Hans understands

From the Melbourne Age:

Advice for Tony Abbott in today's Age

Advice to Tony Abbott in today's Age - 

Future generations will be angry, and rightly so

From the Melbourne Age (May 31, 2018).

Wilcox gives us insight to the Queensland State and Federal Government's environmental handbook

From today's Melbourne Age.

Worthy letter from The Age

A letter from today’s Age worth considering.

Finally, we get some agreement, well sort of.

Non Sequitur from today's Melbourne Age - 

Telling it like it is, until the very end

"Horacek" in today’s Melbourne Age.

Australian climate inaction might mean ejection and pariah status: letter

Anglesea’s Andrew Laird wrote thoughtful comments in today’s Melbourne Age articulating his concerns that the Turnbull-led Australian Government is doing little or nothing about meaningful climate action.

We will, according to Andrew, soon be “ejected and accorded pariah status” from among those nations actively working to counteract climate change.

Here is his letter:

 

Mick's unknown to most, but a friend to all

Chiltern’s Mick Webster would be unknown to most people, but it seems he is a friend of all.

A letter in today’s Melbourne Age suggests Mick understands that the demands humanity put on the Earth are beyond its capacity to supply.

Tomorrow being Earth Overshoot Day, it’s wholly appropriate that such a letter should be written, and published.

Here is what Mick had published in today’s Age:

Downsize expectations

Tomorrow is Earth Overshoot Day. We will have used in just over seven months the ecological resources (fish, forests, grasslands, soil fertility, carbon sinks and so on) that the planet will produce in a whole year. This means we have to borrow 4 months-worth of resources from the future. This year's Overshoot Day is five days earlier than last year. If everyone on Earth lived by the standards of Australians we would need five Earths. Do any leaders have the courage to explain to us that we must drastically downsize our expectations if we are not to hit an enormous wall?

Mick Webster, Chiltern.

The fickleness of politics puts the CSIRO back in Climate science

(This, I know is an example of the fickleness of politics, but it has produced a confusion and delay that Australia, nor the world can afford. Within that I can only wonder about the sincerity and intelligence of Greg Hunt – although a friend who has personally seen him in action vouches for his intelligence – for if climate change research that was first ripped away from the CSIRO is now being reinstated, surely that only illustrates confusion in the minds of the “responsible men” and political point-scoring on their behalf.

Looked at objectively, there should be no confusion about climate change as it is unquestionably the biggest threat humanity has ever faced and so it is way beyond the idea of political point-scoring. However, let’s celebrate that fact that the CSIRO appears to be seriously back in the climate change research business – Robert McLean)

New Science Minister Greg Hunt has
ordered a mayor U-turn
in the direction of the CSIRO.

New Science Minister Greg Hunt has ordered a major U-turn in the direction of the CSIRO, reviving climate research as a bedrock function just months after the national science agency slashed climate staff and programs.

Mr Hunt, the former environment minister, told Fairfax Media he has instructed CSIRO's executives and board to "put the focus back on climate science", adding: "This is not an optional component, it's critical".

Read the story by Nicole Hasham and Peter Hartcher in today’s Melbourne – “Turnbull government orders CSIRO U-turn towards climate science.”

Heading down the road of the 'autonomous' car - a private and yet public mistake

A Melbourne designer set to become a global leader of car design says that within 12 months, car companies will have the capacity to produce "autonomous" or driverless cars. 

Michael Simcoe with the 1969 Holden
 Hurricane - he says we will have
"autonomous" cars within a year.
 

Michael Simcoe has achieved something no one from outside the US ever has, he has been appointed to the top design job at General Motors in Detroit.

Mr Simcoe has come a long way since his days as a student at Koonung High School in Melbourne's east and later RMIT - he will now head a design team of about 2500 in 10 design centres around the world for a company that produces 10 million cars a year.

And what does the 33-year veteran of GM Motors see as the next big change in design? Autonomous cars.

He said the public's perception of autonomous cars had changed.

"Once upon a time if you asked a customer or someone in the street about autonomous driving, no driver, no steering wheel, they probably would have laughed at you," he said.

Read Jason Dowling’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Watch out! Cars that can drive themselves are closer than you think.”

(Cars, be they driverless, autonomous, electric, or otherwise are not in and of themselves the issue, rather it is the private ownership of those cars and their anarchical-like use of them that demands an energy and space intensive infrastructure that is wasteful and a significant contributor to the worsening of Earth’s climate system – “worsening” in terms of how our activity is bringing changes to the weather that are antithetical to human needs.

The “driverless, autonomous, electric, or otherwise” car of tomorrow must be part of a public owned and used fleet, linked with an equally intensive public inter-town/city public transport system, that users book with their smartphone and then once they have completed their “movement”/journey the car returns to its predetermined based awaiting another user.

Such vehicles would be more convenient for the user, the road infrastructure would be more compact; energy would be saved in every sense; deaths and injury resulting from road accidents would be almost non-existent; parking would no longer be an issue, and congestion would be little more than a memory – technologically it is possible right now, psychologically it is so utopian that most people haven’t even yet imagined the idea – Robert McLean.)

'Yes', 'No' storm blasts through Geelong

"Once-in-a-century" downpour
 flooded the streets of Geelong.

A wild thunderstorm has drenched Geelong with "once-in-a-century" rainfall, but by the time it reached Melbourne its wrath had weakened.

When the storm hit Melbourne around 6pm it sprinkled the city with little more than three millimetres of rain, a fraction of the 70 millimetres it dumped on Geelong earlier on Wednesday.

