Engulfed
As the northern hemisphere burns:
Guardian Australia asked seven leading climate scientists to describe how they felt as much of the northern hemisphere is engulfed by blistering heatwaves, and a number of global land and ocean climate records are broken.
Dr Joelle Gergis:
What is playing out all over the world right now is entirely consistent with what scientists expect. No one wants to be right about this. But if I’m honest, I am stunned by the ferocity of the impacts we are currently experiencing.
Bill Hare:
Driving all this is the fossil fuel industry. Enabling it are political leaders unwilling to bring this industry under control and who promote policies such as offsetting and massive gas expansion that simply enable this industry to continue.
Professor Ian Lowe:
Now all the projected changes are happening, so I reflect on how much needless environmental damage and human suffering will result from the work of those politicians, business leaders and public figures who have prevented concerted action. History will judge them very harshly.
Professor Matthew England:
It makes me feel deeply frustrated to watch the slow pace of policy action – it’s bewildering to see new fossil fuel extraction projects still getting the go-ahead here in Australia. And with this comes deep resentment for those who have lobbied for ongoing fossil fuel use despite the clear climate physics that have been known about for almost half a century.
Still the cruise ships trundle in and out of port.
The Murray River has just experienced a once-in-100 flood event, even though the last one was less than 50 years ago. This has resulted in fantastic new crops of fuel for fires later this year.
We are also experiencing far colder than normal weather, and this cold air will eventually suck hot air down from the north, hastening drying and boosting the power of fires.
But don’t worry, our government has just approved new, carbon neutral coal mines. (-:
Nova Scotia has just experienced record-breaking flooding, with some areas getting 200+mm of rain in just a few hours.
Rishi Sunak is now signalling that the Tories will temper or abandon Net Zero policies that might cost consumers extra money. They held Uxbridge, so they believe that they will win the next general election. He’s not as concerned now about pleasing those moderates who want the UK to participate in policies that will work towards Net Zero.
Rishi – It’s going to cost Britons Much, Much, More in the coming years to deal with effects of climate change
For those who do the podcast thing, there is a podcast I learned about on Threads called “Climate Rebels.” It is run by those with an entrepeneurial spirit who talk about both the necessity of reducing carbon load and how enterpreneurs can do what governments are afraid to do. I learned that there is a company that is processing the methane product from landfills into fuel called “bio-methanol” and Maersk, the shipping giant is now placing orders for all new cargo ships to be fueled by the product. There is an astonishing amout of organic matter in landfills and the decomposition is a major source of methane emissions into the atmosphere. Methane is an even more effect heat trap than carbon dioxide. It’s worth a listen, and they discuss the clash between instittutional investors and those who really actually want to make a change. There’s a lot of greenwashing out there.
Australia’s former Deputy Prime Minister was on a panel show recently, opining on the issue of Australia continuing to approve new fossil fuel projects, given climate change. Mr Joyce, a former accountant, noted that Australia imports virtually all our goods, and we must sell *something* to the rest of the world in return, therefore, we *must* sell fossil fuels.
This boggles me on many fronts. Among them, that these new projects don’t come online for some time, so the economics of those sales won’t be realised for a decade or more, we have plenty from existing projects to sell now.
Secondly, wanting and planning to sell said fuels to the rest of the world over a decade from now is no guarantee at all that we CAN sell those fuels when the time comes – it appears not to have occurred to Mr Joyce that a time may arrive when no one else wants our awful climate warming fuels, and perhaps we’d better hurry up and work out what else we might sell instead.