07/01/2020

(AU) Bushfire Preparations Stymied By Climate Change Deniers In Government, Says Small Business Lobby

ABC News - Michael Janda

COSBOA says it is not only the small businesses destroyed or damaged by fire that are suffering. (Supplied: Lorena Granados)
Key points
  • Small business lobby COSBOA warned many businesses "will close and not reopen" as a result of the fires and loss of summer trade
  • COSBOA chief executive Peter Strong said climate change deniers in the Federal Government should "shut-up" and "go and sit at the backbench where they belong"
  • The lobby is urging governments to assist fire-affected regions to put on events once the fires are over to lure visitors back to those areas
A key small business lobby group has urged any climate change sceptics on the Coalition frontbench to quit their ministries, arguing they stymied preparations for this bushfire season.
The Council of Small Business Organisations Australia (COSBOA) said its members who have been affected by the fires, either directly or indirectly, are generally disappointed with the Federal Government's handling of the crisis.
"What I'm hearing from my members is the fact that there should have been better preparation for what was predicted by many to be very bad bushfires, worse than normal," said COSBOA's chief executive Peter Strong.
"The preparation at the state level, I think, was very good. But at the federal level, there are people within Government who firmly believe there is no such thing as climate change or that human beings don't have an impact upon it, and they are adamant that no extra work or extra effort should ever happen because they don't believe in climate change.
"That's where the disappointment is within my membership, and we want to hear from those climate change deniers in the Government ranks that they will now shut up, they will go and sit at the backbench where they belong and they will not interfere in developing processes to respond to this situation."
Morrison's fires response has put
his political judgement in question
Within the Government, there is widespread acknowledgement that Scott Morrison's Midas touch has gone missing, writes David Speers.
The Federal Government has faced heavy criticism around its handling of the bushfire crisis, including accusations that ads authorised by the Liberal Party were politicising the disaster and that the acquisition of extra aerial firefighting resources was too slow.
However, the Government said its call-up of 3,000 Defence reservists to assist with relief efforts is an unprecedented response to a natural disaster in Australia.
"I can understand why people are angry, absolutely. But when I look at our response as a Federal Government, we've got the ADF [Australian Defence Force] reservists out the door, we've actually deployed defence assets in a way they never have been," Agriculture Minister Bridget McKenzie told the ABC's RN Breakfast program.

'Businesses will close and not reopen'
Mr Strong told RN Breakfast that the scale and timing of the fires meant thousands of businesses were losing a large part of their annual income.
"In a lot of cases, they might get 80 per cent of their incomes come from this time of year, as you go through December, January, February," he said.
"It's when they make the money they need to stay open for the rest of the year."
Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume.


ABC Radio National Breakfast
7m 34secs

He said the summer revenue shortfall meant many will go out of business, especially in tourist areas around national parks where blackened forests may not recover for several years.
"There will certainly be businesses that will close and not reopen," he predicted.
"If you go to the bushfire affected areas, where people won't be visiting for a long, long time, they just won't be able to open because there won't be any passing trade.
"It will have a huge impact, and the impact on the businesses means an impact on the whole community as jobs are lost."
Parliament House was shrouded by a heavy haze as Canberra was blanketed in bushfire smoke. (AAP: Lukas Coch)
Mr Strong said it is not just businesses in towns directly ravaged by the fires that are suffering.
"We have areas that have been smoke affected as well — Canberra's been very heavily smoke affected — and so a lot of businesses there are not trading the way they used to because people aren't
Can Morrison live down his
George W Bush moment?
Scott Morrison has had some perplexing failures of political and policy judgement in recent weeks, writes Laura Tingle.
going out, or people are going to the shopping malls so they businesses outside shopping malls are being affected," he said.
Mr Strong said governments at all levels could assist by funding events that would encourage tourists back to affected areas after the fires have passed.
"There's all sorts of things that could be done — putting on fetes and festivals, putting on music festivals, you've still got your beaches, the beaches are still going to be pristine, there's still reasons for people to visit, but now it's up to government, local government, and businesses themselves to send a message out, 'Here's some reasons why you should visit'."

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(NYT) As Fires Rage, Australia Sees Its Leader as Missing in Action

