If you work at one of your country’s embassies or consulates, be prepared to receive strange requests for assistance. Like the one from an Australian man in Thailand who wanted to borrow money from the embassy in Bangkok to pay a local prostitute. And he wasn’t the only one with the bizarre plea for help as Julie Peacock reports.
Australia’s Foreign Minister Julie Bishop told Australians that their consular staff are not there to pay hotel bills, to lend you a laptop or to provide you with the office space in the embassy. Among the other examples offered by officials was the case of a man who approached the Australian embassy in Bangkok and asked for the loan to help pay a Thai prostitute. Foreign affairs staff say such requests are common at that embassy. The government is now considering charging Australians for any consular help they receive.
Julie Peacock.
If the current climate pattern continues, this year will be the warmest around the world since records began. That’s according to the latest estimates from the world meteorological organization announced at the UN Climate Conference in Lima. For more of this, I’ve been speaking to our environment correspondent.
The figures are for the first ten months of this year and it shows the year is tracking in one of the very hottest years on record. If we continue with a warm November and a warm December, then we will have the hottest year on record. And that will make, and I think this is more interesting because you know, years can be warmer or cooler, but the general trend is what’s important here. And that will make 14 of the 15 hottest years on record from the 21st century. And the only other one in that is 1998. So all of the hottest years since 1998. That is really what’s remarkable.
So it’s all about the trend.
It’s all about the trend. And it’s the trend that gives climate meteorologists so much confidence to say we can not explain this trend unless we take into account man-made green house gases. That’s why they are so confident to say that humans are driving up with temperatures. They can’t be sure how much we are responsible but they can be sure that we are at least partly responsible and they make their predictions based on that.
And they are linking the trend to what kind of phenomena that we’re seeing around the world?
They are linking the trend to increasing temperatures and the increasing temperatures in turn lead to weather phenomena. So this year apparently, we have had exceptionally high ocean temperatures.