Climate Change
Below is a copy of an email sent to a senior worker from Mr Shorten’s Office met at a Town Hall type meeting on Monday 4th June 2018. Rather than give a political talk Mr Shorten responded to questions from the audience on a range of matters. The LNP has no policy on climate change, Direct Action has proven to be shambolic as anticipated by Turnbull prior to becoming Prime Minister.
Email:
Dear xxxxxxx
My wife and I were most impressed with how Bill was able to answer off the cuff questions last night. We certainly hope that Justine is re-elected.
My concern is that climate change is not getting enough attention, it has been subsumed by attention to energy requirements by the LNP. I believe that Australia is not taking the matter serious enough.
Turnbull often pushes the view that terrorists present a high risk; the science in relation to climate change suggests it presents far higher risks than terrorists. Some examples:
Professor James Anderson who made us aware of CFCs creating the hole in the ozone layer states we are in dire danger. World wide we must spend huge amounts of dollars to ward off extreme climate change, and have only a few years to do so.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2018/01/15/carbon-pollution-has-shoved-the-climate-backward-at-least-12-million-years-harvard-scientist-says/#1774cdc7963e
Paleoclimate research does not present a happy picture, as Dr Burger discusses in his preliminary comments attached to research yet to be published:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323402270_What_caused_Earth%27s_largest_mass_extinction_event_New_evidence_from_the_Permian-Triassic_boundary_in_northeastern_Utah
Dr Burger’s research clearly provides convincing evidence in the role greenhouse gases had in causing mass extinction at the end of the Permian period. He reaches his view through chemical and mineral artefacts he found in the samples of rock he obtained.
Permafrost is thawing, which potentially provides further danger in pingos exploding in Siberia; to date 7,000 pingos have been found. One of the original pingos to explode was found to have 9.6% methane in the atmosphere of the crater formed by the explosion. Normally methane is measured in parts per billion.
While not all of the pingos discovered might have methane gas, they do present concern.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/03/27/russian-scientists-find-7000-siberian-hills-possibly-filled-with-explosive-gas/?utm_term=.91f6919b4f0d
Copy of article given to you last night with hyperlinks.
My main worry about climate change is that people will be dislodged through extreme weather events when lack of fresh water, sea level rise, and crops being damaged with all sorts of nasties through flooding, create a dystopian world where insurrection, and break down of communities will be outcomes. A major tipping point is an ice free Arctic Ocean which is extremely likely to happen within thirty years when taking into account the most conservative scientist’s view point. Grounding lines of ice sheets in Antarctica are going in the wrong direction.
Not something we would wish our children to face.
Yours Sincerely
Keith Antonysen
*Keith Antonysen has had an interest in the science of climate change for a number of decades. Matters which were originally suggested as predictions, such as sea level rise, storm surges and extreme weather etc, are now occurring with increasing frequency.
john hayward
June 6, 2018 at 15:08
Such is the awesome power of conservative greed that it dwarfs that of the volcanic eruptions that set off the mass extinctions of the Pemian.
Not even the prospect of inevitable extinction can deter them from their quest for ever greater riches.
John Hayward
Kim Peart
June 6, 2018 at 20:56
A far greater power driving the destruction of the Earth is voter lethargy, because it presents a green light for conservative greed.
When every voter in the Prosser electorate was sent an invitation to one of six community meetings, the public engagement with climate change, homelessness (housing crisis), creating work, and reviving country and coastal towns with a new approach to tourism, was absolutely amazing ~ http://oldtt.pixelkey.biz/index.php?/article/letter-to-will-hodgman-is-democracy-dead-in-tasmania-/
A couple of phone calls. A couple of received emails. The voter in Prosser has spoken.
Tasmanians do politics as blindly as possible, and no longer engage in democracy.
14,000 invitations sent out by Australia Post attracted 4 people in Swansea, one in Ross, one in Bagdad, and none in Oatlands, Sorell and Eaglehawk Neck.
