Ok, I’m going to assume you believe that climate change is real and needs to be acted on. I’m not going to waste time convincing you otherwise if you’re that locked in.
We are the 13th largest emitter in the world, producing 1.2% of the emissions. That means 98.8% of the emissions come from other countries. Not worth our time, clearly. (Sarcasm font, I personally think that 1.2% for a nation our size is an embarrassment)
But let’s extrapolate that line of thinking. The 13 biggest emitters produce 73.3% of the emissions. If we put our hands up and say we are too small to bother with, then every other small nation may as well too. That’s 26.7% of the world that won’t reduce emissions because they are individually too small to worry about.
China has started to drop their total emissions, not just their intensity. Most of the top 12 emitters are also declining. The pack of small nations will quickly become the dominant emitters in the world.
It amazes me how little global influence Australians think that we have as a nation. We are a middle power, broadly respected diplomatically. We have the largest deployment of rooftop solar in the world. We are relatively cashed up, have the best renewable resources in the world and a stable political climate. If we can’t do it, we become the excuse for everyone else to not do it. We also can’t push for more action as we wouldn’t have a credible leg to stand on. If we succeed, we are the role model and able to export that knowledge.
So it comes down to a simple question. Do you want to solve this or not? Because if you want to solve it, then everyone in the world needs to step up. If you don’t want to solve it, then own that position.
The libs think this just look at your power bills argument will be a winner… it won’t be. Why? Because as much as people do notice that increase they also notice the climate changing and its effects. How? I live in Brisy. I can probably count on my 1-2 hands the amount of storms which have given big hail stones in my lifetime. In the last month we have had 4-5! and 4 weekends in a bloody row. Not to mention a f***ing cyclone earlier this year for the first time since I was in year 1, 35 years ago. Seems of late every god dam storm has hail in it, which is beyond ODD!
In Tehran, only 1mm of rain has fallen this year, a once-in-a-century event (the capital’s average annual rainfall between 1991 and 2000 was 350mm). All this comes on top of five previous years of drought. The second half of November is normally the snow season in the capital.
Snow cover has decreased by 98.6% nationwide compared with the same point last year, and in Tehran the daily temperature has been a balmy 20C. The price of bottled water has escalated and limits are being placed on purchases.
All across Iran, in towns and villages, organised rain prayers have been taking place. Past miracles are recalled, such as the spring of 1944, when wartime Iran was suffering drought and the people of Qom went out into the fields and for three days prayed for rain under the mocking eyes of their British occupier. After the third day, as the crowd scattered, the winds blew and the rail fell.
Rather than blaming the climate crisis, attention in some quarters has turned to whether this descent into calamity is God sending a disapproving message. The link between “blatant debauchery on our streets” and drought is drawn by Ayatollah Mohsen Araki, a conservative member of the Assembly of Experts.
Grand Ayatollah Javadi Amoli warned: “Sometimes cultural problems, social shortcomings and sin take away the grounds for mercy.”
Some MPs have also blamed the drought on the Iranian government for failing to enforce the restrictive hijab laws passed by parliament. Supporters of the president, Masoud Pezeshkian, asked in reply: why is Europe, where women are free to expose their hair to the wind, so green? One headline read: “Why do atheist countries have more rain?”
Iran’s water crisis comes largely off the back of decades of infrastructure corruption involving the IRGC alongside massively increasing numbers of illegal wells that have drained their underground aquifers - Tehran is sinking by like 20cm per year and they have no intention to do anything about it, other than a ridiculous plan to move the capital down to the Makran coast.
When you throw that alongside the river dam disputes with Afghanistan, Turkey and Iraq and throw climate change on top - we’re probably getting the first water wars very soon
This is the problem. Australia changing makes no difference, all we are doing is setting a standard for countries like China and India etc to follow. The problem is that the new power solutions provided are not viable and arguably just as bad for the environment. What is the cost of producing solar panels or wind turbines? How long do they last before they need replacing? What happens to the Lithium batteries in cars? I’m not sold on the whole sustainable energy options that have been provided to date. Not sure how China and India will be able to produce enough power to support populations of over 1 billion people as well as provide enough energy to maintain their manufacturing levels that the world is reliant on.
