The Australian Abbott government has announced the target of a 26% reduction in emissions of CO2 by 2030. This futile effort to change the weather is all cost and no benefit. It’s 26% reduction in 1.3% (Australia’s share) of 4% (human share) of total CO2 emissions globally. If we succeed there’ll be 0.01% less CO2 in the air (at best).
The only good thing is that the policy supposedly can be achieved without “without any need to purchase emissions reductions from overseas.” That means Australia won’t be feeding the global banker-broker machine and assorted “carbon market” bureaucrats — not until the Labor Party come to government, anyway. This is a big win, helping to slow the cycle of governments feeding vested interests who promote big-government.
For once the Greens had a realistic response, though they probably did not intend it that way:
“The Greens party room also discussed the government’s target. The party’s MPs agreed it was “an all-around science fail” and they “all nodded vigorously”, a senior source said.”
Because “carbon accounting” is a joke, measured in a dozen mindless ways, all sides are spinning this in equal and opposite directions. Black IS white simultaneously, and too much pandering is never enough: “Tim Flannery has said the government’s draft proposals to cut Australian carbon emissions by 30 per cent by 2030 was “vastly inadequate”. Indeed, but the dams filled, didn’t they?
The carbon-reduction leaders of the world are downunder
Australians are great “Green” achievers on a per capita basis, despite the rapidly growing population:
Australian per capita emissions fell by 28% since 1990 — and our population has grown by a monster 38% in the same period. Fully 20% of the 28% comes from land use changes (basically a euphemism for not cutting down bush and regrowth). The pink batts, solar panels, wind turbines have achieved very little. The carbon tax cost $14 billion and reduced global emissions by 0.004%. The dark side of Australia’s “fantastic” reduction is that farmers like Peter Spencer have paid for it on our behalf. More news on that soon.
Mr Abbott said the government’s per capita emissions cuts would be the highest in the developed world.
“It is not quite as high as the Europeans at 34 per cent on (the levels of) 2005. It is better than the Japanese at 25 per cent. It is vastly better than the Koreans at 4 per cent. It’s immeasurably better than the Chinese who will actually increase their emissions by 150 per cent between now and 2030,” Mr Abbott said.
— The Australian “Climate change: emissions reductions target set at 26pc ”
The US and Canada withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol, while Japan, Spain, Denmark, Switzerland and Norway failed to meet their targets in the first commitment period. Australia represents about 1.3 per cent of global emissions, while China (24.1 per cent), the US (14.9 per cent) and the EU (10.4 per cent) are the three biggest emitters.
Australia’s current target of 5 per cent below 2000 levels by 2020 represents a reduction of 13 per cent below 2005 levels by 2020. But the government faces pressure to match commitments by other developed countries such as Canada, which has promised 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 and Japan’s 25 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.
— The Australian Tony Abbott cuts ambitions on carbon
The costs — modeled as an unbelievably low $660m by 2030
How does a non-nuclear nation with not-a-lot-of-mountains (for hydro) pretend to reduce emissions by a quarter at barely any cost?
The Direct Action plan auction in late 2014 meant it will cost $660m to reduce our carbon emissions by 47 Mt, less than a tenth of our total CO2 emissions. (Our National Greenhouse Accounts estimate our total emissions were 542.6 Mt CO2-e in the year to June 2014.) We’ve already done the cheap and easy things. The numbers just don’t add up.
The modelling done to prepare for last night’s cabinet meeting suggested that a cut of 26 to 35 per cent would lead to a “forgone GDP percentage change” of 0.02 to 0.04 per cent of GDP by 2030. Gross domestic product is expected to be about $3.3 trillion in 2030 in nominal terms, according to the forecasts set out in the Intergenerational Report issued in March. A 0.02 per cent cut to that amount would equal $660m. Mr Abbott is likely to justify the lower target on the basis that Australia has some of the highest population growth of any developed country, which means emissions are strongly linked to economic growth and population growth.
Australia’s population continues to grow at a rate of about 1.5 per cent a year to 2030, compared with the average in the OECD of 0.4 per cent.
The EU’s population is expected to be stagnant to 2030 and Japan’s population is predicted to fall by 0.3 per cent a year.
—The Australian, Tony Abbott cuts ambitions on carbon
Tony Abbott will not be attending the Paris Climate Junket.
This information and the truth it exposes is something that should be on change.org
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The main benefit in the Liberal Target may be in the Social Security area.
If this Green Target can be translated into a community imperative that all unemployed on “benefits” must contribute to the advertised “Tree Planting” for Australia, then we may ALL benefit.
Yes!
Getting out in the Sun is better than being inside and disengaged.
Capture CO2 by planting trees; what a great idea.
And if the CO2 capture doesn’t really have any scientific significance, so what.
There has still been a benefit to ALL
KK
270
It’s funny that the Howard government set up the ‘green corps’ in 1996, and I recall it being ridiculed by Labor, yet, on paper at least, it was a great concept. Presumably, like all schemes like this, in practice it was about as useful as a punch in the face for most of the people involved, but you never know, I suppose.
Of course I keep forgetting that the current crop of noisy die-hard Labor supporters prefer that the government provides everything without the recipients exerting effort, so they would oppose any such scheme…
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I’ve seen the Green Army in action on my local rounds, skeptical of anything labeled “Green” thanks to learned behavior of witnessing “Green outcomes” for years I was pleasantly surprised see they did actual work that made a real world difference to the physical environment, for a moment I thought I’d had drifted into an alternate Bizzaro World where evrything is opposite to ours.
To a warmist it may not be as important as reducing emissions to save the unicorn populations of neverland but to us realists stopping further creekbank erosion that will eventually claim a walk path or someones land isn’t a bad start.
220
When my daughter left school in the Howard era with very good uni entry scores…. she had no idea what she wanted to do…
From a farming family, she went rousabouting and then joined the green army…which got her a job with a fencing contractor…….has since gone on to get a degree and now self employed in her own business, in the horse industry, and not related to either of the above but still rural…..the green army definitely helped.
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For gods sake, give them an axe, not seedlings to plant. As it is, too much of our grazing country is reverting to useless scrub.
Despite owning a chain saw, an axe, mattock, a ripper & tree spear on the tractor, I am having a battle keeping my ex totally bare turf farm down to a nice parklike tree cover.
Every time we get a couple of consecutively wet years the seedlings appear like ants.
This is nothing. I think my neighbour has given up trying to keep his 10,000 acres grazing area productive. He was saying the other day, fighting weed infestations, & controlling woody weeds & saplings is today costing about as much as the place can earn. Just controlling the declared noxious weeds is becoming prohibitively expensive.
Over 25 years I have watched his well developed improved pasture revert to scrub. The chemical tools are continually taken away, & tree cover becomes thick enough to hide stock from roundup. His carrying capacity has halved, & his earning capacity has reduced by about 80%.
Time for us to join the public service. We might as well be paid to be non-productive.
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Trees have their place but not filling good arable land, the new batch of environmental officers seem to think farmers are eco vandals that have no idea of agricultural rejuvination, maybe they can explain how Australian farmers suvived and grew from the mid 1800’s without constant disaterous stories of famine and desolation?
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It is no wonder that [SNIP]
[no no no no no no. Way too angry]ED
30
My guess is that Hasbeen’s neighbour switched from Merino sheep to cattle after the politicians bankrupted the world trade in wool. Am I right? Sheep control scrub regrowth much better than cattle do. This applies to a very big part of Australia. Yonniestone’s new batch of environmental officers have been trained to think farmers are eco vandals. Those new batch of environmental officers and their mentors have no idea of the land degradation that has resulted from the desperate lack of funding for maintenance since wool was crippled in 1990. This is particularly visible in those declared noxious weeds to which Hasbeen refers.
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Ted
And don’t discount the losses in commercial value of grazing land under the various native vegetation acts that are uncompensated a la Peter spencer. He’s not the only one.
And the areas we’re inflicted with to “preserve our heritage” are about as pristine as a recycled virginity
100
His neighbor should’ve ran Goats, they’ll eat all the weeds and any old farm machinery lying around.
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HasBeen
You’ve got my vote there.
We have bush all through and around Newcastle and it is all “natural” now.
While it is true that the local area was seriously denuded of trees to support mining, when I was a kid the bush had lots of 20 year old tees and little undergrowth, making it very attractive.
The “bush” now is chock a block with every sort of verminous weed and tangle of undergrowth imaginable and needs urgent sorting by Tony Abbott’s green army.
National Parks are a shambles and no better than the local scrub which all looks unloved and neglected.
KK
170
The vines covering trees is increasing around Barrington National Park (Great Dividing Range) and in many other areas up and down the east coast. Friends who have spent their lives riding Horses, capturing Brumbies and earlier grazing Cattle have told me that the remote areas of the Snowy Mountains are becoming thickly entangled with Blackberry and other plants that are ready to fuel more very hot wild fires, the pastures are disappearing since the ban on grazing was reinstated by the present Labor Government of Victoria.
110
When you say “chemical tools being taken away” I’m not sure if you mean being denied herbicides, but at a general level, part of the UN Agenda 21 is the concept of “rewilding”
It means basicially what it says – reverting most of australia to its original scrub, pushing farmers off land, and pushing everyione onto high density mega-cities.
One big benefit to the eco-loonies is that by shoving people into highly dense cities, a high death rate from an introduced lethal pathogen of choice is guaranteed, similar to the days of old in europe with the black death….
Cut off water & power, lock down the city, drop in a few spores and wait….
Anyone who tries to escape is shot. You cant go into the countryside, that is verbotten.
You have to see the bigger picture…..
Agenda 21 at its heart is heavy handed control ( and culling ) of humans.
00
“The main benefit in the Liberal Target may be in the
Social Securitypolitical area.If this Green Target can be translated into a community imperative that all
unemployed on “benefits”bureaucrats paid with public money must contribute to the advertised “Tree Planting” for Australia, then we may ALL benefit.Yes!
Getting out in the Sun is better than being inside and
disengaged in writing useless regulations.Capture CO2 by planting trees; what a great idea.
And if the CO2 capture doesn’t really have any scientific significance, so what.
There has still been a benefit to ALL by getting some useful work out of a bureaucrat while keeping them from messing up the economy.”
There, fixed it for you KK
50
Thanks Gai
Have just come back from a holiday in Vienna.
The “woods” there would never be allowed to become overgrown with rubbish weeds and stuff climbing over trees.
Sometimes nature needs a hand from goats, sheep, the unemployed or even fires to keep things workable.
KK
40
You should also include numbers for ALP’s Climate plans as a “compare and contrast”.
90
How do we get our elected representatives to do a little bit of scientific sleuthing for themselves? They might discover that CO2 has minimal effect on climate. They then may find the courage to lead the world out of the economy destroying “drama-queen “scenario developed by Gore and perpetuated by Obamaa. Until then any complaint about budget deficits etc is just a smoke screen for our politicians’ inability to think for themselves.
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West Australian Liberal MP Dennis Jensen said no emission target was needed.
He is the only real scientist the Party has and they shut him down from saying the hiatus proves CO2 does not cause global warming.
463
It proves nothing of the sort. It proves the TCS is very small or zero.
If you believe the ECS is proven to be zero, it must be impossible for natural variation to have overwhelmed CO2 for 18 years. In which case it’s impossible for CO2 to have overwhelmed natural variation 1980-98, which proves the ECS is NOT zero. Your claim fails by contradiction.
423
Could you translate that into English please?
180
Andrew is referring to effective climate sensitivity (ECS) – IPCC
‘The transient climate response (TCR) is the temperature change at the time of CO2 doubling and the equilibrium climate sensitivity…’
150
You mean a respeak to oldspeak?
I’ve found a doubleplusgood textwrite that does it, Winston says Goldstein left it there, so no-let the Ministry of Love find out…
http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/ns-dict.html
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What are you on? Natural variation is far more dominant than CO2. It overwhelms it by orders of magnitude. Fool.
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If Mr Jensen actually said that then he would be legitimately recognised as a waste of space in parliament.
Warming from CO2 is additive to surface irradiance and tropospheric temperature and so it is additional to whatever else nature was going to do at that time. If nature was going to cool off and the “ECS_2xCO2” is weak but still greater than zero then in combination a global hiatus can still occur.
As it happens (lucky for us) I can’t find a quote from Mr Jensen actually saying such nonsense.
The nearest I can find is this at Their ABC in July 2015:
In one of Jensen’s few parliamentary speeches on the topic in 2008 he never mentioned sensitivity and didn’t say there was no warming from CO2, saying only that the models have failed to predict atmospheric and oceanic heat trends.
If Mr Jensen had actually said something as nonsensical as “the hiatus proves CO2 does not cause global warming” you can be sure Their ABC would have reported it.
There’s a raft of empirically-based attempts to estimate ECS_2xCO2 and these results are frequently celebrated in the skeptical blogosphere when they show figures significantly less than the IPCC’s infamous 2 degrees per doubling, such as 1.6, 1.3, 1.1, or 0.8, but in every case it is greater than zero.
107
The “hiatus” if we can be confident of our ability to sense it, proves that we do not know what if ANY effect CO2 has on climate.
Your assumption that CO2 must have “greater than zero” effect is made without sufficient empirical support. This made evident by your own mention of the “raft” of attempts to estimate sensitivity, all of which fail when confronted with an apparent “hiatus”.
212
ECS2xCO2 is what happens if CO2 is the only factor that changes. Your muddle-headed hiatus argument assumes there is no natural variability in the Earth climate forcings. Now who’s making unsupported assumptions?
Oh? You agree there are natural variances in Earth’s climate forcings? Then they can cancel or overpower CO2 forcing for some period, which allows a temperature hiatus to occur. As sure as (+1W/m² + -1W/m²) * 1yr = 0 Joules/m². By itself that doesn’t tell us how strong CO2 is. What it does is show that your argument is nonsense. A hiatus does not imply CO2 warming is zero.
The fact that everything with an albedo less than 1.0 is heated by infrared radiation implies the effect of CO2 is greater than zero.
