G8 negotiations on track for 2009 climate deal

G8 nations have committed to working towards a target of at least halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 in a summit in Tokyo, Japan.

They are pleased with their effort.

"This is a strong signal to citizens around the world," European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said, adding that the EU's benchmark for success had been achieved.

Others aren't.

"The G8 are responsible for 62 per cent of the carbon dioxide accumulated in the Earth's atmosphere, which makes them the main culprit of climate change and the biggest part of the problem," WWF said shortly after the communique was issued.

"WWF finds it pathetic that they still duck their historic responsibility...," the campaign group said.

The last and final hold-out is the US.

But US President George W. Bush has insisted that Washington cannot agree to binding targets unless big polluters such as China and India rein in their emissions as well.

That's what you get when your president used to be an oil man.

Technorati Tags: global warming, climate change

Whereis tells me where to go. Frankly, I love it

It's just the kind of out-there relationship you can have with a brand now-a-days. Especially one offering to plan my car journey, then offset the fuel emissions.

Whereis® (Sensis) are working with Greenfleet (who do good work restoring the Murray) on a project called GreenRoad to plant trees to offset the combined ghg emissions of their membership.

They're in the unique position to easily carbon neutralise your extra-habitual trips, you don't have to. So join up, now.

You'll love it when Whereis clears the air with you.

Global Warning Climate Change Greenfleet GreenRoad

Developing world won't take lead in climate fight

On page 2 of the Draft Garnaut Climate Change Review he cuts to the chase:

The work of this Review is directed at nurturing the slender chance that Australia and the world will manage to develop a position that strikes a good balanced between the costs of dangerous climate change and the costs of mitigation.

A slender chance that needs nurturing?

Australian emissions reductions are not going to make a big difference, on a world scale. But without them, we are not going to convince the developing world to cap theirs. As they told us a month ago:

Berlin June 8 The Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, and leaders of four other emerging economies, China, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa, took the offensive in the debate on climate change asking the developed world first to make significant cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

"Greenhouse gas mitigation in developed countries is the key to address climate change given their responsibilities in causing it," noted a joint policy paper that was presented to the leaders of the G-8, the group of eight top industrialised nations: the US, UK, Japan, France, Italy, Japan, Russia and Canada.

This was a response to the assertion of the G-8 that cutbacks in emissions by only the developed countries would not be adequate; the emerging economies too have to do their bit. "We invite notably the emerging economies to address the increase in their emissions by reducing the carbon intensity of their economic development," the declaration of the G-8 had said.

The key to bringing them on board is their cheap access to renewable energy technology.

The emerging countries said that access to adequate technology was a key enabling condition. "We need an agreement on transfer of technologies at affordable costs," they noted in their joint paper.

Aware of the constraints that patents imposed on transfer of technologies, they said, "Rewards for innovators needs to be balanced with common good for humankind."

Like the man said... a slender chance.

Technorati Tags: global warming, climate change

Frequent Extreme Weather Events scenario for 20 years

Federal Agriculture Minister Tony Burke has likened a scientific study into links between climate change and drought to the final chapters of a disaster novel.

We live in strange times.

Mr Burke on Sunday released a joint assessment by the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO, which found that what are now considered to be one in 25 year climate events could become as frequent as once every one to two years.

In particular, the study found exceptionally high temperatures would occur almost yearly, while low rainfall would almost double in frequency from current figures.

The report found about 50 per cent of the rainfall decrease in south-western Australia since the 1950s was likely due to greenhouse gases.

The reports are inputs into agricultural policy development. It's gratifying to see a Government allow science to inform policy development, at last.

"While this is a scientific report, parts of these high level projections read more like a disaster novel than a scientific report," Mr Burke told reporters.

"What's clear is that the cycle of drought is going to be more regular and deeper than ever."

Mr Burke said events of extreme temperature, which currently occurred once every 20 to 25 years, were forecast to happen once every one to two years coming up to 2030.

The area of Australia declared to be in drought would double and the likelihood of drought would also double, Mr Burke said.

"What this means is that in terms of government policy, we now know what would happen if we did nothing," he said.

"If we fail to review drought policy, if we were to continue the neglect and pretend that the climate wasn't changing we would be leaving our farmers out to dry well and truly."

The CSIRO report is the first in the federal government's three stage review of drought policy with the scientific findings to be fed into an analysis of social policy and economic review being undertaken by the Productivity Commission.

The release of the report follows the announcement for drought figures in NSW, which put 65 per cent of the state in drought, an increase of more than two per cent on last month.

