http://www.smh.com.au/news/World/US-scientists-accuse-Bush-of-pressure/2007/01/31/1169919370234.html

US scientists felt pressured to tailor their writings on global warming to fit the Bush administration's skepticism, in some cases at the behest of an ex-oil industry lobbyist, a congressional committee has heard.

"Our investigations found high-quality science struggling to get out," Francesca Grifo of the watchdog group Union of Concerned Scientists told members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

A survey by the group found that 150 climate scientists personally experienced political interference in the past five years, for a total of at least 435 incidents.

"Nearly half of all respondents perceived or personally experienced pressure to eliminate the words 'climate change', 'global warming' or other similar terms from a variety of communications," Grifo said.

---

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/08/politics/08climate.html?hp

A White House official who once led the oil industry's fight against limits on greenhouse gases has repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents.

---

http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1697616,00.html

The American space programme's leading climate scientist has accused the White House of trying to gag him after he called last month for urgent cuts in the emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming, writes Ned Temko

---

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,18128520-29277,00.html

SOME of Australia's top scientists say they've been gagged from highlighting concerns about climate change because it could reflect badly on government policy.

After a top NASA scientist last month accused the Bush administration of trying to muzzle him, three eminent Australian scientists have told tonight's ABC's Four Corners program they too have been censored.

The Government has received widespread international criticism for refusing, along with the United States, to sign the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

"I was told I couldn't say anything that indicated that I disagreed with government policy and I presume that meant Federal Government policy," Dr Pearman said.

He said he was censored "at least half a dozen times" during his final year with CSIRO.

This just confirms what we have all suspected.  Even tonight on 7.30 report - another talented scientist is leaving our country for California to sell his solar technology to the Americans.

Australia isn't very interested and will throw a few million at renewable technologies occasionally to pretend they care.  Ian McFarlane - our energy Minister (or whatever he is) says the Government has received a report from the  Australian Energy Market Commission stating that we need to head in the direction of clean coal technology supported by nuclear power.  McFarlane goes along with this and disputes the cost of solar technology - even though this scientist - Don Mills - says that the cost to develop solar power for each state would be the same as a mid range coal fired power station.

We have to do what this government says at the sacrifice of our environment.  They have got too much invested in coal, uranium and gas - who knows what arrangements our politicians have with this major corporations.

Seriously, am I the only one in the whole of Australia that couldn't give a rats @ss about climate change?

yes, I am about over it.

There is a theory that it is not man made anyway. It is a natural oscillation in the climate.
The sun is getting hotter.

I am considering buying an older softroader and selling the futura wagon. It'll use more petrol and I can go more places. I want to go to the deserts again.  Good idea ? Or better to buy a horrible buzzbox that uses less fuel and goes like a month of wet sundays.  I like the grunt and size of my falcon.
If I wait long eough, the deserts are coming to me .  :-)

If it is man made, the ploiticians should fix it. Is what they are meant to do . Not my issue  ;)

if it is man made ..it IS YOUR ISSUE sprint and if it , the climate , is decimated , you will sure as h-ell know about it.

One issue none of us can dodge or deny.



I do care about climate change. :)

SUN GETTING HOTTER  ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

I think the nature of the problem requires a government driven solution. Personal actions will only ever be a minor (though still important) part of the solution.

http://www.ozpolitic.com/green-tax-shift/green-tax-shift.html

I do often wonder if the man made/natural argument is really relevant. Even if the man made proponents are correct they do say drastic changes today will have little effect on the shorter end of the long term outcomes, however the chance is for more damage even further down the track. I still wonder though if damage to our economy today, before green technologies are mature, is really the best way to go about it? Would it be better to keep ourselves rich today and develop the technology of the future while we can afford to do so?

Climate change aside, getting away from polluting energy sources based on finite resources is a sensible idea, but I'm not about to go out and sell my V8 baby! ;)

Most economists think the short term costs of solving it will be negligable. Plus, we waste a lot of the wealth we generate these days. Generating a bit extra is not likely to increase our ability to solve it in the future, it will just make us fatter. Of course, once you factor in the costs associated with global warming then solving it is probably a good economic investment. Just ask the insurance companies.

freediver wrote on Apr 18^th, 2007 at 7:52am:

Most economists think the short term costs of solving it will be negligable. Plus, we waste a lot of the wealth we generate these days. Generating a bit extra is not likely to increase our ability to solve it in the future, it will just make us fatter. Of course, once you factor in the costs associated with global warming then solving it is probably a good economic investment. Just ask the insurance companies.

But those costs wont be realised for a very  very long time, even at the most extreme end of the predictions? Also, will the costs of climate change pan out over a century, centuries, or a decade? because that also is relevant to how much it really will cost.

I do agree that our society has the wealth, but I'm still not convinced that the average citizen has that kind of free wealth, most people are living pretty tight these days.

But those costs wont be realised for a very  very long time, even at the most extreme end of the predictions?

They are already being realised. Insurance premiums are already going up. People are already being forced off marginal low land. Of course, the longer we allow it to proceed, the worse it will be in a century or two.

Also, will the costs of climate change pan out over a century, centuries, or a decade?

I think over the order of centuries, assuming global climate to be linear. That is based on the effective half life of CO2 in the atmosphere. However, the climate is not linear and we may push it into some other quasi stable state or into a period of rapid oscillations which could last for thousands of years or far longer.

I do agree that our society has the wealth, but I'm still not convinced that the average citizen has that kind of free wealth, most people are living pretty tight these days.

Most people in the west are not starving. People live tight because they spend most or all of what they earn. If they became 1% poorer they would just reduce their standard of living accordingly.

Pffft...Carbon tax, green tax ::) What a great idea...let's create another industry/level of bureaucracy at great expense with little reward.

High scaly, thanks for joining up. Did you know that petrol is already taxed separately to help pay for the roads? So all we would have to do is increase it. As for electricity, there aren't that many power stations around and they are already being monitored, so taxing them would not involve an enourmous amount of paperwork.

Cool, another tax!

Which gets us where exactly?

If environmentalists were really keen to reduce emissions then fission would be a card on the table for base load requirements...but that would conflict with how they raised their revenue for the last 30 years

It gets us to the cheapest way to reduce carbon emissions.

cheapest ≠ effective

cheapest-effectiveness= expensive

Reducing carbon emissions is reducing carbon emissions. It doesn't matter how you do it. By cheapest, I mean that for any given amount of reduction, it could be achieved via a green tax shift at far less cost to society.

[quote author=freediver]Reducing carbon emissions is reducing carbon emissions. It doesn't matter how you do it. [/quote]

Yes it does.

A bad plan executed now does not a good plan make

Do you think the plan with the least cost to the economy per unit of emissions reductions is good or bad?

Are you having trouble getting your login to work? You should be able to set it so you are logged in automatically when you visit the forum.

Do you think the plan with the least cost to the economy per unit of emissions reductions is good or bad?

Depends if it can be substantiated as being the least cost to the economy while still being effective

It can, on both counts.

Any sources or objective analysis where this has occurred?

This is all based on basic economics. If you don't believe it you are welcome to try to discredit it, or find an economist who can discredit it.

http://www.ozpolitic.com/green-tax-shift/green-tax-shift.html

I'm not looking to discredit anything. I like to keep an open mind but citing your own penned work is subjective rather than objective  which is what I asked for.

This is common knowledge, at least among economists. It's kind of hard to cite an undergraduate course. I'll dig up my Law and Economics textbook for you if you want.

I'll dig up my Law and Economics textbook for you if you want.

Please do

I think this was the prescribed textbook for the upper division law and economics course I did at UCSD:

http://www.cooter-ulen.com/

http://www.amazon.com/Law-Economics-3rd-Robert-Cooter/dp/0321064828

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_analysis_of_law

http://www.smh.com.au/news/breaking-news/wetter-north-only-temporary-flannery/2007/06/14/1181414456995.html

Australia should forget about moving people and agriculture to the country's north because the increased rainfall there won't last, scientist Tim Flannery says.

The Australian of the Year says people instead should learn to live in a permanently drier climate.

"Computer models indicate that the increased rainfall is most likely caused by the Asian haze, which has pushed the monsoon south," Professor Flannery wrote in the latest issue of New Scientist magazine.

"This means that as Asia cleans up its air, Australia is likely to lose its northern rainfall.

The federal government's $10 billion national water plan includes an investigation into the potential for land and water development in northern Australia.

The task force is led by Liberal senator Bill Heffernan, who believes the north could become the food bowl of Australia and Asia.

ex-member DonaldTrump wrote on Apr 17^th, 2007 at 12:37am:

Seriously, am I the only one in the whole of Australia that couldn't give a rats @ss about climate change?

Im not worried either.  The world has been through climate change many times.
I think everyone is over reacting, the ice caps are melting naturally,  Try this- Put an ice cube into a glass of water, watch how slowly it melts and notice, that as it gets towards the end of melting how fast it melts.  We are still coming out of the last ice age. its ending.

climate change caused by humans is a load of bullocks.

Classic Liberal wrote on Jun 15^th, 2007 at 5:26pm:

climate change caused by humans is a load of bullocks.

AH some sense from pender! :D

---

i really like that pic ausnat.

we can agree sometimes 8-)

Classic Liberal wrote on Jun 16^th, 2007 at 1:04pm:

i really like that pic ausnat. we can agree sometimes 8-)

So we dont have anything to worry about then..pender AN?

We wont cook to death/freeze to death.?  .. If its earth cyclical then it wont be as severe..more gradual perhaps? :-?

Quote:

We wont cook to death/freeze to death.?  .. If its earth cyclical then it wont be as severe..more gradual perhaps? :-?

Oh we will, but we didnt cause it. its a natural occourance.

we may or may not die, but one thing is for certain, we wont be controlling it...

anyway we are smart enough now to survive through pretty much any natural crisis

Quote:

we are smart enough now to survive through pretty much any natural crisis

We survived the last ice age didnt we? in fact we bloomed from it.

all we had was throwing spears then.

I don't think we need to worry about cooking to death or freezing to death, but trying to make it through the next half century without dying of thirst? Theres the Australian dilemma...

So how many have gone out and got their tanks yet?

zoso wrote on Jun 19^th, 2007 at 6:28pm:

I don't think we need to worry about cooking to death or freezing to death, but trying to make it through the next half century without dying of thirst? Theres the Australian dilemma... So how many have gone out and got their tanks yet?

Can't afford it. The hype costs too much if you want to buy into it.

not in this weather. downpour

Classic Liberal wrote on Jun 19^th, 2007 at 8:46pm:

not in this weather. downpour

Best time to get a tank. :D

Classic Liberal wrote on Jun 19^th, 2007 at 8:46pm:

not in this weather. downpour

Fer FVCKS SAKE. Is it raining EVERYWHERE but Victoria???

Its snowing in north east Vic if that makes you feel better. ;)

not raining in QLD either.  I have given up on it

Ahh yes lots of rain... not doing much though is it? The drought has become so bad now that rain is just being sucked up into the dry earth and the rivers simply aren't flowing.

Anyone remember Australia being called "drought proof"?? All of our major dams are massively over capacity, as far as I'm aware we are supposed to have enough water stored up for years with no rain, so this has been a problem for years already. I know I've been harping on about it for years. There's enough storage, there's enough rain, why are we dying of thirst? Dams don't work when the rivers don't flow! This is why we need tanks, but most importantly we need to learn how to use water effectively.

I challenge anyone to live 6 months in the bush with only tank water and no rain. I've done it, thousands of Australians do it year in year out, the majority however have no idea what it is really like... and are shaping up for a REALLY rude shock!

meh warragamba has gone up 4% :D

Classic Liberal wrote on Jun 20^th, 2007 at 4:07pm:

meh warragamba has gone up 4% :D

That 4% will be lost by next week.

zoso wrote on Jun 20^th, 2007 at 3:59pm:

Ahh yes lots of rain... not doing much though is it? The drought has become so bad now that rain is just being sucked up into the dry earth and the rivers simply aren't flowing. Anyone remember Australia being called "drought proof"?? All of our major dams are massively over capacity, as far as I'm aware we are supposed to have enough water stored up for years with no rain, so this has been a problem for years already. I know I've been harping on about it for years. There's enough storage, there's enough rain, why are we dying of thirst? Dams don't work when the rivers don't flow! This is why we need tanks, but most importantly we need to learn how to use water effectively. I challenge anyone to live 6 months in the bush with only tank water and no rain. I've done it, thousands of Australians do it year in year out, the majority however have no idea what it is really like... and are shaping up for a REALLY rude shock!

I think the Gold Coast has taken up an initiave or plans to take up an initiative which will see every home require a rainwater tank in the future. In that all new homes built will be built in with a rainwater tank....

With the Gold Coast being the fastest growing city in Australia... (have to check that stat) ... it only makes sense to take such precautions.

In saying that though... the water from rainwater tanks usually looks brown... blargghh.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/North-cant-be-food-bowl-of-Asia-report/2007/08/14/1186857507208.html

A group of Australia's leading environmental scientists have dismissed claims the nation's north could become the food bowl of Asia and counter water shortages in southern states.

After three years of intensive research, the group launched a report in Darwin which describes the north of Australia as one of the last remaining natural wonders of the world.

As the largest intact savanna on earth, the ecosystem covers more than 1.5 million square kilometres and stretches from the Cape York Peninsula and Gulf Country in north Queensland, across the Northern Territory to the Kimberley in Western Australia.

It is four times larger than Africa's largest intact tropical savannas.

But while the report compared the environmental value of the north to the Amazon rainforests, Alaska and the wilderness of Antarctica, its authors said there was little hope of the land sustaining agriculture.

In fact, they warned that unless pastoralists who currently occupy 70 per cent of the north start changing their ways, they could bring about the total devastation of the savanna and the animals it supports.

http://dsc.sp@m/news/2007/08/15/volcano_pla.html?category=earth

Larry O'Hanlon, Discovery News

Aug. 15, 2007 — Emulating the sun-dimming effects of large volcanic eruptions to slow the Earth's greenhouse effect, as some have proposed, may just make matters worse, say scientists studying the effects of nature's recent volcanics.

The eruption of the Philippine's Mount Pinatubo in 1991 shows that the far-flung effects of its sun-blocking particles led to a marked decrease in precipitation worldwide.

An attempt to mimic volcanoes to cool the Earth by blocking solar energy reaching the Earth's surface could have similar short-term effects — which could be worse than global warming.

"They're all designed to cut the incoming (solar) radiation," said climate researcher Kevin Trenberth, referring to various proposals to "geo-engineer" our way out of global warming. But you can't engineer the climate without thinking about the entire flow of that incoming heat, he added.

That heat flow warms tropical oceans, which evaporates lots of water. The water vapor moves to higher latitudes, where it rains down and releases heat that can radiate back into space.

"So if you are changing this flow of energy," said Trenberth, who works at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), "it's going to have an impact."

The immediate effect is less rain falling worldwide. In other words: drought.

Trenberth and his NCAR colleague Aiguo Dai found just such a pronounced drop in precipitation — seen in terms of the world's stream and river flows — after the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo.

There was a "singular decrease" in river discharges into the oceans, Trenberth told Discovery News. The researchers' work is published in the latest issue of Geophysical Research Letters.

Unlike the more gradual effects of global warming, droughts have been known to cause immediate famines along with political and economic instability.

"There is really a major ethical aspect to it," said Trenberth. "If you can really [dim solar radiation], who is in charge? Who plays God?" After all, he said, it's one thing to accidentally cause the climate to change, as has happened with global warming, and another to deliberately tinker with it.

"Any time you are talking about geo-engineering you have to be very careful," said climate researcher Robert Adler of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. "If you don't understand the system — and we do not fully understand this system — you can get perturbations."

Another problem with mimicking volcanoes is that you have to keep doing it or face potential trouble when the effect wears off in 18 months or so and the climate rebounds, said Trenberth.

The cement in dams also contributes to global warming:

http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Dams-contributing-to-global-warming/2007/09/04/1188783203624.html

The world's dams are contributing millions of tonnes of harmful greenhouse gases and spurring on global warming, according to a US environmental agency.

International Rivers Network executive director Patrick McCully told Brisbane's Riversymposium rotting vegetation and fish found in dams produced surprising amounts of methane - 25 times stronger than carbon dioxide.

"Often it's accepted that hydropower is a climate friendly technology but in fact probably all reservoirs around the world emit greenhouse gases and some of them, especially some of the ones in the tropics, emit very high quantities of greenhouse gases even comparable to, in some cases even much worse than, fossil fuels like coal and gas," Mr McCully said.

He said when water flow was stopped, vegetation and soil in the flooded area and from upstream was left to rot, as well as fish and other animals which died in the dam.

They then released carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide into the air.

Mr McCully said global estimates blamed dams for about a third of all methane emissions worldwide.

The Brazilian National Space Agency estimated that was about 104 million tonnes of methane each year, or four per cent of the human impact on global warming, he said.

But he said it was an area that was under-researched so a clearer picture of how dams were contributing to global warming was not known.

---

No easy progress on climate issue: Clark

http://www.smh.com.au/news/breaking-news/no-easy-progress-on-climate-issue-clark/2007/09/03/1188783147912.html

New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark says it will take the "wisdom of Solomon" to solve international differences over climate change policy at this week's APEC summit in Sydney.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23416151-details/Judge+attacks+nine+errors+in+Al+Gore's+'alarmist'+climate+change+film/article.do

controversial documentary on climate change which has been sent to thousands of schools has been criticised by a High Court judge for being 'alarmist' and 'exaggerated'.

Mr Justice Burton said former US vice-president Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, was 'one-sided' and would breach education rules unless accompanied by a warning.

Despite winning lavish praise from the environmental lobby and an Oscar from the film industry, Mr Gore's documentary was found to contain 'nine scientific errors' by the judge.

Scroll down for more...


A High Court judge ruled Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth was 'alarmist' and 'exaggerated'


These inconvenient untruths included the claim that the snows on Mount Kilimanjaro were disapearing and solely due to the global warming and that sea levels will rise up to 20 feet in the near future.



Kent school governor Stewart Dimmock brought the legal action, claiming the film was unfit for schools

Impressed by the film's slick message on climate change, the Government sent copies of the documentary to all secondary schools in England earlier this year, along with two short films and an animation about the carbon cycle produced by Defra.

Ruling that the film could be shown in schools as part of the climate change resource pack, Mr Justice Burton warned it must be accompanied by new guidance notes to balance Mr Gore's partisan views.

The High Court action was brought by a father-of-two who accused Labour of 'brainwashing' children with propaganda.

Kent school governor Stewart Dimmock claimed the film was unfit for schools as it was politically partisan, containing serious scientific inaccuracies and 'sentimental mush'.

Lorry driver and member of the political group, the New Party, Mr Dimmock had sought a court order to ban the documentary after the Government decided to distribute the documentary and four short films to 3,500 schools in February.

Yesterday he said he was delighted with the outcome: "The film contains blatant inaccuracies. It's a political shockumentary, it's not a scientific documentary."

Describing the documentary as 'a powerful, dramatically presented and highly professionally produced film', Mr Justice Burton said it was built round the 'charismatic presence' of the ex vice president 'whose crusade it now is to persuade the world of the dangers of climate change caused by global warming'.

But he said it might be necessary for the Government to make clear to teaching staff that some of Mr Gore's views were not supported or promoted by the Government, and there was 'a view to the contrary'.

Agreeing that Mr Gore's film was 'broadly accurate' on the subject of climate change, he found that errors had arisen in 'the context of alarmism and exaggeration'.

The judge then set out nine errors in the film which went against current mainstream scientific consensus.

Yes, bullocks and other bovines are responsible for a lot of greenhouse emissions.

---

actually bullocks and other animals emit more greenhouse gasses than humans :D

pender - hahaha.

Will have to do some scientific research to verify that !!!

Sprintcyclist wrote on Oct 12^th, 2007 at 3:30pm:

pender - hahaha. Will have to do some scientific research to verify that !!!

ha ha Id like to see that. :o

um its true... animals emit more carbon than humans simply because there is so much more of them.

carbon has been emited since the beginning of life, even before that. Volcanoes emit carbon, animals, trees when they die, even the bloody ocean does.

Humans and our industry emit such a small percentage of the worlds carbon that is seems so rediculous that we could influence anything with it.

Carbon has always been seen as a giver of life, untill the last decade, when a scare campaign with alterior motives was started. We as a society have a short memory, in the 1970's everyone was raving on about "global cooling" just because there had been a downturn in temperature between 1940-1970...

um its true... animals emit more carbon than humans simply because there is so much more of them.

I think cows only emit less than 20% of Australia's emissions. Termites probably less. And that is in a coutnry with a far higher ration of cows an termites to industry than most countries.

in the 1970's everyone was raving on about "global cooling"

No they weren't. A small number of people were onto it, but it was a far smaller problem because the rate of change was far smaller and there was no need for immediate action. To suggest that this indicates some kind of ignorance or folly is wrong.

freediver wrote on Oct 15^th, 2007 at 9:59am:

um its true... animals emit more carbon than humans simply because there is so much more of them. I think cows only emit less than 20% of Australia's emissions. Termites probably less. And that is in a coutnry with a far higher ration of cows an termites to industry than most countries. in the 1970's everyone was raving on about "global cooling" No they weren't. A small number of people were onto it, but it was a far smaller problem because the rate of change was far smaller and there was no need for immediate action. To suggest that this indicates some kind of ignorance or folly is wrong.

all animals added together produce more than humans, for goodness sake if cows alone produce 20%...

Only ruminants produce methane in large quantities.

Also, just because animals emit it does not mean humans are not responsible. European farmers introduced cows to Australia. Switching to roos or some other alternative must be considered as a way to reduce greenhouse emissions.

Rice produces 7% of the worlds methane.

The melting of the ice shelves is releasing methane and methane hydrates (which are even nastier) into the atmosphere.

That's the farming method typically used for rice, not the rice plant itself.

freediver wrote on Oct 17^th, 2007 at 4:05pm:

That's the farming method typically used for rice, not the rice plant itself.

Yep yep yep  :)

so what your saying is if we stop farming rice that would have more of an impact than anything else :)

CO2 is the main culprit, not methane. In Australia, about half of our CO2 emissions come from electricity production.

freediver wrote on Oct 20^th, 2007 at 3:19pm:

CO2 is the main culprit, not methane. In Australia, about half of our CO2 emissions come from electricity production.

Therefore we should all stop breathing. :P

We are more likely to be wiped out by a meteor than by climate change.

There are other risks to be considered besides being wiped out completely, but it is good to see you have the issue in perspective.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Land-clearing-blamed-for-climate-change/2007/10/28/1193555525054.html

Land clearing has led to climate change in Australia, a University of Queensland-led report says.

UQ's Dr Clive McAlpine said their research showed the clearing of native vegetation had made Australian droughts hotter.

"Our findings highlight that it is too simplistic to attribute climate change purely to greenhouse gases," said Dr McAlpine of UQ's Centre for Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Science.