Here are the real world measurements from one of several atmospheric IR radiometer stations. GHGs are the only explanation for why the ground receives 200W/m^2 longwave radiation from the sky at night during winter at a place 600km from the nearest major body of water and 1600km from the nearest ocean. Are you going to argue that adding more CO2 causes zero increase in air’s absorbance of IR, or that causes zero increase in downwelling LWIR, or that LWIR can’t heat the land, or that the land can’t heat the air? Are you going to argue with Tony Heller? It will be comical either way.
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NO McRae, I said you don’t KNOW. I did not say I do know. Read more carefully muddle brain.
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Nope, Mark D, you absolutely did say:
What you argued in the above single sentence was that a CO2 climate sensitivity estimate greater than zero has failed when a temperature hiatus occurs. I understand exactly what you said, you can’t wriggle out of that.
If the above is not what you meant then you should not have written something different to your intended meaning. I can only judge based on what you actually did say.
210
In spite of your bluster I’m not compelled to “wriggle” out of anything.
Or you could interpret what I said to mean that with a hiatus we can’t KNOW that zero CO2 sensitivity isn’t a a possibility.
Generally it’s easier for me to want to help the comprehension challenged reader when they are polite. Please make a note for yourself.
By the way, Andrew, I’d like to meet you in person. I’m sure that in person I could find the real Andrew. The one that is actually charming, polite and friendly enough to stand being around.
Then again I might be wrong.
00
Mark D.,
English isn’t helping you much, so we’ll have to be more precise.
The quote of the original statement again:
With exactly the same meaning:
The proposition that CO2 must have greater than zero effect has empirically failed when confronted with an apparent hiatus.
More formally: dT/dt=0 ⇒ Not(
ECS2xC02> 0 )equivalent to: dT/dt=0 ⇒
ECS2xC02≤ 0where
ECS2xC02∈ Reals.You’ve said I should interpret the above quote to mean this new second statement: “with a hiatus we can’t KNOW that zero CO2 sensitivity isn’t a possibility”, which without the deliberate obfuscation of the double-negative is:
with a hiatus we know that zero CO2 sensitivity is a possibility.
More formally: dT/dt=0 ⇒
ECS2xC02∈ {X⊆Reals : 0∈X}But being a subset of the Reals already implies 0 is a possible value and it doesn’t have to be 0, so this is
equivalent to: dT/dt=0 ⇒ true
The second condition is weaker than the first condition and a weaker condition is more easily satisfied than a stronger condition, therefore the statements do not have the same meaning. In fact the second condition is the weakest possible statement and tells us nothing. Some wriggling has verifiably occurred between the original and second statements.
Your communication abilities are not as error-free as you have assumed. My comprehension skills are fine as I understand your words more precisely than you do. No need to argue semantics further.
There was no suggestion in your previous comment that you were arguing the effect on surface temperature was negative. I initially did not interpret your statement to be such a claim, though in hindsight I now see that is also a possible interpretation of those words. It was only my assumption you were excluding negative values, though this was not a safe assumption as you have not been sensible about the matter. Under the assumption negative values are excluded, your original statement implies the value is zero.
My oversight regarding negative values lead to one incorrect description of your argument (i.e. A hiatus implies CO2 warming is zero) but this does not invalidate my exposition of the fallacy in your reasoning about the meaning of the hiatus, which I expand upon next.
In an initial state of ignorance all values are possible by default, then evidence narrows the range by excluding possibilities. A hiatus fails to exclude zero as a possibility for the trivial reason that the system has more than one forcing factor in it (other than CO2).
A blinkered assumption of CO2 being the only climate driver is the only circumstance where a hiatus during rising CO2 would be considered an instant disproof of a non-zero strength. As long as some other cooling factor can be found to fully account for the hiatus (eg cessation of solar activity) there is no need to revise the CO2 sensitivity downward at all. The more factors that contribute to climate the more model components other than CO2 which may be in error when simulation doesn’t match measurement. Only when other factors can’t empirically provide the required offset does the CO2 have to be revised downward, but that still does not imply it must be zero and therefore estimates greater than zero have not failed due to a hiatus.
As you are too stubborn to admit that error you’ve now resorted to a creepy mixture of pretensions about being a nice guy while issuing more ad-hominems which (after the tone of your previous comment) can easily be interpreted as threatening physical violence towards me in real life. You said you want to meet someone in real life who in your opinion is impolite, unfriendly, and you wouldn’t want to be around them. That leaves primarily sinister interpretations for the motive of your meeting, but I will not be continuing this thread to find out how you try to wriggle out of that one.
And yes, I was impolite, I don’t suffer fools kindly. For that, and for that alone, I apologise.
00
Andrew, I don’t know what I can say if you are able to imagine anything creepy or threatening in my words. I said that part because many times I have read the things people here and other blogs (even my own words sometimes) seem to forget that they are still speaking with other real people. It is too easy to be impatient, rude and impolite. behavior that we would usually never expect if we were discussing in person.
All my first comment was meant to say is that we (you included) can’t KNOW what CO2 is doing. I repeated it in the next response to you after you accused me of muddle headedness. I made no claim that CO2 sensitivity IS or has to be zero. I made no claim that there are no other forcings. (yes that is a double negative) Really simple and it appears that many others read it correctly and approved of what I said. Perhaps they too are muddled but then again maybe it’s something in you.
Now here we are and you’ve accused me of intentionally obfuscating by typing double negative. It most certainly was an intentional assembling of words but obfuscation was not the goal. I simply felt it to be MY preferred way of expressing. You don’t have to like what I say. I don’t mind that you correct me or anyone else for that matter but the first “glove” was dropped by you not me. I’ll accept the apology and offer my own for my apparently imperfect language skills.
Even if you prefer to slot me as the fool, after filtering the crap out of our exchange, a third party might actually “get” what both of us are saying. That would be of value to the blog world. I’ll add to it the following statements that are not in conflict with what I have already said:
Most recent estimates of CO2 sensitivity for doubling have a range of about 3C (IPCC) and lower. The lowest sensitivity to CO2 alone may likely be higher than zero but we are unable to prove that with current empirical measurements. Higher than zero sensitivity is an assumption based only on calculations not empirical measurement. When we consider all known forcings we expose our lack of understanding of how the atmosphere behaves and our still limited ability to measure it.
The unexpected temperature “hiatus” demonstrates nothing specific about CO2 but it does strongly demonstrate the limitations in our ability to calculate how the atmosphere behaves. Since the estimates of forcing ability of CO2 are CALCULATIONS then they must be lumped into the latter reality.
Andrew, I’d appreciate your comments and even corrections.
00
Andrew McRae, Then how do you explain this?
http://www.solen.info/solar/cycles1_24.png
Notice cycle 8 centered around 1840. Here is just that cycle.
http://www.solen.info/solar/cycle8.png
It starts in 1834 ends ~1844
Now apply Dr Evans Notch-Delay solar theory (add 11 years). That gives dates of 1845 to 1855.
So what happened in that time frame when the sun ‘woke up’?
You got a climate shift in the decade starting from 1845 JUST WHERE DR EVAN’S THEORY SAID IT WOULD BE! Absolutely NO CO2 needed.
If you thing the sunspot numbers should be stomped flat as L.S. thinks, you can use the other measurement method used by Dr Nir Shaviv the Be10 Solar Proxy.
http://www.sciencebits.com/sites/default/files/pictures/climate/SolarActivityProxies.png
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Excellent rebuttal.
61
el gordo,
Gai claimed it is possible to use a model that has no CO2 sensitivity component to successfully predict a change in climate that occurred during a time when CO2 did not appreciably rise. This is completely unsurprising. Such a model would also be useless for telling us what should happen (if anything) when CO2 does rise. That doesn’t sound like a model that would be useful at the present.
Secondly, at no stage in my comment did I claim all warming was due to CO2, so arguing for a solar influence does not contradict any part of my comment.
In summary, Gai’s comment is useless for predicting global warming and it wasn’t a rebuttal to anything I said.
But that comment is what you described as an “excellent rebuttal”.
You are just one of many people (at least 10) here who should practice thinking before posting.
01
If you thing the sunspot numbers should be stomped flat as L.S. thinks
Just to add to that have a look at the doctored charts that were in the press release over at Tallbloke’s blog.
80
IMO the new correction of the sunspot numbers, called the ‘Sunspot Number Version 2.0’, by a team led by Frédéric Clette (Director of the World Data Centre [WDC]-SILSO), Ed Cliver (National Solar Observatory) and Leif Svalgaard (Stanford University, California, USA) is more sciency blather.
It attempts to nullify the claim that there has been a Modern Grand Maximum, but also seems to be nothing more than a vainity project with the aim of making them look important in Paris.
Yet more snake oil shrouded in smoke and mirrors, with the last two sun cycles (23, and 24) edited out from their charts so you don’t see a decline in solar output (hide the decline?).
This ‘research’ leaves the door wide open for later ‘recalibration’ (a la BOM, GISS, etc.) to reduce the importance of the very apparent natural variations that have/are occurred/occurring.
What possible worth is this ‘recalibration’ to science? In the words of Dr. Nir Shaviv about this solar recalibration, ‘irrelavent’ . For the progress of ‘climate science’ it is at best a willful distraction, and at worst… ?
60
Gai, you are trying to challenge me with evidence contradicting claims I have never made. You have no idea who I am or what arguments I have adopted, yet you are confident in assuming you know what I believe or why I believe it. Please stop imagining things. It is unfair. You can imagine my arguments much quicker than I can communicate them, so I will never catch up to you at that rate.
In particular, how on Earth has arguing about solar activity forcing of the climate got any connection with establishing whether CO2 has a contribution? The only requirement is that all causes in combination must produce the observed history and every cause must have an independently quantified mechanism.
Using the existence of one factor to argue there are no others is warmist logic. It goes like this…
Question: “Why do you attribute most of the late 20th century warming to CO2?”
IPCC logic: Because we can’t imagine it being anything else.
Question: “Why do you attribute no 20th century warming to CO2?”
Gai’s logic: Because I don’t want to venture beyond solar activity.
It’s the same fallacy of motivated reasoning in both cases.
By contrast…
Question: “Why do you attribute most of the 20th century warming to an increase in solar activity with a minor contribution from CO2 and the AMO?”
Reasonable inference logic: 1) The causal link from solar activity to changes in climate definitely exists at all other time scales and one mechanism has been proven in the lab, so it should exist in the 19th and 20th century. The strength of the Svensmark Effect is difficult to determine from proxies but a guess can be made given that any changes in earth’s albedo over the 11-year solar cycle must be too small to be detected by the satellites of the 1980s and 1990s within their 1% error margin.
2) The conventional radiative transfer models are correct to within 10% at every wavelength in every other radiative prediction they make so it is reasonable to accept their prediction of 3.7W/m² per doubling of CO2 before feedbacks. The radiative gases intercept (and therefore delay the departure of) the outgoing surface radiation because their absorption spectrum overlaps mainly with earth temperature spectrum and not solar radiation. Even the most shrill detractor of the global warming hyperbole agrees increases in CO2 increase DWLWIR and warming.
3) Infra-red radiation heats things up, obviously, or ceramic element stoves wouldn’t work. To the extent the boundary layer air contains H2O and CO2 that layer can be heated from below by the surface and from above by CO2 which is not political and radiates in all directions as measured by radiometers.
4) There is definitely a global temperature influence from whatever drives the AMO, so smoothing the AMO and HadSST3 will find the most recent period and amplitude, with the 20th century trend influenced by the fact the century started on the low part of a cycle and finished on the high part of the next cycle.
5) There are many other phenomena contributing to climate but these 3 seem to be ones which have on average altered significantly on periods greater than 5 years and less than 200 years, so I don’t have a problem with ignoring everything else as long as these 3 factors are enough for the task at hand.
6) With a solar activity forecast and a bit of tweaking of other fudge factors like convective cooling and the water vapour GHE, I can make a simple statistical model that matches the history, hindcasts the hiatus successfully, and predicts future cooling.
I have used the apparent fidelity of my simple model to argue against the warmists on ScienceOfDoom and for solar activity being the main factor in recent temperature, for which I was appropriately and politely grilled. When my interlocutor asked me exactly which evidence quantifies the conversion of sunspot change into a change in forcing from clouds, I had no answer because I don’t know of any publicly available paper which has done this. I found a paper by a fellow named Rao which hypothesises a conversion rate starting with the magnetic field, but I still have to convert sunspot counts into a heliospheric magnetic field strength before I can use his conversion factor for the final step. The development of the model is unfinished.
With a dating error of 20 years I’m not sure how you used it to explain an event that requires less than 5 years error for establishing cause-and-effect. I don’t think you’re asking me to explain solar cycle peak variances because the dynamo theory of solar activity is a mystery still being figured out by the world’s top plasma physicists and I’m quite happy to let the experts sort that one out in their own sweet time.
If you are asking how I explain an abrupt temperature increase in 1843 without any large industrial CO2, I would explain it the same way I have done for several years, which is the change in solar activity altered climate on Earth. You wouldn’t be surprised at my response if you had either been paying attention on this blog for the last 5 years or had refrained from jumping to conclusions.
I’d love to but Dr Evans admitted the last one released failed on closer inspection by one of the commentators and the new one has not been released. There’s more I could say (and have said) about the mysterious Force X and the ND model, but this whole thread is already offtopic and this isn’t the place for it. In the meantime I’ll stick with factors that have experimental support, like solar wind and the Svensmark effect.
As for your insinuations about “stomping” historic data flat, I was about as irritated as anybody that the historic record was being fiddled with, so Gai I disliked your insinuation on my character.
Solar activity is the main player in the Current Warm Period and for the last 5 years I’ve said that consistently.
22
Notice in this interview Roy Spencer is getting even less “lukewarm’. More emphasis on El Nino:
“Spencer on Varney & Co Talking Obama’s Clean Power Plan”
http://www.drroyspencer.com/
21
Andrewmcrae says:
conspiracy Ideation?
