“Today’s G77 walkout at the Copenhagen climate conference is purely a negotiating tactic because there’s so much money at stake. Copenhagen is no longer about climate – it’s about cash and corruption, both for poor and wealthy countries. By accepting restrictions on carbon emissions in exchange for cash, the world’s poorest countries are offering to prevent growth and perpetuate poverty. Ultimately, this could be a tragic repeat of the aid industry in the 1960s and 70s, when the leaders of some of the poorest countries stuffed their Swiss bank accounts – all in the name of the poor.”

The vote is sponsored by World Vision; Australia’s largest charitable organisation with a history of working with schools. 

When I was about 13, in about 1976, my school promoted World Vision’s 40 Hour Famine to raise money to feed children in poor countries.  I only raised a small amount through the sponsorship program but it made me feel like I had participated in something good – something worthwhile. 

Now World Vision is involved in not only humanitarian work but also the politics of climate change:   ‘Youth Decide ‘09’ is a national youth vote on climate change sponsored by World Vision and no doubt results from the poll will be used leading up to the United Nation’s Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen to tell the Rudd Government how Australian Students want cuts in emissions by at least 40 percent by 2020. 

Indeed according to ‘Youth Decide ‘09’ only by Australia signing up to drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emission can the worst impacts of climate change be avoided, the Great Barrier Reef  be saved, less people around the world face water and food shortages and the list goes on…   http://www.youthdecide.com.au/home.aspx

In reality it will make no difference to any of these things, or global temperatures, if the Australian government agrees to reduce emissions or not.   So World Vision is not only involving itself in politics, but also spreading misinformation.

There is no science, not even Ross Garnaut science, indicating Australia makes a significant contribution to global emissions.

Indeed the ‘Youth Decide ‘09’ website is full of misinformation and yet it includes Monash University as a partner.

While the rhetoric is little changed from 1976 when I raised money for World Vision, the difference is that back then no one was involving science.  It is one thing for teacher to tell kids about poverty and encourage them to raise some money to be charitable, but it is an entirely different matter to involve science teachers in politics and morality – which is exactly what ‘Youth Decide 09’ is all about.

If burning is interrupted, then woody shrubs thrive, and the savanna turns into thickets. Due to lightning, fires will still occur, but they will be at longer intervals, and much fiercer, potentially lethal to both humans and wildlife, as in Kruger National Park (http://ag.arizona.edu/oals/ALN/aln54/govender.html ).

I have never been to the Tiwis, but I suspect that they are very similar in this respect to Africa, or Madagascar, where Dr Kristian Kull (Isle of Fire 2006) has eloquently described the political ecology of regular burning by humans.

My attention was caught recently by a television news item about the ‘Tiwi Carbon Project’, in which CSIRO is working with the Tiwi islanders to reduce the carbon released by their fires, and so win them large amounts of cash as ‘carbon credits’. I pursued this back in time, and found a few events which may relate. In 2006, the ABC’s Catalyst program carried a story about a similar scheme in the Northern Territory. The then Northern Territory Environment Minister, Marion Scrymgour (a Tiwi woman), seemed to be working with several Aboriginal Elders, and Dr Jeremy Russell-Smith, a scientist at the CRC Tropical Savannas Management, to promote mild traditional burning, early in the season, to avoid fierce fires later on – wonderful. 

According to Dr Russell-Smith, the Australian Greenhouse Office considers such burning technically feasible for carbon credits. The narrator said that ‘A hectare burnt in May releases half the greenhouse emissions of a hectare burnt in a hot November wildfire’ (www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1769056.htm).

Further searching found that Marion Scrymgour, in June of this year, left the Labor Party, removing the Henderson government majority. I don’t know the details, but the rift seems to have been over Aboriginal policy.  In August of this year, Marion Scrymgour suddenly rejoined the Labor Party, and, as far as I can determine, the Tiwi Carbon Project was announced soon after.

A few questions occur to me:

• Does the Rudd Government now recognize the merits of traditional mosaic burning, as opposed to uncontrollable megafires?

• If so, can state government departments and local government Bushfire Volunteers, now claim carbon credits for any prescribed burning they do?

• As Federal Environment Minister, was Mr. Peter Garrett involved in the Tiwi matter?

• If so, how about a press release from his office, setting out the environmental benefits of regular, early burning, as done by Aborigines in southern Australia for thousands of years?

• Was there any connection between Marion Scrymgour rejoining the Labor Party, and the approval of the Tiwi project?

• Is there a connection between funding for the Tiwi project, and the recent axing of funds to the Bushfire CRC, established after the 2002 NSW bushfires?

