Unsurprisingly, the Government doesn’t like to draw attention to the fact that since the 2022 election:
It has approved four new coal projects.
It has approved the drilling of 116 new coal seam gas wells.
It has sat in court with coal companies and defended its right not to consider the climate impact of opening new fossil fuel projects.
The Government has passed legislation at the request of gas companies specifically designed to expedite their expansion. This is not hyperbole. The transcripts and documents are there in black and white.
The Government has stacked the agencies legislated to oversee and shape Australia’s climate policies — including the Net Zero Authority and the National Reconstruction Fund — with industry interests and surrounded them with a fortress-like bureaucracy, impervious to public scrutiny. It has left a former gas executive in charge of the Climate Change Authority.
The Prime Minister and various ministers have flown to India, Japan, Korea, and (just this month) Vietnam to lock in customers for our gas and coal. The media releases never mention that either. Australia is one of the world’s largest fossil fuel exporters, and the Government is subsidising, legislating, and using the full weight of our foreign policy to ensure we stay that way. Because Governments are very effective at making very big things happen very quickly when they want to.
The Australian Government has lobbied UNESCO to stop the Great Barrier Reef from being listed as “in danger”. This is as it is in the grip of another mass coral bleaching event.
The Australian Government has refused to end native forest logging. Despite the carbon it would store and the very real risk of extinction to the koala and the swift parrot. It has left the protection of our collapsing ecosystems to the market. It has put far more energy into talking about being ‘nature positive’ than doing anything about it.
The federal Labor government alone still gives over $9 billion in subsidies to fossil fuels. It has committed $1.5 billion to a gas export hub in the Northern Territory. One single gas export hub is getting half of what Australia has committed to global climate finance over five years.
Pedal-electric Hopper may be the German "car" you didn't know you wanted.
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The rider's pedaling power is augmented by a 250-watt rear hub motor, taking the Hopper up to a top speed of 25 km/h (16 mph). The motor is powered by a removable 30-Ah/48V/1,440-Wh lithium-iron-phosphate battery, which is claimed to be good for a range of approximately 65 km (40 miles) per charge. An optional rooftop solar panel should help boost that figure.
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In order to minimise maintenance and mechanical complexity, the Hopper utilises an electronic pedal-by-wire system instead of a traditional chain-drive drivetrain.
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Such systems work by having the rider spin up a generator as they pedal. Doing so converts their mechanical energy into electrical energy, which is fed into the motor. That motor converts the electrical energy back into mechanical energy, which is used to turn the wheel.
I can't think of a more adequate person to ask the following.
This post states that "the #Arctic#OceanIce is not considered to be a tipping point anymore."
#ClimateDiary thinking back to Rio’92 and the huge concern about #Amazon deforestation then. We need to recognise that here, along with most environmentalism since the 1990s, we have basically completely failed. By all measures, on all fronts, things are significantly worse now.
Seems like we are now rapidly approaching #TippingPoints on so many of these fronts at once - maybe we should call our time the #TippingPointCene? (Not serious. Terrible neologism).
This is a really important point from Andreas Kääb : #TippingPoints is partly a question of definitions - and different definitions are used even within the scientific community.
The #IceSheets are likely tipping elements, but we're really not sure about all of them!!
High impact, high uncertainty is not a good combination..
Kicking off the #WMO#polar and high mountain regions committee meeting in Oslo this morning. Long pre-meeting on #Antarctica yesterday to determine policy and strategy was pretty successful. Hoping it will get passed by full panel today.
WMO president Celeste Sauto giving us an online welcome. #PHORS24#ClimateDiary
not being a #Climate scientist, I know a bit of controlling and communications strategy.
I think, the issue of the highly complex issue of the interdependent #TippingPoints that #TimLenton at the #UniversityOfExeter summarized* ought to be visualized and controlled (in a management-accounting meaning) for the educated public and politicians.
Probably, at least two layers would be needed (probably more fir cognitive reasons,) the top level showing all known (9?) #TippingPoints in a synopsis, grouped for degree of interdependence, and then the different climate drivers as a next drill-down level.
In a next level approach, the climate drivers would then be contrasted with (potential) remedies (e. g. solar panels,) including costs, that will mitigate or even solve these impacts.
In this way, global leaders will have a way of deciding where they will get the most...
Atlantic Ocean circulation nearing ‘devastating’ tipping point, study finds
Collapse in system of currents that helps regulate global climate would be at such speed that adaptation would be impossible.
Likely impact on Southern Hemisphere is it will get even hotter and wetter.
On Tuesday this week, the Australian Financial Review went large with the story headlined, “How a big new solar farm became a stranded asset”. That evening, energy analyst Tim Buckley debunked the story on social media. This was not a stranded asset at all, Buckley pointed out. “Zero stranding … [financially] a brilliant success”.
What is not over, and the point of this republication, is the ‘culture war’ between new and old energy which is played out daily in the press and is frankly misleading for most Australians, and for many politicians whose votes they crave. People tend to believe what they see in the media.
For that reason, there is a generation of older Australians who read and watch the fossil media who are outraged about the demise of coal – this newfangled “not base-load power” solar boondoggle. “When the wind don’t blow and the sun don’t shine” blah blah. They are simply, relentlessly, misled by the financial press which is pro-fossil fuels. There is money in it for them.
This is also why you will see Tim Buckley, principal of Clean Energy Finance, and the leading coal and RE analyst in the country published in this journal from time to time, but so rarely ever in the AFR or The Australian. They won’t run him; he doesn’t suit the fossil agenda.
"Major climate tipping points could be triggered 👉 within a decade👈
The climate has warmed so much that we are already at risk of triggering five global “#TippingPoints” that would have catastrophic effects worldwide and 👉couldn’t be reversed easily if at all, according to a major report.👈
“Triggering one tipping point could trigger another in a kind of dangerous domino...
...preventive action open right now which might close as soon as the 2030s..."
"“[The slowing of the subpolar gyre] 👉could happen within about 10 years,”👈 says #McKay. “It would have pretty major impacts across both sides of the #Atlantic. It would 👉cause regional cooling and affect agriculture in #Europe and #NorthAmerica👈 , and change the patterns of extreme weather events.”
"...it still isn’t clear which systems have #TippingPoints, how close we are..
"Humanity faces ‘devastating domino effects’ including mass displacement and financial ruin as planet warms.
The #TippingPoints at risk include the collapse of big #IceSheets in Greenland and the West Antarctic, the widespread thawing of #permafrost, the death of #CoralReefs in warm waters, and the collapse of one oceanic current in the North Atlantic."
"The tipping point report also looked at what it called “positive #TippingPoints”, such as the plummeting price of #RenewableEnergy and the growth in sales of #ElectricVehicles. It found that such shifts do not happen by themselves but need to be enabled by stimulating innovation, shaping markets, regulating business, and educating and mobilising the public."
"Crossing Earth system #TippingPoints would have “catastrophic” impacts on societies, with the potential to “escalate violent conflicts, mass displacement and financial instability”, the report also warns.
The authors say that promoting “positive social tipping points” in socio-behavioural, technological, economic and political systems is “the only realistic systemic risk governance option” to limit the risks.
The Global Tipping Points Report was launched at #COP28 on 6 December 2023. The report is an authoritative assessment of the risks and opportunities of both negative and positive tipping points in the Earth system and society.