"Our work shows that the 2002-03 El Nino drought in eastern Australia was on average two degrees hotter because of vegetation clearing," Dr McAlpine said.

Dr McAlpine said their research showed average summer rainfall decreased by between four and 12 per cent in eastern Australia, and four and eight per cent in south-west Western Australia - regions that have had the most extensive clearing over the years.

"Native vegetation moderates climate fluctuations and this has important, largely unrecognised consequences for agriculture and stressed land and water resources," Dr McAlpine said.

"Australian native vegetation holds more moisture that subsequently evaporates and recycles back as rainfall.

"It also reflects into space less short-wave solar radiation ... and this process keeps the surface temperature cooler and aids cloud formation."

yes, we need to reforrest aussie  with edible fruits .

make it a self sustaining eden .

It'ld solve many problems

And Bunya nuts, Macadamias etc.

and mangoes, star fruit, lolly berries, panamanian cherrys, citrus, grapes, passionfruit, fruit salad fruit.


I so miss my permaculture garden. Going to make them wherever I live now.

I just picked a handful of grumichums (type of Brazil cherry, not sour) from a tree I only discovered in the backyard about a year ago.

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Aussie drought blamed on global warming

http://news.smh.com.au/aussie-drought-blamed-on-global-warming/20071214-1h4x.html

Global warming is playing a direct role in Australia's drought, with higher temperatures having a significant impact on the availability of water, scientists say.

Most of southern Australia has recorded its hottest year on record in 2007 and rainfall in some areas has been higher this year than in 2006.

But while there are optimistic forecasts for better than average falls over summer, higher temperatures mean much of the water is not getting into Australia's storage systems.

National Climate Centre chief Michael Coughlan said it was becoming clear that the difference between the current drought conditions and those in Australia's past was that global warming was pushing the mercury higher.

From the IPCC, the leading scientific body on climate change:

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report.html

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/Report/AR4WG1_Print_Ch06.pdf

Climate has changed on all time scales throughout Earth’s history.Some aspects of the current climate change are not unusual, but others are. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has reached a record high relative to more than the past half-million years, and has done so at an exceptionally fast rate. Current global temperatures are warmer than they have ever been during at least the past five centuries, probably even for more than a millennium. If warming continues unabated, the resulting climate change within this century would be extremely unusual in geological terms. Another unusual aspect of recent climate change is its cause: past climate changes were natural in origin (see FAQ 6.1), whereas most of the warming of the past 50 years is attributable to human activities.

The main reason for the current concern about climate change is the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration (and some other greenhouse gases), which is very unusual for the Quaternary (about the last two million years). The concentration of CO2 is now known accurately for the past 650,000 years from antarctic ice cores. During this time, CO2 concentration varied between a low of 180 ppm during cold glacial times and a high of 300 ppm during warm interglacials. Over the past century, it rapidly increased well out of this range, and is now 379 ppm (see Chapter 2). For comparison, the approximately 80-ppm rise in CO2 concentration at the end of the past ice ages generally took over 5,000 years. Higher values than at present have only occurred many millions of years ago (see FAQ 6.1).

A different matter is the current rate of warming. Are more rapid global climate changes recorded in proxy data? The largest temperature changes of the past million years are the glacial cycles, during which the global mean temperature changed by 4°C to 7°C between ice ages and warm interglacial periods (local changes were much larger, for example near the continental ice sheets). However, the data indicate that the global warming at the end of an ice age was a gradual process taking about 5,000 years (see Section 6.3). It is thus clear that the current rate of global climate change is much more rapid and very unusual in the context of past changes. The much-discussed abrupt climate shifts during glacial times (see Section 6.3) are not counter-examples, since they were probably due to changes in ocean heat transport, which would be unlikely to affect the global mean temperature.

If projections of approximately 5°C warming in this century (the upper end of the range) are realised, then the Earth will have experienced about the same amount of global mean warming as it did at the end of the last ice age; there is no evidence that this rate of possible future global change was matched by any comparable global temperature increase of the last 50 million years.

See the graphs here:

page 448, CO2 concentrations over the last 20000 years: http://www.ozpolitic.com/articles/IPCC-paleoclimate-p448.pdf

page 467, temperature over the last 1300 years: http://www.ozpolitic.com/articles/IPCC-paleoclimate-p467.pdf

Climate change, for the sceptics: http://www.ozpolitic.com/green-tax-shift/climate-change-for-the-sceptics.html

Pasted and copied from higp on cracker


"I've never once heard ANY good scientific debate about the effects of C-emissions. Truth be known Carbon Dioxide makes up only 0.03% of the earths atmosphere (by volume I think), and only 1.3% of this can be attributed to humans. Which gives 0.0000039% of the atmosphere being human generated Carbon Dioxide. Furthermore Carbon Dioxide is not the primary contributer to the greenhouse effect, water vapour is and contributes to the effect around three times more than carbon dioxide...

A good reason not to ratify Kyoto would instead be because its based on fundamentalist environmental fanaticism and has nothing to do with science! "

Of course he hasn't heard any good debate - people keep disagreeing with him.

not i.

Why would someone go to a political forum looking for in depth scientific discussion?

Here is a good list of rebuttals to the standard sceptic arguments:

http://gristmill.grist.org/skeptics

Apart from a few oil rich countries, Australia is at the top on per capita greenhouse emissions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhouse_gas_emissions_per_capita

16.3 metric tons per person per year, compared to a global average of about 4 tons per person per year.

We are close to the top on CO2 emissions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita

Comparison of GDP per unit CO2 emissions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ratio_of_GDP_to_carbon_dioxide_emissions

By total emissions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions

These links also have some good maps that show the same info.

---

Reference sections are always handy: Ta!

See, we're the best !!!!

fd - going to give the reasons for that ??
such as, we produce raw materials for the WHOLE world

I think you'll find your favoured map is well and truly out of date.

According to some reports China has already passed the US according to your per-capita scale- except they admit they aren't actually measuring any output with accuracy.  ::)

According to some reports China has already passed the US according to your per-capita scale

IQ, that would total output, if it is meaningful at all. China is still far below the US and Australia on er capita emissions.

But be my guest and provide a link if you disagree.

Q, that would total output, if it is meaningful at all.

That is the most meaningful of all comparisons...or should Australians just over populate to put us on an even keel?

freediver wrote on Dec 3^rd, 2007 at 9:34pm:

According to some reports China has already passed the US according to your per-capita scale IQ, that would total output, if it is meaningful at all. China is still far below the US and Australia on er capita emissions. But be my guest and provide a link if you disagree.

I would have thought total output is the only meaningful figure.  Otherwise one dude with a continuously burning campfire on a rock somewhere in the ocean may generate more CO2 than all the rest of the world combined on a per capita basis.  It is meaningless though.

No, the total on a country by country basis is not as meaningful. The campfire guy would be contributing more to global warming than other people. On a 'total by country' comparison, if China were to split into two countries, it could double it's output, but each country would then be no worse in comparison to other countries. Two countries could join, and their contribution would appear to double. When you compare on a total by country bsasis, you include an arbitrary multiplier - how big the country is.

The most meaningful measure is total global output. However that cannot be used to compare countries. The only meaningful way to compare countries is on a per capita basis.

IQSRLOW wrote on Dec 3^rd, 2007 at 10:22pm:

Q, that would total output, if it is meaningful at all. That is the most meaningful of all comparisons...or should Australians just over populate to put us on an even keel?

How can you say that?

You are a total looper!

deepthought wrote on Dec 3^rd, 2007 at 10:46pm:

freediver wrote on Dec 3rd, 2007 at 9:34pm: According to some reports China has already passed the US according to your per-capita scale IQ, that would total output, if it is meaningful at all. China is still far below the US and Australia on er capita emissions. But be my guest and provide a link if you disagree. I would have thought total output is the only meaningful figure.  Otherwise one dude with a continuously burning campfire on a rock somewhere in the ocean may generate more CO2 than all the rest of the world combined on a per capita basis.  It is meaningless though.

It is a meaningful figure, but not the most meaningful figure.

Statistics must be interpreted carefully to form any kind of meaning.

BatteriesNotIncluded wrote on Dec 12^th, 2007 at 6:40pm:

deepthought wrote on Dec 3rd, 2007 at 10:46pm: freediver wrote on Dec 3rd, 2007 at 9:34pm: According to some reports China has already passed the US according to your per-capita scale IQ, that would total output, if it is meaningful at all. China is still far below the US and Australia on er capita emissions. But be my guest and provide a link if you disagree. I would have thought total output is the only meaningful figure.  Otherwise one dude with a continuously burning campfire on a rock somewhere in the ocean may generate more CO2 than all the rest of the world combined on a per capita basis.  It is meaningless though. It is a meaningful figure, but not the most meaningful figure. Statistics must be interpreted carefully to form any kind of meaning.

Absolutely agree.  And to quote Australia as the worst is misleading.  We only contribute a small percentage of the total.

How can you say that?

You are a total looper!

I'll forgive your personal attack because I know you have no way to actually comprehend my answer

Victoria's greenhouse emissions up

http://news.smh.com.au/victorias-greenhouse-emissions-up/20080107-1khh.html

Greenhouse gas emissions from energy production in Victoria have risen by 30 per cent since 1990, new figures show, putting pressure on the state government to do more to tackle climate change.

By contrast, annual greenhouse gas emissions in NSW have risen by only seven per cent over the same period, the first annual report of the greenhouse indicator produced by the non-profit Climate Group and The Age newspaper has found.

Victoria's hefty increase, caused mainly by emissions from its Latrobe Valley brown coal-fired power stations, went against the Victorian government's policy of cutting greenhouse emissions by 60 per cent of 2000 levels by 2050, the report said.

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Climate change to harm health: study

http://news.smh.com.au/climate-change-to-harm-health-study/20080125-1o54.html

Climate change will have potentially devastating consequences for human health, outweighing global economic impacts, researchers say.

"While we embark on more rapid reduction of emissions to avert future climate change, we must also manage the now unavoidable health risks from current and pending climate change," said Australian researcher Tony McMichael, who co-authored a study in the British Medical Journal.

"This will have adverse health effects in all populations, particularly in geographically vulnerable and resource-poor regions," he said.

McMichael, from Australia's Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, said increased wildfires, droughts, flooding and disease stemming from climate change posed a much more fundamental threat to human wellbeing than economic impacts.

A 2006 report by former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern said climate change had the potential to shrink the global economy by between 5 and 20 per cent, causing a similar impact to the Great Depression.

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World can 'afford' to solve its environmental woes: OECD

http://news.smh.com.au/world-can-afford-to-solve-its-environmental-woes-oecd/20080306-1x9j.html

The world could solve many of the major environmental problems it faces at an "affordable" price, the OECD said Wednesday, warning that the cost of doing nothing would be far higher.

In a report presented in Oslo, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development suggested a range of measures to address what it said were the greatest global environmental challenges through 2030: climate change, biodiversity loss, water scarcity and the impact on human health of pollution and toxic chemicals.

The suggested measures would cost just over 1.0 percent of the predicted global gross domestic product in 2030, meaning world wealth would grow on average 0.03 percentage points less per year over the next 22 years, the organisation said.

"It has a positive cost-benefit result. Regardless of the ethical, of the moral, of the social, of the political consequences, simply looking at it from the business and the economic point of view, it is a better idea to start right away focusing on the environment," Gurria insisted.

The group placed a special emphasis on the need to rein in carbon dioxide emissions through special taxes and increased emission trading.

http://www.alternet.org/water/78676/?source=cmailer

Brian Fagan believes climate is not merely a backdrop to the ongoing drama of human civilization, but an important stage upon which world events turn.

As it turns out, the anecdotal evidence of climate change in this, the 21st century, shares much in common with a historical antecedent, the Medieval Warm Period, circa AD 800 to 1200, that radically shaped societies across the globe.

The Medieval Warm Period was a time when the capacity of agriculture rapidly expanded and enabled people to flourish in Europe. Yet elsewhere, extended lack of rainfall, or too much of it, brought famine, plagues, and wars.

This bout of global warming was followed by the Little Ice Age that lasted roughly from AD 1300 until the middle of the 19th century and cast Europe and North America back into a big chill. Since then, mean global temperature has been slowly and steadily rising, accompanied by huge leaps in agricultural output and skyrocketing human population.

Today, climate experts tell us that over the past two decades, temperature has registered an alarming unnatural spike and is expected to keep climbing.

Despite the well-established fact that Earth is heating up, skeptics still are trying to poke holes in the assertion that it is owed to humans pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere. Climate change is, and always has been cyclical, they say. Or maybe, some insist, it is God who has his hand on the thermostat.

As polar icecaps melt and glaciers disappear, thus causing seas to rise, low-lying coastal areas may indeed be inundated, creating millions of environmental refugees. But it is the inland agricultural breadbasket regions that feed the world that stand to suffer the greatest upheaval if reliable precipitation patterns vanish.

Such a scenario is not speculative, Fagan insists; it's based upon not only sophisticated computer models, but also the precedent of what's already happened during episodes of climate change half a millennium ago -- in the Arctic, Europe, China, the Southern Hemisphere, and in America's own backyard. By taking readers back to the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age, Fagan argues that history "shows how drought can destabilize a society and lead to its collapse."

Amid disturbances to growing seasons, humans suffered mightily, though our ancestors proved their resilience by adjusting opportunistically to changes that manifested over generations. That's the good news.

But the difference between then and now is that climate is changing faster today and the corresponding effects of drought over the next century have implications for hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people, some living in the wealthiest of nations, who Fagan believes are unprepared to cope with severe water shortages.

"Droughts are expensive in human terms and also carry a high economic price," he writes. "The notorious Dust Bowl droughts of the 1934-40 over the Great Plains scarred an entire generation. Three and a half million people fled the land." Imagine the Dust Bowl lasting centuries with no end in sight.

A new ice age is on the way.
I saw a program about the Gulf stream slowing, causing a new ice age.


"Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.

The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January "was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average."

China is surviving its most brutal winter in a century. Temperatures in the normally balmy south were so low for so long that some middle-sized cities went days and even weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too icy to repair them.

There have been so many snow and ice storms in Ontario and Quebec in the past two months that the real estate market has felt the pinch as home buyers have stayed home rather than venturing out looking for new houses.

In just the first two weeks of February, Toronto received 70 cm of snow, smashing the record of 66.6 cm for the entire month set back in the pre-SUV, pre-Kyoto, pre-carbon footprint days of 1950.

And remember the Arctic Sea ice? The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its "lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 and that there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past.

The ice is back.

Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, says the Arctic winter has been so severe the ice has not only recovered, it is actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year.

OK, so one winter does not a climate make. It would be premature to claim an Ice Age is looming just because we have had one of our most brutal winters in decades.

But if environmentalists and environment reporters can run around shrieking about the manmade destruction of the natural order every time a robin shows up on Georgian Bay two weeks early, then it is at least fair game to use this winter's weather stories to wonder whether the alarmist are being a tad premature.

And it's not just anecdotal evidence that is piling up against the climate-change dogma.

According to Robert Toggweiler of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton University and Joellen Russell, assistant professor of biogeochemical dynamics at the University of Arizona -- two prominent climate modellers -- the computer models that show polar ice-melt cooling the oceans, stopping the circulation of warm equatorial water to northern latitudes and triggering another Ice Age (a la the movie The Day After Tomorrow) are all wrong.

"We missed what was right in front of our eyes," says Prof. Russell. It's not ice melt but rather wind circulation that drives ocean currents northward from the tropics. Climate models until now have not properly accounted for the wind's effects on ocean circulation, so researchers have compensated by over-emphasizing the role of manmade warming on polar ice melt.

But when Profs. Toggweiler and Russell rejigged their model to include the 40-year cycle of winds away from the equator (then back towards it again), the role of ocean currents bringing warm southern waters to the north was obvious in the current Arctic warming.

Last month, Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, shrugged off manmade climate change as "a drop in the bucket." Showing that solar activity has entered an inactive phase, Prof. Sorokhtin advised people to "stock up on fur coats."

He is not alone. Kenneth Tapping of our own National Research Council, who oversees a giant radio telescope focused on the sun, is convinced we are in for a long period of severely cold weather if sunspot activity does not pick up soon.

The last time the sun was this inactive, Earth suffered the Little Ice Age that lasted about five centuries and ended in 1850. Crops failed through killer frosts and drought. Famine, plague and war were widespread. Harbours froze, so did rivers, and trade ceased.

It's way too early to claim the same is about to happen again, but then it's way too early for the hysteria of the global warmers, too."

http://www.nationalpost.com/most_popular/story.html?id=332289

Quote:

A new ice age is on the way.   I saw a program about the Gulf stream slowing, causing a new ice age.

There could be some truth in that sprintcyclist.  Even NSW has had some record cold days over the last couple of months comparable to temperatures recorded half a century ago.  But they would have to go back further than a century to get a true comparison.

Although I'm still sitting on the fence with global warming - I believe that we need to clean up this planet urgently and by using clean energy and minimising greenhouse gasses  - we can reduce pollution which is so harmful to the environment and living creatures.  The planet is just a toxic rubbish tip and getting worse.

At least freezing to death would be a less painful option.

Most Aussies urging climate action: poll

http://news.smh.com.au/most-aussies-urging-climate-action-poll/20080311-1yio.html

A poll has found Australians want urgent measures from the federal government to reduce the nation's carbon dioxide emissions.

The nationwide poll for the Climate Institute has found 78 per cent of respondents believe emissions should be reduced before 2012.

Ninety per cent want the government to introduce measures in the next 12 months to address energy efficiency, 88 per cent want action within a year on clean electricity generation and 87 per cent want equally rapid action on motor vehicle emissions.

---

Gas the energy solution: industry

http://news.smh.com.au/gas-the-energy-solution-industry/20080311-1ymb.html

Policy and fiscal reforms are needed to bring large natural gas projects off the drawing board and into reality, says the upstream natural gas sector's peak industry association.

"And we need to give gas a level playing field as a fuel for domestic power generation," Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (APPEA) chief executive Belinda Robinson said in a statement on Tuesday.

APPEA has long maintained that Australia's vast reserves of clean, natural gas are the key to meeting the nation's energy needs while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and maintaining economic wellbeing.

---

Homeowners get incentive to go solar

http://news.smh.com.au/homeowners-get-incentive-to-go-solar/20080311-1ym8.html

Queensland homes using solar power will be paid more for the excess energy they generate for the electricity grid.

Under the state government's Solar Bonus Scheme, the "feed-in tariff" for solar powered homes will be boosted to 44 cents per kilowatt hour.

Premier Anna Bligh on Tuesday told state parliament the scheme would begin on July 1, and was guaranteed for 20 years.

Energy retailers now pay between 14 and 20 cents per kilowatt hour for excess solar energy fed into the grid.

---

Cemetery offers carbon neutral funerals

http://news.smh.com.au/cemetery-offers-carbon-neutral-funerals/20080311-1yl5.html

South Australia's largest cemetery will offer carbon-neutral cremations and burials as part of plans to offset the carbon emissions of its entire operations.

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Melbourne gas emissions trounce London

http://news.smh.com.au/melbourne-gas-emissions-trounce-london/20080311-1yj8.html

Transport in Melbourne's sprawling metropolitan area belches more greenhouse gases than London's, despite London having twice Melbourne's population, a study has found.

The study, based on published data from authorities in Australia and Britain, was prepared by bus industry lobby group Bus Association Victoria (BAV), Fairfax newspapers said on Tuesday.

Melbourne's cars, trucks, motorcycles and public transport generate the equivalent of 11 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, compared with 8.5 million tonnes in London.

This equated to 3.1 tonnes of carbon per person in Melbourne, compared with 1.2 tonnes per person in Greater London, Fairfax said.

mantra wrote on Mar 10^th, 2008 at 4:49am:

Quote: A new ice age is on the way.   I saw a program about the Gulf stream slowing, causing a new ice age. There could be some truth in that sprintcyclist.  Even NSW has had some record cold days over the last couple of months comparable to temperatures recorded half a century ago.  But they would have to go back further than a century to get a true comparison. Although I'm still sitting on the fence with global warming - I believe that we need to clean up this planet urgently and by using clean energy and minimising greenhouse gasses  - we can reduce pollution which is so harmful to the environment and living creatures.  The planet is just a toxic rubbish tip and getting worse. At least freezing to death would be a less painful option.

green house gasses arnt bad in themselves unless you subscribe the the humanity causing global warming theory.

Other pollutives from coal etc are bad though.

UN warns climate change melting glaciers at alarming rate

http://news.smh.com.au/un-warns-climate-change-melting-glaciers-at-alarming-rate/20080316-1zr9.html

The world's glaciers are melting at an alarming rate, the UN said Sunday, calling for immediate action to prevent further constraints on water resources for large populations.

"Millions if not billions of people depend directly or indirectly on these natural water storage facilities for drinking water, agriculture, industry and power generation during key parts of the year," said Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The culprit is climate change, according to data from the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS), based at the University of Zurich and supported by UNEP.

The centre drew its findings from nearly 30 glaciers in nine mountain ranges revealing that in 2004-2005 and 2005-2006 the average rate of melting more than doubled.

---

Govt unveils carbon trade timeline

http://news.smh.com.au/govt-unveils-carbon-trade-timeline/20080317-1zv9.html

The federal government has announced a detailed timeline for a national carbon trading scheme which could be up and running by 2010.

The government will also determine the impact on low-income earners if the cost of energy rises under any scheme.

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said a consultation paper would be released in July and legislation could be drafted by the end of the year.

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Rich, poor nations clash at climate talks

http://news.smh.com.au/rich-poor-nations-clash-at-climate-talks/20080316-1zqd.html

Disagreements between rich and developing countries came into the open Sunday as the world's top 20 greenhouse gas emitters worked to lay the groundwork for a new deal on climate change.

The developed and developing countries, whose greenhouse gas emissions account for about 80 percent of the global total, were wrapping up two days of talks hoped to jumpstart negotiations on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.

But developing countries voiced scepticism about the meeting, saying they should not be considered in the same league as major industrialised countries when deciding on future cuts to gas emissions blamed for global warming.

---

Gold Coast desal plant to go green

http://news.smh.com.au/gold-coast-desal-plant-to-go-green/20080316-1zq7.html

The Queensland government says it plans to offset all carbon emissions from the $1.2 billion desalination plant on the Gold Coast, in what could be the state's largest single renewable energy deal.

The Tugun site is expected to produce up to 125 megalitres of water a day for Queensland residents when it is completed in November.

Natural Gas is cleaner than coal, but I don't think it's a long-term solution.

Personally I think Nuclear is a wasted opportunity. In that respect, I agree with James Lovelock on that.

Has anybody else read his latest book, "The Revenge of Gaia" ? He makes some grim predictions for the world population by the end of the century. From memory, he was talking about a residual population of 2 billion.

I don't envy generations who will live (and die) through that period.

