Energy & Nuclear

“You can do a lot of damage with $10 billion. It can be used to build a lot of halls of fame and finance a lot of local community groups. In short, $10 billion can fund a lot of porkbarrelling in a lot of marginal seats.

Ten billion dollars is how much (on a conservative estimate) the federal government will make in 2010 from the sale of permits to emit greenhouse gases. Potentially double that amount could be collected – and if so federal government revenue would jump by 10 per cent. Anyone who believes that climate change is a gravy train only for lawyers, accountants and ‘‘environmental advisers’’ should think again. No politician has ever missed the chance to save the planet, especially if they can also garner a few billion dollars as a re-election war chest.

So far the government is not telling us what it will do with the embarrassment of riches it is about to receive.

In a speech last week to the Melbourne Institute, Labor’s climate change tsar, Ross Garnaut, said the additional revenue should be devoted to supporting ‘‘adjustment to a low-emissions economy’’. That sounds chillingly like code for a $10 billion ‘‘industry structural adjustment’’ program.

Garnaut said that whatever funding was provided to enable an adjustment to a low-emissions economy should be allocated ‘‘transparently’’. As someone experienced in the ways of government, Garnaut would appreciate that transparency is in the eye of the beholder. More transparency is better than less transparency, but of itself transparency doesn’t guarantee good policy outcomes. If the government funds the newest and trendiest low emissions technology, it can do so in an entirely transparent way; but that doesn’t change the fact that government is nonetheless picking winners.

One of the things Kevin Rudd could do with his windfall gains is cut taxes. The question is what taxes to cut. Priority should be given to reducing personal income tax as, ultimately, it is going to be individual consumers either directly or indirectly paying the costs of higher electricity prices. But cutting income taxes doesn’t compensate for the effect of raising industry costs on a country like Australia that’s dependent on cheap energy for its comparative advantage in international trading.

In his speech, Garnaut warned that ‘‘continuing disputation about parameters of the scheme, uncertainty, continuing politicisation of the ETS’s [emissions trading scheme’s] operations, would dissipate resources in unproductive activity, and seriously disrupt productivity growth’’.

An unkind person could translate this as ‘‘be quiet and leave it to the bureaucrats’’. The trouble is, bureaucrats don’t have a sparkling track record designing markets – ask anyone who’s had the misfortune of visiting a public hospital lately. Given the massive change that the introduction of an emissions trading scheme involves, it’s entirely appropriate that there be as much ‘‘disputation’’ as possible – particularly given that the scheme is going to begin within two years.

Climate change bureaucrats are going to be busy over the next few years as they invent an emissions trading scheme and scurry back and forth between Canberra and New York, because ultimately the scheme will be in the hands of the United Nations.

Labor has promised that Australia’s emissions trading scheme will be integrated into a global system. A few days ago the global head of carbon emissions for Merrill Lynch spelled out exactly what this means. ‘‘Every single carbon credit that comes in or out of Australia has to have a unique serial number, and that serial number is tracked by the United Nations.’’

The Department of Climate Change estimates that in the next few years this country’s greenhouse gas emissions will be about 600 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. Under the current European emissions scheme, one carbon credit is provided for every tonne of carbon dioxide. Even if only 10 per cent of Australia’s emissions are internationally traded, that still leaves 60 million carbon credits that must be given a serial number and reported to the UN.

There’s a certain irony that Kevin Rudd has pledged to cut red tape. His government is on the verge of imposing an emissions trading scheme with rules so complicated they will make the 8000 pages of tax laws look simple. Whatever complaints there are about the Australian Taxation Office, it is surely a paragon of efficiency compared with the UN.

Having the UN monitor and regulate Australia’s emissions trading almost sounds like an April’s fool’s joke – except that the first of April was three days ago.”

John Roskam is the Executive Director of the Institute of Public Affairs and this article has been republished from the Australian Financial Review with permission from the author.

27 March 2008,
The Hon Kevin Rudd, MP,
Prime Minister of Australia,
Australian Parliament,
Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, 2600.

Dear Prime Minister,

Your leadership is needed on a matter concerning coal-fired power plants and carbon dioxide emission rates in your country, a matter with ramifications for life on our planet, including all species. Prospects for today’s children, and especially the world’s poor, hinge upon our success in stabilizing climate.

For the sake of identification, I am a United States citizen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Adjunct Professor at the Columbia University Earth Institute. I am a member of our National Academy of Sciences, have testified before our Senate and House of Representatives on many occasions, have advised our Vice President and Cabinet members on climate change and its relation to energy requirements, and have received numerous awards including the World Wildlife Fund’s Duke of Edinburgh Conservation Medal from Prince Philip.

