Garnaut Climate Change Review Final Report – open thread

Posted on 30 September 2008 by Barry Brook

The long-awaited, much-anticipated Final Report of the Garnaut Climate Change Review has now been released. As per its website, the review was set up to: “…examine the impacts of climate change on the Australian economy, and recommend medium to long-term policies and policy frameworks to improve the prospects for sustainable prosperity.” It is an independent study by Professor Ross Garnaut, which was commissioned by Australia’s Commonwealth, State and Territory Governments.

A draft report was released in June, and engendered much discussion in the media, as well as a vocal response from scientists. Here is what I had to say on it at the time:

The Garnaut Draft Review is an extensive document and very much a work in progress. But the key fundamentals are already there. It rightly points out that the scientific evidence for climate change, on which hard economic decisions must ultimately hinge, is already flashing some extremely worrying warning signals: carbon emissions and the impacts of climate change are tracking at or above the top end of predictions made a decade ago, tipping elements such as the Arctic sea ice and polewards expansion of the tropical weather systems are being crossed decades ahead of schedule, and because of amplifying carbon-cycle feedbacks, were are now close to the time at which this ‘diabolical problem’ runs away from us, and which point neither mitigation nor adaptation will be sufficient for us to cope.

Our great natural assets – the Great Barrier Reef, the wetlands of Kakadu, the enormously productive agricultural basin of the Murray-Darling system – will be severely degraded or all but eliminated within the lifetimes of current generations. As Garnaut said, we should have moved on this issue years or decades earlier, when potential impacts were already reasonable well understood and yet greater uncertainty about the extent of the problem existed, compared to today.

By explicitly recognising these harsh realities, the Garnaut Report positions the economic and social arguments within the right frame of reference – one in which urgent action is required, and where forward-looking domestic action from the developed world, especially nations that are exquisitely sensitive to climate change impacts, must be the trigger for international multilateral agreements – which are ultimately the only way to solve the problem, and at the same time spawn the energy revolution of the new century – renewables, not fossil carbon.

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Filed under: Emissions, Impacts | 29 Comments »

Ongoing rise in global carbon emissions and the lazy audience

Posted on 26 September 2008 by Barry Brook

The Global Carbon Project just released their annual report (‘Carbon Budget 2007‘), which makes for rather depressing reading, at least if you were hoping for a turn-around any time soon in global carbon emissions. The media release associated with the report is packed with good information, and so I’ll reproduce it at the end of this blog post. There have also been some news reports on this in the Australian and international media in which I am quoted, such as here, here and here.

My comments on the report, made to AusSMC, are as follows:

The carbon emissions growth story coming out of the latest Global Carbon Project analyses isn’t getting any brighter. At the average rate of CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere over the last few years, we’ll reach a concentration of 450 parts per million by about the year 2040. And that’s an optimistic outlook under a business-as-usual economic scenario, if carbon ‘sinks’ in the ocean miraculously cease their decline in effectiveness, and industrial emissions growth somehow stagnates at the current output. A more realistic projection, accounting for further decline in carbon sinks and ramping up of industrial activity, suggests 2030 is a plausible timeline. But whatever the specific date, 450ppm CO2 commits us to >2 degrees C global warming and all the disastrous consequences this sets in train.

Of particular concern is that emissions from deforestation (mostly the burning of rain forest) in our nearest tropical neighbour region, Southeast Asia, continue to skyrocket. Not only is this damaging to this area’s rich biodiversity (because habitat is degraded and fragmented), but it also has a huge impact on the region’s carbon budget. Yet Southeast Asia, like Australia is particularly susceptible to the impacts of climate change from sea level rise and changes in rainfall patterns. Emissions from Southeast Asian forest loss now exceed those of Latin America or Africa – truly the global ‘hotspot’ of CO2 from deforestation. Australia’s regional role in abatement has never been clearer.

Each year that Australia’s industrial emissions and Southeast Asia’s forestry emissions continues to grow, our chances of avoiding the worst consequences of climate change diminish. Are we willing to continue to act like a lazy audience in a movie theatre, watching passively as a disaster film plays out in slow motion, in which we are the real-life actors? Who is going to ask the projectionist to turn off the reel before we get to the disturbing climax and the end credits start to roll?

