Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston |
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Climate Science for Dummies
Malcolm and others have a refrain of "show me the evidence", so I thought it was worth setting this out as clearly as possible. If you want more detail, the Garnaut Report chapters 3-5 are a good summary.
What is undisputed
1. The so-called greenhouse gases (GHGs)* do what they say on the tin. Specifically, they absorb certain wavelengths of infrared radiation. The sun pours in 342 watts per square metre of energy into the planet every day, and some of it is not reradiated back into space because of greenhouse gases. If they didn't do that at all, it would be too cold for human or much other life. There is no qualified scientist on the planet that disputes this basic science.
- * for ease of reference, added from a later comment: the GHGs specified in Kyoto , and thus the ones controlled by the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting System and the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, are: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, sulphur hexafluoride, hydrofluorocarbons and perfluorocarbons. There is an argument in Garnaut (p59) about also including chlorofluorocarbons and hydrochlorofluorocarbons, but these are covered by the Montreal Protocol, and therefore should be phased out by 2030 anyway. Water vapour and ozone also have greenhouse effects, but aren't primarily human in origin, and water vapour at least is complicated, since much of it forms clouds, which reflect energy from the sun as well as retain heat below them.
2. There is more greenhouse gas in the atmosphere than at any time over the last at least tens of thousands of years, and the amount has been climbing steadily year on year at an accelerating rate for at least the last fifty years. These are direct observations, for recent years by direct measurement, and for the history from concentrations of CO2 in deep ice cores.
3. The great majority of the growth in atmospheric CO2 is anthropogenic – ie we did it, by burning fossil fuels and clearing land and spreading fertiliser and raising cows (cow and sheep farts contribute 11% of all Australia's GHG emissions, and there wouldn't be any of them here at all if humans weren't raising them). The more powerful greenhouse gases don't appear in nature at all, so we can't blame anyone or anything else for them (unless you have evidence that aliens have been secretly importing them from off-planet).
What is only disputed by the willfully blind or deranged
1. The planet has been getting hotter in the last 50 years, and for the last 30 years has been hotter than ever recorded. There are no remaining unexplained anomalies in the observational series whatsoever: regional and other differences eg in the high atmosphere are all accounted for. I have heard people claim that the world has cooled / stopped warming since 1990: since 12 of the last 13 years are the highest on record, they have to resort to three-card tricks or falsified data to attempt to justify this ludicrous claim. It is true that some regions around the north Atlantic were as warm in 1250 as they were in 1975, but a) the sort of fluctuations in the Gulf Stream that caused that are included in the mainstream models, b) this wasn't true of most of the rest of the world, and c) anyway, all but four of the years since 1980 have been warmer than that. There is, of course, no direct observational record of either the medieval anomalies or the regionality. Both the claims and the refutation rely on anecdotal and other contemporary observations without instruments, and on indirect observations such as tree-rings. Insofar as anecdotes and tree rings count for anything, they support the submission that the world wasn't generally warmer / colder at those times as much as or more than they support the claim that it was. We can't claim that European monk's accounts are more reliable than Indian or Chinese ones, only note that they record different trends. NB: if you were relying on The Great Global Warming Swindle for a different view on how warm it was in 1250, note that the UK broadcasting regulator has castigated the program's makers for altering their graphs to mislead viewers (eg, on that one, by re-labelling 1975 as "Now").
2. Getting hotter will be a Bad Thing. Thousands upon thousands of detailed studies have been done over the last twenty years on the impacts of warming. They have indeed identified a few impacts that are positive, but these are enormously outweighed by the negative impacts on everything from crop yields to disease ranges. Even the crop yield gains from CO2 fertilisation in some crops disappear at warming of more than two degrees, and are overwhelmed by the rainfall changes above that.
What can be debated
1. How much warming is due to GHGs? The mainstream science says that doubling GHG concentrations raises the temperature by 2 to 6°C. The sceptics say 1) something else is causing the warming, eg solar cycles, volcanism, or whatever, and therefore 2) since the GHGs definitely do cause warming, they're contributing less than the mainstream models show, and so we don't have to worry yet about further increases in GHGs, because they won't warm us as much as is feared.
2. er – that's it. Since GHGs do cause warming (basic physics) and are increasing (undisputed observations), any other touted cause boils down to that argument.
Note also that alongside the sceptics there are at least as many scientists (eg James Hansen) who think that the models underestimate the GHG effects, and therefore we need more drastic action than the mainstream models suggest.
The problem with all the other alternative explanations for warming is that they either don't change at the right times in the right direction to explain the temperature record, or that there is no observable mechanism for them to put enough energy in. For example, the total energy expended/burnt by all human activities to date is simply insufficient to have had any direct impact on warming: we may be able to keep our cities a degree or so warmer at ground level on a cold day, but in the great energy budget scheme of things it just doesn’t count.
Solar variations obviously do have impact –all of this energy came from the sun originally – but they vary at different times and different directions than the temperature record does. Huge amounts of effort have been put into understanding this, and the chances that there is some missing high-energy source we don't know about and can't detect are very small indeed. Finding one that stands up to scrutiny would be worth huge amounts in support from people like Exxon, so there is plenty of incentive for scientists to publish if they found one. And equal bunce for peer reviewers who got that paper through to publication. And the count of peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals supporting the sceptics' position: none, nada, zero.
What if it's a conspiracy?
What if all these thousands of scientists working in all the countries of the world have a secret conspiracy to defraud us all? Well, if just one of them decamped from the conspiracy with evidence of it, they'd be living in luxury on the rewards from those interested in keeping the gases flowing. What are the chances that a) it exists, and b) none of them have gone public? I leave that exercise to the reader.
What if warming is mostly caused by arbitrarily advanced alien space bats?
If there is some real as-yet-unidentified cause of warming that we don't recognise, or if thousands of scientists have uniformly and systematically got their model coefficients wrong, and some combination of other factors is causing warming, then what should we do that's different to what is currently planned?
