Global Warming/Climate Change Super Thread
- Thread starter Cdn Blackshirt
- Start date
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The Koch brothers funded an independent, climate change skeptic, Richard Muller, to study and examine climate change.
"Our biggest surprise was that the new results agreed to closely with the warming values published previously by other teams in the US and UK." - Richard Muller, Founder, Best
This is the 4th independent reassessment I know of, of the IPCC findings/"Climategate", determining the information was accurate and unbiased.
Despite continued ongoing peer reviewed scientific data, we get corporate financed op-ed pieces, C n P'd on here, accepted as journalism and science (of which it is neither). Now, Jason Johnston, for example, is stated as a "well-credentialled skeptics, including Jason Johnston, an expert in environmental law". He's a Republican election campaign manager, no science creditials. Donna Laframboise? A feminist, no science education, much less expertise.
And it goes on. Much like arguing with Creationists or astrologists, opting for their own reality.
"Our biggest surprise was that the new results agreed to closely with the warming values published previously by other teams in the US and UK." - Richard Muller, Founder, Best
This is the 4th independent reassessment I know of, of the IPCC findings/"Climategate", determining the information was accurate and unbiased.
Despite continued ongoing peer reviewed scientific data, we get corporate financed op-ed pieces, C n P'd on here, accepted as journalism and science (of which it is neither). Now, Jason Johnston, for example, is stated as a "well-credentialled skeptics, including Jason Johnston, an expert in environmental law". He's a Republican election campaign manager, no science creditials. Donna Laframboise? A feminist, no science education, much less expertise.
And it goes on. Much like arguing with Creationists or astrologists, opting for their own reality.
But now the BEST study is being attacked by one of the key scientists who worked on it. The following article from The Mail on Sunday is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provision of the Copyright Act.
Scientist who said climate change sceptics had been proved wrong accused of hiding truth by colleague
By David Rose
It was hailed as the scientific study that ended the global warming debate once and for all – the research that, in the words of its director, ‘proved you should not be a sceptic, at least not any longer’.
Professor Richard Muller, of Berkeley University in California, and his colleagues from the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatures project team (BEST) claimed to have shown that the planet has warmed by almost a degree centigrade since 1950 and is warming continually.
Published last week ahead of a major United Nations climate summit in Durban, South Africa, next month, their work was cited around the world as irrefutable evidence that only the most stringent measures to reduce carbon dioxide emissions can save civilisation as we know it.
It was cited uncritically by, among others, reporters and commentators from the BBC, The Independent, The Guardian, The Economist and numerous media outlets in America.
The Washington Post said the BEST study had ‘settled the climate change debate’ and showed that anyone who remained a sceptic was committing a ‘cynical fraud’.
But today The Mail on Sunday can reveal that a leading member of Prof Muller’s team has accused him of trying to mislead the public by hiding the fact that BEST’s research shows global warming has stopped.
Prof Judith Curry, who chairs the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at America’s prestigious Georgia Institute of Technology, said that Prof Muller’s claim that he has proven global warming sceptics wrong was also a ‘huge mistake’, with no scientific basis.
Prof Curry is a distinguished climate researcher with more than 30 years experience and the second named co-author of the BEST project’s four research papers.
Her comments, in an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday, seem certain to ignite a furious academic row. She said this affair had to be compared to the notorious ‘Climategate’ scandal two years ago.
Like the scientists exposed then by leaked emails from East Anglia University’s Climatic Research Unit, her colleagues from the BEST project seem to be trying to ‘hide the decline’ in rates of global warming.
In fact, Prof Curry said, the project’s research data show there has been no increase in world temperatures since the end of the Nineties – a fact confirmed by a new analysis that The Mail on Sunday has obtained.
‘There is no scientific basis for saying that warming hasn’t stopped,’ she said. ‘To say that there is detracts from the credibility of the data, which is very unfortunate.’
However, Prof Muller denied warming was at a standstill.
‘We see no evidence of it [global warming] having slowed down,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. There was, he added, ‘no levelling off’.
A graph issued by the BEST project also suggests a continuing steep increase.
But a report to be published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation includes a graph of world average temperatures over the past ten years, drawn from the BEST project’s data and revealed on its website.
This graph shows that the trend of the last decade is absolutely flat, with no increase at all – though the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have carried on rising relentlessly.
‘This is nowhere near what the climate models were predicting,’ Prof Curry said. ‘Whatever it is that’s going on here, it doesn’t look like it’s being dominated by CO2.’
Prof Muller also wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal. It was here, under the headline ‘The case against global warming scepticism’, that he proclaimed ‘there were good reasons for doubt until now’.
This, too, went around the world, with The Economist, among many others, stating there was now ‘little room for doubt’.
Such claims left Prof Curry horrified.
‘Of course this isn’t the end of scepticism,’ she said. ‘To say that is the biggest mistake he [Prof Muller] has made. When I saw he was saying that I just thought, “Oh my God”.’
In fact, she added, in the wake of the unexpected global warming standstill, many climate scientists who had previously rejected sceptics’ arguments were now taking them much more seriously.
They were finally addressing questions such as the influence of clouds, natural temperature cycles and solar radiation – as they should have done, she said, a long time ago.
Yesterday Prof Muller insisted that neither his claims that there has not been a standstill, nor the graph, were misleading because the project had made its raw data available on its website, enabling others to draw their own graphs.
