Coalition enters a policy-free zone on carbon
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So the Liberals have sorted out the leadership, at least for now. Tony Abbott may have only beaten Malcolm Turnbull by a single vote, but that’s as good as a landslide. Plenty of other leaders have won only narrow victories. Billy McMahon, Billy Snedden, Bill Hayden, Mark Latham, Brendan Nelson and Turnbull himself . Hmmm. Perhaps the less said about that the better. And for now the moderate-conservative divide has been papered over, with the conservatives in the ascendancy, moderates being told to toe the line or have their preselections threatened (“they owe their careers to the party”, their new leader warned yesterday, unsubtly) and troglodytes such as Bronwyn Bishop and Sophie Mirabella in line for promotion. That’s two of the three issues that caused this whole disaster. On the third, things aren’t looking so good. Putting aside its dog of a CPRS and its determination to use climate change as a political weapon, the government has been dead right to point out that the coalition has repeatedly delayed settling a position on the CPRS. As each stage of the debate has unfolded — the Garnaut Review, the Green Paper, the White Paper, the first cave-in to polluters early this year, the introduction of the actual legislation and its inevitable senate committees — the coalition has put off determining a position, saying it would wait until the next stage, or commission its own review (it’s had two of its own reviews or wait for the legislation to appear), or wait for Copenhagen, or wait for the Americans. Finally, for exactly one week, they had a position on implementing the policy John Howard took to the last election. Then, yesterday, they demolished their own position and began calling the very policy they had negotiated with the government and accepted last week a “giant tax” that they would fight tooth and claw. This confusion is mirrored in Abbott’s own position on climate change. As Turnbull accurately noted, there isn’t a position on climate change and the CPRS Abbott hasn’t held, despite his reputation as a bloke who says what he believes. Apparently he wasn’t saying what he believes when he called climate change “crap” or claimed that the science “wasn’t settled”. Yesterday he was back to claiming climate change was real and at least partly caused by humans. He also, crucially, committed the coalition to the same emissions reduction target range as the government — 5-25%. Anyway, that’s politics, and no one would be able to do anything without a little hypocrisy. So now Abbott has the same problem that Turnbull and Nelson faced: what will be the coalition’s policy to address climate change? Specifically, how will it reduce Australia’s emissions by at least 5% by 2020, unilaterally? Because that’s what Abbott signed himself up to on his first day in the job. Turnbull solved the problem. He got the government to agree to an ETS even less effective and even more rewarding to polluters than Labor’s. Now Abbott has to do the same. He has very few options, and none of them good, and that’s before he even takes it to a party room divided between reactionary denialists, emissions trading sceptics and the 29 who backed the Turnbull-amended CPRS. A carbon tax is not an option, and Abbott appeared to rule it out this morning. You can’t campaign against a “giant tax” and propose one of your own. The party of the Right can’t campaign for a vast tax while the party of the Left wants a market-based mechanism. You can’t have another version of the CPRS. Again, it clashes with the coalition campaign against the CPRS if it is proposing a variant of the same thing. And their own, Keatingesque mantra if you don’t understand it, don’t vote for it” would apply equally to the coalition variant. After that, you’re down to non-economic tools: throwing money at technology, which the government is already doing, except Abbott might be tempted by nuclear power, the most expensive technology of the lot, and the most frightening one to voters. Or regulating industries to compel carbon emission reductions. Again, the party of the Right promising big government spending, or regulation, when that of the Left wants a market-based mechanism. Or there’s voluntary action, which is now being promoted as some sort of silver bullet, both for households and for agriculture. If voluntary action was going to do the trick on climate change, we wouldn’t be having climate change. All the tree-planting and switching off lights and biosequestration in the world won’t get us within cooee of 5% reductions by 2020. And you know what’s worse about the coalition’s position? They’ve signed up to a unilateral 5%, but look like they’re walking away from the mechanism that would have allowed Australia to actually increase its emissions while still notionally meeting that 5% target, by buying foreign permits. Abbott seems to have signed up to a far more draconian target, a real 5% reduction, unleavened by trading credits from PNG and Indonesian forests. Quite the greenie aren’t we, Mr Abbott. That’s why more sensible Australian businesses are mortified that the chance of passage of the CPRS has slipped away. Whatever Frankenstein’s Monster of a policy Abbott and his team craft over the summer break — it needs to be done by the end of January, because the government might call a double dissolution election in March — as Christopher Pyne noted last night, that will need to go through the same trial by fire that Turnbull’s went through. Most or all of the Nationals, the denialists, the ETS sceptics and the moderates will need to be happy with it. The coalition has spent two years running and hiding from having to take climate change seriously, littering public debate with a string of increasingly implausible excuses while they sought a way to deal with their own internal divisions. Turnbull made them stop running and face up to the challenge. Now that they’ve overturned all his work and shown him the door, they’ve resumed running. But they can’t run forever. Eventually Abbott will desperately wish more Senators than Judith Troeth and Sue Boyce had crossed the floor and got the government’s CPRS over the line. |
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195 Comments
Bernard says “Abbott might be tempted by nuclear power, the most expensive technology of the lot”. However nuclear will get cheaper with practice, while gas can only become more expensive.
It is here that the Libs can fill a policy gap: to give industry a reliable alternative to hydrobcarbons.
The vast majority of Liberal Party members do not want the ETS. At least Abbott is giving heed to the members who elected him. Carbon emissions can be controlled cheaply and now we can go about doing that.
An excellent description of the farcical state of Liberal policy-making. And from what I have heard of Abbott’s interviews so far he is going to make a very poor fist of making any of this nonsense seem credible.
To his credit perhaps, Abbott is not very good at the verbal sleight of hand and extraordinary verbal dexterity is needed if you want to paper over this mess. All the jesuitical sophistry in the world will not save him from the chopping-block that is wheedling its way towards him.
Tim Falkner, all this bowing and scraping towards the Liberal Party membership will do them no good with the ordinary Liberal voter.
If the Labor Party obeyed all the wishes of its membership we would have the “commanding heights” of the economy nationalised and union membership made compulsory. Rudd has no trouble ignoring those demands so what on earth is wrong with the Liberal leadership?
Bernard,
The ETS - like the Republic - is a dead issue.
You are living in denial.
Move on.
On the contrary, the ETS is now more of a live issue than it has been for a while. The next election, sooner or later, will be fought substantially on climate change policy. Labour may face cross benches which will not pass an ETS as piss weak as the current version, rather than complaints that it is far too strong, and the wholesale pork barrelling of Ma Coal will have to be defended again. Burn it down, bring it on, time is short.
As I recall so well from 1975, never mistake outrage (even by thousands of people) as an indication of public opinion. The kinds of people that have the time to make their views known (like me) are the more motivated, engaged and typically older people in our community. This is particularly true of political party members.
Our group is not representative of public opinion….so we must turn to the opinion polls, which all suggest consistent support for action (of any sort…don’t bother me with the details) on climate change and more than adequate support for the current government.
How will the Liberals respond when the outraged left of their party become similarly enraged as Tony Abbott begins to exert his will on the party? Will they feel obliged to change direction again?
I note that he is already unilaterally committing the party to all sorts of new directions. So much for being an inclusive and collegiate leader. Should be a sufficient “red flag” to mobilise those in his party that don’t like his politics.
I note also the continued eerie silence from within the Crikey Death Star on the Climategate scandal.
The childish refusal to even acknowledge the action taken today by the CRU where one of the world CHIEF CLIMATE SCIENTISTS has stepped down pending an investigation into his disgraceful conduct over the past decade in which he and several of his colleagues did wilfully and collusively block FoI requests from academics in the UK and USA; blackball and attempt to discredit dissenting scientists, shamefully manipulate the peer-review process and obscure, destroy or massage inconvenient temperature data.
Ignoring this scientific travesty won’t make it go away.
Last night I wrote a piece almost identical to Bernard’s. By claiming the ETS is a tax you automatically rule out either a tax or an ETS. Then an hour ago Abbott agreed. No tax and no ETS going to this election. Oh, and by the way, no credible carbon policy.
Then the brilliant press conference by the acting Prime Minister and Minister Wong.
I am a Liberal voter. Sorry, I was a Liberal voter. Now I am just a liberal voter desperately seeking a party. I will have to go to the ALP unless Malcolm and the remaining sensible (not moderate, sensible) Liberals jettison the lunatic love boat and start a new Party.
If you are a young Liberal in Parliament today then you will almost certainly lose your seat anyway. Might as well go out with a bit of style and reclaim the people who want a party of free enterprise, small government and action on climate change.
Okay, no ETS and no Carbon tax. I’ll be fascinated to see what sort of credible mechanism the Liberal Party comes up with (and make no mistake, they’ll need to). It sounds very much like Abbott is trying to shore up his power-base (unsurprisingly) by promising all things to all factions. He’ll have much less wiggle room in the new year.
Injunctive prayer to the demon oxide which has occupied Gods carbon. Begone!
After that, I think they’ve got nada.
I thought Bernard’s analysis ‘light on’ until I read some of the posts especially Dave Sanderson’s
You tell the average Australian that their cost of living is about to go up but at the same time the burdens being placed on their shoulders will make not the slightest differnce to any environmental outcome, and watch what happens.
The Liberals will start to target Labor held seats in the Hunter and WA and QLD, the coal miners and their families. Especially Combet’s seat! This is going to be great to watch.
This will be a sight to behold. Abbott doesn’t take any prisoners.
Ah, I just want to say, a great analysis, the kind of stuff that puts the banal insights of the mainstream commentariate to shame.
“…I am a Liberal voter. Sorry, I was a Liberal voter…”
Riiiight.
Of course you are.
Sorry, were.
Wow. I don’t drop into Crikey all that often for precisely the existence of articles like this!!! What a load of crap, typical of Bernard Keane to just be rolling around in the afterglow of a little interaction with Rudd, Gillard or the greatest hypocrite in Australian politics, Bob Brown.
The ETS is a tax, it is a tax on the creation of Carbon-based pollutants. You can gloss it over in anyway you like, such as calling a tax a stamp duty so as not to imply it is an indirect tax, ala the most honest tax in our history - the GST. If you create pollution in running your business, you will taxed for it. And from that we will help some of the wealthiest economies in the world to deal with what they should already be doing. This whole ETIS is a beat-up, it is a nothing policy that will only push the price of everything up and make the GST look like a fool’s folly - and in this case we get nothing in return. We don’t get a cleaner environment, we do not get tax cuts. Nothing. Nada.
So Bernard, tell me how it works in layman’s terms you biased Labor sycophant.
Abbott has a carbon policy, you just don’t like it. Global warming is a myth, or so he believes. While people like Keane, Rudd and Brown trot out poorly fashioned statistics that are more often than not either false or distorted, they shout down anyone with data pointing to other impacts or reasons for changes. Look up climate gate, or track down an article by a Jewish scientist that went into great detail on the myth. There are two sides to every story, and if you were a real journalist you’d go looking for it.
That said, I am very disturbed for what it happening to the Liberal Party. It is fast moving away from being a liberal party, and to that end I may join Joek in hunting a new home for my vote. Rest assured though, it will not be the Greens. I leave that last spot on my ballot paper blank, and it always for the Greens candidate.
The one thing you have to say for Abbott is that we now have a point of difference and maybe the Rudd clown will become a little more accountable for his recklessness.
Now that the ETS has had its day for a while, lets hear for all the other ETS acronyms that have had to take a back seat recently:
Emergency Telecommunications Service
Electronic Trading System
Engineering Technical Services
Episodic Tremor and Slip
Electronic Text Services
Environmental Tobacco Smoke
Educational Talent Search
Essentially the Same
Educational Technology Services
Evangelical Theological Society
European Test Symposium
Electronic Traction System
Engineering Test Satellite
Electric Thermal Storage
Econometric Time Series
European Treaty Series
Edmonton Transit System
Enhanced Traction System
Endoscopic Thoracic Sympathectomy
European Telecommunication Standard
Electronic Tendering System
European Trading Scheme
Eye of the Storm
Expiration Term of Service
Executable Test Suite
Estimated Time of Sailing
Equivalent Time Sampling
Estimated Time of Separation
Education and Training System
E-Gov Travel Service
Energy Transfer System
End Term of Service
Embedded Tool Suite
Enthought Tool Suite
Emergency Temporary Standards
Electronic Tandem Switching
Electronic Translator System
Electric Train Supply
Electron Transfer System
Experimental Test Site
Engine Temperature Sensor
European Telephone System
EOSDIS Test System
Emergency trip system
Escondido Tutorial Service
Extra Terrestrial Spacecraft
Electronic and Traditional Dictionaries
Electronic Transaction System
Emergency Towing Systems
English Textual Studies
Electronic Test Set
Electric Train Staff
End of Time in Service
External Technology Solutions
Emergency Treatment Services
Enhanced Transport Service
End Tour of Service
Electronic Timekeeping System
Extramural Tracking System
Evaporator Tank System
Embedded Training Simulation
Electronic Telephone Set
Electronic Title System
Estimated Time of Shipping
European Telephone Standard
Exploitation Technology Symposium
Equinox Transition Study
External Telecommunication Service
European Troop Strength
Entertainment Transportation Specialists
Employee Timekeeping System
Expressed Tagged Site
Emergency Throttle System
Engineering Technical/Test System
Extended Tank System
Engine Tracking System
Event Tree Sequence
Enhanced Transport Session
Enron Technical Services
Electronic Test Station
Engineered Time Standard
Enlisted Training Strategy
Extreme Transformation System
Thanks to http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/ for showing me the enormity of the acronymiverse.
Time that Tony belted a few asylum seekers - that’ll distract the masses. And will these deniers/ /sceptics get off the fence ? Just answer yes or no .. Is there climate change ? If so, is it man made ( all or some ) ? If so, do you want to do anything about it ? Or do you just hate Rudd and his tribe because .. that’s how you’re made ? Enough crap links to neo-con web sites …
Yes the Abbott haters will be out in force and yes he won’t win the next election, at least he will give Krudd some sleepless nights on his next overseas junket. Oh yes of course Krudd will be going to Copenhagen, i hope he doesn’t forget his mittens, it is 1 c in Copenhagen today!! This evil tax on everything is a complete con, Krudd is now worse than Whitlam, totally fiscally irresponsible!
The Coal-itions actions, for all the world from their stance in this “debate”, seem predicated on the one underlying tenet, that while “their legacy will forever be remembered for Iraq, “non-core promises”, nurturing prejudice and distrust - Rudd will never have something of value if they can help it”. That and “Not the Malcolm” of course!
