Yes, the atmospheric climate is changing. But here at Crikey we think something just as potent has happened over recent months: finally, the social and political climate that informs the climate change debate is being transformed.
So what has changed this year?
- The federal government has ended its climate denial rhetoric — a symbolic but telling response to public outrage at its inaction.
- The world’s biggest mining company, Glencore, has announced a retreat from coal mining.
- The Reserve Bank has formally declared that climate change is a fundamental economic risk.
- School kids are marching in the streets around the globe.
That’s on top of the unambiguous, active support for action on climate change from just about every reputable institution, industry and profession: the courts, scientists, the military, the insurance industry, the accounting profession, NASA, meteorologists, most big public companies. (All except for one institution, of course: News Corp.)
Yes, the climate is changing irrevocably. That’s why it’s the only subject we’re writing about at Crikey today.
Read our full series, Slow Burn, here.
10 thoughts on “The climate has changed”
klewso
March 14, 2019 at 2:44 pmEveryone else knows about it, but not this bastard fossil-fueled government – and the troglodyte neanderthals pulling it’s strings – and they’ve been “in control” for the last 6 years they’ve wasted.
form1planet
March 14, 2019 at 3:33 pmThank you Crikey. It is so important that we keep talking about this, keep it in the news and keep the pressure on politicians and business to take real, meaningful action, and reporting like this is crucial. When climate change is not reported on, it seems like less of a problem (or a niche problem, something for the environmentalists to worry about); and if people don’t feel concerned about it, media are less likely to report on it. Although this has been the trend for the past few years, this cycle can be reversed, where greater media prominence increases awareness and hence public demand for action. Schoolkids around the world are doing their part and I’m very glad to see Crikey on board as well.
intouch
March 14, 2019 at 4:36 pmAT LAST!!! Thank you, Crikey. I hope with all my heart (and don’t dare call me “a bleeding heart”) that we can still mitigate this damage. We ALL have to work very hard and change our life styles.
Richard Shortt
March 14, 2019 at 5:46 pmNow we can sit back and watch as the ‘changed rhetoric’ moves to ‘as we have always held, climate change is real and we need to be taking active steps to address it. That is why I announce today…’ because, as night follows day, that flip is just a presser or two away!
AR
March 15, 2019 at 12:42 amOrwell covered that fancy footwork in 1984 – Oceania was not after all at war with Eurasia. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Eurasia was an ally.
“A Rumplestiltskin of a man, contorted with hatred…” who would be that exemplar in our current rogues gallery?
So many to choose from, none guiltless.
AR
March 15, 2019 at 12:34 amInteresting inclusions in “reputable” institutions – “..the military, the insurance industry, the accounting profession..,” – none of which would have made my first 100 list.
[email protected]
March 15, 2019 at 8:24 amDenialism, however, is mutating rapidly into advocacy of magic mirrors in the atmosphere and while carbon capture tech seems likely to play a necessary part in any solution, big polluters deflect and trivialize before genuinely moving to depart from business as usual
Chris Golis
March 15, 2019 at 12:27 pmYou will probably delete this comment. However if you are a Marxist and believe in the Hegelian Dialectic of thesis-antithesis-synthesis you will leave it in. Indeed you would publish it as a separate article.
Why are we so focused on carbon dioxide?
I first learned about photosynthesis when I was 11 years old (1955). It is the process through which plants use water and carbon dioxide (CO2) to create their food, grow and release excess oxygen into the air. Animals use respiration during the act or process of breathing to inhale oxygen and the exhale carbon dioxide and water, When I then learned that that the earth’s atmosphere contained 21% Oxygen and 0.3% CO2 I used have nightmares. There was 70 times as much oxygen as carbon dioxide. My nightmare was that the level of CO2 in earth’s atmosphere would drop below the minimum level (0.15%) and all the plants would die. If you had said to me in 1955 that in 50 years governments would be legislating against the production of carbon dioxide I would have replied no government would be that stupid.
I then learned about greenhouse gases. According to the Department of the Environment and Energy the greenhouse effect is a natural process that warms the Earth’s surface. When the Sun’s energy reaches the Earth’s atmosphere, some of it is reflected back to space and the rest is absorbed and re-radiated by greenhouse gases. The absorbed energy warms the atmosphere and the surface of the Earth. This process maintains the Earth’s temperature at around 33 degrees Celsius warmer than it would otherwise be, allowing life on Earth to exist.
There are four main greenhouse gases: water vapour, carbon dioxide, , nitrous oxide, and methane. My problem is that when I search the internet to work out how much each greenhouse gas contributes to global warming, I keep getting the same answer, that water vapour is the major contributor to global warming at 95%. Carbon dioxide contributes 3.5%, nitrous oxide 1% and methane 0.5% of the greenhouse gas effect. So if you were really serious about global warming what you should be doing is trying to ban water vapour.
Finally for my sins I did an MBA at the London Business School 1971-1973. One of our lecturers was Professor Andrew Ehrenberg. There is a large research centre (the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute) at the University of South Australia that directly continues his work: https://www.marketingscience.info/. One of Professor Ehrenberg’s big messages during his consumer marketing lectures was that before you start making sweeping assumptions on limited data you should play around with the actual numbers and look at previous models.
For example let’s look at the numbers for carbon dioxide in the earth:
The mass of the atmosphere = 5.15 x 1018 kg
50 times more carbon is dissolved in the oceans.
The mass of the hydrosphere = 1.4 x 1021kg
Carbon Dioxide (CO2) since 1960 has increased from 320 ppm to 400ppm or 0.008%
This equals an increased mass of 4.1 x 1014kg of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Total mass of atmosphere + hydrosphere = 1.40055 x 1021 kg.
In numeric terms what the AGW hypothesis states is that an increase in mass of a trace gas equal to 3 millionths of the total mass of hydrosphere + atmosphere has caused a significant rise in the temperature of both. This is a ridiculous hypothesis. The rise must be caused by other factors. For example the sun is so large that about 1,300,000 planet Earths can fit inside of it. However everyone keeps focusing on CO2. Why?
Finally thanks to Online Opinion I finally know why. This article The sun dominates climate change appeared in the 7 March 2019 edition. The article clearly states that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the source of most people’s understanding about the field, was deliberately directed to study only the human causes of climate change. The sun (along with other non-man made variables) as a cause of climate change was explicitly excluded. And that is why all the focus is wrongly on carbon dioxide.
“When you’re a hammer everything looks like a nail.” If you are only allowed to talk about carbon dioxide, then carbon dioxide will be the root of all evil.
AR
March 20, 2019 at 11:50 pmHardly surprising – “…I did an MBA… “, ie a waste of space and a parasite on the biosphere.
GeoffThomas
March 21, 2019 at 4:02 pm“The Climate is always Changing, ” the neo liberal funded answer to all of us is a meaningless portentuous paradigm, you can equally say, ‘The Sun is always shining’ ‘the fish are always swimming’ it is portentous in that it implies something profound, whereas it actually gives no information at all, whereas “The world is getting slowly warmer every year” is not portentuous, it is a claim to fact, – verifiable or disputable, and is an entirely different level of communication from “The Climate is Always Changing”.
I think the above Crikey comments have sort of realised that, but hope putting it my way might help, as paradigms are an insult to our intelligence and should be pointed out as such to morrison and co.