South Australian Premier Mike Rann might be listening to the once-banned Solar Shop advertisements in which Tim Flannery says climate change is the greatest threat facing humanity.
According to ABC Online, just today he has pledged a whopping 60 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions if his government is re-elected on March 18.
He will even introduce new laws to make sure the target is achieved by 2050.
The policy was apparently announced at a wind farm this morning and includes $250,000 to set up a climate change research centre at the University of Adelaide and the installation of mini wind turbines on government buildings in the city.
So 2050 is how many elections away? How old will Mike Rann be in 2050?
(Sorry Joe, but one for Ender.)
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
The South Australian “Thinker in Residence” this year is Stephen Schneider, so “Media Mike” Rann is pushing the global warming line, egged on by the genial looking Tim Flannery, who cheerfully tells us (on taxpayer funded TV commercials), that we can help prevent climate change by taking shorter showers and turning our computers off standby mode.
At the same time, Rann is promoting a population increase to 2 million, and trying to attract more industry to SA. Quite how this will square with the reduction in CO2 emissions I’m not sure.
Unfortunately the Liberal opposition is basically a disorganised rabble, so there’s not a lot of alternative to Rann’s trendy policies.
It could be good business: new technological market opportunities and the money multiplier effect ‘n all that:
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/35363/story.htm
“Total trade in carbon dioxide (CO2), the main traded greenhouse gas, was worth 9.4 billion euros,..”
Sounds pretty cool Thinksy, Adelaide could buy some carbon credits from Russia and build a new coal fired power station.
Fabulous idea, better get the carbon credit projections right for the lifetime of the plant though. If they’re willing to bank on him, could get Joe the Trader to figure it out, he seems like an astute kinda guy.
Seeing as how SA is not signatory to Kyoto, it’s a bit hard to see how it could participate in the hot air market.
One of the global warming ads lists ten ways to reduce greenhouse emissions that the ordinary household can do. Most of them are quite commonsense if you’re looking to reduce your power bill. I asked, about four months ago, how much they expected to reduce emissions if the whole state followed these guidelines. Unfortunately their budget doesn’t appear to run to enough staff to answer these basic questions. I suspect they have no idea of the answer, or else the reduction in emissions would be so negligible as to expose the whole thing as a propaganda exercise.
SA produces about .1% of global emissions. If we all went back to the caves tomorrow, global emissions growth would make up the difference in about six months. It’s all about a grandstanding socialist government making trendy policies so the latte sippers feel better about their 4WDs.
Yep. Media Mike at it again. Electioneering – appealing to the latte vote, perhaps to siphon off some of the independant votes. Cimate change might be the ‘greatest threat facing humanity’, but threatening to cut so-called greenhouse emissions by 60% makes Mike Rann look like the geatest threat facing South Australians. But loopy legislation can be squashed, and with another 10 elections before 2050, that is likely (4 year term in SA).
And I love the idea of mini wind turbines on the top of Govenment buildings. Powered by hot air emitting from downstairs?
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/earth/mg18925351.500.html
PROFF THAT TIM FLANNERY IS CONCEALING SOMETHING_ Something even worse that CARBON DIOXIDE!
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Something nasty in the air
* 21 January 2006
Just as the world starts to take carbon emissions seriously, along creeps another environmental crisis – and the reactive nitrogen threat could be worse
STOP five people on the street and chances are they will be able to tell you that carbon dioxide emissions cause global warming. Stop another five and ask them about nitrogen emissions, and they will probably stare at you blankly.
But a growing number of scientists say that nitrogen is a problem that we ignore at our peril. While we have been fretting about the consequences of a 10 per cent increase in CO2, levels of polluting nitrogen compounds in the environment have almost doubled. If we ignore them for much longer, the scientists insist, the consequences are likely to be even worse than “just” global warming. Human health, biodiversity, ozone levels and global climate are already being affected. And if we thought the carbon problem was tricky to sort out, we’re in for an even nastier shock.
“Long term, anthropogenic nitrogen is probably a greater environmental threat than anthropogenic–