This report is timely in the sense that it is a good lead in to another blog post I plan to make within the next few days, which will try to clarify the confusion around whether we are currently at atmospheric concentrations of 455 or 380 ppm CO2-equivalent. The answer is very much that… it depends…

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Filed under: Emissions | 53 Comments »

Paying the climate change piper

Posted on 24 September 2008 by Barry Brook

Guest Post by Tony Kevin.

Tony Kevin served as an Australian diplomat in Moscow (1969–71), UN New York (1973-76), and as Australian Ambassador in Poland (1991–1994). This opinion piece was originally published in Eureka Street.

Ross Garnaut’s important public statement was largely overwhelmed by the welter of federal and state political news. It was a world away from his impassioned, ethically challenging, first public report on 4 July.

Quietly, government has narrowed the goalposts back to a safe world of can-do politics, of short-term realism at the expense of long-term responsibility. Unnerved by the hostile reaction of powerful stakeholders to the July report, it now seeks a conventional balance between the demands of a worried population, and a decision-making elite uniting corporate and trade unions in high-emitting industries and sympathisers in parliament.

Garnaut’s sombre, low-key second report recommends a narrow range of possibilities for greenhouse gas emissions limitations by Australia to 2020, likely to have minimal impacts on the Australian economy. It won cautious decision-makers’ approval. It is politically achievable, despite disappointed green lobbies.

Unlike epic debates over industry protectionism in the 1970s–1980s, we do not have a visionary Keating and Button driving necessary change. I see no comparable passion in Rudd or Wong.

Now, Australia’s decision-making elite believe deep down — if indeed they think it through, and I suspect many are instinctive climate change denialists at bottom — that Australia is rich enough to insulate itself against climate change.

They live on higher ground in the green coastal zone. Food and utility costs are a small part of their budgets. If it gets too hot, they will turn up the air conditioning.

For these status-quo people, the issues that matter are macroeconomic — dividends, high salaries, superanuation earnings. They want to keep the economy we have now. The desertification of the Murray-Darling and the dying of the Barrier Reef do not affect them directly, and they lack imagination to conceive of polar icemelt sufficient in their lifetimes to inundate fertile populated coastal areas of Australia. Apres nous, le deluge.

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Filed under: Emissions, Impacts | 16 Comments »

CCQA4 Presentations Available

Posted on 24 September 2008 by Barry Brook

The PowerPoint presentations from the fourth of the Climate Change Q and A seminars are now available as PDF files. The presentations by Professor Barry Brook and Associate Professor Corey Bradshaw provide the scientific answers to questions about whether the impacts of climate change have been overstated. Please see at bravenewclimate.com or adelaide.edu.au/climatechange for details.

If you believe copyrighted work is available on this site in such a way that constitutes copyright infringement, or a breach of an agreed licence or contract, please let us know.

Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A | 3 Comments »

3/3 CCQA4 Questions from the audience regarding the impacts of climate change

Posted on 24 September 2008 by Barry Brook

Listen to Barry Brook and Corey Bradshaw respond to questions from the audience at the 4th seminar in the series entitled Climate Change Q and A: Sceptical Questions and the Scientific Answers. Subscribe for podcasts at bravenewclimate.com/feed or go to adelaide.edu.au/climatechange for complete details about the series.

Please note this recording has some silent periods because of questions asked without a microphone. Efforts have been made reduce this effect and enhance ease of listening.

Filed under: CCQA, Clim Ch Q&A | 1 Comment »

2/3 CCQA4 Barry Brook on the impacts of climate change

Posted on 24 September 2008 by Barry Brook

Listen to Prof Barry Brook’s presentation on the impacts of climate change. This is the 2nd of 3 recordings from the 4th seminar in the series entitled Climate Change Q and A: Sceptical Questions and the Scientific Answers. Subscribe for podcasts at bravenewclimate.com/feed or go to adelaide.edu.au/climatechange for complete details about the series.

Filed under: CCQA, Clim Ch Q&A | 1 Comment »

1/3 CCQA4 Intro and Corey Bradshaw on marine impacts

Posted on 24 September 2008 by Barry Brook

Listen to the seminar introduction by Barry Brook and the presentation by Associate Professor Corey Bradshaw focussing on the impacts of climate change on marine ecosystems. This is the 1st of 3 recordings from the 4th seminar in the series entitled Climate Change Q and A: Sceptical Questions and the Scientific Answers. Subscribe for podcasts at bravenewclimate.com/feed or go to adelaide.edu.au/climatechange for complete details about the series.

