Climate & Climate Change

MORE Australians will die from heart attacks, strokes and respiratory diseases as the planet heats up, a study has found.

Instances of obesity, food poisoning, and mosquito-borne diseases such as the deadly Ross River fever are also likely to rise as climate change raises average and extreme temperatures.

The Healthy Planet, Places and People report released yesterday, says mental health in rural areas is also likely to suffer from more frequent and more intense droughts.

Herald Sun: Climate change to lift death toll in Australia

IT came direct from Kevin Rudd’s mouth: the Labor Party cannot commit to ratify a post-2012 second Kyoto period unless Australia’s conditions are met.

Having spent 10 years of worship at the symbolic altar of Kyoto, Labor is suddenly selling a very different message. It is the opposite message: Kyoto has become conditional. Its sanctification is coming to an end.

The Australian – Labor sees the light on next Kyoto phase

Labor finally admits the Government was right all along

THE uncomfortable facts about climate change have forced Labor to admit the inconvenient truth about its own position on global warming. If Labor wins office, Mr Rudd may find himself in the same position for which Labor has long criticised the Howard Government, refusing to ratify a post-Kyoto agreement because it does not include developing nations such as China and India.

The Australian – Closing the climate change policy gap

KEVIN Rudd has tried to restore order to Labor’s chaotic climate change policy by “absolutely” refusing to ratify the post-Kyoto agreement unless China and India sign on.

The Labor leader’s climate change policies were thrown into disarray on Monday when Peter Garrett said it would not be a “deal breaker” for a Labor government if developing nations, such as China, did not accept binding targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

The Australian – Rudd seeks climate control

“I DON’T know if global warming will destroy the earth, but it is already frying brains.

Check out Peter Garrett’s.

Labor’s environment spokesman has got the faith so bad – saying Labor would sign a deal to slash our emissions even if bigger countries wouldn’t – that Labor’s leader, Kevin Rudd, had to shoot him.

Which makes two frontbenchers that Rudd has executed for saying precisely what Rudd himself has said.

Now there’s a sign of a leader who is making it up as he goes along, and is so hungry for power that he’ll say anything and ditch anyone.

But it’s also a sign that when it comes to global warming, Labor hasn’t a clue how to make the huge but useless cuts in emissions it has promised without bleeding us dry.

What a farce.”

Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun – Labor’s beds are burning

Professor James Lovelock gave a public lecture hosted by the UK Royal Society on Monday 29th October.

Lovelock said, “Any economic downturn or planned cut back in fossil fuel use, which lessened the aerosol density, would intensify the heating. If there were a 100 per cent cut in fossil fuel combustion it might get hotter not cooler….We live in a fool’s climate. We are damned if we continue to burn fuel and damned if we stop too suddenly.”

The Royal Society Press Release from which the above extract was taken is here.

MOST farmers believe climate change is a natural phenomenon and not man-made, senior delegates to a farmers’ conference said today.

NSW Farmers Association (NFA) executive councillors Howard Crozier and Ian McClintock’s comments were applauded by the 60 fellow NFA councillors at their bi-annual meeting in Sydney today.

Read the full article entitled, ”No link’ between drought and climate change’ in The Australian.

An extensive plan to save Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has been announced by Prime Minister John Howard’s main rival in the forthcoming elections.

He announced the A$200m (£90m, US$185.5m) plan while on a glass-bottomed boat tour of the reef in Queensland in the north-east of the country.

Mr Rudd said the bulk of the fund, A$146m (£65.4m), will go towards a water quality grants scheme to encourage landowners to adapt more environmentally-friendly agricultural practices.

Read the rest of ‘Rudd unveils Barrier Reef plan’ on the BBC News Website.

I was interested to hear Australia’s shadow Environment Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, on ABC Radio National yesterday explain that should Labor win government, Australia would sign up to a post Kyoto agreement even if China and the US did not come onboard.

I then heard the Prime Minister, John Howard, phone in to local ABC radio claiming to be ”startled” by this revelation.

Mr Howard went on to explain that this was not responsible policy because Australia would be economically disadvantaged… essentially the same reason the Prime Minister uses for not signing Kyoto.

But the Environment Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has been silent on the issue.

Mr Turnbull also ignored the article, Time to Ditch Kyoto, published in science journal Nature just last Thursday that, while acknowledging that global warming is a real issue, explained in some detail what credible economists have been saying for some time, that the Kyoto Protocol is not a solution.

It is Coalition policy not to sign Kyoto. But such obvious potential life-lines as a major article in Nature supporting Coalition policy are being ignored, including by the Coalition.

Graham Young suggests the problem is Malcolm Turnbull:

“On Kyoto the Liberals have refused to ratify the treaty on the basis that it is mere ineffective symbolism. So you would have thought that they would have jumped on an article in the latest edition of Nature which not only agrees, but suggests the correct solution is to get the 20 largest polluters together to make an agreement, and to spend money on research and development – all Coalition initiatives that have been ridiculed by Labor. Yet they didn’t. Sunday’s papers made it clear why – Environment Minister Turnbull isn’t playing a team game and actually wants to ratify Kyoto…

Read the complete blog post here: http://ambit-gambit.nationalforum.com.au/archives/002493.html