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A Doomsday Report (and a song) for 2025

Skye Doomsday Report 2025 — Isle of Skye, present day, photo by James Fagan.

You may have been expecting fireworks, first-footing, haggis and other Celtic fare in my first Digression for a while, but no, it’s a Doomsday analysis.

I don’t mean Doomsday as in the Marvel comic character; look instead at the Doomsday Clock, a harbinger of global catastrophe. The world’s atomic scientists have adjusted the time of the clock (founded by Albert Einstein in 1945), 17 times since 1947. The members of the Science and Security Board, deeply worried about the deteriorating state of the world, set the Doomsday Clock at two minutes to midnight in 2019 and at 100 seconds to midnight in 2022. The best we could do was 17 minutes to midnight (in 1991).

The SASB will reveal the 2025 Doomsday Clock time in Washington, DC on January 28, 2025. In so doing, the team will consider multiple global threats, including; the proliferation of nuclear weapons, disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence, the Russia-Ukraine war, Israel-Hamas war, Israel-Hezbollah conflict, bio-threats and the continued climate crisis.

Bob & Winne’s curtailed honeymoon

The world is in as parlous a state as it was when my parents – Bob and Winnie, journeyed to Scotland’s fabled west coast Isle of Skye for a honeymoon in early September,1939. The honeymoon was cut short by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s declaration of war against Germany.

Dad’s skills as a baker and cook were at the top of a list of ‘must haves’ for the British government of the day. He was elevated from Reserve status to regular army duties in double time. Private Wilson to you.

Perhaps I exaggerate by making comparisons about Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939 and today’s conflict-ridden world. Or not.

I spent a couple of heatwave days locked in the home studio (it faces west), finishing a Doomsday song for Generation Beta. If you didn’t know, babies born between 2025 and 2039 are Gen Beta. Whatever they want to call them, this next generation (and Alpha that came before them), will probably grow up with a grudge against their parents’ generation and the ones that came before. From their perspective, we pillaged the planet, mostly for material gain. As a result of damage done over 200+ years, climate change has run amok.

If you want some insights from Gen Alpha, this (lengthy) opinion piece in The Guardian does not hold back.

The majority (97%) of actively publishing climate scientists still agree that humans are causing climate change. I got that stat from my research assistant Al (well, AI looks like Al, doesn’t it?).

Digressing just a little, did you know that the saxophone parts on Paul Simon’s hit You Can Call Me Al were programmed on guitar synthesisers by Rob Mounsey.

My pal AI also tells me that 99% of peer-reviewed literature on climate change says it is human-induced.

Yet in 2020, Australia was ranked third in the world on a table of climate denier countries (topped by the US at 12%)

A University of Canberra survey conducted in 2020, not long after the Black Summer bushfires, found that Australian news consumers were far more likely to believe climate change was “not at all” serious.

The Conversation’s report on the survey of 2131 people found that 15% don’t pay attention to climate change news.

Of the 40 countries in the survey, Australia’s 8% of “deniers” was more than double the global average.

A recent Pew Research Center survey on global threats found that whether you believe climate change is a major threat depends on your political views.

Scepticism rules in the US, where 85% of voters who lean to the left thought climate change to be very serious; on the right of politics, only 22% agreed.

As I wrote this, Doomsday arrived early for some residential suburbs in Los Angeles, burnt to the ground by unseasonal and out of control wild fires.

In Australia, 91% of those who place themselves on the left side of the political spectrum say climate change is a major threat, compared with only 47% among those on the right. In the share market world this would be called ‘talking to your book’. That is, politicians acknowledge climate change as a threat, yet appease business interests by backing new coal mining and oil and gas projects.

Despite those trends, at least 10 countries in the Pew Report have changed their tune dramatically in recent years as floods, cyclones and other climate change events have crippled towns and cities.

President 47 And The Doomsday Clock

As President 47 prepares to take over the Oval Office, we all wonder just what will replace former President Biden’s policy of backing Israel’s armed offensive against Arab nations.

The most worrying sign of the Middle East conflict escalating is the mass importation of cannon fodder. This derogatory term describes troops regarded as expendable. It was most used to describe Australian and New Zealand innocents abroad during WWI. They were sent to the front line to fight in trenches, where survival was rare and dysentery more common.

The Russian-Ukraine war, which dates from 2014 but got more serious in 2022, took on a different hue in late 2024.

Russia imported 10,000 troops from North Korea, a secretive state from which no verification of facts is ever offered. Sources including NPR, the BBC and the Washington Post say the troops sent to the front have limited training and experience in front-line warfare. Al Jazeera reported in late December that 1,000 North Korean troops had been killed and 2,000+ soldiers injured on the Kursk front line.

But what does all this have to do with us folks Down Under? Quite a lot, as we are allied to the US and by extension, Israel’s retaliatory war against Hamas/Gaza. Prime Minister Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong have walked back their too-early pro-Israel statements, but the damage is done.

Fair to say we would become a fancied takeover target in any world war or Doomsday scenario. Just as the late John Marsden imagined it in Tomorrow When the War Began, Indonesia (or China or India), would have no trouble invading Australia using barges and four-wheel drive landing craft.

Despite the US establishing a large Marine presence in northern Australia, our capacity to retaliate against mass invasion is questionable, nuclear submarines notwithstanding.

Not that it will come to that – nuclear warheads and the dodgy people at the top will bring any escalation to a rapid end. In the meantime, more ordinary people will be flushed out of their homes and businesses to continue life as refugees and asylum seekers.

Sad to say, Australia’s new laws relating to those who come by boat leaves no room at all for a future here.

As Kasey Chambers once sang: “If you’re not pissed off at the world then you’re just not paying attention.” (from the song Ignorance and the album Barricades and Brick Walls).

Kasey wrote the tune in 2001 and 24 years later keeps on rolling out new music and blunt opinions. My editor recommended Kasey’s 2024 biography “Just Don’t Be a Dickhead”. The publisher has asterisked the title, even though 9 out of 10 streaming dramas freely use far more offensive words.

If this Digressions essay and the accompanying song carry any hope at all, it might be that Kasey’s book title become a universal cry for fair and reasonable discourse, at all levels.

Take five then have a listen to a song on the same topic.

(link from Bandcamp)

Bare bones budget for jobseekers

Just as well the Commonwealth Government Budget wasn’t tabled last week – that would have been too much of a mixed message.

A nation’s budget is all about redistribution of wealth, a concept worth keeping in mind at a time when £100 million of British taxpayers’ money was spent on an unnecessary coronation pageant.

As has been repeatedly pointed out, Prince Charles became King by default on September 8, 2022, on the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II. There was no pressing reason to stage a mediaeval pageant, however splendidly well done.

This week, the media’s attention swung back to the King’s southern hemisphere colony, as Treasurer Jim Chalmer presented his budget.

So much had been flagged already that one does have to question is there a critical reason for the media embargo till 7.30pm on Tuesday.

As I started writing this on Tuesday morning, much of the Budget’s headline measures had already been revealed. This included a $15 billion spend on cost-of-living relief; $1.5 billion of it in electricity bill relief for 5.5 million households and 1 million small businesses. I should point out that this is from an ABC article published on Tuesday morning. The ABC’s business reporters Ian Verrender and Gareth Hutchens were all over it.