Inferiority complex?
Projection?
No just forgot he was sitting in front of a mirror
01
Water is the dominant radiative gas in the atmosphere. In the form of clouds its net impact is to reduce heat input to the globe. That is easily observed, measurable to reasonable accuracy and well known. The net impact of CO2 is unknown and unmeasurable. No one knows what impact it has on the atmosphere.
40
Andrew.
You wrote: “The fact that everything with an albedo less than 1.0 is heated by infrared radiation implies the effect of CO2 is greater than zero.”
Nonsense. Because all real matter (that is, everything) has an albedo less than 1.0 and because infrared radiation exists at least for some real-world thermos bottles holding “heated” contents, if your statement on its face value (i.e., without caveats) were true, inserting CO2 gas into the vacuum region of a vacuum thermos bottle would always keep “the heated” contents of a CO2 thermos bottle placed in a “cooler” environment warm for a longer period of time than for identical initial conditions using a “true” vacuum thermos bottle. Such is not the case.
31
It is as usual all about politics. Remember what Christopher Monckton warned about, that Prime Minister Tony Abbott was a target because of his reluctance to blindly follow the climate change con. However, he too has internal party political issues to be wary of, meaning airheads who believe in global warming and then the swinging voters who might get upset if the Coalition was not prepared to act, meaningless as it is. Remember that politicians are a mixed group of people who are into self preservation and self interest, and most do not want to stick their neck out.
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Behind the left’s push to remove Tony Abbott
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NG0WcjGHkEw
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The absolute BEST news from the entire [ost
“Tony Abbott will not be attending the Paris Climate Junket.”
Let’s go LENR!
Cheers,
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And hopefully if there isn’t any agreement there he can dump the whole emissions reduction scam.
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Fool me once, shame on you. Fool twice, shame on me.
June 30, 1989, San Jose Mercury News (CA) : GRIM FORECAST
A senior environmental official at the United Nations, Noel Brown, says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000.
He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human…
~ ~ ~
Hansen 1986 : “2 to 4″ Degrees Warming From 2001-2010
1910: THE END OF THE WORLD COMING.THROUGH AWFUL HEAT, INTENSE COLD, OR FLOOD.”
. . .
A fool and his money is easily parted.
Unfortunately, the choice for my vote was dumb & dumber.
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GDP modelled by the same fools who did CEF for Gillard. Mind you back then they worked out that sending $57bn offshore pa for carbon credits had no effect on us. Hard to see a multiplier on carbon credit paper. Presumably they’ve accounted for “green jobs” planting unwanted trees as equal in GDP to “non green” jobs making and exporting aluminium. So it nets out to zero.
140
My Tweet:
As for the Paris Climate Games, we’re sending our best team, aren’t we? 😉
220
Bernard
Careful! Isn’t best a registered trade mark?
110
Perhaps if we were really nice, and crawled shamelessly, we could convince Kevin Rudd to represent us at the Paris gabfest.
Then we would be assured of paralysis. Just don’t tell Kevin why we really need him.
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LOL, so since the government will not enable the purchase of international carbon permits that means that the full cost of carbon abatement will be paid by Australian tax payers.
And yet this gets spun on this site as a “…a big win”.
How hilarious.
019
You mean send Australian taxation revenue to the UN EU ETS, the failing scheme that is now worth less than A$10.00 a tonne as compared to the Australian carbon tax that started at $23.00 a tonne. The EU ATS that leftist deceivers now claim is what Australia would be paying if Labor had remained in power and joined that TAX to the EU ETS (tax system). But the deceivers try to gloss over the Bill Shorten ALP Conference emissions trading comment that it would be a THREE TIER system. Carbon Tax was not. So three times A$10.00 is A$30.00 and equivalent to Carbon Tax. The true deceivers strike again.
100
Ahem! These [fraud-prone] International Carbon permits would have have been paid for by whom ?
This way at least the money go round stays at home, within sight and supervision of the Australian Govt. That is a masterstroke of withholding of powers from corrupt foreign powers.
How could an adopter of the name of that great Economist have missed that ?
20
Oops. I guess that little excursion to the Carbon Filter is what comes of calling a Fraud a Fraud, instead of mincing words like with the one person operated, manually controlled … masterpiece of prose that this is http://motls.blogspot.co.uk/2010/02/lord-monckton-explains-ipcc-definition.html?m=1
20
Greg Hunt was interviewed by Michael Brissenden on ABC radio today. Despite the fact that I still think he is a lukewarmist and that he goes along with the 2 degree target he did a great job. He did not let Brissenden interrupt him and repeatedly got the message over about Labor’s policy to cost each of us $4,900 pa by 2030.
I sent him this email, to which he replied personally with a thanks.
Hi Greg,
Heard your interview with Michael Brissenden! Well done! You refused to allow him to interrupt you and kept on delivering a very strong message re the $4,900. I particularly liked the fact that you knew the resolution from the Labor conference off pat, and he didn’t.
No doubt you know as well as I do that nothing that Australia does will make anything but an insignificant difference to world CO2 levels (as if it matters anyway, the more CO2 the better) but politics is politics.
Just don’t sell us down the river in Paris – make sure we keep control of our own destiny.
*******
PS – can someone tell me how to insert a link into body text on this site – thanks
330
Hunt is a warmist and in Machiavellian style he released to the media before the Party Room meeting and the sceptic faction was effectively rolled.
Hunt is a disgrace and the monk isn’t far behind.
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Well EG you may as well vote for the clueless Labor or Greens at the next election.
Then you’ll be happy to see us paying billions $ to gangsters overseas for bits of fraudulent paper just so we can exist from year to year. Brilliant move NOT, and zero change to the climate, temp or co2 levels.
120
Keep your shirt on Nev, living in the bush I vote for the Nats.
10
I will not stand for socialism masquerading as environmentalism: Tony Abbott 2014.
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Good work!I for one like to see people engage directly with our elected officials, be it to say something positive, or negative.
This is what annoys me about Australians – they complain that politicians are out of touch (though I feel this claim is not without merit), and of feeling ‘helpless’ and ‘having no control’ but they never make any effort to communicate with any politicians, unless you count facebook clicktivism and ridiculous online petitions.
As for inserting links – highlight the text you want to convert to a link, and then press the blue underlined ‘link’ button above (hopefully you have that?). A pop-up ‘enter the URL’ box will appear, and you can paste your link there.
If you want to do it manually, here’s a quick guide to the format you need to use.
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‘…but they never make any effort to communicate with any politicians’
That’s because we know they don’t listen, unless polling forces them into action.
40
I think it was Mark Twain that said[ Politicians are like diapers and need to be changed often, and for the same reason] you get no sense out of them unless they are harried.
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PeterPetrum,
You asked “PS – can someone tell me how to insert a link into body text on this site – thanks”
Here are some notes I’ve made for formatting comments on WordPress/HTML blog pages. I hope these are helpful.
I believe you need the a (anchor to a web address) as shown below to insert a link within the text.
IMPORTANT Before posting check your comment with the Preview button below the comment box…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There are only a few commands that are useful, and a few more that are pretty much useless. Here are the most useful ones…
A typical HTML formatting command has start and end pieces and has general form of <name>text to be formatted </name>.
A common mistake is to forget the closing tag like </b>. This can have consequences for the entire thread, so please be careful.
Commonly used codes for embedding in comments
Examples —
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
¯
b (bold)
This is <b>bold</b> text
becomes —
This is bold text
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
i (italics)
This is <i>italicized</i> text
becomes —
This is italicized text
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
a (anchor to a web address)
See <a href=http://joannenova.com.au>Jo Nova home page</a>
becomes —
See Jo Nova home page
Note there are three items to insert
1) <a href= ,the opening anchor to the link address.
2) > ,the close of the link address.
3) </a> ,closing code inserted after text incorporating the link.
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
blockquote (indent text)
Blah,Bhla, text <blockquote>quoted text</blockquote>More of my text.
becomes —
¯
Blah,Bhla, text
More of my text.
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Hopefully this is helpful. Happy commenting!
TM
———————————
REPLY: Thanks Tom, I have put in images and explanations about commenting in the Guide to Commenting. It includes information about coding up comments, and how to set your gravatar image. Things like that. It’s a bit long and desperately in need of an edit after 5 years of no attention… — Jo
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Thanks Jo, I saw your ‘How to use comments formatting buttons’, however so many things do not work correctly ( adding color to text, adding headers, Large
I have inserted the correct code in the above comment but as you see none are evident.
Also it may be nice to add an image here but the code inserted from your button does not match the example on your guide. I have an image inserted in that comment!
I must admit I’m not the greatest at this code, that’s why I restrict myself to the few methods I have shown.
Things like numbered lists etc might be nice etc., but are a royal PITA(Pain In The…) as far as I see, and so often do not work correctly in comments.
[TomOmason, the insert image and color function are disabled for regular users. bolding, Link and
do work. I believe it is Jo’s choice of WordPress style that determines which codes work and which are disabled] ED
30
ED
Thank-you for the comments but the reason I mentioned inserting images is because in Guide to Commenting under the section Code to format comments specifies how to do it.
And also in 10 Easy Steps to be a Classy Commentator where it says
As this option is unavailable then surely these parts should be removed (Note: I do not wish to use it as, IMO, inserted images make blogs harder to read.)
Please understand I’m trying to be helpful here but finding HTML tagging information (with examples), for some of us less knowledgable, is a fearsome pain in the ‘arris. WordPress cares not for commenters needs.
[Tom, we agree about some of the WordPress issues. Thanks for your effort in helping sort out HTML tagging. We tend to forget about the possibility that newcomers may be struggling. I use Firefox exclusively and could imagine that other browsers may not work as well with WordPress. What I do know is that some of the tags won’t work no matter how well you do them and that doesn’t help with the pain in the ‘arris does it? Also it is sometimes a bit difficult for us to test things in order to write good instructions because we moderators have added WordPress privileges that don’t match the general subscribers.
I haven’t discussed the image posting with Jo lately but allowing it is fraught with potential problems such as copyright infringement and the potential for clogging the threads with off topic junk. If you or anyone else has a really good image that would be valuable to the blog, send a message to the support email and we can get it sorted out. Images must be moved to a web server and be available into perpetuity and that can be a pain too. ] ED
00
ED
Many thanks for the clarification.
I totally agree, unfortunately not all browsers are created equal. Sometimes I’m forced to use a very basic text browser (lynx) due to ongoing ISP issues.
Thanks TM.
00
with the a href= part I think you need to also put in two quotation marks so you get
a href=”the URL”
20
The quotes are, as far as I know optional, to allow more parameters to be included. I’ve never used them
Test with here
Test without here
I see no differnce but as WordPress says it should I suppose I’m in error. But as that previous link testifies it make no difference.
My Rant!…
As an aside it would be good if WordPress would put a basic formating tutorial for commenters only , instead of those pages and pages of nearly indecipherable bilge they have put out. Commenters want quick and easy. I do not want to learn even more coding!
Apologies if there is a WordPress ‘commenters tutorial’ it ain’t obviously found from a web search. Having to do all this HTML tag crud is just like the early days of wordprocessing were you had to manually insert escape codes all over the place to make things look and print correctly.
It’s about time blog software providers improved there act!
Wordpress build by coders for coders.
Rant ends 🙂
10
Thanks Tom, Jo and Gai. I’ll have a go later. If I make a mess of it, please forgive me!
10
A common measure of CO2 “emissions” is tonnes per capita. With a -28% reduction in emissions from 1990 and a growth in capita of +38%, then emissions are now only about 52% per capita of what they were, an effective reduction of about 48%.
Perhaps someone could point out to Mr. Abbott that further reductions aren’t necessary, because of such stupendous results achieved by his No Carbon Taxes policies … 🙂 (gotta assign the blame usefully!)
183
You’re double counting. Per capita emissions fell 28% – emissions rose.
90
Yes, sophocles, Andrew has it right. They had already accounted for the growth in population.
Note that without land use, the per capita emissions fell by only 8%. This is the sort of change that gradual efficiency can achieve. Getting another 18% for each of us by 2030 seems quite another tall order.
I suppose we could stop farming, and just let it all regrow eh?
Or do some serious greening of the deserts…
120
Or do some serious greening of the deserts…
But Jo that would need much higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere to do that.
Is that what is known as a circular argument?
40
Might be a good idea to “green” our deserts.
New study.
20
scaper…,
Excellent catch!
20
Do you mean I can’t engage in The Modern Spirit of “lies, damned lies, and statistics,” after all? (The three levels of unreliable witness: liars, damned liars and experts.) Expletive deleted, it looked to be such fun. Arrhenius got it wrong with his Arrhenius Hypothesis, for the contribution of CO2 to atmospheric warming in the same tradition. He ignored Knut Angstrom’s objections despite Angstrom’s laboratory experiments. (He didn’t get it right, either.) Angstrom hadn’t won a Nobel Prize. Neither had Dr. Mann and neither have I :-). So I’m in good company.
However, Richard Feynman did win a Nobel prize. Feynman published his proof of the Maxwell-Claudius-Carnot greenhouse effect which only requires an atmosphere of 99% Oxygen and Nitrogen (the present atmosphere) in the presence of gravity at 1G in Chapter 40 of the Feynman Lectures. No CO2 nor methane are required.
Your Point, though, is taken.
Jo said:
Stop farming? The Grasses may have something to say to that. King Grass is in control. Not us. Maize, rice and wheat have efficiently and effectively tamed this versatile, inventive, exceedingly helpful and plentiful animal. Oats, barleys, ryes, clovers, sugar canes and other grasses have climbed aboard. I can’t see us being permitted to stop farming them, ever. They won’t allow it.
Attempting to re-green deserts outside their cycle’s time won’t work either. They’re in the atmospheric ‘Desert Zone,’ where the dry air from the equatorial Hadley cells descends, which is why they are deserts and why they appear in the belts around the globe above and below each of the Tropics. The zone shifts away to greater lattitudes and back depending on the Solar Cycles. Nothing will work until there is another Holocene Optimum type change. Increased CO2 levels are suggestive of some improvement so don’t sell that SUV.