Well, this runs into the undisputed territory again. GHGs do cause additional warming, and warming is a Bad Thing. So, if the warming to date is caused by something else, and that is going to carry on having this effect (if we don't know what it is, it would be imprudent to assume anything else), then we should take action to reduce as far as possible our efforts to add to that warming. So, if the mainstream science is wrong, we need to reduce GHG emissions even more than is currently planned. Simple really. Now let's get on with it.
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Earthquake in the House of Murdoch
Kathy, thanks for the link to Greg Sheridan, but my thoughts on that will have to wait as I've been working hard all day and am whacked.
Note first that six neanderthals who would have us play climate roulette with the planet deserted Nelson today. He could definitely use my services (see previous post.)
Much is made of how China and India can hold out on emission controls. It is not like Doha at all in my opinion. Both those countries depend on glaciers for much of their fresh water. They will be shooting themselves in the foot if the IPCC position turns out to be right, as it probably will.
It must have been grievous for Greg Sheridan to concede even an inch to the greenies, but he appears to have stepped out onto the start of the slippery slope. He now says: "I am not a global warming denier. But I am, like Catholic Archbishop of Sydney George Pell, a modest sceptic, open to evidence."
Wow! What a shift!
It's an earthquake, no less.
To Anthony Nolan
Anthony Nolan: "The problem. as we are seeing, is that the market is not a substitute for society."
No, there a reflection of society. A market only exists because there is a want for that market.
What does this mean? Example?
Why? Isn't the government in a democratic society the reflection of the majority? Surely if it wasn't there would be a new market opening.
Miners now make a very tidy living - better than most occupations in fact. It's not neo-liberals trying to put the kabosh on that, is it?
For Paul Morrella
Paul Morella, the issue, as I see it, is not that markets exist or that they are capable of providing access to and distributing goods and services in ways that the state cannot. The issues is with the way that social democratic parties have retreated from their responsibility to govern through legislation and regulation.
The neo-liberals, the real uglies, are the likes of Nozick who argued for no more than a "night watchman role" for the state suggesting that anything other than policing, military defence and judicial/corrective roles were an attack on the rights of "free individuals".
The problem. as we are seeing, is that the market is not a substitute for society. Social life is significantly more than the aggregation of acts of free individuals as they seek to maximise their market capacities.
Such has been the ideological dominance of neo-liberalism, however, that we are now going to have to virtually re-invent the wheel by teaching the remnants of the social democratic parties about the nature of the social in social democrat. Strewth.
Rudd and co. will take the easy path by administering the interface between the market and social life so long as we let them. In the meantime he and his associates will have their own advantage looked after very well indeed.
It is as well to remember that the banner on the old miner's newspaper "Common Cause" used to read:
"The purpose of the Labour Party is to advance the interests of the working class - one by one."
Canadian Arctic sheds ice chunk. Have we reached tipping point?
As Arctic ice continues to melt faster than predicted, we must begin to wonder if the climate scientists have been too conservative and the catastrophic effects of climate change may be upon us sooner that we think. The ice will no longer be reflecting the sun back into space. The heat will now be absorbed in the ocean, increasing the pace of global warming. We have probably already reached the tipping point.
Glaciers and other melting things
Who was it who said on tele the other night: "Our ancestors are coming out of the ice to warn us."
I loved the imagery.
A mysterious world
Anthony Nolan: "The problem with neo-liberalism is that it has captured the imagination of precisely those middle classes from whom we have a right to expect social and political leadership. For this group legislative controls over production amount to an attack on some sort of fundamental freedom and they cannot grasp that government has a legitimate role in ensuring the ecological conditions of existence."
Neo-liberalism doesn't really have any one box - like all beliefs, people generally believe and disbelieve in different aspects of it. Really, "neo-liberalism" was taken on board by western governments due to the failure of Keynesian economics during the seventies. There simply wasn't an answer for the stagflation the west was experiencing. Hence, the legend of the "devil" himself, one Mr Friedman, was born.
Governments can be involved in anything the choose - "neo-liberals" aren't the ones holding back Mr Rudd for example. Under ay system the market will do what always does: it'll react for better or worse. The implementation of any economic problem isn't your real problem. The reaction to those policies is your real problem. And that, my friend, cannot be controlled by any political or, indeed, economic belief. No matter how hard we will it.
Brother won't you lend me a dime
Anthony Nolan, I don't think you can say a carbon trading scheme is any more neo-liberal than it is anything else. The scheme will fail because it lacks market depth - how can this not be apparent? There maybe dreamers who believe they'll make money, and there may be dreamers who believe the government will make money - both of course will be false and the scheme will quickly collapse.
The problem is that, like most stupidity, the wrong people will be blamed, and the scheme will remain, somwhere, in someone's head. Probably for another day somewhere else - so as the stupidity can be repeated to make certain it doesn't work.
Why would anyone in their right mind trade carbon? In a market that makes up 2% of the world market no less - it's ridiculous. This scheme is a political fix (nobody could be possibly be that brain dead) to find the middle ground - that's blatantly obvious. There's even talk of workers getting the credits that the now off-shore companies leave behind - if it wasn't so sad it'd be funny.
You simply can't sell something that doesn't have a buyer. It reminds me of the Dot com bomb - once one hundred million dollar companies (stock value) liquidating ten dollar domain names etc.
If the guy who wrote this report is the best they can find, well...........
Kathy...Sharon Beeder is correct...
Sharon is a very credible source on this who first came to attention for blowing the whistle on a highly negligent and potently abusive masculine engineering culture at Sydney Water...her book on the subject was "Toxic Fish and Sewer Surfing". Sharon is an engineer of one variety or another.
Her point in the article you cite is that an emissions trading scheme will allow for emissions trading but will not effectively reduce emissions. Markets do not generate ecological outcomes. They generate market outcomes when what we need are solutions that produce ecological outcomes.
