BPSDB When I went to Google News this morning the “Top Stories” are about some skiers and the beginning of the Federal election campaign.
Only much lower down do I find anything about floods in Australia and Sri Lanka, or mudslides in Brazil.
Apparently there is nothing new about climate change here in the Industrialized West. In the Anthropocene (era of human dominated biosphere) disasters of epic proportions are not “news.”
“The cost of cutting back emissions is more than we estimated, but that is because the consequences of climate change are already here.” Nicholas Stern
Just over one year ago Australian blogger MothIncarnate posted his first piece “Business as Usual; The Dead Horse and Juggernaut of Climate Change.” An area of Queensland the size of France and Germany combined is flooded; the Juggernaut has arrived.
As people die or lose everything they have, the climate change Deniers want to quibble semantics. The flooding is exactly what was predicted and is completely consistent with climate science, but can we categorically say that it has been caused by climate change?
“It’s not the right question to ask if this storm or that storm is due to global warming, or is it natural variability. Nowadays, there’s always an element of both.” Trenberth
No we can’t, and it’s as irrelevant as quibbling whether specifically Uncle Harry’s cancer was caused by smoking (or if that can be shown, then quibble about exactly which cigarette caused it). Scientists can and should continue to seek to understand just how climate and weather extremes are linked, but the rest of us need to deal with the reality that they are.
Media connects the dots about “wild weather” in Australia, Brasil, and more
I want to draw your attention to some of our friends in the affected areas and let them tell you about what is really going on in the world:
Hot Topic
Sou from Bundangawoolarangeera
Victoria Australia, closed till further notice due to flooding
Help the Victorian flood victims, and those in Tasmania and NSW and WA
GOMMs – ideas for helping out after the Queensland floods
Watching the Deniers
ABC (USA) reports on flooding and climate change: must watch segment
Victorian floods; highest rainfall recorded in 40 stations; towns evacuated; 17,000 without power
Brisbane is going under (part 2): how the city may flood; if you can, please give
HUN War on Science: Andrew Bolt, lying about Queensland floods
Even the gods were afraid: a flood of truly “Biblical” proportions
Scenes from a disaster: Brisbane, January 2011
Brisbane is going under: city centre evacuated, thousands of properties at risk
Australia’s “Katrina”: this is what I feared…Queensland drowning, dozens missing feared dead
After a year of battling the Denialosphere MothIncarnate wants to move on to a new blog that will “provide a new positive spin” so that “… my grandchild can be left a world that is as full of wonder as that I knew …” Maybe these disasters will be a wake up call that makes that future possible, at least for these regions.
My thoughts and wishes are with him and all the peoples of Australia, Brazil, Sri Lanka, and all of the other front lines of the climate change issue.
“A global catastrophe can serve many purposes. One of them is to provide an alibi when God asks: And where were you, Adam? —I was in the war.“
—Theodor Hacker, Tag und Nachtbucher, March 31, 1940
We give our consent every moment that we do not resist.
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Greenfyre's 
Cheers for the plug!
I’d argue that the juggernaut was here and obvious since 2009 – with the Vic bushfires, the severe and prolonged Aust drought, the topsoil dust cloud that turned much of the east coast of Aust red and then the bizarre weather that captured the news throughout 2010 (well, as you suggest – to the bottom of the list unless it was a snow storm seeing as deniers don’t seem to understand winter still occurs).
If anything, I’m returning to my original goal – ACC is beyond reasonable doubt (and a pointless discussion when we factor in all the related issues). The best topic is to ask how we can best change our activities to insure we can improve our standard of living whilst meeting these challenges,
WtD has done a lot of excellent work on the subject on the subject of denial, as has you and S2 here!
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Thanks for this. I’d like to let your readers know that the evidence of climate change is not merely anecdotal. Scientific research studies on climate change in Australia are coming in. That is, studies showing evidence of how Australia is having shifts in climate and more hot and wet extremes as a result of human-caused climate change, and just how much change is happening.
Here is a link to an article yesterday in the Melbourne daily newspaper, The Age, referring to a paper in J Climate by Dr Ailie Gallant and Prof David Karoly:
http://www.theage.com.au/environment/weather/more-of-australia-getting-hot-and-wet-extremes-20110115-19rj7.html
And here is the link to the article (paywalled, but maybe avail if your local library subscribes):
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2010JCLI3791.1
As Hot Topic‘s Gareth said, “The laws of physics are not susceptible to rhetoric.” I’m still amazed that some people still argue with a straight face that ‘global warming is a hoax because it violates the US Constitution!’ or ‘global warming is a hoax because it goes against economic theory!’
— frank
The deniers’ misuse of ‘specific instances can’t be specifically causally linked’ has been driving me nuts.
It’s somewhat like someone who has been examined at the hospital and found to have multiple fractures and trauma due to years of assaults, who has provided evidence to the police who then laid a charge leading to conviction in court based on the overwhelming strength of the physical evidence and also the testimony of many witnesses, all of whom identified the same perpetrator, going for help and having to prove to a helper that the shoulder pain the particular day they are seen is related to a past assault rather than to unrelated arthritis or sleeping the wrong way or some other normal cause of body aches, in order to get some help for themselves and their family.
And by the way… does anyone actually think this abuser is likely to hold up their hand and say, ‘yes, I did it’ — even when confronted with all the evidence known to others?
Honest to God. 😦
Stop protecting abusers, people, and start caring about victims.
Going now to Sou’s links…
I also appreciate the update from Moth on his overall thoughts and direction– I’ve been a reader and will continue to be. Thank you much, Moth!
Thanks Martha!
Always good to know my work’s been enjoyable!
Has anyone seen the article on Joule Technologies in the Globe and Mail this morning? “A Brave New World of Fossil Fuels On Demand” sounds too good to be true.
To add a little more weight to the overall extremity of the rains in eastern Australia this year, northern Tasmanians are currently experiencing near (and in some cases, actual) record-breaking floods:
http://au.news.yahoo.com/local/tas/a/-/local/9077978/launceston-on-floodwatch-as-waters-rise/
For those unfamiliar, compare the image above with the usual flow:
See also:
http://au.news.yahoo.com/local/tas/a/-/local/9078277/launceston-suburbs-under-flood-threat/
http://au.news.yahoo.com/local/tas/a/-/local/9076754/longford-floodwaters-slowing/