Ten years ago, on this day, March 17th, 2014, the wheels on the bus went round and round…
‘CARBON BUS’ NORTHERN TOUR 17-20 MARCH 2014
Eleven lucky applicants participated in the tour, which left from Townsville QLD and visited the Lansdown Research Station, ‘Trafalgar’ Station, ‘Wambiana’ Station and the Wambiana Research Site. Participants heard from leading specialists in climate science and agriculture and practising agriculturalists, including:
Professor Snow Barlow, University of Melbourne
Dr Ed Charmley, CSIRO
Dr Chris Stokes, CSIRO
Dr Steven Bray, QLD DAFF
Peter O’Reagain, QLD DAFF
Andrew Ash, QLD DAFF
Geoff Dickinson, QLD DPI
Roger Landsberg, ‘Trafalgar’ Station, Charters Towers
John Lyons and Michelle Lyons, ‘Wambiana’ Station, Charters Towers
The tour was enlightening and beneficial for all participants, but you don’t need to take our word for it, click here to hear from them direct…or watch the Virtual Tour video to see the tour highlights.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 399.9ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Prime Minister Tony Abbott had recently abolished – or was in the process of abolishing – the emissions trading scheme that Julia Gillard had shepherded through parliament in 2011. And climate activists were at a low ebb, and understood that they really had to go out and engage people who didn’t “get” to the climate issue. The trouble is that these sorts of tours from the south, to educate the benighted, ignorant, rural savages don’t work. Now, for the avoidance of any doubt. I’m sure that that’s not what the organisers of this carbon bus tour thought or felt on any level: but it’s easy for their good intentions to be painted.as such. I don’t have a solution. I suppose the climate education has to come from within these communities, from people who are trusted? Who those people are and how they might be supported, is beyond me. I guess. There’s always the internet….
What happened next? Well, the most infamous example of all this is the 2018 tour of Queensland by a whole bunch of greenies who thought that they were helping Bill Shorten get elected, and most definitely were not. This was something that was curiously absent from the Bob Brown hagiography about the tall giants or whatever it’s called. (see film review here).
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Also on this day:
March 17, 1976 – UK Weather boss dismisses climate change as “grossly exaggerated”
March 17, 2007 – Edinburgh #climate action gathering says ‘Now’ the time to act