Public opinion isn’t always a reliable guide, but, given time, and a reasonable hearing of the issues, ordinary people get most things right in the end. The Lowy Institute survey released recently illustrates this with respect to climate change. Respondents were given three choices of viewpoint on climate change, as follows
There is a controversy over what the countries of the world, including Australia, should do about the problem of global warming. I’m going to read you three statements. Please tell me which statement comes closest to your own point of view.
Easily the most popular option, supported by more than two thirds (68%) of respondents, was that ‘global warming is a serious and pressing problem [and] we should begin taking steps now even if this involves significant costs’. A quarter (24%) of respondents agreed that ‘the problem of global warming should be addressed, but its effects will be gradual, so we can deal with the problem gradually by taking steps that are low in cost’. The least popular option, supported by only 7% of respondents, was that ‘until we are sure that global warming is really a problem we should not take any steps that would have economic costs’.
Not surprisingly, I agree with the majority, but I don’t have too much of a problem with the second position either. Kyoto is a low-cost first step, and gradualism is appropriate. The third position, which is pretty much that of John Howard, has even less support than I would have expected.
But where does this leave the denialists, who dominate the opinion pages of the Oz, and most of the rightwing blogosphere? Their view, that the whole thing is a hoax cooked up by greenies and scientists looking for grant money, wasn’t presented, but looking at the results it’s hard to believe it would attract more than 1 or 2 per cent of the population, on a par with theories that NASA faked the moon landings, or that the US government was behind 9/11.
John Quiggin 
For the contrarians, the fact that the general public has a better appreciation of the calamities in store must be galling to those propounding a ‘we know better’ elitist view of the world. On the issue of left and right, social research decades ago showed that the so called left were actually more conservative than the so called right and left and right has no real meaning. From my perspective your either civilised and caring or your not.
As for Taust and Proust your ideological speak gives you away, your the idealogues, every scribbled utterance is some fawning illusion to the superiority of the smart rejoinder, I have yet to see a single constructive contribution, your simply apologists for the arrogant media elites you probably belong to or work for and all your running is a spoiling operation.
It is not about right and wrong it is about dialogue and dealing with the evidence about you, the human warming signature is clear, the very long term natural celestial or solar cyclical warming pattern is probably correct as well, the problem is they are now both colliding, welcome to the ‘Perfect Storm’. Time to get real boys and girls. Nature cares for no ideology.
I don’t care if cotton farmers irrigate. They should just pay the same frigging price for water that I pay or justify why not (paying less for water that grows food has some rational basis, but not cotton).
You’re begging the question.
Sure, my real name is Rupert Murdoch.
Farmers (in particular Queensland cotton farmers) have legal entitlements to the water they use. There’s no real alternative to buying them out if we want to use it in urban areas. That would of course raise the price in the market, but if they don’t choose to sell, it’s too late to charge them more for the water they already own (there are some services associated with water delivery that are still public, but a lot of this has been privatised).
And even if we pursue this option, it’s not a magic wand. Except for Melbourne and Adelaide, there isn’t much scope to divert irrigation water to urban use. Buying irrigation water won’t change the need for higher prices in urban areas, in particular to finance investment in desalination or recycling, which will probably be private or PPP in many areas.
Before treating rhetoric as reality, it’s worth paying attention to some basic facts like the fact that water is heavy and that it evaporates when the weather is hot. The nearest major city downstream from St George is Adelaide, and there will be a fair bit of water loss along the way, so this isn’t as cheap an option as you might suppose. The initial beneficiaries from reducing water use in cotton would be downstream graziers and environmental flows.
You sound like a true blue National Party member. Such entitlements were presumably granted under very different circumstances to those in which we find ourselves today. Much the same as the right to belch arbitrary amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. If the government giveth, the governement can taketh away. Water is a public good.
Is it not a little inconsistent to strongly advocate changing the rules for CO2 emitters, yet throw in the towel when it comes to pre-existing rights for water usage?
