I’ve been on holidays, staying with a friend whose business provides services to Queensland and NSW firefighters.
I watched him throughout the weekend, his mobile phone glued permanently to his ear, as he worked feverishly to co-ordinate assistance to a growing number of fires and ensure they had adequate resources to fight them. There was barely a moment, day or night, when that damn phone wasn’t ringing with another demand, crisis, question or request for more help.
My friend has been in this industry for years – he is intimately involved with the Australian bushfire season – and, in his opinion, there is not a shadow of doubt that climate change is having a significant impact on the number and severity of fires in this country. The Climate Council agrees:
I’m sure if you spoke to experts in other fields, they would tell you the same about the impact on other aspects of the environment.
Yet, our new government seems set on ignoring the science and dismantling what little legislation we have in place to take action on climate change. It’s short-term thinking which short-changes everyone – particularly future generations. Are we really so selfish that we cannot accept some small impost, some minimal increase in the cost of living to ensure we don’t get past the point of no return on climate change?
I think most Australians do want action on climate change and that the Abbott government is fooling itself to think it has some kind of ‘mandate’ to deny the science. They remind me of the creationist who, when confronted with absolutely irrefutable evidence of evolution by Richard Dawkins, simply refused to even ‘hear’ him. It was as if she erected some kind of ‘cone of silence’ around herself to protect her from the force of his arguments. It was bizarre.
It is even more bizarre (and dangerous!) when you see a national government doing the same thing on climate change.
This weekend, GetUp! and its supporters are organising a number of climate change rallies across the country. I’ll be going to my local rally (at Nambour, Queensland). I hope that some of my readers might support the cause by turning up at a rally close to them.
The rallies are on tomorrow, Sunday, 17 November at either 10am or 11am (or later) – depending on location.
Sydney – Prince Alfred Park, 11am
Melbourne – Treasury Place, 11am
Brisbane – Queens Park, 10am
Canberra – Garema Place, 11am
Adelaide – Elder Park, 11am
Perth – Russell Square, 11am
Hobart – Parliament Gardens, 12pm
There are also hundreds of regional events so CLICK HERE and enter your postcode to find one near you.
I’ll be at the Nambour Rally at Quota Park, Mathew Street, Nambour. Send an email to gladlybear@yahoo.com.au if you are going to that event and want to say ‘Hi’.
Chrys Stevenson
And, for those who haven’t seen it, Dawkins interviews creationist, Wendy Wright – a woman who is as obtuse as our Prime Minister is on climate change.
Gladly, the Cross-Eyed Bear 
Sadly all too true Chrys. As a volunteer Deputy Fire captain with the RFS and member of a family with farm records going back to the 1870s in the Orange region of NSW I have no doubt we are changing our climate for the worse. No longer farming but working for the state Government department that includes Primary Industries I know many scientists, horticulturist, agronomists and fishery officers who’s research clearly points to change that is having an adverse impact on our ability to grow crops through hotter and drier climate and more extreme adverse weather events.
I don’t have children myself but I fear for my multitude of nieces & nephew’s and grandnieces and nephew’s. Every day we delay major action multiplies the cost they will have to pay.
Tomorrow I’m off to our closest protest event in Bathurst with hopes of seeing a large crowd.
I want to highlight another consideration many people don’t think of.
Working in health, I have seen the budgetary and human costs of mosquito-borne infections in north Qld. Dengue Fever and Ross River Virus are debilitating conditions which take considerable time to recover from, putting people off work for weeks to months, and putting some people into hospital.
These infections were once restrcited only to the tropics – but we are seeing more severe outbreaks (i.e. more people infected) and people becoming infected further down the Qld coast.
With climate change happening, and climate scientists saying Australia will be one of the worst affected countries, we can expect to see these once-tropical diseseas spreading to Brisbane and eventually Sydney and perhaps Melbourne too (not to mention the rest of the country).
This will mean lots of people off work for prolonged periods, and lots of people requiring hospitalisation – the financial burden would be considerable.
Also in countries with Malaria, you could expect to see this spread further too.
This Prime Minister is taking Australia off the map of the worlds scientific calls for action. He is not only an embarrassment but downright dangerous to our future.
I had recorded but never watched till last night Al Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth’. Although the presentation took on a ‘religious fundamentalist’ feel at times, the facts were shocking, and it was recorded in 2005. How shocking to see Australia was then noted as one of the few Western Nations who had not ratified Kyoto ( beside the USA), which thanks to Kevin Rudd was corrected by 2008.