Filed under: CCQA, Clim Ch Q&A | Leave a Comment »

Climate change and human health – inequities demand win-win solutions

Posted on 23 September 2008 by Barry Brook

One of Australia’s leading authorities on the ramifications of climate change for human health and welfare is Prof Tony McMichael from the Australian National University. Earlier this year he and three co-authors published an important review in the British Medical Journal entitled “Global environmental change and health: impacts, inequalities, and the health sector” [full text available as open access]. The core points were this:

  • The biophysical and ecological systems of the natural environment are fundamental to human health
  • Mounting human pressures on the environment are disrupting and depleting these systems
  • The resulting health risks will particularly affect vulnerable and poorly resourced populations
  • Adaptive strategies can lessen current and impending health risks
  • Health professionals are well placed to contribute to adaptive and preventive strategies

Importantly, this essay by McMichael and colleagues serves to emphasise the inextricable link between human well being and ‘environmental health’. As I have described in other blog posts, humans are rapidly degrading the Earth’s natural capital, via the synergies of climate change, tropical deforestation and changed land use, diversion of freshwater flows, pollution and exhaustion of soils through intensive agriculture.

These critical drivers of global change were reviewed in detail by the little-cited, yet incredibly important, 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment – the ecological equivalent of the Intergovernmental Assessment on Climate Change Assessment Report. The key point that I believe needs to be far more widely appreciated is this – without its planetary life support system intact, humanity’s health – be it the health of individuals, societies or global economies – will be severely and perhaps irreparably compromised during this century and beyond.

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Filed under: Impacts, Renewables | 5 Comments »

Ethics and climate change

Posted on 22 September 2008 by Barry Brook

Dr Glenn Albrecht, an environmental philosopher from the University of Newcastle, has started a new blog on ethics and climate change, which according to its byline is: “A Blog devoted to critical evaluation and analysis of the ‘values’ that are implicit in global warming and climate change articles in the media”.

Of particular interest to Brave New Climate readers is that he’s done an analysis of the Dr Jennifer Marohasy piece from The Australian, “A case of the warm and fuzzy“, which I also dissected a few weeks back when it first came out. My comments were largely focused on what elements of the published climate science were ignored in the sweeping statements contained within that editorial. Glenn goes over some of this same ground, but in addition delves more deeply into the underlying motivations behind the piece. It makes for a really interesting perceptive. To quote Glenn’s conclusion:

Overall Assessment
The article, in Australia’s only national newspaper, reveals much about the motivation of Jennifer Marohasy. At first glance, one could be forgiven for thinking that her ‘line’ is a form of religious faith or zealotry erected as a defence against all the evidence to the contrary. Like flat earthers and the Church at the time of Copernicus and Galileo in the face of evidence of a heliocentric solar system and imperfect heavenly spheres, a closed system of belief is created where all counter-evidence is reinterpreted as proof of the truth of her own position. Data is then manipulated to defend the indefensible. Graphs are produced to show misleading and erroneous ‘trends’ and advocacy misrepresented as science.

However, like the many climate change sceptics she relies on for her data and graphs, JM is intimately associated with a privately funded think tank. She is an employee of the Institute for Public Affairs, a think tank funded by commercial enterprise. As such, she is expected to provide value for money and deliver messages that are supportive of the corporate interests. She is not a dispassionate or disinterested commentator on global warming and climate change; she is an advocate for the interests of those who fund the IPA. It should come as no surprise that the major bodies funding the work of JM include BHP-Billiton, the Western Mining Corporation, Monsanto, Clough Engineering, News Limited (publisher of the Australian Newspaper), Caltex, Esso, Shell, Gunns and companies in the electricity generation industry.

The evidence for the long-term warming of the planet is now overwhelming and that JM has resorted to the use of distraction with irrelevant issues such as salinity, over-reliance on dodgy satellite data and short term changes in recent weather patterns (not trends in long-term climate) in order to make her case is revealing.
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How long will Old King Coal reign? Part II

Posted on 21 September 2008 by Barry Brook

As if ‘peak oil‘ – the point at which half of the available oil has been squeezed out of the surface rocks – weren’t enough, another freight train thundering towards us and picking up pace is ‘peak coal‘. It hasn’t gotten the attention yet of ‘peak oil’, but the implications just as huge. For instance, ‘Peak coal’ could make carbon capture and storage investments a disastrous waste of money.