Green Davey lives in Perth, Western Australia

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The 2009 Victorian Bushfire Royal Commission has today handed down its Interim Report: http://www.royalcommission.vic.gov.au/getdoc/9d5fb826-b507-4fed-a7f7-86bab961992f/Interactive-Version .   I have not yet read the report, but flicking through I can’t see a heading that relates to prescribed burning.

Senators voted 42 to 30 against the law, which included plans for a carbon trading system similar to one used in Europe.

Australia, the world’s biggest coal exporter, was proposing to reduce greenhouse gases by between 5 percent and 15 percent of 2000 levels in the next decade…  Read more here.

“Although military and intelligence planners have been aware of the challenge posed by climate changes for some years, the Obama administration has made it a central policy focus.”

The same  article explains the planning, at least in part, is about reviewing critical military installations and their vulnerabilty to rising seas and storms – both natural hazards.  This would seem all very sensible.

But Senator John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, is apparently hoping to use the issue to push through the cap n trade legislation. He has even claimed the war in southern Sudan is a result of global warming.

No doubt the actual article by Mr Broder is a useful part of this campaign it begins: WASHINGTON — The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.

The article suggests a need for military intervention as a consequence of global warming.

Here we have alarmists starting to sound like neo-conservatives. Is this the sort of the thing the New York Times would normally advocate or even condone?

***************
Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security
August 8, 2009. John Broder. New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/science/earth/09climate.html?pagewanted=1

Quadrant Online ETS Forum, edited by Professor Bob Carter, is now online.

Forum participants: James Allan, David Archibald, Bob Carter, Ian Castles, Sinclair Davidson, Terry Dwyer, David Evans, Ray Evans, Viv Forbes, John Izzard, William Kininmonth, Jennifer Marohasy, Des Moore, Alan Moran, Joanne Nova, Ian Plimer, Alex Robson (some essays will be posted over the coming days).

www.quadrant.org.au

Michael Connor, Quadrant, Sydney

It is generally agreed that the legislation is intended to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide and methane.  However, given the big global polluters including China have no intensions of signing up to such a scheme, it is also generally agreed that an Australian emissions trading scheme will have no significant impact on global emissions or global temperatures. 

But in terms of economics how big will the impact be and what will the flow on effect be in terms of Australian industries and as a consequence the Australian environment.

Very large tracts of Australia support a cattle industry.  The government intends to include agriculture in the scheme down-the-track and Senator Barnaby Joyce, Leader of the Nationals in the Senate, claims that taxing methane emissions from cattle will effectively make beef too expensive.  He has claimed a prime cut roast will end up costing upwards of A$100.

Many would argue that the end of the cattle industry in Australia would be a good thing for the environment.   Indeed Ross Garnaut, a key advisor to the government on climate change, suggested in his final report on climate change that the nation’s farmers should switch to kangaroo and this would have multiple environmental benefits additional to reducing emissions.   But instead of switching to kangaroos, it is perhaps more likely that beef producers in moderate rainfall zones will plant trees to defray their costs.  This is what a reader of this weblog, Luke Walker, has suggested and furthermore he claims that trees in large numbers will impact significantly on catchment hydrology resulting in reduced water yields.

Another industry likely to be affected by the proposed legislation is mining.   While mining has arguably a less diffuse impact on the immediate landscape than either agriculture or forestry it never-the-less impacts.   There is currently a battle between farmers and miners on the Liverpool Plains of northern central NSW as farmers worry about the impact of proposed new coal mines in particularly on their aquifers.      

In short, is an ETS likely to be beneficial for Australia’s natural environment, not because it will reduce global emissions of carbon dioxide, but because it will result in the closure of many Australian primary industries and extractive industries?

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The picture is of a young blue gum plantation in western Victoria taken by Jennifer Marohasy on a cold day in November 2006.

If you live on a diet of naturally grown wild berries and lentils, which you scavenge for in your back yard, then you’d also probably be OK. But if you’re associated with the consumption of food, that’s either grown with the use of carbon intensive processes, or if you like to eat beef, mutton or lamb, which involves the emission of methane and is apparently a super form of carbon, then under Mr Rudd’s proposal, you’ll potentially have to pay for the privilege.

Put simply, a single beast, which ends up on our supermarket shelves as steak, roast, mince or sausages, emits about 70 kilograms of methene and according to the Kyoto protocol this has to be multiplied by 21 which means that each beast is responsible for emitting  around a tonne and a half of carbon.

Utilising NAB modelling on the price of a carbon permit, a tonne and half of carbon, multiplied by about $50, is equivalent to an additional cost to the farmer of approximately $75 dollars per beast per year.

