Queensland's Catastrophic bushfire, extreme heatwave and climate change

Queensland: Catastrophic fire conditions, a week long extreme heatwave with record breaking temperatures, mass bushfire evacuations at Gracemere near Rochhampton, State and Commonwealth disaster response plans triggered.

But no mention of climate change intensifying heat and bushfires.

Guest Post: Frank Jotzo on Labor's new energy policy using the #NEG and the need to do so much more

Labor's policy can smooth the energy transition, but much more will be needed to tackle emissions

Frank Jotzo, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University

The Labor party’s energy policy platform, released last week, is politically clever and would likely be effective. It includes plans to underwrite renewable energy and storage, and other elements that would help the energy transition along. Its approach to the transition away from coal-fired power is likely to need more work, and it will need to be accompanied by good policy in other sectors of the economy where greenhouse emissions are still climbing.

The politics is quite simple for Labor: support the transition to renewable electricity which is already underway and which a large majority of Australians support, and minimise the risk that its proposed policy instruments will come under effective attack in the lead-up to the 2019 election.

Storms and flooding for Melbourne Cup day, but media dares not mention climate change

Melbourne Cup day dawned with rain falling. Storms escalated with torrential rain through the morning. Power outages, train disruptions, flashflooding of stations and many low lying roads across the city eventuated. But the mainstream media failed to add 2 + 2 with the influence of climate change in this extreme weather event.

The previous day racing officials had ordered more racetrack irrigation overnight to reduce the firmness of the track. Perhaps they should have checked the weather forecast.

Intense rain events are becoming more frequent, the science is clear not only from models but also observational data. Part of the reason for this is a Warmer atmosphere that can carry more moisture. For every 1 degrees Celsius of warming the extra atmospheric carrying capacity is increased by an extra 6-7 per cent. So heavier rain. That means more flash flooding.

The IPCC 1.5C report and a visit to Bill Shorten to #stopAdani

In this photo I am making a short speech outside Labor MP and Opposition leader Bill Shorten's office at Moonee Ponds on the major transformation necessary if we are to meet the 1.5C Paris climate target, as detailed by the recent IPCC 1.5C report (which I am holding up in the air). The climate science report says unequivocally that there is no physical or chemical impediment to us limiting climate change warming to 1.5C, the problems are entirely political and would entail at this stage massive social transformation of our energy, transport, agriculture and social systems.

We have at most perhaps another decade to start significantly on the path of this social transformation. Actually, I think we need to be well on the path to deep decarbonisation by 2020.