China's CO2 emissions down 25% due to coronavirus. Yay? →

From Lauri Myllyvirta at CarbonBrief:

“All told, the measures to contain coronavirus have resulted in reductions of 15% to 40% in output across key industrial sectors. This is likely to have wiped out a quarter or more of the country’s CO2 emissions over the past two weeks, the period when activity would normally have resumed after the Chinese new-year holiday”.

Lauri’s article is an excellent fact-filled analysis—read it in full here.

But how much is “a quarter” of China’s CO2 emissions?

“Over the same period in 2019, China released around 400m tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2), meaning the virus could have cut global emissions by 100MtCO2 to date.

So that’s 100 million tonnes, or 100 billion kg of CO2, in a two-week period.

100 000 000 000 kg.

It’s a lot. That’s around 200 kg less per square km of the planet.

If only the Australian bushfires hadn’t released 900 million tonnes of CO2, the planet would be having a good year.

China would therefore need (900/100 x 2) = 18 weeks like this to balance out the extra Australian CO2.

Based on how things are going, this is possible. And coronavirus is now hitting parts of Europe (Italy) and other parts of Asia (South Korea), so this should also lower CO2 emissions in a more planetary way.

Another crazy fact out of China: on average more than 3000 domestic flights cancelled per day between 23 January and 18 February! That’s a lot of planes not flying. Plus all the cancelled flights to and from China.

Lauri estimates that total aviation emissions have dropped by 11% over the past two weeks:

Airlines all around the world are currently freaking out because their profits will be smaller than expected.

So sad.

In any case, China will be looking to ramp up industry once the scare has blown over, with the risk of cancelling out all these “saved” CO2 emissions.

Because using the coronavirus scare as a planetary wake-up call would be too much to ask for.

I mean, Jonny still needs those plastic toys, right? And Mummy and Daddy’s new 2020 iPhones are already a primal urge waiting to be satisfied, deep in their souls.

I think it’s group hug in a forest time.

Bye for now.

[Cover photo credit: Kham/Reuters]

Mike Hosking and the Muppet Show →

New Zealand has a right-leaning clickbait muppet called Mike Hosking.

He mostly appeals to old white people.

He’s on the radio and writes reactionary vomit-in-your-own-mouth columns for the NZ Herald newspaper. The Herald’s online articles are mostly behind a paywall. Mike’s drivel usually isn’t—it’s main goal is to drive the clicks, sell some ads, empty some brains. (also the slogan of the NZ Herald by the way: ‘Empty some brains’, but I digress)

When it comes to climate change, he’s one of those odious types that rarely comes out and directly denies it’s happening. Instead he denies that it will overly bother humanity*:

“Bad news. I’m afraid the IPCC – the International Panel on Climate Change – has issued its latest report. It’s 2,600 pages long and spans 32 volumes. But I can sum it up for you. Ah, we’re stuffed. The seas are rising, the storms are coming, the locusts are close, we are going to climatic hell in a handcart. That’s of course, if you believe them. Which, as it turns out, I don’t”.

Yesterday he was at it again, in a piece entitled, ‘We need to face up to the growing threat of climate change’.

Oops. I read that wrong.

The actual title was, ‘We need to face up to growing insurance threat’.

My bad.

In his words:

“Looks like the nightmare is real.

“The same way we seemingly refuse to make some of the major calls around things like water, we are burying our head in the sand over insurance.

“QBE has told us parts of Australia, to use their words, aren’t worth the risk, that they are uninsurable.

“And so it begins”.

It turns out the nightmare isn’t climate change. Phew! (wipes brow)

The nightmare is insurance companies bailing because they have calculated that climate change has made some places too risky to insure.

Mike continues:

“And what are communities going to do when the insurance isn’t there, and the value of the property plummets and the population dwindles and it all becomes a vicious cycle?”

No longer build at sea level or next to flammable forests, perhaps?

An equally pertinent question Mike could have asked but didn’t is: What are NZ’s communities doing at the moment?

Here are a few of those things:

  • In NZ, 2/3 of new cars are SUVs or small trucks (which are bigger, heavier, less aerodynamic than compact cars, thus requiring more fuel per km and emitting more CO2)

  • In NZ, people have the habit of setting the AC in their car to 18°C when it’s only 20°C outside, and then shutting the windows (AC = more fuel required = more CO2)

  • In NZ, greenhouse gas emissions (CO2, methane, etc.) are equivalent to 16 900 kg CO2 per person per year (7th highest per capita in the world)

  • In NZ, there is a feeling that you live in a far-away fantasy world (in part due to a near total absence of actual journalism, see: NZ Herald) where the rules don’t apply.

The vicious cycle we should be worried about is: ignorance -> global heating -> Mike -> ignorance.

It turns out that this vicious cycle causes Mike’s vicious insurance cycle.

