Melbourne Launch of Repower Health

More than 60 people meet in the central city FAD Gallery last night (October 27) for the Melbourne launch of Repower Health.

National Director of
Repower Health, Alex Bhatal.

Initiated by Healthy Futures, Repower Health is about encouraging health institutions, from small GP surgeries to large hospitals, to understand and embrace renewable energy, such as solar power to help mitigate the health-damaging advance of climate change.

Repower Health’s vision is for an Australian health sector powered by clean, healthy energy. 

It’s presently mapping existing solar-powered clinics, services and hospitals and so at the Melbourne launch asked those attending to reach out to clinic owners and health service administrators and convince them to get more services running on renewable energy.

Immediate past president of the Medical Association for the Prevention of War, Dr Margaret Beavis, was the MC for the evening, introducing and array of speakers who left no doubt in minds of those attending about the need for clinics, services and hospitals to embrace, and use, renewable energy.

Among those she introduced was the director of Repower Health, Alex Bhatal, who has published and presented on climate displacement at UN forums and is active in the global climate justice movement.

Healthy Futures is an organisation of health professionals, students and community members taking action to address climate change and related threats to health.

"Climate Conversations" was at the launch.

Robert Manne - using his voice to help people better understand climate change

When Robert Manne was diagnosed with throat cancer he faced a stark choice: have his voice box removed, or die. 

Robert Manne - using his voice to help
people better understand climate change.

A leading public intellectual, he thought at first he’d rather die than spend his life unable to speak. 

But now he’s back in the public domain - and still has plenty to say.

And speaking up he certainly is - Professor Manne has declared that his task from now is to do all he can to help Australian’s understand the realities of climate change.

Robert Manne is an Emeritus Professor of politics and Vice-Chancellor's Fellow at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia and is considered by many as leading Australian public intellectual.

He was interviewed on the ABC’s “One Plus One” program by Jane Hutcheon.

Is climate change really too hard to understand?

It’s a big subject, all right. And a difficult one to address. But too big to understand it isn’t. Quantum physics is too big to understand. Climate change is simple. I’ll put it in one sentence: There are known heat-trapping gasses, and if we add too much of them to the atmosphere, it will cause large, foreseeable damage to humans and natural environments. That is not too big to understand.A lot of people wonder why we are doing so little to prevent the slow-motion catastrophe of climate change. One theory is that it’s too big a subject to understand.

And a majority of people understand it just fine. They are making the assumption that the political process will work normally and that the government will take the steps necessary to deal with it. Like government did with smog, and with polluted water, and with acid rain, and with ozone depletion. The thing that is hard to understand is how people in positions to do something about it do nothing. Or rather, do everything in their power to stop action.

Read the opinion piece from The Washington Post by Tom Toles - “Is climate change really too hard to understand?”

Stephen Hawking's Final Warnings Urged World to Halt Climate Change

Stephen Hawking, one of the greatest minds on Earth, died peacefully at his home in Cambridge on Wednesday at the age of 76.

Stephen Hawking - final warnings were for
the world to halt climate change

As well as being a renowned physicist whose groundbreaking theories helped us understand the complexities of space, time and the universe, the British professor also taught us about our home planet.

In his last years, Hawking used his platform to warn that human activity is causing irreversible planetary damage and that we must take action to halt climate change.

Read the EcoWatch story by Lorraine Chow - “Stephen Hawking's Final Warnings Urged World to Halt Climate Change.”

Trio of webinars will boost our understanding of climate change

A trio of upcoming webinars will help people better understand the implications and complications of climate change.

Australia’s National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF) has organised the three webinars.

The first of the webinars, “Climate change, extremes and sea-level rise - where are we heading?” is on Friday, February 23, at 3:00 pm in Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania and the ACT, 2:00pm in Queensland, 2:30 pm in South Australia, 1:30 pm in the Northern Territory and midday in Western Australia.

The February 23 panel will include 

• Professor Jean Palutikof (NCCARF Director) - Moderator

• Dr Karl Braganza (Bureau of Meteorology)

• Dr Kathy McInnes (CSIRO)

The second webinar on Monday, March 5, will be “Good weather guaranteed - how climate change might transform tourism”.

Those on the panel for that event will be:

• Dr Sarah Boulter (NCCARF) - Moderator

• Professor Catherine Pickering (Griffith University)

        • Professor Susanne Becken (Griffith University) 

The times for this second webinar will be the same as for the first.

Coming up for the third webinar on Monday, March 19 will be “Coastal planning and governance under climate change and sea-level rise”.

Speakers for that event will be :

• Professor Jean Palutikof (NCCARF Director) - Moderator

• Jo Mummery (University of Canberra)

        • Bruce Thom (Wentworth Group of Concern Scientists) 

The times for this third event will be the same as for the first two.

Each webinar will feature two experts and an opportunity for those going the webinars to ask questions and interact with our experts.

Those keen to participate should register for the webinars at Eventbrite.

The government’s energy policy hinges on some tricky wordplay about coal’s role

The most important thing to understand about the federal government’s new National Energy Guarantee is that it is designed not to produce a sustainable and reliable electricity supply system for the future, but to meet purely political objectives for the current term of parliament.

The new policy could end up feeding demand for coal. 

Those political objectives are: to provide a point of policy difference with the Labor Party; to meet the demands of the government’s backbench to provide support for coal-fired electricity; and to be seen to be acting to hold power prices down.

Meeting these objectives solves Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s immediate political problems. But it comes at the cost of producing a policy that can only produce further confusion and delay.

Read the piece on The Conversation by a professor from the School of Economics at The University of Queensland, John Quiggan - “The government’s energy policy hinges on some tricky wordplay about coal’s role.”

Return of 'ocean chimney' the size of Tasmania puzzles Antarctic scientists

A rare hole the size of Tasmania has opened up in the sea ice off Antarctica, enthralling scientists keen to understand its cause and the possible role of climate change in its formation.

Water vapour rises off the Antarctic ice sheet as a
 rare hole opens in the Antarctic winter sea ice. 

Known as the Weddell Sea or Maud Rise Polynya, the ice-free zone appeared in September and has grown to as large as 80,000 square kilometres, according to the University of Toronto.

Polynyas, defined as a stretch of open water surrounded by ice, are frequently found in the Arctic and Antarctica, usually near the coast. They rarely reach the extent now seen in middle of the pack ice.

"Something has changed" to bring the polynya back, Kent Moore, a professor of physics at the University of Toronto, said. "But we not quite sure what that trigger was," he said.

Read Peter Hannam’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Return of 'ocean chimney' the size of Tasmania puzzles Antarctic scientists.”

Miles of ice collapsing into the sea.

We went to Antarctica to understand how changes to its vast ice sheet might affect the world. Flowing lines on these maps show how the ice is moving.

Ice sheets flow downhill, seemingly in slow motion. Mountains funnel the ice into glaciers. And ice flowing from the land into the sea can form a floating ice shelf.

Glaciers in certain areas have been undercut by warmer ocean waters, and the flow of ice is getting faster and faster.

The acceleration is making some scientists fear that Antarctica’s ice sheet may have entered the early stages of an unstoppable disintegration.

Read the first part of a three-parr series in The New York Times - “Miles of ice collapsing into the sea.”