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[Reelya]

Sydney isn't going to be affected.

Do you have any idea how large the area called "Sydney" even is? Google puts it at 12,368 km². Google puts New York at 783.8 km² for comparison. To says something is "near" Sydney is the same as saying something hundreds of kilometers from Manhattan is "near" New York.

The media always hypes up the threat to Sydney. But googling it, the peak coverage was back on December 10th and they haven't ny bothered to print anything since then. So, predictably, nothing actually happened to Sydney.

[Frumple]

The new york metropolitan area is 13,318 mi², ree. About 34,493 km². That 12k you're mentioning is the greater sydney region, which as near as I can tell is roughly equivalent as a concept. Please don't forget the US is huge :V

[Reelya]

I'm not sure what your sources are MSH, but googling "koalas functionally extinct" only brings up articles saying they're not functionally extinct, or that it's misinformation:

https://sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2019/11/27/koalas-are-not-functionally-extinct-but-they-are-in-danger.html

Academics reject claims that koalas are close to extinction

Reports claiming koalas are in demise went viral on Twitter this week, particularly after the American journalist Dan Rather shared it with his followers. Experts say the reports may lead to apathy around conservation.
...


Associate Professor Mathew Crowther, a wildlife ecologist in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences, said the term “functionally extinct” is misleading, with many meanings.

“It can be used to say that the species is too low in numbers to make a contribution to the ecosystem, or it is too low to recover in numbers. Both are untrue for koalas,” he said. “The Australian Koala Foundation has recently used it to say that genetic diversity is too low for koalas to survive into the future. This is also untrue.

“Koalas are in decline in many populations and the recent bushfires do not help. However, some populations are doing well and even increasing in size. Hence it is alarmist and adds nothing to the conversation to say koalas are ‘functionally extinct’.”
...
Estimating koala populations

The best scientific evidence that is currently available puts the koala population in Australia at around 330,000 animals, said Associate Professor David Phalen, in the Sydney School of Veterinary Science. “Koala populations in Victoria and South Australia are stable, increasing or, in some areas, overabundant,” Associate Professor Phalen said. “Koalas in Queensland and NSW are threatened.”

Basically it was "declared" by a bunch of people who have nothing to do with it, and actual experts reject the "declaration". Koalas inhabit a total range of about 1 million square kilometers. Not all of that is on fire, and while 1000 or even 2000 koalas may have died, there are about 330,000 left.

Koalas are still here, there have been bushfires since the dawn of history. Many Australian plants require fire to germinate. Sydney isn't going to burn down.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Well, it's good to hear the fuckin' koalas will live to maul children's faces for another couple decades.

I know about fire germination, Reelya. We have that in the US too, you know. 

Your country is still arguably the most climate fucked place in the world though, depending on how easy it is for an angry mob to destroy a desalination plant, in which case Saudi Arabia or Israel might win that particular lottery.

But whether it is the cleansing fire of literal fire or the cleansing fire of mass worker's revolt or the cleansing fire of death by thirst, Sydney's future is not a bright one. Nor the world's. This is but the prelude. Well, maybe act one.

[Reelya]

Saudi Arabia and Israel have been "climate fucked" since the dawn of time. That has nothing to do with climate change. And Australia is huge, but has always been able to support only a small number of people. You're confusing places with a fucked climate with places fucked by climate change. Australia was fucked from day one when they settled here. It's nowhere near the place in the world that will affected most by climate change.

There have been bushfires pretty much every year since I was born. The worst by far was in 1983. They're not a sudden thing, there just a constant backdrop in Australia every summer. It's not end times.

As for droughts. I can't really remember any time the news wasn't about droughts. Droughts is normal conditions in Australia for the last 200 years. It's good to have some history for reference. The current conditions aren't actually anything not experienced before:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drought_in_Australia

[Mini]

There have been bushfires pretty much every year since I was born. The worst by far was in 1983. They're not a sudden thing, there just a constant backdrop in Australia every summer. It's not end times.

Going by death toll it was the fires in 2009 (around 4x as many deaths), and going by area it's the fires going now (by a factor of 3, and they are still going). Fires in general are definitely not an unusual thing, but the severity of them is clearly getting worse.

[Reelya]

2009 was worse, but a quick look shows it's not 4 times worse. Also a fair comparison is population-adjusted.

1983 was ~75 deaths, 2009 was ~180. Which is 2.4 times in raw numbers, not 4 times. But the population was also 1.4 times as high by then (15.37 million to 21.69 million) so in adjusted terms it was 1.7 times as bad.

Also I think you're seriously over-estimating the current death toll. This highest confirmed figure I can find is 11. If you think 225+ people have died in the current season, which would be triple the 1983 level, what's you're actual source for that?

[Jimmy]

The BOM website is actually a really great resource for those interested in the climate in Australia.

For example, here's their chart of rain anomalies over time.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

We can pretty clearly see that low rainfall isn't something new. We've been having years of low rainfall mixed with years of high rainfall for at least the last hundred years. We're even getting slightly more high rain times compared to a century ago.

But, if you look at average temperatures...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Yeah, things are getting hotter, faster. We're all fucked.

