Scientists used a technique called ‘optimal detection’, which showed clear fingerprints of human-induced global warming. Photograph: MODIS/Terra/NASA
It is an “increasingly remote possibility” that human activity is not the main cause of climate change, according to a major Met Office review of more than 100 scientific studies that track the observed changes in the Earth’s climate system.
The research will strengthen the case for human-induced climate change against sceptics who argue that the observed changes in the Earth’s climate can largely be explained by natural variability.
Asked whether his study was specifically scheduled as a fightback, Peter Stott, who led the review, said that the paper was originally drafted a year ago. But he added: “I hope people will look at that evidence and make up their minds informed by the scientific evidence.”
Scientists matched computer models of different possible causes of climate change - both human and natural - to measured changes in factors such as air and sea temperature, Arctic sea ice cover and global rainfall patterns. This technique, called “optimal detection”, showed clear fingerprints of human-induced global warming, according to Stott. “This wealth of evidence shows that there is an increasingly remote possibility that climate change is being dominated by natural factors rather than human factors.” The paper reviewed numerous studies that were published since the last IPCC report.
Optimal detection considers to what extent an observation can be explained by natural variability, such as changing output from the sun, volcanic eruptions or El Niño, and how much can be explained by the well-established increases in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
According to Nasa, the last decade was the warmest on record and 2009 the second warmest year. Temperatures have risen by 0.2C per decade, over the past 30 years and average global temperatures have increased by 0.8C since 1880.
The evidence that the climate system is changing goes beyond measured air temperatures, with much of the newest evidence coming from the oceans. “Over 80% of the heat that’s trapped in the climate system as a result of the greenhouse gases is exported into the ocean and we can see that happening,” said Stott. “Another feature is that salinity is changing - as the atmosphere is warming up, there is more evaporation from the surface of the ocean [so making it more salty], which is most noticeable in the sub-tropical Atlantic.”
This also links into changes in the global water cycle and rainfall patterns. As the atmosphere warms, it has been getting more humid, exactly as climate modellers had predicted. “This clear fingerprint has been seen in two independent datasets. One developed in the Met Office Hadley Centre, corroborated with data from satellites.”
Arctic sea ice is also retreating - the summer minimum of sea ice is declining at a rate of 600,000 km² per decade, an area approximately the size of Madagascar. Again, decreasing sea ice is predicted by climate models.
Rainfall is also on the rise in the higher latitudes of the northern hemisphere and large swaths of the southern hemisphere, while in the tropics and sub-tropics, there are decreases. “The already-wet regions are getting wetter and the dry regions are getting drier,” said Stott. “We now have studies that can identify this fingerprint in the observational data.”
The review, published in Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, found that the natural causes of climate variation, including changing energy output from the sun and volcanic eruptions, could not explain the observed changes by themselves. “There hasn’t been an increase in solar output for the last 50 years and solar output would not have caused cooling of the higher atmosphere and the warming of the lower atmosphere that we have seen,” said Stott.
If the observed climate change was entirely due to solar activity, the Earth’s atmosphere would have warmed more evenly - both the troposphere and stratosphere would have been affected. Warming due to the Sun would also have meant temperatures should have increases more quickly early than late in the 20th century, which is the reverse of what was actually measured.
The review is published as scientists also report a rise in methane emissions from a section of the Arctic Ocean sea floor. That study, published today in the journal Science, shows that the permafrost under the East Siberian Arctic shelf, once considered an safe store of methane, is leaking large amounts of the gas into the atmosphere. Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming as this is a greenhouse gase around 30 times more potent than CO2.
“The amount of methane currently coming out of the East Siberian Arctic shelf is comparable to the amount coming out of the entire world’s oceans. Sub-sea permafrost is losing its ability to be an impermeable cap,” said Natalia Shakhova, a researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks’s International Arctic Research Centre. “The release to the atmosphere of only one percent of the methane assumed to be stored in shallow hydrate deposits might alter the current atmospheric burden of methane up to three to four times. The climatic consequences of this are hard to predict.”
THE Rudd government has revamped its stalled renewable energy target scheme to head off job losses and a “strike” by investors reluctant to put their money into renewable energy projects.
Changes announced yesterday could clear the way for billions of dollars of investment in large-scale clean energy ventures.
Climate Change Minister Penny Wong and her Assistant Minister Greg Combet announced that from January 1 , 2011, the scheme would be split into two parts — the first paying a fixed price to small-scale sources such as home solar panels and the second covering large-scale projects such as wind farms, commercial solar and geothermal.
The renewable energy industry yesterday praised the change — expected to lift electricity prices by about $4 a year — saying it would halt job losses and pave the way for new investment.
The opposition and Greens claimed credit, with Coalition climate change spokesman Greg Hunt saying the government had adopted Tony Abbott’s direct action approach and Greens senator Christine Milne saying the response mirrored her private member’s bill introduced in the Senate on Thursday.
The RET seeks to ensure that 20 per cent of Australia’s energy consumption by 2020 is derived from renewable sources. Generators of green energy earn renewable energy certificates, which they can sell to big energy consumers that are required to source 20 per cent of power from renewables.The change, following months of consultations with industry, is designed to fix a flaw in the original policy which emerged when the Rudd government moved households into the RET scheme. This left the scheme with five times as many renewable energy certificates as it was designed to have, and drove down the value of renewable certificates.
Under the new policy small-scale sources operate in a separate scheme and will receive a fixed price of $40 per megawatt hour of electricity produced which will equate to a rebate of about $6200 for a 1.5 kw solar panel and $1200 for a typical solar hot-water system. Large-scale producers such as wind farms will operate in a separate market-traded environment. The industry expects this to increase the price of renewable energy certificates and make big projects viable.
Steve Garner, general manager of Keppel Prince, said the policy change had given his firm, which makes wind turbine towers and employs 120 people, a future. “We have really been suffering . . . we can now see that we do have a future,” Mr Garner said.
Pacific Hydro general manager for Australia, Lane Crockett, said the announcement would unlock billions of dollars of projects across Australia and protect thousands of jobs.
AGL Energy managing director Michael Fraser, said AGL was likely to go ahead with renewable energy projects worth more than $1 billion.
The likely costs of an ETS are becoming apparent BOTH domestically and internationally, the price that could be demanded from Australians for our part in cutting greenhouse gas emissions is emerging from a sea of red ink. Earlier estimates suggested that an emissions trading scheme would reap a profit of between $11 billion and $20bn by 2020. Now we learn from the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook that the scheme is likely to lose money over the next five years. The second reality check was the European Union’s call for industrialised nations to contribute $160bn per annum by 2020 to help developing nations tackle climate change.
The shortfall in ETS revenue makes the prospect of a deal between the Rudd government and the Coalition less likely. It will be impossible to pay for Malcolm Turnbull’s proposed amendments to Labor’s ETS from funds generated through emission permit sales. A fortnight ago, an analysis by Riskmetrics and Innovest Strategic Value Advisors gave an idea of what the Coalition amendments could cost. It found that the amendments could turn an estimated $777 million net surplus in its first year into a $1.8bn deficit.
The Treasury figures should prompt a review of the government’s proposed compensation payments to householders. These are likely to make low-income earners better off, acting as an indirect welfare bonus by lifting pensions, unemployment benefits and family payments by more than the expected increase in energy prices. Compensation to other income earners will be means-tested. But the last thing Australia’s complicated tax system needs is another layer of complex welfare churn.
It is not surprising that nations such as Poland, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania are objecting to the EU plan to subsidise climate change action in developing nations. It remains to be seen how Australian taxpayers would react to being asked to subsidise such fast-developing industrial economies as China, India and Brazil. It also remains to be seen whether the US would agree to such a proposal.
