The key question — with all the billions spent on cutting Australia’s carbon production: the trade and income lost; the jobs cut; the pain of living near wind farms; the foreign holidays avoided and then paying more for petrol and electricity than we have to — how many degrees will our actions cool the world by?
Assuming the IPCC are right about the effects of CO2, and that Australia stopped producing CO2 entirely (if we all left the country) by 2100 the world would be 0.0123 degrees cooler, and sea levels would be 2mm lower. These are so small they are unmeasureable.
Abandon Australia and save
0.0123°C
The statistics every Australian should know:
- Australia produced 1.38% of global human emissions of CO2 in 2011. (EIA, 2011a)
- Each year global emissions increase by twice Australia’s total annual output. (2.8%/year (EIA, 2011a). If we all emigrated and left a bare deserted continent, it puts off the warmer Armageddon by just six months.
The numbers were calculated with Wigley 1998 protocol assuming that Australia would otherwise have kept producing about 3% of the total CO2 emissions of developed countries. The SPPI estimate uses Wigley’s (1998) mid-range emissions scenario (which itself is based upon the IPCC’s scenario “IS92a”):
Read the full SPPI paper by Chip Knappenberger: Impacts of Climate Mitigation Measures in Australia.
Where’s the value for money Julia?
The theme of 2011 will be to keep repeating the question:
How much will it cost and how many degrees will it save?
This is surely the most expensive, all encompassing legislative proposal ever tabled that will produce (at best) a benefit so small that its unmeasurable.
Extra Info
See this link for more details about how hard it is for us just to reduce emissions slightly: Australia can meet its 2020 targets with just 35 nuclear power plants or 8000 solar ones!
References
Wigley, T. M. L. (1998), The Kyoto Protocol: CO2 CH4 and climate implications, Geophys. Res. Lett., 25(13), 2285–2288, doi:10.1029/98GL01855
Energy Information Administration (EIA), 2010. International Energy Outlook 2010.
U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2011a. International Energy Statistics, U.S. Department of Energy, Washington, D.C.
Jo
Here’s a test for the true believers. Let’s see how many quality answers we get!
JB?
Sam?
Matt B?
10
How long will it be before the fawning MSM controllers & the pollies realize they are waiting for their competitors to blink in a game where the biggest winners will be the biggest losers ?
It could be likened to a game of musical chairs round a time-bomb.
10
The late Pol Pot also didn’t ask how tiny is Cambodia’s contribution to the damage, which evil mankind inflicts to the planet as the only specie in 4.5 billion years of Earth history. He got down to his saving the planet and shutting the Cambodiaa down, too. Why should your leaders be less heroic then Pol Pot? 🙂
10
” Shut down Australia..”? Alarmist!
[Feel free to calculate the degrees saved due to a carbon tax in it’s “current” form (whatever that is). The figures above maximize the impact of cutting carbon but apply to Australia with carbon emissions = 0. At the moment the only way to reduce Australia’s carbon emissions to zero is by reducing our population to nothing. See this link for more details about how hard it is for us just to reduce emissions slightly: Australia can meet it’s 2020 targets with just 35 nuclear power plants or 8000 solar ones!
10
While Julia leads us to our own destruction the legislators in new Hampshire have done a U-turn.
http://notrickszone.com/2011/03/01/hats-off-to-live-free-or-die-new-hampshire/ They voted 246-104, a veto proof majority, to abandon the ten state ETS. Julia tries to climb on as others are leaping off.
10
I like that question:
“How much will it cost and how many degrees will it save?”
It should be asked of Gillard and her party every single day until a reasonable answer is given. My prediction is that they’ll never answer it reasonably, or be out of power by the time they do.
10
Seems like a reasonable sacrifice for you guys to make..
If we here in the UK can reduce our emissions by EIGHTY PERCENT (oh yes, its the law) by 2050, then it seems only sensible for you lot to get in some rowboats (no outboards, obviously) – and pitch up in (say) China or India, where they have a more – er – realistic view of greenhouse emissions…
C’mon, folks – you know it makes sense – the ‘pollies’ (as you call them) have been banging on about it long enough now…
10
we are all crazy – the media is crazy – the scientists are all crazy
I’m sick of it – isn’t anyone sensible anymore??
10
Treeman @#1,
I especially liked “What percentage of revenue from the carbon tax will be lost in bureaucratic churn between it being collected by your Government and handed out in compensation?”.
To me this is the big elephant in the room. Apart from the fact that any attempt by Australia to pre-empt serious action by major emitters such as US, China and India is futile, all we are going to do is add to the bureaucracy. If it was I running the country I would tell the bureaucrats; “fine, have your carbon tax but I will not employ 1 extra public servant to manage the administration of it and the climate bureaucracy will receive no more than the average wage increase of the Australian private sector for the next five years” (at least).
The CEO of BHP Billiton was recently on record as saying he supports a carbon tax providing it’s ‘revenue neutral’. Of course no carbon tax could ever be revenue neutral, as extra taxes would need to be raised to cover “bureaucratic churn” !
10
Treeman @#1
Loved this one from Tim Blair in the link your provided…
* CONSIDERING Labor couldn’t run a simple grocery pricing website and Labor’s attempts to insulate houses ended up setting them on fire and killing people, what are the odds Labor can successfully run the country’s largest and most complicated tax regime?
20
Wasn’t the first British settlement founded back in 1788?
[Oops. First Fleet. Fixed!– Ta JN]
10
We have no real idea how much atmospheric CO2 is due to human activities. It is unknowable because CO2 molecules cannot be identified as being of human or natural origin.
The greatest absurdity is that the oldest continuous CO2 monitoring station, Mauna Loa in Hawaii, is located on a CO2 belching volcano.
10
Off thread sort of – but keeping this in the top 10 might tempt some readers to use the link!
“Pops says:
March 2, 2011 at 10:51 am
Just to remind you Jimbo:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
Go on, give it a click. The Independent for printing it (and Connor for trying to excuse it) will never live it down.
We’re managing to keep it in the top ten:”
From http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/03/02/the-early-spring-in-new-england/#comments
10
There is a simple way to test how well a carbon tax would work. Try it out on something else. The older Trenberth radiative balance diagrams show a figure of heat heading from the ground up to the atmosphere as “Thermals” of 24W/M^2. The Newer ones seem to show only 17. This has no doubt been caused by the large scale errection of wind turbines. Think about it. There is no more direct way to change the climate than to take the energy out of the wind. So a tax on wind energy would serve as a good prototype test for a dioxide tax. Lets tax these noisy bird killing monsters out of existance and pay compensation to consumers as a test to see how well the bigger tax will go.
10
Not only is Joolya Australia’s first female PM, but I’m pretty sure she also takes the gong for being the very first PM, in Australia’s relatively short history, to actually set out to ruin the economy, to implement policies designed to impoverish and cause hardship for the people of this country. Or do we count Rudd as being the first to try but not succeed?
I suppose, if you can’t be remembered for being good (and heaven knows their track record provides plenty of evidence this Govt isn’t good) then you might as well attain infamy for being spectacularly bad!
10
I’ve read—can’t find the link now—that if you take Australian territorial waters into the calculation that Australia is actually a net sink of CO2, including all our human emissions, bush fires, cow farts, question times in parliament, whatever. Australia with its surrounding territorial waters absorbs more CO2 than we can produce naturally and anthropogenically combined.
So maybe we should tax Chinese emissions as they cross our borders instead. Of course, we’ll need to expand our navy a bit to enforce that.
10
Adolf B! Pol Pot did, indeed, do his part to offset the damage. He stopped over 2,000,000 people from breathing out CO2. Come to think of it, communist nations around the world have reduced CO2 emmissions by at least 150,000,000 people….
Makes me wonder how much more the watermelons would like to see it reduced by.
10
Yeah, nice one guys.
I’ve decided to just throw my litter in the street, because I’m only responsible for less than 0.0001% of the total litter in Australia, so I don’t see why I should disadvantage myself by wasting my good time taking my litter home when I can just chuck it out the car window. Lets face it, if I don’t do it someone else will.
12
If reducing Australia’s carbon dioxide output was a necessary action to take, could we not reduce coal exports by 10% and drop the expensive solar schemes?
China’s annual increase in CO2 output is greater than Australia’s total output so we would be wasting our efforts anyway.
I feel somewhat frustrated by this banter about carbon and climate when the tax is probably nothing to do with either.
It looks like The Red Witch is merely pedalling the policy of her predecessor who was doing the bidding of his internationalist mates. You cannot run an effective World Governance System if it lacks money, power and control. If they fail to upgrade the UN it will go the same way that the League of Notions did but I question the need for a Global Dictatorship at all.
I applaud Monckton for calling it as he sees it. Focusing on climate and carbon diverts attention away from naming their real game-plan.
10
But John, no one is asking you to rearrange the energy source our national civilization is built on, add in a whole layer of bureaucrats, auditors, fat cats, and accountants and no one expects you to work several weeks each year, just to remove 0.01% of global litter. (Actually Australia’s contribution is 0.045%). And your litter doesn’t feed plants, and increase crop yields.
