Qualifications and occupation of Melissa Price before entering Federal Parliament

• LL.B(Hons) (South Bank University, London)
• Grad.Dip.Law (UWA)
• Non-Executive Director, Cancer Council (WA), until 2016
• Non-Executive Director, BrightSpark Foundation, until 2016
• Solicitor in private practice 1997-2002
• General Counsel and Business Development Manager, CBH Group 2002-08
• Vice-President, Legal and Business Development, Crosslands Resources Ltd 2008-12

She understands the "law" which is about as useful as a hole in the head WHEN YOU NEED TO SAVE THE KOALAS (save the koala...), but knows effing nothing about the ENVIRONMENT...
AND THIS IS WHY SHE GOT THE F&^^$#G JOB FROM F*&&^%$ SCUMMO...

On multimillion-year time scales, Earth has experienced warm ice-free and cold glacial climates, but it is unknown whether transitions between these background climate states were the result of changes in carbon dioxide sources or sinks. Low-latitude arc-continent collisions are hypothesized to drive cooling by exhuming and eroding mafic and ultramafic rocks in the warm, wet tropics, thereby increasing Earth’s potential to sequester carbon through chemical weathering. To better constrain global weatherability through time, the paleogeographic position of all major Phanerozoic arc-continent collisions was reconstructed and compared to the latitudinal distribution of ice sheets. This analysis reveals a strong correlation between the extent of glaciation and arc-continent collisions in the tropics. Earth’s climate state is set primarily by global weatherability, which changes with the latitudinal distribution of arc-continent collisions.

Over geological history, Earth’s climate has varied between warm ice-free climate states, and cold glacial climate states in which polar continents were covered in ice (1, 2). Through the Phanerozoic Eon [past 540 million years (Ma)], Earth’s climate has been predominantly nonglacial (~75%), with relatively brief, ~3- to 60-Ma intervals of glacial climate (1, 3). Similarly, aside from Snowball Earth events, much of the preceding Proterozoic Eon was also characterized by a nonglacial climate state (3). Given that a warm, nonglacial climate is the most common climate state for Earth, what processes have caused cooling trends on million-year time scales resulting in glacial climate states, like that observed today?

Earth’s climate state is set by the balance between geological sources and sinks of carbon to the ocean-atmosphere system, but their relative importance is uncertain (4–8). On long time scales, CO2 is emitted primarily by volcanism and consumed primarily by chemical weathering of silicate rocks, which delivers alkalinity through rivers to the ocean and sequesters carbon via the precipitation of carbonate rocks. Prolonged imbalances between the magnitude of the sources and sinks would catastrophically manifest in either the onset of a Snowball Earth or a runaway greenhouse (7). The relative clemency of Phanerozoic climate requires that CO2sinks scale with changes in the sources, which can be explained through the silicate weathering feedback where increased CO2 leads to higher temperatures and invigorated hydrological cycling that enhances chemical weathering and vice versa (4). Because of the silicate weathering feedback, a decrease in the CO2 flux to the atmosphere leads to decreased weathering until a new steady state is achieved at lower CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere (4, 7). CO2 levels also vary as a result of changes in global weatherability—the cumulative factors that affect chemical weathering aside from climate (8). Global weatherability is the product of variables such as lithology, topography, and paleolatitude (8, 9). An increase in global weatherability also results in cooling as the consumption of carbon through silicate weathering will match that of volcanic input at lower concentrations of atmospheric CO2.

——————————————

This article in Science Magazine could appear as a contradiction to the present science of global warming, by giving a “different source” to atmospheric CO2. But it’s not a contradiction. What this article does is placing the slow climatic changes in context with the plate tectonic movements, which have already been mentioned on this site. It also squarely place the temperature variations onto the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere —irrespective of its origin. 
One of the major consideration is that there was a major climatic behaviour shift around 540 million years ago. This was mainly due to the appearance of life on land, which reduced the amount of erosion by consolidating top soil — and used the carbon dioxide as a feeding mechanism through land-plant photosynthesis. Thus, my guess is that despite major plate movements, the climatic conditions became more influenced by the biosphere rather than the slow plate shifts — as well as being influenced by the Milankovitch cycles. This has been the major source/management of the CO2 equation in the present time, for at least the last million year.
In the last 150 years, humans have added to this CO2 equation, via industrialisation. This cannot be denied. From a maximum of 300 ppm in the natural variations, we have added about 120 ppm of CO2 into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels — and we're adding more (3 ppm per annum). Denying that this won’t have any influence, is worse than being deliberately blind. It’s being stupid, careless and dangerous. 
So, what is the planetary cost of this added CO2. The scientific prognosis varies according to what model we choose to apply, but the result, whichever way we calculate, is going to warm up the atmosphere. The major questions are by how much and what is the timeframe we’re looking at. In terms of the multimillion-year time scales mentioned at top, atmospheric changes that are happening now are on a light-speed momentum, though, in terms of one human life, global warming is quite slow. Considering that Shakespeare lived about 400 years ago, four centuries of civilisation is still a blink we care to gloriously remember, we're warming the place — the planet — at at average of about four degrees by century to a possible estimated "maximum" of 12 degrees Celsius, with sea level rise up to 35 metres (or more) by 2250. And sea level could rise as much as 75 metres in the long run (year 2500).