Hello kiddies, and welcome to the Muppet Show! Today’s expression, listen up carefully boys and girls, is… Mike can’t see the forest for the trees!

Maybe it burned down already.

[* 1 April, 2014, “7 Sharp”, TV1]

The End of Australia as We Know It →

From the New York Times:

“In a country where there has always been more space than people, where the land and wildlife are cherished like a Picasso, nature is closing in”.

In particular, bushfires are:

“…forcing Australians to imagine an entirely new way of life. When summer is feared. When air filters hum in homes that are bunkers, with kids kept indoors. When birdsong and the rustle of marsupials in the bush give way to an eerie, smoky silence”.

Nature fights back:

“What many of us have witnessed this fire season does feel alive, like a monstrous gathering force threatening to devour what we hold most dear on a continent that will grow only hotter, drier and more flammable as global temperatures rise”.

And the fear. Hanging in the air like ashes in the wind:

“Last month in Cobargo, a dairy and horse town six hours’ drive from Sydney, I stood silently waiting for the start of an outdoor funeral for a father and son who had died in the fires a few weeks earlier. When the wind kicked up, everyone near me snapped their heads toward where a fire burned less than a mile away”.

A new normal raises its head, takes a quick peep, ducks back down when it spots Scott Morrison:

“It’s no wonder that all across the area, known as the South Coast, the streets in summer have looked closer to the quiet found in winter. Perhaps, some now say, that’s how it should be.

“We should no longer schedule our summer holidays over the Christmas season,” Professor Eckersley said. “Maybe they should be in March or April.”

“Certainly, we should rethink when and whether we go to all the places in the summer where we might be trapped,” she added.

Smoke and fire as a source of change:

“Smoke may be more of a catalyst than flame. For much of the summer, a fog of soot has smothered Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra. In Sydney alone, there were 81 days of hazardous, very poor or poor air quality last year, more than the previous 10 years combined. And until the recent rains, the smell of smoke often returned”.

And to wrap up: every article requires at least one moron, for “balance”:

“Near a bus stop, I met Bob Gallagher, 71, a retired state employee with thick white hair. He felt strongly that the criticism of Mr. Morrison for not doing enough about climate change was unfair.

“The first thing the government needs to do is run the economy,” Mr. Gallagher said. “I just don’t understand what these climate change people want.”

Not to die maybe?

[Epic cover photo: Matthew Abbott for the New York Times—this photo will win prizes]

The (temporary) upside of coronavirus/zombie apocalypses →

Good news due to coronavirus hysteria:

“The amount of oil needed to run the global economy will decline sharply in the first quarter of this year as the coronavirus forces factories to close in China, snarls transportation and hits supply chains.

“Global oil demand in the first three months of 2020 is expected to drop by 435,000 barrels per day compared to a year earlier, according to the International Energy Agency, the first quarterly decline in more than a decade”.

Less oil means less CO2 emissions.

435,000 barrels less per day means 187 million kg of CO2 less per day. You can do this calculation here.

What if we just capped future oil production to the smallest daily amount needed during the outbreak?

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Sorry, back to reality oops there goes gravity:

“The agency also marked down its forecast for oil demand growth for the whole of 2020. It is now expected to increase by just 825,000 barrels per day, the weakest annual pace since 2011”.

So, despite the coronavirus adventure, they still expect a massive increase in oil consumption in 2020.

Dwarfing the current decrease.

One feels a bit powerless at times like these.

[Cover photo credit: Brandon Thibodeaux for The New York Times]

Cool graphics of Australia's heating since 1960. →

Very cool graphics showing Australia gradually getting hotter, on average, since 1960:

The last time anywhere in Australia was properly cooler than the average was around 2012.

Since then it’s been a bit of a barbecue.

In 2019, the mean national temperature was 1.52°C above average. Considering that the currently planetary myth is to keep the worldwide temperature bump to 1.5°C above average, Australia has already lost the cricket.

A quote on Australia’s recent climate adventure:

“ ‘I think the size and the intensity of these fires, coupled with the drought, have really just pushed Australia into a place that just doesn’t feel like home anymore’, said Linden Ashcroft, lecturer in climate science and climate communication at Melbourne University’s School of Earth Science. ‘It doesn’t feel safe anymore’. “

Signs of resistance to the pathetic outpourings of Australia’s “leader”:

“Last week, more than 400 climate, weather and fire scientists signed an open letter calling on Australia's leaders and policymakers to take "genuine concerted action to reduce global emissions of greenhouse gases." The scientists unequivocally link the bushfires to human-induced climate change.

Abram, one of the signatories of the letter, said it had been "disheartening" as a climate scientist to have correctly made predictions for years and for governments to have basically ignored them”.

How bad could it get?

“There probably needs to be some discussion about where it is safe to live or where it is safe to build," Ashcroft said. "(But) I don't think that Australia will get to a point where it'll be a Mad Max anarchy kind of thing. I believe that we have the ability to adapt and to change what we do”.

