Scientists must not downplay the seriousness of Antarctic ice melting
parts of the Antarctic ice caps were melting at unprecedented rates.
“The role of scientists is not to be alarmists, and not to downplay the data, but simply to report it.”
Antarctic climate facing ‘rapid’ changes: chief scientist, The Age, October 16, 2012 -Australia’s chief Antarctic scientist says claims by climate experts about environmental changes in the southern continent are not alarmist.
The Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) told a Senate estimates hearing today “rapid changes” taking place across the icy land mass would have significant impact on global climate.
Changes in ocean flows and shifts in Antarctic ice cap levels were occurring at rates faster than at any other time in history, chief scientist Nick Gales said. “That’s the part that is the most dramatic about the information we’re receiving,” he told the hearing. Continue reading
Australia’s Institute of Public Affairs campaigning to deny climate change
IPA goes up the greasy Delingpole for cash http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/environment/ipa-goes-up-the-delingpole-for-cash/ 14 September, 2012 The IPA are grubbing for donations to fund their tireless campaign to stymie action on climate change — and are happy to fly out even the most obnoxious deniers from the UK to assist. Graham Readfearn reports.JAMES DELINGPOLE is a UK columnist waging a long personal jihad against wind farms, environmentalists and climate science.
A resident blogger and columnist at London’s Daily Telegraph, Delingpole is probably best known for being among the first mainstream columnists to declare – wrongly, of course – that emails illegally hacked from an influential climate research unit showed scientists were trying to con the public.
So he is the perfect person to be appealing for people to donate their cash to the Melbourne-based Institute of Public Affairs, a free market think tank which has been working for about 20 years on a campaign to mislead the public about climate science and the impact of carbon pricing.
In the appeal, Delingpole lauds the IPA’s campaign against climate science and action on climate change. Readers of the appeal might be forgiven for thinking the IPA is struggling for cash. Says Delingpole:
James Delingpole
‘Their budget is always stretched. If you don’t give them money they’ll go broke.’
Yet the IPA’s most recent financial returns to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission suggest that, rather than scrambling around for spare change, the think-tank is, in fact, in rude financial health.
For the year ending June 2011, the ASIC documents show the IPA declared a before-tax profit of $217,000 with an income of $2.42 million. In 2010, the IPA’s income was $1.72 million, with before-tax profit of $203,000.
The IPA’s executive director John Roskam refuses to declare where the IPA’s money comes from……
Professor Bob Carter, the IPA’s science policy advisor, is also an advisor to the GWPF (as well as at least seven other climate sceptic groups), alongside fellow Australian “sceptic” Professor Ian Plimer, who has also made personal appeals for people to hand over cash to the IPA.
As I revealed in a story for The Guardian in March, the only known funder of the GWPF is Michael Hintze, an Australian-born, UK-based, hedge fund manager, donor to the UK Tory Party, and a man with a personal fortune of $1.4 billion, according to Forbes.
The IPA also has close ties to the billionaire set in the form of Gina Rinehart, the coal and iron ore mining magnate and world’s richest woman. In an address to “IPA members and friends”, Rinehart recently declared her concern that Australia was becoming too expensive, given that “Africans want to work, and its workers are willing to work for less than $2 per day”. The comments prompted a Ugandan television personality to declare Rinehart was “removed from reality“.
The IPA is currently working in partnership with Rinehart’s lobby group Australians for Northern Development & Economic Vision, which wants a separate low-tax economic zone for the north of Australia to make it cheaper to run major mining projects.
In 2012 a tipping point in the change to renewable energy for Australia
We’ve hit energy tipping point: Flannery THE AUSTRALIAN, AAP August 14, CLIMATE change campaigner Tim Flannery says 2012 will be seen as a tipping point in the fight against rising carbon dioxide levels.
Advances in clean energy technologies, increasing global investment, the drop in price of those technologies and growing public support point to the dawn of the clean energy era, Australia’s chief climate commissioner says.
“Global investments in renewable power and fuels has increased six fold since just 2004, standing today at about $257 billion,” Professor Flannery told a Committee for Economic Development of Australia function in Melbourne on Tuesday.
“We’re seeing investment in renewables now outpacing those of fossil fuels. “Some of these trends have only become evident in the last 12 months. I don’t think they’re going to go away and I think we’ll see this as the moment when things really started to move.”
