The final text of a huge 12-country trade agreement has confirmed the "worst nightmares" of environmental groups, with no mention of climate change in its lone environment chapter and weak enforcement mechanisms, Australian academics say.

The text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement was finally released on Thursday, with Trade Minister Andrew Robb saying the deal will deliver "substantial benefits for Australia" in the rapidly growing Asia Pacific.

The TPP is the biggest global trade deal in 20 years, involving 12 countries in the Pacific region which collectively represent over 40 per cent of world GDP.

Scientist arcs up at fact-fudging by climate skeptics Lord Matt Ridley and Rupert Murdoch. Wouldn't have anything to do with their financial interests in fossil fuels?Graham Readfearn investigates.

A SCIENTIST whose research has been used by prominent climate science denialists Lord Matt Ridley and Rupert Murdoch to claim carbon dioxide is good for the planet has hit back at the “selective presentation” of his work.

Professor Ranga Myneni of Boston University, has been researching satellite data showing how the extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels is contributing to increased plant growth across the planet.

In an article published in the Murdoch-owned The Times and reproduced in Murdoch’s The Australian, Ridley said 30 years of satellite data showed plant growth had risen by 14 per cent across the world.

I asked Lord Ridley on Twitter about the source for his satellite data and he pointed me to a 2013 presentation by Professor Myneni.

No, 14% overall -- data here: http://t.co/VyRpHBollt. Donohue study was different. https://t.co/ufyPRT0tH8

Myneni told DeSmog the presentation Lord Ridley had cited had not been peer reviewed and was “work in progress” but hoped it would appear as two scientific articles, one of which was in review at the journal Nature Climate Change.

He said his analysis of satellite data covering the last 30 years did show a 13 to 14 per cent increase in vegetation growth. He said some of this could be attributed to increased levels of carbon dioxide, but changes in the way land was management was also a factor.

Myneni, in Norway for a meeting of ecologists to discuss vegetation changes in remote regions, said “in the context of being good versus bad” he was “worried about how this work is being interpreted”.

He said Ridley’s story “suffers from selective presentation of facts” and would“not survive peer-review”. 

If one were to interpret the greening of the Earth as a good or a positive development then one must also accept that the accompanying climate changes (global warming, for example) and its physical (sea level rise) and biotic impacts (polar bears) as bad or negative developments.

Again, in my opinion, this benefit of greening is not worth price of all the negative changes.

Humans are one amongst many species on Earth and we have no right conducting such experiments that affect all forms of life — it is simply indecent, deeply vulgar and inhuman (you can choose any adjective).

https://independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/scientist-hits-back-at-fact-fudging-by-pro-coal-climate-skeptics-lord-matt-ridley-and-rupert-murdoch,8349

Europe has to step up its effort to combat climate change and wake up to the urgency of the situation, the climate change expert Lord Stern has said before crunch UN talks in Paris later this month.

Europeans need to end subsidies for fossil fuels, multiply energy efficiency efforts, improve mass public transport systems and accelerate the roll-out of electric cars in order to live up to their commitments, Stern told the Guardian in an interview.

Decisions taken at the Paris summit, opening on 30 November, will shape the world’s carbon course for the next two decades, which in turn will determine whether there is a chance of avoiding a global temperature rise of more than 2C, considered to be the threshold for dangerous climate change.

“In human history it’s a one-off … and what we map out in the next two decades will be absolutely critical,” he said. “Whether we can live in our cities – breathe in them, move in them – all of this will be defined by the decisions we take.

“I don’t think the criticalness of these 20 years is sufficiently understood.”

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/08/sterns-warning-on-climate-change-battle

As the Northern Territory is experiencing record temperatures, we need to look at the battle AGAINST the science of global warming, of which Andrew Bolt is a shameless spruiker against the science and a completus ignoramus.

The Science Show on ABC Radio National is celebrating its 40th year of broadcasting with having resisted to introduce one denialist to the microphone since 2006. The denialists of climate change science are not doing humanity a favour and they should be banned from spruiking their unscientific ideas on a science show —or anywhere else for that matter...

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To say that Robyn Williams is a bit of a legend of science broadcasting on the radio is a bit like saying David Attenborough is a dab hand at nature documentaries on the telly.

