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CPRS bills succumb to a quiet defeat
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The Government’s CPRS bills slipped to a quiet and deserved defeat this morning in the Senate, to much excitement here in Parliament House but, one suspects, yawning non-interest from voters. Right, well that’s the Garnaut Review, a Green Paper, a White Paper, a revision and delay and two Opposition-commissioned reports wasted then. One wonders how the bill would have fared if a smarter operator like Julia Gillard had been its shepherd, rather than the one-note dogmatist from Adelaide, given Gillard managed to woo the Greens, Xenophon and Fielding into the tent on IR, an issue every bit as controversial. But that probably misses the point that the CPRS has, first and foremost, been about making life hell for the Liberal Party. To the death this morning, Steve Fielding was demanding a debate on climate science, with the air of a Titanic passenger insisting that the boat is unsinkable. Fielding had his denialist briefing yesterday for Senators and MPs even as the ANU’s Will Steffen was releasing a succinct but savage hatchet job on the likes of Bob Carter. I thought a long time ago that the refusal of the Senate to pass the CPRS would be a problem for the Senate, not for the Government, and I’m still convinced of that. For all that we know the CPRS is a dud — and not just any old dud but a dud on a multi-billion dollar scale — the ETS may be taking on the sort of “just do it” logic that the notion of an apology to the Stolen Generations took on in the Howard years. Australians want to be able to tick the issue off and don’t really understand what the problem is. Those arguing that the CPRS is too harsh or not harsh enough — that’s most people here — might face the same fate as conservatives who insisted an apology would open the floodgates to compensation claims. If so, it will become a powerful tool for a Government already overburdened with political fortune. The outcome of the vote will be framed in terms of double dissolution triggers. That’s slightly misleading, because the Government will get a double dissolution trigger sooner or later even if, as Antony Green has so amusingly identified, reports of the availability of such triggers have been decidedly exaggerated. That’s not really the issue: the issue is whether Kevin Rudd, who is as a percentage player, as conservative a political tactician as he is on social issues, would risk an early election that would throw away one of his most powerful assets, the public’s genuine regard for him, which is a luxury in good times but might yet prove much more of a necessity when times turn bad — which they inevitably will, even if it’s not before the next election. This is a bloke who is planning well into the next decade when the Opposition is struggling to plan for next week. Nevertheless, the Government will make an effort to demonstrate its willingness to compromise. Expect some high-profile meetings; shots of Wong sitting down with Andrew Robb, or of Greg Combet chatting earnestly with Nick Xenophon. The message will be of a Government eager to do whatever it can to get its bill through; the reality will be that beyond a few token concessions like more help for the coal and electricity industries — already agreed upon within the Government — the CPRS will return in the same form late in the year. Watch Question Time today. The tenor of the Government’s attack on the Liberals will show the political strategy at work here. Lots of references to disarray and denialism. And it won’t stop for months to come. |
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24 Comments
“…well that’s the Garnaut Review, a Green Paper, a White Paper, a revision and delay and two Opposition-commissioned reports wasted then…”
Hip, Pip, HOORAY!!!
Now maybe we can move on.
Its about time Kevin was photographed in hard hat and ISO9000 vest again spruiking all those “nation-building” jobs.
“…For all that we know the CPRS is a dud - and not just any old dud but a dud on a multi-billion dollar scale…”
Then explain why you supported it?
“…the ANU’s Will Steffen was releasing a succinct but savage hatchet job on the likes of Bob Carter…”
Again attacking the man.
AGW believers are an embarrassing joke.
Stupid too.
As the opposition were never going to vote for anything that resembled an ETS, it was probably better just to bring on the vote. I understand the only policy Malcolm could get party room support for was to delay the vote and bill. So the shenanigans of the last few days fitted in to this strategy. The govt could have talked to them for two weeks; they still would have found a reason to not support the bill and we would be in the same place but two more weeks wasted.
Fran Kelly exposed this best when she asked Andrew Robb if the the govt adopted the plan as presented by MT would they vote for it? After some obfuscation “no” was the reply. You cannot negotiate with another party if their only strategy is to extend the negotiations and do not want a resolution.
At least they can get on with something else now and prepare for the real vote in two months time. That is when it will get interesting. Although I am sure there will be some interesting back room discussions going on in the mean time.
Again I have great admiration for Bernard Keane’s analysis of the CPRS bills and all that it entails. Two comments: One, I don’t think all the electorate is made up of non-interrested voters. I have been hoping that this Bill will be rejected because I believe it is better not to have this one, with at least the possibility that a better one can be produced, preferably sooner than later. Secondly, I would caution Rudd against calling an early election no matter what trigger is available - if he really needs one. He has enough “mandate” to push ahead with significant change now. The only sensible backlash to an early election will be to vote greens, despite the remarks of other commenters to this forum. Climate change is real, its happening now,you can debate it until the cows come home (but they won’t in most scenarios) - what we need to do is take action quickly NOW. Should the worst we fear NOT happen then we will still be better off with the likes of renewable energy higher local self-sufficiency, more relaiable freshwate rsupplies, etc. But if our worst fears are realised then we will be glad we started early.
Just crossed my mind and would be interested in a view from someone who understands the constitution and procedures better than I.
I believe that when the vote on the CPRS was blocked last time and deferred, there was a view put forward that this could be taken as the first rejection of the bill. Any chance that this could be the second and some smarty constitutional lawyer will advise that the govt now has a DD trigger.
Of course I will accept that I don’t know what I am talking about here. Just a thought bubble really.
On a personal note our family solar business took a hit this morning with the voting down of the CPRS bills. Sadly enough the Labor government has linked the future of the solar industry rebate to the ETS, and it went down with the ship.
When the rebate suddenly ended (last month?) retail solar sales collapsed in a heap and my Dad and co. have had to lay off salesman and various tradies. We’re hoping the solar rebate might come up again as a separate concern but for the meantime it (and the fledgling solar industry) is in limbo.
I understood that the whole purpose of a CPRS was to reduce the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere; this is to be done by cost pressures on the use and misuse of carbon. Just listening to the Prime Minister today on Question Time I wonder where the pressure is to come from. As far as I could see just about everyone is to be compensated by the government for the higher energy prices, and the consequent increase in the cost of living.
How can the government achieve this magic pudding? No prizes for the correct answer. Taxation!
Trevor: I thought about the earlier double dissolution trigger issue too. For a while I thought there was a tenable argument, but the vote of the Senate in June to set a definite future date for a CPRS vote (today) made that fairly tenuous. The High Court considered related issues in Victoria v Commonwealth & Connor (1975) 134 CLR 81, and the majority would only determine whether a failure to pass had taken place by looking at the acts of the Senate as a whole, not at the views of individual parties or Senators.
The Government is unlikely to try to rely on the June delay vote as a double dissolution trigger, since even if the Governor-General agreed to the dissolution, the Government won teh election handily and passed the legislation at a joint sitting, the High Court might strike it down if the first trigger wasn’t found to be kosher. The election wouldn’t be undone, but the legislation would have to run the gauntlet yet again.
Bernard: Penny Wong may not be the poster Senator for burning charisma, but I don’t think that any configuration of votes for a CPRS ever existed in the current Senate without the Liberals. The Liberals have been disappointingly unable to engage coherently up to now; and since it must be sustained over the long term to achieve its aim, the CPRS can’t work unless it is fundamentally accepted by both sides of politics. If the Liberals can get it together internally, I think there is room for a worthwhile agreement in the next couple of months to get the CPRS up.
WHO CARES MAN MADE CLIMATE CHANGE IS FUCKING BULLSHIT!!!!
Dont get me wrong im a environmentalist, but if we are going to tax pollution, lets tax all polution, not just the fashionable, flava of the day one.
Again big polluters should pay, but not just for the smallest trace green house gas but all polution.
Kevin Rudd eat dick you enviro sell out.
Nice work “MIA”
The Massively Impotent Alliance salutes you
Only a braindead ape would call anyone whom agrees that, yes, climate is variable and it is a NATURALLY occurring fact of life but questions the role of the minuscule volumes of carbon dioxide, a ‘denialist’. I’m sorry, but the use of such language removes any credibility from whatever message you are attempting to recycle.
If you are so filled with the ‘knowledge’ then please answer the following questions for us:
(a) the earth’s climate was significantly warmer than now during the Roman period when the Romans occupied and farmed portions of Greenland where there is now thick ice. In the absence of the “Industrial Revolution” can you please outline what caused this increase in temperature, why such an increase did not result in a a runaway ‘greenhouse effect’, and what caused the following cooling?
(b) what has recently changed in our understanding of carbon dioxide such that logarithmically declining influences of what is essentially a trace gas provide extreme impacts upon ‘climate’ such as you expouse? Is it changes in thermodynamics, flaws in assumptions used in our primitive modelling, or something completely different?
Thanks keith
obviously not as impotent as Penny Wong and her Penis
If (and when) the Government is serious about making Australia’s appropriate contribution to tacking human-induced climate change, it will negotiate seriously with the Greens.
Agree a package of appropriate greenhouse-reduction measures with the Greens - then see who dare face it down in Parliament.
I dare you, Mr Rudd…
Several weeks ago a commenter (SM?) left the same comment “.. the Romans occupied and farmed portions of Greenland where there is now thick ice.” but I, presumably like others, just couldn’t believe it was anything other than a fevered typo. - the intention being to write “..Vikings farmed Greenland..” .
But, if you are just gonna cut’n’paste with engaging brain then you’re talking nonsense.
typos. rule, KO. That should, of course, have been “..withOUT engaging brain..” .
Sorreee
I’m baffld.
What is the Greens strategy people?
I can only guess that voting with Liberals, Nationals and Independants cannot not go too far towards their hopes of stricter reductions, considering the majority of other members of this opposition bloc would “water down” the measures.
I thought the Greens would be leading out front on this issue, but a healthy dose of realpolitik may do them some good.
Shurely they can’t believe that voting with the majority to down this scheme, however shoddy it may be, will produce results they will appreciate.
Mabe they have some kick arz astrologers on their team?
Stuart, Stuart, Stuart. Been reading Plimer’s book have you? I’m not a climate scientist but a little bit of research can easily answer your questions to end all questions.
a) Assuming you mean the Vikings were farming Greenland during the Roman period, you have succumbed to a pleasant fairy tale that the Vikings had a thriving community on “Green”land. It may well have been a bit warmer but not hugely. In fact, the Viking settlement was not very successful at all. They tried to raise animals but had to keep them locked in a barn for 5 months of the year. Many of them starved. They refused to eat fish and refused to trade with the Inuit. Anyway, even if it was a bit warmer in Greenland at the time, this is not an indicator of GLOBAL warming. The same nonsense argument comes up with sceptics about the Medieval Warm Period - as if because it was warm in England in the 1400’s it must’ve been warm throughout the whole world.
b) My personal favourite Plimer argument: CO2 “saturation”. I had the pleasure of confronting the man himself about this particular piece of obfuscation. You wrote: “Is it changes in thermodynamics, flaws in assumptions used in our primitive modelling, or something completely different?”. I will refer you to realclimate.com to find out about the details of the greenhouse effect. The short version is that the radiation that CO2 reflects is a logarithmic relative to its concentration. As the concentration of CO2 increases, the CO2 in the upper atmosphere where there is no water vapour will reflect more infra-red radiation. Even though CO2 is a trace gas it can and does have a large effect on the amount of radiation and thus energy that gets trapped in the atmosphere. Also there is no such thing as a “runaway greenhouse”. This is a figment of Plimer’s imagination. As the CO2 concentration increases so the equilibrium radiation balances changes, it will not “run away”. In the 1960’s studies done by the US airforce to measure the radiation spectra in the upper atmosphere proved that the CO2 is not saturated in the upper atmosphere. Since then computers have been used to calculate what the temperature increase will be as a result of the absorptive characteristics of the greenhouse gases. This is also a fundamental result of our knowlege of absorption spectra which is based on quantum physics. Stuart, are you prepared to dismiss a large chunk of 20th century physics so that you can continue to believe that CO2 is just a “trace gas”?
