Tony’s Tropfest

No, it’s not a sidebar event to a well known film festival.

Instead it is a damning indictment of Abbott’s two faced attitude to climate change.

Under the Emissions Trading Scheme introduced last year the Australian energy economy has taken a turn for the better, reducing their emissions of Carbon to the atmosphere.

A new study shows wind and large scale solar thermal are cheaper than a coal fired power station when the cost of carbon emissions is taken into account. Even if no cost of carbon emissions is included these three forms of power generation are now about the same cost per Mwh.

Only a few days ago the Abbott Liberals flagged a northern development policy for those who still believe the earth should be developed everywhere.

As though humans are only benign and never benighted, these dated thinkers have a flat earth view, flying in the face of all we have learnt in the last few decades about managing the remaining natural areas and services.

What Abbott has failed to take into account with his Vision 2030 is that a 2070, a 2170 and perhaps even a 2270 year could follow. Who knows, Australia may be occupied for thousands of years more, perhaps even another 60,000.

[Abbott failed to recognize the period of inhabitation in his 2013 Australia Day address in South Australia, showing up his real ignorance of Australia for all his practical works in Aboriginal communities. The new found bi-partisanship on Constitutional recognition may represent a lesson learnt.]

We should know that if Australia continues on a path of high emissions through the use and export of fossil fuels along with the United States and perhaps China, we can be sure of much more than the dangerous 2dC of warming. As a nation we collectively ignore the idea of any consequences from such a path.

One of the results is an impact on the monsoon rains, the wet the North is renowned for. This season has seen those rains delayed in Northern Australia. What sort of infrastructure will be necessary to ensure a larger population has a reliable year round water supply with a loss of reliability?.

It may be good for the dam construction businesses and for others associated with civil works as the Federals spend scarce dollars on trying to harness a changing climate, but who will be paying for these adaptation costs?.

The CISRO modelling’s best estimate for 2070 is for a 2.5 to 3dC increase in the Top End with the balance of the NT falling into the 3 to 4dC end in a medium emissions scenario. Darwin already has summer temperatures of xxdC and Alice Springs has xxdC.

Similar temperature increase will apply for coastal northern WA and Qld, with a similar rise as the NT for their respective inland areas.

In suggesting the north be conquered Abbott must believe that even without Australia, a country with high per capita emissions, not joining in emissions trading scheme [He proposes to abolish the ETS], that emitting countries currently less willing to change now will be gripped by a crisis of conscience and eschew fossil fuels.

How likely whilst we continue to export more and more coal each year, certain corporations and identities profiting at a cost to all life, that cost sometimes being the ultimate price.

Clearly Abbott hasn’t thought that with higher temperatures and a less stable climate the tourism industries, large local employers in Cairns, may have to take a different focus.

Who wants to holiday in a Queensland coastal resort that is affected by more intense cyclones with their associated floods or to visit a dying barrier reef affected by a warmer Coral Sea. Medium emissions scenario sees surface sea level temperatures off Qld rise by between 2 and 2.5dC.

Who wants to live in a town that is flooded more often?. The flooding rains associated with the far reaching Cyclone Oswald are part of an emerging global phenomenon. The records may only just be broken against the last record event.

This appears to be the current case in the early period of transition to greater climate instability, a period defined by only 0.8dC of warming.

For example the 10/11FEB13 blizzard in the NE US.

In Portland, Maine, the storm surpassed a record 27.1 inches set in January 1979. The city had received 29.3 inches by earlyon the 11th and was still snowing heavily.

However, the storm that arrived days after the 35th anniversary of the “Blizzard of ’78,” which buried Boston in a then-record 27.1 inches of snow and killed 99 people in Massachusetts and Rhode Island did not break a record there but the February blizzards of 2003 and 2011, surpassed that epic storm’s snowfall, but by less than an inch.

Along with that gradual change in the recorded extremes, the frequency of some events is increasing even if the record is not broken each time. The frequency of high intensity or extreme events is also of importance in understanding trends.

High intensity precipitation events in the NE USA have increased in frequency with the minima stepping up from 5 to 15% above average. This mimics the rate in sea level rise which has stepped up from 1.7 to 3mm per annum average in this century.

The distress of another flood on the psyche of the Bundaberg residents when they spoke to the media after being flooded for that second time in several years came across. Their shock was clear.