The “legend” epithet just feels a bit superfluous but is, in any case, annoyingly necessary to introduce a broadcaster to those not familiar.

Williams has presented more than 2000 episodes of The Science Show on ABC Radio National since it was first broadcast in August 1975.

Perhaps the only thing as synonymous with The Science Show as Williams is the microphone he uses – a curious but faithful lump of black plastic that he has used since first joining the ABC in 1972 (I got to talk down it myself once).

Last week Williams was in Brisbane for a celebration of the 40th anniversary of the show put on by the University of Queensland.

Williams, 71, was in conversation with ABC personality John Doyle to an invited audience of a couple of hundred. I was there too. Williams looks well after undergoing treatment for cancer earlier this year.

Joining Williams onstage was outgoing chief scientist Ian Chubb. On a big screen, there were video dedications from the likes of actress Cate Blanchett, theoretical physicist Professor Paul Davies, Nature editor-in-chief Philip Campbell and former UK chief science advisor Lord May.

Oh, and David Attenborough.

But Williams reserved one section of the event to talk about what he called “the war on science” and, in particular, the war on climate science.

So a few days later I spoke to Williams about the event and, in particular, that war on science he’d told people about.

Something happened around 2006 or seven which meant that the usual politeness where you argue over ideas became, instead, a kind of assault – a propaganda assault – which most of us were not expecting.

We had not seen anything quite like that before, except when, as Naomi Oreskes has written, cigarette companies were defending their pitch.

Then it becomes obvious that you have a number of interested parties hiring experts in publicity and penetration and propaganda even to get a message across to sow doubt about science.

Not simply one aspect – like tobacco – but many aspects, as if science was a matter of opinion.

I called it the war on science because before me Sir Paul Nurse from the Royal Society had done so in his documentary for the BBC and in March the National Geographic magazine had done so on its cover story as well.

As I’ve written many times here and elsewhere, much of the doubt about the science linking human emissions of greenhouse gases to dangerous climate change is manufactured.

Vested interests, either ideological or economical, have worked hard to convince the public that sufficient doubt exists about the causes or the impacts of climate change to warrant doing little or nothing about it.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2015/nov/09/why-legendary-science-broadcaster-robyn-williams-wont-broadcast-shameless-climate-science-deniers-any-more

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to THE SCIENCE SHOW !

Hundreds of millions of people around the world are living in places that could eventually be submerged by rising sea levels triggered by unchecked climate change, new global maps suggest.

An estimated 627 million people live in these places, including about 1.9 million in Australia and many more in the world's great metropolises such as Tokyo, New York and Shanghai.

The rising seas won't happen overnight, nor in anybody's current lifetime. The global mapping project, carried out by the US group Climate Central, is based on huge sea-level rises that would not emerge for another 200 to 2000 years.

But a report that accompanies the maps, released on Monday, says this future would be locked in if global warming reached four degrees by 2100 - considered likely if the current level of emissions continued unabated.

I won't pass on the link to Andrew Bolt's blog. I believe that it is behind Paywall but I manage to bypass the fence by small devious means, despite my internet connection being wonky. But today he is full flight against Turnbull, against global warming and against our dislike of Tony Abbott... Bolt sings the praise of Lomborg and damn that former Media Watch presenter Jonathan Holmes, now a columnist at the Fairfax shooting gallery... We had our own shots at Jonathan on this site... Like Bolt, Jonathan as usual is fidgeting with stuff he does not understand, or possibly cannot back with analysis and evidence.

But Bolt still pushes his barrow of crap that:

Contrary to what Shorten claimed, I noted that:

- satellite data showed no statistically significant warming for 18 years

- crops were in fact bigger than ever

- food prices were falling

- some warming was likely to save lives overall, not cost them, since cold weather was deadlier

than warm

- 80 per cent of low-lying atoll islands were in fact not drowning but growing or stable

- cyclones were decreasing in number and there was little evidence they had grown stronger

- there was little evidence for an increase worldwide of the predicted droughts.

All this crap of course can be disproved in a flash... But the clincher is "some warming was likely to save lives overall, not cost them, since cold weather was deadlier than warm"

This conundrum is studied by Gus short analysis of Arrhenius predictions.  

