Gas investment will drive more extreme weather

So says the self-appointed Climate Council below.  Natural gas gives off much less CO2 when burnt than coal does so you would think the climate council would welcome it.  But like all Greenies, they know no compromise. They want it all now.

Their claim that renewables are cheaper is misleading.  It is cheap in some ways only because it receives large subsidies.  It is tax powered.

And the claim that CO2 drives extreme weather is just an assertion.  The U.N., among others, says there is no proof of that

The bushfires are the result of negligent forest management, nothing more


SCOTT MORRISON, just days after addressing the nation with ‘climate action now’, has today announced a significant investment in new fossil fuels, with the New South Wales Government.

“Fossil fuels are the problem. Burning coal, oil, and gas is driving climate change, which is making Australia’s extremes, more extreme,” said the Climate Council’s CEO, Amanda McKenzie. “Every dollar toward fossil fuel projects is a dollar toward making heatwaves worse and fires more damaging. It is just crazy, given everything we have lost this summer to even suggest opening new fossil fuel reserves,” said McKenzie.

“More gas isn’t a climate policy it is a pollution policy. While fires are still threatening lives and properties - why is the Government investing in making the problem worse,” she said.

“You don’t reduce emissions by increasing investment in fossil fuels,” said Climate Councillor and energy expert, Greg Bourne. “The idea that gas will reduce prices is nonsensical. Gas is the reason power prices are so high along the east coast of Australia. Renewables are the cheapest form of new generation. Cheaper than coal, oil and gas,” said Climate Councillor and energy expert, Greg Bourne.

“Investing in gas will ensure power prices keep rising, and Australia spews out even more greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to pushing climate change to new and terrifying extremes,” said Bourne.

 “We have just witnessed an unprecedented bushfire crisis. Lives, homes, wildlife and millions of hectares of Australia simply burnt and gone. The Prime Ministers’ job is to protect Australians but he's making the problem worse,” said McKenzie.

Via email. Contact Communications Advisor, Brianna Hudson on 0455 238 875.





Struggling public hospital REFUSES to accept a $15M donation - because it was made by a coal mining company

Destructive Greenie fanaticism again

A struggling hospital has been accused of 'ideological grandstanding' after turning down a $15million cash injection - because it came from a coal mining company. 

Wyong Hospital, on the New South Wales Central Coast, has been dogged by complaints over low nurse numbers and emergency wait times - and last October sent a one-year-old home with a fractured neck without staff ordering scans. 

But the hospital board has refused Wallarah 2 Coal Project's offer to donate $14.8million over the mine's 28-year life span because of 'community sentiment' and 'public health effects'.

The project, due to begin in 2022, has been approved by the state ­government and the ­independent planning commission, which takes into consideration pollution and health impacts. 

Wyong Coal Wallarah 2 general manager Peter ­Allonby and site manager Kenny Barry claimed a board member said hospital board members compared the handout to 'taking money from a tobacco company', The Daily Telegraph reported.

Central Coast Local Health District boss Andrew Montague released a statement this week stating the offer was not appropriate 'to accept at this stage'.

'[This is] due to current community sentiment and potential public health effects, particularly in relation to air quality and noise pollution,' he said.

It is common for mining companies to pour money into local community infrastructure, and the state government alone rakes in $2billion from industry royalties annually.

The contribution would be an average of $528,000 a year - or the wages of at least six nurses.

According to the Department of Planning and Environment, the $800million mine is expected to create more than 1,700 direct and indirect jobs. 

The hospital board's decision to reject the funds has been criticised by officials, but many within the community have launched online petition to stop the mine.

Deputy Premier John Barilaro said the decision would impact the Wyong community.

'For them to reject what is a very generous donation from a company wanting to be a good corporate citizen is a slap in the face for that community,' he said.

The father of the one-year-old sent home with a fractured neck last year also described the refusal to accept the offer as a 'slap in the face'.

SOURCE  







Federal Government chooses Kimba farm on the Eyre Peninsula for nuclear dump

The Federal Government has selected a farm on South Australia's Eyre Peninsula as the site of a controversial nuclear waste dump.

The decision to use the 160-hectare area for what the Government calls a "disposal and storage facility" was made after four years of consultation.

Nearly 62 per cent of people voted in favour of the site being used in November, while a site near Hawker in the Flinders Ranges was opposed by Aboriginal traditional owners and residents.

The Federal Government said the $200 million facility would boost the region's economy and create about 45 jobs during construction.