The “Transmogrified Tony Abbott”? For all the world comes across as an 18 carat, politically driven, hypocrite - to borrow one of his more candid, classic lines, uttered in an unguarded moment, referring to Bernie Banton, “Just because a politician wears his Christian religiousity like a sandwich-board, doesn’t mean he’s pure of heart”! Now if we could harness that drive, we’d solve this “climate change crap”, and heat all our houses in winter with the hot air!
And don’t you love his implied appraisal of the “bludging work ethic” and “conditions” of “some” Australians, and how they should “contribute” more - we could do so much better under the sort of “Workchoices MkII” ( a cur by any name is still a dog”) he wants to reintroduce, given the chance. And “the only people” who would pay the price for the sort of “progression” he envisages, would be the less well off workers. While workers, and their families battling the cost of living, would have to fight for 3% wage increases, “management” could get “15+% plus perks”, with a “vote”. Guess that’s why he’s in politics? To represent them?
As for the observation, by some, that they must like being in Opposition - “electing Abbott” - to borrow a reference from a wise man “In Opposition :- the pay’s not that much uncomfortably less than government; it pays better than the dole, and the work’s not that much harder”! This Michael “Pancakes” Johnson chap, nice to see him lifting his profile, over the last day or two, after so long and this latest personal “mishap”
@Paddlefoot
Yes (for 4.6 BILLION YEARS)
No (and neither you nor the IPCC can prove it is)
n/a (see answer to Q2)
No (that I can see Rudd for the bureaucratic shaman that he is doesn’t make me hate him…it just makes me smarter than you)
If Tony the Wild Colonial Boy can muster up a credible carbon policy with no tax and no ETS he will be hailed around the world as the new Messiah.
His chances of success are worse than those of Rudd getting an ETS through the current Senate.
MOST PECULIAR MAMA: You’re a sore winner!
I have recently and reluctantly changed sides re nuclear power generation. I now support consideration of all options, including nuclear, which can produce electricity with lower CO2 footprint.
Perhaps there is an avenue left open for the Mad Monk and his mates.
Abandon thought of CPRS for the present. Saving, perhaps $150B over ten years, maybe more, maybe less.
Spend on three new power sources:
1. Nuclear - replace three coal fired dinosaurs with three nuclear plants on the same sites, using the same water supplies and transmission lines. Say $15B for 6000 MW of baseload power, or about 1/3rd of that needed at present in Australia.
2. Solar thermal, PV and Wind. Another $15B for about 3000MW of non-baseload power, but a good start. A bit expensive, mainly because of transmission line construction.
3. Other. Another $15B for CCGT, OCGT, wave, geothermal… you name it. Some of this is technically half done at present, the two gas options still come with CO2 footprints, but are excellent for peak loads. Another 3000 MW.
Thus, the country is $105B better off after spending only $45B to attack the base of the problem.
Conservative governments have constructed power stations in Australia before, albeit much less so than Labor governments. It used to be quite the norm, until Victoria sold the farm.
Where’s the problem? Of course the libs have alternatives available. So does the government.
As I have said before, if this is war, then let’s get on with it, using everything at our disposal.
With Abbott saying “And we won’t be having a tax as part of our policy going to the next election” it sounds a lot like Howard on the GST “”No. There’s no way a GST will ever be part of our policy.”
Like the master, so speaketh the apprentice…
Go on Liberals, I dare you. Become the nuclear power party, to fix a problem you don’t believe in. Lets see how that goes for you.
JOHN FROM PLANET EARTH: Liar!
JOHNFROMPLANETEARTH, you must be one of those Liberal Party emailers we have been hearing so much about.
The relevance of the current temperature in Copenhagen today? Oh, it proves that climate change doesn’t exist! [Edit]
@John Bennets
I am all for government investment in power sources and saving money on the pork-barrelling but none of those options can beat coal on market cost (as opposed to total cost, including a small levy for destroying the world) unless there is a tax or an ETS. And probably just unless there is a tax. So I don’t think his Holiness does have that many options to forget the whole idea, even if building infrastructure is a good idea.
John From Planet Earth - Just as a matter of interest, do you believe that mankind is responsible for increases of CO2 in the atmosphere (seperate to global warming etc)?
John, I think the problem is that there isn’t Government money to save. Is there? Where will the money come from to subsidise the big polluters? I thought it would come from auctioning the other permits. It’s not a direct cost straight from consolidated revenue; it’s a churn within the system.
Of course “A-bot” says what he believes, it just depends on “the day, what he had for breakfast, what that little girl over there is wearing, what the last person said to him, where the sun is, the colour of oranges, how flat the earth feels, which way the wind is blowing, this mornings scourging …..” when asked - the science isn’t settled yet!
When he said that climate change was crap, was that a “non-core promise”? And that the science wasn’t settled (as “settled” as him anyway?) was that another? Can’t wait to see what sort of policies he’d actually implement after they won an election, compared with what they’d promised/campaigned on. Be like watching what a spews from a piñata, and with much the same process - just like “the good old boss” days!
Moderator how the f*ck do you let Venise get away with that??
“…Go on Liberals, I dare you. Become the nuclear power party, to fix a problem you don’t believe in. Lets see how that goes for you…”
Tsk, tsk Evan.
With State Labor governments you know that is impossible and an ignominious demand.
Don’t be so disingenuous.
I do note however, that ACF, AANP and Greenpeace champion, The Honourable Peter ‘Moai’ Garrett MP became the first Labor Minister in 25 years to give approval for a new uranium mine.
One could say Peter had been soul-mined on uranium.
How deliciously ironic.
Why blow a valve when he can do all the heavy lifting for them.
Anyway this little black duck of a Greens voter is sitting back, cracking open a drink, popping the bowl of popcorn on the knees and watching with glee the whole Liberal-National coalition trainwreck in slow motion that we knew was coming even while enduring all those long smug years that they had burrowed into the hide of this nation’s seat of power.
We knew that once bloated and full they would drop off and fall forgotten into the refuse of the political forest floor.
So. much. fun.
@Roger Clifton: how will nuclear power get cheaper if the world is running out of nuclear-grade uranium? 60-80 years worth, less is everyone starts switching to it?
@Most Peculiar Mama: There is more evidence to suggest AGW then there is against it. It is ultimately never going to heed results of %100 certainty. Even if it was %50/50, if humans have the opportunity to do something about it, but don`t, isn`t that just outright stupidity?
The more of the science and counter-scientific claims I read on this issue, I still lean 70/30 in favour of AGW - where once it was 100/00 but that was before I read more than just opinions on the issue that confirmed my centre-left instincts: even Rupert Murdoch says that we should give the world the benefit of the doubt.
Is the ETS a tax? On one level of course it is, but it is also a market mechanism to price carbon pollutants for all businesses and consumers to promote efficiency and give renewable energy sources the chance to compete on a plain plateau. Every other developed country will have some sort of ETS in place in the next five years, if Australia does not have something commensurate to these other countries then Australian businesses will not be able to trade on the world carbon market, which would be ultimately worse than any adjustments to costs an ETS will have business and consumer incur.
Seems kinda ironic that Abbott believes in a supernatural omnipotent and omniscient deity with no proof of its existence, but is agnostic about a state of scientific surety. But then, these are people who believe in creationism over evolution. I suppose there are climate change denialists here in that rickety little boat too….
The sad thing is, the Government’s CPRS and ETS are serious stinkers, and the Opposition won’t be coming up with anything better, so we are now facing the situation where we have no hope of securing a reduction to our carbon emissions. Why the hell is the international community letting Rudd have such a prominent position around Copenhagen etc? Surely, they see him for the charlatan he is.
Or maybe all the countries are really charlatans. Maybe they’re all god-botherers waiting to be saved by what is really the religious equivalent of climate change denialism.
@Most Peculiar Mama - excellent. So what do you think of The Abbott’s statement that climate change is real and ‘at least partly’ caused by man. Is he also a part of the conspiracy, or is he confused .. or is he being duplicitous ( in a weasly political way in that he has to say that , but really … ) ?
Please Explain.
Bernard
Today I learned that Phil Jones has been stood down from the CRU by East Anglia Uni pending a full investigation of the scandal they call Climategate and NZ scientist Warwick Hughes is calling for the conference to be cancelled pending a comprehnsive review of what has been going on. Of course, you probably know that now all of the raw data on which the main climate modeling was done has been destroyed.
As much as the MSM and you have tried to ignore it, it just won’t go away, and the scientific blogs have been running white hot around the world. So I am not without hope that reason will prevail above the ad hominym carping. I believe that as long as we can speak out, we can do something to ensure there is no complete takeover of our existence by the power elite. By organising at a community level where people can see they do matter, they can see the political process at work and will get involved.
I noticed that Lord Stern and more recently Trilateral Commission representative Ross Garnaut (who proposed that the banks run carbon trading); are attacking Australia over the Opposition’s decision to review more evidence on climate change. Well that is their job as it appears to have been Paul Krugman’s job to counter any attack on the CRU in an interview with US newsman George Stephanopolous on one of those shill TV stations the other day. These guys work hard for their masters. They have already got so much egg on their faces I don’t know how anyone can take them seriously.
Now we have reported today in the Danish press, a scandal concerning fraudulent carbon trading in a Euro market which is already valued at 670 billion krona. How much of the market is being fraudulently traded is anyone’s guess. I think the people are starting to learn they have far more power than they ever dreamed and if they know what is good for them they will use it every chance they get.
Instead of getting emotional about carbon dioxide and no BS EWTS, I suggest you get angry about the wanton destruction of our rainforests, rivers and oceans and the rest of this amazing place.
The purposeless treaty that the global elites were about to foister upon the world as a precursor to world government may well have been stopped by The Opposition today. This explains their desperation at the 11th hour including the cheap invoking of the Dalai Lama to speak to us and to make sure we did not think for ourselves. The draft treaty according to Lord Monckton and ratified by other sources (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/16/obama-poised-to-cede-us-sovereignty-in-copenhagen-claims-british-lord-monckton/) states the following:
The scheme for the new institutional arrangement under the Convention will be based on three basic pillars: government; facilitative mechanism; and financial mechanism, and the basic organization of which will include the following:
a) The government (world government) will be ruled by the COP with the support of a new subsidiary body on adaptation, and of an Executive Board responsible for the management of the new funds and the related facilitative processes and bodies. The current Convention secretariat will operate as such, as appropriate.
b) The Convention’s financial mechanism (global financial control) will include a multilateral climate change fund including five windows: (a) an Adaptation window, (b) a Compensation window, to address loss and damage from climate change impacts including insurance, rehabilitation and compensatory components, © a Technology window; (d) a Mitigation window; and (e) a REDD window, to support a multi-phases process for positive forest incentives relating to REDD actions.
c) The Convention’s facilitative mechanism will include (an enforcement authority): (a) work programmes for adaptation and mitigation; (b) a long-term REDD process; © a short-term technology action plan; (d) an expert group on adaptation established by the subsidiary body on adaptation, and expert groups on mitigation, technologies and on monitoring, reporting and verification; and (e) an international registry for the monitoring, reporting and verification of compliance of emission reduction commitments, and the transfer of technical and financial resources from developed countries to developing countries. The secretariat will provide technical and administrative support, including a new centre for information exchange (enforcement).
This is sinsister. This is 1984 and this is in black and white. And, maybe, just maybe the vote down today may halt this process. This drafted global treaty that all member countries were planning to sign according to Lord Monckton, and he has the treaty in his hands, effectivey hands our sovereignty to the UN. Well I for one didnt vote for this! So Mr. Rudd don’t you dare sign anything you have no authority to sign.
But don’t take my word for this read it for yourself!
The COALition’s stance on an ETS is to be expected, the usual nonsense you get from selfish rightards.
(dic) rightard:- (class) subhuman (Lat)homo inconsidaritus.
However, the outrageous stance of the Greens is just unforgivable. Once again, we see the bloody mindlessness of these all or nothing Neanderthals. Do you see now why people like Garrett ignored you in his political career options; he wanted to make a difference. People are thinking Fielding makes more sense than the Greens these days, maybe he always did. I can now understand why he got his senate seat on the back of ALP preferences. Why are the Greens in parliament, does anybody out there know?
“People are thinking Fielding makes more sense than the Greens these days”
Steady on there, Phil. It takes years of study to be as stupid as Fielding, as he has told us.
SBH: Don’t tell me you didn’t get it?
Phil,
I, for one, still harbour some hope for the Greens, despite their lunatic all-or-nothing attempt to be the mouse that roared.
Fielding is beyond all hope.
JoeK.
The Liberal party is dead… long live the liberal party
Does anyone remember the Canadian Political Party that went from having over one hundred MPs to just one or two in a matter of years?
@ Rollo asks, when will the world’s uranium run out?
Answer: Effectively never. Uranium is in indefinite supply. The more we look, the more we find. In 1950s there was one type of mineable deposit known, now there are 14 types. One Australian mine alone, Olympic Dam has “proved up” 300,000 tonnes or 15 years of current world consumption. As demand arises, they will prove up some more. And thorium? There is even more of it in Australia than uranium.
Both could rescue the greenhouse. Now that would be something for an Australian PM to grandstand about at Copenhagen!
“Does anyone remember the Canadian Political Party that went from having over one hundred MPs to just one or two in a matter of years?”
No, but that’s the sort of downsizing I really support.
@Rollo, please don’t use the running out of Uranium argument against nuclear power, as it is not true. Australia alone has very significant reserves, some of which are not offically recognised and various African countries change their official reserves depending upon which amount is most beneficial to them, rather then any reflection of reality.
Abbott: “I am not a theological opponent of nuclear power.”
Perhaps he is leaving some space for being a POLITICAL opponent of nuclear power? Or perhaps not. Who knows what the hell Tone is talking about.
Labor’s invitation to give the Libs another chance to vote on the ETS is clearly a ploy to delay pulling the DD trigger, possibly until the middle of the year.
Surely Evan Beaver knows the non-nuclear answer to Bernard’s pained quandary?
Apparently Bernard’s really weally concerned about the Liberal’s future. He thinks they will be annihilated and that would be bad for our wonderful democracy or some such.
What can poor Tony do to reduce emissions by 5% by 2020 with no ETS/$120billion tax? Bernard’s really-weally worried for Tony apparently and the Liberals and democracy or some such.
