Guess where I took this photograph… and what the rock formation shows?
Archives for May 2012
Deal with Climate Reality as it Unfolds: Bob Carter
“OVER the last 18 months, policymakers in Canada, the U.S. and Japan have quietly abandoned the illusory goal of preventing global warming by reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Instead, an alternative view has emerged regarding the most cost-effective way in which to deal with the undoubted hazards of climate change. 
“This view points toward setting a policy of preparation for, and adaptation to, climatic events and change as they occur, which is distinctly different from the former emphasis given by most Western parliaments to the mitigation of global warming by curbing carbon dioxide emissions.”
So begins an article by Bob Carter recently published in Canada’s Financial Post. The article is a summary of a public lecture Professor Carter will be giving in Ottowa, Toronto and Calgary over the next week. It continues…
“Ultimately, the rationale for choosing between policies of mitigation or adaptation must lie with an analysis of the underlying scientific evidence about climate change. Yet the vigorous public debate over possibly dangerous human-caused global warming is bedevilled by two things.
[Read more…] about Deal with Climate Reality as it Unfolds: Bob Carter
World Leaders to Tackle Real Pollution from Black Carbon
“IT seems to have gone virtually unnoticed, but the world leaders at the weekend’s G8 summit look as if they have taken the biggest step in years in tackling climate change. And it’s quite apart from anything to do with carbon dioxide.
“The summit’s final communiqué, the Camp David Declaration, supports; comprehensive actions’ to reduce “short-lived climate pollutants”. These substances – including black carbon (soot), methane, ground-level ozone, and hydrofluorocarbons – are responsible for about half of global warming…
“More important still, the measures would save some 2.4 million lives a year, mainly by cutting the inhalation of soot, chiefly emitted by vehicle diesel engines and by the inefficient wood and dung burning cook stoves used by most of the world’s poorest people – and increase grain harvests, at present hit by pollution, by 52 million tons a year. While the international climate negotiations drag on, these pollutants can be reduced through existing national laws and regulations, using technologies that are already available…
Read more here: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geoffreylean/100159272/g8-leaders-open-up-vital-new-front-in-the-battle-to-control-global-warming/
G8: Leaders open up vital new front in the battle to control global warming by Geoffrey Lean @ The Telegraph, May 22, 2012
Why the Carbon Tax? Peter Lang
Dear Members of Parliament and Senators
Why is the government insistent on implementing a CO2 price, given that it will not make any difference to the climate, or to sea levels, and most certainly will not “lead the world by example” (as has been so clearly demonstrated at the Copenhagen, Cancun and Durban conferences)?
If the government had been given sound, objective advice it would realise that there is no point in implementing a CO2 price unless the whole world participates. Renowned world leader in all matter to do with CO2 pricing, Yale economist Professor William Nordhaus, says in his 2008 book “A Question of Balance” [1], p19:
“We preliminarily estimate that a participation rate of 50 percent, as compared with 100 percent, will impose an abatement-cost penalty of 250 percent. Even with the participation of the top 15 countries and regions, consisting of three-quarters of world emissions, we estimate that the cost penalty is about 70 percent.”
Treasury estimates [2] suggest the Government’s CO2 pricing scheme will cost about $1,350 billion cumulative to 2050 (undiscounted), or $390 billion (discounted at 4.35% per annum, the rate used in the Nordhaus Yale-RICE model (2012) [3]). This cost may be an underestimate; for example, the compliance cost for CO2 measuring and monitoring apparently has not been estimated.
However, the benefit of the Government’s CO2 pricing will be virtually nil.
Why is the Australian Government so insistent on damaging our economy (and our wellbeing) for no environmental benefit?
