Democracy sausage

 It is a tradition in Australian elections that on the election day at the polling place, there are booths for charity organisations selling cakes and cooking sausages.   At the last election, Labor differentiated themselves sharply from the soi-disant "liberals" and lost the election they were expected to win.  So this time, they've made themselves a much smaller target.  Although Labor does have a better emissions-reduction policy than the LNP coalition, it's still in favour of new coal mines and increased coal exports.  For my non-English-speaking readers, the reference to 'pork' refers to the slang phrase 'pork barrel' which refers to electoral bribes handed out by the government to swing voters towards them.  This "Liberal-National" government has been the most corrupt ever.  The election is on Saturday.

Reminder to Americans: outside the USA, blue means right-wing, red left.

Cartoon by Cathy Wilcox.

Dashes to take the credit ....

 Scott Morrison is Australia's current PM.  There's an election in 4 weeks, which I'm hoping will turf him out.  Useless man, all baff and bombast.  Penny Wong is a take-no-prisoners frontbencher with the opposition Labor Party, the ALP.  And she is so right.

Household income has fallen under Morrison

 

Slowmo Antoinette

 The latest idiocy from our PM:  if you can't afford to pay the rent, buy a house!  

Scott Morrison is toast

 A cartoon by Glen le Lievre  The cartoon refers to the terrible polls the LNP under Scott Morrison has been getting.  

I won't believe it until the election is over.  Scotty is a past master of spin and dissembling.  He's not called #ScottyFromMarketing for nothing.

Scott Morrison and Oz's climate emergency

 Oz's PM (Prime Minister) is a born-again evangelical Xtian who leads the completely misnamed "Liberal" Party of Australia.  It is in coalition with the so-called "National" Party which used to be called the Country Party, but is really an agrarian socialist party, which wants protection for agriculture and lots of subsidies from the government when there are droughts, floods, etc.  They want to socialise the losses (of the bad years) and keep the profits (in the good years).  The "Liberal" Party is the party which favours the rich and companies, and is in favour of cutting taxes on the rich, cutting welfare for the poor, cutting minimum wages, and nobbling Oz's free health system.  The Liberal/National Party coalition (known for short as the LNP) is most infamous for its demented climate denialism and its passion for fossil fuels, reflecting its largest donors.  This denialism and delayism is also driven by the "National" Party which fears that country regions would suffer if Oz adopted a reasonable climate target.  

This image comes from the Twitter page of Scott Ludlam who was one of the Green Party's (Federal) senators for a couple of years.  The cretin in the picture is our PM.  He once brought a lump of coal into Parliament and said we don't have to be afraid of it.  The map of Australia behind the PM shows the temperatures in Oz on a heatwave day.  The BOM (Bureau of Meteorology) has had to create new colours to show the new high temperatures being reached on our continent.

Vaccination against Covid works

 These are data from the Sydney delta variant outbreak.  About 12% of the population has been fully vaccinated, about 1/3rd has had either 1 or 2 shots.  Clearly vaccination works, since the proportion getting Covid, going to hospital for it, being put into intensive care, and dying is much higher for the unvaccinated than it is for the partially and fully vaccinated.   The reason so few have been vaccinated is only partly due to vaccine hesitancy.  Mostly it's due to government ineptitude.

So of the 2702 cases only 1 was vaccinated, and none of those hospitalised, in intensive care or dying was.

I can't breathe

Some Ozzies have been smug about the racism and riots in the USA.  But people of colour die after police brutality in Australia too.  Over the last 4 years, nearly one Aboriginal a month has died in custody in Australia.  Oddly enough, no police have been convicted.

This is Cathy Wilcox's cartoon about that.  The sanctimonious cretin in glasses is our P.M., Scott Morrison.

A burning nation led by cowards

From Hugh Rimington of 10Daily:

Among those determined to do nothing about climate change, the arguments have shifted over time. We know them all too well. But here’s a reminder.

