Antarctica is known for its weather extremes, and even with temperatures remaining well below freezing, Mawson Station has experienced its warmest August on record.

The mean temperature was about 6 degrees Celsius above the long-term average for August, and recordings on the station date back more than 60 years.

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-13/warm-august-in-antarctica/10368770

The rain bucketed down in western Sydney last night, with more than a month's worth falling in just an hour.

The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) recorded 70 millimetres in Penrith from about 7.00pm onwards.

The average October rainfall for Penrith is 51mm.

The downpour resulted in flash flooding in the area, and one person needed to be rescued from a car stuck in floodwaters.

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-18/penrith-cops-more-than-a-months-worth-of-rain-in-one-night/

Australia would need to shut 12 of its coal power stations by 2030 in order to do what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says is necessary to avoid catastrophic effects of climate change.

• The IPCC said coal-generated power needed to drop by 78 per cent of 2010 levels
• The Parliamentary Library ran the numbers and, in Australia, that means 12 stations have to close 
• The Government says coal will "continue to play a vital role in our energy mix, now and into the future"

The implication comes from simple arithmetic, produced by the Parliamentary Library, and would require nine power stations closing before the end of their scheduled life.

To stop warming at 1.5C, the United Nations' IPCC said this week coal use for electricity must be reduced to almost zero by 2050. 

But another figure went unreported: the IPCC also said to get to zero by 2050, we need to get to 78 per cent below 2010 levels within 12 years.

At the request of the Greens, the Parliamentary Library crunched the numbers for what that meant in Australia, assuming that reduction was shared equally among each country. 

To figure out Australia's share, the library researchers looked at how much electricity was produced from coal across the country in 2010 and simply cut it by 78 per cent.

Then, assuming coal power stations operate at an average of about 80 per cent of their maximum output, it was a relatively simple matter to figure out how much coal-fired power needs to go.

In 2010, Australia produced about 180,000 Gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity from coal. Cutting that by 78 per cent means we can produce just 40,000 GWh from coal in 2030.

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-13/coal-power-stations-needed-to-clo...

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has warned Australia that its future prosperity is at risk if it continues its dependence on fossil fuels.

Weeks after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) called for a total phasing out of coal-fired power by 2050 in order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, the former World Bank economist and 2001 winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences said successful countries "are those that are going to make, as soon as possible, the transition from the fossil fuel economy to the innovative economy".

Professor Stiglitz was a member of the 1995 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that reviewed the evidence of human-induced global warming.

He said that panel made "one mistake", which was to underestimate the magnitude of the effects of climate change and the speed at which those impacts would be felt.

Ahead of the Columbia University economics professor's visit to Australia to collect the Sydney Peace Prize, he acknowledged that Australia's record-breaking 27 years of uninterrupted economic growth owes much to the mining and export of fossil fuels.

Coal and iron ore are Australia's top two export earners. This financial year they are expected to generate more than $110 billion in foreign income.

Professor Stiglitz said it would be "fundamentally short-sighted" not to be thinking about the serious climate change impacts in Australia and around the world and "over the long term, the real wealth of a country is based on the skills, the ability and the innovation of its citizens and that is going to depend on the investments that you put in to your people, not on coal, not on iron ore".

When asked to reflect on the politicisation of climate change policy in Australia, Professor Stiglitz blamed "special interests that make a lot of money out of fossil fuels".

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-24/stiglitz-warns-australia-economic...

• Trump administration officials at high-stakes climate talks in Poland offered a defense of fossil fuels, arguing that a rapid retreat was unrealistic.
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• While that stance brought scorn from environmentalists, it is finding an audience among other major fossil-fuel producers, including Russia, Saudi Arabia and Australia.
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Environmental and progressive activist groups are urging Australia’s major banks and financial institutions not to fund new coal projects now that the Morrison government has flagged taxpayer assistance for power generation.

The Australian Conservation Foundation, GetUp, Greenpeace, Environment Victoria, the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, the Australian Centre for Corporate Responsibility and the Australia Institute wrote on Thursday to chief executives of the major lenders, warning the provision of finance for new coal, or retrofits of old coal-fired power stations, would be inconsistent with their public commitments to the Paris agreement.

The pressure on financial institutions follows the energy minister, Angus Taylor, calling for expressions of interest in new power generation projects to be underwritten by taxpayers, including, potentially, new coal builds or retrofits.

The government has made it clear that the new projects must be coal, gas, batteries or pumped hydro to be eligible for the government underwriting. A very tight timeframe is also proposed, with proponents having to put their hands up by January 23.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/dec/13/banks-urged-not-t...

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