North Africa was green with lakes and hippopotami 8,000 years ago. The Sahara came back without any human help. History strongly suggests re-greening the Sahara and other deserts without copious rainfall isn’t at all likely according to this paper, until the next inter-stadial. The Long Term Solar Cycles it introduces fit alongside the recent Solar Dual Dynamo discovery. Long term Solar Oscillations layperson’s analysis is here. )
Long term coolth looks to be likely, bottoming out around 2030-2050. If this should prove correct, we’re in for a a long term bumpy ride.
So any CO2 reduction attempts are, IMHO, pointless. Expensively so. We have to look to maintaining our Grasses.
30
“Tim Flannery has said the government’s draft proposals to cut Australian carbon emissions by 30 per cent by 2030 was “vastly inadequate”.
So Tim Flannel does not agree with the governments proposed emissions target. Why is this man still relevant?! (only at the ABC I suspect)
Why should we care what he thinks!
Regards
Geoffrey Williams
311
The man who warned that by 2000 the Sydney Opera House would be under water, the man who owns two properties on the banks of the Hawkesbury River just north of Sydney. Zero credibility. And that the dams would never fill again.
130
In all of human has there ever been a government policy more ineptly stupid or pointlessly futile as attempting to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions in order to supposedly reduce global surface temperatures by an impossible-to-quantify miniscule amount, that will have precisely zero impact on the planet or its inhabitants, at a cost of untold $£trillions?
Welcome to Peak Stupid.
411
I think you should wait to see what happens in Paris before declaring peak stupidity just yet.
170
Australia’s exclusive economic zone already absorbs at least 10 times the co2 emissions that we emit every year.
See the multi authored book “Taxing Air.”
Therefore to be fair I think that we should be paid reparations by the rest of the world. Ya gotta laugh.
251
The EU achieves its targets by burning anything that isn’t fossilized yet: trash, imported woodchips, pig belches, canola…you name it.
Pity the ABC is fossilized. Plenty of waste to burn there.
241
SBS too, and ask why Australia needs two public broadcasters funded by the private sector taxpayers including broadcasters that pay tax.
60
That costing does seem low.
Nine news gives a different figure for the cost of these CO2 emissions reductions:
Is it 0.3% or 0.04% by 2030? Someone’s got a decimal point out of place.
But don’t worry, it’s only the poor taxpaying mugs who have to pay for it, what’s a power of ten difference matter for serfs?
Either way, the (formerly) great prophet Tonekiel al Abbottabad has shown us that the real reality is not important, only the political reality is important, spine is unnecessary. It’s a bit sad when the nicest thing we can say about this outcome is that it could have been worse.
Aaaand since the Paris talks are a treaty negotiation, this might only be the starting point for a negotiation that will go up. Isn’t that a horrible thought?
54
If you adopt a different calculation to our hostess, based on the cutting of emissions from electricity generation, then the actual “reduction” in greenhouse gases (whatever they are) amounts to 0.11%.
Assuming that wind farm energy is ONLY 3 times more expensive than coal, such a change would raise electricity by 54%. If the actual cost of electricity from wind farms was the same as the figure given by the manager of Lake Bonney S.A. some 4 years ago, then the cost will go up by just over 70%.
90
Just a note on Graeme’s comment.
If you’re constructing wind farms (or PV, etc) to abate “carbon emissions”; you’re only fooling yourself. All of that redundant construction (because you always need about 99% in shadow capacity/spinning reserve from reliables) only shift future emissions into the present, while creating a headache in demolition and disposal for the future.
Is it irony that these so-called “environmentalists” aren’t at all thinking about the future? Or is it all crony capitalists (and worse) hiding under a green flag?
10
Thanks Andrew, Graeme,
I copied the costing from this article in The Australian. As I said “it doesn’t add up”. For a policy this important, it’s bizarre that there are not even good rubbery numbers. (I’ll add the link in). Thanks for any insight you can give. David Crowe in The Australian , does not appear to be remotely sceptical (judging by this article) where the quote I used came from.
There is a longer quote on a different article about the $660m.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate/tony-abbott-cuts-ambitions-on-carbon/story-e6frg6xf-1227478033410
“The modelling done to prepare for last night’s cabinet meeting suggested that a cut of 26 to 35 per cent would lead to a “forgone GDP percentage change” of 0.02 to 0.04 per cent of GDP by 2030. Gross domestic product is expected to be about $3.3 trillion in 2030 in nominal terms, according to the forecasts set out in the Intergenerational Report issued in March. A 0.02 per cent cut to that amount would equal $660m. Mr Abbott is likely to justify the lower target on the basis that Australia has some of the highest population growth of any developed country, which means emissions are strongly linked to economic growth and population growth.
Australia’s population continues to grow at a rate of about 1.5 per cent a year to 2030, compared with the average in the OECD of 0.4 per cent.
The EU’s population is expected to be stagnant to 2030 and Japan’s population is predicted to fall by 0.3 per cent a year.”
Earlier in the article it said:
“One submission from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade estimated the 26 per cent target would cut economic output by 0.02 per cent at the end of the target period compared with “business as usual” without the new target, sources told The Australian last night.
While the official modelling did not put a dollar figure on that outcome, it would mean a $660 million reduction in the size of the economy in 2030 and similar amounts every year thereafter when applied to the long-range forecasts issued by Treasury in the Intergenerational Report earlier this year. “
91
OK, this Nova100 radio report gives an origin for the 0.3% :
Hang on, they’re both saying these different estimates are from the same source.
I just realised. 0.02% * (2030-2015) = 0.3%. Maybe somebody just multiplied a per-year percentage by 15 years, as though that would mean anything. But that still doesn’t explain where Nine got the 0.4 from.
Will the real cost please stand up?
31
Jo,
I feel that Australia is doing what nearly all the Western nations are trying…
“A 0.02 per cent cut to that amount would equal $660m. Mr Abbott is likely to justify the lower target on the basis that Australia has …”
and
“One submission from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade estimated the 26 per cent target would cut economic output by 0.02 per cent at the end of the target period …
Start with less than accurate low figures, and then later raise the bar, then raise again then …
How to cook a frog?
Put into cool water and gradually raise the heat.
Huummm, announce cool regulation right now. Not too bad, eh? Recalculate later, awaiting then next bad weather event, then just a bit more …
50
Sorry jo, i tried to give you thumbs up, but misfired..
Sorry again,
Dave B
20
Bottom line is we don’t need to do anything and Australians will be financially better off.
We need to rebuild many domestic industries wich will reignite the economy, confidence and pride, reducate people that work = reward.
If other Australians feel so socially concerned to take action do so with your own F&^%$#g money!
211
Yonnie, I would suggest that they move to North Korea where they can live a true low carbon life style.
Best of all it has short summers, long winters and mostly consists of hills and mountains to allay any fears of sea level rise or a 2C increase in temperature. Just to add the cherry to the cake, it has a nice communist government I know the
WatermelonsGreens would love.60
ABC continues to broadcast any climate alarmist statement without dismissive questioning.
ABC continues to dismiss any anti-alarmist scepticism without broadcast.
ABC has a plane-load of staffers booked to promote the Paris climate change talkfest in December.
ABC has… ( contributions welcome )
200
ABC has not clicked to this
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2015/8/10/in-which-nature-climate-validates-my-predictive-models.html
I’ve just sent this to a friend who was always aiming to get a “Letter to Nature” published and suggested that he concentrate on golf
110
ABC has no reason to be publically funded, if I were to arm my enemy I’d make sure the weapon didn’t work, not supply good weapons that’ll take me out.
160
The days may be close at hand,
When freezing sweeps over the land,
That more’carbon’ emissions,
Boosting growing conditions,
By Government agents is planned.
160
‘Both major parties committed to a cut of between 5% and 25% by 2020. Australia is likely to meet a 5% target, primarily because of lower electricity demand and the closure of heavy manufacturing.’
Lenore Taylor / Guardian
90
PM can’t even get a headline minus the critics. Business does get a couple of lines, but the rest involves all the usual suspects. biased? nah.
11 Aug: ABC: Carbon emissions: Tony Abbott defends climate targets which critics say don’t go far enough
By national environment reporter Jake Sturmer and political reporter Anna Henderson
(OPENING PARA) Prime Minister Tony Abbott says Australia’s climate targets have struck the right balance between protecting the economy and the environment, but green groups believe the Government’s commitment is inadequate and does not go far enough to avoid dangerous climate change…
(PARA THREE) The Opposition and the Greens argue that would put Australia at the “back of the pack” when it comes to international action on climate change…
Mark Butler said the Government’s target was not high enough…
interactive insert: TOP 15 EMITTERS MAP
Sources: Climate Institute Climate, Action Tracker, Climate Change Authority, Global Carbon Atlas
China is the world’s top emitter in total and of the top 15 emitters, Australia is the largest emitter per capita…
MORE MARK BUTLER…
Greens environment spokeswoman Larissa Waters said Australia would be judged harshly for the policy.
“We are now one of the worst offenders compared to other developed nations,” she said.
“[These are] incredibly weak climate pollution targets from an incredibly weak Prime Minister, who is in absolute denial about the science.”
She said…BLAH BLAH ON AND ON…
Business groups have voiced support for the Government’s position, with the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry applauding the target as “realistic”….
“Setting really high levels that are simply impossible to meet, or alternatively impact on energy prices and the competitiveness of Australian industry, is a mistake.”…
The Climate Institute previously argued for a much higher target to ensure Australia could meet its international commitment to keep global warming to less that 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels.
“This one is a big fail. It’s a fail on climate, it’s a fail on community and a fail on competitiveness,” said tie Institute’s chief executive John Connor.
“On these numbers we would still be the most pollution-intensive economy in the developed world in 2030.”
The Climate Council, which was set up when the Abbott Government abolished the Climate Commission, also criticised the Coalition’s approach…
Related article: Abbott’s love of coal holding us back
insert graph: How carbon emissions reduction targets compare
Source: Climate Change Authority, Climate Action Tracker, The Climate Institute
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-08-11/tony-abbott-brushes-off-criticism-of-climate-targets/6688214
60
Why does anybody complain about Tony Abbott. Vote Labor or anything else and see what happens. He has to try an make everyone happy. People will not like him, no matter what he does.
180
The Coalition was handed a minefield of problems by Labor and face a Labor Greens dominated hostile senate blocking or amending just about all important legislation and then claiming the government is incompetent. They are assisted by ABC/SBS and other left leaning media outlets. The propaganda exercise is huge. And too many people including voters who would not like to have Union Labor Greens back in power assist by repeating the smear campaign agenda and expressing dissatisfaction with Tony Abbott and the Coalition. Politics is all about perception and most voters are not politically aware enough to see past the dirt being thrown. Labor spin doctors must be congratulating themselves for creating discontent and diverting attention away from the many achievements of the government.
100
Abbott is being disingenuous, he knows the science on global warming is ‘crap’ but being a political animal he will do anything to stay in power.
20
Well, as I pointed out TO the prime minister in my submission as CO2 level increases, plants use more of it, since Australia absorbs 20 times It’s man-made emissions, the 10 PPM increase in CO2 has caused about a 5% increase in plant productivity (CO2 uptake) since 2005 which is exactly equivalent to our emissions.
The is no need to do anything, we are already FAR more than 26% down on 2005 on a nett basis.
120
You would think this maths is so simple that even a politician or public serpent could understand it, but, alas, no.
70
“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”
― Laurence J. Peter, The Peter Principle
100
Follow the money!
In the USA all the tax payer dollars that went to failed green energy companies disappeared into the pockets of the people who put the politicians in office or in the case of some politicians into the pockets of close relatives. — Dumb like a fox in a hen house full of sleeping Chicken Littles.
President Obama’s green energy failures
Nancy Pelosi’s brother-in-law is given $737m of taxpayers’ money to build giant solar power plant in middle of the desert
50
A few minutes ago I was scanning through today’s ” Australian” and spotted another self serving tottaly baseless prediction by some third rate wannabes in the science field
“Scientists say” that Australia’s “Blue Economy” will double in the next decade with the further development of marine industries.
But it will need much more money funneled into ocean reasearch blah!, blah! blah! blah!
They are lying through their teeth as they haven’t got a bloody clue nor has anybody else as to what the future holds nor how the economy will pan out or what other nationals and peoples will do in another decade or longer or who will buy what or not!.
Economists have been in this predicting game for close on a century now and they still haven’t proven they can predict anything let alone a bunch of rank amateurs who call themselves scientists claiming predictive powers which nobody anywhere else has ever been able to achieve.
I can’t use the language I would like to here but I am getting absolutely sick to death and increasingly angry at the arrant, arrogant, often completely ignorant, totally unprovable predictive spouting nonsense that is now becoming a feature of an increasing range of not very accomplished or bright self serving scientists gaming of the public trust to try and direct even more of the public funds the climate and environmental sectors of science have such easy access to, towards themselves even though they claim they are already in that same science sector that is already being lavishly supplied with public funds.
“Scientists say” is invariably followed by some spurious self serving, marsh mellow consistency prediction that has no basis in anything except their own opinion or what they think they can get away with in maximising the benefits to their own pet bit of personal science lolly.
I’ve had an absolute a gutsful of scientists PREDICTING. this, that or something else, invariably of a nature that is either going to be catastrophic and /or will require vast amounts of the ordinary “man and woman on the streets” money to funnelled with great urgency in that scientist’s direction.
Nobody can forecast or predict the future .
Predicting is merely expressing a personal opinion about what one may think or might happen in the unknowable future.
“Scientist say” [ add prediction, the more colourful and catastrophic, the better! ] is rapidly corroding the respect and image of science as today more and more non science people are on the look out for stupidity exemplified when some scientist somewhere is caught out through one of his or her past “scientists say” predictions turning to utter crap not long after aforesaid scientist is quoted as in“scientists say”.
