Climate change a burning issue (again) in voters' minds

This piece of backroom intelligence shouldn’t come as a surprise, given the summer we are all still enduring. Record high temperatures, the hottest January on record; storms; floods in some places, droughts in others; mass fish kills in ailing rivers.

 ‘Climate change is not only a hot-button issue on its
own terms. Some of the research suggests it has
also become a proxy for political dysfunction.’ 

Climate change is back as a vote-changing issue – top of mind for many Australian voters. Private polling conducted for the environment movement and for the major parties suggests community concern about climate change is currently sitting at levels not seen since the federal election cycle in 2007.

If you can remember the events of 2007, you’ll recall that John Howard was forced into a significant about-face on the issue. Within sight of the election that swept Kevin Rudd into power, Howard signed the Liberal party up to emissions trading, a “world’s best-practice” cap and trade scheme, and declared Australia must prepare for a “low-carbon future”.

Read the story from The Guardian by Katharine Murphy - “Climate change a burning issue (again) in voters' minds.”

Climate change records remind us thermostat is steadily pushing up

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ew climate change records have come along to remind us that Earth’s thermostat is steadily pushing upward.

More exactly, there are two global high temperature records and a smattering of climate change low points.

March 2015 was the warmest March since record-keeping began in 1880, says the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And the first quarter of 2015 was the warmest first quarter on record in those same 136 years.

That gives 2015 a stab at trumping the hottest year on record — which was 2014.

The uninterrupted continuation of the warming trend is no surprise. The 10 warmest years on record have occurred in the past 17 years.

And though the rise in the last 10 years has been gentle by comparison, since 1910, the clear trend has been up, according to NASA’s Global Land-Ocean Temperature Index.

Read the GantDaily story - “New temperature records highlight global warming’s continued rise”.