6 December 2016, The Conversation, Australia’s political elites are fiddling while Rome burns. Australians are used to the vulgar antics and empty point-scoring that pass for debate in federal parliament. But little could have prepared them for the current descent into pure farce. Politics divorced from political reality The US has been engulfed by a political tsunami few predicted and many are struggling to comprehend. Much of Europe is still weathering the storm of an unprecedented influx of refugees at a time of high unemployment and little prospect of economic growth. Financial markets, climate change negotiations and great power relations are precariously poised. Amid this turbulence, federal parliament’s last sitting week for 2016 was devoted to the backpacker tax, legislation to bring back the Australian Building and Construction Commission, and the political future of Attorney-General George Brandis. There has never been a time when the disconnect between political elites and the public interest was greater than it is today. The major parties seem uninterested or unable to respond to a drastically transformed political agenda. And so the disconnect grows wider by the day – and the contradictions ever sharper.Read More here
Tag Archives: Denial
22 November 2016, Renew Economy, Climate conspiracy grips Senate as Coalition attacks latte-sipping opponents of coal. The influence of president-elect Donald Trump’s attack on “elites” is taking hold in the Australian parliament, with the Coalition attacking “latte-sipping” opponents of coal mining and joining enthusiastically in a debate questioning climate science in the Senate. Frydenberg was asked in question time by Greens MP Adam Bandt about a US government report delivered in at the Marrakech climate talks that warned, amongst other things, of a 1.5m rise in sea levels by 2050 if greenhouse emissions continued at current levels. Frydenberg responded by claiming that Australia had an “ambitious” climate target for 2030 and had been praised “for innovation” and its work on carbon capture and storage at the recent climate talks in Marrakech. A few hours later, Canada announced it would phase out traditional coal fired generation by 2030 as part of its “vision for a clean growth economy”. The UK is phasing out coal by 2023, and France is phasing out coal too, although it has taken a rain check on that idea because one third of its nuclear fleet are sidelined by safety concerns.“It it is okay for the member for Melbourne to put his sandals up on the seat, sip his soy latte, sit in the streets of Brunswick and say that it is the end of coal,” but coal would continue to be part of the mix for decades to come, Frydenberg said. Read More here
15 November 2016, DESMOG, Meet the Fossil Fuel Lobbyists and Climate Science Deniers at the Marrakech COP22 Talks. It’s no secret fossil fuel companies will have to fundamentally change their business models if countries are serious about tackling climate change. With so much skin in the game, it’s no surprise they find ways to try and influence climate policy at the highest level. The international climate talks in Marrakech this week has provided the perfect opportunity for corporate lobbyists and climate science deniers to push their high carbon agendas. Who’s who Prior to the COP22 negotiations currently underway in Marrakech, Corporate Accountability International released a mapshowing how fossil fuel representatives can get access at the highest level. Many of the groups they identify do indeed have a presence in the inner ‘blue zone’ of the talks, where negotiators meet to hammer out the details of global climate policy. (Most non-state actors and companies are officially consigned to the ‘green zone’ in a separate section of the venue). Read More here
1 November 2016, Independent, Climate sceptics widen their net to claim all science – from medicine to physics to computing – is ‘in deep trouble’. Climate change deniers have long tried to cast doubt on the science behind warnings about global warming, but now Lord Lawson’s sceptic think tank has taken things a step further. For, if the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is to be believed, not only are climatologists exaggerating the risks of burning fossil fuels, but all science is “in deep trouble” with “fraudulent research” finding its way into the most eminent, peer-reviewed journals. Medicine, physics, economics, chemistry, computer science and psychology are just a few of the subjects were this is a problem, according to a new GWPF report. Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, a leading research centre based in London, suggested the report showed the sceptics’ frustration that their flawed theories were not being taken seriously. “This attack on the practice of peer review is another example of propaganda from the Global Warming Policy Foundation aimed at illegitimately undermining confidence in climate research,” he told The Independent. “The ideology-driven claims made by the Foundation simply would not stand up to the rigours of peer review by independent experts, which is why their inaccurate and misleading claims about the causes and potential consequences of global warming appear in pamphlets and newspapers columns instead of academic journals.” Read More here