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Scott Bridges 15/12/08 2:10PM

5%: margin of error territory.

pyrmontvillage 15/12/08 2:23PM

Incensed would be putting matters lightly.

Betrayed is an excellent word!

Oh Kevin, We are going to make you pay at the next Election.

We voted for you because we thought, you would give us a Green Energy Revolution, Instead you reward big Polluters, by giving them our hard earned Tax dollars.

jomccubbin 15/12/08 2:24PM

Early this morning, Peter Anderson from the Industry side of the equation told our local radio that he was going off to the lock up for industry stakeholders……I think it was a freudian slip, and I’m glad to hear they did let in a few NGO’s…but it did highlight the cockiness of the polluters who know they have the Government eating out of their hand!

sunili 15/12/08 2:28PM

le sigh.

eet 15/12/08 2:31PM

This is an unbalanced juvenile piece riddled with prejudices (‘lobbyists in suits’) and stereotypes which does not enhance NM’s reputation. I would have rather read a factually based piece devoid of emotions. The reality is that if the rest of the world does not reduce emissions, any effort made here would be futile and costly. That important premise is not addressed.

The words ‘catastrophic’ ‘too late’ and other apocalyptic references are not backed up by evidence, and where there is evidence it is not exactly conclusive.

The environmental movement will continue to see its credibility eroded if fundamentalism and profound fanaticism are seen to be its two main drivers. I agree with their objectives but I believe that their strategy is undermined by all this.

pyrmontvillage 15/12/08 2:36PM

eet, I think that you are in the wrong place, Daily Telegraph, where the rest of your Big Polluter mates and their various PR flack peddlers hang out is over there some where in the ether..

Bye Bye…

peterdconroy 15/12/08 2:37PM

This article is emotional clap trap. To state that Australia has missed a chance to "avert catastrophic climate change" is scientific nonsense. With our tiny total contribution to world CO2 levels (less than 2%), at best we would be a sacrificial offering to the new god ‘Gaia’.

thehays 15/12/08 2:41PM

"the rest of the world is committing to carbon cuts of between 20 and 40 per cent"

Are they? Last I heard nobody anywhere had done this. Which is why everyone was looking for Kev to ‘Lead the way’ and be a ‘pioneer,’ by setting targets before the rest of the world.

Can someone provide the countries which have commited in writing to this 20-40 percent target please? I’m curious to know.

tonykevin 15/12/08 2:46PM

Anna, as a 66 year old, I apologize for my generation’s betrayal today of your generation’s legitimate hopes that the Rudd government would finally do the right thing. Your analysis, including of where the moral accountability falls, is 100% right. Today was Greenwash, engineered by Australia’s power elites. It is a tragic event in government policymaking failure, for Australia and the world. But what can I say to you and your contemporaries but this: please keep fighting. Don’t give up, you have the right to go on claiming a decent future, as vigorously and forcefully as you choose.

pyrmontvillage 15/12/08 2:46PM

I don’t give Two Shaits about the rest of the world,

what I DO GIVE a F’@#@ About is

The Very Fact that, my hard earned Tax Dollars is going to go straight to the bottom line of Big Corporations!!!

I would much prefer 4 Billion Dollars go to incentives for NEW Business in the Green Energy Sector!!

Ringo 15/12/08 2:56PM

It’s fascinating that at the end of 2008 lobbyists for the environment have to keep arguing the existence of man-made global warming ie "EET: where there is evidence it is not exactly conclusive", whilst at the same time, industry get free permits and compensation such as $4 billion for the not-very-clean coal industry.

The tired ‘we’re only a small nation/let’s wait till the big polluters’ do something argument is pathetic.

We’ll be bailing out these corporations in 2020 anyway, why not invest the money now in incentives for renewables?

gordonc 15/12/08 3:03PM

Yeah, funny how Kevin 07 announces this while at the pinnacle of his popularity because he is tipping billions of dollars out of a Jumbo jet, which happens to also buy that popularity, amongst the millions of Australians that can be bought.

KJR 15/12/08 3:10PM

eet

How much "proof" do you need? All the evidence points to catastrophe and that should be enough to make us act "conservatively". I don’t WANT to believe what the "climate change fundamentalist" are predicting but much of what I have read on the subject for the last 25 years seems to indicate I should. I would rather try to prevent such outcomes at the expense of our standard of living which would be infinetly worse if the predictions become a dire reality than cross my fingers.

m.diesendorf@unsw.edu.au 15/12/08 3:14PM

Mark

Anna,
Thank you for you powerful article. The facts are clear and so you are right to focus on the betrayal. May I add an additional point:

The introduction of per capita emission reductions masterpiece in obfuscation . The Government adopted this fallacious approach from the Garnaut Climate Change Review, final report. It is ‘justified’ there on the assumption that the world’s nations will follow a process of ‘Contract and Converge’ over the next several decades until each country has the same per capita emissions. The fallacy arises because the genuine proposal for Contract and Converge chooses a baseline population level at the beginning of the process and calculates per capita emissions on that basis. This is essential to avoid giving countries a perverse incentive to increase their populations and hence their greenhouse gas emission allocations. If Australia can do it, so can India, Brazil and China.

Australia, with the highest per capita emissions in the industrialized world, should be making the greatest effort to stabilize its population. Every additional Australian has a greater greenhouse impact than an additional person in almost any other country. We should ignore the lobbying of vested interests, such as the housing/property industry, and greatly reduce the huge quota for business and professional immigration. We could still increase the refugee component which is only 10% of total immigration.

deej 15/12/08 3:14PM

It is interesting to read a personal approach to the White Paper, but I would have loved to read something less self-indulgent, that spent more time/energy dissecting the White Paper and making clear arguments against the plan proposed - maybe that is coming in the days to follow. But i can really identify with Anna Rose’s anger on the issue. It’s hard to stay hopeful.

00bweis 15/12/08 3:16PM

A greater betrayal could not have been imagined. As a Rudd supporter and I now fear apologist this news is a disaster. I was listening to it live and the rhetoric in the beginning sounded good. When we got to 5% and a free pass for the major polluters the goodness left me and the more I listened the worse it got.

Fancy challenging Turnbull with this weak attempt!