One thing that gets clearer and clearer to me over time: the Mad Max anarchy stuff just happens when it’s ready to happen, and probably won’t be predicted in advance. It’ll just happen.

Then basically we all die from diarrhoea due to tainted water.

The end.

[Ps: If you want to geek-out, there are cool graphs and statistics galore over at the Australian Government’s Bureau of Meteorology website. Not on diarrhoea, thankfully.]

Car companies are hedging their bets →

Interesting to see Toyota’s plans in Europe:

“Toyota wants to evolve from a car-maker to a mobility company. To do that, it's launching Kinto, a new brand that will provide full-service leasing, car sharing, carpooling and subscription-based leases”.

You could see this working in somewhere like Paris where car ownership is in terminal decline, passing from 60% of households in 2001 to 35% today. [Another cool article here.]

Not so obvious in a place like New Zealand, where you feel like you need your own car to do basically anything. You don’t really, but the cities are so spread out, it just takes so long to get anywhere, do anything, on public transport.

Volkswagen seems to be going down the same path as Toyota, calling their thingamajig Moia:

“One of its first major goals is to develop on-demand commuter services based around small, electric shuttles. Think UberPool or Lyft Line, but with dedicated vehicles and more space for passengers. Gett and other ridesharing companies would pick you up if you're the only one headed in a given direction. Ultimately, though, the plan is to offer autonomous on-demand transport. You wouldn't have to worry about getting around town when there's always a robotic ride just a few minutes away”.

And by trying to predict the future, they are probably creating it.

The Australian Government is up to its old tricks →

It just has to rain for a day in Australia for the crazy talk to pick up again.

“The government says it will spend up to $6m in grants for two new Queensland electricity generation projects, including a coal-fired power plant, as part of a bid to lower power prices”.

What about just trying to use less electricity and stabilize Australia’s population?

Currently, two thirds of the growth is from immigration, one third from natural increase:

Some doublespeak straight from the article:

“ ‘We are supporting two promising new generation projects to deliver the reliable, affordable power that the north Queensland economy needs to grow and thrive,’ the deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, said”.

Unfortunately, the last thing Australian ecosystems need right now is a growing and thriving economy based on CO2 emissions. How’s that going for you, Aussies?

More excellent doublespeak:

“The energy minister, Angus Taylor, said the projects were important to meet the power needs of people in central and north Queensland.

“ ‘Our plan to unlock investment in new reliable generation capacity will increase competition, keep the lights on and lower prices to better support our commercial and industrial sector so they can employ more Australians and remain internationally competitive,’ he said”.

Why not just decide to use less power? Why not just stop and say, I’m going to use less power today. I’m going to switch off some of the eight lights I have on. How about I suffer through that terrible 26°C heat rather than turn the AC on to 18°C?

But this would be a fundamental affront to modern life, whose mantra is, I shall do what I want, when I want.

Quite interesting though that the perceived pressure on private companies to not work on Adani’s new coal mine may be having a carry-over effect on other new projects:

“But Labor’s climate change and energy spokesman, Mark Butler, said private investors would not touch a new coal-fired power station “with a barge pole”.

Yeah. They’ve seen the hell protesters are putting coal mine enablers through.

Meanwhile, Australia continues to export one billion kg of coal per day.

When that coal is burned, it produces 2.6 billion kg of CO2.

Per day.

That’s about 5kg of CO2 per square kilometre of planet earth.

Most of that gets absorbed (part of which is killing the oceans)

What doesn’t get absorbed ends up sitting in the atmosphere:

And with this atmospheric CO2, this thing called the greenhouse effect—settled science since 1859—just keeps on heating up the planet.

And Australia gets hotter. And drier—over time.

And catches on fire.

Which can no longer be put out by mere mortals.

It now requires biblical floods.

Train news is more enjoyable than coronavirus news

It sometimes seems that the only good news these days is train news.

Unless you’re in China:

“But in the past 15 days, the Chinese railway has only sold an average of 1.2 million tickets a day—about a tenth of the original estimated figures, Huang Xin said”.

But back to the good stuff.

Starting on April 30, there will be two direct Eurostar trains between Amsterdam and London a day.

Hooray!

Until April 30 vs after April 30:

“This follows an agreement between the governments of the UK, France, Belgium and the Netherlands enabling the operation of juxtaposed border controls at the Dutch departure stations, removing the current requirement for UK-bound passengers to catch an earlier Thalys service and then disembark at Brussels Midi for border and Channel Tunnel security checks before boarding a London-bound Eurostar”.

This will remove one hour of kerfuffle, meaning a trip time of around four hours.

Plus you can work on a Eurostar, wander around, be happy, and not have to worry about a cracked computer screen from the moron in front suddenly reclining.

“Eurostar said its ‘hassle-free travel’ would provide a ‘compelling reason’ for travellers to switch from air, with a journey between London and Amsterdam resulting in 80% less carbon per passenger than the equivalent flight”.