[scriver]

While I appreciate the effort to combat alarmism (and like MSH are very happy your little terror-teddys aren't in danger of extinction as I was told) I must insist that even though Australia may have been fucked by the climate to begin with, that doesn't mean it can't be worsenly fucked by climate change on top of that

[Reelya]

I'm not disputing that as a long-term trend, but there's no imminent collapse. The foreign tabloids seem to be reveling in the doomsday stories. Read the local papers.

Also the 'on the verge of conscripting firefighters' thing is clearly babble. If they're saying that, then that's just a fake story, hands down. If it got that bad, the first thing is that the other states send (trained) volunteers, then after that you might start to see other nations helping out such as NZ volunteers coming over, and they'd be bringing more police to assist, and after that (and this is a stretch) they would bring in the army, and after that, start mobilizing the army reservists. Conscripting civilians isn't even in the playbook, and is completely illegal.

EDIT: it turns out the 'conscripting firefighters' story probably stems from a single right-wing independent MP who said they should have a senate inquiry about conscripting people (she mentions housing estates, so i presume she means the unemployed) for the emergency services. Other than that, nobody else is calling for this as far as I know, and it's not "imminent", it's just one far-right-wing asshole mouthing off about their wet dream of the lazy young people being whipped into shape by national service.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/jacqui-lambie-calls-for-emergency-services-conscripts-to-combat-climate-change-20190914-p52rbe.html

However, this lady is also a far-right nutter in general. She was saying Trump-like stuff even before Trump ran for office.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqui_Lambie#Political_views

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Actually, I was just taking a shot in the dark. But fash all want the same things so it was pretty much a certainty.

Give it another electoral cycle, it'll make its way into the right-wing platforms. A patriotic reuse of the...useless.

[Reelya]

Also MSH I just got that you actually think that it's likely Sydney will suffer a "Mass worker's revolt". Sorry but that's kinda delusional. Football riots is more likely that a worker's revolt in Sydney, and they couldn't even be arsed to have a riot over sports. A typical "working poor" person in Sydney is some fat guy who's married with 3 kids, a big house in the suburbs, and 2 cars.

Let me demostrate with figures:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_per_adult#List_of_countries_by_median_and_mean_wealth_per_adult_(USD)

Australia, Median adult wealth: $US181,000
United States, Median adult wealth: $US65,904

Joe Average in Australia is about three times as wealthy as Joe Average in America.

So yeah, mass revolt isn't going to happen. The minimum wage here is currently $19.49 per hour, but that includes holiday pay / sick pay. If you're casual you get 25% on top of that. Plus everyone gets free medical care. So the poorest-paid legal worker here gets $25 per hour, which is about $US 20 per hour. The typical low-paid worker can still save up to buy a nice house out in the suburbs in Sydney, so you're not going to get "mass revolt" here. Sydney workers: throw down your cappucinos and march for freedom.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

It's like they say: revolution is never more than three meals away. I'm sure that your Aussie football hooligans and suburbanites from hell are just as indolent as you say, but the benefits you tout for AUS will all be stripped away in due time. They have to be, in order to maintain the supremacy of capital. Look at what's happening in UK for a model.

Speaking as a member of the "richest nation in the world", I can assure you this happens faster than you'd like to believe.

[Reelya]

It's like they say: revolution is never more than three meals away.

This is basically never been true. It's just one of those glib one-liners people spout, in service of their own pet theory of how things work.

What are they going to do? Storm the supermarkets? After that, then what? form a revolutionary government and send raiding parties out into the farmlands to steal crops? You've now gone from high food prices to a complete collapse of the food production and distribution system. What's true is "people killing each other is never more than three meals away" not "revolution".

This is very much a "guy thing" I think. You seem to be keen on this and just hoping for this glorious revolution and seeing it as imminent everywhere as a result of wanting it to be true. Like war-mongers or extreme libertarians, relative few women vs men fantasize about the violent collapse of society and the rise of a communist utopia.

Here's a point: communist revolution of the sudden upheaval kind has only ever successfully been carried out in nations which are basically agrarian peasant societies. They just don't happen in advanced industrial economies no matter how much food prices rise. Also, if you understand Marx himself then communism is just the stage after advanced capitalism. The "revolution" is the event that signifies the shift from capitalist to post-capitalist, in the sense of "industrial revolution separating feudalism from capitalism. There is no reason to think it will involve a Soviet-style armed revolution. Quite the opposite: the change in economic relations causes the change in political relations due to being in a post-labor society (advanced automation). The idea that "workers" are going to burn down the modern institutions and "implement" communism is a poor understanding of what Marx's communism is about. If you only have a society that religiously venerates labor, you end up with a fascist slave state. That's not at all in line with what Marx actually said.

 Australians will look at the situation - we have a democratically elected government now. Are we going to have a "revolution" and put other people in charge? Who exactly. Nobody is going to trust any self-appointed communist vanguard party to "lead" the people. So we just end up with another democratic government basically. Who apparently will solve the food problem by magic.

This just makes no sense as a trajectory for how things would go. People, even normal people have too much vested interest in things as they are, including dole payments and not having to work to grow your own food. Even if the amount of food is half, or a quarter of what they can afford now, even the dole-paid underclass wouldn't join a revolutionary government. You'd have to do stuff then, like work really hard for a small amount of gain. There's just too much economy of scale in industrial production for an overthrow by the masses to bring any benefits in an advanced nation. The poor would be worse off than they are now.

[feelotraveller]

Give me pizza, or give me life.  D'oh!

Wait, there's actually a choice...