The Libs will do what they have been doing all year. Scoff at the timidity in the Reps and block it in the Senate.

Australians will act and how.

Greens are looking like the only choice now

mwsmith 15/12/08 3:18PM

To eet: this may be "an unbalanced juvenile piece riddled with prejudices (‘lobbyists in suits’) and stereotypes" but it beautifully portrays the passions of a young generation feeling totally betrayed by years of Howard government inactivity on this issue and, now, by the Rudd government. I don’t know how old you are, but the odds are that you’ll be too old to care when the catastrophe - if indeed there is one - hits. But Ms Rose’s generation will bear the brunt of it.

You write: "The reality is that if the rest of the world does not reduce emissions, any effort made here would be futile and costly." Someone has to make a start. It might as well be us. Fancy: Australia leading the way!

More: "The words ‘catastrophic’ ‘too late’ and other apocalyptic references are not backed up by evidence, and where there is evidence it is not exactly conclusive." You expect conclusive evidence in an article like this?? It might be that the evidence is not entirely conclusive, but it’s certainly alarming. What if the situation is as bad as many scientists believe it to be? What if it’s worse? Do we just quietly go under, doing nothing? Or do we do everything possible now to avert disaster, developing profitable green industries along the way?

johntons 15/12/08 3:20PM

The article is certainly emotive - and this failure is something about which we must be emotive.
Perfectly true that whatever we do wont alter the reality of climate change. However, what the business as usual lobby misses is that by taking action we are preparing our nation for the post carbon economy.
If the government was reluctant to be tough on business it had a ready made option: demand that business implement a 25% carbon efficiency programme - good for business in that it makes them more efficient, good for the environment for it reduces our carbon footprint. Instead the government has chosen to take the unimaginative option.

Maryj 15/12/08 3:23PM

For god’s sake, Rudd has not betrayed anyone you silly little girl. Tell us what the whingers here do to cut their own emissions? Come on all of you. Do you leave the car in the garage and walk, turn off the lights and appliances, use gas or solar?

It has taken 250 years of pollution for this mess and decades for the science to be proven.

We cannot change this yesterday or tomorrow and your ignorance and shortsighted bullshit drives me nuts. Sure we oldies have stuffed up the planet. Yada, yada, yada. Whine, whine, whine.

Well listen up kids. My own emissions are listed on my power bills and they come in at 2 tonnes per annum so no dirty coal fired power station is getting rich from me.

You can do your own thing surely without waiting for the guv’mint to hold your hands and do it for you. Don’t like dirty aluminium producers? Boycott their products until they change their ways.

Don’t like dirty coal power, use heaps less and deprive them of profits and clean the atmosphere at the same time.

It’s all very well to expect huge cuts but how many of the spoilt brats in gen X or Y want to change down their life styles. I grew up using a 12 volt generator for power and managed to survive children.

You are all back to front, lazy and too ignorant to do the job yourselves.

So much easier to whine isn’t it. No government can cut emissions. Full stop. Governments are not by their nature huge polluters.

It is up to the populations of each country to do the job.

You are all arse about in the arguments.

bywongbooth 15/12/08 3:24PM

For the Hays above….I heard on the news today that the EU has a target of 20% by 2020. But this is a minimum presumably also to be achieved by such recalcitrants as Poland. Already the UK is discussing 34% to 42% by 2020 (see link). http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/01/climatechange-carbonem…
Australia is a laughing stock already with our 8% above 1990 levels to be achieved by 2012 (and this was set after some very dubious logic about tree clearing).
Mr Rudd stood and received the acclaim at Bali. After such high expectations, now he must be seen as yet another footdragger and would probably be booed by delegates if he had shown his face with a 5% at Poznan. With the lowest target of the developed countries Australia has triumphed in negotiating away Climate Change. John Howard would be very envious at Rudd’s copout. It leaves the Coalition with nowhere to go and our only hope to regain national pride is to massively vote for the Greens.
For the Hays, I recently had visitors from Sweden and they have more than 40% of power generated by renewables, Yet we struggle to even nominate 20% renewables by 2020 having deferred the decision to June next year. The ETS will achieve too little too late and provide massive subsides and windfall profits to the highest polluters.A better approach would be to increase this target to 50% renewables by 2020 and start to fund the transition to a sustainable future by imposing a carbon tax to fund the changes needed.
Mr Rudd can not deliver this change without any pain to our nation, and the later he waits the more pain we will experience and the further we will fall behind in the the global move to sustainability.

Ringo 15/12/08 3:32PM

I think old Maryj has been smoking the maryj.

Mitchell 15/12/08 3:34PM

An initial glance at the White Paper (Chapter 4 page 11, comments on CPRS -5 scenario) suggests that the unconditional commitment from Australia corresponds to a global target of 550 ppm CO2. Meanwhile, the White Paper Summary on the Department of Climate Change’s website says a global target of 450 ppm or lower would be in Australia’s interests. And at the UN conference just concluded in Poznan, the island states and other countries most immediately threatened called for a target of 350 ppm.

The preindustrial level was about 280 ppm; these targets of 350, 450, and 550 ppm correspond very roughly to temperature increases of 1, 2 and 3 degrees respectively.

So the situation appears to be, that we have now placed ourselves in the 550 bloc, we are willing to join a 450 bloc if the global majority goes there, and meanwhile there is a 350 bloc consisting of places like Bangladesh and Tuvalu.

Now I wonder if this 550/450/350 rating system can be applied *within* a national economy? It offers a way forward even if the national government has decided only to enforce a 550-compliant ceiling on emissions. During the Bush years, even though the American federal government established no emissions targets, regional cap-and-trade systems were created, which will now be folded into the federal system. In the same way, individuals, organizations, municipalities and states could aim to get onto a lower track, in anticipation of a time when the country as a whole moves to a more ambitious target.

For people who really want to see what this looks like in detail, I suggest looking for a copy of the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook for 2008, which describes a 550 global Policy Scenario and a 450 Policy Scenario. I hope to see similar 350 policy scenarios constructed in the near future, now that this more stringent target has a geopolitical constituency.