Technorati Tags: global warming, climate change, drought, Australia

Garnaut Draft: Critic discounts it by 33%

The 537 page Garnaut CLIMATE CHANGE REVIEW DRAFT REPORT is out today, and already we know it's hurting Australians.

We know exactly who, too. L. Ron Bolt is already clawing at the report, and he hasn't even got to the Table of Contents:

Garnaut goes for the scare

UPDATE

Ross Garnaut’s 360-page blueprint for tackling the urgent crisis of the end of the warming world is printed on paper. But, says Garnaut on page 2, it’s environmentally kind paper:

9Lives80, composed of 80 percent post-consumer fibre....

Pity that this is paper that’s actually made in Italy, requiring lots of gassy transport to bring here. What hope of purity for the rest of us, then, when the gurus set this example?

(Thanks to reader Owen.)

Or should that be reader Pwn?

Don't it jest drive you nuts when deniers spear us well-meaning non-deniers with such sharp shards of perspicacity? Here is the whole statement that Andrew's playing Gotcha Garnaut with.

This report is printed on 9Lives 80, a paper composed of 80% post-consumer fibre and 20% totally chlorine-free pulp? 9Lives 80 is a Forest Stewardship Council mixed-source certified paper identifying that all virgin pulp is derived from well-managed forests and manufactured by ISO 14001 certified mills?
All inks used in the printing of this report are vegetable based.

Of course Andrew knows that ISO 14001 is the environmental management planning ISO certification? The Italian paper company, Burgo Group, must have strict compliance and reporting standards. In a trice I was downloading their Paper Field 2007 Environmental Report for an statement on their transport, logistics and distribution.

Eureka.

The path towards sustainable growth also includes responsible logistics and transport management: moving and storing goods, in fact, produces noise, consumes energy and creates traffic, therefore, emissions into the environment. We have organised an approach to tackle these problems that leads to benefits in terms of savings, efficiency, safety and less pollution. Movement of materials arriving at and leaving our mills, production planning and warehouse management is controlled at Group level.

Thanks to precise coordination of goods and raw material flows we have managed to limit movements, so reducing the noise this creates, emissions from vehicles (fork-lifters and trucks) and risks of damage to finished products.

As far as possible we at the Burgo Group try to reduce road transport by resorting to alternative methods. We use railways, the multimode system that consists in a combination of truck, ship and rail transport, and short-range coastal sea transport, also encouraged by the European Commission. During the year the PM9 was installed at Verzuolo we expanded rail facilities from 6,500 to 19,000 wagons per year, both arriving and departing.

Our Duino mill has an internal railway line to handle arrival of raw materials and is linked directly to already organised major European printing centres and those that will be connected in the future.

So Andrew's caught out again, and rightly so. If a company bothers enough about customers and the environment enough to implement costly ISO 14001 compliance, is it too much to ask newspaper opinion journalists to implement simple research before snidely sniping from the sidelines?

I note he didn't even download the Garnaut Draft before criticising: It's a 537 page blueprint, not a 360 page blueprint. Andrew's discount is by 33% — before even reading the table of contents.

What hope of an honest debate for the rest of us, then, when the L. Ron Bolt sets this example?

Technorati Tags: global warming, climate change

Cap 'n Trade on US election menu

Hot on the heels of Australia's green election (Rudd signed the Kyoto Protocol as his first act of government), follows the second US climate change election. Bush tore up the Kyoto Protocol after the first one. Waste of good lead-time.

Obama and McCain have both stated that climate change requires decisive action. Both support cap-and-trade, putting a limit (cap) on greenhouse gases and enabling the market to work by allowing the trading of permits.

Click for more on Cleantechblog's take on how it would work.

Be Obama for 50 words

Now you can orate like Obama.

Here's my effort.

Generate a Barack Obama Quote!

"You know, there's a lot of talk in this country about uneasiness. Well I think Americans are tired of the same old wet nappies. Ordinary Americans believe in mother, they want less monkey business, they just aren't sure if their leaders believe in a fair go for all."
Generate your Barack Obama quote at Buttafly.com

Technorati Tags: Obama

Climate Change: A plot to breed new Masters Race

Brett Stephens of the WSJ somehow got the masses onto his couch to listen to it's global warming neurosis. Then he wrote a 450 word thesis explaining there is no such thing as global warming, only the mass belief in it.

It's true. He wrote it. He's serious. And the Wall Street Journal published it.

Three explanations are offered for free, by Brett. Brett Stephens of the WSJ. (G'day Rupert. Those 'ud be your fingerprints. I see you got to the WSJ, finally.)