$75 dollars per beast per year = no beef industry in Australia !

If the consumer wants to eat beef and can afford to pay for it then you will be buying it from a country that doesn’t have an ETS.

The price of beef in Australia will be above the price paid in other countries that don’t have a beef industry which will result in you paying better than $100 dollars for a prime cut roast.

Quite obviously the quality of the Australian standard of living, as reflected in our diet, will be reduced.

When it comes to lamb and mutton, sheep emit around 10 kilograms of methane, so using the same formula; this means around 210 kilograms of carbon per year, per sheep which equates to Australian sheep farmers being slugged about $10 per sheep annually and this will ultimately drive sheep meat out of the market.

So, if you decided to have a lamb roast for dinner this Sunday, which the gentleman in the car giving me a lift today said he was planning to do, then expect to pay almost $100 dollars at the butcher for it.

This is the sort of reality that we as Australians have to understand we’d be signing ourselves up for if Mr Rudd gets his way with his ridiculous Emissions Trading Scheme.

Penny Wong has said publicly that she would not accept the proposition put by Malcolm Turnbull that would exclude agriculture, so lets not play ducks and drakes here, agriculture in Australia is going to suffer massively if Mr Rudd gets his way and the biggest losers in all this will ultimately end up being the consumer as they struggle to pay to fill the family shopping basket each week.

If Mr Rudd’s plan was actually going to make a difference then it would be slightly plausible, but the fact is, it is not. Mr Rudd’s ETS will not result in the planet being cooled and has not even the slightest prospect of doing anything for the global climate.

Mr Rudd’s ETS is merely a gesture, a token. There are all sorts of wonderful gestures we can offer as comfort for the world’s problems, however if imposing a tax on consumers, which Mr Rudd wants to do, is the right way to deal with things, then we may as well impose a tax to bring about world peace.    

Mr Rudd keeps coming up with all these peculiar ideas.

Imposing a crippling tax on consumer’s, forcing us to pay massively inflated prices at the supermarket for the food we eat and forcing Australian farmers out of business is implausible, short sighted and dangerous.

Barnaby Joyce
Leader of the Nationals in the Australian Senate

Either the government impresses on the population that it must be content with less including smaller families, smaller houses and fewer pairs of shoes etcetera or there will be more emissions.

I’m happy to go along with less – I’ve never aspired to a luxurious lifestyle or a big family.   But most of the rest of the population doesn’t seem to get it?

Viv Forbes does – see below, but Malcolm Turnbull doesn’t. 

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Dear Jennifer

Australia’s Prime Minister, Kelvin Rudd, has woken up that Penny’s Ration-and-Tax (RAT) Scheme will destroy jobs.

But instead of killing the RAT Scheme, he proposes a massive carbon subsidy to offset the job destruction caused by the carbon tax.

Kevin and Malcolm [Malcolm Turnbull, Leader of the Opposition] need to make up their minds.

If they want to cut the production of harmless carbon dioxide, it MUST cause job losses in coal, power generation, cement, steel, farming and tourism.

But if job protection is important to them, they should abandon the RAT scheme immediately and concentrate on important matters.

Fiddling with it, achieves neither goal.

As for the subsidy, Kevin needs reminding that the money we get from Canberra is the money we sent to Canberra, less handling charges both ways.

A tax and subsidy policy always replaces real jobs in regional industry with fake jobs in the money laundering departments in Canberra.

Mr Viv Forbes
Rosewood, QLD 4340
28th July, 2009

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Dear Jennifer,

The Coalition supports, and supported when in Government, an environmentally effective and economically responsible emissions trading scheme (ETS) as part of a co-ordinated global response to climate change.
Indeed the first legislation to establish an ETS was introduced by me as Environment Minister in 2007.

However, it is vital that we get the design right. A well designed ETS will achieve substantial reductions in emissions and at the same time ensure that we do not sacrifice jobs and industries to other countries which do not have a comparable price on carbon.
 
Right now, every party and interest group except the Rudd Government agrees that Labor’s ETS legislation is flawed and must be improved.

Despite our view the ETS should not be finalised until after the US Congress has determined the shape of America’s ETS and the Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen in December has determined the global community’s next steps, the Prime Minister is determined, purely for political purposes, to force an earlier vote on this legislation.