One of the other measures flagged earlier aimed to change the dispensing rules at pharmacies. Australians will be able to buy two months’ worth of medicines on a single prescription, with the change affecting more than 300 common medicines. This overrides the current rule that only 30 days’ supply of medicine can be applied to one prescription.

The ABC and other media outlets also seemed confident, ahead of the Budget, that Chalmers would produce a surplus and indeed he did. You can’t please everyone, though. Greens leader Adam Bandt said the government had prioritised delivering a ($4.5 billion) surplus over supporting people in poverty.

“Labor’s second budget is a betrayal of people who were promised that no one would be left behind,” he said in a tweet on social media.

Other leaked or pre-announced budget measures included cheaper child care and a (long overdue) pay rise for aged care workers. Welfare recipients received higher payments, but nowhere near the level asked for by lobbyists.

The Budget is a document which sets out how taxes paid by Australian businesses and individuals will be spent. It is a massive number, equating to 29% of GDP. In 2021-2022, $683 billion was raised in taxes across all levels of government. This was 15.2% higher than the previous year. A table prepared by the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows an upward trajectory for taxation revenue. The slight blip in 2019-2020 was due to disruption to employment by the onset of Covid-19 and its attendant lockdowns. Total tax revenue includes all Commonwealth, State and Territory taxes, GST, those indirect taxes that still exist and excises imposed on alcohol, tobacco and fuel.

The cost-of-living package is one thing, but the government has been under enormous pressure to raise the level of unemployment benefit. The Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) last month presented a detailed brief to Treasurer Jim Chalmers. A former Commonwealth Treasury head, Ken Henry, appeared on television as the ACOSS brief’s anointed spokesman. In a call to raise the level of NewStart and Youth Allowance, ACOSS said some 750,000 people in communities across Australia live on unemployment and student payments that do not cover the cost of housing, food, transport and healthcare.

The single rate of Newstart is (or was) less than $40 per day and living on Newstart and Youth Allowance presents the biggest risk to living in poverty. ACOSS wanted the rate raised to within 90% of the aged pension, so were almost certain to be disappointed.

In an open letter to the Prime Minister, ACOSS said 80% of people receiving JobSeeker payments have been receiving the benefit for more than 12 months. The same research found that seven in ten people on income support were eating less or reporting difficulty getting medicine or care. In December 2022, Anglicare found that there were 15 Jobseekers competing for each entry-level role.

“The longer people remain on income support, the harder it is to transition back into paid work,” the letter said.

ACOSS chief executive officer, Dr Cassandra Goldie, said post-Budget that while the $20 per week pay rise was welcome, it did not go far enough.

“The (increase) to JobSeeker and related payments is well below the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee’s findings. The committee said that it needs to rise by at least $128 a week to ensure people can cover the basics.”

ACOSS and others are right to complain. Australia has the lowest rate of unemployment payment in the OECD. One in four people on Newstart have only a partial capacity to work because of illness or disability.

The ABC’s business reporter Gareth Hutchens wrote an intriguing analysis in May 2021 about the ‘full employment’ policies of governments prior to the 1970s. Then followed a policy aimed at creating a permanent pool of unemployed as a means of promoting economic growth and making Australia more globally competitive. Along with rising unemployment came a political ploy to blame the victim. The term ‘dole bludger’ emerged, first used by Liberal MP Bert Kelly, a pioneer of “New Right” political ideas. But the phrase was also promoted by Clyde Cameron, minister for labour in Gough Whitlam’s Labor government (1972-1975).

As unemployment soared in the mid-1970s, being without a job was recast as the fault of workers for being ‘too lazy’. There was much debate about the need for ‘overly generous’ income support. (Anyone who has ever been on it would dispute its ‘overgenerosity’. Ed)

Policymakers from the early 1980s started using an unemployment rate of 5% as a deliberate policy tool.

“How could everyone be expected to find a job,” Hutchens wrote. “There haven’t been enough jobs to go around, by design.”

Now, almost 50 years later, the long-term unemployed are still being victimised over a deliberate policy to keep them out of work.

If I may hark back to a FOMM from 2018 when we speculated about what one could do were one made King for a Day:

King Bob decreed: “I’d single out the dysfunctional tax and welfare systems and propose the following reforms:

Introduction of a universal basic income for all adults: $25k a year, indexed, no strings attached. Adults are free to earn money over and above the $25k but will be taxed on a sliding scale to the maximum rate for anyone earning more than, say, $100k.

In my Kingdom, all forms of social welfare would be replaced by a new regime, overseen by the Office of Financial and Social Opportunity and Incentivisation (NOOFASOI). The office would oversee payment of the UBI and iron out the inevitable wrinkles in a new and untested system.”

In the real world, countries as diverse as Finland, France, Ireland, Norway, the US, Canada, New Zealand, Holland, Iceland, India and Brazil are either talking about a UBI or trialling it in one form or another. In 2016, the Parliament of Australia published this comprehensive yet concise policy paper by Don Henry, for those who want to find out more.

While I leave you to make of that what you will, I’ll be delving into the 997-page Budget, seeing what’s in it for me. As we all do.

One big climate COP-out

climate-change-copout — Image: Tuvalu’s Foreign Minister Simon Kofe reading a speech in 2021 delivered electronically at COP26. Source: Facebook/Ministry of Justice, Communication and Foreign Affairs, Tuvalu Government

The United Nations Secretary-General set the tone for the 27^th annual COP climate conference by saying the world was “on the highway to climate hell”. Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg no doubt agreed, earlier describing the two-week climate conference in Egypt as an exercise in ‘green-washing’.

Fair to say the representatives of 198 nations who gathered in Glasgow last year for COP26 have not done as much about climate change mitigation as we’d all hoped.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told the ABC he would not be attending the COP27 conference at Egyptian resort town Sharm el-Sheikh.

“This COP will be all about implementation,” he said, delegating the task to Climate Minister Chris Bowen and other representatives.

Team Albanese have made big strides in Australia’s climate policy since being elected six months ago. Albanese is banking on mending fences by backing his government’s turnaround of the Morrison administration’s poor climate record.

Unlike British PM Rishi Sunak, who has been forced by political pressure to reverse his decision to stay at home, Albanese justified his absence, saying “I can’t be in all places at once.”

“I have a very busy schedule of parliament, then the international conferences, then back to parliament again, making sure that our agenda gets through and that includes our agenda on clean energy and taking action on climate change.”

COP is a shorthand acronym for an alphabet soup of descriptors – the Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). Despite this being the 27^th year this global talkfest has been held, there have been many promises and commitments, yet little has been done to slow the global ravages of climate change.

Despite Egypt’s police state reputation, climate activists are there and some have already said harsh things about COP27’s major sponsor, Coca-Cola.

Environmental campaign group Greenpeace said it was baffling for COP27 to choose the “world’s biggest plastic polluter” as a sponsor, given that “99% of plastics are made from fossil fuels”.

On what it cost to stage COP26 in Glasgow last year, this year’s conference in the Egyptian town of Sharm el-Sheikh will probably top $200 million. It is clearly now an annual ‘Expo” that wealthier countries want to host. It’s expensive to participate, with organisations being charged as much as $500,000 to hire a pavilion. More than 30,000 people registered to attend this year, representing governments, businesses, NGOs, and civil society groups.