The minor water related squabble that was Somalia will soon be forgotten by the end of the century. Other wars related to dwindling resources will probably be much more memorable.

Govt to issue paper on emissions trading

http://news.smh.com.au/govt-to-issue-paper-on-emissions-trading/20080317-1zyr.html

The federal government will offer a much-awaited glimpse of its emissions trading plans when a green paper is released in July.

A timetable released said the government would by the end of the year give a "firm indication" of the scheme's trajectory, which would determine the initial price of carbon.

Climate Change Minister Penny Wong reaffirmed the scheme - the centrepiece of efforts to curb greenhouse gases - would begin in 2010.

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Sydney must prepare now for peak oil

http://news.smh.com.au/sydney-must-prepare-now-for-peak-oil/20080317-1zwt.html

Sydneysiders must take serious steps to reduce their vehicle use before future global oil shortages hit, a peak oil study group says.

The Australian Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO Australia) says cities all around the country should be preparing now for the inevitable shortages as global oil production heads into decline in the coming years.

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SA could become 'Saudi Arabia of energy'

http://news.smh.com.au/sa-could-become-saudi-arabia-of-energy/20080317-1zw5.html

South Australia could become the Saudi Arabia of the energy world with a cradle to grave uranium industry, a geology professor says.

SA, home to the bulk of the world's uranium deposits, is encouraging mining and exploration but does not want a nuclear industry.

---

from crikey:

Time for government investments to go green
Josh Meadows, Australian Conservation Foundation spinner, writes:

Governments across the country – federal, state and territory – are pretty keen to spruik their green credentials these days. But how do they go putting their money (or rather, our money) where their mouths are?

That’s one of the questions underpinning a new piece of research released today by the Australian Conservation Foundation.

The Responsible Public Investment in Australia study looks at the really big buckets of money (anything over $50 million) controlled by governments and asks: (1) Do these major government funds take environmental issues into account when they choose which companies they invest in? and (2) Are governments’ investments consistent with their climate change policies? The short answer to both those questions is “not really”.

The 36 federal, state and territory investment funds examined in the study control assets worth $206 billion. They’re big. And they have serious financial muscle.

Those billions can be invested in, for example, companies that build new coal fired power stations, construct new freeways or mine uranium. Or they can be invested in companies that develop renewable energy projects, build urban public transport and regional rail infrastructure or turn landfill waste into electricity.

So what are our governments sinking our money into? This study finds government-controlled funds invest $47 in fossil fuels and uranium for every $1 they put into renewable energy.

Federal, state and territory investments in the private energy sector looked something like this in 2005-06:

Energy sector
Government holdings
(million)

Fossil fuels
$ 5,379

Nuclear/uranium
$ 559

Renewable energy
$ 126

At a time when governments are well aware of the urgency of climate change and economist Ross Garnaut has suggested emissions cuts of 80–90% might be needed by 2050, how is it that all Australian jurisdictions continue to invest so heavily in fossil fuel intense industries?

And how is it that all jurisdictions have relatively minor holdings in proven renewable energies like wind and solar and promising technologies like geothermal and tidal energy?

This report shows many large, government-run funds’ investment decisions are out of step with their government’s ambitions to reduce emissions and tackle climate change.

Some are heading in the right direction. The ACT Government has conducted a whole-of-government review of responsible investment practices. The Victorian Funds Management Corporation (the state’s largest government funds manager) and the massive Queensland Investment Corporation have both recently endorsed the United Nations’ Principles for Responsible Investment.

But the biggest federal fund of them all, the Future Fund, with $59.6 billion under its control, does not appear to have incorporated environmental, social and good governance principles into its investment decision-making. It should.

There are sound economic reasons for all governments to review their guidelines for investment funds to make sure they invest in socially and environmentally responsible companies. Funds that don’t consider climate and environment risks in their investment portfolios jeopardise their financial returns.

And, of course, they jeopardise the quality of the environment the next generation will inherit from us.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/mar/18/fossilfuels.carbonemissions

Clean coal's definition changes according to whom the industry is lobbying. Sometimes it means more efficient power stations - which still produce almost twice as much carbon dioxide as gas plants. Sometimes it means removing sulphur dioxide from the smoke, which boosts the CO2. Sometimes it means carbon capture and storage: stripping the carbon out of the exhaust gases, piping it away and burying it in geological formations. None of these equate to clean coal, as you will see if you visit an opencast mine. But they create a marvellous amount of confusion in the public mind, which gives the government a chance to excuse the inexcusable.

In principle, carbon capture and storage (CCS) could reduce emissions from power stations by 80% to 90%. While the whole process has not yet been demonstrated, the individual steps are all deployed commercially today: it looks feasible. The government has launched a competition for companies to build the first demonstration plant, which should be burying CO2 by 2014.

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The European Union summit reveals plenty of hypocrisy over climate-change targets

http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10879737

DEMAND agreement on a divorce settlement before you marry, and the world may believe many things of you: that you are prudent, or cynical, or just a bit mean. What it will not believe is that you are a swooning romantic, moved only by the high ideals of love. You can boast you are an idealist, in other words, or you can make a pre-nuptial agreement: you cannot plausibly do both.

Just such a test faced European Union leaders at their recent summit, when they reviewed their year-old plan to lead the world in the fight against climate change. A year ago they were brimming with selfless idealism. They agreed to make deep cuts in carbon emissions (by a fifth from 1990 levels by 2020), even if other rich countries did not follow. The signal was clear: Europe will start saving the planet now, even if the selfish Americans (not to mention the Chinese and Indians) are not ready. Bigger cuts were promised if other countries joined in, prompting much self-congratulatory talk about the EU's “leading role”.

That was then. A year on, with the world economy looking wobblier, the March summit was a less uplifting affair. Leaders from countries with powerful heavy-industry lobbies called for explicit measures to “protect” European firms in case talks on a global climate-change deal failed (and left the Europeans pushing ahead with tough curbs on their own). In a move that would make an American divorce lawyer proud, Germany, France, Austria, Italy and the Czech Republic all asked the EU to plan for failure, insisting that defensive measures must be agreed before climate-change talks in Copenhagen at the end of 2009.

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Vast iceberg breaks off Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctic

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3621685.ece

A vast iceberg has broken away from the Antarctic coast, threatening the collapse of a larger ice shelf that is now “hanging by a thread”.

Satellite images have revealed that about 160 square miles of the Wilkins Shelf have been lost since the end of February, suggesting that climate change could be causing it to disintegrate much more quickly than scientists had predicted. “The ice shelf is hanging by a thread,” said David Vaughan, of the British Antarctic Survey(BAS). “We’ll know in the next few days or weeks what its fate will be.”

Professor Vaughan was a member of a BAS team that predicted in 1993 that the Wilkins Shelf could collapse within 30 years, if the pace of global warming continued.

“Wilkins is the largest ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula yet to be threatened,” he said. “I didn’t expect to see things happen this quickly. We predicted it would happen, but it’s happened twice as fast as we predicted.”

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Vicious crabs poised to invade as the Antarctic warms up

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article3378819.ece

Predators such as crabs, rays and even sharks are ready to invade the Antarctic as global warming raises sea temperatures. Their arrival could devastate the continent’s fragile and unique marine ecosystem.

The alien species, armed with bone-crushing jaws and claws against which native species have no defence, are extending their range in the Southern Ocean towards Antarctica’s continental shelf, new research has found.

Because very cold temperatures have kept predators away, some of the world’s most bizarre animal life thrives in Antarctica, including giant sea spiders the size of dinner plates, isopod crustaceans that resemble aquatic woodlice, and sea snails.

As none of these species has evolved alongside swift and voracious predators such as crabs and bony fish, they have few defences against them. The Antarctic’s native fish, which make antifreeze proteins so that their bodily fluids do not freeze, eat small, shrimp-like crustaceans and other soft foods. The main predators on the sea floor are slow-moving sea stars and giant, floppy ribbon-worms.

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/09/money-for-indias-ultra-mega-coal-plants-approved/

The troubling tension between propelling prosperity and limiting climate risks in a world still wedded to fossil fuels is on full display this week. India’s Tata Power group just gained important financial backing from the International Finance Corporation, a branch of the World Bank, for its planned $4 billion, 4-billion watt “Ultra Mega” coal-burning power plant complex in Gujarat state.
The I.F.C., along with the Asian Development Bank, Korea, and other backers, sees the need to bring electricity to one of the world’s poorest regions as more pressing than limiting carbon dioxide from fuel burning. The plants will emit about 23 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, according to the I.F.C., but using technology that is 40 percent more efficient at turning coal into kilowatt-hours than the average for India.
The decision powerfully illustrates one of the most inconvenient facets of the world’s intertwined climate and energy challenges — that more than two billion people still lack any viable energy choices, let alone green ones.

Traffic slowed during power outages in South Africa in January as traffic lights failed. (Rodger Bosch/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images).
As Michael Wines reported last year, the 700 million people of sub-Saharan Africa outside of South Africa have access to the same amount of electricity used by the 38 million people of Poland.
And the fastest-growing population on Earth is the middle class, which — whether in India or Indiana — revolves around access to electricity and mobility. (Tata Power is part of the same conglomerate that is poised to sell millions of $2,500 Nano sedans to the expanding Indian middle class.)

This sounds reasonable. Pointing the finger at poor countries and expecting them to make sacrifices while we are still emitting far more per capita is diplomatically naive, at best. Cap and trade schemes that start with 'current' or 1990 levels of emissions are fine for developed countries, but poor countries will not accept greater financial burden merely because they have caused less pollution in the past.

Rich states failing to lead on emissions, says UN climate chief

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/14/climatechange.carbonemissions

Developing countries, including China and India, are unwilling to sign up to a new global climate change pact to replace the Kyoto protocol in 2012 because the rich world has failed to set a clear example on cutting carbon emissions, according to the UN's top climate official.

Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said too many rich countries, including the US, had failed to take the action needed to convince the developing nations to sign up to a deal in Copenhagen next year that could help to stabilise global emissions.

"You may not be able to get an agreement in one shot, let's say by Copenhagen, that sets you on the path of stabilisation in keeping with some kind of long-term target," Pachauri told the Guardian. "Looking at the politics of the situation, I doubt whether any of the developing countries will make any commitments before they have seen the developed countries take a specific stand."

He said there were "reasons for dismay" at the rich countries' failure to cut carbon emissions. "This really doesn't give anybody the conviction that those that had agreed to take action as the first step are really serious about doing so. And in several developing countries you get the feeling - in fact people state it very clearly - that these guys [rich countries] are going to shove the whole burden on to our shoulders. That's why it's necessary for the developed world to establish a certain credibility."

Pachauri said Germany had set a good example, with significant investment in renewable energy, and Britain had done "quite well". The UK is on track to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions as required under Kyoto, but will miss a separate domestic goal to reduce carbon dioxide pollution by 20% on 1990 levels by 2010. If emissions from aviation and shipping are included, Britain's carbon dioxide emissions are higher now than in 1990.

Analysts say a new global deal needs to be agreed at the Copenhagen meeting for it to come into force by 2012, because it will take several years to be ratified by countries. If a new deal is not in place when Kyoto expires, then confidence in emerging carbon trading markets - seen as a key way to reduce greenhouse gas pollution - could collapse. Schemes such as the European emissions trading scheme, set up under Kyoto, force polluting companies to invest in carbon credits or cleaner technology, but rely on carbon caps continuing past 2012.

Pachauri, who is also director general of the Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi, India, said: "I don't think they [China and India] will come on board in the first round. I think they would like to see some level of ambition on the part of the developed countries before they make any voluntary commitments of their own."

Last year Pachauri, an economist and environmental scientist, collected the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the IPCC, which it won jointly with the American former vice-president Al Gore. The IPCC analyses the state of climate science and issues reports that form the foundation for international action under the UN.

Any reluctance by China to participate in a new agreement would spell problems for the new US president, who could sign a deal in Copenhagen next year and then find it rejected by the US Senate. Several leading figures in the US have said the Senate would be unlikely to pass a new treaty that did not require China to act on its soaring carbon emissions. All three presidential candidates have promised stronger domestic action on global warming, and are expected to play a more constructive role in the search for a new international treaty than the Bush administration.

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, told an IPCC meeting in Budapest this week that it would be "very, very difficult" to reach an agreement. He warned that if the carbon emissions of China and India continue to grow at the same pace as their economies, mankind would be unable to prevent a critical level of warming.

Pachauri said there was still time for the developed countries to convince India and China to sign a new deal next year, but that it would require a series of "measures and actions" in the next few months.

He urged other rich countries to follow Europe's lead and set ambitious carbon reduction targets for the next 10 years. He said more money was needed to help poorer countries adapt to the likely impact of global warming, as well as "some tangible efforts to make technology transfer a reality".

Rich nations could help China to invest in more efficient coal power stations, for example. "If there was low interest financing of some of these measures, it would make it very attractive to developing countries."

It's a dangerous dance they play out. It's like an international game of chicken. "I won't do anything until they do".  It's sad that the future of mankind is reduced to that kind of thing.  What we really need is decisive leadership. Will somebody please step up?
(Ex US Vice Presidents need not apply )

This carbon bank is an interesting idea, though perhaps a bit premature. The reserve banks works because there is underlying bipartisan support for it, as well as support from economists. It also had a few decades of 'bad experiences' that proved it was necessary. You don't set up independent governing bodies when policies are changing, you set them up when you want policies to remain unchanged.

I also don't see the need for 'cutting edge' management of our northern rivers, when there is such low demand placed on them.

Carbon bank pushed at 2020 summit

http://news.smh.com.au/carbon-bank-pushed-at-2020-summit/20080419-278z.html

An independent carbon bank not unlike the Reserve Bank of Australia was among ideas offered to tackle climate change in the 2020 summit's environment stream.

Participants focusing on global warming said the bank would be part of a national climate strategy which also included flagship clean energy projects, an independent climate information trust and a dedicated education program.

Insurance executive Sam Mostyn said the carbon bank would be "of a similar quality and character to the Reserve Bank that was enduring long-term and not caught up in the three-year cycle of the federal government".

"The underpinning framework (would be) a climate strategy that runs across the whole of government that informs the way we think about economic decisions, our financial institutions," Ms Mostyn said.

Two of the four groups in the environment stream backed a concept which came out of last weekend's Youth Summit of having public transport close to all city residents.

"All people in cities by 2020 should be living no further than 800 metres from a public transportation hub," population expert Bernard Salt said of his group's consensus.

"We also said that hopefully all homes and buildings will be carbon neutral by 2020."

The water group's top idea was preserving the water resources of northern Australia.

"By 2020 Australia will be a global leader in tropical water system conservation and sustainable use," Queensland water Commission chairwoman Elizabeth Nosworthy said.

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Newcastle climate protesters charged

http://news.smh.com.au/newcastle-climate-protesters-charged/20080419-278c.html

Police have charged a group of environmental activists who stormed the construction site of Newcastle's third coal terminal early on Saturday.

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Climate change: Progress at polluters' talks, but obstacles ahead

http://news.smh.com.au/climate-change-progress-at-polluters-talks-but-obstacles-ahead/20080418-273v.html

Talks among major carbon emitters aimed at speeding negotiations towards a new pact on climate change ended Friday after making some headway but failing to remove roadblocks ahead of a summit in July.

"We achieved a consensus on the need for long-term and medium-term goals for reducing greenhouse-house gases... but we have not quantified targets at this stage and we regret this," said France's secretary of state for European affairs, Jean-Pierre Jouyet.

The two-day talks in Paris gathered ministers from Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa and the United States.

The 16 economies account for around four-fifths of global output of greenhouse gases -- the carbon pollution, stemming mainly from fossil fuels, that traps heat from the Sun and is damaging Earth's climate system.

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Antarctic waters worry climate experts

http://news.smh.com.au/antarctic-waters-worry-climate-experts/20080419-2773.html

Scientists studying the icy depths of the sea around Antarctica have detected changes in salinity that could have profound effects on the world's climate and ocean currents.

The scientists returned to the southern Australian city of Hobart on Thursday after a one-month voyage studying the Southern Ocean to see how it is changing and what those changes might mean for global climate patterns.

Voyage leader Steve Rintoul said his team found that salty, dense water that sinks near the edge of Antarctica to the bottom of the ocean about 5 km down was becoming fresher and more buoyant.

So-called Antarctic bottom water helps power the great ocean conveyor belt, a system of currents spanning the Southern, Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Oceans that shifts heat around the globe.

"The main reason we're paying attention to this is because it is one of the switches in the climate system and we need to know if we are about to flip that switch or not," said Rintoul of Australia's government-backed research arm the CSIRO.

"If that freshening trend continues for long enough, eventually the water near Antarctica would be too light, too buoyant to sink and that limb of the global-scale circulation would shut down," he said on Friday.

Cold, salty water also sinks to the depths in the far north Atlantic Ocean near Greenland and, together with the vast amount of water that sinks off Antarctica, this drives the ocean conveyor belt.

This system brings warm water into the far north Atlantic, making Europe warmer than it would otherwise be, and also drives the large flow of upper ocean water from the tropical Pacific to the Indian Ocean through the Indonesia Archipelago.

If these currents were to slow or stop, the world's climate would eventually be thrown into chaos.

World's biggest polluters stumble over specific emissions cuts

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/04/19/europe/EU-GEN-France-Climate-Talks.php

PARIS: Climate negotiators from the world's biggest polluters clashed over how deeply to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases, but decided to hold new talks aimed at reaching an accord.

They also agreed on the enormity of their task.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, addressing the negotiators on Friday, warned that global warming is threatening food supplies and risks sparking a dozen Darfur-like conflicts — involving displaced, starving populations — around the world.

A South African participant said unchecked global warming would cost the world a staggering US$200 billion (€127 billion) a year to overcome, according to the meeting's co-chairman, Jean-Pierre Jouyet.

No fixed targets were set at the two-day Paris meetings, which were "dominated" by debate over how much to cut emissions of the gases that contribute to global warming, said Jouyet, France's junior minister for Europe.

"There were divergences" between the EU and U.S. positions, he said, without elaborating. The EU has pledged to cut its emissions by 20 percent of 1990 levels by 2020, while the United States has not committed to any fixed emissions cuts.

---

Carbon dioxide, methane up sharply in 2007-US govt

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN23457127

WASHINGTON, April 23 (Reuters) - The amount of two key greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere rose sharply in 2007, and carbon dioxide levels this year are literally off the chart, the U.S. government reported on Wednesday.

In its annual index of greenhouse gas emissions, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found atmospheric carbon dioxide, the primary driver of global climate change, rose by 0.6 percent, or 19 billion tonnes last year.

The amount of methane increased by 0.5 percent, or 27 million tonnes, after nearly a decade of little or no change, according preliminary figures to scientists at the government's Earth System Research Laboratory in Colorado.

Methane's greenhouse effect is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide's, but there is far less of it in the atmosphere. Overall, methane has about half the climate impact of carbon dioxide.

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‘Clean tech’ hits the ground in Abu Dhabi

http://www.earthportal.org/news/?p=1065

AMSTERDAM — When you sit on 8.5 percent of the world’s oil reserves, investing in renewable energy might be the last thing on your mind.

But United Arab Emirates, bankrolled by Abu Dhabi’s crown prince, is spending $15 billion to become the global hub for alternative energy. It wants to create what it calls the world’s first zero carbon, zero waste city, entirely powered by renewable energy.

“It’s going to be a clean tech community,” said Steven Geiger, director of special projects at Abu Dhabi Future Energy Co., or Masdar. “It’s going to assist in the transformation of the UAE from a commodity-based economy to a knowledge economy. And it will create a lot of high-quality jobs that will have an economic spillover effect.”

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Artificially cooling Earth may prove perilous: study

http://news.smh.com.au/artificially-cooling-earth-may-prove-perilous-study/20080425-28h3.html

Radical proposals to inject sulfur particles into the Earth's stratosphere to cool it down and battle global warming could instead badly damage the ozone layer, a study warned Thursday.

"Our research indicates that trying to artificially cool off the planet could have perilous side effects," said researcher Simone Tilmes from the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

"While climate change is a major threat, more research is required before society attempts global geoengineering solutions."

The study, published Thursday in Science Express, warns that injecting sulfate particles into the air at an altitude of some 10 to 50 kilometers (six to 30 miles), could lead to a loss of ozone above the Arctic and delay the recovery of the hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica by decades.

In the past few years, scientists have been studying "geoengineering" ways to combat global warming rather than by just reducing emissions of greenhouse gases alone.

One of the ideas put forward and studied by Nobel Chemistry laureate Paul Crutzen draws on the lessons learnt from volcanic explosions, when vast amounts of sulfur particles are unleashed into the air.

The sulfur, which blocks the sun's rays, has in the past led to a cooling of surface temperatures around the volcano site.

Researchers, led by Tilmes, studied what would happen if regular, large amounts of sulfate particles were artificially injected into the atmosphere with the aim of cooling the surface temperatures.

But in fact the team found that over the next few decades, such large amounts of sulfates would likely destroy between about 25 to 75 percent of the ozone layer above the Arctic.

This could have a devastating effect on the northern hemisphere, computer simulations showed. The expected recovery of the hole over the Antarctic would also be delayed by 30 to 70 years.

Maverick Climate Scheme Gets Reality Check

http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1170222422/48#48

Biodiversity Is Crucial To Ecosystem Productivity

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080424112451.htm

ScienceDaily (Apr. 27, 2008) — In the first experiment involving a natural environment, scientists at Brown University have shown that richer plant diversity significantly enhances an ecosystem's productivity. The finding underscores the benefits of biodiversity, such as capturing carbon dioxide, a main contributor to global warming.

Osvaldo Sala, director of the Environmental Change Initiative and the Sloan Lindeman Professor of Biology at Brown, and Pedro Flombaum, a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Brown, said the results confirmed tests charting how biodiversity affects aboveground plant productivity in artificial ecosystems. Aboveground plant productivity (ANPP) is the amount of biomass, or organic material, produced by plant growth.

But the Brown team also learned that the correlation between plant species richness - the number of plant species in a unit of area - and ANPP in a natural ecosystem was greater than had been expected. What that means, the researchers wrote in a paper published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is that the greater the number of plant species, the more productive the ecosystem.

Conversely, species loss has a decidedly negative impact on ecosystems. This is especially true in light of the role ecosystems play in capturing the global warming gas carbon dioxide: The fewer the plant species in a given natural environment, the less carbon dioxide they capture.

"It's a double whammy," Sala explained. "We not only are disturbing our planet by putting more carbon into the atmosphere, but we're reducing the ability of ecosystems to capture and store it."

Sala and Flombaum conducted their experiments in the Patagonian steppe, a semiarid grassland located on the east side of the Andes Mountains in Argentina. They marked 90 plots, each containing three species of native grasses and three species of native shrubs. The team then removed a certain number of species from the plots and measured each revised plot's productivity.