New York Times - Livia Albeck-Ripka | Jamie Tarabay | Isabella Kwai

The country is venting frustration with Prime Minister Scott Morrison over what many view as a nonchalant response to the disastrous blazes and his unwavering dismissal of climate change.
Credit Pool photo by James Ross
HASTINGS, Australia — The posters have popped up on streets around Australia, showing the prime minister looking very tropical: floral wreath on his head, ocean-blue shirt open at the collar.
“MISSING,” they blared. “Your country is on fire.”
The immediate reference was clear. The prime minister, Scott Morrison, has been widely castigated for taking a vacation to Hawaii last month, and trying to keep it quiet, while Australia was in the early clutches of one of its most devastating fire seasons ever.
But the message went well beyond one island getaway. Angry and frightened, Australians have been venting their frustration with Mr. Morrison over what they see as his nonchalant and ineffectual response to the disastrous blazes and his unwavering dismissal of the force that has made them so intense: climate change.
With thousands fleeing eastern towns this weekend as fires swept from the hills to the coast, the inescapable realities of a warming world were colliding with the calculated politics of inaction.
Mr. Morrison has minimized the connection between climate change and Australia’s extreme environmental conditions, even as the country just completed its hottest and driest year on record. He has derided calls to end coal mining as “reckless,” prioritizing economic interests and loyalty to a powerful lobby. He has opposed taxing heat-trapping emissions or taking other significant steps to reduce them, although a majority of Australians say the government should take stronger action.
Credit Lukas Coch/EPA, via Shutterstock
And he has signaled no change in his policies even as 24 people have died, hundreds of homes have been destroyed, and more than 12 million acres have burned, an area larger than Denmark. On Sunday, weather conditions eased a bit, with light rain in some areas, but blazes were still burning in Victoria and New South Wales, and some towns were being evacuated.
“The thing that strikes everyone about the present situation is the federal government’s disengagement and lethargy, to put it politely,” said Bill Hare, director of Climate Analytics, a policy institute.
“People are just bewildered,” he added.
As the fire conditions worsened over the weekend, Mr. Morrison defended his government’s response and announced a military mobilization — one that he quickly promoted in a video on social media, drawing widespread criticism. He also denied that his government had played down the links between global warming and changes in Australia’s weather patterns.
“The government has always made this connection, and that has never been in dispute,” he said.
The prime minister said he was undeterred by the anger directed at him. “There has been a lot of blame being thrown around,” he said. “Blame: It doesn’t help anybody at this time, and over-analysis of these things is not a productive exercise.”
Mr. Morrison’s attempt at damage control came as Australians have been voicing a growing sense since November, when the fires arrived early and with far more force than usual, that the government is no longer protecting them in the way it once did.
For much of the time since, the prime minister said that it was not the time to talk about climate change, and that those who did were merely trying to score political points.
But each surge of the flames into crowded suburbs and coastal getaways has presented a fresh test of Mr. Morrison’s defense of the status quo. He has sought to tamp down outrage mostly with photo opportunities and a populist appeal that echoes President Trump. Mr. Morrison has portrayed those who support greater climate action as effete snobs trying to impose their ways on an unwilling quiet majority.
The prime minister published a New Year’s message in newspapers across Australia that pushed back against international pressure for the country to do more.
Credit Adam Taylor/Australian Prime Minister's Office

“Australians have never been fussed about trying to impress people overseas or respond to what others tell us we should think or what we should do,” Mr. Morrison said. “We have always made our own decisions in Australia.”
Critics suggest that his antipathy toward action on climate change has contributed to what they consider a hands-off response to the fires, treating them as a tragedy rather than a turning point.
For months, Mr. Morrison rebuffed calls for a more forceful intervention by the federal government — like a broad military deployment or the largely symbolic declaration of a national emergency — by noting that firefighting had long been the responsibility of individual states. He changed course on Saturday, announcing a call-up of military reservists and new aircraft resources.
The prime minister also initially resisted pressure to compensate the thousands of volunteer firefighters who are performing the overwhelming bulk of the work to protect communities. He later relented, approving payments for each of up to about $4,200, or 6,000 Australian dollars. The decision came a week after he cut his Hawaii trip short and returned to Australia following the deaths of two volunteer firefighters.
Mr. Morrison, who began his professional life in tourism, has been mocked online with the hashtag #scottyfrommarketing. On New Year’s Day, as fire victims surveyed the destruction from the wildfires under orange skies, photos emerged of Mr. Morrison hosting the Australian cricket team in Sydney.
Credit Matthew Abbott for The New York Times
“It reminds me of the George W. Bush moment after Hurricane Katrina in 2005,” said Daniel Flitton of the Lowy Institute, a nonpartisan policy center in Australia. “He seemed to be out of touch, and misread the depths of public concern. That became a lodestone he had to carry for the rest of his term in office.”
More recently, Mr. Morrison has tried to defend Australia’s environmental policies, portraying his government as taking firm action. He said repeatedly in a news conference on Thursday — his first since before Christmas — that the government was on course to “meet and beat” its emission reduction targets.
Climate scientists say those targets were low to begin with. And Australia’s emissions have been rising, while the leadership continues to fight for the right to emit even more.
During United Nations climate talks in Madrid late last year, Australia came under heavy criticism for proposing to carry over credits from the two-decade-old Kyoto Protocol to help it meet its targets under the landmark Paris accord.
“We are laggards,” said Joseph Camilleri, an emeritus professor of politics at La Trobe University in Melbourne, where he specializes in existential threats, including climate change.
“What the Australian fires do best is show us that climate change is now with us here and truly,” he added, “and everyone, including Australia, needs to do an awful lot more than we are doing.”
Australia’s conservative leaders often point out that the country accounts for only a tiny percentage of the world’s heat-trapping emissions. But some experts called the Madrid maneuver a potentially pernicious example from a country that continues to extract and export huge amounts of coal that ends up being burned in power plants around the world.
Credit Wendell Teodoro/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Credit...Wendell Teodoro/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
“The government claims it has reduced emissions,” Mr. Hare said. “What they’re using are essentially accounting tricks to justify or explain their reasoning.”
In his news conference on Thursday, Mr. Morrison framed the government’s climate policy in a way he often has before, as something he will not let get in the way of continued prosperity. He also asked Australians to trust the government and to be patient.
To many, that appeal did not match the gravity of the fear and anxiety coursing through the country.
Jim McLennan, an adjunct professor specializing in bush-fire preparedness at La Trobe University, said that many of the regions affected this season had no recent history of severe bush fires, making it difficult for communities to prepare.
Australians are also emotionally unready, he added, for the extreme future that most likely awaits them. Some scientists say
people may have to throng to cities to escape the threat of bush fires.
“I can’t think of a time,” he said, “where we have had so many serious fires occurring in so many different parts of the country at roughly the same time. It is a kind of new world.”
Mr. Morrison may be able to weather the political storms. The next election is two years away, and he is fresh off a surprise electoral victory in which he was buoyed by support in Queensland, a coal-mining center.
But across the country’s heavily populated eastern coast, the public’s patience is nearly exhausted and turning rapidly to fury. Hours after the news conference on Thursday, Mr. Morrison visited a fire-ravaged community, Cobargo, to see the damage and pledge support to residents.
They heckled him out of town. “You left the country to burn,” one person yelled before the prime minister walked away and set off in his car.
In Mallacoota, another devastated community in southeastern Australia where hundreds of people were evacuated by naval ship to the town of Hastings, Michael Harkin, a vacationer from Sydney, said his experience during the fires had intensified his anger toward the government over its inaction on climate change.
The Morrison government, he said, was exhibiting “incompetent governance avoiding the inevitable.”
“They’re not keeping us safe at all,” he added.
Credit Steven Saphore/EPA, via Shutterstock
 