So the Coalition has examined what changes would be needed for us to consider supporting the legislation prior to the end of this year.
So in that practical context, I have set out nine issues of principle which must be addressed in Labor’s scheme. First and foremost is that an Australian ETS should offer no less protection for jobs, small business and industry than an American ETS which is presently in the form of the Waxman Markey Bill approved by the House of Representatives but yet to pass the US Senate.
In addition, an Australian ETS should enable us to take advantage of the full range of agricultural offsets (”green carbon) which will enable much greater reduction in our overall CO2 emissions.

To read the full release and list of issues which need to be addressed in the Rudd ETS  click here
http://malcolmturnbull.com.au/Media/LatestNews/tabid/110/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/541/Statement-regarding-an-Emissions-Trading-Scheme.aspx

You can also watch my interview with Barrie Cassidy on Sunday on the ABC Insiders program here
http://malcolmturnbull.com.au/MalcolmTV/Videos/TabId/111/VideoId/106/Malcolm-Talks-With-Barrie-Cassidy-On-Insiders-.aspx

All the best,
Malcolm Turnbull
Leader of the Opposition
Federal Member for Wentworth
July 28, 2009

***************************************

The picture was taken in the Grose Valley, Blue Mountains, Australia, in February 2009.  It costs nothing, except time, to go bushwalking in the Blue Mountains.

It is also generally recognised that it is the west that has spear-headed the campaign against the so-called climate crisis.  And the west is desperate to get the rest of the world to a United Nations meeting in Copenhagen in December to discuss solutions to this issue.  

The UN’s top climate negotiator, a Dutchman Yvo De Boer, has already said the west will have to put $10 billion on the table to get the developing world – read China and India – to agree to anything at Copenhagen.

He doesn’t sound like much of a negotiator to me: More likely a bleeding-heart who can’t see that those in power in so-called developing countries like China and India are probably laughing behind closed doors.    Indeed their GDP is already very large and growing relative to countries like Holland.

All the west really has on its side for this upcoming meeting in Copenhagen is its own smug, misguided sense of morality based on environmentalism.  

Indians appears to better understand the science and the politics – at least better than Holland and Australia.

Rajendra Pachauri, an Indian and chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has explained, “You cannot, in a democracy, ignore some of these realities and as it happens with the resources of coal that India has we really don’t have any choice but to use coal in the immediate short term.

Jairam Ramesh, the Indian environment minister, recent accused the developed world of needlessly raising alarm over melting Himalayan glaciers. 

The west will of course continue to obsess over environmentalism and its tax payers continue to finance planned investments in renewable energy in countries like India and China that will continue to build coal power fire stations.

Tax payers in the west have already been paying through their nose for all the moralizing on climate change.  According to a recent study by Australian Joanne Nova the US Government has spent more than $79 billion of taxpayers’ money since 1989 on policies related to climate change, including science and technology research, administration, propaganda campaigns, foreign aid, and tax breaks.  And she concludes: Most of this spending was unnecessary.

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Notes and Links

Read Joanne Nova’s Climate Money: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/climate_money.html
 Despite the billions wasted, audits of the science are left to unpaid volunteers. A dedicated but largely uncoordinated grassroots movement of scientists has sprung up around the globe to test the integrity of “global warming” theory and to compete with a lavishly-funded, highly-organized climate monopsony. Major errors have been exposed again and again.
 Carbon trading worldwide reached $126 billion in 2008. Banks, which profit most, are calling for more. Experts are predicting the carbon market will reach $2 – $10 trillion in the near future. Hot air will soon be the largest single commodity traded on global exchanges.
 Meanwhile, in a distracting sideshow, Exxon-Mobil Corp is repeatedly attacked for paying just $23 million to skeptics—less than a thousandth of what the US government spends on alarmists, and less than one five-thousandth of the value of carbon trading in 2008 alone.
 The large expenditure designed to prove the non-existent connection between carbon and climate has created a powerful alliance of self-serving vested interests.
 By pouring so much money into pushing a single, scientifically-baseless agenda, the Government has created not an unbiased investigation but a self-fulfilling prophecy.
 Sound science cannot easily survive the vice-like grip of politics and finance.

To get a perspective on what some Chinese political theorists are thinking, consider this. While Westerners “anguish” about how to manage China’s rise, Chinese think-tankers debate about “how to manage the West’s decline”! Wang Yiwei, from Fudan University, shares this worry, and asks, “How can we prevent the USA from declining too quickly?” (pp. 115-116)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/What-Does-China-Think-Leonard/dp/0007230680

“(It) will allow developing countries to begin preparing national plans to limit their own emissions, and to adapt to climate change,” he told the BBC.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8163456.stm

Image of the Shanghai skyline from http://www.ghmadsen.com/Bilder/Kina/shanghai_skyline_g.jpg