Essay by Eric Worrall
Michael Mann appears to have mistaken a left wing electoral cycle maximum for a hockey stick.
Australia’s climate battle has moved on – leaving deniers behind
Michael Mann
at 8 Apr 2023 01.00 AESTNotwithstanding some absurd outbursts from the fringe, the fight is now over what form climate change action should take.
I departed Australia three years ago, cutting my sabbatical short as Covid-19 spread and lockdowns ensued. I had just lived through Black Summer, a climate change-fueled disaster marked by unprecedented heat, withering drought and destructive and deadly bushfires. Though I had come to Australia to research the impacts of climate change on extreme weather events, it instead became my lived experience.
The governing Coalition had left a trail of death and destruction, both figuratively and literally. Thousands of homes were destroyed, dozens of lives lost, 24 million hectares burned, and Australia was shunned from an international climate summit over the then prime minister Scott Morrison’s climate intransigence. Meanwhile, the rightwing Murdoch media machine continued to spew climate disinformation, cynically blaming the devastation on arson and “back-burning”. Things appeared pretty bleak. Yet at the same time, I sensed that something had changed.
…
The good news? After nearly a decade, Australia once again has a meaningful climate policy, after ongoing and somewhat heated negotiations between the Albanese government and the Greens. One can quibble over whether it goes far enough. But Greens leader Adam Bandt put it this way: “To everyone who is despairing about the future and wants real climate action, today you should have a spring in your step, because it shows we can take on the coal and gas corporations and win.”
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/08/australias-climate-battle-has-moved-on-leaving-deniers-behind
As we approach the one year anniversary of the left wing Albanese victory, with Albanese riding high on a recent stunning by-election win, it is understandable that Mann is getting excited by a short subset of available data.
But history teaches caution. Kevin Rudd rode to victory on a large wave of support in 2007, with promises of solving the climate crisis. But a series of economic and political missteps led to him losing his leadership role in 2010, briefly regaining it in 2013, only to be wiped out in 2013 by conservative climate skeptic Tony Abbott.
Will Albanese go the same way as Rudd? Sadly it is possible he will win a second term. The Conservative opposition in Australia is deeply fractured thanks to reckless attempts by mainstream conservative Liberal and National Party leaders to swing too far to the left, such as their unconvincing embrace of Net Zero, just before the last federal election.
Conservatives will eventually regroup, and Albanese will stumble. There are already storm clouds on Albanese’s horizon in the form of looming energy shortages. Sooner or later these problems will substantially impact the lives of ordinary Australians.
Aussie voters are no different to other countries, when we feel economic pain, lose our jobs, or suffer housing insecurity, we lash out at whoever is in charge.
When the pendulum finally swings back to the right, we can all look forward to reading tiresome essays from Mann about what a missed opportunity the Albanese years were.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
If Michael Mann were right its really a sad day for us Australians.
After at least 36 Royal Commissions on the aftermath of catastrophic fires we are still not doing litter clearing of our forests and pattern burning.
I look around and see lots of solar panels all due to decay as power sources which have no effect on bushfires and in no way stay the decisions of the world leaders who have decided climate change is inevitable and we are not the primary cause.
These at least are the BRICS countries that keep on pumping oil,or Biden who just opened Alaska to oil as well as a huge tract in the Gulf, by their actions.
At home in Aus some of the adults in the room have worked out a path to forest clearing against bushfires which inevitably follow the El Ninos.
https://www.usc.edu.au/about/unisc-news/news-archive/2023/february/cultural-burns-can-help-protect-koalas-new-research
So if its good enough for Koalas it is good enough for us.
You cannot deny the cultural heritage passed on to us by the indigenous, be they Australian or Canadian.
Michael Mann has clearly a problem with interpersonal relationships.
This can only be hardened by the derogatory comments about him on this site today.
The problem for those who believe Australia is heading for Catastrophe brings to mind a recent post on this site about the Australian experience over geological time
“‘you [ have] got no understanding of the temperature variation over the last 10k years? 1850 was chosen because it was the coldest period in the last 10k years. So we are now 1 degree above the coldest period in the lasts 10k years and 2 degrees below the hottest period. Man, such as for example the Australian Aborigine , lived through the whole period and they say +50k years before that, when it was 6 degrees above what it is now. We are still recovering from the last glacial period when the sea was 100m lower than now as proven by aboriginal middens found 30k to the east of Australia. That survived all of that with only fire and furs. And you talk of catastrophe? Are you completely mad?’ “
Ask the Mann why it is that in 2022/3 Australia has had one of its coldest wettest years, even though CO2 was 6 ppm or more higher than it was when he was here and he had droughts and fires?
