Here, for example, is what Plimer wrote on Australia’s ABC Network website last August:

The atmosphere contains only 0.001 per cent of all carbon at the surface of the Earth and far greater quantities are present in the lower crust and mantle of the Earth. Human additions of CO2 to the atmosphere must be taken into perspective. Over the past 250 years, humans have added just one part of CO2 in 10,000 to the atmosphere. One volcanic cough can do this in a day.

John Cook of the increasingly popular Skeptical Science website currently lists the “volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans” viewpoint as number 54 on his ever-growing list – 107, to date – of debunked sceptic arguments.

I had the opportunity to see Ian Plimer in person at an event recently and there is no doubt he is a skilled, avuncular speaker who understands the power of a good narrative. He weaves fact and fiction seamlessly and with such confidence that it’s hard for an audience, even a smart, well read audience like the one I was at, to see where the truth ends and the lies start. That in my mind makes people like Plimer more dangerous than the ranting street-corner climate sceptics who have been popping up of late.

Plimer also neglects to mention the vast sums of money he is paid by his mining interests, or the money he’s made simply be being a professional climate change denier.

So cheers to The Guardian and to people like Jon Cook for presenting the bare facts.

Oh and if you, like me, have no clue how to pronounce Eyjafjallajökull, this little song might help. — DS

Technorati Tags: AGW, Climate Change, climate denial, CO2, CO2 emissions, debunking, Eyjafjallajökull, Ian Plimer, Iceland, sceptics, skeptics, volcano

The impetus for GreenAnswers was the realization that a lack of widespread knowledge about environmental issues is one of the greatest hurdles to positive action. We created GreenAnswers to provide a forum where people could debate and discuss these important issues, thereby helping to educate and inform the public about the environment.

Since we are a user-generated site, the quality of the answers depends on getting smart and passionate people to participate.

The site is still very young and growing fast and is always after knowledgeable contributors. — DS

Technorati Tags: answers, carbon, eco, green, knowledge, questions

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

“Addiction is a terrible thing. It consumes and controls us, makes us deny important truths and blinds us to the consequences of our actions. Our society is in the grip of a dangerous greenhouse gas habit.

The message of this book is that we are all part of the solution. Whether you are an individual, a business, an organization or a government, there are many steps you can take to reduce your climate footprint.”

This is a beautifully put together book that breaks down almost every aspect of our modern lives and shows how, with a combination of energy efficiency, sensible behavioural adjustments and appropriate carbon offsetting strategies we can all kick the CO₂ habit and deliver a sustainable, climate-neutral world.

“Kick the habit” is available as a free PDF download, either in whole, or chapter by chapter. — DS

Technorati Tags: carbon, carbon credits, carbon neutral, climate, climate neutral, CO2, offset, offsetting, UN, UNEP, United Nations

The book aims to recast the debate on climate change from one of fear and problems to one of hope and opportunity. It contains a collection of essays from key politicians, investors, business people, activists and academics on how to make the most of the current predicament. The authors include the Hon Greg Hunt MP, the environment spokesperson for the Federal Opposition, Professor Sir David King of the University of Oxford, Bill Mckibben, the renowned American author, and Tenke Zoltani who works with Lord Nicholas Stern in London.

…and me. As someone who can be counted on to take a positive view on most things, John O’Brien. the editor, asked me to contribute a chapter in the section on business opportunities. My chapter is called “Reasons to be Cheerful,” and, alas, some of it was out of date before the book came out. The carbon industry is like that though.

The book is being launched in seminars around the country. I spoke at last week’s Sydney seminar, harking back to my youth as a door-to-door sales person in rural Australia and making the connection between occupational health and safety legislation and climate change laws. I’ll be speaking in Melbourne this coming Friday if people want to come along and hear me, and a handful of others, talk about just why we are not doomed, why business can save the planet, and why carbon trading is an essential part of the long-term solution.

The Melbourne book launch seminar will be held on Friday 17 July 2009, 9:00am until 12:00pm at Investec Bank, Level 49, 120 Collins Street, Melbourne.

