Tag Archives: Melbourne

Has the Melbourne Extinction Rebellion Protest Driven Up CO2 Emissions?

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

An extinction Rebellion road block on a major Melbourne access road forced commuters to wait in a queue, or use roads with lots of start / stop traffic lights.

Extinction Rebellion protesters cause traffic chaos as they block Melbourne’s West Gate Bridge at peak-hour

Climate change activists have deployed a large truck to block three lanes of the West Gate Bridge during peak-hour traffic on Tuesday morning. 

Amy Roulston Digital Reporter
March 5, 2024 – 8:30AM

Climate activists have sparked traffic chaos in Melbourne on Tuesday morning by positioning a large truck on West Gate Bridge during peak-hour.

Three protesters from Extinction Rebellion Victoria stood on top of the truck that was parked perpendicular across three West Gate Bridge lanes, with a large banner draped over the side reading “declare a climate emergency”.

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Three of the five lanes on the bridge were initially closed, before another was forced to shut an hour later, forcing angry commuters to merge into one remaining lane.

Read more: https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/extinction-rebellion-protesters-cause-traffic-chaos-as-they-block-melbournes-west-gate-bridge-at-peakhour/news-story/34d1257729afd2cfee7a53a35eeb979a

The protestors were later arrested. At least one of the protestors, Deanna Coco, was previously arrested for creating an illegal road block on a major Sydney access road. She was released a year ago after a judge quashed a 15 month jail sentence on the grounds that police falsely claimed Deanna’s protest had blocked an ambulance with its lights flashing.

This time Deanna received a much lighter sentence than the 15 months she successfully appealed in New South Wales, the Victorian magistrate only sentenced her to 21 days for disrupting traffic. Deanna thinks she’s a climate suffragette, she has said so on several occasions. I’m sure the Melbourne magistrate followed the letter of the law, but I suspect Deanna staged the protest in Victoria, because weak anti-road disruption laws in Victoria mean Victoria is a soft target compared to New South Wales, which hardened its road disruption laws in 2022. I suspect Deanna and her friends will be back, targeting Melbourne commuters again, or commuters in another soft target state, either later this year or next year.

It is difficult to estimate how much additional CO2 this protest released, a lot of people probably gave up on the traffic and worked from home that day. But when you take into account all those internal combustion engines idling, 20 miles of start stop traffic either on the alternative routes or squeezing through the bottleneck on the main access road which the XR protest created, I wouldn’t be surprised if the XR protest increased Melbourne commuter CO2 emissions several times over normal levels. Of course, climate protestors triggering the release of lots of additional CO2 is nothing new.

Another Warning Shot from Space: Melbourne, Australia Experiences a “Loud Bang”

Why should we waste our time with an imaginary climate crisis when there are real powerful threats in our real world.

 Tunguska blast of 1908

From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Why are we wasting resources on the imaginary climate crisis, when there are real threats to address?

The Melbourne meteor, if it was a meteor, wasn’t as big as the Chelyabinsk blast of 2013, but it was powerful enough to make people wonder what just happened, over a large area.

What can I say? It’s only a matter of time until one of these space objects seriously damages a city or worse.

Some scientists believe Tall el-Hammam, an important city state in the Bronze age, was wiped out by a Tunguska scale blast in the year 1650BCE. Tall el-Hammam was near the biblical city of Jericho.

And of course, we have the Tunguska blast of 1908 itself, estimated yield of 12 megatons, as proof dangerous space objects are still out there.

There are other mysterious devastations through history, some of which might have been meteoric. Some researchers claim the Manuika crater in New Zealand is evidence of a 15th century comet strike and regional mega-tsunami, though this claim is controversial.

There is a risk an unexpected meteor might be mistaken for a nuclear attack. The East Mediterranean Event of 2002 could have started a nuclear war, had it exploded further East over India or Pakistan. 2002 was a time of heightened tension in the region.

Space defence is an issue we could actually try to address. A better space watch would reduce the risk of unpleasant surprises. Even a little more warning could save lives, and there are technologies we could explore, such as Project Orion (if detected late), or NASA’s hypervelocity interceptor (if detected early), which might allow us to prevent substantial collisions with Earth.

But our politicians are too busy frittering uncounted trillions of dollars on climate unicorn projects to bother with real problems.

Meteors are a classic low probability high impact event. the odds of serious damage on any given year might be very low, but if we don’t do something to address the threat, it is inevitable that sooner or later something really bad will happen.