Jennifer Marohasy

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Clive Hamilton Boycotts e-Journal for Publishing ‘Climate Change Denialists’

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Clive Hamilton, Professor of public ethics at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, is leading an attack by left-leaning Australian academics on Graham Young and his e-journal On Line Opinion because it publishes article by so-called ‘climate change denialists’ including Tom Harris and John McLean.

Now is your opportunity to support Graham Young and On Line Opinion by making a donation here: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/membership/

You can read Prof Hamilton here: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7580

And then perhaps leave a comment here: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=7580

Crying Need for Skepticism: Gerard Henderson

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There is an opinion piece in yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald entitled ‘Crying Need for Doubting Peter’ in which Gerard Henderson suggests that even if carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are contributing to global warming it is unclear why a nation like Australia — responsible for only 1 percent of the world’s emissions — should be an international leader in responding to climate change.

Gerard Henderson quotes ABC Radio National Broadcaster Robyn Williams from his interview with Channel 9 TV journalist Adam Shand on Sunday.

You can watch the Channel 9 story — which is probably the first time mainstream Australian TV has given some of Australia’s so-called global warming skeptics a fair hearing — here as Part 1 and Part 2.

Global Warming for Dummies (Part 3)

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The prediction of how much manmade global warming we will see in the future (as well as how much past warming was manmade) depends upon something called “climate sensitivity”.

For many years, climate researchers have struggled to diagnose the Earth’s climate sensitivity from measurements of the real climate system. It’s almost a “holy grail” kind of search, because if we could discover the true value of the climate sensitivity, then we would basically know whether future global warming will be benign, catastrophic, or somewhere in between.

Here I present a new method of satellite data analysis which I believe reveals the climate sensitivity, and I also show why it has been so hard to diagnose from observations.

When the Earth warms, it emits more infrared radiation to outer space. This natural cooling mechanism is the same effect you feel at a distance from a hot stove. The hotter anything gets the more infrared energy it loses to its surroundings.

For the Earth, this natural cooling effect amounts to an average of 3.3 Watts per square meter for every 1 deg C that the Earth warms. There is no scientific disagreement on this value.

Climate sensitivity is how clouds and water vapor will change with warming to make that 3.3 Watts a bigger number (stronger natural cooling, called “negative feedback”), or smaller (weaker natural cooling, called “positive feedback”).

While there are other sources of change in the climate system, cloud and water vapor changes are likely to dominate climate sensitivity. The greater the sensitivity, the more the Earth will warm from increasing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations being produced by humans through the burning of fossil fuels.

There are three possibilities for climate sensitivity:

1. If clouds and water vapor don’t change as we add CO2 to the atmosphere, then the expected warming by 2100 would only be about 1 deg. C, which would not be a very big concern for most people. This is called the “zero-feedback” case.

2. If low clouds decrease, high (cirrus) clouds increase, or water vapor increases, then warming will be magnified. Most, if not all, climate models predict that clouds and water vapor will change like this, resulting in an amplification of the CO2-only warming of 1 deg C to as much as 4.5 deg. C or more. This is called the “positive-feedback” case, and the greater the positive feedback, the greater the warming. (NOTE: If the sum of all positive feedbacks more than cancel out the 3.3 Watt natural cooling, then the climate system is inherently unstable…this is why you sometimes hear of climate change “tipping points”.)

3. If the climate modelers are wrong — and low clouds increase, high clouds decrease or water vapor decreases with warming — then the effect will be to reduce the warming to less than 1 deg. C. For instance, if that 3.3 Watts of natural cooling mentioned earlier increased to as much as 8 Watts from cloud changes, the warming would be reduced to about 0.5 deg C by 2100. This is called the “negative feedback” case.