For more information and a booking form for this event please email melbournelaunch [ at ] auscleantech.com.au. — DS

Technorati Tags: book, business, carbon, climate, Climate Change, CO2, economics, emissions, emissions trading, global warming, Opportunities Beyond Carbon, trading

Musgrave argues:

The designer had chosen bamboo to provide a suitable look while enhancing sustainability compared to competing products. Bamboo takes a stain very well so it has a beautiful finish–important for a living space–and it is strong as well as fast-growing, so it can replace slow-growing woods, earning its excellent sustainable reputation. It’s a favorite for floors, wall-coverings and clothes, but, so far, rare in electronics. Rather than applaud this material choice, however, the designers questioned it as greenwashing. They said its prevalence in both sustainable products and products pretending to be sustainable cost it credibility. In fact, they went so far as to say bamboo is a material whose time has come and gone and that it should now be avoided.

What a dilemma for designers! Choose a material that grows like grass but risk alienating confused consumers, or choose another that grows like timber but risk alienating the well-informed consumers. One choice is certainly a missed opportunity to make an environmental difference, but earning a reputation for greenwashing could have negative implications for a company doing the right thing.

He concludes, arguing strongly;

While many want to make purchasing choices that support sustainable lifestyles, they are rarely equipped to do so. Our society needs a universal standard for measuring and comparing “greenness.” We have food labels showing calories, fat grams, and protein grams as units of measure that help us make informed decisions around our nutrition. We need similar, well-structured and credible sources to help us make informed decisions around carbon impact, recyclability, and other critical factors of sustainability.

Imagine a consumer at Target choosing between the disposable bamboo plates and disposable plastic plates and checking a label with the green score to help with the choice. We can even call the labels something catchy–like “Greenies.” “Hey!” A suddenly triumphant husband calls to his wife. “These bamboo plates are only 3 Greenies–those plastic plates are 5!”

Gizmodo, playing negative-Nancy here, respond to this idea in a way that shows they really didn’t think their answer through.

How are we going to measure greenness? How much of the original product is used in the new, recycled product? How much energy in joules it takes to make this? How many pounds of carbon is spent? Many of these are nebulous numbers, and it takes a combination of them to determine whether or not one thing is “greener” than another. Something may be using 99% of its original materials but take a lot of energy to recycle, whereas something may be using very little original material but be quickly grown from the earth.

If we just look at a measure of carbon neutrality for now, greenhouse gasses being, in essence, the mother of all environmental problems, performing a compete life-cycle analysis of a product is not really that hard and The Carbon Trust in the UK have been proposing just that sort of concept for years. Recently they have expanded that concept into Australia via the Carbon Reduction label” project in partnership with Planet Ark.

My own company, Carbon Planet, has done plenty of LCA work so we can testify that it’s quite ‘do-able’ (horrid expression). Additionally there is plenty of software, specific to various industry types, to simplify the task a bit. How boundary conditions are worked out, and supply chain factors taken into account is complex but well documented and based largely on common sense sprinkled with precedent.

That said, I’ll admit that how carbon labelling takes into account issues of transport, is still not clear to me. For example a bottle of wine, produced on-site and sold at the cellar door should have fewer emissions associated with it than the same bottle of wine bought in a supermarket on the other side of the country. There needs to be a concept of wholesale and retail carbon labelling perhaps, where the final label, much like price tags in a local supermarket, are applied locally based on an agreed formula. But I guess the Carbon Trust are thinking about these issues and how best to address them. To date the whole concept of carbon labelling in the UK has been more hype than reality, with plenty of concepts being announced but precious little on-the-shelf action. The last time I was in the UK I looked carefully for the carbon labelling in my local Tesco store but found nothing.

It’s a concept that once worked out properly can be applied to all manufactured goods though, so it will, in time, be accepted and simply incorporated into the one label people really care about, the price. Perhaps the global symbol of ‘green’ will simply end up being the €. — DS

Technorati Tags: carbon, carbon labelling, carbon trust, climate, Climate Change, CO2, emissions, GHG, green, greenwashing, life cycle analysis, lifecycle analysys, planet ark, Tesco

How can we ever begin to restrain ourselves? We appear, at this distance, like a successful lichen, a ravaging bloom of algae, a mould enveloping a fruit. Can we agree among ourselves? We are a clever but quarrelsome species – in our public discourses we can sound like a rookery in full throat. In our cleverness we are just beginning to understand that the earth – considered as a total system of organisms, environments, climates and solar radiation, each reciprocally shaping the other through hundreds of millions of years – is perhaps as complex as the human brain; as yet we understand only a little of that brain, or of the home in which it evolved.