Australia’s Climate Council, which has sent several delegates to Cop27, reminded us that Australia signed the Glasgow Pact in 2021.

The Pact called for countries to bring forward a 50% emissions reduction plan to COP27 and increase on that target during this decade.

Australia may be pressured to finally sign the Global Methane Pledge and other important deals it avoided under the Morrison Government.

Key issues which will emerge at COP27 include “loss and damage” financing. This refers to developing countries at the frontlines of the crisis who are suffering from the consequences of climate change. As one example, the low-lying Pacific island of Tuvalu, population 12,000, is suffering serious consequences from the CO2 emissions of others.

The Climate Council says countries like Australia, which have built considerable wealth off the back of fossil fuels, can and must do more to support climate action beyond their shores.

Back in 2009, developed countries committed to mobilise $100 billion per year in climate finance to developing countries, but have consistently fallen short. Australia would need to lift its annual contribution by 10 times to fulfil its share towards this global goal, the Climate Council said.

The UNFCCC Secretariat is the United Nations entity tasked with supporting the global response to the threat of climate change. There has been almost universal commitment to join, with 198 countries signed up. Until this year, Australia was seen as a laggard, to the extent that former PM Scott Morrison was initially not invited to attend COP26.

Heads of State and Government attended the Climate Implementation Summit at COP27 on November 7 and 8 with a high-level meeting for climate Ministers from 15-18 November.

The main aim of the UNFCCC is to uphold the 2015 Paris Agreement. As we all should know, this bare-minimum pledge was to keep the global average temperature rise this century as close as possible to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Seven years on though, only 190 of the 195 signatories have ratified the agreement.

The ultimate objective is to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system. The sticking point, I suspect, is the proviso that this is done in a time frame which “allows ecosystems to adapt naturally and enables sustainable development”.

The Guardian’s pre-conference report posed some scenarios for the Australian delegation, led by climate and energy minister, Chris Bowen. The Guardian’s environment writer Adam Morton said Australia can expect questions about what it is prepared to support on finance and loss and damage. Questions could be asked about the Australian government’s exit (under the Morrison government) of the green climate fund. Morton expects Australia to be under close scrutiny due to its bid to host COP in 2026.

There will (or should be) an examination of Australia’s support for an expansion in fossil fuel exports, at odds with its green policies at home.

The UN secretary-general’s COP27 opening address, where he twisted the meaning of the famous AC/DC song, was not wildly inaccurate. He was no doubt reflecting on the ongoing effects of flooding in Pakistan.

Since mid-June, unprecedented floods in Pakistan have killed 1,717 people. The floods were caused by heavier than usual monsoon rains and melting glaciers; these events following a severe heat wave. All are linked to climate change, with poor urban planning playing a significant role.

In Australia, we might make pale comparisons with the inundated New South Wales town of Lismore, battered by one flood after another. There is talk of writing the town off and rebuilding it on higher ground. Many of those badly affected by the floods have not waited to find out, relocating to supposedly less flood -prone towns (like Warwick).

The agenda-setters for climate change mitigation may well be the world’s largest manufacturing industries. International vehicle manufacturer Volvo chose this week to announce it would stop making fossil fuel-driven cars in Australia by 2026. This is unlikely to stampede the manufacturers of cheaper, mass market vehicles. All the same, it is a line drawn in the sand. We must hope that rising tides do not wipe it away too soon.

As for Tuvalu’s social media post (above) which went viral last year, it is probably not much of an exaggeration. Climate change in Tuvalu is particularly threatening for the long-term habitability of the island state. The average height of the islands is less than 2m above sea level, which has been rising at 3mm per year, about twice the global average. On a per capita basis, its CO2 emissions are 0.9 metric tonnes, compared to between 15mt and 17mt for developed countries.

As Sunshine Coast songwriter Noel Gardner sarcastically comments, in a pithy song of the same name:

So it’s toodle loo to Tuvalu, it’s not that we don’t care

But I can’t support this warming crap, taxes and despair

We can’t reduce our standards, two houses, shares and land

So its Toodle loo to Tuva Lu, I hope you’ll understand.

After the floods, the clean-up

floods-clean-up — O.O Madsen Bridge, image by Sandra Wilson, May 13, 2022

I had no sooner finished writing about floods in Warwick when it started raining again. I’d written the lead article for our local U3A newsletter last week, recounting the times since 2000 the Condamine River had closed the main bridge into town.

The answer (so far) is four – October 2010, January 2011, January 2013 and May 2022, when the river rose above 6.5m. Closing the bridge effectively cleaves the town in two,as alternative routes will also be under water if this happens. This time, the closure was for only 24 hours; but in 2013, the highway was cut for days, as the river peaked at 7.21m.

The O(tto) O(ttosen) Madsen Bridge is not just the link across the Condamine River, it is a national monument. The 58-year-old bridge is a vital link between Brisbane and Sydney, carrying traffic across the bridge from the Cunningham to New England highways.

Spanning 100m across the Condamine River, the O.O. Madsen Bridge was opened in 1964. It is dedicated to Otto Madsen, who was State MLA for Warwick from 1947–1963 and served as a Minister in the Nicklin Government between 1957 and 1963. If you have ever taken the inland highway to or from New South Wales, you’ll have driven across it.

On May 13 this year, after an early call from a friend, we did a dash to the supermarket and got safely home again before the bridge closed. Twenty-four hours later (the rain having stopped) the river level dropped and the bridge re-opened.

It might seem churlish to complain about the minor inconvenience, given that so many parts of urban and rural Australia have been smashed multiple times by floods. The damage bill this year for South East Queensland and NSW alone is $4.38 billion.

In February this year, floods visited the Sunshine Coast, Lockyer Valley, Toowoomba, Gympie and Maryborough, to name a few regions. In late February, the northern NSW town of Lismore was badly flooded. Lismore copped it again a few weeks later. In some parts of town, the flood levels were so high houses and shops vanished beneath the waters.

This week, a major rain event revisited Sydney, the Blue Mountains and the Hawkesbury and Hunter regions of New South Wales. This is only three months after unprecedented rains inundated many NSW cities and towns. Apart from the drama, the danger, and loss of property, those affected by floods are almost always traumatised. Being forced to live through flood events twice within six months is more than anyone should have to bear.

Those of us who live on high and dry properties might blithely say “Oh well, you did have insurance, didn’t you?”

That’s a thorny question and one worth trying to shed some light on.

The latest data from the Insurance Council of Australia on the 2022 South East Queensland and Northern NSW floods tells a story.

Data from June shows that of the 225,000 claims made, 68,000 have been settled, leaving 157,000 claims still outstanding,

Three to six months after flood events in SEQ and NSW, 70% of those who made claims are still waiting. To be fair to insurers, a claims assessor must physically visit the property to which the claim applies. The assessor then makes a recommendation and the claims department makes a decision. It all takes time.

Typically, those badly affected by natural disasters like bush fires and floods turn to State and Federal government for help.

New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet said in March this year the floods then affecting NSW were a “one-in-one-thousand-year event”. But that’s not what science, or the insurance industry, suggests, according to University of Melbourne academic Antonia Settle. The Conversation says that Australian home owners and businesses are facing escalating insurance costs in areas prone to fires, cyclones and floods.

