HALFWAY between Hawaii and Australia lies the tiny nation of Tuvalu, which according to popular mythology is slowly disappearing into the Pacific Ocean because of rising sea levels. Except a recent article at the ABC news website correctly explained that in the four decades to 2014, Tuvalu has actually grown by 73 hectares.
How can this be? The mainstream news media reporting something factual – even though it contradicts their catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) meme!
It all began with my favourite federal politician, Craig Kelly MP … a relentless warrior for all that is logical and reasonable. 
Mr Kelly always takes a keen interest in the detail of issues that concern his electorate in Sutherland just south of Sydney, and his objective of late has been fair electricity prices. This objective resulted in something of an obsession by Mr Kelly with the draft National Energy Guarantee legislation – the NEG. In fact, this objective, that became a concern, that developed into an obsession, brought down a Prime Minister. It also caused the ABC Fact Check team to take an interest in his speeches and recently declare him correct, at least on the issue of Tuvalu.
Let me begin this story on 13th August when then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull insisted that a meeting of the Coalition’s Energy and Environment Committee, which is chaired by Craig Kelly, be in the prime minister’s cabinet room in his presence at 9pm that Monday night … rather than as usual at 8am in a standard committee room, immediately before the usual party room meeting which is at 9am on the Tuesdays that federal parliament is sitting.
The NEG legislation had been in development for over one year, but Mr Kelly had only ever been given one-page summaries. From these, early in 2018, Mr Kelly had understood that the Paris Target would be for 2030 and could be backloaded, so much of the emissions reduction could be, for example, in a decade’s time after the ever-promised improvement in the reliability and price of renewable sources of energy. Further, there would be no interim target, and the cost of the intermittency of the generators would be borne by the intermittent generators themselves. This meant that those ostensibly providing electricity to the grid were obliged to provide it when called upon, or else they would pay a penalty. These points were all important provisions in the draft legislation that Mr Kelly had lobbied for.
Then, there was rumbling that there would be an interim target, and that there could even be an annual emissions reduction target … that the Prime Minister was requesting as much.
This was in perhaps June, and Mr Kelly protested. “We don’t need to make Paris more onerous than it already is,” he complained to his parliamentary colleagues.
Mr Kelly became further concerned when it became apparent in July that the cost of the intermittency of generation could be borne by the large industrial users. That is, when the wind didn’t blow the bigger manufacturers would need their own backup … their own diesel generators.
These were all concerns that Mr Kelly made known to Mr Turnbull. But most importantly, he wanted to see the actual legislation – the text, the detail.
The meeting of the Energy and Environment Committee that Monday night – held in the room normally reserved for the Cabinet, and most unusually attended by the Prime Minister – lasted about two hours. By the end of it, seven members said they would support the Prime Minister and the legislation. Former Prime Minister Tony Abbot, now a backbencher and a new member of that committee, said he was opposed to it. Queensland Liberal-National MP Ken O’Dowd said he was undecided. That was also the position of Mr Kelly: he insisted that before he could endorse the NEG he needed to see the fine print – he needed more than a one-page summary.
Mr Kelly repeated this concern the next day in the party room, while eyeballing the Prime Minister.
That week parliament finished-up on Thursday. The next day, on Friday 17th August, soon after 6pm – soon after the journalists would have filed their stories for the weekend papers – Prime Minister Turnbull made a major announcement regarding the NEG. The emissions reduction target that was being proposed at 26 percent by 2030 would be set by regulation – not parliament.
Craig Kelly was now angry, because this meant that there could be future increases in the renewable energy target at the discretion of whoever was the Minister at the time. Labour wanted the target set at 45 percent and could achieve as much if they won the next election without so much as consulting the people or the parliament. What Mr Kelly saw as a major lever of the economy – the price and reliability of electricity – could be changed at the stroke of a Minister’s pen, if Prime Minister Turnbull had his way.
Mr Kelly went into overdrive – against the NEG and the Prime Minister, and for democracy.
It was reported that Mr Kelly appeared to be on a “kamikaze mission”. Further, the mainstream media reported he was going to lose preselection because he was so out of touch and being so unreasonable.
In fact, within the week it would be Prime Minister Turnbull, not Craig Kelly, who was out of his job.
Mr Kelly spent the weekend phoning colleagues. Monday it was announced that the legislation would be withdrawn. Tuesday morning at the party room meeting Mr Turnbull stood aside, declaring a spill.