Percentages are confusing. 80% less mean five times less CO2 per person. On the Eurostar website, they suggest almost six times less CO2 per person.

If that doesn’t make you happy, here’s a lovely article about the beauty of slow train trips across Europe. One example:

“Ceske Budejovice to Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic. The Czech Republic has a comprehensive and cheap rail network. From Prague, you can reach much of the country, but you'll have to change if you want to take one of its most charming journeys (about NZ$2.70 one way; the journey takes 45 minutes). Ceske Budejovice is the home of Czechvar (the Czechs call it Budweiser, though it's different from Budweiser in the United States), one of the country's most famous beers, while Cesky Krumlov is among its most beautiful towns. The gently rolling south Bohemian landscape, with its low-slung farmsteads and forests, is equally beguiling”.

Spent some of the best days of my life in Cesky Krumlov.

Bringing up the rear, ten of the best night train trips in Europe from the Guardian, including this Swedish one:

“…for many Swedes nothing can beat the 20-hour odyssey from their capital’s Central Station across the wilderness of the Arctic Circle and on to the Norwegian town of Narvik. This is one route to fight to keep the blinds up for. In summer, the midnight sun means seeing much more than normal on a sleeper and no wifi make this the perfect route to switch off and unwind”.

It’s on the list.

They're now getting close to 1 cm sea rise per year in some parts of the US →

In the US:

“The pace of sea level rise accelerated at nearly all measurement stations along the US coastline in 2019, with scientists warning some of the bleakest scenarios for inundation and flooding are steadily becoming more likely”.

Where was it the worst?

“The highest rate of sea level rise was recorded along the Gulf of Mexico shoreline, with Grand Isle, Louisiana, experiencing a 7.93mm annual increase, more than double the global average. The Texas locations of Galveston and Rockport had the next largest sea level rise increases”.

In one year only!

It’s generally “rising” more on the east coast than the west as the land is gradually sinking to the east. So the “sea level rise” is relative to the height of the land, so if the land is also sinking, it appears worse.

Why does the rise seem to be accelerating?

“Researchers at Vims said that the current speed-up in sea level rise started around 2013 or 2014 and is probably caused by ocean dynamics and ice sheet loss. Worldwide, sea level rise is being driven by the melting of large glaciers and the thermal expansion of ocean water due to human-induced global heating”.

Let’s see how long it takes to get to 1 cm/year in the Gulf of Mexico. And then 2 cm/year. And so on.

And then add to that more extreme coastal storms and higher storm surges.

Yikety frick!

[Photo credit: Dan Meyers at Unsplash]

"We've pissed mother nature off, big time" →

A collection of personal stories of Australians who lost their houses to fire (in the Guardian):

“All my life I’ve fought bushfires, but there’s never been one like this: the fireballs, the way it roared, the flames, 50-60ft high. Sometimes it seemed to be above the ground, just burning the air. It sucked the roof off the house and threw our cars a kilometre away”.

Holy crap.

“There’s not a single person in the entire region who is not traumatised – all over the Great Dividing Range. I wish the people in power would listen; I wish they would stop using industries that are so bad for our environment. I hope that the underlying anger, because of mismanagement from our leaders, does not overrule the kindness and compassion that people are showing in the present moment. I don’t really know what my life lesson is: I’m just very glad to be alive”.

Even in people who lost everything, the slippery-slidey climate change denial can still appear in full force:

“This fire was hotter than anything. I saw cars’ aluminium wheels melted and running down the gutter like a stream. The fire came from all angles, in whirling winds and twisters. It’s 35 years since the bush was last burnt out. The stuff in the mountains has been building up; you couldn’t walk through it, there’s that much rubbish. When the fire came, the whole mountain seemed to explode. I don’t think it was the climate crisis that caused this; I think it was neglect, not keeping the mountains clean”.

And:

“Forensics think two fire fronts collided and created their own storm. My brother had a bull that was killed in the fire and is still sitting upright. It was just instantly cooked, mummified. They told us that for that to happen, it had to reach 2,000 degrees. I don’t think it’s climate change; the bush here hasn’t been burned back in 15, 20 years”.

This stuff just gets my bullshit sensor out. Convince me that there was a systemic back burning operation underway over the last 100 years. References please. Also, back burning is a last-gasp attempt to burn the fire back at itself. What they didn’t seem to know they meant was, ‘controlled burning’, i.e., deliberately starting a (in theory) controlled fire to clear away low-lying flammable material.

From a different victim:

“But what upsets me most is the political inaction of the last two years, when they’ve been warned of these conditions. People had been asked for additional firefighting aircraft. They should be held criminally responsible”.

More importantly, in today’s Australia, I find it hard to see what the resulting difference between controlled burning and arson would be. Everything would just catch fire and boom, bush fire!

Too hot. Too dry.

