Tim Baxter

@timinclimate

Australian climate researcher and advocate on unceded Wurundjeri Country. Burgeoning neo-luddite. Why am I becoming more anarchist with each passing climate disaster? If you want to save the world: Let's have a chat.

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Tim Baxter@timinclimate· Jul 7

Tim Baxter@timinclimate· Jul 5

Look at these cocky bastards!

Two cockatoos on a deck. One is on the railing, the other is on the edge of a birdbath. A large forested hill is in the background.

Tim Baxter@timinclimate· Jul 3

Reading fossil fuel company environmental plans gives you a solid insight into companies' competence with the topic and genuine desire to understand. For example, this one discusses the degree to which the project might contribute to "anthropomorphic climate change". Is the climate change... sad?

The ERA process combines the likelihood and consequence of an event occurring to give a relative indication of risk ranking associated with that event. The ERA identified sensitive environmental factors, and their initial and residual risk rankings. The EMP presents a detailed ERA.
The highest risk ranking of 5 relates to fugitive greenhouse gas emissions, and the flaring or venting of gas during appraisal phase, potentially contributing to anthropomorphic climate change. Good design and operation practices will significantly reduce the risk of fugitive emissions, and gas recovery on an appraisal basis would significantly reduce flaring and venting ...

Tim Baxter@timinclimate· Jul 2

This is a very good summary of the role the Australian federal government is playing in international climate diplomacy: climatediplobrief.substack.com/p/climate-di...

Bowen: FF

Australian Minister (and COP talks lead) Chris Bowen is more fuzzy. Earlier this year, he said he’d use his role to lobby petrostates on phasing out fossil fuels. Apparently that doesn’t include his own government, declaring fossil exports were “not on the agenda” under his leadership. This is despite the Oz Treasury predicting a sharp drop off in the value of fossil fuel exports. Fishing with dynamite is fine, so long as it’s not your river.

Tim Baxter@timinclimate· Jul 1

If the picture you had in your head isn't this fella, Malcolm Lucas, I want to know what tf is wrong with you and why you don't understand the world.

Photo of Malcolm Lewis, an older white farming type who looks like he is in his 70s, standing in front of farm machinery.

Text across the image reads "Stock & Land: South Australian farmer builds a nation-first electric combine harvester".

Tim Baxter@timinclimate· Jun 30

What the fuck to all of this.

Mrs Deeming had alleged that Mr Guy put her in a headlock at a Macedonian community event last month.

She first took her complaint to Ms Wilson's office before reporting the allegation to Victoria Police.

Police on Thursday dismissed her complaint after reviewing CCTV of the interaction.

Footage showed Mr Guy placing his hand on Mrs Deeming’s back at the crowded Sunshine venue.

Mr Guy demanded an apology at an emotional press conference on Friday, and has threatened to bring in defamation lawyers.

Mrs Deeming has claimed she is enduring "pack bullying".

She insists she made the complaint in good faith and that her interpretation of the interaction was exacerbated by trauma.

In a statement released through her lawyer on Monday, Mrs Deeming conceded she misunderstood the technical meaning of the word headlock but said she would not apologise for making the complaint.

"She will not apologise for something she has not done," her lawyer Tim Houweling said.

Tim Baxter@timinclimate· Jun 30

I was reminded about this little infographic I made a while back. I really like it and think I did a good job.

Infographic.

In summary: Producing and using fossil fuels re-introduces greenhouse gas to the biosphere that was buried over millions of years. When this was in the atmosphere last, the world was much hotter and humans didn’t exist. Whether on the land or in the sea, manipulating natural processes can relocate emissions within the biosphere and protect the stores we have today, but they are slow at removing them. Most relocated carbon will eventually find a way back to the atmosphere under climate change.

Tim Baxter@timinclimate· Jun 29

Twice in one day!

Linkedin comment section.

