I’ve approvingly quoted Jonathan Holmes’ 2005 piece on nuclear waste many times on this blog and elsewhere, and he was in was in fine form again tonight. Tonight’s 4 Corners show centred around the possibility of creating a GHG ‘pricing signal’ – “any mechanism that adds a cost to the bottom line of businesses that are emitting greenhouse gases.” The stories of each of the self-interested participants interviewed by Holmes are predictable enough – The PM looking to drive a wedge between resource rich, booming states and their South-Eastern neighbours; the Coal Association balancing its bottom line with the need to be ‘doing something’; the entrepreneur with kind words for the NSW scheme from which is capital has been mobilised to produce a profit; and a seemingly unfaltering faith in the linearity of ‘technological development’ from just about everyone else.
However, As Brian has pointed out, the time to act is now if we’re serious about protecting things many of us hold dear. Climate change also puts at stake the future security of our borders (from environmental refugees), the potential economic prosperity of our children, the integrity of our infrastructure and the biodiversity of our world heritage listed tourist destinations (reefs and national parks). So what of John Howard’s response that it’s pointless to act without China and India onside? I certainly don’t believe that the inaction of a neighbour is any reason to continue to do the wrong thing yourself, though clearly Howard’s made the political judgements that
- Australian entrepreneurs – indeed, the broader society – are unable or unwilling to reform a fossil fuel based economy in the short term using complex markets for trading carbon because they’re full of red tape (though we can all cope with a GST on cooked chickens)
- a massively subsidised and regulated nuclear power industry is probably more desirable than a fair fight between different sustainable competitors (but would rather see a deregulated telecommunications industry)
- that the potential short term political gains of driving a wedge between the States are greater than longer term vision required to enact a national system that will look after than welfare of future generations (but is willing to stake it all on a Workplace Relations bill nobody wants because it’s good for the country in the long term).
Disclosure: I’m currently employed by a company which holds contracts with ‘Easy Being Green’.
Update [by Mark]: Phil has more commentary over at Spinopsys.
It was a very interesting programme. And I think your judgement about Howard’s political response is right, dk.au – he has always been a short term thinker and suited perhaps better to the permanent campaign than to any genuine thinking about Australia’s future. You can see the same phenomenon with the resistance to genuine economic reform and the quick political fixes involving deals with interest groups and handouts to targetted groups which only complicate the tax/welfare interface. It would appear also that Howard and fellow climate change minimisers are increasingly out of step with corporate thinking too.
Indeed, Mark. Thanks for the comment (good to be back!)
I could have mentioned the pathetic LPG subsidy too as another case of bungled, inadequate and ill-conceived free-market interferance.
It’s strange to see the battle lines drawn between mainstream scientists, corporatist environmentalists and libertarian traders on one hand and statist conservatives on the other, though something that we’ll increasingly need to get used to. I found Paul Gilding’s Op-Ed from earlier this year pretty much spot on in this regard.
Yes, nice to have you back, dk.au, and you’re right – Gilding’s op/ed is an interesting take. There are some fascinating directions and alliances evolving around these debates.
It also occurred to me that Howard’s line about petrol prices and electricity being political negatives was either designed purely for immediate consumption or indicated an astonishing blindness. He was being asked about the impact on Australia in a few decades. Climate change also has the potential to be economically catastrophic. The example given on the other thread of the impact on property rights (and values for that matter) of rising sea levels is surely only one small dimension of a larger issue.
As I’m interested in dramatically sequestering all of John Howards CO2 emissions I was doing some Wiki research on Hasan Al Sabah…the old man of the mountains.
After all he lived in ancient Persia and that is today is a well known energy exporter – like us. This search led onto ‘ Assassination markets’ through Hashish assassins and I was thunderstruck to see my own name!
( Professor rat being a sort of idle ‘ nom-de-guerre’ as it were. ( Thanks Mr Kotzwinkle! My actual meatspace name is Matthew Taylor. )
It’s strange seeing your own name in an encyclopedia – any encyclopedia, but the main thing is naturally getting an online Carbon emissions trading market, a ‘ PAM’ or Policy Analysis Market, up and running.