The object of “Scientists say” is almost invariably an attempt to make themselves relevant or try to scramble up the Totem Pole a bit further.
Totem Poles of course being constructed of dead wood which seems a fitting proxy for most of those scientists and their inane self serving, unprovable and dire predictions.
I’m finally getting angry, quite angry at the duplicity and arrant stupidity of these self serving practitioners of some supposed form of science and their constant spouting of unprovable and highly emotional, socially and economically damaging “predictions” from so much of what today, tries to pass as some form of science.
[ / Rant! ]
20
ROM
Remember that, for rural Australia, an average property exists only in the mind of an average economist
00
Please continue to commit economic suicide. If any of the major countries wakes up to common sense, they’ll own world commerce. Only if the liberal elites can fail everyone simultaneously can they make the world safe and prosperous for wonderful liberal regimes like the Chinese and the Russians. For a brief period losing the economic battle forced them to open up to the world a bit. Thank heavens the greens have fixed that. Watermelons forever.
120
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/curbing-global-warming-mission-impossible/2015/08/09/b95b2650-3d2d-11e5-b3ac-8a79bc44e5e2_story.html
This article illustrates the mis- perceptions that the general public and the policy makers operate under. Although he is right that Obama’s and other’s policies won’t affect the climate, and about the economic damages it will do, he remains confused about the science of co2’s effect on climate and the sources of co2 concentration. He still takes as a matter of fact that human co2 emissions cause global warming.
As long as these mis-perceptions continue world wide, we will continue to see these utterly stupid political and economic policies.
80
Unfortunately, the reporter is a fool with no grasp of either the science, economic details, or politics. Typical of the media today, biased.
70
I was just wondering here who gets to make the decisions on how this reduction will be achieved. (no matter by how many percent, and you can just bet that the Labor target will be higher, and The Greens will still not be happy with that either)
Now, while the electrical power generation sector makes up 40% of emissions, all forms of Transportation makes up around 35% of all emissions, so straight up, there’s three quarters of all emissions right there, in just those two sectors alone.
The Transportation Sector. Think about that for a minute.
If this 26% reduction is to be achieved, then it must be achieved across all sectors.
So, that entails taking one in four cars off the road, trucks, long haul transports, ambulances, police cars, cabs, buses. One in four trains, both passenger and freight, Then it’s one plane in four out of the skies. One boat in four off the water. One mower in four even.
So, when it comes to passenger cars, one in four of them, as I mentioned.
The time when I’m making this Comment is now 12.30AM Wednesday Morning. So far, for this Thread, there has been 60 Comments and they have been made by 40 people.
40 commenters so far.
You tell me.
Which ten of you will have your cars taken off the road, and umm, who gets to decide that?
I’m willing to bet that the public won’t be told that. There’s no politician in his or her right mind will come out and say that.
One in four businesses gone. One in four industries gone. One in four hospitals closed. One in four shops closed. One in four Malls closed. One in four Coles and Woolies closed. You know, all those large consumers of electrical power. Probably even one in four jobs gone too, because with all those places of employment shut down, there’ll be no jobs to go to.
Can you see why no politician will dare say this. They’ll be tossed out on their fundament.
You can shut down all the power plants you want. Start taking away people’s cars and then the warm and steaming bovine waste product really will come into violent contact with the rotating wind generating machine.
Come 2030, there’s going to be an awful lot of seriously embarrassed people out there, all wanting to change the subject.
Tony.
281
Worse than that, Tony, for the average Joe and Jane. They won’t take one and four of emergency services or mass transit, other agencies and business will lobby and receive special waivers. This means that perhaps 1/3 to 1/2 of the average Joe and Jane will be unable to drive and the only way to stop them is with super high costs (taxes) on fuel and/or fines, punishments and bans on private vehicle use.
That’s OK though the average Joe and Jane will be very busy at home trying to afford to stay warm and that in turn will likely result in a population up-tic.
Dumb idea meets real world.
120
Labor’s proposed three tier emissions trading tax will achieve that outcome Tony.
20
You can bet that rich and upper middle class elites won’t be making those sacrifices. Once again it will be he poor and the elderly that will be made to the price, some with their lives. Energy and carbon taxes are always regressive.
80
Arrgh..should be:… the poor and the edlerly that will be made to pay the price,…
50
Tony, once again you have pointed out the elephant in the room, disregarded by most of the players in this game but actually the crucial factor. Electricity generation is about a third of emissions equalled by that of transportation. I have seen no calculations whatever as to how the grid is going to supply the electric vehicles (themselves an economic joke) demanding 100% of its current (not a joke!) outcome.
I have even seen the suggestion that the car batteries will support the grid!!!!
To show the importance of this let me take you back to the “oil-shock” (OPECs embargo)consequent on the Yom Kippur war of October 1973. Even before this war gasoline supplies in the USA were in trouble because a policy of controlled gas prices (I kid you not -in the land of free enterprise) had produced a shortage and rationing. I was in California in summer 1973 and you could only buy gas on days odd or even which corresponded to the last number on your registration. THIS IS TRUE – google it! Gas station queues were fractious and violet. Murder was committed even. I won’t forget that vacation – but mostly for my first visit to Yosemite (and Alcatraz).
At the bottom line NOBODY is going to separate the American (and probably the Australian)from his automobile. Freedom of movement is a core human need (after food, shelter and sex – sometimes even before.) What I witnessed was the seed that flowered into Mad Max. That is the rock against which the Global Warming Narrative is wrecking itself.
I would bet that this issue never even tangentially touched at Paris.
120
Hi Tony,
Your thought experiment of taking 1 in 4 ZYX out of service is (I think the term is) a “straw-man.” Here is why: Back in the 1960s new autos were large, heavy, and engines were not too technologically advanced. Our autos got about 15 miles per gallon or less. Today I drive a Subaru Outback (2009 version) and it gets about 28 mpg. That’s a nice increase without taking a vehicle off the road. Another example, and then I’ll go: In the USA a lot of beer and sodas are sold in aluminum containers. Like autos, the technology of the beverage can has changed. Asking 1 in 4 beer drinkers to stop – well, that’s probably a bad idea. But, also, unnecessary.
The first improvements of the type mentioned are more easily done than the next round, and so on. At some point – the USA is already here – government regulations so contort the situation that things become silly. For example, real auto companies buy indulgences from Tesla. Tesla, with government help, sells expensive (3rd or 4th or 5th) autos to rich folks that average folks can’t afford. Meanwhile, business and families buy the SUVs and pickup trucks they want and need, and paying the added costs on both ends.
We need government to support research and otherwise stay out of the way.
Your last bit is priceless and worth repeating:
“Come 2030, there’s going to be an awful lot of seriously embarrassed people out there, all wanting to change the subject.” [TonyfromOz, Aug. 12, 2015]
30
I’m not so sure about this car removal being a strawman argument.
My first car was a brand new Corolla in December 1969. I was in the RAAF and I ran up an awful lot of miles between Base and home, and from Base to Base whilst doing training. I had that car for three years and 6 Months, and when I traded it in on a new car, there was just over 100,000 MILES on the clock. I was religious with the record keeping for fuel consumption, well, right up till only five years ago now with all my cars.
That original Corolla had a lifetime fuel consumption of 40MPG, and that’s in Imperial Gallons and not the smaller U.S. gallon.
Since selling that first car, I have had a Corolla (1200 engine) Corolla, (1200 engine) Corolla, (1300 engine) a Camry (2 litre) and now an Astra (the Euro with an 1800 engine)
All I have ever owned is small cars. The fuel consumption has never even approached that of the first 1969 Corolla, and there’s no way even a small Yaris, I20, or Jazz sized cars with their small engines would even get close to an around town fuel consumption of 40 MPG.
Cars may have got better, but fuel consumption hasn’t improved as markedly as what will be required from what is expected by 2030 emissions reduction standards.
The only way to do it is for Commodore/Falcon/SUV owners to go back to using those smaller vehicles, and people will drive what they always have. A decade or so back now, it actually looked like there might be the death of Land Cruiser sized SUVs’ and now look at them. There are more vehicles in that size range than there ever were, and please don’t try and tell me their fuel consumption has improved to the stage where it can be used to justify 2030 emissions levels, or will even get to that stage.
Either way, I can just hear the auto manufacturers ramping up their lobbying.
Getting people out of cars and ramping up public transport defeats the purpose as there has to be cutbacks in that sector as well.
Electric vehicles. The cost will be prohibitive, and don’t ever believe battery technology will improve that dramatically, or that they will get cheaper, or more plentiful. And then you have to charge them, and with so many of them that the green dreamers envisage, that’s a huge amount of electrical power, provided from who knows where, because it won’t be from wind or solar power.
So, while that one in four may seem to have been poorly thought out, and a possible strawman, it wasn’t really.
Transportation will be a pretty major problem, and one which will have just as many problems trying to solve, similar to power generation.
Green dreamers think that the answer is just around the corner, or that auto manufacturers are colluding, or …. whatever it is that greenies dream about. They think they have all the answers.
All we have is more questions.
Tony.
90
I didn’t catch where among your anecdotes about the old days and your statements about problems, you established that “it wasn’t really”. Is this the theory where if you write enough stuff you can come to any conclusion because, surely, within all that writing the evidence must be there somewhere.
06
or maybe repeating a statement will make it true?
Comment #4 http://joannenova.com.au/2014/11/how-to-save-billions-of-gallons-of-gasoline/
“A 25% reduction means effectively that one in four of every car, truck, bus, train etc has to be taken off the road”.
At least you wrote “effectively” even if it isn’t.
Comment #6 http://joannenova.com.au/2015/06/your-car-causes-war-feel-the-fear-about-australias-climate-security/
“So, if there is to be an overall reduction of 20% for emissions, then that 20% reduction also carries over to cars as well, meaning that, in effect, one in five cars has to be removed from the roads.”
Good to see you adjusting your data for the circumstances!
06
40MPG Imperial equals 33.3MPG U.S. equals 7 litres/100KM.
It was easy on that original 1969 Corolla. The second throat on the carburettor wouldn’t cut in till just a tick over 4000RPM, and with a final drive in top (4th gear) of 15MPH/1000RPM, that was 6around 62.5MPH, and you could cruise comfortably at 60MPH and get the optimum fuel consumption.
Tony.
40
A bit more on the California implementation of Agenda 21 I mentioned above. San Francisco considers allowing nation’s tiniest micro-apartments
I came into the fight via the National Animal Identification System and the Food Safety Modernization bill. (We in the USA were warned by the Aussies BTW.)
Jill Richardson aka Orange Cloud runs a site called La Vida Locavore. The site Pushes that 100 mile radius food shed I mentioned. Much to the horror of the organic farming community she came out in favor of the bill as did Organic Consumers Association and Food and Water Watch. WHY were all three in favor of this bill? Why were they pushing the WTO/UN/transnational corporation goals?
I did some digging.
Maude Barlow a “no dog in this fight” Canadian, is a director of both, Organic Consumers Assoc. and Food and Water Watch. She has been handsomely rewarded for selling out the US consumer and farmer with an appointment as New Senior Advisor to the UN president on October 21, 2008.
Then we come back to the real interesting character Jill Richardson.
Jill Richardson says she is a Consultant but she is “University of California – San Diego” Sustainability Coordinator and is working on the practical aspects of UN Agenda 21 as far as I can tell. For example:
A new bit of evidence HERE
Raymond Clemencon was another facultiy member of University of California, San Diego (Political Science Professor) at the time. He was one of the negotiators on the Rio Declaration and the Agenda 21. Now he is a Senior Lecturer, Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Rim Studies, at University of California Santa Barbara.
Google does a good job of hiding His BIO but here it is and very interesting:
(wwwDOT)global.ucsb.edu/people/raymond-clémenç
00
Tony,
The reason for the big push toward electric vehicles is because they will become part of the grid and the car batteries will be used by grid managers for LOAD LEVELING!
A cold still winter’s night? You just might find your half charged car batteries are all now stone dead, all charge removed when you want to go to work in the morning. The grid needed the power so you lost it. Welcome to the wonderful world of the socialist green planned community.
..the University of Delaware had sold power from electric vehicles to the power grid for the first time – in what appears to be the first working application of the Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) concept… V2G is slated as an essential of the EU’s response to increased use of intermittent and highly variable renewable energy, and in particular the use of windmills.
The only way to actually manage to drastically cut the use of vehicles is to transform civilization. The goal is to move everyone into tiny apartments in cities with no transportation. This is a quick explanation of the concept from a liberal California bureaucrat. Your food sources are limited to a hundred mile radius of that ‘Transit Village’ to save transportation costs/energy.
The transition plan is already being implemented in Christchurch NZ
thedemiseofchristchurch(DOT)com/2012/11/29/hello-world/
And in California — From the Wall Street Journal
Welcome to Agenda 21.
10
Agenda 21 seeks to kick people out of the countryside into mega ciies where people can be easily herded and controlled.
And if people know anything about history, the denser population in a city, the greater chance of a pandemic having a high death toll.
Even allowing for modern medicine, in a high impact virus taking hold, hospitals would be swamped and shut down. As people wouldnt be allowed out of the cities , they would become pandemic death traps. Anyone trying to escape would likely be shot on site.
Agenda 21 in action.
11
V. Lenin, the founder of the Russian revolution
10
Most of the improvements achieved in engine, drivetrain and overall vehicle efficiency since the mid-1980’s have been negated by … regulations requiring bigger, heavier and vastly more complex vehicles … and regulations in traffic flow that’s frustrated efficient operation in spite of the technical burdens.
Back in the 1990’s SAAB’s engineers complained that the lowering of speed limits meant that their cars would be consuming more fuel as they’d have to be operated in a lower gear than optimum for the conditions. Engineers became personae non grata.
Samilar things happened in Australia when speed limits were decreased from 60 to 50 km/h. All in the name of “road safety”; based on extremely dubious “evidence” provided by “road safety industry” researchers. Recently in Europe, with a push for 30 km/h limits in all built-up areas, reports of increased emissions (in noise, particulates and gases) are quietly pushed to the “inside pages” of media; seldom, if ever mentioned in radio and TV. Complaints by emergency responders that “traffic calming” measures are costing lives are handled similarly.