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(AU) The Bushfire Crisis Has Given The Government A Political 'Out' To Its Climate Change Problem

ABC News - Frank Jotzo

The bushfire emergency, arising from the drought, has become a national crisis. (Supplied: DELWP Gippsland)
Frank Jotzo
Frank Jotzo is a professor at the Australian National University’s Crawford School of Public Policy.
He is representing the ANU as an observer at the UN climate conference. 
The fires across Australia are taking a terrible toll. For those who have lost their loved ones and for those who have lost their homes.
For those who suffer weeks and months of fear, and for the firefighters working beyond exhaustion.
For the millions who breathe harmful smoke with the risk of future illness, and for the many businesses that go broke.
And for nature: we are losing animals and their habitat, biological diversity and natural beauty at massive scale.
The physical and mental scars will be with us for years. Every drive or walk in the woods will be a reminder. Spring will bring fear of the summer.
The bushfire emergency, arising from the drought, has become a national crisis.

You need to lead
It could be the turning point for Australia's climate change politics and policy that is so deeply in the ditch.
It could allow Government politicians to discard their past destructive stance on climate change, and give the opposition an opportunity to look to the future.
So dear Prime Minister and Cabinet, please find it within yourselves to drop the old anti-climate change stance.
You have created the perception of being aloof, uncaring and ineffective on the fires. This was epitomised in the way the Prime Minister turned his back on a resident of fire-ravaged Cobargo when she pleaded for help and the partisan way of going about the announcement of the federal measures.
You will need to lead, and that means showing concern and acknowledging that climate change is a huge issue for Australia.
And you will need to pivot on climate change policy. You've been politically locked into a no-action position, but the bushfires give you the reason to change. The bulk of Australia's business community will be behind you, they yearn for sensible national climate policy.
You can make it your mission to protect the country from harm, an essential conservative cause.
Your biggest problem will be the Murdoch media, some rabid backbenchers and some coal companies. But you are in charge, right?

We need a strong and positive voice
And dear Labor, please be a strong and positive voice. You'll need to get over the idea that the way to electoral salvation is by singing the praises of coal to differentiate from the Greens.
The party of progress and social justice needs to stand for strong action on climate change, and for helping workers and communities in the transition that will sweep Australia's energy and industrial sector.
An all-around strong position on climate action is the natural position of the progressive centre.
Under climate change, the conditions for catastrophic fires will likely be much more frequent. (Supplied: Adam Meredith)
A large majority of voters know that climate change is real and important and say that something should be done about it. That sentiment will likely strengthen.
The usual limitation is the fear of costs. But the fires and drought remind people that our high standard of living depends on nature, and that the very underpinnings of our wellbeing slip away when nature gets out of balance.
The bushfire catastrophe will put climate change policy once again into the mainstream of public concern. And perhaps 2020 will be the year when the political contest starts being over what specifically to do about it, rather than whether or not to act.
It is possible: the UK and Germany have conservative governments that pursue strong climate change policy, and the main opposition parties are broadly in agreement.

If there was ever a 'nation building' program, this is it
Under climate change, the conditions for catastrophic fires will likely be much more frequent — along with the conditions for drought, flooding and storms.
It is plain to see how hard climate change could hit Australia's economy: the rebuilding after catastrophes like the fires, the costs of upgrading infrastructure including to better withstand flooding, and the losses in tourism and agriculture which are major sources of export income. Add to that the widespread damage to unique ecology, which is not only a value in itself but part of what makes Australia attractive to the world.
There is no need to despair. There will be rebuilding and regrowth, but as a nation we need to muster the courage to accept the inevitability of future catastrophes, and have an honest conversation about how we will go about them in a future of accelerating climate change.
It is plain to see how hard climate change could hit Australia's economy. (Instagram: @travelling_aus_family)
We need to plan ahead, provide the resources to fully deal with the impacts as they come, invest in infrastructure and raise capability. If ever there was a "nation building" program, this is it.
A good starting point is the National Disaster Risk Reduction Framework that was prepared within the Department of Home Affairs.
It argues for better anticipation of future disasters in the context of climate change, and for more integrated decision making.
It has been buried, but Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton and the Home Affairs Secretary Mike Pezzullo could now take the running with this blueprint.
Dealing with disasters is only the start of it. We need a comprehensive strategy for responding to climate change impacts.
That means a shakeout of government policy and planning at all levels of government, testing investments for whether they are climate change proof. It also means giving businesses — including farmers — the best information and right incentives to plan ahead for climate change.
Worryingly, in recent years Australia has fallen behind in climate change adaptation research and planning.