Oh and the planet…
And let’s not forget…. our children and our children’s children etc who are all going to fry or some such
C’mon Evan….. you have a suggestion.
You did read that article….didn’t you?
@Roger Clifton: effectively never is a load of BS. It is a finite resource. My understanding is that the Uranium needed for current Nuclear Generation has a supply life of about 80 years - that isn`t to say that we may not be able to refine the total available uranium into possible nuclear generation. Then there is construction costs, construction times, insurance availability, waste management issues even if there is a breakthrough in recycling techniques (there may have been, I haven`t checked in a few months), water consumption of nuclear plants, and approved engineer availability.
It sounds like I am being dismissive of Nuclear Energy but it seems it will only be a stop gap, temporary solution compared to geothermal, solar, wind, biofuels, and biomass - which are the only long-term solutions to energy security.
I do agree that Nuclear Generation, excluding the radioactive waste disposal component, is a way to drastically reduce carbon pollutants in a shorter time-frame, but in 5 years (which is about the time-frame of completing a Nuclear plant from start to finish) I am guessing they will have solved solar`s base-load problems. That is just a guess.
I am open to persuasion in most instances: we, as a planet, can not get away from the fact that anything found in the ground and burnt for energy, is on an ever-decreasing scale, especially when you factor in world population expansion to 9 billion people by 2050.
But you know what: in 2050 if I am not already cremated or in the ground, I will be pretty close to it, but the generation born in the next 20 years are probably going to face something altogether different than what we are now.
And I will be dancing near my grave or in my grave or my incinerated incarnation floating in the atmosphere, if it turns out it is all a hoax. That would be brilliant. I don`t want to believe the science, I don`t think anyone does (maybe Rapturists), but not wanting to isn`t a particularly good idea.
”..Labors invitation to give the Libs another chance..”
Oh Dave, purrrrlllease.
Mate, day1 of Abbotts leadership, and Labor blinked, big time.
Wait until the middle of the year?? And 2-3 or three more interest rate rises??
This just gets better and better.
Now Kevin will have to explain and explain and explain. And many Australians have, and will have, lots of questions.
People who speak of “renewables” mistakenly believe that we are limited by finite resources. However it is our outputs, not our inputs, that limit our seemingly endless expansion.
The atmosphere is already full, overfull, of our wastes from hydrocarbon burning. Our agricultural land is being overcovered by municipal wastes and encroaching cities, including solar and wind farms. Our soils are being washed away to sea. Our seas are full of floating wastes, the sea floor is littered with junk.
The world is choking on the volume of our wastes. Our time here is limited. And you want to bitch about indefinite supplies of uranium being “finite”?
Yes, John, string it out so that they have a DD election in July then after the election they have a 3 year term , not the 2 that they would get by going now.
John James: I don’t recall Labor ever publicly threatening double dissolution this issue, in fact Rudd has said an number of times that the Australian public expects his government to run a full term.
If you have a link to a quote where he says he’ll bring on a DD if the ETS legislation doesn’t pass, then by all means post it here.
It’s the media that keeps talking about a DD.
Well there you go. It’s been announced. The Mad Monk is going nucular and won’t be taking anything remotely resembling an ETS to the next election.
So we do nothing for 20 years until the reactors come online. That is of course after the decades long legal battles over where they will be situated. (Fiddling while Rome burns, did I hear you say?)
The high temperatures experienced in Australia (reactors can’t can’t go ever 50 degrees C inside) and the lack of available fresh water that would be needed to cool reactors make nuclear a seriously non-viable option for this country.
Good call on the Liberals and the nuclear option Bernard.
As an afterthought to the whole Climate Change debacle, we should just get used to the idea we are all doomed. Deniers are flat-earthers/sun circles the earth types who will never stop denying, no matter how much evidence is pressed into their faces. It’s hard to believe that in the 21st century we still face the same hurdles as poor old Galileo all those centuries ago.
These people are not sceptics by any interpretation. Most will never change their denialist/conspiratorial viewpoint in their lifetime unless the flames, so to speak, are burning around them — and perhaps not even then.
I know a guy here who still truly believes that on Sept 11, 2001, the three-frame time-lapse images show a missile hitting the Pentagon, and that it was fired by the US Air Force.
There is no hope and as a species we are all going to be totally stuffed.
Oh, and to Andrew Clarke
Posted Wednesday, 2 December 2009 at 2:51 pm
If you actually followed Bernard’s blogs regularly you would know that it is far from certain who he would vote for at election time. (layman’s terms, just for you!)
Also, politically, bringing it back a few times continues to remind the electorate that the Libs are standing in the way of climate change action.
Bullmore, the fact that Rudd does not talk about a DD does not mean it is not on the table. It is important that the government not look like they are seeking a DD trigger so that when the trigger is pulled they can say that they have exhausted every option and Coalition obstruction has forced them to do it.
As for alternative energy sources, I have great hopes for geothermal (aka hot rocks), a technology that is in its infancy, but which holds great promise for Oz in particular if it can be mastered.
http://www.csiro.au/org/geothermal.html
As I’ve said hereabouts before, I’ve never considered a DD a practical move because unless you can guarantee that you’ll win a decent majority in the Senate then it’s a waste of time and money.
Rudd is not facing a blocking of supply here.
Richard Wilson - dunno why I’m bothering replying to a conspiracy freak, but the “government” listed in part (a) is the government *of the draft treaty*. It has nothing to do with world government (which you’ve added in brackets) unless you Monkton or an equally crazed disciple.
I can’t see how the Liberals can get to *anything* on CO2 reductions. As Bernard has pointed out, all they’ve done is delay until they had the opportunity to gut the CPRS which the party accepted. Yet as soon it came time to vote the result was an all-in brawl and back to square one.
Now Abbott’s ruled out an ETS and a carbon tax, the two main solutions put forward world-wide. So he’s got to go it alone.
But what if Abbott by some miracle does come up with a “third way” to reduce Co2 emissions? What’s to say the proposal won’t be rolled by Minchin and co then?
Roger Clifton - from what I understand the problem is the increasing cost of uranium as the current high-quality deposits are depleted, ie it’s not the absolute amount as such, but reserves that can be accessed in a manner that is both economically viable and doesn’t require excessive amounts of energy to access. A major expansion of nuclear power world-wide will rapidly run up against such a declining net yield and “peak uranium”.
If breeder reactors actually worked at an industrial scale (for repeated and unfulfilled promises over decades they’re nearly as bad as controlled fusion) I’d be much more positive about the role nuclear power can play as in that case you could be looking at power for centuries. That’s the only way you’d get to use thorium. As it stands all I can see is nuclear being a short term measure that is expensive, of dubious safety and leaves a residue of nuclear waste that will need to be husbanded for centuries. And then we’ll still have to come up with another form of energy for the longer term. Places like Finland don’t have a choice at present about nuclear energy; we do.
@Roger Clinton: Aaaaaaaargh! Who is bitching dude? And where have I said those problems of outputs aren`t a problem? They are a problem, all non-recyclable waste is a problem, as is soil erosion, ocean plasticity, soil salinity, freshwater salinity, agricultural produce & land mismanagement, over-fishing, rainforest deforestation, increase population densities, world population accumulation, sewage mismanagement, industrial waste mismanagement, population over-consumption of resources, over-consumption of beef, freshwater reductions etc. etc.
Those are all something we can, are and will do something about, but finite resources particularly related to energy are something we only control at the rate at which they run out. They don`t grow back. We have no ability to procure the outputs, particularly of fossil-fuels, in any way that we can recycle for energy consumption. Maybe one day we will in a way that will be sustainable, I don`t put it past humanity to be able to do that but none of that answers the riddle of what we do about transition to a renewable energy sector.
So no, I wasn`t bitching about renewables, I responded to you making claims of `effectively never`.
I am comfortable with the notion that humans will cease to exist in our current bio-form at some stage either evolutionarily or by meteorite or by the volcanic activity underneath Yellowstone exploding or any other uncontrolable factors but I like to think that the human potential for re-inventing how we relate to the planet is not imaginatively finite; that we learn how to re-cycle our material resources, learn how to cultivate local food production sustainability & climatically, and learn better packaging methods.
As I said much of what is direly proposed is likely to come to pass after I am dead, and although I will not know I would like to think that when I am about to die we have started to move to a sustainable world.
So the loonies are really out of the closet now spouting all this world conspiracy rubbish without having the integrity to read the science for themselves, as usual getting their information second hand from those opposed to any action on climate change. Who said this is a , conspiracy of the power elite, when did scientists become the power elite? I am pretty sure that it’s the oil companies that fit that description.
And have any of you got an answer as to why a fleet of icebergs are floating past New Zealand right now, we know that they broke away from the Antarctic ice sheet, or is this this an inconvenient fact that you think can be ignored ? And the record temperatures for Adelaide this month, another irrelevant fact by chance.
If you are going to promote a ridiculous conspiracy theory against the majority view of the world science community at least have the credibility to do some research before making such claims. You see ithat is what is required by a scientists before his or her views can be taken seriously. While your at it, lets see your evidence for an equal split in the opinion of scientists? Of course most deniers don’t believe that these rules apply to them. Put up or shut up.
The party that ate itself………
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Conservative_Party_of_Canada
BJ
One iceberg flotilla does not a global warmfest make! You forgot to mention the bears!
In any event, I don’t know how many scientists have to stand up before you accept there may be an alternative point of view to yours.
As for the global elite, they already own the oil companies and figured they can make far more out of trading carbon dioxide, which is in endless supply, than selling oil.
Pretty sneaky eh!
Another thing just occurred to me. If Abbott gets his way and we get a fleet of nuclear power stations, who is going to buy the power? Without an ETS or a carbon tax there is no price on carbon emissions and hence no incentive to buy from any low-emissions but more expensive source. So Abbott would have to direct power companies to buy a proportion of power from nuclear sources, as is done with the renewable energy target (except that nuclear is just another finite energy resource). It would lead to power companies being directed to use a specific technology. It’s the government picking winners, something that one would have thought would be anathema to the Liberals. And who will pay for these power stations; world-wide, private power companies avoid new nuclear construction like the plague? Would it require a government-owned national nuclear power company to build and operate the things, which of course sounds more like something out of Chifley than the Liberal party?
@EngineeringReality - seems the only person on this forum drunk on power is the person from the party with the lowest vote to hold a seat in Parliament!!! If you think Abbott is the demise of the Liberal Party you are in for a rude shock, and the more people like you preach your message and treat any doubters like they are fools, the stronger the upswell against you will be. Remember Pauline Hanson, she tapped into a vein and stole Labor’s conservative voters, Abbott can do the same for the Liberals.
Critical here is the understanding that we need to be nicer to our planet, what we don’t need to do is give Kevin Rudd his chance to stand on a world stage with an ill-concieved plan and a moral high ground. Let’s think this through, how about we try to get it right rather than generate another token gesture… but perhaps that isn’t want any of you clowns want.
Abbott is the self-declared ideological love child of John Howard and Bronwyn Bishop.
Howard was tossed out of government and out of his own seat by a new generation of voters.
I don’t rate the love child’s chances facing that electorate.
(and the picture of a copulating J Howard and B Bishop is too awful to imagine)
The troglodites are correct!
With or without a solution to global warming (ie a better energy supply than fossil fuels), we are stuffed as a species (to use Pedro’s description). Judith Troeth pointed out on the 7.30 Report tonight that the world population has trebled since 1950 - ie in my lifetime. We either burn/drown/die horribly in resource wars/whatever the local result of global warming is … or, with a greenhouse-gas free energy supply that allows population to increase even more, we die anyway as our trashed planet no longer has the resources to sustain us. One way or another, the population will crash sooner or later. It’s the law of the jungle.
Read Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change by William R. Catton. We’re stealing from the future (by cannibalising the past). Our population cannot continue to increase indefinitely, we’re not going to anything sensible about that, so disaster is the only solution unfortunately. It happens to other species, we seem however to think we’re immune … because we’re so ‘clever’.
Malcolm Street asked @8:12pm, what happens when we run out of cheap-to-extract uranium?
Consider that mineral deposits range in purity from a very few of highest concentration through increasing frequency of modest concentration right out to some background level. Then the minimum price of the commodity in the market is the cost of finding, mining and concentrating it.
As the easy-to-find, high-quality deposits are mined out and rehabilitated, the explorers move on. As their costs rise, the price of the commodity in turn rises. However, currently uranium is so easy to find that the cost of nuclear fuel is a small part of the unit cost of nuclear electricity.
In a way, the cost of uranium is too low. It is presently cheaper for an operator to build a slow-neutron reactor, which only uses a fraction of the 0.7% U235 and a much smaller fraction of the 99.3% U238, thus accumulating slightly-burnt used fuel for delayed recycling.
The more expensive, fast-neutron reactors are more efficient users of the uranium. The larger ones will burn fuel recycled from the older slow-neutron designs, a feature planned for the stalled GNEP . While smaller fast-neutron reactors can be made proliferation-resistant, the proliferation resistance of recycling continues development in the US advanced fuel cycle program , funded in June.
BULLMORE’S GHOST: A couple of years ago, I took out a tiny investment in a geothermal company, because the process fascinated me. At this stage it’s too soon to tell if they can make it economically viable for vast distances, but it is an awesome concept. But these companies believe it can be done.
Perhaps in future we will get our energy needs via a diversity of systems, including nuclear, and let’s face it, the world’s population has, and will continue to, explode. WTF worldwide, but especially in Oz, is going to cope with this? We’ve screwed whole river systems, our farmers are living on leached-out top-soils a centimetre thick, which blows across to our capital cities. Our, once cheap coal is becoming incredibly expensive in ways the Cro-Magnons of the denialists can’t even begin to appreciate. As we know the denialists are so specious they can appeal to a voting public on the grounds of terror tactics and scaremongering about the price.
These clowns, the Neanderthals, are helping to destroy every last advance of the last two hundred years solely to play tiddly-winks with our childrens’ inheritance. With Australia’s future, egged on by the vapid mentality of Nick Minchin, Barnaby Joyce, Phillip Ruddock, Tony Abbott and all the other firey lead-swingers-an oxymoron I know- has become the playground of buffoons. They are the linear descendants of the rioters in nineteenth century Britain who flung themselves against mounted police because parliament decreed that the decision had been taken to replace the old gas lamps of Britain with electric lights.
Stupid, venal Luddites rule the opposition benches and they will ensure the whole of the public will have to fork out trillions of dollars because of this consummate idiocy.
If nothing more the performance in the Senate today of Barnaby Joyce purple face, spittle flying, all sincerity completely manufactured, was a disgrace. That the man is not the fastest car on the grid is obvious. But he should be despised for being the leper-colony of the mentally impaired. This parody of a farmer makes of politics a farce, and of himself a national tragedy.
@Moira Smith
Are you suggesting we dip further below replacement level reproduction than we are already here in Australia or do you suggest we place contraceptive drugs in the water supply in Asia?
The cheapest method of lowering reproduction is to enrich, empower and educate.
Do you think that ETS will actually empower developing and third world economies or will it like all western liberal democracies enslave certain populations to a dependent culture only this time writ on an international rather than merely a national societal?
@Richard Wilson, MPM, Roger Clifton et al,
Please direct me to three articles in peer-reviewed journals that refute the AGW hypothesis.
Surely if you are going to dismiss thousands of peer-reviewed articles that support the hypothesis, you must have some convincing evidence? No doubt you’ll ignore my request and then respond with some conspiracy theory that the publishers of every scientific journal in the world are colluding to keep the truth hidden, or maybe point to discredited, unpublished research by nutters like Richard Lindzen (http://www.logicalscience.com/skeptics/Lindzen.htm), or just spout more empty rhetoric with no substance.
MPM in particular writes the same rubbish every day and has yet to provide any evidence to support his/her position. I’ve long suspected that he’s Alexander Downer but perhaps he’s Tony Abbott after all.
Regardless of what Australian politicians do or don’t do the world will move on and Australia will be part of this..20million of us just ain’t enough to say no!…and….the longer we leave it the more it will cost our communities; the science is complicated and easily turned into slogans. In any case as soon as big oil & merchant banks work out how to make even more money from this, it’s game on.
What is ironic is that while Barnaby Joyce stands outraged in the Senate on ETS, Dalby a mid-size town in Southern Queensland, looks like it will run out of water…so much for central planning and local political help eh Barnaby! I bet the people of Dalby could not give a fat rat’s cracker on ETS- but they sure would like some answers on where the fuck the water’s going to come from..like next week.
Bernard Keane,
The new Lib policy is to do as little as possible about climate change - because lunatics currently running the asylum don’t believe in it - while appearing to believe in it and be doing something. It will be all lip service.
What beggars belief is how pathetically weak Labor’s response has been. In no uncertain terms they have been given the two finger salute. Now they are going to offer exactly the same ETS again to the Libs in the new year! This after saying this is a “one time only offer”. How insipid. If any situation called for leadership and making a stand, this is it. Abbott is saying, “Call a double dissolution, I dare you”, and Rudd is saying, “No, I’ll give you one more chance to be reasonable.”
Next time round what’s the bet that FF’s Steve Fielding joins in a vote to refer the bill to a Senate Committee. So Labor won’t even have an outright rejection to base a double dissolution on. “Why are you calling a double dissolution? We are still considering your ETS.”
No doubt Rudd will be going full term to make sure the Coalition can make the most of the Spring refugee season. Rudd is an absolute wimp, incapable of making hard decisions.
“MPM in particular writes the same rubbish every day and has yet to provide any evidence to support his/her position. I’ve long suspected that he’s Alexander Downer but perhaps he’s Tony Abbott after all.”
He’s Gerard Henderson.
VA: “the performance in the Senate today of Barnaby Joyce purple face, spittle flying, all sincerity completely manufactured, was a disgrace”
Yes, old Bananaby near blew a gasket in that scene. Watching the Senate is like watching ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’, except that it’s real.
@JimmyF, wtf? Why ask Roger Clifton for refutation of AGW?
If you’re going to comment, at least go to the trouble of reading what’s already there properly. Roger will be mortified that you’ve lumped him with MPM.
Speaking of MPM, he has a point @ 2:33 pm. The first I heard of Phil Jones stepping down as CRU head pending an investigation into his e-mails was through his (MPM’s) comment. That is an indictment of Crikey as a news organisation.
Bruce said: Next time round what’s the bet that FF’s Steve Fielding joins in a vote to refer the bill to a Senate Committee. So Labor won’t even have an outright rejection to base a double dissolution on. “Why are you calling a double dissolution? We are still considering your ETS.”
Ahh, but the trigger is there regardless because the original ETS has been rejected twice, so that backstop remains.
Am amazed to hear the Barnaby is going to head for the lower house because Abbott is promoting him to the front bench! Surely people with the capacity to vote for him directly wouldn’t do so … a whole electorate can’t be that insane. His performance on Lateline tonight would be a great Labor anti-Barnaby advert … but then again most of his media performances would rate that way. Same with Fielding.
If there was to be a DD, how many of the Senatorial Luddites would likely survive. Fielding apparently only made it in last time with Labor prefs. The loss of both he and Joyce would be a big improvement — although much less entertaining in terms of theatre.
Here’s a start… http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1063707.html
There will not be a DD, we can all just come to grips with that now, Rudd doesn’t have the guts. He has proven that time and time again, but maybe Bernard has some special insight? I rank Fielding and Joyce right up there in loony town with Bob Brown.
There are enough fruit loops in QLD to vote him into the Reps, especially in a seat in the deep banana belt, assuming the Nats actually want to give him a safe seat.
Nonetheless, it would be fun seeing Bananaby kicked out by the Speaker.
@James K - yes I *do* suggest we dip further below replacement level reproduction here in Australia - our Australian population has been increasing by leaps and bounds (yes as an immigrant I’m one of them). Let’s face it, a mere 210 years ago the Australian population (all aboriginal then) was self-sustaining and not - by all accounts - raping the land. NOT causing soil erosion, salinity, extinction of native species, destruction of habitat etc. Granted they didn’t have electricity or MacDonalds … difficult choices, in theory.
My stand does NOT include turning refugees away … we have to find a way to accommodate them as they will become more plentiful and needy as the planet becomes more stuffed. I don’t know how to solve that one but I know in my heart it is not through a ‘Pacific solution’ or a ‘Christmas Island solution’.
No I don’t suggest we place contraceptive drugs in the water supply in Asia. I agree with you that the cheapest [and best] method of lowering reproduction is to enrich, empower and educate people - AND particularly women.
The third sentence of your comment I don’t understand / don’t feel qualified to reply to …
My sincerest apologies to Roger. A case of mistaken identity (it was Andrew Clarke’s post I had taken issue with, not Roger’s) although I do disagree with his stance on nuclear.
Most of the estimates I have heard is that it will take around 15 to build a viable nuclear power industry in Australia. It is expensive, non-renewable, produces a very nasty toxic waste that will be with us for tens of thousands of years (and which no-one has quite worked out what to do with), and has the potential to render a large city like Sydney or Melbourne uninhabitable in the albeit very small chance that there’s an accident or terrorist attack. There are also issues with the expansion of uranium mining because then the question becomes why don’t we export more of it and the question that immediately follows this is can we be sure that they won’t be building nuclear weapons with it, eg. India.
Comparably renewable energy sources are expensive (but will surely become less so as they are certainly newer technologies than nuclear in terms of large-scale use), obviously renewable, does not produce waste (although there are issues with disposing of used solar cells) and do not have the potential for environmental catastrophe under any circumstances.
In 15 years from now, I know which option I’d like Australia’s power generation to be based on.
@Moira Smith.
I am sorry that you approve of the first option. I think it is quite mad.
Italy is following your ‘advice’ and it will die as a culture at a birth rate of 1.1 per woman.
spain and Greece are following suit. I think it amounts to self loathing and will do absolutely nothing to decrease global population. As you agreed with my educate and empower proposition I find your stance particularly sad and incomprehensible.
The last sentence referred to the Copenhagen proposition to pay developing and third world counties not to use carbon thus keeping the rich countries rich and the poor countries poor. The sentence was missing the intended last word which was ‘level’.
Poverty is what becomes ingrained at least within subsection within all left wing countries and even sometimes sadly in so called centre-left democracies like ours.
A whole class of peoples become a dependent culture ensuring their continued poverty of money, health and spirit.
But that’s the progressives for you.
Gee JimmyF,
I think peer review has just about had it mate.
From the Washington Examiner today, Dec 2, 2009:
Patrick Michaels: Climate scientists subverted peer review, December 2, 2009
“Without the IPCC there would be no cap-and-tax legislation awaiting debate in the Senate. There would be no meeting in Copenhagen, where, next month, world leaders will attempt to globalize cap-and-tax. There would also be no pledge from President Obama to emissions reductions that have never been passed by the Senate.”
The Climategate e-mails have given IPCC chief Pauchari the onerous task of defending the IPCC from its own “scientific” leadership, now accused of seriously manipulating the scientific literature that goes into the august IPCC scientific reports.
In one of the e-mails, Penn State’s Michael “Hockeystick” Mann, long a power player in the production of these reports, said this about some scientific articles he did not like: “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”
Well doesn’t look like he is going to get away with it according to today’s Washington Times editorial: Universities take action on Climategate, December 2, 2009
“The Obama administration might think Climategate is a nonevent, but on Monday, Pennsylvania State University announced it was launching an investigation into the academic conduct of Michael Mann, director of the school’s Earth System Science Center”.
Patrick Michaels in the Washington Examiner also notes that the now discredited, stood down lead “scientist” to the IPCC , “Phil Jones along with and other climate luminaries, cooked up the idea of boycotting any scientific journal that dared publish anything by a few notorious “skeptics,” myself included. Their pressure worked. Editors resigned or were fired. Many colleagues began to complain to me that their good papers were either being rejected outright or subject to outrageous reviews — papers that would have been published with little revision just a few years ago”.
IPCC’ boss Pauchari’s response to all of this is denial insisting that
“IPCC relies entirely on peer-reviewed literature in carrying out its assessment and follows a process that renders it unlikely that any peer reviewed piece of literature, however contrary to the views of any individual author, would be left out.”
But, JimmyF, Michaels says “That’s just not true. The last IPCC compendium on climate science, published in 2007, left out plenty of peer-reviewed science that it found inconveniently disagreeable. These include articles from the journals Arctic, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Earth Interactions, Geophysical Research Letters, International Journal of Climatology, Journal of Climate, Journal of Geophysical Research, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Quaternary Research.
Patrick J. Michaels by the way is senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and author of “Climate of Extremes: Global Warming Science They Don’t Want You to Know.”
If you need still more convincing why not take s look at
what US Senator Inhofe – head of the US Senate environmental committee has to say on this whole scam.
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=4c063bc2-802a-23ad-42ec-c96147ecb906
Richard Wilson and JamesK (and Mama) - Global Warming/Climate Change aside, do you believe that there are increased levels of atmospheric CO2 as a result of human activity?
Good stuff Richard. That’ll get ‘em on the run.
Are you suggesting that the leaked CRU emails will see an end to the peer review system? I doubt you’re right.
Feed them too much and the trolls will get fat, and multiply. Their like Gremlins. Cute and strange in small numbers, voracious and world destroying if allowed to get out of hand. Of course the opportunity to see MPM in a blender might be worth it.
RE the ‘Don’t want to give Rudd something to flash around at Copenhagen’ argument against passing the legislation before.
The main arguments against passing before Copenhagen are the above childishness, but also the ‘once we’re locked in there’s no going back’. I don’t think that’s entirely true, legislation can, you know, be changed after it’s passed.
But there are good reasons to have it passed. It’s going to be a Catch 22 at the negotiations. Australia to develpoping nations: ‘Please change your practises to help stop a problem we caused’.
‘Sure. But what are you doing about it?’
I think our negotiating ability is damaged by not having a position to offer. Not that it matters. The main deal will need to be done between the US and China. We’ll just follow them I suppose.
“…Richard Wilson and JamesK (and Mama) - Global Warming/Climate Change aside, do you believe that there are increased levels of atmospheric CO2 as a result of human activity?…”
No.
And you cannot prove otherwise.
Humour me and explain what YOU see as the scientific link between temperature and carbon dioxide levels.
“…I don’t think that’s entirely true, legislation can, you know, be changed after it’s passed…”
Evan,
Can you give me any examples where MAJOR Federal legislation such as that being proposed has later been rescinded by an incumbent or incoming (new) government?
@Richard,
Is that really the best evidence you’ve got to refute AGW? Really? You would choose to ignore the findings of decades of science based on that? At what point do you admit to yourself that you’re clutching at straws?
That is easily the worst example you could have chosen. Yes, editors resigned over that paper - because it was so seriously flawed:
‘The problem with this paper which has undergone one of the “most rigorous peer reviews ever” is that Patrick Michaels messed up some really basic math. Patrick Michaels confused degrees with the much larger radians. If you understand highschool level trigonometry then you should be able to follow this tutorial and discover the blunder yourself. This error has been discussed in blogs by Prof. Tim Lambert, John Quiggin and the peer reviewed paper Benestad (2004). In 2005 Michaels published an errata (CR 27, 265-268 ) which admitted the mistake. Unfortunately, this is not the first time that the peer review process at the journal Climate Research has failed. Oddly enough, the other paper also attempted to cast doubt on anthropogenic global warming. Both papers were reviewed by the controversial Chris de Frietas. The year before Pat Michaels’ paper was published, the chief editor and 3 additional editors had resigned in protest because the “review process had utterly failed”. Much more on this topic can be found at Realclimate here and here. Given the history of the journal and the fact that he botched up some basic math, Pat Michaels’ statement of “four years of one of the most rigorous peer reviews ever” is a little out of place.”
http://www.logicalscience.com/skeptics/patMichaels.html
@MPM, I see you couldn’t come up with any evidence whatsoever. A massive conspiracy between scientific journals perhaps? The peer-review process - one of the cornerstones of modern science - is so corrupt that no papers refuting AGW can possibly get through? What do you base your view on, if not evidence? Gut instinct? God whispering in your ear?
This is written in language that you might be able understand (with some good references too):
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
Workchoices.
Jimmy, they really confused degrees with radians? Awesome.
Like the first Mars Rover that had trajectory calculated in metres, but coded in inches.
Forget AGW. We must all rail against obscure units of measure. Starting with the Imperial system.
Looks like you’ve nothing more to contribute then ‘David Sanderson’.
Shut the door on your way out.
There is nothing that anyone can “contribute” to a ratbag mind. It is so full of garbage that nothing more will fit and the ‘door’ is closed.