20
Good try, JB, but no cigar:
Your analogy is seriously flawed: It would actually cost you more to throw your litter “out the car window”, since you would have to first take it from your house, walk past the litter bin, start up the car and drive away before you could throw it out. It does not cost more to produce carbon dioxide than not to produce it — you have it exactly backwards. The production of carbon dioxide is what makes your life different than that of, say, a Medieval serf.
No no, John. What you need to do is not produce any litter at all — immediately stop buying (or producing) anything that has any component that has to be thrown away. Oh, and don’t ever get a new car, unless you figure out something to do with the old one — cut it up into small pieces and eat it perhaps?
To enforce this we would need to enact a punitive tax on any litter you accidentally produced, to keep you honest.
*************
Besides being flawed, your analogy is dishonest as well: It is not even a slight imposition to ask that you put your litter in a bin and pay a trash hauler to cart it away. Restricting carbon emissions, however, will impoverish Australia — sooner rather than later.
10
It may be true that abandoning Australia would only save 0.0123° and 2mm of rising sea levels, but Australia only has around 0.333% of the world’s population. If humans abandoned the earth, it would be more like 3.69° and 60cm.
10
Well, I’m sold guys.
The trouble with your logic is that every country can apply the same to argue that it shouldn’t do anything (and you guys would no doubt approve).
It is a problem that is too hard and expensive to solve, so lets just enjoy the present and leave future generations to fix things (or enjoy the wonderful benefits, depending on your point of view).
12
Now John what you would probably be annoyed at is if you did the right thing but your neighbours threw all there rubbish over your fence.
Think China,India and all the rest
10
Anyway who is to say that 600-700ppm and a couple of degree C wouldn’t great for the earth.Do we have some past history that this would be catastrophic.
10
Tel, if you are out there, can you check your email? I sent you a message a couple of days ago.
Cheers,
Jo
20
John B. So since all of your comrades think like you, what is stopping the whole of you from volunteering the equivalent tax payment today? If over half of Aussies feel the same as you do you all can have a direct impact pushing the temperature down down down starting right now! Please send Jo a photocopy of your first installment check to show good faith.
PS your litter analogy is not even bad (it’s real bad). Litter is not even close to deadly like Co2 is. The most you get till it bio-degrades is a bit of aesthetic displeasure. Of course this must be compared to your personal avatar.
10
But what are you sold on?
John, if we accept (for argument’s sake) your POV that CO2 concentration increases are a major problem, and Human emissions are causing the increase, then that is a simple problem to solve — simply build more nuclear generating plants and hydroelectric dams to replace fossil fuel energy sources and subsidize electric (or hydrogen) cars.
Have you ever wondered why the environmental organizations that are (supposedly) most upset about CO2 concentration absolutely (except for a few mavericks) reject this solution?
You think maybe they have a (not so) hidden agenda?
10
John, No, its not like we are all naughty boys throwing out litter. There are 6 billion of us. At the moment there is no realistic way of keeping us all alive and not producing CO2. Aside from the fact that there are 850 papers repeatedly showing there is no disaster coming, even if there was, you are asking us to make some very tough choices. Who should die in order to cut emissions? Which people starve? Who doesn’t get clean water. Who doesn’t get deliveries of fertilizer or pesticide. Who doesn’t eat tomorrow? Sure, it’s not us here in the guilty first world. It’s the worlds poor.
Even if CO2 were a problem, there are much more sane ways to deal with it.
30
Bob C @#28,
Thanks for the link. These environmentalists must be truly delusional. Based on existing or known technology, there would be nuclear Armageddon before the world ever returned to pre industrial revolution energy production. I don’t think such an outcome (Nuclear war) would be too beneficial for the environment. These people must live in some sort of alternative universe from the rest of us! But the refusal of environmentalists to support the best forms of non C02 emitting base power generation (new dams and nuclear) would indeed seem to betray their true motives.
10
What this will do is destroy the middle class, (as per rest of the world) in-debt Aust to IMF Globalists, Then floods of migrants with little in common with Aust (K Rudd Has his ORDERS and Plans) next Aust resources will be the possessions of the Globalists. Same scenario being played in every part of the world ALL BY ACCIDENT.!?
10
How will this dioxide tax work? What would happen if one of the electic companies we pay our bills to declared that it only buys electricity from hydroelectic generation. Would customers of that company then be exempt from the tax?
10
Siliggy, Carrying that thought one step further what if I want to buy my electron flow exclusively from that hydro station. Shouldn’t I be able to pay a better tax rate?
10
John, Carbon Dioxide is not a poison. I don’t think ‘litter’ is the right analogy. I think ‘water’ would be a good one. Carbon dioxide is essential to life. So is water. So rephrase your statement using ‘water’ and you will get my drift.
I’ve decided to just throw my
litterwater in the street, because I’m only responsible for less than 0.0001% of the totallitterwater in Australia, so I don’t see why I should disadvantage myself by wasting my good time taking mylitterwater home when I can just chuck it out the car window. Lets face it, if I don’t do it someone else will.10
Siliggy: #31
That was tried in New Zealand. Meridian Energy – one of the companies formed as an State Owned Enterprise when the government of the day “de-nationalised” energy production – just “happened to end up with most of the green energy sources, while the other major company (also a State Owned Enterprise) got most of the coal fired stations.
Meridian made a big thing of how “green” they were in their advertising, so the government tilted the playing field by legislating for a “swap” of energy production assets between the two companies.
Like it made a difference? The government essentially owned both companies anyway.
10
Mark D. Not sure that we have the ability to choose to that extent … yet. The dioxide tax may bring it about. We can ‘elect’ to some degree which provider we buy our ‘electric’ from but where they get it is not so clear. I would love to be able to choose non green, flood mitigating, nation building, hydro but do not no how?
http://www.switchwise.com.au/electricity/suppliers.
10
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/mar/02/climate-camp-disbanded
No climate camp this year
10
Rereke Whakaaro:
Sounds like another pointless processing exercise of “bureaucratic churn” with your
—electicelectric supply.Sorrry about my bad morning written english. I do not
—noKNOW how it gets past my pruph reedn.10
to avert warming, according to Prof Bob Carter’s calculations, of less than 0.001 (one-thousandth) of a degree by 2020. Much less, on the strength of 0.0123 deg by 2100 if the country shuts down!
One would like to think that it would be enough to pull the plug on Labor’s reckless pursuit of a “carbon” scheme simply by rubbing Greg Combet’s nose in JoNova’s lucid and hardhitting presentation here. Unfortunately, these guys are driven by politics, not principle and sweet reason.
10
Sorry, I saw messages building up but lately I’ve been quite busy and tired, thus not really had time for long and well thought out comments.
I suggest that the US economy may quite likely get bad enough to drive AGW out of the news this year…
10
The Australian Department of Climate Change has published on their website a report provided to the Multi Party Climate Change Committee.
It quotes current generation costs: coal $45/MWh, gas $60, wind $120, solar $300+.
An average current coal-fired generator might emit 1 tonne of carbon dioxide per MWh generated; a $10 carbon price might thus increase wholesale electricity prices by $10 per MWh.
So whatever the initial tax on CO2 emissions, to make wind “economical” will require a tax of $75?
The report suggests that a carbon price should be used to reduce emissions as a substitute for many other current higher cost greenhouse schemes.
10
Johnny’s litter analogy is an example of what happens when we allow a demagogic Green/Labor coalition to debase our language with Orwellian dysphemisms in order to appropriate the weather for political advantage.
Thus carbon dioxide, a 100% natural product of respiration necessary for all life on earth is rebranded “carbon pollution” in order to sell a regressive tax.
The human mind uses language as the basic tool to compose rational thoughts. When that language is corrupted so is our ability to think clearly.
No wonder poor Johnny is so addled!
He really can no longer think about carbon dioxide as anything but filth. And Rob Mclaughin has extended this abuse of language to all humanity. Humans are filth and the Earth would be better if we all died. Hey, I got an idea…let’s teach school kids about “carbon pollution” so we can create a whole generation of mentally addled, self-pitying morose victims like poor Johnny and Rob.
Likewise, because anthropogenic global warming has been reduced to the vague tautology of Climate Change, millions of people can be frightened into believing that AGW causes any kind of poor weather including anomalous cold winters in the northern hemisphere.
And, of course, anyone who questions whether carbon dioxide is “carbon pollution” is a “climate denier.”
Yeah, I know, this is all old territory, but it can’t be repeated enough. As long Alarmists dishonestly manipulate the language to misrepresent the truth, it’s going to be very difficult for the public to think clearly about the real facts obscured beneath deception.
We should all make it a point to fight the intentional corruption of fair language by exposing lies like “carbon pollution” and “climate change.” Instead everyone here should pointedly use “carbon dioxide” and “catastrophic AGW.” Daily.
Don’t play by their rules. Call a spade a spade. It might help all the poor addled Johnnys out there come to their senses.
10
There is a story going around the traps, that Greg Combet is a sceptic.
10
Of course there will be no 0.01 degree saving because, the global warming that is not happening does not have a cause and therefore can’t be attributed to man made CO2. Even if all the false AGW premises were true there would still be no saving because all the Australian CO2 producing jobs will go to third world countries which will power their plants with coal fired generators.
10
[…] 3. Jo Nova on Shut Down Australia And Save 0.01 Degrees […]
10
Rod M at #22
Depopulation. Complete depopulation, hmm. I am very eager to know what you think of the idea of reducing the earth’s human population. Thanks in advance.
10
Some relevant articles for today………….
How many billions of this “carbon tax” will be hived off by the UN?
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/how_many_billions_of_this_carbon_tax_will_be_hived_off_by_the_un/
The climate wouldn’t blink if Gillard killed the economy stone dead
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/and_the_climate_wouldnt_even_blink_if_gillard_killed_the_economy_stone_dead/
And exactly what difference to the temperature will Gillard’s tax make?
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/and_exactly_what_difference_to_the_temperature_will_gillards_tax_make/
You betrayed them, Mr Windsor, so no wonder they’re cross
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/you_betrayed_them_mr_windsor_so_no_wonder_theyre_cross/
Why is Gillard arguing for a tax she forced Rudd to drop?
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/why_is_gillard_arguing_for_a_tax_she_forced_rudd_to_drop/
How many Labor men and women can stand their giddy green party?
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/how_many_serious_labor_men_and_women_can_stand_their_giddy_green_party/
10
They way i see it population goes into decline in wealthy countries. So any tax is going to be counter productive. The tax will increase poverty. Nations with poverty problems have the worst population problems. While this tax would not do much to reduce lovely life giving carbon dioxide, it will cause an increase in real pollution.
10
wes george: #41
I am with you in spirit Wes, but the propaganda genii is out of the bottle, and will not return, not even through trickery.
Language has always evolved (otherwise we would all be speaking in “thee wurds of ain Engles”, or worse still in Welsh). But the corruption of language is a different matter, That is what we are now seeing, and all for sake of political point scoring.
10
Siliggy: #46
That is a good point. Underdeveloped countries have less certainty about future outcomes, and are more vulnerable to natural catastrophes, so as a genetically driven “insurance policy”, we all have in inbuilt instinct to have more children. When 30% of children die in a country before the age of 10, it pays, in evolutionary survival terms, to have three times as many children.
Once the threat of child mortality is lowered, through the surety of food supply, better medical services, safer living conditions et cetera, population growth rates fall. Most of the developed world now has a population growth rate below the optimum replacement rate (which is somewhere between 2 and 3 – I forget the exact number).
Of course, that is what carbon taxes and carbon trading is all about – the transfer of “wealth” from the developed countries to the underdeveloped countries.
There is a belief that by transferring the wealth, we can raise the living standards in the underdeveloped countries. In fact the result will be to reduce all economies to the lowest common denominator. Bureaucrats and activists have never been good at recognising the unintended consequences.
10
Another, similarly ‘useless’ statistic…
based on 600 million cars worldwide,
all doing 20,000 miles per year
and 20 miles per gallon (imperial)
removing them ALL from the planet would reduce the CO2 levels by 0.002%
10
Combet is my local member, as such he gets regular spots on local radio. When he first got the gig as climate minister, a definite tremble could be detected in his speech as he delivered his rehearsed lines. The longer he has held his position the smoother he delivers the lines, I always felt the tremble in his voice betrayed his belief in the cause, his smoother presentation in later times either say’s lying now comes easy or he does believe.
10
Really, Tel? How so?
AGW is already well and truly out of the news in the states.
Speaking of the US economy, I was under the impression that things were looking up slightly over there. It seems like all the pundits are either totally bearish buying gold and building bunkers or totally bullish forecasting 20% gains this year on the Dow and hailing the resumption of the Long Boom .
I’m a contrarian, so I try to figure out where all the money is and then go somewhere else. After all if all the money is in gold, you be the greater fool to buy any. Likewise, if everyone is sitting on bags of gold afraid to get back into equities, that’s the time to buy equities.
Anyway, today’s sentiment in the US markets is so polarized that I’ll punt both the pessimistic bear and the bullish bulls are wrong. Instead we’re going to see a lot of churn this year and a slow “climbing of the wall of worry” as they say on the Street. One fear at a time. Climbing hand over hand back out of each correction. I’m told traders relish this kind of environment. Investors, not so much.
They dodged a double dip recession (there was no recession in Australia at all. Another Labor lie) are in the third year of a bull market with modest economic growth and good reasons to be optimistic about declining commodity prices, especially energy over the mid- term. The Euro-zone will survive 2011 and the the Iranian crisis isn’t likely to come to a head this year either. S&P 500 quarterly earning growth has been trending higher since 2009 and continues on course. US corporate cash stockpiles are anomalously strong (ie, they’ll have to spend it soon.) Monetary policy is as good as it gets. Emerging markets continue to soar. Global free trade is doing fine.
Don’t get me wrong, as Tony says, shit will happen.
But I’ll punt the markets are going to end 2011 higher, but not by much and the ride will be volatile. The US economy will grow just enough to avoid stagnation, so it’s really going to be a year of picking individual winners and sectors. It’s good to remember there isn’t anything really fundamentally morbid about the US economy other than the Obama regime of terror and I hear they are working on that problem. 😉
But maybe I overlooked something? So, please Tel, let us know why the US economy is in trouble this year.
10
El Gordo
He probably leaked that himself. Got the idea from HerRanganus’ tactics at the last election.
The trick is you smile a knowing smile & pretend to be all things to all people.
JG took the chair & declared she had 3 things to do before she called an election.
1. Do something about the boat people (it makes for bad TV & lots of ugly interviews)
2. Sort out the Mining Super Profits Tax (it makes for bad TV commercials & lots of job & superannuation insecurity)
3. Do something about climate change (it has its own bad TV & sells a lot of advertising)
Now by my estimation the refugee issues have not changed, the backroom deal with the big players of the mining industry was pretty close in style to the power sale in NSW & the Citizens Committee/Multi party Committee/ Garnaut etc was a style copy of the pre-written AGENDA 21 from Rio92.
So spreading the yarn that you are a sceptic could only help keep the “True Believers” in the Hunter from firing up their loud strident Yorkshire bred union delegates.
A cunning plan! Will it work?
10
Am I imaging things or am I now hearing the words ‘low carbon economy’ and ‘pollution’ more often than AGW and CC since the big announcement? Has there been a change of strategy to sidestep the questions you ask?
10
The irony here is if we sit and wait the temperature will go down of itself.
Last time the Sun was having a weak cycle like this one Napoleon’s army froze in Russia. And the PDO and AMO have both swung into their cold phases. All up that is about 1-1.5 C of cooling, depending on latitude. I just hope a big volcano doesn’t go off in the next couple decades or we’ll all need long johns.
10
It is worse in the US, we have an EPA administrator lobbying to regulate C02 emissions and she admitted to congress (gulp) that she didn’t even know what the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is. And why would she? She has NO science credentials and is a cultural anthropologist!
http://thetruthpeddler.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=570&action=edit&message=1
10
Uh oh. Stand by for the new religion. When, by brute force, alarmists finally succumb to the awful truth that reducing emissions will do nought to cool the planet, what other excuse can there be for a “carbon” tax? Why, Ocean Acidification, of course! That champion of the Left and megaphone of catastrophic climate claptrap, Tony Jones, promoted the revised version of alarmism on Lateline last night.
10
kellys-eye @#51
Another interesting but quite useless statistic…if the waddle-duck’s carbon tax is say $45/t, she looks like she could be cashed in for about $1.35.
BTW, if the price goes up suddenly, would you call that a carbon dioxide bubble?
10
sliggy @ 32
Yes, that is the theory. The coal-fired companies have to charge (cost + profit + carbon dioxide tax) = market price. Thus the market price for electricity increases to this amount. If you assume that the market price never goes below the cost price of coal + carbon dioxide tax, then the hydro generators can accept market price – their costs = their profit. Thus their profit is augmented due to not having to pay the carbon dioxide tax. In the long run nobody invests in coal fired power because there’s not enough profit in it compared to other forms of generation. So they stop building coal plants and build nuclear, gas or hydro instead.
Of course there are a lot of assumptions there. One is that the market price will never go below the cost + tax price for coal. Which is patently ridiculous – you can’t just stop a power station because it is losing money for short periods of time. Its also ridiculous to think that any government is going to let major power stations get switched off and plunge their constituents into darkness. The other is that power companies will be incentivised to invest in ‘low carbon’ power sources. Which is only as good as the political likelihood of the tax staying in for the next 10-30 years, the timeframe over which an investment decision would be made.
