Comments on: Global warming is a global emergency

By: Lois Achimovich

Lois Achimovich — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

I totally agree with Ian Dunlop. We’re fiddling around the edges while Rome burns. We should be on a war footing - rationing fuel (and I believe we’ll soon be rationing food), banning unnecessary journeys in cars, not allow cars with one passenger to enter cities,importing the REVA electric car from India NOW rather than waiting for the government’s useless propping up of the US car industry with 4 cylinder cars. Use the REVA - and bicycles - as government-owned shuttles from public transport to destination at a plug-in centre - and for God sake, enforce building codes requiring low-energy-use housing. In WA, we have codes but one glance at the new developments makes it clear that they are ignored by building companies. And will someone tell Mr Rudd that insulating a house that is not appropriately oriented will make it into a hot box? Stop cutting down trees and start growing hemp for clothing, paper and rope. Give jobs that are useful to the global warming struggle to those laid off by the mining industry, eg planting trees, retrofitting houses, building fast trains (why Notley’s Engineering, which makes trains for the mining industry and which shut down last week, isn’t paid to do this is beyond me). Stop this rubbish about building more nuclear power stations and convert to renewables right now. Leave the coal in the ground until we know how to use it without cooking the planet. President Obama has surrounded himself with scientists to tackle this - most of the climatologists in Australia are still an embattled species. Maybe the powers that be - and the people - will listen to someone with Ian Dunlop’s credentials

By: Don

Don — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

I would like Andrew Bolt to read this article, maybe he might then crawl out of the dungeon, where he hides with the older neo-con’s and Howardesque climate change deniers, and join the rest of the world to do something about this issue.

By: Ian Dunlop

Ian Dunlop — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Malcolm - The level has to be finessed as the science improves, but we are already seeing major changes at current levels of warming. Safe, stable conditions would seem to lie around the pre-industrial level. The 300 level is around the upper boundary of the safe climate zone in which humanity has evolved over the last inter-glacial period. See:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/what-can-we-do-to-save-our-planet-1221097.html . Professor Martin Parry, IPCC lead author:
“We’ve reached a point where we have a crisis, an emergency, but people don’t know that. …There’s a big gap between what’s understood about global warming by the scientific community and what is known by the public and policymakers.”James Hansen, NASA, November 2008
“I am one of those who believes that any reasonably comprehensive and up-to-date look at the evidence makes clear that civilization has already generated dangerous anthropogenic interference in the climate system,” John Holdren, science advisor to US President Obama
Professor John Schellnhuber, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/15/climatechange.carbonemissions
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,3907790,00.html
Also http://www.climatecodered.net/
Andrew - The uncertainty is not so much the basic science. Rather I meant what form catastrophic failure might take first up – crop failure, fires, sea level rise, a combination?
Robert - Re carbon tax: The carbon price required under an ETS to achieve the change we need is far higher than the figures being bandied around politically, at least initially. Its trajectory will depend on how rapidly we all respond. If we move quickly it will come down, if not it will go up, so we all have an incentive to perform – provided the targets are ambitious enough initially, which at present is patently not the case!. No politician would have the backbone to impose an equivalent carbon tax at the levels we need.

By: robert

robert — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Agree with Ian, except for his dismissal of a Carbon Tax.

It's hard to imagine, but I guess there might be people who will prefer to buy expensive dirty electricity over cheap green electricity, prefer to loose money cutting down trees rather make money planting them, etc, and so Carbon Tax might not work.

And from what I understand, trading schemes are no less safe 'tinkering' than a tax.

To Lois' point, I'm afraid I have to agree. I've never been a big fan of 'war' analogies. 'War on Drugs' and all that crap, but at least here we are in a situation where the idea of mobilising our entire society around an existential threat (much as the Brits did in WW2) makes grim sense.

I often wondered what today's politicians would've done in the lead up to WW2. What special interests they would've caved in to as they 'prepared' for war. And what they'd say after we lost. The only consolation I guess is that, if we don't overcome this crisis, the pollies won't be getting any cushy jobs with the occupational government, they'll be toast like the rest of us.