However, he admitted it was true that the BEST data suggested that world temperatures have not risen for about 13 years. But in his view, this might not
be ‘statistically significant’, although, he added, it was equally possible that it was – a statement which left other scientists mystified.
‘I am baffled as to what he’s trying to do,’ Prof Curry said.
Prof Ross McKittrick, a climate statistics expert from Guelph University in Ontario, added: ‘You don’t look for statistically significant evidence of a standstill.
‘You look for statistically significant evidence of change.’
The BEST project, which has been lavishly funded, brings together experts from different fields from top American universities.
It was set up 18 months ago in an effort to devise a new and more accurate way of computing changes in world temperatures by using readings from some 39,000 weather stations on land, instead of adding sea temperatures as well.
Some scientists, Prof Muller included, believe that this should provide a more accurate indication of how the world is responding to carbon dioxide.
The oceans, they argue, warm more slowly and this is why earlier global measurements which also cover the sea – such as those from the Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia University – have found no evidence of warming since the Nineties.
The usual way a high-profile project such as BEST would publish its results would be in a scientific journal, following a rigorous ‘peer review’ by other experts in the field.
The more eminent journals that publish climate research, such as Nature And Science, insist there must be no leaks to the media until this review is complete and if such leaks occur, they will automatically reject the research.
Earlier this year, the project completed four research papers.
As well as trends in world temperatures, they looked at the extent to which temperature readings can be distorted by urban ‘heat islands’ and the influence of long-term temperature cycles in the oceans. The papers were submitted to the Journal of Geophysical Research.
But although Prof Curry is the second named author of all four papers, Prof Muller failed to consult her before deciding to put them on the internet earlier this month, when the peer review process had barely started, and to issue a detailed press release at the same time.
He also briefed selected journalists individually. ‘It is not how I would have played it,’ Prof Curry said. ‘I was informed only when I got a group email. I think they have made errors and I distance myself from what they did.
‘It would have been smart to consult me.’ She said it was unfortunate that although the Journal of Geophysical Research had allowed Prof Muller to issue the papers, the reviewers were, under the journal’s policy, forbidden from public comment.
Prof McKittrick added: ‘The fact is that many of the people who are in a position to provide informed criticism of this work are currently bound by confidentiality agreements.
‘For the Berkeley team to have chosen this particular moment to launch a major international publicity blitz is a highly unethical sabotage of the peer review process.’
In Prof Curry’s view, two of the papers were not ready to be published, in part because they did not properly address the arguments of climate sceptics.
As for the graph disseminated to the media, she said: ‘This is “hide the decline” stuff. Our data show the pause, just as the other sets of data do. Muller is hiding the decline.
‘To say this is the end of scepticism is misleading, as is the statement that warming hasn’t paused. It is also misleading to say, as he has, that the issue of heat islands has been settled.’
Prof Muller said she was ‘out of the loop’. He added: ‘I wasn’t even sent the press release before it was issued.’
Prof Muller defended his behaviour yesterday, saying that all he was doing was ‘returning to traditional peer review’, issuing draft papers to give the whole ‘climate community’ a chance to comment.
As for the press release, he claimed he was ‘not seeking publicity’, adding: ‘This is simply a way of getting the media to report this more accurately.’
He said his decision to publish was completely unrelated to the forthcoming United Nations climate conference.
This, he said, was ‘irrelevant’, insisting that nothing could have been further from his mind than trying to influence it.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2055191/Scientists-said-climate-change-sceptics-proved-wrong-accused-hiding-truth-colleague.html#ixzz1cGCTco4X
Scientist who said climate change sceptics had been proved wrong accused of hiding truth by colleague
By David Rose
It was hailed as the scientific study that ended the global warming debate once and for all – the research that, in the words of its director, ‘proved you should not be a sceptic, at least not any longer’.
Professor Richard Muller, of Berkeley University in California, and his colleagues from the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperatures project team (BEST) claimed to have shown that the planet has warmed by almost a degree centigrade since 1950 and is warming continually.
Published last week ahead of a major United Nations climate summit in Durban, South Africa, next month, their work was cited around the world as irrefutable evidence that only the most stringent measures to reduce carbon dioxide emissions can save civilisation as we know it.
It was cited uncritically by, among others, reporters and commentators from the BBC, The Independent, The Guardian, The Economist and numerous media outlets in America.
The Washington Post said the BEST study had ‘settled the climate change debate’ and showed that anyone who remained a sceptic was committing a ‘cynical fraud’.
But today The Mail on Sunday can reveal that a leading member of Prof Muller’s team has accused him of trying to mislead the public by hiding the fact that BEST’s research shows global warming has stopped.
Prof Judith Curry, who chairs the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at America’s prestigious Georgia Institute of Technology, said that Prof Muller’s claim that he has proven global warming sceptics wrong was also a ‘huge mistake’, with no scientific basis.
Prof Curry is a distinguished climate researcher with more than 30 years experience and the second named co-author of the BEST project’s four research papers.
Her comments, in an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday, seem certain to ignite a furious academic row. She said this affair had to be compared to the notorious ‘Climategate’ scandal two years ago.
Like the scientists exposed then by leaked emails from East Anglia University’s Climatic Research Unit, her colleagues from the BEST project seem to be trying to ‘hide the decline’ in rates of global warming.