He clearly believed Professor Flannery, our government appointed Climate Commissioner who predicted that our dams would never fill because of drought brought on by ‘climate change’.
However the data never supported that.
https://www.waternsw.com.au/nsw-dams
Some belief systems are supported when one sees a small community like Australia manage to write the ‘longest economic suicide note in history’. McCann
But as we are always told, there are outliers in every data set.
“Though I had come to Australia to research the impacts of climate change on extreme weather events, it instead became my lived experience.” He experienced one year of weather and thought it was climate?
“Meanwhile, the rightwing Murdoch media machine continued to spew climate disinformation, cynically blaming the devastation on arson and “back-burning”.”
Perhaps he doesn’t know humans cause about 90% of fires. Climate change doesn’t light fires.
“I had just lived through Black Summer, a climate change-fueled disaster marked by unprecedented heat, withering drought and destructive and deadly bushfires”
What will the climate cultists say when the western world is blanketed with solar PV and wind turbines, the FF industry largely destroyed, and there is still – drought, flood, storm and fire with sadly human casualties as a result?
Hmm, what’s the betting that they will say, “Oh dear, too little too late, Saint Greta warned you all: now she is taking revenge from the right hand of Lord Gore!”?
It’s not often that I agree with Tim Flannery, but let’s face it: very few people are wrong all the time (Michael Mann, and ???)”
“Flannery writes that “The use of fire by Aboriginal people was so widespread and constant that virtually every early explorer in Australia makes mention of it. It was Aboriginal fire that prompted James Cook to call Australia ‘This continent of smoke’.” However, he goes on to say: “When control was wrested from the Aborigines and placed in the hands of Europeans, disaster resulted.” Fire suppression became the dominant paradigm in fire management leading to a significant shift away from traditional burning practices. A 2001 study found that the disruption of traditional burning practices and the introduction of unrestrained logging meant that many areas of Australia were now prone to extensive wildfires especially in the dry season. A similar study in 2017 found that the removal of mature trees by Europeans since they began to settle in Australia may have triggered extensive shrub regeneration which presents a much greater fire fuel hazard.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushfires_in_Australia
I wonder where and when this unrestricted logging was? It certainly wasn’t in the State Forestry areas which were logged in much of the 20th century. Scrubby regrowth is useful for neither timber cutters nor graziers.
State forests had an extensive network of fire roads and logging roads, along with management of regrowth to ensure a continuing supply of suitable timber.
There was scrubby regrowth in the NSW Western Division after the introduction of many mandates which severely limited the ability of landholders to implement control measures.
BTW, only the Tropics really have a Dry Season. The rest of the country has seasonal rainfall, but with much less variability.
question- if a solar “farm” is built in a shrub area- and a big fire occurs and gets into the solar “farm”- will the solar panels burn or melt and/or emit toxic pollution?
That was a rhetorical question, wasn’t it?
I suppose- my point was- why the hell will anyone build in such areas? I suppose it happens- just want to know why.
I don’t think they do build them in scrubby areas to any extent. They seem to be in farming areas, surrounded by wheat, canola, etc crops which only grow waist-high, and where the neighbours have an incentive to keep vegetation low.
They also have a strong incentive to not have fires, though a post-harvest stubble fire is much less of a concern.
With stubble-retention and low-till farming methods, the post-harvest stubble burn-offs are far less common than they used to be. It might be interesting if the use of glyphosate is restricted and people have to go back to post-harvest burns and more frequent cultivation. The smoke and dust would throw a spanner in the photovoltaic works.
From the same Wikipedia article, referring to the 1938-39 Black Friday fires in Victoria
Almost every enquiry into subsequent major fires has made the same recommendations, which have almost invariably been honoured in the breach, or at best with half-hearted compliance for a handful of years.
Looking at the NASA definition of weather v climate. Begs, the question, does Mann know or understand the difference between a short and long period of time?
It’s good news and bad news.
It’s bad new that Mann scrapes a few more tedious seconds of his fifteen minutes of fame.
It’s great news that it is Mann, he hasn’t been right in public since before 2009.
It’s what is known as a well known loser, losing it again.