So when your ultra-safe, battery-“powered” car bursts into flames after running into a speed bump, setting off all 28 explosive devices arranged to protect vehicle occupants, rest assured that the fire brigade and ambulance will be with you as soon as they can; having negotiated the streets jammed with traffic throttled down to one lane and speed bumps unsafe to surmount at any speed over 10 km/h in a fire truck carrying 8 tonnes of water.
There’s little need to rush to a house fire if it has PV panels on the roof. Fire crews will wait until the fire has destroyed those panels before they dare to go near that electrical hazard.
30
I recall the Poll Tax & Brixton riots in the UK. Now roll that forwrd to a whole population seething with resentment and deaths from this eco lunacy….
I predict ( note: I do *not* in any way endorse nor encourage said action ) the day when politicians are dragged into the street and beaten, over this stuff. All you have to do is look at history as to how this stuff will go.
Most australians are ignorant of world history & a placid bunch ( whihc is kind of good ) , but they havent really had a reviolution per se nor had to fight for their actual freedom like the brits or french or americans, so when it kicks off in this country, it will be weird, but inevitble.
10
No “Eureka” moment in Australia?
00
Tony, as you know, this is simplistic and possibly a bit misleading
but I would invite other readers to delve into how complex this is and how complex any government driven “solutions” would need to be. There are ways to achieve a reduction and keep fleet sizes the same – some palatable and some Stalin would be proud of.
For instance it has taken 40 years for aircraft to reduce their fuel consumption by half (kms/L fuel /passenger) but there are existing ways (fleet management, fleet replacement, logistics) to lop 10 or more percent in the short term and have the same number of planes flying.
Personal car transport efficiency is unchanged for 60 years at around 11L/100km because efficiencies in engines and production are offset by bigger cars. Public policy could reduce consumption by 50% by forcing (I didn’t say this was easy) a limit of 6L/100km.
15
So, how do you envisage a 26% cut or greater in emissions from that Transportation Sector, or do we just not think about that.
Tony.
40
sorry Tony… what do you mean by “that”?
03
My part of the world ships hay to Asia and the Middle East. Once out of the fields, it begins its journey as shown in this photo:
http://www.hankstruckpictures.net/pix/trucks/jon_tetzlaff/2012/11-17/misc/hay_truck_pulling_ladd_canyon_or.jpg
Somewhere I saw a video of a truck hauling grapes from the area south of Perth, across the Nullarbor Plain, to just north of Melbourne. Likely heavier than the hay because the hay is only about 10% water.
Energy dense fuel is required for trucks such as these. Insofar as there are many such trucks – and they last a long time – most trucks on the roads in 2030 will be remarkably similar.
20
I don’t want some Green or pasty faced public serpent telling me what size car I am going to drive. I rather like my six litre V8.
30
Sorry, that was a response to #28.6
00
I agree with Tony
I do not know about Australia, but I do know that here in the USA any fuel efficiency is offset by more and worse pollution control gadgets that INCREASE the inefficiency.
My first 8 cylinder 1964 (bought used) got ~12 mpg.
My second (brand new) 1976 8 cylinder got 26 mpg. (Like Tony I kept records)
My third (brand new) 1981 4 cylinder got 48 mpg (Diesel)
My fifth (brand new) 1991 6 cylinder got 22 mpg (Diesel)
My sixth (used) 2008 4 cylinder got 21 mpg (gas)
I am not seeing much improvement from my old ‘full sized’ 1976 8 cylinder with a carburetor and 5 spd except in the switch to a diesel even though the vehicles are smaller and lighter and have a heck of a lot less power. The engine has been around for a hundred years and most of the major advances have been made and the vehicle bodies have been made lighter via unibody construction and as much plastic replacement of parts as safe.
20
Similar observations here. To compare apples to apples more or less I could compare my 91 turbo diesel pickup to my 97 with the same 6 liter 6 cylinder base engine. The 91 got 19 mpg on the highway. But the 97 got 14 mpg.
It is more complicated than that though. The 91 made 400 ft/lbs of torque and 160 HP (Hp = Tq x rpm/5252). The 97 made 480 ft/lbs and 230 hp. So the 97 may be actually more efficient in terms of fuel used to create usable work. The 97 is, however, now modified with EPA mandated pollution controls deleted. It’s not strictly kosher but everybody does it. Now it makes 550 ft/lbs but still gets 14 mpg. So it is more efficient without the controls although it gets the same 14 mpg, because it makes significantly more power. Moreover, the diesel fuel formula is now way different with less BTU’s per liter than in 1997.
One huge difference is engine electronics today. I know somebody who has the same basic turbo diesel engine in an 08 model pickup truck. The engine has been increased in displacement to 6.7 liters from 6 liters though. With the full EPA package on, it got 12 mpg (making 660 ft/lbs.)That was on the highway, empty. Put a trailer on it and 8 mpg was typical. He re-tuned it with his laptop disabling all the EPA controls. It now gets 25 mpg on the highway while making 800 ft/lbs. So an increase in efficiency by more than 100% by getting rid of the Gov mandated pollution controls is observed.
Another example is my gas powered Mustangs. I have a 85 carburator fueled 5 liter V8 engine. This engine was basically 1960s technology. It got 21mpg at 210hp max output. It is now modified. It has modern design combustion chamber cylinder heads, and no pollution controls. It now gets 27 mpg and the max output is around 400 hp. It also is much cleaner without the outdated pollution controls because of more efficient combustion.
Progress has been made. My newer car has a 4.6 liter V8 of completely different state of the art design. It makes 320 hp max output while getting 31 mpg on the highway, going 80 mph. And that is with the full package of emissions controls. Additionally, the engine can be tuned only using a laptop to outputs of 400+ hp, using higher grade gasoline.
My nephew is an engine tech. He told me that a certain US passenger car that typically gets 33 mpg (highway at 230 hp) in the USA with a USA tune, gets almost 50 mpg in China, with a different tune and no pollution controls activated.
20
Thanks, Dave
I am not surprised at the differences. My Boy friend many years ago was an airline mechanic. He and his buddy were always tinkering with my 1981 4 cylinder diesel (pick-up) that is why it got 50 mpg, especially when running on aviation fuel.
20
Recent history and current technology makes a 26% reduction in vehicle transport energy requirement trivial. It will happen simply by the normal process of vehicle and infrastructure upgrade. That trend has been occurring for years and there are significant improvements in the pipeline:
http://transportpolicy.net/images/3/36/Car_NEDC_CO2.png
Fuel limitations were first introduced into F1 in 1984 at 220l per race with refuelling permitted. The fuel limit has since been reduced, settling at current limit of 100kg per race in 2014, starting with the full fuel load. Vehicle minimum weight has been restricted for a long time but changed little since fuel limits were imposed.
My own 6yp diesel car uses half the fuel of the previous Australian made car it replaced; built in 1999. The current diesel technology is about 20% better than my present vehicle and that is even without any energy recovery.
In Melbourne parking has become the constraint to driving from the suburbs. That is forcing a preference for public transport as well as higher density living closer to the centre. There is also increasing use of bicycles. With any of these options the infrastructure is inadequate for the growing population.
11
agreed… change is in this direction with or without intervention. Efficiency sells.
02
Rick
Thought about “on your bicycle” from Birdsville to somewhere else?
00
Tony
O/T here but the photo says a lot
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2015/08/we-dont-need-no-530.html
00
Notice the lying by omission by this presstitute.
Australian emissions are being contrasted with promised reduced omissions by Canada.
Canada is going to reduce our emissions by SFA if the conservatives hold on to power, i.e. a majority.
But we will reduce private citizen emissions if the socialists gain power.
As usual the Watermelons will produce double our current emissions as they police the private citizen into serfdom.
I think my next business will be fencing, Unicorn fencing.
Buy my mega dollar/linear foot fence and you will never be menaced by a deadly unihorned horse beast.
Right next to the Zero Carbon organic foods and the DiHydrogen monoxide deflectors.
On the bright side it seems voters are starting to feel the pain.
Funny how being taxed into poverty can get ones attention.
Everywhere the do-gooders, progressives and luvvies have held power, the tax paying citizen is not better off.
That experiment has been run, endlessly.
What is staggering is their modern mantra; “It would have worked, if we had spent more money on it”.
Amazing they spent money our great-grandchildren are indebted for,world economy is all out of trust, never mind money.
I know you can not cure stupid, but…..
130
Posted at Climate Etc by Judith Curry re
Costs of President Obama’s Clean Power
Plan.
http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/press/the-price-tag-for-uprooting-americas-electric-grid/
40
So we are going to reduce our CO2 emissions by 26%. How about starting with reduction of 26% of CO2 exhalers such as journalists, politicians, economists, bankers, public servants….who are essentially scientifically illiterate. And for good measure let’s see a mathematically significant relationship between global temperatures, which are static apart from values due to homogenisation, and levels of atmospheric Carbon dioxide which are rising to now around 0.04%. Without this any form of carbon abatement will achieve very little apart from lining the pockets of the spruikers.
Hopefully, there is some silver lining with the grey clouds we see on TV every time climate change is mentioned. Shades of King Canute isn’t it! A couple of decades ago it was the fear of global cooling, but it also shows that our politicians haven’t the time to read much, nor understand the issues on any particular subject.
110
One small irony that amuses me is the assumption by the, well lets call them Paris-ites, is that they won’t be affected. Thus shutting down industry and reducing commerce by loading extra costs onto them will result in less tax money to the Government and more outlay on Welfare.
At some point reductions in the number of public servants, consultants and others on the public payroll (e.g. University & Hospital staff) will become necessary. I wonder how the inner city greens will take that?
120
“…I wonder how the inner city greens will take that?”
I think in the USA the inner city welfare types are being set up. They are being primed to riot when the lights go out. The Department of Homeland Security didn’t buy 1.6 billion rounds of ammo and equip our police with military weapons just for yucks. Reports have shown that over $4 billion worth of military equipment has been transferred from the pentagon to local police departments in recent years. In addition to automatic weapons and grenade launchers it includes armored vehicles like this:
http://archive.wtsp.com/images/300/169/2/assetpool/images/111121052835_tpd-tank.jpg
This is the story of a Mayor who was subjected to our overly militarized police. The Mayor’s response was superb. (I wish he was running for office.)
“Oh, God, I thought they were going to shoot me next”
Local law enforcement’s often using SWAT teams to do regular police work. The results are frightening — and deadly
I am not sure of this story because of the racist overtones.
US police get antiterror training in Israel on privately funded trips
10
Beat me to it but I was going to include lawyers and lobbyists too.
40
The innocent view is that policy and politics should do what is good for all of the local voting public. Yes policy should be advised by science, but only as much as any other, national or international, lobby group should influence policy makers.
In peacetime, policy should not be driven by any (one or group of) single interest group(s). To do this will distort the requirements of what is beneficial and best for all of society; away from public good, and to moving the political structure (money/power/resources) to best feather-bed the single interest lobby group.
Informed by but not driven.
As for global issues; exceptional claims require exceptional proof. Thus exceptional policy changes require exceptional verifiable evidence, with, as far as possible, all verifiable evidence and incontravertable proofs being explained fully to the voters.
Yep, would be nice if it ever could happen like that!
But how and why have we moved so far from that ideal?
What can be done to get politics back to an even keel of being for the people and more locally aware?
40
CAGW-ists get it evey way – they can claim hot, cold, drought, flood, sea-level rising and falling and anything else whether thought of yet or not. There is no climate phenomena that they cannot claim as “theirs”.
BTW, Brian Wilshire, radio 2GB overnight, is very much on our side. You can listen to him online as I am doing now and most nights as I cannot sleep most of the time.
50
In other words, CAGW is not falsifiable and therefore is not within the realm of science.
Can someone please correct me if I am wrong?
80
We all know this ‘effort’ has nothing to with ‘the weather’ and even less to do with the climate. The UN pre-defined climate change to include indirect and direct anthropogenic influences on land use and atmospheric composition, which means categorically we’ll at the mercy of this ideological vomitus until the last individual standing ceases to exhale and all the ALL the evidence of an anthropogenic presence on Gaia is expunged.
Your falsifiable experiment David (32 & 32.1) is doomed from the outset. They’ll be no one around to determine the result.
What leaves me flummoxed is the cowering institutional mass that we all recurrently recognise, the same one that
failsdoesn’t wish to see the reductio ad absurdum of their position.‘Climate change’ always was and will forever break the principle of non-contradiction. It has no other name but ideology.
70
Exactly Jo. We also don’t have thermal energy like Costa Rica or New Zealand. And while we don’t have a lot of mountains, the mountains we do have are not utilised for Hydro energy potential because of the objections by our greens. Instead we buy back water from farmers to flush it down the Darling river system for so called “environmental flows”. Dumb.
But somebody needs to expose the Australian public to the folly of Solar and particularly Wind power to significantly reduce our reliance on coal. The cost to benefits of Wind and Solar do not add up and the end price of these energy sources isn’t cheap unless heavily subsidized.
90
That’s geothermal energy.
30
In NZ, as elsewhere, the Greens are promoting coal as a ‘dirty word’ fanned with the Green flames of an ideological driven media. A larger part of the heart and soul of NZ export is the dairy industry in general and Fonterra in particular, a currently highly stressed industry as the global auction price of milk solids has plummeted. The NZ Greens have recently emitted large quantities of pollutant trying arguing that Fronterra needs to clean up its operation. No costings are provided of course.
Truncated from Fonterra a large scale coal user:
“Former Green Party co-leader and environmental activist Jeanette Fitzsimons said Fonterra risked damaging its reputation “as a company that trades (on) being clean and green.”
She said it could switch to more energy efficient and environmentally friendly biofuels to power their milk processing plants.