As the 181-page Copenhagen draft treaty proposal stands, developed countries will be obliged to pay their “adaptation debt” to developing countries through a variety of options. One of these, if the draft is adopted and Australia signs it, includes “a (global) levy of 2 per cent on international financial market (monetary) transactions to Annex I Parties” - meaning industrialised countries.
African nations boycotted part of the pre-Copenhagen meeting in Barcelona this week, demanding that developed nations cut emissions by at least 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 - far deeper than the cuts on offer. They have been egged on by anti-capitalist organisations whose policies would plunge much of the world into far greater poverty and destroy hope by eroding commerce and trade. Such agendas must not be allowed to hijack climate negotiations. After years of inflated expectations of what can be achieved in curbing carbon, it is clear that any deal that would make an appreciable difference in emissions levels will be costly. As a responsible global citizen, Australia should play its part. But we have no obligation to join any push to use climate change to redistribute global wealth to assuage the consciences of climate change billionaire Al Gore and social campaigners such as Bono, whose carbon footprints far exceed those of the ordinary Australian taxpayers they expect to foot the bill.
A bit of a worry? yes, apparently some scientists believe that have 550 ppm CO2 in atmosphere will dissolve sea shells which will kill of plankton and destroy food chain.
See links below courtesy of Telegraph. I am not sure why this is not publicized as, if these concerns become reality, the future look quite grim.
An interesting article in the Australia today (based on an extract from from “Superfreakonomics” by Levitt and Dubner) challenges the status quo regarding the perceived need to reduce CO2. They argue that geoengineering is the answer, using an inexpensive and small injection of SO2 into the atomosphere. I could not find the Australian article online but found an equivalent blog on NY TIMES.
By the time you finish this blog post, you will understand why we differ from our critics in our conclusions.
As we write in SuperFreakonomics, there are many misconceptions about the facts surrounding global warming. Take the following true/false quiz to test your knowledge of the science, economics, and technology of global warming.
Global-warming science questions:
1. The Earth has gotten substantially warmer over the past 100 years.
TRUE / FALSE
2. Even if we were to immediately and permanently stabilize our carbon emissions at the current levels, or even cut these emissions substantially, climate models predict that Earth will continue to get warmer for decades.
TRUE / FALSE
3. When Mt. Pinatubo erupted in 1991, it spewed millions of tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. Scientists believe that the haze generated by the eruption reflected some of the Sun’s light, causing the Earth’s temperature to temporarily drop as a consequence.
TRUE / FALSE
4. Because the half-life of sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere is relatively short (on the order of one year), the cooling effects of the Mt. Pinatubo eruption faded within a few years.
Though not yet officially Coailition policy, a new model for ETS has been launched by Malcolm Turnbull. This involves setting a “base” for emissions over which emitters like generators must buy permits. It also involves increasing subsidies to the power sector as well a slower increase in power prices but with an overall increase in emissions reduction.
Coalition Plan a “Mongrel”
Lenore Taylor, National correspondent | August 11, 2009
Article from The Australian
THE Rudd government has dismissed Malcolm Turnbull’s rival emissions trading plan as “unworkable” and a “mongrel”, despite the Coalition’s claim it could double emission reductions, boost jobs in the regions and cost the economy almost $50 billion less over the next 20 years.
Opposition carbon plan
Malcolm Turnbull says his ETS is greener, cheaper and smarter than the Rudd Government’s scheme. Sky…
The response leaves the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme headed for defeat in the Senate on Thursday. But with the Coalition beginning to draft possible amendments based on the findings of its modelling, it brings the Opposition Leader slightly closer to his desired political outcome of negotiating passage when the laws are resubmitted to the Senate in November.
Senate Nationals and some Liberals remain implacably opposed to any form of emissions trading and are likely to say so in the Coalition partyroom today, but sources said shadow cabinet had responded positively to a briefing yesterday by the author of the modelling commissioned by the Coalition and independent senator Nick Xenophon, Frontier Economics’ Danny Price.
