Special report: A 30-year alarm on the reality of climate change

Three decades have passed since then-NASA scientist James Hansen testified before the Senate Energy committee and alerted the country to the arrival of global warming. 

Why it matters: The predictions of the world's leading climate scientists have come true, with dire consequence for the planet.

• In the 30-year period prior to Hansen’s testimony, the Earth’s surface was, on average, less than 0.2°F warmer than the 20th-century average. In the 30 years since, the planet’s surface has, on average, undergone a six-fold temperature increase. 
• Hansen's temperature projections weren't exactly on target, since he projected a slightly higher amount of warming than what has occurred, but about two-dozen climate scientists told Axios that overall, his main conclusions were right.

Read the Axios story by Harry Stevens - “Special report: A 30-year alarm on the reality of climate change.”

Climate change poses security risks, according to decades of intelligence reports

A series of authoritative governmental and nongovernmental analyses over more than three decades lays a strong foundation for concern over climate change implications for national security.

Intelligence officials for three decades have
warned of security risks from climate change. 

Most recently, the national intelligence community – including the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other federal agencies – in January 2019 submitted the annual “Worldwide Threat Assessment.” In it, the intelligence agencies stated that “climate change is an urgent and growing threat to our national security, contributing to increased natural disasters, refugee flows, and conflicts over basic resources such as food and water. These impacts are already occurring, and the scope, scale, and intensity of these impacts are projected to increase over time.”

That report from National Intelligence Director Daniel R. Coats, a former U.S. Republican senator from Indiana, was just the most recent in a long string of analyses that any upcoming challenges to such conclusions will have to address. Those conclusions clearly are at odds with the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine and reverse federal climate policies, and they cast doubt on the President’s next day tweet that “Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!”

Read the story from Yale Climate Connections by Dana Nuccitelli - “Climate change poses security risks, according to decades of intelligence reports.”

Inpex will pay nothing to extract oil and gas

The Inpex-led Ichthys LNG project will export $195 billion of LNG, LPG and condensate from Darwin over the next three decades but will not pay Canberra anything for the gas it extracts from its field 450km north of Broome.

The Ichthys LNG project’s s central processing facility.

The Ichthys LNG project started construction in 2012 and next year is expected to begin shipping condensate from its offshore facilities and LNG and LPG from its Darwin plant.

Inpex yesterday released a report by ACIL Allen on the economic benefit to Australia from its $US37 billion ($47.7 billion) investment.

Inpex president director Australia Seiya Ito said Ichthys, funded by a US$20 billion project finance deal, was the biggest overseas investment ever by a Japanese company.

Read the story by Peter Milne from The West Australian - “Inpex will pay nothing to extract oil and gas.”

Hostage to myopic self-interest: climate science is watered down under political scrutiny

Three decades ago when serious debate on human-induced climate change began globally, a great deal of statesmanship was on display. A preparedness to recognise that this was an issue which transcended nation states, ideologies and political parties. An issue which had to be addressed proactively in the long-term interests of humanity, even if the existential nature of climate risk was far less clear cut than it is today.

‘In the magical thinking of Australian policymakers, a pathway
 of gradual change, constructed over many decades in a
growing, prosperous, coal-fired world stretches enticingly before us.’

Then, as global institutions were put in place to take up this challenge and the extent of change this would impose on the fossil-fuel dominated world became more obvious, the forces of resistance mobilised. Today, despite the diplomatic triumph of the Paris climate agreement, debate around climate change policy has never been more dysfunctional, indeed Orwellian, particularly in Australia.

In his book Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell describes a double-speak totalitarian state where most of the population accepts “the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane.”

Orwell could have been writing about climate change and policymaking.

Read the comment  by Ian Dunlop on The Guardian - “Hostage to myopic self-interest: climate science is watered down under political scrutiny.”

Hostage to myopic self-interest: climate science is watered down under political scrutiny

Three decades ago when serious debate on human-induced climate change began globally, a great deal of statesmanship was on display. A preparedness to recognise that this was an issue which transcended nation states, ideologies and political parties. An issue which had to be addressed proactively in the long-term interests of humanity, even if the existential nature of climate risk was far less clear cut than it is today.

‘In the magical thinking of Australian policymakers, a
 pathway of gradual change, constructed over many
decades in a growing, prosperous, coal-fired
world stretches enticingly before us.’ 

Then, as global institutions were put in place to take up this challenge and the extent of change this would impose on the fossil-fuel dominated world became more obvious, the forces of resistance mobilised. Today, despite the diplomatic triumph of the Paris climate agreement, debate around climate change policy has never been more dysfunctional, indeed Orwellian, particularly in Australia.

Read the piece by Ian Dunlop on The Guardian - “Hostage to myopic self-interest: climate science is watered down under political scrutiny.”