The proposed carbon taxes are not enough to switch to solar or wind, because they require a much higher subsidy/price fixing to become profitable. So the assumption is that the tax will be ratcheted up year on year until solar suddenly looks competitive.
The other big problem with the tax is that it either succeeds in lowering carbon dioxide intensive industry and electricity generation, and then there are no more proceeds to ‘compensate’ lower income people with, leaving fuel poverty widespread, or it doesn’t succeed in lowering carbon dioxide emissions at all, leaving a giant beuracracy churning huge amounts of money around. And that will not end well.
You can achieve all the same scenarios by bringing in a phasing out period of coal-fired power stations and replacing with nuclear, hydro and solar and wind where suitable (which is virtually nowhere but a few places). I don’t support this personally, but you could agree with power companies on a period over the space of 10-20 years where they would no longer be able to legally produce power via coal. This is what was done with unleaded petrol and it worked fine. You didn’t have to ‘tax’ leaded petrol more (though subsequent governments did after the majority moved on). You just had to declare leaded petrol no longer permissable for future vehicles and let the population move on as old cars were scrapped. The government holds the power to regulate pretty much anything, and people will go along with them if the timeframe is reasonable.
Or, as a final option, you could just leave things as they are and concentrate on lowering the cost of power generation and distribution to spark an industry turnaround in Australia, and to drive standards of living in Australia to the highest in the world, based on cheap abundant energy. This could be done with bold experiments in power generation and a willingness for a government to allow all types of energy generation to compete in a free and open marketplace. And that includes nuclear and whatever else scientists and tinkerers come up with. Why not announce an annual $50 million dollar ‘x prize’ awarded by the aust government for the best advances in energy generation or conservation or transportation. This could be done with simple working prototypes – kind of a government sponsored ‘new inventors’ for the energy sector. That would get a few blokes in sheds out and tinkering. You could disband the dept of climate change for the funding.
10
Jo asks:
I could equally ask, who should die in order for us to keep burning coal and oil? Wo doesn’t eat because their crops failed due to AGW induced climate changes.
The concern for the poor is always touching, in a world which doesn’t actually seem to care that much about them now.
11
the good news for all your arch-conservatives is that according to Jo’s graphic at least the ETS solves the boat people problem.
10
John, face it. The sky will always be falling for you. Plus the usual flippant, content free contribution from MattB.
A bit later I’ll go and stoke up the fires on my twin-turbocharged, six cylinder private conveyance (car). That always makes me feel good! Just a shame I can’t afford a V12. Think of the plants I could feed with that.
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Jo
In the face of this well reasoned analysis and recommendations, it would seem that Gillards tax is doomed!
Here Shellenberger and Nordhaus refer to the dumping of Rudd’s ETS but their words ring equally true for Gillards Carbon Tax!
10
Matt B
only in the short term
10
Sliggy @ 31 , Rereko @ 35 & brc @ 60
As brc says according the “game plan ” the supplier of hydro generated electricity will charge less and then become the preferred supplier of customers. The coal fired generators will “change their behaviour” and generate from something else after they waved their magic wand.
When NZ introduced the ETS, within the first week the company that gets most of its electricity from the dams on the Waikato River was the FIRST company to increase prices. So much for the “game plan”.
The other issue is that the Greens who want this “change in behaviour” are the first to object to new hydro stations being built
( upsets eco systems etc.). Also please do not mention the word– nuclear.
So just like the financial aspects of this tax do not appear to have well thought out , the rest of it is equally poorly thought through
10
John B @ 61
I suggest you have a look at CO2Science.com and observe the INCREASE in crop yields with increasing CO2 levels. Your “AGW induced climate change” is purely speculative (or can you show us the physical evidence?) whereas the improved plant growth is tested empirically on numerous occasions – and used every day in horticultural greenhouses for boosting crop yields.
Cheers,
Speedy
10
I Love CO2: Here comes the “ocean acidification” scam, watch out!
http://www.iloveco2.org/2009/04/here-comes-ocean-acidification-scam.html
10
From Andrew Bolt’s site I see at least one MP has remembered the other “climate related” costs that will have to be met from recent promises ( Copenhagen and Cacun ) and the Kyoto obligations. Will Brown & co have enough left from the tax grab to compensate anyone after these costs are met ??
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/how_many_billions_of_this_carbon_tax_will_be_hived_off_by_the_un/#commentsmore
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Are you “John Brookes” still hiding under your bed because the sky is falling on you????
You poor darling……..
Get a life!
10
update:
3 March: Gold Coast Bulletin: Henry Tuttiett: Way out of water pain for Gold Coasters
ALLCONNEX boss Kim Wood has admitted councils have the power to order the water retailer to reduce prices but says the chances of it actually happening are ”unlikely”…
The legislation governing Allconnex states ”a distributor-retailer’s participating local governments may give it a written direction about the way the distributor-retailer is to perform its functions”.
Mr Wood said the company was bound by the legislation.
”The board is very keen to get direction from the owners and ultimately the three owners could direct (it),” Mr Wood said.
”It is unlikely the scenario would ever eventuate because the three owners are at different stages of their aspirational targets.”…
http://www.goldcoast.com.au/article/2011/03/03/296431_gold-coast-news.html
from the comments:
“Notice that in addition to his salary of up to $500k including “bonuses”, Kim Wood is driving a luxury 6 cylinder car which is part of his package. Meanwhile the peasants struggle on with the huge water bills.”
most pertinent:
“The State govt. increased it’s price of the water to Allconnex by 21.6%.This latter entity increased it’s price to us by 19.6%. Who is to blame?? The State govt. of course. Hardly rocket science!!!”
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Wes in 53,
There is no such thing as a jobless recovery
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Speedy@67,
Actually, the effect of climate change on plants is complex. Most CO2-enrichment experiments have indeed confirmed increased yield for many crops, but also show decreased quality (protein and nutrient content.)
Also, in the real world, there will also be other changes such as water availability and temperature which haven’t been adequately researched to the best of my knowledge.
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For the sake of John Brooks and co i would like to summaries the debate so far, if we accept the IPCC on its word then it is safe to say that Australia produces very little global warming and will do so for the foreseeable future therefore any oxygen pollution TAX will be a colossal waste of time and money.
However the John et al argument is that we all need to pitch in and do our bit, the suggested oxygen pollution TAX is therefore our albeit meagre effort to solve this global problem.
At the most basic level this argument has some merit so lets continue with this lne of thought, the purpose of the oxygen pollution TAX is to reduce our ability to bond one carbon atom with two oxygen atoms to form the molecule CO2.
Australias CO2 sources are as follows:
Energy 72.3% (transport 13.9%, power 51.4%)
Agriculture 15.2%
Indutrial 5.4%
Land use 4.6%
Waste 2.5%
Now the oxygen pollution TAX is directed squarely at energy with some sectors (aluminium smeltering) to be exempt and so far it would seem that agriculture will also be exempt so therefore the oxygen pollution TAX will target less than 72% of our emission sources.
This list does not include the oxygen pollution generated by the coal that we export and this oxygen pollution TAX will not reduce this amount by one iota. So in the end John et al do you really think this new TAX is such a great idea? Do you really think it will accomplish anything apart from generating revenue?
By the way here is another important fact that has obviously escaped your grasp, the total government subsidy for the nergy sector in 2005/06 was about 10 billion dollars and 96% of this subsidy was given to the fossil fuel industry, below is a link to a 2003 paper.
http://www.isf.uts.edu.au/publications/CR_2003_paper.pdf
So John et al why would the government apply an oxygen pollution TAX to the fossil fuel industry which will simply pass the cost on to you and i and at the same time afford them generous subsidies? Do you know why they would do such a thing?
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLvdh5aXE80
It had to happen.
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Actually we can’t all leave. That would simply transfer the CO2 generation to somewhere else. We need to kill the demand and industry. The obvious conclusion…
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Anyone want to go and HECKLE? PR campaigning continues…
On the evening of Monday 14 March 2011, Melbourne-based group Beyond Zero Emissions
will be launching their ‘Zero Carbon Australia 2020’ plan for stationary energy at Perth Town Hall.
This highly influential, ambitious proposal, endorsed by the International Energy Agency and economists and scientists from around Australia, has also drawn praise from politicians as diverse as Greens Senators Scott Ludlam and Christine Milne, Liberal Party minister Malcolm Turnbull and from the Labor Party, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh and former NSW premier Bob Carr.
Speakers for the Perth launch include:
• Mr Matthew Wright, Executive Director, Beyond Zero Emissions
• Mr Steve Gates, Chair, Sustainable Energy Now
• Sen Scott Ludlam, Greens Senator for WA
• Hon Alannah McTiernan, Former WA Planning and Infrastructure Minister
• Mr Andre Garnaut, Principle Sustainability Consultant, WorleyParsons.
(Attempts are still being made to secure a speaker from the Lib-Nats State Govt.)
