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Heat Waves In Australia Are Getting More Frequent, and Hotter
vikingpower writes "In a landmark report on bushfires and climate change (PDF), the Australian Climate Council concludes that heat waves in Australia, as driven by climate change, are becoming more frequent — and that they get hotter. 'It is crucial that communities, emergency services, health services and other authorities prepare for the increasing severity and frequency of extreme fire conditions,' says the Council in the report. Sarah Perkins, one of the report's co-authors,
was interviewed by The Guardian Australia. '"While we can't blame climate change for any one event, we can certainly see its fingerprint. This is another link in the chain." Perkins said her latest work had analyzed heatwave trends up to 2013. She said the trend "just gets worse – it's a bit scary really."' In 2009, the United Nations World Meteorological Organization signaled that a Southeast Australian heatwave was the hottest in 100 years."
given their natural habitat and evolutionary traits, this means its only a matter of time until those ferocious Drop Bears go extinct. the bad news of course is that we can no longer use the drop bear as an excuse for americans to choose New Zealand as their holiday destination.
Granted its also important to note that should americans agree to reduce their carbon footprint and sign the damn kyoto treaty, we wont have to resort to shipping drop bears to safer climates in the states.
Good people go to bed earlier.
"The report, which will be released in full in February, finds that climate change is having a key influence on a trend that has seen the number of hot days in Australia double and the duration and frequency of heatwaves increase in the period between 1971 and 2008."
So, yes, it's global warming.
get the tinfoil hats on, here come the climate changers!!
I think you'll find the tinfoil hat wearers are those who think that the scientific community are all conspiring to earn big bucks from climate change, although quite how they earn this money is never spelled out. Odd, that. Then the climate-change deniers have no trouble believing the industry-sponsored pseudo-science of the global warming denial industry that actually does have big money behind it from the likes of Exxon of Exxon Valdez fame. Yeah, you have no trouble believing the polluters, do you?
Get a fucking grip. The scientific consensus is that anthropogenic global warming is a fact. Out of thousands of peer-reviewed papers you'd be doing well if you can find one single paper that says otherwise.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
stop living in the desert.
What if the desert comes to you?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
I'll buy one, but only if I can act all smug to my friends who still drive gasoline-powered cars, especially hybrids. I'm already practicing saying "Well, I guess driving a hybrid is okayyyy....I mean if you're not ready to go all the way and REALLY help."
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
The Youngs are powered by high voltage electricity, not gas.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
There is a nonzero chance that your third possibility is correct. But nonzero is all I'm going to give you. Have a look at the amounts of greenhouse gasses put into the atmosphere by a large natural phenomenon, vulcanism
Looks like the numbers are from 2009 or so. Summary: It takes ~3 days of humans' output to equal one year of volcanic greenhouse gas emissions.
The factors that are out of our control contribute a tiny fraction of our total.
Look, the west is working on lowering their emissions.
However, China alone emits over 1/3 of all CO2 emissions. Worse, by 2020, they will account for over 1/2 assuming that no other nation lowers theirs (and if other nations lower theirs, then it will probably be around 2017). In addition, the rest of BRICS are busy increasing their emissions.
And with kyoto and other nations trying to tie emissions to individuals, rather than to GDP, this will continue to happen. The only way to stop this is to have ALL NATIONS lower their emissions at the same time. In addition, it needs to be tied to GDP, rather than per capitia. Finally, it needs to be based on empirical data, not SWAGs.
And the only way to make sure that ALL nations work on bringing emissions down is for nations to tax all consumed goods, local and imported, with a tax based on where the good and its parts come from. In addition, ideally, it would include something for the transportation of the item.
Until that point, emissions WILL rise faster.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"It's possible that both the AGW deniers and AGW alarmists are wrong. Climate change could be real, but caused by natural factors that are out of our control, the same ones that have caused ice ages and warm periods in the past when carbon outputs were nowhere near as high as they are now."
The problem with this is that it is exactly what many of those so-called AGW "deniers" have been saying all along.
to earn big bucks from climate change, although quite how they earn this money is never spelled out
Climate Change Is the Next $10 Trillion Opportunity
While I'm not debating that the climate is changing, let's also not pretend that this is not all about $$$. .