1. It’s a hoax.

1. It’s corruption. Climate scientists are scammers getting rich on grants.

1. It’s a mental illness. People reflecting the science are “alarmists”, “warmists” and “catastrophists” recklessly damaging the mental health of children.

1. It’s something we can’t talk about -- especially when the weather and bushfires are behaving precisely as the science predicted they would behave.

The trouble is, across the country people who have believed this stuff are having to swap their tinfoil hats for fire helmets. The predictions of the scientists are playing out exactly to the script. Reality is biting.

Now the coal lobby and its many paid-up mates have a new argument:

“Not even if Australia completely de-industrialised could we make the slightest difference.”

And broadly speaking, that’s true. Our emissions, at less than two percent of global totals, will not be decisive in the fight. Therefore, it follows, we can change nothing. So let’s sprout new coal mines all over Queensland, and leave the issue to someone else.

And how gutless would that be?

In a nation that rightly reveres its ANZAC ideals, here’s a reminder: Australia has never beaten any deadly threat on our own.

We didn’t defeat Nazi Germany on our own.

But we did join the fight.

We didn’t defeat Japanese imperialism on our own.

But -- by heaven -- we were in the fight.

We did what we should be doing now. Seeking allies wherever we can find them, goading them into action, showing our willingness for the fight, and getting stuck in.

The sacrifices being asked of us in combating a warming planet are nothing compared with the sacrifices our men and women gave in two World Wars.

This is not a green issue. It should be a galvanising call for Australian patriots everywhere -- one that binds farmers with those in country towns, and all those in the teeming suburbs of our cities.

But from Canberra: nothing.

Where are the Curtins and the Menzieses? Where’s the national bloody leadership?

We are a burning nation led by cowards. It’s time we all got a lot more angry about it. And then looked each other in the eye, shook hands, and got on with it.

Source: 10Daily

Oz—too small to matter?

Our cockwomble of a PM, Scott Morrison, denies a link between climate change and our unprecedented bushfires (it's just arsonists), denies that climate change is even happening (it's all natural),  but if it is, we (Oz) only emit 1.3% of global CO2 (so we're helpless to stop climate change), and anyway, switching to renewables will devastate the economy (rubbish).  This farrago of half-truths, lies and obfuscations is accepted and magnified by the Murdoch press and media channels, and isn't properly questioned and refuted by other "centrist" media.  Only The Guardian and the ABC have been any different.

Here are some excerpts from a piece by Simon Holmes à Court in The Guardian, and it addresses the claim that Oz is too small to matter when it comes to climate change.

Australia’s unforgiving, unrelenting and unprecedented fires have demonstrated so clearly that the climate doesn’t recognise tricky “Kyoto carryover” accounting and doesn’t care for juvenile finger pointing at other countries.

With a warming climate, this brutal summer is a preview of what will become a regular occurrence in our lifetimes. More and more Australians realise that climate change is a clear and present threat.

Our only chance to maintain our standard of living, and our economy, is if all countries rapidly decarbonise. Many are committed to this, Australia is not. We cannot expect global progress if we ourselves aren’t prepared to at least pull our weight, let alone show any leadership.

Yet, we have a prime minister who looks into the camera and speaks to a people in survival mode and deep trauma and waves away our responsibility. He claims that we are responsible for just 1.3% of global carbon dioxide emissions, as if we are irrelevant.

Australia is the 14th largest emitter out of 208 countries. If all countries with emissions under a “measly” 2% were lumped together we’d together be responsible for almost as much annual emissions as China and India put together.

Australia has never been irrelevant and we certainly aren’t now.

Australia has the highest emissions per capita of all major nations. The average Australian has four times the carbon footprint of the average global citizen, significantly due to our unusually high reliance on coal for electricity, the poor energy efficiency of our vehicles and buildings and the high domestic emissions from coal and gas extraction and processing.