Now however the revelations of the melting of the ice/glaciers must be even more shocking…and yet still this new ‘leadership’ ( I use the term loosely) is determined to ignore the facts just as that contemptuous female in the video you put up, Chrys, does on evolution.
What a closed minded, ignorant, rude and stupid woman. I will excuse her because her influence is limited. I will never excuse a PM of this nation living in the same state of mind; Closed and ignorant!
Join me @ the Coolum Beach rally, Lions Park, David Low Way, Coolum, @ 11:30 Sun 17th Nov. Excellent work, Chrys!
The ability to deny the evidence is staggering but all too common.
it is a very human trait to be able to totally ignore things that do not fit our own personal point of view.
It takes an active effort to be able to keep an open mind on subjects and to ask just what is the evidence, what is the science and what is just my opinion.
The woman in the interview claims belief in evolution causes inhuman actions but at the same time totally ignores the 2000 years of atrocities committed by people who have the same beliefs as her.
g2, that was what I thought as well & I was waiting for Dawkins to bring the holy wars up. She didn’t really give him too much ground & had quite a few good things to say. She seemed to be educated somewhat in regards to the foundations of evolution. I couldn’t help but agree with her when she talked about the foundations of evolution being the way they were & I don’t think that Dawkins had much of a leg to stand on except to try & defend his beliefs rather poorly. Dawkins talked about the DNA pyramid being proof positive that mankind evolved from monkeys. There are many clever scientists who do not believe that this happened. Just as there are many clever scientists who don’t believe in climate change.
Not sure what fundamentalist hole you crawled out of Steve, or how you found my blog but, let me be concise in my answer to you: “Bullshit”.
To expand, watch the second video and watch Ms Wendy just absolutely draw the shutters on Dawkins explanation that she can just go to a museum and see the fossil evidence for transitional species for herself. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggwu5sWU0Mo
As for climate change – I’m assuming you are arguing against anthropogenic climate change?
Chrys,
Steve’s stupid assertions remind me of the Podcast “The Broken Record” by The Thinking Atheist (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71Hvkq_TOKY).
We have the same phenomena with Human Provoked Global Warming and we will have to bang our collective heads on the wall often before this is over.
Of course our PM is out of touch about a few things. He likes to stick his fingers in his ear and go “la la la la”.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/abbotts-response-to-child-sexual-abuse-by-clergy-angers-victims-20131114-2xjpo.html#ixzz2kf1KyTch
[quote]
Asked whether Cardinal Pell, now Archbishop of Sydney, carried any responsibility for the failures described by the report of the Victorian inquiry into the church’s handling of child sexual abuse, Mr Abbott said he hadn’t read it.
”As is pretty well known, I have a lot of time for George Pell … my understanding is that the first senior cleric who took this issue very seriously was in fact Cardinal Pell.”
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/abbotts-response-to-child-sexual-abuse-by-clergy-angers-victims-20131114-2xjpo.html#ixzz2krKfL7yV
[/quote]
Fingers in ears and singing la la la. That’s Tony Abbott. I was hoping it was just a ploy to win the prize (being PM, remember he said he’d do ANYTHING to become PM). But hopes dashed, he really does believe climate change is crap and all these disasters are his God’s will.
I long ago had the impression that the Rabbit shows classic symptoms of psychopathic tendencies. Amoral, no conscience, sly, sycophantic , with some, tyrannic with others, will do and say whatever he thinks will benefit him & his mates (though highly likely to stab them in the back too).
Anyhow, whatever he does will be forgiven in confessional.
…………………………………………………………………………….
Another aspect of climate change denial by dogmatic Christians I’ve come across (my AoG fanatic sister included) is it doesn’t matter if we totally trash this planet. The end is coming soon and God will give us (xtians, not me coz I’m an evil heretic) a brand new Earth.
(I saved my sister’s life that day…I resisted the impulse to strangle her).
From today’s news…
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/12/27/world/antarctica-ship-stuck/
That is about the Guardian journos hopping aboard a ship to gloat about the ‘devastation’ that climate change, ie melting ice, has wreaked on the Antarctic only to find themselves ice-bound and requiring the help of other carbon producing vessels to rescue them. Further irony is that the first rescue vessel also got stuck.
How much longer can alarmists continue with this scam?
Darn it I wish he didnt bring up the DNA heiracy argument, I do love Dawkins in full flight but he needs to drop this one. There is far more data and information that we can rely on for the evolution. I do think was good that he wasnt in debate with a scientist because it not exactly water tight.