I also think the way forward has to involve making clean energy intrinsically cheaper, and not just making dirty energy artificially expensive. In this regard the fact that Kevin Rudd, over the weekend, said we have to have a renewable energy revolution is encouraging. My next act will be to call up Queensland’s new Office of Clean Energy and find out more about what it does. Maybe I can get a job there!

Jonah Bones 15/12/08 3:42PM

Yep pyrmontvillage the handing of billions to failed big corporates is sickening . We are making inroads into renewables and the government’s ignorance of these pioneering efforts is pathetic.
We need direction in leadership.
Give a billion to geodynamics and we will have baseload power from hot fractured rock geothermal. (the pilot plant to power Innamincka is only months a way)
Give a billion to Solar Systems will give Victoria baseload from concentrated photovoltaic.
http://www.truenergy.com.au/About/News/News.xhtml?newsitem=197
It is Rudd’s ignorance of the efforts being made that is appalling.
Thousands of people are spending millions on grid connect systems for their homes , even though they are not big polluters . It is a major statement of what people want. Unfortunately these systems are not environmentally or economically efficient .However if the goodwill was harnessed to build more generators like those at Bridgewater , then the charge to a renewable Australia would be rapid.

mwsmith 15/12/08 3:45PM

To Maryj: You write: "For god’s sake, Rudd has not betrayed anyone you silly little girl." He has, you silly old woman. After nearly 12 years of Howard’s refusal to deal with global warming, the electorate chose a team it thought could get down to business and do whatever possible - even if it meant a fall in our living standards - to avert disaster. Millions of Australians, including the "spoilt brats in gen X or Y", want to do something. But it’s unrealistic to expect millions of Australians to research the situation and take individual action. They need guidance. They need a government that will lead. That’s what they voted for.

More: "Sure we oldies have stuffed up the planet" - you oldies should get on with cleaning it up, then, and not simply attack those who know that boycotting aluminium producers, for example, would be too little too late. Who’s going "Yada, yada, yada. Whine, whine, whine" here? Self-satisfied prig.

Maryj 15/12/08 3:48PM

I do not smoke Marijuana. Read what I wrote you fools. Tell me what you have done in the last 10 years to stop polluting the atmosphere.

Have you stopped driving everywhere, got a smaller and cleaner car, used public transport, used low power appliances.

Or is it gung ho on the big screen TV’s, gas guzzling cars and carboard and sticky tape houses that need to be continually air conditioned.

When power is switched to solar and wind, geo thermal and so on the pollution levels will drop massively and we will all be better off.

I stand firm. Your hysterical arguments are arse about.

Do it yourselves instead of whining about guv’mint. Trouble is that you are spoilt brats. I know, I have a gen x daughter who is slowly changing her ways and a couple of gen Y grand daughters trying to do their bit based on my model.

It takes 21 million people to slow the emissions and pollution of a nation, not the guv’mint.

It that clear people? Anna I have no doubt you mean what you say, it’s just that you are a silly girl.

angelaflorida1 15/12/08 3:53PM

Hi Anna, this is dreadful, your article excellent, emotion is certainly warranted. I’m 67 and am just as emotional. I’m reading Climate Code Red, recommended to anyone still doubting the figures. We’ll all need to read it just to become numerate, the detail of the science seems confusing but the overall picture is grim.
I am expecting the Greenland ice sheet to slip off any day - it seems none of the weather disasters everywhere make an impact on those not directly affected.
Enjoy the blue sky before it turns red or green.
Thanks for your effort

Tom Harris 15/12/08 4:06PM

Here are some of the misrepresentations, or downright errors, in Ms. Rose’s article:

She says: "The Rudd Government has just blown Australia’s chance — the small window of opportunity we had — to avert catastrophic climate change."

Correction: Australia has no chance of significantly affecting global climate.

Rose: "So while the rest of the world is committing to carbon cuts of between 20 and 40 per cent, Australia is lagging behind at just 5 per cent."

Clarification: Yes, the rest of the world are promising things most have no intention, or ability, to keep. I would say Rudd is being more gutsy than most by shooting for targets that just might be met (although, of course, I hope they are not since, while they will undoubtedly be costly, they will accomplish nothing in the real world)

Rose: "… that is what they are basing the carbon price ($25 per tonne) and revenue estimates on."

Correction: It is not "carbon" they are talking about - carbon is an element which appears in nature as graphite, diamonds and soot (and some exotic ‘alotropes’). It is one particular compound of carbon they are speaking about - carbon dioxide - an invisible, odourless substance that is an essential reactant in plant photosynthesis, without which there would be no life. That human releases of this gas is hypothesized by some scientists to contribute to climate change, but we are still a long way from knowing this with any reasonable degree of certainty.

Rose: "significant emission reductions need to be made in the next four to 10 years to avoid dangerous climate "tipping points" that could see climate change spiral out of control."

Correction: This sounds like an episode of Star Trek I remember. Both are science fiction, of course. "climate change spiral out of control" is hilarious - when was climate change ever in our "control"?

Rose: "carbon pollution"

Question: What is that - carbon monoxide? That is a compound of carbon that is pollution. So are PCB’s (C12H10-xClx). You can’t be speaking about carbon dioxide, of course, since that is not a pollutant, as explained above.

Rose: "polluting" this, "polluting" that

Clarification: This is nonsense talk unless you are talking about pollution, when I gather yo mean to be speaking about CO2 - right?

Rose: "Earth isn’t dying, it is being deliberately destroyed."

Oh, by whom? Could you explain who is "deliberately destroying it"? By putting more photosynthetic gas into it? Come on.

Rose: "I put so much of my life into this process — submissions, consultations, campaigning, media and trying to explain what it meant to thousands of young people."

Hmm, I note you did not put learning basic climate science in your list of activities - I suggest that would be a good next step. ;>)

I think it is about time more people started to question the science that supposedly backs the drive to reduce humanity’s carbon dioxide emissions at all.

Working with climate scientists the world over for the past decade, my perception is that the opinions of scientists on the issue is somewhat like a skewed bell curve, with very few scientists at either extreme (namely saying we definitely are, or definitely are not, causing significant global climate change). The vast majority in my experience simply say "I don’t know, although it seems unlikely to be a serious problem that we will be unable to adapt to."