Preferably one with built in anonymity and some sort of allowance for
‘ Chaumian’ digital cash. For more on why this is a good idea see…
http://www.nex.com/innews.htm
Far better to let the famous ‘invisible hand’remove this stone from our shoe than any opressive Israeli style state system A.
You haven’t yet shown that CO2 release is a bad thing.
This is a typical leftist thread. In that YOU SIMPLY ASSUME THAT YOU ARE RIGHT and when you haven’t begun to prove your case and then you build bullshit on bullshit.
Maybe John Howard has a better understanding of economics and science then you.
Did you ever take that into account.
CO2 is the Lord of creation along with water. It is what plants breathe. It is what they manufacture food out of.
Now show us that it is instead some sort of demonic gas before you lay on this presumptive LOCK-IN-THE-CONCLUSION-AND-BUILD-UPON-IT technique.
This is the exact same technique the left alibied Saddam
Here is how (presumably) the increase in CO2 release is helping the Greenlanders improve their bio-productivity.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06204/707710-113.stm
Not only the Greenlanders but the Canadian whine-growers.
People this CO2 is just Manna from heaven. Why look the best dumb luck an greatest gift-horse in the mouth?
Sooner or later someone is going to have to start applying the terms “microeconomic reform” and “structural efficiency gains” to discussions about changing Australia’s currently profligate patterns of energy usage. Then the pointyheads might get it.
No thats wrong Norton. If they applied economic analysis what they’d find is that we’ll need more and more energy as time goes on. And there is no reason why we shouldn’t have more and more energy as time goes on.
In response to PanelbeaterBird I quote the follwing from Wikipedia:
“Carbon dioxide is a colourless gas which, when inhaled at high concentrations (a dangerous activity because of the associated asphyxiation risk), produces a sour taste in the mouth and a stinging sensation in the nose and throat. These effects result from the gas dissolving in the mucous membranes and saliva, forming a weak solution of carbonic acid.”
“Carbon dioxide content in fresh air varies and is between 0.03% (300 ppm) to 0.06% (600 ppm), depending on location and in exhaled air approximately 4.5%. When inhaled in high concentrations (greater than 5% by volume), it is immediately dangerous to the life and health of plants, humans and other animals. The current threshold limit value (TLV) or maximum level that is considered safe for healthy adults for an 8-hour work day is 0.5% (5000 ppm). The maximum safe level for infants, children, the elderly and individuals with cardio-pulmonary health issues would be significantly less.”
Whilst it is acknowledged that CO2 is an important part of the lifecycle of plants, animals and humans it can have negative attributes. Note that at high concentrations inhalation of the gas is DANGEROUS. Increasing the concentration of CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere may negative consequences for human, animal and plant life.
What sort of a response is that?
We are talking about more than 240 years at current rates of CO2 growth to even get to where CO2 is 0.1% of the atmosphere.
You can use 1% to get rid of the insects. And as you say more then 5% is dangerous to larger animals. But this is totally irrelevant.
Because what we are talking about is 0.038% at the moment. And this amount increasing by 0.4% per year for the time being. That is it grows by a ratio of only 1.004 per year.
So no-ones talking about 5% for goodness sakes.
People talk about optimal growing conditions for most plants as being between 1000 parts per million and 1500 parts per million.
That is to say between 0.1% and 0.15 %.
And we are about 240 years from the lower limit and 340 years from the upper limit.
5% has got nothing to do with anything.
And let’s not even start about the super-cali-clusterfuck that is ethanol fuel policy.
Could it work as a petrol additive? Could it work as a fossil fuel replacement? Nobody has any idea because all the manufacturers ruthlessly exploit their nepotistic closeness to Government and because there’s so much fear, uncertainty and doubt.
Well, the technology is proven to be 100% effective in fuelling humans. And, since it’s nearly a quarter to ten, I believe it’s time to toast that sentiment in genuine Australian sugarcane rocketfuel. Leave off the ULP and let’s get stuck into the OP!
If you beleive that human activity, rather than natural processes, has significantly contributed to a long-term rising trend in global temperatures, then you will acknowledge that this is a global problem that requires a global solution. Even if you believe that human action in reducing CO2 emmisions will reduce the amount of warming, the science that supports these arguments indicates that what is happening now, proposed, or potentially required would wreck the world economy as we know it and is highly unlikely to have any significant impact. Australia’s contribution on a global basis (not per capita) is small compared to the rest of the world. Given all the above, then anything that Australia does is not going to do bugger all and these proposals are a waste time and money.