The trend is being driven by the frequency and severity of extreme weather events as the global climate continues to change.

Premiums have risen sharply over a decade, as insurers count the cost of insurance claims and factor in future risks. Rising insurance premiums are creating a crisis of under-insurance in Australia, Settle says.
Under-insurance has been a problem for untold thousands whose houses were wrecked by floods. In some cases, insurers have no option but to offer a cash payment rather than re-instate what has been damaged or destroyed. (The level of insurance the policyholder has chosen will not cover the cost of a repair or rebuild).

Settle writes that the two main ways to reduce insurance premiums are to limit global warming (not something Australia can achieve on its own) or reduce the damage caused by extreme events.

This means constructing more disaster-resistant buildings, or not rebuilding in high-risk areas (Ed: obviously, do not build houses (or railways) on flood plains).

The (Morrison) Federal government put most of its eggs in a different basket. Its plan was to subsidise insurance premiums in northern Australia, in response to an Australian Competition and Consumer Commission investigation in 2020.

The ACCC’s final report into insurance affordability found the average cost of home and contents insurance in cyclone-prone northern Australia was almost double the rest of Australia. The rate of non-insurance was almost double – 20% compared with 11%.

Former PM Scott Morrison copped harsh criticism for this policy, as he did for his tardy response to the Lismore floods and before that, not funding urgent requests for more fire-fighting aircraft during the Black Summer bush fires.

Our globe-trotting Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, keen to mend fences, confirmed he would visit flood-affected towns along the Hawkesbury River when he touched down yesterday from a hectic schedule of visits to Europe. This is such a contrast to his predecessor’s weak and belated responses to bush fires and floods.

Meanwhile on the Southern Downs, more rare winter rain is causing the saturated ground to send run-off into the catchment. Relatively few properties in Warwick are prone to flooding, but the damage in low-lying areas is clearly evident. As a farmer who lives on the banks of the Condamine explained, he has seen six floods in the past 18 months, although only one forced the closure of the O. O. Madsen Bridge.

If you walk along the riverbank today, you will see visible signs of flood damage to fences, posts, park benches, trees, light poles and any infrastructure that happened to be in the way of rushing flood waters (the dog park, which has now been completely dismantled, as an acknowledgement of defeat after being knocked over four times). Most damage has been caused to fences, which simply collapse under the weight of water and debris.

BlazeAid, a volunteer organisation initially set up as a response to the aftermath of bush fires, has set up a base camp at Warwick Showgrounds. The base camp in Warwick was established last month to carry out the organisation’s most valued work – rebuilding fences destroyed by fires or floods.

Warwick coordinator Brad Young is very pleased with the response to the camp.“BlazeAid volunteers have come from all over, including WA, Vic, NSW, ACT and QLD,” he said, adding, “We have currently 38 properties on the books, with an estimated 100 kilometres of fencing to repair, rebuild and clean.”

BlazeAid was formed in 2009 after the Black Saturday bush fires in Victoria. Founders Kevin and Rhonda Butler created the charity as a way for retired farmers, tradespeople and others to volunteer on properties affected by natural disaster. BlazeAid has to date completed more than 15,000 kilometres of fencing around Australia, all built by volunteers and funded by donations.

It’s never too late to volunteer.

FOMM Back Pages

Climate Crisis on Election Back-burner

climate-crisis-election — Coal-fired power station in Germany – Catazul www.pixabay.com

My reading of election coverage (such as it is), is that both major parties have shuffled the climate crisis to the back burner. It must be crowded back there, with homeless people and refugees trying to stay warm.

What has been widely ridiculed as the ‘shouty’ debate (on Channel Nine) said nothing meaningful about the most important issue of all – the climate crisis. Such has been the pre-occupation with the election here, we haven’t seen much coverage of Canada’s wet, cold spring, India and Pakistan’s lethal heatwaves, or debate about whether our wet autumn is driven by climate change or something else.

People who deny climate change theory often dismiss it with ‘there’s always been climate change’. Well, yes, but it’s been accelerating since 1950 and in 2022 we have the technology to make material changes.

Andrew Wallace, Federal member for Fisher and Speaker of the House, recently told a public meeting in Montville he was not convinced that climate change was caused by emissions from human industry.

Sunshine Coast resident Gillian Pechey, who was at the meeting, wrote to the Glasshouse News after hearing this statement.

“I asked him (Wallace) whether he had worries about the predicted ocean level rise, loss of the sandy beaches which tourists flock to holiday on. He smiled! His position is predicted to lead to global temperature rise of 3-4 degrees. Parts of Queensland will become unliveable unless you’re wealthy enough to live and work in a solid air-conditioned building.

“It is frustrating to see the lead political party turning its back on climate science which predicts that over this century we will continue to have destructive bushfires, floods, eroded beaches and gradual loss of the Great Barrier Reef.”

FOMM’s observation is that Andrew Wallace, elected in 2019 with a 62.7% two-party preferred vote, is obviously going to stick to the LNP’s position on subsidising fossil fuel at the expense of investment in renewable energy. He persists with this line even when campaigning in the Green-friendly towns of the Sunshine Coast hinterland.

Whatever politicians are saying (or not saying) about the climate crisis, there is evidence that the general population has been trying to self-educate. The ABC found a researcher who uncovered a 5,000% increase in the volume of climate questions on Google since 2019.

The data has been ‘normalised’, meaning interest has increased relative to that of other topics. The use of ‘big data’ to reach conclusions is called ‘culturomics’.

For the past 18 months, social researcher Rebecca Huntley has been conducting focus groups to understand climate change concerns among Australians.

Dr Huntley said the Google search data broadly aligns with the focus group results. Various other polls concur – the climate crisis is a hot-button issue. The ABC’s Vote Compass shows an overwhelming number of Australians want more action to reduce carbon emissions.

“The basic theory as to why this is happening now rather than, say, three years ago, is stuff builds up,” Dr Huntley said.

She told the ABC the 2019/20 Black Summer fires were not enough on their own to “shift the dial” on climate concern. But they were followed by two other major climate crisis events.

Australia was criticised for inaction on climate change at the November 2021 COP26 climate conference in Glasgow. Australia did present a net zero emissions plan, but it lacked detail and critics pointed this out.

The third event which may have tipped some Australians over the climate fence was the 2022 floods in Queensland and New South Wales. There’s no evidence yet to blame that individual weather event on climate change. But it was consistent with predictions of the type of epic natural disaster we can expect under global warming scenarios.

The ABC delved into the Google research to find that the top ‘searchers’ came from very small towns, which suggests the data may not be that reliable. A reporter asked Lawrence Springborg, Mayor of Goondiwindi Shire and president of the Queensland Liberal National Party, what he thought.

He suggested people were searching “because they don’t believe” climate change and wanted ammunition to disprove the science when the topic came up in conversation.

“I have absolutely no idea why they’re searching,” he added.

One of the common searches on Google is ‘when did climate change start’.

The latest research now suggests that atmospheric warming began in the early to mid-1800s, rather than the mid-20^th century. Until 1950, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels had never been above 300 parts per million. Now the readings are over 400 ppm and rapidly increasing.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report says the current warming trend is unequivocally the result of human activity since the mid-20^th century.

