"How Christmas is ruining the planet
Environmentalists call Christmas the world’s greatest annual environmental disaster."

https://www.politico.eu/article/how-christmas-is-ruining-the-planet/

Merry Christmas! (Though I fear that in part they do have a point).

http://grid.iamkate.com/

Fossil fuels - 42.5%
Renewable Energy - 13%
Interconnectors - 12.8%
Other - mostly nuclear (at 21.7%) and biomass (9.6%).

So much for the renewables miracle. In the MSM a discreet veil will be drawn over its failure to provide the electricity we need.

"Australia's east coast faces extreme heat as bushfire threat looms again
Temperatures forecast to reach the mid-40s again as heat moves from South Australia to New South Wales by Monday"

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/25/australias-east-coast-faces-extreme-heat-as-bushfire-threat-looms-again

"‘My moment’: the activists fighting climate crisis and winning elections"

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/25/activists-fighting-climate-crisis-and-winning-elections

Merry Christmas to one and all, and best wishes for 2020 - especially just now, for our Australian contributors.

"..disconnected from unhinged?

I guess Jainism will eventually appear in The Guardian touted as a lifestyle choice for the fashionably woke.

The twattery that GMG scribblers routinely espouse does not acknowledge any limits

Dec 24, 2019 at 9:23 PM | Unregistered Commentertomo

Nice one. I especially like the bit

"Although it has gotten better in past years, America still doesn’t understand what it means to be a true Jain. If you go to any restaurant, they have trouble making vegetarian food. Asking them to make Jain food is nearly impossible to them. Seeing the reactions from the waiters when I tell them that I need something that is vegetarian and has no vegetables that grow underground is hilarious. They give a look as if they have no idea what I am taking about. Then they would give me an awkward stare as in “I have no idea how to answer this”."

Although it has clearly gotten much better in recent years, America still clearly has a problem trying to accommodate the clinically insane. However, I took the trouble to check, and swiftly diagnosed the author's real problem: They hale from Michigan, not California.

More intellectual and logical contortions in order to prove that warmer weather makes cold weather worse.

Their initial argument is that warmer, wetter weather makes the snow and ice harder to dig-through for the Caribou (despite their well know penchant for nibbling the croquet hoops). Sensible people might also suggest that warmer weather might actually mean less snow coverage, in both area and depth.

However, once the reader breaks through the crust, the next big problem for the Caribou is, apparently, too many Caribou. Yes, the warmer summer weather also means that the Caribou are able to breed and multiply more successfully, leading to greater pressure on food resources.

The same mental gymnastics have long been employed in human demographics too. Population pressures in, typically African, third world countries is often causally linked to 'increasing' child mortality from starvation, malnutition, disease etc. I'm sure it's no fun living there, but rapidly expanding populations is the prima facie evidence that child mortality is actually decreasing, not increasing. In such places, women have long been bearing children in numbers approaching double digits per woman, but today maybe half of them might survive into adulthood as opposed to one or two in decades past.

It takes a special kind of logic, known mainly to Malthusians and global-warmers, to paint success as failure.

Robert Swan

>"But in two earlier years I have seen the still-burning embers carried directly on the wind from a nearby fire. Rather more worrying."

Yes. Terrifying, in fact.

I'm in the Upper Blue Mountains. My little street was directly the target of embers aloft on a mild easterly from the Grose Valley fire. The incredibly brave competence of the local RFS saved my house of 45 years and all the others in the street.

Politicians and bureaucrats are effing useless.

The dry winter and spring primed the bush for fire. No hazard reduction in cooler months was undertaken (Green Blob Councils, Sydney politicians fearful of smoke hazard complaints 150km away). Drought is endemic and in fact the actual normal. Our "climate scientists" are struggling to understand what causes the rain episodes - ENSO, IOD, SOI.

http://joannenova.com.au/2019/10/figure-this-andy-pitman-says-we-dont-understand-what-causes-droughts-but-the-indirect-link-is-clear/

No MSM will come within 10km of these facts.

golf charlie,

It's much the same here, if a bit more incendiary with so many of the plants being pyrophytes. Not that they fare any better in these huge fires; they kill everything. Australia was once mostly covered with deciduous trees. It's the centuries of small fires that have selected for the pyrophytes.

As you say, the greens seemingly won't be satisfied until the whole country is scorched earth.

Fun factoid: Soggy London average annual rainfall 23"; Sydney of the famous wide brown land, average annual rainful 46". Water restrictions in Sydney are more to do with the population going from 2.8m to 5.xm in 30 years or so with no new dams. We did get a desal plant to give a shot in the arm to electricity prices.

Dec 24, 2019 at 9:11 PM Robert Swan

Fire breaks in planted forests were standard practice in the UK. Unless regularly cut or burned, these firebreaks stopped being capable of doing what they were supposed to do. This would become apparent during hot dry summers.

Creating or maintaining firebreaks needs to be part of routine management, not carried out as an emergency measure during hot dry conditions.

Controlled burns of moorland covered with Heather has been another traditional practice, carried out to encourage fresh growth for grouse etc.

The UK Green Blob has campaigned against traditional rural practices and some landowners have complied to save costs. Five to ten years of accumulated scrub vegetation makes a bigger fire than one years worth.

Unfortunately, modern Green Blob Environmentalists want to put Mother Nature in charge of destroying the countryside