Yesterday Dee Cee put in a passionate plea for ideas that are truly new and go beyond the industrial age as we know it, especially in relation to the business of mitigating climate change.
I don’t know how he rates the idea that US scientists have come up with of coating glass panels with a vegetable dye to make solar panels. Cheap solar panels that are more reliable and capable of generating up to ten times more electricity.
They are heading for commercialisation, it seems, but if you have the same idea here forget it unless you have a pile of cash.
Continue reading ‘Clever country on hold’
In this post I mentioned that the CSIRO had just released a report which says petrol could be $8 per litre by 2018. There was also a lot of discussion on this thread about the possible impact of an ETS on transport.
News of the CSIRO report Fuel for thought (pdf) has rocketed around the world. When I googled there were over 60 links smack on the topic.
The World Today did an item on the story followed by one on shale oil where Queensland Energy Resources are considering their options and are more than eager to help.
Continue reading ‘Shale oil to the rescue’
Nelson has taken off in another direction on emissions trading schemes again. What Turnbull, Hunt and even Julie Bishop think of this is not known. Certainly Nelson’s new position would have been a surprise to Helen Coonan on Q&A last night. (How excruciating was that?!)
Nelson is now saying that a “cap and trade” emissions trading system may not be the best way and that there are “multiple models out there that should be debated”. Well, at least one - the hybrid scheme proposed by Warwick McKibbin.
Continue reading ‘Nelson determined to be different’
Terry Hill and Gorden (Raging Bull”) Tallis were not the brightest sparks who ever played State of Origin rugby league, but their 1999 confrontation provided perhaps the most emblematic photo of the ferocious interstate rivalry. That’s Laurie Daley’s then receding hairline in the background, now miraculously restored.
Continue reading ‘Cochroaches v cane toads’
As protesters locked themselves onto a conveyor belt at Loy Yang power station in protest, those of us listening to the ABC heard Tony Eastley intone these words:
With the Garnaut report due out tomorrow and an emissions trading scheme to be introduced by 2010, building a coal-fired power station may not be high on many peoples’ agendas.
But the Victorian Government has just approved the building of a new brown coal plant in the Latrobe Valley.
Continue reading ‘Exquisite timing’
The above image from NOAA via The Oil Drum shows us that the temperature of the Eemian interglacial about 125,000 years ago was persistently above that of our times for several thousand years (oldest data is on the right). Hansen tells us that when the temperature was 1-2C higher than now during the Eemian the sea level was 4-6 meters higher. The frightening bit is that CO2 levels apparently did not go above 300ppm.
At 386ppm we should worry.
Continue reading ‘Greenland, Antarctica and sea level change’
Most people in commenting about Rudd’s dilemma in introducing a highly unpopular emissions trading scheme were pessimistic as to whether Rudd would be brave in policy terms and do the right thing, especially as it applied to petrol. Most thought he would cave in to Nelson’s cynical populism.
Most thought that the populace at large liked signing international treaties that were largely symbolic but baulked when it meant coughing up their hard-earned cash. MSM commenters largely took the line that Rudd had pulled a swiftie in deluding the electorate into thinking that they could have pain-free climate change policy.
I seriously doubt that was ever the case. Whatever. I was heartened, though, in reading in the Courier Mail this morning Denis Atkins (he’s not a flake) saying:
PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd decided last week that he would make climate change his sink or swim issue.
Continue reading ‘Rudd set to implement popular emissions trading scheme’
Before the last election John Howard was emphasising that emissions trading and emissions targets were the most important decisions a government would ever be called upon to make. Rudd I think agrees and it has gotten through to his troops. Laurie Oakes reports Martin Ferguson as saying:
“It represents the most fundamental change that has ever occurred in Australia’s economic history.”
According to Ferguson, the scheme puts the big economic reforms of the Hawke-Keating era, as well as the introduction of the GST, into the shade.
As Oakes says, Wow!