If that bush had been back-burned 15-20 years ago, would it have burned again today? Of course it freaking would have. Australia is ridiculously hot and dry right now. Can’t think why. Would it have burned less intensively? Maybe a little bit. Maybe not. Not the point.

A final hint of reason from another victim:

“We’ve pissed mother nature off big time, and she’s paying us back. We’ve just been watching it get drier and drier – the whole valley’s been a tinderbox. Nobody heeded the warnings. Surely they’ll listen now”.

Good luck with that.

[Cover photo: of Veronica Coen and Murray Gibbs by Gideon Mendel]

Australian novelist burns Australia (while it burns) →

Richard Flanagan has a piece in the New York Times entitled, How Does a Nation Adapt to Its Own Murder?

One juicy titbit:

“Australia’s situation is now no different from that of low-lying Pacific islands confronting imminent destruction from rising seas. Yet when last August those states protested against the Australian government’s refusal to act on climate change, Australia’s deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, said, “I also get a little bit annoyed when we have people in those sorts of countries pointing the finger at Australia and say we should be shutting down all our resources sector so that, you know, they will continue to survive.”

“Today Australia has only one realistic chance to, you know, survive: Join other countries like those Pacific nations whose very future is now in question and seek to become an international leader in fighting for far stronger global action on climate change. But to do that it would first have to take decisive action domestically.

“Anything less and Australia will be lost to its climate catastrophe as surely as Tuvalu will be to rising oceans.”

Slightly freaky though: this pretty bad mess we’re in isn’t going to magically solve itself with a few more solar panels and a few more group hugs. This is going to get messier.

And this kind of ongoing bollocks doesn’t help:

“And yet Prime Minister Scott Morrison argues that Australia is on track to “meet and beat” its pitifully low pledge, under the 2015 Paris climate accord, of cutting 2005-level greenhouse gas emissions by 26 percent to 28 percent before 2030. Experts have overwhelmingly rejected Mr. Morrison’s claim as false”.

Another fun fact: the bushfires have effectively doubled Australia’s usual CO2 emissions!

Thankfully at least Australia is not planning any more coal mines.

Oh wait, I just made that up for a laugh.

I’d thought there was one new coal mine on the way. Then I heard about another one. However:

“According to a recent United Nations report, what is happening in Australia is “one of the world’s largest fossil fuel expansions,” with proposals for 53 new coal mines”.

Fifty. Three.

That is some daft parallel universe shit going on there.

One more fun fact is that coal mining in Australia only directly employs 37,800 people. That’s diddly-squeak percentage of the Australian voting population. And yet ScoMo is protecting the industry as if his tackle is tied to a mine manager’s wrist.

Maybe because it is:

“According to John Hewson, a former leader of the conservative Liberal Party, Mr. Morrison “is almost totally beholden to the fossil fuel lobby. Several of his senior staff are ex-coal executives; a couple of his key ministers have coal industry links; fossil fuel companies are major donors.”

And then into another parallel universe we go:

“If Mr. Morrison’s government genuinely believed the science, it would immediately put a price on carbon, declare a moratorium on all new fossil fuel projects and transfer the fossil fuel subsidies to the renewables industries. It would go to the next round of global climate talks in Glasgow in November allied with other nations on the front line of this crisis and argue for quicker and deeper cuts to carbon emissions around the world. Anything less is to collaborate in the destruction of a country”.

Good luck with that Mr Fancy-Pants Australian novelist! See you on the evacuation beach!

[Cover photo: Matthew Abbott for the New York Times]

Murky shit on climate change denier websites

Traffic to the blog just spiked unexpectedly.

Traced it back to someone linking to one of my University of Turku posts in the comments section of a climate change denier’s blog. I’m not going to link to it, but it’s run by an Australian called Joanne Nova.

The University of Turku posts were my attempt to contact two Finnish scientists—Jyrki and Pekka—who had put out a preprint suggesting global warming was not man-made. I was looking to see if they had some murky fossil fuels funding in the background.

Both they and the University of Turku public relations office denied it.

Plenty of murky oil slick floating around Joanne Nova though. As stated here:

“She downplays the funding she and other denialists receive from the Heartland Institute and the Science and Public Policy Institute.”

If you want to know what if feels like to lick a toilet bowl without actually doing it, read here about the Heartland Institute or the Science and Public Policy Institute.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Perhaps the Science and Public Policy Institute’s greatest moment here:

“…a report in which they claim that sea levels have not risen, their evidence being a graph showing sea level rise, but tilted such that the long-term trend is flat. Yes, really”.

This is amazing.

I'm not sure "funny" is the word but it kinda is →

Today’s surreal new story comes straight outta bushfire country.

That would be Australia.

Ready? Let’s go!

Yep. Thou cannot maketh this shit up.

The details:

“Mining giant BHP has warned that smoke and dust from Australia’s deadly wildfires is hurting coal production.

