Communicating the emergency

The Safe Climate Australia campaign is more than three months in. Their video Run for a safe climate remains one of the best bits of communication around.

Hat tip Climate safety.

Burn rate

Anthropogenic climate change is likely an important contributing factor in the unprecedented maximum temperatures on 7 February 2009

says RealClimate in a commentary the recent bushfires in the Australian state of Victoria

A kicker comes in the quote from the IPCC TAR, considered too conservative by more than a few:

In south-east Australia, the frequency of very high and extreme fire danger days is likely to rise 4-25% by 2020 and 15-70% by 2050.

P.S. Climate models predicted Australian bushfires, reports New Scientist.

Bearing in mind Vicky Pope's warning that overplaying natural variations in the weather diverts attention from the real issues.

Fire

Over the last few days, we Australians have looked our own future in the face.

-- Christine Milne

Smoke obscured the horizon, entering my air-conditioned car and carrying with it that distinctive scent so strongly signifying death, or, to Aboriginal people, cleansing.

Tim Flannery

Down the dunny

Ashdenizen fisks Simon Calder and the Indy

Luhrmann: the Bernie Madoff of film

By twisting history, garbling geography and glossing over the appalling exploitation of Aboriginal workers, Baz Luhrmann's film Australia bears more relation to fairytale than fact.

-- Germaine Greer

Who we are

Good to read the sane voice of Richard Flanagan (An invitation to the future) regarding the stolen generation ("some hundred thousand indigenous children were taken from their families and tribes - often forcibly - and raised in institutions and foster families where they would pointedly not be allowed their language or culture")

Earlier today I came across a nice line in The Subtlety of Emotions by Aaron Ben Ze'ev. This purported quote from an Aborginal elder may be a Chief Seattle moment -- that is, a bogus Western forgery of recent origin that speaks to our own sentimentality rather than indigenous reality -- but I'll quote it anyway:

You white people are so strange. We think it very primitive for a child to have only two parents.

[Kevin Rudd's sorry speech is here]

P.S. 24 Feb: Teo Kermeliotis takes issue here.

Doing the right thing

The Australian government has announced it will issue its first formal apology to Aboriginal people when parliament resumes next month more.

Bye bye Kyoto?

One barely discussed element is that the Kyoto protocol appears to have been consigned to the dustbin of history even before its main provisions come into force in January. Nobody talks about a second round of Kyoto targets any more. The Bali roadmap mentions the protocol only once, noting that the new negotiations "shall be informed by... experience in implementing the... Kyoto protocol".

This provides a face-saving way back into the climate fold for Kyoto-refusenik, the US. Nobody is saying so, but it may also wipe the slate clean for countries likely to fail their Kyoto targets. Canada in particular is expected to have emissions 38 per cent above 1990 levels by 2010, rather than the promised 6 per cent cut. Moreover its government has said that it will not, as required by the protocol, buy carbon offsets to make up the difference.

Under the protocol, Canada faced swingeing penalties in a future round of emissions targets. It may now escape them. Likewise Australia, which finally signed up to the Kyoto protocol in Bali seemingly unconcerned that it has no hope of even approaching the target it agreed back in 1997.

-- from How the climate drama unfolded in Bali by Fred Pearce. But:

On Saturday afternoon [15 Dec] the EU gained an unexpected victory. Canada, Russia and Japan had been set against dictating clear emissions targets during the talks but, in a set of discussions including the developed-country Kyoto parties but excluding the US, the three countries changed their minds and signed up to cut their emissions by 25-40 per cent of 1990 levels by 2020. This goes much further than the original protocol, which asked for 5 per cent cuts by 2012

-- from Who bears the load? by Fiona Harvey and John Aglionby.

Dirty diggers

Ove Hoegh-Guldberg highlights a new book by Guy Pearse called High and Dry which looks as if it is well worth a read beyond Australia's shores too.