"The water is the same, the nitrogen is the same, the sunlight is the same," Sala said. "What is different is the diversity of the plants."

What the researchers also learned in their experiments, which ran from 2002 to this year, is that plant productivity in a flourishing ecosystem is enhanced because each species assumes a specific niche. Ecologists call this "niche complementarity." The plants use the resources available to the whole system harmoniously, such as extending their roots at different depths in the soil, using different forms of nitrogen, and staggering when they photosynthesize.

"We are deeper into understanding the mechanisms of an ecosystem's productivity," Sala said.

Brown University, the InterAmerican Institute for Global Change Research, Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica and Argentina's National Research Council funded the research.  

Adapted from materials provided by Brown University.

---

World may be heating quickly: scientist

http://news.smh.com.au/world-may-be-heating-quickly-scientist/20080507-2bul.html

Climate change is happening faster than predicted and the world could be as much as seven degrees hotter by the end of the century, a CSIRO scientist says.

New Australian research showed current policies did not go far enough to manage the risks posed by climate change, according to Dr Roger Jones, a climate risk analyst with CSIRO's energy transformed flagship.

Global action was needed by 2015 to adequately reduce those risks, he said.

The research, conducted by CSIRO and Victoria University, showed even if severe emissions cuts were implemented from 2030, warming of 2.2 to 4.7 degrees could still happen by 2100.

If the present high emissions path was followed, the most likely warming was between 3.4 and 7.2 degrees.

The risks posed by climate change were worse than had been predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2000, Dr Jones said.

The world had moved on to a new economic path, driven by developing countries and commodity-producers like Australia, which would lead to more serious emissions scenarios than the panel's scientists had forecast.

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Clark backpedals as financial realities put paid to worthy dream

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10508400

The Government looks like it is retreating on its big climate change push as quickly as it advanced the surprise concept of a 'carbon neutral' New Zealand.

Prime Minister Helen Clark's announcement of a two-year delay to transport's inclusion in the flagship emissions trading scheme yesterday can only be seen as backpedalling.

It is understandable backpedalling - the kind of pragmatic move an experienced politician like Clark makes when she senses the public tide is turning.

It is only 18 months since the Prime Minister first voiced the aspirational target of taking the country to carbon neutrality. A lot has changed since, with food and oil prices surging as high mortgage rates also begin to bite on household budgets.

China and India havent even started polluting yet, god help us all, oh and CO2 does nothing.

Would you like to expand on that statement that CO2 does nothing?

Seems to me that admin thinks that flooding his site with articles is the way to win an argument.

Perhaps it is.  But quantity is usually no substitute for quality particularly when most of the argument ignores causation and facts and spouts resolution based on a flawed premise.

Steady as she goes mates, lets lob one over his bow and see what we shall see.

Climate facts to warm to
Christopher Pearson
March 22, 2008

CATASTROPHIC predictions of global warming usually conjure with the notion of a tipping point, a point of no return.

Last Monday - on ABC Radio National, of all places - there was a tipping point of a different kind in the debate on climate change. It was a remarkable interview involving the co-host of Counterpoint, Michael Duffy and Jennifer Marohasy, a biologist and senior fellow of Melbourne-based think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. Anyone in public life who takes a position on the greenhouse gas hypothesis will ignore it at their peril.

Duffy asked Marohasy: "Is the Earth stillwarming?"

She replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."

Duffy: "Is this a matter of any controversy?"

Marohasy: "Actually, no. The head of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has actually acknowledged it. He talks about the apparent plateau in temperatures so far this century. So he recognises that in this century, over the past eight years, temperatures have plateaued ... This is not what you'd expect, as I said, because if carbon dioxide is driving temperature then you'd expect that, given carbon dioxide levels have been continuing to increase, temperatures should be going up ... So (it's) very unexpected, not something that's being discussed. It should be being discussed, though, because it's very significant."

Duffy: "It's not only that it's not discussed. We never hear it, do we? Whenever there's any sort of weather event that can be linked into the global warming orthodoxy, it's put on the front page. But a fact like that, which is that global warming stopped a decade ago, is virtually never reported, which is extraordinary."

Duffy then turned to the question of how the proponents of the greenhouse gas hypothesis deal with data that doesn't support their case. "People like Kevin Rudd and Ross Garnaut are speaking as though the Earth is still warming at an alarming rate, but what is the argument from the other side? What would people associated with the IPCC say to explain the (temperature) dip?"

Marohasy: "Well, the head of the IPCC has suggested natural factors are compensating for the increasing carbon dioxide levels and I guess, to some extent, that's what sceptics have been saying for some time: that, yes, carbon dioxide will give you some warming but there are a whole lot of other factors that may compensate or that may augment the warming from elevated levels of carbon dioxide.

"There's been a lot of talk about the impact of the sun and that maybe we're going to go through or are entering a period of less intense solar activity and this could be contributing to the current cooling."

Duffy: "Can you tell us about NASA's Aqua satellite, because I understand some of the data we're now getting is quite important in our understanding of how climate works?"

Marohasy: "That's right. The satellite was only launched in 2002 and it enabled the collection of data, not just on temperature but also on cloud formation and water vapour. What all the climate models suggest is that, when you've got warming from additional carbon dioxide, this will result in increased water vapour, so you're going to get a positive feedback. That's what the models have been indicating. What this great data from the NASA Aqua satellite ... (is) actually showing is just the opposite, that with a little bit of warming, weather processes are compensating, so they're actually limiting the greenhouse effect and you're getting a negative rather than a positive feedback."

Duffy: "The climate is actually, in one way anyway, more robust than was assumed in the climate models?"

Marohasy: "That's right ... These findings actually aren't being disputed by the meteorological community. They're having trouble digesting the findings, they're acknowledging the findings, they're acknowledging that the data from NASA's Aqua satellite is not how the models predict, and I think they're about to recognise that the models really do need to be overhauled and that when they are overhauled they will probably show greatly reduced future warming projected as a consequence of carbon dioxide."

end pt 1

Part 2.

Duffy: "From what you're saying, it sounds like the implications of this could beconsiderable ..."

Marohasy: "That's right, very much so. The policy implications are enormous. The meteorological community at the moment is really just coming to terms with the output from this NASA Aqua satellite and (climate scientist) Roy Spencer's interpretation of them. His work is published, his work is accepted, but I think people are still in shock at this point."

If Marohasy is anywhere near right about the impending collapse of the global warming paradigm, life will suddenly become a whole lot more interesting.

A great many founts of authority, from the Royal Society to the UN, most heads of government along with countless captains of industry, learned professors, commentators and journalists will be profoundly embarrassed. Let us hope it is a prolonged and chastening experience.

With catastrophe off the agenda, for most people the fog of millennial gloom will lift, at least until attention turns to the prospect of the next ice age. Among the better educated, the sceptical cast of mind that is the basis of empiricism will once again be back in fashion. The delusion that by recycling and catching public transport we can help save the planet will quickly come to be seen for the childish nonsense it was all along.

The poorest Indians and Chinese will be left in peace to work their way towards prosperity, without being badgered about the size of their carbon footprint, a concept that for most of us will soon be one with Nineveh and Tyre, clean forgotten in six months.

The scores of town planners in Australia building empires out of regulating what can and can't be built on low-lying shorelines will have to come to terms with the fact inundation no longer impends and find something more plausible to do. The same is true of the bureaucrats planning to accommodate "climate refugees".

Penny Wong's climate mega-portfolio will suddenly be as ephemeral as the ministries for the year 2000 that state governments used to entrust to junior ministers. Malcolm Turnbull will have to reinvent himself at vast speed as a climate change sceptic and the Prime Minister will have to kiss goodbye what he likes to call the great moral issue and policy challenge of our times.

It will all be vastly entertaining to watch.

THE Age published an essay with an environmental theme by Ian McEwan on March 8 and its stablemate, The Sydney Morning Herald, also carried a slightly longer version of the same piece.

The Australian's Cut & Paste column two days later reproduced a telling paragraph from the Herald's version, which suggested that McEwan was a climate change sceptic and which The Age had excised. He was expanding on the proposition that "we need not only reliable data but their expression in the rigorous use of statistics".

What The Age decided to spare its readers was the following: "Well-meaning intellectual movements, from communism to post-structuralism, have a poor history of absorbing inconvenient fact or challenges to fundamental precepts. We should not ignore or suppress good indicators on the environment, though they have become extremely rare now. It is tempting to the layman to embrace with enthusiasm the latest bleak scenario because it fits the darkness of our soul, the prevailing cultural pessimism. The imagination, as Wallace Stevens once said, is always at the end of an era. But we should be asking, or expecting others to ask, for the provenance of the data, the assumptions fed into the computer model, the response of the peer review community, and so on. Pessimism is intellectually delicious, even thrilling, but the matter before us is too serious for mere self-pleasuring. It would be self-defeating if the environmental movement degenerated into a religion of gloomy faith. (Faith, ungrounded certainty, is no virtue.)"

The missing sentences do not appear anywhere else in The Age's version of the essay. The attribution reads: "Copyright Ian McEwan 2008" and there is no acknowledgment of editing by The Age.

Why did the paper decide to offer its readers McEwan lite? Was he, I wonder, consulted on the matter? And isn't there a nice irony that The Age chose to delete the line about ideologues not being very good at "absorbing inconvenient fact"?

Jenifer gets it wrong repeatedly when she says 'this is not what you'd expect if CO2 were the driver'. There is nothing to the AGW theory that says the temperature climb must be steady. You still expect nights to be colder than days. You still expect winter to be colder than summer. Likewise you still expect variations with other natural cycles. Her view is more longwinded, but no less jevenile than the climate change denier who says "OMG! it frosted over here this morning, therefor the world isn't getting warmer".

She is misrepresenting her opponent's argument. She is putting up a strawman. For someone in her position to make such a basic error can be nothing other than deliberate deception.

http://www.ozpolitic.com/articles/logical-fallacies.html#strawman

I gather you make denial a habit.

Throughout the worlds history CO2 in the atmosphere has risen and fallen, in times of high CO2 levels the earth has actually cooled. Thats not to say that pollution is good, its bad, very bad but you cannot blame CO2, a lot of the fuss is focused on it and perhaps this is misdirected.

You mean like methane? Why do you think we can't blame CO2?

Thats right, too many cow farts.

I'm not going to retype my post that got deleted, but Google the highlighted text - Source Watch is a good start. Then decide for yourself if the source is credible.


Quote:

Last Monday - on ABC Radio National, of all places - there was a tipping point of a different kind in the debate on climate change. It was a remarkable interview involving the co-host of Counterpoint, Michael Duffy and Jennifer Marohasy, a biologist and senior fellow of Melbourne-based think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. Anyone in public life who takes a position on the greenhouse gas hypothesis will ignore it at their peril.

I'll give you a hint. They generally have the same policy on all environmental issues that could possibly get in the way of industry -  Namely denial.


Quote:

More recently, the IPA has been the driving force behind the establishment of a number of new non-profit front groups, including the Australian Environment Foundation - which campaigns for weaker environmental laws - Independent Contractors of Australia - which campaigns for an end to workplace safety laws and a general deregulation of the labour market, and the ironically named Owner Drivers Australia, which campaigns against safety and work standard for truck drivers.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Institute_of_Public_Affairs
You might as well cite The Wiggles as a source on climate change.

I won't make defamatory remarks about scientists who prostitute themselves, this time around. Maybe that was why my original post was deleted.

Come off it Muso, the holy grail of researchers is to get funding, and this usually comes from the government. They therefore have a huge vested interest in not rocking the boat and also in emphasing 'problems'. Then there's green politics. There is little doubt for some that Green is the new Red and they are after an excuse for personal power and the chance to control peoples lives.  You can't say that only one side of environmental debate has a vested interest.

Corporations aren't just greedy robber barons as you seem to make out. They meet the needs of society by providing jobs, goods and services. Concern for the environment must be balanced with that for human needs and progress.  

That doesn't make any sense pj. There is truckloads of money out there for any scientist willing to deny AGW.

freediver wrote on May 21^st, 2008 at 9:57pm:

That doesn't make any sense pj. There is truckloads of money out there for any scientist willing to deny AGW.

Plenty do, or at least the more gloomy 'predictions'. They can't all be dismissed as being in the pay of the fossil fuel industry as Muso seems to do.

Obviously the scientists are going to reject the extremists from both sides, but that doesn't help you unless you want to build a strawman out of it.

If the scientists had been around during all those Ice Ages we had, they would have cleaned up but who caused the Ice Ages mmmmmmmm, must have been the lack of fossil fuels and people.

Jenifer Marohesy does have a valid point regarding the recent cooling. It's not the first  anomoly observed to the AGW theory.  Hudson Institute environmental economist Dennis Avery said: "The Earth's warming from 1915 to 1940 was just about as strong as the "scary" 1975 to 1998 warming in both scope and duration - and occurred too early to be blamed on human-emitted CO2. The cooling from 1940 to 1975 defied the Greenhouse Theory, occurring during the first big surge of man-made greenhouse emissions. Most recently, the climate has stubbornly refused to warm since 1998, even though human CO2 emissions have continued to rise strongly."

Regarding the recent cooling the Earth has been getting cooler since 1998. The drop has now been going for a decade, with another big drop last year. The peer-reviewed journal, Nature, reported on May 1 that according to a new (and hopefully improved) climate model, global surface temperatures may not increase over the next decade.

So how can you on the one hand build a theory of AGW on the observed warming of 1975 - 1998 and yet ignore the recent cooling (when CO2 emissions are rising) and ignore the pre war warming (when CO2 emissions were still low), as well as the post war cooling (when CO2 emissions were rising)?

It is not an anomaly in the AGW theory, because the theory does not predict a steady rise in temperatures. Also, it is very easy to mislead people about the warming trends if you describe them in words. It is possible to describe a graph in a way that is technically correct but completely misrepresents the trends. I've seen it a number of times from global warming deniers. None of what you said is a meaningful description of a trend in measured data.

OK then where is my description wrong. I haven't heard anyone deny these observed trends.

Also the IPCC did predict a steady rise in temperature this decade so the observed trend is at odds with the AGW orthodoxy. There is an adjustment going to climate models (some have described as ass-covering) and now were are told there will be another 15 years of cooling before AGW returns.

The observed trend is not at odds with AGW orthodoxy, because the 'orthodoxy' does not predict a steady rise. I didn't say you are wrong. You are probably right in a technical sense. I said it was misleading. If you actually wanted to communicate the real trends, you would put up a graph, not try to get it across in words.

It would not have been difficult for Jennifer Marohasy to get her facts straight. Instead she chose to build an absurd little strawmen to mislead people.

Climate change and the hockey stick graphs:

http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1170222422/72#72

An example of why you should be wary of people who describe a picture to you but won't show you the actual picture:

http://www.ifm-geomar.de/typo3temp/pics/d1835954cc.gif

An explanation for this particular change:

http://www.ifm-geomar.de/index.php?id=4192&L=1

During the last decades, temperature maxima were regularly broken. A new study to be published May 1st in the international science magazine “Nature” suggests that a reprieve may be expected over the next decade, as natural climate variations may temporarily offset the long-term warming trend. This result was obtained by researchers from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR) in Kiel and the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Meteorology in Hamburg.

To date climate change projections, as published in the last IPCC report, only considered changes in future atmospheric composition. This strategy is appropriate for long-term changes in climate such as predictions for the end of the century. However, in order to predict short-term developments over the next decade, models need additional information on natural climate variations, in particular associated with ocean currents. Lack of sufficient data has hampered such predictions in the past. Scientists at IFM-GEOMAR and from the MPI for Meteorology have developed a method to derive ocean currents from measurements of sea surface temperature (SST). The latter are available in good quality and global coverage at least for the past 50 years. With this additional information, natural decadal climate variations, which are superimposed on the long-term anthropogenic warming trend, can be predicted. The improved predictions suggest that global warming will weaken slightly during the following 10 years.

“Just to make things clear: we are not stating that anthropogenic climate change won’t be as bad as previously thought”, explains Prof. Mojib Latif from IFM-GEOMAR. “What we are saying is that on top of the warming trend there is a long-periodic oscillation that will probably lead to a to a lower temperature increase than we would expect from the current trend during the next years”, adds Latif. “That is like driving from the coast to a mountainous area and crossing some hills and valleys before you reach the top”, explains Dr. Johann Jungclaus from the MPI for Meteorology. “In some years trends of both phenomena, the anthropogenic climate change and the natural decadal variation will add leading to a much stronger temperature rise.”

Emmy-Noether1 fellow and lead author Dr. Noel Keenlyside from IFM-GEOMAR continues: “In addition to the greenhouse gas concentrations we are using observed SST’s of the past decades in our climate model simulations, a method which has already successfully been applied for seasonal predictions and El Niño forecasting. The SST’s influence the winds and the heat exchange between ocean and atmosphere, and both factors impact ocean currents. The results are very encouraging and show that at least for some regions around the world, it is possible to predict natural climate oscillations on decadal time scale. Europe and North America are two such regions because they are influenced by the North Atlantic and Tropical Pacific, respectively.”

Decadal climate precitions are not weather forecasts, as Prof. Latif expands upon: “Such forecasts will not enable us to tell you whether or not we will have a white Christmas in 2012 in northern Germany, but we will be able to provide a tendency as to whether or not some decades will be warmer or cooler than average. Of course, always with the assumption that no other unforeseen effects such as volcanic eruptions occur, which can have a substantial effect on our climate as well”, summarizes Prof. Latif.

More information:

Science Paper:

Keenlyside, N. S., M. Latif, J. Jungclaus, L. Kornblueh, and E. Roeckner, 2008: Advancing Decadal-Scale Climate Prediction in the North Atlantic Sector. Nature, 453, 84-88.

1Emmy Noether Programme

The Emmy Noether Programme supports young researchers in achieving independence at an early stage of their scientific careers. Young postdocs gain the qualifications required for a university teaching career during a DFG-funded period, usually lasting five years, in which they lead their own Independent Junior Research Group.

Contact

Prof. Dr. Mojib Latif, Tel. +49-431 - 600 4050, mlatif@ifm-geomar.de

Dr. Andreas Villwock (Öffentlichkeitsarbeit), Tel. +49-431 - 600 2802, avillwock@ifm-geomar.de

freediver wrote on May 21^st, 2008 at 9:57pm:

That doesn't make any sense pj. There is truckloads of money out there for any scientist willing to deny AGW.

About $2500 per month was the going rate a couple of years ago. I'd rather not 'sell my soul' to that crowd though.

pjb05 wrote on May 22^nd, 2008 at 10:13am:

Jenifer Marohesy does have a valid point regarding the recent cooling.

Come on. You start at an El Nino Year and you finish on the next La Nina year in the cycle. 11 years of data ? How easily can the wool be pulled over your eyes? It's totally criminal to mislead people that way.

As freedvier pointed out, you have to look at the genuine set of data (NASA GISS data) to see the real picture.

That graph only goes back to 1860, and look at the scale: +/- 0.5 of a degree! Isn't it true that the modern warming roughly matches the cooling of the little ice age (which followed the medieval warm period)?

There are more graphs here that go further back:

http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1170222422/72#72

No doubt the temperature variation has occurred in the past, but it is the rate of change that has the scientists worried. Probably also that the natural causes of slow change don't appear to be responsible.

Exactly, it's the rate of change. It's all very well to say that it's all to do with overpopulation. That's part of the picture, but even if you look at small parts of the overall problem, such as the limiting temperature on rice wheat and corn production, the reducing rate of calcification in marine organisms caused by the falling ocean pH, and even rising sea levels (the least of my concerns), all these factors have serious implications. For the 6.8 billion people currently living on Earth the prognosis is not good.  

Think of the consequences of 2 billion people dying by the end of the century, or averaged out (it won't be) 22 million deaths from starvation and war every year.

I don't think it can be said with any certainty the the present rate and extent of warming is unusual. What you don't mention regarding your 'infalible' graphs is that only the very recent section is based on actual direct measurements of temperature. The rest is based on the assumption that one can interpret past temperatures from examining ancient tree rings or ice core samples from ice locked in glaciers. The original graph used by the IPCC was the now discredited Mann's Hockey Stick.  

This showed a nice fit to the AGW theory with temperatures stable for centuries and only shooting up with our age of industrialisation.
It was noticed a couple of significant and fairly well accepted climatological history facts to be conspicuously missing.  The first was the well-documented "Medieval Warm Period" where temperatures, at least in Europe, temperatures were significantly higher.  The second was the "Little Ice Age", a period in which the temperatures dropped so low the Thames River in London froze over.

As I mentioned before the fall into the Little Ice Age about matches the recent warming.

I'd be interested in the source of your 'wisdom'.

Your apparent failure to understand the basic science involved is only matched by the gross disinformation you are spreading. The science behind global warming is 'unequivocable' (AR4). The research is strong and published in peer-reviewed journals. To think anything less is disingenuous to say the least.

The IPCC is not some monolithic organisation. It comprises over 4000 climate scientists worldwide.  

Re the LIA:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png

The main temperature proxies are based on Deuterium proxies in ice cores from Greenland, Law Dome and Vostok, the latter two being in Antarctica. Vostok potentially provides a record going back 850,000 years. The Deuterium proxies match extremely well with actual GISS data sets. Dendrochronology data is less reliable, being necessarily regional in nature.  

My last reply was somewhat hurried and overly confrontational. (I probably need to calm down.)  One of the reasons we know that the increase in atmospheric CO2 is having an effect of increasing global temperatures is that the upper stratospheric layers have cooled correspondingly. If the observed increase in temperature over the period of industrialisation was due to variations in solar irradiance or cosmic rays inducing increased cloud cover, then you would expect an increase in stratospheric temperature.

The fact that these temperatures have decreased indicates that the CO2 is trapping heat in the lower areas of the atmosphere. The maximum warming occurs about 10km(at least here in the Tropics), and recent research by Yale University published this month shows that the atmospheric temperatures in the Tropics rose about 0.65 degrees Celsius per decade since 1970, which is  probably the fastest warming rate anywhere in Earth's atmosphere. This was monitored at the 10km level.  

This Wikipedia page has some useful links on climate modelling. It's a good place to start if you don't have any prior knowledge apart from the disinformation sites.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_model


Here's a post that I made over at the old space.com forums where I post as Alpha Tauri. The post  explains the basic fluxes and the application of the CO2 forcing equation. The CO2 forcing equation is based on some pretty fundamental physics. It's a derivation of the Stephan-Boltzmann equation. There is nothing controversial about it.

http://uplink.space.com/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=environment&Number=741559&page=7&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=0&vc=1

I'd recommend that you do some basic research into the carbon fluxes and how these are derived. That's the real key to understanding the issue.

Well at least you didn't accuse me of being in the pay of the fossil fuel industry. Regarding "disinformation sites", wasn't the Mann's Hockey Stick discredited by Steven McIntyre, who submitted his work to Nature Magazine - since they were responsible for publishing Mann's flawed research without peer review in the first place, but they reportedly rejected it twice! In the end, McIntyre turned to the internet, and today he is known as the man who broke the hockey stick.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_McIntyre

Here's another interesting paper.

