Greens dare criticize coal and climate policies during #CycloneDebbie

Original article published at nofibs.com.au

Those uppity Greens are daring to speak about climate change while severe Tropical Cyclone Debbie beat the shit out of the Whitsunday Islands (Read this report of Hamilton Island), Proserpine and Bowen, and now threatens extensive flooding from torrential rainfall for central and SE coastal Queensland.

The accusatory tone from Malcolm Turnbull and other Liberal government ministers is 'How dare you try to politicise an extreme weather event, when we should all be pulling together.', while they conveniently forget the South Australian storms in September 2016 which resulted in a system black which they conveniently and erroneously immediately blamed on the fault of the wind turbines in South Australia.

They have continued to prosecute an attack on wind energy and South Australia, despite a BOM report blaming the primary cause as the cyclonic storm with 260km per hour wind gusts. AEMO also put the primary cause as the destructive winds destroying transmission towers, but also identified in the final report that automatic wind generator protection settings (since updated) contributed to the System Black event.

No pulling together for South Australia, Queensland, or in fact all of Australia, in it's time of need to resolve the lack of coherence in energy and climate policies.

Is there the taint of hypocrisy here? You bet.

Turnbull increases climate aid for Pacific at Regional leaders meeting

Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull attended the Pacific Leaders' meeting forum, and announced a small increase in climate related aid for the region. But this comes after the Abbott Government slashed Australia's foreign aid budget to extremely low levels in 2014.

Related: Pacific pariah: how Australia’s love of coal has left it out in the diplomatic cold | Pacific Island nations lead in ratification of Paris Agreement on climate change

Bandaids for an unmitigated reef catastrophe #ReefElection

Image: Malcolm Turnbull, Greg Hunt, Ewen Jones travelling to Magnetic Island. Photo: Greg Hunt/twitter. Article first published using storify at nofibs.com.au

A promise by the Prime Minister to divert $1 billion in Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) funding to improve reef catchment water quality and reduce greenhouse gas emissions has been soundly criticised as legally problematic, inefficient and far below the funding scientists say is required to Save the Reef.

This video, published on 2nd June 2016 from the Climate Council, articulates the climate change threat facing the reef, with statements from tourism operators, marine scientists and climate scientists.

Storms, floods and avoiding the dots on climate in the Federal election

This article was originally published at nofibs.com.au

During a tour of flood affected areas in Tasmania on Thursday 9 June, the Prime Minister was asked a question (See SMH report) relating to extreme weather events and climate change:

Politicians offer token #ausvotes funding to Great Barrier Reef facing extinction. It is a climate emergency

We need to come to terms that the Great Barrier Reef ecosystem and coral reef ecosystems globally as we know them, are facing extinction. It is a climate emergency. The reef is our canary in a coalmine and it is now dying from the greenhouse gases we have released.

Early surveys of the Great Barrier Reef showed that 93 percent of reefs were affected by coral bleaching. Scientists have been undertaking extensive aerial and underwater surveys since then to refine these initial survey results. Scientists from the Coral Reef Centre of Excellence are now reporting that over 35 percent of coral north of Cairns in the northern and central regions are now dead or dying.

The impact of coral bleaching changes dramatically from north to south along the 2300km length of the Reef.

“We found on average, that 35% of the corals are now dead or dying on 84 reefs that we surveyed along the northern and central sections of the Great Barrier Reef, between Townsville and Papua New Guinea,” says Professor Terry Hughes, Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University (JCU).

“Some reefs are in much better shape, especially from Cairns southwards, where the average mortality is estimated at only 5%. This year is the third time in 18 years that the Great Barrier Reef has experienced mass bleaching due to global warming, and the current event is much more extreme than we’ve measured before."

“These three events have all occurred while global temperatures have risen by just 1 degree C above the pre-industrial period. We’re rapidly running out of time to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” concluded Terry Hughes.

Guest Post: John Hewson - Shorten can wedge Turnbull on climate

I recently wrote how I still feel ashamed of Australia during and after the Paris COP21. Australia signed the Paris Agreement in New York on April 22, but is still not showing signs of walking the talk on climate action. I am far from the only one who are critical of current Government political inaction in addressing climate change from across the political spectrum. Here is John Hewson, an Economics Professor and a former opposition leader of the Liberal National Party in 1993, who accused the Government, and Environment Minister Greg Hunt, of 'blatant hypocrisy'...

John Hewson, Australian National University

It was all a bit much for me to see Environment Minister Greg Hunt wallowing in the signing of the Paris Agreement on emissions reduction in New York this week. His commitment to its ratification by year end, after opposing the pricing of carbon and attempting to close down the renewables industry, is nothing short of blatant hypocrisy.

Further, it was galling to hear him boast that, “We’re now on track to meet and beat our..targets and our Paris 2030 targets are strong and ambitious and they have been welcomed and hailed”, and then to attempt to create the impression that “our domestic climate change policies” have and will continue to deliver “real outcomes”.

Climate activists stage protest outside #LNG18 in Perth

The Gas Industry and all the big fossil fuel companies have come to Perth to talk exploitation of fossil fuels regardless of the climate imperative agreed to in Paris in December 2015. They were greeted on the opening night by climate activists.

The 18th International Conference and Exhibition on Liquefied Natural Gas has brought together the fossil fuel industry to discuss production efficiencies with the current low prices in LNG, and work out how they can continue to maximise drilling and exploitation into the future. There was a Welcome to Country and headline speeches by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett.

Major companies at the conference include Chevron, Shell, Inpex, ConocoPhillips, Total and Woodside Petroleum.