Your legacy is at stake
And of course we need to do what we can to limit future climate change. That means encouraging strong global action on emissions.
We cannot do that as long as we are seen as a recalcitrant on the global stage, as we are now.
We should invest to transition Australia's economy to a zero carbon powerhouse, and to build up renewables-based energy export industries.
With our unrivalled renewable energy resources, we are extremely well placed to prosper in a global zero-carbon energy system. But we need to get started, and be seen to be playing ball on climate change.
Australia has profited from fossil fuels for decades. The workers and architects of the carbon industries deserve respect. But the future for our economy lies in services, clean industries and smart agriculture.
This is all quite obvious to most of our young people, and that is where things will turn.
For those who see their future in peril, climate change action is not a left-right divisive issue, but one of common sense.
The pressure and that will come from the young generation will sweep the climate nay-saying aside.
So dear politicians of all stripes: get with sensible climate policy, or be left behind. Your legacy is at stake.

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06/01/2020

(AU) Morrison's Government On The Bushfires: From Attacking Climate 'Lunatics' To Calling In The Troops

The Guardian - 

From May 2018 to January 2020, the Coalition government has had an evolving stance on the fire crisis
The prime minister, Scott Morrison, speaks with Paul and Melissa Churchman at their Wildflower farm in Sarsfield, Victoria, which was destroyed by the bushfires. Photograph: James Ross/AAP
From describing bushfire warnings as the concerns of “inner-city raving lunatics” to calling in the defence forces, the following is a timeline of Scott Morrison’s government’s evolving stance on the fire crisis.

May 2018
The National Aerial Firefighting Centre sends the commonwealth government a business case requesting a permanent increase of $11m to its annual budget. Payments are made on a top-up basis only.

April 2019
The Emergency Leaders for Climate Change, a group of 22 former emergency services leaders led by former commissioner of NSW Fire and Rescue Greg Mullins, writes to the federal government alerting them to the threat of “increasingly catastrophic extreme weather events and calling on both major parties to recognise the need for “national firefighting assets”, including large aircraft, to deal with the scale of the threat.

 16 September 2019
The Emergency Leaders for Climate Change write again to Morrison asking why the government has not yet given them a meeting, despite being told on 4 July that Angus Taylor’s office would be in touch to arrange one.
“It appears that Minister Taylor, or perhaps his office, fails to grasp the urgency of this matter,” Mullins writes. “I must assume from this response and the months of delay in Mr Taylor making contact, that the minister appears at best disinterested in what the Emergency Leaders might have to say.”

8 November 2019
Australian defence force liaison officers start working with Emergency Management Australia.

9 November 2019
Carol Sparks, the mayor of Glen Innes, raises the link between climate crisis, drought and bushfire activity after the town faces down an inferno that killed two of its residents. “We are so impacted by drought and the lack of rain,” she says. “It’s climate change, there’s no doubt about it. The whole of the country is going to be affected. We need to take a serious look at our future.”

11 November 2019
Michael McCormack told Radio National it was ‘pure, enlightened and woke capital-city greenies’ linking climate change with the bushfires. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP
The deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, tells Radio National that it is “pure, enlightened and woke capital-city greenies” and “inner-city raving lunatics” like Richard Di Natale and Adam Bandt from the Australian Greens that are “trying to get a political point score” for raising the link between climate crisis, drought and the devastating bushfires.
David Littleproud, the minister for emergency management, says that Taylor’s office has received no formal request for a meeting from Mullins or the Emergency Leaders for Climate Action but that his office will reach out to them.

11 December 2019
Australia is rated the worst-performing country on climate change policy out of 57 countries in a report prepared by international thinktanks. The report also criticises the Morrison government for being a “regressive force” internationally.

12 December 2019
Morrison attempts to reassure voters that he understands bushfires are a natural emergency and that he accepts the link between climate change and an extended fire season, while dismissing international censure of his government’s climate policies as “not credible”.

16 December 2019
Reports circulate that the prime minister has gone on holidays to Hawaii, as Sydney battles extreme smoke pollution as out-of-control bushfires burn through the Blue Mountains. The prime minister’s office says his whereabouts are “not a story” and that claims he is on holiday in Hawaii are “wrong”.

17 December 2019
Littleproud says he met with Mullins and told the delegation they “should take great comfort and great pride in the current cohort of fire chiefs around the country who have planned meticulously for these fires”.
Littleproud says fighting bushfires is “obviously … the responsibility of states but the federal government kicks the tin. We don’t walk away from this.”