“…Workchoices…”
It existed longer under Labor than the Libs and is still largely in place.
Try again.
“It existed longer under Labor than the Libs and is still largely in place.”
And that’s exactly why it’s a good comparison. The whole legislation is unlikely to rolled back completely; the main problem would be if the target was wrong. This can be changed.
Still largely in place? Which bits remain?
@David Sanderson
That’s hilarious considering your childishly prissy ad-hom attacks masquerading as ‘comment’ that add nothing to the conversation.
Being right all the time must exact a terrible toll on you.
I know it wears me out MPM
“Being right all the time must exact a terrible toll on you.”
[Edit]
“…Which bits remain?…”
Here you go:
- Parts of the (obligatory NewGov-rebadged) Fairness Test
- Most WorkChoice-amended unfair dismissal and unlawful termination provisions
- Restrictions to workplace right-to-enter for unions
- Australian Workplace Agreements (to eventually be phased out)
- secret ballots
Happy to be of assistance.
Thanks MPM. Helping’s what trolls do best
.
MOST PECULIAR M: The problem I have lies with trying to understand how someone like you could not see the correlation between man and man-made Global Warming. Of course you are obviously paid, just like Andrew Bolt to lobby for the Coal industry, yet even the deliberately blind have to notice the equation.
It isn’t that you have do research or anything. All that has to be done is to find some fairly flat land-just follow all the land being bull-dozed for yet another ten thousand new housing estates. When you are about 40 Kms from your State capital, stop your car, grab your sandwiches and your thermos of coffee and after consuming your meal look back to Melbourne, Sydney, etc. You will notice a heavy pall of grey green sludge hanging over the city. Perhaps you have been to China or India? They illustrate it even better. Beijing, Mumbai. Go for it. You have to have noticed it if you are driving anywhere.
That same sludge acts as an umbrella, with me so far? The sun’s rays strike the earth in the usual manner, but once in, the inversion business come into play. Those rays are now caught under the umbrella and can’t escape. Making for extra heat to be built up-and because heat expands, every time those rays bounce a bit, more heat comes into the environment.
There doesn’t have to be every single day of every single year or every single country a landscape of blistering heat. Not at all, just let that sludge-cap over big cities get bigger and bigger and the heat will do the rest.
Having pottered through my thumb-nail sketch, a valid question could be asked. Namely, why is that cap sitting there over the landscape/cityscape? Another question may be, what caused it to be sitting there. It didn’t have anything to do with man, did it? Certainly it had nothing to do with outrageous population explosion throughout the world?
To quote Steve Fielding after his round-the-world, fact-finding re Climate Change
tour. Quote,”Climate Change doesn’t exist because God hasn’t thought of it first! ¡Quelle non-sequiteur!
PS: Do me a tiny, no of course the worlds great deserts in Africa and the Middle East
weren’t caused by Climate Change. Nope! They were brought about thousands of years ago, by man hacking down the forests.
The world’s great glaciers which are melting as fast as the ice that created them, are doing this because God took a week off from work, and let them run down a bit. Really God is tiresome, truly he’s getting just a little bit beyond it. Old age you know!
Interesting where this discussion has headed. Firstly, I am a climate change skeptic, it is a giant beat-up and there is enough evidence around to refute any claim one way or the other… that said, we need to be better to our environment. Much better.
Man leaves a trail of destruction wherever he goes, and we need to minimise that impact. This ETS will not do that. If I run a coal-fired electricity plant, I pay a tax to operate and I pass on that cost to the consumer. Where is the incentive to do better? There is none, my profit remains the same and I just keep going and help Rudd fund his handouts. It is tokenism and fuind raising, nothing more and nothing less. No different in essence to the State Government appraoches to speeding fines, if the revenue from speeding fines has gone through the roof over the past 10 years, why has there be no drop in road fatalities?
Tokenism.
And if you debate the merits of this, VicRoads for instance, trots out a bunch of poorly sourced statistics that prove nothing. I know this because I asked.
How about we sit down and work out an ETS that will work, incentives for doing things better rather than taxes for not… the golden rule is business is that in increase in the cost of running a business will be passed onto the consumer. Bob Brown wouldn’t understand this because he doesn’t believe in free enterprise, Rudd should because his family has made hundreds of millions of dollars from running business.
I run a small publishing business. I print off shore because I can’t afford to print here and stay in business. The printers I use in China are far from green. I need a boat to ship my books to Australia and I fly to China for proofing. If there were incentives for me to print with an FSC accredited printer in Australia, I may be able to do that, and in my small part of the world I would make a difference.
Instead, I will continue to print in China because I want to stay in business. How does Rudd’s ETS change any of that? And this is why it will not work.
Now the real question to be asked is will I change my vote based on this ETS? Yes, I am more likely to vote Liberal. Will I change my vote because Tony Abbott is leader? Yes, I am more likely NOT to vote Liberal.
I am in a quandry because essentially I can vote for shallow hypocrites who charge me more to live in this country and give me less (ie, Labor or Greens) or religious zealots from the far right who live on another planet (ie, Liberal of Family First).
I want a moderare party. I want a true liberal party.
notKeane, the economs would argue your argument is fundamentally flawed. Here:
“If I run a coal-fired electricity plant, I pay a tax to operate and I pass on that cost to the consumer. Where is the incentive to do better? There is none”
The incentive comes from your competitors, who produce power cheaper now that dirty coal power has a fee associated, getting more customers than you. Your cost of power goes up, people go elsewhere.
Look, there are plenty of alternatives to compulsary ETS or carbon taxes that could reduce emissions
1. What about tax deductions/incentives for efficient/renewable energy projects
2. Mandatory labelling of greenhouse gas emissions on every product to let the punters decide.
3. “Name and shame” reporting of top 100 carbon emmitters
4. Companies required to detail their carbon emmissions in annual reports.
5. Government departments required to use “Green” energy
6. Carbon Quota’s for big emitters to stop expansion of carbon emissions
7. Fuel Economy standards for cars/trucks etc.
8. Converting all electric hot water systems to solar or gas.
9. An opt-in ETS, not mandatory, but with the potential to trade in permits oversea’s.
So all is not lost. I do think this whole policy was done badly….not enough education was given to the punters (75% don’t understand it). If ignorance or fear reigns, it is not the student who is to blame, it is the teachers. When the liberals proposed changes when in power, there was advertising, marketing, websites, you name it, it was there. Where are the websites for the CPRS? (and don’t point me to Garnaut or Treasury…I’ve been there and those sites are not for the layperson.)
The Labor government has had a year and a half to sell this to us and haven’t been able to pull it off. Penny Wong and Kevin Rudd have a lot to answer for…
Oh Mama -
Start with Fourier (in his Remarques Générales Sur Les Températures Du Globe Terrestre Et Des Espaces Planétaires he describes how atmosphere slows heat loss of the planet), go via Stefan-Boltzmann’s Law (energy radiated is directly proportional to thermodynamic temperature ) to Arrhenius (ΔF = α ln(C/C0 - “if the quantity of carbonic acid (CO2 in water) increases in geometric progression, the augmentation of the temperature will increase nearly in arithmetic progression ) and finish off with a bit of Planck (u(ν,T) = 4πI(ν,T) / c - describing the spectral radiation at all wavelengths emitted in the normal direction from a black body at temperature).
But like I said, I don’t want to talk about whether or not Global Warming is real, I just want to understand if you think that CO2 levels are rising or not.
@Notkeane,
“there is enough evidence around to refute any claim one way or the other”
No, there simply is not. This completely mischaracterises the body of scientific evidence. There are thousands of peer-reviewed papers on one side and a few right-wing conspiracy blogs on the other. How does this in any way support the claim that you have made?
@MPM, at what point in your hundreds of comments that you post to Crikey will you actually post some evidence to support your claims?
@Most Peculiar Mama - hey wind-up boy ! Still waiting for your Abbott view. Especially now that, in a fit of testosterone - fuelled brain expansiveness, your mate Barney now claims that capitalism is self-cleaning .. so just leave it to business. It’s all on the run now, and if the agrarian socialists, with their suspicions of ‘big business’ and other dark forces, start driving policy, its Joh For PM all over again !!! Flat Tax , Flat Earth .. it’s all there.
Please Explain.
Right-on NotKeane! And thank goodness you are not!
I thought I had almost written that commentary myself except it may be worthwhile pondering why we are dealing with climate by taxing the end user of good and services who has no way out of the matrix.
To replace the fossil fuel scam, the global bankers had to work out a way of extracting even more money from their serfs so they hit upon the idea of taxing carbon dioxide. It was never going to run out so with the help of the client follower media and the foundation funded climate shills, the scam could go on forever, or until we all died of taxitis.
I agree that all polluters should be disemboweled and all deforestation halted. All oceans and rivers should be cleaned at the expense of those destroying our planet, the end promoters of this crazy but extremely lucrative scheme. The real crime against humanity is in the disregard for our natural resources and the constant replacement of durable consumer goods i.e. forced obsolescence.
If it is true that man accounts for just 3% of all global C02 emissions, I wonder what we are playing at here! Surely, someone must twig to this or are a lot of scientists locked inside their models with no way out? The breathing out tax has got to go and with it those who dreamed it up!
I was all set to tear RWs post above apart. But I’ve decided against it. No real need, the hole’s getting deeper. Carry on.
Hey, hey, mama, said the way you move
Gonna make you sweat, gonna make you groove.
Oh, oh, child, way you shake that thing
Gonna make you burn, gonna make you sting.
In the party of the blind, the one-eyed man is king….
The [Edit] vanity of Richard Wilson and MPM is their belief that they have discovered ‘facts’ that the world’s scientists have ignored. [Edit]
@ merlot64
“… I just want to understand if you think that CO2 levels are rising or not…”
I’m well aware of the current data, but that wasn’t your question (do you even read your own comments?).
And plagiarising Wiki articles is the lowest form of research.
For ten points though, explain how the Vostok ice cores show elevated CO2 as lagging temperature rises at all time intervals.
That should keep you busy on the Copy-Cut-Paste.
DS said:
” If they wish to treasure their aberrations then let them but they will have no impact on any sane deliberations.”
Much the same could easily be said about the internet in general.
@Paddlefoot
“…hey wind-up boy ! Still waiting for your Abbott view…”
Wind-up boy?
[Edit]
Good luck that.
Maybe you can tell me why should I care what Tony Abbott says?
MPM doesn’t understand electrickeral writing computology. Copy and paste is all you need. Just the way MPM copies and spouts.
@JimmyF
“…@MPM, at what point in your hundreds of comments that you post to Crikey will you actually post some evidence to support your claims?…”
I just love these particular comments.
The furtive demand for “skeptics” to provide evidence that AGW DOESN’T exist belies the fact that not even the base level of scientific theory and approach to proving hypotheses, evidentiary rigour and review and the investigative process is understood.
When you have at least grasped where the burden of proof lies in ALL scientific endeavours, maybe then we can discuss the climate theories postulated thus far.
Until then…
Nope.
Can’t find it ‘tumbrelpusher’.
Again.
Help me out will you.
Here’s some info on ice cores for you Mama
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11659-climate-myths-ice-cores-show-co2-increases-lag-behind-temperature-rises-disproving-the-link-to-global-warming.html
From New Scientist.
“The furtive demand for “skeptics” to provide evidence that AGW DOESN’T exist belies the fact that not even the base level of scientific theory and approach to proving hypotheses, evidentiary rigour and review and the investigative process is understood.”
What pathetic and ridiculous obscurantism. And the insertion of “furtive” is laughably meaningless and reflects only MPMs need to say something stupidly unpleasant.
@Venise Alstergren
“…You will notice a heavy pall of grey green sludge hanging over the city….”
Oh dear.
Senior moments can happen at any time.
You appear to have your ‘pollutions’ confused.
Do you know what ‘colour’ carbon dioxide is?
@David Sanderson
If you don’t understand a word look it up.
Resorting to abuse to cover a knowledge deficiency is just childish.
Clearly, you don’t know what ‘obscurantism’ means. It is perfectly easy to understand what you are trying to say and achieve and it is that which is so pathetic and contemptible.
Some more info on the old ‘lagging not leading chestnut’
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/co2-in-ice-cores/
Not that it matters. I bet the nest rebuttle will be an attempt to discredit the source.
From the denialist flow chart:
Demand Evidence! — — -> Discredit source, particularly anyone associated with the IPCC, Realclimate or any university. They were all discreditted when someone hacked the CRU computers.
@JimmyF & David Sanderson - why is that you must declare the detractors as right-wing blogs. Can we get this right, and people need to understand this. There is a body of scientists that believe global warming is a reality, there is equally a body of scientists who believe it is cyclical. What did we do to cause an ice age? This debate is stupid and senseless and completely irrelevant.
The ETS is about nothing but tax collection and allowing Kevin Rudd to flop out his penis in Coppenhagen and have other world leaders gasp at what a great man he is. It will not reduce emissions. That is a fact and I don’t need a scientist to explain business to me.
Your debate is about as well informed as the Greens’ clown at the polling bouth this morning who was glowing in his ideological haze. It all reminds me of the data error at one step a hundred years ago when determining the iron levels of spinach, by the time they’d finished the calculations Popeye came into being, and now we know the error was massive. Or the impact of salt in heart disease. Not to mention Galileo.
The left wing moralists like to make people who don’t think their way feel bad. I personally don’t care what you think until it starts affecting me… in fact, most of the time I laugh at your moral righteousness and thank any god I can think of that you aren’t a Roman emporer or a Pope.
Oh Mama - just answer the question. Are CO2 levels rising or not?
Re Vostok Ice Core CO2 lag - CO2 acts as a feedback - this explains it nicely.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/co2-in-ice-cores/
But lets ignore Global Warming for the moment? Are CO2 Levels Rising?
Sorry if i am a littler bit confused but the people who are saying that there is no scientific evidence for global warming etc. and therefore humans should not be concerned are mostly the same people (the venerable Steve, Mad Monk, multifarious bible-thumpers in the states , never mind G.W.B. et al)who say that because there is no scientific evidence of their invisible friend in the clouds who will transport them to Sugar Candy mountain when they die, (usually He) exists and rules over us all?.