Read more from Roy Spencer here: http://www.weatherquestions.com/Climate-Sensitivity-Holy-Grail.htm

In this simplied version of a paper entitled ‘Chaotic Radiative Forcing, Feedback Stripes, and the Overestimation of Climate Sensitiviy’ submitted on June 25, 2008 to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society Dr Spencer goes on to conclude that:

1. Current satellite estimates of climate sensitivity have a spurious bias in the direction of high sensitivity.

2. This bias is probably due to small, natural fluctuations in cloud cover.

3. The true climate sensitivity only shows up during those shorter periods of time when non-radiative forcing (e.g. evaporation) is causing a relatively large source of temperature variability compared to that from cloud variability.

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Read Global Warming for Dummies Part 1 here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/000959.html
And Global Warming for Dummies Part 2 here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/002844.html

Energy Intensive Australian Businesses To Report Emissions from Tomorrow: Media Release from Penny Wong

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From Tuesday (1 July), businesses emitting large amounts of greenhouse gases will be required to monitor and measure the emissions ahead of reporting them to the Government by October next year.

Minister for Climate Change and Water, Senator Penny Wong, said the requirements were part of Australia’s new National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting System.

“The National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting System will be an important part of our efforts to tackle climate change as we move to establish an emissions trading scheme,” Senator Wong said.

“The emissions trading scheme is at the heart of the Rudd Government’s plan to reduce greenhouse emissions. It is the best way to tackle climate change at lowest cost to families and business.

“This new system will play an important role by more precisely quantifying the greenhouse gases Australia produces. It will also, for the first time, provide robust and comparable information to the public on the greenhouse and energy profiles of Australia’s large corporations.”

From 1 July, corporate groups that emit 125 kilotonnes or more of greenhouse gases each year, or produce or consume 500 terajoules or more of energy, will be required to collect data to meet annual reporting requirements. Corporations controlling facilities that emit more than 25 kilotonnes of greenhouse gases, or use or produce 100 terajoules or more of energy, will also need to collect data.

(25 kilotonnes of greenhouse gas emissions is equivalent to the annual emissions of more than 6,200 cars. 100 terajoules equates to the annual energy use of around 1900 households.)

While the Act governing the system comes into effect on 1 July 2008, relevant corporations will have until 31 August 2009 to apply to register under the scheme, and until 31 October 2009 to submit their first annual greenhouse and energy report.

“Many of these corporations already report their emissions and energy use to meet investor demands under existing programs, or as part of a growing corporate commitment to social responsibility and sustainability,” Senator Wong said.

“But others may be unsure as to whether or not they are covered by the system, and the Department of Climate Change will work closely with them to ensure they can comply.”

The Department of Climate Change has developed an online calculator to help businesses work out whether the system applies to them. The department will continue to run information sessions and provide guidance on using the online reporting system, along with a ‘reporting hotline’.

More on the Barrages Blocking the River Murray

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Let’s be honest: a dry river is not necessarily an environmental catastrophe.

Two weeks ago Australians were warned that a leaked government report claims there is only six months to save the Murray-Darling Basin.

In response, the Federal Opposition leader, Brendan Nelson, called on the Prime Minister, Kelvin Rudd, to make a joint tour of the River Murray’s lower lakes region.

Mr Nelson said he thought it was “very important that the leaders of this nation have a first-hand look at the environmental, economic and human catastrophe which is unfolding in the Lower Murray lakes.”

The leaked report focused on the lower lakes, and as I have previously written (Acid Sulfate Blame Floating Upstream, The Land, May 15, pg 30), a solution to many of the environmental problems at the Murray’s mouth is to simply open the barrages and let the area flood with saltwater.

The barrages were built from the 1920s to keep the Southern Ocean out and to raise the lake level, including for boating.

These same barrages also facilitated the development of irrigated farming in this area, but they are unnatural.

If the barrages were now opened, irrigators dependent on freshwater from the lower lakes would need to be compensated.

But the alternative, continuing to send large quantities of water from the drought-drained reserves in the Hume and Dartmouth dams during this protracted big dry, is less viable.

Some argue that if a permanent weir was constructed just upstream of the lakes at Wellington and the barrages used under “an adaptive management regime”, there could be water savings in the order of 750,000 megalitres a year.