Tim Baxter: @John Pabon Here's one of my favourites: Karratha Senior High School - a publicly funded school - with the logos of five different global oil and gas companies on it. (Attached is a screenshot showing the logos on the KSHS website)

John Pabon: @Tim Baxter LinkedIn really needs to create a dislike button for times like these!

Tim Baxter@timinclimate· Jun 29

This is my current top contender, I reckon.

Tim Baxter@timinclimate· Jun 28

commsdeclare.org/cradle-to-ca...

Screenshot of a website with text reading From Cardle to Career: Fossil Fuel Industry Presences in Australian Childhood Settings.

Tim Baxter@timinclimate· Jun 27

Here's an exclusive preview of tomorrow's report. No-one else is getting this.

A blue background with half of a lowercase g, an s and a full stop.

Tim Baxter@timinclimate· Jun 27

Got distracted.

An array of cut up ductwork strewn across a backyard.

Tim Baxter@timinclimate· Jun 26

Nieces are staying over. This is fine.

Photo of a very bearded man with glasses wearing a unicorn headband.

Tim Baxter@timinclimate· Jun 25

Photo of a father and son dressed in the same style of clothes.

Tim Baxter@timinclimate· Jun 24

The Zurich Climate Resilience Alliance cancelled an event on coping with extreme heat at London Climate Action Week due to the extreme heat.

Poster for an event by the Zurich Climate Resilience Alliance on governance of extreme heat. The flyer has the words "CANCELLED DUE TO EXTREME HEAT" stamped across it.

Tim Baxter@timinclimate· Jun 22

From the AFR's print edition today.

Image of article from the Australian Financial Review: Gas project earn $90m in 'free' carbon offsets

A loophole in the Albanese government’s flagship climate policy has allowed one of Australia’s biggest LNG facilities to earn more than $90 million in carbon credits in the last two years even though it increased its total emissions over the same period.

The Safeguard Mechanism requires about 200 facilities in the resources, transport and manufacturing sectors to cut their emissions by 4.9 per cent annually below a cap, or to purchase offsets to make up the difference.

The policy was overhauled by Labor in 2023, and avoids penalising resources companies for increases in their production by setting caps, known as “baselines”, based on each facility’s emissions intensity, rather than its absolute emissions.

But a series of operational challenges, safety issues and industrial relations disputes at Prelude that limited its production in the pre-2022 period when the caps were calculated had the effect of artificially raising its official emissions intensity.

A subsequent ramp up in production at the LNG facility has since increased its overall emissions but decreased their intensity, allowing the facility to claim almost 20 per cent of the safeguard credits ever issued in the first two years of the reformed policy.

Tim Baxter, a consultant at Naru Research, said awarding “free” credits to facilities that had few real plans to reduce emissions undermined the integrity of policy and was unfair to manufacturers in the scheme who were struggling to meet their commitments.

“The safeguard mechanism is an irrational and unfair scheme that splits Australian industry into the haves and have nots,” he said.

A planned review of the scheme is due as soon as July and is set to cause headaches for the government, which is caught between green groups critical of the policy’s flaws and industrial facilities keen to avoid more stringent and costly rules around their emissions.

Tim Baxter@timinclimate· Jun 21

I've put a new piece of analysis out today showing how Shell's Prelude LNG terminal will receive a butt tonne of free offset credits from the safeguard mechanism for no other reason than because it repeatedly exposed its workers from life threatening risk. Really!

1 – Shell’s Prelude liquefied gas facility will receive in the order of $200 million worth of unearned offset credits under the rules of Australia’s Safeguard Mechanism

2 – This unearned bounty is not linked to emissions reduction at the facility. The credits are instead being issued as a direct result of a series of life-threatening safety issues and a workers strike at the facility in the early years of the facility’s operating life.

3 – Prelude is one of Australia’s most emission-intensive liquefied gas producers. Its emissions have risen in recent years and are set to increase even further even while it continues to receive free offset units.

4 – Prelude can use the free and entirely unearned credits it was issued under the current Safeguard Mechanism rules to avoid buying a single offset credit until well into the next decade.