We need a profound reassessment of how we do business on planet Earth. Every day, evidence accumulates that our global resource wallet is progressively emptying of cash and becoming filled with only over-extended credit cards. Resource bankruptcy looms, and it’s going to force change, whether we want it or not. With wisdom, we can sidestep the freight trains. With denial, profligacy, short-term thinking and delay, we’ll be stuck on the rails, with an inevitable and ugly collision due within as little as a few years or at most a few decades. The decision is ours.

One of the clearest thinkers on the peak energy and resource depletion issue, and a regular contributor to the excellent website Energy Bulletin, is Richard Heinberg. He has summed up the relationship between fossil fuels and climate change as well as any I’ve read in his latest piece: ‘Coal and Climate’. I quote the preamble:

Recent reports on global coal reserves, surveyed in previous chapters, generally point to the likelihood of supply limits appearing relatively soon-within the next two decades (a contrary view is represented solely by the BGR report ["Lignite and Hard Coal: Energy Suppliers for World Needs until the Year 2100 - An Outlook," 2007]). According to this near-consensus, coal output in China, the world’s foremost producer, could begin to decline within just a few years.

Since coal is the most significant source of human-generated greenhouse gas emissions, releasing about twice as much carbon dioxide per unit of energy produced as natural gas, the news that there may be much less coal available to be burned than commonly thought should be heartening to climate scientists and environmental activists, and to policy makers and citizens concerned about the fate of the planet. Reduced estimates of future coal supplies should be factored into climate models-which typically assume that there is enough coal available to permit continued expansion of usage well into the next century.

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Grim scenarios on a 2 to 6 degrees celsius hotter Earth

Posted on 18 September 2008 by Barry Brook
NASA Earth Observatory, based on IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (2007)   

 

 

 

Temperature projections to the year 2100, based on a range of emission scenarios and global climate models. Scenarios that assume the highest growth in greenhouse gas emissions provide the estimates in the top end of the temperature range. The orange line (“constant CO2”) projects global temperatures with greenhouse gas concentrations stabilized at year 2000 levels. Source: NASA Earth Observatory, based on IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (2007)

A stark appraisal of the synthesis report of the IPCC 4th assessment (AR4) reveals some disturbing realities.

First, stabilisation scenarios indicate that to have a reasonable chance of avoiding 2 to 2.4°C warming, we will need to achieve global emissions reductions of 50 to 85 percent by 2050, relative to year 2000 output and a levelling off by no later than 2015. On a globally equitable basis, the burden on developed nations will be higher (80 to >95% by 2050) because of their disproportionately high per capita emissions. Second, there is no mitigation scenario proffered for <2°C, yet the model scenarios do take us into the intemperate realm of 4.9 to 6.1°C of planetary heating.

The IPCC, it seems, is not at all confident that global society will be able to implement the sort of wholesale socio-economic restructuring that is likely to be required to stave off substantial global warming this century. It seems, therefore, quite necessary to assess the likely implications of scenarios for a 2 to 6°C warmer Earth.  I did this recently in a speech to the Manning Clark House conference ‘Imagining the Real’, and followed this up at the 2008 JD Stewart Address I delivered to the University of Sydney. You can download the slides and listen to the audio here. My Climate Change Q&A seminar #4 on 19 September will cover similar ground, with a slightly different slant.

In brief, analogue climates from deep time may help in this “imagining the real” - when the real is something never before witnessed by humanity, or indeed, at its most extreme, by most species now occupying the planet.

The average lifespan of a species is 1 to 10 million years, and yet to approach conditions 4 to 6°C hotter than today’s climate, we must look back to the world of the Eocene, some 35 to 50 million years ago. The world was then a very different place – there was no permanent ice cap shrouding Antarctica, sea levels were considerably higher than today, and deserts were more widespread. The tundra and boreal forests were limited or non-existent.

The cooling descent into the icehouse conditions of the Quaternary, 1.6 million years ago through to the present, was a slow progression that took place over tens of millions of years – an unimaginably vast stretch of time. Although this slide from a Cretaceous greenhouse world towards a “modern climate” was punctuated by occasional rapid climatic reversals, the globally hot conditions of the deeper past were never again re-visited. Now, through the actions of modern civilisation, we risk returning to the Eocene (or earlier) within the geological wink of an eye – a matter of a mere century or two. How will Earth, and its diaphanous clothing of life, cope?

