Australian Atheists Forum

pipbarber wrote: ↑Thu Nov 23, 2023 8:23 am Thomas Piketty has some ideas.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... as-piketty

Regulations will be needed to outlaw goods and services that have unnecessarily high greenhouse gas emissions, such as private jets, outsized vehicles, and flights over short distances...

I think Piketty's views as presented in this article are slightly off the mark. One of my favourite climate assessments, the UK "Absolute Zero" report from 2019 goes further, saying that flying generally has to stop unless it's really necessary, and it suggests that all UK airports be closed except Heathrow. Effectively this means the active destruction of the international tourism industry, as well as discretionary aviation. So you need to expand your definition of who is rich, to include a suburbanite who likes to fly to Bali every couple of years, or even the four or five flights I've been on to Queensland for various holidays in my lifetime.

Private jets are obscene, but if you are going to talk about winning people over, they are low-hanging fruit. You could ban them now, but for it to be meaningful at the same time you would also have to announce a ban on all discretionary aviation to be phased in soon after.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... mate-talks

Don'y worry, no deals will be done during 'official' cop28 meetings.

A Cop28 spokesperson said: “The documents referred to are inaccurate and were not used by Cop28 in meetings.” He did not specify the inaccuracies. A Cop28 spokesperson told CCR: “Private meetings are private, and we do not comment on them.”

So fossil fuel companies can't make deals during official meetings but private meetings are private. Super. Surely at this point we put an end to these cop conferences and start again. And the starting point would be to not invite the worlds worst polluters...and maybe do it via zoom, rather than jump on private jets and stay in five star air conditioned hotels and supper on imported salmon and god knows what else.

What a farce.

pipbarber wrote: ↑Tue Nov 28, 2023 8:50 am https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... mate-talks

Don'y worry, no deals will be done during 'official' cop28 meetings.

A Cop28 spokesperson said: “The documents referred to are inaccurate and were not used by Cop28 in meetings.” He did not specify the inaccuracies. A Cop28 spokesperson told CCR: “Private meetings are private, and we do not comment on them.”

So fossil fuel companies can't make deals during official meetings but private meetings are private. Super. Surely at this point we put an end to these cop conferences and start again. And the starting point would be to not invite the worlds worst polluters...and maybe do it via zoom, rather than jump on private jets and stay in five star air conditioned hotels and supper on imported salmon and god knows what else.

What a farce.

I've been thinking about the farcical nature of this process. One of the previous critiques (possibly posted here, or maybe it was on the old forum) analysed how much the IPCC is dominated not by climate science but by the "Dismal Science" of economics.

It's like the climate scientists have identified the problem and the best response: stop burning fossil fuels now. But the economists have rejected that as unpalatable according to the principles of their science, so they ask for a different solution. Desperate to remain relevant, the climate experts, (some of them, anyway) oblige, and we end up with this pantomime horse, a ridiculous fantasy of net zero, offsets, CCS, etc., and continuing fossil fuel burning.

It's weird because the IPCC has supposedly been the repository of evidence against the high-powered global climate denial movement, which hates it. But the IPCC is now looking more and more like it is on the same side as the deniers. A giveaway is that it is governmental. Governments are overwhelmingly dominated by economists and economics. The only prominent politicians I can think of as having some sort of a knowledge of science are Barry Jones and Angela Merkel, but Jones wasn't in a position to use his knowledge, and Merkel, especially at the end, was consumed by the greenwashing forces of dismal economic non-science.

Some serious penalties need to be meted out to environmental vandals as well, cutting down trees illegally to give them views, they need to be charged, possibly imprisoned and fined, and then made to pay for the replacement of the trees with mature trees, there's simply to much of this going on;

https://www.news.com.au/technology/envi ... b07b286806

Have a look at the bushfire chances for your State/Territory in the coming months.

https://www.afac.com.au/docs/default-so ... r_2023.pdf

Trying to get my thinking straight on where we are at, I don't have the patience to sit down and read a whole shelf full of climate books. It would be great to do that, but in the meantime, I really appreciate good summaries. I thought this review of "Bottleneck" by William Catton, and another article summarising Catton's ideas, was quite helpful.

https://resourceinsights.blogspot.com/2 ... ntury.html

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2015 ... s-warning/

The circus is in town.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ssil-fuels

stylofone wrote: ↑Mon Dec 04, 2023 7:31 am The circus is in town.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ssil-fuels

I think it perfectly sums up these COP meetings now. They've become the opposite of what was intended. It would be better if they didn't take place and a new forum for climate change planning was established - with no seat for fossil fuel industry reps. Not holding my breath though, i'll save that for when the air is too toxic to breathe.

Inland = too fucking hot.

https://kolektiva.social/@nathanaelcbr@ ... 9911257201

Parts of inland Australia moving from west to east over the week are expecting temperatures over 45°C

Wilcannia is expecting to reach 45°C on Wed, Thu, and Fri. Dubbo in the low 40's. Cobar low to mid 40's. Broken Hill low 40's. Muswellbrook might get 43°C on Saturday, then down to 33°C on Saturday.

https://kolektiva.social/@nathanaelcbr@ ... 0196443269

Incoming: Sydney climate doom.

Penrith - 42.

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/nation ... 5epc4.html