Anyone with an interest in renewable energy is urged to attend this important, free event. Please RSVP to http://zcaperthlaunch.eventbrite.com and arrive 5.45pm for 6pm sharp start.
More details about BZE’s plan for how to shift Australia’s stationary energy sector to 100% renewable energy by 2020 may be viewed at http://www.beyondzeroemissions.org. This event is being proudly supported by WA volunteer organisation, Sustainable Energy Now Inc. (www.sen.asn.au)
***********WHERE POSSIBLE, PLEASE DISTRIBUTE THE ATTACHED FLYERS & POSTERS TO YOUR FRENDS, FAMILY AND WORKPLACES! Due to delays confirming some details, we are anxious to spread the word about this event. The attached include options to print in A3, A4 or A5, or to post on websites.******************************************************
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wes @53
Don’t want to spoil your party wes, but where did you factor in the price of oil in your case?
http://www.bloomberg.com/energy/
Firstly – what sort of a “recovery” do you expect to get with oil at over $100 a barrel, and possibly rising?
Secondly – There’s plenty of oil about, so the demand is not supply driven meaning it is being driven mainly by an excess of fiat money printed insanely by the Fed to save them from the GFC. (The Saudi’s can easily increase their supply if necessary to counter the shortfall from Libya)
Thirdly – and here’s the crazy part for Australia at present – who needs a “carbon tax” when oil is at over $100 a barrel?
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@73. Not quite so…
Actually recent studies in show that not all plants lose protein and nutrients with higher CO2 growth.
I’m sure its spinach, and others to follow.
I will try drag up the link, bt I am confident its IDSO’s site at CO2sceince.org.
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@73….in addition there;s the reduced plant uptake of water thru less transpiration required (more food from CO2 so less water needed). hence soils have been shown to retain higher moisture content that increases run-off…. when it does rain.
so in one respect you are right..its more complex that one might think.
Just not in one direction.
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Macha@79,80
yep, agreed – cuts both ways and varies depending on which plants.
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SUBJECT: Carbon Dioxide and Earth’s Future
As presently constituted, earth’s atmosphere contains just slightly less than 400 ppm of the colorless and odorless gas we call carbon dioxide or CO2. That’s only four-hundredths of one percent. Consequently, even if the air’s CO2 concentration was tripled, carbon dioxide would still comprise only a little over one tenth of one percent of the air we breathe, which is far less than what wafted through earth’s atmosphere eons ago, when the planet was a virtual garden place. Nevertheless, a small increase in this minuscule amount of CO2 is frequently predicted to produce a suite of dire environmental consequences, including dangerous global warming, catastrophic sea level rise, reduced agricultural output, and the destruction of many natural ecosystems, as well as dramatic increases in extreme weather phenomena, such as droughts, floods and hurricanes.
As strange as it may seem, these frightening future scenarios are derived from a single source of information: the ever-evolving computer-driven climate models that presume to reduce the important physical, chemical and biological processes that combine to determine the state of earth’s climate into a set of mathematical equations out of which their forecasts are produced. But do we really know what all of those complex and interacting processes are? And even if we did — which we don’t — could we correctly reduce them into manageable computer code so as to produce reliable forecasts 50 or 100 years into the future?
Some people answer these questions in the affirmative. However, as may be seen in the body of this report, real-world observations fail to confirm essentially all of the alarming predictions of significant increases in the frequency and severity of droughts, floods and hurricanes that climate models suggest should occur in response to a global warming of the magnitude that was experienced by the earth over the past two centuries as it gradually recovered from the much-lower-than-present temperatures characteristic of the depths of the Little Ice Age. And other observations have shown that the rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations associated with the development of the Industrial Revolution have actually been good for the planet, as they have significantly enhanced the plant productivity and vegetative water use efficiency of earth’s natural and agro-ecosystems, leading to a significant “greening of the earth.”
In the pages that follow, we present this oft-neglected evidence via a review of the pertinent scientific literature. In the case of the biospheric benefits of atmospheric CO2 enrichment, we find that with more CO2 in the air, plants grow bigger and better in almost every conceivable way, and that they do it more efficiently, with respect to their utilization of valuable natural resources, and more effectively, in the face of environmental constraints. And when plants benefit, so do all of the animals and people that depend upon them for their sustenance.
Likewise, in the case of climate model inadequacies, we reveal their many shortcomings via a comparison of their “doom and gloom” predictions with real-world observations. And this exercise reveals that even though the world has warmed substantially over the past century or more — at a rate that is claimed by many to have been unprecedented over the past one to two millennia — this report demonstrates that none of the environmental catastrophes that are predicted by climate alarmists to be produced by such a warming has ever come to pass. And this fact — that there have been no significant increases in either the frequency or severity of droughts, floods or hurricanes over the past two centuries or more of global warming — poses an important question. What should be easier to predict: the effects of global warming on extreme weather events or the effects of elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations on global temperature? The first part of this question should, in principle, be answerable; for it is well defined in terms of the small number of known factors likely to play a role in linking the independent variable (global warming) with the specified weather phenomena (droughts, floods and hurricanes). The latter part of the question, on the other hand, is ill-defined and possibly even unanswerable; for there are many factors — physical, chemical and biological — that could well be involved in linking CO2 (or causing it not to be linked) to global temperature.
If, then, today’s climate models cannot correctly predict what should be relatively easy for them to correctly predict (the effect of global warming on extreme weather events), why should we believe what they say about something infinitely more complex (the effect of a rise in the air’s CO2 content on mean global air temperature)? Clearly, we should pay the models no heed in the matter of future climate — especially in terms of predictions based on the behavior of a non-meteorological parameter (CO2) — until they can reproduce the climate of the past, based on the behavior of one of the most basic of all true meteorological parameters (temperature). And even if the models eventually solve this part of the problem, we should still reserve judgment on their forecasts of global warming; for there will yet be a vast gulf between where they will be at that time and where they will have to go to be able to meet the much greater challenge to which they aspire.
http://www.co2science.org/education/reports/prudentpath/prudentpath.php
THE REFERENCED STUDY DEMONSTRATES THAT MAN GLOBAL WARMING IS THE GREATEST FRAUD IN THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION…………….
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Sam @73:
Of course and therefore we MUST rely on your experts because we aren’t able to understand right?
Actually it is safe to say that all this has been robustly researched and well understood by Mother Nature. Recall please that temperatures HAVE been higher AND lower, and Co2 PPM HAS also been higher AND lower. We still have plants in rich abundance, likewise fauna that feast on them.
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wes george:
March 3rd, 2011 at 8:54 am
Wes, before you believe what you are reading about the US economy and its prospects I suggest you read Mr Karl Denninger. http://market-ticker.org/
He doesn’t pull any punches and analyses the official statistics. The US Government is broke, busted, bankrupt. The financial system is being run by criminals in conjunction with the US government, another large organised crime syndicate. Recurrent spending well above tax income the rest being borrowings including large overseas borrowings. This isn’t going to end well.
I’d rather listen to a pessimist than an optimist. If the pessimist is wrong you get a pleasant surprise rather than nasty one.
That Beyond Zero Emissions mob should be called “Beyond Zero Contact With Reality” As for “important, free event” that should read “useless, content free event”. These people are complete moonbats. Barking mad.
BTW my subsidised solar cells are installed. Thanks taxpayers. The subsidy was to the tune of at least $8000-9000 dollars making the installation a $10,000 to $11,000 one. On average over 24 hours it produces about 250 watts (1500 watts peak) so $40,000 to $44,000 per Kw-hr installed. What was the number for a nuke or coal fired station again? It does seem to be performing according to my analysis of it before I bought and is reducing our electricity bill to around half of what it was. Completely dumb investment for the government though.
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The Knappenberger calculations used by the post assume “the mid-range sensitivity of surface temperature to changes in CO2”, accepting IPCC’s scenario “IS92a”.
This tack may risk implying we accept the IPCC’s cAGW theory and desirability of temperature change and restrict the argument to just the difficulty of achieving a meaningful amount. This may confuse some people actually thinking through this. People may also consider this small amount significant if they intuitively multiply it by the whole world, in the absence of emphasis on global retreat from meaningful carbon constraint.
I believe we should be crystal clear in our argument that temperature does not need to be actively lowered by decarbonization by any amount.
I would like to propose here an even stronger message:
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John, but see, that’s the thing. I ve been searching for the evidence that CO2 will lead to pain and suffering and starvation. Do speak up if you come across that one mysterious paper that no one can find that supports projections larger than 1.2 degrees. Empirical evidence.
20
Joanne, I admire your forbearance with people like Brookes.
Of late I find myself incapable of anything excepting hurling epithets at them.
Rational responses mean nothing to these people; Mr Brookes has already concluded elsewhere that you are incapable of providing meaningful information to him.
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Mike Borgelt:
March 3rd, 2011 at 1:13 pm @84
Absolutely Mike, and further supporting your comment:-
THE US DEBT CLOCK….