In fact, Prof Curry said, the project’s research data show there has been no increase in world temperatures since the end of the Nineties – a fact confirmed by a new analysis that The Mail on Sunday has obtained.
‘There is no scientific basis for saying that warming hasn’t stopped,’ she said. ‘To say that there is detracts from the credibility of the data, which is very unfortunate.’
However, Prof Muller denied warming was at a standstill.
‘We see no evidence of it [global warming] having slowed down,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. There was, he added, ‘no levelling off’.
A graph issued by the BEST project also suggests a continuing steep increase.
But a report to be published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation includes a graph of world average temperatures over the past ten years, drawn from the BEST project’s data and revealed on its website.
This graph shows that the trend of the last decade is absolutely flat, with no increase at all – though the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have carried on rising relentlessly.
‘This is nowhere near what the climate models were predicting,’ Prof Curry said. ‘Whatever it is that’s going on here, it doesn’t look like it’s being dominated by CO2.’
Prof Muller also wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal. It was here, under the headline ‘The case against global warming scepticism’, that he proclaimed ‘there were good reasons for doubt until now’.
This, too, went around the world, with The Economist, among many others, stating there was now ‘little room for doubt’.
Such claims left Prof Curry horrified.
‘Of course this isn’t the end of scepticism,’ she said. ‘To say that is the biggest mistake he [Prof Muller] has made. When I saw he was saying that I just thought, “Oh my God”.’
In fact, she added, in the wake of the unexpected global warming standstill, many climate scientists who had previously rejected sceptics’ arguments were now taking them much more seriously.
They were finally addressing questions such as the influence of clouds, natural temperature cycles and solar radiation – as they should have done, she said, a long time ago.
Yesterday Prof Muller insisted that neither his claims that there has not been a standstill, nor the graph, were misleading because the project had made its raw data available on its website, enabling others to draw their own graphs.
However, he admitted it was true that the BEST data suggested that world temperatures have not risen for about 13 years. But in his view, this might not
be ‘statistically significant’, although, he added, it was equally possible that it was – a statement which left other scientists mystified.
‘I am baffled as to what he’s trying to do,’ Prof Curry said.
Prof Ross McKittrick, a climate statistics expert from Guelph University in Ontario, added: ‘You don’t look for statistically significant evidence of a standstill.
‘You look for statistically significant evidence of change.’
The BEST project, which has been lavishly funded, brings together experts from different fields from top American universities.
It was set up 18 months ago in an effort to devise a new and more accurate way of computing changes in world temperatures by using readings from some 39,000 weather stations on land, instead of adding sea temperatures as well.
Some scientists, Prof Muller included, believe that this should provide a more accurate indication of how the world is responding to carbon dioxide.
The oceans, they argue, warm more slowly and this is why earlier global measurements which also cover the sea – such as those from the Climatic Research Unit at East Anglia University – have found no evidence of warming since the Nineties.
The usual way a high-profile project such as BEST would publish its results would be in a scientific journal, following a rigorous ‘peer review’ by other experts in the field.
The more eminent journals that publish climate research, such as Nature And Science, insist there must be no leaks to the media until this review is complete and if such leaks occur, they will automatically reject the research.
Earlier this year, the project completed four research papers.
As well as trends in world temperatures, they looked at the extent to which temperature readings can be distorted by urban ‘heat islands’ and the influence of long-term temperature cycles in the oceans. The papers were submitted to the Journal of Geophysical Research.
But although Prof Curry is the second named author of all four papers, Prof Muller failed to consult her before deciding to put them on the internet earlier this month, when the peer review process had barely started, and to issue a detailed press release at the same time.
He also briefed selected journalists individually. ‘It is not how I would have played it,’ Prof Curry said. ‘I was informed only when I got a group email. I think they have made errors and I distance myself from what they did.
‘It would have been smart to consult me.’ She said it was unfortunate that although the Journal of Geophysical Research had allowed Prof Muller to issue the papers, the reviewers were, under the journal’s policy, forbidden from public comment.
Prof McKittrick added: ‘The fact is that many of the people who are in a position to provide informed criticism of this work are currently bound by confidentiality agreements.
‘For the Berkeley team to have chosen this particular moment to launch a major international publicity blitz is a highly unethical sabotage of the peer review process.’
In Prof Curry’s view, two of the papers were not ready to be published, in part because they did not properly address the arguments of climate sceptics.
As for the graph disseminated to the media, she said: ‘This is “hide the decline” stuff. Our data show the pause, just as the other sets of data do. Muller is hiding the decline.
‘To say this is the end of scepticism is misleading, as is the statement that warming hasn’t paused. It is also misleading to say, as he has, that the issue of heat islands has been settled.’
Prof Muller said she was ‘out of the loop’. He added: ‘I wasn’t even sent the press release before it was issued.’
Prof Muller defended his behaviour yesterday, saying that all he was doing was ‘returning to traditional peer review’, issuing draft papers to give the whole ‘climate community’ a chance to comment.
As for the press release, he claimed he was ‘not seeking publicity’, adding: ‘This is simply a way of getting the media to report this more accurately.’
He said his decision to publish was completely unrelated to the forthcoming United Nations climate conference.
This, he said, was ‘irrelevant’, insisting that nothing could have been further from his mind than trying to influence it.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2055191/Scientists-said-climate-change-sceptics-proved-wrong-accused-hiding-truth-colleague.html#ixzz1cGCTco4X
- Reaction score
- 5,970
- Points
- 1,260
Here are the two graphs cited in the article Old Sweat posted.
