Election Fraud News & The Money Party
This is simply unbelievable. Australia faces a 10 fold increase in heat waves. They're in the sixty year of one right now. And they face a "plague of locusts."
Unless radical action is taken quickly, this means "the eventual destruction of sites including the Great Barrier Reef --- and the nation's food bowl ---"
A plague of locusts is also threatening crops in the state, with farmers on 900 farms reporting finding locust eggs. The government plans to fight the infestation with aerial spraying before the eggs hatch.
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Climate Change: Risk and Vulnerability
Promoting an Efficient Adaptation Response in Australia - Final Report, March 2005
Executive Summary & Links to Full Report
Report to the Australian Greenhouse Office, Department of the Environment and Heritage, by The Allen Consulting Group
Download PDF
Download the Executive Summary - Climate Change: Risk and Vulnerability
(risk-vulnerability-summary.pdf - 677 KB)Download the full report - Climate Change: Risk and Vulnerability
(risk-vulnerability.pdf - 1862 KB)Agriculture
Agricultural systems have shown considerable capacity to adapt to the climate changes in land management practices, crop and cultivar choice and selection of animal species and technologies to increase efficiency of water use have all been used to change the geographic and climate spread of our agricultural activities. All of these activities could and will be deployed by farmers to respond to climate change, although as the degree of climate change increases the limits of this adaptive capacity may be tested. There may be some gains in some regions emerging from low levels of climate change as a result of longer growing seasons, fewer frosts, higher rainfall (northern Australia) and CO2 fertilisation.
The agribusiness units and regions most at risk will be:
Those already stressed -- economically or biophysically, as a result of land degradation, salination and loss of biodiversity;
Those at the edge of their climate tolerance; and
Those where large and long lived investments are being made -- such as in dedicated irrigation systems, slow growing cultivars and processing facilities.
Settlements and emergency services
Exposure of our cities to climate patterns is high -- but the sensitivity to change depends very much on the way it impacts on extreme events. Urban areas and the built environment are machines to manage and control climate. Our cities and infrastructure are built to accepted risk limits based on the expected return frequency of severe winds, heavy precipitation events, storm surges and so on. Below these thresholds, severe weather events are usually handled with relatively light damage to property and human health and life. Above the thresholds, however, damage, injury and death can accelerate in a non-linear way.
Energy
Demand for energy is temperature sensitive (increasingly so with the penetration of domestic air-conditioning) with peaks both changing from winter to summer and steepening. Electricity supply is sensitive both to extreme weather related events and in some cases temperature itself as it degrades transmission capacity. Supply sensitivity also extends to disruption to platform operations (as has happened recently in the Gulf of Mexico with direct consequences for global energy prices), transmission and distribution (including impacts of land slip and storm on very long gas pipelines and storm and bushfire on electricity distribution). Most of Australia's energy infrastructure -- generation and transmission/distribution -- is now at, or approaching, the point where there is little redundancy at peak periods and reduced capacity to sustain cumulative impacts. Our economic, social and household systems are now so interdependent while being simultaneously dependent on a reliable, high quality energy supply that a failure in that supply brings much higher economic and social costs than at any time in the past. Much of the sector is subject to price regulation in one form or another, and it is not clear that regulators are as yet sensitive to the pressures that might be placed on infrastructure by climate change, and hence the possible need to allow some level of redundant capacity.
-- Droughts are likely to become more frequent, particularly in the south-west
-- Evaporation rates are likely to increase, particularly in the north and east.
-- High-fire-danger weather is likely to increase in the south-east
-- Tropical cyclones are likely to become more intense
-- Sea levels will continue to rise.Climate Change in Australia In 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released their fourth assessment report, concluding that:
Warming of the climate system is unequivocal.
Humans are very likely to be causing most of the warming that has been experienced since 1950.
It is very likely that changes in the global climate system will continue well into the future, and that they will be larger than those seen in the recent past.These changes have the potential to have a major impact on human and natural systems throughout the world including Australia.
The IPCC reports provide limited detail on Australian climate change, particularly when it comes to regional climate change projections. For this reason the Australian Greenhouse Office, through the Australian Climate Change Science Programme, engaged CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology to develop climate change projections for Australia.
Climate change in Australia is based upon international climate change research including conclusions from the IPCC's fourth assessment report. It also builds on a large body of climate research that has been undertaken for the Australian region in recent years.
Climate change in Australia provides essential tools for government, industry and the community to understand the likely magnitude of climate change in Australia and the possible impacts.
The Climate change in Australia report is available for download from the Resources page of this website.And be sure to see GARNAUT CLIMATE CHANGE REVIEW Web Page
When the river runs dry Blayney Chronicle 06/07/2008
'If you want to see an example of stress from climate change, and where it could go over time, look at what's behind us here in terms of the Murray-Darling system'' (the nation's main source of food), Mr Rudd said. ''Therefore, the challenge for us is not to bury our heads in the sand and pretend this problem will just go away.''
