Extinction Rebellion: hitting a nerve at Australia's climate flashpoint

The Extinction Rebellion protesters think you should be angry. They want politicians and opinion columnists to be angry. The more people they upset stopping traffic in the Brisbane city centre – the louder the car horns, the more vicious the insults – the more certain it is they’ll be back.

Extinction Rebellion protesters block
the corner of Margaret and William
streets during a climate change
 protest in Brisbane.

“It’s not an enjoyable experience, we don’t take pleasure in doing it,” says Emma Dorge, an activist arrested in Brisbane on Tuesday, during a day of mass civil disobedience that shut down Australia’s third-largest city.

Extinction Rebellion, the decentralised global movement calling for aggressive action on the climate crisis, has engaged in similar disruption tactics in major cities on every continent. Those protests have been most effective when they are most polarising, like in Queensland, where talking and writing and screaming and marching about the climate emergency has not shifted public sentiment; a state home to the threatened Great Barrier Reef, and also the world’s most controversial coal project.

Read the story from The Guardian by Ben Smee - “Extinction Rebellion: hitting a nerve at Australia's climate flashpoint .”

La Nina likely to develop in the Pacific by December, Bureau of Meteorology says

A La Nina is almost certain to develop in the Pacific this summer, as all eight models used by the Bureau of Meteorology anticipate threshold levels for the key climate pattern will be reached or exceeded by next month.

The bureau's latest fortnightly assessment of conditions in the Pacific and Indian oceans rates the likelihood of a La Nina this summer at about 70 per cent – triple the usual level – prompting it to issue a La Nina alert on Tuesday.

During La Nina years, eastern Australia tends to have wetter than usual summers, as equatorial trade winds strengthen, shifting rainfall westwards.

While the added cloud cover can moderate temperatures, there is also an increased chance of prolonged warm spells for south-eastern Australia during La Ninas, the bureau says. The cyclone season can also be more active than usual.

Read Peter Hannam’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “La Nina likely to develop in the Pacific by December, Bureau of Meteorology says.”