It comes with a $31 million community development package to give local businesses and workers skills to build and run the dump. "I am satisfied a facility at Napandee will safely and securely manage radioactive waste and that the local community has shown broad community support for the project and economic benefits it will bring," Resources Minister Matt Canavan said.

Dump to consolidate nuclear waste

Local federal Liberal MP Rowan Ramsey said waste would come in from more than 100 sites around Australia, such as hospitals and universities, and the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor in Sydney.

Processed medium-level nuclear fuel rods from Lucas Heights will be temporarily stored at Kimba while a permanent site is found for them, he said.

Mr Ramsey, who tried to nominate his own property near Kimba for the dump but was barred as a federal MP, said there would be no fly-in, fly-out workers at the facility. "All of those things should provide a long-term economic benefit to the community," he said.

SOURCE  





MP Amanda Stoker taking fight to transgender activists

A free speech champion and rising star of conservative politics, Amanda Stoker, has launched a petition to build support for a stand against the “dangerous and radical ideas” and “completely unreasonable” demands of the transgender activist agenda.

The Queensland Liberal senator has quietly joined this toxic identity politics debate with a preamble on her personal webpage saying most Australians recognise the freedom of others “to live their life the way they want.”

“But that doesn’t mean we abandon truth. It doesn’t mean we abandon common sense or our understanding of basic biology,” she writes.

“You do have a right to teach your children they are born as either a boy or a girl and that gender isn’t something we can choose.

“You do have a right to keep women’s sport for women.

“You do have a right to know what your child is being taught about gender and sexuality in school.

“You do have a right to protect children from hormone treatment and surgical procedures.

“I will continue to stand up for common sense and objective truth — but I need to know I have your support.”

Senator Stoker, 37, a former barrister and prosecutor, and outspoken Christian, took the Senate spot of former attorney-general George Brandis in 2018. In her maiden speech, she defended liberty of conscience, thought and speech.

Critics of trans activism — and of “gender affirming” hormone treatment and surgery for under-18s who feel “born in the wrong body” — face denunciation as “hateful transphobes”, vexatious complaints and online harassment, as well as real-world intimidation.

The latest target is Oxford University professor of history, Selina Todd, who has been given security guards to take her to lectures after students alerted her to trans activist threats. She defends the sex-based rights and protections of women from biologically intact men who declare a female “gender identity”.

Trans activists argue trans people are vulnerable and victimised, and that opposition to their rights is driven by rightwing religious bigotry.

Critics of medicalised gender transition of children include Christians and conservatives but also atheist psychiatrists, young adults who regret hormonal treatment and surgery, former gender clinic staff, parents with progressive politics, anti-queer theory lesbians and gay men, radical feminists, and mothers who were tom boys.

Not all activists for trans rights are trans themselves, and there are trans adults who deplore the aggressive tactics and oppose medical interventions with “gender non-conforming” children.

Senator Stoker told The Australian everyone was entitled to support and respect, but inclusion of trans-identifying adults could not “mean we neglect our duties to children.

“Providing chemical, hormonal or surgical treatments to children without the capacity to truly understand their implications and provide their consent, is wrong,” she said.

“There is a lack of research showing these treatments are the best way to deal with gender issues, and a growing body of evidence that they are harmful.

“The trend of treating any speech which questions the wisdom of gender-transitioning treatments for children as ‘discrimination’, has the perverse effect of denying people with gender issues the best treatment that research, medicine and psychology could deliver.

“The scientific method should prevail here, not hard gender ideology.”

Teenage trans

Practitioners disagree how to respond to a surge in teenagers, mostly girls, who turn up at gender clinics claiming to be boys, often with a host of problems including mental illness, autism, awkward same-sex attraction and family trauma.

The influential pro-trans “affirmative” approach regards children as “experts” in their gender identity, encourages gender change and sometimes medical intervention to mimic the opposite-sex body. Sceptics of the affirmative model say the trans declarations of troubled under-18s may mask the real issues.

Next week, a parliamentary committee in Queensland will hold a public hearing into a draft law that would criminalise “conversion therapy”.

The term conjures up images of coercive, hurtful attempts to change the fixed sexual orientation of an adult.

Queensland’s bill extends this to any perceived attempt to change a child’s feelings of gender, which may be at odds with biological sex. Psychology sees youth identity as a work in progress marked by experimentation and influence, especially around puberty.