“The world’s biggest mining company said production had slumped 11 per cent at its New South Wales coal mine and power station in the second half of last year, partly due to poor air quality resulting from Australia’s catastrophic bushfire season.

“Smoke from regional bushfires and dust have reduced air quality at our operations, which has impacted December 2019 production,” BHP said in a trading update on Tuesday”.

I wasn’t the only son of a gun to stumble upon this surreal story. There are pages and pages and pages and pages on it. Just type BHP coal bushfires into Google and trip out on the 73,300 results.

Indeed, as pointed out by Professor Jeremy Moss last year:

"BHP's emissions from its global fossil fuel operations alone were more than the whole of Australia's domestic emissions (534Mt CO₂-e) for 2018.

"If BHP were a country, the products it produces would cause emissions greater than those emitted by 25 million Australians."

I cannot even imagine the cognitive dissonance of being a coal miner and having to take leave to protect your home from a bushfire.

Not blaming them for being coal miners though. It’s our society that allows them to be coal miners, and a job’s a job.

Random Train News →

Time for a new episode of Kevin’s random train news.

Train news is nearly always happy news.

Today is no exception.

Austria’s new night train from Austria to Belgium has reached Brussels!

“The Austrian Federal Railways (ÖBB) Nightjet from Vienna pulled into Brussels Midi station exactly on schedule at 10.55 local time on a grey, foggy morning in the Belgian capital. It is the first ÖBB night train between the two cities since 2003, as Austria’s state-railway revives its overnight network”.

In fact, it’s the first scheduled regular night train to Belgium since 2003.

Two trains depart from Austria, one from Vienna and slightly later one from Innsbruck. The two trains come together in the night at Nuremberg in Germany, to complete the journey to Liege, Brussels North and Brussels Midi”.

And same back the other way. Twice a week in both directions.

The Austrians are on fire:

“The ÖBB now runs 27 night trains, alone or with partners, serving cities in Germany, Italy and Switzerland. It plans to have a Vienna to Amsterdam route by the end of the year”.

And their epic new night trains with sleeping pods are due in only two years now. I’m betting they’re going to have to increase their order.

Meanwhile, Russia is introducing double-decker trains on parts of their network.

It will increase capacity by 30% on Moscow-Petrozavodsk and 40% on Moscow-Penza.

Let’s go to Penza!

Have a nice day :)

One day in Australian politics

I don’t know if you’ve heard but Australia has been having a few teensy-weensy bushfires recently.

How many hectares is it now? Ask Google, your psychic friend:

The answer is about 6 million hectares so far in the 2019/2020 season. That’s quite a lot.

Rumour has it that the severity of the bushfires may be a teensy-weensy bit related to human CO2 emissions and fair dinkum climate change.

How is this rumour going down in the murky diarrhoea that is Australian politics?

I’m so glad you asked.

I have today for you a 24 hour snapshot of that mythical world: 15 January 2020.

Requirements before proceeding any further: one of these nose clips.

Righty ho. Let’s go.

To begin, here’s a great article called “Prime Minister defends coal as more businesses pull out of industry”.

“Prime Minister Scott Morrison delivered a spirited defence of coal mining in Canberra after the world’s largest fund manager, US-based company BlackRock, revealed it will cut its investment in the other black rock – thermal coal.”

He then collapsed in a coughing fit from the bushfire smoke that briefly gave Canberra the world’s worst air quality, smiled weakly, patted a koala that was lying smouldering on the ground, farted twice, and hopped back on the plane to Hawaii.

Another great read is this one about the Australian government axing funding to a climate change adaption body back in 2017.

“Ebony Bennett, the Australia Institute deputy director, said the decision to cut the NCCARF’s adaptation funding was “shortsighted” and “typical of the Coalition approach to climate policy.

“Any economist will tell you an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure,” she said. “The government’s new embrace of adaptation and resilience is welcome, but it’s the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff approach.

“To reduce the amount of gas and coal mined and burned in Australia is the [better] response … to prevent hotter and drier summers in future.”

Guess who the treasurer was back then?

Ok, that was too easy.

Next!

Here’s a particularly hallucinatory article on the climate denier muppets in the current Australian government.

Craig Kelly:

“A serial and constant denier of climate change, the New South Wales MP most recently made international headlines when he called a British meteorologist an “ignorant pommie weather girl” after openly denying the existence of climate change.

George Christensen:

“The Queensland MP continues to point to debunked and false theories that arson is to blame for the majority of blazes this summer. He also openly and consistently disputes the link between climate change and worsening disasters and “hat tips” Kelly for his work in this space, linking to Kelly’s posts.”

And there are plenty more of them. This is amazing.

And last but definitely not “last” (the quantity of daily madness out of the Australian government is not teensy-weensy), my joyful discovery that there are other new coal mines being planned in Australia, not just the Adani one.

