The last few days has seen some of the worst fires in Australia’s recorded history. That’s in the South East of the country. Meanwhile in the north we’ve had extensive flooding. Not so well covered in the Australian media has been the snow storms enveloping the Northern hemisphere in places like the UK.

So is climate change the cause of these extreme weather events?

The ABC’s Lateline last night addressed this issue bringing in Professor David Karoly, a lead author in the for the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). According to Karoly, it’s hard to directly pin extreme weather events such as Hurricane Katrina and the recent ones in Australia on climate change. But the scientists are pretty certain climate change means more intense events, more often. He likened it to the rolling of a dice and the increased likelihood of our number coming up.

Here are some of the other key points from my digging around on this issue:

• Australia is the developed country most at risk from the effects of climate change.

• Even if we can turn climate change around it’s going to take some time to do – because we’re stuck with the greenhouse gases we’ve put up there for decades.

• Scientists have expected these kinds of effects from global warming but they say it’s happening faster than expected.

• Weather records have been broken recently by unexpectedly large margins e.g. Melbourne’s hottest day on record was broken this last week by almost a whole percent when normally records go by 0.2%.

• Records have been broken not just for highest temperature but also for the duration of the recent heatwave which preceded the fires.

• It’s not just hotter days, lower rainfall also means a drier landscape and increases the possibility of larger fire events.

• The scale of disasters is also increased by the fact there’s more people on the planet, and more people living in danger areas.

• Many people think global warming means small temperature increases. The reality is small changes in climate increase the likelihood of large changes in weather.

You’d think these disasters would be a wake up call.

A week ago two and a half thousand people encircled Australia’s Parliment House to demand we do more about global warming. There was not one article in the Sydney Morning Herald about the protest. Instead we got pages on the global financial crisis and the economic stimulus package.

I don’t think I can put it any better than Freya Mathews who did manage to get an opinion piece in the Herald today:

…. the consequences of climate change will make the financial crisis look like a garden party.

But when the embers die in rural Victoria and the next media story blows in, will we go back to business (or worrying about business) as usual?

Audio:
David Karoly discusses the role of climate change in Victoria’s bushfires (ABC Radio National)

Transcripts:
Quite fortuitously climate experts from around the world have gathered in Melbourne this week for a conference on global warming. The link below provides Lateline’s interviews with leading climate specialists Kevin Hennessy of the CSIRO and Andy Pitman from the Uni of NSW about extreme weather. Transcript of the interviews from the Melbourne extreme weather conference.

Here also is the transcript of the Lateline interview with Prof David Karoly, the Victorian Government’s chief climate change adviser.

Related articles:
Why global warming may be fuelling Australia’s fires (Time)
Australian fires a climate wake up call (Reuters)
Fires will increase in intensity as climate changes (Herald)
Records smashed – heatwave registered unprecedented highs (Herald)
An analysis of 2008 – a record year of extreme weather events (Herald)

Useful links:
Environmental Defense Fund site on extreme weather

Photos:
Sydney Morning Herald’s multi-media on the Victorian bushfires
Photos on flickr of the bushfires in Australia

More video:
Another video tracing emerging news on the fires in Victoria

Check out this video which reminds us how easy it is to make noises about climate change. But what about doing something about it?

Here in Australia the Rudd government initially talked up the importance of dealing with climate change but then committed to relatively small cuts in Greenhouse gas emissions.

Now a groundswell of community action groups are rallying to put pressure on the government to do more.

Two hundred community action groups from around the country are coming together in the nation’s capital Canberra for a climate action summit from 31 January to 3 February. The event will culminate in a peaceful protest at Parliment House on the 3rd. Word has it they intend to form a human chain around Parliment House. Tuesday the 3rd is the first sitting day of Parliment following the summer break, so you can expect this story to be all over the news then.

Useful links:
If you want more info or want to get involved in the Canberra protest, go to www.climatesummit.org.au. There’s also more in our events section.

Related articles:
Giving up on climate change? (Online Opinion)
Green groups damn paper on climate change (Sydney Morning Herald)

Video credit:
Time to Lead! (Time to Lead is a collaborative campaign from the Climate Action Network, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and WWF in Europe.)

Here’s a Christmas present. Check out the trailer to this interesting documentary about Christmas Lights (and why people do it.)