I write, however, as a private citizen, a resident of Kintnersville, Pennsylvania, USA. I was assisted in composing this letter by colleagues, including Australians, Americans, and Europeans, who commented upon a draft letter. Because of the urgency of the matter, I have not collected signatures, but your advisors will verify the authenticity of the science discussion.

I recognize that for years you have been a strong supporter of aggressive forward-looking actions to mitigate dangerous climate change. Also, since your election as Prime Minister of Australia, your government has been active in pressing the international community to take appropriate actions.
We are now at a point that bold leadership is needed, leadership that could change the course of human history.

I have read and commend the Interim Report of Professor Ross Garnaut, submitted to your government. The conclusion that net carbon emissions must be cut to a fraction of current emissions must be stunning and sobering to policy-makers. Yet the science is unambiguous: if we burn most of the fossil fuels, releasing the CO2 to the air, we will assuredly destroy much of the fabric of life on the planet. Achievement of required near-zero net emissions by mid-century implies a track with substantial cuts of emissions by 2020. Aggressive near-term fostering of energy efficiency and climate friendly technologies is an imperative for mitigation of the looming climate crisis and optimization of the economic pathway to the eventual clean-energy world.

Global climate is near critical tipping points that could lead to loss of all summer sea ice in the Arctic with detrimental effects on wildlife, initiation of ice sheet disintegration in West Antarctica and Greenland with progressive, unstoppable global sea level rise, shifting of climatic zones with extermination of many animal and plant species, reduction of freshwater supplies for hundreds of millions of people, and a more intense hydrologic cycle with stronger droughts and forest fires, but also heavier rains and floods, and stronger storms driven by latent heat, including tropical storms, tornados and thunderstorms.

Feasible actions now could still point the world onto a course that minimizes climate change. Coal clearly emerges as central to the climate problem from the facts summarized in the attached Fossil Fuel Facts. [See note below] Coal caused fully half of the fossil fuel increase of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air today, and on the long run coal has the potential to be an even greater source of CO2. Due to the dominant role of coal, solution to global warming must include phase-out of coal except for uses where the CO2 is captured and sequestered. Failing that, we cannot avoid large climate change, because a substantial fraction of the emitted CO2 will stay in the air more than 1000 years.

Yet there are plans for continuing mining of coal, export of coal, and construction of new coal-fired power plants around the world, including in Australia, plants that would have a lifetime of half a century or more. Your leadership in halting these plans could seed a transition that is needed to solve the global warming problem.

Choices among alternative energy sources – renewable energies, energy efficiency, nuclear power, fossil fuels with carbon capture – these are local matters. But decision to phase out coal use unless the CO2 is captured is a global imperative, if we are to preserve the wonders of nature, our coastlines, and our social and economic well being.

Although coal is the dominant issue, there are many important subsidiary ramifications, including the need for rapid transition from oil-fired energy utilities, industrial facilities and transport systems, to clean (solar, hydrogen, gas, wind, geothermal, hot rocks, tide) energy sources, as well as removal of barriers to increased energy efficiency.

If the West makes a firm commitment to this course, discussion with developing countries can be prompt. Given the potential of technology assistance, realization of adverse impacts of climate change, and leverage and increasing interdependence from global trade, success in cooperation of developed and developing worlds is feasible.

The western world has contributed most to fossil fuel CO2 in the air today, on a per capita basis. This is not an attempt to cast blame. It only recognizes the reality of the early industrial development in these countries, and points to a responsibility to lead in finding a solution to global warming.

A firm choice to halt building of coal-fired power plants that do not capture CO2 would be a major step toward solution of the global warming problem. Australia has strong interest in solving the climate problem.
Citizens in the United States are stepping up to block one coal plant after another, and major changes can be anticipated after the upcoming national election.

If Australia halted construction of coal-fired power plants that do not capture and sequester the CO2, it could be a tipping point for the world.
There is still time to find that tipping point, but just barely. I hope that you will give these considerations your attention in setting your national policies. You have the potential to influence the future of the planet.
Prime Minister Rudd, we cannot avert our eyes from the basic fossil fuel facts, or the consequences for life on our planet of ignoring these fossil fuel facts. If we continue to build coal-fired power plants without carbon capture, we will lock in future climate disasters associated with passing climate tipping points. We must solve the coal problem now.

For your information, I plan to send a similar letter to the Australian States Premiers.

