Emergency action shuts down coal exports

A small group of climate change activists is occupying coal loading facilities at Newcastle forcing a temporary cessation of exports:

Annika Dean, spokesperson for the protest organisers, Rising Tide Newcastle, explained the group's motivations: “We are staging an emergency intervention into Australia's number one cause of global warming.”

“Around the world, the early impacts of unabated global warming are beginning to emerge. 2010 has been a year of tragic weather disasters.”

“Thousands of people have died this year due to flash floods in Pakistan and China, and fires in Siberia. Millions of people are facing starvation due to a devastating drought in west Africa. These are the impacts of global warming that scientists have been warning us about for decades. Global warming is happening now, and it is killing people.”

At least some of these weather events are thought by scientists to result from variations in solar activity.