Under the Frontier model, the economic impact of emissions trading is softened by charging electricity generators only for emissions over a “best practice” baseline and by giving all emissions-intensive industries full ongoing compensation until trading partners also put a price on carbon.
It says this “hybrid” model can deliver a tougher unconditional emissions reduction target of 10 per cent, rather than the Rudd government’s proposed 5per cent, making up the difference by buying many more permits internationally, and that the extra compensation is affordable because smaller electricity price rises mean it is possible to “reduce or remove” compensation to households.
It calculates that the changes mean jobs growth in hard-hit regions such as the Hunter Valley, the Illawarra, Gippsland and central Queensland slows less dramatically, leaving a net long-term improvement of 68,000 jobs.
And in a move that could appeal to the Nationals, it proposes agricultural emissions be permanently excluded from the scheme, but that farmers be allowed to reap the financial benefit of a wide range of emissions reductions through reforestation and biochar, or storing carbon in the soil.
Sources said many in the Liberal party room were “appreciably happier” after seeing details of the plan.
In total, Frontier calculates the plan would cost the economy $49bn less over the next 20 years than the government’s CPRP.
Although the principles outlined by Mr Turnbull last month proposed that coalmining emissions be left out of the scheme, the Frontier modelling includes the industry but offers it the
full compensation it has unsuccessfully sought from the government.
Frontier says that instead of seeing Australia’s largest export industry decline by 2.9 per cent by 2020, the change would see coal exports rise.
The Australian Coal Industry welcomed the proposal, but
the Australian Industry Group expressed deep concerns about a 10 per cent unilateral emissions cut. Many other industry groups were last night still digesting the complexities of the proposals.
Climate Change Minister Penny Wong quickly dismissed them. “It is not a hybrid, it is a mongrel. It is not a credible alternative, it is a smokescreen,” she said shortly after it was unveiled.
She said the government would only begin negotiations “if Mr Turnbull can get his party on board with serious, credible amendments, that are in the national interest”.
“The Liberal Party can do this the easy way, or the hard way. One way or the other, we are going to get this through,” Senator Wong said. Government sources said the plan “didn’t add up” and increased uncertainty for business and for taxpayers, who could have to bear the burden of buying additional permits offshore.
But Mr Turnbull said it was “foolish of the government to arrogantly dismiss” his ideas if it was serious about trying to get its legislation through the Senate. Some conservation groups continued to press the Coalition to negotiate the bill through as soon as possible.
Polling done for The Climate Institute showed that 78 per cent of voters wanted the Liberal Party to back the CPRS laws.
But Greens senator Christine Milne said the major parties were “engaged in an auction of who can give polluters more”.
If, as expected the bills are defeated in the Senate on Thursday, the government will resubmit them just before the UN meeting on climate change in December. A second rejection would allow them to become a trigger for an early double-dissolution election.
Bloomberg reports that the US lower house has passed a cap and trade legislation. The article is short on detail but, in any event, must go to the upper house. The aim is to have a 17% cut in 2005 emissions by 2020
House Passes Climate-Change Plan, an Obama Priority (Update2)
By Lorraine Woellert and Simon Lomax
June 26 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. House passed legislation to limit greenhouse-gas emissions that scientists blame for global warming, a top priority of President Barack Obama intended to create jobs and make the U.S. energy economy more efficient.
The House voted 219-212 for the measure, which would create a cap-and-trade plan of pollution permits to curb emissions. The measure goes to the Senate.
“Global warming is real and it’s moving very rapidly,” House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman of California said during debate. “Let us not lose this historical opportunity for our national security, for jobs in our country, to make us the leader once again in the international community.” He called the measure “an enormous jobs bill.”
The American Clean Energy and Security Act calls for the U.S. to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020.
