Resistance in face of a Trump climate denial agenda

Photo by Charlie Furman/twitter @DigitalCharlie

Despite the climate denialism in a Trump administration, it will be difficult to stop the zero carbon transition already underway and driven by economic forces, with action by citizens, businesses and states.

As the minutes ticked past midday with Trump's inauguration on January 20, the whitehouse.gov website was swept clean of anything climate related. Obama's record in this area has been officially archived and Trump's pages announce an America First Energy Plan.

• Killing Obama's climate plan not so easy
• Oil pipelines mired in controversy
• Cost of carbon abolition
• Moratorium on coal leasing on Federal land
• Last minute methane and clean water rules under threat
• Arctic and Atlantic Deep sea drilling put off-limits by Obama
• Paris Agreement
• Reasons for optimism
• California Governor Jerry Brown Climate Hero?
• Obama discusses energy transition in Science
• Obama's Parting payment to Green Climate Fund

As 2016 double dissolution election firms, Attorney General Brandis questions climate science

Katharine Murphy for the Guardian reports that Attorney General George Brandis stated in the Senate today that the science of climate change is far from settled.

Like Murphy, I am having trouble following the Brandis logic. If the climate science is not settled as he says, why are the LNP Government allowing CSIRO to savagely slash their climate research capacity in the CSIROcuts.

Australian Government funds $4 million sweet deal for #climate contrarian Bjorn Lomborg

This sweet deal for statistician and climate contrarian Bjorn Limborg is likely to really piss off Australian climate scientists.

With one fell swoop the Government has alienated climate scientists, and probably a heavy proportion of other academics and the general public. The Abbott Government is funding climate contrarian Dr Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish Professor of Statistics, to establish a 'Consensus Centre' at the University of Western Australia at a taxpayer funded cost of $4 million for a four year period, at a time when the Treasurer is arguing we need budget constraint.

Of course most Australian climate scientists were probably already not very sympathetic to the Abbott Government with the failure to appoint a Science Minister, axing the Climate Commission (a budget saving of just $1.5 million), and cuts to science and research funding.

It has been clear for many years that 97% of research papers say climate change is happening, and while Lomborg does not directly deny anthropogenic climate change he casts doubt on climate impacts, often cherry picks his data selectively, makes straw man arguments, and runs cost benefit models to argue for delaying climate mitigation action.

Warburton Review recommends slashing Australia’s Renewable Energy Target

Original article posted on Climate Action Moreland website

No surprises in the Warburton Review recommendations published this week. The review panel was after all hand picked to return a result the conservative and ideologically driven Abbott Government would be happy with.

Chaired by self confessed climate denier and former chairman of Caltex Dick Warburton, the recommendations involve changing the target by either closing the scheme to new investors or by setting targets based on the growth of electricity demand. The review also called for the outright abolition of the small-scale RET scheme - the scheme that assists solar PV panels installation on domestic houses and small businesses. This change would push up the cost of panels by 50 per cent according to a Sydney Morning Herald Report.

The review was very narrow in focus and did not consider adequately the climate science imperative for rapid climate change action and need to rapidly transition to renewables in stationary energy, and the need to do this as part of the global uptake in renewables, and nor did it assess or model the substantial health benefits and reduced medical costs provided of reduced air pollution.

Link: Warburton Review of the Renewable Energy Target

Open Letter: Respect climate science expertise, Maurice Newman

Dear Mr Maurice Newman AC,

As the head of Prime Minister Tony Abbott's Business Advisory Council and a person advising the Prime Minister on business related matters I expect you to give factual, informed and considered advice. It is particularly important that you take the time, effort and responsibility to respect expertise, particularly scientific expertise, and educate yourself on areas outside of your own business and management focus that impinge on government decisions that effect the management of Australia's economy and environment and international relationships.

I would expect that on matters of science and climate change you would seek the advice and collaborate with Australia's chief scientist, Professor Ian Chubb, and the premier scientific organisations active in this research including the CSIRO, BOM, and the Australian Academy of Science.

Of course you have a right to your personal opinions, but not to proffer them as factual advice to Government when they are clearly inaccurate or misleading according to the people of expertise working in these specialist areas.

