<
https://reneweconomy.com.au/dutton-brings-back-old-school-climate-denial-in-second-leaders-debate/>
"In a campaign where Coaltion leader Peter Dutton’s fate seems tied to his
closeness to broadly hated figures like Donald Trump and Tony Abbott, it is
weird and confusing that at every single possible opportunity Dutton seems to
actively double and triple down on those connections.
On Wednesday, in the second leaders’ debate, Dutton decided to throw out a
statement that there isn’t enough information to say for sure whether or not
the burning of fossil fuels is impacting extreme weather events in Australia.
He cited recent floods in Thargomindah in Queensland as an example of where
increasingly severity and frequency of wild disasters can be shrugged off as a
mystery.
“I don’t know, David (moderator David Spiers) because I’m not a scientist and I
can’t tell you whether the temperature has risen in Thargomindah as a result of
climate change or that the water levels are up in Thargomindah’s latest flood
as a result of climate change,” Dutton said.
“I think the honest answer for most people is that they don’t know and there
are scientists who can provide advice”.
Just so it’s absolutely clear here: The temperatures in Thargomindah have
absolutely risen due primarily to the impact of coal, oil and gas on Earth’s
atmosphere (along with large-scale agriculture and the destruction of
vegetation). The Copernicus ERA5 explorer shows a recent historical temperature
record for the region and it’s pretty blatant.
Rainfall, floods and storms are notably more complex phenomena and so it’s
tougher to create a nice chart of the signal without the noise. But there is
essentially no doubt that a hotter atmosphere results in a warmer and wetter
atmosphere, filled with much more energy and dumping greater volumes of water
when it does storm."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