Mr Kelly didn’t have a plan for Peter Dutton or Scott Morrison to become Prime Minister, but he had had enough of Turnbull’s NEG and his concerns were resonating.
To be clear, if Craig Kelly thought that by Australians paying more for their electricity, we could save the planet, he would have supported the NEG and a high renewable energy target. But in Mr Kelly’s view arguing about a NEG of 26 or 45 percent is like arguing about how many fairies fit on a pin head – it is about chimerical wish-fantasies. Even a NEG of 100 percent would have no effect on global temperatures, but it would have a real and deleterious effect on Australian industries reliant on affordable and reliable energy and it would also negatively impact his constituents already struggling to pay their electricity bill.
And Mr Kelly’s concerns go further than this, he is of the opinion that the planet does even need saving – at least not from CAGW. Typical of many so-called sceptics, Mr Kelly is not sceptical of climate change. Rather by reading in some detail about the Earth’s history he realises that the climate has always changed.
Further, as John Abbot and I explain in our recent article in GeoResJ*, there is nothing unusual about the speed or magnitude of climate change over the last 100 or so years. For the last 1,000 to 2,000 years, temperatures have fluctuated within a channel of plus or minus 1 degree Celsius. It is only studies using remodelled data, suspect algorithms and cherrypicked datasets – that generate hockey-sticks. Considering the majority of published studies, in the best journals, global temperatures, including in Sweden, are about as hot now as they were 1,000 years ago.
I mention Sweden, because children in Australia that want the federal government to stop climate change have apparently been following the lead of a Swedish school girl: fifteen-year old Greta Thunberg who has been demonstrating outside the Swedish parliament to stop climate change. That was until she set off with her father in an electric car for the United Nations climate talks in Poland. There she explained that the climate crisis is “the biggest crisis that humanity has ever faced”.
This fake news has been reported uncritically by the world’s media. In fact, they have reported her as wise and brave … causing two fourteen-year old girls, Harriet and Milou, from Castlemaine in rural Victoria to organize the national day of school student protest in Australia.
I was in a taxi on my way to the Melbourne airport when I heard the oh-so passionate chanting on Friday 30th November. I asked the cabbie to go around the block again … I was in disbelief at the naivety of it all. Governments can, of course, be a hindrance to various things – for example, innovation. But it is hubris and nonsense to suggest they could ever stop climate change. This is what Craig Kelly has been trying to explain all year and was a key reason he was so concerned about the NEG and its negative impact on the economy, for no environmental gain.
While denied access to the text of the draft NEG legislation, Mr Kelly has been reading key technical papers on climate change. Earlier this year he read an article in the journal Nature by Paul Kench and colleagues from the University of Auckland. He repeated the conclusions from that research at a Liberal party fundraiser, attended by Get-up activists incognito. So outraged by Kelly’s claims about Tuvalu, the activists sent transcripts of his blasphemy to The Guardian and Australian Broadcasting Corporation. To the ABC’s credit they did a fact check, they even got back to Craig Kelly and asked him if he could substantiate his claims.
Mr Kelly sent them the article, which explains that despite sea level rise, there have been “positive sediment generation balances for these islands” from wave deposition. In fact, to quote more from the article “environmental” rather than “anthropogenic processes” are causing an “expansion of the majority of the islands … masking any incremental effects of rising sea levels, making attribution of sea level effects elusive, as these [environmental] processes can promote high frequency and larger magnitude changes in islands that can persist on the geomorphic record”.
Yet at least since Al Gore’s documentary ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ the world media has been claiming Tuvalu was lost to CAGW.
Every attempt by so-called sceptics to correct the record – until this latest by Craig Kelly – appeared to just generate more ridicule … specifically remembering Graham Young’s attempt to correct the record at Crikey.com back in 2006.
What neither the article in Nature that Mr Kelly quotes from, nor the recent few paragraphs of concession from our ABC, explain the complexity of the situation at Pacific Islands on an Earth where climate change and also volcanism will persist … yes volcanism.
Indeed, the great majority of oceanic islands, including in the Pacific, were formed by volcanic activity. While the volcanoes are active, the islands generally rise relative to the global averaged sea-level. When volcanic activity stops, the islands will cool and eventually start to sink … though as Paul Kench et al. explain in the Nature article wave process and shifts in wave regimes can result in the growth of atolls offsetting any rise in sea levels.