The reason Beder thinks it will fail is readily understood: the scheme allows energy producers to pass on to the consumer the cost of a carbon tax which negates any incentive for the producers to reduce carbon outputs. Carbon outputs will remain pretty much the same.
Unfortunately every one with a half baked degree in economics or management theory will bang on endlessly about how this might work or that knob might be twiddled without grasping the fact that markets are not the mechanism with which to drive social policy. Leaving it to markets is in fact an abandonment of government responsibility to make social policy.
The problem with neo-liberalism is that it has captured the imagination of precisely those middle classes from whom we have a right to expect social and political leadership. For this group legislative controls over production amount to an attack on some sort of fundamental freedom and they cannot grasp that government has a legitimate role in ensuring the ecological conditions of existence.
Governance
Anthony Nolan is right in this sense: government is about governance. That entails the concept of the greater good. It is balanced by people like me asserting the liberty of the minority to be protected from that greater good. Good governance is about balancing the two.
I was at a public meeting today listening to the unspeakable Lord Mayor (a political enemy of mine) and her underlings talking about the wonderful things that were "palnned" for my community and I started wondering whether I was living in a totalitarian city.
Fear and greed? It's all fear baby
Ian MacDougall: "As I have said many times in the pages of Webdiary: I would love it if the climate change denialists and 'sceptics' were right. (I have had a career in science, and so maintain a certain scepticism about everything I read.) But the potential cost of accepting their bet and losing makes it a no-brainer."
Fear will always be more persuasive than greed. Just another thing PR has lifted from markets in action. At Princeton (the guys name escapes me) during the sixties, they undertook a number of studies on the subject. It's worth having a look at for a slight understanding on some of the reasons for extreme market movements.
So on that note Mr Rudd, and indeed your good self, are probably on a winner. Conning the average dupe into paying for the air they breath. Sheesh - never thought I'd see the day. Surely, there really is a market for in-depth study of genetics. Is it just my feeling or is the world really getting dumber?
It is time for all of us to step up to the plate.
The issues we face today such as climate change and peak oil cannot be understood by quick news grabs. It is up to all of us to be better educated on these topics. Topics that will shape the world we live in over the next fifty years.
Education is the key to understanding these major issues it is up to all of us to be better informed and to encourage more scientific education, and information sharing. The effects of climate change will not be tackled by dummies.
I can't stop any changes
Ian MacDougall, I've been saying for a few years there'll be a major push toward larger government in western nations (and really that's all this is) - and it's not surprising when one looks at the generational composition. My doubt is that future generations will accept it.
I don't believe the Australian Government really believes in climate change. I don't believe any national government really believes in climate change. The actions of the Australian Government certainly seem to support my suspicions. I personally believe most governments see such "growth taxes" as a de-facto consumption tax. A tax that wouldn't be accepted by the general populace under any other name. A tax invented to resist the trend of global tax shopping, and global labor movements. It's a tax that will ultimately fail for those reasons.
Obviously the report doesn't tell the "whole truth". If China, India, and the United States don't follow - and they won't - it makes no difference. If the constantly vaunted climate change doesn't eventuate; Australia becomes a nation of jack asses.
Any report that doesn't report on costs should be viewed with suspicion in my opinion.
The costs of these taxes are something I doubt few are aware of. For that reason, they'll probably become part of the landscape - until a future government scrapes them on popular mandate.
Australia is in a world economy, it isn't in nor will it ever be in, splendid isolation. Economic suicide isn't in the interests of Australia - and it will have serious future ramifications.
Hayek & Friedman promote TB
Here's an interesting parallel to what we're discussing.
Bring out your dead!
David Roffey
And for most of that time a constant barrage from the four horseman of apocalypse. What is you say:
Well, I've got a problem, one big f###### problem. I'd like to live past one hundred. Maybe even see the Great Great Grandchildren, watch man land on Mars, maybe see a breakthrough cure for cancer, and whole lot of other shit, that may require some "progress".
Living in someone's destructive fantasy world just isn't one of those things.
When it all goes wrong you'll blame someone else
David Roffey
Markets will do as they've always done, regardless of you, Ian or the Australian Government. That's not a guess, that's a fact.
And I'm not the guy equating mans progression with some sort of evil.
Naturally, of course, you're not including the last ten years?
If I own the only bridge out of town, what do I look for? The highest number of people to cross that bridge at the highest attainable price. What happens say, a government tells me they will tax me one dollar for the first one to one hundred crosses, two dollars for the next one hundred and one to two hundred, and so on? In today's world I'd probably seek a thousand page report at top dollar, to tell me what I already know. I'd look for the least amount of people at the highest attainable price (still keeping my profit). Cut back on the maintenance, employment costs etc. The government will lose out on taxes from assorted industries etc.
That's the effect of a growth tax.
As the bridge owner I may escape the cost, as a towns person, I'm the loser.
It'd be much cheaper for the Australian people to give you guys a community medal and weekend away - when voting comes in on this issue.
This exact situation will happen across Australian industry.
When did science become sexy?
Ian MacDougall
It follows "quite logically that if there is no warming effect due to increased atmospheric CO2 concentration" - there is no warming effect due to man. It doesn't follow, man will stop looking for better ways of doing things. Man has progressed over thousands of years without "global warming" after all.
I think it is the "accepted" conclusions that he wants people to question. A scientist asks why, an economist asks how much, and the religious show faith. I think we're seeing what happens when those lines are blurred.
No it doesn't, that's just meaningless emotional claptrap.
If scientists have made the wrong assumptions as a starting point - and this man has shown that some assumptions were most definitely wrong - there isn't any reason to stop questioning and probing. I've always been under the impression that was a basic tenet of science - asking questions that is.