This does not have to be seen as catastrophic, but as a major destruction of what we know. It will hit us slowly, like a low blow in the crotch and crush most of us, beyond what we care to imagine. Some of us will "adapt", most of us won't.

So what do we do? Nothing? Or wake up?… Or carry on burning baby burn? This is our economic dilemma. We are committing suicide on a planetary scale. This is why we have to stop Adani — a cog in burning more fossil fuels which will eventually kill us.
Get rid of this pox on Australian soil. Time to act. Become real.

Richard Miller Flanagan (born 1961) is an Australian writer, "considered by many to be the finest Australian novelist of his generation", according to The Economist. Each of his novels has attracted major praise and received numerous awards and honours.[1] He also has written and directed feature films. He won the 2014 Man Booker Prize for The Narrow Road to the Deep North.[2]

The New York Review of Books described Flanagan as "among the most versatile writers in the English language. That he is also an environmental activist and the author of numerous influential works of nonfiction makes his achievement all the more remarkable."

 

Here is his speech about STOPPING ADANI...

 

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I grew up in a remote mining town. I know the hardship. I saw the tragedy. One of my earliest memories is a whole town stopped for a miner’s funeral, family after family lining the main street, one people joined in grief.

And when politicians talk of caring about miners I don’t believe a word they say.

If they cared wouldn’t they be advocating to end black lung disease, a 19th century industrial disease now returned, because of unsafe working conditions, to kill Australian coalminers in the 21st century?

If they cared wouldn’t they be speaking out about the increasing casualisation and pay stripping of coalminers, supported by the Morrison government?

And if they cared wouldn’t they question whether Adani is an appropriate business to employ Australian miners? Adani, such a friend of the working man that, when building its giant Shantigram luxury estate in India, it housed workers in conditions so appalling that there were 15 recorded outbreaks of cholera.

Put a hi-vis jacket on that corpse and say you’re still for the working miners of Queensland, Scott.

But then Adani’s long-term aim isn’t to employ miners under whatever pitiful conditions and awards its paid-up political mates might legislate.

As Adani Mining’s CEO said in 2016, “When we ramp up the mine, everything will be autonomous from mine to port. In our eyes, this is the mine of the future.” That’s right: Adani’s ambition is ultimately that its mine is all robots. Not a miner, not a driller, not a driver in sight.

So the promised 10,000 jobs that turned out to be 1,462 jobs will in turn vanish like the mist as Adani buys in ever more robots.

But that’s not all. Modelling by Wood Mackenzie shows that if coalmining in the Galilee Basin, led by Adani, goes ahead, coal production in older, less efficient Australian coalmines will drop significantly and many coalmining jobs will vanish. Adani’s new mine will simply steal the jobs off the old mines.

Jabbering jobs, jobs, jobs, in a hard hat doesn’t change these truths. It doesn’t make a politician fair dinkum. It makes him or her a lying clown who sells every coalminer down the drain for another backhander from the bosses of the fossil fuel industry.

The coalmining communities of Australia deserve better. They deserve the truth. They need a responsible transition plan, not lies and deceit.

Because Adani’s mine is not happening to help miners. It’s not happening to help Clermont or Mackay or far-north Queensland. It’s certainly not happening to help the poor of India.

It’s happening because of one thing: greed.

And that greed controls our politics. How can Scott Morrison claim to care about climate change when his political survival now hinges on a deal with Clive Palmer, a man whose own massive Galilee Basin coalmine is dependent on Adani getting up? What exactly did Scott Morrison promise Palmer? The Liberals’ platform is nothing more than a smoking coal heap.

Forty-one years ago, I had just kayaked through a beautiful gorge on the Franklin River called Irenabyss. The Franklin was to be dammed and though there was opposition to the damming, no one I knew believed it was possible to defeat the all-powerful state and federal governments that were at the time hell-bent on building it.

The gorge opened out into small basin. At its rainforested edge there was a beach. I kayaked over to it and a lanky man appeared out of the rainforest. And there, on the banks of that beautiful, doomed river, I met Bob Brown.