One. Belief in AGW is engineered by socialist plotters with UN sympathies seeking to restrict breeding to college educated women. I kid you not. Brett Stephens spotted this first.

Two. Belief in AGW is theologically explained because there's a flood involved. Er,... and... Because James Hansen sounds like this: "And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart."

Three. There is a psychological explanation. People are psychologically predisposed to paying penance. At the secular level. Instead of enjoying prosperity we are looking for something to be guilty about, so we invented global warming and the carbon tax / carbon sink indulgence.

So those our beliefs, apparently. He didn't offer up a recommendation, choose the neurosis that fits you best.

But, before you freak-out, here is reality by Brett Stephens. The reasons why AGW ain't real:

NASA now begrudgingly confirms that the hottest year on record in the continental 48 was not 1998, as previously believed, but 1934, and that six of the 10 hottest years since 1880 antedate 1954.

It's global warming we are talking about. You seem to think the continental 48 constitutes the globe. A trap for young players, and fast-ageing Presidents; 1998 was the hottest for the rest of us 5.97 billion people living outside the continental 48 thank you very much.

Anyway, it's not about the extremes or short term variations. The need to be removed with moving averages to reveal the underlying trend, as Skeptical Science soberly tells us in Did global warming stop in 1998?

Data from 3,000 scientific robots in the world's oceans show there has been slight cooling in the past five years, never mind that "80% to 90% of global warming involves heating up ocean waters," according to a report by NPR's Richard Harris.

It's an interesting report, read it. It doesn't say global warming has stopped as Brett claims. It says that we thought the heat measured above sea level and on land was going into the oceans. But the National Center for Atmospheric Research's diving robots aren't measuring that, opening up some interesting questions.

This is enough to conclude AGW is not real. For Brett Stephens. As for the explanations he offers us for our beliefs, I can relieve him of his delusions:

One. Socialist are not plotting to use global warming to breed the Masters Race from swotty women.

Two. James Hansen does not sound like Genesis. Or Black Sabbath.

Three. Affluenza guilt? Why didn't we first latch onto global warming back in 1988 then?

Four. You've lost the right to credibly use the word alarmist to describe anyone but yourself. And of your ilk.

Technorati Tags: global waming, climate change

ACCI input into The Garnaut Report

In two days the guiding document that kicks off the Australian Government's policy review process gets tabled. The Garnaut report on climate change will input into a white paper, and then a green paper, and I'll be blogging more about these.

I came across the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) SUBMISSION TO THE GARNAUT CLIMATE CHANGE REVIEW [25pg PDF] the other day. The ACCI open strongly in favour of an Emissions Trading System in their executive summary.

ACCI supports an ETS that is efficient, maximises participation across all industry sectors and, will include major world emitters, when possible. Furthermore, a domestic ETS must minimise compliance costs and provide measures to ensure the international competitiveness of trade exposed energy intensive businesses. This should also recognise some SME’s will face energy and transport cost increases with variable, and in some cases limited, opportunities to pass such costs onto final consumers. ACCI has previously endorsed a series of policy priorities, which form the high-level policy position of our response to climate change. This includes objectives relating to environmental outcomes, economic efficiency, Australia’s
welfare (underpinned by job security and maintaining competitiveness) and assuming a fair share of the burden.

These issues were further expanded into more detailed
policy guidelines which include:

• Australia’s largest contribution to climate change will be through indirect measures such as technology development, rather than though direct reductions in emissions;
• Australia can reduce its own direct emissions, however, it’s contribution to global climate change will be marginal;
• all technologies and fuel sources must be available for abatement and not regulated out of consideration – including nuclear;
• the broadest range of sectors must be included in an ETS;
• all six Kyoto greenhouse gases must be included in an ETS; and
• Australia’s high per capita emissions profile does not reflect our contribution to the stock of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Back to the exec summ..

ACCI agreed with the Government that the arrangements
applying post-2012 must include commitments from large
emitters including India, China and the USA.
Any ETS should be national rather than based on multiple state schemes, this includes complimentary measures such as the Renewable Energy Target and taxation liabilities such as stamp duties.

This submission provides some detailed responses to design aspects of a proposed ETS (see section 2). In providing this response we do howerver maintain concerns about the wider impact of an ETS on the Australian Economy. In large part this concern relate to the potential economic and compliance costs that will be faced by business,
especially smaller enterprises which are less able to pass
through costs. These costs will be exacerbated where an ETS operates with very restrictive emissions targets and competitor
nations remain outside these arrangements. ACCI considers that Australia’s fuel mix can only change over a long period and irrespective of the operation of an ETS unrealistic expectations of a shift from fossil fuels to renewables or the adoption of lower emissions technologies need to be tempered.