Help me here, my head hurts
@MPM, I was only asking you to provide your evidence that the scientific consensus is wrong because I thought it was obvious to you that the evidence in support of AGW was voluminous and easily locatable. My position is not to assume that the AGW hypothesis is true and challenge sceptics to deny it as you are implying. My position is that there is a weight of evidence that says it is real and significant, and as you have clearly stated that all this evidence is wrong - which is not scepticism by the way, it’s disagreement - I think it reasonable to ask on what evidence you base your judgment. If you were to tell me that smoking categorically does not cause lung cancer in opposition to the prevailing scientific consensus, I do not think it would be unreasonable to ask on what evidence you have come to that conclusion.
Of course, I’m prepared to do what I ask of you. The references of the Copenhagen Diagnosis (pp. 54-60, all peer-reviewed) will serve as a decent starting point to the current literature in support of AGW:
http://www.copenhagendiagnosis.com/
@Notkeane,
“There is a body of scientists that believe global warming is a reality, there is equally a body of scientists who believe it is cyclical”.
This is just plain misleading. Who is this “body of scientists who believe it is cyclical” and where are their published papers? Please, please show me. Surely, you must have a list of thousands of them for you to form the opinion that the debate is anything approaching being evenly balanced between the two camps. You would be hard-pressed to reach double digits. I believe my characterisation of “detractors” as consisting primarily of right-wing bloggers is perfectly accurate. Can you show me otherwise?
The authors of the papers referenced in the Copenhagen Diagnosis that I linked to in my last comment are just a small subset of the “body of scientists that believe global warming is a reality”. In fact, you would do well to spend the time to read that report. It’s well-researched and backed by peer-reviewed research. Let me know which parts you disagree with.
MOST PECULIAR MAMA: Of course. It’s like you, totally transparent.
MPM Which is why I set you up in the first place.
“…MPM Which is why I set you up in the first place…”
Of course you did dear.
Bully for you.
@Merlot64
This the last time I’ll say it…read BEFORE you comment.
@Evan
Realclimate!!!
C’mon man, you can do better than that.
What next sourcing ‘wikipedia’?
@JimmyF
“… I thought it was obvious to you that the evidence in support of AGW was voluminous and easily locatable…”
No. It’s not.
Worse, large - and key - parts of your ‘evidence’ have been shown to be fraudulent and tainted.
And let’s not even start on your beloved “peer-review” process.
“…I think it reasonable to ask on what evidence you base your judgment…”
Why do you insist on doing this to yourself?
The burden of proof of a scientific ‘theory’ or hypothesis is YOURS, not mine.
Good God man, that’s basic science…what part do you fail to understand?
But, humour me and so some reading on the null hypothesis.
Then we can talk again.
A consensus of opinion and peer endorsement doesn’t mean it is right, that is why I listed just three items at the top of my head to prove science may or may not be right. A bunch of numbers can be interpreted in a number of ways.
What bugs me about people like you is that because I think AGW is a crock, you lump me in with the right-wing bloggers. I am not right wing and I really hate the way people like you stomp around on your high moral ground telling me I am an idiot for thinking as I do. Simple thing is, I pity you and your thought processes and you naivety about politics and Rudd’s agenda. That’s the problem with being left wing, you aren’t encouraged to think – there now I throw in generalizations.
Good scientists acknowledge there is a body of thought in other directions… “Shaviv’s view is a minority view,” says Prof. Colin Price, head of the Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences at Tel Aviv University.
The scientists and others fall into groups that include those that claim global warming is a myth, that data is overstated and the nature has a bigger impact that man.
Peer Review:
1. Antonino Zichichi, emeritus professor of nuclear physics at the University of Bologna and president of the World Federation of Scientists
2. Chris de Freitas, Associate Professor, School of Geography, Geology and Environmental Science, University of Auckland
3. Claude Allègre, geochemist, Institute of Geophysics (Paris)
4. Craig D. Idso, faculty researcher, Office of Climatology, Arizona State University and founder of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change
5. David Deming, geology professor at the University of Oklahoma
6. David Douglass, professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester
7. David Legates, associate professor of geography and director of the Center for Climatic Research, University of Delaware
8. Don Easterbrook, emeritus professor of geology, Western Washington University
9. Fred Singer, Professor emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia
10. George Chilingar, Professor of Civil and Petroleum Engineering at the University of Southern California
11. George Kukla, retired Professor of Climatology at Columbia University and Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
12. Harrison Schmitt, Adjunct Professor of engineering physics at the University of Wisconsin
13. Hendrik Tennekes, retired Director of Research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute
14. Henrik Svensmark, Danish National Space Center
15. Ian Clark, professor, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa
16. Ian Plimer, Professor emeritus of Mining Geology, The University of Adelaide
17. Jan Veizer, environmental geochemist, Professor Emeritus from University of Ottawa
18. John Christy, professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama
19. Khabibullo Abdusamatov, mathematician and astronomer at Pulkovo Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences
20. Nigel Calder is a former editor of New Scientist
21. Nir Shaviv, professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (theory states that the rise in Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere is cased by a cyclical rise in global temperatures, not the other way around)
22. Patrick Michaels, research professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia
23. Patrick Moore, environmentalist with access to truck loads of material, and his issue is with people like you who use misinformation to try and manipulate people. Founded Greenpeace which he now seems to decry.
24. Paul Reiter of the Pasteur Institute
25. Petr Chylek, Space and Remote Sensing Sciences researcher, Los Alamos National Laboratory
26. Philip Stott, professor emeritus of biogeography at the University of London
27. Richard Lindzen, Professor of Atmospheric Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and member of the National Academy of Sciences
28. Robert Balling, Jr., a professor of geography at Arizona State University
29. Robert Carter, researcher at the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University in Australia
30. Roy Spencer, principal research scientist, University of Alabama in Huntsville
31. Sallie Baliunas, astronomer, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
32. Sherwood Idso, former research physicist, USDA Water Conservation Laboratory, and adjunct professor, Arizona State University
33. Syun-Ichi Akasofu, retired professor of geophysics and Founding Director of the International Arctic Research Center of the University of Alaska Fairbanks
34. Tad Murty, professor, Departments of Civil Engineering and Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa
35. Tim Patterson, paleoclimatologist and Professor of Geology at Carleton University in Canada
36. Timothy Fall, ex University of Winnipeg
37. Tom Segalstad, head of the Geology Museum at the University of Oslo
38. Vincent Gray, chemist and founder of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition:
39. William Gray, Professor Emeritus and head of The Tropical Meteorology Project, Department of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University
40. William Happer, physicist Princeton University
41. William Kininmonth, meteorologist, former Australian delegate to World Meteorological Organization Commission for Climatology
42. William R. Cotton, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Colorado State University
43. Willie Soon, astrophysicist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
That’s 43 and just for a start, double figures by my very basic use of figures… but I’m sure this is a right wing conspiracy too. If you had ever studied science and paid attention, you would know that views on what is right and wrong changes over time. No set of tests, research or study has ever proven 100% that something is correct, but one experiment can disprove a theory. AGW is a theory, that is all. It may be a popular theory, it may have some basis of truth, but it is time people got their heads out of the boiling hot sands in the desert that Venise Alstergren thinks we made.
My issue with running blindly along in the belief that AGW is an irrefutable fact means we are not open to looking at alternative theories, of truly analyzing the problem and finding the best solutions. Let’s get better at protecting the environment, and it can start by people like JimmyF getting off their high horses fro which they sprout enough hot air into the atmosphere to cause a warming issue in itself. The next thing you know we’ll hear you have a Toyota Prius with a carbon footprint for creation that takes more than 7 year to recapture against a well maintained car… not to mention we’ll one day have to dispose of the batteries… or perhaps even never against a hydrogen powered car.
Perhaps the Ice Age happened because we didn’t burn coal or own cars? Maybe the two scientists who claim the current carbon markets are making it worse have studied Rudd’s ETS. Or maybe they read the documents linking the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit to the distortions of the truth?
At least Scott at 11:35 is starting to think. JimmyF, when will you engage your brain?
I, unlike those flat-earther, “we-burn-increasing-volumes-of-fossil-fuels-and-its-not-having-any-effect” climate change deniers in the liberal party don’t have a poster of Amanda Vanstone up on my bedroom wall nor kneel at night to place offerings and burn incense at an altar to John Howard - I can think for myself.
The overwhelming weight of public opinion to do the right thing and transform our society to one that gets it energy from the sun and wind and drives around in transport that only emits water vapour and doesn’t mine every atom of mineral only to transform into a flashy consumer-driven throwaway gimic to clog up the ecosystem will prevail.
It make take longer now that a few dinosaurs have taken control of the opposition but it will happen.
Why fight it?
@JimmyF
Here this ought get you paddling fast uphill!
Jo Nova’s blog today tells the same story I have been going on about for ages since I discovered that global finance was moving on from Big Oil. In short, Nova says in a piece titled “Sub-prime carbon is coming” :
“Behind the scenes, large financial houses are moving in stealthily. In 2008, carbon trading worldwide reached $126 billion and is projected to grow to become a $2-$10 trillion dollar market, or “The largest commodity traded world wide”. That’s bigger than oil, coal, gas, or iron. Banks want us to trade carbon (and they don’t care what level of carbon is pumped as long as they get their cut). (My words)
“JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, BNP Paribas, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, Credit Suisse are just a few financial houses calling for emissions trading schemes. Those who broker the trades are guaranteed to make money. Journalists who repeat IPCC press releases without investigation are unwittingly acting as unpaid agents for large financial players”.
(This was Garnaut’s original idea as described in the AFR in Feb 09).
This “free market” is not free, and is not based on a commodity, but on unverifiable, unauditable permits for actions that depend on “motivations”. They are issued to companies to build clean factories they would otherwise not have built (who can tell?). The top two auditors in Europe have both been suspended in the last 12 months. Carbon permits have no value other than by government decree. It’s another fiat currency to be exploited by financial institutions.
Its a psychgames people and that happens to be my area.
Well, we are leading the world now in something and that is helping to unravel this Global Banker’s Scam. In a piece in the UK Telegraph today titled “It’s all unravelling now” James Delingpole gives prominence to the Australian Senate flipping off the global bankers i.e. “Expect to see a lot more of this: politicians starting to become aware their party’s position on AGW is completely out of kilter with the public mood and economic reality. Kevin Rudd’s Emissions Trading Scheme – what Andrew Bolt calls “a $114 billion green tax on everything” – would have wreaked havoc on the coal-dependent Australian economy. That’s why several opposition Liberal frontbenchers resigned rather than vote with the Government on ETS; why Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull lost his job; and why the Senate voted down the ETS”.
He goes on to describe how the Danes have been caught gaming the system and how the Daily Express has bravely giventhe scandal its front page. Poor old Trotskyist BBC is slowly “warming” to the hoax of the century while universities are standing down their wunderkind. Of course amidst all of this, Kevin and Penny will be in Legoland shouting from the turrets about how unenlightened we are here.
Common Jim boy let’s hear some bellyaching!
Why are conspiracy theory nuts so verbose? They certainly go well beyond the maximum 10 second reading time they are entitled to. Actually ten seconds is not short shrift enough.
Hey David, I don’t regard myself as a conspiracy theory nut - but I expect nothing less than to be categorised as that or as a right-wing blogger or some other crap to try and denigrate the fact that I have a differnt thought process to you. I rate people like you as gullible and incapable of thought and analysis, if you can’t see the other side of something like this then you’ll never work it out. And if people like JimmyF weren’t asking to substantiate comments I’d keep it simple.
You cannot create energy without destorying something, whether it is coal, uranium or just the environment. Our job is to work out the way of generating energyu with the smallest impact. Even wind power changes the ecosystem in its wake… Wind, Solar Wave Motion all have environmental impacts. Ethanol is perpaps one of the best power sources for cars, but how do we get car manufacturers to give us E85 vehicles? We pressure them. V8 Supercars race on the fuel, why can’t I use it on the road?
Especially when they have so little to say….
So Richard Wilson and JamesK (and Mama and Johnfromplanetearth), where does all the CO2 go? Burning all that carbon based fuel and making all that concrete and burning all that forest releases CO2 in what even you would have to agree is fairly significant amounts. So where does it go?
Why would you want to burn rocks rather than make use of freely available energy streaming down from the sky?
Any answer apart from “well its what we’ve always done” please…
Want some more scientists including Godfather Hansen - check this out!
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/03/global-warming-fraud-harms-science/
According to the CRU emails, I thought that C02 was rising - the problem was they just couldn’t get the temperature to follow it!
@merlot64
“…Burning all that carbon based fuel and making all that concrete and burning all that forest releases CO2 in what even you would have to agree is fairly significant amounts. So where does it go?…”
Do you need to be reminded the construct - by gas volume - of the Earth’s atmosphere?
Just in case, here it is: 0.04%
That leaves a residual 99.96% of stuff that is NOT CO2.
With ~6, 500,000,000 on the planet, does 0.04% sound like a “fairly significant amount”?
And cosndiering Australia’s contribution to that 0.04% is 1.5%, well you do the math.
My abacus can’t handle that many zero’s before the decimal point.
“…Why would you want to burn rocks rather than make use of freely available energy streaming down from the sky?…”
Burn “rocks”.
“ROCKS” you say.
Big black rocks, right?
HUGE. BLACK. ROCKS.
Seriously though, your particular train of thought may inadvertantly reveal to us why no-one knows who built Stonehenge, what they built it for and why they all died out.
Well done Sir.
NOTKEANE: Because an idea hasn’t been rounded out and when it comes to politics everyone fires shots without loading their guns-doesn’t mean it that it is a bad idea. All that it means is the idea has to be redefined. However, surely-you might ask yourself- there has to be a lot of truth to it to frighten the mining lobby. Why else do they hire cheap flacks to sow fear and hatred, people like Andrew Bolt, whose own fear and hatred is purchased by the word. Far less expensive than spending millions of dollars to improve their out-dated machinery.
The mining industry especially, would rather erase an idea, than plan for the future. Why should they spend millions of dollars to re-jig their entire industry to catch up with the urgency of a grim future? Cheaper to pressure governments into granting exemptions. They didn’t Lobby the government for protection unless they already knew there was something to protect, did they?
Since the 1950’s the world’s population has TREBLED, we are now well in excess of ten (10) billion people. How do you imagine this planet to continue supporting all those people until we find ways to clean up our act?
I beg you to ask yourself if you can stand idly by, reading the words of the people who are paid to make GW a non-event, because their bosses want to continue pursuing profits at give-away prices? Do you not have a future you wish to care about; or your family and their kids. Are you happy to see the urban hovels which exist throughout the world? Are you frightened this means you will end up in the same place as all those third world places? Well we will, if we let the coal mining industries, the multiple irrigators, the mentally-deficient farmers maintaining a tradition of ploughing a landscape which is already fragile. Land whose topsoil has become so thin that the wind picks it up and flings it over our cities.
