Which Climate Change Consensus? (Part 4)
Posted by jennifer, January 27th, 2006 - under Uncategorized.
Tags: Climate & Climate Change
There has been some interesting discussion on policy solutions for ‘climate change’ at the thread following Part 2 of this series.
David Tribe mades the comment:
Focusing on policy realism is what is needed. We’ve heard too much about model uncertainties and physics.
Ian Castles responded with a suggestion from Indur Goklany’s submission to House of Lords Economic Committee Inquiry:
“Over the next few decades the focus of climate policy should be to
(a) broadly advance sustainable development, particularly in developing countries since that would generally enhance their adaptive capacity to cope with the many urgent problems they currently face, including many that are climate sensitive;
(b) specifically reduce vulnerabilities to climate-sensitive problems that are urgent today and might be exacerbated by future climate change; and
(c) implement ‘no-regret’ emissions reduction measures; while
(d) concurrently striving to expand the universe of no-regret options through research and development to increase the variety and cost-effectiveness of available mitigation options”.
Ian then made comment that:
In the light of this and other submissions, the House of Lords Economic Committee unanimously concluded that ‘The important issue is to wean the international negotiators away from excessive reliance on the ‘targets and penalties’ approach embodied in Kyoto.
Hence there should be urgent progress towards thinking about wholly different, and more promising, approaches based on a careful analysis of the incentives that countries have to agree to any measures adopted’ (Report, para. 184).
The objections to Kyoto go deep. To quote a few from Aynsley Kellow’s paper for ASSA:
a) the Protocol ‘lacks adequate enforcement mechanisms;
b)it allows paper reductions in emissions to be offset against future real increases;
c)and it is overly sanguine about the ability to create the institutions (especially measurement and verification measures) which will permit the establishment of effective emissions trading regimes.’
… A major element in the Castles and Henderson critique of the IPCC approach is precisely that the Panel is excessively confident of its ability to make long-term projections of emissions, i.e., of socio-economic conditions and technological possibilities. The concluding statements you [Ender] quote from the Econbrowser blog summarise precisely why basing policies on very long-term projections of emissions is wrong-headed.
But the emissions scenarios do need to be constrained by what is logically possible, and they do need to be based on sound concepts. For example, it would be a nonsense (a) to assume that average incomes per head in Africa will increase 15-fold by the middle of the century (as the IPCC scenarios with both the highest and lowest emissions profiles do); (b) to base projections of emissions of GHGs on this assumption; but then (c) conclude that climate change will lead to large increases in the numbers at risk of hunger on the continent. Yet this is what is done in the most widely-cited impact study using the IPCC scenarios.
In his submission to the Lords Committee, Julian Morris of the University of Buckingham made the point that, if Bangladesh and the United States prove to have similar levels of output per head by the end of the century, as the IPCC high emissions scenarios assume, this outcome could only have come about because either (a) Bangladesh has found a highly cost-effective way of coping with the adverse effects of climate change or (b) it would not have suffered these effects. He concludes that ‘Either way there appears to be a contradiction between the economic scenarios that underpin the IPCC’s climate forecasts and the scary stories that the IPCC tells on the back of these forecasts.’
Goklany (and Jessie Ausubel’s and Anthony Trawavas’) whole argument about agricultural efficiency is that it should be directed at preservation of ecosystem services, so I think is is wrong to assume that the agriculturalists are ignoring ecosystem services. That said, as usual, David you introduce an important and fresh point. Scenarios of large temperature change presumably have different degrees at different locations, and predict benefits as well as costs. I wouldnt wan’t to guess further than that.
Two more quick points.
The advantage of concentriting on relistic policies that will in any case have near term impact, climate change or not, is its much easier to attract the funds and attention from the scientific market for ideas and the capital markets ($s), as both these markets work in a currency of realism. A vivis exampe is Bill Gates global challenges that are actually doing stuff now. Bill , besides being bright, talks to really good people in science and Wallstreat both.
Second, via google, recently I found (well, kind of hacked a server directory, it’s amazing how open things are) a great little speach by a well respected economist (Ruttan?, )at a Columbia U website (Jeff Sachs place).It mention’s the three isolated island empires of knowledge – agriculture, environment and health. (if my memory serves me correctly). Barriers between these empires need to be broken to create policies on the environment that succeed.
Ian – the popular press did pick up on Ice Age and Nuclear Winter in the 1970s. I don’t know what an individual like Schnieder said or otherwise. This is very different to a whole IPCC organisation of scientists reviewing the worlds literature signing off on an Ice Age. The literature does not show the case. Connelly makes a fair attempt at disputing a well tried-on contrarian argument by looking at the literature. If you want to go there – we’ll have review what every economist has ever said about anything as well. Have they all been spot on?
Rog – the 15 years is a throw-away to the extent and duration of drought in rural areas. Some have had enough Exceptional Circumstances and drought declarations to last 200 years. Those on the coast tend to have blind spots here.
And I think how Ian skipped ecosystem response as not policy realism says it all for the me. – the massive schism that exists between the biological sciences and economic sciences on this issue. It has suddenly all become very clear.
Also biospheric feedbacks are not well represented in the current IPCC models. Some have said there might another whole 300ppm out there which we may well get from melting peat bogs, tundra and perma-frost – as well as land clearing for detribes’ new agricultural revolution.
And you won’t get an agronomic improvment in drought ! Actually an economically rational approach is to not waste fertiliser and not plant crops. And not drought feed animals. i.e. experience shows it’s pouring more money down the black hole.
My point on the communique – is that I think our discussions have been most excellent but very low on any specific detail. And I don’t see anything much different to where we are – “doing our best at no regrets, and ignoring the issue”. If nobody steps up the plate I’m simply concluding that we really don’t have any ideas. That’s OK as it’s a very difficult problem.
Phil, the reason Ive not posted specific detail is that I dont want to flood the comments and hog it with my stuff. There is a vast universe out there of real problems urgently awaiting better processes. People are actualluy dying and starving out there from drought and poverty and there are clear ways forward.
As far as Enders energy efficieny worries about biofuels and ghg, several new commentaies has just come out in Science
see
http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/2006/01/new-study-shows-biofuel-is-useful-and.html
and Pundit post just before that.
Phil, the whole thrust of CSIRO’s wheat breeding successes is to improve dry climate yields and they have, after 25 years succeeded with perhaps 25% boosts in yields.. Extreme drought may be a proble, but making the best of what rain there is is perfectly sensible.
Sorry detribe – not trying to be tedious – was contemplating drought in Africa as I thought this is where we needed most effort.
And I also concerned about plateauing of yields in Australia. But I yield to your more informed view on local yield increases of late.
For example .. .. today’s paper.
LOCAL Government water charges could rise by up to $185 a year per ratepayer under a $3 billion emergency water package announced yesterday.
Local councils must contribute up to $1 billion of the package aimed at stopping southeast Queensland running out of water in as little as three years.
Emergency measures outlined yesterday include mandatory rainwater tanks on all new homes, a Gold Coast desalination plant and re-commissioning of old water resources.
SEQ Water has blamed an unpredictable climate shift on the drying dams.
It said that, if the area’s major dams receive minimum recorded inflows, “the region has about three years of supply remaining”.
The situation is made more critical by the fact that, by 2026, the population of southeast Queensland is expected to top 3.7 million, more than twice the population in 1985.
Full story:
http://www.thecouriermail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,17960110%255E952,00.html
Ian – “That’s what I thought, Ender. You are questioning whether the world will have enough energy to supply ‘this bountiful increase’. In logic, therefore, you should be questioning the IPCC’s emission scenarios and the Panels projections of increase in temperature. I don’t understand why you are denying this.”
Sorry I must be really thick today – I do not see what you mean here.
detribe – “I would argue that enough liqid fuel energy is available for key food needs (just cut traveling use by 3% each year with extra efficiency and working at home by the internet.”
I guess but the problem is that we are not doing this. Major oil fields are delpleting at 6% so you would have to cut travel by more that this. Also demand is still rising.
Ian – for what it’s worth – a robust exchange on your post theme of economics
http://www.inkstain.net/fleck/?p=1338
and locally
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2006/01/27/castles-and-henderson-again/
Perhaps too much turf protection? Getting some traction here and a consensus here will be hard yards.
If we are concentrating on policies then the one mentioned here such as 5 billion dollars to promote a green revolution could result in the people being dependant on imports of oil and fertiliser. Natural gas prices are rising so much so most of the USA based producers have closed. With increased demands for fertiliser NG prices will go higher which will also make the fertiliser more expensive.
Why not spend the 5 billion in an integrated sustainable way. A wind turbine or solar thermal plant on a small scale could be the heart of a local clinic/power station/community centre. The power could be used for electric farm machinery (http://www.electrictractor.com/) eliminating the need for imported fossil fuels. The clinic could help with the devasting Aids crisis and generally help with the health of the people. The community centre could educate and assist the farmers on sustainable organic farming without masses of artificial fertiliser.
This way a Western style factory farm that requires massive amounts of energy and fertiliser that the people cannot afford long term is not foisted on villagers.
Action to prevent global warming does not have be soley focussed. It can form part of an integrated distributed system that can bring benefits beyond just growing food.
Sorry Ender, I must be thick today too, because the point I tried to make seems obvious to me.
You doubted whether the world would have enough energy to support increased productivity in agriculture. In response I pointed out that the IPCC’s high projections of future CO2 emissions, and therefore of future temperature, ASSUMED that the world would use many times the amount of energy that it does at present. If you believe that that’s impossible, it seems to me that you must also reject as irrelevant the scenarios of increased energy use and the projections of increased temperature that the IPCC derived from those scenarios. I’m not trying to make a subtle debating point – it seems to me to be an elementary point of logic. Am I missing something?
Similarly, I couldn’t understand David’s point that a 6C warming is inevitable under BAU. In their 2005 paper “Convergence and Per Capita Carbon Emissions”, McKibbin and Stegman ‘focus … on per capita carbon emissions from fossil fuel use because this is the basis of many projections as well as a variety of policy proposals.’ Their conclusion was that ‘We find strong evidence that the wide variety of assumptions about ‘convergence’ commonly used in emissions projections are not based on empirically observed phenomena.’ If there is no observable convergence across countries in per capita CO2 emissions, I can’t see how a projected temperature increase which assumes massive convergence in such emissions can be characterised as inevitable.
Note that it’s not necessary to make any assumptions about GDP to reach this conclusion. Assumptions about population and emissions per head of population are sufficient. Of course McKibbin and Stegman may be wrong, but they have to be shown to be wrong.
Thats not a tractor Ender, its a toy, this is A Tractor
http://www.caseih.com/files/tbl_s18News%5CImage165%5C2331%5CSTXworldrecord.jpg
Do you mean, Phil, you give credence to things that appear in the Courier Mail? Just a little back of the envelope stuff for you;
Average household water use is 700 litres/day or 255 tonnes/yr. Include some on-site multiple use, like using shower water to flush toilets (save 25%) and this comes down to 191 tonnes pa.
Average household roof area is 250m2 and average rainfall for Brisbane is 1100mm so 250m3 x 1.1m rainfall = 275 tonnes of water. Add all the other infrastructure that operates at almost 100% catchment efficiency (driveways, patios etc, (another 50 to 100m2) and we have a micro catchment that can yield from 172% to 200% of demand. Which is well within 95% of rainfall variation.
And that would release virtually the entire Brisbane dam supply for irrigation or other productive uses.
Just reporting on the governments reported comments.
So what would the cost of this be for each house?
How much are you going to store ? What area required?
What’s the cost of running the pump for moving the water.
Any disease, pollutant or heavy metal issues?
Presumably you’ll say we won’t drink it to be on the safe side.
Keep going Ian – you’re on a roll. (positive comment)
Ian – OK I get you now.
“If you believe that that’s impossible, it seems to me that you must also reject as irrelevant the scenarios of increased energy use and the projections of increased temperature that the IPCC derived from those scenarios”
I assumed that the IPCC projections were only high low and medium case studies of what could happen. I never took them as literal fact as as you know even the best economic forcasting is suspect and the best anyone can do is give scenerios.
Now if the high case is found to be impossible due to another factor that they did not take into account, Peak Oil, then I don’t think that this invalidates the whole IPCC report as you seem to maintain. Not everybody accepts peak oil and it is unlikely that this would have been taken into account in 2001. The high case is taken as BAU with no attempt to restrain emissions and no limits to growth. I am sure this is explained in the assumptions of the various scenerios. The next report may have to factor in oil delpletion.
Phil
Ian Castles is a statistician, not an economist.
I’m so glad the rest of the world does not depend on solutions evolving from any of this stuff. In all the scratching for facts people on here haven’t grown a thing.
For example Ian Mott’s micro catchment, thousands of roofs running into tanks needs to be costed against another Brisbane dam to be relevant. But first you had better be a plumber for it to be affordable in these academic times then an electrician before we get round to fixing the water lift in high rise apartments.
Thousands of pumps don’t stack up either. This ends up in us using third world buckets.
It’s all dreaming and won’t pass where it counts, back in the hands of average folk like me living on a trickle, sorry Ian.
Before we let Brisbane water, or our government, get away with the lie, we have had 10% more rain so far this decade than last decade.
Taz, I have not had a drop of water from a dam in 20 years. I can see no reason why you, & the rest of our city brethren, should not have to use your own water. What right do you have to mine?
In fact Taz, I can see no reason why you should be entitled to take whe water of another district to use in your lousy city. I believe you should have to pay the people of the district you plan to rob of thier water. If we were to feed in a reasonable charge for our catchment, say, $100 pre acre to supply our water to your dam, the cost of tanks, & pumps may not be so large after all. & Taz, you all ready have to pump the water in your high rise.
Ian, its not quite as easy as your math would suggest. I have 65000 L storage, & this often overflows in the wet. When the rain is heavy we loose about 50% in overflowing gutters. From my experience, you can catch & store, about 25 to 30,000 litres from 100 mm of rain, depending on your storage capacity.
This is still no reason why you should not become self sufficient in water.
Hasbeen may be referring to the notional national water scheme were water can be freely traded between copmpeting interests eg a surplus in one area could be sold and somehow “moved” to another area with a deficit.
More rain this decade – not exactly sure where you are talking about – but do you have numbers to support that?
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/reg/cli_chg/trendmaps.cgi seems to indicate we have some long trends going on.
Rog – do we feel a Bradfield scheme, divert the Clarence, or pump Lake Argyle to Perth coming on.
The SEQ water authorities seems to be thinking about interconnecting the various council storages in the region – Wivenhoe Dam and Northpine Dam with Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast storages. Maybe makes some sense. Other pipelines being mused about for Central Qld to keep Gladstone industrial complex going.
I guess it’s all in the cost benefit. Philosophy used to be “no new dams ever ever” but this seems to be changing to maybe some new dams, plus recycling and local conservation (Motty’s rainwater tanks final solution BOEmm), and even de-salination. The works.
Maybe one good cyclone is needed to fill it and we can put it all off for another 10 years, till we creep back to low levels again.
And on cyclones – wonder why we haven’t any coast crossing cyclones in Qld in yonks. Anyone noticed? Just random perhaps? But some very fast cyclones in Pacific off-shore and around WA.
BOEmm = Back of envelope, Mottian methodology
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/silo/reg/cli_chg/timeseries.cgi?variable=rain®ion=aus&season=0112
Phil,
Hasbeen is right on both counts
1. If one looks at the times series graph of the annual rain fall since 1900, also provided by the BOM, one can safely assume that there has been no change. If anything the rolling average show an increase.