But what is needed in all of this, and especially in future ABC news items, is some context. It is fact that:
1. Since the last glacial maximum about 20,000 years ago, sea levels have risen by more than 100 metres as large ice sheets melted.
2. Globally-averaged sea levels reached a maximum height about 2,000 years ago.
3. Along the east coast of Australia sea levels have actually fallen by about 1.5 metres since then … to reiterate sea levels have fallen about 1.5 metres over the last 2,000 years.
3. But over the last 100 years there has been a slight, but measurable, increase in sea levels. Considering Sydney Harbour this has added up to about a 6.5 centimetre increase over the last 100 years … based on a documented rise of 0.65 millimetres per year between 1885 and 2010: that is the official rate of sea level rise at Fort Denison (just across from the Opera House) as reported by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). That is less than 1 millimetre per year.
Of course, compounded, this could add up to something catastrophic – one day. But, neither sea levels, nor temperatures, rise in a monotonic way – rather they cycle.
Considering just sea levels at any one location on this planet there is the daily tidal cycle, the monthly lunar cycle, the annual cycle associated with the sun’s declination that causes the four seasons, cycle associated with El Nino and La Nina events, and then there are the longer cycles including the cycles associated with ice ages and interglacial warm periods.
We need to hear more about this from the mainstream media … not just Mr Kelly.
There is no denying that standing for reason can be difficult, especially when the numbers and slogans are against you. But just as Craig Kelly defied a Prime Minister, and won … it is incumbent on every one of us who seeks the truth to keep asking questions and concern ourselves with the detail and most importantly to not give-up on the truth never mind the short-term consequences. This Wood Fired Hot Tub – our spruce wooden hot tubs with built-in stove is ideal for home use. Visit us today to find out more www.woodenspasolutions.co.uk
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*There has been a campaign against our article in GeoResJ by various high profile believers in CAGW, we respond to this in some detail here: https://jennifermarohasy.com/temperatures/response-to-criticism-of-abbot-marohasy-2017-georesj/
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Merry Christmas Jennifer. Your clear-sighted advocacy for reason is a contrast to the dogmatic clamour of AGW alarmists. Keep up the good work.
Jennifer, I read this with interest as I have yet to read a coherent report of why Turnbull was sent into exile..
But this puts it in context.. I guess is that Kelly not being part of Dutton’s clique, had no idea how his attempts to get changes to the NEG under Turnbull, would lead to an attempted Liberal party faction putsch.
The law of unintended consequences !
And so Morrison abandoned the proposed NEG raher than modify it..Very curious !
Thanks Jen and good on you, Craig Kelly.
Looks like Tuvalu is the Christmas present that only the sceptic realists want.
But whether the Alarmists like it or not, it is a reflection of the real state of climate change.
Merry Christmas to all.
Merry Christmas and best wishes to you and yours.
Your dedication to science and integrity is a gift to us all.
Thank you.
BTW, Jen, did you see this article in today’s Australian:
Coral can take the heat, unlike experts crying wolf PETER RIDD
· By Peter Ridd
· 12:00AM December 26, 2018
· 400+ Comments
Scientists from James Cook University have just published a paper on the bleaching and death of corals on the Great Barrier Reef and were surprised that the death rate was less than they expected, because of the adaptability of corals to changing temperatures.
It appears as though they exaggerated their original claims and are quietly backtracking.
To misquote Oscar Wilde, to exaggerate once is a misfortune, to do it twice looks careless, but to do it repeatedly looks like unforgivable systemic unreliability by some of our major science organisations.
The very rapid adaptation of corals to high temperatures is a well-known phenomenon; besides, if you heat corals in a given year, they tend to be less susceptible in the future to overheating. This is why corals are one of the least likely species to be affected by climate change, irrespective of whether you believe the climate is changing by natural fluctuations or because of human influence.
Corals have a unique way of dealing with changing temperature, by changing the microscopic plants that live inside them. These microscopic plants, called zooxanthellae, give the coral energy from the sun through photosynthesis in exchange for a comfortable home inside the coral. When the water gets hot, these little plants effectively become poisonous to the coral and the coral throws them out, which turns the coral white — that is, it bleaches.
But most of the time, the coral will recover from the bleaching. And here’s the trick: the corals take in new zooxanthellae, that floats around in the water quite naturally, and can selectselecting different species that are better suited to hot weather.
Most other organisms have to change their genetic make-up to deal with temperature changes — something that can take many generations. But corals can do it in a few weeks by just changing the plants that live in them.
