Rushing to a Climate Disaster

03/03/2007

January 2007 was the World's Hottest January Ever Recorded and 2006 was the fifth hottest year on record, with ice cream imported from half a world away while Glaciers and ice sheets melt. In Queensland the Land and Resources Tribunal has found that Fossil fuels are not linked to global warming in a judgement on a new coal mine developed by Xstrata. The Tribunal was also sceptical of the Stern Review and the latest report from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change according to an ABC report.

The petro-chemical, automobile and mining industries have been at the heart of undermining scientific research and information on climate change with Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study and a heavily subsidised Disinformation Campaign

Challenges for universities to go Research Zero | Rainforest Information Centre on Climate Change
Beyond Zero Emissions | Avoiding Catastrophe | Climate IMC

Mining Lobby Censors Parody Website

27/02/2007

A parody website focussing on Mining and its contribution to climate change has been forced offline due to legal threats by the NSW Minerals Council under Regulation 20J of the Copyright Regulations (1969). The Parody website sought to expose the current public relations campaign of the NSW Minerals Council over the expansion in coal mining and its contribution to Greenhouse gases and climate Change. [Full Story]

Website Statement
Anvil Hill Alliance | Rising Tide Australia | Mineral Policy Institute

Zero Emissions must be the Target to Avoid Climate Catastrophe

21/02/2007

"We must go to zero emissions and start removing existing atmospheric carbon straight away if we are to avoid dangerous run-away climate change," said Philip Sutton, Convenor of Greenleap Strategic Institute, to a large audience at Federation Square at the Sustainable Living Festival. (Powerpoint presentation (PDF)) This follows packed crowds at Richmond Town Hall and in Ballarat recently to hear John Seed from the Rainforest Information Centre on Climate Change.

Recent studies and reports indicate that Catastrophic Climate Change may be Inevitible unless Drastic Steps are Taken. Some experts are warning the IPCC Report under-estimates Global Warming, with increased melt from the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, precipitating an accelerating rise in sea levels resulting in a 12 metre rise or more.

Beyond Zero Emissions | Avoiding Catastrophe | Climate IMC

Walk Against Warming: 30,000 in Melbourne

6/11/2006

More than 30,000 people marched from the Town Hall to Birrarung Marr in Melbourne on Saturday to demand urgent action on climate change. A cross section of groups challenged Victorian political leaders to commit to reducing Victorian greenhouse emissions by 20% by 2020. The rally was part of a global day of action against climate change. Full Story [1,2]
More Reports [1,2]

[Walk Against Warming]

Newcastle Activists Target Peabody for "Practices of Cultural and Eco Genocide"

18/10/2006

Around 30 people descended upon Peabody’s office in Newcastle in protest against Peabody’s practices of Cultural and Eco Genocide on the homelands of the Navajo and Hopi peoples in America and their interest in doing the same on Australian Lands. [Read more]

"Climate change now is a global issue and the global community must now act to protect what is left of our precious environment. These coal companies have no place in our future the way they desecrate the earth and our sacred homelands" said Arthur Ridgeway who is a traditional owner of the Pambalong area that now makes up Newcastle. [Photos on Arizona Indymedia | Quicktime movie (4.7MB)]

Carteret Islands Evacuated Due to Rising Sea Level

30/09/2006

"I recently visited the Carteret Islands, 100 km north east of Bougainville, having heard that they were suffering badly from rising seas caused by global warming. All 6 of the islands in the group are being badly damaged and the islands look like making history as the first atoll to be abandoned due to rising seas. Food crops have been destroyed, houses have been washed away and malaria is now the most common cause of children dying." said independent documentary film maker, Pip Starr, in a detailed report of what he saw when he visited the Atoll.

Torres Strait Islanders are also facing annihilation from rising sea levels with climate refugees set to be an increasing problem globally.

Pip Starr Pictures | Climate IMC | GETUP: It's Getting Hot In Here - Climate Change
Background: Climate Change and Development Issues for Island States - Jan 2005 Report on MIM

Subsidising Alcoa to Generate Climate Change

15/09/2006

Environmental activists staged a protest on the steps of Parliament House against the Government subsidy of electricity given to the Alcoa Aluminium smelter. According to Matthew from futureenergy.org, "Alcoa receives subsidies of around $125 Million dollars a year, paid for by the people of Victoria through higher electricity prices and innapproriately directed tax money that could be better spent on health, education or solving our polluting energy supply problem through renewable energy and demand side reduction."

"Our current political leaders are making decisions about how much our climate will change. It’s time that they started making those decisions based on what’s best for Victorians, rather than what’s best for multinational companies like Alcoa.” said Mark Wakeham, Greenpeace energy campaigner.

futureenergy.org | Greenpeace Australia

Methane a Trigger in Runaway Climate Change

11/09/2006

"Carbon dioxide is the major greenhouse gas released by industrial society, we release far less methane. However, methane is a more potent greenhouse gas. Millions upon millions of tonnes of methane are stored in the permafrost bogs across the Arctic, in Siberia and elsewhere." said John Sumby at Tasmedia.org

Scientists extrapolating their data to Siberia's other lakes, have estimated that more than 4 million tons of methane is being released into the atmosphere each year -- between 10 and 63 percent higher than previous estimates. The study, led by Katey Walter at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks is detailed in the journal Nature. "It's kind of like a slow-motion time bomb," Ted Schuur, professor of ecosystem ecology at the University of Florida, told AP. "There's these big surprises out there that we don't even know about." ...[Read more]

Related: Ocean Acidification | Ocean has reached tipping point
Energy Bulletin: Stopping Runaway Climate Change
Alaska Report: Melting Permafrost Could Amplify Global Warming
Rising Tide Australia

Federal Government Gagging Climate Refugee Issue?