2.It is dead easy to catch and store 136kl in a concrete tank that cost $10k to build, and use a small pump to feed a house of 5 people, and water a garden, and never run out of water.The key is the timing of the opportunistic showers in summer.(In SA)
Most of the lost water in a household system takes place in a wetter than average year and so, is surplus to needs anyway. In Brisbane a 13,500 litre storage will ensure continuous supply to the average household in the 5th decile rainfall year, provided they have two small (200l) tanks and an aquarium scale pump to store daily shower water for the toilet system.
And lets get this clear. WATER TANKS ARE THE NORM ALL OVER RURAL AUSTRALIA. You simply do not build a house, or even occupy a house, without water tanks. Yet, we have people in the cities, mostly home owners, who have recently pocketed an average of $150,000 in mostly untaxed capital gains. But they have the gall to expect unlimited cheap public water (someone else’s) because they couldn’t possibly afford the $2000 for a water tank.
We have heard a load of stuff about farmers duty of care to the environment but nothing about urban voters duty of care. The key test for government assistance is whether the recipient has taken reasonable steps to help themselves before putting their hand out. An adequate (not token) urban household water tank is a reasonable, practical step to help oneself and it should be regarded as the minimum duty of care.
The right to that drop of water falling on anyone’s head wherever are quite unclear. We own a block of land; do you think it’s mine? It’s a big debate up and down the country.
Looking up or looking down it’s mine hey?
And the environment is mine too. Air, wind, rain but how about climate?
With water for the masses, the actual catchment point is almost irrelevant, however storage is vital. Since urban development generally increases rain run off, the community tank could simply be a storage dam on the out fall otherwise the environment downstream gets more than normal sooner.
In Canberra our forefathers saw fit to put the most of the storage back in the wilderness above the city and let gravity do the rest. Cheap as chips except the outfall must be treated to the highest standard for everyone else from here to Adelaide. The big decision last year was to return to river pumping to top up the huge dry dam on the far side emptied after bushfires ruined all water in the main storage.
Guess what? Our water rates went up!
Back in the 1970’s I was out round Melbourne after their fires and droughts tinkering with new water and old sewage treatment plants above much of the city. There had been a crisis in all infrastructures through the post war building boom. The 1960’s were very bad for bushfires on the outskirts and in the hill towns. We fought the worst in the hills with garden tools after sustained arson attacks and the old water supplies had run dry. I saw real panic on wide fronts then. Eventually the Thompson River had to be harnessed.
Any government worth its salt now, needs to look backwards to those years. Adequate storage is vital everywhere.
Unfortunately the most suitable areas for storage tend also to be of ”high conservation” value and politicians are loathe to restrict the public’s psychological need for pristine rainforest (I say psychological as most dont go near it, they just like to know ”it’s out there somewhere”).
The Hunter Valley in NSW is blessed with visionary water managers; between the Chichester Dam, Grahamestown Dam (currently undergoing extensions to weir height which will double capacity enabling them to export water to the Central Coast), Tomago Sands, Glenbawn Dam plus other weirs they have water to boot.
Here is a question for Hasbeen. What Australian forest do you and your family get your toilet paper from?
Soon after I quit the paper mills I tried the low impact lifestyle. It went this way; bush block, tents, kids, cast iron stove, bulldozer, shed, underground tanks and live stock. Why the bulldozer? Bull ants all over, three to an adult palm. They lived in ancient stumps with enough roots each to cover a tennis court. After a long period of high school homework under a candle and no TV we had mains power too.
Back to progress: although milking a herd of Friesians or woolly goats can be rewarding, education for the completive young today needs to be much more than a rural understanding.
Our lifestyle must include options like hot showers including remote power sources and toilet paper regardless of changing resources and values. Resources will continue to be distributed through fair trade.
Malcolm – pls look at the spatial distribution maps not an Australia wide average. The time series is meaningless for water resources policy.
I am not doubting the utility of rain water tanks but there are some gotchas retrofitting a whole city with them. There is movement on the issue with many people installing tanks in Brisbane at least. People has also responded well by conserving water – actually surprised council – so don’t say there is zero will to change.