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Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Future | 25 Comments »

Climate Change Q and A Seminar 4: Friday 19 Sept – Are the impacts of climate change being overstated?

Posted on 17 September 2008 by Barry Brook

Seminar reminder and Discussion Thread.

Friday 19 September: What future climate change scenarios are possible?

“Global warming is good, agriculture will flourish!”

Such statements represent the tip of an iceberg of arguments suggesting that global warming isn’t going to have catastrophic impacts. Some of these are based on pseudo science regarding the effects of global warming on severe weather, sea level rise, or the loss of glaciers. Others focus on the possibility of a few winners in our gamble with the climate–those who find the changes favorable or who are better positioned to adapt–while neglecting the fact there will be a far greater number of people, plants and animals who will suffer as a result of the unnaturally rapid change that are to come.

So what does 2°, 3° or even 6°C of global warming really mean? Find out in the fourth seminar of this series.

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Target atmospheric CO2 levels, not vague emissions reductions

Posted on 16 September 2008 by Barry Brook

Some climate scientists choose not to talk specifically about emissions reductions. Dr James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University is one of them. Prof John Schellnhuber of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research is another. Instead they refer to a level of atmospheric CO2 (plus other greenhouse gases that together constitute a total forcing) that would be required to re-establish a ‘safe’ climate.

But surely targeting a safe level of CO2 is basically the same thing as aiming for an emissions cut of X% of some baseline year in Y years (e.g. 80% global reduction in emissions compared to 1990 levels by 2050)? Well, sort of, but not really. Both approaches certainly aim for a reduction in human-caused climate forcing, as the figure to the right indicates. Yet the difference between the two strategies is subtle but important.

To once again use an archery analogy (yes, I like these), aiming for a target CO2 concentration is like fixing your sights directly on the bullseye. That gold circle is what you want your arrow to hit, so you shoot for it. There’s a chance that you’ll miss, of course, but you use your past shooting experience, your training, and some good old ‘gut feeling’ to estimate where to aim – and are prepared to adjust your shooting hand up or down as the wind changes.

Alternatively, aiming for a given level of emissions reduction is like estimating the distance to the target butt, knowing the draw weight of the bow, the shaft stiffness of the arrow, and so on, and then using some ballistics theory to calculate the angle of launch you require in order for the arrow trajectory to rise and descend to the target according to the appropriate mathematical parabola. You don’t look at the target when you shoot, and have no real chance to adjust your aim should the wind direction or speed change.

Spot the difference? One is an explicit aim, the other is implicit. That difference might matter, it might not.

There is an article in the Guardian today which explains Schellnhuber’s position in some detail. To quote:

Roll back time to safeguard climate, expert warns

[A return to pre-industrial levels of carbon dioxide urged as the only way to prevent the worst impacts of global warming]

Scientists may have to turn back time and clean the atmosphere of all man-made carbon dioxide to prevent the worst impacts of global warming, one of Europe’s most senior climate scientists has warned.

Professor John Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, told the Guardian that only a return to pre-industrial levels of CO2 would be enough to guarantee a safe future for the planet. He said that current political targets to slow the growth in emissions and stabilise carbon levels were insufficient, and that ways may have to be found to actively remove CO2 from the air.

Schellnhuber said: “We have to start pondering that it might not be enough to stabilise carbon levels. We should not rule out that it might be necessary to bring them down again.”

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Filed under: Emissions, Future | 31 Comments »

Are voluntary actions meaningful where an emissions cap is introduced?

Posted on 15 September 2008 by Barry Brook

Guest Post by Tim Kelly. Tim is works as a Principal Climate Change Advisor in the Water Industry.

The Federal Government released its Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) in July 2008.

Whilst much debate about the Green Paper has focussed on coverage of businesses and industries by the scheme,  the impact on various industries, compensation and economic impacts, there has been little discussion on exactly what the scheme will do to voluntary market mechanisms, how the CPRS and voluntary schemes might interact and whether many voluntary mechanisms can even operate with meaning in a cap and trade based economy.