“A last-ditch plea to the Queensland government to stop Clive Palmer building a coal mine at a nature reserve is likely to go unanswered.

“Mr Palmer's Waratah Coal company has federal and state government approval to extract 40 million tonnes of thermal coal each year from a nature reserve in central Queensland.

“In 2002, the Queensland government recognised the area as a nature refuge to protect birds, including the endangered black-throated finch, reptiles and other animals.”

This one is called the China First project.

I shit you not.

“The mine, known as the China First project, would destroy the nature refuge, a fact acknowledged by Queensland's Coordinator-General in 2013.”

What a strange country.

Zurich Airport's data continues to suggest flying is flattening out in Western Europe

I recently spotted that Zurich Airport’s passenger growth went negative in October 2019.

This was a bit of a shock. I dived into their (public) data and came up with a graph of their growth over the last two years.

I posted it on Facebook, not on the blog. You can see that plot here. Feel free to click on my name and then “Follow” if you want to see future blog posts appear in your Facebook feed (I put a link to each new blog post on Facebook with public access).

It’s now January so two more months’ data is now available. Let’s see what’s happened since October in Zurich (and Paris):

Zurich slipped slightly above 0% growth (vs one year ago) in November (0.7%) and December (1.2%). Still, the nine lowest growth rates of the last two years were in the last ten months.

The story gets interesting when we look at the big picture. Here’s Zurich’s November results:

What’s interesting is the decrease in passenger air traffic movements (take-offs and landings) of 5.9% compared to November 2018. That means around 3% less planes landing and taking off.

[Update: in fact it means 5.9% less planes, not 3%. That’s quite a drop.]

Since passenger numbers are relatively flat compared to a year ago, it means—as we see above—that there are more passengers per flight (an increase on average from 117.6 to 127.6).

As for December:

Same thing. 5% less traffic movements compared to December 2018, so 2.5% less incoming and outgoing flights.

[Update: again, this means 5% less planes, not 2.5%.]

One interesting thing missing from the data is the yearly change in size/weight/age/model of the planes taking-off and landing. For instance, does the 3% drop in take-offs and landings in November correspond to an overall loss in weight and thus fuel and thus CO2 emissions, even when taking into account the increased number of passengers per plane?

My guess is that yes, Zurich Airport is now on a decreasing CO2 emissions path even with basically flat passenger numbers.

This leads to an amusing dilemma. Should Zurich Airport publicize their decreasing CO2 emissions?

As for Paris Airports (CDG and Orly), growth is also hovering around zero (0.9% in November, -0.3% in December), but the fairly epic strikes in France mean that we don’t know what would have happened without them.

Stay tuned!

[Data sources: here, here, and here, Cover photo: Hansueli Krapf]

Australia's new coal mine →

Regular readers of the blog know that Australia exports one billion kg of coal per day.

Funnily enough, Australia is also living through the best test-run yet of what a climate apocalypse looks like.

Imagination is no longer required.

Matthew Abbott for the New York Times

Sometimes the evacuations have been like Dunkirk with selfies.

One sign of how deep Australia is in denial about this is that its “leader” ScoMo still has a 37% approval rating.

With all the smoke, other stories get buried behind mirrors.

Like this one.

Adani is currently building a massive new coal mine in Australia.

It turns out they can’t do it on their own. They need other companies to help them build it.

Like Siemens.

Siemens has a contract for the signalling system on the railway to the mine.

Protesters have turned on companies like Siemens to pressure them to stop helping.

For the last few weeks, Siemens’ President and CEO Joe Kaeser has been besieged by protesters urging him to reconsider the contract.

“The decision on the contract, reportedly worth $30m, comes as Australia is in the grip of an unprecedented bushfire crisis that has claimed at least 27 lives, destroyed more than 2,000 homes and likely pushed several species towards extinction, scorching millions of hectares of unique habitat and killing more than a billion animals”.

Then, yesterday:

“President and CEO of Siemens, Joe Kaeser, announced Monday that after reviewing the rail signalling contract the company had “a legally binding and enforceable fiduciary responsibility.

“He said: “While I do have a lot of empathy for environmental matters, I do need to balance different interests of different stakeholders, as long as they have lawful legitimation for what they do.”

Followed by this poo-flavoured pearl for the ages:

“He added that the company “fundamentally shares the goal of making fossil fuels redundant to our economies over time”.

Excuse me for a moment while I vomit in my own mouth.

Right, I’m back.

So, to summarize what may come to be seen as a high-point of human civilization on Earth: Parts of Australia are literally living a climate apocalypse pushed by human CO2 emissions, and Siemens did not cancel a contract with a new coal mine in Australia, because: 30 million dollars.

If you can feel the vomit pooling in your own mouth, feel free to email Siemens’ CEO using this ready-to-go form from StopAdani. Bonus points for using the German word for shit (Scheisse) in your email.

Have a nice day.

[PS: Funny story: Siemens is also the company building the new night trains for Austria.]

