Climate change

[David]

[pietillidie]

^On your earlier comment, are Labor/Labour parties around the world taking the piss? Albanese makes Old Spice smell edgy.

[David]

[watt price tully]

Even the future Libs think Scotty from Marketing and his ilk need to do something. Hopefully there'll be a Greta Thunburg amongst the Young Libs: who knows?

"...President says the party’s young membership understands the risk if no climate change action is taken..."

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n ... government

[Wokko]

https://volunteerfirefighters.org.au/sc ... -bushfires

[pietillidie]

^Don't we already know that?

[think positive]

^Don't we already know that?

some of us do, some seem to think stopping coal mining will fix it!

[Pies4shaw]

It won’t stop bushfires, per se - but it might help to keep the planet habitable for humans in the medium term.

[Wokko]

Here's Stui's story on the Gippsland protests

https://www.theunshackled.net/rundown/a ... protestors

[David]

[Pies4shaw]

Yes, well it won’t - because the Deniers so badly need to find another scapegoat.

[David]

https://volunteerfirefighters.org.au/scientist-david-packham-on-whats-really-causing-the-bushfires

Packham seems to be a legitimate authority on bushfires but one with a serious blind spot on climate change (which is apparently not in his area of expertise, not that there’s anything wrong with that). The oversimplifications here on both sides are deeply frustrating; of course these fires have proximate causes that have nothing to do with climate change, and any climate activist worth their salt will be able to acknowledge this (needless to say, many are not). It goes without saying that, if climate change were the sole cause, then we would have had equally or near-equally bad fires last year, and the year before, and fires of this size would now become an annual event. But of course it’s quite possible that we might not see another catastrophe like this for another three, five or even ten years, because, as Packham says, you need a whole range of other conditions in place for a bushfire to occur: fuel, ignitions and weather.

He himself acknowledges (around eight minutes in) what is included in that third category: temperature, drought and wind. What he doesn’t acknowledge is that all of those conditions have been and are being affected by climate change. That is not contentious; that’s not opinion; that’s fact. And these fires will get worse, and more frequent, if the world keeps warming at its current rate, precisely because we’ll on average be experiencing more heat, dryness and (if I understand correctly) wind speeds. You can only magically make up for that increased risk with better fuel management if we accept that firefighters are currently slacking off at their jobs in winter and spring and have significant room for improvement. Does anyone actually buy that?

I have no idea whether Packham is a climate sceptic or is just afflicted by a bad case of tunnel vision, but it’s obvious why 2GB are so keen to get him on air: he tells them what they want to hear, which is that bushfires have nothing to do with climate change, and that the only thing in our control is fuel. That plays into the insufficient-hazard-reduction narrative debunked by the post above, which, it should be noted, isn’t an obsession that has emerged from nowhere. It serves a very specific purpose, which is to distract and displace responsibility onto one’s critics: in this case, inner-city green/Green activists who supposedly hold sway over rural councils and communities and exist as a permanent thorn in the side of fire services. You couldn’t make this stuff up...

Contrary to Packham’s argument, there are in fact two causes of bushfires that are each partially within our control: one is the proximate issue of forestry management, which is a necessity every single year and needs to be done right. The second is climate change, a much bigger global problem that requires global co-operation, which in turn requires local commitment and action. Ignoring the second and solely fixating on the first is like putting up concrete blocks on footpaths to stop terrorist attacks without also seeking to confront and defeat the ideologies that make people want to kill other people in the first place. To say the latter isn’t the problem only shows a lack of conceptual thinking.

[PyreneesPie]

^ Brilliant post and one I agree with all the way through.

Basically, if this bushfire season doesn't convince every Australian that we need a vigorous policy against climate change, then not only Australia, but the whole world, is stuffed.

I always used to think that Dr Karl was too much of a sensationalist TV personality to take note of a lot of what he said, but this explains some of the reasons why some people choose not to see what's in front of them:

https://australiascience.tv/vod/dr-karl ... te-change/?

Some anecdotal experience - I've lived in rural areas of Southern Australia for all of my 66 years, so I can say that we've always had hot, dry summers. They have always been the norm. What has become abnormal in my life-time is the wind factor. Hot northerly winds during summer have become far more frequent and fierce compared to my childhood days. The blessed cool changes are also far stronger. Wind ferocity enormously increases bush fire risk and is the first factor I take into account to determine fire risk every day in summer, regardless of what temperature is forecast.

[pietillidie]

Contrarianism is a common manifestation of narcissism. The belief that one has special insight, when it's not schizotypal or manic, is very likely to be narcissistic. This is why you find crackpots on the edge of science beavering away on pet issues, or wealthy but unappealing eccentrics supporting things like Brexit. Their egos have been injured by not being recognised, so they grab the chance to seek vengeance on the establishment, with the resultant attention giving them what they crave. This is not to dismiss all that they say, but it should make one wary.

And not all contrarians, I hasten to add, are narcissists; but it's a pretty well-known phenomenon. The number of genuinely brilliant undiscovered geniuses with the ability to see beyond everyone else is far lower than movies would have us believe.

Not to mention we all need a bit of that delusion to drive us forward, just not so much of it that we start thinking we could do a dozen years of study at the highest level in the hardest subjects publishing competitively in the best journals when we don't even have the entry-level maths to get into a basic undergraduate science course at a local university.

[Wokko]

https://disrn.com/news/glacier-national ... 2020-signs