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa576.pdf

About the author:

Patrick J. Michaels is senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and professor of natural resources
at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He is a past president of the American Association of State
Climatologists and an author of the 2003 climate science “Paper of the Year” selected by the Association of American
Geographers. His research has been published in major scientific journals, including Climate Research, Climatic
Change, Geophysical Research Letters, Journal of Climate, Nature, and Science. He received his Ph.D. in
ecological climatology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1979. His most recent book is Meltdown:
The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media.

He points to poor science and distortions of a sensation seeking media combining to exagerate the threat.

Here's the conclusion:

It is apparent that many recent stories on
melting of high-latitude ice, hurricanes, and
extinctions are riddled with self-inconsistencies,
are inconsistent with other findings, and
are reported—as much by scientists themselves
as by reporters—in extreme or misleading
fashions that do not accurately portray
the actual research.
This begs for an explanation. Perhaps it is
simply the way science always has been, but
that the dramatic policy implications of
global warming compel some people (including
this author) to examine the refereed literature
with more scrutiny than would normally
be applied. The alternative is that
recently the peer review process has begun to
allow the publication of papers that should
have been dramatically modified before
being accepted.
If the latter is true, then another explanation
is required. One hypothesis would be thatpublic choice” dynamics is now entering into
science. But this would seem to require unethical
behavior on the part of a wide scientific
community. Under this model, the review
process becomes less stringent if a paper promotes
the economic well-being of the reviewer,
and more stringent if it does not.
“Well-being” here means professional
advancement and reward. It is a fact that in
the United States the taxpayer outlay for socalled
global change science is now in excess
of $4 billion annually. Universities reward
their faculty on the amount and quality of
research that they produce, which, in climate
science, requires considerable taxpayer funding.
If the funding stream is threatened by
findings downplaying the significance of climate
change, the public choice model would
predict rather vociferous review. If it is
enhanced, this model would predict a glowing,
positive review.
Whether public choice dynamics is indeed
responsible for the current rather sloppy state
of global warming science is a testable hypothesis,
but beyond the scope of this paper.
It can be tested by noting that adding new
information to a forecast has an equal probability
of changing the forecast in either a positive
or a negative direction. It would be interesting
to undertake a comprehensive analysis
of the recent scientific literature on climate
change to see whether results are significantly
biasing our view of the future into one that is
almost always “worse than we thought” and
rarely “not as bad as we thought.”
Whether or not this bias exists, the recent
tidal wave of global warming papers on polar
ice, hurricanes, and extinctions has included
an incredible number of omissions and
inconsistencies. It is to be hoped that this
paper will help to set the record straight on
these aspects of climate change.

pjb05 wrote on Jun 1^st, 2008 at 10:21am:

Well at least you didn't accuse me of being in the pay of the fossil fuel industry. Regarding "disinformation sites", wasn't the Mann's Hockey Stick discredited by Steven McIntyre, who submitted his work to Nature Magazine - since they were responsible for publishing Mann's flawed research without peer review in the first place, but they reportedly rejected it twice! In the end, McIntyre turned to the internet, and today he is known as the man who broke the hockey stick. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_McIntyre

Was Mann discredited ? No. Again, you should be discriminating in your use of Wikipedia. (I realise that I quoted a Wikipedia site before)

Stephen Schneider's site provides a reasonable explanation of this episode and the infamous McIntyre and McKittrick paper (Often referred to as the M&M Paper).

Schneider is a qualified climatologist who frequently appears in the media, including the ABC.

http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Climate/Climate_Science/Contrarians.html

"Mann and his colleagues and other members of the scientific community were outraged when they learned of the publication of the McIntyre/McKitrick article. Most credible scientific journals receiving criticism of previously published work typically give the authors under fire the chance to review and respond to an article challenging their claims. Energy & Environment never gave Mann and his colleagues that chance, and it was not clear whether any of the reviewers who did look over the paper were well-known climatologists or other natural scientists qualified to judge the validity of such a paper (nor have I seen any evidence that McIntyre and McKitrick have any training in climatology or natural science!). In fact, it is well known that the editor of Energy & Environment, Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, has sometimes allowed her political agenda, rather than the high standards of scientific peer review, to dominate the content of the journal. In 2003, Boehmer-Christiansen also allowed the publication of another Soon and Baliunas paper nearly identical to the one published in Climate Research (discussed above), and she is known to be against ratification of the Kyoto Protocol and supportive of the work of Bjørn Lomborg, another contrarian (discussed below). Though Energy &  Environment is geared toward social scientists, she told the Chronicle of Higher Education that she published scientific papers that refute the notion that global warming is a problem because there are very few outlets for such work. This practice fits nicely with her political stance (see, e.g., Parsons, 1995 — comment on page two) and calls the objectivity of Energy & Environment into question. (See an e-mail from Boehmer-Christiansen regarding the McIntyre/McKitrick paper to Michael Mann that was posted on the internet and an e-mail response from co-author Raymond Bradley)."

You probably need to know a bit about Stephen McIntyre too:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Stephen_McIntyre

Which of these men would you buy a second-hand car from?

pjb05 wrote on Jun 1^st, 2008 at 6:35pm:

Here's another interesting paper. http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa576.pdf About the author: Patrick J. Michaels is senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato....

Not much actual science in that paper.

Here's the Source Watch reference for Patrick J. Michaels:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Patrick_J._Michaels

and the Cato Institute:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Cato_Institute

As you can see (surprise surprise) it's not an academic institution, although it's not a far right think tank either.

I don't think it can be said with any certainty the the present rate and extent of warming is unusual.

In the face of such uncertainty a precautionary approach is the only rational one. Failure to take 'evasive action' until you are 100% certain it is necessary will give you a certain outcome - that eventually you will be too late to solve a problem of your own creation.

It was noticed a couple of significant and fairly well accepted climatological history facts to be conspicuously missing.  The first was the well-documented "Medieval Warm Period"

It is not missing. It is all there.

The second was the "Little Ice Age", a period in which the temperatures dropped so low the Thames River in London froze over.

Also there.

freediver wrote on Jun 2^nd, 2008 at 11:30am:

I don't think it can be said with any certainty the the present rate and extent of warming is unusual. In the face of such uncertainty a precautionary approach is the only rational one. Failure to take 'evasive action' until you are 100% certain it is necessary will give you a certain outcome - that eventually you will be too late to solve a problem of your own creation.

The point is that the evidence is overwhelming, and the past record is.... well about the past. The rules have changed with the advent of industrialisation. We can no longer usefully predict the future from the past climate record.

In summary, the study of the past can be very informative, but it is in no way explanatory of the present or predictive of the future.

The scientific basis for the dangers we face and their cause is about much more than a few tree-rings and the temperature during the Medieval Warm Period.

Have a read through the following report which provides a synopsis of this scientific basis for Anthropogenic Global Warming. You'll find nothing there that asserts that everything rests on the ice core data or dendrochronology or ocean sediment proxies for that matter. It's more about atmospheric physics, the general circulation of the atmosphere and the oceans.

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/index.htm


Had it not been for countries like China and the US, the last IPCC summary for policy makers would have painted a much darker picture for the future. The AR4 synthesis report is widely regarded by Climatologists worldwide as being grossly understated.

Even so, a 95% consensus is pretty strong.  

I had a look at Source Watch Muso. I got a laugh out of this - apparently they are against the nuclear industry! Even though it is the only proven large scale baseload power source that doesn't generate CO2. It seems that they might be guilty of some bias themselves - albiet a lefty-green one:

"The Nuclear Issues portal is intended to help readers find out more about those behind the global push to revive the nuclear power and and nuclear weapons industry. It also aims to facilitate citizen journalists document the activities of the individuals, lobby groups, PR companies, trade associations and front groups promoting what has been dubbed the 'nuclear renaissance'. Every aspect of the nuclear industry will be covered from uranium exploration and mining, the nuclear power industry, spent fuel reprocessing, nuclear waste disposal and weapons proliferation".  

PJ, there are plenty of 'proven' baseload providers. It's called storage. Plus, with buffering, proper economic incentives and greater use of offpeak in recharging electric vehicles, desalination and aluminium production, the baseload requirement starts to look far less fixed than it first appears. Baseload 'needs' are not needs at all, but reflect the economic forces arising from the current dominant technology. They will change accordingly.

If the change had been in the opposite direction, say from wind to coal, we would no doubt here complaints from big consumers that the market would no longer get periodically flooded with dirt cheap electricity for them to use.

There is no proven way of storing electricty on a large scale FD - at least one which is economic. I don't know what you mean by mentioning aluminium production and desalination - both are heavy users of electricity which needs to be reliable and constant. Electric cars are only as 'green' as the power used to charge them. You might as well have people driving smaller, more efficient ICE cars (which is the trend anyaway).  

both are heavy users of electricity which needs to be reliable and constant

They do not need to be reliable and constant. Intermittent is fine. While storing energy is difficult, storing water produced from energy is not.

Electric cars are only as 'green' as the power used to charge them.

So you charge them with renewables at offpeak times, further buffering the system. This also doesn't need to be reliable if yu use hybrids, which are already on the market.

You might as well have people driving smaller, more efficient ICE cars (which is the trend anyaway).

Hybrids are more efficient, and can take advantage of peaks in supply from renewable sources, when the marginal price of electricity is likely to be zero or near zero. Plus, once you've got it plugged in, it can double as a distributed electricty storage system.

both are heavy users of electricity which needs to be reliable and constant

They do not need to be reliable and constant. Intermittent is fine. While storing energy is difficult, storing water produced from energy is not.
Really - its sounds more like a recipie for chaos to me - trying to rumn an industrialised society on intermitent power!

Electric cars are only as 'green' as the power used to charge them.

So you charge them with renewables at offpeak times, further buffering the system. This also doesn't need to be reliable if yu use hybrids, which are already on the market.

What renewables would that be? Wind is unreliable and requires massive back up from baseload sources where ever it has been used. Solar is expensive and can't be used offpeak for obvious reasons. Hybrids aren't economic due to the much higher purchase price and the cost of battery replacement. A small ICE car is not far off hybrid fuel use - especially for freeway speeds.

You might as well have people driving smaller, more efficient ICE cars (which is the trend anyaway).

Hybrids are more efficient, and can take advantage of peaks in supply from renewable sources, when the marginal price of electricity is likely to be zero or near zero. Plus, once you've got it plugged in, it can double as a distributed electricty storage system.

See above. You have to have a renewable source in place first.

Really - its sounds more like a recipie for chaos to me - trying to rumn an industrialised society on intermitent power!

Plenty of applications already are run off intermittent power. We even have separate lines set up for them. It all comes down to the economics, which will change to reflect the new situation. A free market is by nature chaotic and does not need the degree of top down planning you imply. The more detail of any economic system you try to analyse this simplistic manner, the more it looks like chaos.

Wind is unreliable

Exactly, which is why you need the extra buffering that electric cars and desal will provide, plus the other economic changes.

See above. You have to have a renewable source in place first.

No you don't. You are getting confused over the chicken/egg question, saying we can't have chickens without eggs and we can't have eggs without chickens. Either option can be implimented at any pace and without the other. You say we need renewable sources in place first, then say the reneable sources can't be used because we lack the buffering provided by a fleet of plug in hybrids. In reality, both will be implimented gradually and will compliment each other along the way. The more wind turbines we have, the more economical plug in hybrids and intermittent desal and other industrial uses will become. Likewise, the more apllications that can take advantage of intermittent sources, the more economical those intermittent sources will become.

In other words, if you build it, they will come.

Here's a 'source watch' on Source Watch!
Source Watch is a project of the Center of Media & Democracy:

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7353

Established in 1983, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) aims to "strengthe[n] participatory democracy by investigating and exposing public relations spin and propaganda" -- focusing largely on what it views as the transgressions of political conservatives. Another CMD objective is to assist liberal and leftist "grassroots citizen activism that promotes public health, economic justice, ecological sustainability and human rights." Toward these ends, CMD produces articles and blog posts on the political, social, and economic issues of the day.

In CMD's view, capitalism generally, and corporations in particular, are the principal root causes of societal ills in the U.S. and abroad. The Capital Research Center, which rates the ideological leanings of nonprofit organizations, places CMD near the extreme far left of the spectrum. The website ActivistCash, which provides "information about the funding source[s] of radical anti-consumer organizations and activists," characterizes CMD as "a counterculture public relations effort disguised as an independent media organization."

Members of the CMD Board of Directors include: Joseph Mendelson, a former Director of Friends of the Earth and co-founder of the environmental organization Center for Food Safety; Anna Lappe, co-founder of the social justice organization Small Planet Institute and a former W.K. Kellogg Foundation fellow; David Meritt, former Executive Director of the Citizens Utility Board (a Wisconsin consumer advocacy group that opposes utility rate increases); Inger Stole, an assistant professor at the Institute of Communications Research; and Jan Miyasaki, an Asian American Studies professor at the University of Wisconsin.

The most notable CMD Board member is Ellen Braune, whose leftist affiliations are extensive and longstanding. She currently serves as Vice President of Communications at the Ms. Foundation for Women, and was formerly a Senior Vice President at Fenton Communications and a Communications Director for the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES). Part of the Soviet-controlled World Peace Council, CISPES was established in America in 1980 by high-ranking members of the Salvadoran Communist Party and Cuban intelligence to support El Salvador's murderous guerrilla bands and to influence American public opinion through protests and one-sided disinformation.

CMD was founded by the leftist writer and environmental activist John Stauber, who continues to serve as the Center's Executive Director. Stauber began his activism in high school when he organized anti-Vietnam War protests and early Earth Day events. The co-author (with SourceWatch founder Sheldon Rampton) of six books, Stauber created the now-defunct website Vote2StopBush.org.  He is also an unpaid advisor to several organizations, including the Action Coalition for Media Education, the Center for Food Safety, the Liberty Tree Foundation, the Media Education Foundation, and the Organic Consumers Association.  

The aforementioned Sheldon Rampton currently serves as CMD's Research Director. A graduate of Princeton University, Rampton was formerly an outreach coordinator for the Wisconsin Coordinating Council on Nicaragua, a group established in 1984 to oppose President Reagan's efforts to stop the spread of Communism in Central America, and currently dedicated to promoting a leftist vision of "social justice in Nicaragua through alternative models of development and activism."

An April 2001 commentary in the liberal publication Village Voice said of Rampton and Stauber: "These guys come from the far side of liberal."

According to ActivistCash, "Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber operate ... from the presumption that any communication issued from a corporate headquarters must be viewed with a jaundiced eye. ... [T]hey recently referred to corporate PR as a propaganda industry, misleading citizens and manipulating minds in the service of special interests. Ironically, Rampton and Stauber have elected to dip into the deep pockets of multi-million-dollar foundations with special interest agendas of their own. Their books Mad Cow U.S.A. and Toxic Sludge Is Good For You were produced and promoted using grant monies from the Foundation for Deep Ecology ($25,000) and the Educational Foundation of America ($20,000), among others. Along with the more recent Trust Us, We're Experts, these books are scare-mongering tales about a corporate culture out of control, and each implies that the public needs rescuing. … If someone in a shirt and tie dares make a profit (especially if food or chemicals are involved), Rampton and Stauber are bound to have a problem with it. Unless, of course, that food is vegetarian, organic, certified fair-trade, shade-grown, biodynamic, or biotech-free — in which case, the sky's the limit!"

In his 2005 article, "Strategy for Progressives: Where Do We Go from Here?," Stauber lauded the violent 1999 anti-WTO protests in Seattle and the anti-Iraq War protests of 2003, though all these events were replete with political propaganda, which CMD professes to disdain. The fact that the propaganda was of a leftist nature made it acceptable to Stauber, who in the same article praised Moveon.org as a "brilliant and effective internet-based activist group.

The Center has collaborated with other leftist organizations on a number of projects and campaigns. For example:
CMD and Adbusters co-endorsed the 2001 "National Ad Slam Contest" (a project of the Ralph Nader-founded Commercial Alert), which awarded money to schools that barred advertisers from their premises.


CMD joined the Center for Food Safety (CFS) and the Humane Farming Association in filing two lawsuits against the federal government in 1999. Alleging that existing federal protections did not adequately protect the American public from Mad Cow Disease, the plaintiffs demanded changes to meat-processing and labeling regulations.


CMD is a member of the Foodspeak coalition organized by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which seeks to give far greater legal latitude to critics who publicly condemn the food industry's allegedly unsafe practices. Other members of Foodspeak include Alliance for Justice, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Environmental Working Group, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, Greenpeace, the Natural Resources Defense Council, People for the American Way, Public Citizen, and the Union of Concerned Scientists.


At the height of the U.S. mad-cow scare, CMD's John Stauber shared a press-conference dais with the Environmental Working Group's Ken Cook, warning journalists that a "crisis" threatened America's meat supply. The event was organized by Environmental Media Services, the now-defunct media arm of Fenton Communications.


CMD is a member organization of the anti-technology Turning Point Project, whose Board member Joe Mendelson also sits on CMD's Board.
CMD has received financial backing from the Ettinger Foundation, Funding Exchange, the Grodzins Fund, the HKH Foundation, the Leo J. & Celia Carlin Fund, the Litowitz Foundation, the Marisla Foundation, the Mostyn Foundation, the Panta Rhea Foundation, the Park Foundation, the Rockefeller Family Fund, the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy, the Threshold Foundation, the Wallace Global Fund, Richard & Rhoda Goldman Fund, the Foundation for Deep Ecology, the Harold K. Hochschild Foundation, the Carolyn Foundation, the Deer Creek Foundation, the Turner Foundation, the Educational Foundation of America, the Stern Family Fund, the Winslow Foundation, the DJB Foundation, the Bauman Family Foundation, the CarEth Foundation, and the Cold Mountain Foundation.

OK they might not be perfect. I have strong suspicion of any of these think tanks that have political agendas. Generally speaking though, the source watch reports are quite accurate and it's a useful service. When they say that a certain person has certain qualifications, it's not spin. Even outside source watch, it's widely known that McIntyre is an retired mining executive with no formal qualifications in Environmental science or climatology.

The question is, why would you want to get your information from such people who are totally unqualified to comment on the matter?

If real climatologists such as Steve Schneider are painting a totally different picture, why would you go out of your way to listen to the likes of retired geology professor Bob Carter or agronomist Jennifer Marohasy?

Because you like what they say?

pjb05 wrote on Jun 2^nd, 2008 at 5:41pm:

There is no proven way of storing electricty on a large scale FD - at least one which is economic.

That's totally untrue.

There are several ways that are currently used commercially. Pumped hydro electric is one example where off-peak electricity is used to pump water for hydroelectric power generation.  I can give you several examples of where that technology is used worldwide, two of which are in the Brisbane area and have been operating successfully for years.

http://www.tarongenergy.com.au/?p=56

I've also posted several references to closed cycle ammonia dissociation plants - currently the most efficient and proven large scale energy storage technology.

Even aluminium production can be regarded as a means of storing energy. With traces of gallium, aluminium reacts with water to form hydrogen. Using the hydrogen as fuel recovers the energy. There was an article about it on a recent Science Show.

muso wrote on Jun 3^rd, 2008 at 8:31am:

OK they might not be perfect. I have strong suspicion of any of these think tanks that have political agendas. Generally speaking though, the source watch reports are quite accurate and it's a useful service. When they say that a certain person has certain qualifications, it's not spin. Even outside source watch, it's widely known that McIntyre is an retired mining executive with no formal qualifications in Environmental science or climatology. The question is, why would you want to get your information from such people who are totally unqualified to comment on the matter? If real climatologists such as Steve Schneider are painting a totally different picture, why would you go out of your way to listen to the likes of retired geology professor Bob Carter or agronomist Jennifer Marohasy? Because you like what they say?

I never mentioned Bob Carter and Jennifer Morohasy's opinions were already a topic of discussion on this thread. Though as a geologist Bob Carter might have some insight regarding the paleoclimate. Geologists do seem to be more relaxed about climate change. Anyway what is a 'climate scientist'? Earth's climate is an enormously complex subject, spanning not only the "pure" sciences like physics and chemistry, but many of the "natural sciences", such as oceanography, meteorology, volcanology, paleontology, archeology, solar science, and many others.  How many are really on top of all those disciplines?  

I'd call myself agnostic on the subject of AGW. I am suspicious of the absolutism that surround the issue. Some have described it as bordering on a religion. Then theres the fact that a lot of environmentalists, activists and Greens only want a 'solution' on their own terms. This and their tendency for exaggeration of the threat tends to bring into question their motives. They have a zero tolerance for nuclear power. Also a distain for other big engineering solutions such as clean coal. They would prefer to put an energy hungry would on an energy crash diet - which is what a switch to renewables will surely do.  

I'd call myself agnostic on the subject of AGW. I am suspicious of the absolutism that surround the issue.

Last I heard, the IPCC put it at '90% certain' (maybe 95) that human activity is causing most of the measured climate change (and thus it was set to worsen).

The mandate for a political reaction on the other hand is certain, as only a fool would stake their future on a 10% chance that the scientists are wrong.

freediver wrote on Jun 3^rd, 2008 at 7:31pm:

I'd call myself agnostic on the subject of AGW. I am suspicious of the absolutism that surround the issue. Last I heard, the IPCC put it at '90% certain' (maybe 95) that human activity is causing most of the measured climate change (and thus it was set to worsen). The mandate for a political reaction on the other hand is certain, as only a fool would stake their future on a 10% chance that the scientists are wrong.

I doubt the scientific basis of the 90% probability figure.  Thats just a number plucked out of the air. All it reflects is the faith of some in AGW. And you have ignored my point about the environmental movement staking everything on renewables. I'm not against reducing CO2 emissions in a way which won't adversly affect our economies and human progress. Sensible measures might have other benifits as well, eg efficiency gains, greater energy security.  

pjb05 wrote on Jun 3^rd, 2008 at 7:26pm:

I'd call myself agnostic on the subject of AGW. I am suspicious of the absolutism that surround the issue. Some have described it as bordering on a religion. Then theres the fact that a lot of environmentalists, activists and Greens only want a 'solution' on their own terms. This and their tendency for exaggeration of the threat tends to bring into question their motives. They have a zero tolerance for nuclear power. Also a distain for other big engineering solutions such as clean coal. They would prefer to put an energy hungry would on an energy crash diet - which is what a switch to renewables will surely do.

There is a difference between what we call the Deep Green environmental activists and Environmental Scientists such as myself. Basically the sight of a fur seal does nothing for me, and while I support the principles of sustainable development, I also think that Nuclear Fission is necessary to fill the energy gap that will occur one way or another.

You'll probably find that most professionals in the field, including climatologists and oceanographers think in a fairly pragmatic and non-emotive way about such issues.  

