Tackling climate change

NSW had elections last weekend. The vote has not been completely finalised but there has been a change of government. Labor has the most seats,  replacing the Liberal/National coalition. However Labor does not have enough seats to form majority government, most likely falling one or two seats short. 

They will be relying on the Greens (3) and Independents (7) to get their legislation passed, a result that will please everyone concerned with climate change as Labor has difficulty divorcing itself from its fossil fuel friends. 

Above: Go the Greens! Acrylic on Canvas. 

Floods, fires, climate responses.

Our Sydney weatherman loves records and our weather is providing him with plenty to talk about. In late 2022 it was all about rain, how much we've had and how much was still coming.  Now he is talking about temperature and the fact that it is a long time, 140 years, since Sydney, the part of Sydney on the seaboard at least, has had such a long run of below 30⁰C days. Our summer has been very variable so far but also unseasonably cool. Yesterday the run of cool days was broken with a hot humid day, but barely over 30⁰. A cool change and rain deluge swept in from the south last night and today is a moist 23⁰C. 

La Niña is expected to ease over summer but the thought of El Niño doesn't bring much joy. The bushfires in 2019/20 are still vivid in our memories and now we know that their increased ferocity makes it impossible for people to stay and defend their homes we are not nearly as sanguine. 

Floods, fire and our industry-captured governments continue to approve new gas exploration and forest-felling licences while legislating more draconian punishments for people who protest them. Perhaps the only way for the population to save themselves will be to drop tools and simply sit down on the streets, Mahatma Gandhi fashion. 

Mr Trump and a warming world

Sunrise in a warming world

We are going to have to get clever and coordinated to save our world, working together as never before to support initiatives that mitigate warming.

We have a formidable enemy, large and powerful and willing to sacrifice the world to make a profit for themselves.

But we are many and we too can be formidable, now we know their methods (thank you Naomi Klein) and realise they just don't care. We must do whatever it takes.

Hot, cold, windy, calm

Brisbane waters - flat calm in December

Summer is meant to be sunny, calm, warm and perfect for the beach but this year we have alternating extreme heat, cold, storms, wind and floods.

December was hot and cold, flat calm one day and stormy the next. January has been even more unpredictable.

Stormy seas on the beach tonight

The first week of January was so wet a lot of people were rained out of their camp sites or, in the Hunter valley, flooded out of their homes.  (The coffee shops did very good trade as there was little else to do.)

Then came the heat.  41C on Thursday was incapacitating and was followed by big winds and thunderstorms that chased away the rest of the campers and cut power to eighty thousand homes in western Sydney.  Temperatures dropped from 41Cto 22C in a matter of hours and yesterday was cold, windy and wet. Today is still cool with stormy seas.

We are not alone I know; Melbourne and Adelaide have been even more extreme and bush fires in Victoria and Western Australia have razed great swathes of land. 

Our recalcitrant government is disinclined to take action against climate change but lack of demand for coal and gas might force the issue. China, it appears, is leading the way.

Rainbow coffee

The early morning sun and my coffee machine put on a rainbow display this morning. If I were superstitious I might think the gods were sending a message to our Prime Minister Tony Abbott who is opposing a proposed cross-party gay marriage bill.

I was once so naive I thought maybe Abbott just didn't get it, was uninformed about the social causes he opposes.  His stance on climate change has made me wise up and I am now convinced he understands but just doesn't care and that he is just the sort of politician corporates need to push their barrow. Our current government seems to be full of people who just don't care.

So I see the rainbow as a reminder that nature is beautiful and fragile and that we must join together to fight for her.

Spiders, webs and a model to help us deal with climate change

This large visitor to my garden built its web high over the back path last week but the web was not high enough as today I found the spider hanging from an inside door jam. Perhaps I brought him in on my hair.

Yesterday I heard a talk about another web,  the inter-web, by lawyer Eben Moglen. It was an extraordinary talk about an extraordinary community, the one that has developed open source (free) software. The community has had to fight to retain its development model, a model which is open and transparent and the most efficient model for solving problems. They have had many enemies, people and companies who have felt threatened by this democratic model, but they have been successful in defending it.

It struck me as I listened that this is the model we will need to solve other intractable problems, like climate change. How fortunate we are to have a model that serves so well, and lucid people like Eben Moglen to talk about it.

More: and here is an interesting discussion about the type of global structures we need to solve global problems.

Forty One degrees

Forecast of 41C on the NSW Central Coast tomorrow

I remember about 10 years ago hearing a talk on the radio about high temperatures. A woman from Alice Springs was asked what temperatures of 40C felt like, and we in Sydney listened in awe as we had never experienced such temperatures.

How times have changed. Last year we had a day at 40C and this year we have already had 42C and it is only November. Tomorrow is forecast to be 41C.

The Australian Liberal (actually Tea-Party) Government is clinging desperately to coal as the world finally gets into gear to tackle climate change. I would leave the whole cabinet out in the town square tomorrow and only supply a water hose when they came to their senses.

The state of the world via twitter

We think we are civilised, or have have become civilised but how far have humans really progressed? My twitter feed this morning is full of images that make me wonder. Here's a sample:

Weekend Australian last week

Last week Murdoch's Australian newspaper (hemorrhaging money as we since found out, so only maintained to pedal influence) ran this divisive front page. In response a group of Christian and Jewish leaders have launched a campaign called We'll love Muslims for 100 years

Joseph Stiglitz

Australians, stunned by the realisation that the liberal party has been taken over by its far right wing and become a tea party, are starting to respond. Someone has posted a picture of Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz telling us the the Abbott Government's plan to deregulate education is a crime.