The science of global climate change is still in its infancy, with many thousands of papers published every year. In a 2003 poll conducted by environmental researchers Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch of the Institute for Coastal Research in Germany, two-thirds of more than 530 climate scientists from 27 countries surveyed did not believe that "the current state of scientific knowledge is developed well enough to allow for a reasonable assessment of the effects of greenhouse gases." About half of those polled stated that the science of climate change was not sufficiently settled to pass the issue over to policymakers.

It’s time to take a step back and re-examine that which we are told is ‘settled’ by untrained media, activists, politicians and corporations out to make massive financial profit by trading in ‘hot air’.

Tom Harris
Executive Director
International Climate Science Coalition
Ottawa, Canada
www.climatescienceinternational.org

Tom Harris 15/12/08 4:12PM

BTW, Ms. Rose,

If you are in a lock-up, how are you legally able to tell us what you are hearing on the inside? Or did you wait until the lock-up was over before publicizing this?

Tom Harris

BPobjie 15/12/08 4:14PM

It’s OK, you can all stop arguing. I was just reading a piece by a climatologist called Andrew Bolt, and apparently climate change isn’t actually happening.

Relieved or WHAT?

Tom Harris 15/12/08 4:18PM

Could you show us where Mr. Bolt said "climate change isn’t actually happening", please? Or did he just say that we are probably not causing very much of it? There is a big difference, you know. Climate change has occurred for billions of years and, as far as I know, no one is suggesting it has stopped.

Tom Harris
Executive Director
International Climate Science Coalition
Ottawa, Canada
www.climatescienceinternational.org

Ringo 15/12/08 4:18PM

Haha, I thought Bolt was a statistician? I feel better already.

DaS Energy 15/12/08 4:29PM

Peter Mckinlay

New slogan for 2011. Kev for Coal.

Coal fired power generation, uses coal to heat steam to 550 degrees Celsius, this provides 175 bar of steam vapour thrust to the turbine.

Tarong power station in Queensland burns 450 tonne of coal per hour for 350 Megawatts of power. Cooling the steam back to liquid requires a temperature drop of 450 degrees Celsius.(550c to 100c

Known alternative to steam is fully recycling Co2, it requires 80 degrees Celsius to provide 9,000 bar of vapour thrust to the turbine. Cooling the Co2 vapour back to liquid requires a temperature drop of 39 degrees celsius. (80c to 31c)

In laymens terms 450 tonne of coal burnt per hour to create 350 Megawatts of power or using the alternate 450 tonne per hour of coal burnt produces 18,000 Megawatts.

Calculous> 175 bar produces 350 megawatts. 9,000 bar divided by 175 bar = 51.428- multiply by 350 megawatts = 18,000 Megawatts.

This of course means a lot less coal needs be burnt, and Government revenue on coal tax returns would be diminished.

The only changes needed to existing power stations is modification of their cooling towers.

Which at a Carbon tax of $20.00 per per tonne, and 450 tonne per hour is an annual cost increase of $78,840,000.00 which possibly is more than the cost of modifying the cooling towers.

But hey maybe so many University Professors dont know what they are talking about. And the fact sheets for Tarong power station are completely wrong.

As for the technology its waiting in wings and Kevs thanks but no thanks for free use of the technology in Australia are fraudulent letters written by some other able to copy Government letterhead.

More than happy to attend any public forum and put the evidence on the table, but I dont think Kev will be calling one of them, so maybe someone else will.

ecoeng 15/12/08 4:40PM

These dumbass Gen Y soft study Arts/Law types make me wanna puke.

New Matilda and its readership is riddled with them. The whole friggin’ Western world is riddled with them, their post-modernist BS and their hypocrisy riddled NGOs.

They wouldn’t know a heat flux, a radiative/convective continuity equation, a lapse rate, an albedo or a shortwave opacity if it jumped up and bit them on the arse.

The Indian and Chinese scientific establishments don’t buy it, the best and brightest in the German and US universities no longer buy it and the crafty old Russian Academy of Science dudes who advise Putin and Medvedev are snickering into their vodkas over it.

Al Gore may still get a rousing reception in Poznan, but most everyone there is looking at everyone else knowing the reality is a sham, and that the emperor has no clothes.

Catastrophic climate change? Phooey!

jmm 15/12/08 4:50PM

Oh good, Tom Harris is back! He’s the EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR of the INTERNATIONAL CLIMATE SCIENCE COALITION!

They’re an institution with a staff of less than five — none of whom are climate scientists, unless you count hydrology — and an advisory board composed almost exclusively of the usual deniers, almost all of whom are profiled on http://www.desmogblog.com and aren’t remotely qualified to comment on climate change.

Re: Storch and Bray (often quoted by less-gifted climate-change misinformation peddlers): see their own rebuttal of attempts to misrepresent their data (and comments that further cast doubt on the results anyway):

http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/2007/08/climate_scientists_views…

martyns 15/12/08 4:50PM

The smugness of Tom Harris and his side of this debate comes through loud and clear. What a pity they are talking through a hole in their collective rear ends. Leaving aside their nit-picking the facts are that most thinking people know that the weather patterns have changed greatly in the last fifty years. I know it because I’ve been alive for over sixty of those years, many of them working on the world’s oceans. When you see the news broadcasts of the storms and other severe weather on the lives of people it is clear that weather changes impact greatly on us. Also these storms are more severe and more frequent.
Logic dictates that if we can do something to halt and even reverse this we should do so. Just supposing that Harris and his pals are correct, it would be prudent to take out some insurance by minimising our impact on the planet. To cheer Harris up, none of his sponsors will go broke over this, there is money to be made by going "green". It just takes a bit of effort and no one promised you lot a ‘rose garden’ so no apologies offered. As far as Australia is concerned it is true that we are a very minor player in all this. In this country we only get worked up over sport, and traditionally vote through our hip pockets. Our politicians reflect this in their policies and its no good getting angry with Rudd. He’s an Australian politician reflecting our wishes.

pertina1 15/12/08 5:03PM

I have no problem with New Matilda running opinion pieces. I would however have thought that an issue as important as this warranted rather more serious and objective analysis than that provided by this writer. Congratulations NM, I’m now considerably less annoyed with the govt’s. climate change policy than I was before reading this!

ecoeng 15/12/08 5:05PM

Nothing like throwing a whole bunch of ad hominems if you don’t actually what the f**k you are talking about.

rachelc102 15/12/08 5:12PM

C’mon ecoeng, stop being so self-righteous. Tell everyone how you work for the mining industry and things will be much clearer then.

marnic 15/12/08 5:14PM

Jeez, pertina1, give us a minute!