It’s a powerful essay, addressing the validity of genuine skepticism and leading to a positive conclusion.

The wide view from the airplane suggests that whatever our environmental problems are, they will have to be dealt with by international laws. No single nation is going to restrain its industries while its neighbours’ are unfettered. Here too, an enlightened globalisation might be of use. And good international law might need to use not our virtues, but our weaknesses (greed, self-interest) to lever a cleaner environment; in this respect, the newly devised market in carbon trading was a crafty first move.

Here he makes a subtle point. Critics of carbon trading miss this point, which is that carbon trading has always been intended as a short to mid term flexibility mechanism to assist in the transformation of our economy such that environmental services, and other externalities, are properly remunerated and incorporated into the price of things.

Read the whole essay, it’s brilliant. — DS

Technorati Tags: Climate Change, Ian McEwan, optimism, scepticism, skepticism

The much-respected Washington DC-based Worldwatch Institute has just published The State of the World 2009, the 26th edition of its annual status report into the planet’s environmental health. You won’t be surprised to hear that the prognosis isn’t exactly rosy. In fact, having pored over the institute’s previous reports in recent years, I was a little shocked to see just how bleak the institute now sees it.

The report’s focus this year is envisioning how climate change will pan out over the coming century. One of the most arresting discussions within the report is the chapter written by Dr Bill Hare, a scientist based at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, entitled ‘A Safe Landing for the Climate’. Hare argues that, in effect, we will have to achieve negative carbon emissions – “neg-emissions”, if you like – by 2050 to avoid catastrophic climate change.

2009 has to be the year that climate change is taken seriously. There are no more excuses. The global economic slowdown is slowing consumption rates, and thus slowing emissions rates, which is an excellent thing, but not exactly the ideal way to go. Ideally our global economy would unhitch itself from the death-spiral of consumption and find sustainable ways to grow through real work, creating genuine value and freeing the majority of humanity from wage slavery and other forms of social bondage.

Green jobs, knowledge work, cradle-to-cradle design, closed loop manufacturing; these should be the growth areas for the carbon constrained economy. It sure beats wars, plasma tvs and a million tonnes of disposable, and disposed of plastic rubbish. — DS

Technorati Tags: 2009, Climate Change, economics, global warming, report, State of the World 2009, World Watch Institute

Australia’s commitment of a 5-15 per cent reduction by 2020 is a serious and credible commitment to the global action required and is realistically attainable in the current circumstances. In the international context, the Australian Government’s medium term target range represents a significant contribution to the global effort.

Im sorry but how is such a pathetic target in any way a significant contribution to the global effort? It’s a joke and a poor one at that.

While this is a very disappointing result, it’s still streets ahead of the previous Government’s attitude which would have seen Australia’s emissions grow by 20% over 1990 levels by 2020. Being thankful for small mercies won’t generate much respect for Australia on the international stage however. — DS

Technorati Tags: 5%, Australia, Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, CPRS, emissions trading, Government, lame

While vineyards are being planned for northern England, millions of residents around desiccated Atlanta are praying for enough rain to flow through their taps.

Brian Fagan believes climate is not merely a backdrop to the ongoing drama of human civilization, but an important stage upon which world events turn.

This is essentially the same thesis as Jared Diamond espouses in his book “Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies“.

Part 1 of 18 of the National Geographic special based on the book

There he argues that it is largely accidents of geography that led to the current world configuration with Europe being more suited to domestication of animals and from that coming professional armies and trades/crafts people and the all important disease resistance. Radical changes in the world’s climate do more than just move the weather around a bit. They impact the entire web of life in unpredictable ways. — DS

Technorati Tags: Brian Fagan, Climate Change, global warming, Jared Diamond, people