Your recent opinions published in the The Australian newspaper ('We’re ill-prepared if the iceman cometh' 14 August 2014) are contrary to the findings of every major scientific and meteorological body on the planet, and ignore the reality that the long term trend is that the Earth is getting hotter, with a more active hydrological cycle causing more extreme weather events.

Why should the Australian public have confidence in your role if you display such little regard for scientific fact and the expertise offered by our scientists, including by Australia's chief scientist?

I understand that the Climate Council's Professor Tim Flannery has offered an opportunity for the Business Advisory Council to be briefed by a group of our nation's top scientists on climate change and business risk. I urge you to take this opportunity.

To assist you, I suggest you watch Professor Michael Raupach in his speech he delivered during National Science Week at the Australian Academy of Science on Tuesday 19 August 2014. Dr Raupach is Executive Director of the Climate Change Institute, Australian National University and has led a highly respected and exemplary career in climate research with the CSIRO. He is regarded as one of Australia's leading experts on climate change.

The speech contains a brief overview of climate science and some of Australia's important contributions to this science. It is as good as any place to start for accurate scientific information on climate change. Grab a cuppa tea or coffee and sit down and watch it for an hour. Is that too much to ask?



If you cannot accommodate and incorporate the expert advice from specialists, such as from Australian climate scientists, in your business advice to government, then I expect you to step down from your position as there is a serious conflict of interest between scientific factual information and the national interest with your personally held views.

Sincerely

John Englart

Humour: Addressing false equivalence in the climate debate

John Oliver's show Last Week Tonight has provided at last an accurate balance on debating the issue of climate change on television. For too long media shows have presented it as a debate between two equal sides - but this is false equivalance.

The overwhelming scientific consensus is that climate change is occurring, impacts are happening now, and we need to rapidly reduce emissions to avoid dangerous climate impacts.

Climate science and clean energy suffer under first Abbott budget

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Treasurer Joe Hockey used the federal government's first budget to continue the assault on scientific research, climate change infrastructure, and clean energy programs to devastate the fledgling renewables industry breaking several electoral promises along the way. This will have long term impacts for responding to and mitigating climate change, pushing even greater costs of action on future governments and future generations.

As leader of the Greens Senator Christine Milne observed, "The words environment and climate change did not appear once in budget speech."

And in the short term the budget reduces spending on health, education and social welfare which hit low and middle income earners particularly hard by making drastic and substantial cuts to 89 different health and social welfare programs to save $80 billion over the next 4 years.

The result: these policies increase social inequity on the short and the longer term.

Antarctic ice mass accelerating according to GRACE reanalysis, Pine Island Glacier in sustained retreat

The continent of Antarctica is a land of complexity and paradox, especially when talking about climate change. It is our driest and coldest desert on the planet but locks up an enormous amount of fresh water in it's thick ice sheets. The southern ocean surrounds the continent, insulating it from warmer latitudes, but those currents also bring warmer waters from the tropics to interact with the giant ice shelves around the continent.

And of course there is the paradox of Antarctic sea ice which is recording record sea ice extent over recent years due to the complex winds, currents and dynamics of melt water.

Sea ice growth or melt does not affect sea level rise. We need to look at what the great Ice sheets are doing to determine whether they are accelerating mass loss and contributing to sea level rise.

The GRACE satellites provide us with a remote measuring tool for ice mass balance, but like all tools it comes with certain biases built in. The job of the scientist is to analyse and correct for these biases.

The Paradox of Antarctic Sea Ice 2: Research vessel trapped by summer sea ice

I came across an article lambasting the Australian Antarctic Expedition scientists on board the MV Akademik Shokalskiy trapped by fast ice since Christmas Eve in the Commonwealth Bay region of Antarctica. Climate scientists and tourists are on board the vessel on the Spirit of Mawson voyage, retracing Sir Douglas Mawson's Antarctic expedition.

The ship found itself locked in thick ice after experiencing blizzard conditions which moved and piled up ice flows.

Ships can get trapped by pack ice in polar waters very quickly during blizzards. Pack ice moves around with wind conditions, and it is not uncommon for ships to become temporarily locked in the ice even during peak summer conditions in Antarctica.

