Australia is burning

Fires in East and Far East Gippsland and the high country exploded on Monday. We were warned.

Some people who I thought would have known better were sceptical of the warning from Emergency Services to leave Far East Gippsland. After all, it's a huge area, was jam-packed with holiday-makers, and it's on the coast (water puts out fire, right?). They may have neglected to factor in a number of things:

Season's greetings to all

A short, sweet and old-fashioned greeting to everyone.

I'm sorry I've not been blogging much this past couple of years, but fear not (or fear, depending who you are), I shall return in 2020.

Here is a picture of my most Christmas-y plant - Little John Callistemon, which keeps getting better and better each year and thrives on very light pruning and general neglect.

And another, this time a snapshot of the next door neighbours' decorations. They have been entertaining the local children (large and small) and raising money for local charities for decades and continue to do so despite the fact that Santa suffered a stroke some time ago, which has been quite debilitating for him. The photo doesn't do justice to the lights, which look amazing. Santa's daughter made the kangaroos :)

Happy holidays wherever and whoever you are, especially to all the courageous men and women fighting fires around the country and not forgetting all the people supporting them.

Stay safe.

Fires - follow your plan but expect the unexpected

From Mount Beauty Dec 2006

The fires across Australia this year are horrific. Because the smoke is inundating the biggest capital city (not good), people are taking notice (which is good). The fires this season are probably vying for the worst ever experienced in this country. There will be worse to come with more global warming, so it's important to be prepared.

I expect there are a lot of people who've never had an up close and personal experience with fires or smoke, so I figured I'd put some thoughts down from my own experience. I'm not a fire expert but I've been through a few huge fires in my time, including three big ones this century. (If you've got better or different advice, based on your knowledge and experience, don't hesitate to say in the comments below.)

G'Day - Not today, mate!

Australia's politicians from the Liberal, National and Labor parties all vow that now isn't the right time to talk about climate change.

Soon there'll be not the tiniest gap between the droughts, fires, heat waves and floods so they'll be saved from ever having to talk about climate change and what they aren't doing about it.

Courtesy of Australia's national broadcaster:

During the #bushfire crisis, many politicians have been hesitant to answer questions about climate change. But now, there's a new program more willing to accommodate their unwillingness to address the issue. #NotToday. #abc730 @markhumphries @evanwilliams @jonocoleman #auspol pic.twitter.com/8E16QmYewK

— abc730 (@abc730) November 14, 2019

If you're wondering about some of the references, here's a guide:

• Karl Stefanovic - I don't know who he is (I don't watch television). I gather he's some tv host who's changed time slots or channels or something. You'll have to Google him if you're interested.
• Dr Karl - is a popular Australian science lover who is in turn loved by many.
• Quiet Australians - our Prime Minister Scott Morrison wants to silence any Australians who speak. He only want's to listen to "quiet Australians" because they say nothing, don't make his head hurt and don't interrupt him when he's singing in tongues to his god.

If only Scott Morrison would stop telling his god what to do and start listening to what his god's been telling him for the past few years: Millennium Drought, Canberra fires, Black Saturday fires, Alpine fires, big wets and big dries, dead fish, dried up rivers, towns out of water - and all the other weather catastrophes this century including the current ones.

To fly or not? Fashion, peer pressure and societal impacts

I don't think I've previously written about flight shame or flight shaming or whatever you want to call it and I see it occupies the minds of many people. So here are some random thoughts on the subject.

There are a lot of issues bound up in this. I'm not advocating anything one way or another. What an individual does to reduce their personal carbon footprint is their own decision. It's worth saying that multiple personal decisions can eventually add up to societal change. Also worth noting there is a lot of peer pressure involved, with some people arguing that flying is hypocritical or anti-social or whatever. This pressure can become a force for societal change as happened with smoking tobacco, sun-bathing, littering, recycling and other behaviours and attitudes over the years.

Climate scientists - respect, but don't be afraid of policy

There has been some discussion in the Twittersphere about how or whether climate scientists should wade in on climate policy. I'm guessing that this is of most concern to early to mid-career scientists and/or academics who have not had much, if any, exposure to policy development. Some scientists at a senior level do get involved in providing policy input and advice, either through advancement (e.g. job promotion in a government agency) or by being co-opted onto one or more government advisory committees (e.g. senior academics).

Thought I'd add my two bobs worth since I've had some experience in the policy area.

The tweet that started the thread was from climate scientist Kate Marvel (and another here).

Asking climate scientists about climate policy is like asking a plumber to build a house. You definitely need them involved, but you’re probably going to need more expertise than that

— Kate Marvel (@DrKateMarvel) November 7, 2019

It's time to pull the plug on our long-running CO2 experiment

In the last 140 years or so, humans have added almost 1,000,000,000,000 tonnes of CO2 to the air (equivalent), or 1,000 billion tonnes. It would have been more except for oceans and land absorbing around half of it.

We are adding a lot of CO2 to the air

This leads me to talk about one of the many misconceptions thrown around by climate disinformers. Some deniers wrongly claim our CO2 emissions add little to atmospheric CO2. How they could ever think that is a mystery. It's not a secret that CO2 is a product of burning hydrocarbons. (Some are very confused, mixing up various numbers they've heard and tossing them back together in strange and wrong patchwork.)

Denier quote of the day: Why should I waste 24 minutes..(learning climate)

The Twitter conversations I've written about before is giving more insight into the denial crowd. The bots and trolls are ramping up as the US election campaign gears up. (It goes on forever, doesn't it. The election is still more than a year away.) Among the bots there are some real people. One of them was happy to summarise the denier's stance.

I wouldn't devote even 24 minutes to learn science

Someone put up a chart purporting to show CO2 and temperature going back 4.5 billion years. I doubt the person tweeting it understood it. They said they got the picture from another denier called Nasif Nahle, who even put a copyright on it! It didn't matter. According to deniers, the tweet was from an acceptable denier so it must mean the greenhouse effect is a hoax.

Do your bit - help with a survey of climate blog readers

How about helping out some researchers by taking a survey of climate blog readers. It's for a project being done jointly by researchers at Cambridge University and Wageningen University. The results will be made available to me and every one who completes the survey so, with luck, we all might learn something and HotWhopper could be better for it. And before you ask, it has ethics approval and yes, the survey is anonymous, responses confidential etc etc.

It'll only take up to about 10 minutes or so. If you start and get interrupted, I'm told you can save where you're up to and finish it later.

So don't hold back - go for it. It's in a very good cause.

Sou.
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A short primer on global energy flows, for the twitter deniers

Energy balancing when no forcing

There have been two or three people on the climate denial conversation on Twitter who cannot conceptualise global energy flows. Remember, almost all the deniers in this particular conversation are greenhouse effect deniers who don't "believe" physics and chemistry. Nonetheless they've discovered a wonky diagram in the deniosphere somewhere and have asked how it works. The short answer is, it doesn't. Not the way it's portrayed in their diagram.

Dr Kevin Trenberth has kindly allowed me to publish this updated global energy flow schematic, which is about to be published. (I'll post the doi when it is available.) Here it is, with an explanation below: