Agmates

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is convinced the science on man made global warming is settled. In fact he’s so convinced that the science of the IPCC and NASA’s James Hansen is correct that his number 1 political priority is the introduction of an Emissions Trading Scheme by mid 2010.

The latest science shows that the IPCC’s Climate Change Modelling is grossly overstated..

Climate change may not be as severe as predicted, suggests an international study that shows current modelling of carbon dioxide emissions from soils are overestimated by as much as 20%.

The view, reported in the latest Nature Geoscience journal, is based on a study of Australian soils that finds the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) released by Australian soils is much lower than previously believed.

The finding has major implications for climate change predictions as annual carbon emissions from soils are estimated to be more than all human-made CO2 emissions combined.

The incredibly ironic thing is that one of the reports Co_Authors Dr Evelyn Krull [pictured] , is a scientist at the Australian governments own CSIRO Land and Water. Dr Krull goes on to say:

For Australia, a proportion of 20% charcoal in soils would lead to a 135 teragram (135 billion kilograms) overestimation on a continental scale.

“On an annual basis, an inflated prediction from topsoils alone equates to … 84% of CO2 emissions associated with aviation for Australia using values obtained for 2006,” the paper says.

Surprise, Surprise the research has found that climate change modelling is grossly overstated.

…this means that current scenarios predicted by climate change modeling “are making it look worse than it actually would be”.

This highlights the need for a global initiative to analyse soils worldwide for charcoal content so that modeling can be more accurate, she says.

Beautiful - the climate models are overstated. All the while Rajendra Pachauri, James Hansen, Al Gore, Tim Flannery, Don Henry , Barry Brook & Clive Hamilton of the alarmist cause try to tell us Global Warming is happening faster than the models actually predicted.

The science on man made global warming is settled. Yes right.

Also published On Crikey’s Enviro Blog “Rooted”

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Journalist Terry McCrann poses some serious questions about Australian Treasury’s modelling of the economic impact of the emissions trading scheme.

OH DEAR. Two weeks ago, I wrote that Treasury had shredded its credibility. It appears I was being too generous.

And one of his key right-hand men, David Gruen, revealed that the complex economic modelling, which has backed the Rudd Government’s aggressive greenhouse gas reduction strategy, was based on assumptions so simplistic — and arguably just wrong — that they would be embarrassing coming from a first-year undergraduate in economics.

McCrann goes on to question the ‘first mover’ principal so often touted by Treasury and the Rudd government.

The bigger worry in the “quality” of such fundamentally important treasury advice is Gruen’s contention — and therefore a core assumption in the modelling — is of a first-mover advantage.

“Economies that defer action face higher long-term costs. This is because more emission-intensive infrastructure is locked in place in the meantime,” he said.

I doubt that I’ve read a more naive unknowing sentence in years. It’s as if Gruen has travelled through the last three decades with his eyes and mind shut.

In a world of such rapid technological change, you are far more likely to see the exact opposite. Early movers locking-in inefficient early-stage infrastructure. Think the “new energy” version of IBM main-frame computers for example.

Hasn’t Gruen heard of the “free-rider principle”? Let others spend the billions of dollars developing the “new energy” — assuming the necessary can-opener can be found.

For a very contextual example look at those useless and inefficient wind farms. Does Gruen really believe his has seen the future in their lazy rotations?

The Emissions Trading scheme will give Australia ‘first mover’ advantage straight into the world of tariffs & import quotas.

He claims that the energy switch is analogous to the tariff experience. He’s right, but he gets it exactly wrong. Placing artificial restrictions on carbon energy is like quotas on imports. Artificially boosting the price of carbon energy is like a tariff on imports.

In effect, we have Treasury mindlessly proposing that we go back to the energy equivalent of our tariff and import quota past. And doesn’t even have a clue what it’s doing.

We, and I do mean we, should be worried, seriously worried.

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At last the Australians Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Tax payers TV has taken its first tentative step toward braodcasting some balance in the Global Warning Debate.

TICKY FULLERTON, PRESENTER: There’s another voice raising alarm at the impact of emissions trading on the resource sector.

Professor Ian Plimer is one of the few scientists roundly pooh poohing the theory of human induced climate change. He is a geologist, not a climatologist who argues that actual events in the earth’s history tells us far more than climate models of the future…..

The interviewed was screened at about 11pm on a Tuesday night, but its a start. Interviewer Ticky Fullerton wants to know how the media and the government could have it so wrong.

TICKY FULLERTON: You are a greenhouse heretic, if I may say so. How can so many governments and the media have got it wrong?

IAN PLIMER: Well heretic is quite correct. That’s a religious word and that’s what we’re dealing with- a modern political religion.

Governments do not seem to understand that the UN is a political organisation and there were scientists who were seeking fame and fortune, there’s not much money around, and if you can get on that bandwagon, then you can have yourself funded and have a great party frightening people witless.

It seems to come as a complete surprise to Fullerton that there are a large number of skeptics in the community who agree with Plimer. Granted she would not have met any hanging around the ABC cafeteria or water coolers.

TICKY FULLERTON: …. what I am interested in this is the talk that you gave last week to the Sydney Mining Club.

What sort of response did you get?

IAN PLIMER: Well I had a phenomenal response. It was overbooked, people couldn’t come in, I’m getting a couple of hundred emails a day as a result of it.

TICKY FULLERTON: Is the scepticism genuine or is this also about economic self interest.

IAN PLIMER: Well I can’t speak for others but scepticism is an integral part of science and when we have sceptical views regarded pejoratively then I think we’re abandoning science.

And I would argue that the current campaign is one that has abandoned science and has taken on the place of socialism and a new type of religion.

Whilst the interview was an eye opening experience for presenter Ticky Fullerton, lets hope its the start of a shift in the ABC’s coverage of the issue which up to now has been totally biased toward the global warming hysteria brigade.

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Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is not having a good trot.

His latest head ache comes from the Labor State Governments who have done a few sums of their own and worked out …. ‘hang on a minute this emissions trading scheme is going to hurt our states economies’.

PREMIERS are in revolt over Kevin Rudd’s plans for an emissions trading scheme, urging changes to the proposed formulas for compensating export industries to ensure they are not pushed offshore.

The premiers of South Australia and Tasmania have written to the Prime Minister raising specific concerns about the design of the scheme, its impact on major industries and expressing fears that the ETS will spark major losses of jobs and revenue.

Queensland, Victoria and the West Australian Liberal Government have raised concerns about the effects on emissions-intensive trade-exposed industries.

As more and more politicians and people work out that it is actually real people who will pay for an emissions trading scheme, one that won’t stop one iota of warming, this will get harder and harder for Kevin Rudd & his Labor Government.

You see if business can’t pass on the cost to the customer they will either close down and or leave the country. It’s the consumer ( you and me) who will pay, not business.

As more people start to work that one out, the Rudd government will be in trouble at the next election and may well face the same fate as former New Zealand Labor Prime Minister Helen Clark.

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Our current Australian anti-farmer policies coupled with a population that grows by 1 person net each 1.3 seconds will lead us to a point within 40 years where we will be a net importer of food. As the world population grows by another 2.3 billion people, food in Australia will indeed become a scarce resource.

During the past 8 years just on 11,000 Australian farmers have left the land. Today just 130,000 farmers or 0.6% of the population not only feed 21.5 million Australians but export enough food to feed double that number.

Australia is one of the world’s major agriculture exporters not because we are a major producer on a world scale, but because we have a small population. Our population is exploding whilst each day our policy makers work hard at reducing the number of farmers and their capacity to produce, in the name of ‘free trade’ and the environment.

As the Australian anti-farmer Federal and State Labour governments continue with policies that shrink our farming sector, world experts are urging them to pour money into ag & water research to avoid world wide food shortages and civil unrest.

THE director-general of the International Water Management Institute, Colin Chartres, has warned that Australia, along with the other developed nations, needs to invest more in research into agriculture and water management and in international aid.

The Rudd government is doing the exact opposite with huge cuts to CSIRO ag research funding including the closing of a number of world renown research facilities.

One of the first things the new Ag Minister Tony Burke did in coming to power 12 months ago was to scrap the very successful Farmbiz program which subsidized training and ongoing resource management education for farmers.

The QLD Labor government has followed up with an announcement it will close more Department of Primary Industry research facilities in that state.

Chartres says the food crisis of the past year was an important warning sign. “We have to heed the warning. Otherwise the ultimate outcome is, if we have millions of people starving in the developing world, much more social unrest, much more fertile ground for terrorists and extremists and the whole world becomes a lot less safe.

There is whole lot standing on it in terms of social security, as well as food security.”

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Chairman of the IPCC Rajenda Pachauri [pictured] avoids the inconvenient truth. Sydney Morning Herald journalist Michael Duffy points this out,

Last month I witnessed something shocking. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was giving a talk at the University of NSW. The talk was accompanied by a slide presentation, and the most important graph showed average global temperatures. For the past decade it represented temperatures climbing sharply.

As this was shown on the screen, Pachauri told his large audience: “We’re at a stage where warming is taking place at a much faster rate [than before]“.

Now, this is completely wrong. For most of the past seven years, those temperatures have actually been on a plateau. For the past year, there’s been a sharp cooling.

These are facts, not opinion: the major sources of these figures, such as the Hadley Centre in Britain, agree on what has happened, and you can check for yourself by going to their websites. Sure, interpretations of the significance of this halt in global warming vary greatly, but the facts are clear.

Here, have a look at the graph yourself. It clearly shows its getting hotter and quicker than anyone thought?

Just as well Pachauri is a world leading scientist. I mean if he were a used car salesman and pulled a stunt like that in a sales presentation, would you buy from him?