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
10
Mike Borgelt@ 84 Thanks for that link it is now in my bookmarks. I don’t share the optimism Wes has for our economic “recovery” either. Cap and Trade would have broken our economic back.
10
John – but don’t you see? It’s well proven that too much state control and taxation kills people as decisions are taken out of the hands of people best able to make it. It’s well proven that people die when the most efficient forms of energy and food production are taken away. It’s also well proven that cold weather kills people in large numbers and kills crops as well. And, seeing as now we hear that AGW means more rain, well, warm weather and rain is about the best thing you can have for growing lots of food. It used to be that AGW causes drought but that is now so very 2007.
It’s like this : all the negatives of excessive taxation and regulation of energy are well proven, documented and are subject to zero levels of uncertainty. Controlling regimes kill people – evidence continues to turn up daily to confirm this one. There’s never been a famine in a society with a democratic government, free elections and free press. We’ll call it a 10/10 chance that people will suffer from excessive state control and taxation, especially on energy and food production. All the negatives of increasing carbon dioxide levels are theoretical, unproven and undocumented -as in they have never shown up anywhere. At best the IPCC gives them a 9/10 chance of occurring – which is probably untrue but I enjoy using the IPCC arguments against them.
So we have a 10/10 chance of negatives from co2 reductions via taxation and regulation and a 9/10 chance of negatives from business as usual. Which odds are you going to take, John?
10
Jo@86,
Here is a collection of peer-reviewed papers from the UK’s Royal Society that show that we’re on the path to a 4 degree celcius rise:
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/369/1934.toc
As they state in the preface, “The papers in this issue that look at impacts and adaptation challenges in a four degrees world are sobering: the possible impacts are large, in some cases, transformational, and the challenges in understanding and developing responses to these impacts considerable.”
I think they’re still free to download. Worth a read for anyone who’s interested in the science.
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Sam @ 73
Actually, you’re right – plants have adapted to climate change for the last several hundred million years. And done it very well. And well before mankind “invented” fire, or even before mankind was born. Which raises an interesting question – what was driving the climate change back then? And why should those same forces cease operating in the present?
I would have thought that a responsible government would have answers to those questions – it’s called due diligence. Doing the sums – just as Jo suggests in her post.
Or do you think that we don’t need to consider the cost – benefit of multi-billion/trillion dollar policies?
Cheers,
Speedy
PS Unfortunately my post wasn’t discussing climate change – I was talking about CO2 concentration effects on plant growth – and we both seem to agree that it is beneficial. You’re just quibbling about how beneficial it is. Beneficial enough to be used commercially, apparently.
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Speedy@93
That’s a good question. There are orbital changes in Earth’s path around the sun (Milankovitch cycles) that drove the last few ice ages. Before that (perhaps a million years or so) they were still operating, but it was too hot for ice-ages.
Climate changes before that occurred for a variety of reasons, such as mountain-building (eg. Himalayas created from collision of continents), excessive volcanic activity etc etc (there’s a bunch!) Some are better understood than others, and the further we go back, the less clear things are, as you’d expect.
To answer the other part of your question – it’s simply a case of time. If we hang around for a few hundred thousand years, we’d get to see the effect of orbital cycles on the climate. They’re known with quite a lot of accuracy.
10
Will the last one to leave, Please turn off the light-bulb!
10
Were we to relocate, wouldn’t we still keep producing CO2? A new geography but the same planet. In that the air we exhale has 100 times the CO2 of the air we inhale, I believe that the warmentologists should set a planet-saving example by refusing to breathe out.
10
To understand how the EU Australia and NZ are taking themselves for a very expensive ride have a look at the numbers in
http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2011/02/24/the-futility-of-trying-to-limit-co2-emissions/#more-1400
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Mark:
March 3rd, 2011 at 4:49 pm @94
I would….normally, but these damn fluorescent bulbs take so long to light up when you turn them on its better to just leave them the hell on…
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The Loaded Dog:
I weakened and put a couple of low energy Philips bulbs in the new bedside lamps. One failed the other day after about 2 weeks and less than 10 hours of operation. Fittings designed for them too.
$3.00 down the drain. I could have run a 1.5 KiloWatt light source for that for the 10 hours.
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John Brookes @ 61
It is estimated some 1,500,000,000 people in the world lack clean drinking water, proper sanitation, basic food and medical care.
How many of those people could have been helped and how many could have been saved from dying with even part of the billions and billions of dollars wasted by the UN and governments chasing ghosts in the AGW scam?
By the way, did you find the Submarine volcanoes after I told you where to look? You know, the ones you said weren’t there or no-one knew about??
10
could you ever get a bigger Dork than this on climate change
http://quantock.com.au/
go and abuse him as I did 😉
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Greg Combet has a degree in mining engineering from UNSW. He would have been taught geology by Ian Plimer.
It is a safe bet that Combet knows AGW is total BS.
10
Sam @ 93.
You would know there are many other major factors besides the Milankovitch cycles, the Sun included, driving any climate change and if I were you I wouldn’t be putting any money on it “being too hot” for ice ages now. There is quite a body of scientific opinion that thinks that over the long term, ice ages are a normal state for the earth, interspersed with occasional warm interglacial periods, one of which we’ve been enjoying for the last 200 plus years.
In relation to that, Alaska Climate Research Center has just released a report on the last decade at Fairbanks, part of which states:
“the best linear fit of the data points of the last decade displays a fairly strong cooling of 1.8°F. Recent cooling has also been observed in other parts of the world, and some climatologists have attributed this trend to the low solar activity we have experienced over the last few years. Another symptom of this can be seen in the aurora activity, which has decreased over the few last years here in Fairbanks. It is worthwhile to point out that during the Maunder Minimum (1645-1715), a time period of very low solar activity, Greenland froze over and the Vikings had to leave, as agricultural activities became more difficult”.
Interestingly too, during that “Little Ice Age” which, along with the MWP Michael Mann tried to swipe from history with his infamous “Hockey Stick”, Sweden also surprised the hell out of the Danes when they appeared outside the gates of Copenhagen after marching 10,000 troops complete with cavalry and artillery, across the frozen sea in the strait between the two countries!
Sam, you’re obviously aware of all the vast universal and cosmic forces which are factors affecting climate, do you honestly believe a few extra parts per million of an essential gas are going to drive runaway global warming? I’m genuinely interested.
Mind you, I’d rather have 4C warmer than a little Ice Age.In fact, after the summer we didn’t have in Tassie an aditional 4C would have been welcomed at times and the first three days of autumn have been even colder! Still had a brilliant year for fruit in my garden. Bring on more CO2 I say!
Cheers from a very chilly Hobart!
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O/T I know and I’m sorry, but this is just too good to pass by.
Clive Hamilton has made one of his periodic surfacings from catatonia with this very recent piece. Oh my, he really does give the concept of “public intellectual” a greasy feel, doesn’t he?
http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/silencing-the-scientists-the-rise-of-right-wing-populism/
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That graphic would sure look good on a classroom wall! The learning that might ensue could be dramatic.
Imagine similar ones being used all over the world: http://climatelessons.blogspot.com/2011/03/picture-for-classroom-wall-shut-down.html
Excellent stuff! Well done Chip K. and SPPI! Well done Jo!
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It’s fairly apparent that those who imagine that severe and prolonged droughts in Africa are a post IR phenomena and thus are gullible enough to accept as gospel IPCC alarmist scientists predictions of greater drought calamities and must suffer, along with those scientists, from selective amnesia of all sorts of data. A simple awareness of it should cure the dullest of persons of their irrational obsession with future catastrophic weather outcomes. All of course caused, so they seem to believe, by a very special class of CO2 that has been insinuating itself into the various climate systems around the Earth.
There is good CO2 which keeps us and every living being and plant species alive and in the pink of health. That of course is “natural” CO2. Ah but then there is the CO2 that we rapacious humans emit into the atmosphere by combusting fossil fuels. That is very evil stuff which when it is incorporated into the atmosphere will cause all sorts of calamities like droughts we cannot imagine etc.
Here is an antidote for one form of that amnesia:
“The Sahel drought was a series of historic droughts, beginning in at least the 17th century affecting the Sahel region, a climate zone sandwiched between the African savanna grasslands to the south and the Sahara desert to the north, across West and Central Africa. While the frequency of drought in the region is thought to have increased from the end of the 19th century, three long droughts have had dramatic environmental and societal effects upon the Sahel nations. Famine followed severe droughts in the 1910s, the 1940s, and the 1960s, 70s and 80s, although a partial recovery occurred from 1975-80. While at least one particularly severe drought has been confirmed each century since the 17th century, the frequency and severity of recent Sahelian droughts stands out. Famine and dislocation on a massive scale—from 1968 to 1974 and again in the early and mid 1980s—was blamed on two spikes in the severity of the 1960-1980s drought period.[1] From the late 1960s to early 1980s famine killed a 100,000 people, left 750,000 dependent on food aid, and affected most of the Sahel’s 50 million people.[2] The economies, agriculture, livestock and human populations of much of Mauritania, Mali, Chad, Niger and Burkina Faso (known as Upper Volta during the time of the drought) were severely impacted. As disruptive as the droughts of the late 20th century were, evidence of past droughts recorded in Ghanaian lake sediments suggest that multi-decadal droughts were common in West Africa over the past 3,000 years and that several droughts lasted far longer and were far more severe.[3][4]”
wiki
For those a little behind the eight ball in their basic education 17C means the 1600s, also notice where the comma is in 3,000 years (ago). When did the Industrial Revolution begin? In began in about 1760 or thereabouts. Get the only possible implication?