Demonstrators gathered in central Melbourne yesterday to demand that political leaders act urgently to combat climate change.
Wearing red, members of more than 60 environmental groups marched to the Alexandra Gardens, where they formed a 140-metre-long human sign spelling "Climate Emergency".
Rally speakers included Greens leader Bob Brown, who described climate change as "a disaster which is on our doorstep". He said Australia needed to reduce its greenhouse emissions by at least 90% by 2050.
Protesters carried placards condemning the dredging of Port Phillip Bay, Victoria's planned desalination plant and the $9 billion east-west road tunnel proposed by transport expert Rod Eddington.
The demonstration followed Friday's release of economist Ross Garnaut's draft report on climate change, which warned that Australia risked losing natural wonders such as the Great Barrier Reef and Kakadu if it did not act now to combat global warning. The report also recommended that an emissions trading scheme should be operating by 2010.
PERTH Now Article from: AAP July 06, 2008 12:19pmA NEW "very disturbing" report due today shows climate change in Australia is inflicting severe drought conditions much more often, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says.
Mr Rudd said Agriculture Minister Tony Burke would release the CSIRO research report on the impact of climate change on drought later today.
"We asked some time ago for the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology to advise us how do we deal with exceptional circumstances and drought arrangements into the future," Mr Rudd told ABC television.
"They've now presented us with a report and the findings are again very disturbing.
"What they say in two short points is this ... firstly that when it comes to exceptional or extreme drought, exceptionally high temperatures, the historical assumption that this occurred once every 20 years has now been revised down to between every one and two years.
"Secondly, with exceptional circumstances drought conditions, under scenarios within it, that they will occur twice as often and with twice the area of droughted parts of Australia included."Pacific watching Australia's moves on climate change AFP Sydney 06/07/2008
ABC Radio Australia Audio program with one of the authors of the climate report on Australia
In Australia, Professor Ross Garnaut has released the draft report of his review on climate change. The review is expected to play a major part in setting the policy for how Australia will limit the amount of carbon it emits ino the atmosphere. As the biggest carbon producer in the South Pacific, many island nations, already living with the affect of climate change, are watching very closely what Australia does.
GARNAUT: The weight of scientific evidence tells us that Australians are facing risks of damaging climate change. The risk can be substantially reduced by strong and early action by all major economies. Without that action, it is probable that Australians over the 21st Century and beyond will experience disruption in their prosperity and enjoyment of life, and to long standing patterns in their lives.
Climate change hopes put on table theage.com.au The Age, Australia
PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd will attend the Group of Eight summit in Japan this week with Climate Change Minister Penny Wong for climate change talks between developed and developing countries.
But hopes of a breakthrough at the summit in Hokkaido on an agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol have been overshadowed by global concerns about rising food and energy prices and the shaky world economic outlook, issues tipped to dominate the summit.
Near the resort town of Toyako yesterday, thousands of anti-globalisation demonstrators gathered as US President George Bush arrived for talks with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda before the summit opening today.
Mr Rudd will participate in the major economies meeting on Wednesday. Climate change is a priority for many countries, and the Garnaut report is expected to be discussed informally
Climate-change goals fall short at G8 Globe and Mail, July 7, 2008
TOYAKO, JAPAN -- Hopes have dimmed for stronger action on climate change - a central goal of this week's G8 summit in Japan - with countries such as the United States and Canada resisting calls for the group to set hard midterm targets for reducing emissions.
There's a sense here that, besides some modest steps, leaders are already looking beyond this summit to next year's UN climate-change talks, and the successor to U.S. President George W. Bush.
And, of course, he Rupert Murdoch paper shows its ignorance
Garnaut report fails the community news.com.au (Fox News Australia)
By Piers Akerman July 06, 2008
TAXPAYERS should ask Professor Ross Garnaut for their money back: his report is little more than a fear mongering document designed to bolster the age-old socialist agenda of wealth redistribution.
It fails from the basis of science and it fails from the basis of economics but it will, however, warm the hearts of the anti-capitalist doom merchants of Europe and inner-urban branches of the Labor Party with its prognostications.
Nostradamus would be proud.
Garnaut on tour as fight heats up
Michelle Grattan theage.com.au July 7, 2008
ROSS Garnaut will play to capacity audiences in the town halls of Australia's mainland capital cities this week, starting his roadshow in Perth today and performing in Melbourne on Wednesday. Bookings are strong -- climate change is a popular issue.
Meanwhile, the interest groups are limbering up for the battles ahead. A new alliance called the Southern Cross Climate Coalition, launched yesterday, is in part a push against the demands that business will make on the pool of compensation.
It brings together the Australian Conservation Foundation, the ACTU, the Australian Council of Social Service and the Climate Institute. Last week the Business Council of Australia bluntly warned that business had no intention of bearing the costs of what will be a huge structural reform.
The detail of how we meet the climate change challenge will be the great debate of the decade, and the Rudd Government has its neck on the line