[Cover photo: Christina Simons for the New York Times]

The Austrian pan-European night trains hit the New York Times →

From the New York Times:

“Passenger numbers have doubled since Nightjet began operating in 2016, and ÖBB said it carried 1.4 million people on the service last year”.

Middle-aged men’s least favourite human was in the mix as usual:

“After the climate activist Greta Thunberg sailed the Atlantic in treacherous waters just to avoid flying to a United Nations summit in New York this summer, many travellers in Europe pledged never to fly again, or at least to drop short-haul flights for trains and buses”.

Other nudges towards trains are creeping in European consciousness, and wallets:

“Germany will raise its tax on flights to domestic and European Union destinations beginning in April, while the value-added tax on train tickets will be reduced in January.”

And why not a couple of “funny” comment from the comments section to round off the day:

“We just finished two weeks of trains in Germany and France. No chance for the NightJet but we would do so in a second if we could or needed to.

“So with speeds up to 180 mph I could put my expresso or beer down and not have it be disturbed or spilled. Then we land in San Francisco and take BART. Pretty damn big difference. The US is slipping further and further behind. Sad but predictable…”

And:

“When you travel on European or Japanese modern rail systems and Bullet Trains you instantly realise that the USA is now near 3rd world standards on infrastructure…”

Ouchy ouch.

Home and Away (the Hawaiian episode) →

Aloha! And welcome to Australia’s favourite soap opera!

In this episode, Australia’s prime minister—who once brought a lump of coal to parliament—secretly snuck off to Hawaii while his country burned.

The whole shit-show was documented in a I can’t believe it’s not Canberra hallucinogenic trip brought to you by the Guardian and Adani Coal.

The Guardian:

“Morrison is confirmed to be in Hawaii, after some excited Australian tourists post about having a “few bevvies” with the “bit of a legend” PM. They include a photo”.

Though it looks like a forest fire behind them, my current sources indicate it was in fact a beautiful Hawaiian sunset.

Then a couple of volunteer firefighters died and Morrison decided to “do the right thing” and cut his holiday short.

His flight was delayed landing back in Sydney due to smoke from bushfires.

Here’s a recap of the last three days fires in Australia:

https://myfirewatch.landgate.wa.gov.au

Here’s the same map with the areas burned so far this year (so it also includes fires from early 2019 as far as I can tell):

https://myfirewatch.landgate.wa.gov.au

Three million hectares and counting in recent months. That’s a serving size of Belgium, or 1.5 portions of Wales. Would you like fiery hot sauce to go with that?

I’m impressed Morrison still has his job after the immense stupidity of choosing to be in a Hawaiian beach photo.

It’s kind of off the awesome scale when you think about it. This soap opera really does have legs.

And maybe it shows that Morrison is just human after all.

But clearly also part-muppet.

The two upsides to coal company bankruptcy →

In 2018, a “group” called GAO slithered out of the slime and began spewing climate denial propaganda. Its aim being to deflect against lawsuits attacking fossil fuel companies in the US.

“GAO, which is run as a for-profit company and foundation, does not disclose its donors nor does it provide much information about its origins. But on Saturday, a bankruptcy court in southern Ohio released a filing revealing that the organization received three donations totaling $300,000 from Murray Energy, the largest privately held coal-mining company in the United States”.

It turns out that filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection means you have to disclose payments to outside political entities.

I guess I should be happy that coal companies are going bankrupt left right and center (bonus #1), but the slime squeezed out by their demise is something else (bonus #2):

“Bankruptcy filings have provided a unique opportunity for the public to better understand the political agenda of powerful corporate interests, which typically shroud sensitive donations through nondisclosing entities. The sudden collapse earlier this year of Cloud Peak Energy, a Wyoming-based coal firm, revealed several donations to climate change denial groups. In 2015, The Intercept reported on another wave of coal bankruptcies, which revealed ties between coal firms to a subterranean network of groups dedicated to blocking environmental reform.”

What kind of abysmal human being do you have to be to take part in this shit? The lowest of the low. I’d rather clean sewers for a week than spend a minute within smelling distance of one of these terrible excuses for a human being.

One POS of note here is Chris Horner, an attorney who claims the earth is cooling.

Clearly he’s not currently in Australia.

“The bankruptcy of Alpha Natural Resources three years ago, for instance, showed secret payments to Chris Horner, a former lobbyist who had hounded climate scientists in an attempt to discredit their work. The disclosure was the first time Horner and his nonprofit, the Free Market Environmental Law Clinic, had been directly tied to the fossil fuel industry”.

So, what’s he up to these days? Swimming in a sea of dirty money in pair of Trump-themed budgie-smugglers?

(Loveriot)

No. Better than that:

“Horner is now on to new projects. Along with several other lawyers, he is a co-founder of GAO”.

Over and out.

[Coal mine photo credit: Dominik Vanyi/Unsplash]