More analysis can now be found here:
http://newmatilda.com/2008/12/15/labor-sells-australia-out-business-lobb…

and here:
http://newmatilda.com/2008/12/15/good-luck-getting-through-senate Marni

Dr David Horton 15/12/08 5:25PM

Great article Anna. As Thomas Paine said:

‘When my country … was set on fire about my ears, it was time to stir. It was time for every man to stir’ and Rudd has insured that the country will be set on fire about our ears, and helped insure the planet will be too.

And yet again, the denialist collaborationists manage to arrive at a post almost before it is written. If you are still skulking out in the shadows Mr Harris, try taking me on (http://www.blognow.com.au/mrpickwick/Climate_change/) and all the rest of those who until now thought that people of goodwill would eventually act, even if it was perilously close to the eleventh hour. Mr Rudd has shown that he is no more a man of goodwill than Mr Howard or the denialist claque that so strongly influences them both. Both of them a bit like Benedict Arnold, don’t you think, Mr Harris?

ecoeng 15/12/08 5:28PM

Readers might like to check out:

http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/letters/index.php/theaustralian/c…

Emeritus Professor Garth Paltridge (UOW), then a senior CSIRO researcher, published in 1974 one of the very earliest papers on what is the burgeoning technical field of Maximum Entropy Production (MEP).

MEP, which now generates an enormous literature every year, is currently resulting in a thorough review of the science of Earth’s climate and of Global Circulation Models (GCMs).

It is already clear this spells the death knell for a high temperature sensitivity to a CO2 doubling.

For example: Kleidon et al. (2006) Maximum entropy production and the strength of boundary layer exchange in an atmospheric general circulation model. GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 33, L06706, doi:10.1029/2005GL025373, 2006 show that the climate sensitivity to a 10 x increase in atmospheric CO2 is about 3.3 degrees C (K). Noting the usual log-linear relationship this is equivalent to a climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 of only about 1.0 K.

In this setup, entropy was produced by radiative transfer (absorption of solar and terrestrial radiation at the surface and in the atmosphere), the turbulent transport of sensible heat in the vertical, and horizontal heat transport by large-scale atmospheric circulation. Due to the exclusion of the water cycle, entropy production associated with the hydrologic cycle [Paulius and Held, 2002a, 2002b] was not considered.

This means the sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 is very likely to be even significantly less than 1 deg. C!

Need one spell out what this implies for even the lower limit to CO2 sensitivity vis-a-vis IPCC AR4 2007?

As CO2 goes up and tends to increase troposphere temperature, MEP requires that meridional, latitudinal and convective movement must increase. This in turn increases cloudiness (both convective and orographic) and hence rainfall thereby increasing the net amount by which clouds reduce the radiative heating of the planet i.e. presently the -13 - -21 W/m^2 which acts against the ~4 W/m^2 predicted for a doubling of CO2.

Increased CO2 also increases continental plant biomass (already observed) and oceanic cyanobacterial primary productivity (I posted a proof of that from NOAA’s own data on Jennifer Marohasy’s blog earlier this year) simply due to CO2 fertilization which increases biogenic aerosol production rate which increases both cloud nucleation rate and cloud opacity/albedo.

This is the as-yet almost completely forgotten biotic sibling of abiotic MEP.

So, the most up-to-date scientific view is that due both abiotic and biotic MEP we will get a cloudier, rainier planet rather than a hotter one.

CO2 may go where it will but I suspect it will eventually slow to a crawl. The same thing will happen to any oceanic pH decline as increased raininess increase continental weathering rates which increases the export of total alkalinity, iron and silicon into the ocean (which both neutralizes CO2-induced acidity and fertilizes CO2-absorbing primary productivity and so on).

Given:

*the lack of the IPCC-predicted stratospheric heating;

*the observed reduction in tropical-polar temperature gradients (grossly underestimated by GCMs);

*the known 30 year trends in continental potential evaporation (down), cloudiness, rainfall (both up), oceanic wind speeds (up) etc; and

*the confounding surface temperature record just before and since the 1998 El Nino (up then down),

I think we can reasonably expect to see the body of top level academic climate researchers in the next few years promulgating a more moderated view of global climate CO2 sensitivity and a more optimistic view on climate homeostasis and so-called ocean acidification.

It is already happening at various reputable overseas universities (e.g. MIT, several Max Planck Institutes, Uni. Hamburg) and is even now creeping into e.g. ANU.

Rachelc102:

Note the above required none of your nasty (and juvenile) ad hominems, just (cold) hard science.

Rockjaw 15/12/08 5:42PM

Who gives a tinker’s curse for all the rhetoric, just please stop destroying the reef which surrounds my home. My children have the right to experience it in the same condition it was in when my parents and I first chose to live alongside it.

barneyG 15/12/08 5:45PM

Thanks jmm and martyns for pointing out where Tom Harris and his denialist lobby group are coming from.

Everyone who actually agrees with the climate science ought to remember that Tom’s technique of throwing in as many sensible-sounding bits of selected information is denialist copybook stuff, and is the standard way of doing things borrowed from the tobacco lobby and others before it.

It’s also interesting that newmatilda.com has attracted the attention of Tom Harris and his organisasion, which runs a coordinated media monitoring, misinformation and lobbying operation across several countries, all from the same IP address in Arizona.

The upside of their unwelcome attention is that they clearly recognise the threat from news services like newmatilda.com and the people who use them.

Anyone who likes to watch denialists and how they operate should check out his extensive history on SourceWatch:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Tom_Harris_(Canadian_engineer/PR_specialist)

Meanwhile, I’m not pleased to read the comments from Maryj calling Anna Rose "a stupid little girl". That kind of thing isn’t going to get us anywhere. Besides that, it makes you look silly, Maryj, since Anna Rose is about as good a voice for youth as this country has. Like a lot of other younger people, she’s working hard to get some outcomes on this, and is an example to a lot of people, of all ages, who are also doing what they can.

