A couple of cartoons reflecting on Oz party politics this week:
The first is from Laberal: Coalition plan to slash $70bn from budget
The second, from Fiona Katauskas, is posted at Eureka Street: A Lack of Opposition
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Cartoonists Capture Oz Politics
The second, from Fiona Katauskas, is posted at Eureka Street: A Lack of Opposition
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Climate Change: Vaccine for the dreaded bird-brain flu
A cross post from Red Bluff Climate: Taming the Unchained Goddess
The Murdoch media, the shock jocks and TV breakfast shows and much of the other mainstream media are obviously too scared to leave home at night as a result of the carbon tax fear and loathing they’ve been spreading. Perhaps it's the dreaded bird-brain flu.
Or ironically it may have just been Melbourne University’s cold winter evening that kept them away. One way or the other they missed out on lots of sensational footage when Professor Hans Joachin Schellnhuber gave his public address for the FOUR DEGREES OR MORE? Australia in a Hot World conference. The Age had a report on his worst-case scenarios from earlier in the day.
More
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Climate Action: Let’s Swap Fear for Facts
Thank goodness the carbon price phoney war is nearly over. Hopefully fear will be replaced with facts after the government’s Sunday announcement of their carbon emissions scheme.
The Federal Opposition has a lot to answer for. Tony Abbott’s partisan performance over carbon pricing reflects the quality of his leadership, rather than that of the economists he attacked recently. He has been busy bad mouthing them in a manner reminiscent of his calling climate science ‘crap’. He has been prepared to say and do whatever will help him to gain power.
Fortunately, the real work has continued. With perfect timing, Melbourne University hosts a major 3-day conference next week about the implications of global warming: Four Degrees or More? – Australia in a Hot World.
It is a great shame that Australia’s response to the climate change challenge has become centred on ideological positioning by opportunist Abbott and populists such as Barnaby Joyce and Alan Jones.
The same is not the case in the United Kingdom where both sides of politics accept that the science is in and urgent action is necessary. The Department of Energy and Climate Change website has an unequivocal warning about greenhouse gas emissions: ‘Unless action is taken to reduce GHG emissions, there is a high risk of global warming well beyond a 2°C increase since pre-industrial times. This would have significant impact and could lead to severe, and possibly irreversible, damage to ecosystems and natural processes’.
The world is in the process of choosing its climate future and all governments must be held accountable for real, substantial action not just rationalisations that can be sold to the voters. That includes our own governments, including the State level. The choices we make should not be based on misinformation, deliberate sowing of confusion or economic fear mongering.
Our current situation is beyond reasonable doubt: the world is warming, humans are major contributors through greenhouse gas emissions, the consequences will be serious and for some catastrophic, the international community is taking action. In addition a low carbon economy, rather than being a drag on Australia’s prosperity, promises a more healthy nation in many senses of the word.
Ross Garnaut, who recently attacked the mainstream media for their ‘crude’ and ‘distorting’ coverage, is one of the presenters. It will be interesting to see what coverage they give his and other contributions to the ongoing policy debate. Keynote speaker Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Chair of the German Government's Advisory Council on Global Change and other international contributors, should bring some very welcome sober and rational perspectives.
Let’s hope that Garnaut and his fellow presenters get the amount of coverage that the Lord Monckton generates with his attention-seeking travelling circus. It’s more hope than expectation based on the last couple of years of media mischief.
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Please help to fund my Climate Change citizen journalism project - Climate Change: Facing the Fourth Degree
Click on the image for details:
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Tony Abbott: Populism's Stunted Master
Let's get Australia back from Tony Abbott's claptrap.
Enter the trihardothon budgie/bumper sticker competition at Café Whispers.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Climate Change: Facing the Fourth Degree
Please help to fund my Climate Change citizen journalism project - Climate Change: Facing the Fourth Degree
Click on the image for details:
I'll be reporting from the FOUR DEGREES OR MORE? Australia in a Hot World conference on 12-14 July at Melbourne University.
It takes place at the time the Australia government is planning to make public the details of its proposed carbon tax and emissions trading scheme. It's not just the climate that's getting hotter.
Speakers include Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Chair of the German Government's Advisory Council on Global Change, and Professor Ross Garnaut from The University of Melbourne.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Joe Hockey feeding both sides of the spending fence
Joe Hockey is not intersted in consistency when he's spinning the daily chook droppings. From ABC Radio AM this morning:
JOE HOCKEY: Well we committed to welfare reform, but we also recognise that if you are going to move people from welfare into work you have to spend money on training, on job support. Most importantly you need to, especially in the case of disability pensioners, upgrade facilities at employers' premises.On Sunday he rolled his hollow barrel about government expenditure:
Hockey: budget not credible without carbon tax numbers
THE Federal Government says it will deliver a tough budget, but all it has done during the past week is spend money, Opposition treasury spokesman Joe Hockey says.
Mr Hockey says if the Government wants to take upward pressure off interest rates it has to get the budget back to surplus, and the starting point is to stop spending money.
Want to budget? Just stop spending, says Joe Hockey
Neither are the media, going by the lack of rigour in testing Joe's contradcitory nonsense with the odd pertinent question.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Tony Abbott's Revolting Pug Politics
I was spurred on by Bernard Keane's article in Crikey Placards not the only thing on display as the denialists gather to these thoughts on Tony Abbott and Tea Party politics:
(Photo: ABC)
It was hard not to be appalled by Abbott's performance yesterday. He chose his company deliberately. That included the other speakers. Barnaby Joyce was playing hysterical demagogue. David Archibald, the ‘economist’ who spoke at the rally, was generally ignored by the media. In fact Melbourne's Herald Sun chose not to mention the event or the offensive signs at all. It was front page at their rival The Age: To-ny, To-ny: poster boy for a crowd of 'fine Australians'. Their photo is far more explicit:
Archibald is from the mining industry and close to the Lavoisier Group of deniers, founded by that well known friend of working people and the environment Hugh Morgan.
Closer to home, the owner of our local shoe shop was headed for the rally: Carbon tax cops kick in Bayside He’s a budding economist too: “He said a 10 per cent carbon tax would be “the final straw” for embattled small retailers.”
Doubtless many in the Canberra crowd were small business people with close links to the Liberal Party.
The evening of the revolting people’s day, Bayside Climate Change Action Group held a successful forum of 150 + with Prof David Karoly of Melbourne University:
Prof. Karoly said. "If climate change is happening, it's happening on top of - and as well as – all the natural climate variations."
"Better to ask", Prof. Karoly said, "is how much worse were the floods made by greenhouse climate change?" While much more research needs to be done, his 'best estimate' is that the floods were perhaps 20% worse than if carbon dioxide levels had remained at the levels of about 100 years ago.
While that may seem only a modest addition, Prof. Karoly said the shift to a warmer climate – signalled too in record seawater temperatures around much of Australia - means Australians had better prepare for a land of greater droughts during the dry spells and worse flooding rains in the wet ones.David Karoly + Simon McKeon @ Firbank Grammar.
The anti-carbon-tax lobby is well organised and presumably well financed. Menzies House provides many of the links to the people's revolt on their campaign website Stop Gillard's Climate Tax.
It was always going to be a dirty fight. Pug politics!
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