The Green Paper describes that “measures that are currently justified on the basis that no effective carbon price exists or that were introduced prior to a commitment to introduce the scheme”…(such measures)… “will not lead to an increase in emissions abatement – within a fixed cap, reductions in emissions in one part of the economy simply result in more emissions elsewhere”.

So what exactly are complementary measures?  Do these include GreenPower?What defines an offset? And what mechanisms are proposed to use for voluntary action?

This discussion piece identifies that CPRS Green Paper model as proposed, places many voluntary schemes at risk or their effectiveness at risk.

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The proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) introduces difficulties with voluntary market mechanisms.  The language of the CPRS Green Paper is somewhat vague in regarding the impact of the scheme on voluntary actions using terms like ‘complimentary measures’, but doesn’t directly spell out in plain English that mechanisms such as GreenPower (despite its current problems) are at risk nor does the Green Paper explore how such mechanisms could be made to work.  Consider the following extract:

Complimentary Measures (page 31)

“the presence of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is likely to mean that some other measures may no longer be required (for example, measures that are currently justified on the basis that no effective carbon price exists or that were introduced prior to a commitment to introduce the scheme). Continuing to use such measures will not lead to an increase in emissions abatement – within a fixed cap, reductions in emissions in one part of the economy simply result in more emissions elsewhere”.

“Such measures” potentially include GreenPower, voluntary trading of Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs), new forestry credits, household and small-scale solar rebates and Solar Cities programs.

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What if the sun got stuck?

Posted on 14 September 2008 by Barry Brook

“We’re heading into a new [little] ice age!”. This meme is a favourite of the denialosphere, I suppose because it is considered by them to be the ultimate counter to global warming. An inactive sun is fingered as the potential culprit in this alternative-universe prognostication hypothesis. But just how likely is such solar-driven cooling? What if the sun really did shut off its 11-year sunspot cycle for some reason, and move into a new extended (multi-decadal) period of low activity like was observed during the Maunder Minimum – would this be sufficient to offset the warming induced by an increased build-up of long-lived greenhouse gases from recent human industrial output and land use change?

The basic answer (“no, an inactive sun will not cause an ice age“) is actually remarkably easy to demonstrate. Jim Hansen did this recently in his occasional blog. This ‘trip report’ (printable PDF) covers a wide range of topics – why coal is the climate lynchpin, what industrial nations are (not) doing, what palaeoclimate tells us about climate sensitivity, and the prospects for fourth-generation nuclear power – and is worth reading for all of these gems. But given the prevalance with which the ice age meme appears in non-greenhouse theorist Op-Eds these days, I’ll reproduce his section on solar forcing here in full:

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Figure 4. Seasonal-mean global and low-latitude surface temperature, based on an update of the analysis of Hansen et al. (J. Geophys. Res. 106, 23947, 2001).

Figure 4. Seasonal-mean global and low-latitude surface temperature, based on an update of the analysis of Hansen et al. (J. Geophys. Res. 106, 23947, 2001).

Temperature and Solar Data (extract from Hansen 2008: Trip Report, p11-14)

Figure 4 updates global and low latitude temperature at seasonal resolution. Red rectangles, blue semi-circles and green triangles at the bottom of the plot show the timing of El Ninos, La Ninas and large volcanic eruptions. Oscillation from El Ninos to La Ninas is the main cause of the big fluctuations of low latitude temperature. These fluctuations are also apparent, albeit muted, in the global mean temperature change.

The most recent few seasons (Figure 4) have been cool relative to the previous five years, on average ~0.25°C cooler. If one takes the recent peak (early 2007) and recent low point (early 2008), the change is about -0.5°C. This drop is the source of recent contrarian assertions that all global warming of the past century has been lost and the world is now headed into an ice age. Figure 4 reveals that it is silly to use a peak and valley as an indication of the trend. Peak to valley drops and rises of 0.3-0.5°C in seasonal mean temperature anomalies are common (Figure 4), usually associated with ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation) fluctuations.

The recent La Nina was strong, but tropical temperatures in mid-2008 have returned nearly to ENSO neutral conditions and global temperature is heading back to the high level of the past few years. The low temperatures in the first half of 2008 lead us to estimate that the mean 2008 global temperature will be perhaps in the range about 10th to 15th warmest year in our record.