China and India haven’t yet peaked their emissions – unsurprising given their stage of development – but both are decoupling emissions from development such that their average citizen will never have the carbon footprint the average Australian has now.

The “too small to matter” argument is logically absurd, but it is also morally bankrupt and economically reckless.

We all know that throwing one piece of litter out the window wouldn’t ruin the environment, but if all did we’d soon be surrounded by rubbish.

How about voting? It is a foundation of our democracy that nobody’s voice is so small as to be meaningless.

Likewise, if any one taxpayer stopped paying tax we all know it wouldn’t make a measurable difference to the government’s bottom line, but if everyone stopped paying tax it would smash consolidated revenue.

So when did we become a nation of shirkers? We’ve always punched above our weight. A young Australia was immensely proud of the troops committed to the first world war, even though the Diggers comprised less than 1% of the Allied Powers. We are only 0.3% of the global population but are gutted whenever we’re not near the top of the Olympic medal tally.

The UN Environment Program recently announced that global emissions need to reduce by 7.6% every year for a decade to keep warming below 1.5C. With no emissions reductions projected, it’s no wonder that Australia’s climate policies were recently ranked dead last among 57 nations.

Meanwhile, other countries are embracing the challenge.

In November I visited a cement factory in Belgium that is trialling a low-cost technology – originally developed in Australia – for decarbonising cement manufacture. Globally, the cement sector is responsible for around 8% of emissions, as growing developing countries urbanise.

In Essen, in Germany’s Ruhr Valley, I saw a technology that allows power-hungry aluminium smelters to operate well (and increase profits) in renewable-dominated grids. The technology was first developed in Gladstone and partly Australian-owned before being sold offshore.
 In nearby Duisburg, I visited ThyssenKrupp, a major German industrial company with a commitment to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The company has embarked on an ambitious plan to decarbonise steel production, also responsible for around 8% of global emissions, with the ultimate goal of replacing coal with hydrogen. ThyssenKrupp is also developing technology to combine “waste” gases with “green” hydrogen – hydrogen produced with renewable energy – to synthesise chemicals such as methanol and ammonia, providing a pathway to lowering emissions from aviation and agriculture.

As these economies wean themselves off coal the demand for hydrogen will skyrocket. With the potential to harness vast quantities of low-cost renewable energy, Australia is well placed to become an energy superpower in a decarbonised global economy.

None of the major industrial companies I visited in Europe sees decarbonisation through a sacrifice lens. There’s no talk of “economy wrecking targets”. Rather, having accepted that the economy must be decarbonised, they are rushing to seize a competitive advantage.

Meanwhile, Australia is a world away, in every sense. A rich, talented, capable nation is being held back by a lack of honesty and a lack of imagination – a nation held back by the vested interests of those who profit from the extraction and sale of gas and coal.

Our prime minister is paralysed, unable to acknowledge that fossil fuel emissions are changing the climate, and that the changing climate is hurting Australians.

To which I would add: if Australia, one of the richest countries on Earth, with one of the highest per capita emissions, refuses to do anything about its emissions, how will we be able to ask China, a much poorer country, with much lower per capita emissions to cut hers?  But it is essential that China cut her emissions if we are to avoid 3 degrees C rise by 2100.  1 degree has been bad enough, and as emissions continue to rise, things will only get worse.

Areas burnt in Australia

2018 California fires burnt 2 million acres; the 2019 Amazon fires 2.2 million; and the 2019 Siberian fires 6.7 million.  In 2018 Sweden, in the Arctic Circle, lost 1.6m acres. In the Arctic Circle!
 

So far Australia's 2019/20 fires have burnt 12 million acres.

Catastrophic bushfires the size of Belgium.  Record heat and drought.  Smoke so bad the sky is dark red--in NZ. 

And still the government denies and lies. 

WHAT WILL IT TAKE TO MAKE US TAKE CLIMATE ACTION?