Tim Baxter@timinclimate· Jun 19

I was trying to remember where I heard the name "Zali Burrows" (Lehrmann's lawyer) before. Found it. www.smh.com.au/national/nsw...

The origins of the dispute date back to a legal matter in 2011, since which time a judge of the NSW Court of Appeal has commented that the costs of pursuing the sum awarded in her favour have vastly exceeded the amount in issue. Macpherson Kelley, then known as M&K Sydney, advised Burrows in the 2011 proceedings, with the court making a costs order of $12,239.83 in her favour.

In November 2015, Burrows sued M&K Sydney and her former solicitor Melinda Di Condio in the NSW District Court, saying they had failed to enforce that costs order, with an additional claim of $50,000 in damages and $50,000 in aggravated damages against them.

But the NSW District Court dismissed Burrows’ claim, finding that she had applied for her costs in the original matter to be quantified after terminating her retainer with M&K Sydney, and it was up to her to agitate it, which she had failed to do. In February 2020, the District Court awarded a lump sum costs order of $130,000 in favour of M&K Sydney.

Burrows appealed to the NSW Court of Appeal, claiming that the primary judge had erred in his findings and denied her procedural fairness by declining to grant her a second adjournment.

But the Court of Appeal dismissed her application, finding no reviewable error or procedural unfairness “in circumstances where her counsel was not available on the suggested date, and where she had repeatedly failed to comply with directions, had provided no evidentiary basis for her application, save that her computer had broken the previous day, had failed to serve evidence by 19 February as directed, and had not given notice of the adjournment application prior to the morning of the day of the hearing”.

On April 20, 2022, Macpherson Kelley issued Burrows with a bankruptcy notice that she attempted to have put aside through the Federal Court. She was unsuccessful.

On Wednesday, she asked Federal Court Justice Ian Jackman, SC, to refer the matter to a full court, which he declined to do, and then appealed on grounds that the bankruptcy notice had been incorrectly served.

“The Plaintiff has, through its representatives, misled the Court, conducted proceedings on a false basis, given untruthful evidence, lacked any objective or other evidence to support their positions,” Wilson said.

Burrows was reprimanded by the NSW Legal Services Commissioner in June last year for failing to appear at the ACT Magistrates Court to represent clients, being discourteous to the court and failing to act in the best interests of clients.

In 2020, Burrows sued fellow criminal lawyer Adam Houda for defamation over an emoji of a person with their mouth zipped shut, which he had posted to Twitter. The emoji was his response to another Twitter user who asked what had happened to Burrows since a judge suggested that she be referred to the Law Society of NSW for potential disciplinary action. Houda is defending the claim.

Burrows has also sued the Herald. The matter was settled.

Jackman has reserved his decision in the bankruptcy matter.

Tim Baxter@timinclimate· Jun 19

Sharing this here because it will find more of the right people: Sarah Aubrey (aka @electrifythis.bsky.social) wants to get out and about to see the energy transition. I know there are going to be loads of folks who follow me who facilitate that.

Post from Sarah Aubrey on LinkedIn:

Dear Universe,

Since visiting Snowy Hydro 2.0 I’ve decided it’s time to write a wish list. I loved getting the opportunity to show Australians such a magnificent feat of engineering, and so, here’s what I’d also like to show everyday Aussies.

I’d love to visit:
• a big battery
• a solar farm
• Fortescue
• an onshore wind farm
• an offshore wind farm
• examples of fantastic active transport
• an electric car factory
• an electric moped factory
• a battery factory and
• a battery recycling plant

It’s time to get on the front foot and highlight the extraordinary things happening in the renewable space. NOW is definitely the right time.
We need to take control of the narrative, because constantly being on the back foot and having to defend a project isn’t how we win this. This industry needs good communicators and I am up for the task.

Universe, the ball is in your court.