I commend to you the following Australian climate, paleoclimate and Earth scientists to provide further elaboration of the science reported in my attached paper (Hansen et al., 2008):

Professor Barry Brook, Professor of climate change, University of Adelaide Dr Andrew Glikson, Australian National University Professor Janette Lindesay, Australian National University Dr Graeme Pearman, Monash University Dr Barrie Pittock, CSIRO Dr Michael Raupach CSIRO Professor Will Steffen, Australian National University

Sincerely,

James E. Hansen
Kintnersville, Pennsylvania
United States of America

To see letter with attachments click here:
www.aussmc.org.au/documents/Hansen2008LetterToKevinRudd.pdf

With present policies Australia has no chance of reducing our C02 emissions by anywhere near 80 per cent by the year 2050. Before I explain why, I should say that I am a greenhouse sceptic taking the view that it is very unlikely that CO2 is having a major effect on changing climate. However, due to the extreme consequences of a potential large rise in temperature, I believe it is prudent to take reasonable and sensible measures to reduce C02 emissions.

Australia has got its head in the sand on two major issues that make the task of meeting our commitments virtually impossible. These are (a) we have a rapidly growing population and (b) we have no technology at hand today to achieve the targets except nuclear power which the government refuses to consider.

Read the complete article by Peter Ridd here http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7158&page=1

We have received the following message from Israel :

“Following a press release last week it seems that several of the leading industrial companies in Israel are going to enter the wind business. These are deeply connected to leading politicians.

Our ministry of environment is quite hopeless. The future seems bleak.”

From Gibraltar, from Sicily, from the US, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, and now from Israel, day by day more bad news come in from the main bird migration flyways of the world. For windfarm developers think nothing of erecting their wind turbines in migration bottlenecks. Wind speed and maximisation of profit is their main concern.

Birds are killed by the large blades, whose tips revolve at speeds exceeding 100 mph while deceiving the victims by an appearance of slowness. In Sweden, one wind turbine is reported to have killed 895 birds in one year – ref : California Energy Commission, A Roadmap for PIER Research on Avian Collisions with Wind Turbines in California, Dec. 2002, quoting Benner et al. (1993).

They also get killed by their powerlines, which are built next to each windfarm to carry puny amounts of this very expensive, intermittent electricity to the grid en route to your homes. According to the report “Protecting Birds from Powerlines”, high tension lines may kill over 500 birds per km per year in migration zones – ref : Convention on the Conservation of European Wildlife and Natural Habitats – Birdlife International (2003). Smaller windfarms may not require high tension lines, but overhead cables are still needed to connect to the distribution network, and they too maim and kill birds that collide in the fog, or at night, or while fleeing some danger.

In short : if someone wanted to set about exterminating the world’s migrating birds, placing windfarms in migration hotspots would be looked upon as best practice.

We are not doing any better in the UK. For instance, the “Bird Sensitivity Map to Provide Locational Guidance for Onshore Wind Farms in Scotland” designates practically the whole of the Western Isles as highly sensitive ; except for two areas, one of them being the site where a windfarm project is seeking approval (Pairc).

Yet the Pairc environmental statement predicts the possible death of 66 -165 golden eagles as a result of collisions with the giant blades. No other project in Scotland declares that it may kill so many eagles ; and the subject of migrating birds is poorly addressed.

The applicant for the Pairc windfarm is Scottish and Southern Energy.

The same map marks the whole of the Shetlands as highly sensitive, except for a few tiny yellow spots – presumably where Scottish & Southern Energy plans to erect more wind turbines. How on earth will migrating birds be able to avoid the giant rotors when adverse winds push them towards one of these “yellow spots” ? or when they fly or make landfall at night ?

Yet a bird society is actually supporting a large windfarm project on Shetland. Don’t they know the island is a crucially important staging post for migrating birds ?

Until these and many other pertinent questions are answered by the ornithological fraternity we ask that all those who cherish Britain’s heritage of migratory and other birds ask their favourite bird society why windfarms are allowed in migration corridors, e.g. in the Hebrides or in the Shetlands ? Also ask your electricity suppliers how much of the electricity supplied to your homes comes from wind. Details from BWEA’s web site indicate that windfarms only supply 1.5% of Britain’s electricity. Then ask yourselves if the slaughter of our birds is really necessary, and join the thousands who are already campaigning against the erection of these levitra wind monsters across Britain.

Co-signed on March 26th 2008 by :

Professor David Bellamy,
and Mark Duchamp.

Farmers in North Queensland are doing their bit to be environmentally friendly by investing in a tree that produces diesel.

Mike Jubow, a former cane farmer and now a nursery wholesaler, says diesel-producing trees are a long-term investment.

“If I’m lucky enough to live that long enough – I’m 64 now – it is going to take about 15 to 20 years before they are big enough to harvest the oil so that I can use them in a vehicle,” he said.

