climate change
12 Oct 2009
And Now For A Healthy Emission
Michael Brull loves the smell of civil disobedience in the morning. And when hundreds of ordinary people showed up at a coal mine south of Sydney on the weekend, he was there
By 11am the protest was underway.
A colourful crowd of a few hundred had turned up for the final day of the Climate Camp protest in Helensburgh. People were meant to be dressed in blue, but that didn’t impede creativity. There were signs, political paintings, tin drums and guitars. The spirit was festive, as people sang various songs, including one to the tune of "Hey Mickey you’re so fine" with lyrics directed at US based multinational Peabody, the villain of the day. Peabody owns the local coal mine that was the object of the day’s mass protest, and they’re a fitting target, having been ranked by Newsweek recently as the most un-green corporation out of the 500 it surveyed.
The crowd was a diverse bunch, with a surprising mix of the young and old. I turned up on Sunday, but most of the people had actually attended the whole camp, starting on Friday. We marched through the tiny town of Helensburgh, which was plainly unused to so much attention. One woman yelled out to us that she supported our right to protest. A young man with a few of his friends said "Maybe I should join you." When I encouraged him to do so, he replied, amused, "But I work for coal".
Not all of us had such pleasant experiences with the Helensburgh folk. The locals became increasingly rowdy, yelling "f*ck off" at the protestors and occasionally throwing eggs.
From the protestors, however, there was a very conciliatory attitude shown to the residents. While speeches at the starting point of the march were about climate change and the need for action, by the time the march ended up in front of the Metropolitan Colliery, the protestors were almost solely devoted to reaching out to the locals. The chants became: "What do we want? Green jobs! Where do we want them? Helensburgh!"
Those who were angry at the protestors, of course, may have believed their jobs were at stake. Protestors I spoke to, however, rejected the idea that there was a difference between the interests of workers and environmentalists. Greens Parliamentarian Lee Rhiannon was only stating the obvious when she told the crowd that coal was a "dying industry". Surely, coal jobs will run out eventually — either profitable coal will run out, or governments will eventually take action on climate change. Under these circumstances, a deliberate shift from coal-dependency to jobs in green industry is the best conceivable way forward for communities dependent on coal jobs.
Next, after various speeches, came the non-violent direct action. On stage, a woman, together with her mother and her son, announced that they were set to walk onto the mine site. She declared that her family represented three generations who needed to act on climate change. "We will not resist arrest and we will remain peaceful," she pledged.
They marched through a corridor made in the Climate Campers crowd, down to the police lines. They walked united into the row of police, who stopped them. They tried again, in a somewhat polite manner, and then they sat down. Next, a 61-year-old man and his father moved through the parted sea of protestors and approached police lines. The police were polite enough as they refused to budge, and these two also sat down in front of police lines.
After a few more attempts, there was not enough room in front of police lines, and people sat down en masse near the police.
Of course, this wasn’t too dramatic. Overall, Climate Campers are a well behaved bunch, and though they turned up in significant numbers, the police were largely unworried by the protestors. This is a striking contrast to how police behaved around APEC time, over the trumped-up threat of "anarchist violence". Yet it could be said that in many ways, Climate Camp has an anarchist flavour to its forms of organisation. Climate Camp is organised in a strictly non-hierarchical manner, and in its decision-making processes the greatest efforts are made to accommodate and respect minority views. They also maintain complete political independence by refusing corporate sponsorship. They operate on a shoestring budget, which forces their grassroots organising to be more dynamic, rather than creating a sterile top-down organisation.
Last year, there was one Climate Camp. This year, there will have been four, after the next one in WA in December. We can expect them to grow each year. Civil disobedience and direct action will naturally appeal to the Australian public, because they want serious action on climate change, and our government is failing to do anything about it.
Kevin Rudd is willing to commit to an emissions reduction of 5 per cent, whereas Malcolm Turnbull made a dubious proposal for 10 per cent. Neither is good enough — they’re not even close. If it is granted that the Liberals were voted out partly because of their weakness on climate change, what options will voters have at the next election when both major parties reject public opinion?
