The juxtaposition of the latest United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, released overnight, and the passage of the government’s inaptly named “direct action” policy last week, is a painful one for anyone who believes in basic science and is concerned about the economy we will bequeath future generations.
The “severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts” identified by the IPCC that climate change will inflict on the world are an economic threat: our children and their descendants will be significantly poorer as a result of the lower economic growth, higher prices and higher taxes that the impacts of climate change will impose on countries like Australia — and that’s before the higher mortality and population displacement that will result worldwide. The costs of climate change far outweigh the modest, indeed almost trivial, costs of using pricing mechanisms to decarbonise even a carbon-addicted economy like Australia’s.
The government’s direct inaction policy at least has that rare virtue of uniting climate action advocates and climate denialists — both agree it’s a waste of money. There’s nothing particularly wrong with Direct Action — it is simply an industry handout program that, however inappropriate for a post-entitlement age, won’t actually increase our carbon emissions. But with Clive Palmer and the Abbott government having removed a functioning, effective and cheap carbon pricing mechanism that was reducing Australia’s greenhouse emissions, Direct Action means Australia has no carbon abatement policy beyond the less efficient Renewable Energy Target — and the government wants to remove that as well.
With the Abbott government deep in climate denialism, serious climate action has been left to citizens. Switching to renewable energy, where affordable, can undermine the emissions-intensive fossil fuel sectors politicians like Greg Hunt hope to prop up. Pressuring superannuation funds and banks to withdraw from fossil fuel investment can help prevent the expansion of emissions-intensive extractive industries. These are less efficient and effective mechanisms than a carbon price — but the government has left us with no alternative if we genuinely care about the standard of living of our children.
49 thoughts on “Crikey says: with Abbott in denial, we must act”
wayne robinson
November 8, 2014 at 11:19 amThis ‘awaiting moderation’ is really annoying. If anyone writes anything that’s offensive, then the moderator should remove it afterwards. And as a result give an indication to everyone that boundaries have been crossed.
I wonder if I’ll get a ‘awaiting moderation’ now?
Gavin Moodie
November 8, 2014 at 11:27 amAwaiting moderation is indeed very frustrating. So the more determined have tried a number of work arounds.
For urls I either spell them out or give a search term which is likely to show the site high on the results.
If I suspect a posting has been sent to moderation cos it includes names I use abbreviations, pseudonyms or nicknames.
For general text I express it in different terms, paraphrase, and break up into separate posts.
Ken Lambert
November 8, 2014 at 8:47 pmOK Wayne,,,try this with spelled out www
Have you heard of Gavin Schmidt at RealClimate blog?
Here is an intensive to and fro from May-Jun12 in which he and I have an interesting discussion on the ‘imbalance’. Check this out:
worldwideweb.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/05/ohc-modelobs-comparison-errata/
Note that Gavin is a real climate scientist and I am an enthusiastic amateur with a degree in engineering.
It takes some knowledge of the subject to understand the issues and links, but Gavin runs out of puff when I come up with 0.3W/m2 as the logical imbalance at comment #33.
Interesting new information…I informed him of Trenberth’s SKS opinion on Hansen’s ‘Asian aerosols’, and he informed me about the AGU meeting in December 2011 at which the SORCE TSI number was confirmed at 1361.5W/m2. I had an earlier discussion with Trenberth in which he told me that the SORCE people’s attempt at a balance using the their 1361.5 number was rubbish.
So the science isn’t settled.
Ken Lambert
November 8, 2014 at 8:50 pmThanks Gavin Moodie…you idea seems to have worked…
wayne robinson
November 9, 2014 at 2:32 pmKen,
The revision of average insolation downwards doesn’t affect whether AGW is true or not. It’s an ‘input’ in the models, not a necessary requirement for the models to work, sort of (I agree that the models are either incorrect or incomplete, because the Earth is a very complex system. We don’t have an adequate model of the Sun either, and that’s a much simpler system). Change the input and the output will change too.
Don’t forget that the average insolation isn’t fixed over the year. The Earth’s distance from the Sun varies by 5 million kilometres (around 3%), so insolation varies by 6%. Allowing for the Earth’s 30% albedo, that amounts to 60 Watts per metre^2 at the surface, far greater than the minor revision in average insolation.
AGW is happening because of the well known and well understood physical properties of greenhouse gases. Unless you can demonstrate that there are sufficient, or unknown, negative feedbacks cancelling out the increased retention of heat due to increasing CO2 levels, then it’s occurring.
And if you’re asserting that there are negative feedbacks, then there are also positive feedbacks (also known as tipping points or catastrophes), resulting in increasing warming as a result of the initial warming due to increasing CO2 levels. Such as the release of methane from melting Arctic permafrost. Or the decreased albedo from decreased Summer Arctic sea ice, also resulting in warming.
Ken Lambert
November 9, 2014 at 2:50 pmStraw man argument Wayne,
If you cared to read the above at #22 and #33, I have never claimed that there is no warming or that the effect of enhanced GHG could not be partly responsible.
Nor have I ever argued about the reality of the GHG effect.
What I have said is that the measurements do not match the models and the alarmism generated by such model projections.