There is no absolutism about climatology. Some areas have more uncertainties than others. Stephen Schneider's website is a good place to start if you want to learn some of the facts. The only absolutism is in the various climate skeptics, most of whom can't agree whether climate change is actually happening, whether it's manmade if it is happening or mechanisms involved. The only thing they agree on absolutely is that we should do nothing and continue to burn fossil fuels in the same wasteful manner.


Regardless of whether you understand the science or not, I hope you would concur that we're probably going to run out of oil at some stage anyway, so we need to look at alternatives urgently. It's not important for me to convince you or anybody else that there is an issue (actually several very serious issues) with Global Warming.

What is more important is the action that we take to avert several very serious problems.

- and generally shortages of energy, food, water and just about anything else tend to lead to war very quickly.

I doubt the scientific basis of the 90% probability figure.  Thats just a number plucked out of the air. All it reflects is the faith of some in AGW.

But it's all we have to go by. I'd rather rely on an the best available advice from a large number of scientists (and economists) than wishful thinking.

And you have ignored my point about the environmental movement staking everything on renewables. I'm not against reducing CO2 emissions in a way which won't adversly affect our economies and human progress. Sensible measures might have other benifits as well, eg efficiency gains, greater energy security.  

I didn't think it was necessary to point out that it is a strawman, but if it makes you happier: It is a strawman. The anti nuclear movement does not represent the entire environmental movement. I personally prefer an economic approach, which would (at least initially) favour efficiency, reduced consumption and altered patterns of consumption as the primary mechanism of emissions reductions.

freediver wrote on Jun 3^rd, 2008 at 10:09pm:

And you have ignored my point about the environmental movement staking everything on renewables. I'm not against reducing CO2 emissions in a way which won't adversly affect our economies and human progress. Sensible measures might have other benifits as well, eg efficiency gains, greater energy security.   I didn't think it was necessary to point out that it is a strawman, but if it makes you happier: It is a strawman. The anti nuclear movement does not represent the entire environmental movement. I personally prefer an economic approach, which would (at least initially) favour efficiency, reduced consumption and altered patterns of consumption as the primary mechanism of emissions reductions.

Its not a strawman - its just a different part of the issue. The first is  the earth warming, the second is are humans causing it (and by how much), and the question it was relevent to is what we can do about it. Your crying 'strawman' as you are so fond of doing is just a form of censorship.

Why do you side with the dark greens on this issue FD - are you after their votes? Reduced consumption sounds like an austerity program - which no doubt would make them happy.

I would also point out the pragmatic case that measures that won't seriously damage our economies and standards of living are more likely to be adopted in practice.  

That's just it PJ, I am not siding with the 'dark greenies'. If you had bothered to actually read my last post you would see how much I agree with you on. You paint me as the extreme opposite of you because I don't agree with you on every little detail. That is a strawman.

pjb05 wrote on Jun 3^rd, 2008 at 10:29pm:

Why do you side with the dark greens on this issue FD - are you after their votes? Reduced consumption sounds like an austerity program - which no doubt would make them happy.

Just my view on this matter - I don't think that the current market economy will tolerate reduced consumption. Our best chance is not reduced consumption, but substitution of renewable technology.

- and your point about the votes is precisely my bugbear with the Australian Greens. They have too much influence from the 'feral acerebral deep greens'.

A few years ago, I was Environmental Manager with a chemical company. We were pretty advanced in our Environmental Management System, we consulted with the local community regularly, and our system was studied by the Queensland EPA as a good example of a model environmental management system, and had some considerable influence in the development of the legislation that followed.

We had a (friendly) visit from one of these Deep Green groups, and you would not believe the guy they sent. At one stage, he urinated in the garden  :D outside the main office. The comment was made that the time that the organisation should at least house train their activists. I think the bargepole approach is probably the best one to take with some of these loose cannons.  

I don't think that the current market economy will tolerate reduced consumption

Why not? That's exactly what the reserve bank is trying to do at the moment.

It is not consumption in general that will fall, but consumption of electricity, petrol etc.

Either way, to combat the issue of Global Warming will require much more than simple reduced consumption, unless you mean an 80% reduction.

Basically it's not going to happen.  

Eventually it will, but not for a long time. A combination of reduced consumption, altered patterns of consumption and improved efficiency may still prove to be cheaper than renewables even for an 80% reduction.

With the exception of nuclear energy, pricing mechanisms alone are sufficient to usher in alternative sources, and will do it far more efficiently and cheaply than direct mandates.

freediver wrote on Jun 4^th, 2008 at 11:12am:

I don't think that the current market economy will tolerate reduced consumption Why not? That's exactly what the reserve bank is trying to do at the moment. It is not consumption in general that will fall, but consumption of electricity, petrol etc.

The RBA is just tapping on the brakes so to speak. Energy use is very pervasive in the economy. Throttling the economy with artificial hikes in energy costs may well just make us less able to afford low emission alternatives. Renewables are very 'blue sky' ie probably a long way off as a major power source. The most promising power sources, of nuclear and clean coal will require big capital outlays - and for this to happen it is best to keep the economy strong.

Throttling the economy with artificial hikes in energy costs may well just make us less able to afford low emission alternatives.

But the goal is not renewables or 'low emission alternatives'. The goal is emissions reductions. Pricing mechanisms are the chepaest way to do that. Mandating very expensive options like renewables, nuclear etc rather than the cheaper options will reduce our ability to reduce emissions.

In any case, I thought you favoured cheaper options like efficiency? Or is that only if the government picks and chooses the efficiency options?

Renewables are very 'blue sky'

The cheapest large scale option, wind, is not blue sky. It has been around for millenia as a source of industrial power. The next best one, hydro, is also one of the oldest, but is a bit more limited for cheap options.

The most promising power sources, of nuclear and clean coal

Geothermal is more promising than clean coal. It will likely be far cheaper and is far further along in development. It may even get up and running faster than we could set up a nuclear system.

will require big capital outlays - and for this to happen it is best to keep the economy strong

Again, the economy is best served by first choosing the cheapest options for emissions reductions, not trying to prop up the energy sector so we don't have to change our electricity consumption patters.

Mandating nuclear or clean coal will increase the price of electricity more, and harm the economy more, than the pricing mechanims necessary to achieve the same level of emissions reductions through the cheaper options.

Furthermore, instead of the price icnrease going into government revenue and funding income tax cuts or something else, it will be wasted on expensive unnecessary infrastructure.

That's why there is an almost universal consensus among economists in favour of pricing mechanisms.

Throttling the economy with artificial hikes in energy costs may well just make us less able to afford low emission alternatives.

But the goal is not renewables or 'low emission alternatives'. The goal is emissions reductions. Pricing mechanisms are the chepaest way to do that. Mandating very expensive options like renewables, nuclear etc rather than the cheaper options will reduce our ability to reduce emissions.

It's only theoretical that pricing mechanisms will do that. I don't think they will make deep cuts on their own. By mandating other options you know you are tackling emissions head on. A lot of fixed based power stations are government owned or subsidised anyway. Government spending on nuclear or clean coal has a different economic effect than taxing consumers. It can actually stimulate the economy by providing a Keynsian boost.  

In any case, I thought you favoured cheaper options like efficiency? Or is that only if the government picks and chooses the efficiency options?

They can mandate more efficient devices, cars etc. I'm wary about putting extra taxes on low and middle income earners. The high oil price we have at the moment is already encouraging efficiency.

Renewables are very 'blue sky'

The cheapest large scale option, wind, is not blue sky. It has been around for millenia as a source of industrial power. The next best one, hydro, is also one of the oldest, but is a bit more limited for cheap options.

Is wind large scale? Isn't it true wherever it is used it requires huge backup from conventional sources? Hydro only provides around 8% of our power I think you will find (you need suitable rivers/ rainfall).

The most promising power sources, of nuclear and clean coal

Geothermal is more promising than clean coal. It will likely be far cheaper and is far further along in development. It may even get up and running faster than we could set up a nuclear system.

You need suitable rock formations don't you? These aren't always near cities. The geothermal set ups I have heard about are quite modest in size and power output. One advantage of clean coal is the possibility of retrofitting existing power stations. There are billions of dollars tied up in these and governments are going to be reluctant to scrap and replace them.

will require big capital outlays - and for this to happen it is best to keep the economy strong

Again, the economy is best served by first choosing the cheapest options for emissions reductions, not trying to prop up the energy sector so we don't have to change our electricity consumption patters.


Mandating nuclear or clean coal will increase the price of electricity more, and harm the economy more, than the pricing mechanims necessary to achieve the same level of emissions reductions through the cheaper options.

Furthermore, instead of the price icnrease going into government revenue and funding income tax cuts or something else, it will be wasted on expensive unnecessary infrastructure.

Defeats the purpose doesn't it - taxing fuel and then giving the mony back in tax cuts! Whats to stop people just using the money to offset the energy costs. Whats to stop them using the money they save on driving their car less on jet fuel for an overseas/ interstate holiday?

That's why there is an almost universal consensus among economists in favour of pricing mechanisms.

Oh no - not another consensus!

It's only theoretical that pricing mechanisms will do that.

It's a certainty.

I don't think they will make deep cuts on their own.

They can make cuts from anywhere between 0% and 100%. Whatever cut you want to make, pricing mechanisms will do it cheaper.

By mandating other options you know you are tackling emissions head on.

In the least efficient way. The only thing you can be certain of is that you could have achieved the same reduction at far less cost with pricing mechanisms.

A lot of fixed based power stations are government owned or subsidised anyway.

So you start by removing those subsidies and chargin a rational price.

They can mandate more efficient devices, cars etc.

There are lots of ways to improve efficiency. Only a small minority can be targetted through mandates, and the government will inevitably miss the best options. It's the same reason why communism doesn't work. It sounds great in theory for the government to decide how every little thing is done, but in practice it doesn't work because it is not responsive to the forces that drive the free market. The government has not even considered efficiency improvements because they would have no hope. Instead they (both parties) are going straight for subsidies to the most expensive option - solar panels.

Is wind large scale? Isn't it true wherever it is used it requires huge backup from conventional sources?

It can supply up to 20 or 30% before that becomes a significant problem. With strong price signals for flexible users, buffering, desal etc you could push it even further. Obviously you would target that easy 30% before more expensive options, but after the cheap options you can access through lower price signals.

You need suitable rock formations don't you? These aren't always near cities.

The cheaper cost of geothermal includes transport to cities.

Defeats the purpose doesn't it - taxing fuel and then giving the mony back in tax cuts!

No it doesn't defeat the purpose. Emissions will still go down. If you change what is taxed, you change how people spend their money. The goal is not to stop people spending their money, but to reduce the amount they spend in ways that increase emissions.

Whats to stop people just using the money to offset the energy costs.

Market forces. They could do that, but they won't.

Oh no - not another consensus!

Oh no, not another person who thinks all the experts in a field they haven't studied and don't understand are wrong.

freediver wrote on Jun 4^th, 2008 at 8:27pm:

[i] Oh no, not another person who thinks all the experts in a field they haven't studied and don't understand are wrong.

Here's a few experts who would seem to disagree FD:

http://www.thenewcity.info/april_2007_editorial.htm

Err in haste, repent at leisure


Leaving aside the patent flaws of ET, the more immediate question is whether Australia should contemplate ‘early action’ at all. By far the most thorough, balanced and objective submission to the Prime Minister’s task group was from the Productivity Commission, which, of course, has no vested interest in the outcome. Refreshingly, the commission’s starting point is that unilateral action by Australia will have no impact on climate realities. This compares favourably with the Business Council’s lightweight contribution containing no such acknowledgement.

The commission proceeds to weigh up a series of possible rationales for early action in any event, namely avoiding climate change, meeting the Kyoto target, being a good world ‘citizen’ and influencing others, reducing investment uncertainty, and facilitating the transition to a lower emissions economy. After sifting through the evidence, the commission concludes that only the last of these justifies early action. And its enthusiasm for this rationale is lukewarm at best. However, the commission’s reasoning ultimately suffers from circularity, in the sense that transition to a future international regime warrants early action, but that depends on the regime: ‘Assessing this potential requires, among other things, judgements about the likely timing and make-up of an international regime.’ In short, the submission contains little if any endorsement of early action.

On a more general level, the commission pours cold water on the underlying assumptions of the Stern Review. The commission calls Sir Nicholas Stern’s particular view about aversion to risk and the low discount rates he employs into doubt, thus joining the growing body of literature questioning Stern’s assertion that an immediate and far-reaching response to climate change is necessary on economic as well as scientific grounds.

The hard reality is this: unilateral action would be pointless, and a multilateral scheme spanning nations and continents at varying stages of economic development, with different political cultures and competing strategic interests, is a pipedream.

Cui bono?

So why are our leaders about to drop a NETS on us?

The Business Council is nervous about the paralysing impact on investment of continuing speculation about a carbon tax or NETS, and would rather see the whole thing settled, even at cost to some of its members. To a lesser extent, it’s about public relations imperatives embodied in the notion of ‘corporate social responsibility’. For its part, Treasury is rightly concerned about economic inefficiencies produced by the mish-mash of federal and state-based abatement measures like the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target (MRET), Generator Efficiency Standards, NSW Greenhouse Gas Reduction Scheme, the Queensland 13 per cent gas scheme and others. Treasury is keen to sweep them all aside to level the national playing field.

Then there are the progressive ideologues, many of them academics, journalists and commentators, and most environmentalists, who campaign to transform social values as they relate to economic activity. For them, NETS is a chance to throw a progressive blanket over the economy. Hot on their heels is the new class of eco-hustlers, the carbon traders and analysts, carbon credit dealers, renewable energy developers and green designers, all clambering aboard NETS to make a buck. They enjoy access to the media on the pretext that they are performing a community service. On some days the Sydney Morning Herald reads like a promotional brochure for these interests.

While many environmentalists argue for NETS on the ground that Australia’s exclusion from carbon trading is costing us billions of dollars, a lucrative market for commodity traders, if achieved, doesn’t necessarily translate into emission reductions. Moreover, if unchecked, this green revolution will, on a significant scale, displace income earning prospects away from investors, proprietors and workers, mostly semi-skilled or unskilled blue-collar workers engaged in fossil fuel related industries, towards well-heeled groups like the eco-hustlers. The Productivity Commission cites ABARE research estimating that if we took independent climate action, even in conjunction with global action, by 2050 our coal and iron/steel industries will be respectively 32 percent and 53 per cent smaller than otherwise. In contrast, ‘services’ will only be 6 per cent smaller. Is this a desirable social outcome?

Whether climate change can be addressed without resort to ET is a big subject for another occasion. Even most ET fans accept that without heavy investment in technological innovation, ET alone is not sufficient. They just think a ‘price signal’ is necessary to stimulate this investment. But if ET proves to be a white elephant, technological innovation is all we have. More attention should be devoted to the option of clean technologies, like carbon capture and storage (CCS), as a stand alone response, mandated by governments according to a mutually agreed timetable.

That article is mostly about unilateral vs multilateral action. It does not give a view favouring direct intervention over price signals. In fact, it agrees with me on the issue:

For its part, Treasury is rightly concerned about economic inefficiencies produced by the mish-mash of federal and state-based abatement measures like the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target (MRET), Generator Efficiency Standards, NSW Greenhouse Gas Reduction Scheme, the Queensland 13 per cent gas scheme and others. Treasury is keen to sweep them all aside to level the national playing field.

Come off it FD, you have just ignored most of the article which was against a rush to carbon taxes and emissions trading and concluded that we may end the end just have to mandate clean technologies. Instead you focus on that one statement concerning the need for national legislation instead of a mish mash of state regulations.

Nowhere in the article does it say that government mandates are better for the economy than price signals. It is a mish-mash of 'concerns', but the only time it does give an opinion, it is against government mandates. You need to work on your critical reading. 'IF ET turns out to be a white elephant' is not the same as saying it will be a white elephant.

Most of the article has nothing to do with the question at hand and the issues raised would apply equally well to pricing mechanisms and direct mandates.

freediver wrote on Jun 4^th, 2008 at 9:31pm:

That article is mostly about unilateral vs multilateral action. It does not give a view favouring direct intervention over price signals. In fact, it agrees with me on the issue: For its part, Treasury is rightly concerned about economic inefficiencies produced by the mish-mash of federal and state-based abatement measures like the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target (MRET), Generator Efficiency Standards, NSW Greenhouse Gas Reduction Scheme, the Queensland 13 per cent gas scheme and others. Treasury is keen to sweep them all aside to level the national playing field.

The Treasury have an agenda. Nationalization??????

Anyways... it's too early to put all our eggs into one ideaological basket. I'd rather see local initiatives develop as well as national ones.

Ballarat for example have done some excellent work over the years with their water collection and distribution systems. Equally, I think the Murray-Darling becoming a national concern is most sensible given no state can lay claim to it fully.

pjb05 wrote on Jun 4^th, 2008 at 5:09pm:

The RBA is just tapping on the brakes so to speak. Energy use is very pervasive in the economy. Throttling the economy with artificial hikes in energy costs may well just make us less able to afford low emission alternatives. Renewables are very 'blue sky' ie probably a long way off as a major power source. The most promising power sources, of nuclear and clean coal will require big capital outlays - and for this to happen it is best to keep the economy strong.

Renewable technology has already been in place for many years in the form of thermal solar generation in California for example, where thermal solar has the same cost per unit (or possibly lower now) than natural gas derived energy generation.  With coal at over $200 US per tonne, the cost differential will continue to reduce, and the viability of clean coal is looking much less likely.  

It's clean coal that's 'out there'. That is totally unproven blue sky territory if ever I saw it. We don't know if it's going to work.

The Treasury have an agenda. Nationalization??????

If the states could achieve a uniform price on emissions, treasury would probably support that. They are concerned about the economic inefficiencies that are inevitable when the government tries to do what the free market is good at, not the political inefficiencies. They have good reason to be concerned.

Anyways... it's too early to put all our eggs into one ideaological basket. I'd rather see local initiatives develop as well as national ones

You think we should give communism another try? This isn't about local vs national initiatives, this is about the role of government vs private industry. Pricing mechanisms will make far better use of local initiatives to reduce emissions cheaply, right down to switching off your lights when you aren't using them.

It's clean coal that's 'out there'. That is totally unproven blue sky territory if ever I saw it. We don't know if it's going to work.

Agreed. Of all the options mentioned here, clean coal is the most risky. It is also guaranteed to be fairly expensive and is limited in it's application.

Here's an interesting link:

"By 2015, concentrating solar power will be cheaper than carbon capture and storage coal-fired power. This is very important. Power plants take a long to time to plan and build. A new power plant proposed today would be lucky to get on line by 2011. Given that few new coal-fired power plants are expected in Australia until about 2015-2020, the earliest time in which still untested carbon capture and storage might be available, so called 'clean coal' will be priced out of the market by cheaper solar."

http://www.trec.net.au/content/costCSP.html

http://www.trec.net.au/images/000-2050/FutureEnergyPrices.gif

What is "IGCC" in this chart?

How do they calculate the cost/kwh?

The prices would be based on the current price of electricity from that method (if it is already running), the price trends, etc. If it is a fossil fuel based system, it would include projected price rises due to the fuel running out. For clean coal, a premium would be added for the cost of burying the CO2, and some value taken off for the lower emissions.

IGCC is coal gasification.

http://www.tampaelectric.com/news/powerstation/polk/IGCC/

freediver wrote on Jun 5^th, 2008 at 8:39am:

Nowhere in the article does it say that government mandates are better for the economy than price signals. It is a mish-mash of 'concerns', but the only time it does give an opinion, it is against government mandates. You need to work on your critical reading. 'IF ET turns out to be a white elephant' is not the same as saying it will be a white elephant.

Didn't you say that there is an amost universal consensus from economists that these schemes will work, and that that it is a "certainty"? Dosen't the acticle and the quotes it include contradict these assertions? Doesn't devasting key industries in our economy qualify as a drawback? Isn't saying they could well be a white elephant giving an opinion? Who is the one with the critical reading problem?

Yes I did say that. Not every blogger is an economist though. Obviously when I said economists I did not mean every economic commentator, as there are plenty of those with no understanding of economics at all.

Check their 'about us' page:

http://www.thenewcity.info/about_us.htm

We are longtime Labor Party members who believe the urban progressive-left has turned its back on ordinary working people: the 70 per cent of the workforce who hold blue-collar and routine white-collar ‘jobs’, as distinct from the 30 per cent who enjoy professional ‘careers’.

While one of us has worked for Labor politicians, and both of us are past or present local branch office-holders, we do not depend on any branch of the labour movement for our living, so we are free to speak our minds. We have diverse private and public sector work histories: currently one of us is a bureaucrat and one a lawyer.

An example of one of the consensus statements:

http://www.ozpolitic.com/green-tax-shift/economics-hopeful-science.html

muso wrote on Jun 5^th, 2008 at 9:08am:

pjb05 wrote on Jun 4th, 2008 at 5:09pm: The RBA is just tapping on the brakes so to speak. Energy use is very pervasive in the economy. Throttling the economy with artificial hikes in energy costs may well just make us less able to afford low emission alternatives. Renewables are very 'blue sky' ie probably a long way off as a major power source. The most promising power sources, of nuclear and clean coal will require big capital outlays - and for this to happen it is best to keep the economy strong. Renewable technology has already been in place for many years in the form of thermal solar generation in California for example, where thermal solar has the same cost per unit (or possibly lower now) than natural gas derived energy generation.  With coal at over $200 US per tonne, the cost differential will continue to reduce, and the viability of clean coal is looking much less likely.   It's clean coal that's 'out there'. That is totally unproven blue sky territory if ever I saw it. We don't know if it's going to work.

Isn't California a big importer of energy from other states -  not of renewable energy either!  Also do you think that governments will scrap their existing coal fire power stations - which they have spent billions on building? A least with clean coal there is the chance of capturing their emissions. It wouldn't call it totally unproven either. There are plants in existance doing it right now. All the elements have been done for years, ie capturing CO2, pumping it underground.

Obviously we know how to pump CO2 underground. I think it's a technique already used in oil mining. It's making sure it stays there and doing it on a large scale in a cost feasible manner that is unproven.

Also do you think that governments will scrap their existing coal fire power stations

No. Once you have a station built, the marginal price of electricity from it is very low. In fact, Australia is still building more coal fired plants. First you would stop building more. Then the natural decommissioning process would see a sufficiently rapid transition to alternatives to satisfy the IPCC recommendations. And of course, there is always the possibility of capturing some of their emissions as you point out.

pjb05 wrote on Jun 5^th, 2008 at 4:57pm:

Isn't California a big importer of energy from other states -  not of renewable energy either!  Also do you think that governments will scrap their existing coal fire power stations - which they have spent billions on building? A least with clean coal there is the chance of capturing their emissions. It wouldn't call it totally unproven either. There are plants in existance doing it right now. All the elements have been done for years, ie capturing CO2, pumping it underground.

