Scott Morrison and the big lie about climate change: does he think we're that stupid?

Of all the horrors that might befall the burnt-out, the flooded, the cyclone-ravaged and the drought-stricken Australian this summer, perhaps none could be viewed with more dread than turning from their devastated home to see advancing on them a bubble of media in which enwombed is our prime minister, Scott Morrison, arriving, as ever, too late with a cuddle.

Scott Morrison comforts 85-year-old Owen Whalan, who was
evacuated from his home to the Taree evacuation centre on the NSW north coast.

It’s fair to say that Morrison has pulled off other roles with more conviction – the shouty Commandant of the Pacific camps perhaps his most heartfelt to date, the Gaslighter-in-Chief his most audacious, his Mini-Me to Donald Trump’s Dr Evil not without tragicomic charge – but sorrowful Father of the Nation has begun to feel a firebreak too far. 

In Australia we are all now being treated as children, quietened Australians, most especially on the climate crisis. While the climate crisis has become Australians’ number one concern, both major parties play determinedly deaf and dumb on the issue while action and protest about the climate crisis is increasingly subject to prosecution and heavy sentencing.

In Tasmania, the Liberal government intends to legislate sentences of up to 21 years – more than many get for murder – for environmental protest, legislation typical of the new climate of authoritarianism that has flourished under Morrison. As Australia burns, what we are witnessing nationally is no more or less than the criminalisation of democracy in defence of the coal and gas industries.

Read the story from The Guardian by Richard Flanagan - “Scott Morrison and the big lie about climate change: does he think we're that stupid?”

5 Plants and Animals Utterly Confused by Climate Change

Every year, as the seasons change, a complex ballet unfolds around the world. Trees in the Northern Hemisphere leaf out in the spring as frost recedes. Caterpillars hatch to gorge on leaves. Bees and butterflies emerge to pollinate flowers. Birds leave the Southern Hemisphere and fly thousands of miles to lay eggs and feast on insects in the north.

Lauren Kolesinskas for The New York Times

All of these species stay in sync with each other by relying on environmental cues, much as ballet dancers move to orchestral music.

But global warming is changing the music, with spring now arriving several weeks earlier in parts of the world than it did a few decades ago. Not all species are adjusting to this warming at the same rate, and, as a result, some are falling out of step.  

Read the story by Livia Abeck-Ripka and brad Plumer from The New York Times - “5 Plants and Animals Utterly Confused by Climate Change.”

Bat swarms tracked by weather Radar Reveal Earlier Migration as Planet Warms

When millions of migrating bats fly toward their breeding cave near San Antonio, Texas, each spring, the shadowy, swirling swarm is so dense, it shows up on weather radar. Scientists reviewed years of that radar data and found that the flying mammals are arriving about two weeks earlier than they did just two decades ago.

Millions of Brazilian free-tailed bats spend summers in the
Bracken Cave near San Antonio, Texas. A study finds
they're arriving earlier and staying longer as the planet warms.

The scientists suspect the changes in the bats' timing and seasonal cycles are linked with the way global warming is altering the food chain and weather patterns.

Spring is warming faster than other seasons in many parts of the world, including Texas. An earlier bat migration fits with many pieces of the climate change puzzle, including earlier migrations of some bird species and earlier blossoming of many plants, said Phillip Stepanian, a meteorologist with Rothamsted Research who co-authored a new study in the scientific journal Global Change Biology on bat migration using the radar data.

Read the Inside Climate News story by Bob Berwyn - “Bat swarms tracked by weather Radar Reveal Earlier Migration as Planet Warms.

Plastic will clog up the world's oceans by 2050

There is a lot of plastic in the world’s oceans.

Plastic will be more plentiful in our
oceans than fish by 2050.

It coagulates into great floating “garbage patches” that cover large swaths of the Pacific. It washes up on urban beaches and remote islands, tossed about in the waves and transported across incredible distances before arriving, unwanted, back on land. It has wound up in the stomachs of more than half the world’s sea turtles and nearly all of its marine birds, studies say. And if it was bagged up and arranged across all of the world’s shorelines, we could build a veritable plastic barricade between ourselves and the sea.

But that quantity pales in comparison with the amount that the World Economic Forum expects will be floating into the oceans by the middle of the century.

Read The Washington Post story - “By 2050, there will be more plastic than fish in the world’s oceans, study says.”

Our PM is not sure whether he is coming or going, arriving or leaving

Canadian PM, Stephen Harper.

Tony Abbott has endlessly agitated to “Stop the Boats” arriving and if he persists with efforts to underestimate the implications of climate change, he will certainly have to stop the boats, but from leaving!

Australia’s PM claims he believes in human-induced climate change, but acts and behaves as if the greatest threat that humanity has ever faced is little more than another commodity that can be bought and sold on the market – it’s not.

Australia is already something a foot-dragger among the world’s developed nation and now Mr Abbott has been courting other nations to join him, and of course Australia, as a block of five nations that would undermine world-wide efforts to install carbon pricing and challenge a push by US President Barack Obama for stronger international regulation of climate change.

A recent story in the Sydney Morning Herald headed: “Britain,New Zealand reject Tony Abbott’s idea for alliance to block action on climatechange” explains his only ally is the Canadian anti-carbon tax prime minister and fellow neo-liberal sycophant, Stephen Harper.