Churchill sums it all up: It is no use saying, 'We are doing our best.' You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.

By: pdev

pdev — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Ian Dunlop hits the nail on the head. Recent data shows us racing towards climate tipping points much faster than envisioned even 12-18 months ago. The release of CO2, NO2 and methane from Siberia and the Alaskan tundra is very scary. Estimates of up to 800 ppm of CO2 equivalent on top of the existing 385ppm could occur if the permafrost melts even partially. We are still being sidetracked from action by politicians and reactionary commentators that still equate environmental concern with anti capitalism. It is depressing but I am of the current belief that the world will only be pushed into serious action when it is too late. I am saddened by the way the current disasterous Vic bushfires and the drought which has caused them are being turned into a cultural battle where evil Greenies are being blamed for policy that minimises burn offs in communities inhabited by ‘real” Australians.(Devine, Bolt, &co). The popular media is complicit in its refusal to highlight the extreme urgency of the situation. Only direct massive action to curb carbon emissions has any chance of allowing us to mitigate the danger of global warning. The question is how do we achieve it??

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Dear Ian,

Sadly you are more than correct.

With one exception.

The impression as if there exists a scientific uncertainty has been perpetrated by those who, innocently or deliberately , misread the (now highly advanced) climate science, and those, close to vested interests, who admit "doubt is our product". Obfuscation which has already cost the world more than 20 years delay in attempts at any effective mitigation and adaptation measures

Even the IPCC-AR4-2007 climate projections are more than scary for anyone who understands that, due to feedback effects, tempratures higher by 2 degrees C relative to the present would result in near-total melting of the polar ice sheets, taking the Earth out of conditions livable for large mammals and thereby civilization.

It is therefore not "scientific uncertainty" but the failure to understand the implications of the evidence ALREADY ESTABLISHED which is the problem.*

* (Just for example, one is not mistaken to say "the Earth is round" just because it has minor spherical irregularities).

By: robert

robert — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

more on the “trade vs tax” debate here:

http://inside.org.au/an-idea-whose-time-never-came/

By: Malcolm Robinson

Malcolm Robinson — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Ian. Where does this figure of ‘less than 300ppm’ as the optimum CO2 level come from? It would eliminate the increased forest growth, which for example has been over 40% in last 50 years in North America and probably worldwide, and which is doing much to maintain the health of the atmosphere. It would eliminate much of the enhanced plant growth that has played an important part in the world’s increased food production during that period, and potentially could lead to mass starvation. It is probably lower than pre-industrial levels which, although assumed by climate modellers to have been 280ppm, was probably around 335ppm, based on the average of many thousands of analyses for CO2 done during the 1800s. Indeed it is lower than the level throughout most of earth history and is dangerously close to the 200ppm level at which plant most plant growth stops. And if you believe that there is a relationship between CO2 and ice ages then there is research to suggest it is low enough to trigger another one. I don’t believe there is any scientific support for proposing such a target level.

By: Mark Duffett

Mark Duffett — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

Lois, your (and Ian Dunlop’s) statement of the seriousness of the situation is inconsistent with your blithe dismissal of nuclear power out of hand. People who know what they are talking about are changing their minds on this issue - see for example http://bravenewclimate.com/, especially

http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/01/13/prescription-for-the-planet-part-ii-newclear-energy-and-boron-powered-vehicles/

http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/01/16/put-all-energy-cards-on-the-table-to-fix-climate-change-fully/

http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/01/25/prescription-for-the-planet-part-iii-renewable-atoms-and-plasma-charged-waste/

http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/02/12/integral-fast-reactors-for-the-masses/

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 10:00:00 +0000

I too, sadly agree that Ian is correct in his assessments of the science and the politics of this debate. The fact that it is still a debate about ifs, and maybes, and middle roads, is a sad indictment of our corporate and political elite. It is heartening, if that’s possible given our dire circumstance, that at least the meagre debate in this comments section is about just how many degrees of a clear and present threat to our species we face.

Here’s praying (I think we’re at that point) that the mainstream debate can also shift to this stage, and onwards into competing to reach the strongest targets, to taking the most immediate and effective actions, to…. you get the point.