blocking traffic and trams and chanting "this is what democracy looks like" and "students united will never be divided".
Milou Albrecht and Harriet O'Shea Carre, both 14, travelled from Castlemaine in central Victoria to march in Melbourne.
Harriet O'Shea Carre and Milou Albrecht travelled with 400 of their fellow students to make the Melbourne march. (ABC News)
The pair started the rally last year and were joined by 400 others from Castlemaine Secondary School.
"Together our collective voice is very strong and powerful," Harriet said.
What do the students want?
  • Stop the Adani coal mine in central Queensland
  • No new coal or gas projects
  • 100 per cent renewables by 2030
Hobart College student Imogen Viner said she was concerned about the future of forests in Tasmania.
"Specifically for Tassie, we want to look at stopping how much forestry she's got going on," she said.
Frida Elliott, 15, said she did not care whether her school supported her presence at the Hobart rally.
"We're told we shouldn't be missing class time by our teachers … but there's nothing they can do about it and they've taken a step back and realised the power we have here," she said.
Rallies were also held in Darwin, Brisbane and Perth.
Hundreds of students defied school warnings to attend a rally at Peregian Beach on the Sunshine Coast. (ABC News: Megan Kinninment)
There were 50 rallies planned across the country for students to protest against what they see as the destruction of their future.
Meanwhile, New Zealand rallies have seen strong turnouts, with a student march blocking streets in Wellington this morning.
Thousands of protesters gathered in Perth's CBD to join the nationwide movement. (ABC News: Evan Morgan Grahame)
Students 'on the right side of history'
The protests were inspired by 16-year-old Swedish student Greta Thunberg, who pledged to protest outside the Parliament in Stockholm until the country caught up on its commitments under the Paris Agreement.
Greta urged students to ignore calls from some politicians to stay in school.
Students in Byron Bay ditched school to join the global movement. (ABC News: Sam Turnbull)
"I say that the children are on the right side of history and that those politicians are not," she said.
"So they should keep on fighting and they must be prepared to go on for a very, very long time.
"I don't think decision-makers will get the message for a very long time."
In Melbourne, students staged their protest outside Parliament House. (ABC News: Bez Zewdie)
Federal Education Minister Dan Tehan said he would meet with the climate strikers to discuss their concerns outside of school hours, while Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the protests should have been held on a weekend.
"Students leaving school during school hours to protest is not something that we should encourage," Mr Tehan said.
"Especially when they are being encouraged to do so by green political activists."
Similar protests in November prompted Prime Minister Scott Morrison to warn against the idea of students leaving school to participate in protests.
"We don't support our schools being turned into parliaments. What we want is more learning in schools and less activism in schools," Mr Morrison said at the time.
Students are calling for a switch to renewable energy. (ABC News: Gabriella Marchant)
But other politicians have thrown their support behind the rallies.
NSW Opposition Leader Michael Daley encouraged students to exercise their "democratic right" to protest.
Independent MP Julia Banks said she was proud to support students for "using their voice".
"This is their time," she said on Twitter.
Signs got creative in Hobart. (ABC News: Monte Bovill)
Greta received a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts starting a global climate change movement.
Her view is shared by students around the globe, including the 15-year-old student organiser for the Sydney school strike, Jean Hinchcliffe.
"I believe that I have learnt much more from these strikes and the organising process than I have learnt in any lesson during school," she told the ABC.
"The amount of experience you gain from it and learning to mobilise and participate in democracy I think is far more worthwhile than any history lesson."
At the November protests, students filled arcades and city squares, defying calls by the Prime Minister to stay in school, to call for an end to political inertia on climate policy.
Students gathered on the steps of South Australia's Parliament House. (ABC News: Gabriella Marchant)

Ruby Clark, 12, was among thousands of protesters gathered at Garema Place in Canberra. (ABC News: Niki Burnside)

Thousands of students gathered in Hobart. (ABC News: Monte Bovill)
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