Tag Archives: Climate Change

“Cut taxes to soften climate pain: Garnaut report” – The Australian

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The Australian, 4th July

TAX cuts and welfare reform should be offered to dampen the impact of a new emissions trading scheme, according to the landmark Garnaut climate change report released today.

Kevin Rudd’s chief climate change adviser, Ross Garnaut, has today urged the Government to pass on the lion’s share of revenue raised through the new scheme, which will put a price on carbon emissions when it starts in 2010.

He also warns some of Australia’s most celebrated tourist destinations and natural wonders – including the Great Barrier Reef and the wetlands of Kakadu in the Northern Territory – could be lost if action is not taken.

The report paints a bleak picture of the international community’s failure to take earlier action on climate change, warning the development of global pacts to create a more level playing field for key Australian industries is an “urgent matter”.

While Professor Garnaut is fighting for the broadest possible ETS, covering as many industries as possible, he also concedes rising petrol prices are already having an impact on consumer behaviour.

Amid warnings that Mr Rudd’s 2010 timetable for a new trading scheme is a mission impossible, his report also concedes that “much anxiety” was expressed about the possibility of an unconstrained ETS generating high and unstable prices in the early years.

“While there are substantial advantages in moving directly to the unconstrained operation of the proposed emissions trading scheme in 2010, the review accepts there is a legitimate second best case for a fixed price for permits in the early years,” he states.

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Climate Change in Queensland – What the science is telling us.

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The Queensland EPA has just released a major report outlining the escalating risks of a changing climate for this great state. Out of the Australian states, Queensland looks like it will particularly hard hit – perhaps with a 5oC increase in temperature by 2070. Maybe we should think twice about exporting so much coal without any real strategy for the associated emissions? The future is in our hands. Read on …

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True colours? Liberal bid to delay emission trading scheme.

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The Australian, Lenore Taylor and Matthew Franklin | June 25, 2008

COALITION frontbenchers are pushing for a delay in the introduction of emissions trading in a move that threatens bipartisan support for the main mechanism to cut greenhouse gases and tackle climate change.

With Labor committed to introducing emissions trading by 2010, several Opposition frontbenchers have told The Australian they favour a delay amid concerns about the potential economic costs of a carbon trading scheme.

But Opposition Treasury spokesman Malcolm Turnbull and climate change spokesman Greg Hunt insisted last night the Coalition would stick with its election commitment of supporting emissions trading by 2011.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd seized on doubts about the Opposition’s commitment to accuse it of reneging on its pre-election promise to support an emissions trading system.

Under an emissions trading system, polluters such as coal-fired power stations that cannot meet greenhouse gas reduction targets will be forced to buy carbon credits on an open market. This is expected to force the cost of services such as electricity and transport higher as companies adapt to the new environment. Continue reading →

Does humanity have the foresight to save itself?

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Mark Lynas is well known for his excellent book Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet from 2007. In a recent edition of the Guardian (June 12 2008), he reports on the outcome of the Stockholm Network think tank examining current and future responses to climate change. The think tank concluded that the present scenario, which is called “agree and ignore”, and one which is referred to as “Kyoto Plus”, will not result in emission reductions before 2030.

The consensus within the modeling community is that we will exceed 450 ppm if global emissions do not begin to decline within the next 8 years. At this point, as argued here and elsewhere, we will lose coral reefs, wet tropical rain forests and many other high biodiversity systems. We will almost certainly enter in a period of very dangerous climate change at this point. Food and water security will decrease and conflicts will escalate.

The third scenario is termed “step change” and is particularly interesting and plausible. In this scenario, major catastrophes driven by climate change over the next decade lead to robust international commitments to cap emissions. Interestingly, this is done by regulating fossil fuel heavy companies as opposed to individuals and governments. Whatever the mechanism, however, many of us believe that this type of shock maybe required before any real action begins – a result of the apparently eternally optimistic nature of humankind.

Pity it has to be this way. Why can’t we just wake now and avoid all the pain? Read Mark Lynas’s account of why this will not happen.

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Species already gone – Herald Sun

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Herald Sun, 13th June 2008

Entire species may have already been wiped off the face of the Earth because of climate change, scientists believe.

But due to a lack of research – caused by minimal funding from governments – it may be some time before it becomes known which species, a CSIRO marine biologist says.

On the back of a study that criticised the lack of funding oceanic research has received, Australian marine biologist Elvira Poloczanska said climate change could have already killed entire populations.

“I think it’s possible … we haven’t even discovered all the animals in the ocean,” Dr Poloczanska said.

She said that compared to land animals, marine creatures responded to changes in climate more quickly, but research into ocean life was limited.

University of Queensland marine scientist Ove Hoegh-Guldberg said it would not be long until new species of animals would be discovered – after they have been wiped out.

“We know that they’re out there because we keep on discovering new species … that’s going to be one of the tragedies of our current pathway,” Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said.

“It’s a horrific thing to think about – an undiscovered gem disappears before we find it.

“But it’s already happening.”

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Coral reefs, climate change and tourism

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Red Orbit, 9th June

A changing global climate may have profound effects on the Florida Keys coral reef, an Australian researcher says, but at least people are paying attention.