Source: Mail Online
It is a bit more than just "fun with numbers." Data interpretation is pretty much central to sound analysis.
A close look at the top graph shows that the data, although highly compacted because the years 2001-2011 are at the end of a data set that goes from 1800 to 2011, the "level" data is there. The bottom graph just clarifies it. The trend line, measured from, say, 1812 would be shocking; the same trend line from 2001-2011 is reassuring.
My reading is that Profs. Curry and Muller are debating long term vs near term trends and I, for one, am not sure which matters more.
Here's another chart showing population growth covering about the same period as Prof, Muller's graph:
Source: http://ecology110armine2011sp.wordpress.com/2011/05/09/population-growth-and-its-impacts/
To the degree that warming tracks both population growth in the "developing world" and economic growth in, for example, China and IF we assume that energy production and use contributes to warming then we might conclude that the growth rate from 1975 to 2000 tracks "development" and perhaps that we are producing less "warming" per capita and that we have "stalled" warming growth since 2000 because we are better managing energy production and use.
China's economic growth 1949-1999
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/520874.stm
Source: Mail Online
It is a bit more than just "fun with numbers." Data interpretation is pretty much central to sound analysis.
A close look at the top graph shows that the data, although highly compacted because the years 2001-2011 are at the end of a data set that goes from 1800 to 2011, the "level" data is there. The bottom graph just clarifies it. The trend line, measured from, say, 1812 would be shocking; the same trend line from 2001-2011 is reassuring.
My reading is that Profs. Curry and Muller are debating long term vs near term trends and I, for one, am not sure which matters more.
Here's another chart showing population growth covering about the same period as Prof, Muller's graph:
Source: http://ecology110armine2011sp.wordpress.com/2011/05/09/population-growth-and-its-impacts/
To the degree that warming tracks both population growth in the "developing world" and economic growth in, for example, China and IF we assume that energy production and use contributes to warming then we might conclude that the growth rate from 1975 to 2000 tracks "development" and perhaps that we are producing less "warming" per capita and that we have "stalled" warming growth since 2000 because we are better managing energy production and use.
China's economic growth 1949-1999
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/520874.stm
- Reaction score
- 35
- Points
- 560
As usual the climate fantasists are at it again.
How did the Koch brothers manage to vary the temperature of Mars to match variations of the Earths temperature? Who travelled back in time to do croft farming in Greenland in the 1100's, then arrange to bury the farms under glaciers? Did George W Bush arrange cosmic events in deep space to shower the Earth with cosmic radiation that controls cloud formation?
The historic record and scientific observations and evidence from many different fields totally negates the AGW arguments, and reveals (just as much as the Climategate emails) that the entire AGW industry is a scam.
How did the Koch brothers manage to vary the temperature of Mars to match variations of the Earths temperature? Who travelled back in time to do croft farming in Greenland in the 1100's, then arrange to bury the farms under glaciers? Did George W Bush arrange cosmic events in deep space to shower the Earth with cosmic radiation that controls cloud formation?
The historic record and scientific observations and evidence from many different fields totally negates the AGW arguments, and reveals (just as much as the Climategate emails) that the entire AGW industry is a scam.
- Reaction score
- 2
- Points
- 210
This could be very bad news (IMO) for the Aussies.
Reproduced under the Fair Dealing provision of the Copyright Act:
Australia passes landmark carbon price laws
By James Grubel | Reuters – Mon, Nov 7, 2011
CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia's parliament passed landmark laws to impose a price on carbon emissions on Tuesday in one of the biggest economic reforms in a decade, giving new impetus to December's global climate talks in South Africa.
The scheme's impact will be felt right across the economy, from miners to LNG producers, airlines and steel makers and is aimed at making firms more energy efficient and push power generation toward gas and renewables.
Australia accounts for just 1.5 percent of global emissions, but is the developed world's highest emitter per capita due to a reliance on coal to generate electricity.
"This is a very positive step for the global effort on climate change. It shows that the world's most emissions-intensive advanced economy is prepared to use a market mechanism to cut carbon emissions in a low-cost way," said Deutsche Bank carbon analyst Tim Jordan.
The vote is a major victory for embattled Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who staked her government's future on what will be the most comprehensive carbon price scheme outside of Europe despite deep hostility from voters and the political opposition.
The scheme is a central plank in the government's fight against climate change and aims to halt the growth of the country's growing greenhouse gas emissions from a resources-led boom and age-old reliance on coal-fired power stations.
It sets a fixed carbon tax of A$23 ($23.78) a tone on the top 500 polluters from July 2012, then moves to an emissions trading scheme from July 2015. Companies involved will need a permit for every tone of carbon they emit.
"Today marks the beginning of Australia's clean energy future. This is an historic moment, this is an historic reform, a reform that is long overdue," Finance Minister Penny Wong told the upper house Senate as she wrapped up the marathon debate.
DECADE OF DEBATE
Australia has been debating a carbon price scheme for a decade and through 37 parliamentary inquiries, with the legislation instrumental in the 2007 fall of former conservative prime minister John Howard and Labor's Kevin Rudd in 2010.
