Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Energy & Nuclear

Say No to Emissions Trading: Art Raiche

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It is foolish beyond measure to enter into an Emissions Trading System (ETS) based on the hysterical predictions of CSIRO’s computer modelling. To quote Prof Freeman Dyson of the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton, one of the world’s most eminent physicists: “The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.”

If there is global consensus that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are causing global warming, why is it that over 30,000 US scientists disagree and have petitioned the US government against actions to mitigate CO2 emissions? See http://www.petitionproject.org/

Why have the oceans been cooling for 5 years? Why is Antarctic sea ice increasing?

Why is it that despite the past decade of increased CO2 emission levels, the temperature has been stable and is predicted by the Hadley Centre to actually go down over the next decade?

We need to think very carefully before following the recommendations of the Garnaut Report, possibly the longest economic suicide note in Australia’s history.

Art Raiche
Killara, NSW

$8-a-Litre Petrol?

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THE price of petrol could soar to a crippling $8 a litre over the coming decade, according to CSIRO-sponsored research to be released today.

The nightmare scenario says the weekly family fuel bill for a medium-sized passenger vehicle could rise to $220 by 2018 – taking $12,000 a year out of family budgets.

couriermail.com.au: ‘Get ready for $8-a-litre petrol’

CSIRO Media Release: ‘Fuel for thought’ on transport sector challenges

‘Fuel for thought’ pdf

Excision from the National Electricity Grid

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According to Professor Gavan McDonell, the national electricity grid stretches over 4,000 kilometres, connecting far North Queensland down through the eastern states to Tasmania and across to South Australia. However, there is one notable exclusion: the Daintree.

One can almost here the collective expression of environmental conditioning, “Yes, but the ‘pristine Daintree’ is far too precious to be spoilt by reticulation.”

So, by implication, if Australia regards the Daintree exclusion area as the most deserving of protection from environmental harm, why is it condemned to the most polluting form of electricity? Surely, if its environmental importance supersedes any other area in Australia, its electricity supply should be the cleanest in Australia?

Residents and businesses within area of excision have a rigorously regulated conservation land-use responsibility. They are also quarantined from development, particularly through World Heritage and Iconic Places legislation. Now that conservation targets and planning scheme objectives have formally been met, the custodial community would like to be supported in the development of an alternative energy policy that is not reliant upon the concurrent operation of hundreds of polluting, emitting engine generators.

To this end, a delegation travelled to Brisbane to meet with Minister for Energy, the Hon. Geoff Wilson MP, to appeal for environmental relief from the existing flawed policy. It called upon the Queensland Government to embrace a new partnership, that protects, to the greatest possible extent, the exceptional environmental and ecotourism values, including the people and communities, through renewable optimisation, innovation, development and provision of world’s best-practice electricity supply.

The Minister’s Office has recently issued the following media statement:

We’re not about to bulldoze through ancient rainforest to put in power lines north of the Daintree River.

We’re talking about world-famous, world heritage-listed rainforest and everyone would want it to stay that way.

The State Labor Government has spent millions of dollars in a land buy-back scheme for the Daintree that demonstrates our commitment to the preservation of this pristine region.

In 2001, residents were invited to apply for federal and state government grants for solar power and to store solar energy.

Householders may also be eligible for grants under the federal government’s regional renewable power generation program. The federal government will pay up to fifty per cent of the cost of any renewable energy project.

The program is essentially for households and businesses that aren’t connected to the grid.

Ergon Energy has experts based in Cairns and they provide technical advice and equipment to households and businesses that rely on remote area power supplies, including solar energy.

I would encourage householders in the Daintree to contact Ergon Energy in Cairns.

The media advice is contemptuous of the people of Queensland, who in 1998 funded a $450,000 EIAS that established that reticulation through directional boring could be achieved without any adverse effect on the natural environment. It is also contemptuous of the local community that travelled from the Daintree to Brisbane to explain their very serious concerns for the pollution that the Queensland Government’s existing electricity policy has forced into their income-earning rainforest.

Indeed, the description of bulldozing ancient World Heritage rainforests is deliberate and mischievous fear-mongering. World Heritage is protected from state government degradation under international law & the Commonwealth’s EPBC Act, in addition to its own state government legislation, including the NCA, IPA, Wet Tropics Management & Protection & Iconic Places Acts.

Land acquisition by the Queensland Government was an integral part of an agreement, defined in the Rainforest CRC’s Daintree Futures Study, which built upon the concurrent delivery of conservation, regulation of development and power.

