ketan

ketan , 8 days ago to random

There has been a resurgence of climate coverage in Australia after opposition leader Peter Dutton said he plans to drop 2030 targets if elected next year. At least a few hundred articles frame this as "the climate wars".

But when it comes to rejecting the spirit of the Paris Agreement and the call for maximum effort in eliminating fossil fuels, there has been close to zero scrutiny of Labor's planned approach to hitting a 43% cut by 2030.

And if you care about Peter Dutton rejecting the heart of the Paris Climate Agreement, you should also care about Labor doing the same, but in a significantly more subtle and corrosive way.

Both major parties wrongly blend temporary land carbon data with multi-millenia fossil carbon, and in doing so, allow worse ongoing burning of fossil fuels while still "achieving" targets. But the land-use data get revised too: and these revisions are so significant that, by my calculations, Labor could now fail to hit its power sector target, and see zero reductions in the transport sector due to fuel standards, and STILL HIT THE 43% TARGET.

This is what is seen as 'climate peace': a broad agreement to avoid tackling the real cause of the threat to our safety. Does that feel peaceful, to you?

Have a read of my new post explaining how this all works, here: https://ketanjoshi.co/2024/06/16/the-hollowness-of-the-2030-targets-debate/

And last weekend's deep dive into land-use revisions, here: https://ketanjoshi.co/2024/06/02/australias-land-use-emissions-data-revisions-are-an-engine-of-climate-delay/

ketan , 23 days ago to random

It is obviously important that we measure how carbon moves from biomass to air, or from air to biomass, due to human choices.

But the inherent uncertainty, uniqueness and complexity of emissions measurements here seems to have turned it into a massive engine of climate delay, in Australia.

I've been tracking revisions to the dataset for five years, every major revision has seen the base year rise, and recent years fall, making target achievement easier for both the Liberals and the Labor party. The most recent change is worse than ever: moving Australia 6% closer towards its 2030 target in the time it took to publish the PDF (equivalent to five years of deployment of wind and solar).

Transport, industry, fossil mining and agriculture emissions in Australia are not falling. The power sector's reductions are slowing down. And this situation is being wholly masked by unreliable, massive revisions to Australia's land use sector.

Have a read of my post here:

https://ketanjoshi.co/2024/06/02/australias-land-use-emissions-data-revisions-are-an-engine-of-climate-delay/

a chart showign the difference between adjutse and unadjusted data
a chart showing how reivisons to autralia's data change the narrative

ketan , 1 month ago to random

I had to turn some of Polly Hemming's posts on Cooper Energy into a couple of charts, because it's such a perfect visual demonstration of what "carbon neutral" actually looks like for most high-emitters -->>

All links, refs etc here: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7192925671474532353/

image/png

ketan , 2 months ago to random

Hey friends, a new post for your weekend reading 😘

"Twitter is dead. It has been replaced by something we have never seen before: a blend of highly engaged, influential media/political accounts posting happily inside the newly formed infrastructure of a seething, hate-soaked racist right-wing fever swamp.

My late-2022 assumption that moral disgust would cause a rapid collapse in X’s user base was wrong. I should have predicted this, knowing that assumption is the mother of all fuckups. X has become as mean-spirited as predicted, but it hasn’t collapsed, and it hasn’t suffered a major loss of its user base"

Featuring an update of my 2023 analysis of climate deniers and pro-climate-action accounts, and some thoughts on why X has retained such a massive user base, despite months and months of ever-worsening problems.

Please share it around if you like it :)

https://ketanjoshi.co/2024/04/19/you-are-the-fuel-that-energises-elon-musks-hate-machine/

ketan , 2 months ago to random

Friends: here's a new post for you! Australia's gov't just saw its highest ever thermal coal exports in a single quarter - and the latest forecast sees PM Anthony Albanese becoming the highest fossil exporting Aus PM in history.

Effortfully pouring fossil fuel subsidies into new coal and gas supply means worse emissions, because supply impacts demand.

Whatever Australia says about its climate plans - it is betting on catastrophic failure and planning to supply the fuel for that fire.

And Anthony Albanese has a long-term plan to be crowned king of climate disaster

https://ketanjoshi.co/2024/03/31/anthony-albanese-the-future-fossil-export-king-of-australia/

ketan , 4 months ago to random

Happy weekend folks, here's a new post I've written up about how bad it is that Australia is following the EU and the US in implementing vehicle efficiency standards that fail to rein in the unstoppable expansion of modern cars.

Like the EU, and the US, Australia's climate policy suite does something but it falls short of what's required - and defanging climate policy to avoid a backlash from big car companies and right-wing disinformation machines seems to be a root cause.

Driven by greed and profit, car manufacturers are creating worse emissions for fossil cars (and weakening emissions reductions from EVs) by oversizing them. The Australian Labor government is certainly not alone in failing to directly address the root cause of emissions growth for road transport, but that doesn't make it any less vital that they design climate policy fit for the age of the urban tank.

Enjoy!

https://ketanjoshi.co/2024/02/17/car-companies-are-wrecking-climate-efforts-to-make-money/