Peter Lang
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References:
1. William Nordhaus (2008) “A Question of Balance”, p19,
http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/Balance_2nd_proofs.pdf
2. Treasury (2011) “Strong Growth, Low Pollution – Modelling a Carbon Price”, [Chart 5:13]
http://archive.treasury.gov.au/carbonpricemodelling/content/chart_table_data/chapter5.asp
3. Nordhaus, Yale-RICE Model (as of March 20, 2012)
http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/RICEmodels.htm
Media Watch Witch Hunt
IN the old days they would have just bound her, thrown her into the lake, and waited to see if she floated. That was how one viewer responded to the vicious dunking of Jennifer Marohasy by Jonathan Holmes on their Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) Media Watch program on March 19, 2012.
Dr Marohasy just wants to restore the Murray River’s estuary, but the pushback from the ABC ’s Media Watch program was personal and aggressive.
My name is Koala and I’ve been studying a complaint about that Media Watch program made by Bob Fernley Jones, a retired professional engineer, to the ABC Audience and Consumer Affairs (A&CA). As Mr Fernley Jones explains: Media Watch ignored all the evidence in condemning Dr Marohasy and broke its own rules and standards. Mr Fernley Jones made it easy for the A&CA by listing all the standards that have been breached.
But according to the A&CA, Jonathan Holmes was just expressing their opinions, and under the Editorial Policies, there is no requirement for accuracy in their opinion. So the A&CA has rejected this complaint from Mr Fernley Jones. What a nonsense ruling!
Even a Koala can see that Mr Holmes was very naughty and nasty.
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Media Watch of 19 March 2012 (What’s in a Name),
By Bob Fernley Jones
SUMMARY:
These complaints concern extreme bias and errors of fact as communicated by Jonathan Holmes in the ABC Media Watch program of March 19, 2012 entitled ‘What’s in a Name’. The show very obviously broke key ABC Editorial Policies in these ways:
A. Jonathan Holmes presented his personal interest views in a gross subjective manner
B. Critical information was withheld from the viewers
C. There was no balance and group-think was apparent in the Media Watch team
D. The scientific consensus on the Lower Murray estuary was seriously misrepresented
E. The program overtly attacked the reputation of two Australian scientists, Jennifer Marohasy and Peter Ridd, and also the Australian Environment Foundation
F. ABC Media Watch should issue an apology to Dr Marohasy, Professor Ridd, the Australian Environment Foundation and the public
Basil Beamish for Climate Commissioner
I’ve been reading about the Commission: the Climate Commission established to provide all Australians with an independent and reliable source of information about the science of climate change.
Two of the commissioners, Professors Will Steffan and Lesley Hughes, have just published a report stating that New South Wales is becoming hotter and heatwaves will become more severe.
My name is Mr Koala Bear and I’ve been studying their report ‘The Critical Decade: New South Wales Climate Impacts and Opportunities’. And that is not what the data says, not all the data.
Scientist Basil Beamish begins at the beginning. He has plotted climate data for two sites in NSW for which there is data back to 1890: Bathurst (pink line in chart) and Observatory Hill (blue line in chart). One of these is an inland site and one is coastal. One is to the east of Parramatta, the site favoured by the Cimate Commissioners and one is to the west.
This data suggests that that it was hotter back in the period 1910 to 1930. It was indeed very hot at Bathurst in 1919 with more than 31 days above 35.0°C (pink line in chart). At Observatory Hill, the hottest year measured by days above 35.0°C was 1926 (blue line in chart).
If Professor Steffan and Hughes are going to make statements about temperatures trends they have an obligation to consider all the instrumental data that is available. I mean they have an obligation to begin at the beginning, not 1960 as they do in their very misleading report.
I am not keen on the idea of counting day above 35.0 °C by calendar year as a measure of global warming. A problem is that the calendar year separates the hot months in each summer; it arbitrarily splits this one discrete period into two repeatedly. But never mind, if the Commissioners want to do this they can. But they must start at the beginning.
Professors Hughes and Steffan have no business being Climate Commissioners.
I want to start a petition: Basil Beamish for Climate Commissioner!
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Jennifer Marohasy
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Account Number 10376039
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.