The article you have linked shows that there are business opportunities created as a result of dealing with climate change. It does not show how climate scientists benefit from the results of their studies going one way or the other, as is often alleged by climate change deniers.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Arctic Ice extent expanding this year is no surprise--most climate scientists predicted that would happen this year. Why? Because it was SO LOW last year, it basically had no direction to go but up.
If you roll snake eyes on your first roll, don't be surprised if your next roll is better.
Had broken it every winter since 1971? Because in australia last year they had to add 2 colors to the temperature charts because how hot things were then, and this year things aren't so far from that, and if 2 years is not enough you have the previous 40 contiguous years where the same trend was there. Thats the difference between long standing climate trends and the weather in a particular season of a limited area. Is the forest the one that matters, not the tree you just stumbled upon. And if you can see the forest because you are not high enough, maybe you should check what the people that can see the whole forest say. The cold fact is that the world as a whole is getting hotter.
Interior Australia seems to be suffering a terrible drought while Northern Australia is being inundated.
Australia: Percent of Normal Precipitation
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Now, do people suddenly get more interested in global warming when it's hot outside? Sure! Why? Because people are essentially irrational, and don't live very long relative to the planet. That includes me and people I agree with, too. But it doesn't change the facts of a 35+ year trend.
Which says nothing about the *global* climate.
Here's a clue: the air mass that's breaking all the cold weather records? That air mass is actually unusually *warm* for this time of year. How can that be? Because it's not where it usually is, way up in Canada. At the same time many northern areas are getting record warm temperatures, and California is missing the rain it should be getting this time of year. The overall picture is of a *warm* winter, averaged over the northern hemisphere, but with temperature anomalies all over the place. Which is not in itself *climate*, but the kind of weather event climate models have been predicting for a decade or more now (citation: Easterling, David R., et al. "Climate extremes: observations, modeling, and impacts." Science 289.5487 (2000): 2068-2074.).
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
exactly! a few billion years ago the planet was a super-hot ball of molten rock. therefore it's been way hotter in the past.
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Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
Sure, in the Hadean period 4600+ million years ago the Earth's atmosphere had no free oxygen.
The far distant past is not the issue. The ability of the human race to survive isn't the issue either. The issue is the ability of the society we have built to cope with environmental changes that may occur on the timescale of a single lifetime.
A +2C change would result in a world that looks drastically different than ours is now. But if that change occurred over a thousand years it'd be practically imperceptible to people. The same change over a century would be a major challenge to our economy. How well you adapt depends on how mobile your means of making a living are. If you're an investment banker, it's no problem at all to shift your money out of harm's way. If you're an American rancher, you may find yourself in a "Bottle Imp" scenario. If you're a Bangladeshi subsistence farmer you are SOL.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The ship got stuck in sea ice that broke off the continent because it's melting due to the warming.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
The parent post is correct, but Greenpeace does not dictate government policy in Australia.
Australia has 31% of the world's uranium reservers (the world's largest) and has in recent years declined production slightly (probably due to Germany's and Japan's 'efforts' that increase greenhouse gas emissions across Europe and Japan). Australia does not use nuclear power for energy generation or for military use or for icebreakers or any use other than ANSTO (small research lab that produces radioisotopes for medical use).
Australia could have gone nuclear ages ago, but didn't. Similarly to how it cut space research and plans to build rocket launch platforms, it is a country of little physics achievements that haven't been done by overseas people. The problem is that is also a county full of coal, and with other countries running out of coal, it might well be the place for coal globally over the next 50 years if policy doesn't change domestically.
Already the highest greehouse gas emitting OECD country in the world in the future if the coal extractions can be seen large from space (like tar pits in Canada) then it might become the biggest contributing country to global warming on a global scale indirectly (due to use of its coal and nonuse of uranium, not to mention thorium).
As a slightly different slant on this troll rousing topic, it is worth noting a few things.
1) Per capita, Australia is the worlds highest emitter of greenhouse gases as we use mostly coal to generate electricity. Furthermore, we are one of the worlds largest coal miners/exporters and so contribute significantly to global CO2 production elsewhere.