But Daniel Greenfield seems to think a ship trapped in Antarctic summer sea ice is a negation of global warming and the science involved in climate change. He is not alone...

Related: Oliver Millman: Five basic Antarctic facts for climate change sceptics | Giles Parkinson: Australia, 'hostage to climate change madness'? To say so is madness indeed

Dark Money - Who funds Climate Change Deniers in the United States?

A new peer reviewed study exposes the major sources of funding of climate deniers in the United States and methods developed more recently to hide this funding as 'dark money'. The study was done by Robert J Brulle, a professor of sociology and environmental science at Drexel University College of Arts and Sciences and published in Climatic Change.

The major findings of this study reveal that Conservative foundations have bank-rolled the climate change denial countermovement. Although the Koch brothers and ExxonMobil have publicly reduced funding from 2007, this occurred at the same time as a dramatic rise in funding through untraceable sources such as Donors Trust. Most funding for climate denial efforts is now publicly untraceable.

This well funded counter-movement has been successful at muddying the waters of public discourse on climate change even though there is an overhelming consensus among climate scientists and the general science community. Drawing upon conservative think tanks, advocacy groups, trade associations and conservative foundations, with strong links to sympathetic media outlets and conservative politicians it has been able to block effective action by the US Federal government and Congress to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

Tony Abbott's Government first actions: trash climate change education, carbon pricing

On September 7 Australia elected the Liberal National parties - the Coalition - to Federal Government, with Tony Abbott as our new Prime Minister. It is a Government firmly in climate denial, intent on winding back carbon pricing; undermining renewables; and closing down the Climate Commission setup to communicate and engage the public on climate science and its impacts.

On the Monday after the election there was an early start to the bushfire season with large fires in Western Sydney and bushfire alerts for much of Queensland. The Bureau of Meteorology also issued a special climate statement saying the last 12 months has been the hottest 12 month period on record with the winter period being the 2nd warmest on record.

Going into the election campaign there was bipartisan commitment by both the Labor and Liberal Parties to meeting a minimum commitment of 5 per cent reduction in Australia's emissions by 2020. But the Liberal Party party strategy for meeting this commitment, the Climate Direct Action Plan, was widely criticised as being reliant on soil carbon methodologies largely unproven and unable to achieve its target within its $3.2 billion budget.

Arctic Sea Ice Death Spiral - Lord Monckton revealed as bad joke

Peter Sinclair has put together another educative video gem on the decline of Arctic Sea Ice, and indeed global sea ice. The video mixes together video footage of Lord Monckton from 2009, 2011, and 2013 to show his inconsistency, with the facts and observations from climate scientists on sea ice decline.

Climate scientists interviewed include Dr Walt Meier from the National Snow and Ice Data center, Dr Ken Dunton from University of Texas, Dr Jennifer Francis from Rutgers University, Dr Jeff Masters from the WeatherUnderground, Dr Claire Parkinson from the Goddard Space Flight Center NASA,

The video covers the recent and unusually extensive ice fractures seen in the Beaufort Sea from the beginning of February through March. This highlights that most of this sea ice is seasonal or first year ice. Sea ice extent continues to track well below model predictions for the disintegration of summer sea ice. Sea Ice volume trend is even more stark with a projection of a possible ice free summer as early as 2016.

Exposing Koch Industries' web of climate denial

A new Greenpeace report uncovers the multimillion dollar funding and intense lobbying against climate science and climate action by Koch Industries, that eclipses the traditional funding for climate deniers from ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel companies.

Greenpeace Reports: Koch Industries: secretly funding the climate denial machine | Dealing in Doubt: A Brief History of Attacks on Climate Science, Climate Scientists and the IPCC

Climate criminals come in many shapes and forms including many corporate executives and politicians who fail to take meaningful action to reduce carbon emissions or other climate mitigation action despite being aware of the climate science.

Greenpeace takes aim at Koch Industries for funding Climate Denial

A new Greenpeace report uncovers the multimillion dollar funding and intense lobbying against climate science and climate action by Koch Industries, that eclipses the traditional funding for climate deniers from ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel companies.

Greenpeace Reports: Koch Industries: secretly funding the climate denial machine | Dealing in Doubt: A Brief History of Attacks on Climate Science, Climate Scientists and the IPCC