Trust me, Stuart, your questions are not a result of gaps in the science, they are the results of gaps in YOUR knowlege because you choose to consult charlatans like Plimer for your information.
” In fact, the Viking settlement was not very successful at all. They tried to raise animals but had to keep them locked in a barn for 5 months of the year. Many of them starved” - Greg this is true but misleading to say the least. The Vikings were in Greenland from about 900AD until about 1400AD during the medieval warm period until the mini ice age, when as you say they starved and had to evacuate the island. They couldn’t adapt to the changing climate, and refused to learn from the Inuits native to the island.
You sc*m, Bernard Keane,
First you s*ck up to Rudd like there’s no tomorrow, now it’s all “Gillard would do it better”
Face facts you lefty sc*m, your hero Rudd is a dudd.
I look forward to reminding you of your ignorant adulation over the next few years. You epitomize all that is best about Labor.
Blind whoreship.
Hey Joel B1,
It’s “scum”, you knob.
GREGB: And I suppose you also believe that the white stuff coming out of power station cooling towers, as promoted so widely by the pro ‘green’ media is carbon dioxide? Yeh, I know it is water vapor - the most widespread potent ‘greenhouse’ gas. Don’t see you guys whinging about that.
Funny, it always seemed that runaway greenhouse scenario was promoted more by guys such as Al Gore exposing his hockey-stick error to light greens seeking a cause. Don’t recall Plimer and others promoting ‘runaway greenhouse’ as an end result, they seem to be saying exactly what you have said, viz. runaway is not possible (the system is self limiting?); that runaway stuff comes from the ‘other’ side.
So Greenland was a bit warmer - a point of agreement. What caused that warming and cooling cycle? Would not have been manmade carbon dioxide surely? Um, why could not a similar cause and effect mechanism (or mechanism) be happening in the recent past, or even now? You must agree that there are certainly factors other than carbon dioxide to consider that are arguably of significant influence in the overall scheme of things.
The Greenland point was probably myself. And I am still seeking proponents of the CPRS to explain the past cycles of global warming and cooling in the absence of the carbon dioxide mechanism so virulently promoted over the past 25 years or so.
Stuart: I am perfectly aware what the white stuff coming out of the power station cooling towers is. I actually work on a plant that generates its own electricity from waste heat. So I do know something about electricity generation. Also, I know that water vapour is a greenhouse gas. It’s a greenhouse gas that absorbs radiation at particular but overlapping wavelengths with CO2. There’s no point in whingeing about rejecting vapour to the atmosphere because that vapour will be taken up in the hydrologic cycle and the overall amount of water vapour in the atmosphere is not changing much.
You mis-interpret what is meant by a run away effect as it applies to the greenhouse effect. As I explained in my previous post, certain levels of CO2 will yield a particular forcing on the climate. The alteration results in a change in the earth’s energy balance. This is the “enhanced” greenhouse effect. The CO2 component of this forcing cannot “run away”. The hockey stick is not a demonstration of “greenhouse run-away”. It is a representation of how temperature has changed over the last few thousand years as revealed by various temperature proxies.
Of course, CO2 concentration is not the only thing that can affect climate. A cursory reading of the IPCC report will demonstrate that they actually do estimate the contributions of various factors such as Total Solar Irradiance, aerosols, ozone etc. See Fig 2,4 in the Summary for Policy makers in AR4 of IPCC.
No-one would claim that the medieval warm period was caused by man-made CO2 emissions, either. You still have not addressed how the MWP can be extrapolated to mean the whole planet was warmer. Actually, that’s what the whole point of Mann’s hockey graph was - to get a more global view of recent climate history. And guess what - the work demonstrated that the MWP WAS a regional phenomenon. We know that current warming is not regional, but global, because we now have thousands of measuring stations across the world. You can refer to FAQ3.1 Fig 1 Ch3 of the WG1 AR4 to see a representation of the measured increase in mean temperature acrosss the globe.
