The Government Edited Climate Change Out Of A Report About Climate Change
Because if you don't say it out loud, it won't come true.
The Guardian is reporting that a document on the Department of Environment website has been significantly edited to remove advice linking climate change to extreme weather events like heatwaves and bushfires.
The document, which aims to inform the public about what real-world effects climate change is having, originally stated: “There is a growing and robust body of evidence that climate change will increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events”, and noted that Australia has seen a growing number of floods, droughts, bushfires and heatwaves in recent years.
The document now reads: “Individual extreme events occur as a result of a number of contributing climatic factors. While it is difficult to isolate the role of climate change in any given event, there are some studies that provide evidence for a link between climate change and specific extreme events [italics added].”
“Should we figure out what’s causing this?”
“Eh.”
The whole thing seems like an odd coincidence given that Tony Abbott flatly dismissed any suggestion that climate change played any role in last year’s massive NSW bushfires, even accusing UN climate chief Christiana Figueres of “talking through her hat”. Meanwhile, the minister in charge of this stuff, Greg Hunt, gets his advice from Wikipedia.
Never mind that the Climate Commission has been pointing out the links between climate change and hotter, longer heatwaves for a while now, or that last year’s fire season started ten days after winter ended. Reporting on extreme weather events in Australia is already woefully inadequate at making the link between more bushfires and climate change without the government editing it out of official documents ‘explaining’ why people’s homes are burning down.
Also, the new Senate comes into power today, which means that the carbon tax is almost certain to be repealed. Hooray.