 | by Stephan Lewandowsky (Winthrop Professor, School of Psychology, University of Western Australia), Shaping Tomorrow's World, January 11, 2013 |
Australia is experiencing the mother of all heat waves. Records are tumbling everywhere: For the first time in recorded climatic history, the country experienced 7 consecutive days above 39 C (90 F). Extremes are everywhere, and the Bureau of Meteorology issued a special climate statement.As stated by Bureau of Meteorology's manager of climate monitoring and prediction, David Jones, ''The current heatwave -- in terms of its duration, its intensity and its extent -- is unprecedented in our records. Clearly, the climate system is responding to the background warming trend. Everything that happens in the climate system now is taking place on a planet which is a degree hotter than it used to be.''
It's so hot, the Bureau had to add another color to the temperature map -- Burning Deep Purple:
This actually means something.
It means that people suffer, like the heroic grandparents who saved their children from a bushfire, taking pictures because they thought they might never see them again alive:
It means freakish dust storms off the coast of Western Australia, awe inspiring in their beauty:
That is what climate change means.
But this reality is not shared by everyone. There are some politicians who live in an alternate reality. Just today, one of them reiterated their commitment to abolishing Australia's price on carbon, because it allegedly fails to cut emissions and because "genuine domestic emission reductions can be achieved without taxing electricity."
And therein lies the problem. We have one world, one reality, and an alternate fantasy world inhabited mainly by politicians, mining magnates, and their enablers in the media.
In reality, there is some evidence that the price of carbon, however imperfect a first step it may be, is having an effect on emissions.
http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/lewandowsky2realities2.html
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2 comments:
Apparently the showdown on line to try and save Earth and to use tools like the internet to get it done didn't have the power to undo the failure of government to protect us.
The monetary world is out of touch and methane is rushing to spread at 30to47km altitude upon release to sky and enough of it lays melting from ice crystal holding it in shallow sea floor to do us in many times over.
There is a shifting of wind now in Arctic and disruption of this year's formation of ice cover indicating massive trouble.
There is plan put forward at Arctic News on line to try and stop Runaway.
Best wishes for people of Australia and that heat increase can be beat.
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