NASA -the earth weeps

NASA Global Climate change talks about the difficulty in reaching out to tell the climate story. You would think NASA had influence but they are up against the Murdoch empire (above). I do wonder what Murdoch's children think of his newspaper's stance - are they so very undereducated?




Then there is this stunning cover of the New Yorker responding to Ferguson. Hands up in surrender to a violent and destructive power.

Quintuplets

Lastly and on a note of hope within disaster, from the UN Refugee Agency comes a picture of five babies born weeks after a Syrian mother fled her country.

Surfing at Freshwater Beach

Freshwater beach
Watercolour on Arches paper

On Saturday I was at Freshwater Beach on Sydney's north shore where the water was dotted with black clad figures waiting for waves.

The sky was blue, the weather balmy and the water was calm and clear with waves breaking just offshore and rolling in with boarders aloft.  Walkers basked in the sun as they strolled along watching the surfers. It was a perfect Sydney winters day.

Perfect?

Kids with surfboards making for the beach

It is the warmest June I can remember, another record no doubt.

The kids in this photo will have cause to blame us if we don't take urgent action on our warming climate. Tony Abbott, are you listening?

Passionfruit

Passion fruit flower

It is already June but the passion fruit plant in my garden continues to produce flowers and fruit. It is as confused as many other plants are by the unseasonal warm weather.

The abnormal autumn comes after our hottest year yet.  I am wondering if summer will always be as long as it was this year.

When Australia has particularly warm weather New Zealand seems to have particularly cold weather. There was snow in Dunedin not so long ago ... will this become more common as well?

Melbourne Climate Action Rally

Climate action rally in Melbourne

Eighty thousand people demonstrated for climate action in Australia today.  People of all ages from many different community groups converged on Treasury Gardens in Melbourne, including the baby below.  

NSW fires worsen

Firefront map

Over two hundred homes have already been lost in NSW and we are in for a scary week. Hoped for rain now looks unlikely, the fires burning in the Blue Mountains are massive and very hot temperatures and northerly winds are forecast. A few minutes ago the rural fire service published this map. The bright orange is where the fiercest fires are. My thoughts are with the residents of the Blue Mountains as all settlements are now under threat.

Greens MP Adam Bandt was criticised for tweeting that this type of ferocious fire is climate change related but today Peter FitzSimons wrote that that the Greens have been warning us all about this for decades, so why shouldn't they keep warning us?  Hear hear! We thought we could do what we wanted to the environment, but nature is proving us wrong.

At the same time as we have this massive firestorm the new Government is trying to dismantle policies that have been successful in cutting CO2 emissions and today we learn that the Government is probably going to cut clean technology grants. Makes you wonder if we deserve to survive.

Climate skeptics

Ever wondered why there are so many climate skeptics when 99% of climate scientists are warning us that we are causing climate change?

Climate change

I always seem to be too busy to go to the beach, but tonight was so balmy I took the opportunity to take a beach walk. There was a huge moon coming up over the bay ... how enormous it looked as it rose from the hills.

On the bench overlooking the beach a woman sat, taking photos of the moon just as I was doing.
"Beautiful isn't it?"
"Just lovely."
"It's been so hot today it is nice to visit the beach in the cool of the evening."
"Yes, it is unseasonably hot."

"It is so hot here, but I just saw on the news before I came out that England is having snow and ice!" the bench sitter said,"and it is the end of March!"
"Well, that's climate change for you, I replied, "up and down like a yo yo."
The look on the face of the bench sitter changed and hardened.
"Oh I don't believe in climate change," she said moving her body into a less accommodating position.
So we had a bit of a discussion about the climate and then I wandered off down to the water feeling a bit dispirited despite the gorgeous moon and the luke-warm waves lapping at my feet.

moonlit beach at 7pm

USA super storm

Watching the East Coast of America with bated breath. So where are the US election voices talking about climate change?

Ski fields are disappearing

Back in Australia the  newspapers are predicting the melting of Australia's snow fields if climate change progresses as predicted but...

politicians are still playing to climate change deniers.
Someone wrote a song about them:

Can we survive Copenhagen?

Shame on the Chinese!
Shame on the wealthy West!
Shame on the Danish!
Shame on the UN!

It was a shock to to be confronted so dramatically with cynicism, secrecy, deceit and narrow self interest when pleading for the lives of our grandchildren.

Our systems have failed us and if we want to survive we are going to have to take action ourselves, each of us. We must pressure our politicians to act and to act alone if they have to, instead of trying to out-stare 'opponents' while the house burns. We must support those who are attempting to show the way and not be distracted by the noise.

Copenhagen showed us that people want action, more than 13 million signed the Avaaz petition. Copenhagen is a call to action.

There is hope. The following comment about Copenhagen was posted on the 350.org Facebook site a few hours ago:

"And yet there was a strangely hopeful gathering outside the Bella Center in the freezing cold after midnight. Mostly young people, chanting slogans--especially 3-5-0--long into the night. They were upset, but they were also optimistic--because they know that the one undeniable thing about this conference is that it reflected the growing power of a people's movement around the world. You were heard. We're not strong enough yet to dominate the talks--that's still the fossil fuel industry. But we're strong enough to make it harder for the great powers simply to impose their will behind the scenes. This time the power grab was out in the open. People have learned a lot about both climate science and international relations in the last few weeks--it will pay off in the months ahead."

Copenhagen

It looks as if the rocks these pelicans were sitting on when I drew them will be well and truly under water in a few years. Not only the rocks, but half the shoreline as well. Have those politicians ever looked at a map of how the world will look if the sea rises with increased CO2? The pelicans could have done a better job in Copenhagen than our selected representatives did.