Dave Bath has reminded us several times now that the Senate Select Committee on Climate Policy has called for submissions which must be made by Wednesday, 8 April 2009. That’s next Wednesday, so get cracking. Submissions can be emailed to climate.sen@aph.gov.au
While the terms of reference of the inquiry do seem to focus on “the choice of emissions trading as the central policy to reduce Australia’s carbon pollution” there is scope for broader issues in relation to:
(c) whether the Government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is environmentally effective, in particular with regard to the adequacy or otherwise of the Government’s 2020 and 2050 greenhouse gas emission reduction targets in avoiding dangerous climate change;
(d) an appropriate mechanism for determining what a fair and equitable contribution to the global emission reduction effort would be;
(f) any related matter.
So you could, for example, address the whole issue of the adequacy of targets in view of developments in the real world, which seem constantly to outrun the expectations of scientists working in the area.
If I have time and strength that is what I hope to pursue. I want to give here a few notes and links. I don’t care how much of my stuff you pinch, though I’m well aware that many of you are very well informed indeed.
Dave has done sterling work in reviewing 40 submissions on the CPRS bills. You might like to look at some of them for inspiration. I notice that all the submissions are in PDF format. The Inquiry asks for PDF or MS Word. For us technophobes does anyone have any simple pointers as to how you create a PDF document?
I’m not sure how I’m going to structure it yet, but these are some of the places I’m going to draw material from.
I identified the source of the Government’s ‘scientific’ approach to targets in the post Last exit on the road to Perdition (thanks to Macintosh and Woldring.) There follows a discussion of what this means in terms of the old-fashioned approach to climate sensitivity and how this must be revised in terms of Hansen’s approach.
I hope to work in something about our irresponsible attitude to risk and get in that sexy graph (Figure 2) from the post on Weitzman’s approach to low-probability, high-impact climate outcomes.
Hansen says that we need to give the paleoclimate record priority over current observations (basically the last 100 years) if we are to see the wood for the trees (see his
December 20, 2008 Bjerknes Lecture at San Francisco AGU meeting, page 4.) From his stuff last year I formulated the following relationship between ppm, temperature and sea levels:
180ppm give a temperature of -5C and a sea level of -120m
280ppm give a temperature of 0C and a sea level of 0m
280-300ppm give a temperature of 1.7 to 2.7C and a sea level of 4-6m
380 (360-400)ppm give a temperature of 2.7 to 3.7C and a sea level of 15 to 35m
425 (350-500)ppm give a temperature of 5.7C and a sea level of 75m
I first outlined this in Sea level rise: some real world implications. Peterc also used this in his collection of some of my sea level stuff at Greenlivingpedia.
In terms of the manifest inadequcy of Australia’s approach if we look out the window, there is material at Copenhagen calling and at the UNEP year Book 2009.
Lord that sounds like work. Not sure I’ll make it.
For more current misery see Fred Pearce’s Arctic meltdown is a threat to humanity especially on methane.
There’s a site I’ve just found that Philip Sutton mentioned the other night called Zero Emissions Network including Why zero emissions? Sutton was saying that a Victorian group had worked out how the state could become emissions neutral within 10 years.
He also said that the advanced economies should take 200gt of carbon (not CO2) out of the atmosphere as their responsibility, because their industrialisation had put it there. He suggested sequestration through biochar. Monbiot has just fired a shot across the bows of biochar enthusiasts, which needs more investigation. Monbiot is usually pretty sound on his science.
Here’s another one indicating the shift in scientific opinion concerning the danger zone.
I could go on, but I’d encourage you to send something off to the inquiry, even if it is a page or two.
Brian, Open Office is a free open source word processor that you can download. It has a “Save as PDF” function which works really well
Thanks, Ben. I’ll try it.
You can also use an online converter to create PDFs.
Brian … Open Office is a LARGE download (north of 160 Mb for Mac OSX). If this is a problem and you know someone with a Mac computer they can just “save as pdf” in their print dialogue. You could send them a file and get them to send you back a pdf. In fact I could do this for you. If you want me to, just mention it in the comments with your email address (suitably obscured) and I’ll get back to you.
According to the Polar Research Group at the University of Illinois the Global Sea Ice Area Anomaly is currently positive. I thought we were meant to be meeeelting.
