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July 22nd, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda Devastating bushfires and heatwaves are set to lash Victoria more often as climate change heats up and dries out the state, a new Climate Commission report says.
Thousands of coastal properties, along with the state’s iconic beaches, are also under threat, with data showing sea levels are on track to rise a metre by the end of the century.
The commission’s Critical Decade report on Victoria says much of Australia’s southeast has become drier over the past 40 years, with the state experiencing a 10-20 per cent reduction in autumn and winter rain over the past 20 years.
Hot days have become more common in recent decades and will continue to do so, putting strain on human health and infrastructure and making conditions for “large and intense” bushfires more common, it says.
“The number of very high and extreme fire danger days could increase significantly over the next few decades,” the report says.
There’s hope though, chief climate commissioner Tim Flannery says.
The report says Victoria is in a prime position to harness renewable energy, reduce emissions and help ease climate change’s inevitable impacts.
“This state has fabulous wind resources, very very good solar resources,” Professor Flannery told AAP.
“We’ve got an ageing fleet of brown coal plants that are going to need to be replaced anyway at some point in the future, so there are real opportunities there for a proper, structured transition (towards renewable energy).”
As worldwide investment in renewable energy grows rapidly, it’s becoming increasingly competitive with the cost of retail electricity, the report says.
Prof Flannery points to China, where the cost of solar panel production has dropped 75 per cent in the past two years.
“We’ve seen all the old fossil fuels increase in costs for a whole variety of reasons over time, while the renewables are declining dramatically in cost,” he said.
Prof Flannery says adapting to rising sea levels is a challenge all three tiers of government in Victoria must work together to tackle.
“The first thing we have to do is make sure we’re not putting even more infrastructure and properties at risk through inappropriate development,” he said.
Then there’s the question of whether to defend existing coastal buildings at risk or gradually abandon them, he said.
The commission will this week meet community, business and industry groups across the state to discuss the report, its implications and what to do about them – as quickly as possible.
“There are serious challenges for this state into the future for the rest of this century … how big it is is going to depend on how slow we are at a global level,” Prof Flannery said.
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