17 December 2019
The Emergency Leaders for Climate Action say they will hold a summit after the current bushfire season because of their “huge disappointment in the lack of national leadership during a bushfire crisis”.
It comes as fires raged across New South Wales and Western Australia on Monday and as Australia was named as one of a handful of countries responsible for thwarting a global deal on the rulebook of the Paris climate agreement.

19 December 2019
Two volunteer firefighters, Geoffrey Keaton, 32, and Andrew O’Dwyer, 36, die fighting fires south-west of Sydney when a tree hits their tanker.

20 December 2019
He says the government is considering calls to pay volunteer firefighters but notes that is “in the first instance” a matter for state governments.

23 December 2019
Morrison says calls to reduce carbon emissions are “reckless” and that Australia doesn’t need to do more on tackling climate crisis. He rejects calls from the opposition to bring forward a meeting with state governments to address the bushfire crisis.

29 December 2019
Morrison agrees to compensation payments made to NSW volunteer firefighters who have lost income due to fighting bushfires, but he sees no further role for the commonwealth. “We’re there to help the states and territories as they address these crises. The states are the ones, as premier knows all too well, who are directly responsible for the funding of their fire services and all the other things that are done.”

30 December 2019
A third NSW RFS volunteer, Samuel McPaul, is killed when his truck rolls during extreme conditions at a fire near Jingellic, on the NSW/Victoria border.

31 December 2019
Morrison releases a statement through social media offering condolences to McPaul’s relatives and emphasising the leading role of the state and territory firefighting authorities in the bushfire crisis. He says the commonwealth will continue in its role of providing “support” to those efforts.

1 January 2020
Morrison shares his new year message urging Australians to celebrate living “in the most amazing country on earth” and remember “there’s no better place to raise kids anywhere on the planet”. He does not make any connection between the bushfires and global heating, suggesting that Australians had faced similarly terrible ordeals throughout history.
Later that day, Morrison hosts the annual New Year’s Day Cricket Australia-McGrath Foundation reception with the Australian and New Zealand teams at Kirribilli in Sydney. In his address to the teams, he says forthcoming Sydney Test match will be “played out against terrible events” but that “at the same time Australians will be gathered whether it’s at the SCG or around television sets all around the country and they’ll be inspired by the great feats of our cricketers from both sides of the Tasman and I think they’ll be encouraged by the spirit shown by Australians”.

2 January 2020
At a press conference, Morrison says he’s “always acknowledged the link … between the broader issues of global climate change and what that means for the world’s weather and the dryness of conditions in many places” but that “no response by any one government anywhere in the world can be linked to any one fire event”.
Morrison reiterates he has no plans to change Australia’s emissions reduction policy. He defends his government’s response to the fires by saying he doesn’t want state and federal governments “to be tripping over each other in order to somehow outbid each other in the response”.
Navy ships and army aircraft are dispatched to help fight bushfires in Victoria.

3 January 2020
While initially saying it was “still the plan” to go to India later in January for trade and defence talks, at which Australia’s coal exports were expected to feature heavily, Morrison says only hours later that he is “inclined not to proceed” with the visit, which has now been postponed.

4 January 2020
The army reserve is called in to assist with firefighting efforts.
Morrison says the federal government will agree to a request made 18 months ago to permanently increase funding to Australia’s aerial firefighting capacity.
The prime minister’s office releases an ad spruiking its firefighting efforts, backed by a jaunty jingle.
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(AU) We Are Seeing The Very Worst Of Our Scientific Predictions Come To Pass In These Bushfires