Razor, as I understand it there are really only two things that matter. One is the mass balance of the ice sheets, Greenland and Antarctica. The first I believe is decisively negative in trend terms, and the second is negative.
The other is the surface coverage of sea ice, especially in the Arctic, in the summer when the sun shines. The daily series is indeed nicely positive, but before you get too excited the winter maximum was the fifth lowest on record and:
Thanks NicM and aidan. My wife has a work portable Mac. aidan I have access to the email that you use to post, unless it’s a dud, as some unfortunately are.
Brian, just send in a .doc format document, the secretariat turns it into a .pdf.
Though more broadly, OpenOffice is worth being a zealot about…
Thanks for yours and Dave Bath’s work on this. i don’t have any original thoughts on the matter, I’m just going to be a dittohead and echo the opinions I already trust.
One thing I would like to know, has anyone tried to quantify the relative compliance/administrative costs of tax v tradeable cap? It seems to me that while a tax may theoretically by ‘inelegant’ to market fundamentalist purists, it’s a damn sight cheaper and has a lot less parasitical rentiers attached to it, wheeling and dealing carbon derivatives (and hasn’t that worked out well for us recently). But is there any quantification anywhere of my gut feeling?
Thanks, Brian et al. Really important to get strong submissions into this inquiry focused on the science and the need for strong targets! Will be most appreciated by at least one Senator on the select committee
Thanks for the reminder. I will shoot something off. I expect the denialist lobby is in there with their jack boots on. I might take the legal angle. If we can have anti bikie and terrorism laws. Perhaps we could have the same thing for deliberately (or inadvertently) misleading the public with regards to science?
Brave New World?? I hope so.
So, questioning the analysis and forecasting ability of scientists and economists is now comparable to not only genocidal nazis but also murderous drug dealers.
Yes
You’ve almost got it, Razor, but it’s more a case of denying undeniable facts (and reasonable inferences), and thereby endangering our lives.
Given the possibility/probability, well anyway unacceptable risk of a 4C world and what it might look like it is a serious matter.
PDFcreator is a small, free download that simply and quickly converts word docs to pdf – even I can use it!
Brian – While the terms of reference do include environmental impact of the scheme, I simply don’t see the point in telling the Senators or the Government that they really should be aiming for 40% because it’s to hell and high water if we don’t.
Rudd knows this.
Wong knows this.
The head of DCC knows this.
Most of the Government know this.
What they clearly don’t know or are too blinded to see, is how they can win the next election while aiming for 20, 30 or 40 per cent.
The politician’s immediate question after you tell them its serious is: “Ok. what do we do?”
Yelling “IT’S BURNING! THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE!” is not helpful. and IMO just wastes time.
So what should we be telling them?
We should be telling something along the following:
- FIRST: The CPRS (even with higher cuts) will only hurt a few key sectors.
- All the rest, particularly, manufacturing and other services, will generally have a net zero, if not positive impact due to changes in terms of trade and exchange rate. (see the treasury modelling for details.)
- So call AIG’s bluff and tell them to check their figures.
- For all other sectors which do get a real hit – target the auction revenue to structural adjustment and making sure that anyone from a coal power station who loses their job gets support, retraining.
- For regions with significant impacts (latrobe valley, hunter etc) – promote new services and industries with incentives and extra infrastructure.
- Give the coal power station a little cash to stay open for a year or two, until new capacity is online. Put the rest into helping workers find new jobs.
- reduce the support to EITEs or at least put a clear timeline and clear triggers for when international support comes on board.
SECOND:
- Limit the quantity of international permits to 50% or maybe 30% for 2 reasons:
a) Without a limit we run the risk of not transforming the Australian economy quick enough to low carbon. (instead just offsetting elsewhere) If the international price spikes, then aus economy gets a bigger hit, than otherwise.
b) international offsets are still in some cases dubious (this could be avoided by going for gold standard CDMs)
c) Kyoto protocol demands emissions are mostly at home (supplementarity rule) – CPRS with unlimited international permits is in danger of not meeting Kyoto obligations.
THIRD:
- Australia’s tricky dealings in getting 108% means we have a responsibility to ‘make up for lost time’
- the per captia story told in the White Paper is disingenious
- we need to be leaders and show what can be done
- strong cuts in Australia will send a message that global action is possible
As I said at the top. I strongly believe that people know we have to do something AND fast. but they just don’t want to see HOW it can be done, due to the political risks – which I argue aren’t as bad as they appear. (especially when sitting on 60+% two-party preferred)
Now is the time for Keating style reform – none of this softly softly stuff.
Brian,
I’m not convinced that the re-jigging of targets for long-term stabilisation of climate can make any material difference to what we should be doing in the short term. Making the scientific case for a precautionary target centuries in the future will not overcome the major issues that leave us with poor policy for what we should be doing to 2050.
Hansen’s formulation of short and long-term climate sensitivity is nice. I wouldn’t tabulate them in the way that you do, because the world has changed since those times, and many of the feedbacks in long-term sensitivity will be different – they do involve factors such as the Panama isthmus and the Tibetan Plateau. This is very uncertain and the fact that we can say now there is a risk that we may have passed the point of committing to dangerous climate change is sufficient.
I think the greatest task is to overcome the disjunct between financial risk and climate risk. The CPRS does not do this, and I am exercised on how this could be done. I don’t think it is a good idea to choose a very low stabilisation limit, then draw a monotonic path to get there. The key decisions are going to be made in the next 50 years.
I’ll make the following points:
* The minimum concentration we can get to without overshooting (reaching a peak in atmospheric concentrations, then declining) is about 500 ppm CO2.
* There is a realistic probability that this will prove to be dangerous, and we will probably know this within the next couple of decades with a lot more certainty.
* Therefore, any safe outcome has to involve an overshoot scenario.
* Therefore, it is most important to reach the point of overshoot asap.
* If the world can reach that point, the view (what we will know by then), the downward slope should be much clearer. Whether 450, 400, 350 – the world will also have given us some knowledge about whether sinks on land and sea can manage that.
* The key task is to integrate the understanding of how to manage financial and climate risks within climate policy – at present they are separate.
* Price is necessary but not sufficient. It probably doesn’t matter whether it’s ETS or a tax. Design is much more important, as is the ability to adjust quickly to new knowledge. Not intransigence on targets because its “party policy”.
* Complementary policy is much more important. Industry schemes, regional schemes, secondary markets, direct investment in complementary technologies. Voluntary actions to retire permits should be allowed and encouraged.
* Reductions in emissions intensity will allow tighter caps without hiking price unduly. Individual and collective actions will reduce intensity.
* Caps should be informed by both climate and financial risk, not just financial risk.
* Having tight targets – even very low ones is not sufficient – workable mechanisms are needed and needed urgently.
* Policy focuses primarily to getting to overshoot, and updating risk along the way. The view at the top will be much clearer.
* The current plan is totally inadequate for this task (and on that we all agree).
Michael D – nice post
Michael D and Roger J I noticed your comments late tonight. If I comment in too much detail I might not finish my submission. In fact if it doesn’t rain tomorrow, as promised by the BOM I’ll be in trouble.
Michael I’m not actually convinced that Rudd and Wong know the gravity of the situation. If they did they couldn’t live with themselves unless they made some plans to do something about it, and there is no sign of that.
But there is another target audience with this one – the recalcitrants on the opposition benches, the likes of Barnaby Joyce. I keep thinking that if I’m clear and explicit enough and put in some nice pictures (plain text won’t do it), there is a chance, albeit small.
But your approach sounds interesting and I hope you follow through with it.
Roger, we’ve been here before. I respect your expertise totally but our minds work in a different way. I’m aware that the world is complex, fluid and changing but on this one I like to see quantifiable targets which should be under constant (at least annual) review to take account of the most recent science and even what you can see by looking out the window.
I would note, though, that there are targets aplenty everywhere. It’s just that they are inadequate and fraught with danger.
In terms of my tabulations it’s my impression that you can make the following statements.
1. During the last glacial maximum the temperature was about 5C cooler with 180ppm and the sea level about 120m lower.
2. At the pre-industrial benchmark the CO2 was about 280ppm.
3. We are constantly told and I’ve never seen it seriously disputed that during the Eemian interglacial about 125kya the temperature was 1-2C warmer, sea level was 4-6m higher with CO2 <300ppm. In view of this I can't see why anyone would be happy with even 300-350ppm.
4. About 3 million years ago the temperature was 2-3C warmer, sea level was 15-35m higher with CO2 in the 360-400ppm range. Remember the birch tree found within 500km of the South pole dating from that time by one of Barry Brook's colleagues.
In all cases above the Panama Isthmus had closed and the Tibetan Plateau was roughly as is now. Please tell me if I'm wrong.
I know too that the climate has a number of major circulation systems which are complex and interact in complex ways. The way they stabilise in the future may not be how they stabilised in the past. But against that the matching three graphs of GHGs, temperature and sea level in the broad over the last half a million years tell astory that cannot be denied.
What happened 40 million years ago is less certain, as I constantly concede, but which climate scientist thinks there would be much permanent ice around at 5-6C?
Anyway I'm well into a "the house is on fire" submission and I don't have much choice about changing tack at this stage. Whether I'll finish it, or if so whether I send it is still uncertain.
BTW my bottom line has always been the ethical position that to give the other species on the planet a fair go (plant and animal and not forgetting the sea) one of the things we should do is restore the GHG atmospheric content roughly to where it was in pre-industrial times.
Brian,
you’re right about the different thinking. You’re working on the environmental risk model that is pretty well defined in Article 2 of the UNFCCC. In that model, one chooses stabilisation at safe levels, with a high enough likelihood (applying the precautionary principle) to avoid dangerous outcomes. I don’t think we know enough to get a target within ±50 ppm of what’s safe (being conservative, think this uncertainty is much larger), and anyhow that target is centuries in the future. This is because even if you stabilise concentrations, the long-term systems that give you long-run sensitivity (deep ocean, ice etc), will mean it’s centuries before all this plays out. So interpretation of this risk is to go back to the bottom of the range of uncertainty, and the call is now to go back to interglacial Holocene concentrations (280 ppm), with the Eemian (125,000 years BP) is considered too risky.
I don’t think others with other operational models of risk and precaution in their minds will follow this line. I’m also very dubious that one can rewind a complex system in this manner. I think we’re going to find what is safe by moving forward, learning as we go. Looking backwards will gain information but is too uncertain for design.
It’s why I’m leaning to a shorter term adaptive management approach that updates as it goes. The point is government has never worked in this way as conscious policy, though the response to GFC is beginning to look a bit like this. Am interested in something that can also work for people without your ethical view (which I totally subscribe to). The current CPRS points us in a direction that is clearly dangerous climate-wise and a CPRS is insufficient in any case, no matter what targets it has.
I don’t expect or want to change your mind – go for it with the submission. I do think though, the path that mitigation to overshoot has to go for anywhere below 450 is pretty similar in the short term because of the many views on climate internationally. The developing countries have to be bought on board, so development paths with rapid reductions in carbon intensity have to be found. That will be a different pathway that our national ETS/tax has to follow, and our national scheme has to be robust enough to show that Australia is playing its part in this effort.
The interesting thing is that many people in government and industry recognise the threat but cannot step forward. This requires transformation – how to manage it? For that reason, one of my new forays is into soft systems thinking for wicked problems. If anyone has seen interesting writings or results in this area, I would be happy to get info – email my firstname.secondname at vu.edu.au
Thinking about this overnight, I think I’ll express the linkage between CO2, temperature and sea level rise in a less formulaic manner. Back in this post I looked at some of Stefan Rahmstorf’s work and said this:
If, looking forward, we get an ice-sheet free world with 6C warming we are looking at about 200 metres of sea level change with a 12C temperature span. That has to be a concern for policymakers, even if it plays out over centuries or indeed millennia, no matter how short their election-dominated focus.
As to what happened 3 million years ago, it occurs to me that there is a difference in the ice-sheet building process as compared with ice-sheet decay. The Antarctic ice sheet is now about 4km thick and the elevation of same gives it a certain stability. The amount of sea level chance consequent on a 2-3C temperature rise, however, cannot be contemplated with equanimity.
My overall point, however, is the one made by Weitzman. If you pay proper regard to the risk of high-impact outcomes then it is a game-changer as far as economics is concerned.