How do you imagine many of the world’s deserts became that way? Take the Middle East, vast deserts exist when millennia ago there was arable land, vineyards, gardens and shady trees. In those days man was ignorant of the knowledge we have today. Slash and burn was the way to go. But now we know what went wrong. Why would the mining industries via their paid mouth- pieces
want us not to be cogniscent of these facts? Because it would mean admitting that
there is a correlation between man and man-made CC.
Why should we have to continue on in the ways of the past? Solely because the coal-mining industry, irrigation industries, forestry industries-I image you are not so young that you believe the MDB always looked like the shit-hole it is today-want us to pay for their upset balance sheets because they haven’t had the foresight to know what is inevitable?
Why should they upgrade their old fashioned mining equipment when they can pay what is, after all, a pittance to the Public Relations brigade to use the cheap rhetoric and selectively edited snippets in throwaway sound/vision-bites of hired hacks, for Christ sake?
By reading your thoughts it is obvious you wish to learn more about the subject. The harder part is sorting through those who are paid to lie to you and the people who wish to improve the world.
This is incredibly difficult situation to think your way through, but for the sake of everyone’s future please give it a try. In case you hadn’t noticed, this is the only planet we’ve got.
@Most Peculiar Mama - you are a precious thing. I think it’s called trolling. Embracing your inner private school bully may get you off but it’s getting dreary.
And there Venise Alstergren is the whole reason why Rudd’s ETS will not work, there is no need to change. By accepting crap policy on the run in an attempt to give his ego a boost at Coppenhagen, he and the Greens ruined any chance of an EWS in this country in the near future. And yes, that is sad. I don’t believe the AGW hype, but I do believe we need to do a better job.
Paddlefoot, you are a wanker. Put you predjudice behind you lest we tag you alongside Tony Abbott as a bigot.
NOTKEANE: It must have been a long winter, sorry for not making myself clear. I agree with you. Rudd’s scheme is hopelessly flawed. That was my point when my opening stanza suggested the whole was in essence a good idea-meaning to clean up the planet-but because it is hopelessly flawed does not mean the idea is bad. Just that it has to become a hell of a lot better.
Unfortunately, now that the criminally short-sighted, terminally idiotic, blindly, cruelly mentally-constipated bigots that have seized control of the (ill)iberal party have stuffed the planet for another hundred years.
Sorry, I get carried away. Yep, I’m in agreement with you.
oh Mama - It doesn’t matter what the percentage is, the important thing is the delta. According to the World Bank (admittedly a bastion of far Left radicalism) emissions worldwide topped 27 billion metric tons in 2003, an increase of 19 percent over 1990 levels.
So again - where does all the CO2 go?
I’ll tell you where it will all go. it will all go to be traded by the World Bank and the IMF which, according to Lindsay Williams set the oil price daily; as well as to their supposed owners, the global banking groups. According to Jo Nova’s blog today:
The banks and apparently former Goldman Sachs boss, Malcolm Turnbull (my comment) want us to trade carbon. So does Ross Garnaut and I guess Labor Insiders, because that is the way banks can make a buck out of this scam.
Jo Nova states that: “JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, BNP Paribas, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, Credit Suisse are just a few financial houses calling for emissions trading schemes”. This will be a sure fire money maker with CDS expected not too far down the track behind the trades. “Journalists are unwittingly acting as unpaid agents for large financial players. Nova argues that this “free market” is not free, and is “not based on a commodity, but on unverifiable, un-auditable permits for actions that depend on “motivations”. They are issued to companies to build clean factories they would otherwise not have built (who can tell?). The top two auditors in Europe have both been suspended in the last 12 months. Carbon permits have no value other than by government decree. It’s another fiat currency to be exploited by financial institutions”.
“The potential for fraud and corruption, she continues, is limited only by what the voting public will put up with. Once this legislation is in place, it will be impossible to unwind without major compensation claims”. Well the corruption has already hit Denmark with a major emissions trading fraud reported in the Danish Register yesterday.
The bankers want a new way to make money and have decided to cap the massive amount of oil discovered in Indonesia a couple of years back. They have also gone mumm on all the oil under the Arctic; shut down huge new discoveries in the Gulf of Mexico , Montana and Prudhoe Bay in Alaska. The world is literally swimming in the stuff. But the money is going to control carbon dioxide trading.
This scheme isn’t about fixing the earth and saving its people - its about fleecing the people even if it means destroying the planet!
@Notkeane,
Are you serious? The first one on your list is an 80 year-old retired professor of physics who made his claims in a speech to the Catholic Church. Is that really the best you can do? Bob Carter? Richard Lindzen? Clutching at straws, no?
I didn’t get any further than that. Sorry mate, I couldn’t find any on that list that have published peer-reviewed papers. Just writing “Peer review” before a list of names doesn’t make it so. It might be more helpful to link to the articles in the peer-reviewed journals themselves.
@Jimmy Bob
You are throwing out experts like the CRU throws out data! Easy to see the CRU pattern here in your responding.
So guess might IPCC expert reviewer Professor Aynsley Kellow:
Here is an ABC interview with him that made actually its way to air, which is surprising for that gullible New Trotskyist front, as he appears even handed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gal6YOR5iE0
I guess he will be no good either if he disagrees with you! By the way, attacking older scientists merely on the basis of age is discriminatory.
@JimmyF
OK JimmyF, tell us a little about yourself. You lay your moral hand over everyone, you ask for a list I give you a list and you discard it because someone is old, catherlic or right wing. Clearly you see youself as a peer on the review chain, perhaps even connected to the East Anglia fraud?
I’ll give you a peer review of you. [Edit - no insults please]
Here is a fact, and you can throw peer review at me until the cow’s come home. AGW is an opnion, it is your opinion and that of a few learned people, but it is an opinion nonetheless.
What high handed people like yourself don’t understand is that you can rabbit on about your peer review system, you can tell me how your scientists are smarter than mine but you cannot generate proof past the point of a few people reckon. And the more you try to tell me how stupid I am, the more I will move away from your beliefs. You are clearly involved in AGW somehow, I would suggest you are one of the peers that I think is a zealot, no different to Tony Abbot as a religious zealot except that you think man is a destructive evil.
I’ll go an have a debate with my dog about whether he should drop the ball or not, at least he makes sense when he barks at me. Hey, hang on, I think he can woof peer review.
[Edit]
I’m bored with this discussion. I’m bored with you because you have such a closed mind you are clearly not good with sciences. So run off and start your car or go to work in your air conditioned office/lab, or maybe even catch a train powered by that evil and disgusting coal and contemplate the end of the world. Apocolypse is nigh because notKeane and millions of others don’t believe in global warming is entirely because of man. Hey, they are trying to live a better life, they are working on reducing emissions as much as they can and looking at alternative energy sources, but they don’t believe me and I must wallow in the glow of my own intelligence. [Edit - mind your manners please]
Isn’t it funny how those that oppose doing something about CO2 emissions have no idea what happens to CO2 once it hits the atmosphere. You would think that they would have an understanding of what happens in the carbon cycle, but instead all they can do is blame an international conspiracy or ignore the question.
@merlot64
“…Isn’t it funny how those that oppose doing something about CO2 emissions have no idea what happens to CO2 once it hits the atmosphere…”
Do you know anything about climate science?
Anything about gas absorption and saturation?
Anything about the greenhouse effect?
Anything about temperature observations in the troposphere?
Whilst I admire you doggedly sticking to the AGW talking points your failure to grasp and understand even the most basic science around this issue is getting tedious.
Evan Beaver wrote: “They were all discreditted when someone hacked the CRU computers.”
Actually Evan, Hansen, Mann et al were discredited long before now.
Hansen’s claim that 1998 was the hottest year on record and his GISS global Temp meat data has been forced to be extensively revised.
Mann’s ‘hockey stick’ should ordinarily have seen him never published or employed by a reputable institution again.
‘Climate science’ has a similar reputation to ‘gender studies’ as true sciences among the scientifically informed.
These characters are a disgrace and that has always been the fundamental criticism.
This whistleblower data and email release merely puts it in comprehensible clarity for the average punter.
Oh Mama, what is getting tedious is your blatant refusal to answer the question - what happens to the CO2? Ignore Global Warming - I’m not asking about it. You list “gas absorption and saturation”, “greenhouse effects” and “temperature observations in the troposphere”. Put the relevant bits in a coherant answer to the question. Where does the CO2 go?
@Merlot64(Not a good year)
Look up ‘The Carbon Cycle’ in your old biology textbook.
JamesK, I know what the Carbon Cycle is - I am just curious as to what you belive are the implications on the cycle of increased CO2 output. Ignoring Global Warming . Where does the CO2 go?
@Not Such A Good Year
I dunni. I think the old biology textbook explained the answer to your question beautifully.
But…..:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7271/abs/nature08526.html
http://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2009/6649.html
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2009/11/10/airborne-fraction-of-human-co2-emissions-constant-over-time/
http://www.biogeosciences-discuss.net/6/10583/2009/bgd-6-10583-2009-print.pdf
Once emitted, most of the carbon dioxide stays up there. That is the simple answer.
It is true that we were taught at school that nature has always pulled the carbon dioxide back down as rock, to maintain an equilibrium level in the atmosphere. However the carbon cycle model was only ever describing the earth’s response to small inputs of CO2. In that case, a temporary increase in partial pressure of CO2 pushed a little more of it to dissolve in the sea surface, marine organisms would form more shells, and so on.
However, we have been emitting CO2 much faster than the (idealised) carbon cycle can cope with. There is now 40% more CO2 than the background level, increasing by about 1% per annum. The feedback mechanisms referred to in the old text books are themselves suppressed by the excess CO2. Effectively, the carbon cycle is broken.
Despite the increasing partial pressure, less is dissolving in the sea surface because it is warmer and more acid. For the same reasons marine organisms are finding it harder to sequester carbonate shells. With less freezing of ice in the Arctic, there is less saline taking down CO2 to the ocean floor. With less cold katabatic winds off the Asian and Antarctic mainlands, there is less cold ocean surface subducting into the intermediate depths.
However, there is one positive feedback mechanism that will eventually return the world to some sort of stasis. The weathering of rock neutralises the acidity of the air by releasing cations into the sea. Although that ensures that the world will eventually return to normal, it will not do it on any human timespan.
JAMESK: Do you have to pinch all my good lines? I was going to say MERLOT64: Was that a good year?!
MOST PECULIAR M: It would seem the Lobby group you work for has told you to be brief but brutal. What you should explain to them is it’s the quality of the article which counts. If they want the best results they would need to furnish you with up to date information from credible sources, instead of feeding you regurgitated material. After all why should you go into battle with a sling-shot in an arena where everyone else is using the latest Kalashnikovs? Being you, you would want an Armalite. The Kalashnikov is a better gun; trust me.
Although the bullying, hectoring attitude you adopt loses you more potential customers than adherents. Or is this reverse psychology you are attempting?
@Roger
Chopping down the rainforests at a ferocious pace could hardly be helping C02 re-absorption surely!
But, can I ask, if C02 levels have continued to rise over the last 8 or 9 or 11 years, why has there been no commensurate rise in temperature?
@Richard - pointing at links doesn’t indicate that you actually understand the implications of the information contain there. Roger is of course right, though I would have said that it stays “out there” rather than “up there”, because once the emitted CO2 enters the Carbon Cycle it also enters the oceans generating Carbonic Acid and dropping the pH levels of the ocean. So even without entering into a debate on Global Warming, basic chemistry should tell you that the dumping increasing amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere while simultaneously depleting the natural carbon capture systems of the world, is really starting to through rocks into a finely balanced mechanism.
Economies can be repaired in a relatively short time. Ecologies are much more difficult to fix. Once a species is extinct, it stays that way.
@Richard Wilson,
Are you saying those three I singled out are those that you feel represent credible scientists who dispute AGW? Let’s see:
1. Bob Carter - very vocal but has never subjected any work on climate change to the peer review process? Why not?
2. Richard Lindzen - see my comment to you above.
3. Antonino Zichichi - Professor of Physics who has no experience in climate science and also obviously has not published any peer reviewed papers on AGW. By the way, I feel his age/retirment status is relevant as his criticisms particularly concern current computer modelling techniques and given that he has been retired for many years (and has never worked in the field), it is unlikely that he has any first-hand experience with that which he is criticising. His age/retirement status would most likely be irrelevant in other fields of study, eg. Humanities.
@Richard Wilson,
Regarding the interview, Aynsley made a few good points, especially concerning the tendency of scientists at the CRU to display “an end justifies the means” mentality to FoI requests in particular. This attitude is certainly something to be guarded against and it’s very positive that the CRU has recently agreed to release all it’s raw data. His statements on dendrochronology were a tad misleading but then again he’s a social scientist and has no training in climate science. I wonder why they didn’t interview David Karoly or an actual climate scientist from the IPCC WG1 rather than a social scientist from WG2 (which deals with the Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability of climate change)?
@Notkeane,
It is clear you haven’t been reading what I’ve said, only what you think I’ve said. I’ve never called you a name, attacked you or even characterised you as right wing. In fact, I’ve never even stated that I believe in the AGW hypothesis or that the science is settled or proven. So why you go off on incoherent rant about “moral high horses” and “closed minds” is beyond me. Even the use of the term ‘hypothesis” is an admission of doubt on my part.
The closest I’ve come to expressing an opinion on AGW is when I said to MPM, “My position is that there is a weight of evidence that says it is real and significant”. This is a statement on the current imbalance between peer-reviewed papers and climate scientists who support the AGW hypothesis and papers and scientists that don’t. This is a statement based on observable, objective facts. We are dealing with a finite number of papers/scientists here. This is what I have been discussing with you if you’d cared to read anything I’d said before forming an opinion. Although there is clearly some subjectivity in determining whether a paper supports or refutes the AGW, the discrepancy in peer-reviewed papers is quantifiable and I think you’ll find is somewhere in the realm of 100-1. If you feel this is incorrect, I’m happy to be corrected but I believe this is somewhat close to the mark.