You wish to force something, that is going to have consequences, because you think the greater good will be served. I'm saying the economics of such a situation should be debated - and clearly explained. Fear mongering and false claims - such as Australian landmarks collapsing if (Australia in isolation), doesn't take these steps isn't true. The end in this case doesn't justify the means.
It's clear to me, and it has been for some time, that most here have scant understanding about most of the economic ramifications. I've no doubt, that this lack of understanding, is shared across the majority of the wider world.
I would be nice to think that, though, that would be a mistake.
We are looking at severe economic changes; changes that will have large ramifications, for individuals and for society at large. The reason most people don't roll a dice for their house verse the neighbors; is that they logically concentrate on what they may lose, as opposed to what they may win. This makes the proposition in their mind a less than fifty fifty chance. Not a logical assumption, though, an understandable one. What would be psychotic is for a person to believe they had 100% chance of success - and that's what you're asking people to believe in this case - in your mind, there isn't any downside to the carbon trading proposal.
Both Hayek, and Friedman are economists. They're not scientists. They'd likely explain to people the economic ramifications of certain decisions - and then allow people to make up their own minds. Politicians are the people that do the sugar coating after all.
Gamblers & Gunfighters
Paul Morella: We are looking at severe economic changes; changes that will have large ramifications, for individuals and for society at large. The reason most people don't roll a dice for their house verse the neighbors; is that they logically concentrate on what they may lose, as opposed to what they may win. This makes the proposition in their mind a less than fifty fifty chance. Not a logical assumption, though, an understandable one. What would be psychotic is for a person to believe they had 100% chance of success - and that's what you're asking people to believe in this case - in your mind, there isn't any downside to the carbon trading proposal.
It depends on what you mean by 'downside'. I have never said that there is no cost in reining in CO2 output to the atmosphere (via carbon trading, carbon taxation or whatever). But your paragraph above reminds me of a story that did the rounds a few years back about Kerry Packer, at the time not only Australia's richest man, but also a legendary blackjack player, and held by some in the know to be the best in the world.
Packer was sitting at the table in the high rollers' room of a casino in the Bahamas one night, where the minimum bet allowed was 100,000 US dollars. In came a somewhat flustered American player, who sat down opposite Packer and started telling of his battle with the staff to be allowed into the room. "You have no idea the trouble I've had talking my way in here!" he said. "They wanted to lock me out! Me! And I am worth no less than twenty million dollars!"
Packer, as the story goes, reached into his pocket, took out a coin, and said: "I'll toss. Your call. Double or nothing."
It could well be a true story.
After thinking about that offer by Packer, it is clear that in his own mind he could not really lose. I concluded that it would have been fairer of him to say "OK. Everything I own against everything you own. One of us walks out broke."
But I don't think either would have accepted the risk. Packer was a gambler all right, but not of the gunfighting kind.
"The reason most people don't roll a dice for their house verse the neighbors is that they logically concentrate on what they may lose." Quite right. So let's focus on what we (ie every last one of us, including also most other vertebrate species) may lose. Which is the planet.
Is even a 1% chance of runaway greenhouse acceptable to you? Because it ain't for me.
These days I am a farmer. That by definition makes me a professional gambler. But I'm not of the gunfighting kind either.
Ross Garnaut, a prominent Australian economist and head of the Federal Government's Climate Change Review has accepted the conclusions of that other prominent economist, Sir Nicholas Stern, and said that the longer the necessary emission reductions are delayed, the costlier they will be. So he is urging the Federal Government to act speedily, but not hastily; not to wait for other national governments as Brendan Nelson suggests, but to follow the Precautionary Principle.
Tim Colebatch, Economics Editor of The Age has a good article on this topic in today's edition.
As I have said many times in the pages of Webdiary: I would love it if the climate change denialists and 'sceptics' were right. (I have had a career in science, and so maintain a certain scepticism about everything I read.) But the potential cost of accepting their bet and losing makes it a no-brainer.
The more I read the more confused I become.
Ian: "As I have said many times in the pages of Webdiary: I would love it if the climate change denialists and 'sceptics' were right. (I have had a career in science, and so maintain a certain scepticism about everything I read.) But the potential cost of accepting their bet and losing makes it a no-brainer"
The problem, as I see it, is that we do not really know who IS right. I agree, however, that this doesn't mean that we should do nothing and leave it to chance
What concerns me is that many scientists have said that emissions reductions are not going to make any difference.
Dr Dennis Jensen says this:
Jensen also has an article in The Australian today.
This from Sharon Beder:
[This article was first published in the July 15 Canberra Times. Sharon Beder is the author of Environmental Principles and Policies (UNSW Press, 2006)].
Are we "pissing in the wind” here, Ian?
Look at the efforts ofChina
Brendan Nelson should hire me as a consultant
Kathy, haven't had time today to do much. I hope to do more tomorrow. But I did watch Brendan Nelson being interviewed by Kerry O'Brien tonight on his party's response to the Rudd government's program on emissions trading. There's no hiding the fact that the Liberal Party is in a policy mess on that topic at the moment.
Yet it need not be. All Nelson has to do is announce total support for the position taken by Dr Dennis Jensen and the rest of the Lavoisier Group, tell all and sundry that CO2 is benign and innocent, that global warming is a con by the 'climate mafia' and the left wing cultural 'elites', and that when he becomes PM he'll withdraw Australia from Kyoto, tell the carbon traders to go hang, and send Malcolm Turnbull off overseas to flog coal to all and sundry. It would be an easy way out of his present bother. I'm amazed he hasn't thought of it.
David Roffey's summary of the science on the subject at the start of this thread is a very good one in my opinion. In addition, my view is that the worldwide near-universal retreat of glaciers is the most telling evidence of atmospheric warming. Nobody should be under the illusion that the atmosphere is a simple system, or the oceans either. The whole climate system of the globe is enormously complex, like the biosphere and the global human economy. But in my view, the glaciers are the canaries in the coal mine, and are as good a global warming alarm as any satellite system or string of ground weather stations.
As I have said before, we should not adopt a presumption of innocence approach to any chemicals in the environment, and CO2 is a major one. It should always be the other way around: guilty until proven innocent. I think that to be a major weakness of Jensen's and the Lavoisier Group's approach.
More later.
Medieval or neanderthal?
Paul: "Man has progressed over thousands of years without "global warming" after all."
For once we can agree! Of course, for thousands of years we progressed rather slowly, if at all. And if we did that again (no need to go backwards) we wouldn't have a problem. But since the industrial revolution, we have been primarily progressing by using ever-increasing use of stored energy from coal and oil, burning lately up to 400 years worth of stored bio-energy every year. And somewhere in the 1960s, the amount we burned exceeded the capacity of the natural systems of the planet (mostly plants and the sea) to absorb the by-products.
So, for thousands of years we had no cars or electricity, and no global warming problem. and now we have. Ian and I and those who understand this are arguing that we should use our understanding of this problem to go forward into a world where we try to solve this. You are arguing that we should let the market do what it will, even if doing so has a real chance of putting us back to the low-energy medieval world where we had no problem (but with no chance of repeating the high-energy tricks that got us out of that). We argue for a bright future, you argue for barbarism.
The real question
David Roffey, the point of course is that if the world has cooled since 1998, warming cannot be man made. Emissions of course have risen rapidly since this date. The question must then be what is actually causing the warming or cooling, if it's not man? That's all anybody has ever asked - and that's the question so many seem so determined to avoid.
It works for moi
"The world has truly gone mad." Always has been, Paul.
"When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane."
Hermann Hesse.
The whole western world needs a damn good political shakeup
Ian MacDougall
Nobody has worked to delay any such switch. Sensible people have pointed out why a scheme, such as one, Australia is proposing, has no chance of working - it'll actually cause worse problems.
How many Australian politicians have any business experience, if I may ask? I mean, real bona fide experience? Really, I find it hard to believe anyone with any reasonable successful experience could think that the moronic alcohol taxes could cause anything other than problems. And people would willingly be guided by such imbeciles on something of this scale? The world has truly gone mad.
Vested interest and disaster
Paul Morrella, it follows quite logically that if there is no warming effect due to increased atmospheric CO2 concentration, there need not be any costly changes to the energy base of the world economy, emission taxes, carbon trading or anything else. I put it to you that that is precisely the conclusion Christopher Booker argues for in the article linked to by Kathy Farrelly.
This puts him, in my opinion, in the same class as the British appeasers and pacifists who argued in the late 1930's against doing anything, armament-wise, to meet the possibility of a war with Hitler's Germany.
Lowering GHG emissions and switching to renewable energy sources is something the world's people will have to do sometime in the next 250 years or so anyway, and the technology to switch to is arguably there already. It is becoming more economically competitive by the minute as supply problems of fossil fuels increase.
If we follow the advice of the Hansens of the world and they turn out to be wrong, we will have moved to sustainability perhaps 100 years too early. If we follow the advice of the Bookers, and they turn out to be wrong, we may well find ourselves past a tipping point, into runaway greenhouse, and with no way back. Correct me if I am wrong, but I don't think there is anything in free market theory or the works of Hayek, Friedman and the rest that says the latter is impossible.
Have a look at the arguments for each side as set out at Climate Debate Daily. It's a slam-dunk, lay down misere, particularly in view of the stakes either way.
Colder there, Jenny
But not here: I haven't had a frost in my garden yet and such as the salvias, which should be sleeping, are still in bloom. And the camellias are a month or so early. I leave work around 7p.m., and usually have slightly iced moisture on my windows at that time. This year, only once so far. I haven't had to use the demister or heater since May. Is this just a wet year - dry year difference? We are within a ml or so of average July rainfall (tho' I assume that the drought years may well have pulled the average down).
Crazy plants
Yes F Kendall, the plants have gone crazy. Wattle out here six weeks ahead of time, daffodils the same, blossoms already coming out a month early, emus chicks up north hatched two months early. And yet is seems so cold, minus seven and very raw days this past week in Goulburn and not much better in Canberra. Really bitter weather all round, with occasional sunny days quite nice. Not much rain at all however.
It is like the winters of the seventies, though the frosts have come later this year. They used to start around March but these days rarely till June. Good snow in the mountains at the moment, and snow in Sydney yesterday it seems.
Tornados? Tornadoes?
I see that Tim Fischer is selling 1700 ha of his 2300 at Boree Creek. He is expecting to get between $5.6 and $7 million. Now, if I had a farm at Boree Creek, I would think it a good idea to sell; I just can't understand why someone would buy.
But there were two little mysteries: in the local paper he said that he expected to retain only a quarter of that ... Why? Could he be so deeply in debt? Or what? It was a mystery comment.
The other was what someone heard on ABC News Radio: that he was planning to build a tornado shelter, leading one to wonder what information he has that we don't.
Greenland's ice is melting, there is fortune underneath.
The possibility of rising sea levels must give second thoughts to those of us who would like to own waterfront property. Don't worry – perhaps all the oil and diamonds will pay for the dikes to protect our coast lines. Pity about the poor though – they might have to learn to swim. I suppose less population should give us less GHG pollution.
Nasa is out of line on global warming.
Came across this thoughtful article.
What do other Webdiarists reckon? Am particularly interested in your thoughts, Ian (science and mathematics have never been my forte).
Nasa is out of line on global warming
By Christopher Booker
Considering that the measures recommended by the world's politicians to combat global warming will cost tens of trillions of dollars and involve very drastic changes to our way of life, it might be thought wise to check the reliability of the evidence on which they base their belief that our planet is actually getting hotter.
There are four internationally recognised sources of data on world temperatures, but the one most often cited by supporters of global warming is that run by James Hansen of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS).
Hansen has been for 20 years the world's leading scientific advocate of global warming (and Al Gore's closest ally). But in the past year a number of expertUS
First they noted the increasingly glaring discrepancy between the figures given by GISS, which show temperatures continuing to race upwards, and those given by the other three main data sources, which all show temperatures having fallen since 1998, dropping dramatically in the past year to levels around the average of the past 30 years.
Two sets of data, from satellites, go back to 1979: one produced by Dr Roy Spencer, formerly of Nasa, now at theUniversity of Alabama , Huntsville
Right out on their own, however, are the quite different figures produced by GISS which, strangely for a body sponsored by Nasa, rely not on satellites but also on surface readings. Hansen's latest graph shows temperatures rising since 1880, at accelerating speed in the past 10 years.
Read more from Christopher Booker
The other three all show a flattening out after 2001 and a marked downward plunge of 0.6 degrees Celsius in 2007/8, equivalent to almost all the net warming recorded in the 20th century. (For comparisons see "Is the Earth getting warmer, or colder?" by Steven Goddard on The Register website.)
Even more searching questions have been raised over Hansen's figures by two expert blogs. One is Climate Audit, run by Steve McIntyre, the computer analyst who earlier exposed the notorious "hockeystick" graph that was shamelessly exploited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore. (This used a flawed computer model to suppress evidence that the world was hotter in the Middle Ages than today.) The other site is Watts Up With That, run by the meteorologist Anthony Watts.
It was McIntyre who last year forced Hansen to publish revised figures forUS
Although Hansen claimed that this only resulted from more careful calculations, McIntyre pointed out how odd it was that the adjustments all seemed to confirm his thesis.
Watts meanwhile has also been conducting an exhaustive photographic survey ofUS
All this has raised such doubts over the methodology behind the GISS data that informed observers are calling for it to be independently assessed. Hansen himself is notoriously impatient of any criticism of his methods: earlier this month he appealed to Congress that the leaders of those who question global warming should be put on trial.
It is still too early to suggest that the recent drop in temperatures shown by everyone but him is proof that global warming has stopped. But the fact is that not one of those vaunted computer models predicted what has happened to temperatures in recent years. Yet it is on those models (and Hansen's alarmist figures) that our politicians are basing all their proposals for irrevocably changing our lives.
Booker vs Hansen
Kathy: Two preliminary comments: (1) Booker is out to discredit his GW targets such as James Hansen, and one of his methods can be seen in his use of adjectives and the odd adverb. Consider this quote (my underlinings) from his 'thoughful article':
All this has raised such doubts over the methodology behind the GISS data that informed observers are calling for it to be independently assessed. Hansen himself is notoriously impatient of any criticism of his methods: earlier this month he appealed to Congress that the leaders of those who question global warming should be put on trial.
It is still too early to suggest that the recent drop in temperatures shown by everyone but him is proof that global warming has stopped. But the fact is that not one of those vaunted computer models predicted what has happened to temperatures in recent years. Yet it is on those models (and Hansen's alarmist figures) that our politicians are basing all their proposals for irrevocably changing our lives.
A fair slab of the thought that Booker has put into this stuff concerns the use of such loaded and manipulative language, which I am always wary of when I see writers use it.
(2) Booker does not deny anywhere that (a) CO2 is a greenhouse gas or (b) that its concentration in the atmosphere is increasing. To my mind, those facts together should inspire Booker into a bit of caution. Further, if he has any notion of the difference between weather and climate, he is not letting on about it.
I am reluctant to comment further until I have read the response from Hansen and others to the criticisms Booker makes of Hansen, the IPCC and the mainstream climatological consensus, which appear pretty well at one on global warming.
Since at least the start of the Industrial Revolution in the middle of the 18th C, we have been running an experiment, using the whole planet as the (one) guinea pig, and being unable to control for a single variable (ie to the exclusion of all others.) The global warming thesis under these circumstances can be more readily challenged by GW denialists. Oddly enough, the Bookers of the world attack the Hansens for ignoring evidence, when they can be accused doing it themselves. They (rightly) question the data from ground temperature stations located near car parks, but make no mention of the fact that everywhere in the world glaciers are observed to be in retreat. Those who maintain a 'no change' or 'global cooling' position have to explain how that rather damning evidence fits their hypothesis.
They are arguing for delay in the switch to a sustainable energy base for the global economy, and for business as usual. To listen to them and to base investment decisions on what they say is potentially as dangerous as it gets. Worse, they don't take the concept of the tipping point seriously at all.
BTW, a good estimate of the relative strength of each side in this debate can be had by reading a selection of the pieces available on Climate Debate Daily. It's no contest in my opinion.
Models predict some cooler periods
Same answer to Booker's article as to an earlier question about why the temperature each year isn't smoothly trending up in line with CO2 concentrations: the models account for a LOT of other factors as well as greenhouse gases, one of the most important of which is solar forcing - ie the strength of the sun's output. This is indeed in the downward part of its cycle, so the models DO predict a small downward trend for the next few years, and that has been duly announced in press conferences and the like: but the so-called sceptics have never been slaves to the truth.
And, of course, note that these 'cooler' years are still in the roster of the highest temperatures ever recorded, just cooler than 1998 ...
Ideas are never an isolated incidence
Malcolm B Duncan: "There was an article in yesterday's SMH (don't have a link unfortunately), Paul Morrella, where some lunatic was calling for the re-introduction of death duties arguing that accumulated wealth should not merely be passed on to the next generation but should be made generally available."
Oh, this type of noise will only become more and more shrill. The newly found raft of "morality taxes" (thinking UK as prime example) plays directly to a certain audience. I mean, why would anyone want things when they could instead be handing money to the government to look after "our" health etc?
I'm sorry, however; I think it's all rather getting an East German feel about it. And it'll end up being about as successful. Australian politicians should take note.
Rearranging the deck chairs
Why is everyone busy rearranging the deckchairs?
