ohn Maynard Keynes, accused of having
made an about-turn on monetary
policy during the Great Depression,
rather sensibly replied: ‘When the facts
change, I change my mind. What do you
do, sir?’
Four fundamental facts about global
warming have changed during the past
decade (as detailed below). But unfortunately,
far too few decision-makers and
the public are aware of the changes.
What do I know about global warming?
As a mathematician, I spent six years building
carbon-accounting models for the
���������������������� ���������������������� ��������e, including
the fairly complicated one that measures
Australia’s compliance with the Kyoto Protocol
in ‘land-use change and forestry’.
When I started the job in 1999, the evidence
that carbon emissions caused
global warming looked pretty reasonable.
Not conclusive, admittedly, but the rami-
��������������������������������������������������������������������������������

could surely worry about that later.
The threat of global warming has been a
boon for many scientists and bureaucrats,
with enviably big research budgets, the
creation of lots of jobs, media attention,
power and status. On top of all that, helping
to save the planet feels pretty good!
But from 2003, evidence began to
emerge that seriously weakened the theory
that carbon emissions were the main
cause of global warming (which had, in
any case, stopped by 2001, as detailed
below). And by 2007 the evidence was
pretty conclusive: at best, carbon emissions
play a minor role.
Despite this, public policy and populist
sentiment haven’t changed since the late
1990s. For example, the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a
United Nations body established to assess
climate-change information, has resisted
even acknowledging the new evidence.
���������������� �������� ������������ ������ ������������ ���� ��������������������
organisation, the IPCC is comprised mainl

MARTIN Royds calls himself a carbon farmer. Twenty years ago the Braidwood cattle producer decided to develop regenerative farming practices, and in 2007 he was voted local carbon cocky of the year.

He says his winning carbon management practices include having 100 per cent groundcover all the time, using controlled grazing to ensure his pastures are never eaten down to the roots, growing trees on his land, and using biological products rather than synthetic fertilisers.

"You can see the difference," Mr Royds said.

Drought has hit his region of southern NSW and he has had to sell cattle.

"I have a lot of dry grass, where my neighbours have chewed down fairly close to the boards," he said. "I have less weeds and there are a lot of trees across the land."

After it rained, his native grass took off. "I went and hired a harvester and made a fortune harvesting native seed," he said.

Mr Royds said his soil carbon was increasing. He estimated it had grown from 1.5 per cent to 2 per cent, and he was aiming to reach 5 per cent. He would like to begin carbon trading.

"My goal is to get paid for building soil carbon," he said. "If we start doing that we fix all the problems. You fix the erosion problems, salinity problems."The Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists estimates Australia could store an additional 1000 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent each year in soil and plants.
"If Australia were to capture just 15 per cent of this capacity, it would offset the equivalent of 25 per cent of Australia's current annual greenhouse emissions for the next 40 years," the group says.

The Co-operative Research Centre for greenhouse gas technologies has been working on geosequestration -- the capture and storage of carbon dioxide from coal production. CRC chief Peter Cook said: "We are doing it on a small scale in Australia.

"We have injected 60,000 tonnes of CO2 over the last 18 months in the Otway Basin. It is staying down there. The technology does work."

Now that approach was needed on a "very much larger scale".

As long as people used fossil fuels "we have no alternative other than to put the CO2 in the ground", Mr Cook said.

AL Gore faced up to inconvenient truth of his own yesterday when it was revealed the former US Vice-President misquoted an eminent climate scientist's work to suggest that the Arctic could be completely ice-free in five years.

Mr Gore stated: "These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years."

But the climatologist whose work Mr Gore was citing has rubbished these claims, a report in The Times says.

"It's unclear to me how this figure was arrived at," Dr Maslowski said. "I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this."

Mr Gore's office later admitted that the 75 per cent figure was an estimate Dr Maslowksi used several years ago in conversation with Mr Gore.


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This is the second embarrassing gaffe for Mr Gore in recent weeks. On December 4 Mr Gore was forced to cancel a 'golden handshake' speaking engagement at the conference in Copenhagen. Attendees were encouraged to part with $US1200 to meet the climate change spearhead and have their photograph taken with him.

Mr Gore's latest error came as hacked e-mails from a British University appeared to suggest that scientists had manipulated data to bolster their argument that humans were responsible for global warming.......