A majority of the critical e-mails asserted emphatically that global temperature change is due mainly to solar changes, not human-made effects. They also state or imply that, because of ongoing solar changes, the Earth is entering a long-term cooling period (following the warming of the past 30 years, which they presume to be due to increases of solar energy). One e-mail virtually shouted: “THE SUN IS GOING OUT!”

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Spot the recycled denial V – Prof Bob Carter

Posted on 12 September 2008 by Barry Brook

In this series, I aim to teach you to recognise the recycled denialism that is rife in the public arena these days.

I don’t refute this nonsense by constructing a new argument each time which, point-by-point, shows why their claims are not supported by the evidence. This is pointless, since the majority of non-greenhouse theorists (‘sceptics’) blithely ignore any such counterpoints and simply repeat the same arguments elsewhere. Instead I rebutt by hyperlinking to some of the wealth of explanatory material out there on the world wide web. For reasons of general accessibility, the articles l link to are predominantly pitched for a lay audience – but they are consistent in linking to the peer-reviewed primary scientific literature (sometimes I’ll link straight to the journal papers). I focus primarily on the science content of the piece, except where non-science arguments are clearly false and demand correction.

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Prof Bob Carter, one of the most active contrarians in the Australian and New Zealand media scene, has a new Op-Ed published in The Courier Mail. Bob also regularly writes letters to the editor of The Age, The Australian, saying much the same thing as in this Op-Ed – over and over again. He is certainly persistent. Bob is also a member of the Australian Climate Science Coalition, so now we are up to four from that group in the ‘Spot the recycled denial’ series, as he joins Prof Ian Plimer, Dr David Evans and Mr John McLean.

Here are the first few paragraphs:

NATURAL climate changes include warmings, coolings and more abrupt steps represented by the Great Pacific Climate Shift in 1977. Meanwhile, lurking in the background lies the threat of visitation of another Little Ice Age.

The Rudd Government’s emissions trading policy deals only with the threat of presumed human-caused warming, and ignores the other all-too-real climate threats. The Government’s intended emissions trading scheme, therefore, does not represent proper climate policy but rather constitutes a human global warming policy – which is an entirely different, and speculative, matter.

For the hypothesis that human carbon dioxide emissions are causing dangerous global warming has failed the tests to which it has been subjected. One important test is that global temperature has failed to increase since 1998 despite an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide of almost 5 per cent since then.

So to say that human-caused global warming is proven to be a dangerous problem is untrue, and to introduce policies aimed at stopping presumed warming when cooling is actually under way is vainglorious. An emissions trading scheme also will represent an expensive act of futility, because its introduction will have no measurable effect on future climate. Even worse, the costs of emissions trading will be levied disproportionately against the members of our society least able to afford them.

The full article can be read here…

As per the revised format of this series, rather than reproducing the article in full and hyperlinking the refuted claims, I’ll simply list them below with some links to the relevant scientific information or debunking. It will be up to you to look at the original and pinpoint these recycled arguments:

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Filed under: Sceptics | 30 Comments »

Nitrogen, climate change and diet

Posted on 10 September 2008 by Barry Brook

Guest Post by Geoff Russell.

Geoff is a mathematician and computer programmer and is a member of Animal Liberation SA.

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Barry has already published a blog on Australia’s biggest climate forcing, livestock. This has prompted some debate about whether to use the warming due to methane (its climate forcing) or its global warming potential (GWP), the forcing averaged over 100 years. Even if you use the smaller factor, then livestock emissions are huge and about the same size as the entire transport sector.

Before getting to this blog post’s topic, its worth clarifying a couple of mistakes that crop up with regular monotony. First is the feeling that grass fed cattle are the answer, this was the response of a Guardian journalist today. If only cattle ate grass like they did when he studied Ag Science in the 60s, and like most Aussie cattle … apart from the ones that ate 5.7 million tonnes of grain in 2005-6, then everything would be alright. The problem is that it isn’t alright because grass fed cattle produce much more methane than grain fed cattle. Every time I see this on the media/internet, I send the author an email, but rarely get a reply and have never seen a correction.

