Climate change denial

phill Parsons

What is it about this issue that sees the science denied again and again. Okay a second opinion or even a third on a diagnosis so profound. But now we are coming up to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and still supposedly qualified people just don’t get it.

The survivors will all be hot heads if we get it wrong and spending a mere 1% of GDP per annum will not break any banks. Indeed Macquarie could do very nicely.
The Age opinion piece Cool heads needed on global warming is so dated in its postulation as to be unworthy of the wasted carbon printing it.

How can such dissembling be published by a paper that (1) seeeks a prestigous status and (2) has on the same day two articles reporting the science and the experts conclusions in the main one, contradicting the gibberish of a civil engineer from the mining industry dribbling on about disproved and disguarded theories.

“Len Walker is a civil engineer and fellow of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy.” The Age of Saturday the 27th of January ends the opinion piece.

His basic postulation is that we are gripped by a form of hysteria in having concern about global heating and the resultant climate changes, apparently whipped up by , wait for it, a film of a presentation by Al Gore starring Al Gore and a report by an economist Nicholas Stern.

Looking aside from Len’s qualifications what does he claim?

He quotes the media, Newsweek, from 28 April 1975, when there was limited data on climate change, to show there was concern that earth was cooling. Gee Len, instead it was warming and the evidence is there now.

So in the next paragraph he agrees that it is warming and uses figures that do not relate to each other, a global average temperature rise related to the a specific event [probably the Younger Dryas] at a specific location to show Greenland has been hotter 11,500 years ago.

Well Len, the Arctic is melting right before your eyes, if you were game enough to go see or just take the residents at their word and save all that pollution, and ice is retreating across the earth.

If this is the effect of an 0.6dC rise then you had better kiss your coal export ports goodbye because 1.3dC is set in place now and will arrive in several decades and unfortunately the British Antarctic Survey has found melt occurring there and the resultant modelling of that melt is a 1.5M rise in seas level, almost double the maximum of the third assessmenrt report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 5 years ago

Further, 2.5dC to 4.5dC is predicted by the experts in the field in the fourth asssessment report, one by 2,500 climatologists working over 2 years. Hardly credible 1 civil engineer could see where so many others can’t.

An article on the outcome of such changes can be found leading The Age on Saturday the 27th. ( On the brink of climate disaster ) ( Also, Soaring temperatures unstoppable ) The hint contained therein is to take action now and avoid [1] more costly action later and [2] the effects predicted or failure of the human construct.

And then the clown who calls himself Lord Monckton is trotted out as the boy genius to defend the climate change skeptics and deniers. Well Len this is a shrinking crew, neither Howard or Bush brave enough to continue denial of the bleeding obvious.

And has Monckton got it right, no Len. You might as well have used Piers Ackerman to try for credibility. He cannot see over the top of the typewriter either.

What do the measurements of carbon dioxide show us. Firstly I am happy to admit we have limited data from direct measurment. However the rise from 1970 to the end of the century showed a steady increment of 1.5ppm.

Now there has been a change in the trend with half as much again being stored in the atmosphere. Yes it’s only 4 years of measurement. The new level increase of 2.2ppm of CO2 was exceeded in 1998, in an El Nino. It was 2.9ppm

If the current trend continues, this year’s predicted El Nino could see the annual rise in carbon dioxide pass the 3 ppm level for the first time.

Forest fires releasing carbon and removing the sinks mature capacity, heatwaves across Europe and the 2005 Amazon drought reducing the capacity of those systems to store carbon [grow] and ocean temperature changes reducing that capacity could have helped to drive up carbon dioxide levels.

Such events are predicted to become more frequent with rising global temperatures along with ocean acidification reducing further the capacity of marine life to sink carbon.

As I have argued before Len, limited data means we may be passing turning points and not knowing it, a return to the climate we are used to or to within paramenters that suit our complex of activities that support the global population, is not guaranteed.

Len calls for a full “an open forum” and “serious public discussion”. Hey Len, the government has had the advice and made up its mind, just like on the nuclear power and uranium mining questions, and therefore not necessarily in logical order.

You should thank your lucky stars that the current government will do nothing effective and therefore costly for industry so you have time to rearrange your share portfolio before you rush down and return your tarnished hero for another term of clever dissembling.

Yes, the Howard government will not deny climate change; the scientific advice and the political momentum make it so. However, they will take heart from your gibberish, alonf with that of other gibberers, and delay comprehensive and effective action to address global heating.

For those who wish to say hang on a moment there phill Parsons, they just promised $10B for the Murray Darling, think for a moment, why?.

That system has been left languishing toward death for years now, successive governments fiddling at the edges, inane fights over jurisdiction leaving one huge natural system that support much of Australia’s agriculture in decline.

Firstly, its an election year and Howard needs a major environmental project with a realizable positive that goes to the nations psyche. Carbon geosequestration for any merits it has, and there are some, just doesn’t do it. Whereas the idea of saving icons; the river system, the farmers, the Australian spirit and the electorates in the city of churches water supply is masterful.

He may have trumped Rudd on an Australian perennial, water. Is it no wonder this issue became bipartisan immediately.

Oh, and also the government’s advice is for more and longer droughts and higher temperatures’. So taking the practical measures to conserve water in the climate that is flagged as ours tomorrow is only a sensible precautionary activity.

It’s a pity Howard won’t take others, a carbon tax gives a signal, increasing mandatory renewable energy targets gives another and grows an industry, renewable energy credits applied aggressively toward solar water heating would increases Australia’s current energy generating capacity by 10% with affecting current carbon dioxide outputs.

phill Parsons would like to be understanding of opposing views. However too much is at stake to continue down the wrong path or delay in taking the right one. As Stern’s report pointed out and as he continues to do, taking climate change management seriously and investing in it will limit more costly action later and avoid the worst effects predicted, or indeed, as other postulate the failure of the human construct.

Also, download TCT’s Media Release on climate change:
Media_Release_Climate_Change_Strategy.pdf