Today in Australia, the profound global threat posed by climate change could not be clearer. Yet none of the major parties are proposing any action to curb our coal export trade.

When legislation fails to protect us from such a serious and immediate threat, civil disobedience is bound to step in, writes David Ritter.

"I support the peaceful actions of those who have boarded the vessel taking our coal to South Korea. And I salute their civic courage" - Robert Manne

"Is it enough, for a person of conscience, to sit back and wait for the harms to become intolerable?" - Clive Hamilton

Last week, six Greenpeace activists from the Rainbow Warrior engaged in an act of civil disobedience when they peacefully boarded and occupied a Korean coal carrier off the coast of far north Queensland.

Civil disobedience refers to public, non-violent, conscientious, unlawful conduct which is undertaken with the aim of bringing about a change in government law or policy in the absence of any other effective remedy.

There is a long and rich tradition of civil disobedience in Australian history, occasions when brave men and women have taken a stand against things that they knew in their heads and their guts were just plain wrong.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4665886.html

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For hundreds of thousands of years preceding the industrial revolution, the concentration of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the atmosphere didn’t exceed 280 parts per million. Now it is poised to pass 400 parts per million, thanks to the burst of fossil fuel combustion and forest clearing that’s accompanied humanity’s recent growth spurt.

That shift was noticed thanks to decades of work by Charles David Keeling of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and more recently his son Ralph. (Keeling’s work establishing a meticulous record of CO2 levels at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii was beautifully described in a 2010 feature by Justin Gillis.)

The Scripps Institution launched a Twitter account, @keeling_curve, to make it easy for people to track the gas’s path through 400 and beyond. Bryan Walsh of Time Magazine has a nice post up discussing what is and isn’t significant about that concentration and what comes next.

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/category/energy/coal-energy/

Republican voters are told over and over by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and GOP leaders in Congress that climate change is a sham, a scare campaign orchestrated by scientists with liberal agendas. Ergo, Republicans are less likely than others to believe that fossil-fuel burning is changing the climate. It stands to reason, therefore, that they are less likely to support efforts to tackle the problem.

But once Republicans come to understand that the world is indeed imperiled by global warming, they begin to support government actions to try to rein in greenhouse gas emissions.

That’s the conclusion of a new study published in the journal Climatic Change. Researchers analyzed the results of a 2012 Gallup poll that asked around 1,000 Americans about their climate change views. From a Michigan State University press release:

U.S. residents who believe in the scientific consensus on global warming are more likely to support government action to curb emissions, regardless of whether they are Republican or Democrat, according to a study led by a Michigan State University sociologist.

http://grist.org/news/study-when-republicans-believe-scientists-they-support-climate-action/

The Arctic seas are being made rapidly more acidic by carbon-dioxide emissions, according to a new report.

Scientists from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) monitored widespread changes in ocean chemistry in the region.

They say even if CO2 emissions stopped now, it would take tens of thousands of years for Arctic Ocean chemistry to revert to pre-industrial levels.

Many creatures, including commercially valuable fish, could be affected.

They forecast major changes in the marine ecosystem, but say there is huge uncertainty over what those changes will be.

It is well known that CO2 warms the planet, but less well-known that it also makes the alkaline seas more acidic when it is absorbed from the air.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22408341

Australia's year of extreme weather is continuing as Sydney enjoys its longest late-season hot spell in 26 years, inland temperature records tumble and regions around Perth prepare for a cyclonic-strength storm.
The Harbour City is 17 days into its stretch of 20-degree or warmer days, with seven more days of such weather possible, said Brett Dutschke, senior meteorologist for Weatherzone.
Only once in 150 years of records – in 1987 – has the city had such warm conditions lasting this long this late in the year, Dr Dutschke said.
Many other regions have been experiencing unseasonably warm weather this month, with more to come. Melbourne, for instance, can expect five days of 20 degrees or warmer days, starting Wednesday.

Adelaide, meanwhile, may get five days of 25 degrees or hotter conditions starting today, a spell not seen this late in a year since 1921, Dr Dutschke said.
Australia has experienced a string of heatwaves, roughly six weeks apart, for the past half-year or longer, climate experts at the Bureau of Meteorology say.
Those hot spells produced the hottest month on record, the hottest summer and a blitz of other national heat records.
Five of the bureau's 112 long-term weather sites have already registered all-time May records, with towns such as Alice Springs in the middle of what forecasters expect will be the longest run of 30-degree or hotter days.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/records-fall-as-run-of-hot-weather-continues-20130507-2j4vm.html#ixzz2SaZf7kkm

Scientists say that foxes in Arctic regions who feed on ocean prey are being exposed to dangerous levels of mercury.

On one Russian island where the population of foxes has crashed, the researchers believe the toxin has played a key role in the decline.

They say the findings could have important implications for conservation.

The data is published in the Journal, PLOS ONE.

Mercury levels in the world's oceans have doubled over the past 100 years, according to the UN, with more mercury deposited in the Arctic than on any other part of the planet.

The Arctic Council says there has been a ten-fold increase in the levels of mercury found in top predators in the region over the past 150 years.

Now a team of researchers says it has found significant levels of mercury in different populations of Arctic foxes in different environments.

On the small Russian island of Mednyi, part of the Commander Islands chain in the North Pacific Ocean, the foxes survive almost exclusively on sea birds with some also eating seal carcasses.

The island's fox population declined mysteriously in the 1970s, and while the population is currently stable many of them are in poor condition, and have low body weight. They are listed as a critically endangered species with IUCN.

Scientists at one time believed their shrinking numbers were caused by an infection, but they couldn't find the underlying cause.

"We started to look for different pathogens that might underline the cause of the poor condition and high mortality but we couldn't find anything," said Dr Gabor Czirjak from the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, a lead author on the new work.

But when they examined hair samples from the foxes and the food the animals eat, they found significant rates of mercury.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22425219

As well as the unseasonal return of snow, there are flood warnings for Devon, Cornwall and Shropshire, while high winds are bringing power lines, leaving thousands without electricity.
 
There will be no respite in the near future, according to the Daily Telegraph. "The winds are expected to die down on Wednesday but the weather will remain wet and cool for this time of year".
 
The inclement conditions are expected to last into next week and beyond and the outlook is bleak according to The Times, which notes that there are "ominous weather patterns" on display.
 
"With the jet stream locked into the same southern position that ruined last summer, some forecasters have suggested the outlook is bleak ahead of the Wimbledon tennis tournament and Glastonbury music festival next month."
 
So why is the jet stream so far south? The Telegraph says: "One theory is that the jet stream is being pushed south by melting ice from the Arctic, caused by climate change. Global warming also means warmer seas, that means more water evaporating, and hence more moisture in the air and heavier rainfall when it does come."

Read more: http://www.theweek.co.uk/uk-news/uk-weather/53046/uk-snow-may-summer-washout-global-warming#ixzz2TR8K5tQc