Ian – if want to pull the “steal my water” line, let no tax dollars from suburbia go to rural Australia for drought support and we’ll import all our food thanks. You can guys can have the rest, problems, weeds and ferals. No I’m not serious – just making a point.
Yes Taz, the low impact lifestyle is not one that greenies actually live, its a concept that they preach, ad nauseum
Something that back-to-nature people fail to plan for; their kids will leave home chasing an education and career and move far away, never to return.
That means missing out on being a “hands-on’ grandparent (shove that in your social capital equation speadsheet)
It also means living in an aging community, with a greater drain on existing health resources whilst the future population has migrated. Greenies dont think of that.
Rog – there must be plague of greenies out there causing all this havoc. All those greenies you meet getting back to nature in western NSW and western Qld .. not!
yea sure ! more drivel greenie bashing from the self-made right wing
So the climate change issue is settled then? The science suggests that AGW could well be happening, so to be on the safe side, we should get prepared to mitigate and adapt. The nomeclature could be improved. The IPCC criticisms are only a matter of degree and not material, so they don’t invalidate the IPCC or its recommendations. Australia’s economic case against implementing Kyoto was weighted for the ‘no’ position, exaggerated the costs and ignored the potential benefits and opportunities (including opportunities to capitalise on that wonderful Australian ingenuity to develop renewable technologies). Now we’re chasing some loose commitment to pursue uncertain technologies that may start to capture emissions in up to 20 years time, meanwhile we’re reducing support for renewable generators while the US and the EU pull ahead and invest heavily in renewables. What will ignoring Kyoto cost Australia, long-term? Destined to be a mindless follower, ne’er a leader. Baaaaaa.
The point about water is that our institutions have failed to grasp key elements of water use efficiency and ethics. And this ignorance is being put into schemes that are a total waste of money and highly inefficient. And the problem will need to get worse before better minds focus on effective solutions. And we have been dealing with water supply for a few centuries, millenia if we count the Romans.
Greenhouse has only been an issue for two decades and it is almost an absolute certainty that the measures that the community would come up with, at this stage, would be ineffective and very high cost for minimal return.
Kyoto was nothing more than a 1976 mainframe, taking up a whole room to deliver a quarter meg of tape drive. Think of the changes that have taken place in IT in the 30 years since then and then try and tell me the kids won’t come up with a better, cheaper option.
My bet is that there is a kid with his thumb in his mouth out there who will discover a new use for Co2 and turn it into a valuable resource. And the green movement will be complaining about excessive harvesting of Co2 to the detriment of key ecological processes.
Phil,
I would have thought that a nationally based time series graph of total annual rainfall trends since 1900 was an infinitely better measure of what IS actually going on. Even if one can detect some variation in selected regions the safer bet would have to be that any regional variation is transient, and therefore what is happening in toto, is a better measure. ie it is the sum of all regional variations.The sum of this is, that total rainfall in Australia is not going down, fullstop.
The real issues with water resources policy is about how we allocate, price, and use the water. Not regional variations in what falls.
The climate change issue is not settled. But if there is a 10% probability of serious change then an investment approach would be far superior to a prescriptive approach. And given the lack of certainty involved in GH issues, we are entirely justified in giving the kids the opportunity to fix any problem that might occur with their greater knowledge and superior technology. This is especially the case if the proposed measures to be implemented today would hamper the economy to such an extent that the knowledge and technology of the kids will be seriously impaired.
I was thinking more of sea-changers and tree-changers Phil, coastal NSW and QLD is bursting with them placing a strain on finite resources (like health care). Your extreme sensitivity on these matters has been noted.
Rog; thanks for your astute comment re my post education and living the alternative; Other folks on here may also notice I don’t rely much on using the web for developing my opinion on a variety of issues associated with testing the boundaries.
There is a good reason for that.
