I was spared the actual announcement yesterday because I was flat on my back under my car replacing a wheel cylinder, fortunately Leon was on the ball and gave us an excellent summary of Labor’s high pork content climate package. This morning I have been doing the rounds of the usual suspects and I am finding pretty much what I expected. I could not help myself though when I read the piece by my favourite scientific schophant, Yep, that’s right Jo Chandler has used the announcement as a reason to cite all of her favourite priests scientists of the Green religion Climate Science.
Lets give her piece the detailed scrutiny that such professions of faith deserve.
TURNING around emissions growth this decade and then cutting greenhouse pollution by 80 per cent by 2050 – the target announced by the Gillard government yesterday – would put Australia on the trajectory the world needs to take to avoid the catastrophic consequences of four degrees warming this century, leading climate scientists said yesterday.
Gee that sound both urgent and bad if we don’t get on board doesn’t it? However just look at the bit that I have emboldened above. Do you see the inherent problem with this argument? Yes that’s right if we are going it alone it does not matter what “trajectory” we are on if the rest of the planet is not following now does it? Of course this is a fine example of intellectual dishonesty here because a casual reading of the sentence above gives the impression that the Australian action is both efficacious and necessary rather than it being both futile and pointless without a concerted Global follow through. Sceptic or believer you have to admit that its is pointless for us to act unless there is equivalent resolve in the global players that truly matter , like the USA, India or most particularly China.
But they warned that the next few years would be critical and that the planet’s systems were poised on the brink of a man-made climate shock equivalent to the most devastating shifts nature had ever delivered on human civilisation.
”As a scientific community we have said we have to look at the end game, which is to decarbonise economies – especially industrialised ones – by mid-century,” ANU Climate Change Institute executive director Will Steffen, said.
”That allows some space for the developing world to bring its people out of poverty. So the 80 per cent target by 2050 is sending a strong signal in that direction,” Professor Steffen said.
It just ain’t gonna happen, There is absolutely NO evidence that there is anywhere near the political will do what alarmist like Will Steffen is advocating for here,Of course the Age’s senior writer is so imbued with the tales of disaster from alarmists like Steffen and so much in awe of anyone in a white coat that she won’t ask them any hard questions like” if we can’t get our mitigation schemes to a point where they could work what is the best way to deal with the consequent changes to our climate?” Instead we are delivered the same old socialist propaganda about the obligations of the rich to enrich the poor. Its the same sort of utopian rhetoric that we have seen dripping from the tongues of every vile Marxist dictator from Lenin, and Stalin to Hugo Chavez. No wonder Chandler is in such awe here.
He was hopeful the momentum of such a target and the new technologies and confidence it would nurture would ultimately enable even bigger cuts. ”The first change is to just slow the growth of emissions,” he said. ”The long-term aspiration target is great and very consistent with what the science is saying we have to do. But to have a chance of reaching that, we actually have to bend the curve this decade.”
The argument that we should act now because we will save money in the long run is very popular with the priests of the Green Religion Climate scientists like Steffan. However if the underlying assumptions (that reducing emission will mitigate anthropogenic climate change) are wrong it all becomes an expensive futility, as does a small nation like ours acting when the bigger players won’t play to those rules. The Borg were right, even for believers, Resistance is futile.
The director of the University of Queensland Global Change Institute, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, said published modelling indicated that if all nations adopted similar targets ”there would be a good chance – more than 60 per cent – of limiting temperature rise to two degrees.
”This will be a tough but manageable world,” Professor Hoegh-Guldberg said. However, he added the caveat that such models assumed that a ”tipping point” or feedback didn’t suddenly accelerate changes in an unforseen way.
Yesterday’s announcements were crucial, if politically difficult. ”Given the pace of climate change, it is an imperative that we move quickly … carbon dioxide can no longer remain outside the calculations of the true cost of energy,” he said.
”This not only makes sense in terms of avoiding the extremely dangerous consequences of climate change, but is rational in terms of ensuring that Australia remains competitive in a world that will rapidly move away from being dependent on fossil fuels.
”This is a win for all – our planet, Australia and our children.”
Chandler trots out another doom and gloom sayer in front of whom she can genuflect. On this occasion it is the chap who has repeatedly insisted that the Great barrier reef is dying, only to have is dire predictions shown to be wrong. Like Steffen he seems to have an undue amount of faith in the notion that the nations of the world will get in line with Juliar and do as this country is doing. This is either academic naivety or wilful blindness to the political realities of our world and frankly I don’t know which is worse but either way he offers nothing useful for our future here.
Associate professor of environmental studies at Melbourne University Peter Christoff was cautious about the 2050 target.
”The issue hangs on the rate of reduction – the volume of carbon emitted, not the final figure,” he said. ”An analogy is trying to lose 30 kilos by Christmas. Start now, you’ve got a chance. Start on December 23rd, and you’ll need a knife and the surgery will be very unpleasant and probably lethal.
”If Australia’s rate of emissions reduction was to be meaningful, it would have to be a lot faster than minus 5 per cent by 2020, unless we intend to crash our economy in the following decade.”
Oh how cute 
its the old weight loss for Christmas analogy so in essence the very same” act now and it will be cheaper in the long run” fallacy, truly this whole effort from Chandler is just one huge appeal to authority without a skerrik of good sense or reason
The head of ANU’s National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, Tony McMichael, said Australia’s actions were significant when seen within the context of the global response.
”To argue that curbing Australian emissions makes no difference to global emissions is as wrong-headed as arguing that paying personal income tax makes no difference to the nation’s budget,” Professor McMichael said.
”Arresting climate change is a collective responsibility and Australia’s step forward will be noticed by other governments, as we notice theirs.”
This guy is an academic administrator and yet he comes across here as being entirely oblivious to the political reality of our world, either that or he has an entirely unrealistic view of the global significance of this country. In terms of global emissions we are what is it less than 2% of the equation. Well this just proves that having a PHD certainly does not ensure that you have the answer. Sadly it appears that Chandler thinks otherwise.
Professor Steffen said the policy was also significant for including scientific voices in the composition of the proposed Climate Change Authority and for recognising the importance of preserving and using landscapes to offset emissions.
”Finding mechanisms for putting carbon back into landscapes enhances biodiversity,” he said. ”More biodiverse ecosystems store more carbon, more securely and are more resilient to the impacts of climate change.”
I suppose I should be thankful that I find something to sort of agree with at the end of this sycophantic diatribe form Chandler. Adding carbon to our environment in the form of tree planting or as a soil enhancer has some benefits in and of themselves, the former provides us with a harvest-able resource and the latter can make our agriculture more productive (hmm do I hear echo’s of Tony Abbott?? ) But I find it rather disturbing that any government should let the priests of any religion near the levers of power, especially when that religion is tantamount to a millenarian cult.
So here we are at the end of another AGW panic piece by Jo Chandler and what a dreary piece of “journalism” it is, full of citations from the AGW orthodoxy and very light on for any sort of analysis of what these men are actaully saying here. I don’t know about anyone else but I expect more from someone who draws a wage from Fairfax as a “senior writer”, like insight and an understanding of the real politics of the issue. Then again this piece was probably conceived and written over just one to many Chai Latte….
Cheers Comrades