If you want to know how past cycles of warming and cooling have informed current scientific thinking on climate change you can consult Chapter 6 of the IPCC report for a whole 66 pages of discussion about paleoclimate. So I would re-iterate my point, Stuart, that you need to consult the available literature to answer your own questions. You can download the whole IPCC report with consummate ease off their website. The IPCC report is a synthesis of the hundreds of peer-reviewed papers on the subject to formulate a scientific position and to provide advice to policymakers. So it’s the easiest way, really, to get a good understanding. Happy reading!
GregB: As a geologist, with a sniff of undergraduate climate study via geography subjects (which I suspect is a lot more than some commentators here), my perspective is that if we are unable to explain past, or even recent events in historical timeframes, then we are ill equipped to understand the present and even less so the future. I agree and understand what you are saying about greenhouse - that the temperature cannot run away. A pity that that is not widely promoted by the environmentalists, certain high profile political personas, the media, and those financial agencies seeking to screw millions from any CPRS, and I am sure there are many others (including climatologists who feed these groups).
Interesting that you bring up the now well and truly discredited Mann Hockey stick - throw in a dataset and get ‘the shape’ I recall was the primary flaw. First version failed to ‘see’ history, then it was fudged to fit before it was exposed.
FYI I have viewed both the recent IPCC report, the Wedgeman report, and many others, which have only served to reinforce that we do not presently have a handle on the multiple factors that have an impact upon global temperatures, and therefore climate.
I repeat, if non-carbon factors have produced past temperature variations greater than we currently experience; then why cannot they be a significant underlying factors now? We know from the past data that carbon dioxide is a lag indicator; that is the temperature goes up and carbon dioxide follows. Carbon dioxide therefore, even though it has been in much higher concentrations than now, does not appear to be a major causative agent.
It is a nonsense that the green lobby seeks to shut down the world by picking on a single ‘soft’ target, viz. carbon dioxide (and I fail to see what Wong’s ‘carbon’ has to do with it). There are obvious a large number cyclical, non-carbon dioxide related, physical and astronomical features, supported by data, that each have some impact on our planet. We know that solar output is not constant but goes up and down, yet we ignore potential influences despite knowing that life as we know it is fully dependent upon it?
You may wish to seek out some geology and paleontology data to complement your own information. That is something the climatology community - and especially the IPCC - could also do, viz. take a holistic perspective and involve other areas of expertise to a much greater extent than has been done to date.
I support reducing pollution, but maintain that carbon dioxide and carbon, which are neither significant pollutants (relative to other substances we discard) or poisons per se. To purely concentrate on reducing carbon dioxide in a futile attempt to manipulate golbal temperatures is a mischief, compounded by foolhardy financial schemes. Money will be better spent on ways to cope with both warmer and cooler (it is coming you know…) condition.
I have no more to add. The electorate is brighter than given credit for and think that most our politicians are wankers and so far off-track on this stuff it is not worth getting in a bother, hence nobody took any notice of the forgone conclusion
Adieu.
Stuart, if as you say you’ve done “sniff of undergraduate climate study via geography subjects ” and you disagree with the IPCC, it’s not a lack of facts that’s getting in the way of your understanding, but breathtaking arrogance. The past is explained very, very well in the documents referenced by Greg. Buggered if I know where you got the idea that we don’t understand past climates.
Mann’s hockey stick is not ‘well and truly discredited either’. Another myth doled out by the Heartlanders. Some aspects of the method used to estimate temperatures from around the MWP were challenged; then these challenges were overturned; and have been challenged again. This does not mean that every single aspect of the graph is wrong. The most recent finding by US Government auditors found that the representation was mostly accurate, apart from some possible problems in past estimated. Maybe you could start by reading the Wikipedia article? It’s very clearly written, and with your awesome educational background you should be able to grasp it.
In summary, the science is not up for debate here. Greg is not debating you, he’s trying to point you to the correct information. Climate science is pretty much nailed; there’s a lot of people working on it and thousands and thousands of papers supporting the theory. You can’t overturn the whole theory with some rhetoric on the internet; you need to write a peer reviewed journal article that disproves the fundamentals. Your extensive university education on this topic should set you up nicely to contribute.