Climate change denial - believe it or not!

The government's repeal of the "carbon tax" won't make climate change go away! it’s a political decision, not one based on science, or a rational reaction to any new empirical evidence contrary to its existence.

Denial of climate science is one that’s based on the assumption that you can believe it or not! We don’t doubt the findings of other scientific results, or discoveries.

According to the National Climate Assessment, the world is currently experiencing the effects of climate change, or the shifting of the planet’s climate zones due to environmental factors.

Small island states such as Tuvalu and many other countries have been shocked by the obstructive tactics of Australia at UN-sponsored climate change talks at Warsaw last year, particularly over negotiations to set up a new institution to deal with Loss and damage, a new mechanism for compensation to countries that suffer from climate change. Numerous other countries expressed their shock that major industrial nations had wound back their targets, rather than increasing them. This was widely seen as a direct reference to the stance adopted by Japan, Canada and Australia.

(Aerial view of Tuvalu’s capital, Funafuti, 2011. Tuvalu is a remote country of low lying atolls, making it vulnerable to climate change.)

In a radio interview with Neil Mitchell, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said that the Head of the UNFCCC, Christiana Figueres, is #10;http://indymedia.org.au/2013/10/23/tony-abbott-in-denial-on-bushfire-climate-change-link">"talking through her hat" for connecting the NSW bushfires with climate change and that "these fires are certainly not a function of climate change, they are just a function of life in Australia."

The trick of Climate denial has been to pretend they are arguing science, but they are in fact impeding science education to the broader public to maintain general ignorance as a political lever.

(This figure shows the annual fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions, in million metric tons of carbon, for a variety of non-overlapping regions covering the Earth.)

The problem is that climate change is long-term, and has tremendous implications for our economic model, government agendas, and the habitability of our planet. Anthropogenic climate change is bigger than the sum of us! It’s too big for governments and politicians to handle, and the whole economic paradigm of “growth” and “progress” is under threat!

Per head of population, we are some of the biggest emitters on the planet, and population growth is a strong driver of absolute emissions. There's bipartisan support for continuing population and economic growth, projecting future emissions trajectories.

In Australia we are also experiencing the impact of warming. Australia had its hottest year on record in 2013 a pattern ominously intensifying in 2014. Long heat waves extreme fire danger and a lengthening fire season, are all part of the new normal. The frequency of record heat events has doubled from the middle of the 20th century to the present, and over the past decade, record high temperature events are occurring three times more frequently than record cold temperatures.

UK

The United Kingdom experienced its coldest spring since 1962. Snow fell in record amounts in northern regions—in late March. This harkened back to the bitter 2012 European cold wave that brought freezing temperatures across the continent, resulting in hundreds of people freezing to death.

United States

Half of the United States is suffering through drought conditions — including all of California, which saw huge swathes of the San Diego area swept by raging wildfires during May this year.

Large portions of the United States are currently experiencing the effects of a "polar vortex", an area of low pressure bringing dangerously cold air over the country. Temperatures in the Midwest and Northeast are below zero in many areas, with wind chills as low as -50 degrees.

Temperatures in many cities are expected to hit record lows, 30 to 50 degrees below typical averages. Thousands of flights have been cancelled, and schools across the country have been closed.

If the earth is really becoming a scorched wasteland then why are winters still cold; why does it rain in the summer; why are there cool days in the summer and why does it still snow? These experiences cannot be used as evidence to disprove global warming.

Melting of Arctic sea ice and the resulting cold rush of wind dipping south are seen as the main temperature suppressors. The dip in the so-called "polar vortex"—which occurs when temperatures warm in the Arctic, directing cold winds southward—sent chills through the northern U.S. in January 2014, making Chicago colder than the South Pole. This phenomenon can be understood to result from the rapid melting of polar sea ice, which replaces white, reflective ice with dark, absorbent open water.

Australia

While Australia rejoices in the heaviest June snowfalls this century, climatologists say that one of the clear effects of climate change is fewer snow-bearing systems making their way from the Southern Ocean to the Australian Alps.

A rare Australian possum is being dubbed the "new polar bear" of climate change. The possums are found mainly in a far north Queensland rainforest on a single mountain range about 1000 metres above sea level.
Their numbers were in the thousands when a severe heat wave hit the area in 2005, which all but wiped out the species.

It's all too easy to blame climate change when Australia has the greatest rate of mammal extinctions in the world – since European settlement. Human activities, land clearing, feral pests and fragmented habitats have driven many animals to extinction. Weakening of environmental laws, loosening land clearing regulations, and a slash to funds for climate change are all wreaking havoc on native species.

Just four white lemuroid ringtail possums have been found in the wild and scientists say the species could soon become the first creature to be wiped out by global warming.

China's plans to reduce emissions backfire!

50 coal gasification plants, aimed in part at reducing pollution from coal-fired power plants in China's largest cities, will shift that pollution to other regions, mostly in the northwest and generate enormous amounts of carbon dioxide. Coal-to-gas, or coal gasification, is a water-intensive process that generates enormous amounts of carbon dioxide, which is the main greenhouse gas destabilizing the world's climate. China is responsible for half of the annual global coal consumption and is the world's the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, followed by the United States.

The carbon dioxide they produce would equal about an eighth of China's current total carbon dioxide emissions, which come mostly from coal-burning power plants and factories, the organisation said.

Greenpeace says China's energy plans exacerbate climate change

Government concedes to increase greenhouse gas emissions

Despite the moderated emissions growth outlook from previous projections, underlying factors such as population and economic growth underpin a steady increase in emissions.
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This growth is bolstered by the continued strong demand for Australian energy exports, in particular, the expected significant expansion of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry and coal exports. Agriculture emissions are expected to increase after 2020, as production is projected to expand across all major agricultural commodities.

Australia’s Abatement Task and 2013 Emissions Projections

National vehicle kilometres travelled (VKT), by all Australian vehicles, are projected to increase by around 1.7 per cent per annum between 2007 and 2020 under the BAU assumptions. By 2020, BITRE (Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics) projects base case emissions to be close to 70.3 per cent above 1990 levels (at 105.2 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent). Australian transport demand is highly dependent on underlying economic and population growth, and relatively inelastic with regard to fuel prices.

BITRE: Greenhouse gas emissions from Australian transport: projections to 2020 Working paper 73

Rightwing powerhouses realise the financial potential of denial and turn reasonable men and women into conspiracy theorists. If politicians and deniers admitted they were wrong on climate change, they might have to admit that they were wrong on everything else and their whole political identity would unravel.

Even with all the scientific data that supports global warming there are deniers that will not accept the facts. Instead, they confuse uninformed citizens by creating pseudoscientific articles and websites that are filled with unproven statements.

Australia must show some leadership in the world, and accept some responsibility towards climate change and the devastation it will cause. Instead we are falling behind as global citizens, and risk becoming an outpost on the world stage.