The Geelong storms led to widespread Geelong storms and more than 250 calls to emergency services.

Read the story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Severe thunderstorms batter Geelong.”

 

(Was the Geelong storm climate change in action?

Officially, no, but anecdotally, yes - Robert McLean.)

The Age calls for urgent and 'potent' climate action

Last month, amid great fanfare and excessive self-congratulations, the representatives of 200 nations at UN-sponsored climate change talks in Paris hailed a general agreement to curb carbon emissions. The covenant, which takes effect in 2020, is intended to limit the potential rise in average global temperatures to "well below 2 degrees" and, ideally, to less than 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

The obvious, but unanswered, question is how this will be done in practice, especially here in Australia, where there is neither a carbon emissions trading scheme (a market-based system) nor a punitive system for taxing big polluters.

Read the Editorial in today’s Melbourne Age - “Global warming: Australia urgently needs potent climate policies.”

Letter writer wants us to 'Face the real threat'

Melbourne Age letter writer Colin Hughes from Greenmount in Western Australia, argues we should “Face the real threat”.

He wrote in today’s Age:

“The Paris climate conference puts the risk of terrorism and national security into perspective. While Australia spends billions of dollars on metadata control and bombing Syria, the real risk to Australia's security goes largely ignored.

There are three issues: biosecurity of our crops and farming; eco-security effects on the Great Barrier Reef and fish stocks plus bushfires and desertification; and disease security where we are already seeing increased risk of tropical diseases such as dengue fever and malaria creeping into Australia, plus the effects of excessive heat on our sick and elderly. Climate change will also put even more pressure on the world's ability to manage refugees. California has shown it is possible to innovate and invest in alternative sustainable energy. It is time our government got serious about the real threats to national security.”

We should all fall silent and listen, carefully

W

aleed Aly is an unassuming character, but when he speaks, we should all fall silent and listen, carefully.

Waleed Aly - we should fall silent and listen.

The newspaper columnist, television chat show host and Monash University political lecturer seems almost retiring and being a wonderful endorsement of what is good about people, provides reassuring respite from the noisy, and often pointless political chatter in Australia.

Aly uses facts and intelligence to slice through the hollow rhetoric Australians are assaulted with most every day and his latest piece in today’s Melbourne Age illustrates that perfectly.

Read what Waleed wrote today - “Abbott is losing the plot in his war on environmentalists.”

Victorian government backing is cash, not just hot air

N

ew Victorian wind farms will get financial backing from the Andrews government as part of a push to encourage renewable energy in the state.

Victorian Premier, Daniel Andrews - his
government is back wind farms.

On Friday Premier Daniel Andrews will release a government "road map" for the renewable energy industry, which is expected to include a minimum state target and some solar initiatives.

As part of the announcement there will be a commitment for the government to buy "renewable energy certificates" as a way to encourage some new wind energy projects to be built Victoria.

Read Tom Arup’s story in today’s Age - “Victorian government to back new wind farms as part of renewables plan.”

Gwyneth Paltrow - ' a conscious uncoupling in under way"

W

ith the colour and noise accompanying the Pope throwing his considerable weight behind global action to combat climate change, you may have missed the sound of something snapping.

Gwyneth Paltrow.

To put it another way – and borrow a line from Gwyneth Paltrow – a conscious uncoupling is under way.

With a large developing world rising from poverty as rapidly as possible, experts stress the link between economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions must be severed. For generations, the latter has surged along with the former.

Read the Melbourne Age story - “The sound of something snapping: God, Gwyneth and a glimmer of good climate news”.

The Pope weighs in an we are in for an 'unholy row'

G

eoffrey Lean has warned us that we should “Stand by for an unholy row”.

The environment columnist with The Telegraph in London has written that the Pope is expected this week to come out as perhaps the world's most effective environmental campaigner.

Lean says we should be prepared for an unholy row in his story, “Is the Pope a greenie? You bet”.

 

The Melbourne Age published Lean's column today.

'Climate babble' seems never-ending

A

ustralians are subjected to never-ending “climate babble”.

Treasurer, Joe Hockey, -
stealing his term
- Australia has become a
 nation of
global warming "leaners".

Listen to the government and Australia, and Australians, are climate mitigation champions – Environment Minister, Greg Hunt, confidently delivered that message just today.

Listen to climate change credentialed people from other parts of the world and Australia is a “free-rider”, contradicting Minister Hunt’s message.

To plagiarize Treasurer Joe Hockey’s phrase, when it comes to dealing with the dilemma of global warming, Australia is a “leaner” and we are leaving the “lifting” up to other countries.

Australians are among the world’s worst per-capita emitters of carbon dioxide and the situation has only worsened since the Abbott Government removed what it wrongly described as the “carbon tax”.

The judgement of Australians being “free-riders” is not parochial political view, rather a consideration of an international panel.

Environment Editor, The Sydney Morning Herald, Peter Hannam, has written about that in today Age in a story headed: “Australia singled out as a climate change 'free-rider' by international panel”.

Most Australians blame global warming for extreme weather

G

lobal warming is responsible for weather extremes, according to most Australians.

The same research also shows that few Australians, just three per cent, say there is no such thing as climate change.

An Ipsos survey, the eighth on the subject, found most viewed climate change as behind extreme events, with similar numbers also linking the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef and rising sea levels to warming global temperatures.

An Age story - “Most Australians view climate change as already causing weather extremes: Ipsos” – discusses findings from the survey.