It’s more than uranium, though, and of course largely if not completely for export.

David @ 20, we can take the longer view, but there are people working in the tourist industry and people who have expectations that tourist facilities will continue to be there for them to enjoy. So there is no crime in spending a bit of effort looking at those issues. It might prevent the facile comments made by the likes of John Howard about protecting coal miners jobs while ignoring the reef nearby.

But yes, agriculture and food production in particular is going to be a problem under business as usual, which will be anything but.

Although I (hopefully) won’t live to see it, I reckon climate change could easily finish off our civilisation, mostly because agriculture is likely to collapse.

I live in a wine region that sees itself [perhaps naively] as having an advantage in this regard, because McLaren Vale, being very close to a large population centre has greater access to recycled effluent, and therefore more water security. In that sense, they seem to be hoping that the Barossa’s loss will result in their gain.

I thnk the tendency to want to look at things in black and white economic terms is really flawed. Economics and ecology both involve the study of interactions, but when when we assess economic data we seem content to oversimplify it. If we are looking at the winners and losers in climate change based on only economics wouldn’t we have to acknowledge that every loss making situation for one group, is a potential gain for another? I think it’s an ugly, rationalist way to view the situation..but if you follow this type of discourse to it’s natural conclusion, that’s where you get. Dont you?

We have plenty of Uranium, you know, the stuff in our fragile desert ecosystems, that require that we build desalination plants adjacent to our fragile marine systems. Even low-grade Uranium could be mined, because it will eventually become economically viable to mine the low-grade stuff – and that stuff is everywhere!! woot!.

We can always find ways to intellectualise the loss of these ecosystems because they are remote and less pretty than the others.

Yep, that’s the point. People just don’t…

But hey as I said, if you don’t care about the naturally rare alpine flora and fauna that will go extinct, the Australian Alps will still be a mighty nice place to visit in 2050.

The 2020 and 2050 dates are normal for climate change, and no doubt part of the project scope given to CSIRO.

The issue here is DSE’s conversion of an expert report that it commissioned, from pretty significant impacts into “low vulnerability”. You might not accept AGW is happening, but the DSE does, so they don’t have your excuse.

The projections in this report are based on the results of computer models that involve simplifications of real physical processes that are not fully understood. Accordingly, no responsibility will be accepted by CSIRO for the accuracy of the projections inferred from this report or for any person’s interpretations, conclusions or actions based on this information.

So here we have a doomsday prophesy for the tourism industry which is designed to stimulate a government response that will cost the Australian community a huge undisclosed cost and the writers run away from its consequences admitting that their models cannot be viewed with any confidence because of their limitations.

Everything is couched in predictions 20-50 years hence. Why don’t they have predictions of what it will be like 5 years hence so that we can see whether their predictions match actual real world observations?

If a company offering a prospectus which was seeking investments from the public which were but a fraction of what is being asked of the community to commit to for climate mitigation and they put such a disclaimer ASIC would be down on them like a ton of bricks.

It’s this sort of analysis that the proponents of AGW claims as “settled science”. They should blush with embarrassment and wilful has the hide to refer to the ski industry as a real estate scam.

And note that snow making activity is responsible for significant GHG emissions too – lots of electricity and fossil fuel involved in pumping water around and running the equipment. And millions of tiny plastic condensation nuclei too.

You only have to look at resorts or mountains where they don’t make snow to see that the climate has changed enough to kill the natural snow season, apart from the higher summits of places like Mt Bogong.

When the temperature rises a bit more, they won’t be able to make enough snow, as they can only do it on below freezing nights.

Under the low impact and the high impact scenarios respectively, the total alpine area with an average of at least one day of snow cover decreases 10-39% by 2020, and 22-85% by 2050. The area with at least 30 days of snow cover decreases 14-54% by 2020, and 30-93% by 2050. The area with at least 60 days of cover shrinks 18-60% by 2020, and 38-96% by 2050 … The high impact scenario for 2050 leads to very large reductions in season duration and peak depth at all sites. Season durations are typically reduced by around 100 days, which leaves only the highest sites with durations of more than ten days. Maximum depths shrink to less than 10% of their present value and occur much earlier in the season.