You’re right to say that personal responsibility on this issue is vitally important, but if you seriously think there’s no role for government in driving, coordinating and explaining big shifts in a nation’s direction, especially in a crisis, then all your years haven’t taught you very much.

Tom Harris 15/12/08 5:46PM

jmm: "They’re an institution with a staff of less than five — none of whom are climate scientists"

Hmm - I guess you did not read the background of our Chair - see http://tinyurl.com/5wvh64 .

"and an advisory board composed almost exclusively of the usual deniers"

Hmm, what is a denier - you mean a climate realist? No one denies climate is changing all the time (except perhaps Al Gore and company). Here is our list of advisors: http://tinyurl.com/552ve6 . You assume they are all quacks I gather since they do not agree with you.

DeSmogBlog has been funded simply to discredit our side of the debate. They don’t focus on what is true or real - their job is "to debunk the debunkers", not to assess whether what we say is correct or not. Look at DeSmogBlogs’s people - none have any background in S&T at all. If groups like ours didn’t exist, they would be out of a job.

There are a number of places on the Web where the raw data of the poll of climate scientists I reference is found - here is one that just came up in a Google search - check it out yourself and see how much "consensus" there is in the field - it is simply a myth that "scientists agree" on much on this field:

http://www.buckeyeinstitute.org/docs/global_warming.pdf

martyns:

I note that, aside from your comments about variations in weather (which may all be natural; how do you know?), your attacks are largely ad hominem, nothing to do with the facts of the case we present. Your reference to our donors is also illogical since none of them are identified anywhere (which is intentional - the last thing people want is to be hassled by aggressive climate campaigners).

Tom Harris
Executive Director
International Climate Science Coalition
Ottawa, Canada
www.climatescienceinternational.org

Tom Harris 15/12/08 6:00PM

barneyG says our group "runs a coordinated media monitoring, misinformation and lobbying operation across several countries, all from the same IP address in Arizona."

That’s a novel claim - could you share with us what you have found on this topic, please? I am truly interested to hear what people are saying about this since our origin is actually in NZ and our IT support comes out of NZ as well. We have two affiliates in other countries so far - the Australian Climate Science Coalition at http://www.auscsc.org.au/ and the NZ one at http://www.nzclimatescience.org.nz/ . Hopefully someday we will indeed be operating "across several countries" as you assert we already are. Anyone interested in helping get affiliates going in other countries, please contact me (sorry, no money involved - volunteers only at this point).

Anything in particular you would like to ask about from SourceWatch? I have tried to correct their mistakes but they pay no attention.

Tom Harris
Executive Director
International Climate Science Coalition
Ottawa, Canada
www.climatescienceinternational.org

ecoeng 15/12/08 6:01PM

Over 650 dissenting scientists from around the globe are criticizing the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore. Set for release this week, a newly updated U.S. Senate Minority Report features the dissenting voices of over 650 international scientists, many current and former UN IPCC scientists, who have now turned against the UN. The report has added about 250 scientists (and growing) in 2008 to the over 400 scientists who spoke out in 2007. The over 650 dissenting scientists are more than 12 times the number of UN scientists (52) who authored the media hyped IPCC 2007 Summary for Policymakers.

The U.S. Senate report is the latest evidence of the growing groundswell of scientific opposition rising to challenge the UN and Gore. Scientific meetings are now being dominated by a growing number of skeptical scientists. The prestigious International Geological Congress, dubbed the geologists’ equivalent of the Olympic Games, was held in Norway in August 2008 and prominently featured the voices and views of scientists skeptical of man-made global warming fears. Two-thirds of presenters and question-askers were hostile to, even dismissive of, the UN IPCC.

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&Content…

Rockjaw 15/12/08 6:01PM

Chill out Tom, we understand how difficult it is for some nameless Loonie freezing his butt off somewhere in Canada to come to grips with the concept of climate change and global warming.

Come down to the real world and visit the Great Barrier Reef where I challenge you to repeat your story to the locals.

PS leave your winter clothes behind but pack in your best good manners.

Maryj 15/12/08 6:21PM

Here is the one thing you are all forgetting with this.

Electricity on base load cannot be stored so the supply only comes with demand. Demand less, less supply required.

Like oil. Price too high, use less, demand drops, price drops.

All of these sorts of energy things are based on what is needed. Stop needing so bloody much and stop blaming Kevin Rudd.

The world will not stop tomorrow children.

ecoeng 15/12/08 6:26PM

But before you do make sure any stony objects in your mouthpiece have already long since migrated upwards……otherwise the culchah shock could well be too great.

Tom Harris 15/12/08 6:27PM

I am glad to see all the ad hominem and rhetorical attacks against me and ICSC - this suggests our actual points must be pretty solid.

I am interested in real debate about the points I raise, if you have any. Evidence of climate change is to be expected, of course - climate changes all the time. Convincing evidence that climate change is:

a) caused in a significant fashion by human CO2 emissions;
b) somehow a significant and unusual problem (for which adaptation is the rational response, unless you have convincing evidence of (a))

would be interesting and worth discussing. The rest is all rhetoric.

Tom Harris
Executive Director
International Climate Science Coalition
Ottawa, Canada
www.climatescienceinternational.org

barneyG 15/12/08 6:36PM

Anyone still interested in the finer points of Tom Harris’s denialist techniques might like to sit back and watch how he goes about it. (Others, who are really tired of getting side-tracked by arguments like his can skip this comment.)

Above, when trying to promote the old idea that there is still significant disagreement within the scientific community, he cites one study "that just came up in a Google search". Yes, it will come up in a Google search, but it happens to be from the Heartland Institute:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Heartland_Institute
…a neoconservative think-tank historically associated and funded by the tobacco lobby and Exxon.

To pick just one of its staff, Jay Lehr, its Science Director and Senior Fellow Environment Policy, has been part of a campaign funded by the fast food lobby to convince Americans that fast food is good for them. [see http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=The_Food_Industry_Campaign_to…

The point is that these are not earnest, disinterested, neutral voices, doing their best to bring you the most accurate information.

