The Australian Government has shelved plans for a carbon pollution reduction scheme, preferring to wait and see what the rest of the world might or might not do. In November last year Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said:

When you strip away all the political rhetoric, all the political excuses, there are two stark choices: action or inaction… As one of the hottest and driest continents on earth, Australia’s environment and economy will be among the hardest and fastest hit by climate change if we do not act now.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald in a story “Rudd’s ETS flip-flop sparks climate chaos“, Penny Wong, Minister for Climate Change said:

… the delay would ”make meeting our [emission reduction] targets more expensive” and that without a carbon price Australia would not meet the targets at all.

So what is to be done? All all is not lost. There is still legislation in place such as the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act, enacted by the previous, conservative, Government to determine the raw baseline data upon which an emissions trading scheme might be based. The NGER requires companies who produce or consume more than a certain level of energy, or who produce more than a certain level of greenhouse gas emissions, to report their emissions (see thresholds here). This legislation came in in 2007 and the first reporting period only just ended with barely 60% of the firms that should have reported actually reporting. The fines for failure to report are in the order of $110k per default plus $11k+ per day they remain in default (and there are also clauses for civil penalties of around $200k and possible custodial sentences) and its been estimated that some $500 million in fines will be owing already based on this.

As I have said repeatedly, relying on the Government, any Government, to act in the best interests of its people is pure folly. One shining light in all of this is that Australia, historically, is an overachiever when it comes to voluntary action on climate change. Indeed Australia comprises around 5% of the world’s voluntary carbon market. Recognising this the Government will continue to push ahead with the National Carbon Offset Standard which establishes clear and unambiguous definitions for what comprises a valid carbon offset and defines ‘carbon neutrality’. This is a huge boost for voluntary action in Australia which, in the absence of a viable compliance scheme down-under is, for now, the best shot we have at making any sort of real difference.

What is certain is that the climate problem is not going to go away by itself, and the solution must be tied into an economic response. Firms caught in the NGER Act are being forced to report on their emissions and that in turn is stimulating them to then manage those emissions in anticipation of some sort of carbon price. And a price on carbon is inevitable.

”You can’t get to your targets without a cost on carbon … we have been very clear that we have to put a price on carbon,” said Minister Wong [yesterday].

If your firm is smaller than that required to report under NGER you are still almost certainly going to find yourself supplying goods and services to one or more of those NGER firms. These firms are typically instituting green procurement policies anyway and so there is a trickle-down effect in reporting.

No matter the Government’s inaction, Australian Business has an opportunity to embrace voluntary action and prepare itself for the time when carbon is properly priced.

To express your personal displeasure at the Australian Government’s back-flip, check out GetUp Australia. — DS

Technorati Tags: Australia, Climate Change, CPRS, economics, global warming

Media outlets have referenced the emails apparently stolen from University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in their recent reports on “record snowfall” and criticisms of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), suggesting that the emails “undermined” global warming research or reporting claims about what they “appeared to show.” Those media did not report, however, that scientists and fact-checkers have found that the emails, in the words of FactCheck.org, “have been misrepresented by global-warming skeptics” and “don’t change [the] scientific consensus on global warming.”

Indeed, if you do check out FactCheck.org’s story ‘“Climategate” Hacked e-mails show climate scientists in a bad light but don’t change scientific consensus on global warming.’ you find the following:

• The messages, which span 13 years, show a few scientists in a bad light, being rude or dismissive. An investigation is underway, but there’s still plenty of evidence that the earth is getting warmer and that humans are largely responsible.
• Some critics say the e-mails negate the conclusions of a 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but the IPCC report relied on data from a large number of sources, of which CRU was only one.
• E-mails being cited as “smoking guns” have been misrepresented. For instance, one e-mail that refers to “hiding the decline” isn’t talking about a decline in actual temperatures as measured at weather stations. These have continued to rise, and 2009 may turn out to be the fifth warmest year ever recorded. The “decline” actually refers to a problem with recent data from tree rings.

The full article, which is a fascinating insight into the way a small band of militant climate change deniers manipulated the media for their own weird ends, adds conclusively:

Even as the affair was unfolding, the World Meteorological Organization announced on Dec. 8 that the 2000-2009 decade would likely be the warmest on record, and that 2009 might be the fifth warmest year ever recorded. (The hottest year on record was 1998.) This conclusion is based not only on the CRU data that critics are now questioning, but also incorporates data from the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The next time someone starts screeching ‘climategate’ at you, you can cite the stories above. — DS

Technorati Tags: Climate Change, climate deniers, climate science, climategate, deniers, factcheck.org, global warming, hype, IPCC, lies, media, UEA, UNFCCC, University of East Anglia

In the UK The Guardian is reporting “Amazon could shrink by 85% due to climate change, scientists say“. The scientists go on in fact to say:

“The impacts of climate change on the Amazon are much worse than we thought. As temperatures rise quickly over the coming century the damage to the forest won’t be obvious straight away, but we could be storing up trouble for the future.”