Obama called the House vote a “historic action” and told reporters he is confident the Senate also will act on the climate issue. The legislation “ushers in a critical transition to a clean energy economy without untenable burdens on the American people,” the president said.
Obama had joined Democratic congressional leaders in lobbying for votes earlier today as the outcome was in doubt. Forty-four Democrats voted against the measure, while eight Republicans were in favor.
Republicans and business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Farm Bureau, sought to drum up opposition to the 1,200-page legislation they called a national energy tax that would eliminate jobs, not create them.
‘Job-Killing Bill’
“This is the biggest job-killing bill that has ever been on the floor of the House of Representatives,” said Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio, who spoke against the bill for about an hour. He said the U.S. should increase drilling of oil and gas while working to create alternative sources of energy.
Republican Frank Lucas of Oklahoma called the measure “the single largest economic threat to our farmers and ranchers in decades,” saying it would increase their energy costs. “I will not make my constituents poorer so others can get richer at their expense,” he said.
Democrats turned back a Republican amendment from Representative Randy Forbes of Virginia that would have substituted a research summit on clean energy for the Democrats’ plan.
House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, who negotiated revisions that brought many rural lawmakers on board, said he was voting for the measure although it still has “problems” he considers “unworkable.”
‘Too Complex’
“It is too complex, the way they’ve structured this and the deals they’ve cut,” said Peterson, a Minnesota Democrat.
Democrats say the bill would create 1.7 million new jobs, save 240 million barrels of oil by 2020, and require in most cases that states get 20 percent of their electricity from renewable sources such as wind and the sun by then. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the measure would cost an average of $175 a year per household.
The measure would boost investment in new energy sources by financing research and providing $10 billion to develop technology to capture emissions from burning coal. Utilities would get free greenhouse-gas pollution permits to aid investment in renewable energy sources. A $30 billion revolving loan fund would support small and mid-sized clean-energy manufacturing efforts.
Aid to Polluters
The bill’s chief sponsors, Waxman and Democrat Edward Markey of Massachusetts, agreed to reduce its environmental mandates and increase aid to polluters, including coal-fired power plants, to help companies meet the measure’s clean-air regulations. That wasn’t enough, though, to guarantee the support of all Democrats from rural districts.
Jim Owens, chief executive officer of Peoria, Illinois- based Caterpillar Inc., opposed the measure in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California that said, “We advocate coordinated international action rather than unilateral U.S. action on climate and energy.”
In pushing for the bill, environmental groups generated about 200,000 calls to about 90 congressional offices this week and are making about 400 more today, Sierra Club spokesman Josh Dorner said.
Former Vice President Al Gore, who won a Nobel prize for his work on climate change, was calling lawmakers from his Nashville home on behalf of the bill. AFL-CIO chief lobbyist Bill Samuel said the union group supported the plan, even as he called it “not perfect.”
Energy Scientists
Even so, a coalition of energy scientists, in a letter to lawmakers, called the measure’s investment in renewable energy “inadequate.”
U.S. Chamber of Commerce Executive Vice President Bruce Josten urged lawmakers to vote against it because he said it wouldn’t ensure development of enough renewable energy sources to make up for the required reduction in fossil-fuel emissions.
After being a scpetic for some time now regarding Australia’s ability to generate 25% of its energy from renewable, I am more confident today that we have the ability tot generate a much higher percentage by 2020. The article in the Herald suggests there is a groundswell moving in thast very direction. Whilst wind energy is not the answer, developments in solar (heating and pv), tidal and geothermal will prove to be able to generate base load power. Clean Coal or carbon storage is not the way to go and, as the article suggests, gas will fill the gap, in particular coal seam methane.
Paddy Manning
SMH 13 Jun 2009
The Australian Government employs about 237,000 public servants. Not one of them is planning for the country to make a complete transition to renewable energy or even seriously envisaging such a scenario.