The laws will see Australia join the European Union and New Zealand with national emissions trading schemes. California's starts in 2013, while China and South Korea are working on carbon trading programs. India has a coal tax, while South Africa plans to place carbon caps on its top polluters.
The government hopes securing the carbon price laws will help re-ignite the push for a global agreement to curb emissions and fight global warming ahead of a international talks in Durban in December.
The carbon price will impose a cost on every tone of carbon emitted, giving companies a financial incentive to curb pollution, and will help Australia reach its goal to cut emissions by 5 percent of year 2000 levels by 2020.
Farmers will be exempt from the scheme, but will be able to cash in by selling carbon offsets under separate laws for a carbon farming initiative.
The package of 18 new laws sets up the carbon price as well as billions in compensation for export-exposed industries and local steel makers, as well as personal tax cuts for 90 percent of workers, worth an average A$300 a year.
Emissions-intensive trade exposed industries such as aluminum, zinc refiners and steel makers, will receive 94.5 percent of carbon permits for free for the first three years of the scheme.
CLEAN ENERGY GOLD RUSH
The passing of the bill was greeted with applause from the public galleries, with Green Leader Bob Brown -- a major proponent of the scheme -- shaking hands with Government senators.
Attendees at a carbon expo conference in Melbourne were ecstatic with the result.
"The atmosphere is electric. This is fantastic," said Nick Armstrong of emissions trading firm COzero.
The government expects the scheme to spur a multi-billion-dollar investment rush in new cleaner energy sources including natural gas and renewable power stations to replace Australia's aging coal-fired plants.
Canberra has committed more than A$13 billion for renewable and low emissions projects, including a A$10 billion independent Clean Energy Finance Corporation, with around A$100 billion in renewables sector investment expected by 2050.
However, full introduction of the Australian scheme remains uncertain, with conservative opposition leader Tony Abbott promising to scrap the carbon price if he wins power and with Gillard's minority government holding power by only one seat.
The next election is not due until late 2013, but opinion polls show Gillard's government would be easily swept from office, and Abbott could potentially take power at any time in the event of a by-election in a government-held seat.
Abbott, who has campaigned tirelessly against the new laws, was overseas for Tuesday's vote, but he issued a statement to reaffirm his promise to repeal the laws if he takes power.
"The longer this tax is in place, the worse the consequences for the economy, jobs and families. It will drive up the cost of living, threaten jobs and do nothing for the environment," Abbott said.
A poll on Tuesday showed the conservatives leading ruling Labor by 53 to 47 percent, although the government's popularity had improved slightly as voters warmed to Gillard's handling of economic and industrial relations problems.
The carbon price is one of the three key policies Gillard promised to finalize when she became prime minister, alongside a planned 30 percent tax on iron ore and coal mines and new measures to deter asylum seekers.
But dead-heat elections last August forced Gillard to negotiate details of the carbon price with the Greens and three independent lawmakers.
Climate Minister Greg Combet said the government would stick to its A$23 a tone price, despite it being almost double the European cost of between $8.70 and $12.60 a tone, which is four-year-lows on the back of global economic uncertainty.
"I'd certainly hope and anticipate that in the course of the next three-and-a-half years, the crisis in Europe is overcome, markets will stabilize and recover and our carbon price will mesh well," Combet told Australian radio.
($1 = 0.967 Australian Dollars)
(Additional reporting by Rob Taylor in CANBERRA; Editing by Lincoln Feast)
http://news.yahoo.com/australia-passes-landmark-carbon-tax-laws-015138476.html
**********************************************************
Well, at least the emissions traders are happy...
Edit: to add the link to the article (sorry, I forgot)
Reproduced under the Fair Dealing provision of the Copyright Act:
Australia passes landmark carbon price laws
By James Grubel | Reuters – Mon, Nov 7, 2011
CANBERRA (Reuters) - Australia's parliament passed landmark laws to impose a price on carbon emissions on Tuesday in one of the biggest economic reforms in a decade, giving new impetus to December's global climate talks in South Africa.
The scheme's impact will be felt right across the economy, from miners to LNG producers, airlines and steel makers and is aimed at making firms more energy efficient and push power generation toward gas and renewables.
Australia accounts for just 1.5 percent of global emissions, but is the developed world's highest emitter per capita due to a reliance on coal to generate electricity.
"This is a very positive step for the global effort on climate change. It shows that the world's most emissions-intensive advanced economy is prepared to use a market mechanism to cut carbon emissions in a low-cost way," said Deutsche Bank carbon analyst Tim Jordan.
The vote is a major victory for embattled Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who staked her government's future on what will be the most comprehensive carbon price scheme outside of Europe despite deep hostility from voters and the political opposition.
The scheme is a central plank in the government's fight against climate change and aims to halt the growth of the country's growing greenhouse gas emissions from a resources-led boom and age-old reliance on coal-fired power stations.
It sets a fixed carbon tax of A$23 ($23.78) a tone on the top 500 polluters from July 2012, then moves to an emissions trading scheme from July 2015. Companies involved will need a permit for every tone of carbon they emit.
"Today marks the beginning of Australia's clean energy future. This is an historic moment, this is an historic reform, a reform that is long overdue," Finance Minister Penny Wong told the upper house Senate as she wrapped up the marathon debate.
DECADE OF DEBATE
Australia has been debating a carbon price scheme for a decade and through 37 parliamentary inquiries, with the legislation instrumental in the 2007 fall of former conservative prime minister John Howard and Labor's Kevin Rudd in 2010.