Worried health practitioners, Christians and women opposed to “gender ideology” accuse Queensland’s Palaszczuk government of using the spectre of past conversion therapy as cover to mandate the affirmative model with its risky medical interventions.

The ban on conversion therapy would not apply to hormonal interventions and surgery that “affirm” a child’s transgender shift.

Advocates for the affirmative model, which has been endorsed by medical bodies, say its treatments are “life-saving” for suicidal trans youth, whose high rates of mental illness reflect their stigma in a transphobic world.

State Health Minister Steven Miles said there was “overwhelming evidence that conversion therapy is harmful and that it correlates with high rates of suicide”, and the government rejected the view that “being LGBTIQ is a disorder that requires correction”.

But Senator Stoker said the bill was an attempt to “silence dissent” and “entrench hard-left gender ideology”.

“No reasonable person supports what comes to mind when the words ‘conversion therapy’ are used — but this law goes much further,” she told The Australian.

She cited “credible minds in medicine, psychology and law” who complain the bill is a threat to ethical and necessary exploration of personal problems and social pressures that may help explain the recent teen epidemic of gender dysphoria (the distress of feeling “born in the wrong body”).

A submission to the committee from a GP with many years’ experience in adolescent mental health and gender issues says: “I can scarcely believe that the state government would threaten me — in the area that I specialise (in) — that good quality medicine could be punished with 18 months of prison.”

The GP, whose name was withheld, says a majority of young patients recover from gender dysphoria with professional care, supportive counselling and treatment of co-existing mental illness or help with autism.

“If you were to pass this law, I would feel compelled by force of law to discharge all of (these) patients from my care, and would not be able to take on new patients,” the GP says.

“Non-harmful, sensitive, respectful, patient-centred counselling should never be made illegal; to criminalise this would be an abuse of government authority and massive overreach.”

Before the post-2000 spike in teen dysphoria, the condition was typically diagnosed in a small number of pre-school boys and the vast majority grew out of it, following cautious psychotherapy or “watchful waiting”, and many emerged as young gay or bisexual adults comfortable in their bodies.

“The drastic medical interventions that accompany a gender affirmative approach and which are being applied to ‘transition’ many young people who would otherwise go on to identify as gay or lesbian would be more rightly be regarded as the ultimate ‘conversion therapy’,” the Sydney-based Feminist Legal Clinic says in its submission on the Queensland bill.

After mainstream medical bodies were blindsided by consultation on the bill being staged during the Christmas-New Year break, there has been confusion about whether or not late submissions will be allowed, or who will be asked to testify at a state parliamentary committee hearing pushed back from February 3 to February 7. The Australian sought clarification from the committee.

Meanwhile, after years of scant media reporting, the intensifying global debate over the affirmative model is getting more mainstream attention.

Last Wednesday, The Washington Post carried a front-page report on South Dakota in the US leading a “wave” of Republican-led state bills that could make medical transition of minors illegal.

In the UK last week, 23-year-old Keira Bell, who regrets taking hormone suppression drugs that interfere with puberty, joined a High Court case arguing under-18 patients at the NHS Tavistock gender clinic cannot give informed consent to this “experimental” treatment.

“I believe that the current affirmative system put in place by the Tavistock is inadequate as it does not allow for exploration of these gender dysphoric feelings, nor does it seek to find the underlying causes of this condition,” she said.

SOURCE  






Schooling at home becomes more popular

THE number of Queensland kids being homeschooled has almost doubled over the past five years and thousands more could be illegally flying under the radar.

Education Queensland data reveals that 3411 school-aged children and teenagers are being homeschooled — up from 1770 in 2015.

But Queensland University Technology home education expert Dr Rebecca English said it did not show the true numbers. She said.research suggested there could be thousands more illegally homeschooling. "They're still homeschooling but just don't tell the department about it which I believe is quite worrying." She said.  A change in the departmental process to register as a home educator became more difficult in 2018.

However, a department of education spokesman said parents had a legal obligation to ensure their school-aged child was enrolled in school or registered in home education. "The parent's application must be accompanied by documentation verifying the identity of the parent, the identity and age of the child and a summary of proposed educational program that shows evidence of high-quality education," he said.

Ipswich mother Kathryn McGowan said instead of sending her son Patrick to mainstream school, she had enrolled him in distance education because home education registration was too. complicated.

As a teacher, Ms McGowan said she knew her five-year-old son was not ready for mainstream school.

From the Brisbane "Courier Mail" of 30 January, 2020

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here