Tim Baxter@timinclimate· Jun 17

I'm not sure which scheme you are referring to, but I think this is a new scheme announced today. My read is that you get to choose what the money is spent on. I can't see how the batteries would be limited to just one brand. It can certainly be spent on things other than batteries.

Rooftop solar system
Residential battery
Switchboard
Heat pump water heater
Solar water heater
Reverse cycle air conditioner
Induction cooktop
EV level 2 charger
DC ceiling fan
Ceiling insulation
Draught proofing
Double glazing
NatHERS assessment

Tim Baxter@timinclimate· Jun 16

LOOOOOOOOOOL

Tim Baxter@timinclimate· Jun 13

I know it may not feel it - because well... winter - but winter this year really have been crazy hot in the south east. Charts for Melbourne, Sydney and Hobart below. And it's only likely to get hotter from here, but for the rest of this year and for the rest of the century.

Heat map comparing the days of 2026 so far to historical record for that time of year. This heatmap shows Melbourne, where every day in June has been in the top two-thirds except one.

Heat map comparing the days of 2026 so far to historical record for that time of year. This heatmap shows Sydney, which has generally been much warmer than average (though a bit more patchily so than Melbourne). The past four days have all been in the top 2%.

Heat map comparing the days of 2026 so far to historical record for that time of year. This heatmap shows Hobart, which has been a little more patchy than Melbourne and Sydney again, though the past week has nonetheless been crazy hot for the time of the year.

Tim Baxter@timinclimate· Jun 11

11 years ago, this was my desk at work. Whiteboard marker for scale. These are exam books, waiting for me to grade them. Sometimes I think for a minute that I miss teaching, then a photo like this comes along to remind me that no I fucking don't. (Most of my labour marking these was stolen.)

A stack of exam answer booklets on a desk, piled roughly 50cm tall.

Tim Baxter@timinclimate· Jun 10

It's more or less entirely meaningless in this format, but I'm actually kind of taken by this pattern that has popped up in some data that I am playing with.

Random pattern of rings made out of thousands upon thousands of coloured dots.

Tim Baxter@timinclimate· Jun 5

I have some remarkably talented friends, but today is my partner @kimberleypeters.bsky.social's birthday, and one of *her* friends HANDFUCKENMADE her this white-striped free-tailed bat specimen and all I'm suggested by is that you lazy fuckers need to lift your game.

A hand made soft toy copy white-striped free-tailed bat, mounted like a framed specimen.

Tim Baxter@timinclimate· Jun 4

It's a peculiarly raucous form of entitlement to assume that you - a private school educated law graduate TV host who grew up in Melbourne's wealthy southeast - understand the world on a deeper level than everyone you disagree with... while you wander outside for a special chat with Avi Yemini.

”As you would understand, and as a Jewish Australian, there is a complete misunderstanding of a lot of the words that are said and what the true meaning of them are, and a lot of people are using words and phrases that have meaning well beyond what they think they do,” Pickering said.

Tim Baxter@timinclimate· Jun 2

I just went to check and lol. Not a punk band then I guess.

In a 2026 interview with The Guardian, Scabies, Vanian and Sensible admitted "they will always be known as 'punk band the Damned,' despite their not being a punk band since 1978." Their 1980 'The Black Album' featured "prog-psych epic 'Curtain Call'" and "by the mid-'80s, they were major label gothic psychedelic hitmakers."[21]

Tim Baxter@timinclimate· May 30

The banner on my Bluesky profile is probably a good answer to this.

A cut away section of the Tiananmen Square Tank Man photo overlaid with the words "Start with Revolt".

Tim Baxter@timinclimate· May 30

In fun news, the United Nations Environment Programme now has an AI chatbot: The ambitiously named EnvironmentGPT.

Screenshot of a fairly plain white website for the UNEP's EnvironmentGPT.

Tim Baxter@timinclimate· May 29

The best genre of consultation briefings are the ones where the public servants spend the entire time explaining why everything is actually perfect, and *nothing* needs to change, before the consultation period is even open. That'll convince people you intend to listen to independent critique!