The ship ... in case you haven't noticed (or are convinced that by denying it, it won't happen) ... is sinking!
Please consider taking part in the Climate Torch Relay (see GetUp's web site). Not interested in hearing why it's a waste of time.
Alternate activity: teach your children some stretching exercises so they can kiss their arse goodbye.
I'm naive and/or simple-minded. It would be waste of time pointing that out.
Ryan Heath
tried to make intergenerational inequality an issue a few years ago, in his book Please Just F* Off, It's our Turn Now.
As he made a pretty poor case - I assumed after reading it that it was just an attempt to bring his name to attention, in which it was successful - I assumed that the whole thing had gone away.
"Expecting them (the young) to wait on us hand and foot, for minimal reward" sounds good to me. When is it going to start?
Yes
Bill Avent: "So we're going to have a big debate in the next decade, and forget climate change, are we?"
I'm tipping the hysteria will have long since moved on to something else by then. Kicking this donkey, probably has about three years tops, left in it. The problems with the issues I've canvassed will only just be getting "warmed" up.
The art of selling stuff
Ruth Conway: "I recently read "The Upside of Down" by Thomas Homer-Dixon. He suggests that there are three stages of denial."
The basic workings of any religious cult is the separation of members from the outside world - who are of course "deniers", heretics etc.
How many of the apocalyptic scenarios in environmental doomsday have come to pass? Thomas Homer-Dixon is of course relying on the gamblers fallacy. Which naturally he can then double up.... and double up..... and double up.....
People in positions to actually make these changes won't have that luxury.
Excellent post
Ruth Conway. Most interesting.
Stages of denial
I recently read "The Upside of Down" by Thomas Homer-Dixon. He suggests that there are three stages of denial:
1. existential denial - deny the problem exists.
2. consequential denial - admit the problem exists, but say it doesn't really matter, either because it doesn't affect us significantly or because we can easily adjust to its effects.
3. fatalistic denial - the problem exists and it has consequences that matter, but we can't do anything about it.
Monitor the columnists and see which stage they are in.
No prizes for guessing
You should have picked up where I'm at Ruth but it's not about climate change.
Guessing and hoping
The thread is about climate change, Scott.
Paul, good luck with that tipping of yours. I hope you're not putting money on it though.
Stages
I can see a fourth stage. Recognise that the problem exists and has consequences that matter, acknowledge that we can't do anything to reverse what we have done, and start thinking about how we are going to adapt to the crunch when it comes.
The sooner we stop pussy-footing around and reach that fourth stage the better.
The world marches on
Scott Dunmore: "One thing stands out; people's wilful blindness to the fact that living standards must fall and are falling in this country right now."
Certainly, post WWII, living standards have risen dramatically in the western world. If they are now falling in Australia, it's because of the crap budget - something I pointed out at the time. Inflation is a working persons curse, and growth taxes will add to that problem.
The biggest debate in the next decade (forget climate change), throughout the western world, will be about economic intergenerational equity. Loading future generations up with our debt (through taxes), expecting them to wait on us hand and foot, for minimal reward, just isn't going to cut it - and any future generation isn't going to accept it. Future generations are going to want what we've had, and apocalyptic doom scenarios aren't going to change that. A bit like the Chinese peasant wanting a computer etc.
None of these facts means the world is going to hell in a handbasket of course - all any doom scenerio amounts to is a personal perspective - which of course the last fifty years has been the golden age of.
Death and Taxes
There was an article in yesterday's SMH (don't have a link unfortunately), Paul Morrella, where some lunatic was calling for the re-introduction of death duties arguing that accumulated wealth should not merely be passed on to the next generation but should be made generally available. I'd be interested to hear what Ian MacDougall thinks about that.
For my part, at 52 I think I am about the last generation of lawyers (Dr Reynolds would be another) who either learnt or had to deal in practice with wills that made provision for the possibility.
Thanks to Bjelke-Peterson's abolition of death duties, the Feds might in the not too distant future end up with a windfall profit as a result of many wills not providing for the contingency and not being changed before death.
The problem I have with that is that, usually, the accumulated wealth has been spent on goods and services by at most the third generation, thus benefitting the economy generally through the profligacy of individuals – I don't see why it should be squandered upfront by bloody politicians. That, however, is about as free-market as I get.
Death duties, CGT and skeptics
Well Malcolm B Duncan, if the Scot doesn't have any ideas about this, try me. From my experience, being the one who has had to unravel and assist in the execution of the last wishes of seven of the family deceased (post abolition of death duties), it appears to me that Capital Gains Tax has compensated the Feds quite nicely for part of what was lost over that abolition.
But there are at least some major exemptions and reducers available to lighten the burden, although the reach of the capital gains tax laws is pretty broad. And anyone closing an estate business and wanting to claim the small business CGT relief needs to a close look at what the Tax Office deems a small business and the conditions that apply.
However one look at the Brits' inheritance tax laws is enough to show that we get off rather lightly in comparison.
As for the third generation, I think that will be our kids. After that it will be back to the plough, I suspect.
Kathy, interesting link. He's a known skeptic of course. But if this winter is anything to go by then it is getting colder. In fact, I don't feel personally that temperatures have been above average at all, either here or in the north, in the past ten years. Makes you wonder just where and how they are measuring it all. But I guess the melting glaciers are telling us that something is going on. You need heat to melt ice and there is no question it is melting. But are we entirely to blame, that is the question?
Jenny I have been thinking.
Jenny, I have been thinking about this comment you made a week ago:
It has certainly been colder than usual here in Perth. In fact, we had snow in the Stirling Ranges a couple of weeks ago. The mercury dropped to 0.7 on two consecutive days last month. There were four days in a row where the minimum ranged between 1.2 and 3.3. July WAS a very cold month, here in Perth. It was also a very wet month. Our dams are at the highest level in eight years, as at the end of July. Of course we could certainly do with more rain, 34% full is still not enough.