The second usually appears in letters to editors in daily papers. This mistake is to think that because the methane from cattle doesn’t introduce new carbon into the carbon cycle, then it is harmless. This, like the former mistake, is just part of the general argument that meat is natural, so whatever problems it is causing can’t be real. It is true that cattle don’t (directly) introduce new carbon, so methane from cattle is better than methane leaking from a coal seam. But consider a swimming pool … dive in … it offers little resistance. Now freeze the pool … and dive in … ouch, that smarts! You haven’t added any new water, you have just changed some chemical bonds. Ditto methane. Take the carbon from CO2 (carbon dioxide) and turn it into CH4 (methane) and the forcing … the amount of warming it causes goes up dramatically. Even if we weren’t adding new carbon we could easily cook the planet by just changing the ratio of methane to carbon dioxide.

Lets get back to those grass-fed cattle. We can easily reduce the methane by switching to grain feeding. Why don’t we? We are … but there just isn’t enough grain. We now feed about 12 million tonnes of grain to livestock annually in this country. It’s up a little from the ABARE report I linked to earlier … because we imported about 2 million tonnes of mainly soy-meal in 2006/7 (this is data direct from ABARE).

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Filed under: Emissions, Renewables | 36 Comments »

Spot the recycled denial IV – climate case built on thin foundation

Posted on 9 September 2008 by Barry Brook

In this series, I aim to teach you to recognise the recycled denialism that is rife in the public arena these days.

I don’t refute this nonsense by constructing a new argument each time which, point-by-point, shows why their claims are not supported by the evidence. This is pointless, since the majority of non-greenhouse theorists (‘sceptics’) blithely ignore any such counterpoints and simply repeat the same arguments elsewhere. Instead I rebutt by hyperlinking to some of the wealth of explanatory material out there on the world wide web. For reasons of general accessibility, the articles l link to are predominantly pitched for a lay audience – but they are consistent in linking to the peer-reviewed primary scientific literature (sometimes I’ll link straight to the journal papers). I focus primarily on the science content of the piece, except where non-science arguments are clearly false and demand correction.

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Today there is a new piece out in The Australian, by John McLean, a climate data analyst with the Australian Climate Science Coalition, a group who works closely with the International Climate Science Coalition. Its members include Prof Ian Plimer and Dr David Evans, both of whom have featured in previous versions of ‘Spot the recycled denial’, so I guess this makes it a triumvirate of spin.

Here is the first paragraph:

ROSS Garnaut made it clear in his interim report that his climate change review takes as a starting point – not as a belief but on the balance of probabilities – that the claims made in the fourth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are correct.

Had he made even a cursory examination of the integrity of those IPCC claims he would have found a very troubling picture.

The IPCC encourages us to believe that about 2500 climate scientists supported the claim of a significant human influence on climate. It fails to clarify that the claim was made in chapter nine of the working group one contribution and that the contributions of working groups two and three were based on the assumption that the claim was correct. The first eight chapters of the WG1 contribution were mainly concerned with climatic observations and the authors expressed no opinion about the claim made in chapter nine, and chapters 10 and 11 assumed the claim to be correct. The entire IPCC thesis therefore stands or falls on the claims of just one chapter.

The full article can be read here…

I’ve decided to change the format of this series a little. In most cases, rather than reproducing the article in full and hyperlinking the refuted claims, I’ll simply list them below with some links to the relevant scientific information or debunking. It will be up to you to look at the original and pinpoint these recycled arguments:

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Filed under: Sceptics | 45 Comments »

CCQA3 Presentations Available

Posted on 8 September 2008 by Barry Brook

The PowerPoint presentations from the third of the Climate Change Q and A seminars are now available as PDF files. The presentations by Professor Barry Brook and Dr Peter Hayman provide the scientific answers to questions about climate models and projections. Please see at bravenewclimate.com or adelaide.edu.au/climatechange for details.

If you believe copyrighted work is available on this site in such a way that constitutes copyright infringement, or a breach of an agreed licence or contract, please let us know.

Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A | Leave a Comment »

3/3 CCQA3 Questions from the audience regarding climate models and projections

Posted on 8 September 2008 by Barry Brook

Listen to Barry Brook and Peter Hayman respond to questions from the audience at the 3rd seminar in the series entitled Climate Change Q and A: Sceptical Questions and the Scientific Answers. Subscribe for podcasts at bravenewclimate.com/feed or go to adelaide.edu.au/climatechange for complete details about the series.

Please note this recording contains brief silent sections where audience members asking questions did not have a microphone. In general, the presenter repeats the question before giving his answer.

Filed under: CCQA, Clim Ch Q&A, podcast | 2 Comments »

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