However, it gives away a lot of permits and is pretty weak.

http://www.euractiv.com/en/climate-change/aviation-emissions-trading/article-139728

Carbon emissions are undoubtedly difficult to measure. and yes, Australia was very dodgy during kyoto negotiations.

Air travel emissions will be included in EU ETS for any flights landing in Europe.

Domestic Air travel will probably be included in AUS, as permit liability will be placed at some point as current fuel excise.

Forests are notoriously difficult to measure. However, we need to be very careful here.

The Green Carbon report is a good start, BUT, if they have overestimated the emissions sequestration we give a free kick to other industries and end up with a worse environmental outcome.

IMO, better to underestimate our sequestration, force the elec gens to reduce and get a better overall environmental outcome.

While it is true that Australia’s emissions from natural forestry are significant, its fairly small compared to Indonesia and others. So if we simply ban logging in Australia, without a similar reduction in demand for hardwood we have just shifted the emissions profile to somewhere else. where on a per tonne of hardwood is probably worse. (along with any other envrionmental impacts.)

We need to ramp up support of protection of forests in Indonesia/PNG and then reduce our own emissions.

In addition, we need to look at forest fires and how they get included in the mix. one of the arguments for not including natural forests in australia’s kyoto accounts was due to risk of forest fire jacking up our emissions in short term.

the next round of negotiations at Copenhagen australia might look at including natural forests in our accounts if we can account for fires adequately.

Air and shipping emissions are, as I said, the global form of hand washing.

I don’t mind the ‘you burn em, you earn em’ allocation of emissions.

No one seems to know where to put airline emissions and so they are ‘missing’ from everyone’s national inventories and only get caught in the global numbers. Monbiot has been hammering this point in the UK – it is another reason why their Kyoto compliance is also a farce.

Barry if you are focused as you say, on this man vs message, then we are not doing science and to claim so is quite false. This is a constructive point to make that deserves your attention. Just what do you think you are really doing or is this just too personal a question?

My comments in your very own blogg, have focused on something quite different … namely … the message vs evidence. This is how our legal system works and just about everything else works because we live our lives continually immersed in cause and effect situations.

BTW, I find it’s incredible that emission values for 2005 is only available in 2008! You can’t have a good control-command system if you don’t have a decent measurement system. Besides, it opens the door to suspicions of cheating and contribute to discredit the whole scheme.

The Dept. Climate Change data on fossil fuel emissions can be obtained by interrogating AGEIS, which is here.

The DCC figure for 2005 is 361419 kt CO2-e (98635 kt C), for 2004 is 353518 kt CO2-e (96479 kt C), and for 1990 is 255297 kt CO2-e (69673 kt C). I’m not 100% sure, but I don’t think these figures include cement.

The CDIAC figure (subtracting emissions for cement) for 2005 is 99447 kt C (0.8% higher than DCC), 2004 is 91837 kt C (5% lower than DCC), and 1990 is 79198 kt C (13.7% higher than DCC).

The land clearing figures are totally dodgy because of Kyoto accounting, where a logged forest that will eventually grow back still counts as a ‘forest’, so emissions from logging are not included (they don’t technically count as a ‘change of land use’). This method of only including some activities as a ‘change of land use’ introduces much more uncertainty. Roughly speaking, a problem of measuring a satellite image becomes a problem of ‘segmentation’ of the satellite image.

The results of Brendan Mackey et al.’s recently released Green Carbon report suggest that the emissions from logging Australia’s native forests are huge.

So who knows what has happened after 2004? Did the 2004
Qld legislation which was supposed to phase out clearing by the end of 2006 actually work? Clearly this is a question rather than a comment. I put a request for data into the Department of
Climate Change a couple of weeks back, they acknowledge me but haven’t sent an answer yet, but maybe someone else
reading your blog has more recent data.

[It's a cooling tower from a coal-fired power station - a power station that produces CO2 emissions from the burning of a fossil fuel - it is also the figure used in the Canberra Times article, which is why it was linked here]

Compounding this ignorance, if you are concerned with CO2 emissions, is the use of the per capita CO2 method which removes the geographic reality. i.e. It sees people removed not just from their biology but from their environment. This is a very serious issue as any veritable, down to earth good gardener would understand.

A natural consequence of this disconnect is seen with our prime minister who from all reports is looking at 300,000 immigrants per year. (i.e. one million in his first term) This may lower per capita emissions but have diabolical effects on the environment. e.g. There is the increased demand for finite water resources in the food bowl Murray/Darling basin plus increased demand for food, infrastructure and energy.

[deleted pointless guff about political views and religion - Keiran, if you haven't got anything constructive to say and wish to continue to snark, then go away. It's my blog and if I feel you are being a pest, I'm quite happy to exercise my right to exercise pest control. I'm happy to answer sceptical questions, but I'm not happy to continue to waste my time correcting your deliberate disinformation or smears - last warning]