The laws will see Australia join the European Union and New Zealand with national emissions trading schemes. California's starts in 2013, while China and South Korea are working on carbon trading programs. India has a coal tax, while South Africa plans to place carbon caps on its top polluters.
The government hopes securing the carbon price laws will help re-ignite the push for a global agreement to curb emissions and fight global warming ahead of a international talks in Durban in December.
The carbon price will impose a cost on every tone of carbon emitted, giving companies a financial incentive to curb pollution, and will help Australia reach its goal to cut emissions by 5 percent of year 2000 levels by 2020.
Farmers will be exempt from the scheme, but will be able to cash in by selling carbon offsets under separate laws for a carbon farming initiative.
The package of 18 new laws sets up the carbon price as well as billions in compensation for export-exposed industries and local steel makers, as well as personal tax cuts for 90 percent of workers, worth an average A$300 a year.
Emissions-intensive trade exposed industries such as aluminum, zinc refiners and steel makers, will receive 94.5 percent of carbon permits for free for the first three years of the scheme.
CLEAN ENERGY GOLD RUSH
The passing of the bill was greeted with applause from the public galleries, with Green Leader Bob Brown -- a major proponent of the scheme -- shaking hands with Government senators.
Attendees at a carbon expo conference in Melbourne were ecstatic with the result.
"The atmosphere is electric. This is fantastic," said Nick Armstrong of emissions trading firm COzero.
The government expects the scheme to spur a multi-billion-dollar investment rush in new cleaner energy sources including natural gas and renewable power stations to replace Australia's aging coal-fired plants.
Canberra has committed more than A$13 billion for renewable and low emissions projects, including a A$10 billion independent Clean Energy Finance Corporation, with around A$100 billion in renewables sector investment expected by 2050.
However, full introduction of the Australian scheme remains uncertain, with conservative opposition leader Tony Abbott promising to scrap the carbon price if he wins power and with Gillard's minority government holding power by only one seat.
The next election is not due until late 2013, but opinion polls show Gillard's government would be easily swept from office, and Abbott could potentially take power at any time in the event of a by-election in a government-held seat.
Abbott, who has campaigned tirelessly against the new laws, was overseas for Tuesday's vote, but he issued a statement to reaffirm his promise to repeal the laws if he takes power.
"The longer this tax is in place, the worse the consequences for the economy, jobs and families. It will drive up the cost of living, threaten jobs and do nothing for the environment," Abbott said.
A poll on Tuesday showed the conservatives leading ruling Labor by 53 to 47 percent, although the government's popularity had improved slightly as voters warmed to Gillard's handling of economic and industrial relations problems.
The carbon price is one of the three key policies Gillard promised to finalize when she became prime minister, alongside a planned 30 percent tax on iron ore and coal mines and new measures to deter asylum seekers.
But dead-heat elections last August forced Gillard to negotiate details of the carbon price with the Greens and three independent lawmakers.
Climate Minister Greg Combet said the government would stick to its A$23 a tone price, despite it being almost double the European cost of between $8.70 and $12.60 a tone, which is four-year-lows on the back of global economic uncertainty.
"I'd certainly hope and anticipate that in the course of the next three-and-a-half years, the crisis in Europe is overcome, markets will stabilize and recover and our carbon price will mesh well," Combet told Australian radio.
($1 = 0.967 Australian Dollars)
(Additional reporting by Rob Taylor in CANBERRA; Editing by Lincoln Feast)
http://news.yahoo.com/australia-passes-landmark-carbon-tax-laws-015138476.html
**********************************************************
Well, at least the emissions traders are happy...
Edit: to add the link to the article (sorry, I forgot)
Australia . . what we avoided.
A minority government dog wagged by the Green Party members.
76% of Australians are against it. Should be a fun next election. The Aussies will vent their anger and disgust at Gillard via the ballot box.
A minority government dog wagged by the Green Party members.
76% of Australians are against it. Should be a fun next election. The Aussies will vent their anger and disgust at Gillard via the ballot box.
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Thucydides said:
So, it revealed as much as the Climategate emails about it being a scam?
So, nothing at all then? Despite your pervasive, loathsome, deep-seated ignorance, investigation after investigation showed that there was no scam at all, just a horrendous mischaracterization of presentation of actual science.
Redeye said:
Not quite. None of the "investigations" were impartial or meant to find truth, they were set up to bury the controversy. When you don't even question the main characters in your "investigations", when your "investigations" are lead by people with vested interests in global warming - and getting rich because of those interest, you are not interested in getting to the bottom of things, you are interested in protecting the status quo and the tens of billions of Pounds squandered by the Government in useless wind turbines, carbon storage scams and a myriad of useless regulations.
But if you feel the need the believe it, fill your boots full.
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Haletown said:
The investigations were conducted by several different agencies with no particular interest or agenda. That's the reality.
Haletown said:
Until actually proven otherwise, I side with the scientific consensus, not the fringe. I'm fine with that. I'm happy with investments in changing how we source our energy, and developing more sustainability. I figure I owe it to future generations, even if they're not related to me.
Redeye said:
Sure they were . . . look up Muir Russell and Lord Oxburgh and see how "independent" they were.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/24/the-telegraph-gets-it-about-climatgate-inestigations-and-the-conflict-of-interest-of-publicly-funded-media/
Like I say, you can believe in anything you want if it makes you feel better.