A spokesman for the Prime Minister confirmed this week a clean energy future is not on our agenda, even as an option - not for 2020, not for 2050, not at all, even though thousands of people will march around Australia today demanding just that.
As a result most of us are completely in the dark as to whether there is potentially enough renewable energy to go around and at what cost. We are held hostage to the argument that coal and nuclear are the only credible options for “baseload power”.
It would be prudent at least to work up a plausible transition-to-clean-energy scenario, because a tipping point is looming and the public’s patience will not last forever.
As soon as 2013, we face the total loss of Arctic summer sea ice. A blue North Pole will be more than a psychological shock - cue media frenzy, photos from space, political promises, sceptical blathering etc.
The summer Arctic ice covers 7 million square kilometres (about the size of Australia) and reflects 90 per cent of the sun’s energy back into space. If or when it melts altogether, 80 per cent of that warming energy will be absorbed by the ocean. It’s called the “albedo flip” - a sudden loss of reflectivity - and it’s one of the planet’s many feedback mechanisms, which threaten to accelerate climate change dramatically.
Privately funded groups in Australia, worried and fed up waiting for credible action from the Government, can see the need and are developing back-up plans, on a shoestring but with conviction and purpose.
Zero Carbon Australia (ZCA) 2020 is one such document, being drafted by volunteers, mainly in Melbourne (see beyondzero emissions.org), with funding from the Climate Emergency Network. An initial exercise estimated Victoria - reliant on dirty brown coal - could halve its emissions within three years at a cost of $29 billion.
Then about six months ago the group won seed funding of $25,000 from a private donor in NSW to prepare a national plan.
About 50 scientists and engineers, activists and writers are working on the plan, using their own internal wiki. The aim is to show how renewable sources could provide Australia’s entire energy demands by 2020.
The guiding principles behind ZCA 2020 include that all technological solutions must be proven, reliable, commercially available and costed at today’s prices. Energy security must be enhanced. The transition must not cause other environmental degradation (for example, land clearing for biofuel crops).
Separate “zero carbon” plans will cover stationary (ie, non-transport-related) energy, transport, land use, buildings, industrial processes and replacing coal export revenue.
A rough draft of the stationary energy plan - eliminating roughly half the country’s emissions - will be made available to interested parties next week.
Over the next decade, the draft plan envisages: using energy efficiency to keep demand at current levels; electrifying transport; creating a smart grid; switching coal-fired power stations to gas in the transition; and obtaining half of our electricity supply from 50 solar thermal power stations and another third from more than 11,000 wind turbines. A ballpark estimate of the costs is $250 billion over the decade.
The group is working on a public launch of the finished stationary energy, buildings and transport plans in mid-August.
The campaign director, former computer engineer Matthew Wright, has a weekly radio show on climate science and solutions on Melbourne’s 3CR community radio station. “We’ve got tens of thousands of climate action group members all over country,” he says. “All kinds of people, there’s the whole spectrum there.”
One of the first localised groups in Australia, Climate Change Balmain-Rozelle, for example, has 170 supporters and its own website, blogging to 700 households. Those concerned about climate change are constantly told, as Malcolm Turnbull told the ABC in 2007: “You cannot run a modern economy on wind farms and solar panels. It’s a pity that you can’t but you can’t.” Wright disagrees: “That’s absolute rubbish.” ZCA 2020 will give people confidence they can lobby for a clean energy supply.
Among similar planning exercises overseas is the Desertec Foundation, backed by the Club of Rome. (Yes, that’s the same Club of Rome that in 1972 - forget decades of troglodyte scoffing - correctly predicted we would be facing environmental crisis by the mid-21st century.)
Desertec aims to provide clean power from deserts. In Europe, that means building massive concentrating solar power stations in the Sahara, with power sent thousands of kilometres north through high-voltage direct-current cables.
In terms of deserts, Australia looms large. We have, according to Stewart Taggart of Desertec’s local arm (he also runs Desertec in the US and China from beachside Manly), an unbelievable opportunity to become a clean energy superpower by 2050. The plan to do so has been drawn up and is available online.