I asked Bob did he really think the river could be saved. His answer was revealing. I think, he said, that there is hope.

And this is what I learned from Bob Brown. The battle for that river raged for another four years. Governments came and went. At every step it looked like we had lost, and yet, what we could not see was that at every stop we were growing stronger. Thousands of people went to prison in the biggest act of civil disobedience in Australian history.

In the end the government was spending countless millions to get heavy machinery into that remote rainforest to destroy as much a possible to make that dam inevitable. And at the very last moment, the high court ruled the dam could not go ahead.

I am here today to say that there is hope. That the Franklin flows free and Adani will be stopped. These things happen because at a certain point enough people say there are things that matter more than politics or money. There is no power on this earth that can resist an idea whose time has come.

I am not going to waste your time today repeating the many facts with which you are already familiar, suffice to say one thing: the IPCC last October said we had 12 years to contain climate change – that is, decarbonise our economy so that the temperature rises no more than another half a degree on what it is today. If large-scale action is not taken now the IPCC warned that we will face a global warming catastrophe.

More than half a year of that 12 years has already passed without any meaningful national or international action. Our emissions are still rising. And that is why this is a crisis unlike any we have ever faced. On present trends much of Australia will become, quite simply, uninhabitable. And what remains liveable will be small bands of our country.

We will not have the means to generate the food we need, the wealth we are accustomed to. The most recent science suggests that around the world up to one million species on which we depend for food and clean water face annihilation, that the planet’s very life support systems are entering a danger zone. This is not science fiction. This is not a Netflix series. It is what the world’s leading scientists tell us.

The moment for believing this is a matter that can be solved by flying less or not eating meat has long passed. The solution will not be about personal choices. It will be about – and can only be about – political change.

And that change will not come about because of a messianic leader. It will not come about because of this party or that party. It will only happen if we wish it to happen and if we make it happen. We have only ourselves to blame and we have only ourselves to turn to save ourselves.

It matters very much who you vote for this election. And after May 18 it matters even more to press whoever wins to recognise this crisis is not an issue. It is the issue.

The drying out of Australia is the issue. The collapse of our fisheries is the issue. The likelihood of not having enough water to sustain our population is the issue. The threat greater and greater mega-fires pose is the issue. The decline of our agriculture is the issue. The inability of our infrastructure to cope with ever-larger floods and more frequent cyclones is the issue. Sea rises are the issue. The death of our rivers, the death of the Great Barrier Reef, the death of the Tasmanian rainforests is the issue. The drying wheatbelt is the issue. If our very fate as a species is not the issue, then what is?

And that is why Adani has become the symbol of why our country is broken. That is why the fight against Adani is a fight for the soul of our country.

I know many of you may feel that you have no power, or lack the skills or abilities needed. Faced with the crisis that is climate change it is too easy to feel powerless, to feel the problem is beyond your powers or perhaps anyone’s to influence.

Perhaps the greatest problem we face is not climate change, but the myth of our own powerlessness. We believe only the most powerful – the politicians, the corporations – can change our world. Accordingly, we feel a great despair about our future because we can see no hope in any politician or any corporation.

But it is not so.

Because the only thing that will save us is us. Half of the carbon in the atmosphere was put there by us in the last 30 years. And now we have 11 and a half years to reverse that disastrous act.

It is a time to act and it is for us to act. Because there is no one else and there is no other time.

And if our politicians continue to deceive themselves and deceive us, if after May 18 we end up with a government that will not act, and if we are only left with only our bodies to oppose this mine, if it takes putting our flesh between the past and the future, between the bulldozers and the earth, if it means a blockade of the Adani site, then I, for one, will be there. And if that means being arrested and going to jail then I will go to jail.

And my question to you today is this: will you?

Will you stand with me, will you go to jail with me, to stop this mine and save our future? Because if you will, I ask you to raise your hand.

I tell you this: we will win.

The Franklin was more than a river. Adani is more than a mine. This rally, you people, are part of the river of hope that flows through this country, our beloved country, and it is a river that cannot be bought, that cannot be dammed, that cannot be poisoned, that cannot be bought and sold. And every day that river grows larger and stronger.

And I am hopeful. Why? Because 41 years ago I met a man who refused to abandon hope and led a movement with such moral clarity that the river still flows. And 41 years later I stand here before you, with that same man, to say that hope is never lost.

Never. Never. Never.

This is an edited version of a speech delivered to the anti-Adani rally in Canberra on 5 May

Adani demanded the names of all federal agency scientists reviewing its contentious groundwater plans so it could check if they were "anti-coal" activists, emails obtained under freedom of information show.