Minister Wilson suggests Daintree landholders contact Ergon Energy in Cairns, which has been relieved of its distribution responsibility towards the Daintree area only, for technical advice. In point of fact, the FNQ Regional Electricity Council has recommended:

In light of the State Government’s ClimateSmart 2050 strategy to reduce emissions from fossil fuel and increase use of renewables, the REC would recommend that the Minister review whether solutions could be found under this or related policies.

Options might include: support increased use of renewable energy through revised subsidies for renewables or tariff arrangements, or through providing grid access to greener power through the large scale cleaner generation such as gas, wind or clean coal.

Given the particular environment, an the many facets of the problem, the REC also recommends that other departments with interests in sustainability and World Heritage environmental management also be asked to consider solutions to the concerns.

How the National Electricity Grid Works in Australia

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“Until the 1990s, Australia had a series of separate regional power grids. We now have a system linked almost across the nation – a system which, when well managed, is cheaper and more reliable. In the late 1980s, governments finally came to see that the existing state monopoly power commissions were amazingly inefficient and hungry for great gobs of capital for new power stations and coal mines.

“The greater reliability of a connected system is just as important as the cost savings. With a national grid and a national market, it is possible to provide softer cushions against natural or man-made catastrophes: a spiraling cyclone, a stinking hot afternoon (one of the worst risks), the collapse of a transmission tower, or, to take a gloomy view, a terrorist attack.

“So it is hardly surprising that state governments should have looked for a new way to keep the lights on. Of course, when talking to their voters back home, they still kept assuring their constituents – and still do – that they were looking after their power, that they were making sure that their state’s power supply is in good shape. The fact is that now all of the connected states rely upon each other and NEMMCO, to keep the whole show firing.

“As a result, much the same amount of base generating capacity can meet our needs now as 20 years ago. And, when precarious episodes have arisen, the wizards at NEMMCO managed to keep the system up, and you, good citizens, probably neither heard nor worried about it.

But … read more from Gavan McDonell at OLO about South Australia’s special role in the administration of all of this: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7585&page=0

Australians Deluded by Latest Climate Change Report

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Since the election of the Rudd Labor government last year Australians seem to be under some sort of delusion that what we do here in Australia will actually have an impact on global climate. These delusions seem to have increased with the release of the Garnaut Climate Change Review Draft Report last Friday.

The front page of the weekend edition of the Sydney Morning Herald suggests that unless we immediately start work on a carbon trading scheme to operate from 2010 – and accept that the price of petrol, gas, power and food will rise – then it will be the end of agriculture in the Murray-Darling Basin by 2100, 5.5 million people will be exposed to dengue virus, it will be the end of the Great Barrier Reef and the beginning of political instability in neighbouring countries.

This is simply not true.

Indeed even Ross Garnaut acknowledges in his report that for there to be any impact on global carbon dioxide levels, the world’s major economies must do something about their emissions. The Professor lists China, the US, the European Union, Indonesia, Brazil, Russia then India, as the world’s largest greenhouse emitters and in that order.

Emissions from Australia make up only about 1 percent of the world total. In reality, we are a nation of just 21 million people at the bottom of the world. There are 1.3 billion people in China (India 1.1 billion, US 304 million and Indonesia 231 million) and given China and most other developing countries have no intension of limiting their greenhouse gas emissions in the short to medium term atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases are likely to continue to increase.

And I am not conceding that the apparently elevated levels of carbon dioxide are driving global temperatures.

Indeed atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have increased significantly over the last few decades and global temperatures did increase over the period 1975 to 1998, but since then they appear to have plateaued.

The prediction was that 2007 would be really hot, but it wasn’t.

There has been a breakdown in the correlation between increasingly levels of carbon dioxide and global temperatures.

Instead of acknowledging this in his report Professor Garnaut has deferred to two fellows at the Australian National University who he describes as “eminent econometricians” and quotes them apparently concluding that “viewed from the perspective of 30 or 50 years ago, the temperature recorded in most of the last decade lie above the confidence band produced by any model that does not allow for a warming trend” (pg. 113).

Why doesn’t the Professor just acknowledge that over the last 10 years, viewed from now, there has been no global warming and that now is not the time to introduce a radical new emission trading scheme that is sure to force up the price of everything, particularly given that our big neighbours, including Indonesia with a population of 231 million, have no plans to do the same.

The bottom line is that the introduction of an emissions trading scheme into Australia is likely to deliver real economic hardship while delivering no environmental benefit. Indeed it is absurd to suggest that the introduction of an emissions trading scheme in Australia will have any impact on the environment of the Murray Darling Basin or the Great Barrier Reef.

Australians are indeed deluding themselves if they think that by simply paying more for their petrol, they can influence global temperature trends, never mind that there has been no warming for 10 years now.

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.