Technorati Tags: global warming, climate change

Tacky fuel tactic creates hostile climate

A new financial year finds The Australian columnist Philip Adams depressed about our response to climate change. He takes it out on us: Add warming to list of failures

WHY do we have such a rotten national anthem? It's because the only words that rhyme with Australia are dahlia and failure. Even Les Murray couldn't do much with them. Mind you, a sort of mulga-wood version of the Marsellaise, emphasising Australian failure rather than French triumphalism would fit the local psyche like a shroud. Because were into failure in a big way. Think of all the films weve made about our failures. Even before Gallipoli and Burke & Wills there was Sunday Too Far Away where Jack Thompson failed to be the gun shearer, Petersen where Thompson failed to succeed at Melbourne Uni and Picnic at Hanging Rock where almost the entire cast failed to return from a picnic. Not to mention the two McKenzie films wherein despite his desperate efforts Bazza, that archetypal Australian hero, failed to lose his virginity.

Ouch, Phil. He's pissed off because the opposition are bailing out of the bipartisan approach to an all inclusive emissions trading system, in favour of short term politics over petrol pricing. And because the Government are not quite delivering on their election pitch.

Before the federal election this column called on the presumptive PM to proffer the Opposition, along with the premiers, full representation in a war cabinet. To at least pretend we were tackling a problem that makes the Cold War look penny ante, let alone that trivial war on terror. Rudd made a few moves in the bipartisan direction, on a number of issues, but having shown reluctant interest (on Sorry Day and 2020 for example), Brendan's switched to giving Kev the finger. He's reduced this vast issue to populist posturing about the price of petrol. Let's fix this week's polls rather than the terminal pollution. And for the Libs and the Nats it's more urgent to get a Gippslandslide against Rudd at the weekend.

I'm pissed off too. A pox on both their houses. We voted for a new kind of politics Kev, Brendo; to tackle serious problems that playing poll politics won't solve.

Adam's notes that the importance of the issue isn't lost on Rudd though, nor is his dilemma.

The only war cabinet seems to be Kevin's as his comrades quarrel over emission trading, ever responsive to the people they really represent. The various interests of the vested variety.

Rudd knows he must crash through or crash on climate change. The issue is producing a predictable range of reactions. As well as ongoing denial there's already boredom and fatalism. Then there's let's-buy-a-Hummer hedonism. But worst of all will be the Opposition's opportunism. Reduce the scale of the argument to the price of petrol.

Nelson's mob don't deserve anything good for that short term tacky tactic. Poetic justice would have them experience blow-back and, unlike Adams, I'm glass half-full about that.

Technorati Tags: global waming, climate change

Arctic sea ice extent running close to record

There is a bet on amongst the climate scientist blogging community, and Stoat is keeping an eye on his investment. He's the one who reckons the record won't be broken this season.

mt called me a "polyanna" (presumably by analogy to "polynyas") for betting on the high side. So let me clarify: my "prediction" was based purely on my reading of the statistics of the time series to-date: a record is rarely followed by another. If we have entered a new regime, then my reasonning is invalid. At the moment, I don't know. The extent is barely above last years, but the ice is thinner, as as NB points out you can see the cracks. Bets are still (formally) open, especially to anyone so confident of low ice that they are prepared to offer 2-1 odds :-), or even odds on extent substnatially (sic or hic?) lower than last year.

Technorati Tags: global warming, climate change, arctic

Public's conflicting attitudes to climate action

The most interesting part of that Ipsos Mori poll on British attitudes to climate change, 2008 (concerned but still unconvinced) [7 page PDF], was that while no man is an island, the public is.

Almost two thirds (61%) say they personally find the subject of climate change interesting, yet over three quarters (77%)are pessimistic about the likelihood of others responding.

I am fairly sure they are reflective of our attitudes Down Undah, so the poll would be instructive for Australia government policy makers. I wonder whether it is because concern about climate change is a private one. Most are concerned, but the nature of CC seems so out of our control that we internalise. If we don't hear about people talking about climate change or global warming, and how to fight it, then we assume people don't share our concerns.

Looks like there is a big demand that Facebook type social networking sites can facilitate for the climate-change concerned. Another project for GWW to research: I wonder how many such online groups exist?