Based on one tonne of coal producing 2.86 tonnes of carbon dioxide, Fonterra’s coal-powered factories pump out 1.17 million tonnes of the climate warming gas. Add to that its gas-powered plants and tanker fleet, and the company becomes one of New Zealand’s top greenhouse gas polluters.
Fitzsimons said that was “without mentioning cows and the methane they produce.”
Subsidised biofuels are ‘the answer’, really? The Economist (2013) writes:
Daniel Klein-Marcuschamer may be found over at The Conversation.
40
Has anyone asked Jeanette Fitzsimons what the by-products of burning bio-mass are ?
90
We were only 19 on the list of industrialised countries contributing almost nothing
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/we_were_only_nineteen/
50
The BBC is already bellyaching that the Abbott government isn’t doing what they want, again.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33861390
40
Tony Abbott article Daily Telegraph Comment
We exceeded our Kyoto target and are on track to meet and beat our 2020 target. By 2020, Australia’s emissions will be at least 13 per cent below 2005 levels. On a per capita basis, this will be a better reduction than Canada, the US, Japan and the EU.
Despite this, we will take a strong 2030 emissions reduction target to the upcoming climate change conference in Paris — while protecting our economy.
50
The Australian Industry Group said that it would cost up to $250 billion to fund Abbott’s emission reduction.
For that cost Australia could provide clean drinking water for all humanity.
60
or end world hunger for 10 years
50
For 10 or 15 Billion Australia could build new dams and irrigation infrastructure that would enable us to feed the world. But no apparently faster internet for at least 4 times that much is more important.
00
Jo
O/T but FYI
“COLD KILLS ONE MILLION HEADS OF CATTLE”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/2015/08/y2kyoto-planeta-24.html
50
Must be Global Warming (TM).
30
I posted this on the previous thread but am not sure if many saw it.
“Renewable Energy: the Opportunities of Action and the Cost of Delay” Hosted by Chifley Research Centre
https://www.facebook.com/events/1019653951401740/
31
But of course its not enough for the party formally known as Labour. They will happily collapse our economy over a delusion.
50
michael hart –
your BBC Matt McGrath piece is hilarious.
McGrath writes: “Commentators were quick to put the boot in to the Abbott plan”
(but only links to ABC’s Jake Sturmer and Anna Henderson’s heavily-biased “critics” piece posted in the comments above!)
McGrath continues: “The message from Australia’s neighbours (PLURAL) in the Pacific was even stronger” and quotes ONLY Tony de Brum, Foreign Minister for the Marshall Islands!
to round off his piece, he refers to a 2014 Lowy Institute Poll to show “…if public opinion in Australia is to be believed, there seems to be greater appetite for action on carbon than Mr Abbott has pledged”.
from the unbelievable Lowy poll:
This year, 45% of Australian adults now say that ‘global warming is a serious and pressing problem…
When asked about international policy on global warming and carbon emissions, 63% of Australians say the government should be taking a leadership role on reducing carbon emissions. Only 28% say it should wait for an international consensus, and a fraction (7%) say the government should do nothing…
http://www.lowyinstitute.org/news-and-media/press-releases/australian-attitudes-heating-about-climate-change-2014-lowy-institute-poll-finds
btw can’t find anything documented so far of Roger Harrabin on BBC World TV news with BBC presenter who played a short Greens’ Di Natale clip with 2 smug female Greens nodding away behind him, & then threw the subject to Harrabin suggesting this clip showed there was massive opposition to the Govt’s target.
of course, Harrabin said it was false for the Govt to claim it was doing better than China (even tho it’s patently obvious we are – and who knows why?) because China is starting from a low carbon base blah blah.
30
anthony watts has a thread up:
WUWT: A review of Steyn’s scathing new book about Michael Mann: “A Disgrace To The Profession”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/08/11/a-review-of-steyns-scathing-new-book-about-michael-mann-a-disgrace-to-the-profession/#comment-2005645
i posted the following from today’s Guardian:
***CORRECTION required – LOL.
11 Aug: Guardian: Scott Walker wants to fire academics with whom he disagrees politically
Universities are the latest target of conservative politicians with an agenda to push
by Michael Mann and Randi Weingarten
The work of scientists often produces facts that are uncomfortable and inconvenient to the interests of those in power…
In discussions about climate change, for example, ‘think tanks’ like Wisconsin’s Heartland Institute use their well-financed public relations machines to create the impression that the scientific evidence for human-caused climate change is still debated…
***CORRECTION: The original version of this piece stated that the Heartland Institute is in Wisconsin. It is in Chicago. The piece has been amended to reflect this.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/11/scott-walker-wants-fire-academics-disagrees-politically
30
WTF is wrong with the Australian Government ?
The coalition is supposed to be a Conservative Government !
Obviously no better than the useless last lot (alp – Australian LIARS Party / greens) !!
Australioans demand an alternative party who has the guts to call out this global warming SCAM !!!!
@#@#$#%^&!
51
The sceptics party didn’t have much impact, so what about the Gleissberg Party?
It sounds like a full strength German beer.
50
The ship MS Global Warming is bound to sink when it runs into a Gleissberg.
Lifeboats fashioned from pure gold will be loaded to the gunnels with members of the elite. No oars provided.
40
election now!!!
12
Highly unlikely to call an election in this political climate.
00
There is nothing wrong with it in terms of its commitment to fossil fuels.
If the present government wants to have any chance of winning the next election (and keep using coal and opening new coal mines) it needs to get the moronic voters who believe “carbon” emissions will destroy the planet and hence are into the equally moronic Labor Party’s policy of 50% renewables by 2030 to see Abbott and company doing something to deal with that foul black stuff called carbon. You will notice that to suck the fools in the Coalition falsely calls the gas that comes out of power plant smoke stacks carbon… dirty filthy stuff. The idiots who desperately want renewables don’t know that carbon per se, according to the “settled science” doesn’t cause the faintest bit of global warming.
There is little doubt that Abbott and Ministers like Andrew Robb are still thorough going CAGW skeptics but are smart enough politicians to know that a Climate Skeptics Party would never get the support of the majority of the voting public (about 55% poll as wanting renewable energy… presumably to save our grandchildren from a fate worse than death) who are fools enough to accept the CAGW scam.
That Abbott – Hunt led ruse is called good politics and just may result in Australia still using fossil fuels for the next 500 or so years ( better than nuclear for improved food crop growth).
20
Good op ed on malicious alteration of temperature records.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/globalwarming/11395516/The-fiddling-with-temperature-data-is-the-biggest-science-scandal-ever.html
40
Good article on history of the global warming scare.
http://www.john-daly.com/history.htm
20
It was a political stunt for Magaret Thatcher to gain prominence and she pushed the “scientific” issue of CAGW as she was the only cabinet minister with any scientific credibility as she had a chemistry degree.
10
In the USA Enron and BP latched on to the idea and ran with it. They bought up moribund solar and wind companies (and natural gas) and then had the politicians go after their enemy coal. — Enron, joined by BP, invented the global warming industry. I know because I was in the room
Ged Davis VP of Shell Oil was IPCC lead author of Scenarios. If you look at the climategate e-mail with his draft of scenarios they ALL have no coal but do have natural gas as a main part of the energy mix.
50
I was just discussing this with someone and his understanding was that Thatcher used “global warming” as the excuse she need to shut down the coal mines and get rid of the rightfully hated coal unions.
20
two more from BBC, with no hint many Australians think the target is too high or not necessary at all:
11 Aug: BBC: Australia emissions target too low, say scientists
But in light of the huge risk posed by climate change, the government’s new target is too weak, said Professor Steven Sherwood, co-director of the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales…
Australia has been criticised domestically and overseas for failing to do more to curb its greenhouse gas emissions…
President of the Australian Academy of Science, Professor Andrew Holmes, says the new target is a step in the right direction.
“The science tells us that on a global scale we need to move towards zero carbon emissions by mid-century to avoid the most serious impacts of climate change,” he said…
But the Director of the Centre for Climate Economics and Policy at the Australian National University, Associate Professor Frank Jotzo, says the government’s new target range falls short of the international community’s goal of limiting the rise in global temperatures from pre-industrial levels to no more than to 2C…
The government’s assumption that setting a stronger target will damage the Australian economy is deeply flawed, argue Adjunct Professor Alan Pears from Melbourne’s RMIT University.
Prof Pears says expert groups such as the International Energy Agency point out that pursuing energy efficiency and energy innovation can save money rather than cost an economy…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-33858698
11 Aug: BBC: Climate change: Australia sets new emissions target
Australia is still largely powered by carbon-polluting coal and is one of the world’s biggest coal exporters…
Scientist Tim Flannery from independent not-for-profit research group the Climate Council, said even if Australia met this target, it would still be emitting more per person than the US and “significantly more” than the UK, on a per capital basis…
The Climate Council says that to stay below a 2°C rise in global temperature, Australia would need to cut emissions by 60% by 2030 on 2000 levels.
It says Australia is the 13th largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world and has one of the highest per capita emissions rates…
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-33858360
btw heard ABC’s Tony Delroy announce his Issue of the Day last nite, naturally the emissions reduction target. is it enough? Tony asked. no option for is it too much or is it needed at all?
20
This is very good, featuring John Coleman.
Watch “How the Global Warming Scare Began” on YouTube
https://youtu.be/SyUDGfCNC-k
10
fact-free zone:
11 Aug: ANU: IPCC presents climate findings in Australia
Experts from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will outline the findings of their Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), and how to limit and adapt to climate change, at briefings and a public lecture in Canberra on Wednesday 12 August…
The Australian National University (ANU) will host IPCC experts at a media briefing at 10am on Wednesday 12 August in room R2116 at Parliament House. A public lecture will be held at ANU from 6pm.
“Australia is vulnerable to climate change,” said Andy Reisinger, one of the IPCC report lead authors and deputy director of the New Zealand Agricultural Greenhouse Gas Research Centre.
“Climate and weather extremes over the past few years have resulted in increased bleaching of coral reefs, damage to infrastructure and deaths during major floods and heat waves, major bushfires and loss of agricultural production during extended droughts,” he said.
“The frequency and/or intensity of such climatic extremes is projected to increase with climate change in many locations.”…
The public lecture will feature IPCC Working Group III Co-Chair Youba Sokona (Mali) and IPCC Vice-Chair Jean-Pascal van Ypersele (Belgium), as well as lead authors Dr Reisinger (NZ) and Debra Roberts (South Africa).
Also on the panel will be Australian lead authors Mark Howden, Director of the ANU Climate Change Institute, and Frank Jotzo, Director of the ANU Centre for Climate Economics and Policy.
They will be joined by special guest, ACT Deputy Chief Minister and Minister for the Environment Simon Corbell MLA…
The briefings and lecture are part of a series of IPCC events around the world to explain the findings of AR5 as nations prepare to negotiate a new global agreement on climate change in Paris in December.
Details of the public lecture are available on the ANU events page.
http://www.anu.edu.au/news/all-news/ipcc-presents-climate-findings-in-australia
Fran’s Breakfast had Van Ypersele this morning:
IPCC vice chair Jean-Pascal Van Ypersele on Australia’s post-2020 carbon reduction target
As it happens, four leading scientists from the IPCC — the UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — are currently in Australia.
Jean-Pascal Van Ypersele is vice chair of the IPCC, and joins Fran Kelly on RN Breakfast…
Fran also got Penny Wong’s opinion (industry doesn’t like Abbott’s target because it’s so expensive), and Martijn Wilder:
March 2013: Business Spectator: Cathy Alexander: The Top Carbon Cutters – number 5 Martijn Wilder
Crikey, with the support of Climate Spectator, are presenting a series that attempts to pin down the top 10 people driving Australia’s efforts to create a low-carbon economy…
He’s the chair of the government’s Low Carbon Australia, soon to merge with the Clean Energy Finance Corporation where he’ll join the Board. He chairs the NSW Government’s Climate Change Council, although it’s less active under the Coalition. He lectures at the ANU, is on the board of WWF, and is involved in the Climate Institute…Wilder is everywhere at once…
The twin arms of policy and law create an economic driver to reduce pollution – what Wilder calls, “creating a market by statute”. …
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2013/3/14/top-carbon-cutters-number-5-martijn-wilder
FANATICS???
20
I suggest that the greenie/left 26% of the population that feel guilty about their CO2 emissions immediately take the following actions:
Stop driving their cars.
Stop flying overseas or interstate on holidays.
Switch off their heating and cooling systems, their big screen TVs, their refrigerators, their internet connections and their smartphones.
Switch off their ABC.
Grow their own food to cutback on lavish supermarkets.
Go to bed at dusk so all house lights are switched off.
Go off grid.
There, problem solved, Australia meets its emission target for 2030 by the end of 2016, and the rest of us can get on with enjoying life.
71
You forgot one other one…..
They should all cease producing co2 by stopping breathing !
42
Wrong, I’m afraid. They only feel guilty about other people’s emissions
40
Tony Abbott knows he has to play the game,at the moment the power brokers want to get their hands on CO2 taxes,Abbott et al are trying to limit the amount of pain to the taxpayer,what they propose is the best of a lousy situation,we should support it because if we don’t hello CO2 tax on everything,and who will gain by this,our hospitals,our homeless,our schools no International Bankers lawyers the UN will be the winners and the despots running tinpot third world nations who’s overseas bank accounts will be overflowing.
40
‘we should support it’
I’ll be voting with the Nats, who understand the vagaries of weather.
20
Dennis –
everyone should read the Tim Blair thread u posted – WE WERE ONLY NINETEEN.
also worth noting these targets are just the beginning!
from BBC/Matt McGrath link posted by michael hart above: Critics will say, rightly, that it doesn’t amount to a hill of methane-infused beans in keeping global warming below 2C…
UK climate secretary Amber Rudd recently outlined her preference for this idea, when questioned by the House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee.
“We want 194 countries signed up to keeping two degrees within reach,” Ms Rudd told the MPs.