About 1968 a catch up class in Melbourne on English for a diploma interrogated their lecturer on his private life after he delivered a copy of the Henderson Report the first “The Poverty Line” for class study. We were all guineas pigs in his personal social experiment to give tech students an edge in life. As that class broke up it formed into fractions that moved on to other things, one group in particular recognised a need to change Australian political party structure. I used some of them again in 1971.
Let’s make an extraordinary claim here about greenies. They came after us in time and probably from a different perspective. We were a politically neutral core in the environment movement long before some of it switched to the left.
Rog, the people I knew then were a very dedicated group from a range of occupations and fortunes. In our work to change the two main parties policies, some lost their regular jobs, others their families, a few almost their sanity in extremely adverse conditions. Several even lost their lives in that first campaign.
Later on after we all went separate ways I went back to basics on as many errors as I could reasonably expect my family to suffer. I still wonder who suffered most, the pollies who lost their seats, the families of the missing, the children who waited while parents published their bit or the odd ones who went on elsewhere.
A lad I met in our play on the streets of Melbourne got right up the noses of the Gendarmes in Paris over their atoms in the pacific. He was heavily placed in prison. I recall telling him with our lot about the evidence from Kodak that was sent to our Government after the second round the globe fallout over Melbourne.
Those were the early days rog.
And so Taz isn’t this like reformed alcoholics telling the rest of us not drink? (no offence intended)
People are not leaving inland Australia in droves because of greenie politics, nor I’d suggest are many greenies getting over the range.
How many young Australians are seriously opting for a “Tree Change” in lifestyle on the coast.
Rog – why am I sensitive – because at every moment you drop a gratuitous greenie bash. I have friends that have green sensitivities – they’re nice people – maybe I should ask them if they’re greenies – I think they are. I think you misrepresent them. I also have friends who are quite right wing too. But they don’t tell me every 5 minutes.
Party professionals may be wondering too but a few of us had a very interesting time resetting mainstream agendas from the outside in 1972. I believe it can be done again.
Moving on I must say rog; the youngsters I meet occasionally in local government (ACT) now are learning fast. Although many are graduates from modern environment science I treat them all as naive.
They probably see me as an old fool today but I know they are told to listen to the public and they do!
My biggest problem now is the NIMBY factor. That is why I go on still and have another agenda.
Malcolm with respect I have to disagree. If you consider the spatial pattern of rainfall – the area that is increasing is central Australia to NW WA. There are drying trends elsewhere should you consider the Bureau spatial maps listed above. If you are living in the Gibson Desert that’s nice for you. Most of us are not.
Most of us are living in eastern Australia on the edge with agriculture going down from Emerald through Dubbo to Melbourne, and of course SW WA.
It’s like saying what’s the average Australian temperature. Makes a difference if you live at Darwin or Thredbo !
Water allocation and water resources policy is most important sure. But the principles on which you have developed those applications need some degree of stability over time.
Perhaps if I knew how to identify someone who is “green sensitive” I may take measures to not offend those sensitivities.
Definitely talking about the weather would be sensitive as is any mention of any material item, money, contruction, development, achievement or McDonalds. And never ever ever ask “what is that propeller on your head”?
Ender and I can help you too Rog – if you come in with Louis we can offer you a discount.
Perhaps more people could do with a real education at Taz’s School of Hard Knocks.
Some like to reinforce the stereotypes because it’s fits with their unchanging, rigid perception of the world. This encourages battles and deadlocks, rather than exchange and learning. After you’ve insulted them, are government workers then more or less likely to accept your input?
What data supports the claim that “proposed measures to be implemented today would hamper the economy to such an extent that the knowledge and technology of the kids will be seriously impaired”? Meeting the Kyoto Protocal could have caused Australia to take an extra 3 weeks in the year to reach the annual GNP it would otherwise have reached.
Are you volunteering thinksy?
Public servants thrive on abuse – from the govt of the day, the public, and their various stakeholders. I think the American system may be better where we have easier transition between business, academia and government. We could have Dr Rog “DG of public policy implementation”.
Here a bit more realism – data based assessment
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2006/01/31/hot-tip-post-misses-the-point/