Source: The Guardian

Australia's fire hell

New Year's day, 2020.
Diamond Beach NSW
Photo by Martin von Stoll

And still our utterly useless and cretinous PM denies that these unprecedented fires have anything to do with climate change and global heating.

Unprecedented natural disasters

Laura Tingle is a journalist with the ABC, Oz's independent public broadcaster. Scott Morrison (alias Scroto) is Oz's PM, and leads the completely misnamed "Liberal" Party.  He is a vicious climate denialist.  Since switching to renewables would reduce electricity prices, the real objection to doing something about climate change by the Right isn't just because they're in the pay of coal and oil, but also because the Left is in favour—their knee-jerk response is to oppose.   Shameful.

The Right continues to lie about climate change

Scott Morrison, PM of Australia, fondling a lump of coal in Parliament

This time in Australia, where there is a federal general election in 2 weeks.  The right-wing "Liberal" party commissioned a fossil-fuel economist to "cost" Labor's policy.  Using absurd assumptions he came up with the required answer: hundred of billions.  Trouble is, his analysis was rubbish.

35% of Oz's emissions are from electricity generation. Snowy Hydro recently stated that it could source green electricity for $40/MWh, and "firmed" green electricity for $60 or $70/MWh (presumably $60 for wind and $70 for solar, since you need more storage to "firm" solar). "Firmed" electricity is generation with enough storage added to mimic the output of a baseload coal/gas/nuclear power plant.

By comparison, 3 years ago wind without firming cost $60/MWh and solar $70. That's how rapidly the cost of renewables is falling. Snowy also said that the fuel cost alone of coal is $56/MWh. Just the fuel. Not maintenance, not repairs, not staffing. Just fuel. The wholesale price of electricity varies from day to day, hour to hour and state to state, but $80-100/MWh would be a reasonable average. So even "firmed" renewable electricity generation is cheaper than the electricity costs of the existing coal-based grid. That's without even considering the continued declines in cost in solar, wind and storage.

On top of that, our fleet of coal generators is aging, and will anyway have to be progressively retired over the next 20 years.

Meanwhile, electric vehicles will reach "sticker price" parity with petrol vehicles in 2022 for big cars and 2025 for small. Transport emissions are another 18% of total Australian emissions.

The moral of the story is that cutting emissions by Labor's target of 45% by 2030 won't cost us anything because we will be replacing clapped out fossil fuel equipment with new, cheaper, green generation and transport. There will be no cost to the economy. In fact we will benefit from ever cheaper electricity.

I still don't know why the Right is so misinformed about climate change and the cost of renewables.  Maybe it has something to do with "contributions" from the fossil fuel industry.

You do this ..... you get this

You do this:

There is no way you can write the sentence, “The treasurer of Australia, Scott Morrison, came to question time with a lump of coal on Thursday,” and have that sentence seem anything other than the ravings of a psychedelic trip, so let’s just say it and be done with it.

Scott Morrison brought coal into the House of Representatives. A nice big hunk of black coal, kindly supplied by the Minerals Council of Australia.

“This is coal,” the treasurer said triumphantly, brandishing the trophy as if he’d just stumbled across an exotic species previously thought to be extinct.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said, soothingly, “don’t be scared.”

No one was afraid, or scared. People were just confused. What was this fresh idiocy?

You get this:

A third fish kill has occurred near Menindee on the Darling River overnight after temperatures plummeted following days of hot weather.

The latest fish kill follows an incident on 6 and 7 January in which hundreds of thousands of native fish, including Murray cod, golden perch and bony bream died around the Menindee weir.

There was also another mass kill before Christmas.

“This is likely worse than the last time,” said local Graeme McCrabb, who on Monday morning was down at the water’s edge at the back of the township, above Weir 32.

“I’ve just picked up a 50cm golden perch, and there are tens of thousands of little bony bream, dead.

“There are fish all around me just gasping for breath,” he said.

Never has it been more obvious that the Right would rather the Earth was destroyed than give up their pet obsessions and their corruption.