“And then, on top of that, I would like to see five-year reviews in which there will be an aggregate look at how we’re doing.” …
11 Aug: AFR: Jennifer Hewett: Carbon targets are just the beginning, now the real emissions reduction starts
In fact, the change is so significant it’s interesting politics that the government didn’t just announce a round 30 per cent figure. After all, it’s not as if this coalition government will be around to try to make the numbers add up. Climate politics is as much about symbolism as substance…
???It’s still clear the community mood on support for (ill-defined) measures to combat climate change has increased in intensity since Abbott won the 2013 election – a victory in part predicated on abolishing Labor’s hated carbon tax.
The Abbott government now cannot afford to ignore the demand that Australia needs to do more, even if as it rules out a tax or an emissions trading scheme to “put a price on carbon”. That pressure is coming from the electorate as well as internationally ahead of the Paris summit in December. Australia wants to claim a position in the middle of the pack of comparable countries…
The most likely starting point is still an increase in either the cost of carbon or the amount of regulation (Ssssh)…
Innes Willox from the Australian Industry Group says the cost to both industries and households – and their success – depends on policies yet to be developed by either side of politics.
An announcement of a target and a target date is just the beginning.
http://www.afr.com/opinion/carbon-targets-are-just-the-beginning-now-the-real-emissions-reduction-starts-20150811-giwjlw
20
the full Media Release from the CAGW-infested Australian Industry Group, which is being selectively quoted from by the MSM today, but only to make out the Govt target is expensive:
11 Aug: Australian Industry Group: Media Releases: Emmissions(sic) Targets Will Require Deep Cuts and Major Effort
“A cut of 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2030 is comparable to targets announced by Japan and Canada, and would require Australian emissions reductions scaling up to more than 250 million tonnes per annum by 2030, based on recent projections of business as usual growth and the outcome of Renewable Energy Target negotiations.
“The new target is a major step change from anything deliverable by current policies.
***For comparison, if the target were delivered solely through Budget spending it would cost between $100 billion and $250 billion in unadjusted terms. If the 50% 2030 renewable energy goal recently floated by the Opposition were achieved, it would only deliver around a sixth of the emissions cuts sought.
“The numbers are huge and there is a good chance that even tougher targets will be needed to meet the 2 degrees goal shared by all sides of politics to manage the risks of climate change…
***Access to international emissions reduction opportunities is going to be an essential supplement to domestic activity if we are to achieve these goals at a manageable cost…
“Ai (Australian Industry) Group is a member of the Australian Climate Roundtable, which brings together leading business, environment, union, research and social organisations and which has put forward sensible principles for policy design. Good process, wide consultation, independent analysis and adequate time are needed to set Australia up for success…
http://www.aigroup.com.au/
link to Media Report from the homepage as url of the Release is ridiculously long.
Innes Wilcox/Climate Roundtable is another ABC/Fairfax darling.
10
All my efforts over the past 5 years:
letters to politicians,
supporting the IPA,
supporting sceptical blogs,
debating the greenhouse effect theory,
writing emails to friends and colleagues,
subsidising the publication of “Climate Change the Facts” and having it sent to every Federal politician.
Seems to have come to nothing so far.
I hope someone can see something positive in this announcement!
30
Peter,
I think the target has been set with a non active method of mitigation in mind, direct action if you like. My guess is primarily via land use changes. Australia is very sparsely populated, just 0.25% of farmland or grassland changed to tree crops would be enough to acheive a 25% CO2 saving? For example: The ord river scheme extension is probably enough to significantly dent emission all by itself, my estimate is that stage 3 – 15000 ha (150 square km) would absorb almost 20 MT more CO2 which represents a reduction of about 4% so just 3 Ord river stages (equivalent) by 2030 is enough to meet the commitment.
Let’s irrigate some desert, just 500 square km is needed to meet the commitment, play the cards right and you can even get china to pay for it, make more food to feed the world.
10
The solution is plain to see. Build dams and hydro wherever they will fit(we can use the water anyway). Establish fully vertically integrated nuclear power industry. Renewables can then compete with coal and nuclear.
A formula for a rosey future.
50
I’m actually astonished that no one has brought this up yet. I was going to mention it not long after the Thread was posted here by Joanne, but I thought I would wait and see if anyone else even considered this.
Let’s take the current total just from fossil fuel usage and cement manufacture, and this is for the whole World.
33,615,389,000 Tonnes (Metric Tons)
Now take away the emissions from China, which are currently 8,826,292,000 Tonnes almost 25% of the whole World total.
This leaves us with:
25,328,497,000 Tonnes.
So then, lets’ actually pretend (just for a microsecond or two) that the remaining 193 Countries agree to decrease their emissions by a (rounded) 25% by 2030, and that includes India which is dramatically increasing its emissions in that interim.
That leaves us with a 2030 reduced total (Minus just China) of 18,996,372,000 Tonnes.
China is increasing its emissions by +150%, so that’s on top of what they already are currently emitting.
So now add the current China emissions PLUS the proposed +150% by 2030, and the new total for the whole World is 39,708,102,000 tonnes.
So the whole rest of Planet Earth reduces by 26 to 28% or what the hell ever, and the new World total is 18% higher than it is now.
Even if China’s total will only be 150% of what it is now, (different to +150%) the new World total is still higher than now.
Isn’t it odd that Mathematics doesn’t quite come up to the rhetoric.
Also, Australia will spend 15 years reducing its emissions by 26 to 28%.
15 years.
That will be cancelled out by China in 28 days, and then in another 28 days etcetera.
If China does stay on that +150% schedule, then China will be emitting just a tad over HALF the worlds Emissions.
And this is just China. India won’t be agreeing to any reductions at Paris either.
Sorta makes the whole exercise worthwhile doesn’t it.
Betya Paris won’t be mentioning this.
Tony.
Oh, and the source. I actually used this link at Wikipedia
120
.
As usual in climate follyscience, the numbers don’t add up to the required result unless they’re homogonised.
Please pass the potato masher when you’re done with it on the temperature and sea rise.
30
Here one for you Tony.
China to fund Zambian coal fired power.
Which will probably help with the increasing food production seen in Africa.
40
Want to hear another totally and utterly useless piece of, umm, dare I even say the word …..inconvenient information.
Even in 2030 when China has increased its CO2 emissions by +150% and they are emitting more than half the World’s total emissions.
Their per capita emissions rate will STILL be lower than Australia’s.
See how that utterly useless metric is being used as a bludgeoning stick in an attempt to make us feel somehow guilty.
Tony.
60
After the solar super-storms of 1859 (Carrington global event), 1989 (Quebec black-out), 2003 (Sweden black-out), 2005 (GPS black-out), and the near-miss EXTINCTION event from all nukes’s explosion by 9 hours in July 2012, shouldn’t we show UN that in view of the next super-storm, the ongoing human sacrifices-depopulation-boomerang will save NONE from extinction, as a Laser Plasma Shield, by two powerful beams over equator will do??? Just to REPEL the excessive fraction of the space storm! http://www.science20.com/news_articles/worldlargest_petawatt_laser_completed_delivering_2000_trillion_watts_output-156782 BOEING PATENTED a Laser Plasma Shield! http://www.sciencealert.com/boeing-has-patented-a-plasma-force-field-to-protect-against-shock-waves
02
REPEL space Damocles swords
Yes, that is so powerful but not for long, eh?
2000 trillion watts output [for one trillionth of one second] and from your science20 link…
Oddly it does not say the time it takes to recharge for the next shot.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From your Boeing link
AND
So somehow, with this proposed patented system, these vehicle mounted weapons carry with them a generator of stupendous power, fueled by an unspecified method, and still be light enough (weight-wise)allowing it can travel to all combat areas. Patented fantasy!
10
gai –
u posted the Climategate Ged Davis/Shell “scenarios”, which makes me wonder if u ever saw this most FANTASTIC and BIZARRE pieces of CAGW writing ever – a letter from John Ashton (see bio below) in response to a speech by Shell CEO, Ben van Beurden:
(warning: novel length)
21 March: RTCC: John Ashton: Shell’s climate change strategy: narcissistic, paranoid, and psychopathic
In an open letter to Shell’s Ben Van Beurden, the UK’s former top climate envoy says now is the time for him to show leadership
From early in my career the Shell Scenarios were seen in the British Foreign Office as the pinnacle of their art, and their then impresario, Ged Davis, as a modern ***Merlin…
Your response is that we should ease off on climate. We can have a transition but it cannot transform. The aim, in any meaningful timeframe, should not be an energy system that is carbon neutral nor even low carbon.
Instead we must settle for “lower-carbon”, whatever that means, to allow us the “higher energy” that “makes the difference between poverty and prosperity”.
And so the story of your mask leads inexorably to the conclusion that no choice is needed after all. Only one approach is morally and economically available. It is not transformational. It proceeds by very small steps…
You have no compunction in immediately excluding coal, the product of a rival industry, from this endeavour. But that is to accommodate a shift to gas, not faster deployment of renewables (which would divert investment from gas)…
The high carbon, resource-profligate modernity you helped build is a new Babylon. Every bite from its fruit poisons the tree from which we pluck it.
King Belshazzar of Babylon plundered goblets of gold from the Temple of Solomon. We take our plunder from an ecological fabric we no longer recognize as our first Temple. But if it crumbles we die both in body and in spirit.
Climate change is the writing on our wall.If we heed it we can repair our Temple and avoid the fate of Babylon. If we don’t, we, too, fall…
***Governments have obligated themselves to do whatever it takes to keep climate change within 2C. I once heard an industry peer of yours dismiss this. Politicians, he said, had promised it cynically to keep NGOs off their backs. But there was no will to act on it. At the table was one of your own predecessors, who did not demur.
The 2C obligation is not going to go away. It will be reasserted at COP21, which should now also state clearly that this means carbon neutral energy by mid century.
***2C was not a casual reaction to civil society impossibilism. It was a political judgement, informed by science, about the threshold beyond which climate insecurity is likely to become unmanageable…
The commitments made at COP21 may still fall short of a 2C response. But the forces now at work will act inexorably to push up not rein back our ambition.
Your strategy seems to be to try to hold the line until the door finally closes on 2C. But governments cannot walk away from their obligation. They would have to explain what had changed to justify doing so…
http://www.rtcc.org/2015/03/16/shells-climate-change-strategy-narcissistic-paranoid-and-psychopathic/
the speech:
Shell: Less aloof, more assertive
Speech given by Ben van Beurden, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Royal Dutch Shell plc, at the IP Week Dinner in London, United Kingdom, on February 12, 2015.
The good news is that renewables, with strong support from the German government, are growing. The bad news is that coal plants are used as a flexible back-up.
That’s caused CO2 emissions in Germany to actually increase in 2012 and 2013, according to the European statistics agency Eurostat. This is bizarre and demonstrates the issues we face…
http://www.shell.com/global/aboutshell/media/speeches-and-articles/2015/less-aloof-more-assertive.html?cid=social22967754&adbid=565992909678211074&adbpl=tw&adbpr=20663500
from Ashton bio at Grantham:
Prof. John Ashton, Visiting Professor
From 2006-12, John served as Special Representative for Climate Change for three successive UK Foreign Secretaries, spanning the current Coalition and the previous Labour Governments. The UK Foreign Office pioneered during this time a diplomacy-led approach to climate change that came to be widely admired.
He was a co-founder and, from 2004-6, the first Chief Executive of the think tank E3G…
He is a Distinguished Policy Fellow at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College. He holds visiting professorships at the London School of Economics and the London University School of Oriental and African Studies. He is a Trustee of the UK Youth Climate Coalition and Tipping Point, and a non-executive Director of E3G.
20
It really peeves me (other word self-snipped) that we have a government that lacks the intelligence or courage to just stand up and tell the truth, explain the actual science, reality and economics of the situation and just say outright that Australia will not ever subscribe to the scam of global warming (despite the name changes it is still actually warming that they claim is happening), and that we will never pay a single cent to the UN or IPCC or any world body that thinks we owe anyone for producing a piddling amount of CO2. Any political party that made that solemn pledge with the actual intention and guts to mean it and implement it would win any election hands-down.
40
So if $$ Trillions are spent in an effort to keep the earths temperature from changing up by 2 degrees how many
$$ Trillions of borrowed money will need to be spent to keep it constant ?
Can the earth’s temperature be allowed to change as it has for billions of years if the reasons are
natural occurring causes ?
The earth’s temperature can change if for example volcanos start going off but if you don’t drive a Prius you are going straight to hell and are killing the planet .
It’s hard to tax a volcano … humans not so bad .
00
Sometimes when I wake up in the morning I really have to gird up my loins before entering the idiocracy our world has become.
According to Monckton, there are only two countries not playing ball with this deliberate suicide pact: Australia and Canada.
The sick joke is that even though we are one of two, we still have three established political parties Labor, Greens, Lib-Nat-coalition, all three of which are now partaking officially in a Flat Earth religion, deceiving the younger generations into believing something that is actually more ridiculous than the original flat Earth dogma.
At least when the Catholic Church was selling the flat Earth theory, they were doing so using blatantly religious reasoning (or interpretation at least). Nowadays the high priests of climate ‘science’, economics (‘green jobs’ golden calf), politics, and … oh yeah … the Pope of Rome, are actually selling this new nightmare religious dogma purely under the label of ‘science’ … and … ‘consensus’, which isn’t even a scientific term, because a majority of authorities had achieved consensus that the world was flat once also.
While western civilization burns – which it is right now – politicians including Tony Abbott, are standing around declaring ‘targets’ on who gets to non-commit to committing suicide first, whilst they all wonder who in fact WILL be the first lemming off the cliff!
I would like to sue my secondary ‘educational’ institute for indoctrinating me into believing in global warming when I was younger. I was a believer once because it was presented to me in the 1990’s for goodness sakes -when they hadn’t even reached ‘consensus’- with the UNESCO curriculum that our policy makers in Canberra adopted without consulting even our own scientific community … without even being taught any skeptical arguments. I feel dirty … abused even!
This is how civilizations die. Abbott is now contributing to the Overton Window shift where we all continue to believe a monumental lie, and even consolidate it as fact! Nightmare is the only word for it. God help our children.
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