My opinion that much of the refutation of AGW originates in right wing blogs is also quantifiable given the dearth of peer-reviewed papers refuting AGW. Of course, there is some subjectivity in determining what constitutes a “right wing blog” but many blogs wear this title proudly. There is a reason for this correlation - in my experience (opinion here) conservatives tend to be biased against anything that challenges the status quo, eg. immigration, feminism, etc. In fact, for me that is one of their defining characteristics. For example, I don’t need to read Andrew Bolt’s blog to know where he stands on any issue I care to think of. When I am feeling particularly masochistic and do read his blog, I am always proved correct. John Howard rarely surprised either. So it’s not unexpected that there is such a large cross-over between right wing blogs and those that refute AGW. This is clearly just my opinion now and I don’t suggest for one second that those who proudly identify themselves as left aren’t guilty of the same level of bias.
I’m fascinated by those who have very little knowledge of climate science and yet are so certain in their refutation. My curiosity about people like you is why, with such an enormous imbalance between the number of climate scientists who accept the AGW hypothesis in comparison with those that dispute it (you could argue that there is also a large group who adopt a genuinely sceptical position but the debate has become so polarised that it’s hard to imagine many climate scientists not engaging in the debate in some form), you are so certain it’s the much smaller group that is correct. If I told you that the majority of neuroscientists were 90% certain that mobile phones cause brain cancer in users within 20 years, would you still use your phone?
Of course, I believe your reasons for forming your view are psychological and have nothing to do with a considered weighing of all available evidence. Your melodramatic response to my questions has laid this bare. You even admit that my questions (or your emotional reactions to them) makes you more likely to believe the opposite to me. Maybe the only reason you believe the way you do is because of “tossers” like me? That sounds like a wonderful way to form opinions on matters that affect the future of the planet. I have no desire to convert you because it is impossible to use reason against someone who forms their judgments based on emotion or faith, for the same reason that it is impossible to convince a religious person that there is no God. I was secretly hoping you’d read the Copenhagen Diagnosis though.
Finally, I think it was perfectly reasonable to reject your list. You wrote “peer review” before it and I could tell immediately that almost every name on that list was neither a climate scientist nor had published peer-reviewed research.
P.S. I don’t think you’re in a position to say that “you are clearly not good with sciences” and I actually believe that in some circles it’s rude to say “Go and die in a dith you tosser”.
@JimmyF
I was so sure I was just going to something useful this evening and forget people like you even exist. You rabbit on about ‘peer review’ like a kid that has learned a new word, yet the only peer review that counts are the ones you agree with… or the ones that fit into your narrowling defined view of who can or can’t determine a trend from a set of statistics. Mate, I could do that and I do not purport to be a scientists. And yes, I am rude to people like you because you are so arrogant and self absorbed that no-one else can be right except for you and your peers that you remind me of Hitler, who if you have any clear understanding of politics was both an environmentalist and a socialist. Your lack of intellectual process is staggering, you may be smart and you may even be as smart as you think you are, but you are not a good thinker. There are plenty of theories that don’t come from the lunatric fringe that say you are and your peers are wrong.
So, and here’s the rub, people like you frighten me. Your are the sort of ill-guided avangalists that do stupid things and also piss so many people off they will go the other way. And let’s be clear, you may anger me and you may annoy me, but I take no heed of the thoughts of people like you. I read all the facts I can find and form my own opinions.
There is no doubt that living in this world we impact the environment, a tree does, and an ant does. The existence of living things lead to change. And this is where you don’t pay attention because I am not wedded to the concept of AGW, we do need to be better to our environment. But if you think Rudd and Brown’s ETS is going to even scratch the suface you are kidding yourself. If I buy a ticket on a Qantas flight, I can pay a couple of bucks to theoritically offset my carbon, only 3% of consumers do this. The Greens get more votes than that, so why so little. Instead of pushing you theory down my and other people’s throats, you perhaps need to ask yourself why your form of evangalism isn’t taking off. Why 97% of people see that carbon offset schemes are invariably of a crock of shit so someone can attach a green sticker to their marketing campaign. And it happens because people like you think an ETS will get us somewhere.
All I have said, all along, is that the theory of AGW is flawed. And that leads to sceptics and conmen. The ETS is a con.
My peer review of people who can think are quite sure that you can’t, and if it’s OK with you I’ll define which peers I pay attention to and your mates who sip chardonnay in the inner city can complain as much as they like. Perhaps it is time you moved into a closed Armish community, you’d minimise your impact on the world and at least we’d never have to hear from you because you wouldn’t use a computer and the fossil fuel that is burned to give it power. [Edit - mind your manners please]
Ah, there the remove JimmyF from life button. Man it is a long time since someone has pissed me off as much as you.
sorry, that was meant to be remoce JimmyF from MY life…
Well that’s a relief NotKeane. So the death threat is no longer current then?
@JIMMYF
“My opinion that much of the refutation of AGW originates in right wing blogs is also quantifiable given the dearth of peer-reviewed papers refuting AGW. Of course, there is some subjectivity in determining what constitutes a “right wing blog” but many blogs wear this title proudly. There is a reason for this correlation - in my experience (opinion here) conservatives tend to be biased against anything that challenges the status quo, eg. immigration, feminism, etc. In fact, for me that is one of their defining characteristics. For example, I don’t need to read Andrew Bolt’s blog to know where he stands on any issue I care to think of. When I am feeling particularly masochistic and do read his blog, I am always proved correct. John Howard rarely surprised either. So it’s not unexpected that there is such a large cross-over between right wing blogs and those that refute AGW. This is clearly just my opinion now and I don’t suggest for one second that those who proudly identify themselves as left aren’t guilty of the same level of bias.”
Brilliant, simply brilliant!
We have a winner.
I notice the polar bears are back in the shill news as are the fish turning on each other apparently due to a one degree temperature change. Golleeeeee! Has anyone noticed all the cute little critters that are about to have their habitats devastated by AGW! They don’t write about the cute little critters that have already had their habitat destroyed in Sumatra, Borneo, Brazil, the Congo and other Third World locales after the IMF and the World Bank sold off their rainforests to globalist developers and timber merchants for failure to make debt repayments.
Anyway, even though the Polars are making a return, Al Gore won’t be able to defend them. Straight off the press from the UK Tele, Mr. Gore won’t be doing Cokenarbend.
“Due to unforeseen circumstances, Al Gore has had to cancel a Copenhagen speaking event at which he had hoped to charge starry-eyed believers in his ManBearPig religion $1200 a piece for the privilege of shaking his hand, breathing in his CO2 and having his latest book inflicted on them. Could those unforeseen circumstances have anything to do with Climategate?”
See article by James Delingpole Politics, UK Telegraph, December 4th, 2009
There is a lot of emotional intensity and certainty in the arguments of the anti-AGW crew here. I’m curious as to why you believe your side of the argument so strongly?
If you do not believe that the majority of climate scientists and climate science research supports AGW theory, are you suggesting that they are all inept, or that thousands of researchers from a range of fields got together to fudge the figures?
If that’s the case, what do you see as their motivation? Are climate scientists supporters of a leftist agenda? Environmental extremists? One world government society members? Being bribed by bankers to support the case for carbon trading? Abusing their credibility to launch the most elaborate April fools joke the world has ever seen? All of the above?
I really want to know. What is the main reason you choose to disbelieve the science compiled and reviewed by the experts in favour of the conclusions assembled by people from outside those fields?
NotKeane, sorry man, but you lose. First to mention Hitler for a start. You’re also, clearly not reading anyone else’s posts. No wonder you’re grumpy.
Jeebus
You’ll find it’s the same psychosis in the anti-AGW mind which also allows religious fundamentalists to take the bible literally, no matter the evidence to the contrary. As Jimmyf stated so eloquently “conservatives tend to be biased against anything that challenges the status quo”. This mental illness overrides their rational critical thinking ability, which in turn protects them from proven facts, which reinforces their ignorant fear of change. It’s a learning disability the can be easily overcome by early intervention by teaching children how to think critically.
Apparently Jeebus really wants to know………….
He wants to know “the main reason you choose to disbelieve the science”.
Difficult question to answer heh deniers?
When we are finally rid of the Kerry O’Brien and Tony Jones loons from ‘YOUR ABC’ perhaps Jeebus should “choose” to apply for the leftist loaded questioner job?
JamesK, yes that would be a loaded question, if it was the one I asked.
My question can be boiled down to this - why do you believe the laymen over the scientists?
@Jeebus
Don’t give me your “boiled down” rubbish.
George Will wrote today, Dec 6, in the Washington Post in a piece called “Climate Change Travesty”:
“A CRU e-mail says: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment” — this “moment” is in its second decade — “and it is a travesty that we can’t.”
The travesty is the intellectual arrogance of the authors of climate-change models. On such models we are supposed to wager trillions of dollars — and substantially diminished freedom”.
This respected writer offers the reader the notion that delusions of grandeur have overtaken a particular scientific clique who, having been lauded by politicians and client follower media, and showered with money, “seem to suppose themselves a small clerisy entrusted with the most urgent truth ever discovered” which has led some to tarnish it.
But Will’s most important question to his readers is to “consider the sociology of science, the push and pull of interests, incentives, appetites and passions”. He points out that certain governments are steering a trillion dollar industry towards a certain financial outcome and perhaps an uncertain scientific one. “Tens of billions of dollars are being dispensed, such as by the U.S. Energy Department, which has suddenly become, in effect, a huge venture capital operation, speculating in green technologies” and that political, commercial, academic and journalistic prestige and advancement are contingent on not rocking the “consensus” that is propelling the gigantic and fabulously lucrative global warming industry forward.
Will concludes that “Copenhagen is the culmination of the post-Kyoto manoeuvring by people determined to fix the world’s climate by bringing the world’s populations to heel through micro supervision by government.
My issue is not about the existence about AGW but the phoney methods they have adopted to tackle it. The biggest polluters will buy up the permits to pollute thereby removing all competition and continue on as though nothing had happened with us paying the bills and with substantially diminsihed liberty. Well I am not buying it!
Even the Financial Newsletters are starting to smell a financial rat.
“To hold that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is a farce, that the books were - if you’ll pardon the pun - cooked, you’d have to believe that governments around the world are colluding to extort a crippling tax on citizens in an effort to save us from - gulp - ourselves. You’d have to suspect that those same governments were in bed with high- flying investment firms and individual insiders who might stand to pocket billions inventing and trading carbon credits and various other enviro-derivatives. And you’d have to believe that an Academy Award winning Nobel Peace Prize recipient is either a mildly convincing actor…or a menace to humanity…or, indeed, both”.
“But that’s not all. As of a couple of weeks ago, to suspect that AGW is a con, you must believe that private emails exchanged between climatologists responsible for providing the “consensus” data - emails in which were divulged methods of suppressing data, excluding dissenting viewpoints and manipulating evidence - were in some way damning or that they might actually undermine the scientific credibility of the heretofore unchallengeable AGW doctrine. Estimates vary on how much a proposed “cap-and-trade” plan might cost. Depending on where you get your figures - which seems to be a recurring caveat surrounding this whole discussion - annual cost to the US alone could be between $200-$350 billion, or roughly $1,750 - $3,000 per household. (We did see one global estimate of $23 trillion…but decided to discard that as a statistical outlier.)
“Critics, predictably, rebuke those figures, claiming that they are typically inflated.
Depending on what side of the debate you reside - skeptic or believer - action or inaction will cost you, respectively, thousands of dollars per year in additional taxes and the surrender of your liberty to a world government, or, your life and that of all future generations”.
From the Daily Reckoning Financial Newsletter Dec 5, 2009.
@JamesK, you’re more slippery than a frog. It’s impossible to get a straight answer out of you without a bait and switch.
@Richard, it’s no surprise that businesses of all stripes are trying to influence governments over climate change. From the entrenched fossil fuel companies who prefer the status quo, to the bankers and clean energy companies who see profit potential in change. Maybe carbon trading is a sham, but whatever solution governments agree on to reduce emissions, the cost will reflect the global scope and magnitude of the problem.
Does AGW exist? I choose to side with the vast majority of climate scientists on that one. It would take a lot of new evidence to over-turn the consensus that has developed, and until I see people removing their signatures from the IPCC report, I really don’t see how it could be wise to ignore their urgent warnings.
After all, if they are right and we do nothing, we face a global threat to civilisation as the conditions for life become less hospitable for us. If they are wrong, we might shave off a few percentage points of global GDP in the short term, but in the long term we will still ultimately benefit from investing in cleaner and more efficient energy sources.
Rickard W, what conclusion have you drawn from that article?
I find the ‘cost to a nation’ figures in general misleading, or utterly useless. What on Earth does that include? Then breaking it down to a per household basis is even less useful.
Jeebus, it would be flattering to be able to say that being abused by JamesK is a badge of honour. Unfortunately, however, it is more like dog dirt on your shoe.
If we can reward the good guys and disincentivise the bad guys, I don’t mind paying. I include the global financial elite in the bad guys group by the way, and I get suspicious when governments of any ilk push desperately for carbon trading schemes. Remember that Goldman Sachs were the chief financiers of both sides of the last US election, including the current leader. A global cap and trade to me is a con which will end up in a derivatives bubble like housing, and the naive scientists will then discover they have been conned again by the money managers.
Let’s spend time working out a way to save the planet which does not involve the banks getting rich at the expense of our individual liberty or our livelihoods. My research has always indicated that people will willingly contribute if they think the cause is genuine. Look at how the world gives to tsunami victims and the like. I just hope the people of the world can distinguish a cash grab from a genuine intent to salvage our resources. I am always reminded of Imran Khan relating how it was the poor and middle classes who contributed the bulk of donations to the most recent Pakistani earthquake victims - not the wealthy elite.
That is what I am always fearful of and that is what I smell within this ruse.
Talking about sleeping with the enemy!
Who amongst us hasn’t seen variants of that pointed finger repeated thousands of times that anyone with a counter view to the warmists is an oil company shill? The paradigm has shifted. Now it appears CRU is the one looking for “big oil” money. See the email:
From Mick Kelly: July 05, 2000 to M. Hume.
“Had a very good meeting with Shell yesterday. Only a minor part of the agenda but I expect they will accept an invitation to act as strategic partner and will contribute to a studentship fund though under certain conditions.” Reported in Watts up with That, today.
And talk about flogging a dead horse.
I want clean water Evan.
Of course you do, everyone does. The WHO rate it as the most important health issue in the world. Apparently just having a toilet that takes your waste away adds 10 years to one’s life expectancy.
But, what on Earth are you talking about?