Taggart, a former financial journalist and economist, is a director of consultancy Acquasol, which is working on the world’s first large-scale solar-gas hybrid desalination plant, at Port Augusta.
A positive for Australia is that our ageing 1970s-era coal-fired power plants require replacement in coming years, while the country’s electricity grid also needs an overhaul. “The whole system is like a clapped-out Cuban Chevy on its final kilometres,” Taggart says. “This replacement cycle represents a blessing in disguise. It’s really fortuitous.”
Taggart wants to see Australia make a “dash for gas” between 2010 and 2020 in the transition to renewable energy.
Australia’s solar, geothermal, wind and wave energy endowments are sufficient to create “a massive clean energy export industry that could one day power Asia”.
The desert bit is important because concentrating solar power requires direct normal radiation and minimal atmospheric moisture or cloud cover, which trends to diffuse the light.
Australia has a world-class solar resource, perfectly flat and geologically stable. We also have selective expertise in transmission technology in this area: the 177-kilometre Murraylink (the world’s longest buried HVDC power line) and the Tasmania-Victoria Basslink cable (until recently the world’s longest subsea HVDC cable).
“It’s all shaping up as a beautifully ‘perfect storm’,” Taggart says. “Coal goes out one door, solar and geothermal come in another and HVDC power lines tie it all together. Australia’s definitely the lucky country.”
Press reports including the AAP article in SMH today suggests that the Oppostion let by Malcolm Turnbull will try and force a double dissolution on the issue of the ETS. By having both houses of parliament (House of Reps and Senate) sit at the same time, Rudd is hoping to pass the legislation ahead of Copenhagen. Turnbull’s view is that the vote should wait till February 2010 when Australian Parliament reconvenes after the summer recess. This he says would give us the chance to see what USA and others have agreed to. It has been a long sore point with Liberal Party that they do not agree to Australia committing to carbon reduction targets alone believing that cuts by Australia in isolation of a global agreement would be meangless in its global impact while disadvantaging Australia with respect to its trading partners.
Turnbull eyes January vote on trade scheme
May 31, 2009 - 12:12PM
Australia could have an emissions trading scheme legislated early next year, after Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull indicated his readiness to see parliament recalled for a vote in early January.
“I’ve got no doubt we will have an emissions trading scheme in Australia,” Mr Turnbull told ABC Television today, ending days of doubt about the coalition’s commitment to an ETS.
Mr Turnbull said the coalition would be prepared to have parliament sit “straight after” global climate change talks.
The opposition last week announced it would vote to defer legislation setting up the Rudd government’s planned scheme until next year, after a decision on emissions trading by the US Congress and UN talks in Copenhagen.
The coalition is also seeking a Productivity Commission inquiry into emissions trading.
Mr Turnbull says parliament could be recalled in early January - a month ahead of schedule - to vote on an ETS.
“We could come back straight after (Copenhagen),” he said, adding the parliament would be fully informed about US plans and a likely global agreement.
The opposition last week announced it would not vote for an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) until next year, throwing out the government’s timetable.
The government had hoped that business would put pressure on the opposition to back down and allow the scheme to pass this year.
Parliamentary secretary for climate change Greg Combet last week warned that business could lose out on assistance if the scheme had to be rewritten next year.
But the Australian Industry Group’s chief executive Heather Ridout on Sunday said the scheme needed more work, offering some support to the federal opposition’s push for a delay.
“You’ve got to get the tradeoff right between certainty and certain death for many industries by getting the thing wrong,” she told Network Ten.
“We need to work much harder on the trade-exposed industry assistance issues. To the opposition’s credit, that’s a core issue that they’re concerned about.”
“The most important thing is that we get a scheme that works.”
Ms Ridout said she had been having fruitful discussions with the opposition.