It’s like that song, Big Yellow Taxi where she says Don’t it always seem to know, that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone. We didn’t so much as pave paradise for a parking lot, as for high salt, high fat, hormone pumped burgers, and all their attendant horror.

Tim Lenton, a climate expert at the University of East Anglia, called the study, presented at a global warming conference in Copenhagen today , a “bombshell”. He said: “When I was young I thought chopping down the trees would destroy the forest but now it seems that climate change will deliver the killer blow.”

The study, which has been submitted to the journal Nature Geoscience, used computer models to investigate how the Amazon would respond to future temperature rises.

It found that a 2°C rise above pre-industrial levels, widely considered the best case global warming scenario and the target for ambitious international plans to curb emissions, would still see 20-40% of the Amazon die off within 100 years. A 3C rise would see 75% of the forest destroyed by drought over the following century, while a 4°C rise would kill 85%. “The forest as we know it would effectively be gone,” Pope said.

Killing the Amazon could trigger an unstoppable warming process that only levels out when the Earth reaches about 400°C, and we can’t live in that. Is it worth the risk?

REDD projects need to be seriously considered as an urgent climate change mitigation tool and to do it properly they need to be folded into the compliance markets. Australia and the USA have the chance to lead the world at last and incorporate REDD into their strategic carbon planning. Before there are nno forests left to save. Don’t think it could happen? Who cut down the last tree on Easter Island? — DS

Technorati Tags: Amazon, Brazil, collapse, forests, Hadley Centre, REDD

Yesterday I attended a meeting of most of the key members of the Australian Carbon Offset industry at the Melbourne Zoo (great venue for such meetings btw), hosted by the Victorian Department of Primary Industries. (Thanks Graeme – and thanks Ginny, shame you could not be there too but your work with the bushfires is appreciated by all.)

During the meeting Vicki Ratliff, Director of the Offsets and Verification Team, a part of the Strategies and Coordination Division of the DCC gave an industry briefing on the DCC’s proposed voluntary offset standard. The DCC’s discussion paper on this topic has been out for a little while and comments are due by next Friday.

The industry has several concerns about the DCC’s approach, and at one point I asked Vicki directly, Is the Department suggesting that it will redefine the term ‘carbon neutral’ to mean ‘complies with the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme’, rather than the more commonly understood meaning of ‘zero net emissions’? Her answer; Yes.

So, under this proposal, Australian industry will be allowed to increase its emissions by 9% over 1990 levels, and be able to claim to be carbon neutral in the process. Anyone who can’t see the problems with this has rocks in their head. I am certain the ACCC will be curious.

Carbon Planet is preparing a response, as is the newly formed Voluntary Carbon Markets Association. — DS

Technorati Tags: Australia, carbon neutral, Carbon Planet, climate change. global warming, VCMA

Oil refinery workers, even in these modern, enlightened, times, are exposed to some of the most hazardous chemicals on Earth including asbestos and benzene carcinogens. Indeed several studies have shown that oil refinery workers have a higher proportion of lung cancers and mesothelioma than people working in other industries. Forward-thinking emissions reduction policies that reduce dependence on fossil fuels will not only slow the destruction to our planet’s climate, but also save lives of industrial workers who toil in this terribly dangerous industry. — DS

[UPDATE] You might want to check out www.asbestos.net which has a load of details about Asbestos and Mesothelioma.

Technorati Tags: asbestos, cancer, Climate Change, mesothelioma, oil, oil industry, oil refinery

On energy and global warming, Obama offers a set of forceful proposals. He supports a cap-and-trade program to reduce America’s carbon emissions by eighty per cent by 2050—an enormously ambitious goal, but one that many climate scientists say must be met if atmospheric carbon dioxide is to be kept below disastrous levels. Large emitters, like utilities, would acquire carbon allowances, and those which emit less carbon dioxide than their allotment could sell the resulting credits to those which emit more; over time, the available allowances would decline. Significantly, Obama wants to auction off the allowances; this would provide fifteen billion dollars a year for developing alternative-energy sources and creating job-training programs in green technologies. He also wants to raise federal fuel-economy standards and to require that ten per cent of America’s electricity be generated from renewable sources by 2012. Taken together, his proposals represent the most coherent and far-sighted strategy ever offered by a Presidential candidate for reducing the nation’s reliance on fossil fuels.

There was once reason to hope that McCain and Obama would have a sensible debate about energy and climate policy. McCain was one of the first Republicans in the Senate to support federal limits on carbon dioxide, and he has touted his own support for a less ambitious cap-and-trade program as evidence of his independence from the White House. But, as polls showed Americans growing jittery about gasoline prices, McCain apparently found it expedient in this area, too, to shift course. He took a dubious idea—lifting the federal moratorium on offshore oil drilling—and placed it at the very center of his campaign. Opening up America’s coastal waters to drilling would have no impact on gasoline prices in the short term, and, even over the long term, the effect, according to a recent analysis by the Department of Energy, would be “insignificant.” Such inconvenient facts, however, are waved away by a campaign that finally found its voice with the slogan “Drill, baby, drill!”