15/02/2006

Friends of the Earth have called on the Federal Government to recognise climate refugees and hold an investigation to prove the issue is not being silenced by the “greenhouse mafia”, as reported on the ABC program Four Corners. [Full Story]

The Four Corners program also contained allegations of censorship against scientists speaking out on issues where their views were counter to Government policy on climate change.

ABC: Four Corners: The Greenhouse Mafia | News in Science: Censorship 'just tip of iceberg'
Friends of the Earth: Climate Refugee Forum Sat 18 Feb | Citizens Guide to Climate Refugees

Planet Collapsing Under Global Warming Stress

05/02/2006

from the newswire
Simon Willace writes "The problem is that all aspects of the environment are being treated as if they were separate, reduce co2 and the problem is solved is the accepted thinking, however less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will not reduce the impact of what is already overburdened...." [Full Story]

Climate IMC news: Sea Level Rise is accelerating and a new study finds that Polar ice at risk this century with dramatic changes in West Antarctic ice sheet, while Australia's hot summer has had a devastating effect bleaching coral on the Great Barrier Reef. In New Zealand activists from the Save Happy Valley campaign have occupied the site of the Cypress open cast coal mine being developed by the State owned Solid Energy.

Climate IMC

2005 Ends in Heat waves and Cold snaps

01/01/2006

The eastern states of Australia sweltered on the hottest New Year's Eve on record, with Hospitals in Sydney swamped and fire services on edge as the heatwave kicked in. On the other side of the continent, Perth has recorded its coldest December in 83 years.

Globally, 2005 Was the Second Warmest Year on Record, and the hottest year in Australia since records commenced in 1910.

While much of Australia swelters, Europe is experiencing a cold snap with UK Drivers trapped in snow drifts. In India a Cold wave tightened its grip with nearly 100 deaths reported so far. In the USA plains, wildfires raced through grass dried out by the region's worst drought in 50 years charring nearly 200 homes and killing four people in Texas and Oklahoma.

• Madison IMC: Global Warming Wrap-up for 2005
  
• NASA: Global Temperature Trends: 2005 Summation
• USA NOAA: Drought feeds wildfires in southern plains
• New Scientist: Climate Change Special

Australia Faces the Heat as Ocean Current Slows

22/12/2005

The 'temperature is Rising' on climate change with increasing extreme weather events, changes in rainfall, increased average temperatures globally and for Australia, increased Arctic ice melt, and now it seems, a very real possibility that the great ocean currents have slowed and may grind to a halt.

Michael Schlesinger, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, told the Climate Conference in Montreal: “The shutdown of the thermohaline circulation has been characterized as a high-consequence, low-probability event. Our analysis, including the uncertainties in the problem, indicates it is a high-consequence, high-probability event.” [ More ]

Background:
Simon Willace on Australia faces the heat as ocean current slows
Melbourne IMC: How Global Warming May Cause the Next Ice Age
Climate Indymedia | Rapid Climate Change | Ocean Currents and Climate

Rising Sea Levels Create first Climate Change Refugees

01/12/2005

As the world awaits the beginnings of the first meeting of the parties of the Kyoto Protocol in Montreal, the Carteret Islanders of the Pacific have already lost their battle to stay on their islands. This is the first instance of an entire cultural group forcibly displaced by climate change due to sea level rise doubling in the last 150 years caused by global warming. According to Norman Myers in A Citizens Guide to Climate Refugees, up to 200 million people may be displaced because of climate change by 2050. Many more islands and low level coastal areas are facing a crisis.

In conjunction with the Montreal meeting, an international day of action will occur on December 3, including an event in Melbourne. The international action also heralds the start of Climate Indymedia, bringing together the latest activist news and reports on climate change, and an alternative to the obfuscation of the mainstream media and corporate public relations.

Climate IMC | Climate Features on Melbourne IMC | Walk Against Warming | United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

Katrina was Environmental & Social Blowback

18/09/2005

from the newswire
What has happened and is happening in New Orleans poses critical questions to our assumptions about the great traditions of western thought and social progress. The first and most important question that must be answered is, was the cause of the levies breaking simply a lack of investment in old, yet critical infrastructure or is it a fundamental question on the failure of a market economy and the subjugation of civil society to neo-classical economics? [More]

Coverage
[Food not Bombs | New Orleans | Houston Indymedia | US Indymedia | SF Bay Area Indymedia]

Global Warming: Drought Increasing, sea levels rising

14/01/2005

According to new scientific research the percentage of Earth's land area stricken by serious drought more than doubled from the 1970s to the early 2000s, due largely to rising global temperatures. A new modelling study for the USA and Europe predicts Future Heat Waves: More Severe, More Frequent, Longer Lasting. Australians Face Buffeting From Climate Change as Australia is getting wetter, while droughts continue.

Rising Sea Levels due to faster melting of Glaciers on the Antarctic and Greenland icecaps will cause a crisis in many Island States, but coastal areas in western nations will also be threatened by rising sea levels. London is considering building a ten-mile barrier across the River Thames to prevent floods caused by rising sea levels.

• Climate Change as a Human Rights Issue for Subsistence-Based Societies
• Global Warming Wrap-up for 2004
• 2004 the Fourth Warmest Year Globally