Australia’s economy is dependent on burning and exporting coal, which doesn’t help matters:
The last 60 years have been the hottest in Australasia for a millennium and cannot be explained by natural causes, according to a new report by scientists that supports the case for a reduction in manmade carbon emissions.
In the first major study of its kind in the region, scientists at the University of Melbourne used natural data from 27 climate indicators, including tree rings, corals and ice cores to map temperature trends over the past 1,000 years.
“Our study revealed that recent warming in a 1,000-year context is highly unusual and cannot be explained by natural factors alone, suggesting a strong influence of human-caused climate change in the Australasian region,” said the study’s lead researcher, Dr Joelle Gergis.
The climate reconstruction was done in 3,000 different ways and concluded with 95% accuracy that no other period in the past 1,000 years match or exceeded post-1950 warming in Australia.
Democratic Representative Marcy Kaptur of Ohio says she supports “clean coal” (whatever that is). Kaptur also admits that we’ve spent billions of taxpayer dollars and many decades trying to build a coal-fired power plant that burns “coal cleanly” and have not succeeded in doing so. Kaptur would like to see the Keystone pipeline built. Dennis Kucinich retired from politics yesterday. Kucinich knows there is no such thing as “clean coal.” He fought against building the Keystone pipeline, the war in Iraq and lots of other things that Kaptur supports. Kaptur used her influence to steal Kucinich’s Congressional seat away from him which is why he’s retiring from politics. Here’s a BIG middle finger to you Blue Dog Kaptur.
One thousand years is too small a comparative data set. Think Chesapeake Bay formation and you’re on the right track. Nobody is going to stop burning fossil fuels and there’s no economic or political will to stop doing it.
Let me know when we can start farming Greenland again, like the Vikings use to do.