If you followed Gavin Schmidt’s to and fro, you can see how derivative vital bits of the science are….eg the 0.9W/m2 imbalance number goes back to Hansen 2005, and then requoted by Trenberth in seminal papers which have become standard texts for the AGW industry.
Drilling down into these key assumptions reveals how arbitrary and in the case of the ‘circular’ satellite correction data, how weak they really are.
This weeks ‘coal or death’ nonsense from Milne is typical of the hysteria whipped up by the AGW industry to mask the fact that there is no new killer information, and that the pause, statis, is REAL.
David Hand
November 9, 2014 at 2:57 pmThe problem here Wayne, is that you are trying to discuss two barely related issues at the same time. Saying “AGW is really happening” is widely accepted and even Tony Abbott would answer “yes” to a direct question on the issue.
The second issue is “What should we do about it” and this is what the article has addressed by saying “Abbott’s in denial – we must act”.
But your latest post illustrates the diabolical policy challenge facing the world. Stopping coal, for example, might seem the right thing to do from the comfort of our first world civilisation where more expensive forms of energy are affordable but stopping coal also means denying the electric light to hundreds of millions of people on the Indian subcontinent.
Then we add to this the problem that climate modelling has not matched observed outcomes. We must accept that our models are not as good as we need them but they are the best our leaders have to drive policy.
The thing that frustrates me is that we have these difficult policy challenges where the leaders must make the call based on incomplete and unreliable data, and then we have shrill, superficial headlines such as this one expressing fundamentalist certainty (we must act) and also calling Tony Abbott an idiot.
wayne robinson
November 9, 2014 at 3:15 pmKen,
The pause isn’t real. It was manufactured by cherry picking the data set by picking a year after a strong El Niño event and ending with a moderate La Niña event, which incidentally aren’t predictable, as shown by the fact that this year’s predicted El Niño year isn’t apparently going to happen.
Your comments in Realclimate are bogus, claiming that if you reduce TSI to the revised figure, that it won’t affect the calculated values of the outputs of the model. That the calculated imbalance in a model will be wiped out because the figure for the input is changed.
There’s no new killer information indicating that AGW isn’t true. And as I’ve noted many times, AGW is based on the well known and well understood physical properties of greenhouse gases. Not on models. Models might be useful in possible projections, but I regard them to be either incorrect or more likely incomplete, oversimplifying a very complex system to be able to make calculations within reasonable time.
My acceptance of AGW is based on what happened in the past. There’s no reason why we couldn’t have a rerun of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, which resulted in. a 7 K increase in global temperature.
Ken Lambert
November 9, 2014 at 9:23 pmWayne,
What you don’t seem to understand is that the AGW story is all about models.
The is no accurate direct measurement of the TOA imbalance nor OHC. Generally satellites give relatively high precision but low absolute accuracy.
So in fact the satellites measure =5.0 – 6.4 W/m2 as the TOA imbalance (a huge number) when in fact the models say 0.9W/m2 and other measurement says much less.
But the satellites can tell you the time series increment of up of down deltas about those clearly huge numbers with precision. What the AGW scientists do is ‘correct’ the 5.0 and 6.4 numbers down to 0.9W/m2 to MATCH THE MODELS.
Then they say nonsensical things like the satellite measurements confirm the models.
So Wayne old son, your cracked record about well known properties of GHG is nothing without the models (the CO2 component is modelled as a logarithmic relationship with concentration).
And BTW you might note that Gavin Schmidt broke off the engagement when I posited the 0.3 W/m2 as a logical result of a reduced TSI.
You might also note that Gavin was unaware of Trenberth’s debunking of Hansen’s ‘Asian aerosols’, and informed me of French confirmation of the SORCE TSI, which has been dismissed by Trenberth as rubbish in 2009.
Indeed why would the reflected component (about 30%) of the incoming solar radiation which produced an imbalance of 0.9W/m2 not stay as the same proportion when the TSI is slightly reduced by 4.5W/m2 in a quantity of magnitude 1360+ W/m2?
Why would the albedo change by just enough to reproduce the same imbalance of 0.9W/m2, when that number is derived from models??
Clearly these AGW scientists are ‘correcting’ the measurements and assumptions to fit the models.
As to your last point equally there is no reason why we could not have a very big volcano produce 3-4 years of cooling which sets the AGW clock back another 10 years in which time PV solar and battery technologies and other energy efficient products, nuclear and gas produce a large drop in CO2 emissions without the help of the Green crazies, and the problem recedes just like Paul Ehrlich’s population bomb.
BTW I am old enough to remember well Paul Ehrlich’s version of AGW (the population bomb), and I heard him on ABC yesterday (where else?). He says he wasn’t wrong at all 40 years later and we are all going to die from something really toxic like economic growth.
wayne robinson
November 10, 2014 at 9:19 amKen,
No, AGW is based on the well known and well understood physical properties of greenhouse gases, not on increasingly sophisticated climate models which are useful but not infallible indications of future trends.
The Earth is far too complex to have accurate and precise models.
My acceptance of AGW is based solely on what happened in the past. Such as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. If humans had evolved in the Eocene, we would have done well in the much warmer climate. But we didn’t. We live in today’s ice age climate, and we’re doing very well as it is.
Now you want a large volcanic eruption to save us? Tambora perhaps (the year without a Summer)? Or Toba (which almost caused the extinction of Homo sapiens)?