Roger @ 18, I didn’t refresh before I posted @ 19. I’m cool with that. Can’t help with “new forays is into soft systems thinking for wicked problems”. I wonder if you could embellish a bit to give us a better idea of what you are looking for.
I’ll just respond to this:
On the first part I think Hansen’s big point is that we are heading in the wrong direction, that leaving elevated levels of CO2 in the atmosphere for extended periods of time is not a good idea, and that we should contemplate reducing the levels, at first to 350ppm and see where we go from there.
As to “shorter term adaptive management approach that updates as it goes”, yes, definitely. Sticking to an election promise as the world changes around you is just dumb.
Philip Sutton mentioned the other night that their “aha” moment was the realisation that we were trying to avoid disaster with as little effort as we could get away with, allowing unacceptable risk at the same time. Instead we should aim for a safe climate and essentially do whatever it takes.
Sounds good to me.
But Sutton said, and this links with Michael’s point, that leaders in government and industry can often see what needs to be done but feel them surprisingly disempowered by what people at large will put up with. Rudd and Wong should be trying to change opinion. Ian Lowe said the other day that they (the ACF) have made the Al Gore presentation to 300,000 people in recent times.
This has stirred my thinking, so thanks.
Complex systems approaches to “wicked problems”
It involves structured thinking and analyses to negotiate messy decisions
An easy to read paper by the Australian Public Service Commission is a good intro and one can use this to source government quotes when responding to Senate enquiries!
Wiki gives pretty good background.
Gerald Midgley (UK, now NZ Crown Research) and Ray Ison (Monash) are two practitioners of the science/art. Gerald has two books out that provide good background, especially Systemic Intervention – Philosophy, Methodology and Practice (Contemporary Systems Thinking) (2000)
Actually, there is a conference in Brisbane in July:
53rd MEETING OF THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR THE SYSTEMS SCIENCES
Making Liveable, Sustainable Systems Unremarkable
Hosted by The University of Queensland and the School of Integrative Systems, Brisbane, Australia
and
The Australia New Zealand Systems Group (ANZSYS)
The conference will be held at the St Lucia Campus of the University of Brisbane in Brisbane, Australia from 12-17 July 2009. Full details of the conference can be found at:
http://isss.org/world/brisbane-2009
Good discussion.
My submission will be calling for flexibility to reduce the targets, specifically by removing parts of the legislation that can specify lower bounds for levels of emissions in the future (e.g. paragraphs 2(b) and 3(b) of Section 15 of the Exposure Draft CPRS legislation). As well as there being issues of uncertainty that Roger was talking about, there is also the issue of international cooperation, which I plan to focus on (see here and here).
I will also be arguing that an ETS with a price floor is the best form of emissions price instrument (see here.
There are two ways that the CPRS legislation could be modified so that a price floor is introduced:
1. The price floor can be maintained by having firms pay an extra fee when they surrender their permits, based on the amount of their emissions. The carbon price then becomes equal to the sum of the permit price and the extra fee. This could be achieved by altering Section 129 of the Exposure Draft Legislation.
2. The price floor could be maintained by having a reserve price when permits are auctioned. This could be achieved by altering Section 103 of the Exposure Draft Legislation.
Thanks, folks. Gotta keep my head down!
Brian – point taken regarding convincing the cross benches. And please don’t think I don’t think there is merit in the need to keep arguing the science. In particular, that the impacts of hell and high water are coming much faster than anyone thinks.
As to whether Penny et al geddit – not sure. But my (limited) observations of politicians is that once you have convinced them something needs fixing (emissions, old growth, building efficiency standards) then you need to come up with a very clever way of fixing it while keeping them in power. and/or winning more votes.
Good policy will often get support, but good policy AND good politics is even better.
Will struggle to make the submission deadline myself- but will pursue some other channels.
Thanks, Michael. On Wong remember this!
In Australia according to David Spratt this is where Penny Wong’s at:
Regarding @25, here is a much more recent exchange, from last week. Scroll down to the part about the Great Barrier Reef and 350 ppm as a target. The argument seems to be that it is more important to get the world acting together than for Australia individually to go as fast as possible. Her host at the Pew Center then backs her up by saying “The most important thing is to get started and to have some reasonable targets in the short- and the mid-term. The world will revisit all the later targets I guarantee you, multiple times.”