The government has argued that the laws must be passed this year to create certainty for investment, but Ms Ridout said the economic crisis was the real obstacle to investment.
“The issue that’s really been focusing people’s minds is the fact that the global financial crisis is really restricting the capacity of business to make the investments.”
Mr Turnbull also rejected the government’s arguments its ETS legislation needs to pass parliament in June to provide business with certainty, saying the government’s plans contained “a dirty little secret.”
“The guts of this scheme, the essential details of the scheme, are actually in the regulations, which are rules made by governments administratively, not legislated by parliament.”
Those regulations had not yet been published, and would determine how much compensation industry would receive under the scheme.
“They are not being presented to the parliament.”
Asked whether The Nationals would toe the line on an ETS, Mr Turnbull said the community would expect Australia “to follow suit as part of an effective global agreement” if the US established emissions trading.
An article in the Australian reports that Carbon Emissions must start falling by 2015 to keep temperature rise to 2 deg C.
Mark Henderson, Robin Pagnamenta | May 29, 2009
WORLD carbon emissions must start to decline in only six years if humanity is to stand a chance of preventing dangerous global warming, a group of 20 Nobel prize-winning scientists, economists and writers has declared.
The United Nations climate summit in Copenhagen in December must agree to halve greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050 to stop temperatures from increasing by more than 2C, the St James’s Palace Nobel Laureate Symposium concluded.While even a 2C temperature rise will have adverse consequences, a bigger increase would create “unmanageable climate risks”, according to the St James’s Palace memorandum, signed by 20 Nobel laureates in physics, chemistry, economics, peace and literature.The temperature target “can only be achieved with a peak of global emissions of all greenhouse gases by 2015″, the document said. If emissions continue to rise after that date, the required cuts would become unachievable.
Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Postdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, a convenor of the symposium, likened the urgency for action on climate change to the threat of thermonuclear weapons during the Cold War.
“We are facing a crisis as deep as the arms race of the 1950s and 1960s and the Cold War notion of mutually assured destruction,” he said. “Today we have mutually assured increases in greenhouse gases.”
He said the memorandum echoed a manifesto signed in 1955 when Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein and nine other intellectuals called for world leaders to seek peaceful resolutions to international conflict.
“Global climate change represents a threat of similar proportions and should be addressed in a similar manner,” the memorandum said.
The extent of the climate threat is also highlighted today by a report that suggests global warming is already killing an estimated 300,000 people per year - equivalent to the loss of life that resulted from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
The report from the World Humanitarian Forum, an independent organisation led by Kofi Annan, the former UN Secretary-General, claims that 90 per cent of those deaths are related to gradual environmental degradation resulting from the warming climate - principally malnutrition, diarrhoea and malaria. The remaining 10 per cent are linked with weather-related disasters.
The study, due to be presented by Mr Annan, was reviewed by distinguished experts in the field, including Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and Professor Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York.
It projects that by 2030, the number of annual deaths directly resulting from the warming global climate will rise to 500,000.
The St James’s Palace memorandum was agreed after three days of discussions attended by 60 leading scientists, policymakers and intellectuals. Participants included Steven Chu, the US Energy Secretary and Nobel physics laureate, Wole Solinka, the Nigerian literature laureate, and Wangari Maathai, the first environmentalist to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
The symposium was organised by the Potsdam Institute and the University of Cambridge Program for Sustainability Leadership, under the patronage of the Prince of Wales.
The memorandum called for an emergency package of financial support for tropical forest nations, as the loss of forests is responsible for about 18 per cent of global carbon emissions.
“The St James’s Palace memorandum calls for a global deal on climate change that matches the scale and urgency of the human, ecological and economic crises facing the world today,” the final document says.
“It urges governments at all levels, as well as the scientific community, to join with business and civil society to seize hold of this historic opportunity to transform our carbon-intensive economies into sustainable and equitable systems. We must recognise the fierce urgency of now.”