I think its obvious which way anyone in the carbon industry, or the green movement will vote. — DS

Technorati Tags: Alternative Energy, choice, drilling, economy, energy, green economy, McCain, NewYorker, Obama, offshore drilling, The Carbon Economy

Diagram by Martin Sharman and used with permission.

People have plenty of reasons for refusing to act when it comes to climate change. For many it’s just easier to blame China than to look to their own actions; their own use of products, made in China, powered by Australian coal. But this is moral cowardice and intellectual laziness combined. The planet is melting, and the solutions are so damn simple. It just takes the will to accept we have a problem and to then do something about it. Go on be the change; I dare you. — DS

Technorati Tags: China, Climate Change, denial, doubt, fear, global warming

The first sentence of the opening section of her paper, entitled “Why we need to act”, contains seven scientific errors — almost one error for every two words.

Here is the sentence: “Carbon pollution is causing climate change, resulting in higher temperatures, more droughts, rising sea levels and more extreme weather.”

And here are the errors.

First, the debate is not about carbon, but human carbon dioxide emissions and their potential effect on climate.

It makes no more sense for Wong to talk about carbon in the atmosphere than it would for her to talk about hydrogen comprising most of Sydney’s water supply.

Use of the term carbon in this way is, of course, a deliberate political gambit, derived from the green ecosalvationist vocabulary and intended to convey a subliminal message about “dirty” coal.

Next, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but a naturally occurring, beneficial trace gas in the atmosphere.

Bob is sort of right here, naturally occuring CO₂ is not a polutant in and of itself. But the term ‘Carbon Pollution’ is a specific reference to the 40 billion or so tonnes of extra CO₂ being pumped into the air by human activity. As the website ExxonSecrets makes plain, Mr Carter has been champing on this bit for years, frustrated I imagine that the only people who pay him any attention are irresponsible publishers, the coal industry and a handful of cranks. My rule of thumb is simple. When I see the story is written by someone like Bob, with a history of coal-industry toadying and climate-change misinformation, I usually just skip the whole story.

In my personal opinion the man is a despicable attention seeker who manipulates facts to suit his, and his pay-masters’ message. It truly seems that people like Carter are deliberately seeking to set back a movement whose only goal is to avert the greatest crisis humanity has ever faced. Is this not treason? — DS

Technorati Tags: Bob Carter, bogus science, climate change denier, denialista, hack, lackey, sceptic, shill, skeptic

In a letter (pdf) made public this week, former EPA associate deputy administrator Jason Burnett indicated that both the office of the vice-president and the White House Council on Environmental Quality have directly attempted to censor discussions of the consequences that global warming poses to human health.

Burnett says that the White House asked him not to send the endangerment findings, after he had already e-mailed them to the White House Office of Management and Budget. Upon realising the document had already been sent, Burnett says he received a “phone call from the White House” asking him to send a follow-up email saying that the document “had been sent in error”. Burnett says he “explained I could not do this because it was not true”. The White House decided not to open the e-mail, and it’s since been hanging out in the ether while the EPA and the White House continue to battle over whether their official rulemaking notice should reflect the scientific findings of experts or the White House’s ideological desires.

But Burnett spilled about more than just this recent scuffle. He also noted that in the fall of 2007, the Council on Environmental Quality and the Cheney’s office asked him to work with the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to remove portions of a report detailing the threats that climate change poses to human health. The document in question was the testimony that Julie Gerberding, director of the CDC, had prepared to give before the Senate environment and public works committee about the human impacts of global warming. After her testimony in October 2007, it came to light that the White House had edited it down from 14 pages to a mere four, cutting the six pages detailing the diseases and other health problems that would be exacerbated by a warming planet. Burnett’s letter this week was the first evidence, however, that the call for edits came directly from Cheney’s office, which he says asked him to “remove from the testimony any discussion of the human health consequences of climate change”.

History will not judge the current US regime kindly. Lying, thieving, war-profiteering, racist freaks. It’s my sincere hope that Bush, Cheney and their dreadful cronies will all be held to account for their blatant crimes against humanity. There’d be a cell in The Hague for them if there was any true justice in the world. — DS

Technorati Tags: Bush, censorship, Cheney, Climate Change, EPA, global warming, Jason Burnett, liars, thieves, USA

[Garnaut's] report is little more than a fearmongering document designed to bolster the age-old socialist agenda of wealth redistribution.

It fails from the basis of science and it fails from the basis of economics but it will, however, warm the hearts of the anti-capitalist doom merchants of Europe

Yep, it’s all the fault of those progress-hating Europeans. It’s pretty obvious from Akerman’s rant that he didn’t watch Garnut’s speech and has not read the report. The world’s moved on mate, and left you and your sad band of ranters well and truly marooned on an island of ignorance. Your are behind the times and lagging. — DS

Technorati Tags: Climate Change, fear-mongering, Garnaut, global warming, hack, Piers Ackerman, shills