Prof Flannery said the 75 per cent drop in the cost of producing solar panels over the past four years, and the subsequent take-up rate in Australian homes was evidence of the change locally….. “(Look at) Germany, with it’s 25 gigawatts of solar power, where the very best sunlight you get in Germany is about as good as our worst here in Australia – we have huge potential in that area.” http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/weve-hit-energy-tipping-point-flannery/story-fn3dxiwe-1226450269594
Australian scientists find that human activity has caused melanoma in fish
A whopping 15% of the fish surveyed had melanoma. … While 15% sounds high, Sweet and his colleagues believe it’s only a minimum estimate. “Once the cancer spreads further you would expect the fish to become quite sick, becoming less active and possibly feeding less, hence less likely to be caught. This suggests the actual percentage affected by the cancer is likely to be higher than observed in this study.”….
Fish with Melanoma – Our Enduring Environmental Legacy Scientific American. By Christie Wilcox | August 1, 2012 | We’ve all heard the horror stories. Melanoma is one of the most dangerous kinds of skin cancer, killing around 50,000 people worldwide every year. If caught early enough, it can be cured, but once it invades past the skin, it’s deadly. On the advice of doctors, we try to protect ourselves, donning floppy hats and coat upon coat of SPF 50 sunblock. We pick over our bodies in the mirror regularly, looking for dark, irregularly-shaped spots. . The recent rise in the incidence of skin cancer, though, is our own fault.
It is the result of our environmental hubris, a combination of a chemically-depleted ozone layer and our pathological obsession with a tanned physical appearance. Now, we’re becoming increasingly aware that our choices don’t just impact our own species. The rest of life has to deal with our poor decisions, and studies are just now determining the wide-ranging consequences of our actions.
Unable to slather on sunscreen, the creatures on our planet are much more limited in their ability to deal with the sun’s radiation…… Continue reading
Queensland’s Liberal-National Party policy on Climate Change- an international embarassment
Queensland and the weird alternate reality of climate change denialists Independent Australia, Graham Readfearn, 25 July, 2012 “….. we come to the latest episode, where Queensland’s currently in-power Liberal-National Party has accepted a motion that climate science shouldn’t be taught in schools. The proposer of the motion, which was accepted unanimously (but may not be taken up by the parliamentary wing of the party), is a Dr Richard Pearson, from Noosa.
It now appears that Dr Pearson has been conducting his own climate science experiments — at home, in his kitchen, armed only with thermometers, two fish cooler boxes and a roll of cling film. Some may find the results remarkable; you see, Dr Pearson believes he may have disproved the greenhouse effect (you may now pinch yourself).
We know this because he wrote about his experiment on the website of the climate sceptic group the Galileo Movement — whose patron is the noted climate expert (and radio presenter) Alan Jones. Dr Pearson’s conclusion?
‘That the Greenhouse Effect theory is not confirmed by this experiment and may be disproved by it.’
Now, even though the notion that a guy in his kitchen in Noosa armed with two eskies and a roll of cling film could single-handedly disprove the greenhouse theory may seem just a tad fanciful….
plausible to non-experts, such as the vast majority of the general public. At the end of his experiment, Dr Pearson recounts how his daughter had questioned how a man with cling film could “disprove a theory that hundreds of climate scientists around the world say is true”. “That my darling is science”, was Dr Pearson’s response. Is it really?…
Professor Matthew England, of the University of New South Wales Climate Change Research Centre and also chairman of the Australian Climate Commission’s science advisory panel, says the motion which Dr Pearson managed to get passed at the LNP’s state conference could have broad ramifications, if only for the state’s reputation.
If the proposal to remove greenhouse science from the school curriculum is enacted, Queensland’s education system will become an international joke overnight. Basic greenhouse gas physics has been established with around 200 years of scientific progress — any move to muzzle climate science facts from being taught at schools will be condemned as world’s worst practice in scientific education.
So if the Queensland Education Minister John Paul Langbroek does act on the motion from his party, then Prof England says the State will be a laughing stock. Until then, we’ll just have to settle for the majority of the members of the LNP. http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/politics/queensland-and-the-weird-alternate-reality-of-climate-change-denialists/
Climate Change Denialism in full swing in Australia
The climate change denialists may soon to be running the asylum Independent Australia, 19 July, 2012 Anyone who places stock in safeguarding the current and future climate (and for that matter anyone who doesn’t) should prepare themselves for the risk that very soon, climate science deniers, contrarians and sceptics will be running the show, writes Graham Readfearn.