As well the prediction by global warming models also predict a reduction of cyclones, BUT the recent experience shows that they are INCREASING IN strength. The only reason there is not so much loss of lives as in the past is due to warnings and evacuation.

As well there has been an increase of sea level of 3 mm per year for the last decade, worldwide now running at 4 mm this year. 

Drought come and go but some places like California are in record breaking drought. Western Queensland now entering the 4th year of dry. 

Food prices are falling... Hum. That's a biggie. Actually, producers are loosing their pants being forced to sell food below real cost. Recent fires in WA and SA show that things are tinder dry. There has been a significant warming in the past 18 years. Bolt is spreading bullshit as if he knew what he was talking about. HE TALKS BULLSHIT.

And Andrew Bolt is far from a lone voice ... – the list of News columnists who are sceptical of or

openly derisive about climate change science goes on and on.

Shorten the scaremonger - good. Bolt the truthteller - bad.

BOLT THE TRUTHTELLER?... Go and wash your mouth with soap, Andrew. Telling lies is one thing and quoting Professor Kench   is a double edged sword:

The new findings suggest that, rather than being passive lumps of rock that will be swamped by rising seas and eroded by storms, the islands are dynamic structures that can move and even grow in response to changing seas.

But although the islands may survive into the future, the changes could still affect issues like fresh water and agriculture, potentially making life on these islands much more difficult than it is today.

Above is what Professor Kench wrote about a year ago, but HE DOES NOT DENY THAT THE SEA LEVEL IS RISING. Nor did he include the possibility of coral bleaching due to the acidification of the sea water by absorption of CO2.... 

Andrew Bolt is full of shit.

It's Now or Never for the Climate

A Commentary by Florian Harms at Spiegel Online

This week, the most important event of the year began: 195 countries are negotiating the future of our planet in Paris. The world's most powerful leaders must now demand sacrifices from their citizens in order to save the climate.

With war, terror, debt drama and mass migration, 2015 was a year of crises and urgent problems. For politicians, it was a year of continual crisis management, often with uncertain outcomes. Many of the blazes have yet to be extinguished, but the greatest challenge is yet to come. This year's crises may have been staggering, but at least they were limited in terms of geography. But for the next two weeks in Paris, the global community will be deciding on the fate of our planet, our future and the basis of life for all of humanity.

It's up to us. At the climate conference in Paris, we will have the opportunity to demonstrate whether or not we are serious about climate protection -- whether we will live up to our responsibility to ourselves and to future generations to keep Earth in an at least halfway healthy state. Whether we are prepared to alter our behavior as consumers, shifting away from the comfort and growth of our excessive, more is better, culture to more modest and austere lives. Or whether we will continue to exploit nature, with devastating repurcussions. Scientists have already demonstrated the grave consequences climate change is having on our planet.

• Fourteen of the warmest years on record, since scientists began compiling data on the climate in 1850, have been measured in the first 15 years of this millenneum.

• The polar ice on the North Pole, the inland ice of the Antarctic and mountain glaciers are melting. And when glaciers thaw and melt water flows into the sea, it causes ocean levels to rise and creates a greater danger of storm surges.

• Entire parts of the planet today -- areas that include the Mediterranean region and West Africa -- are frequently plagued by droughts.

• Extreme weather of the type that can cause billions in damage and have deadly consequences has become an increasingly frequent phenomenon, including in Germany. Tens of thousands of people died during the heatwave that plagued the Central Europe during the summer of 2003.

Things are likely to get even worse. If we continue to spew the same amount of emissions from coal, oil and gas combustion into the atmosphere, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns the climate could warm by three or four degrees Celsius or even higher by the end of the century. This would make parts of our planet uninhabitable through extreme droughts, famine, floods or simply because human beings are incapable of enduring sustained temperatures of 60 degrees Celsius (140 degrees Fahrenheit). The consequences of climate change could intensify conflicts in fragile countries and drive more people into flight. Climate change "is a threat to lives and livelihoods everywhere," United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon wrote this week. He's right.