"Are we entirely to blame" is a good question, Jenny.
I do despair, though, when I read such guff coming from someone who should know better.
Dr Tim Flannery, 2004:
Snow and ice
Kathy, there has been reasonable snow in the mountains this year which might lift dams in the MDB though I suspect much of the melt will be soaked up by the forest cover and dry mountains before there is much run off. What is needed is a really wet year and that is not what we have had now for over a decade. There is still substantial drought area over much of NSW and Victoria and now we are heading into the spring in the north without good falls the crops will be in trouble. some are already stressed, others are doing well.
Four Corners tonight on the melting ice caps should be good.
I do not know if your saw that doco on SBS last night about the Andes plane crash survivors - riveting stuff - but what impressed me was the snow cover in those mountains, assuming of course that the program was made in the region. And when - is that snow cover still as extensive? I understood not, that the glaciers of the Andes and the snow was retreating there pretty fast. It is hard to get to the facts in all this.
Glad to hear Perth has had some good rain. Even Canberra has done well in parts but the landscape is pretty barren still.
Cheers. Struggling to unravel the Ecclesiastical history of Scotland at the moment. - a rather bloody history I must say.
Stern hell in 'Quadrant'
I mentioned in a previous post on this thread an article in the June 2008 issue of Quadrant entitled The Chilling Costs of Climate Catastrophism by Ray Evans, Secretary of the Lavoisier Group of global warming denialists.
Catastrophism is clearly a boo-word for Evans, reflecting perhaps the fact that it was geological orthodoxy in the period before science had won its decisive battles with religion, and dovetailing as it did with the biblical account of the Earth's history. Then from 1850 to 1980 catastrophism was replaced by uniformitarianism, based on the proposition that the Earth's history is one of gradual and incremental change at the pace we find today in natural processes like erosion and deposition.
Understandably, this appeals to political conservatives like the fellows of the Lavoisier Group.
A note in passing: The name of Lavoisier is invoked because that most distinguished and influential 18th Century French chemist fell victim on the guillotine to the political radicals of the French Revolution. They would not call themselves say, the Galileo Group or the Darwin Group. It wouldn't look good coming from an inherently conservative bunch, because the latter two were attacked and victimised in their times by political conservatives. The invited corollary is that those who hold the modern 'radical' concern that post WW2 industrialism threatens runaway global warming, and who in turn tend to be found left of centre politically, are the modern equivalents of the barbarians who beheaded one of the great leaders of the Enlightenment.
However, these days catastrophism is back in favour again. The prevailing geological paradigm is that the planet's history has been one of uniformitarian processes punctuated by abrupt, severe and (for life forms) catastrophic changes. These are both in the geological record of times past and thus still possible in future. Yet Evans treats as cranks those who argue that a climate catastrophe could be on the way and may have already begun.
The same issue of Quadrant carries a companion (hard copy only) article to the above mentioned piece by Evans entitled The Abused Science of Climate Change. It is written by Sev Sternhell, Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at the University of Sydney.
After dismissing the computer modelling, the credibility of some 'alarmist' claims (eg the 'hockey stick' graph of global temperature anomaly vs time over the last 1000 years) and the religiosity he detects in some 'alarmists', Sternhell generously concedes that their case "has one argument going for it, the 'precautionary principle', which essentially amounts to avoiding risks if potential consequences are dire." He believes that the climate-CO2 connection justifies further research, but not the "currently proposed expensive, probably unnecessary, disruptive and probably futile measures."
When writing my last post on this thread I did not have time to deal fully with the above propositions of Sternhell. I return to them now, and hope to get this written before the ABC's Four Corners program on the melting of the Arctic sea ice begins at 8:30 tonight.
Notice first that Sternhell is against "currently proposed expensive, probably unnecessary, disruptive and probably futile measures."
Probability attaches only to their necessity and futility, not to their cost and capacity to disrupt the existing economy: which nobody disputes. However, Sternhell is neither adamant nor definitive, and to say that they are 'probably unnecessary and probably futile' is to say that they are possibly not in both cases. That is the reason for the guarded academic statement. Sternhell clearly does not want to be caught out later over this, in the event that the Garnaut cap and trade measures turn out to be both necessary and effective.
It appears then that in the back of his mind Sternhell rates the probability of climate catastrophe at greater than zero. That in itself is cause for alarm.
Paul Morrella
So we're going to have a big debate in the next decade, and forget climate change, are we?
Brilliant. I sure hope climate change is reading this.
Why economic growth is so important
Scott Dunmore: "You advocate economic growth which must result in increased consumption and at the same time agree that it cannot be endless. I think you have a dilemma here: just where does the transition kick in?"
Nothing is endless, Scott Dunmore. The "transition" kicks in when it kicks in. There isn't any evidence that this is anywhere near happening at the moment. The only dilemma is that people wish to prematurely halt economic growth, because economic growth, will one day end. That's not even slightly rational.
Economic growth is the reason Australians enjoy certain standards of living. Any fall in such growth can only result in reduced living standards - like, where do people think the government gets its money? The period in history with sustained negative growth (over hundreds of years), was known as the Dark Ages - and it wasn't because it was all fun and parlour games.
If a nation destroys business viability, it ultimately destroys government viability. There are multitudes of such cases throughout the 20th century. Acting willfully blind will not change the end result.
Why it can't continue
without, Paul Morrella, ever more drastic consequences.
One thing stands out; people's wilful blindness to the fact that living standards must fall and are falling in this country right now. You might be ready to argue to the contrary but tell me I'm wrong in pointing out that money spent on fuel and rent can't be spent on other goods and services.
Increased productivity? In service industries that means longer hours, hardly an increase in living standards.
Can I take it that your position is wait for things to run their natural course? It's mine also because I don't think any amount of talk or knowledge will change government thinking or people's attitudes. Like I said, party while you can.