So it’s disturbing that Rajendra Pachauri’s presentation was so erroneous, and would have misled everyone in the audience unaware of the real situation. This was particularly so because he was giving the talk on the occasion of receiving an honorary science degree from the university.

Remember, this is the Chairman of the IPCC and this is the science that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is relying on as the reason why Australia must embrace an emissions trading scheme to stop global warming?

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Doomsday Prophet Watch.

Todays Doomsday Prediction is from that loveable TV character and former Australian of the year, the one and only Professor Tim Flannery.

Speaking to a meeting at Wimmera in Western Victoria last Friday Flannery said that Global Warming is moving beyond any thing previously predicted by the IPCC.

He said in 2001 the panel [IPCC] suggested a worse case scenario for climate change would see the earth warm six degrees Celsius by 2100.

Professor Flannery said if that happened it would be the end of civilisation.

Loveable Tim of “2 Men and a Tiny” fame says the signs are everywhere that prove global warming is worse than we thought. Heres his proof -

Professor Flannery said tell-tale signs of climate change were that water troughs no longer froze over and stream flow had reduced.

He said in the 1950s cold conditions created an ice skim over inland Australian water troughs but that was no longer happening.

Is that right Tim, what a fascinating piece of scientific observation.

I wonder how many of our readers have noticed that although their water troughs use to get ice on them in the winter, they don’t anymore?

Tim believes its a dead set sign we are all going to fry to death sometime in the next 90 years.

For that wonderful piece of scare mongering that lovable rascal Professor Tim Flannery is a deserved winner of an Agmates community “Doomsday Prophet Award”.

Click here to see other Doomsday Prophets Award winners.

Have Your Say! How many winters has it been since you had ice on your water troughs?

This will be a true test for the Rudd Government. On the one hand you have a leading academic and RBA board member saying don’t rush into an ETS, while on the other you have former Rock Singer now Environment minister saying ‘bugger the economy’.

In an unprecedented move Reserve Bank of Australia board member and world renown authority on the economics of cliamate change Professor Warwick McKibben has called on the Rudd government to delay the start of Australia’s emissions Trading Scheme.

“Professor McKibbin [pictured] said today the Prime Minister should not act before Australia knows what commitments other countries will make to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at international talks in December 2009.

“There is no way that at Copenhagen there can be a firm commitment on abatement because the US administration, whoever it is, won’t have the people in place to negotiate a rules-based system,”

Hang on, the whole basis of the Treasury modelling was on the fact that there would be a global agreement reached at Copenhagen. Now just a week after the release of the modelling that premise looks shot.

The good professor is concerned about that a hastily implemented scheme will be out of kilter with the what the rest of the world does or does not decide to do.

But that does not worry Australia’s Environment minister Peter Garrett [pictured below] who once again has proven that he is off with the fairies.

“THE environment is bigger and more important than the economy, even in the midst of the worst financial crisis the world has seen for several decades.

Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett expressed that view to a meeting of prominent environmentalists in Melbourne last night, saying the economy was a “subset” of the environment.

Thats a conundrum, who should Kevin Rudd take his advice from on this one, the Rock Star or the Professor. Daaahhh, I wonder?

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Australia is crashing through the front doors of the great Carbon Constrained global economy, only to find that those already occupying the space are bolting for the back door.

“EUROPEAN Union member states are ready to grant car makers a three-year delay until 2015 to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions of their new vehicles in light of the global economic crisis, negotiators said at the weekend.

During a meeting of representatives of the 27 nations, “a consensus was reached” on pushing back the original 2012 deadline to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, a negotiator said.”

At this rate Kevin Rudd is right on track to demonstrate why Australia is not thought of as a world leader. What world leader worth his salt would introduce a policy that will punish his countries economy during the worst global financial crisis in living memory?

Perhaps only one who believes it will look good on his Secretary General of the UN job application.

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Just as the Rudd Labor government announces that it was pressing ahead with its Carbon Reduction Scheme two US Scientists have released a paper that contradicts the whole man made global warming theory.

Stunningly their research is from data collected by Australia’s own CSIRO.

Boston (MA) - Scientists at MIT have recorded a nearly simultaneous world-wide increase in methane levels. This is the first increase in ten years, and what baffles science is that this data contradicts theories stating man is the primary source of increase for this greenhouse gas.

According to the Man made Global warming theory thats not supposed to happen.

One thing does seem very clear, however; science is only beginning to get a handle on the big picture of global warming. Findings like these tell us it’s too early to know for sure if man’s impact is affecting things at the political cry of “alarming rates.”

We may simply be going through another natural cycle of warmer and colder times - one that’s been observed through a scientific analysis of the Earth to be naturally occuring for hundreds of thousands of years.

It is beyond comprehension that the Rudd Labor government is planning to plunge Australia into a Carbon Constrained future while current events and science is casting doubts over whether rising CO2 levels are actually causing climate change.

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