The massive summit in Paris (20,000 participants!) provides us with an opportunity to mitigate this scenario. Earth is likely capable of maintaining its ecological balance with a maximum warming of the atmosphere by 2 degrees Celsius. The delegates representing 195 countries at the Paris conference must now demonstrate that they truly take this goal seriously. They must agree upon a concrete timetable for transforming the climate protection plans they have submitted into binding rules by 2020. We can no longer accept declarations of intent -- particularly not those that are circumvented using tricks and deception. China, for example, which is pumping considerably more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than it previously admitted. But the summit also needs to send a message to large corporations like Volkswagen, which in their manic thirst for growth deceive their customers and violate hard-won environmental standards. A clear message must be sent that this kind of behavior will no longer be tolerated.

The delegations dispatched by Obama, Putin, Li, Modi, Merkel and Co. are negotiating the fate of our world. Now they have to deliver and prove that they have vision and determination -- as well as the courage to stand up to the corporations in their own countries and to teach their own people that they cannot carry on with their wasteful lifestyles. Courage is needed

• from the United States, which under President Obama has risen to become one of the world's largest producers of oil and gas.

• from China, where the cost of economic upsurge has been the wholesale rape of nature and the smothering of entire regions in the smog of fossil fuels.

• from India, which is burning an increasing amount of coal and has risen to become the world's third-largest producer of greenhouse gases after China and the US.

• and from Germany, which is unlikely to achieve its stated goal of reducing CO2 emissions by 40 percent by 2020 and still has no coherent plan for implementing or even financing the "energiewende," the country's planned shutdown of all German nuclear power plants by 2022 and radical increase in the share of renewable energies used by 2050.

If it creates the basis for a new global climate pact, then this summit has the potential to become a truly historic event. For that to happen, though, China and India must show a willingness to organize their economic growth in ways that are more environmentally sustainable. And Western countries that have achieved prosperity at the cost of the world's climate will have to reach deep into their coffers in order to provide the aid needed by developing and emerging economies for climate protection.

A fair and, above all, honest global emissions trading system could provide the prudent conditions needed for lasting climate change, one that is oriented around climate goals and places strict limits on the number of certificates that can be traded between companies. No matter what, the prices of these certificates cannot be allowed to be as low as they are in Europe right now. And exclusions from the trading system must no longer be permitted for individual industries, like the transport and agricultural sectors.

Ultimately, it's actions that will matter. The only thing that can guarantee the livelihood of millions is a treaty with binding, verifiable goals for CO2 emissions reductions and sanctions that can be imposed if its terms are violated. Germany's interests in such a deal are also great, for a courageous climate treaty would more sustainably limit future migration to Europe than any fences or transit zones ever could.

In Paris, it is time to go for broke in order to save the climate.

EBEYE, MARSHALL ISLANDS — Linber Anej waded out in low tide to haul concrete chunks and metal scraps to shore and rebuild the makeshift sea wall in front of his home. The temporary barrier is no match for the rising seas that regularly flood the shacks and muddy streets with saltwater and raw sewage, but every day except Sunday, Mr. Anej joins a group of men and boys to haul the flotsam back into place.

“It’s insane, I know,” said Mr. Anej, 30, who lives with his family of 13, including his parents, siblings and children, in a four-room house. “But it’s the only option we’ve got.”

Standing near his house at the edge of a densely packed slum of tin shacks, he said, “I feel like we’re living underwater.”

read more: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/02/world/The-Marshall-Islands-Are-Disappearing.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

Andrew Bolt's crap: http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/31025#comment-34086

And by the way, when I mention "coral bleaching in the Bolt's crap above, in regard to what Professor Kench wrote, I mean that as the coral dies from bleaching, the coral stops building. The coral islands die and stop "growing upwards". Temporary coral disintegration might provide more "sand" for the islands, BUT the surrounding waters around the islands would be getting deeper — by see water rising and natural erosion of the dead coral beds. This in turns allows for stronger waves to hit the island in storms. Some island may "survive" such problem because storms are rare in their location. They are the islands that are in the band stretching about 10 degrees North and 10 degrees South of the equator. Tropical islands above and lower those latitudes will eventually get wiped out by cyclones, hurricanes and typhoons.