This is but one slice of history for one region showing that the alarmists really know nothing of our Earth’s history of weather and hence are, it seems, ignorant of the sort of climate factors or climate variables that have driven weather over thousands of years. It is the same story with the recent drought breaking floods in Australia. Read your weather history and you won’t be raving on about the evil sort of CO2 being the game changer. That can only be claimed by those substantially ignorant of Earth’s weather history.
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LevelGaze: @102
Groan…that was just too much. I had to stop reading around the 80 word mark. (I thought I did quite well in the circumstances)
On a positive note however, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the basting Cliveyboy received in the comments.
I suspect he may like being basted.
Why else would he pen such garbage?
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Does all this mean I can have my incandescent light bulbs back?
10
Taxing carbon is quite likely going to make matters worse I reckon. More hard earned money down the drain to fund a pointless exercise in political single mindedness.
If we really want to make a difference; improve the efficiency in which we interact with the collective environment – less wasted effort and resources means less environmental impact as the rate of innovation is given more chance to advance and gain yet greater efficiencies for less impact.
Basically if we want to help the environment – fire the bureaucrats…..
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#91 Sam, can you not see this weakness in your comment?
(1) “papers from the UK’s Royal Society that show that we’re on the path to a 4 degree celcius rise”
(2) “The papers in this issue that look at impacts and adaptation challenges in a four degrees world”
As with the IPCC itself, almost all of the contributions start from the assumption of a warmer world due to man, and proceed to speculate about the implications. Given the astonishing levels of funding for alarmism, it is a wealthy, or a remarkably principled, academic who can resist the temptation to add into their grant application for doing more on X: ‘X may be linked to global warming’, coupled with, of course, ‘possible changes in X are alarming’.
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Here is an idea I think we Australians should start using everytime someone tries to shame us for the amount of CO2 we emit.
Japan 3000 tonnes/sq/km
China 730 tonnes/sq/km
India 487 tonnes/sq/km
Australia 59 tonnes/sq/km
We should be charging the world for storing their rubbish
And here is another thought(yes I know)is the concentration of CO2 in the air over Japan the same as it is over Australia if so why.?
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Jo asks:
Well, the gold standard for empirical evidence would be to find a period in the past, identical to now in all important aspects, where CO2 was pumped into the atmosphere for a few hundred years, and see what happened. I don’t think we can find that.
The best we really can do on the empirical front is to take a given period, and subtract or add from the temperatures the known forcings other than CO2. So you take out ENSO, and solar variation, and aerosols, and what you’ve got left is CO2 (and the associated water vapour feedback). Tamino does this here. He gets a warming rate of about 1.7 degrees per century over the last 45 years (using satellite as well as terrestrial stations). That is, 0.76 degrees over 45 years while CO2 went up from 330ppm to 390ppm. This is about a quarter of a doubling (logarithmically), so we’d expect 4 times the temperature increase from a doubling of CO2. That is 4 x 0.76, or about 3 degrees. This does not include longer term feedbacks like ice albedo.
Anyway, 3 degrees seems to be about what most scientists think. But I’ve way overstepped my level of expertise in the subject, so will annoy you by trusting the scientists.
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Check out The Chiefio-E.M.Smith website(3rd March.)
‘What is to Come-Sun-wise.’ Significant graph and commentary. Looks as though we could be heading for seriously cold weather leading to crop failures, but will we be prepared do you think?
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Mike Borgelt – $3.00 for a low energy lamp..??
Here in the UK they’re being discounted in supermarkets from £2.00 to ten pence..! (Sorry – don’t know what that equates to in Oz dollars – but I bet it isn’t much..!)
Oh – and they are in huge display bins…
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Interesting little multiple choice poll going at Roger Pielke Jr’s blogspot asking what price carbon will be in Australia on July 1 2012.
currently
1. $0 – New PM 66.4%
2. $0 – Gillard PM 12.5%
3 $0 – $10 8.0%
4 $10 – $25 7.6%
5. >$25 5.5%
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2011/02/australia-carbon-tax-poll.htm
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John Brookes: #111
March 3rd, 2011 at 10:38 pm
John you really disappoint me sometimes. I accept that the science is above your head, it’s mostly above mine too. However, critical thinking, clear thinking and the ability to sort wheat from chaff shouldn’t be above either of us.
Now think man, Tamino claims to be able to REMOVE ENSO effects from the temperature anomalies. He would be the one and ONLY person on this planet who understands ENSO enough to quantify it’s effects. Are you happy to accept that? Have you asked him if he is able to predict El Nino and La Nina effects 6 months ahead of time? Surely he KNEW the current La Nina would plunge global Ts down to near zero anomaly by December/Jan/Feb. Where has he posted these predictions? Or is he saying he KNOWS ENSOs effect after the event?
Also, even the IPCC, in EACH AND EVERY ONE of their 4 reports have stated that their understanding of solar influence is LOW. But your mate Tamino can assign a value to solar effects going back 45 years and deduct that from the T anomalies? You believe that?
Have you asked Tamino why he went back to 1975 only, just as the current warming was beginning? Why didn’t he go back to say the 20’s or 30’s or even back to the 19thC?
Now come on John, it might be fun for you to stir-up the denizens here, but try and do it without making yourself out to be a complete gullible ignoramus will ya mate?
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There is the rub John – “subtract ..*known* forcings other than CO2”. Scientists admit there are many unknowns, and you still only have a trivial unvalidated model of a complex system.
Main trouble is downstream of scientists:
Scientist: Unvalidated models have scenarios of 1-6 C rise, but we know next to nothing about clouds, deep ocean current, initialising conditions so there is large uncertainty.
IPCC scientists: So many Models must be right, all scientists agree dangerous warming is >90% likely. Opposing papers are unworthy.
Environmentalist: Finally, proof that man is bad. Warming is bad, cooling is good. Sky is falling. We must de-industrialise, but not use nuclear.
Politician: Carbon dirty, solar good. If you wanna live, vote for me and my new tax on bad carbon pollution. Opposing voices are evil deniers.
Banker: We must make carbon a new currency and trade it, a lot.
Green industry: Give us subsidies if you want to look like you are doing something about climate. The more subsidies the more worthy.
Citizen: ** WTF **?
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Well Baa, who knows how Tamino did it? But clearly its at least an attempt in the right direction, as opposed to just knocking the people out their doing their bit.
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LevelGaze @ 103:
The article by Clive Hamilton is quite startling. I didn’t know who he was, so looked it up:
Given the publicity surrounding the Arizona shooting of US Representative Gabrielle Giffords, how could anyone of normal intelligence simply maintain that it was caused by “the rise of right-wing populism”?
Of course, he’s just getting warmed up — he goes on to blame “Right-Wing Populism” for AGW skepticism and just about anything else he can think of.
The first commenter takes his argument apart pretty well:
That Hamilton is a chaired professor is frightening in what it says about academic standards. One would think that blatant “big lie” techniques would not be acceptable for a professor of Ethics.
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JB: I thought 1998 was suposed to be the hottest year on record. Hansen was forced to modify his figures for last year and the result was that 2010 was not as warm as 1998 (not by much). Regardless, Where you choose a start point for your graph can make a big impact. What would the trend line from the 1940’s to 1975 look like on this graph? It concerned Hansen enough for him to predict an oncoming ice age at the time. Put a trend line on the graph starting in 1998 and see what it shows. What do you see as being the desired trend: ascending? (obviously not); descending? (for how long and to what point?); level? (never happened in the past, unlikely in the future).
Then you inject water vapour feedback. Water vapour has a far, far greater impact as a greenhouse gas. Ironically though, the programmers on the computer models predicting runaway global warming assumed water vapour has a positive feedback on global temperatures. No one knows for sure yet. Water vapour may have a negative feedback, or possibly even positive and negative. Until further research is accomplished, we won’t know.
However, it appears apparent that the computer models that were forecasting runaway global warming with only months to act are not being supported by the Earth’s climate. How unfortunate for the doomsayers.
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Mark in 63:
“Plus the usual flippant, content free contribution from MattB.”
which you follow with:
“A bit later I’ll go and stoke up the fires on my twin-turbocharged, six cylinder private conveyance (car). That always makes me feel good! Just a shame I can’t afford a V12. Think of the plants I could feed with that.”
and
“Will the last one to leave, Please turn off the light-bulb!”