“People are concerned about tourism and the reef, of course,” economist Hans Hoegh-Guldberg said after his first Keys workshop Friday in Islamorada.

“But one positive thing about the environment is that people here see is an increasing environmental consciousness on both the corporate and personal level,” Hoegh-Guldberg said. “People are taking more and more notice.”

Hoegh-Guldberg will spend this week in the Keys to conduct four more workshops with residents as part of a scenario-planning process commissioned by the National Marine Sanctuaries Program of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“That means developing a set of alternative possible future worlds from ‘best case’ to ‘worst case,’ all equally credible and equally likely to occur,” said Hoegh-Guldberg. “We must plan to avert the worst and encourage the best.”

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From the climatic sidelines: Stephen Schneider (Stanford University, IPCC) on the global warming debate

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Effective science is often dogged by the antics of skeptics who look out the window and say, “look the temperature didn’t go up this year yet CO2 did – I rest my argument, enhanced greenhouse driven global change is not occurring”. Stephen Schneider, a climatologist from Stanford University discusses this issue and more in a response to Don Aitkin (the political scientist and author of ‘Good science isn’t about consensus”):

“Such contrarians ascribe to the false god of falsification, that is, a critic finding one or even several lines of argument contrary to mainstream consensus who then claims they have falsified the conventional conclusion. That’s how simple science used to be done. For example, if you have a liquid in a test tube, and you want to know if it’s an acid or alkaline, one piece of litmus paper can falsify a wrong preliminary hypothesis. But in complex system science, like tobacco and cancer, or greenhouse gas build-ups and climate change, hundreds and even thousands of studies are needed to build a consensus. A few dozen exceptions do not remotely falsify the vast preponderance of accumulated evidence. System science is based on preponderance of all the evidence, not on a few exceptions.”

[audio:https://climateshifts.org/climateshifts/audio/orr_20080518.mp3]

Click above for the full audio of Schneider’s response, or read the full transcript over at the ABC (link)

Rising ocean acidity threatens low-lying islands – Reuters

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A woman sits atop a section of a dyke built to protect the tiny island from the ravages of the sea during a sunrise in the Maldives capital Male in this July 12, 2001 file photo.Reuters, 1st June 2008

Rising acidity in the ocean caused by seas absorbing greenhouse carbon dioxide could make low-lying island nations like Kiribati and the Maldives more vulnerable to storms as their coral reefs struggle to survive, say scientists.

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is at its highest level in the past 650,000 years, possible 23 million years, and half has now been dissolved into the oceans making them more acidic.

Ocean acidification, which is projected to spread extensively north from the Antarctic by 2100, makes it difficult or impossible for some animals, like coral and starfish, to produce their shells and skeletons.

“If ocean acidification weakens the structure of reef-forming corals and algae, tropical systems (islands) will be more vulnerable to physical impacts from storms and cyclones,” said a new report by some of the world’s leading marine scientists.

“By 2100, it is expected that some reefs will become marginal and reef calcification will decline,” said the report, by the Antarctic Climate & Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre, released on Monday.

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Tim Flannery’s radical climate change ’solution’

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Scientist Tim Flannery has proposed a radical solution to climate change which may change the colour of the sky.

But he says it may be necessary, as the “last barrier to climate collapse.”

Professor Flannery says climate change is happening so quickly that mankind may need to pump sulphur into the atmosphere to survive.

Australia’s best-known expert on global warming has updated his climate forecast for the world – and it’s much worse than he thought just three years ago.

He has called for a radical suite of emergency measures to be put in place.

The gas sulphur could be inserted into the earth’s stratosphere to keep out the sun’s rays and slow global warming, a process called global dimming.

“It would change the colour of the sky,” Prof Flannery told AAP.

“It’s the last resort that we have, it’s the last barrier to a climate collapse.

“We need to be ready to start doing it in perhaps five years time if we fail to achieve what we’re trying to achieve.”

Prof Flannery, the 2007 Australian of the Year, said the sulphur could be dispersed above the earth’s surface by adding it to jet fuel.

He conceded there were risks to global dimming via sulphur.

“The consequences of doing that are unknown.”

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Draft carbon capture legislation unveiled

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RESOURCES Minister Martin Ferguson today unveiled draft legislation to establish the world’s first framework for carbon dioxide capture and geological storage (CCS).

Mr Ferguson said it involved capturing greenhouse gas emissions, predominantly from coal-fired power stations, before they reached the atmosphere.

The gas is then injected and stored deep underground in geological formations similar to those which have stored oil and gas for millions of years, he said.

“With 83 per cent of Australia’s electricity generated from coal, no serious response to climate change can ignore the need to clean up coal and the Government’s establishment of a CCS framework represents a major step towards making clean coal a reality,” he said in a statement.

“CCS is essential for the long-term sustainability of coal-fired power generation and the potential of new industries such as coal-to-liquids, which could improve Australia’s liquid transport fuel security.”

Mr Ferguson said the draft legislation had been referred to the House of Representatives Primary Industries and Resources Committee to conduct comprehensive review before the bill was introduced to Parliament later this year.

The legislation establishes access and property rights for injection and storage of greenhouse gases into a stable sub-surface geological reservoir in commonwealth waters more than three nautical miles offshore. (Read More)