Wet areas have become wetter and dry areas drier during the past 50 years due to global warming, a study of the saltiness of the world's oceans by a team including CSIRO researchers has shown.

The intensification of rainfall and evaporation patterns, which is occurring at twice the rate predicted by climate change models, could increase the incidence and severity of extreme weather events in future.

The team's leader, Paul Durack, said the finding was important because reductions in the availability of fresh water posed more of a risk to human societies and natural ecosystems than a rise in temperature alone.

CONCERN for the environment has dwindled into a ''middling'' issue that many people do not have strong feelings about, a major study into Australian attitudes towards society, politics and the economy has found.

Food, health, crime, safety and rights to basic public services - the tangible things that people confront on a daily basis - are dominant national concerns.

''Australians are effectively indifferent to global and societal issues, rating these significantly lower,'' said the report What Matters to Australians, produced by the University of Technology, Sydney and the Melbourne Business School, with the support of the Australian Research Council.

''What we see in these results is a picture of a relatively conservative society concerned with local issues that influence its members' daily lives.''

People's concerns about industrial pollution, climate change, renewable energy and depletion of energy resources plummeted when compared with an identical study in 2007, with only logging and habitat destruction remaining among the top 25 issues of concern to Australians.

If Clive Palmer is elected to Parliament, it will put a face to the 'Greenhouse Mafia', which could be a very good thing.

For 20 years the climate debate has been spinning in circles. The world's biggest miners and polluters have used every trick in the book to sabotage progress.

They have funded extremism and confusion, to hide their interests. Now that democracy is on the verge of fixing the problem, they are taking on democracy.

When the public sees a coal billionaire in Parliament, the penny will drop. The whole climate debate has been a charade of false claims and abstract policy. Palmer will make it a concrete battle of interests; coal versus everyone else.

In the USA, the coal versus everyone reality was hidden for years. This involved funding right-wing think-tanks, supporting Sarah Palin and spending billions on political lobbying and advertising, to undermine rational politics.

In Australia, we had it all revealed in 2006, when ABC's Four Corners featured a whistleblower, Guy Pearse. Pearse explained how the government of former prime minister John Howard had undermined renewable energy technologies, to protect the interests of the miners and polluters.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3981898.html?WT.svl=theDrum

See also http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/18118

I disagree with Dan Cass. We don't want Palmer in parliament. Having him there would not be a good thing... We know who the denialist activists against the reality of climate change are. Having one (more) in parliament (there are quite a lot already, including Barnaby Joyce) would only give them more status... It would make the fight against ignorance harder. Palmer is a proven liar as well, no need to reinforce his cuedos...

An Underground Fossil Forest Offers Clues on Climate Change
By W. BARKSDALE MAYNARD

In the clammy depths of a southern Illinois coal mine lies the largest fossil forest ever discovered, at least 50 times as extensive as the previous contender.

Scientists are exploring dripping passages by the light of headlamps, mapping out an ecosystem from 307 million years ago, just before the world’s first great forests were wiped out by global warming. This vast prehistoric landscape may shed new light on climate change today.

Dating from the Pennsylvanian period of the Carboniferous era, the forest lies entombed in a series of eight active mines. They burrow through the rich seams of the Springfield Coal, a nationally important energy resource that underlies much of Illinois and two neighboring states and has been heavily mined for decades.

Pushed downward over the ages by the crushing weight of rock layers higher up, the Springfield forest lies at varying depths, 250 to 800 feet underground. The researchers have only sampled it so far, in the vicinity of Galatia, Illinois, but they think it extends more than 100 miles in one direction; its width has not been ascertained. An earlier discovery by the same team, the Herrin Coal forest farther north in Illinois, is just two miles long.

“Effectively you’ve got a lost world,” said Howard Falcon-Lang, a paleontologist at Royal Holloway, University of London, who has explored the site. “It’s the closest thing you’ll find to time travel,” he added.

