phill Parsons

Humans have no experience of climate change, having survived ice ages by migrating to the tropics where they could. Now we are bound by the artifacts of our activities and only a few will survive any poleward relocation.

Greenhouse gases pass into the dangerous level, reaching 455 ppmv of CO2 [carbon dioxide] equivalent in 2005.

When I first started writing on the subject Greenhouse Gas [GHG] was only reported as a measure of CO2, the warming values of others left out of consideration. In the few years of my interest that measure has gone from 370ppmv to the above, years ahead of projections.

This level will be officially announced when the final synthezised Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] Fourth Assessment is released sometime in November.

The cat was let out of the bag on the 8th of October by Tim Flannery, author of The Weathermakers, Australian of the year and advocate for comprehensive, effective and timely action to reduce greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide.

CO2 is currently the major greenhouse gas and its rapid increase in volume has been the result of human activity; burning fossil fuels and reducing carbon stores through deforestation.

The CSIRO has reconfigured its model on the latest IPCC report and the results are available on the web.

The news media focused on the highest temperatures and lowest rainfall outcomes, the ones most likely if the business as usual approach to fossil fuel burning continues.

Of course there are a number of other model options that include lower emissions outcomes leading to less drastic outcomes for temperature and rainfall.

Even so, the changes we face are predicted to make 15% of the planets heritage, the species present today, become extinct.

Why so?. Because the current level of GHG’s makes a 2dC temperature increase in global temperatures unavoidable, putting pressure on all ecosystems by pushing to their limits many of the primary food producers, the plants, and thus causing them to either perish or relocate to favorable sites as they shrink away under the effects of climate chaos.

Further such an increase in temperature will force positive feedbacks from the system, and thus feed in further negative impacts. Loss of arctic albedo, forest drying in the wet tropics, methane release from the melting tundra.

All we have to do is wait for 3 to 4 decades, or less given that the changes to the systems that drive the climate are moving more rapidly than the models predicted, and the associated climate chaos of a 2dC increase in global average temperatures will arrive.

The first Kyoto Protocol had too small a target to actually stop the changes, it was all that the majority of countries could agree to given the short sighted self interest of governments of certain nations, including Australia, representing the fossil fuel energy sector, the causative factor

Had the world accepted the correctness and understood the implication of the work of Arrenhuis when he described he result of filling the atmosphere with carbonic acid in 1896 it may have been able to chart a different course.

Instead there was some work falsely showing those calculations to be wrong and now we are left with little time to turn around the global economies dependence on fossil fuels whilst at the same time deal with the impacts of climate chaos; drought; megafires and sea level changes leading the local impacts list.

And against this simple choice of a future will be aligned massive opposition. The fossil fuel energy companies interests in maintaining the status quo, the inertia of comfortable societies and familiar paths, all act to delay comprehensive effective and timely changes.

For example, we have a British School Governor making some minor point about the Gore film “An Inconvenient Truth” whilst at the same time the Swedish Academy of Sciences recognizes Gore’s work with the Nobel Peace Prize, the implications of failing natural systems on nations and international relations not lost on those deciding the prize.

Humans have no experience of climate change, having survived ice ages by migrating to the tropics where they could. Now we are bound by the artifacts of our activities and only a few will survive any poleward relocation.

In this country we are about to make a choice between the leader who has wasted 11 years in confusing the community, delaying action and sending technologies offshore when their development could have reaped benefits for the Australian economy at a time when to save itself it will have to decarbonizes .

The vested interests of the old parties make them incapable of taking the degree of action required, that comprehensive, effective and timely mitigation and the targeted adaptation measures, that stem the catastrophic changes associated with the higher levels of emissions.

Howard and Rudd have charted their course for climate chaos, a belief in clean coal and carbon trading, both worthwhile but of themselves insufficient given that the new rate of change to the climate, running ahead of the modeling.

Howard asks for trust, Rudd awaits advice. In Queensland new Premier Anna Bligh is set to act like the Howard government did when the use of the law was set to bring destructive practices to book and changed the EPBC Act because of a win on Wielangta.

Industry must be protected and I Queensland their legislation will be changed because they fear a win over the new Xstrata coal mine in the Bowen Basins. The industry that threatens all life must go on for the jobs it provides. No mention of a transition strategy, a technological breakthrough or an expanded carbon trading scheme.

Neither of the old parties have the strength to tell the truth and lead on this crucial issue, the media fails in its responsibility by crying out for balance when the science is clear. Thus we have voter concern but not yet enough to override the other issues.

Carbon trading has the capacity to assign a value to the natural function of ecosystems including forests and thus set a base price for its carbon storage product – wood.

Such measures already occur in Queensland and New South Wales..

Recently the responsible Minister, Llewellyn, announced that the new Tasmanian Climate Change Strategy was nearing finalization, a process started some 2 state elections ago when Judy Jackson was Minister for the Environment.

Stumbling and bumbling the wheels of misgovernment grinding against action, the great thinkers of Tasmanian government have been unable to buy off the shelf products for reducing the climate impact of day to day activities of government, their attention focused on destroying the great carbon sink that is Tasmania’s natural forests.

For example, I have suggested several practical measures including the use of biogas from sewage works to provide power, the advantage being replacing fossil fuel and reducing the powerful greenhouse gas methane [CH4].

The Minister finally had an official reply, asking me to desist, as it was distracting him by answering the Minister and anyway not enough power could be harvested from shit even though other places were, and still are, actually doing it rather than the low yield outcome of Tasmania.

I gave up, clearly Tasmanian shit lacks the power of the European model. The addition of culture and an intellectual life that pervades the cities of Europe must produce a more potent item than the sports based Tasmanian model, still missing the clever element.

No doubt a real strategy will emerge one day, perhaps even this time given that the world has entered the dangerous phase where the climate is no longer changing but has become chaotic and unpredicatble. Some serious action now could divert us from the path to climate destabilization and catastrophe.

Today the Swedish city of Vejco [pop 78,000] powers one third of the City’s vehicles using biogas from the sewage works. Having made the decision to act to reduce GHG production in 1993 this city has reduced emissions by 30% to date and no doubt made huge savings by moving away from a dependence on liquid fossil fuel [oil].

Heretics that they are [in the Tasmanian sense] this city in the middle of the forests of Smaland has also used wood waste to heat and power its needs, that activity being closer to carbon neutral then their previous oil fired processes.

One measure available to government, is to reward investment in research, development and installation of new and sustainable energy sources, providing both a breathing space and the opportunity to be among the leaders in the emerging fossil fuel free economy through technological development across a range of solutions.

Providing a 1000% tax deduction to investors in those paths would allow a place for the managed investment scheme money currently disappearing into plantations to find its way into alternative energy developments thus targeting the need for a more secure future for all life.

There is a price to pay for deferring the necessary actions. It rises with each delay. Stern set the picture and if you refer to his report you will see the price has just gone much higher.

As people go to the polls the window of opportunity that was open to us has closed and the choice now is between retaining a stable climate so we may have an economy a heritage of disaster.

phill Parsons. Advocate for avoiding catastrophic climate change [< 550ppmv], less than 40 years away on the current business as usual approach. Turnbull, on behalf of a Costello government elected in its own right in 2010, has flagged the signing of the next round of Kyoto. No doubt there are and will be caveats to that. By that time the climate chaos may still only be on the margin of its potential. At least one hopes so. However, the failings of the business as usual path will be even clearer and the ‘deniers’ and ‘realists’ will be even more isolated from reality, the events influenced by a destabilizing climate surrounding them.