Razor, the economists have been thinking about the cost of climate change amelioration.
Bird, I’m sure the 57,000 Greenlanders will welcome with open arms their share of the 300 million or so (2000 figures, more like 450 million by 2050) who will be inundated if Greenland melts. This is aside from increased desertification.
A minor inaccuracy in Holmes’ report was the conversion rate from coal to CO2. The atomic mass of carbon is 12. Each atom is joined by two atoms of oxygen with mass of 16 each. So 12 becomes 44 or 3.6666 times. But coal is not completely carbon and I understand a rule of thumb conversion rate is 3.15 times. Holmes kept saying 2.
Relax guys because Mike Rann and SA are leading the charge http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,20276016-1246,00.html?from=public_rss
Now why have I got this really uptight feeling?
“For the first time, we’re enshrining in law our ambitious target to reduce greenhouse gases to 60 per cent of 1990 levels by 2050,” Mr Rann said.
Mr Rann said his state was the only jurisdiction in Australia and one of the few in the world to introduce such legislation.
Ooh Ahhhh, lucky us eh! Roll over Donny Dunny here comes reforming Media Mike Ranny!
Brian,
So, Australia is meant to commit economic hari kari while the rest of the world continue on their merry way?
If the ABARE modelling is so great, why isn’t the world working on Kyoto Mark II that actualy includes all nations, not just the nasty ones?
“Bird, I’m sure the 57,000 Greenlanders will welcome with open arms their share of the 300 million or so (2000 figures, more like 450 million by 2050) who will be inundated if Greenland melts. This is aside from increased desertification.”
But there will be MORE room for everyone. You make it sound like a sudden thing. Like the sea is going to rise overnight. We are talking hundreds of years and land opening up faster then that which we lose on the Coast.
You notice that this land is opening up in Greenland NOW.
But the flooding is speculative and in the future. Thats what we will expect the whole time through. More land opening up and the fear of a much smaller amount of land being closed off in the future.
I think we will see this rather fortunate pattern every step of the way.
It won’t hurt Australia this CO2. It will increase how much food we can grow.
But should we be thinking only of ourselves. What about the Russians, the Canadians, the Siberians, The LapLanders.
Lets not be selfish about it. Lets spread the benefits of CO2 around.
Update [by Mark]: Phil has more commentary over at Spinopsys.
Well Mark. The problem with spinopsys is that you are acting like its the Gospel ‘when you know that its only church’.
Its an argument-free zone what you just now got me to read. He’s simply assuming that CO2 will cause this horror-show. He’s not likely to ever present any evidence for this.
What was the point of linking an argument free zone.
PanelbeaterBird, the point of my post was to show that whilst a certain level of CO2 can be good above certain levels it can also be detrimental. I readily acknowledge that CO2 levels are nowhere near 5% and unlikely to get there anytime quick but you had made the point that “CO2 is the Lord of creation ….”. I was just trying to point out that in certian contexts CO2 might not be Lord of Creation but rather it may have detrimental effects.
This can be considered a poor argument that does not address the main topic of the thread and I am willing to agree with that. However, when we start trying to shout the benefits of something we do need to keep in mind the context in which we are shouting that these benfits occur.
“So, Australia is meant to commit economic hari kari while the rest of the world continue on their merry way?”
It’s only South Australia committing hari kari by the sounds of it.
“Mr Rann said his state was the only jurisdiction in Australia and one of the few in the world to introduce such legislation.”
Pay attention Razor.
I will just step outside and bang my head on a tree.
We deal in probabilities, risk and choices. But if you contemplate with equanimity the notion of opening up real estate in northern Canada, Alaska, Siberia etc you need to be aware of the likely implications. These are easier to see in the long term than they are in the short term.
This is becoming a bit circular across the threads, but the relationship between greenhouse gases and ice sheets is quite powerful. I don’t want to argue about it. Nor do I think the relationship between ice sheets melting and sea levels is worth arguing about.
Flooding is not speculative, it is real. Sir David King in his Zuckerman Lecture (pdf file) tells us that during the last couple of decades 10% of Britain’s housing has come under threat of storms and flooding. He has commissioned a report on Flooding and Coastal Defenses as part of the Foresight Programme. They took a 100-year look at the issue.
He says that the Thames Barrier, commissioned in 1983, was used less than once per year in the first 5 yeas. In the last 6 it has been used on average 6 times each year (to 2002).
I understand the Dutch are planning for the time when they have to give up part of their country.
In the end there is science in this issue, but I’m inclined to agree with Al Gore that at base it is a moral issue (I’d say ethical.) You may contemplate eliminating the habitat of the polar bear with equanimity and putting at risk the Amazon rainforest. The only position that I am prepared to defend is the notion of putting the planet back as we found it as industrial man in 1800.
Hansen says we are in charge now, so it’s our choice. May we choose wisely.
Bird, I’ve been fascinated watching your bizzare logic on CO2 for a few days now. You seem to realize that its largely responsible for global warming (it is – irrespective of where it comes from, natural or artificial processes, the atmospheric concentration has been increasing for a couple of hundred years – think Industrial Revolution) but you seem to think this is somehow a good thing, because its defrosting the polar ice caps. Stop and think – how close do most of us here in OZ live to the coast? Whats “good for Greenland” might just drown us.
The other big problem with carbon emissions (and this might just be the even bigger one as it applies to all suspended particles in the atmosphere) is that they interfere with plants capacity to photosynthesise due to the scattering and diffraction of sunlight. If plants cant photosynthesise they dont grow. So, unless we all get comfortable eating a lot more deep sea kelp, we’re eventually going to go pretty hungry.
Hope you like seaweed and fish Birdie…
I don’t know about Birdie, but sushi sounds pretty darn good to me.
With regards to the photosynthesis issue, wasn’t it recently reported that global dimming due to large suspended particles in the air was having a slightly negative effect on global warming? In fact our cleaner burning coal and gas power-stations are allowing more carbon dioxide and less large particle pollution. So in fact photosynthesis won’t be a problem, but accellerated warming will.
Whether or not you think this is a bad thing depends on what sort of bird you happen to be.
Why do you hate the polar bears and the penguins so much Birdie?
The avian autodidact has been adequately answered by other posters, so I’ll address myself to those who can see only economic doomsday from a strong greenhouse response.
Firstly, as someone who was a febrile revolutionary socialist between the ages of 18 and 23, I wish someone had told me then that a general, and probably terminal, crisis of Australian and global capitalism could be precipitated by attaching a price signal to carbon emissions. If I and my comrades had known, we could have used our Sunday nights for more pleasurable activities than ploughing through dense neo-Marxist texts at the Melbourne YWCA.
Speaking seriously, attaching a price signal to carbon emissions will impose additional costs on economic actors IF they continue to consume energy at current volumes and from current sources – in other words, IF they are stupid, unimaginative and inflexible. However the whole point of attaching a price signal to carbon emissions is to create an incentive structure within which economic actors will use energy more efficiently (i.e. less of it per unit of GDP) and from less polluting sources (i.e. less environmental impact per unit of GDP). The evidence is that steps can be taken to achieve this which are not only NOT economically crippling for producers and consumers, but which can create economic benefits (e.g. development and use of new, more efficient and new productive technologies and production processes, positive environmental and health externalities from changed behaviours, to cite just two).
To take two more simple examples.
1. If a carbon price signal means that the cost of drying one’s washing in the local laundromat rises from $2 to $3 at a time, economically rational individuals will, if they are able, hang their washing on the Hills Hoist and have the clothes dried by solar and wind energy which comes as a free gift from nature.
2. If a carbon price signal increases the cost of driving the car a kilometre or less to the shop each morning for the milk and paper, economically rational individuals will, if they are able, walk or cycle to the shop, reducing their expenditure on energy and creating positive externalities through improved fitness leading to improved work productivity and reduced demands on the health system.
Analogous examples could be adduced for the likely effects on business and industry.
The OECD has been studying the effects of environmental regulation on economic activity for some time, and has found that in OECD economies environmental regulation has created a small net economic and employment benefit. The US environmental economist Eban Goodstein concurs, and has also found that economic models predicting gloom and doom from environmental regulation and pollution control measures consistently overestimate the costs by orders of magnitude (and have even been known to predict costs from self-funding policy instruments!) whilst failing to predict the benefits. Australia’s legion of right-wing think tanks have failed to point to a single example where environmental regulation or protection has led to the economic negatives predicted by opponents of such measures.
Need I go on?
It wasn’t much of a point Chorlto. Do try and stay relevant. The nature and food-maximising level of CO2 seems to be 1000ppm to 1500ppm. And it will take some doing to get that far with things.
“The avian autodidact has been adequately answered by other posters, so I’ll address myself to those who can see only economic doomsday from a strong greenhouse response.”
No he hasn’t. You’re just trying to dodge the question.
What we see here is a runaway intellectual fraud that you guys are getting sucked along in. And you are always dodging the argument and pulling this LOCK-IN-AND-BUILD-ON-UNPROVEN-BULLSHIT technique.
“I wish someone had told me then that a general, and probably terminal, crisis of Australian and global capitalism could be precipitated by attaching a price signal to carbon emissions.”
Now stop running ahead with your nonsense. You have to have a REASON to start imposing costs on people in such a massively destructive way as this.
In 50 years time it won’t matter so much. But right now we need to substitute away from oil. So we need to massively expand both coal and nuclear use throughout the world. In that context carbon-tax is a crime.
But you haven’t gotten that far yet. Everytime you guys try and justify this fraud we find your arguments to be more or less totally speculative if not outright perverse.
We are in an ice age. Thats your starting point. Go from there.
” but you seem to think this is somehow a good thing”
Not SOMEHOW…. Its OBVIOUSLY a good thing. Being as we have been in an ice-age for 39million years and that the planet has been a most inhospitable place for life 80-90% of the last 3 million years.
The scale of this intellectual fraud is therefore astounding.
The WHITE DEATH almost wiped out the human race 70 000 years ago ….. DID YOU KNOW THAT?
Boy: Where did the rocks come from Dad?
Man: The ice brought them
Boy: Where has the ice gone Dad?
Man: Gone to get some more rocks.
Our working assumption has to be that we have NOT banished the ice age quite yet. And it is with THIS in mind that we must consider the relative risks of this matter.
Ergo we can be very clear it is not yet time to be imposing costs on people.
“The other big problem with carbon emissions (and this might just be the even bigger one as it applies to all suspended particles in the atmosphere) is that they interfere with plants capacity to photosynthesise due to the scattering and diffraction of sunlight. If plants cant photosynthesise they dont grow. ”
This is very much like Chorltons argument. Not untrue. Yet totally irrelevant to whats going on. Plants are not currently limited in this way. Nor would 1000ppm or 1500ppm inhibit sunlight to the extent that would make what you are saying relevant. If it was a problem we wouldn’t be worrying about CO2 as the problem. We would be more concerned with tiny “aerosols” (ie small particles in the air) being released by industry.
We see here the structure of an intellectual fraud that has reached this level of momentum. People conjuring truly foolish and irrelevant arguments. The thing has become a perpetual motion machine.
“This is becoming a bit circular across the threads, but the relationship between greenhouse gases and ice sheets is quite powerful. I don’t want to argue about it. Nor do I think the relationship between ice sheets melting and sea levels is worth arguing about.”
Well I’d agree on first principles. Thats the one truly hopeful thing out there. That the CO2 might overide the natural tendency towards glaciation.
I don’t think we can yet be absolutely sure that we have succeeded in this critical civilisation-saving quest. But one can always hope I suppose.
You see in the medium-term the CO2, if its not high ENOUGH will lead to increased precipitation that need not necessarily be melted off. We don’t want to be half-arsed about this. If we have just enough CO2 to increase the snowfall but not enough to melt the snow come summertime then we haven’t solved the problem.
But if we let the CO2 get up to 1000ppm then review the situation one could imagine being in a position of strength.
“Bird, I’ve been fascinated watching your bizzare logic on CO2 for a few days now.”
Whats making you fascinated pre-dawn is that its NOT bizzare but that its LOGICAL… And you are fascinated as someone would be pinching herself wondering how it could be so logical.
“Flooding is not speculative, it is real.”
And its always been with us. There was particularly nasty flooding during Europes “Little Ice Age” for example.
This is a problem of capital investment more then anything else. When the town of my birth had severe flooding back in the sixties we built a man-made river and things have been cool ever since.
Generally speaking its a problem of not enough cash rather then too much CO2.
“In the end there is science in this issue, but I’m inclined to agree with Al Gore that at base it is a moral issue (I’d say ethical.)”
You bet it is. My Oath. People wanting to impose costs on there fellow man with the purpose of making the food and water more scarce and the nights colder. It could not be MORE of a moral issue.
“You may contemplate eliminating the habitat of the polar bear with equanimity and putting at risk the Amazon rainforest.”
The Amazon is being bulldozed and burnt into oblivion. Its not dying from an excess of the free airborne fertiliser CO2.
And here we highlight the REAL environmental problem Its our land and resource-use. Its got nothing to do with either population, consumption or CO2. As Tim Flannery showed it only takes humans numbered in the tens of thousands to burn off everything and kill all the mega-fauna.
The polar bear would merely be like that Aussie country singer and move ‘a little further North every year” if it wasn’t for our land and resource use. Thats an easy problem to solve. Just find them other places to stay and then go there and put a dart in his ass. But if we have fished everything out and he can’t catch fish anymore or if what he eats can’t catch any fish then thats a bigger problem.
“The only position that I am prepared to defend is the notion of putting the planet back as we found it as industrial man in 1800.”
Well thats a goal thats not ambitious enough for me. Its not industrial man that is the problem. Man was a problem to the other species well before James Watt came on the scene. Probably he’s been a bit of a problem ever since he discovered fire.
We get our land-use right we can have a more thriving natural world then anytime this side of the last glaciation. Going back to 1800 is not good enough.
Yes we are in an ice age in the sense of the long ice age that started about 40 million years ago. And in the last 3 million years there have been ice ages as commonly understood more often than not.
But having evolved towards our present shape mostly in the last 6 million years we are, then, creatures of the ice age.
I wouldn’t put too much on this because I am under the impression that our anscestors in the last million years mostly hung out in places where there wasn’t too much ice.
And yes, I understand that DNA evidence says we all came from a residual band of up to 2,000 or so somewhere in Africa about 70,000 years ago. There are a few reasons why we survived, I suspect. One is our ability to cooperate, another our ability to plan and take anticipatory action. The main other one for me is our adabtibility.
Personally I don’t want to adapt to heat greater than is provided by Brisbane summers and I don’t want to move.
Someone hereabouts may know the real story about the polar bears. I understand they are in severe difficulty, with body-weight loss of about 30% because they can’t do there hunting seals under the ice trick because much of summer the ice has melted. So being nice to them apart from putting up a few breeding pairs in zoos may be a bit tricky.
But its been an evolution via frequent holocaust. Thats how I make it. I don’t think the natural world can ever get used to mile-deep frozen water passing over the land destroying everything in its path.
We get attrited by the typically 60,000 year deep freeze. Then the clans, cut off from each other by that hateful long winter get a 6,000 year summer where they come together again…..
Where they come together, and explode in population as the game opens up faster then they can make babies.
And I suspect that everytime the survivors get together their heads are just that little bit bigger via Neotony.
We don’t need another holocaust.
It appears that many within the environmental movement are driven by a desire for such a thinning out of the humans.
Paul wrote:
Nicely put. That was, broadly, what I was trying to say in the post. How nice of someone to actually engage with its subject!
Brian, another threat to Polar Bears are chemicals from mainland Europe that have found their way into the food chain. Many bears are born with deformed genitals and cannot reproduce. This was the subject of Gary Hume’s artwork in the excellent exhibition The Ship at London’s Natural History Museum.
Trying to reduce CO2 output to save the bears is reminiscent of the Monty Python movie “The Life Of Brian” wherein this suicide squad shows up and instead of getting Brian down from the cross they just all kill themselves.
Choosing to restrict carbon output at this pivotal time in industrial history when we are going from one primary energy source to another (or more correctly to TWO others) is suicidal. Or homocidal. Because after all the people who will enact this insanity (and clearly it IS insanity. Since their predictions of future doom are very weak scientifically and speculative) are not that short of a quid.
We could wait 50 years and then see if there are worse taxes then carbon tax that we can get rid of. That wouldn’t be all that bad. It wouldn’t be the disaster it is now since we will by then be weaned off oil.
We could wait for 50 years and then put on the carbon tax if indeed we found that things were unambiguously heating up at both Poles.
But meanwhile the Polar Bear will die of neglect. I could use some fucking FISH! the Polar bear would say if he could talk and if he could see people busying themselves hurting their fellow man, and doing things which will cause enourmous grief and not help the Polar Bear even a little bit.
I COULD USE SOME FISH AND A NEW LOCATION says the bear. But the leftists are too busy destroying industry to notice.
“Nicely put. That was, broadly, what I was trying to say in the post. How nice of someone to actually engage with its subject!”
Whats that suppossed to mean? You were being evasive in your begginning thread. We are dealing with the REAL issue that you are running away from.
The World Bank has concluded that climate change poses a serious problem for economic development and poverty reduction in countries of the global South.
Amongst other things these projections suggest that, contrary to what Bjorn Lomborg is telling us, poverty reduction in the developed world can’t be set against climate change mitigation in a zero sum game of priority setting.
Let’s look at some real figures from green power shall we
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,20302112-1246,00.html?from=public_rss
$15 mill to solar up 1700 homes equals $8823/home which at a low interest rate of 7% means $617/yr in interest before depreciation and maintenance. If the useful life is 20 yrs then add $441/yr to the cost giving a total of $1058/yr. With the govt purchasing power here that’s as cheap as it can possibly get so it’s no wonder solar doesn’t stack up except for the odd altruistic greeny. You would of course still need mains power at night and overcast days which may be as much as 40-50% of your current bill anyway.
Well the World Bank have it wrong then Paul.
But here is a scientist from Townsville that is confirming pretty much everything I’ve told you guys.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/Science/Global-warming-cyclical-says-climate-expert/2005/06/12/1118514924793.html
I wasn’t specifically referring to you Graeme, but you’ve made your point more than enough times on this thread and elsewhere.
With respect to Rob Carter, the following link might be interesting.
By the way, how did PanelbeaterBird get access to my last name? I realise Chorlto is close to Chorlton but as I didn’y use it how was he able to find it?
Well, it just goes to show that I have had little experience with posting links at blogs. My last paragraph of the previous post now becomes a link. Bugger!!
Ah yes, the hapless Bob Carter.
Carter says:
True.
Also true. This is acknowledged by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and factored into its modelling.
Also true, and also acknowledged by the IPCC and factored into its modelling.
To elaborate in very simple terms on the previous two points, 3.6 per cent of the total greenhouse effect of 33 degrees Celsius amounts to 1.2 degrees Celsius. A doubling of the atmospheric concentration of CO2 will lead to a direct warming of 1.2 degrees Celsius, plus “feedback effects” including an increase in atmospheric water vapour which will add a further increment of warming.
Nonsense. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency:
Thus the human contribution to date constitutes about 30 per cent of the CO2 component of the greenhouse effect, and about 1.1 per cent of the whole directly plus a further indirect contribution from feedback effects such as increased water vapour. If the EPA’s upper level scenario is correct, by 2100 atmospheric CO2 concentrations will be 3.25 times what they were before the Industrial Revolution, and humans will be contributing about 70 per cent of the CO2 component of the greenhouse effect. (Again, this is before factoring in feedback effects.)
The linked article does not make clear how Carter arrives at his claim that “only 0.12 per cent” of the greenhouse effect is due to human activity. However Carter has previously stated that: “of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, just 3per cent comes from human sources, which equates to a warming effect of about four-hundredths of a degree” (Sydney Morning Herald, 29 September 2005). As I have already shown, this is nonsense.
Carter has either crassly misunderstood greenhouse science at a very elementary level, or he is crassly misrepresenting it to a lay audience.
I suspect a bit of both. Plus, the man is is a geologist and marine geologist, not a climate specialist. So does he really know what he is talking about?