What I’m presenting here is not an ad hominem attack - it’s just that a lot of people who read new matilda have been around long enough to know how privately funded think tanks and lobby groups work.

No matter what Tom Harris and the fossil-fuel lobby say, there is not the kind of scientific disagreement that they try to depict.

They say we need to look at the science, but it is most people’s very ignorance of science that they exploiting with their fake arguments, heading us toward disaster for the sake of a few lousy bucks.

They out to be ashamed of themselves. Perhaps when things start to get really bad, they will be, but that’s not going to give me much comfort.

Now - hopefully - back to the real discussion over Rudd’s disastrous emissions target…

Rockjaw 15/12/08 6:39PM

But Tom, you clearly do not dispute the unusually high rate of change experienced over the past few years.

Have you tendered evidence that current changes in climate are in fact not the result of CO2 emissions? Have you evidence of exactly what is causing the current changes?

In the absence of that evidence what we are dealing with here is the precautionary principle where we should assume that the CO2 emissions theory, being at least plausible, is correct and that we should act upon this theory until such time as an alternative explanation is found.

Come on Tom, chill out.

Cubby 15/12/08 6:43PM

good article

ecoeng 15/12/08 6:44PM

What unusually high rate of change in climate?

It must be really hard to keep your balance - what with having a rockjaw attached to a pinhead.

John Bursill 15/12/08 6:46PM

Please, there is no GW catastrophe on the horizon, please do some research "on your own" and turn the TV off!

They will all be trying to get out off these CO2 targets because the planet is cooling. The scientist are jumping ship that quickly that the polys know the Globalist World Tax on life is going to be very unpopular indeed!

The CO2 to Temperature correlation is unproven and appears to be less likely by the day.

Regards John Bursill

WE GOT TO TAKE THE POWER BACK!

barneyG 15/12/08 6:48PM

This move by Rudd really puzzles me.

Despite what Geoff Davies is saying over on his piece [http://newmatilda.com/2008/12/15/labor-sells-australia-out-business-lobby] about Rudd giving in to the business lobby - all of which is pretty valid - I still can’t see how Rudd could miss this opportunity to do something on this issue. It’s not going to go away, and with this target around his neck he’s going to look dumber all the time. It’s hard to imagine a point where he’ll have more political capital than now. So why not do something useful?

Tom Harris 15/12/08 6:49PM

If you research the German climate scientists poll you will see it had nothing to do with Heartland until years later when Heartland decided to publicize it. If you think there IS a consensus in the climate science community, please show us a poll to support this contention.

Similarly, if you think there are science mistakes in what we are saying, please share that with us too.

I don’t need to chill out - nature is already doing that for us - check out the latest global warming data at http://www.climate4you.com/images/AllCompared%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince19… .

My article in Friday’s National Business Review in NZ answers some of your questions, Rockjaw - see http://tinyurl.com/5bcma3 . What "unusual rate of change" are you speaking of? It is 2:45 am here now so I won’t be able to answer anything else posted until tomorrow.

Thanks for asking something scientific!

Tom Harris
Executive Director
International Climate Science Coalition
Ottawa, Canada
www.climatescienceinternational.org

Dan Cass 15/12/08 6:53PM

Cool article Anna. You got a good, worthwhile response…mostly crank free!! ;-)

What a disaster Rudd is turning out to be! It was telling how defensive and sheepish he looked eh.

And how great were all the protests at the Press Club, Rudd’s office, Wong’s?

Very inspiring stuff and a prelude of more to come hopefully. Policy blah blah is less useful than just getting out and creating the solutions locally or raising the political costs of fossil fool economics.

Dan Cass
––––-
"War is God’s way of teaching Sarah Palin geography"
––––––––––––––-
Personal blog http://greenfunkdan.blogspot.com/
Greenpeace blog http://www.greenpeace.org.au/blog/energy/
Music last.fm/tastytunes

icedvolvo 15/12/08 6:55PM

Thank God!

Rudd may actually be starting to listen to other than the cult of the environmental doomsayers and scientists with a vested interest in promoting doomsday global warming!

Perhaps it’s because the Northern Hemisphere is currently freezing it’s arse off or perhaps it is because any warming that occurred since 1970 has been cancelled out by the drop in the last two years or perhaps the penny has finally dropped: the computer models on which all this rubbish are based have been proven WRONG yet again.

To be honest I don’t care, its good news!!

Rockjaw 15/12/08 7:09PM

Tom "..I don’t need to chill out - nature is already doing that for us.." - nothing is getting any chillier over here Tom, in fact, increased warming and the damage associated with that warming is visible wherever you care to look.

Your tinyurl did not load properly, but who needs a web page reference refuting evidence of warming when your home environment is surrounded by evidence of damage caused by warming?

John Bursill, you make a very valid point, but there is a difference between a drive to profit from climate change and a denial of the fact. Most of the proposed solutions are most certainly worse than the disease.

Until the skeptics present us with proper evidence we must accept the CO2 theory and act upon that theory - the stakes are too high to ignore and there is no margin for error.

Dan Cass 15/12/08 7:16PM

Tom - your website shows no street address, no way to join and no annual reports or other financial information. Are you legitimate? Do you take funding from Exxon perhaps? (ps Please keep the answers short and factual eh? You are rather a bore.)

Maryj 15/12/08 7:31PM

For f…..k’s sake, Let’s say Rudd promised the world we would reduce greenhouse gases by 50% how would he do it?

Got a clue folks? Shut down the power stations tomorrow and destroy the entire country?

Leave us in a nuclear winter?

You are stupid people. Power is based only on demand. Don’t demand so much and they won’t produce so much.

Base power cannot be stored don’t forget.

DrGideonPolya 15/12/08 8:09PM

Excellent article by Anna Rose on the gutless, cowardly, selfish, greedy, yellow, irresponsible BETRAYAL of our children , our grandchildren, Australia, the Great Barrier Reef, Humanity and the Planet by this despicable Labor Government whose only residual merit lies in the horrible reality that among the Livb-Labs the Libs are even WORSE than the Labs.

