Australia’s prime minister pledges to outlaw climate boycotts, arguing they threaten the economy

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison railed against environmental protesters in a lunchtime speech on Friday, warning of a “new breed of radical activism” that was “apocalyptic in tone” and pledging to outlaw boycott campaigns that he argued could hurt the country’s mining industry.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his wife
 Jenny leave after attending the inauguration of Indonesian
President Joko Widodo for a second term, in Jakarta on Oct. 20, 2019. 

The remarks were made to an audience at the Queensland Resources Council, an organization that represents peak mining interests in the northeastern Australian state. The proposed limits on protest quickly drew condemnation from human rights groups and activists.

“From ending slavery to stopping apartheid, boycott campaigns have played a critical role in achieving many social advances that we now take for granted,” Hugh de Kretser, executive director of the Human Rights Law Center, said in a statement.

Read the story from The Washington Post by Adam Taylor - “Australia’s prime minister pledges to outlaw climate boycotts, arguing they threaten the economy.”

(Maybe Scott Morrison should consider that his inaction on climate change is “apocalyptic in tone”  - Robert McLean)

Labor has its work cut out on climate policy

In his speech to the Sydney Institute last week, federal opposition agriculture and resources spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon asked as part of his thoughts on Labor’s election defeat whether it was time for the party ‘‘to reach a sensible settlement on climate change’’.

What would be "sensible", he argued, would be for Labor to wind back its target of a 45 per cent cut in carbon emissions by 2030 to something more like the Coalition's declared target of a 26 to 28 per cent. Even a cut of that lesser magnitude would be a concrete achievement to build on, he said, as opposed to another aspiration postponed.

Read The Age Editorial - “Labor has its work cut out on climate policy.”

Thoughts and prayers: miracles, Christianity and praying for rain

In a speech in Albury last month, Prime Minister Scott Morrison told his audience that he was praying for rain in drought-affected areas. 

Can prayers bring rain to drought-stricken parts of the
 country? Our prime mInister hopes so.

“I pray for that rain everywhere else around the country,” he continued. “And I do pray for that rain. And I’d encourage others who believe in the power of prayer to pray for that rain and to pray for our farmers. Please do that.”

This week, Morrison spoke at a breakfast and praised prayers as “a reminder of our humility and our vulnerability […] that forms a unity”. 

It appears prayer has become part of government public policy.

Read the story from The Conversation by the Emeritus Professor in the History of Religious Thought from The University of Queensland, Philip C. Almond -  “Thoughts and prayers: miracles, Christianity and praying for rain.”

Dam nation: tough road to water reform on the world's driest continent

In a speech to the National Press Club this week, Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack pledged to bring in a new era of dam building across the country.

An aerial view of the Hume Weir on the Murray
River in 2010 after the millennium drought broke.

“We know the key to unlocking the potential of regional Australia is simple – just add water,” the Nationals leader said.

If the Coalition is re-elected on May 18, a new statutory authority called the National Water Grid will be set up to plan and manage new water infrastructure. Its decisions will be based on science, taking the politics out of water, McCormack said.

But water policy is never simple and always political on the world’s driest inhabited continent.

Read the story from The Age by Adam Carey - “Dam nation: tough road to water reform on the world's driest continent.”

Tony Abbott has lost touch with reality on climate change

There may not be much to agree with in Tony Abbott's recent speech, "Daring to Doubt", delivered to the Global Warming Policy Foundation in London this week, but it's aptly titled.

Abbott's rambling discourse is full of the predictable sniping, undermining and wrecking that he vowed to spare us when ditched by his own party room in 2015, but some of his assertions are also pretty daring, no doubt about it. In fact, given the patent inaccuracy of his remarks, it's no surprise he had fly 10,000 miles to find an audience sufficiently receptive, or adequately ignorant of Australia's climate record, to actually listen.

Read Sarah Gill’s comment in today’s Melbourne Age - “Tony Abbott has lost touch with reality on climate change.”

Five charts that show Tony Abbott is the one who has lost sight of the science

Tony Abbott's speech to the Global Warming Policy Foundation provides a mix of partial truths that are designed to create a plausible whole.

As one leading climate change scientist noted in private on Tuesday, "most statements have the classic element of truth but once confronted by the balance of evidence the statements are true but irrelevant, or true to a point and then misleading - classic sceptics' stuff”.

Still, there are enough clangers to suggest Abbott either can't read a chart or is tapping some data source that has somehow escaped the attention of the many global climate monitoring bodies from NASA to the UK Met Office or Australia's Bureau of Meteorology.

Here are some of Abbott's standout claims, and the charts that counter them.

Read the story in today’s Melbourne Age by Peter Hannam - “Five charts that show Tony Abbott is the one who has lost sight of the science.”

Tony Abbott's climate change claims just don't stack up

Former prime minister and current backbencher Tony Abbott gave a speech at the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a climate sceptic thinktank, on Monday night.

t
The real Tony Abbott emerges in an
incendiary climate change spech

It was an interesting lecture in that it claimed that climate change isn't real (the "so-called 'settled' science of climate change [is] absolute crap") and also is real but nothing to worry about as the results could be beneficial.

But how accurate were his arguments?

In the same speech, Mr Abbott declared that Australia needed to adopt "evidence-based policy rather than policy-based evidence", which seems like an excellent idea.

So let's take him at his word and look at the evidence for the claims he has made.

Read the ABC News opinion piece boy Tony P. Street - “Tony Abbott's climate change claims just don't stack up.”

President Trump’s speech on the Paris Agreement was full of confusion and bogus claims

President Trump’s speech yesterday about the Paris Agreement on climate change was full of confusion and bogus claims.

President Donald Trump.

The key passage from the President’s speech was: “Therefore, in order to fulfill my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord…but begin negotiations to reenter either the Paris Accord or a really entirely new transaction on terms that are fair to the United States, its businesses, its workers, its people, its taxpayers. So we’re getting out. But we will start to negotiate, and we will see if we can make a deal that’s fair. And if we can, that’s great. And if we can’t, that’s fine.”

It is not clear what this means. Article 28 of the Paris Agreement (PDF) states that any Party wishing to withdraw would need to wait at least three years from 4 November 2016, the date it came into force, and that the process would take 12 months. This means the earliest that the United States could complete its withdrawal would be on 4 November 2020, the day after the next Presidential election. So it is not possible for the United States to withdraw immediately.

Read the story - “President Trump’s speech on the Paris Agreement was full of confusion and bogus claims.”

Forceful comments underlined with mockery by U.S. President

President Barack Obama made some of his most forceful comments to date about global warming in his 2015 State of the Union address.

The U.S. president mocked the Republican reluctance to acknowledge man-made climate change and warning Congress against attacking his efforts to curtail greenhouse gas emissions.

Obama spoke about climate change late in the 63-minute long speech. But his rhetoric was blunt. "No challenge — no challenge — poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change," he said. "That's why, over the past six years, we've done more than ever before to combat climate change, from the way we produce energy, to the way we use it...And that's why I will not let this Congress endanger the health of our children by turning back the clock on our efforts."

Inside Climate News writes about President Obama in a story headed: “A Defiant Obama Asserts Climate Agenda With Firmness and Mockery”.