Video:
Christmas Lights documentary trailer. The film is on the ABC tonight at 10pm.

Related story:
Our recent post Christmas Month v. Earth Hour has more on the energy irony of it all.

Merry Christmas. See you in the new year.

Audio:
Have a listen to our Christmas lights podcast. In it we hear from people with ‘over-the-top’ Christmas lights on their houses to find out why they’ve done it.

It seems pretty obvious the root of our environmental problems comes back to one key thing – consumption. And there’s one time of year when it really hits you in the face – Christmas.

Mostly I’ve stayed clear of the shopping centres myself, but one thing you can’t avoid is Christmas lights. Every year there seem to be more houses getting into it. And every year they seem to be more over-the-top.

It got me thinking – how does this stack up against Earth Hour? If Earth Hour is meant to be a symbol people do care about the planet – by switching their lights off for an hour, what does that make the whole month of December? A time when not only do people festoon their houses with Christmas lights, consumption is well and truly king.

Television:
The film clip in our podcast is from the documentary ‘Christmas Lights’. It premiers Wednesday 24 2008, 8.05pm on ABC2 and Thursday 25 December 2008, 10.05pm on ABC1.

Video:
Click this link for more over-the-top Christmas lights video – this house is brilliantly synchronised to music. But wait there’s more … ‘OTT’ video. (This house got the same idea.)

And don’t forget not long til the official Energy Wasting Day! (1st April.)

More photos and where to see more Christmas lights:
Click these links for more photos and locations of houses with over-the-top lights in Sydney – from our learned colleagues at The Telegraph and 2GB.

Archie and my big Christmas lights adventure was to Matraville. The shot below is a house complete with Sydney landmarks in Franklin Street. Nearby Barwon Cresent is a mind explosion (for kids) of lights on every house. You should also check out – Hodge Street, Hurstville.

I’m sure there’s plenty more near you.

Merry global warmed Christmas.

Snow is looking increasingly unlikely for Sydney.

This last photo and the first (feature) photo courtesy of Screen Australia.

A new documentary called ‘The Future Makers’ shows how the answers to our environmental problems are there in nature itself. It includes renewable energy innovations in solar, wave and geothermal. And discusses the application of biomimicry.

Video:
You can view here the The Future Makers documentary trailer.

(If you’re a YouTube fan you can find it on The Environment Show’s YouTube channel. It’s also on The Environment Show’s Current TV Channel.)

Television:
The documentary airs on the Discovery Channel on Boxing Day 26th December.

Useful links:
The Future Makers film website and news.
Review in G magazine.
Discussion in Sydney Morning Herald article ‘It’s the ultimate hottie’.

2008 – a not so hot year compared to the last few, but ….. it looks like the only way is up! This is the global temperature trend since the industrial revolution.

Maybe we’re so used to hearing about global warming, the 7th warmest year on record doesn’t sound so bad. But remember most of the other warmest years have all occurred since 1998 – as you can see in the chart above.

These figures have been compiled and were released yesterday by NASA’s Goddard Institute and the World Meterological Organisation.

According to James E Hansen of the Goddard Institute, we’re building a blanket of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere which will take a long time to turn around. Hansen is a campaigner for immediate and significant cuts in emissions. Otherwise he says we run the risk of the Earth becoming “a different planet” from the one humans have experienced for thousands of years. (Source: The New York Times ‘Dot Earth’ blog.)

Hansen is the guy who testified before the US Congress 20 years ago and explained that the world was heading toward dangerous climate change and we needed to do something about it.

Video:
And what response have we had from politicians since 1988? This Greenpeace TV commercial sums up two decades of our leaders leading on climate change.

Here’s a short ABC news story on the outspoken James Hansen.

And check out this more detailed doco from the PBS TV network in the US Frontline: ‘Global warming – is it getting warmer?’ Yes, the science is in, but there’s still skeptics. (Not sure the IPCC has convinced Barnaby Joyce.)