The Guardian - 

As a climate scientist I am wondering if the Earth system has now breached a tipping point
‘The thing that really terrifies me is that weather conditions considered extreme by today’s standards will seem sedate in the future.’ Photograph: Peter Parks/AFP via Getty Images
Dr Joëlle Gergis
Dr Joëlle Gergis is an award-winning climate scientist and writer based at the Australian National University.
Currently, there are tens of thousands of people in coastal NSW and Victoria stranded in towns where the highways are closed, supermarkets are running out of food, and queues for petrol snake down the streets of devastated towns. The scenes experienced by those caught up in the ordeal are being described as apocalyptic – rightly so.
Meanwhile, the locals face the infinitely more serious situation of returning to find their homes completely incinerated. Cars melted, pets killed, beloved landscapes destroyed. A lifetime of memories razed to the ground. As Australia’s climate continues to warm, the most intimate places of human safety – our very homes – are being threatened in an increasingly dangerous world.
It’s confronting to see military evacuations, usually reserved for developing regions of the world following natural disasters, happening right here in 21st-century Australia. The sheer scale and severity of the emergency has actually overwhelmed our capacity as a nation to deal with the unfolding events. Not just in one area following a single event, but across multiple disasters occurring simultaneously in every state and territory of our nation.
As a climate scientist, the thing that really terrifies me is that weather conditions considered extreme by today’s standards will seem sedate in the future. What’s unfolding right now is really just a taste of the new normal.
At this point I could restate all the lines of scientific evidence that clearly show the links between human-caused climate change and the intensification of extreme weather conditions not just in Australia, but all over the world.
To avoid sounding like a broken record, instead I will say that as a lead author on the forthcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Sixth Assessment report of the global climate due out next year, I can assure you that the planetary situation is extremely dire.
It’s no exaggeration to say my work as scientist now keeps me up at night.
As I’ve watched the events of this summer unfolding, I’ve found myself wondering whether the Earth system has now breached a tipping point, an irreversible shift in the stability of the planetary system.
There may now be so much heat trapped in the system that we may have already triggered a domino effect that could unleash a cascade of abrupt changes that will continue to play out in the years and decades to come.
Rapid climate change has the potential to reconfigure life on the planet as we know it.
We know this because the geologic record contains evidence that these events have occurred in the past. The key difference is that we’ve never had 7.5 billion people on the planet, so the human species really is in uncharted territory.
The scientific community is acknowledging this by including new sections on abrupt climate change throughout key areas of the upcoming IPCC report. We now consider these “low probability, high impact” scenarios an increasingly critical part of our work.
At the risk of stating the bleeding obvious, adapting to climate change in the driest inhabited continent on Earth is going to take a bit of work.
To prepare our nation for the very challenging times ahead, we need political leaders – at every level – prepared to face this harsh reality.
I single out our political leaders because the rest of the country is already leading the way. The leadership and true guts being shown out there by our local communities, often with minimal resources and under intense duress, has been staggering. The resilience, dedication, generosity and heart being demonstrated by our emergency services and embarrassingly unpaid volunteer firefighters is truly the stuff of legends.
Cynics might say that our government seems to be taking advantage of the fact that we are a remarkable people willing to do whatever it takes to defend our incredibly unique nation. But the longer we leave things on a national policy level, the worse things are going to get.
Failing to adequately plan for the known threat of climate change in a country like Australia should now be considered to be an act of treason.
The scientific community has been trying to warn the government of the need to plan to adapt to climate change for at least a decade. In fact, the world’s first global conference on climate change adaptation was hosted here in Australia, on the Gold Coast in 2010.
This conference was run by the former National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCARF), which lost its federal funding in June 2018. It was a visionary initiative to attempt to help the most vulnerable nation in the developed world prepare for climate change. Despite this immensely important task, the initiative is now vastly scaled-down and operating through Griffith University by a handful of dedicated researchers.
How anyone thought that axing funding to the only dedicated national climate change adaptation program in the country was a good idea is completely beyond me.
This summer has been a brutal reminder that no matter how much we want to avoid addressing the problem of climate change, it simply can no longer be ignored. As this summer has shown, it is now part of every Australian’s lived experience.
Now is the time for our political leaders to make a choice about which side of history they want to be on. There is much work to be done, and we are fast running out of time.
As a climate scientist I find prime minster Scott Morrison’s request for people to be “patient” as infuriating as it is condescending. With respect prime minster, the science of climate change has been ignored in this country for decades. We are now seeing the very worst of our scientific predictions come to pass.
Everyone’s patience has worn thin. The Australian people are justifiably angry and are now demanding true leadership in the face of this climate emergency.
We have already squandered over a decade debating climate policy in Australia. All the while, the clear reality of a rapidly destabilising planet accelerates all around us.
There genuinely is no more time to waste. We must act as though our home is on fire – because it is.

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(AU) Could A Lawsuit Tip The Scales On Climate Policy?