“It is undeniable that human activities have warmed the atmosphere, ocean, and land and that widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere, and biosphere have occurred.”

The Sydney Morning Herald said the Resolve Political Monitor found young voters (18-34) ranked climate change as the second-most important issue in this year’s election. Not surprisingly, the number one issue for young voters was keeping the cost of living low.

Meanwhile, the LNP is sticking to its target of reducing emissions by at least 26% by 2030. Labor’s target is 43% although climate experts warn Australia must cut emissions 75% by 2030. Both major parties want to keep on exporting coal, despite the US Environmental Protection Agency stating that the burning of coal, natural gas, and oil for electricity and heat is the largest single source of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Professor Stephen Bartos was recently commissioned by Farmers for Climate Action to prepare a report on the impact of climate change on food supply. Farmers for Climate action is part of the National Farmers Federation (which has 7,000 members).

Writing in The Conversation, Prof Bartos, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, explained his methodology. He reviewed research in this area, interviewed more than a dozen farmers, farmer representative bodies, and other participants in the food supply chain. Among the issues identified were the impact of drought, diseases and stress on livestock, the loss of food due to hotter weather, and shorter shelf lives.

“An unexpected finding was the degree to which everyone involved in the supply chain is affected by uncertainty caused by climate change. It is making future weather highly unpredictable, making planning harder for both farms and in transport networks.”

Climate change has made a further impact on lending and insurance, where unpredictability means higher costs for financial products. Some farmers reported that they were unable to insure due to climate risks. All these costs are passed on to consumers in the form of higher food prices.

This concurs with the Climate Council’s findings that one in 25 Australian properties would be ‘uninsurable’ by 2030. The Climate Council says this is directly due to the rising risk of extreme weather and the impact of climate change.

The Climate Council created at interactive map so households, businesses and farmers can assess the likely risk. Queensland is looking vulnerable.

Finally, though this report is five months old and I’ve mentioned it before, it should be remembered that Australia ranked last in a survey of 60 countries on climate change policy. The Climate Change Performance Index, published annually since 2005, gave Australia a zero for its policy response to the climate crisis, citing ‘a lack of ambition and action’.

As we post this, the Condamine River has risen so much overnight authorities are about to close the bridge into town. The Cunningham Highway to Brisbane is closed and the road to Toowoomba must surely be compromised.

Climate crisis? What climate crisis.

Pork barrels and billboards ahoy

pork-barrels-billboards — Image: Welcome to Queensland – an apolitical billboard

You can tell there is an election looming when the government promises to reduce the price of beer – a classic example of ‘pork barrelling’. The move to halve the excise on draught beer would save beer drinkers 30 cents on the price of a schooner (a New South Wales term for three quarters of a pint of beer).

Pork barrel, or simply pork, is a metaphor for the appropriation of government spending for localised projects, usually designed to bring money to a representative’s district.

According to Investopedia, the phrase ‘pork barrelling’ harks back to the 1770s when people who owned slaves gave them pork in barrels as a ‘reward’. Before refrigeration, pork was salted and preserved in large wooden barrels.

But in the cut and thrust of 21^st century politics, the phrase now means trying to win votes by appealing to voters’ basest instincts.

Social media, being the untamed beast it is, was quick to condemn the wafer-thin beer excise promise. What about spirits and wine, they asked (not unreasonably). Sexist, said others. DISCRIMINATION, said another post (words in capital letters means shouting).

As pork barrelling goes, 30 cents off a schooner of beer amounts to little more than a head of froth. More to the point, we could use some excise relief on the cost of fuel, don’t you think?

On a five-day round trip towing a 14 ft caravan through New England and back last week, we totted up a $350 fuel bill . The most expensive diesel was sighted at Wallangarra on the Queensland/NSW border ($1.79.9 cents a litre). In Brisbane this week $1.85 seemed to be the going rate.

I’m surprised the government would even risk attracting attention to the $46 billion it earns through excise and custom duty on petroleum, alcohol and tobacco (budget projection for 2021-2022).

Election campaigns are usually fought over relatively lightweight matters such as the cost of beer or fuel. But as we all should know, there are more pressing matters, domestic and global.

Mike Scrafton, writing in Pearls & Irritations, says the media can play a role by simply not repeating the trivial utterances devised by politicians to seduce voters.

“Election campaigns never rise much above budgetary baubles, three-word campaign slogans, pork barrelling, name-calling and personal slurs, and straight-out deceptions. The electorate and the media have been conditioned to expect nothing more profound or visionary from their leaders.”

Scrafton, a former senior bureaucrat in the Victorian Government, was commenting on Scott Morrison’s National Press Club speech, which “typically infantilised voters and kept the focus on economic growth”.

“We’re facing a climate calamity, yet the PM believes Australians are more focused on the next holiday than threats to their children’s future.”

Scrafton says the federal election should be about global warming, increasing wealth inequality, irreversible environmental degradation, widespread species extinction and the seemingly inexorable march to great-power war.

FOMM feels obliged to add to this list the most immediate social issues of our times – housing affordability and our appalling treatment of refugees/asylum seekers.

Pork barrelling aside, even in these early stages, with the election yet to be called, the major parties are throwing out none-too subtle hints about what to expect.

In late January, Labor’s leader Anthony Albanese promised $440 million to help teachers and students navigate the challenges mounted by Covid-19. He is also promising a Royal Commission of Inquiry or similar into the handling of the pandemic. An Albanese government would also tackle Federal reform. At the time, Albanese skilfully scooted around questions about whether this would include an overhaul of the tax system.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison will continue to pledge financial support for smart technology, particularly that which can help meet our net zero climate change targets. The big question is can he keep to a 2019 promise to establish a Federal Integrity Commission? Ironically, Morrison was roundly defeated over an election promise he tried hard to deliver.

We can expect some kind of a re-run of the Religious Discrimination Bill, whichever party wins the election. It was Labor’s amendments (protecting the rights of trans students), that saw the bill shelved indefinitely. (Some wag suggested that ‘Scomo’ had suffered splinters from his own wedge. Ed)

Election promises often return to haunt the leaders who made them. The most egregious of broken promises was former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard’s distinction between ‘core’ and ‘non-core’ promises to explain why they did not materialise.

In 2014, Crikey compiled a list of the worst ‘porkies’, (as opposed to Pork Barrels. Ed) that is, political promises made and not kept. It is worth repeating that in 1995, John Howard said there would “never ever” be a GST then introduced one in 1999. This list makes fascinating reading at a time when we are being asked to trust what politicians tell us. The ‘porkies’ include then Health minister Tony Abbott’s promise before the 2004 election not to change the Medicare ‘safety net’ (This is meant to limit the annual amount a person must spend on medical treatment and medications before paying a subsidised rate- currently about $6 for a prescription.) After the election, the Coalition raised the ‘safety net’, leaving Abbott to say, “I am very sorry that that statement back in October has turned out not to be realised by events.”

Even further back, Bob Hawke’s 1987 pledge – “by 1990 no Australian child will be living in poverty” didn’t happen and still hasn’t happened.

Crikey’s investigative unit recently compiled a ‘dossier of lies and falsehoods’ – an analysis of 48 statements made by Prime Minister Scott Morrison. It’s here if you have the time and inclination. There has been no comment from the PM’s office.

As history shows, it is easier to offer voters something they will like, or promise not to do something they will hate, than it is to reveal complex policy ahead of the vote.

Honest politicians who come out with carefully costed plans to introduce necessary but controversial legislation don’t win elections. Remember John Hewson, who as Opposition Leader in 1993 lost the election to Paul Keating, after trying to sell a plan for a GST? Likewise former Labor Opposition Leader Bill Shorten paid the price in 2019 for campaigning on a long list of complex policies.

I am not expecting Anthony Albanese to fall into the same trap. Thus far, his modus operandi appears to be to criticise and rebut most things the government does or tries to do. The problem with that strategy is that voters don’t really know what he stands for, as this week’s Four Corners programme tried to establish.

While I was trying to escape to the bush and disengage from media, the Canberra protest filtered through via the all-pervasive ABC and social media. It did not surprise to learn that Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party has hitched its wagon to that loose collective. If you travel through the backblocks of New England, it is hard to miss the yellow and black colours of the UAP on billboards set in paddocks along the highways and byways.

“Freedom…freedom” is the common slogan. I’m pretty sure there is no link between that and the song by Beyonce and rapper Kendrick Lamar (the lyrics of which empower black women).

Nevertheless, the billboards are out there, spreading the gospel as understood by anti-vaxxers, sovereign citizens, religious zealots, conspiracy theory followers, ‘preppers’ and genuine if misguided people whose lives have been severely disrupted by Covid-19 controls and mandates. It falls to me to remind readers that protests like the one in Canberra last week happened simultaneously in places as far removed as Ottawa (Canada), Wellington (NZ) and Paris (France). Van Badham’s overview of the global movement is required reading if this issue troubles you – and it should.

Extreme weather reminds us of Black Summer

black-summer-extreme-weather — Photo: View from our veranda, Yangan November 2019 (see after photo below). BW

As Australia Day passes by, is it safe yet to say the eastern seaboard of Australia has dodged a ‘Black Summer’ in 21/22? This typically runs from December to May in most parts of Australia. Too soon?

The 2020-2021 bushfire season so far is relatively subdued due to the effects of La Nina and the wet winter and spring it brought in many parts of Australia.

We’ve seen some freaky weather, though, including heat-waves, a cyclone and hail storms. Reports of bush fires from far away Western Australia this month may have sparked anxiety in those who suffered through Black Summer in 2019.

The WA coastal town of Onslow sweltered through a 50.7C day this month, equalling a 62-year-old record set in Oodnadatta. The ABC observed that if confirmed, this will be only the fourth day over 50C for an Australian location since reliable observations began.

It is apparent that climate change will rank among the top three issues debated in the upcoming Federal election.

There is concern at the top end of town, with a survey by Deloitte’s revealing that 77% of business executives think the world is at a “tipping point”. The global survey found that businesses are starting to take action, but the level of action often doesn’t match the scale and urgency of business and moral concerns expressed in the survey.

Whatever we as individuals think about how the Federal Government is handling climate change policy, the world has already judged us.

Australia’s latest climate policies are failing to “take advantage of its potential” and it ranks last among nations surveyed, according to the 2022 Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI).

Advocacy group Germanwatch ranks the performance of 63 nations and the European Union on each country’s progress working towards goals in the Paris Agreement.

Australia slipped from 54^th place overall to 59^th, well below other developed countries. Australia was rated last on the climate policy table (64^th), the worst of the bottom 15 countries rated as “very poor”.

“The (Australian) government does not have any policies on phasing out coal or gas, but CCUS (carbon capture, utilisation and storage) and hydrogen are being promoted as low-emissions technologies,” the report said.

Experts consulting to the report said Australia’s international standing has been damaged by climate denialism by politicians. A “lack of ambition” and refusal to recommit to international green finance mechanisms. https://ccpi.org/

The Climate Council’s extreme Weather Communication Guide, available in 10 different languages, explains how cyclones, flooding, bush fires, heat waves, and poor air quality are being supercharged by climate change.

The Climate Council’s Nathan Hart said Australians were already paying the price for more frequent and severe extreme weather.

He cited floods in Maryborough, QLD, and the Top End, fuelled by ex-tropical cyclone Tiffany.

The independent, not-for-profit Climate Council was launched not long after incoming Prime Minister Tony Abbott scrapped the Australian Climate Commission in September 2013.

The Climate Council’s chief councillor is Professor Tim Flannery, who also chaired the ACC. Prof Flannery and Climate Council councillor Greg Mullins (former Commissioner, Fire and Rescue NSW) are the faces behind an award-winning documentary, Burning.

The climate change documentary was first shown at the COP26 conference in Glasgow and was released on Prime Video and distributed to 260 countries.

The documentary about Australia’s devastating Black Summer was directed by Australian film-maker Eva Orner. The film recaps the Black Summer bush fires that scorched Australia in 2019-20. More than 450 Australians were killed, either directly by the fires or from the toxic air that covered three of Australia’s major cities for weeks. The fires burnt over 18 million hectares, destroyed 3,113 homes and killed 3 billion animals. Former Fire Commissioner Greg Mullins features in the film.

“I’ve never seen fires like it and I hope I never will again,” he said. “Sadly though, we are going to see more Black Summers – and even worse. Despite the extreme danger we face, the federal government refuses to ramp up emissions cuts this decade or to embrace Australia’s incredible renewable potential.

“Not long after the flames had settled, the COVID-19 pandemic rolled in and the world moved on. But for survivors, fire-fighters, business owners and mental health workers, the road to recovery was only just beginning.”

In some small way we count ourselves among the millions of Australians who suffered physical and mental anguish during the Black Summer fires.

I recall going to see a GP in late 2019 about some unrelated complaint. He scrolled through my records and asked if my asthma was worse than usual. A Monash University study found there were 6% more weekly emergency department presentations for respiratory disease and 10% more cardiovascular presentations compared to the previous two fire seasons. The study was the first to look at the impact of bush fires on actual ED attendance numbers.

In Australia, during the 2019-20 season, the density of particulate matter in the air peaked on 14 January – at fourteen times more than the historically highest level previously recorded. According to Monash’s Professor Yuming Guo, it is known that PM1.0, PM 2.5 – the two most common particle-sized matter in smoke – can cause respiratory disease, chronic obstructive disease, pulmonary disease and asthma.

“The results indicate that the unprecedented bush fires led to a huge health burden, showing a higher risk in regions with lower socio-economic areas and more bush fires,” Professor Guo said.

Hence my GP asking about asthma. At the time we were living at Yangan, 18 kms from Warwick in the foothills of the Dividing Range. Long-burning bush fires in the hills shrouded the valley in smoke most days. On occasions, it was so bad it drifted into town (Warwick). Asthma aside, the constant pall of smoke, the visible fires (at night) and the unpredictability of bush fires made us anxious.

The University of Western Australia conducted a survey of professional and volunteer fire-fighters after Black Summer which reveals the extent of mental anguish among those who battled the blazes.

The survey identified a third of volunteers and a quarter of employees had felt there was a time when their life was threatened by the fires. Some 4.6% of volunteers and 5.5% of employees had since shown very high psychological distress indicative of serious mental illness.