But buy some longjohns 'cause we are in for a long cold spell.
- Reaction score
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I don't know, I'm tonne death.PMedMoe said:
- Reaction score
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- Points
- 1,160
http://digital.nationalpost.com/epaper/viewer.aspx
National Post 10 Nov 11 WWF’S tainted ‘witnesses’
The fund’s climate witness program is just another fundraising scheme, as indicated by that “Donate!” button
It is an established strategy among both the panjandrums of climate catastrophe and their media handmaidens either to ignore individual skeptics or to denigrate them en masse as “deniers” or shills for the fossil fuel industry. No surprise, therefore, that The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star have so far contained not a peep about Donna Laframboise’s exposé of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), The Delinquent Teenager who was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert. However, the book has drawn an angry response from at least one bastion of climate alarmism, the WWF.
Ms. Laframboise’s book claims that the WWF — along with other environmental NGOS such as Greenpeace — has “infiltrated” the IPCC. The WWF subsequently issued a press release describing the assertion as “ludicrous.” Her “sole evidence” was “some overlap between some of the thousands of scientists who have worked for the IPCC and members of a scientific advisory panel to WWF’S climate witness scheme.”
Funny how even the most tenuous link between any individual skeptic and Big Oil or Big Coal is considered to taint all skepticism, and yet to point out the implications of the very significant “overlap” between a radical activist organization and the IPCC is “ludicrous.”
Further diversionary bombast came from the WWF’S Josh Laughren. In a letter to the Post, Mr. Laughren boldly refuted what Ms. Laframboise had never claimed. “Despite Ms. Laframboise’s (and Mr. Foster’s) claims to the contrary,” he wrote, “academies of science from 19 countries all endorse the consensus position that humans are causing climate change, not to mention the more than 800 Canadian scientists and 12 Canadian scientific societies who signed WWF’S 2009 letter to the Prime Minister asking for urgent action. The fact that scientists around the world are increasingly speaking up is evidence of how concerned they are, not of some vast and mysterious conspiracy.”
Ms. Laframboise’s book said nothing about the non-existence of such endorsements and letters. Neither did my review. And who is suggesting “some vast and mysterious conspiracy?” There is nothing mysterious about the fact that the IPCC was set up by governments to find scientific support for a thesis they were already strongly inclined to support.
I have little doubt that the vast majority of IPCC authors are wellmotivated, honest and “concerned,” but I also have little doubt that quite apart from the fundamental bias in the organization’s orientation, its strings are being pulled — as Ms. Laframboise documents — by a central claque of activists such as IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri, who has repeatedly stated that what is required is a fundamental change in Western lifestyles, even as he personally piles up the Air Miles.
Ms. Laframboise is certainly not the first person to question the integrity and motivations of the IPCC. Former British chancellor of the exchequer Nigel Lawson suggested in his book, An Appeal to
Reason, that the IPCC had mutated into a “politically correct alarmist pressure group.” Andrew Montford, at the end of his own exposé,
The Hockey Stick Illusion, declared: “It is clear that it would be foolish in the extreme to give the IPCC the benefit of the doubt. Their record is too poor, the stakes too high.”
Perhaps the most significant official criticism of the IPCC came in the report by the Interacademy Council, the group representing national science academies, which found “significant shortcomings in each major step of IPCC’S assessment process.”
This latter point is amply fleshed out by Ms. Laframboise’s assiduous investigative digging.
Unfortunately for the WWF, meanwhile, its eruption of indignation draws attention to that “Climate Witness” scheme, which it established “to bring attention to the serious impacts climate change already is having on people and communities, particularly in the developing world. The scientific advisory panel was set up to ensure that the climate impacts related in the articles were consistent with current scientific knowledge of impacts.”
If you go to the WWF website and locate the very first piece of climate testimony, you will find a scientist exercising creditable due diligence. According to “witness” Rifi Hamdani, 31, “I live on Derawan Island, East Kalimantan, Indonesia, and work as a dive guide at the Maratua Paradise Resort. Unpredictable weather has made an impact on underwater tourism here.” The subsequent “scientific review” by Dr. Heru Santoso, of the Tropical Forests and Climate Change Adaptation project, Indonesia, notes: “There are very few scientific literatures to report whether the observed phenomena in this specific region are related to climate change.”
So the first scientist concludes that this witness’s testimony is essentially worthless, as must be all such “stories” about local weather when it comes to assessing the science of global climate. The climate witness program is at heart just another fundraising scheme, as indicated by that “Donate!” button in the top right-hand corner.
As Ms. Laframboise points out of the IPCC authors involved with the WWF: “These people chose to link their scientific reputations to an activist organization that believes ‘It is nearly impossible to overstate the threat of climate change.’ They chose to muddy the water by aligning themselves with lobbyists at the same time that they were examining some of the planet’s most important questions.”
It’s one of the many critical issues raised by her book that, strangely, don’t seem to be getting the media attention they deserve.
National Post 10 Nov 11 WWF’S tainted ‘witnesses’
The fund’s climate witness program is just another fundraising scheme, as indicated by that “Donate!” button
It is an established strategy among both the panjandrums of climate catastrophe and their media handmaidens either to ignore individual skeptics or to denigrate them en masse as “deniers” or shills for the fossil fuel industry. No surprise, therefore, that The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star have so far contained not a peep about Donna Laframboise’s exposé of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), The Delinquent Teenager who was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert. However, the book has drawn an angry response from at least one bastion of climate alarmism, the WWF.