This vacuum in democratic engagement in Tasmania delivers blind victories to conservatives whereupon they can pump gambling money into campaigns.
The momentum and money of the State election flowed into Prosser in many ways, including an ocean of blue placards with Prosser stickers pasted over “Lyons” at all angles.
Will there be a democratic awakening, or is democracy well and truly dead in Tasmania?
By default, this lethargy translates to a slow waltz into dangerous levels of climate change, and if worse comes to worse, the loss of all that our generations have worked so hard to achieve.
Will there be a democratic awakening in Tasmania?
TGC
June 7, 2018 at 00:06
#1 … “Not even the prospect of inevitable extinction can deter them from their quest for ever greater riches”
Because “extinction is inevitable” – why worry?.
George Smiley
June 7, 2018 at 22:34
Trevor, extinction is not inevitable.
Most instances of an exponential population spike in the natural world are followed by a collapse of carrying capacity, ergo population collapse of the offending species, but they are rarely extinguished altogether. Introduced rats that have crashed sea-bird populations on small islands have been observed in small numbers, fishing for crabs in tidal pools using their tails. Polynesians have eaten each other or moved steadily westward until they came up against the Micronesians with projectile technology, curly hair and special forks for feasting on ‘Long Pig’. And today Mayan Indians eke out a living from their little humpies, scratching in maize with sharp sticks in the shadow of giant pyramids built by their once wealthy and numerous ancestors.
The really sad bit is that one dominant species almost had enough smarts to sort things out, before nature as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse does it for him. But it is not to be.
Kim Peart
June 8, 2018 at 08:08
Re #4 … George Smiley writes “But it is not to be.”
Is this a personal choice, like Mad Otto’s crack suicide squad in the Life of Brian?
A path of action for our survival is still possible if individuals will wake up and work together. See my invitation in Comment #3 .. http://oldtt.pixelkey.biz/index.php?/weblog/article/is-space-the-new-green/
Survival will not be secured by living in a way that has led to the threat to our survival. Using our technology in such a way that we secure survival, is now the key to our survival.
Not one person on TT has responded to the invitation yet, issued many times in many ways, to deal with equity matters as well as survival issues. Those two go together, as the will to deal with equity matters also translates into a will to survive.
I found the same in a whole electorate after issuing 14,000 invitations to every home and business in Prosser to attend six community meetings. We work like the devil for that which does not connect with the delivery of survival.
Why do intelligent people display such blind stubbornness and bone laziness when it comes to survival? If this black hole in mental activity and physical action can be understood, that could be a start to the helping of ourselves.
We are the creature that has brought great harm to the Earth, leading to a threat to our survival. As with the saying “physician, heal thy self”, we must now grow up to the responsibility to heal ourselves, so we can heal the Earth. This will not be an easy challenge, but if a critical number of individuals wake up and act, we can.
Even from Tasmania, we have the tools at our fingertips to drive a global campaign for survival and for winning back a safe Earth. With each day that goes by the challenge gets tougher, and the prospect of failure increases.
The sooner we act, the more people we can save. The more people become engaged, the more hope we have to save the Earth.
That is critical, as our vanishing may not stop the processes that take the Earth system into a heat death of life, driving our emerald planet into a second Venus.
phill Parsons
June 15, 2018 at 13:29
The Tasmanian version of Comical Ali mismanages a misquote in #3, to what end only TGC can know.
Whish-Wilson refers to the recent study on the 3 times increase in the rate of Antarctic ice melt.
Hansen posits, and is supported by the physical evidence, that changes in climate will come in steps which will give a false idea that a new state has arisen when it is simply part of an ongoing change until, and if, greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere are stabilised.
It will get worse even if we don’t act now. How much worse depends on the how quickly and deeply CO2 emissions are cut.
Those who fail to so act are clearly criminal .. and it could be argued, insane. For our own safety, and for the safety of future generations, they should not be given any decision-making power over energy policy or production.
There you are Trevor, just like countries run by people with sanity, we should have a fast transition path .. and no new fossil fuel projects.