Is poor funding of climate and health research by NHMRC political bias?

This was an Original article published at nofibs.com.au

Is there a funding bias with the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) when it comes to climate change and health? and particularly extreme heat and population health?

Some climate and health researchers say there is a definite bias, over a number of years, against funding health and climate change related research projects. One result of this wide-spread perception, is that researchers self-censor their funding proposals to avoid mentioning climate change to stand a much better chance of grant approval.

Fossil fuel growth centre funded while silence on Mission Innovation global commitment

Article originally published at nofibs.com.au

On the opening day of the Paris Climate conference our Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, in a stylish but lacklustre speech with few new initiatives, announced support for the Mission Innovation multi-country program to research, develop and commercialise clean energy systems.

"Today Australia joins with many other countries in supporting Mission Innovation which aims to double investment in clean energy innovation over the next five years." said Turnbull on November 30 at the Leaders Forum in COP21.

Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull at COP21: all style little substance

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull waltzed onto the stage at the UN Climate Conference Loire plenary room on Monday afternoon. He was suave and eloquent. All style, but there was little of substance, or new commitments in his speech.

He announced that Australia was not only going to meet our 5 per cent target by 2020, but we were going to exceed it. "We will meet and beat our 2020 emissions reduction target." he said.

But he gave no commitment to actually setting a new pre-2020 target to aim for.

Our current pre-2020 target puts us at the back of the pack with regard to carbon pollution reduction effort prior to 2020.

If every country took this attitude, then the world would be well on the way to 4 degrees global warming.

Australia's #climate stance for Paris #COP21

It seems that Australia has flexibility in negotiating for a global climate agreement in Paris. Minister Hunt even expressed that there is some room for Australia to lift it's targets, after a review, through purchase of carbon credits. But it appears there is no extra funding to the Green Climate Fund on the table.

Australia as a mid-level power carries some influence at sensitive negotiations such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) annual summit, called the Conference of Parties or simply COP. This year in Paris is the 21st year of negotiations, hence COP21.

Tom Arup in The Age has a good summary of the Australian political negotiating position on climate, writing that Australia's "team now has a negotiating mandate approved by cabinet. It is understood to be flexible and allows Australia to sign up to a strong agreement, including one with lofty language about the long-term ambition of the agreement."

Guest Post: Prof Peter Christoff on Prime Minister Turnbull and climate change

If he wants to win an election, Turnbull should go back to his old self on climate

Peter Christoff, University of Melbourne

No more “stop the boats” or “axe the tax”. In announcing his challenge to Tony Abbott on Monday, Malcolm Turnbull promised to take Australian politics away from the mantrafication of policy by three-word chant.

He offered to treat the public intelligently, to engage it with reasoned explanations for policy change, and to fashion a convincing positive economic narrative for Australia.

You could almost hear a collective sigh of relief from the withered body politic.

Turnbull also campaigned for leadership on the basis that he could save the Coalition from an impending crushing electoral defeat. The immediate bounce in polls after the leadership coup suggests that he mobilises extra support based on public expectations that he will lead a government that is more progressive, intelligent and humane on a range of issues – including climate.

No change in Australian #climate policy with new PM Turnbull

This week Australia watched as the Liberal Party changed the Prime Minister, deposing Tony Abbott in a 54-44 party room vote and reinstating Malcolm Turnbull to the position of party leader and now Prime Minister. The change follows succeeding worsening polls for the Government.

Sunday afternoon Canberra was abuzz with rumours of a leadership challenge in the Liberal Party. Even though the Canning byelection is in progess, this is a sitting week in Canberra when politicians were available for a party room meeting. The #Libspill quickly came to fruition on Monday night in the Liberal party room meeting.

This is the third Prime Minister in 5 years who has been deposed in a party room ballot. Kevin Rudd was deposed by Julia Guillard in 2010, who then went on to form a minority government after a general election with the support of Independent MPs. With polls souring, Guillard was deposed by Rudd near the end of her term in 2013, with Tony Abbott then becoming Prime Minister after the Liberal National Parties won a majority of seats in the general election.

Now it was Abbott's turn to be deposed after serving less than 2 years as Prime Minister and numerous gaffes in government. The most recent gaffe was a laughing response to a joke in bad taste made by Immigration Minister Peter Dutton on rising sea levels and Pacific nations.

Malcolm Turnbull squashes #climate action for #libspill chance as Prime Minister

Malcolm Turnbull was on the unofficial campaign trail on the Central Coast of NSW for the upcoming Liberal Party spill of positions being forecast to take place next Tuesday (10 February). It comes after a confrontation in a 'secret' meeting between Turnbull and Abbott in the Prime Minister's offices on Wednesday 4 February.

Turnbull used a Politics in the Pub event at Wyong with Member for Dobell Karen McNamara, along with some strategic tweets in his travels, to show his leadership colours to his fellow MPs. But one media pack question after the event stood out and made clear Turnbull is willing to trade any credibility and integrity on climate action for a chance at the top job. A repost of my original article for Nofibs.

Malcolm Turnbull on the Coalition's Climate Change Policy

John Clarke and Bryan Dawe talk carbon tax. Some satirical humour on the carbon tax on the Seven thirty report last night with a dig at Malcolm Turnbull having to support the Coalition Climate policy he opposes and knows is wrong to preserve shadow cabinet solidarity.

Are you Con Fused? Maybe you should ask Malcolm Turbull, former Opposition leader and now shadow cabinet minister, about the merits of the opposition's stance on reducing carbon pollution.