Recent related articles:
Glut of hot years a coincidence? Fat chance (New Scientist)
‘Believe it or not, this was the tenth hottest year (in the UK)’ (The Independent).
2008 colder than previous years but world still warming (Yahoo Green)

And we have these videos from the Garnaut Forum. In fact you can even rate what he has to say. In this video, the good professor lashes out at the sceptics (in his own gentile way):

Here’s what Ross said when asked why Australia should act when other countries aren’t:

And here’s what Professor Garnaut had to say about compensating the coal industry:

Paul Watson is a man on a mission. He has played a leading role in alerting the world to what he calls the illegal actvities of Japanese whalers. In 2007 I spoke by satellite phone to Paul in the Antarctic, the day after his ship the Farley Mowatt had chased down and collided with a Japanese whaling vessel. Click on the link above to play this podcast.

Following is a link to an emotive video posted by Watson’s organisation Sea Shepherd on YouTube. It explains where he’s coming from:

Wikipedia sums up some opposing views on Watson:

“Paul Watson has been denounced as an ecoterrorist. Some former colleagues in Greenpeace have distanced themselves from him. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Jim Bohlen, one of the founders of Greenpeace, said: ‘I’ve known the guy for 15 years, and he’s absolutely insane’.”

“Thus far, all attempts at prosecuting Watson have failed. Watson defends his actions as falling within international law and Sea Shepherd’s right to enforce maritime regulations against illegal whalers.”

What’s the latest? Well, the new Rudd government in Australia appears to be taking Watson’s outcries more seriously, recently sending a large Australian Customs vessel to monitor the Japanese whalers and gather evidence which may be used in international courts against them.

There’s more on the new Australian government’s stance in this ABC story just prior to Christmas. Click here.

Expect to see Paul’s ship tangling again with the Japanese on a TV screen near you. They’re down there now. How he finds them, I don’t know. Next interview.

Actually, I do have a Commerce degree, and I have worked in the corporate world, but this commercial is pretty good and pretty telling.

But it doesn’t have to be like this. If business worked more like nature (in a cyclical instead of linear way), we’d all be better off. Check out the ‘Ecology of Commerce’ by Paul Hawken for more detail on how and why. And there are businesses which are right now learning from nature. Interface Carpets is probably the most well known.

I intend to feature this kind of new entrepreneurship on The Show this year.

Late last year the Australian government gave the go-ahead to building what will be one of the Southern Hemisphere’s largest pulp mills. The Gunns Pulp Miill is planned for the state of Tasmania, the scene of many epic environmental battles due to its pristine nature. Prior to the recent election, both major parties in Australia supported the mill.

The previous Environment Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, emphasized his decision to approve the mill was based on science. What the minister didn’t emphasize was the limited terms of reference of the review by the Commonwealth’s Chief Scientist.

His review concentrated on threatened and migratory animal species and the effect on marine environment. According to critics such as The Wilderness Society, important issues remain untested. These include the impact of the mill on Tasmania’s wild forests (the source of timber for the mill), emissions from the plant and the impact of the mill on local business. And many still have doubts about the mill’s effect on the marine environment

Following is a link to the video ‘Pulp Friction’ which was posted on YouTube. It attempts to address both sides of the argument.

And this is a link to The Wilderness Society video on Gunns, also on YouTube:

All of which begs the question, what will the new environment minister do? (For our international readers, that’s the bald bloke who formerly fronted the band Midnight Oil.) Peter Garrett ‘played the game’ during the recent federal election in order to win power, but now he’s there what will he do with it? The Gunns story has gone quiet now the election is over, but for how long?

Phil Stubbs spoke to Matt Dever from Emit Environmental Brokers to find out.

For a fuller explanation, I’ve added this link to a video interview with Dr Andrew Sentance who was formerly the Head of Environment for British Airways. It was produced by Warwick iCAST and can be found on YouTube.

And for more on the European carbon trading system (which is well down the track), there’s a link below to a video prepared by European channel EUX.TVand loaded to YouTube.

Above is a link to a great video on YouTube. It provides a good, simple explanation of how and why old-fashioned commerce is damaging the planet. (Part 1 is first up. Click on the ‘menu’ to bring up the other parts after that. Each is a few minutes long.)

What’s the answer? Bring on the second (smarter) industrial revolution where business works in a cyclical way like nature. More on this idea in Hawken’s book ‘The Ecology of Commerce’.

Cities like Austin have been making some of the most progressive changes in the US. The action of these cities in Texas and states like California shows the other side of the U.S. coin. And they show there’s plenty more Australian cities could be doing.

Following is a link to a news story by Aljazeera which has been posted to YouTube.