‘Like opening a fan oven': Australia's rainforest threatened by bushfires

When Michelle Ready first moved to the cane farm she owns with her husband in Queensland nine years ago, it sounded like a jungle at night. “It was lush and green and wet,” she says.

 Unusually hot and dry conditions in Queensland have fuelled
‘frightening’ fires that are forcing a rethink of what the
region can expect in the future.

A week after a “frightening” fire ripped across their property in Finch Hatton, a small township in the subtropical region of Mackay, better known for its humid, rain-drenched summers, it’s obvious that things have changed.

“It has been unbelievably dry here … the last few years we’re just not getting the rain and then, when we do, it’s often associated with a cyclone.”

Read the story from The Guardian by Lisa Cox - “‘Like opening a fan oven': Australia's rainforest threatened by bushfires.”

Looming realities of climate change not something we want to confront

D

avid Roberts writing on The Vox cuts to the chase about the looming realities of climate change.

He writes:

“There has always been an odd tenor to discussions among climate scientists, policy wonks, and politicians, a passive-aggressive quality, and I think it can be traced to the fact that everyone involved has to dance around the obvious truth, at risk of losing their status and influence.

“The obvious truth about global warming is this: barring miracles, humanity is in for some awful shit.”

Read the whole story - “The awful truth about climate change no one wants to admit”.

Singing from a rather dated hymn book

Abbott and Hunt sing from a
rather dated hymn book.

As it should be, Australia’s Prime Minister, Mr Tony Abbott, and the Environment Minister, Greg Hunt, stand close and tight as they sing from the same hymn book.

Although that behaviour is to be applauded, they urgently need to update their hymn book and not continually rely upon text from an edition that dates from the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

Evidence of their endeavour to apply logic from those centuries to a dilemma that became blatantly obvious late in the twentieth century and has become brutally apparent today, early in the 21^st century, is obvious in this ABC story headed: “Greg Hunt defends Tony Abbott’s climate change comments in testy BBC interview”.