Opening the barrages would take some pressure off the system, because less water would need to be allocated to South Australia, but the river could still run dry.

Indeed, it doesn’t matter how many leaked government reports call for more water for environmental flows, if there’s ongoing drought and the upstream dams runs dry, there will be simply no water for the river.

It would be an economic and human catastrophe for the many towns now dependent on the river for their water supply, but it would not necessarily be a catastrophe for the environment.

The River Murray in its natural state could be reduced to a chain of saline ponds.
Indeed, the idea that a river should be always brimming with freshwater is a very European concept – in reality, alien to a land of drought and flooding rains.

So, let’s be honest, many South Australians want to keep the barrages shut to the Southern Ocean and many Victorians and New South Welshmen want to keep the river full of water – not to save the environment, but to avoid what Mr Nelson has described as a potential economic and social catastrophe.

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This is an edited version of my column published in The Land on Thursday June 26 entitled ‘Barrages Block Sense’.
You can read many of my The Land columns here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/articles.php

Farm Lobbies Abandon Farmers: Media Release from Viv Forbes

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“The Carbon Sense Coalition today accused the big farming lobby groups, government departments, politicians and Ministers representing agriculture of ignoring science and abandoning farmers to unjustified carbon taxation.

The chairman of “Carbon Sense”, Mr Viv Forbes, claimed that there was no justification whatsoever for including emissions from farm animals in any carbon emissions tax scheme.

“Every intelligent farmer can understand the carbon food cycle whereby every bit of carbon dioxide released by farm animals or plants into the atmosphere has previously been removed from the same atmosphere.”

“This simple process is surely not beyond the understanding of all the lobbyists, bureaucrats, researchers and media living off farmers?”

“In the farm sector carbon balance, apart from any fossil fuel used, it is a zero sum game, and all farm animals have zero net carbon emissions.”

“Grazing animals have not yet learned to live on coal or diesel fuel, and they cannot create carbon out of rocks, soil or water. Therefore they must extract it, via grasses and grains, from that marvellous gas of life in our atmosphere, carbon dioxide. All foods and organic matter represent carbon that has been sequestered by life processes into living matter. The carbon is simply recycled at zero cost.”

“Farm plants and animals are every bit as green as forests. Both farms and forests extract carbon from the air and store it in organic life forms until that organic matter is burnt or decays in the open air, thus returning their borrowed carbon to the atmospheric storehouse.”

“Why then do those who grow forests attract a carbon credit and but those who grow cattle and sheep cop a carbon tax?”

“Australia and New Zealand lead the world in harvesting solar energy and carbon dioxide to produce an abundance of clean green food. Why then are both the New Zealand and the Australian governments proposing to force farm animals into their emissions trading quagmire? And why are they subsidising the conversion of farmland producing food into forests producing nothing but carbon credits or crops producing ethanol motor fuel? What are future generations going to eat?”

Forbes claimed that farmers need to start agitating now or they risk being the only bunnies still paying carbon taxes.

“Motorists who vote and use petrol will escape the carbon tax by sleight of hand – petrol excise will in future be called “carbon tax”. Exporters will get an exemption to enable them to compete with more sensible regimes with no carbon taxes. Other protected species like working families in marginal electorates will get subsidies to cover carbon taxes on electricity bills. Truckies will blockade the roads if politicians add carbon tax to diesel prices. That leaves farmers as the only big group with so few votes and such incompetent leadership that they will pay the carbon tax.”

“Farmers have been abandoned by Ag Force, the Meat and Livestock Authority, CSIRO, the National Party, our “working families” Government and most of the similar organisations in New Zealand. It is not clear whether this is because of a lack of scientific logic or cowardice in the face of electoral hysteria on global warming.”

“But the politicians representing the treasured “working families” in the battling suburbs had better start taking notice of rising food prices or a more soundly based hysteria about the growing shortage of food will sweep emissions trading nonsense from the political landscape.”

Viv Forbes, BScApp, FAusIMM, FSIA
Chairman, The Carbon Sense Coalition
www.carbon-sense.com