Key points:

• Emails show Adani gave the federal environment department five days to provide the names of people from the CSIRO and Geoscience Australia involved in the review
• Adani says it wrote to the department to request "assurance that individuals involved in any review processes were independent"
• CSIRO's Sam Popovski says "our scientists just want to get on and do their best job ... without their social media being tracked"

 

The revelation has alarmed CSIRO staff representatives, who said it indicated Adani had "a deliberate strategy" to pressure scientists by searching for personal information it could use to try to "discredit their work".

Emails obtained under freedom of information by environmental group Lock The Gate show Adani gave the federal environment department five days to provide "a list of each person from the CSIRO and Geoscience Australia involved in the review".

"Adani simply wants to know who is involved in the review to provide it with peace of mind that it is being treated fairly and that the review will not be hijacked by activists with a political, as opposed to scientific, agenda," the company told the department on January 25.

A department spokeswoman said it "consulted with CSIRO and Geoscience Australia about Adani's request" but did not provide the names "as the advice on the plans was received from CSIRO and Geoscience Australia, rather than individuals within those agencies".

Days before the demand, in a January 21 newspaper article Adani had questioned the independence of a scientist leading a Queensland review into the company's bird conservation plan because he tweeted from a climate rally nine months earlier.

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-16/adani-requests-names-of-csiro-sci...

Read from top

The Queensland Government is prosecuting mining giant Adani for allegedly providing false and misleading information to the Environment Department over land clearing at the site of its proposed Carmichael mine.

Key points:

• Queensland's Environment Department says documents from the mining company had misleading information about disturbances already undertaken at the mining site
• Adani notified the Department about an "administrative paperwork error" in their report
• The Government stressed the legal action would not impact work already underway at the mine

 

The ABC understands the charge under the Environmental Protection Act carries a fine that runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"The prosecution relates to information contained in Adani's 2017/2018 annual return for its Carmichael mine," the department said in a statement to the ABC.

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-16/adani-facing-prosecution-queensla...

 

 

Read from top.

Seven [mostly French] people were arrested, including [journalist] Hugo Clément and three members of his film crew. All are charged with trespassing on a railway line.

A French television crew filming a demonstration against a giant coal mine was arrested Monday [22/7/19] in Australia and charged with trespassing on a railway.

The Carmichael coal mine project near the Great Barrier Reef is led by the Indian conglomerate Adani and is valued at more than 12 billion euros. Since its origin, it has been plagued by legal and regulatory problems, as well as by activism of organisations relentlessly denouncing its bad environmental impact.

 

 

Translation by Jules Letambour.

 

Read more:

https://www.sudouest.fr/2019/07/22/hugo-clement-et-plusieurs-autres-jour...

 

 

Read from top.

How One Billionaire Could Keep Three Countries Hooked on Coal

The story of a mining project in Australia helps to explain why the world keeps burning coal despite the profound risk it poses to the future.

Climate

https://www.nytimes.com

A Great Barrier Reef conservation organisation has ended its partnership with bus company Greyhound just hours after Guardian Australia revealed the company’s contract at the controversial Adani coal project in Queensland.

Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation held an emergency board meeting at 8am today, where its chairman Alex de Waal, who is the chief executive of Greyhound Australia, resigned.

Guardian Australia revealed that Greyhound had written to all its staff on 6 January, alerting them to the contract to transport workers constructing the Adani mine’s railway that will move the coal from the Galilee Basin to Adani’s Abbott Point coal port.

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/22/great-barrier-reef-g...

 

Read from top. If my memory (and Wikipedia) is correct it's Abbot's point...

Lucas Dow has mysteriously stood aside as the Adani chief executive with the controversial Carmichael coal project still about a year away from production.

The company said the decision came as the Carmichael mine development was well underway. Mr Dow will become a non-executive director of the company’s Australian mining division.

Mr Dow, who served as CEO for two years, left with a parting shot at the activists who have delayed the project for years with legal action, claiming their campaign of bullying and intimidation had failed.

He also leaves a tattered relationship with the Queensland government after he began an all-or-nothing campaign to shame it into approving the mine. It eventually did following Labor’s poor showing in Queensland in the 2019 federal election, during which Adani was a key issue.

However, Adani faces a new legal threat from landowners in Godda, India, where Adani Power is building a power plant that will use coal from the Carmichael mine. It also still faces an appeal in the Federal Court from the Australian Conservation Foundation about the approval of Carmichael.

The decision came as New Hope Group appointed former Yancoal boss Reinhold Schmidt as chief executive replacing the retiring Shane Stephan.

 

Read more:

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/state/qld/2020/07/10/adani-boss-lucas-do...

 

Read from top.