Ms. Laframboise’s book claims that the WWF — along with other environmental NGOS such as Greenpeace — has “infiltrated” the IPCC. The WWF subsequently issued a press release describing the assertion as “ludicrous.” Her “sole evidence” was “some overlap between some of the thousands of scientists who have worked for the IPCC and members of a scientific advisory panel to WWF’S climate witness scheme.”
Funny how even the most tenuous link between any individual skeptic and Big Oil or Big Coal is considered to taint all skepticism, and yet to point out the implications of the very significant “overlap” between a radical activist organization and the IPCC is “ludicrous.”
Further diversionary bombast came from the WWF’S Josh Laughren. In a letter to the Post, Mr. Laughren boldly refuted what Ms. Laframboise had never claimed. “Despite Ms. Laframboise’s (and Mr. Foster’s) claims to the contrary,” he wrote, “academies of science from 19 countries all endorse the consensus position that humans are causing climate change, not to mention the more than 800 Canadian scientists and 12 Canadian scientific societies who signed WWF’S 2009 letter to the Prime Minister asking for urgent action. The fact that scientists around the world are increasingly speaking up is evidence of how concerned they are, not of some vast and mysterious conspiracy.”
Ms. Laframboise’s book said nothing about the non-existence of such endorsements and letters. Neither did my review. And who is suggesting “some vast and mysterious conspiracy?” There is nothing mysterious about the fact that the IPCC was set up by governments to find scientific support for a thesis they were already strongly inclined to support.
I have little doubt that the vast majority of IPCC authors are wellmotivated, honest and “concerned,” but I also have little doubt that quite apart from the fundamental bias in the organization’s orientation, its strings are being pulled — as Ms. Laframboise documents — by a central claque of activists such as IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri, who has repeatedly stated that what is required is a fundamental change in Western lifestyles, even as he personally piles up the Air Miles.
Ms. Laframboise is certainly not the first person to question the integrity and motivations of the IPCC. Former British chancellor of the exchequer Nigel Lawson suggested in his book, An Appeal to
Reason, that the IPCC had mutated into a “politically correct alarmist pressure group.” Andrew Montford, at the end of his own exposé,
The Hockey Stick Illusion, declared: “It is clear that it would be foolish in the extreme to give the IPCC the benefit of the doubt. Their record is too poor, the stakes too high.”
Perhaps the most significant official criticism of the IPCC came in the report by the Interacademy Council, the group representing national science academies, which found “significant shortcomings in each major step of IPCC’S assessment process.”
This latter point is amply fleshed out by Ms. Laframboise’s assiduous investigative digging.
Unfortunately for the WWF, meanwhile, its eruption of indignation draws attention to that “Climate Witness” scheme, which it established “to bring attention to the serious impacts climate change already is having on people and communities, particularly in the developing world. The scientific advisory panel was set up to ensure that the climate impacts related in the articles were consistent with current scientific knowledge of impacts.”
If you go to the WWF website and locate the very first piece of climate testimony, you will find a scientist exercising creditable due diligence. According to “witness” Rifi Hamdani, 31, “I live on Derawan Island, East Kalimantan, Indonesia, and work as a dive guide at the Maratua Paradise Resort. Unpredictable weather has made an impact on underwater tourism here.” The subsequent “scientific review” by Dr. Heru Santoso, of the Tropical Forests and Climate Change Adaptation project, Indonesia, notes: “There are very few scientific literatures to report whether the observed phenomena in this specific region are related to climate change.”
So the first scientist concludes that this witness’s testimony is essentially worthless, as must be all such “stories” about local weather when it comes to assessing the science of global climate. The climate witness program is at heart just another fundraising scheme, as indicated by that “Donate!” button in the top right-hand corner.
As Ms. Laframboise points out of the IPCC authors involved with the WWF: “These people chose to link their scientific reputations to an activist organization that believes ‘It is nearly impossible to overstate the threat of climate change.’ They chose to muddy the water by aligning themselves with lobbyists at the same time that they were examining some of the planet’s most important questions.”
It’s one of the many critical issues raised by her book that, strangely, don’t seem to be getting the media attention they deserve.
more "truth is stranger than fiction" from the ever so corrupt IPCC.
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2011/11/09/the-ipccs-fake-review-editor/
That IPCC, that claims to only uses peer reviewed science - except for the 35% of references that are NOT peer reviewed science but ARE press releases and fundraising literature from Greenpeace and the WWF.
That IPCC, the oh so corrupt waste of time and money that fools so many people into believing it is above reproach, above review and must be listened to, or else.
Get ready for the Durban COP Gong show . . . probably as entertaining as Copenhagen COP.
http://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2011/11/09/the-ipccs-fake-review-editor/
That IPCC, that claims to only uses peer reviewed science - except for the 35% of references that are NOT peer reviewed science but ARE press releases and fundraising literature from Greenpeace and the WWF.
That IPCC, the oh so corrupt waste of time and money that fools so many people into believing it is above reproach, above review and must be listened to, or else.
Get ready for the Durban COP Gong show . . . probably as entertaining as Copenhagen COP.
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