Well excuse me Einstein,
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John Brookes:#117
March 4th, 2011 at 12:02 am
You and I know now that he guessed. I encourage attempts at improving our knowledge, but I wouldn’t put my trust in attempts that are made up of guesses. They are just intellectual curios.
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As my old Pappy used to say:
Not only Tamino, but James Hansen and many others have applied the technique you describe to claim that climate sensitivity is high and CO2 is a major driver. The fatal flaw in this technique, however, is that it critically depends on knowing what all the significant climate drivers are — a knowledge that we don’t even have now, much less can claim to know in any past era where measurements are few or nonexistent.
A single current example of our deep ignorance is enough to prove my point:
The Earth’s total albedo has been measured fairly well over the last 2 decades. Over that time, it has varied such that the effective forcings have varied by 7 watts/m^2 — nearly 3 times the estimated change in GHG forcing since 1900. The changes in temperature during this rather large forcing change indicate that climate sensitivity is significantly lower than any current CAGW estimates — perhaps significantly lower than 0.5 deg C.
Obviously, any attempts to determine the climate sensitivity of the Earth by tracking GHG forcing and ignoring the 3x larger albedo forcing are doomed to be in error.
The fatal flaw in Tamino’s (and Hansen’s, etc.) attempts to calculate climate sensitivity is twofold:
1) We don’t know why total albedo changes — that is we don’t know what drives it and can’t predict it. (Although, Svensmark’s research may be a good start.)
2) We don’t know what the Earth’s total albedo was for any period before 1985.
Since there is (at least) one unpredictable and untrackable historic and prehistoric forcing (total Earth albedo) that is multiple times larger than GHG forcing, any attempt to calculate climate sensitivity by pretending the albedo forcing doesn’t exist is meaningless.
So, back to square one. No empirical evidence of high climate sensitivity exists. (In fact, much evidence points to low sensitivity.)
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The cost of controlling Australia’s climate, modelled using projection from official government figures:
Cost to control climate in Parliament House, Canberra: $300,000,000 / 250,000m² / year
Area of Australia (not including territorial waters) 7,617,930,000,000m²
Annual cost of controlling Australia’s climate $9,141,516,000,000,000.42
A bargain at $1,142,689,500 per household a year.
😉
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UEA CRU FOI answer to:
1. all Climatic Research Unit research grant applications
and
2. research grants awarded to the CRU
since 1st January 2006.
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/cru_research_grant_applications
Might be something there of interest.
I wonder what “Investigation links between simulated biological-weapons tests over Norwich and Cd & Zn concentrations in tree rings using dendrochronology” is all about.
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I would like to pose a question to the AGW believers out there.how much the seas would rise if all the north and south poles melted along with the himalayers and other icy places,when the seas rise they get larger so therefore needs more water to rise even more. just thought i would ask.
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To add to the comments on climate sensitivity
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/03/02/new-paper-claims-a-value-one-seventh-of-the-ipcc-best-estimate-for-climate-sensitivity-for-a-co2-doubling/
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That other “Mark” is not me, MattB. Second or third time this has happened.
[are you saying that #63 post March 3, 2011 10:52am is not by you?] ED
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Crakar @ 27
Recoveries are never “jobless” but all recoveries are really economic adjustments to new realities. This recovery isn’t jobless. If you’re an IT sysop it’s booming in the US, if you’re a union mill worker you’re stuffed. And that’s totally fair if you have a global perspective. Why should a worker in the US make $30/hour plus benefits, plus pension to do what someone in India could do for much less and still be upward mobile within their own society? People in developing economies deserve to have the same thing we’ve taken for granted for the last century and that is economic growth. We can all grow together. It’s not a zero-sum game. There are no limits to growth but our own imaginations and courage.
It’s all good. Part of an evolving economy adjusting to global realities. America is simply retooling for this new reality. Actually everyone is always retool constantly, but this evolution isn’t smooth, it’s punctuated by financial crises, hopeless government interventions, the odd war, revolution, earthquakes, what not..
Change is pain to the people who have to retool their skill sets to adapt to the always emergent economic ecology. But it’s also full opportunity for those willing to take the creative risks necessary to succeed.
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Mike Borgelt @ 84
All good points, Mike. But if you noticed I was careful to limit my punt on the US economy to 2011. I wouldn’t dare try to forecast the future much beyond that 😉
An investor nowadays can sell or buy online, with trade executions in minutes for practically no transaction cost. It’s irrelevant to the market that the current US debt crisis might lead to default in 2020. Besides, most of the US debt is projected debt that could easily be ditched by a new President with a Repub congress in 2012. Don’t panic yet.
The US debt may prove a problem in future years. Although, England carried a much larger per capita debt all through the 1700 to about 1880 with no ill effects to its economy. US government debt is much less of a problem for the private, increasingly multi-national, business then is commonly thought. Why else are US and EU equity markets up 25 to 40 percent from the GFC bottom in 2009? As the US and the EU zone decline as the dominate economies, emerging markets are rising rapidly to replace them. As far as investors care, it doesn’t matter if the US fades, there is no reason the global economy can’t grow going forward.
Never believe equity market doomsayers is the general rule of investing that would have served anyone well in the period between 1940 and 2011. Listen to what they have to say, but never believe in what they preach. Buy on the panicky dips, sell when the consensus is that the boom will never end.
There is always someone claiming the end is nigh and always plenty of good reason to worry…. Market alarmists are like broken clocks, they are right if you wait long enough and they never let you forget that one moment when they were spot on. Likewise when the optimists get too exuberant then that simply means that all the money is already in the market and a correction (or recession) is due. So get out.
I’m neither a pessimist or an optimist, but a realist and a pragmatic. As for all the allegations of corruption. Show me a better less corrupt system than the multi-trillion dollar global equity markets? There isn’t one. It’s the world we have. Fortunately, part of the beauty of the system is that it’s so huge and there are so many players that it really can’t be control by any corrupt alliance of government and private actors, try as they may, the complexity so too nonlinear that any conspiracy always go bust in the end.
Which is exactly why a carbon tax won’t work. There are too many ways to scam it.
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Ed:
Comment #94 re “will last one to leave…” is not by this Mark.
[thank you I was worried for a minute] ED
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Sorry, I’m off-topic again, but here’s a great article linking the way the University of East Anglia prostituted itself to the global warming scam with the way the London School of Economics did the same re. that other ‘green’ madness, the regime of Colonel Gadaffi:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/03/lse-gaddafi-libyan-dictator-universities
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and, as likely as not, swamped by natural cooling that will be measurable. Indeed, there are indications that global temperatures are heading south.
For example, consider global temperatures. They have been falling for the past year, entering negative anomaly territory for January and February 2011.
In Australia, 2010 was the coolest since 2001. Likewise December 2010. There was some respite in January, there being only 3 warmer ones since 2001. But it was short-lived. February’s temperature was exceeded eight times since 2001.
Informed opinion points to continued global cooling. Here’s hoping they’ve missed something. Cold sucks.
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BobC @#118
I didn’t know who he was
Given his menacing and deranged diatribes, such as this rubbish and the one linked by LevelGaze @#103, Clive Hamilton is certainly not worth knowing. But, to be sure, he is one that it would be as well for honest and rational citizens to know about.
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I got a comment deleted from Komment Macht Frei in the Guardian because I said the guys who invented global warming have been exposed, there is no objective definition of ‘stability’ or ‘disorder’ in the environment, therefore ecology is a pseudo-science, and warming is good for some organisms and not others. This doesn’t meet their community standards:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/04/republicans-attack-obamas-environmental-protection?commentpage=all#start-of-comments
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I just realised my first comment here got hidden because 0 people liked it and 26 disliked it. I know Britain has lost its sense of humour – now Australia too?
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Rod McLaughlin @ 135:
Probably should have used an emoticon ( 🙂 ) to indicate humour. Outfits like Earth First actually do desire the Human race to become extinct, so what you thought was an over-the-top humorous suggestion is actually the agenda of a lot of Greens.
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If you did this analysis for many countries, I wonder what the result would be? The inconvenient truth that China, India, and the USA (in reverse order) determine the temperature rise as per the CO2 IPCC meme? That out of the 128 countries in the world, 125 are bit players?
In business and engineering you always look to the critical parts that control your activity. If you can’t influence them, your idea is set up for failure. I’d like to see who the critical players are. It sure as hell ain’t Canada, either
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Australia’s forests and oceans ABSORB many times more CO2 than our small population could ever produce. These are intentionally left out of IPCC CO2 absorption calculations entirely. No Australian should be dumb enough to pay for absorbing the CO2 emissions of other countries.
An accurate CO2 trading system would make Australia very rich for absorbing massive amounts of CO2 through our forests and oceans .
The current system was designed by small European countries with no fossil fuel reserves, little forests and little or no ocean territory. It is designed to destroy Australia’s comparative advantage of cheaper fossil fuel energy and hence cheaper production costs.
It is a massive fraud perpetrated by the UN.
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