Emissions « JoNova

Australians: still the Global Patsy grand achievers of climate change with 46% cuts, but we’re getting better at selling that

PRE NOTE: Obviously Australian emissions of free aerial fertilizer are a net benefit to the world, and we should be paid for them, not charged. But in this world of witchcraft, and lacking a billionaire celebrity who can win elections and face down the media mob — this post is about the obvious, immediately doable ways to reduce the burden of being the worlds Global Patsy. Read it in that spirit. Even within a game with stupid rules, it’s time to go on the attack..

Suddenly the Australian government uses the magic term “Per Capita” and baffles the commentariat

While the rest of the world revels in their glorious fantasy future carbon “targets” the Australian government has finally realized that the measurement units “per country” suited the European overlords, and it was time to reframe the debate.

I have been saying for years, years and years, that Australia has been the Star Global Patsy, doing more per capita than any other nation despite being the fastest growing, furthest, remotest, sparsest and most dependent economy on coal. This is despite most nations of Earth not even pretending to meet their targets. In a quiet moment, even believers in the […]

Methane emissions: don’t blame cows and camels, blame the oceans

Steak-lovers — look at the volatility in the graph of methane levels. That is not the cows…

Methane emissions are a bit of a sleeper. They are ignored (even by me) yet and cows, sheep, pigs and lamas produce a whopping 11% of the Australian national greenhouse emissions (mostly as methane and nitrous oxide). Livestock emissions are 70% of our entire agricultural sector emissions. They are so important, at one stage Australia was considering a camel genocide — hoping to stop storms and reduce droughts by knocking off some camels. So if we like ham, steak and hamburgers, we need to pay attention. The carbon-politisi are coming.

The UN thinks we need to worry about methane which has 34 times the impact of CO2 (which is 34 times something immeasurably insignificant, so who cares?). Somehow global methane levels are often blamed on fossil fuels and farting cows, but this latest analysis suggests humans are pretty much irrelevant.

Tom Quirk tracks the annual changes in methane and finds that it bumps up by both big and small amounts, and the volatile pattern doesn’t match human agriculture or mining but rises and falls in time with El Ninos. This is not […]