Ok. It’s laughable to say that China is waiting to see what we do so that they can follow. I’m not surprised that the idea is still bouncing around as the coverage of China’s remarkable moves has been almost zero. They are by far the world leaders in the following categories:
Nuclear
Wind
Solar
Batteries
EVs
Much of the renewable projects in Australia are now using Chinese turbines or panels. Lithium batteries have been coming from China for a while now.
The cost of producing solar has been collapsing at the same rate that semi-conductors got exponentially better. Wind has hit global supply chain problems, so is largely flat on price for imported parts. For both types of projects it is the local install that is the majority of the spend. We are an expensive place to do business, but that’s driving innovation.
Replacement is about 25 years. That increases if well maintained. Some projects are putting new turbines on old towers, but most of the time it is more efficient to replace 10 short towers with 5 tall towers.
The wind suppliers are now taking back blades to recycle, knowing this is a reputational issue. Steel towers are easily recycled.
Solar recycling seems pretty basic, just crush it up and soak it in acid. We haven’t got a huge volume of old panels yet to make this an urgent need.
Currently the lithium battery recycling is in the scale up stage. There just aren’t a large number of batteries coming out of retired vehicles, but that volume will swell in the next 5-10 years. There’s plenty of time for the industry to scale up. (Currently a significant volume of EV battery packs ends up in Ukraine and turned into FPV drone munitions.)
I don’t know how to sell you on wind and solar in ways that I haven’t said before. There’s an amazing amount of exciting stuff happening, but people’s perception is based on 5-10 years ago. Renewables will bring in an age of plenty, not scarcity as people fear.
I’m confident on China, if only as a national security issue to stop importing bulk energy over marine lanes that can be interdicted by US warships. India, I don’t think they have the political capability to make the changes needed, so will likely drag their feet.
While historical and future increases in heatwave frequency, duration and intensity are well documented, no studies have yet examined heatwave changes after anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions reach net zero. We address this by examining heatwave projections from millennial-scale simulations run with the Australian Earth System Model, ACCESS-ESM1-5. Each simulation branches off the SSP5-8.5 scenario at 5 year intervals between 2030–2060, from which point anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions are set to net zero. Heatwaves are systematically hotter, longer and more frequent the longer net zero is delayed and reach their highest values when net zero is delayed until 2060. Moreover, most regional trends show no decline over the entire 1000 years of each simulation, indicating that heatwaves do not start to revert to preindustrial conditions. Some regions even display significantly increasing millennial-scale trends when net zero occurs by 2050 or later. Furthermore, the longer net zero is delayed, the more occurrences of historically rare and extreme heatwave events. This is problematic for low-latitude countries which are also generally more vulnerable, where historically record-breaking events occur once a year or more when net zero is delayed until after the middle of the 21st Century. Should the global effort to permanently reach net zero occur before 2040, future heatwaves will be less severe than in a 2 °C warmer world, however if net zero is not reached until 2060, heatwaves will be systematically more severe than this upper threshold of the Paris agreement. Our research critically challenges the general belief that conditions after net zero will begin to improve for near future generations. While our results are concerning, they provide a novel length of foresight, such that effective and permanent adaptation measures can be planned and implemented while the world is still on the imperative path to permanent net zero.
Yeah climate change is real but humans have stuff all effect on it ,big ball of fire and earths orbit controls most of that , very small amounts of co2 come from man compared to nature but you do you I will do I and together we can make co2 which is apparently destroying us all by wasting hours on this platform
The basic science is pretty clear that putting CO2 and other gases such as methane into the atmosphere will increase temperatures over all. If you think otherwise, not much can be said to you.
How much that will impact the climate worldwide or more locally isn’t really clear.
There are many models on the impact to the total eco-system that vary widely. What exactly that will be will only find out at a time in the future.
So NSW state libs say they are keeping net zero. Could the Libs be any more of a shambles if they tried! Pick a line and keep to it to at least try and fake you have some conviction in whatever you believe. No wonder Pauline is pulling 18% now. Is it so much to ask that we have an effective opposition whom is not a basket case so we have as effective government as possible.
**** me we need a new (and actually competent with no nutters) third party in this country bloody badly to replace the Libs! Like reform has done in UK (but not reform and not with a leader like that if you know what I mean, breaking up the uniparty system)
You’re in the climate change thread, so maybe vote with the party with the best environmental policies. The way I see it, everything else is irrelevant without a healthy environment. If there enough of us, who knows, maybe we get the third party you’re looking for.