That is not all. Our government has bullied Pacific Island states to prevent their calling for stronger emissions targets. That is, we don’t want countries facing destruction through climate change to add to international pressure to stop ruining the environment. Last week, Oxfam complained that "millions of people facing greater floods, droughts and failed harvest after failed harvest will be the real losers if the US, Canada, EU, Japan and Australia continue as blockers to the UN negotiations".
Oxfam frames the issue perfectly in its report Climate Wrongs and Human Rights: by "failing to tackle climate change with urgency, rich countries are effectively violating the human rights of millions of the world’s poorest people". This is not just a future threat, says Oxfam: "hundreds of millions of people are already suffering" from climate change. One report estimates "that 26 million people have already been displaced because of climate change." Even "warming of 2°C entails a devastating future for at least 660 million people".
The report notes the IPCC’s finding that "climate change could halve yields from rain-fed crops in parts of Africa as early as 2020, and put 50 million more people worldwide at risk of hunger… And up to one billion people could face water shortages in Asia by the 2050s due to melted glaciers."
This is the results of our emissions. We could do less harm if we started systematically bombing poor countries. But that is not all: our government is actually escalating our war on the climate. The NSW Government is building two massive new power stations. It is likely they will be coal fired. It is also expanding coal exports, and increasing funding for coal.
With all that happening, what chance does the climate have? The NSW Government in particular goes mushy and weak at the knees for coal companies. It recently approved the expansion of the Metropolitan Collieries targeted by the Climate Camp protest even though the Sydney Catchment Authority has warned that the expansion could cause the dam floor to crack and "cause serious leaks from southern Sydney’s main drinking water supply". Even the NSW Liberals were appalled that the Government would "override two key agencies in this way". As one Liberal MP said, "If it comes down to a choice between coal and water, I know which one most people would support".
Coal companies can exert economic pressure on governments to get their way. From the other side, if public opinion isn’t enough to push governments to do the right thing on climate change, the public needs to up the ante somehow. We know that civil disobedience works: the Wall Street Journal is whining about Al Gore’s "liberal consensus" of the need for civil disobedience, whereby people acting on concerns about climate change have "succeeded in making new coal plants nearly impossible to build".
This is exactly what a small group of Climate Campers realised. While most of the protesters made their point at the gates of the Peabody mine, early in the morning four brave young activists (and a photographer) had gone to the BHP Billiton-owned Dendrobium coal mine further south near Port Kembla and locked themselves on to the conveyor belt. They stopped production for four glorious hours. I managed to interview Aimee, one of those arrested. Aimee is a pleasant and friendly activist, and she had a nice chat with the cops about the lousy weather while they figured out how to get the activists down.
Aimee, however, is an undergraduate student. She doesn’t have the time or money to make the kind of political example out of her civil disobedience that the Kingsnorth Six did. For her bravery to pay off, we don’t just need more Aimees, we need Australians to support her. That’s our challenge.
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I really like the use of language in this article, I realised some time ago that journalism had long iven up the pretence of objectivity but NM takes it to another level with the parallels between this new religion based on climate catastrophism and traditional religions no better exemplified than by the use of the symbolism;
The “pure” Protesters on God’s mission:
“…ordinary people…”
“…colourful crowd…”
“…creative…festive…singing…”
“…conciliatory….reaching out to the locals…”
“…non violent ….peaceful old men and mothers and children…”
“…poorest facing extinction….”
“…brave young activists…pleasant friendly…glorious”
The “evil” Miners and their Devil Spawn minions:
“…multinational….”
“…villains…”
“…target…ungreen”
“…obscenity yelling….egg throwing…”
“…memories of angry APEC police……
“…dubious….”
We even have Prophets such as Gore!