People will not want to experience such a world again and again as they try to build the future Abbott envisages for the north of Australia when they may be able to escape by living elsewhere.

The trauma caused by repeated floods, storms and fires will change society like the trauma of World War 1 changed the people and nations affected by that.

And then there are the wet tropics World Heritage Rainforests. Forest, because some species are dependent on cool mountain habitats, will shrink in area and species mix with a 2dC heating. And we are not talking the margins here; some 70% of the current area is modelled to be lost with a 2dC warming. Who will want to ride the rails to Kuranda or visit the much diminished natural attractions of the Atherton Plateau.

As the national disaster recovery bill grows how will Abbott balance the budget and fund development in the north?.

Abbott and Co currently claim a belief in direct action to reduce the impact of climate changes, yet ignore the scientific advice that a 5% reduction by 2020 is not enough to ensure we dodge the bullet that is inherent in the medium emissions scenario outlined above.

So what is their vision for northern Australia’s climate, where at Kununurra lifestyle already revolves around the air-conditioner?. Will foreign workers somehow be more able to cope with the new climate. Nobody will easily cope with the emerging extremes.

If, because of their failure to have sufficiently strong emissions targets to avoid the impacts of higher emissions, targets recommended by the science, will the Vision 2030 be warmed in line with the higher emissions scenario to the 4dC range. Will that scenario be hastened to arrive before 2070 by Abbott’s actions if he wins government this year.

The Liberals have totally inconsistent policies in this area.

This Northern Development policy is a reaction to the Katter Australia Party, who the Nationals know will appeal to a range of older ideas about the direction of river flows, the impact of new inland railways and other northern development chestnuts, sounding plausible on the face of it but thinner than an outback heat haze at a second look on a cold day.

These Liberals and Nationals have paid lip service to these ideas for decades but have not delivered because they know that when in government they cannot be justified to the southern electorate.

Abbott and Co attacked the Gillard Labor government for looking years ahead only to be found doing a bad job of it themselves.

Were Abbott a modern leader he would be assisting the country to transit from Carbon intensive energy production to low emissions energy. But no, despite the well understood process of pricing a pollutant to encourage non polluting processes the Liberals and Nationals are going to dance to the tune of the profit takes of the fossil fuel industry.

It may be that an Abbott government is elected. It may well be that an emissions trading system is delayed for some time.

If we remain on the current emissions path, and barring some unforseen natural phenomenon, temperatures will exceed the danger point of a 2dC. increase. The climate will become less stable with a higher likelihood of expensive floods and costly long droughts, each summer will see greater fire danger, natural wonders will begin to change and do so at an faster and faster pace, sea level will rise by metres as it has done every time in the last 40 million years CO2 has been about the level it is today.

Abbott may believe he will be the authority in Canberra, a claim he made when asked how he could promise anything when he has broken promises from the time he was junior to Howard.

However, the physical and chemical changes in the atmosphere that human activity continues to cause do not recognize that authority, they will only change, and do so slowly, if we do.

The Greens have, by raising questions about the exploitation of the natural world made very powerful enemies. The fossil fools of the coal mining industry, the gas industry, the metals mining industry, the forestry industry.

They have also made some new allies, the sustainable power industries, those with forests who want to sink and store carbon, sectors of the tourist industry, those who have a belief in opportunity through education and in fair treatment for those less well off, be it in health or just income support and those who understand the asylum seeker issue is one of an orderly entry process, not simply a barrier to stop all boats.

The conservative forces in the United States failed to understand and appeal to the changing voter demographic there. The TEA Party policies and the negativity of the Republicans left their candidate for President isolated.

However, their demographic is not Australia’s, their right wing beliefs not as openly widespread here.

But nevertheless Australians are conservative, rightly concerned about their possessions and their families and so sometimes unable to clearly envision what the alternative futures are.

Be in no doubt, a Party without policies to change the emissions mix from our activities, that does not promote such changes to other countries at all the world’s forums on such matters and is not preparing for the impacts of the changes to the climate that are already in place is only paying lip services to the idea that they care about families or the future.

Such an approach may work for some electoral cycles but as the reality of climate instability impacts more and more on peoples possessions and their families those very Conservatives who exploited those fears will find themselves allocated to an electoral wilderness for many years because, patently, they failed to act in the best interest of those they claimed to serve.

• Guardian: Secret funding helped build vast network of climate denial thinktanks