ALL the polls suggest that a Liberal-led coalition will sweep to power at next year’s Federal election in Australia — the world’s biggest exporter of coal and on track to be the biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas. Current Liberal leader Tony Abbott, if we care to remember, once described climate change as “crap“. Views shared among Abbott’s parliamentary coalition ranks are that climate science is a “leftist fad” and a “work of fiction”.
The Liberal-National Party’s new Queensland Premier Campbell Newman and his environment minister Andrew Powell are currently presiding over a massive boom in coal and gas projects. Both have said they’re unable to accept the evidence of human-caused climate change, going against the scientific findings of the country’s main science agency the CSIRO and the country’s Bureau of Meteorology, plus every major science academy on the planet. Continue reading
At last, a comprehensive and rational assessment of Australia’s climate policy
Little by little: the benefits of Australian climate policy, The Conversation, Roger Jones, 20 July “…..For climate, any action to permanently reduce greenhouse gas emissions in one region spreads the benefits across the globe. A global effort requires many good neighbours amongst countries who may not know each other well or trust each other very much.
Australia’s efforts to do its bit as a good neighbour are being opposed by an increasingly shrill and irrational chorus that includes politicians, industry figures, academics and a sizeable proportion of Australia’s print media….. Is Australia going it alone? No. Limited trading or tax schemes exist in the US, Canada, the EU, and Japan, and are soon to start up in regions of China, India, and South Korea. The rest of the world will learn from us, as we have learned from the Europeans to keep a tight limit on emissions permits. Good carbon accounting was largely developed in Australia.
In the same way that we have exported Landcare for good environmental management and sports science for running marathons, we can export our know-how in managing the climate. Naked self-interest and ignorance are the two biggest barriers to achieving this. http://theconversation.edu.au/little-by-little-the-benefits-of-australian-climate-policy-8259
70,000 scientists wrong about climate science, says Queensland’s Liberal/National Party
Scientists reject LNP school move http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/scientists-reject-lnp-school-move-20120713-221or.html#ixzz20dcQEzwx July 14, 2012 Adam Morton and Daniel Hurst A BODY representing nearly 70,000 Australian scientists has criticised a Queensland Liberal National Party resolution calling for mainstream climate science to be cut from the state’s school curriculum.
LNP delegates at the party’s state conference passed a motion yesterday calling on Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek to stop the teaching of ”environmental propaganda material, in particular post-normal science about climate change”. The mover of the motion, Noosa LNP member Richard Pearson, attacked ”false prophets who would poison the minds of our children in our schools”.
”Few people understand that the so-called science of climate change is really what can be defined as post-normal science,” he said, arguing it went beyond traditional understanding of science. The motion was passed with overwhelming support.
Anna-Maria Arabia, chief executive of Science & Technology Australia, called the resolution ”extremely harmful”. The central principles of climate science – including that man-made greenhouse gases trap heat in the lower atmosphere and have warmed the planet – were backed by all the world’s major scientific academies.
”The message this sends is ‘we do not treat the science as an issue of testing ideas, we treat it as a belief system’,” Ms Arabia said. ”We shouldn’t be telling students that testing ideas is propaganda and that there is ‘post-normal science’, whatever that means.” Queensland Premier Campbell Newman said MPs had not decided whether to act on the resolution. ”We will always do the right thing by Queenslanders ahead of the LNP,” he said.
Australian businesses don’t want repeal of carbon tax
The opposition climate spokesman, Greg Hunt, (left) repeated his prediction that if the Coalition won the next election, there would be no carbon price in Australia for the next 20 years.
Keith Orchison, a former head of the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association, said Mr Hunt’s 20-year prediction was out of step with business. Investors in mining, power infrastructure and large manufacturing – which look 20 years or more ahead – were assuming a carbon price, he said.