A study published last October found the physical and mental impacts of exposure to smoke from the black summer fires was likely greatly underestimated by official health statistics.

Prof Iain Walker of the Australian National University surveyed 2,084 adults affected by the bush fires close to Canberra.

“Virtually all of them – 97% – said they had experienced at least one physical symptom attributed to the smoke. Half of respondents reported symptoms of anxiety and depression, as well as sleep loss.

“Only one in five people sought medical attention for their symptoms, suggesting the breadth of health impacts was far greater than the number of cases officially recognised by the health system,” Walker said.

“A much wider segment of the population was exposed to bushfire smoke than bush fires directly.”

Yes, and how we still remember that late afternoon in 2019 singing Christmas carols in Warwick’s main intersection. A sudden change of wind brought clouds of bushfire smoke rolling into town like a London fog. We all ran for our cars, forced to put the lights on to drive home.

But then, after some rain…

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The Last Waterhole on TradandNow

The question Bob gets asked most about this song is – “Is there a book called The Theory of Control”? The title track from our most recent studio album was included on the compilation CD, Pick of the Crop 8, produced by the national folk music publication, TradandNow.

Featuring the exquisite fiddle playing of Silas Palmer.

Purple haze – the jacaranda story

On Remembrance Day (November 11), we met a Year 12 student who had been singing in our community choir but had taken time out to concentrate on her studies. She told us (with some excitement), that school was set to finish the following week. That reminded me of the old Queensland maxim about flowering jacarandas and exam times. The story goes that if the jacarandas are flowering and you are behind on your studies, it is too late!

That may have changed over the decades as climate change has led to earlier flowering, not only of jacarandas, but cherry blossoms (and pohutakawas). More on that later.

When I visited Brisbane in late September, the jacarandas were already starting to bloom. They flower later across the Southern Downs, as we know, but even so, this old jacaranda in the grounds of St Mark’s Anglican Church (above) was starting to lose its blooms as I took this photo on November 9.

Warwick has some lovely mature examples of this tree, many of them in the front or back yards of private homes. In some towns and cities (Grafton, Toowoomba, Brisbane, Sydney’s north shore), jacarandas were planted on either side of city streets, to create a stunning, if ephemeral display from mid-October to mid-November.

Jacaranda is the name for a genus of 49 species of flowering plants in the family Bignoniaceae, native to tropical and subtropical regions of the Americas. Wikipedia describes it as a ‘cosmopolitan’ plant.

It is common across many continents and countries including Argentina, Botswana, Brazil, Florida, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Paraguay, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Southern California, Spain, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The jacaranda is also found in New Zealand. It has been introduced to most tropical and subtropical regions and is widely planted in Asia, with trees visible in Nepal, Pakistan and India.

These days, the tree is seen as an invasive foreigner although with a loftier status than the camphor laurel, deemed to be an invasive weed. Regardless, Australian towns and cities compete for status of champion jacaranda; examples including Grafton, Brisbane, Toowoomba, Sydney, Melbourne and Perth (although not until December in WA).

Apart from the obvious connection with school and university exam times, the jacaranda’s purple haze is the first real sign of Spring. Many romances have hatched under their sheltering boughs. Songwriters have mentioned the jacaranda in songs, even!

When at their peak, the showy trees are hard to beat for a visual spectacle. Unfortunately, the triumph is short-lived, with storms, rain and wind soon littering the ground with purple flowers. As staff in hospital emergency rooms would attest, ‘slipped on wet jacaranda flowers’ is a common refrain when patients present at the fracture clinic.

When visiting Brisbane on September 27, I was surprised to see this jacaranda on Coronation Drive. Although I set out to write a ‘light and fluffy’ piece, it did not take much to uncover the climate science take on this. An article in The Conversation and republished in other journals similarly observed the early flowering of jacarandas in South Africa.

Jennifer Fitchett, Associate Professor of Physical Geography, University of the Witwatersrand, explained why early flowering of Jacaranda mimosifolia is a ‘warning sign’. Gauteng Province’s proliferating jacarandas have in recent years started flowering in early September. Octogenarian residents interviewed by researchers recalled the trees flowering in mid-November in the 1920s and 30s. The trees, native to Brazil, were introduced to Pretoria and Johannesburg in the late 1800s. Civic leaders of the time deemed them an ornamental worthy of lining streets in the suburbs and CBD. You could write a thesis about how the seeds ended up germinating in foreign soil.

Professor Fitchett wrote that jacaranda flowering had gradually advanced over the decades to mid-October and now to September. She described this process as ‘phenological shift’, which has been observed in multiple flowering tree species around the world. The earlier flowering is a key indicator that the planet is warming.

Prof Fitchett initiated the first known phenological shift study done in South Africa, singling out the jacaranda. Phenological research is rare in South Africa, compared to the work done across Europe, Asia and North America.

“Because jacaranda blossoms result in such a dramatic change in the urban landscape each year, they are often reported on in the news and, more recently, in social media posts,” she said.

“We mined these sources to compile a list of flowering dates of jacaranda trees spanning 1927-2019.”

These records allowed researchers to confirm the advance in flowering dates, quantifying a mean rate of advance of 2.1 days per decade.

The flowering took place against a backdrop of warming temperatures, ranging from 0.1-0.2°C per decade (daily maximums) and a more rapid 0.2-0.4°C per decade for daily minimums.

Japan’s world-famous tourist attraction, cherry blossom season, has been under threat in 2020 and 2021. Covid restrictions meant that international tourists keen to witness the ‘sakura’ were unable to travel. Those who managed to sneak in a tour in early 2020 may have found their timing was off. The data suggests the peak blooming date in Kyoto has been gradually moving from mid-April to the beginning of the month.

She Who Itches to Travel had a Japan trip lined up for 2020 to see the cherry blossoms, ride the bullet trains and, if not actually climb Mt Fuji, take photos from miles away and say we did. That this never happened was more about my tendency to procrastinate and worry about becoming destitute.

In January SWITT decided we’d left our run too late and postponed the 2020 trip to Japan’s autumn. I agreed, imagining parks blazing with autumn colours, all the while converting yen to dollars. Then Covid appeared and everything changed.

The Japanese have been studying phenological change for centuries, so they have a better handle on it than most. Cherry blossom flowerings last only a few weeks. They have been occurring earlier and earlier in recent decades.

The ABC reported in April this year that the famous cherry blossoms in Kyoto, Japan, peaked on March 26, the earliest date in 1,200 years, according to data compiled by Osaka University. Records that date back to 812 AD in imperial court documents and diaries show that the previous record was set in 1409, when the cherry blossom season reached its peak on March 27.

Kyoto experienced an unusually warm spring this season. The average temperature for March in Kyoto has climbed from 47.5 degrees Fahrenheit in 1953 to 51.1 degrees Fahrenheit in 2020. Japan’s national newspaper Mainichi reported that despite diminished human activity stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, carbon dioxide levels in surrounding areas did not decrease.

The ABC’s report also mentioned that Washington DC’s famous cherry trees bloomed early this year.