Thanks, Mitchell, very disappointing. It shows that we (Oz) are being very careful not to get ahead of the pack. But if Wong and Rudd were aware of the seriousness of the situation they would be trying to create a constituency for urgent and aggressive action, which they’re not.
Instead they are acting to preserve a role for the coal industry and other polluters.
On the CPRS, I oppose it – on the basis that no CPRS would better on several accounts.
Having said that, we should also think about what form of emissions trading (if any) we would support, which to my mind would include:
* No free permits
* No special consideration to Trade Exposed Emission Intensive Industries
* No exemptions for petrol/fuel
* A cap that reduces our total emissions by a minumum of 5% per annum
* No international offsets – this allows us to buy our way out of real emission reductions
* No forest protection offsets – that would allow companies to buy their way out of real emission reductions. Our forest should just be protected.
* No burning of forest biomass as an energy source
There is of course not a hope in Hades that Labor would support ANY of these measures.
If the CPRS is rejected, I think that the focus should shift to real legislated emission reductions inluding efficiency measures, and possibly a carbon tax in its place.
We need to go on a carbon diet (rather than trusting vague and unpredicatble market systems).
Peterc, one small quibble. 5% per annum will halve emissions in 14 years by the rule of 72 and halve them again in another 20, so you’d get a 75% reduction in 40 years. Roughly speaking. Is that what you want?
I’d look for zero in 20 years, that is 5% in the first year and the same amount each year thereafter, on average.
Just a last minute-ish bump to encourage everyone that they can still, as long as it has today’s timestamp on it, fire off an email to the
Senate Select Committee on Climate Policy
climate.sen@aph.gov.au
Re: (per the terms of reference)
(a) the choice of emissions trading as the central policy to reduce Australia ’s carbon pollution, taking into account the need to:
(i) reduce carbon pollution at the lowest economic cost,
(ii) put in place long-term incentives for investment in clean energy and low-emission technology, and
(iii) contribute to a global solution to climate change;
(b) the relative contributions to overall emission reduction targets from complementary measures such as renewable energy feed-in laws, energy efficiency and the protection or development of terrestrial carbon stores such as native forests and soils;
(c) whether the Government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is environmentally effective, in particular with regard to the adequacy or otherwise of the Government’s 2020 and 2050 greenhouse gas emission reduction targets in avoiding dangerous climate change;
(d) an appropriate mechanism for determining what a fair and equitable contribution to the global emission reduction effort would be;
(e) whether the design of the proposed scheme will send appropriate investment signals for green collar jobs, research and development,and the manufacturing and service industries, taking into account permit allocation, leakage, compensation mechanisms and additionality issues; and
(f) any related matter.
Read full instructions on how to make a submission here , but the important procedural bits so to make sure it’s not wasted are:
- E-mailed submissions must include your name, phone number and postal address so we can verify them. If it is the submission of an organisation, say so clearly. Show the signatory’s position and say at what level the submission was authorised.
-(It) becomes a committee document, and must not be disclosed to any other person until it has been released (‘published’) by the committee. Unless you have requested that the submission remain confidential, it is normally published
-If your submission ‘reflects adversely’ on another person .. the committee will send the comment to the other person so they can reply. This applies even if the committee agrees to keep your submission confidential.
-If you make a submission, the committee may invite you to give evidence at a public hearing.
The Committee secretary’s Phone is +61 2 6277 3540, and Fax is +61 2 6277 5719
Note term of reference (F): any related matter.
So get in there and make whatever points you like.
Danny, thanks for that. I’d missed it. As a result I sent it again, adding my address and deleting a reference I’d made to Andrew Bolt. I don’t really want to stir him up.
I did talk about Garnaut’s work in a way that may be construed as adverse. Ditto for Lord Stern. Anyway it’s done and I can get on with my life.
BTW PDFcreator which Davek mentioned @ 14 worked a treat.
Why on earth are you people still pushing this baseless unscientific leftist fraud?
“Why on earth are you people still pushing this baseless unscientific leftist fraud?”
Andrew, this is rare time to spend with your family. So back to your break.