Well yes, California does import electricity. I don't see how that's relevant.  The state of California would be the 8th biggest economy in the world, however they have a clean objective of converting 20% of their power generation to renewables by 2020.  

Do you think you could simply convert an existing Coal fired power station to a full-blown carbon capture plant? That sounds a bit naïve. Some of the research is being conducted in decommissioned power stations, but a  full scale CCS Power station would have to be built from the ground up.

The main issue is not so much pumping the CO2 underground, but ensuring that the leakage rate is low enough to make it viable. That's where the real uncertainty lies, apart from the economic feasibility.

 

Well yes, California does import electricity. I don't see how that's relevant.  The state of California would be the 8th biggest economy in the world, however they have a clean objective of converting 20% of their power generation to renewables by 2020.  

It's very relevant. It's just another example of the fact that wherever renewables have been tried they need massive back up from conventional sources of baseload power. When you say 20% renewables that is very misleading because that 20% is not there all the time. FD says the way around this is to reconstruct industry and society to work on variable power. No thanks - I have just been sitting in the cold and dark for two hours and unable to cook my dinner due to a power black out!

Do you think you could simply convert an existing Coal fired power station to a full-blown carbon capture plant? That sounds a bit naïve. Some of the research is being conducted in decommissioned power stations, but a  full scale CCS Power station would have to be built from the ground up.

There are plans on retro fitting them. You would start with a ground up version naturally and then move on to retro fitting as the technology is refined.

The main issue is not so much pumping the CO2 underground, but ensuring that the leakage rate is low enough to make it viable. That's where the real uncertainty lies, apart from the economic feasibility.

Leakage doesn't seem to be much of a problem, it's under a lot of pressure remember. Sure it comes with a cost - so does every other low emission technology. Being a major coal miner and exporter it would surely be in our interests to pursure the technology in case the world becomes carbon constrained.  

freediver wrote on Jun 5^th, 2008 at 4:53pm:

Yes I did say that. Not every blogger is an economist though. Obviously when I said economists I did not mean every economic commentator, as there are plenty of those with no understanding of economics at all. Check their 'about us' page: http://www.thenewcity.info/about_us.htm We are longtime Labor Party members who believe the urban progressive-left has turned its back on ordinary working people: the 70 per cent of the workforce who hold blue-collar and routine white-collar ‘jobs’, as distinct from the 30 per cent who enjoy professional ‘careers’. While one of us has worked for Labor politicians, and both of us are past or present local branch office-holders, we do not depend on any branch of the labour movement for our living, so we are free to speak our minds. We have diverse private and public sector work histories: currently one of us is a bureaucrat and one a lawyer. An example of one of the consensus statements: http://www.ozpolitic.com/green-tax-shift/economics-hopeful-science.html

Yes I know who wrote it. Recall, however they quoted groups like ABARE and the Productivity Commission. I think you will find that they have a few economists in their pay!  

http://www.financialpost.com/analysis/columnists/story.html?id=c74086f1-dced-4a4e-97a0-cfb5160a045a&p=1

The carbon experiment
Terence Corcoran, Financial Post  
Published: Saturday, May 31, 2008

In any discussion of carbon taxes, no matter what their form, it is important to keep the core economic theory in focus. The basic idea, advanced by early 20th-century economist Arthur C. Pigou, is that if a society wants to reduce the use of something that's undesirable, the best way to do that is to have the government tax it. Pigou is the magician behind the great global pressure from economists and politicians -- from Stephane Dion to Stephen Harper, from John McCain to Nicholas Sarkozy --for taxes on carbon emissions.

The theory is simple enough, and intuitively appealing. In the Pigouvian world, if you raise the price of carbon, the laws of supply and demand will kick in and carbon use--from burning coal, oil, gas, wood-- will fall. As carbon use falls, the threat of man-made global warming will be reduced, maybe even eliminated. Beautifully simple. Who could not like such a clean solution to a messy problem?

Unfortunately, little of what Pigou said on the subject of Pigouvian taxes is of any use to policy makers. How high should the tax be? How do you set targets for measuring effectiveness? What do you do about the side effects of the taxes? What do you do with the tax revenue?

Pigou is silent on all of this, but these are the important carbon tax questions. It ultimately matters not whether governments try to tax carbon directly, right down at the gasoline pump as planned in British Columbia, or whether they try complex "cap-and-trade" schemes that seem to tax big corporate polluters and let the rest of us get off with little direct burden.

Never mind, also, whether a climate change catastrophe looms between now and 2080 or 2120 or 2180 or whenever. The science, a quagmire of uncertainty, is irrelevant to the economics of carbon taxes.

So lets look briefly at our main questions.

How high should the tax be?

With oil at $130 a barrel, we already have in place the equivalent of a carbon tax of about $300 a tonne. The impact of that price increase is rattling through the economy, transferring massive amounts of wealth from consumers to energy producers. But if this new oil price were to persist, would it cut oil-based carbon emissions to the levels we supposedly need to save the planet? Nobody knows, but it's not likely. The B. C. carbon tax, set to reach $30 for each tonne of carbon, will obviously do even less to curb carbon emissions.

The point is that nobody knows how high the carbon tax would
have to go to reduce emissions. It's a central planning problem. The policies being talked about now are really just exercises in experimental economics, pushed by speculative science.

What are the carbon emissions targets?

No carbon tax regime sets explicit emissions targets. The B. C. government said it would produce estimates of how much carbon emissions would fall as a result of its taxes, but no numbers have been produced so far. In fact, any carbon tax, no matter what its design, would be based on guesswork. They have no clue.

What are the side effects of carbon taxes?

Unpredictable, but undoubtedly dramatic. Economists' models are no help. Politics will shape the tax, applying it here and there as dictated by planners and the usual political pressures. Industry groups will fight for preferences, provinces and states will battle to protect their local economies, international trade will be at risk, developing countries will gain advantages. Carbon taxes, especially cap-and-trade systems, essentially require a total reordering of economic calculation around carbon atoms instead of money.

What do states do withall the new tax revenue?

This is the second part of the central planning nightmare. Local, provincial and national governments will begin massive planning efforts and plot new interventions to deploy the new tax revenues. They will claim to be "shifting" the revenue back to taxpayers through cuts in income and other taxes. They will want to use the new revenue to subsidize other non-carbon industries, and offset the burden of the carbon tax on injured industries.

That's consistent with Pigou's theory, which worked both ways. Not only should government tax to reduce the use of bad things, he thought government should subsidize good things, part of his belief that government should help distribute resources "in the most efficient way." His objective, he said, was to make it "feasible for governments to control the play of economic forces to promote the economic welfare, and through that, the total welfare, of their citizens as a whole."

So carbon tax programs are an experiment --although one that has already been tried. It imposes central planning on an economy based on carbon emissions rather than economic growth and welfare. It didn't work for the economy, it won't work for carbon.

FD says the way around this is to reconstruct industry and society to work on variable power.

That is nothing like what I said. There will be no need for people to be sitting in the dark.

Being a major coal miner and exporter

How major? I don't think we are as big a player as many make out.

Recall, however they quoted groups like ABARE and the Productivity Commission.

That doesn't make them economists either. Anyone can quote ABARE and then go on to say something stupid.

Unfortunately, little of what Pigou said on the subject of Pigouvian taxes is of any use to policy makers. How high should the tax be? How do you set targets for measuring effectiveness? What do you do about the side effects of the taxes? What do you do with the tax revenue?

Of course Pigou didn't predict everything, but you could get a reasonable prediction of the short term impact of a tax from modern economists. Over the long term there will be feedback loops. Also, taxes and trading schemes are not mutually exclusive. Even if we have a tax locally, we will still need an international trading scheme, or something similar.

With oil at $130 a barrel, we already have in place the equivalent of a carbon tax of about $300 a tonne.

Obviously coal is going to be reduced first. That's the beuty of pricing emchanisms - the highest value uses of fossil fuels are eliminated last.

No carbon tax regime sets explicit emissions targets.

There are not many carbon tax regimes around, but it wouldn't be hard to include an explicit target.

In fact, any carbon tax, no matter what its design, would be based on guesswork. They have no clue.

Not true.

Carbon taxes, especially cap-and-trade systems, essentially require a total reordering of economic calculation around carbon atoms instead of money.

No they don't. They just put a price on something that was previously free. There's nothing special about that.

What do states do withall the new tax revenue? This is the second part of the central planning nightmare.

Reducing other taxes is the obvious choice. Since when is having more revenue a nightmare? Whoever wrote this is a serious drama queen.

It imposes central planning on an economy based on carbon emissions rather than economic growth and welfare. It didn't work for the economy, it won't work for carbon.

No, it does the opposite. That's the whole point of carbon taxes, to avoid central planning. The author is an idiot.

pjb05 wrote on Jun 5^th, 2008 at 8:26pm:

It's very relevant. It's just another example of the fact that wherever renewables have been tried they need massive back up from conventional sources of baseload power. When you say 20% renewables that is very misleading because that 20% is not there all the time. FD says the way around this is to reconstruct industry and society to work on variable power. No thanks - I have just been sitting in the cold and dark for two hours and unable to cook my dinner due to a power black out!

No - that's 20% of the total load, and how many times do I have to explain that storage technology is already available?  


Quote:

There are plans on retro fitting them. You would start with a ground up version naturally and then move on to retro fitting as the technology is refined.

Are there? Do you have some examples of these plans? I'd be totally amazed if you could take an exhaust stack and convert it to a CO2 extraction system by some process of retrofitting. Your retrofitting might leave the turbogenerators intact but that's about all.

The other question is - will this retrofitting technology be available within the projected lifespans of current coal fired power stations, or do we have to wait for the next generation?


Quote:

Leakage doesn't seem to be much of a problem, it's under a lot of pressure remember. Sure it comes with a cost - so does every other low emission technology. Being a major coal miner and exporter it would surely be in our interests to pursure the technology in case the world becomes carbon constrained.

From what I've read, that's the main thrust of the current research, and I'm not aware that any results have been published yet, so I don't know where you get this idea that it doesn't seem to be a problem.  

If it's not possible to maintain a leakage rate of less than 0.01% over a 1000 year period, the whole thing becomes unworkable, and that's the bottom line.


http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/technical-papers/paper-I-en.pdf

(See section 5.2.3)

quote author=pjb05 link=1170222422/165#179 date=1212661561]
It's very relevant. It's just another example of the fact that wherever renewables have been tried they need massive back up from conventional sources of baseload power. When you say 20% renewables that is very misleading because that 20% is not there all the time. FD says the way around this is to reconstruct industry and society to work on variable power. No thanks - I have just been sitting in the cold and dark for two hours and unable to cook my dinner due to a power black out![/quote]


No - that's 20% of the total load, and how many times do I have to explain that storage technology is already available?  

[/quote]

Well explaining it once would be nice Muso. Notice I have said where ever renewables have been tried they have needed massive back up - and you have not contadicted this. Yes, you mentioned how water is pumped back into to dams (but this is limited to areas which can have dams) and some unproven scheme of getting hydrogen from aluminium - I doubt very much this will be feasible on a large scale.

Try this thread - the last post on there:

http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1178671084/30#30

No one is saying clean coal is a sure fire certainty Muso. But that doesn't mean that it's not worth pursuing. Tim Flannery seems to think so:

http://news.smh.com.au/national/clean-coal-needed-in-23-years-flannery-20080526-2i87.html

Clean coal needed in 2-3 years: Flannery


Climate expert Tim Flannery says the coal industry should be penalised if it does not develop clean technologies within the next two to three years.

Professor Flannery was speaking at a local government managers' conference on the Gold Coast when talk turned to the viability of coal as an energy source.

The 2007 Australian of the Year criticised the coal industry for its reluctance to embrace "greener" technologies, despite being one of the biggest contributors to global warming.

"The coal industry never ceases to amaze me," the scientist said.

"They sit up there in central Queensland denying they've got a problem, raking in the profits ... (but) when is the day going to come when they dip into their own pockets to buy their industry a better future, a sustainable future?"

If the coal industry failed to act, he warned the world had as little as 10 years before it reached the point of "no return" and became irreversibly damaged.

"We should be demanding that the coal industry develops these technologies in the next two to three years, to demonstration stage, with penalties otherwise," Prof Flannery said.

The federal government also needed to boost its contribution from $100 million to $5 billion, recognising Australia's critical role in developing clean coal technologies, he said.

"I don't think anyone else can do the job," Prof Flannery said.

"No one else has the technical capacity."

Australia also had a global responsibility to pass that information on, especially to China, which builds about one new coal-fired power plant each week, he said.

He urged individuals to think green by cutting down on electricity and water use, as well as investing in carbon offset programs.

Councils also could do their part, he said, through leading by example and driving hybrid cars.

"If people see the mayor driving a big, clunky car, they're not going to buy (the environmentally friendly message)," Prof Flannery said.

"As councillors, there's huge things that can be done."

I think the point that Tim Flannery is making is that the coal industry is dragging its heels.

I know that's the case. It's procrastination on a major scale. I think it will become apparent that clean coal is on a parallel with the emperor's new clothes.

If they're going to do something, I agree that it has to be sooner than later.

The main problem is that the coal lobby is putting its weight behind a clean coal future that is unlikely to materialise, and diverting time and energy from proven renewable technology.

As far as petrol is concerned, if we really want to reduce the cost of petrol medium term, we need to add additional taxes to reduce the demand, then use the extra revenue to subsidise more efficient transport options, such as hybrids. Hybrids are not perfect, but they use half the fuel of a conventional vehicle the same size. If we had more hybrids, the demand for fuel would drop again, and the pressure  
for higher fuel prices would be eased.

Of course, such a course of action is political suicide. I tend to agree with Tim Flannery's statement today that Climate Change might be too difficult for governments to manage.

Just on the Rankine Cycle. It occurs to me that you guys might not appreciate how elegant that system is. I work with the technology every day, so it's second nature to me.

Basically there is a reversible chemical reaction:

Nitrogen plus hydrogen are combined at high pressure to give ammonia.
Heat is recovered from that reaction (think night time). The heat is converted to steam which drives a turbogenerator.

Now for the daytime reaction. The ammonia that was produced at night  is dissociated into nitrogen and hydrogen. That requires energy to be input. (From the sun)

The chemical equation is:

N2 + 3H2 <==> 2NH3

Very simple and elegant - and closed cycle. All the reagents are stored at ambient temperature, but very high pressure.

Muso, there is no need to subsidise hybrids. Simply putting up the price would be enough.

Labor runs into trouble with its green machines

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,23818737-2702,00.html

KEVIN Rudd's key economic advisory body has rejected as economically unsound his $500 million plan to subsidise the development of a hybrid car in Australia.

The Productivity Commission has also queried the Prime Minister's promise that the Green Car Innovation Fund would spark greater car industry innovation, advising it would make more economic sense for Australia to import hybrid cars than to subsidise local models.

The commission said plans to slash tariffs on imported vehicles to 5 per cent in 2010 and scrap the previous government's $500 million-a-year Automotive Competitiveness and Innovation Scheme by 2015 would accelerate downsizing of the car industry.

But it found the economy would be $500 million a year better off if the Government went ahead with the scheduled cuts, because of lower car prices and savings on subsidies.

The criticism came yesterday as Mr Rudd used World Environment Day to hail his $500million fund as a boon for the environment and the potential trigger for the recovery of the nation's car manufacturing industry.

The car sector employs 66,000 workers but has lost 11,000 since 1996, including 930 when a Mitsubishi plant in Adelaide closed earlier this year.

The decline has come despite taxpayer-funded support including tariffs on imports and direct subsidies worth $1.1 billion in 2006-07.

Mr Rudd told parliament yesterday a locally produced hybrid car would revitalise the industry while also reducing carbon emissions.

"The Government's view is that we need an Australian automotive sector that is sustainable in all senses - economic, social and environmental," the Prime Minister said.

"When all is said and done, we do not just want a green car - we want a green car industry - and industry that can provide secure, high-skill, high-wage jobs by meeting the global demand for a wide range of greenhouse-friendly technologies and an industry that is itself a model of clean and green production."

Labor promised its GCIF during last year's election campaign. Starting in 2011 - after the next scheduled election - it will draw on the fund to pay car manufacturers $1 for every $3 they spend on the development and manufacture of low-emission vehicles.
Mr Rudd has also commissioned former Victorian premier Steve Bracks to review the car industry and suggest ways to improve its efficiency and protect jobs while reducing carbon emissions.

As Mr Rudd told parliament yesterday that high fuel costs and climate change demanded government action on a hybrid car, the Productivity Commission said it was unwise to subside cars that would otherwise be uncommercial. "Assisted green car production is unlikely to lead either to innovation spillovers or lower greenhouse emissions," said the report commissioned by Mr Bracks, whose final study is due by the end of next month.

"The GCIF will likely encourage some buyers to switch from taxed, more efficiently produced imported hybrid and fuel-efficient vehicles to subsidised, higher-cost, locally produced ones - without markedly increasing green car sales overall."

Industry Minister Kim Carr, who is about to travel overseas to lobby manufacturers with Australian operations to access the new GCIF, said through a spokeswoman last night the fund would go ahead regardless of the commission's view.

The Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries attacked the commission report as flawed.

"To state that an innovation fund aimed at reducing emissions will not result in innovation or reduced emissions shows the commission's poor understanding of the competitive influences in the industry," said FCAI chief executive Andrew McKellar. "The commission's report ignores the fact that the automotive industry is Australia's most valuable exporter after mining and that product innovation is essential to maintaining global competitiveness."

The commission's suggestion that the closure of more manufacturing facilities could boost the fortunes of remaining manufacturers was disturbing, he added.

"It is based on the false assumption that the cost to the economy of the closure of one or more vehicle manufacturers will be picked up by other car makers in the economy," he said.

Mr Rudd said his approach would help the car industry reinvent itself.

Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson backed Mr Rudd's efforts to cut greenhouse emissions but said Labor's policies were inconsistent, with imported hybrid cars subject to the same level of tax as petrol-guzzlers such as Hummers.

Hybrids don't make a lot of economic sense being at least $14,000 dearer than a turbo diesel car which gets close to hybrid like economy. Then there's the fact that you are up for many thousands to replace the batteries after ten years. Getting a smaller petrol car makes more sense also. How much do you wan't to put up the price of fuel to hake hybrids an attractive alternative FD?

Muso asked for some sources regarding some of my earlier comments. Here's an article that covers some of the same ground as well as supplying sources:

http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?id=19026

Global warming, an unsettled science

Image: CIA Factbook
The thesis of man-made global warming has been portrayed as a scientific consensus, but is this more a policymaker and media phenomenon than a settled matter?

By Simon Roughneen for ISN Security Watch (30/05/08)

In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Working Group One, a panel of experts established by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme, issued its Fourth Assessment Report. This included predictions of dramatic increases in average world temperatures over the next 92 years and serious harm resulting from the predicted temperature rise.

Founding director of the UN Environment Programme Maurice Strong once analyzed global environmental challenges as follows:

"We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse."

"Industrial civilization" has been pumping additional carbon dioxide into the earth's atmosphere and adding to the greenhouse effect, whereby carbon dioxide, methane and water vapor combine to trap sunrays bouncing off the earth's surface, keeping the earth at a temperature conducive to supporting life.

What ultimate benefit the collapse of industrial civilization could bring at a time when - as Oxford University economist Paul Collier put it in his award-winning book The Bottom Billion - around four billion people are being lifted out of poverty, remains unclear.

However, the IPCC outlines that "deep cuts in global emission will be required," while the European Commission supports emissions cuts of 25-40 percent by 2020. The US, however, considers such cuts beyond reach, at least before 2050, while Japan says it is premature to commit to 2020 limits.

On 26 May, G8 environment ministers endorsed slashing greenhouse gas emissions in half by mid-century, but failed to agree on much more contentious near-term targets.

Environmentalists were disappointed, according to AP reports: They missed the "opportunity to accelerate the slow progress of G8 climate negotiations, but they failed to send a signal of hope for a breakthrough," said Naoyuki Yamagishi, head of the Climate Change Program at WWF Japan.

Whether or not such emissions cuts, and the industrial and economic turmoil that could ensue, are necessary, depends precisely on whether global warming or climate change is man-made, or whether the anthropogenic aspect outweighs natural factors.

On 10 May 2007, UN special climate envoy Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland declared the climate debate "over," adding that "it's completely immoral, even, to question" the UN's scientific "consensus."

Questions about the "consensus" are mounting, however, as are apparently growing numbers of scientists who dispute the notion that "the science is settled."

Unraveling consensus
All four agencies that track Earth's temperature - the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California - report a 0.7C cooling in 2007 - a reversal of the warming that has taken place over the 20th Century.

A recent study in the journal Nature by scientists from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University, postulates that global temperatures are unlikely to rise again until around 2015-2020, after a decade-long leveling-off since the 1998 recorded high. In other words, it is possible that by 2020, the world will not have warmed for over 20 years.

Dr Vicky Pope of the Hadley Centre at the UK Met Office told ISN Security Watch that natural climate variations linked to the Pacific cooling system known as La Niña, as well as a cooling phase of a system of Atlantic currents, contributed to the 2007 cooling and what the Leibniz/Nature study predicts for the coming decade.

The climate prediction modeling system used by the IPCC postulates that global temperatures will rise in tandem with carbon dioxide emissions, and at an unprecedented and dangerous rate, hence the need for, if not the collapse of industrial civilization, then reductions in carbon emissions as outlined since the Kyoto agreements in 1998.

Another study published in Nature in mid-May postulated that "Changes in natural systems since at least 1970 are occurring in regions of observed temperature increases, and these temperature increases at continental scales cannot be explained by natural climate variations alone," and that man-made climate change is having "a significant impact on physical and biological systems globally."

Speaking about this study to the Financial Times, Barry Brook, director of climate change research at the University of Adelaide, said: "[We should] consider that there has been only 0.75ºC of temperature change so far, yet the expectation for this century is four to nine times that amount."

However, Richard Lindzen (Alfred P Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology), told ISN Security Watch that predictions such as the IPCCs were based on flawed modeling:

"The text of the IPCC [as opposed to the spin-oriented summary] makes clear that a major assumption of attribution studies is that the models were used properly and adequately account for natural internal variability. This study acknowledges that they did not. Under the circumstances, it is absurd to depend on these same models to predict the end of phenomena that they could not predict in the first place."

Dr Pope conceded that "climate science is an evolving subject," but in reference to the second Nature study, said that "they looked at secondary impacts of climate change, and made a stronger link back to core causes, along the lines of the latest research being done on this issue."

Arguments over the reliability of climate models have emerged at various times, in recent years. Most notoriously, the "hockey stick" graph used by the IPPC showing a rapid temperature rise over the industrial era was revised after allegations that it glossed over previously occurring natural cycles, including the Little Ice Age, running to around 1850, and the Medieval Warm Period, when temperatures may have been higher than now.