For Brendan Nelson, it’s dead set easy when it comes to fuel:
Federal Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson laid down his marker by the end of the week, announcing on ABC Radio’s AM that the Coalition would propose compensating Australians, including small businesses, in full for the costs incurred as part of a emissions system.
Continue reading ‘Emissions trading tight rope’
The Courier mail and just about every other news medium carried stories yesterday on our Treasury Secretary, Dr Ken Henry taking five weeks leave with his wife Naomi to look after the colony of endangered northern hairy nosed wombats at Epping National Park in Central Queensland.
Continue reading ‘A friend in high places’
Those who criticise anthropogenic global warming (AGW) science sometimes say we need to take the long view and if we do human activity is relegated to noise in the natural system. James Hansen and his colleagues reckon they have come up with a story about the relationship between atmospheric CO2, temperature and sea level change that fits the whole Phanerozoic Eon, which dates from about 545 million years ago.
Continue reading ‘Hansen’s long view’
There’s plenty of coal in the world. This is where to find it by country. We are also using more and more of it. In fact, according to BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy just out coal was the big winner in as an energy source in 2007.
Across the world energy consumption rose by 2.4% with China accounting for a half of the increase in the year 2007 and India a third. The energy source with the biggest increase was coal at 4.5%, with China leading the way. China gets 70% of its primary energy from coal and increased its coal consumption by 8%. Coal showed the fastest growth amongst the fossil fuels for the fifth year in a row.
This is a worry.
Continue reading ‘Coal and Germany big winners in energy use’
Recently I saw a news item about the World Bank providing funds to preserve the Siberian tiger. When I googled I couldn’t find it but found instead their effort to save the Bengal tiger with Harrison Ford, Robert Duvall and everyone getting into the act.
The Sichuan earthquake in China was a terrible thing, with 69,000 estimated dead. It was also unfortunate for the giant panda. First we had emergency supplies of bamboo leaves shipped in to the largest panda breeding centre because there were no people left to collect the panda food. Then we find that over 80% of China’s 1590 wild pandas are in jeopardy.
None of these high profile events had anything to do with climate change as such. But many more less noticeable species and arguably more important to the biosphere are coming under threat.
Continue reading ‘Give the animals a go!’
The above image shows the coastline of Florida as it was at the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) 20,000 years ago, now, and as it was 3 million years ago. Mark Lynas in his book Six Degrees published in February 2007 told us of a 1996 paper recording the discovery of fossil leaves from a stunted, ground hugging beech which grew just 500k from the South Pole 3 million years ago. The temperature there now is a bracing -39C.
Lynas, who spent eight years compiling his book from peer-referenced papers, and is generally regarded as scientifically accurate, tells us that 3 million years ago the temperature was 2-3C warmer than now and CO2 levels were 360-400ppm, much as now.
This information would have been available to the IPCC, whose cut-off for considering scientific papers was, I understand, May 2006. Yet in 2007 when the Arctic ice coverage took a dive, they effectively buried the issue of sea level change.
Continue reading ‘Scientific caution or climate change politics? the IPCC and sea level change’
There’s trouble at the top of the world. Images like the above shocked climate scientists all around the world late last year. Arctic ice has been declining at an alarming rate. The minimum surface cover in September had been in a 7% per decade trend decline since satellite imaging began in 1979. But suddenly in 2007 it took a dive of 20% or so compared with the previous record low in 2005.
At RealClimate there was some discussion about what would happen in the future. Most, I think, believed there would be some improvement in 2008 but that the trend decline would continue. According to IPCC projections the Arctic sea ice was meant to last until 2080. Just a year earlier two top scientists had projected that the sea ice could disappear completely by 2040. Now glaciologist Jay Zwally in reviewing the 2007 data said that the Arctic could be almost ice free by the end of summer 2012.
He went on to say that in climate change “the canary has died. It is time to start getting out of the coal mines.”
Continue reading ‘Trouble at the top of the world’
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