Australia’s hottest day on record

Denial of resources thanks to denial of debate in the parliament.

> If I understand correctly, the current Australian government does not believe in human caused climate change but still enjoys domestic support from voters. Is that changing?

Not really. The governments strategy is currently to isolate and intimidate the concerned (scare campaigns, proposal of laws to outlaw "environmental protest terrorism"), whilst repeatedly telling the rest of the country: "we're fine", "we're doing our bit", "the problem doesn't exist" and "we can't survive without coal".

Also, both major parties here (in particular the conservatives) are beholden to the incredibly powerful mining lobby. The current PM held up a piece of coal in parliament as a prop and told the opposition not to be scared of it, for example. We did once actually have a functional carbon tax, but it got completely destroyed once the party that brought it in lost, in no small part due to the major offensive brought on by the mining lobby that secured their defeat.

There's an incredible political incentive to minimise any links to climate change, and to not do anything that impacts the mining industry's profit margins. I don't really hold any hopes that we'll see structural change in either the political sphere. Additionally, it's my opinion that given Australia's incredible run of prosperity in so many ways, many (most?) voters here have become very insular, selfish and self-serving in their attitudes, and ignore externalised/delayed-impact issues such as climate change in a large way.

You're right in that the polls got it wrong, and everyone (including arguably the current government) thought the conservatives were done for.

But the end results, iirc, were 77 seats for the conservatives, 68 seats labor. A one seat gain from the previous election for the conservatives and a one seat loss for labor, with a total swing of just over 1% in the two party preferred vote.

For context, a party needs 76 seats to form government.

I feel it's more accurate to say our country remains quite polarised.

For the record - only in Western Europe - due to changes in circulation patterns. Central and Eastern Europe had rather cool summer and records from beggining of XX century still stand.

Nuclear is going to have to be a discussion topic for the world, me thinks, but the Aussies are only ~27 million people spread across a sunnny continent -- they might be able to swing solar + tesla batteries for some time.

And it's unlikely we will ever find out, because it's so expensive compared to the alternatives. If nuclear had of delivered on its promise of "too cheap to meter", my bet is the things would be all over the planet like a rash how - rather like wind turbines are today, squawking nimby's be damned.

https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/30602

At the end of the last ice age, during the large scale melting, there was a great North American lake formed of melt water, held back by glaciers. When that finally melted into the Atlantic, enough freshwater was dumped to turn off the thermo haline circulation (inc Gulf Stream). Europe tipped into another mini ice age, as the whole globe warmed.

I think what most people have trouble realizing is that global warming indeed is a chaotic shift in many weather patterns and only overall average is rising. Ie it might just rain more during summer due to changed water circulation, which will take average yearly temperature down. Most people equate global warming with less snow during winter and heat waves in the summer and imagine it as a equal rise of say +2 all over the place, spread over whole year.

Part of the problem is that a decade before I was born, enough newspapers breathlessly reported “scientists” “predicting” “a new ice age”. Despite the fact those headlines misrepresented the scientific consensus of the time so badly that it’s appropriate for me to put all those scare quotes in that sentence, the meme remains potent.