Malcolm Turnbull pushes revenge button as Tony Abbott's climate change highlights election panic

Tony Abbott pulled the panic lever on Friday, and Malcolm Turnbull pushed the revenge button.

Tony Abbott backflipped on his position the Paris
Agreement during a candidates' forum.

The gainers from these spectacular plays were Zali Steggall, the independent candidate who is trying to oust Abbott in Warringah, and Bill Shorten, who is handed another break in his campaign to defeat the Government.

Years ago, in a much earlier round of the climate and emissions wars, Mr Abbott referred to himself as a "weather vane”.

That accurate self-assessment invited ridicule, but his latest change of direction is beyond absurd.

Read the ABC News story by Michelle Grattan - “Malcolm Turnbull pushes revenge button as Tony Abbott's climate change highlights election panic.”

(Listen to the “Climate Conversations” podcast featuring Zali Steggall)

Frogs show signs of immunity to chytrid fungus pandemic that has wiped out about 200 species

A disease caused by a highly contagious fungus has wiped out as many as 200 species of frog worldwide since the 1970s, and pushed many more to the brink of extinction.

The Panamanian golden frog is presumed to be extinct in the wild.

But researchers now believe that some frogs may be developing a resistance to the deadly chytrid fungus.

When chytridiomycosis wiped through a biodiversity hotspot called El Cope in Panama in 2004, scientists said the spread was so rapid that, in places, dead frogs littered the forest floor.

In the study published today in Science, researchers have documented the recovery of nine frog species in three regions of Panama, including El Cope, and have observed infected frogs showing no ill effects from the fungus.

Read the ABC News story by Nick Kilvert - “Frogs show signs of immunity to chytrid fungus pandemic that has wiped out about 200 species.”

New U.S. Record-Level Oil Production! Peak Oil Theory Disproven! Not

Well, I’m amazed and impressed. Tight oil production has pushed total United States petroleum output to more than 10 million barrels a day, a rate last seen almost a half-century ago. It’s a new U.S. record. Fifteen years ago I was traveling the world with a Powerpoint presentation featuring a graph of U.S. oil production history. That graph showed a clear peak in 1970 and a long bumpy decline thereafter.

My message: as went the U.S., so would go the world at some point in the fairly near future. Peak oil—the inevitable moment when global oil supplies started drying up—would be a watershed for industrial societies, leading to economic contraction, geopolitical crisis, and social upheaval.

So is it time for a retraction? The optics are certainly unfavorable for peak oil theorists like me. Our forecasts obviously failed, in that none of us expected the current surge in U.S. output. But permit me to offer some context.

Read the Resilience story by Richard Heinberg - “New U.S. Record-Level Oil Production! Peak Oil Theory Disproven! Not.”