Read the entire ABC News article, ‘Qld farmers invest in diesel-producing trees’

There’s also a similar article in The Syndney Morning Herald, ‘Farmer planning diesel tree biofuel’

Australia has now ratified the Kyoto Protocol and when George Bush’s Presidency expires the United States is also likely to join up. Indeed all counties in the developed world will probably soon become parts of a carbon emissions trading scheme. But the gap between what is agreed and what is achieved in terms of reducing emissions is likely to be significant.

Speaking at the ‘2008 International Climate Change Conference’ in New York last week, the President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, described the “robust relationship between carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth”. He went on to suggest there are three types of countries in Europe based on their emissions profile and level of economic growth. He talks about his speech in an article in The Australian (March 12, 2008).

He described the less developed countries of the European Union (EU), including Greece, as trying to catch-up economically and in the process, since the signing of Kyoto, increasing their level of carbon emissions by 53 per cent. The post communist countries are seeing their heavy industry disappear and are experiencing a decline in GDP and a drop in emissions of on average 33 per cent. Highly established countries like France and Germany have seen their emissions increase by about 4 per cent since Kyoto was signed.

President Klaus said “the dream” to reduce emissions in the EU by 70 per cent in the next 30 years could only be achieved if there was a dramatic de-industrialisation of Europe – likely associated with a dramatic drop in GDP, a significant drop in population, or a technological revolution.

Klaus questioned the extent to which carbon dioxide, as opposed to natural variability, has driven global warming over the last 100 years. He sees the imposition of carbon rationing through emissions trading as reminiscent of communist era European politics where radical economic change was imposed from above.

These sorts of views are often labelled as climate change scepticism – but it is more climate change realism.

Of course there are those who argue that given the imminent catastrophe of global warming we all need to make some sacrifices and if this requires some draconian top down social engineering, so be it.

Also at the conference in New York was Roy Spencer who leads a team analysing temperature and cloud data from NASA’s Aqua satellite which was launched in 2002. This satellite has, for the first time, enabled the collection of detailed data on cloud formation and evolution, and temperature anomalies in the tropics.

Much of the scientific uncertainty about the size of manmade global warming is related to how the climate system responds to some warming. The climate models suggest a strong positive feedback: that the warming effects of additional carbon dioxide will be amplified by increasing water vapour. But data from NASA’s Aqua Satellite indicates just the opposite – that warming has the effect of slightly reducing the total greenhouse effect by adjusting water vapour and cloud amounts, to keep it in proportion to the amount of available sunlight.

These findings published late last year are still being digested by the meteorological community: if correct it will mean that all current climate models used by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC) will require an overhaul.

Dr Spencer’s work supports President Klaus’ hunch that climate systems are more robust than the models suggest and that natural climate variability has been neglected in much of the research and discussion to date. The policy implications are considerable if, as Dr Spencer‘s work seems to indicate, the overhauled climate models eventually show greatly reduced future warming projections.

The conference in New York was attended by 500 so-called climate change sceptics, including meteorologists, geologists, astrophysicists, social anthropologists (studying group dynamics in the climate change community), polar bear specialists and of course lobbyists.

There was diversity of opinion among delegates at the conference as to the causes of global warming in the last 100 years, and also little consensus regarding the future of fossil fuels.

Benny Peiser from Liverpool University in the UK, acknowledged that governments worldwide had no real solutions to rising emission levels but that solutions would come through geo-engineering and the development of solar energy.

In contrast, Michael Economides from the University of Houston in the US suggested this was a pie in the sky fantasy. Professor Economides said the world was likely to continue to source most of its energy from fossil fuels for the foreseeable future.

Perhaps it all depends on the extent to which governments in developed countries, including Australia, are prepared to risk a fall in their GDP by insisting on a real reduction in carbon emissions before new low emissions technologies are in place.

Such social engineering, President Klaus warned, would be disastrous.

Instead, we perhaps have to restart the discussion about the very nature of government and about the relationship between the individual and society. Should governments let climate alarmists impose policies designed to limit an individual’s access to energy?

We do need to relearn the lessons from the collapse of communism nearly 20 years ago. It is not just about climatology; it is also about freedom.

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This article has been republished from On Line Opinion: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=7124&page=0

I was a delegate at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, March 2-4, 2008, New York City.
You can read some of my blog posts on the conference at the following links:

February 25, 2008
The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change: I’m off to New York
https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/002787.html

March 03, 2008
Climate Change Conference, New York – Day 1, In Review
https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/002809.html

March 04, 2008
Climate Change Conference, New York – Day 2, In Review
https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/002813.html

March 06, 2008
Climate Change Conference, New York – Day 3, In Review
https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/002820.html