2) In September, Australia elected a new government that is predominantly in the hands of climate change deniers. The Prime Minister (Tony Abbott) is on the public record saying that climate change is "crap" (http://blogs.abc.net.au/victoria/2009/12/climate-change-is-crap-tony-abbot-said-to-the-pyrenees-advocate.html). Amongst the new government's first acts was to defund the Climate Commission (along with several other "green" initiatives of previous governments). They are also committed to repealing the existing Carbon Tax legislation, but cannot (yet) force this through the upper house (Senate) which they do not control.
3) In response to its defunding, the Climate Commission reformed itself as the Climate Council, raising around $1 million in under two weeks. Whilst not big bikkies in US terms, this is extremely significant in a small population country like Australia that demonstrates that many Australians feel very strongly about climate change - strongly enough to not only make a one off donation but to commit to regular, monthly donations to support the ongoing public information work of the Climate Council.
From their "about" page http://www.climatecouncil.org.au/about-us/
"The Climate Council is an independent non-profit organisation funded by donations by the public. Our mission is to provide authoritative, expert advice to the Australian public on climate change."
You are using page 1 of the global warming denier's handbook -- cherry-pick local minima to deny the trends. Yes, there is more arctic ice this year than last year, but last year was an extremely low point. The US has had one week of record cold, but not sustained record cold.
Next up you'll be saying that there hasn't been any increase in average temperatures since 1998 - ignoring the fact that 1998 was a massive outlier and that if you were to start witih 1997 or 1999 the trend of increasing temps is still, unfortunately, intact.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Houses were not insulated, most didn't even have plaster and lathing on the interior of the wall studs, the only heating was radiant heat from the fireplace, and if you underestimated the amount of wood you needed in September you were burning your furniture to keep alive by April. Clothing was limited to wool and cotton, with no way to really dry them when you got wet. The gods help you if your boots fell apart in the middle of winter and you didn't live close enough to town to get them fixed, very few people had the tools to do that. Some winters it was a miracle ANY of them survived.
My grandfather had a photo of himself, his brother and some neighbors, young men all, standing in front of a snow drift with shovels. On the other side of the drift you can see about a foot of the smoke stack of a locomotive. When my dad was young someone he knew drove his car from Michigan to Wisconsin across Lake Michigan, and people moved HOUSES across the ice on Lake Superior. When I was little I remember snow banks were frequently taller than my dad. My mom saw her first Christmas without snow on the ground in 1984, in the last ten years they've had snow on the ground on Christmas day twice and Grand Traverse Bay on Lake Michigan (not the big lake, just the Bay) has frozen thick enough to go ice fishing once.
Australia isn't the only place that has seen a century of warming.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
What's with all the China-bashing? A nation with 1.35 billion people to feed and clothe has to get it's energy from somewhere. Not to mention all the products they are manufacturing for you in the West.
% of electricity generated from renewable sources
China 17.88% USA 10 .05%
The Chinese government is promoting huge projects for investment in solar, wind and hydro.
I'm not saying they are innocent, but at least they seem to be trying to do something.
No left turn unstoned.
While I don't even consider myself among the "deniers" ... I think you have to be going around with a big, thick blindfold on, if you really believe the "pro climate change" researchers aren't getting some money out of it.
And how much money is flowing to the climate change deniers? Follow that money.
You'll find it dwarfs climate research grants significantly. If you think it's all a giant conspiracy to get money into the hands of researchers, you really need to up your medication because that's bordering on the paranoid delusional.
Besides this, money going to scientists doing real science is to produce accurate results. Only the money going to climate change deniers is being used to blatantly make stuff up.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
To be fair to China they are working on dealing with the problem too. They lead the world in some forms of renewable energy and are building new nuclear plants. Their country is growing rapidly and they see how the west polluted as it did so, and so are unwilling to give up the same opportunity.
It's not as simple as China not caring or not making any effort, it's just that they are only now getting the skills and technology needed to be cleaner. Pollution is a big deal in China and they are making efforts to sort it out, but obviously it is going to take time and economic growth is running at 10% a year.
What we need to do is encourage them as much as possible, and develop new technologies with them in order to help. None of this treating China like the enemy that automatically steals all our tech. Aside from anything else we need to have clean tech become extremely cheap and widely available before Africa really starts to boom.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC