I feel a need to correct you also. Converting gasseous CO2 into solid as a resource is not basic biology, it is nonsense, that totally violates the laws of thermodynamics. By oxidising Coal (basically pure carbon) into CO2 we liberate a lot of energy, and make a gas which is MUCH bigger than the original coal. To use that CO2 again for anything useful, all the energy we’re going to get out of it has to be put back in. It’s useless as CO2 and definitely won’t burn. It’s also not a solid, but a gas, and will need to be pumped and pressurised at an enormous energy cost to sequester it anywhere.

EB

Once people start to want their own answer to our problem-unless one is an Andrew Bolt, who says the whole thing is a Furphy-to be accepted above everyone else’s ideas. Then the lethal line. Either everyone does it my way or there will be no way I’ll accept someone else’s way. Sound grotesquely way-out? It shouldn’t. It’s called John Howard’s answer to the Republic syndrome.
Already we have goons like Victoria’s very, very own John Brumby circling around like a pack of hyenas.

Bernard: I don’t wish to be pedantic but, isn’t it meant to be ‘deus ex machina’, or are you being frightfully witty and I don’t get the allusion?

Cheers

Venise.

And when our electricity was privatised in Adelaide consumption fell dramatically as prices rose.

One thing journalists who bloviate and opionate forget is that coal is carbon anyway. By burning it we make CO2. If it can be captured successfully and solidified we have a new resource.

That is basic biology.

Now to the journalists. Matthew Warren is very sarcastic today clearly hoping we have forgotten that he was stooge for the NSW Minerals Council for years which translates into “hack for the coal polluters”. Chris Uhlmann doesn’t believe in climate because they cannot predict the weather for next Friday. Grade 5 kids are capable of knowing the difference between climate and weather but perhaps the seminary fried Uhlmann’s brains while he was talking to his imaginary friend.

Why are there so few science journalists in this country? Why do we have to have the likes of Milne and his poison pen bringing things down to nonsense.

In Adelaide today it winter. Just today. It might be the only day of winter we have because we haven’t had a cold, wet winter since 2000 and we haven’t had a wet winter since 2005. Our rainfall is 4 inches below average again this year yet vintners are stealing billions of litres of water from the Murray rather than plant seasonal crops.

It is criminal behaviour that has gone unchecked for a century - we are slowly getting the point but what do we do?

Bray like mindless donkeys at Kevin Rudd.

Venise

Dr. Roy W. Spencer is a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a climate scientist and sceptic had an interesting take on this in The National Review recently:
“It is well-established that the ancient Mayan, Aztec, Incan, and Toltec peoples offered human sacrifices, probably in the belief that such rituals would placate the gods who were in charge of nature; for instance, to help bring life-giving rains to their crops. Although we shudder at the thought of such barbaric practices, I believe that we have unwittingly reinstituted human sacrifice in modern times. But while the list of justifications has grown immensely, our new rituals are still performed in the name of avoiding the wrath of the gods of nature”
http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=MDExMTEwZWVjZmI5MGFmNzgzYmM1MWVmNTc0MDMyYTU=

CO2 is a natural gas that we produce and Nature ‘fixes’ trough trees and foliage.

If we are believe the threat of global warming then all options to decrease CO2 production and increase ‘fixing’ or sequestration need to be fully canvasses but funnily enough they are not……….

The Garnaud Interim Report has immediately devalued a national asset: our coal reserves and the industry that flows from those reserves. The rubber has already hit the road.

http://www.soilcarbon.com.au

M, i think you hit on a good point about the road toll as there is a lot that governments can do from behind the scene by changing building codes (thermal standards etc, energy efficiency standards (appliances etc), fuel efficiency etc.

And Brad, you make a good point about the migration rate of the biosphere being over run by the warming it will experience but i believe your support for aerosols should come with a foot note. While the idea of aerosols being used to cool the earth does have some merit in a pure physical sense. There are loop holes, such as that aerosols only cool where the sun shines which means it works the most at the tropics and least at the poles. While CO2 warms the most at the poles and least at the tropics, and for all hours of the day. So there is a miss match. Then there’s also the fact that introducing aerosols will have massive effect on global circulation. The eruption of Laki on Iceland led to a weakening of the monsoon in India and playing with aerosols would lead to similar problems. Basically what you are doing is saying we’re going to continue our experiment with co2 on the earth and add in another experiment of sulphur on the earth. It is not out of the question but should not be thrown around lightly.

Orfeo

“Leemans and Eickhout (2004) found that adaptive capacity decreases rapidly with an increasing rate of climate change. Their study finds that five percent of all ecosystems cannot adapt more quickly than 0.1 C per decade over time. Forests will be among the ecosystems to experience problems first because their ability to migrate to stay within the climate zone they are adapted to is limited. If the rate is 0.3 C per decade, 15 percent of ecosystems will not be able to adapt. If the rate should exceed 0.4 C per decade, all ecosystems will be quickly destroyed, opportunistic species will dominate, and the breakdown of biological material will lead to even greater emissions of CO2. This will in turn increase the rate of warming” — Leemans and Eickhout (2004), “Another reason for concern: regional and global impacts on ecosystems for different levels of climate change,” Global Environmental Change 14, 219–228

Having trouble reading the above scientific quotation? Here is a simpler way to think about it:

“Few seem to realise that the present IPCC models predict almost unanimously that by 2040 the average summer in Europe will be as hot as the summer of 2003 when over 30,000 died from heat. By then we may cool ourselves with air conditioning and learn to live in a climate no worse than that of Baghdad now. But without extensive irrigation the plants will die and both farming and natural ecosystems will be replaced by scrub and desert. What will there be to eat? The same dire changes will affect the rest of the world and I can envisage Americans migrating into Canada and the Chinese into Siberia but there may be little food for any of them.” — Dr James Lovelock’s lecture to the Royal Society, 29 Oct. ‘07

There is a very inexpensive simple way to immediately cool the Earth: just put a small amount of aerosol into the air to dim the sun. We won’t be able to stop rapid ecosystem collapse without geoengineering.

In 1970 the Melbourne Sun (which then sold more papers than it does today) ran a campaign called “Declare War on 1034.” 1034 was the road fatality figure in Victoria in 1969. It played a huge role in preparing the political ground for the hard decisions that needed to be made. It may be wishful thinking, but it would be nice to see one of our major media groups have the courage to take a similar leadership role now. After all, we may not be killing ourselves at quite the same rate but what are we doing to the planet.

EB