[MCN] Australia fires: 20, 000 protesters march to demand urgent action on climate change

[Lance Olsen]

Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) Updated December 11, 2019

'Sydney is angry': Protesters march to demand urgent action on climate change

By Laura Chung <https://www.smh.com.au/by/laura-chung-h17jx8> and Matt Bungard <https://www.smh.com.au/by/matt-bungard-hvf3e>

Our coverage of the bushfire crisis <https://www.smh.com.au/topic/bushfires-5vj> is free for all readers.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/sydney-is-angry-protesters-march-to-demand-urgent-action-on-climate-change-20191211-p53iyc.html <https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/sydney-is-angry-protesters-march-to-demand-urgent-action-on-climate-change-20191211-p53iyc.html>

Excerpts

An estimated 20,000 protesters marched from Town Hall to Hyde Park on Wednesday evening, taking over George Street to demand stronger climate action as bushfires continue to rage across the state.

The event, titled "NSW is Burning, Sydney is Choking - Climate Emergency Rally!", was swiftly set up on Facebook last week by Extinction Rebellion, Uni Students for Climate Justice, and Greens MP David Shoebridge, in response to horrendous air conditions <https://www.smh.com.au/link/follow-20170101-p53ins> and ongoing bushfires across the state.

High school student Amy Lamont addressed the thousands of protesters wearing P2 face masks and said: "The reality is these fires will be around all summer."

"Students shouldn't have to worry when going to school that they might come back to a burnt home."

Fire Brigade Employees Union state secretary Leighton Drury has been a firefighter for 20 years. He said the government had "failed" to adequately fund services.

"We’re on the bones of our ass," he said. "There are now fewer professional firefighters than there were in 2011. We’ve got no water, a state and country in drought, professional firefighters are spread thin, and our volunteers are exhausted”.

NSW Fire and Rescue firefighter Monte Partridge, who finished his shift at 6.30am on Wednesday morning, joined the march because "not enough is being done".

"The city was choking in smoke yesterday, we are understaffed, our rivers are dry or poisoned and we’re not getting too much from the government," he said.


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Excerpts from Parmesan 2006 review of 800+ reports 

Climate change is not a new topic in biology. The study of biological impacts of climate change has a rich history in the scientific literature, since long before there were political ramifications…… 

Observations of range shifts in parallel with climate change ... date back to the mid-1700s.”

 This review  …  deals exclusively with observed responses of wild biological species and systems ….  

… the direct impacts of anthropogenic climate change have been documented on every continent, in every ocean, and in most major taxonomic groups …. 

The issue of whether observed biological changes can be conclusively linked to anthropogenic climate change has been analyzed and discussed at length in a plethora of syntheses, including those listed above. 

Similarly, complexity surrounding methodological issues of detection (correctly detecting a real trend) and attribution (assigning causation) has been explored in depth ....

Analyses restricted to species that exhibited change documented that these changes were not random:  They were systematically and predominantly in the direction expected from regional changes in the climate.  Responding species are spread across diverse ecosystems (from temperate grasslands to marine intertidal zones and tropical cloud forests) and come from a wide variety of taxonomic and functional groups, including birds, butterfies, alpine flowers, and coral reefs.

A meta-analysis of range boundary changes in the Northern Hemisphere estimated that northern and upper elevational boundaries had moved, on average, 6.1 km per decade northward or 6.1 m per decade upward (P <0.02). Quantitative analyses of phenological responses gave estimates of advancement of 2.3 days per decade across all species and 5.1 days per decade for the subset of species showing substantive change (>1 day per decade).

“A surprising result is the high proportion of species responding to recent, relatively mild climate change (global average warming of 0.6C). The proportion of wild species impacted by climate change was estimated at 41% of all species (655 of 1598).”

Parmesan, Camille. 2006. 
"Ecological and Evolutionary Responses to Recent Climate Change.” 
Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and  Systematics.37:pp.637-69


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