Technorati Tags: global waming, climate change

Climate denial getting traction

One fossil-fuel fraud peddler is nonchalant about the apparent Ground Gained by deniers in the public debate on climate change. Yet, another affects an air of smugness.

I would have thought that if they honestly believed in their work, then an expression of joy would not be out of order. The source of the elusive joy is an Ipsos Mori poll for Britain's Observer.

Says in Blairsplog,

If Ipsos Mori is right, the deniers are gaining ground. Its polls show the proportion of Britons who are unconcerned has risen from 15% to 23% in the past year.

The Great Global Warming Swindle is fingered, as are "internet blogs arguing all the world’s scientists are party to a Marxist conspiracy bent on destroying western civilisation."

If Ipsos Mori is right. I'm going to check it out.

Technorati Tags: global warming, climate change, denialists

Bolt's gay-baiting, homophobic base

But he's not having any of it.

No really, in a Darwin was a Christian thread today, Andrew Bolt let slip that he thinks his conservative Christian readership 'base' is 'gay-baiting' and homophobic, when asked why he promotes Christianity as an agnostic.

Andrew, aren’t you an agnostic? So why are you coming out swinging for the Christian faith?
AJFA of Moorooka
Mon 30 Jun 08 (02:05pm)

Andrew played a straight bat.

Have I? I’ve simply let someone state some facts, and added a logical conclusion of my own. Nothing more can be inferred than that I prefer facts over propaganda, regardless of what side of the argument main gain or lose.

Andrew Bolt
Mon 30 Jun 08 (02:42pm)

But another commenter smoked Andrew out of hiding.

Tom replied to AJFA
Mon 30 Jun 08 (03:04pm)

To AJFA

Andrew has claimed to be agnostic, but is also very careful not to offend his Christian conservative base by pushing it too hard.

In the same way he accuses artists of lacking courage in attacking Christianity rather than Islam, so too Andrew himself generally attacks the easier targets (which around here is Islam) whilst playing to his base.

Then something bizarre happened.

ANDREW REPLIES: Wow. Suddenly I understand myself. Everything I thought I said because I believed it is now revealed to me as the merest populist positioning. I’m so ashamed I think I’ll just retire right now. One thing still puzzles me though.
Why, given my crude pampering of my “base”, am I so damning of gay-baiting and homophobia? Why not simply announce I’ve found God? Why criticise so strongly The Passion of Christ? But you’ll have a theory for that too, right?

And, then it was too late.

Nick replied to AJFA

Mon 30 Jun 08 (03:36pm)

Who suggested Andrew’s base was gay-baiting homophobes? Looks like a very convincing response... to the wrong argument.

You know you’ve hit a raw nerve when the sarcasm-meter hits 11!

Cheers

Tom replied to AJFA
Mon 30 Jun 08 (04:01pm)

LOL

Good point Nick...it seems Andrew has a very narrow view of this “base” that he apparently doesn’t go out of his way to appeal to...no-one else identified them as gay-baiting homophobes

His own words have damned him (or in this case them)...reminds me a little of this anti-Obama rant a couple of months ago

Dave replied to AJFA
Mon 30 Jun 08 (04:03pm)

Why, given my crude pampering of my “base”, am I so damning of gay-baiting and homophobia?

Did Andrew just throw his base under a bus?

Ooooppppssss.

Andrew's indication he hold parts of his readership in contempt, "damning" is his description, could also explain why he is so sloppy with logic when pimping for big fossil-fuel.

But of course: hiking prices of such a necessity to “stop” a warming that actually stopped in 1998 and would be unstoppable anyway is hardly something a sane person could support.

In passing off multiple yet contradictory positions on AGW as an appeal to sanity, AB is also saying that he thinks his readers are a bunch of dumb-arses who won't notice so he can get away with laziness.

And they don't. And he does. But, if someone does highlight the contradiction, they are derided by the pink dot skeptic gang as a lefty, Al Gore / Castro lover, or the like.

Don't mean anything by any of this... I'm just saying...

Pell' bells toll for thee, AGW denier

Nexus 6 confesses that he has no faith in Cardinal George Pell's capability to analyse observed earthly phenomena, i.e. data.

Writing in The Sunday Telegraph yesterday, Dr Pell highlighted what he says are inconvenient facts for the climate change bandwagon. These included the declaration by more than 100 international scientists, some of them members of the UN Intergovernmental panel on climate change that attempting to control climate was "ultimately futile".

I understand that the church has a mission to reach out to the marginalised and unfortunate, but it's a sorry church that needs to recruit climate change deniers to fill it's pews. George, a hint, some low-hanging fruit is so low that it's soiled.