They have learned a thing or two in a couple of hundred million years of evolution.
The problem here is that the world has been completely misled about the effects of bleaching by scientists who rarely mention the spectacular regrowth that occurs. For example, the 2016 bleaching event supposedly killed 93 per cent, or half, or 30 per cent of the reef, depending on which headline and scientist you want to believe.
However, the scientists looked only at coral in very shallow water — less than 2m below the surface — which is only a small fraction of all the coral, but by far the most susceptible to getting hot in the tropical sun.
A recent study found that deep-water coral (down to more than 40m) underwent far less bleaching, as one would expect. I estimate that less than 8 per cent of the Barrier Reef coral died. That might still sound like a lot, but considering that there was a 250 per cent increase in coral between 2011 and 2016 for the entire southern zone, an 8 per cent decrease is nothing to worry about. Coral recovers fast.
But this is just the tip of the exaggeration iceberg. Some very eminent scientists claim that bleaching never happened before the 1980s and is entirely a man-made phenomenon. This was always a ridiculous proposition.
A recent study of 400-year-old corals has found that bleaching has always occurred and is no more common now than in the past. Scientists have also claimed that there has been a 15 per cent reduction in the growth rate of corals. However, some colleagues and I demonstrated that there were serious errors in their work and that, if anything, there has been a slight increase in the coral growth rate over the past 100 years.
This is what one would expect in a gently warming climate. Corals grow up to twice as fast in the hotter water of Papua New Guinea and the northern Barrier Reef than in the southern reef. I could quote many more examples.
This unreliability of the science is now a widely accepted scandal in many other areas of study and it has a name: the replication crisis. When checks are made to replicate or confirm scientific results, it is regularly found that about half have flaws. This is an incredible and scandalous situation, a view shared by the editors of eminent journals and many science institutions. A great deal of effort is going into fixing this problem, especially in the biomedical sciences, where it was first recognised.
But not for Barrier Reef science. The science institutions deny there is a problem and fail to correct erroneous work. When Piers Larcombe and I submitted an article to a scientific journal suggesting we needed a little additional checking of Great Barrier Reef science, the response from many very eminent scientists was that there was no need. Everything was fine. I am not sure if this is blind optimism or wilful negligence, but why would anybody object to a little more checking? It would cost only a few million dollars — just a tiny fraction of what governments will be spending on the reef.
But the truth will out eventually. The scare stories about the Barrier Reef started in the 1960s, when scientists first started work on it. They have been crying wolf ever since. But the data keeps coming in and, yes, sometimes a great deal of coral dies in a spectacular manner, with accompanying media fanfare. It is like a bushfire on land — it looks terrible at first, but it quietly and rapidly grows back, ready for the scientists to peddle their story all over again.
Peter Ridd was, until fired this year, a physicist at James Cook University’s marine geophysical laboratory.
Thank you for the most sensible little scientific and history lesson on the coral.
well done !
I have heard many marine scientists over the past few years state exactly what you have commented on above, but they get very little media support except for Allan Jones and a very few others.
So keep putting it out there and hopefully over time there will be a ground swell of support for the real science, facts and history from which we can learn and progress from.
All the best,
Ed
Seasons greetings and HNY to all.
What is not discussed above is Frydenderg’s role in all of this, the loyal Turnbull NEG author, and now deputy PM. Frydenberg spent the best part of a year crafting the hopelessly flawed NEG and selling it to cabinet colleagues. The comment is he still believes in it, and is quietly supporting Turnbull’s request to reinstate it. His future position in a reformed Liberal party must be at risk.
The tragedy for Australia is that the coalition government is still peddling the fundamental untruth that replacement of fossil fuel-derived energy by expensive renewables will not cost jobs and close industries.
Until they tackle that major stumbling block, electoral victory will be impossible.
The other, hidden part of the electricity price fiasco is the Supply Charge, levied as a daily cost and generally paid by the retailer to the supply companies (poles and wires).
This charge mainly covers transmission costs, which are additional to power generation costs, and include capital charges (depreciated and amortised) for maintenance of existing network infrastructure, and also for new infrastructure to connect new wind and solar projects into the existing grid.
In our residential situation, this charge has risen from 1.2c/kwhr in 2012 to 3.6c/kwhr in 2018.
And this level of increase applies to every electricity customer in the nation.
An enquiry into electricity supply charges on their own would shed light on what proportion of renewables costs are being hidden in the transmission charges.