Similarly, New Zealand botanists have observed the early blooming of the pohutakawa, often known as the country’s Christmas Tree. The pohutakawa, with its distinctive red flowers, usually blooms in mid-November through to early January. Early flowering north of Auckland was noted in October. News portal Stuff says the early flowering is due to a relatively dry and warm winter. This might thwart the gathering of kina (sea egg), with local Maori tradition of taking the flowering as a sign that the shellfish is ready to harvest.

As I said, I didn’t set out to do yet another climate change story, but it’s a bit ubiquitous. In the spirit of ‘do your own research’ I have provided more links which confirm what you have just read. As Greta Thunberg would say “Wake up! Your house is on fire.”

Go out into the suburbs with your camera or phone and capture those luscious jacaranda blooms while they last.

https://www.brisbanekids.com.au/jacarandas-brisbane-find-year/

https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2021/4/1/japan-sees-earliest-cherry-blossoms-on-record-as-climate-warms

https://www.sciencealert.com/japan-s-cherry-blossoms-burst-into-color-sooner-than-they-have-in-1-200-years

Heatwaves and the Winter Solstice

heatwaves-increasing-australia- — Graph by The Conversation/BOM refers to the situation in Australia)

As the Winter Solstice came and went and our wood heater consumed the last of 2020’s firewood, the US mid-west was sweltering through an early summer heatwave.

Australia is, hopefully, at least five months away from its first hot spell. But in the US mid-west states, which have been in the grip of the worst drought in 20 years, the mercury is rising. Cue Martha and the Vandellas..

Canadian relatives had already been posting photos on social media implying a very early summer, but across the border, things are grim.

The New York Times took the opportunity to conjure up an appropriate headline “Climate change batters the west before summer even begins”.

In Arizona and Nevada, temperatures soared to 115F (46 Celcius), which would raise eyebrows even in Birdsville. Four writers contributed to a New York Times special report last weekend as Lake Mead, which supplies water to three south-western states and Mexico, fell to its lowest level since 1930. Early wildfires are burning in Utah, Montana and Arizona, while in California communities are debating water rationing.

In Texas, power utilities are pleading with customers to go easy on air conditioning in case excess demand causes blackouts.

Moreover, the June trend appears to have surfaced in some European countries, notably France. After a freak late-winter heatwave, above-average temperatures are assailing Europe.

Those with relatives living in the Northern Hemisphere will be hoping this does not signal a return to the disastrous heatwave conditions that killed 72,000 Europeans in 2003.

Not that we are immune in Australia, where it could be easy to argue that many of us live in heatwave-like conditions for at least three months of the year. At which point I should mention it seems to matter not if it is heat wave or heatwave.

It is difficult in winter to recall how it is to live through consecutive days with temperatures in the 40s. We should take our cue from the dog, who slinks off to the bathroom and splays himself on the cool tile floor.

Scientists agree (apart from those who don’t), that climate change is accelerating the severity and duration of heatwaves. Certainly in this country extreme hot spells increased markedly between 2000 and 2020.

Australia’s weather authorities have decreed a heatwave to exist when temperatures are seven degrees higher than average in any 30-day period. A report in November last year by Ralph Trancoso and others in Science Direct summarises highlights for Australia:

Future heatwaves could last up to a month should global temperatures increase by 1.5% to 3% in coming years.
There has been major increases in the 2000’s in comparison to previous decades;.
heatwaves have intensified in the recent past and are projected to increase faster in future;
heatwaves may be 85% more frequent if global warming increases from 1.5 to 2.0 °C.

In hindsight, perhaps we should have paid more attention during Australia’s ‘angry summer’ (December 2012-January 2013). The severity of the heatwave conditions then prompted a flurry of research reports on climate change.

Climate Council chief executive Amanda McKenzie chose the ABC’s Q&A forum in 2017 to claim that Australia’s heatwaves were worsening, with hot days doubling over the last 50 years.

The Conversation put this assertion to the test, asking the Climate Council, which had recently commissioned a report, for more detail.

“Climate change is making hot days and heat waves more frequent and more severe,” a spokesperson said. “Since 1950 the annual number of record hot days across Australia has more than doubled and the mean temperature has increased by about 1°C from 1910.

“”On average, that there are almost 12 more days per year over 35°C.”

Andrew King, Climate Extremes Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne, said there was not a large body of research against which to test these claims.

“But the research we do have suggests there has been an observable increase in the frequency and intensity of heatwaves in Australia. A review paper published in 2016 assessed evidence from multiple studies and found that heatwaves are becoming more intense and more frequent for the majority of Australia.”

In Australia, the general population is well versed in the art of remaining hydrated in hot weather. Regardless, heat-related deaths happen here, even though it is not often stated as such on death certificates.

UK academic Professor William Keatinge says few deaths are directly caused by heat-stress, although extreme heat exacerbates medical conditions including diabetes, kidney and heart disease. Heat stress causes loss of salt and water in sweat, causing haemoconcentration, which in turn causes increases in coronary and cerebral thrombosis.

“Other deaths in heatwaves are probably due to overload of already failing hearts, unable to meet the need for increased cutaneous blood flow in the heat.”

Writing in the British Medical Journal, Prof Keatinge said people at risk in heatwave conditions include those unable to sweat (because of diabetic peripheral neuropathy), or those taking anticholinergic drugs, barbiturates or phenothiazines, which depress reflex regulation of body temperature. Alcohol can also be dangerous in the heat, he added.

Meanwhile back in the relatively chilly southern hemisphere, Macca is due to deliver a load of ironbark firewood on Saturday morning. Even though nights have been cold here, apart from a few bleak days, it warms up to 19 or so by midday. Perfect weather to strip down to a t-shirt and jeans and shift the firewood to the shed around the back. The truth about cold snaps is you can always add another layer, crank up the wood fire or turn on electric heaters. The only real damage is to the power bill.

We do not have the same choices when weather phenomena like a heat dome pushes ‘normal’ summer temperatures to the levels usually experienced in arid places like Marble Bar or Coober Pedy (for America, read Death Valley).

The reappearance of heatwaves this summer will see a renewed focus by climate change activists on the Australian government’s inaction on climate policy.

And it’s official: Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been formally rebuffed by the UK government, which is hosting a climate summit in Glasgow. Britain’s foreign secretary said Australia’s PM did not meet the required terms for attendance in November. The UK urged Australia to do more to reduce its carbon emissions.

It is illuminating, then, to revisit January 2020, when we were in the midst of catastrophic bushfires and a heatwave.

Mr Morrison told the media his policies on reducing emissions would ensure a “vibrant and viable economy, as well as a vibrant and sustainable environment”.

At the time, the United Nations had rebuked Australia, saying there had been no change in its climate policy since 2017. Emission levels for 2030, it said, were projected to be well above the target. The Climate Change Performance Index ranked Australia last out of 57 countries responsible for more than 90% of greenhouse gas emissions on climate policy.

Complicating matters now is the re-emergence of controversial politician Barnaby Joyce as Deputy Prime Minister. The conservative politician can fairly be described as a climate change denier. In 2012 he opposed the Labor government’s attempts to bring in a carbon pricing regime. Joyce was quoted in the SMH as claiming it would push the cost of a Sunday roast to $100. Infamously responding to public criticism of the Coalition’s environmental policies, he accepted the climate was changing, but insisted the solution was to respect God.

Heatwave? What heatwave?

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