How did this poor fellow my country end up in this moral morass? In short, through cowardly, dishonest Mainstream media that, for example, will almost certainly NOT publish the following authoritative figures on the CONSEQUENCES of this cowardly decision by the Rudd Labor Government.

Extrapolating from US Energy Information Administration data (see: http://www.eia.doe.gov/ ) on Australian coal and liquid natural gas exports in the last decade (beautifully LINEAR and UPWARDS when plotted versus time and hence permitting qualified extrapolation ), this cowardly and irresponsible decision of "5% decrease on the Domestic 2000 GHG pollution value by 2020" and official Labor policy of "60% decrease on the Domestic 2000 value by 2050” means that Australia’s annual Domestic plus Exported greenhouse gas pollution (in Mt = million tonnes of CO2-e) will INCREASE from 885 Mt (2000) and 1130 Mt (2008) to 1245 Mt (2020; an INCREASE of 41% over the 2000 value) to 1586 Mt (2050; an INCREASE of 79% over the 2000 value). This is a gutless policy of national and global climate suicide.

Australia is the world’s biggest coal exporters; the worst per capita greenhouse gas polluters in the developed world; and one of the worst annual per capita greenhouse polluters in the world as a whole. In 2000 Australia’s Domestic plus Exported GHG pollution (tonnes CO2-e per person per year) was 44.2 versus 3.9 for China; by 2020, based on US EIA data projections and Labor policy announced today (and assuming population stasis at 21 million), Australia’s Domestic plus Exported CO2-e pollution will reach 59 (15 times China’s 2000 value) and by 2050 under official Rudd Labor policy Australia’s GHG per capita will reach 75.5 (19.4 times China’s 2000 value).

Top UK climate scientist Professor James Lovelock FRS (the Gaia hypothesis, “The Revenge of Gaia”) has said that over 6 billion people will perish this century due to unaddressed man-made climate change (see: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/16956300/the_prophet_of_clima… ).

This latest appalling Rudd Labor assertion of Australia’s “right” to grossly pollute the world and threaten billions with death this century gives a new meaning to Labor leader Arthur Calwell’s notorious 1947 assertion that “2 Wongs do not make a White” – except that current Labor is evidently aiming for a 20-fold disparity.

the Libs Peace is the only way but Silence kills and Silence is complicity.

heli 15/12/08 8:47PM

I am so disappointed that the government cannot agree to move forward more assertively and progessively, behaving like a modern, informed, sophisticated 21st century democratic government might. Instead what is airing here is still denial, dissent and squabble laced with emotional fingerpointing and corporate greed. Sounds like ignorant third world despots are running the show.

Mitchell 15/12/08 8:52PM

ecoeng, the problem with supposing that MEP-adjusted GCMs alone are going to give a reduced value of climate sensitivity is that the existing value also derives from paleoclimate studies, not just from GCMs.

I see a paper by Tyler Volk in a 2007 issue of Climate Change which purports to be a refutation of biotic MEP. There is a response by Kleidon and an editorial comment mildly skeptical of the MEP revolution.

So whatever its ultimate merits I don’t think it’s "already clear" that this is the "death knell" for climate alarmism, etc.

What are your current views on pre-Keeling levels of CO2? (Google shows you talking about this topic on an ABC message board last year.) My lay impression is that before Keeling, measured CO2 levels were all over the place, but since Keeling, they are stable, consistent, and show a simple trend (upward, with annual seasonal cycles), and that the pre-Keeling data is considered highly unreliable, not just because of the chemical techniques, but because of the circumstances on the ground (I get this from Spencer Weart’s history, the text around footnote 16 in the section "The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect").

nimueoz 15/12/08 9:00PM

If Rudd really wanted to tackle CO2 emissions Maryj all he would need to do to lift the target to 50% reduction is to stop all logging in Native Forests. I refer you to Professor Brendan Mackey’s recent ‘Green Carbon’ paper which clearly demonstrates the huge gains that could be made both in terms of emissions avoided and carbon sequestered. And if that still fell short of the target he could finance retrofitting insulation and upgrading window glazing for low income housing.
Of course the right wing zombie element will find this suggestion rather hard to swallow. Good, perhaps they will choke.

cherry 15/12/08 9:03PM

Hang on everybody politics is the art of the possible. Rudd does not have a majority in the senate. There is no way he could get a 20 % target through the senate. He needs the Libs on board to get a bill through and he has put Turnbull on the spot with the lowest figure that Turnbull must accept or deny global warming entirely. This is the first step and if successful then Rudd will push for a higher level. Howard, in good times , could not bring himself to do anything about climate, now Rudd ,in very bad times is expected to work a miracle. We , the people , are as much to blame as our pollies, when asked what sacrifices we would make for the environment they are very few indeed, witness all our large SUVs, our endless overseas trips etc. Patience and a better level will be achievable, impatience and all will be lost.

Christopher_M 15/12/08 9:28PM

MaryJ, come off it, it doesn’t suit you. Tom Harris, I’ve read your articles and they’re balls.

Rudd and his henchpeople have stuffed up real bad.
A greenhouse allowance per capita would put Australia in the firing line. We’re an idiotic bunch for whom no amount of Tom Harris’s or MaryJ’s apologia will make one sniff of methane’s difference.
PER CAPITA GREENHOUSE ALLOWANCE. Neither Tom not MARYJ would get another sniff on this website. And no trading and certainly no allowances for polluting industry
And it would place little Kev where he belongs - in the pocket of the GGGases emitters.

We had one chance to lead the world in turning this disaster away and we have stuffed it

Christopher_M 15/12/08 10:00PM

Cherry, good one and very funny BUT this is not the time for your politics. This is the time for action - for us and our children. Wong and Rudd are complete failures.

Anyone could put to the Parliament something they believed in! Ruddy unlikely!

Jill Walker 15/12/08 10:39PM

Jill Walker

The inscrutable Penny Wong has finally showed her cards - and as we suspected she was bluffing.

And Kevin Howard - or is it Johnny Rudd? has given something like $2 billion dollars to build a coaltrain to Newcastle Harbour so we can shunt our carbon pollution overseas to China,Japan and India even faster! what a hypocrite.

As for Peter Garralous - well what about him? nothing really.

Save us Saint Bob Brown!

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