Canberra Times - Mark Kenny*

 "Is the climate changing? Why weren't we told?" chided broadcaster Phillip Adams as a long-feared drought-heatwave-bushfire trifecta neared its deadly apotheosis.
It might sound fanciful - and costly - but some lawyers say a class action against those responsible for climate change could in fact be successful. Picture: Shutterstock
Eight words that nailed the smouldering betrayal which is now as pungent in the public nostril as the acrid smoke blighting south-eastern Australia.
The New Year's Eve jibe came as the last twigs of the Coalition's she'll-be-right assurances were themselves cremated - a vengeful coda to a decade of climate negligence. Of putting short-term electoral advantage before the national interest.
Only months ago a coal-brandishing Liberal Prime Minister had been re-elected.
Making consistency his sole virtue, Scott Morrison would later think little of taking off on a luxurious overseas holiday as the crisis he regarded as nothing unusual rolled forward.
And just to emphasise his party's zen-like state, the NSW Minister for Emergency Services would, astoundingly, follow suit, venturing to Europe during the very event for which he had been sworn in - a major state emergency.
This brazenness also characterises the embattled federal Emissions Reduction Minister, Angus Taylor, who confidently claims that Australia produces just 1.3 per cent of global carbon emissions and is thus doing everything required of it.
He also urges the world to keep burning as much Australian coal as we can dig out, while shamelessly pleading our case to use accounting carry-overs (from our laughably low Kyoto obligations) to meet the mediocre Paris target we were set.
If it weren't so serious these failings would qualify as high farce.
Of course our government had been told about global warming. Clearly. Repeatedly. Authoritatively.
Steadily accumulating data pointed unmistakably to catastrophic implications.
While some parts of the globe would become wetter, others would become much hotter, drier, functionally uninhabitable.
Sea levels would rise, exacerbating storm surges. Low-lying Pacific nations would disappear.
Our government has been told about global warming - clearly, repeatedly and authoritatively. Picture: Shutterstock
Atmospheric volatility would bring more furious storms, and with them floods, cyclones, chaos.
Species loss would accelerate.
In short, the preconditions for a state of more-or-less galloping crisis.
All of these threats have coalesced in recent weeks and months.
Soaring temperatures and extraordinary turbulence across tinder-dry ground have created hellish conditions.
Yet while Australia burns - 2019 being the hottest and driest year on record - in the nearby capital of Indonesia, unholy rains have seen at least 30 dead.
Jakarta's heaviest falls in 24 years (perhaps ever) have brought widespread drownings and fatal landslides.
Again, such events had been predicted.
But to what effect?
The absence of visionary leadership has been evident globally, but nowhere more self-destructively than in Australia, a sophisticated polity with perhaps the greatest interest in securing concerted action.
Yet far from doing that, Australia has actually led the resistance.
And its most successful political party, shielded by influential media barrackers, has instead preferred to undermine the scientific consensus, to inhibit action at home, and, most damningly, to lend legitimacy to tardiness abroad.
Viewed historically, this is hardly Australian. Viewed strategically, it is self-serving to the point of being unpatriotic.
Even as a small nation, Australia has boldly contributed to global initiatives in the past.
Examples include unhesitating engagement in two world wars, championing the creation of the United Nations and showing moral leadership against apartheid South Africa. Or there's the establishment of the International Criminal Court, the progression of free trade rules, and the creation of the G20 and APEC.
"The absence of visionary leadership has been evident globally, but nowhere more self-destructively than in Australia."
Yet on the existential question of climate change? Fecklessness.
Abatement has been politicised as the panicked ravings of a "climate cult", the science informing it pilloried, and the only legislated mechanism for reducing domestic carbon output triumphantly repealed.
Remarkably, the Coalition went to the 2019 election with no energy policy and no serious carbon-reduction plan - nor even any desire for one. And it prevailed.
Think about that.
Little wonder younger voters doubt democracy.
It is not just that politicians fail to deliver, or that some lie - it is that there is no electoral consequence for negligence and moral turpitude.
But what if there were consequences? Liability even.
It's a long bow, but imagine a class action against government itself, against individual politicians, ministers, their political parties, and perhaps even their media apologists?
That the damage is real is beyond debate - we all know the figures. But the liability?
That case could be brought by farmers, regional businesses, burnt-out homeowners, families of deceased residents and firefighters, their insurers, conservationists - all of them seeking to show that an officially sanctioned rejection of expert advice amounted to a negligence born of self-interest and a reckless indifference on the part of governments, political leaders, individual MPs and their various organs.
Sound fanciful? Perhaps, but statutes such as the NSW Rural Fires Act, 1997 set out a very clear responsibility for ministers and officials requiring them inter alia to make provision: "(a) for the prevention, mitigation and suppression of bush and other fires in local government areas, and (c) for the protection of persons from injury or death, and property from damage, arising from fires, and (c1) for the protection of infrastructure and environmental, economic, cultural, agricultural and community assets from damage arising from fires..."
There could be other legal bases for an application also.
There's no doubt such an action would be novel and highly adventurous. It would face significant technical hurdles, and would be potentially costly.
Unlike the US, Australian litigants are generally required to pay the other's costs in the event of failure.
Even the threshold challenge would be problematic: proving a causal link between global warming and the firestorm(s).
Only after that could the claimants go on to assert that, through its particular negligence, the Coalition had increased the danger, thus breaching its duty of care.
Legally, this is a heavy burden, even if the moral and political case seems open and shut.
What is clear, however, is that the expert advice was repeatedly shelved and that the whole issue of climate change and its associated dangers was cynically politicised to the material disadvantage of citizens - current and future generations - and the national estate.
If justiciable, and that is a big "if", the words and actions of senior Coalition figures undermining the science as "crap" and claiming any risks were manageable are legion.
Just weeks ago, the Deputy Prime Minister, for example, described those linking climate to bushfires as "woke inner-city greenies".
Add to this, the repeal of the carbon price, refusal to seek global action, failure to take reasonable steps on available knowledge to avoid loss of life, loss of property, and destruction of native flora and fauna.
Would an Australian court entertain such an application? According to several lawyers contacted, it is not impossible.
Tony Abbott's replacement in the North Shore seat of Warringah, Zali Steggall, took to Twitter on New Year's Day.
"Very hard to celebrate a decade where governments had all the facts on the risks ahead and failed to act. #ClimateEmergency #ClimateActNow"
They did know. But claimed they knew better. They were wrong. Legally or otherwise, that is a fact.

 *Mark Kenny is Senior Fellow at ANU's Australian Studies Institute

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05/01/2020

NYT Q&A: How Climate Change, Other Factors Stoke Australia Fires

New York Times - Seth Borenstein, Associated Press

In this Monday, Dec. 30, 2019, aerial photo, wildfires rage under plumes of smoke in Bairnsdale, Australia. Thousands of tourists fled Australia's wildfire-ravaged eastern coast Thursday ahead of worsening conditions as the military started to evacuate people trapped on the shore further south. (Glen Morey via AP)
Australia’s unprecedented wildfires are supercharged thanks to climate change, the type of trees catching fire and weather, experts say.
And these fires are so extreme that they are triggering their own thunderstorms.
Here are a few questions and answers about the science behind the Australian wildfires that so far have burned about 5 million hectares (12.35 million acres), killing at least 17 people and destroying more than 1,400 homes.
“They are basically just in a horrific convergence of events,” said Stanford University environmental studies director Chris Field, who chaired an international scientific report on climate change and extreme events. He said this is one of the worst, if not the worst, climate change extreme events he’s seen.
“There is something just intrinsically terrifying about these big wildfires. They go on for so long, the sense of hopelessness that they instill,” Field said. “The wildfires are kind of the iconic representation of climate change impacts.”