Curiously, the forest can be viewed only from below. The scientists crane their necks, illuminating the ceiling with miners’ helmet lamps. Hundreds of millions of years ago, trees and other plants grew atop thick peat that eventually compressed into coal; when that was excavated, the forest’s fossilized remains could be seen in the mine’s shale ceiling.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/01/science/underground-fossil-forest-in-i...      

Former Labor premier Kristina Keneally says the Federal Government should try to revoke or wind back the carbon tax in order to claw back public popularity.

Ms Keneally publicly supported the carbon tax in the lead-up to her failed bid to retain government in New South Wales last year.

But now the Labor backbencher has told Sky News that Prime Minister Julia Gillard needs a game-changer, and the carbon tax should be in her sights.

"Revoke it or lessen its impact somehow," she said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-05-02/kristina-keneally-says-repeal-the-carbon-tax/3984042

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Gus: Kristina dear, the carbon tax isn't a popularity contest... It's about ensuring the future isn't too crap for this planet soon... It is thus imperative for the Federal government to promote the tax with greater emphasis on the science of global warming, which by the way is correct. Global warming is real. If you read all the warnings on this site, you will learn a few things and start to bat for the "carbon tax" with intent... but, I know, like Tony Abbott (the rabid mutt), you're a CATHOLIC...  Thus you still have vapours of Adam and Eve, of god and paradise lost to the "original sin" between you ears... You're brain is foggy... 

Although not perfect, the carbon tax is the first necessary instalment of an "insurance" against global warming. The opposition of course has no idea about global warming and does not want to know... Com'on fight for the damn thing (the carbon tax) and be effing proud that doing so you are ensuring a significant carbon usage reduction by humans on this small planet!...

Read "the clock is ticking"... and more on this site. See toon at top.

EVER wondered what the planet would look like if you could see everything we did at once? Now you can.

Often when looking at the Earth in pictures taken from space the planet looks like an untouched green and blue gem, but this is deceptive.

A new video called anthropocene shows just how much impact we have on the planet through a series of stunning visual overlays of human activity data.

Layer upon layer of human activity is gradually heaped on an initially dark earth.

A CSIRO oceanographer says his team has recorded the first sign that Antarctic ocean currents are sensitive to the current climate.

Steve Rintoul returned from Antarctic research in February and says his team has recorded a reduction in the amount of heavy, cold and salty water in the deep sea surrounding Antarctica.

Dr Rintoul says the amount of dense water halved between 1970 and 2012.

"What was a surprise to us was the extent of the changes," he said.

"One way to think about it is to look at how much water that's denser and heavier than a certain value today compared to what there was in 1970.

"So a layer that used to be about 1000 metres thick, lying over the seafloor, is now only about 400-500 metres thick."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-05-04/study-finds-antarctic-currents-sensitive-to-climate/3990720

Read also: the clock is ticking...

THE global warming fraudsters have been caught out - again.

The world’s polar bear population is increasing, both Arctic and Antarctic sea ice is increasing and there have been no death threats made to Australian climate scientists.

Let’s begin with the dire warning from Australian Climate Change Commissioner Tim Flannery in 2006 that the Arctic could be entirely free of sea ice by last year.

http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/piersakerman/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/truth_sends_icy_chill_up_scaremongering_spines/

Okay Piers... Flannery was talking of the Arctic in Summer and he did exaggerate a bit about the timeline — in jest, though I agree this is no jesting matter...

But there is no two ways about it, on average, the ice in Summer is thinning in the arctic... In the Antarctic, the prognosis is similar with a different observation. But what we have to recognise is global temperatures fluctuate year to year BUT THE TREND OF THE GLOBAL TEMPERATURE IS WARMING nonetheless. Even the most anti-anthropogenic global warming scientists have had to admit to this. See the Berkeley report (a skeptic scientific outfit) which states:

Global warming is real, according to a major study released today. Despite issues raised by climate change skeptics, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study finds reliable evidence of a rise in the average world land temperature of approximately 1° C since the mid-1950s.