Businesses reject Abbott’s vow to repeal carbon tax, SMH, July 7, 2012, David Wroe with Adam Morton and Paddy Doulman FEWER than a quarter of the biggest heavy greenhouse gas-emitting companies that will directly pay the carbon tax support Tony Abbott’s ”pledge in blood” to repeal the scheme, a survey by the Herald has found…
.The Herald asked 40 of the biggest emitters on the government’s list of 294 companies that will pay the carbon tax whether it was in their interests to repeal or change the scheme. Nine indicated they supported a repeal, Continue reading
When El Nino strikes, Australians will believe in global warming again, and in carbon tax?
This week, the weather bureau warned another El Nino event was looming for the coming year.
The last time Australia went through El Nino, the country had its worst drought in more than a century. Not surprisingly, many Australians drew a connection between the drought and climate change and the need for action.
El Nino may be good for Labor The West, Andrew Probyn July 6, 2012, Shhhh! Don’t mention the war. As the great heatwave struck the US, knocking off thousands of temperature records, Bob Henson, a meteorologist at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, was asked this week whether any of this could be down to climate change.
“Climate change is a political question,” he told Fairfax’s US correspondent Nick O’Malley. “I thought it was a scientific question,” O’Malley responded. “Well, it’s both.”
This was a fascinating exchange. Especially in a week where scientists could confidently announce they had confirmed the existence of the Higgs boson, the so-called God particle. Comparatively speaking, there’s less evidence of the Higgs boson than there is of climate change, but we believed the scientists when they told us they had found the elusive subatomic particle that explained mass.
The fact that Mr Henson went straight to the politics of climate change, rather than going to the cause of climate change
(anthropomorphic or otherwise) speaks volumes for the success of the campaign against the so-called “warmists”….. Continue reading
On July 1 Australia joins international effort to address global warming
[Tony Abbott has] claimed regions will disappear, Whyalla will collapse. The population in Whyalla’s increasing and 
there’s a lot of investment there. I just think a lot of the claims that have been made from Sunday will be able to be tested against reality and I think people will think, “Well, you know, can we really believe what Tony Abbott’s on about?”
VIDEO Combet joins Lateline http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2012/s3535240.htm 28 June 12,
“……….[The carbon tax is] meant to achieve reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in our economy over time because it’s important for Australia to play its part in international efforts to tackle climate change. We’re part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, an advanced economy like ours has to play its fair part, we’re one of the top 20 greenhouse gas emitters internationally and we’re the highest per capita emitter amongst the developed economies. So, we have to play our role and the intention here is to put a price tag on pollution so that there’s an incentive to cut greenhouse gas emissions….
what we’re implementing of course is an emissions trading scheme. I know we’ve discussed this previously, but when it does migrate to a flexible price in 2015, the government of the day will be setting caps so we can achieve a targeted emissions reduction.
Essentially what that means is the number of permits to emit greenhouse gas will be limited and cut each year so that we can achieve a specific emissions reduction target by 2020. So it will be effective, but of course we’re part of the international community. Other countries are doing similar things and a tonne of greenhouse gas emissions cut overseas or in Australia is – it doesn’t matter whether it’s here or overseas, as long as there’s greenhouse gas emissions cut and that’s why linking carbon markets is important…… Continue reading
Australia a leader in climate change action
PM commits Australia to green jobs, Herald Sun By Paul Osborne 22 June 12 Prime Minister Julia Gillard had told world leaders she’ll drive a push to end global poverty by creating green jobs, despite green groups and unions accusing the world environment summit of being a failure.
In a seven-minute address to the United Nations sustainable development conference in Rio de Janeiro this morning (AEST), Ms Gillard said that even though government heads had “already lowered other important ambitions”, it was important that the world put in place sustainable development goals (SDGs).
Ms Gillard and the Australian delegation have pushed hard for SDGs to replace eight UN millennium development goals, put in place to fight global poverty in 2000 and which expire in 2015. The prime minister has been appointed to co-chair a taskforce to oversee the final years of the millennium goals and ensure the 191 signatory nations meet their commitments.
“Everyone here knows that collective action is hard – and that global collective action can be even harder,” Ms Gillard said.
But targets work, Ms Gillard said, and create the firmest possible basis for long-term success.Ms Gillard said Australia was playing its part in addressing climate change and creating green jobs by putting in place a carbon pricing
scheme from July 1 and investing in renewable energy technology….. http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/pm-commits-australia-to-green-jobs/story-e6frf7jx-1226405748931
Non political and impressive panel to oversee Australia’s climate action and renewable energy targets
High-power panel to put emissions on target June 22, 2012 THE Gillard government has named its ”Reserve Bank for climate change” – as coined by Tony Mohr of the Australian Conservation Foundation – a high-powered panel, including hard-headed industry representatives, that will help set Australia’s greenhouse gas and renewable energy targets.