And the same as many traditional religious beliefs remain unaffected by scientific reality all the “could” and “may” scenarios based on some now Holy Spirit computer models are accepted as some inalienable law of the universe thrown down from Mount IPCC. The fact that the earth has not warmed for nearly a decade and the snow and ice data indicate that overall the glaciers/poles are not melting is now irrelevant.
The only question is when the trinity will be completed and the Climate Messiah will come……
I am able to summon some respect for climate sceptics. At least Lomborg, for example, draws on statistics to make his points, and couches his claims in the careful language of someone who is held accountable for his views.
But icedvolvo, your comment above is idiotic and offensive.
I don’t see how “…creative…festive…singing…” or “conciliatory…reaching out to the locals…” are phrases that evoke religious or mystical emotions.
The irony here is that you attack climate activists for believing climate science on blind faith, yet offer no scientific evidence for your own views. Aren’t you then accepting climate scepticism on blind faith?
Next time, please contribute something rational that actually advances the debate.
Where do you get your information from icedvolvo? I’d like a link to somewhere reputable that shows that you haven’t just made all that up.
Look here:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090129090002.htm
Glaciers are melting.
Here:
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Ice is melting.
Obviously I could find link after link of people on the ground who don’t need to rely on computer modelling to see the bleeding obvious. What can you provide other than a group of fossil fuel funded flunkies who twist statistics or misrepresent them?
I have a couple of questions for the climate change sceptics/deniers.
1/. You dont belive that human activity is having an effect on our climate, so do you also believe that we should be free to continue polluting our environment to the degree that we have been over the last few centuries?
2/. Do you really think that we should continue to dig up carbon based fossil fuels and burn them , thus combining oxygen and carbon and reducing the ammount of breathable oxygen in the atmosphere, until they run out and doing so will have no effect on our global environment.
the proposed ets is nothing more than the beginning of our taking measures to reduce carbon pollution, it is not the end and it is probably going to have little or no effect.
The best solution to our problems would be to seriously reduce the population of humans on the planet over the next few generations. Unfortunately the religious cults of the world such as the catholic church and islam insist that they need to breed and are unlikley to defy the wishes of their imaginary friend.
Well done Michael and to the protesters!!!
The Victorian government loved the Hazelwood protest four weeks ago so much, that they’re increasing penalties for peaceful protest at coal-fired power stations!
There will be more and bigger protests to come until our governments start acting on the climate crisis in a science-based way, and get out of the pockets of the fossil fuel lobby. Everyone’s life is at risk because of these idiots in the Labor/Lib party.
And my suggestion to the commenters above (and no doubt below) is to ignore the climate change deniers. They are either employed by the fossil fuel lobby or are just very damaged individuals with obvious psychological issues. They are irrelevant, lets keep up the fight for a safe climate future.
To eddieb:
Some reasonable questions instead of the usual name calling vilification ala “shun the non-believer…(see versions of Charlie the Unicorn on You Tube if you don’t get it)”. I won’t bother with the others.
Q: You dont belive that human activity is having an effect on our climate,
No one said anything of the sort! Although it varies from person to person. From my perspective, the evidence that the climate is doing anything unusual at all is almost non existent: forgetting for the moment the fudged (and what was SECRET and now is LOST !) surface temp data we have had warmer periods in human history, we have had bigger and more extensive melts of ice, we have had higher and faster rising sea levels and this even in the relatively minuscule period of human records. In other words NOTHING that is happening appears to be unusual.
The CO2 levels have been rising at least in part because of human burning of fossil fuels (or at least the isotope ratios indicate this) and neglecting that this started BEFORE the industrial revolution one then asks: is this a problem? Well remembering that all that nasty CARBON came from atmospheric CO2 as plants sequestered it in the first place and the fact that CO2 has been much higher i.e. 20x higher with no apparent effect on global temps then the lay answer is “well if it is having an effect it can’t be that much”. The scientific answer is more sophisticated and involves knowledge of spectroscopy and saturation effects but put simply you reach a point where no matter how much CO2 you put in the spectrum is saturated and it makes little/no difference.
The ONLY evidence that the alarmists rely upon is the SECRET computer models, which we KNOW for certain are not able to accurately predict climate on decadal scales because every single IPCC prediction in advance has been proven to be WRONG! And contrary to the myths there were only about half a dozen or so INDEPENDENT IPCC scientists who “approved” the models which I remind you again are SECRET!!!
Q: so do you also believe that we should be free to continue polluting our environment to the degree that we have been over the last few centuries?
Polluting is a belief laden term and shows an inbuilt bias. CO2 is NOT a pollutant, it is a part of the cycle of all living things (except some of the sulphur bacteria). So lets ask the question again and combine it with part of Q2:
Q: so do you also believe that we should be free to continue emitting CO2 into our environment to the degree that we have been over the last few centuries and Do you really think that we should continue to dig up carbon based fossil fuels and burn them?
If the answer is that “it has no damaging effect” why not? However the real problem is that modern society is all interlinked with technology, something the Greens and ilk do not seem to understand. You can’t have all this wonderful world we live in without ENERGY and that ENERGY has to come from somewhere. Present technology does not provide for ANY alternative (please don’t say solar or wind or other such drivel, simple physics cannot be overridden by wishing!). So yes dig away BUT use the time it buys to find some alternative because if we don’t then its back to the mud huts and basket weaving and a short violent unpleasant life for ALL humans.
Q: Do you really think that we should continue to dig up carbon based fossil fuels and burn them , thus combining oxygen and carbon and reducing the ammount of breathable oxygen in the atmosphere, until they run out and doing so will have no effect on our global environment.
The question about O2 is silly and shows a lack of scientific knowledge. As to the effect see above
Q: the proposed ets is nothing more than the beginning of our taking measures to reduce carbon pollution, it is not the end and it is probably going to have little or no effect.
Then why do it at all?
Q: The best solution to our problems would be to seriously reduce the population of humans on the planet over the next few generations. Unfortunately the religious cults of the world such as the catholic church and islam insist that they need to breed and are unlikley to defy the wishes of their imaginary friend.
Ah something we agree on but you won’t see the Greens or anyone else take this on! BTW non religious populations i.e. India. China and Africa are increasing far more than “religious” nations so its not all about religion its more about culture and poverty.
I like that “icedvolvo” quotes me, and the quotes aren’t actually in what I wrote. In other news, I do not think having opinions means I am not objective. I’ll just address one point you raise: the “fact” that the “the earth has not warmed for nearly a decade”. This is presumably what you read in Andrew Bolt or something like that. No scientist says that the earth will be a certain temperature every year: climate is about looking at broader trends. The science of climate change is not the same as weather forecasting: scientists don’t predict it will be hot or rainy tomorrow. Now, because 1998 was particularly hot, that does not mean global warming isn’t happening: it means that that year was particularly hot, and is part a broader warming trend. The warmest years since 1850 are 1998, 2005, 2003, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2007, 1997. (although some say 2005 was hotter than 1998, but let’s assume for your sake 1998 was hotter).
icedvolvo, I notice you have not been able to back up your false claims re snow and ice data that has been collected on the ground. This also defeats your claim “The ONLY evidence that the alarmists rely upon is the SECRET computer models”.
Please provide proof of your assertions or stop making unsupported claims. Perhaps you can find it amongst the data that band of hippy, commie greenies over at NASA have come up with.
http://climate.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/
Umm must have stirred a hornets nest….
Michael Brull:
I cut and pasted your whole article into notepad and then removed all but the “words” in quotes. So I am not sure how the quotes cannot be there unless the story above has somehow been edited.
As to “not warmed for a decade” you are still in hockey stick land. See the article I posted here as even the “alarmist” press arm the BBC admits the reality (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8299079.stm)
As to the models it is irony in extremis that you lecture me on integro differential modelling because you show your ignorance. The GCM “climate” models are derived exactly from the GCM “weather” models and I understand implicitly the difference between them! Any model that cannot predict the “big” events (like El Nino, PDO or even a decades cooling) is fatally flawed!
As to hottest years you show your ignorance again! When Steve Mc was given access the the North American data (~ half the worlds data set) he showed they had made a “mistake” and that in fact the 1930’s were hotter than the 1990’s. NASA has admitted this publicly. However Hadley CRU, who maintain the IPCC temperature database, have never allowed ANYONE to access the raw data for the rest of the world. When finally they were forced to release a small amount of data it was shown (again by Steve Mc) that they had been fudging the data! Now CRU, after denying access for decades, has now said that they have “lost” all the original temperature data. As a result we will never know what would have happened if the corrected data was applied to the IPCC database! How convenient for the AGW’s!
To bzepat:
The point about CO2 was simple but I will spell it out in capitals:
OVER THE HISTORY OF LIFE ON EARTH (~500MY) THERE IS NO CORRELATION BETWEEN CO2 and TEMPERATURE REGARDLESS OF WHETHER CO2 WAS 300PPM or 8000PPM
Humans are just animals and animals evolved over temperature ranges from very hot and humid 22C down to frigid 12C. To say we would or would not survive is just opinion and nothing else.
The IPCC AR4 work was only publicly available AFTER it was ratified IN SECRET. The full report was only made available outside of the IPCC a full 9 months after the Summary Report was published. The dissenting comments were hidden until nearly 12 months after that again. NO COUNTRY OR THEIR REPRESENTATIVES SAW THE DISSENTING REPORTS UNTIL AFTER THE FINAL REPORT WAS PUBLISHED I.E. TOO LATE TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT!
The predictions of the IPCC reports (AR1-4) have NEVER been correct. All they have been able to do is to alter the models after the event to show correlation. The failure to predict the recent cooling is a perfect example as pointed out by one of the chief IPCC modellers Prof Latif himself.
And now wikipedia is the basis on which the world should base its energy policy. Go and learn some physics and you will understand why not a single country, state, city or even town has been able to use solar. A short time ago I visited one of the most advanced research groups in the world at ANU and the simple fact is that we are still at least a decade away from useful thermal technology and several decades (or more) from photo voltaics producing enough energy to use for basic stuff like steel and aluminium smelting. When we get there I will be the first one to call for widespread adoption.
GrahaemF
Go to Climat4you and have a look at the snow and ice cover data which is derived directly from NSIDC and NASA and JAXA data.
I find it curious that some people seem convinced they are competent to assess and pontificate on scientific subjects about which they know little to nothing but don’t seem to know they don’t know. When it comes to climate science in particular, many seem to pick a salient website, or vocal fringe scientists, and adopt their views in preference to the science of the mainstream. This seems an odd phenomenon. Education may have failed us at a crucial time in history.
icedvolvo, why would I need to go to a website that re-evaluates data when the links I put above are direct from the source. And they’ve got pictures.
I looked at Climate4you and followed the author Ole Humlum to the University Of Oslo. On the universities site they had a link to Glaciodyn who study glaciers.
http://www.geo.uio.no/glaciodyn/obj.html
“Dynamic feedbacks also play a key role in thermal transitions, and the non-linear behaviour of calving glaciers, which in many parts of the world have undergone sudden thinning, acceleration, and retreat.”
It seems that if you twist the data hard enough you can come to any conclusion you want but its impossible to fool researchers who are on the ground.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26213406-601,00.html
“This month, the National Snow and Ice Data Centre, which is part of the University of Colorado, said that Arctic ice coverage was the third-lowest since satellite records began in 1979.
The coverage was greater than in 2007 and 2008 largely because of cloudy skies during late summer. Each of the past five years has been one of the five lowest years. ”
icedvolvo, should I go to climate4you to get a different interpretation of NSIDC data?
To icedvolvo,
you said it yourself - 1930’s was the hottest year on record for North America. But not for the whole world - in the 1930’s there was still coverage of temperature data over most of the globe, this along with temperature reconstructions through proxies (e.g. ice core data) shows that 1998 was hotter than the 1930’s globally.
OVER THE HISTORY OF LIFE ON EARTH (~500MY) THERE IS NO CORRELATION BETWEEN CO2 and TEMPERATURE REGARDLESS OF WHETHER CO2 WAS 300PPM or 8000PPM
You try to earbash us about not understanding basic physics, yet you come out with this howler? The relationship between greenhouse gases and global temperature is a very fundamental physical principle, known since the mid-1800’s. You can calculate using the Stefan-Boltzmann Law and Wien’s Law the equilibrium global temperature for any level of greenhouse gases. Over the entire history of the ice-core data, temperature and GHG concentration fit like a glove, we’ve all seen the charts.
(a) what temperature records go back 500 million years?
(b) there has been life on earth for over 3.5 billion years. Get your facts straight, your credibility is tattered enough as it is.
No credible scientist with an understanding of physics refutes the basic understanding that greenhouse gases trap heat and increase temperature.
Humans are just animals and animals evolved over temperature ranges from very hot and humid 22C down to frigid 12C. To say we would or would not survive is just opinion and nothing else.
I refer not to the biological ability of an animal to survive at a higher temperature of a few degrees. Our civilisation (e.g. settled agriculture, complex cities) is highly reliant on the particular set of climatic circumstances in which we developed. The consequences of climate change will be intensified drought in some areas of the world that are already stressed (e.g. Africa, Australia). The loss of the himalayan ice sheet will drastically reduce fresh water supplies to much of India, China and South East Asia - these impacts will not be light.
The failure to predict the recent cooling is a perfect example as pointed out by one of the chief IPCC modellers Prof Latif himself.
But not only does Latif recognise that we will still see accelerated global warming beyond any short-term cooling (http://climateprogress.org/2009/10/01/interview-with-dr-mojib-latif-glob…), it may be missing data compared to better models (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/sep/16/global-t…)
And now wikipedia is the basis on which the world should base its energy policy. Go and learn some physics and you will understand why not a single country, state, city or even town has been able to use solar. A short time ago I visited one of the most advanced research groups in the world at ANU and the simple fact is that we are still at least a decade away from useful thermal technology and several decades (or more) from photo voltaics producing enough energy to use for basic stuff like steel and aluminium smelting. When we get there I will be the first one to call for widespread adoption.
Wikipedia provides a good summary of Solar Millenium’s Andasol, the company website is here if you want the source: http://www.solarmillennium.de/index,lang2.html
I personally know the researcher at ANU who is working on their ammonia thermochemical storage system. While the ammonia system is still in development, the salt storage is ready to go large-scale, as shown by the andasol plants. There are now huge solar thermal projects underway in Spain and the California - the U.S. already has projects for 97,000MW of solar thermal, with ground being broken as we speak:
http://www.doi.gov/news/09_News_Releases/062909.html
When we get there I will be the first one to call for widespread adoption
Then I’m glad that you’ll be supporting the widespread adoption of solar thermal that is already underway, though I have to ask why if you so vehemently believe that global warming doesn’t exist?
bzepat:
Yes I agree that solar thermal is the most promising alternative technology in the short term.
But if solar thermal is so fait accompli then why are the ANU group (and others) spending millions on research viz z vie the brand new thermal tower currently under construction? (BTW there is more than “the researcher at ANU” working on ST ).
As to projects in Spain and California you could not give two better examples of abject failures of alternative energy exploits. Billions wasted on unproductive and inefficient wind and solar failures.
WHEN we get the technology right and we can store and transport enough energy to support heavy industry THEN we can deploy the technology, in the mean time lets keep doing the research.
As to views of global warming see the thread at http://newmatilda.com/2009/10/13/last-some-realistic-climate-policy-idea…