Now in relation to the observed "unusual cold in the Bering Sea", One has to remember several other observations. AT THE SAME TIME, America, including New York was enjoying an "unusually" warm winter... It was spring in winter. Plants were flowering early.

Then America "enjoyed" 220 devastating tornadoes...

But last year when the US was experiencing a "bitter cold" in winter, the further northward latitudes had a "warm winter" with temperature about 20 degrees Celsius above average. 

You're a gloriously overpaid misinforming idiot who writes shit, Piers, and I believe you know it...

“The large number of [weather stations] reporting cooling might help explain some of the skepticism of global warming…Global warming is too slow for humans to feel directly, and if your local weather man tells you that temperatures are the same or cooler than they were a hundred years ago it is easy to believe him”.

http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2011/10/23/somewhat-skeptical-science-finds-evidence-for-global-warming/

As summarized by the BBC, the reasons why this report (which, after all, simply confirms every other serious scientific study) is significant include:

• it was set up after the so-called “Climategate” incident, when stolen emails from a group of British scientists were used to argue that scientists were falsifying data– a conclusion, of course, that was refuted in later investigations

• it “received funds from sources that back organisations lobbying against action on climate change”, specifically the Koch brothers

• it “examined claims from ‘sceptical’ bloggers that temperature data from weather stations did not show a true global warming trend” due to the “urban heat island effect”

The graph resulting from the research analyzing data from 40,000 weather stations, is virtually identical to those produced by previous studies.

From Mungo MacCallum:

If there was any lingering doubt that sections of the Labor Party had abandoned all sense of purpose and direction and descended into gibbering political insanity, consider the maunderings of Kristina Keneally last week.

Keneally, it may be recalled, was the premier who led New South Wales Labor to its worst ever defeat. One might have thought, therefore, that she would hesitate to give political advice to anyone, let alone a fellow leader in dire straits.

But even the absurdity of such chutzpah pales into insignificance beside her election-winning formula: Julia Gillard should dump the carbon tax.

In other words, the Prime Minister should stand in parliament and announce that she was repealing the legislation that she had spent nearly a year and a half manoeuvring through both houses, so abandoning all her principles and allies in a last, desperate effort to kowtow to the rent seekers, shock jocks and opinion polls; and somehow this mother of all backflips is meant to buy her back votes.

But wait, don't pull your dropped jaw back into place yet, there's more. Keneally would not want you to think that there was any limit to her populist cynicism: "Whether it (the carbon tax) is good policy or not is irrelevant," she proclaims. So there is no room left for policy. In Keneally's brand of political nihilism, anything goes.

--------------------------

Yes, Mungo... But it's not nihilism that's tormenting Kristina...

She is a strong catholic member of the Labor Party and like Tony Abbott — an ardent catholic — she's wresling with the naturalness of this planet and what we're really doing to it... They create false ideas about the non-worth of this temporal world and this is where we have to fight the rot...

Religion rots this little corner of the universe with "comfortable" falsities that interfere with the harsh reality...

Between now and the next election, the Labor party and the greens HAVE TO SELL THE CONCEPT OF GLOBAL WARMING to an idiotic public whose empty heads are being massaged daily by the likes of Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt with no recourse to even a "balanced" (false by definition but a bit more questioning — with at least some truth as a conterpoint to the bullshit) view point...

A Canberra radio host has been banned from the airwaves by his employer after an on-air joke this morning about "upskirting" the Prime Minister.Radio 2CCs Jorian Gardner has been silenced for at least a week by station management after suggesting during the station's morning show that Communications Minister Stephen Conroy should wear a "penis cam" during cabinet meetings so that he could film up the skirt of Prime Minister Julia Gillard.Gardner and breakfast show host Mark Parton were pursuing the theme of a story in today's Canberra Times about the police union calling for "lapel cams" for Canberra's police uniforms when the former arts promoter and blogger, who is also the station's news director, made his remarks.
Read more: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/pm-upskirting-comment-sends-radio-shock-jock-offair-20120614-20c0g.html#ixzz1xlNFLNTU