The Climate Change Authority will include industry heavyweight John Marlay, widely seen as a more conservative voice on the panel, and Reserve Bank board member Heather Ridout, who in her previous job as head of the Australian Industry Group was critical of elements of the carbon tax. The panel, announced yesterday, will also include respected climate
scientist David Karoly, former economics bureaucrat Lynne Williams, left-leaning economist Clive Hamilton, AustralianSuper chairwoman Elana Rubin and leading economist John Quiggin….. The authority will be chaired by former Treasury secretary and Reserve Bank governor Bernie Fraser.
The authority members will constitute the most powerful independent advisers on the carbon pricing scheme, recommending greenhouse gas emissions targets to the government….. Greens leader Christine Milne said the panel would ”depoliticise the fraught process” of setting targets. http://www.smh.com.au/environment/highpower-panel-to-put-emissions-on-target-20120621-20qtt.html#ixzz1yYez2G63.
Australia’s Institute of Public Affairs promotes climate denialist lies to schoolchildren
what might it mean that Plimer’s views are rejected outright by 97-98% of climate scientists and major scientific organisations across the world? Might his extreme and nastily expressed views have something to do with vested interests – given that he is the interim chairman of one mining company and director of at least one other – in the context of a looming carbon tax?
Teaching critical thinking in this context would also look at the concept and role of peer review and relevant credentials when deciding on the worth of conflicting statements.
How the IPA feeds kids lies about climate change, Independent Australia, 12 June 12, The Institute of Public Affairs, a lobby group funded by big business, miners and the tobacco industry, is sending schools misleading and inaccurate books about climate change. Frances Quinn from the UNE reports. Two recently published books suggest that the public – and school children in particular – are being fed lies about environmental issues such as climate change. The books – “How to Get Expelled from School: A guide to climate change for pupils, parents & punters” by Ian Plimer and “Little Green Lies: An expose of twelve environmental myths” by Jeff Bennett – clearly demonstrate how important it is to have a scientifically literate Australia.
The distorted and selectively reported science in these books highlights some of the challenges that Australian teachers face in teaching science, and how important it is that they are supported in this task.
The Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency (DCCEE) has condemned Plimer’s book as misleading and inaccurate. However the free market think tank the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) is apparently sending copies of Plimer’s misleading fringe book to Australian schools. The Executive Director of the IPA John Roskam is, incidentally, on the editorial board of the publishing house of these two books.
Plimer’s book tells school students that they are being “conned” and “fed propaganda” if their teacher “waffles” on about issues such as human-induced global warming, sea level rise and the IPCC. He deplores this as “environmental activism”. This is despite the overwhelming evidence for human induced climate change accepted by a vast range of climate scientists and scientific organisations. Continue reading
Carbon Capture and Storage – a failed dream
”It was never going to be viable,” Greens leader Senator Christine … the fact is it is not going to work … it’s too expensive, it’s last century and we don’t need it because we have got renewables … Why would you stick with the horse and buggy era when you can move on?”
Australia will not be able to use carbon capture and storage as planned. That means it will need to rework the assumptions underpinning its crucial carbon tax reform – among them the role of coal-fired electricity generation in Australia, the cost of emission reductions, and the idea that we can be part of a global effort to limit global warming while continuing to export
billions of dollars worth of coal.
Climate strategy up in smoke, The Age, Lenore Taylor, June 16, 2012 IT WAS the technology that was going to help underpin the nation’s climate change strategy. In 2009, the then prime minister, Kevin Rudd, pledged to ”lead the world” in carbon capture and storage technology, which traps carbon dioxide emissions, permanently storing them deep underground.
The Rudd and Gillard governments allocated almost $2.5 billion to push the idea, which would be used to ”clean up” coal-fired power stations in Australia and in the countries to which we will export $44 billion worth of coal this year.
But so far there is almost nothing to show for their effort. Instead, the fledgling technology is struggling. Continue reading
1 This month
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
Antinuclear 