A warm Middle Ages saw vineyards in England, while Greenland got its name due to the relatively lush coastal regions encountered by contemporary exploring Vikings, whose villages there lasted until around the 17th Century, until a cooling climate reduced the snow-free land available to the settlers and indigenous people alike, leaving Greenland as we know it today. Needless to say, such temperature levels occurred well before any "industrial civilization" was in place to emit copious amounts of carbon dioxide.

But in response to counter-arguments to the man-made global warming thesis, the UK Royal Society has drawn up another point-by-point counter-argument, which states "our scientific understanding of climate change is sufficiently sound to make us highly confident that greenhouse gas emissions are causing global warming."

The Royal Society, however, goes on to outline: "While climate models are now able to reproduce past and present changes in the global climate rather well, they are not, as yet, sufficiently well-developed to project accurately all the detail of the impacts we might see at regional or local levels. They do, however, give us a reliable guide to the direction of future climate change. The reliability also continues to be improved through the use of new techniques and technologies."

In turn, Director of the Science & Environmental Policy Project S Fred Singer has responded to the Royal Society's position in a paper authored for the Centre for Policy Studies in London. And referring to the Leibniz Institute Nature study, he told ISN Security Watch that "natural climate fluctuations can be greater than manmade forcing," and that it is feasible that "the modeled manmade forcing has been greatly exaggerated."

The 4th IPCC report was released 10 months before it shared the Nobel Prize with Al Gore, and that publication made it clear that there was a consensus of 2,500 scientists across the globe who believed that mankind was responsible for greenhouse gas concentrations, which in turn were very likely responsible for an increase in global temperatures.

However, just two weeks ago, Dr Arthur Robinson of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine told the National Press Club in Washington DC that more than 31,000 scientists had signed the so-called Oregon Petition rejecting the IPCC line.

Moreover, some of those included on the IPCC's list have also raised objections. On 12 December 2007, the US Senate released a report from more than 400 scientists, many of whose names were attached to the IPCC report without - they claim - their permission. In the report, the scientists expressed a range of views from skepticism to outright rejection of the theory of anthropogenic global warming.

While the US remains outside the Kyoto system, along with developing-country high carbon emitters such as China and India, US President George Bush has made conciliatory noises on climate issues in recent months, while all three remaining presidential candidates have been vocal about their commitment to offsetting.

Less commented-upon is the data on emissions reduction: The US has cut the rate of increase of its carbon emissions more than any party to Kyoto, according to the Index of Leading Economic Indicators' figures for 1997-2004, the last year for universal emission data.

The US Senate will convene next week to discuss a climate bill, which aims, through a mandatory cap-and-trade scheme, to reduce emissions 70 percent from 2005 levels by 2050, even though countries such as China, Russia and India have no such plans.

Alarmism misplaced?
Prior to the December Bali climate summit, some of the scientists who signed the Senate and Oregon letters penned an open letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, outlining their view that climate alarmism was misplaced, and the policy options discussed were futile:

"The UN climate conference in Bali has been planned to take the world along a path of severe CO2 restrictions, ignoring the lessons apparent from the failure of the Kyoto Protocol, the chaotic nature of the European CO2 trading market, and the ineffectiveness of other costly initiatives to curb greenhouse gas emissions. […] Furthermore, it is irrational to apply the 'precautionary principle' because many scientists recognize that both climatic coolings and warmings are realistic possibilities over the medium-term future. […] The current UN focus on "fighting climate change" […] is distracting governments from adapting to the threat of inevitable natural climate changes, whatever forms they may take."

Whether this distraction results in the destruction of industrialized civilization or not, some analysts, such as Bjorn Lomborg, author of Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming, believes that an inappropriate reaction to global warming will cause more problems than contribute solutions.

Carbon trading has been pitched as part-panacea to man-made global warming. Stanford University academics believe that the system does little to prevent emissions, while cynics believe that proponents of the schemes can benefit financially - a sort-of counter-argument to the "big oil funds climate dissent" view held by green activists.

Problems aside, Dr Terry Barker, director of the Cambridge Centre for Climate Research, tells ISN Security Watch that the ongoing climate negotiations need to "establish a global carbon price through a global cap-and-trade scheme for international transport, not adequately covered by national jurisdiction."

He adds: "Governments need to agree to quantified targets [...] with a reasonable chance of achieving the EU's 2 degree target."

It seems that policymakers are in a bind: EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas reacted to the Bali summit as follows: "Now the real hard work must begin. It is essential that the agreement to be worked out over the next two years is ambitious enough to prevent global warming from reaching dangerous levels."

And more incongruently, only last week, Slovenia's UN ambassador Sanja Stiglic, speaking on behalf of the EU, whose rotating Presidency Ljubljana holds, said that "the present [food] situation highlights the urgent need to reach ambitious, global and comprehensive targets for reductions in CO2 emissions."

The massive rise in world food prices in the past two years came to a head recently, with widespread food riots in numerous countries, and many analysts point to the diversion of cropland to the subsidized biofuels industry - aimed to curb carbon emissions - as a contributory factor to the food crisis.

Global warming, therefore, is causing the food crisis, but most directly through human efforts to prevent warming. In any case, the IPCC itself concedes that for a warming of anything up to 3 percent, "globally, the potential for food production is projected to increase."

Off-Topic replies have been moved to this Topic.

from crikey:

When Greg Hunt declares that the Coalition is behind an emissions trading scheme, he’s either lying or he’s totally out of touch with his colleagues.

If the latter, today’s Australian must be humiliating for him. With Hunt having done The 7.30 Report and other media overnight and this morning stressing that not only was the Coalition supporting a trading scheme but they hadn’t even decided if transport should be in or out, The Oz  describes in gory details how Hunt’s colleagues want to significantly delay and weaken emissions trading.

It is clear that, regardless of the views of Malcolm Turnbull and Hunt, the Coalition has prepared a litany of reasons for it to back away from an emissions trading scheme. 2010 is too soon. We’ll send jobs offshore. Australia can’t solve climate change by itself. Petrol costs too much to include.

So to make life easier, Crikey is preparing a cut-out-and-keep guide to why the Coalition is hopelessly wrong. Next time you find yourself stuck at a party with a greenhouse denialist, or a Coalition MP pays a visit, or you find yourself on the bus next to Andrew Bolt, whip out this guide and have it ready for their specious arguments.

Australia’s emissions are tiny. We shouldn’t have an emissions trading scheme before other countries.

1)
So what? An emissions trading scheme is good economics regardless of whether other countries do it. Reducing carbon emissions is not some act of generosity. Carbon is inflicting damage on our environment and our economies. Currently we are not paying the cost of that damage, and therefore distorting our investment, consumption and production decisions. We apply the principle of "polluter pays" elsewhere in the economy -- why not in relation to carbon?

2)
Major trading partners like Europe and New Zealand have emissions trading schemes already.

3)
Our emissions might be small in total but we are one of the highest per-capita emitters and major exporter of carbon-intense coal.

2010 is too soon. We need to wait.

1)
Any further delay creates more uncertainty and sovereign risk for business and investors.

2)
Because of the Coalition’s flatearther-like refusal to acknowledge global warming, we’ve already waited too long. The only scientifically credible dispute over global warming now is whether we’ll be totally stuffed in thirty years or fifty years. Every time the evidence is re-considered, the scenarios get worse. We don’t have time to wait.

3)
As Michael Hitchens of the Australian Industry Greenhouse Network says, there’s no reason why the process of establishing an emissions trading scheme should take longer than the Government’s current timetable.

4)
If the economy is not in prime position to absorb the transition costs of a trading scheme now, when will it be? We have low unemployment, businesses screaming for more workers and a struggle to contain inflation. If there are economic impacts, when would be a better time?

A trading scheme will cause jobs in energy-intensive industries to "leak" jobs offshore.

1)
No it won’t. Building new facilities (e.g. an aluminium smelter) in non-trading countries requires massive investment, confidence in factors like political stability, and certainty that the destination country won’t impose a trading scheme or carbon tax for years.

2)
It leaking does occur, moving energy-intensive facilities to other countries might yield environmental benefits, given Australia’s reliance on carbon-intense coal for electricity generation.

3)
Energy-intensive industries form only a small part of the economy -- less than 5% of jobs.

4)
Given the current skills shortage, other sectors would gratefully absorb any displaced workers.

Transport should not be included -- it is better to regulate greater transport efficiency than make people pay more for fuel, because they can’t control their fuel usage.

1)
Price signals are nearly always more efficient -- and that means cheaper -- than regulation. Regulation is the command economy method of economic reform that doesn’t give consumers a choice about what they do but generates significant inefficiencies and higher costs for consumers and producers.

2)
Regulating for higher motor vehicle fuel efficiency won’t compel people to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles in the absence of incentives to do so. Fuel efficiency is much higher in countries with higher fuel costs than in the US and Australia.

3)
People can control their fuel usage if they have access to alternate means of transport. Our urban mass transit systems are already seeing significant increases in patronage. Greater investment in mass transit will provide more alternatives to car use.

4)
Omitting transport, or any other energy-intensive sector, will just mean a higher cost across all other sectors. There’s no free lunch -- if the scheme is to be effective we have to pay one way or another.
But China and India aren’t doing anything.

But China and India aren’t doing anything.

1)
We’ve benefited from 200 years of carbon production. We have a moral obligation to acknowledge this, especially when we can afford to do it.

2)
The developed world accounts for 80% of carbon emissions. Our emissions trading scheme will strengthen our hand to argue that developing countries should join us in curbing carbon emissions. But waiting for China and India to do something about emissions will mean nothing will ever be done.

New technologies like geosequestration will fix everything.

1)
This is pipedream stuff. Assuming a new technology would somehow actually address carbon emissions (and geosequestration definitely will not), by the time it is developed, proven and implemented across the world economy it’ll be 2030 and we may be facing nightmare climate change scenarios.

2)
There's a wide range of existing renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies that can be a large part of the solution, just waiting to be deployed here in Australia, as they are now being deployed in many parts of the world. But these won’t work in the absence of price signals to use them.

I can't believe what i'm reading,have you bothered to do any research on this topic at all,or do you just believe whatever is on the channel ten news.Everybody knows "man made" global warming is for the mass idiot,and even if it was true (which it ain't)this would do nothing to help.eventually you'll have to have "this" for your house and"that" for your car,look i can't even continue to finishing writing this post.Scam-Scam-Scam.

liko please stay around!

Well constructed argument Liko, "I'm right, everyone else is wrong", it is very persuasive.
Thank god for the extreme right wing, they at least know that god and oil will stop global warming.

Liko I found your claims interesting and would like to subscribe to your newsletter. Can you please elaborate a bit on this issue for us?

What a strange person....?

:-?

Yeah come on Liko, put your evidence up for scrutiny, if you are that certain of it.

I do so enjoy reading posts like that.
I remember my favourite from cracker, when fred said that even if it is true about global warming, we need to keep consuming to drive the economy, so we could not afford to stop it, and by the time the earth became uninhabitable, scientists would have developed space travel to the point where we could go live on another planet.
Unfortunately, he wasn't joking, but it was still the funniest thing I read all year.

Lol. Another strange fella... this Fred.

:o

What ever happened to Fred? Was he so loathe to leave cracker that he went down with the ship? I remember he seemed pretty hostile to this site, mainly because of my views.

I believe this was the last sighting of Fred.

---

I think that photo is far funnier without the text.

Yes, I agree, but it was just a funny pic which had the text embedded, so I could not be bothered photoshopping it out.

I agree that subtlety can often be far more effective.

Quote:

I believe this was the last sighting of Fred.

Fred is over on Debate & Relate.  His attitude hasn't changed, but his English has improved a lot.

Hi mantra, I hope you are well and happy, I miss seeing your posts, I always enjoyed hearing your perspective, which was so often compassionate, as well as thoughtful.

It is funny how here I am almost the resident redneck, because I argue with the muslim posters, but on cracker, the arguments against them would have been so extreme, that I probably would have been defending them, to a degree.

At least with johnnie off the scene, we are now seeing our government moving on the climate change issue at last.
It is pretty complex, and how far we will go is anyone's guess, but at least we are past the sceptic stage that was entrenched by the libs.

Hi Mozzaok - thank you for your kind words and yes I am as well and happy as any average person can be and hope you are too.  

You have definitely changed your stance here, but it's understandable after dealing with a couple of the provocative and racist posters on Cracker - it left anyone with a conscience with no choice but to defend the victims.

Regardless of all the cynicism in regard to the ETS - this was one of the reasons we voted Rudd in - to do something positive about climate change.   It will be good for Australia in the long term, and result in the creation of many new technologies and give us the opportunity to become world leaders in exporting these innovations.  

All I can say about Howard's departure is - hallelujah!

Been mentioned many times the difference between facts and modelling...


but...

Case of the warm and
Jennifer Marohasy | August 23, 2008

WHEN Nicholas Stern released his influential British government report on the economics of climate change in October 2006, it said that the east coast of Australia had suffered declining rainfall. In the same year, the Howard government pledged an additional $500 million to stop the trend of rising salinity in the Murray River.

Three claims have been repeated so often they are accepted as fact: global temperatures are rising, we have less rainfall and so water is becoming scarce, and salinity in the Murray River is rising.

Of course there is the old adage: lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics. But we can keep it simple and just consider data from observations of the real world and from the most reputable institution since records began for the particular issue in which we are interested. It is important to not confuse real-world data (also known as observational data) with output from computer models because computer models generate scenarios that may or may not come true.

Observational data on rainfall for the entire east coast of Australia is available from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology with yearly averages for all the sites back to 1900.

But, contrary to the Stern report, this chart does not show declining rainfall; rather, it indicates that rainfall was very low in the early 1900s, that there were some very wet years in the late '50s and early '70s, and overall the trend is one of a slight increase in rainfall during the past 107 years.

Stern got it wrong, perhaps because he was confusing output from computer models with the real-world data. There are a lot of computer models that foretell dire environmental catastrophe that may not eventuate.

Rainfall data for the Murray-Darling Basin is also available from the Bureau of Meteorology. The overall trend is one of increasing rainfall since 1900. The past few years show below-average rainfall for the region and indeed there has been drought. The low river inflows have been exacerbated by more groundwater pumping, more plantation forestry, including in the upper Murrumbidgee, and more salt interception schemes along the Murray River.

Salt interception schemes evaporate water to trap the salt. In the '80s, computer models predicted that Adelaide's drinking water soon would be too salty to drink because of declining water quality and rising salinity levels in the Murray River. Measurements of salinity are recorded from many different sites along the Murray River, including at Morgan, which is immediately upstream from the offshoots from Adelaide's drinking water. The data from Morgan enables us to get an idea of how salt levels are trending in the real world, as opposed to computer-generated scenarios.

Concerns with salinity have resulted in levels being tested from the '30s. Salinity levels rose dramatically during the '70s and peaked at Morgan in 1982, which was a drought year. Then the Murray-Darling Basin Commission implemented a catchment-wide drainage management plan and started building salt interception schemes, and since then salinity levels have more than halved.

Measuring global temperatures is much more contentious than measuring salinity or rainfall. Issues include how to combine the data from all the weather stations across the globe and the data is usually presented as a temperature anomaly rather than, for example, just a global average. A temperature anomaly is derived from the average temperature for a specific but arbitrarily defined period and usually emphasises the extent to which temperatures have increased. The Bureau of Meteorology relies on the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in conjunction with the Hadley Centre of the British Met Office for its information on global temperatures. This information is available on the internet going back as far as 1850 and shows the deviation from the period 1961 to 1990.

But when global temperatures are presented just as a simple average with a vertical axis that spans the range of temperatures experienced in a place such as Ipswich (west of Brisbane) during a single year, the global rise in average temperatures is not that obvious because the mean temperature since 1850 has increased by less than 1C.

The data from the CRU is generally accepted as accurate by those who subscribe to the idea that carbon dioxide is driving dangerous man-made global warming. In contrast, many sceptics of man-made global warming argue that the only reliable measure of global temperatures is from satellites.

Ross McKitrick from Canada's University of Guelph argues that 50 per cent of global warming measured by land-based thermometers in the US since 1980 is due to local influences of man-made structures, also known as the urban heat island effect. There also have been issues with the additions and losses of weather stations; for example, many weather stations were lost in places such as Siberia with the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

Thermometer temperature data has been collected in the polar regions only since the '40s and calculating the mean temperature at the poles is still difficult.

James Hansen, from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has explained the general difficulty of measuring surface temperatures.

etc, etc, etc  from the Australian

You gotta laugh when people try to claim there is a trend but don't produce a graph. It's like the people who claim the temperature has been going down because there was an unusually hot year ten years ago. Then he has the gall to pull out the 'lies, damn lies and statistics' line. You cannot describe 100 years of temperature measurements in a couple of words like he did. He didn't produce any statistical measures of trend, which implies that he is deliberately lying. What he did say implies a linear fit, which is totally inappropriate for a measure of rainfall trends and their response to climate change. The guy is an idiot. He is way out of his depth and doesn't even realise it. I guess he hopes the same for his readers.

In denial on yet another topic i see FD,

You see the same old names in these articles. They are put together with great craft but have little substance when you dig slightly beneath the surface.

The sole purpose is not to mislead the experts but to mislead the more gullible members of the general public. The authors generally know the truth, and that's just plain sad.

wELL THANK YOU FOR THAT FACTUAL AND INSIGHTFUL REFUTATION.

rotflmao

Grendel wrote on Sep 2^nd, 2008 at 2:34am:

wELL THANK YOU FOR THAT FACTUAL AND INSIGHTFUL REFUTATION. rotflmao

If you want me to dissect yet another Jennifer Marohasy work of fiction, then I'm happy to do that. Would you listen?

Quote:

But, contrary to the Stern report, this chart does not show declining rainfall; rather, it indicates that rainfall was very low in the early 1900s, that there were some very wet years in the late '50s and early '70s, and overall the trend is one of a slight increase in rainfall during the past 107 years.

This seems a very vague and broad comment, trying to elicit a similiarly broad assumption.
As we see the East Coast of Australia, ranging through, Tropical, Sub-Tropical, and Temperate zones, it would seem unscientific to use this huge area as a single determinant in regard to rainfall patterns.

Do the models not predict different rainfall outcomes for different climates?

As Muso sems to have the most scientific knowledge in this area I was wondering if he has any thoughts on this?

I do accept the GW theory, but I admit to the fact that I am not able to objectively judge one set of scientifically presented contentions, as being more valid than another, hence my reliance on getting better analysis from those who understand it better.

mozzaok wrote on Sep 2^nd, 2008 at 9:45am:

Do the models not predict different rainfall outcomes for different climates?

They do. The wet climates will generally get wetter and the dry will get drier. the IPCC AR4 Technical Paper VI on Climate Change and Water  - Chapter 5, pages 90 and 91 is a good place to start.

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/technical-papers/ccw/chapter5.pdf

There is a tendency for decreased annual rain in most of southern and sub-tropical Australia, increase in Tasmania, Central Northern Territory, northern NSW. Increases in extreme daily rainfall. Increased frequency of severe tropical cyclones.

That's it in a nutshell.

Thanks muso, like you said previously, much of the denialist argument seems to rely on attempts to muddy the water, and even as a layman, when I see broad statements like the one I quoted, they just stand out as being designed to deliberately portray facts in such a way as to add to the confusion.

As you seem pretty up with the science, I saw just a little of the sixty minutes show which had some aussie scientist who said that because we have no sign of hot spots over the equator, which all the models predict, then the basic assumptions are all based on the wrong criteria.
Sorry it is such a vague description, but I only caught a few minutes whist doing other stuff, but do you know what he may have been referring to, and is his contention that without evidence of these hotspots, all the other science must be flawed?

My understanding of the current theory is that the biggest impact will be closer to the poles. The tropics will change the least. It sounds like a strawman.

freediver wrote on Sep 2^nd, 2008 at 11:22am:

My understanding of the current theory is that the biggest impact will be closer to the poles. The tropics will change the least. It sounds like a strawman.

My understanding of climate change is that the rising sea temps will kill the plankton which is THE source of oxygen on earth. Without a reliable source of oxygen, which has always been the role of the seas, our planet will become mars-like.

Prior to Earth Death, the tropics will change with equatorial bulge, bulging just that bit more, covering any low lying islands. With the change and/ or ceasing of the tradewinds, wild weather will constantly destroy what strives to survive there as cool winds interact more readily than now, with the warm winds of the equator.

mozzaok wrote on Sep 2^nd, 2008 at 11:18am:

As you seem pretty up with the science, I saw just a little of the sixty minutes show which had some aussie scientist who said that because we have no sign of hot spots over the equator, which all the models predict, then the basic assumptions are all based on the wrong criteria. Sorry it is such a vague description, but I only caught a few minutes whist doing other stuff, but do you know what he may have been referring to, and is his contention that without evidence of these hotspots, all the other science must be flawed?

Yes, there was a paper published earlier this year that found that increased kinetic energy from winds accounted for some of this  thermal energy. I'll see if I can find it tomorrow if I get time.

There is a summary of the subject of Tropical tropospheric temperature trends over at Real Climate> I think that's what you were talking about:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/12/tropical-troposphere-trends/

"The basis of the issue is that models produce an enhanced warming in the tropical troposphere when there is warming at the surface. This is true enough. Whether the warming is from greenhouse gases, El Nino’s, or solar forcing, trends aloft are enhanced. For instance, the GISS model equilibrium runs with 2xCO2 or a 2% increase in solar forcing both show a maximum around 20N to 20S around 300mb (10 km):

The first thing to note about the two pictures is how similar they are. They both have the same enhancement in the tropics and similar amplification in the Arctic. They differ most clearly in the stratosphere (the part above 100mb) where CO2 causes cooling while solar causes warming. It’s important to note however, that these are long-term equilibrium results and therefore don’t tell you anything about the signal-to-noise ratio for any particular time period or with any particular forcings.

If the pictures are very similar despite the different forcings that implies that the pattern really has nothing to do with greenhouse gas changes, but is a more fundamental response to warming (however caused). Indeed, there is a clear physical reason why this is the case - the increase in water vapour as surface air temperature rises causes a change in the moist-adiabatic lapse rate (the decrease of temperature with height) such that the surface to mid-tropospheric gradient decreases with increasing temperature (i.e. it warms faster aloft). This is something seen in many observations and over many timescales, and is not something to climate models."

I just Googled the Sixty Minutes segment - That was Dave Evans our favourite rocket scientist. He's always loads of fun.

The gospel according to Dave (we are not worthy) is that Tropical Hotspots are a characteristic signature of the enhanced Greenhouse effect , and that their absence is proof that there is no Enhanced Greenhouse effect.  

No Dave - the hotspot is not an exclusive signature of the greenhouse effect - it is a signature of warming from any source, and

er - the hotspot is not actually missing.

Dave - That's an F. Don't give up the day job..... You know Consulting.... Ok Dave, but we won't actually tell anyone that consultant translates to "unemployed". It will be our secret.