There is no escape for our flora and fauna when it gets too hot. I hope the colonies that you look after @Humble_Minion weren’t too badly affected.
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I was (fortunately? Unfortunately?) interstate so couldn’t help out with this year’s catastrophe.
Brimbank was worst hit, I haven’t had much to do with that one. The big one at Yarra Bend copped it too, but the sprinklers there helped out a little. Basically every flying fox pup born this year, died.
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Ministers suppressed a report after intelligence chiefs warned that climate change could drive mass migration to Britain and trigger a nuclear war in Asia.
The study, entitled Global Biodiversity Loss, Ecosystem Collapse and National Security, was put together with the help of the joint intelligence committee, which oversees MI5 and MI6.
Initially due to be published last autumn, it was blocked by No 10 for being too negative.
When the government was forced to release the report after a freedom of information request, it published an abridged version that outlined a “realistic possibility” that the decline of forests and glacier-fed rivers would lead to “global competition for food” beginning in the 2030s.
But a full, internal version of the report, seen by The Times, goes further, suggesting that the degradation of rainforests in the Congo and the drying up of rivers fed by the Himalayas could drive people to flee to Europe, leading to “more polarised and populist politics in the UK” and putting “additional pressure on already strained national infrastructure”.
It noted that Britain’s large south Asian diaspora could make it an attractive destination to people from the region.
The internal version also warned that collapsing ecosystems could motivate acts of eco-terrorism in Britain, as well as drawing Nato into conflicts over remaining breadbaskets in Russia and Ukraine.
Described as a “reasonable worst case scenario”, the report said that many ecosystems around the world were so stressed that they could soon pass a tipping point, after which they would inexorably degrade no matter what humans did to protect them. Forests in Canada and Russia might pass a tipping point by 2030, as might glaciers in the Himalayas that fed rivers on which two billion people depended, the report suggested.
Intelligence chiefs warned that the decline of Himalayan rivers would “almost certainly escalate tensions” between China, India and Pakistan, potentially leading to nuclear war.
Britain, which imports 40 per cent of its food, including a fifth of its animal feed from South America, would struggle to feed itself unless it made expensive investments in its supply chains, the authors said. These investments could include lab-grown meat and new crop varieties.
“This government is hiding the true danger of climate change from the people,” a source close to the development of the report claimed. “We need to have an honest conversation about the risks we face to our prosperity and how to mitigate them.”
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Yikes.
Indonesia, where 285m people reside, is on our doorstep.
But Gina said no, so what choice does poor little Albo have but to open a couple more coal mines?
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People have been migrating to Australia from there for about 60,000 years. It’s a lot harder to live here though, one of the reasons we don’t have 285 million people. Politicians big Australia wet dream.
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The world seems headed into another El Nino, just 3 years after the last one. Such quick return normally would imply, at most, an El Nino of moderate strength, but we suggest that even a moderately strong El Nino may yield record global temperature already in 2026 and still greater temperature in 2027. The extreme warming will be a result mainly of high climate sensitivity and a recent increase of the net global climate forcing, not the result of an exceptional El Nino, per se. We find that the principal drive for global warming acceleration began in about 2015, which implies that 2°C global warming is likely to be reached in the 2030s, not at midcentury.
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What’s causing the continuous growth?
In a nutshell? Our ecosystems are in trouble and we keep burning enormous amounts of fossils.
Our once great carbon sinks are now becoming sources. The Amazon and the Artic-Boreal region are good examples.
The hotter our oceans become, the harder it is for them to absorb carbon. Ocean acidification also inhibits carbon absorption. Our oceans have done a lot of heavy lifting in the past, but we continue to abuse it, and everything has a limit. La Niña has given it some temporary respite, but ocean temps will be setting new records later this year amd into 2027.
“Drill baby, drill” won. There are no signs that we are going to reverse the curve any time soon.
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What gets us first, Climate collapse, AI extermination or Nuclear War?
My very suspect French ancestry makes me say ennui
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In your case, it will be worry and your peptic ulcer will explode.
Lighten up Beni, you will see a Bomber flag before you die. Not so sure for me, but you are young, and your kids will fix the environment under yours and Mrs Beni tutelage.
As Queensland communities begin to recover from devastating flood events, environment groups have slammed the Albanese government for approving another open cut coal mine expansion in central Queensland this week.
Yancoal and Peabody’s Middlemount coal mine expansion has been given the greenlight by Environment Minister Murray Watt to clear over 183 hectares of koala habitat and 82ha of greater glider habitat. The project will extend an open cut pit and divert a section of Roper Creek that provides an important corridor for koalas, greater gliders and other native animals. The approval decision and conditions are available here.
The project extends the life of the mine for an additional 7 years, from 2037 until 2044 and will extract an additional 112 million tonnes of mostly PCI coal that can be sold into thermal or metallurgical coal markets.
The project will produce 236 million tonnes of climate pollution, equivalent to more than half of Australia’s annual domestic emissions from all sources in 2024-25 (440.2 million tonnes) and 1200 times more than the annual emissions of Vanuatu (197,079 tonnes).
This is the second coal mining project to be approved by the Albanese government this year, after an extension to the Meandu Mine, that supplies coal to the Tarong power station, was granted in January this year. The Albanese government has approved 33 new coal and gas projects since they were elected in 2022.
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Name a more iconic duo
The Libs and mining magnates
Labor and coal mines
Both utterly disgusting
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Bast*rds
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Even worse when it’s given away dirt cheap. But, yeah… we’re fkd
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What else would the “Lucky Country” do?