Q: Is climate change really a factor?
A: Scientists, both those who study fire and those who study climate, say there’s no doubt man-made global warming has been a big part, but not the only part, of the fires.
Last year in Australia was the hottest and driest on record, with the average annual temperature 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) above the 1960 to 1990 average, according to Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology. Temperatures in Australia last month hit 121.8 F (49.9 C).
“What would have been a bad fire season was made worse by the background drying/warming trend,’’ Andrew Watkins, head of long-range forecasts at Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology, said in an email.
Mike Flannigan, a fire scientist at the University of Alberta in Canada, said Australia’s fires are “an example of climate change.”
A 2019 Australian government brief report on wildfires and climate change said, “Human-caused climate change has resulted in more dangerous weather conditions for bushfires in recent decades for many regions of Australia.”
In this satellite image released by Copernicus Sentinel imagery, 2020 twitter page dated Dec. 31, 2019, shows wildfires burning across Australia. (Copernicus Sentinel Imagery via AP)
Q: How does climate change make these fires worse?
A: The drier the fuel — trees and plants — the easier it is for fires to start and the hotter and nastier they get, Flannigan said.
“It means more fuel is available to burn, which means higher intensity fires, which makes it more difficult — or impossible — to put out,” Flannigan said.
The heat makes the fuel drier, so they combine for something called fire weather. And that determines “fuel moisture,” which is crucial for fire spread. The lower the moisture, the more likely Australian fires start and spread from lightning and human-caused ignition, a 2016 study found.
There’s been a 10% long-term drying trend in Australia’s southeast and 15% long-term drying trend in the country’s southwest, Watkins said. When added to a degree of warming and a generally southward shift of weather systems, that means a generally drier landscape.
Australia’s drought since late 2017 “has been at least the equal of our worst drought in 1902,” Australia’s Watkins said. “It has probably been driven by ocean temperature patterns in the Indian Ocean and the long term drying trend.”

Q: Has Australia's fire season changed?
A: Yes. It’s about two to four months longer, starting earlier especially in the south and east, Watkins said.
“The fires over the last three months are unprecedented in their timing and severity, started earlier in spring and covered a wider area across many parts of Australia,” said David Karoly, leader of climate change hub at Australia's National Environmental science Program. “The normal peak fire season is later in summer and we are yet to have that.”
In this image released Thursday, Jan. 2, 2020, from the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning in Gippsland, Australia, smoke rises from wildfires burning in East Gippsland, Victoria. Thousands of tourists are fleeing Australia's wildfire-ravaged eastern coast ahead of worsening conditions as the military started to evacuate people trapped on the shore further south. Cooler weather has aided firefighting and allowed people to replenish supplies. (DELWP Gippsland via AP)
Q: Is weather, not just long-term climate, a factor?
A: Yes. In September, Antarctica’s sudden stratospheric warming — sort of the southern equivalent of the polar vortex — changed weather conditions so that Australia’s normal weather systems are farther north than usual, Watkins said.
That means since mid-October there were persistent strong westerly winds bringing hot dry air from the interior to the coast, making the fire weather even riskier for the coasts.
“With such a dry environment, many fires were started by dry lightning events (storms that brought lightning but limited rainfall),” Watkins said.

Q: Are people starting these fires? is it arson?
A: It’s too early to tell the precise cause of ignition because the fires are so recent and officials are spending time fighting them, Flannigan said.
While people are a big factor in causing fires in Australia, it’s usually accidental, from cars and trucks and power lines, Flannigan said. Usually discarded cigarettes don’t trigger big fires, but when conditions are so dry, they can, he said.

Q: Are these fires triggering thunderstorms?
A: Yes. It’s an explosive storm called pyrocumulonimbus and it can inject particles as high as 10 miles into the air.
During a fire, heat and moisture from the plants are released, even when the fuel is relatively dry. Warm air is less dense than cold air so it rises, releasing the moisture and forming a cloud that lifts and ends up a thunderstorm started by fire. It happens from time to time in Australia and other parts of the world, including Canada, Flannigan said.
“These can be deadly, dangerous, erratic and unpredictable,” he said.

Q: Are the Australian trees prone to burning?
A: Eucalyptus trees are especially flammable, “like gasoline on a tree,” Flannigan said. Chemicals in them make them catch fire easier, spread to the tops of trees and get more intense. Eucalyptus trees were a big factor in 2017 fires in Portugal that killed 66 people, he said.

Q: How can you fight these huge Australia fires?
A: You don’t. They’re just going to burn in many places until they hit the beach, Flannigan said.
“This level of intensity, direct attack is useless,” Flannigan said. “You just have to get out of the way... It really is spitting on a campfire. It’s not doing any good.”

Q: What's the long-term fire future look like for Australia?
A: “The extreme fire season in Australia in 2019 was predicted,” said Australian National University climate scientist Nerilie Abram. “The question that we need to ask is how much worse are we willing to let this get? This is what global warming of just over 1 degree C looks like. Do we really want to see the impacts of 3 degrees or more are like, because that is the trajectory we are on.”

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