I live in Adelaide, so will be one of the major beneficiaries of reduced agricultural use of water. There are 1.2M of us you know, vs a small handful of cotton farmers.
Perhaps we should form our own militia, and head off up the Murray in restored paddle steamers. Except that would just encourage the cotton farmers to use even more water so we’d be grounded before we get to them.
Oh well.
Water is a public good, but the schemes we need to use are going to allow it to be traded like a private good so that private incentives will cause it to be used in the most efficient manner (because its becoming scarce).
C02 emitters were never given any of those rights as private goods that they could trade (like the irrigators), anymore than tobacco companies had some private tradeable rights to kill people. It’s only after we established any connection between their activities and the welfare of others, that anyone’s rights come into play (tradeable or otherwise). Trading permits is one means to coordinate private incentives in one case, litigation is another means in the case of tobacco companies. Its all about internalising externalities in one way or another.
Proust, you really should go take an economics class or something and give up this ignorant opinion slinging. A militia on paddle steamers? Yeah perhaps.
I see no problem with the public purse being used to buy back entitlements where this is needed; so what if some irrigators end up making some money because the entitlements were sold to them too cheaply? Funny that PPPs should be mentioned in this context because those farmers/irrigators would be doing no less than bankers have done in some of those deals – out smarting some public servants. But, we live and learn, its not the first time governments have lost public money, especially privatising public assets.
Remember that properties were originally valued on their access to water, in some places (maybe many) this has been recognised and the history of usage has been taken into account in the granting of irrigation licenses. Mandating to taking water away from a farm is akin to theft of property.
JQ: how’s this for common sense on global warming?
The Decreasing Diurnal Temperature Range (DTR)
Daytime temperatures are higher than nighttime temperatures. The difference is defined as the diurnal temperature range (DTR). Observations show that in most places the DTR is decreasing in recent years. It is caused by temperatures increasing faster at night than during the day. Thomas Karl (1993) states: “Since 1950 all of the increase of temperature across the U.S.A. is due to an increase in the minimum temperature (about 0.75 degrees C/ Century or 1.5 degrees F/Century ) with no change in the daily maximum temperature. This caused a decrease in the diurnal temperature range.” Subsequently, this type of behavior has been observed at other locations and is stronger as one goes towards the polar regions. It now appears most of the observed global surface warming of recent decades is occurring mostly at night.
Explanations involving Changes in the Atmosphere
A decreasing DTR presents problems for the greenhouse warming theory. In 1995, James Hansen noted: “Models show that daytime warming will be almost as great as nighttime warming” [for a greenhouse gas forcing]. In a 1997 paper in Climate Dynamics, climate modeler Watterton points out that the observed decrease in the range of diurnal temperatures “are not consistent with their being produced by the observed increase in greenhouse gases.” No climate model yet devised can fully account for the observed diurnal variations and hence the recent observed warming. Watterton suggests that there are major errors in the way climate models treat clouds. A climate model experiment that comes close to explaining the results is given by Hansen et al. (1995) in Atmospheric Research. Their model experiment implies that a greenhouse gas doubling, accompanied by a 1.2% increase in low level clouds, will reduce the diurnal cycle by 0.21 C compared to an already observed decrease of about 0.5 C. This experiment implies clouds are acting as a strong negative feedback, so that when greenhouse gases double, the global warming will equal 0.67 C. Even this number may be high since they are unable to explain the full 0.5 C change, meaning even more clouds causing more cooling may be required. However, a recent study by Kaiser (1998) shows that cloud cover in China is decreasing along with the decrease in diurnal cycle amplitude. Thus, Hansen’s model is not consistent with observations. Neither greenhouse gases nor changing cloud cover can account for the decreasing diurnal temperature cycle in the surface observations, which is the primary evidence that is used to claim the warming is caused by increased greenhouse gases.
Desperate stuff, TOS. Warwick Hughes for heaven’s sake. And can’t you quote something more recent than 1995? As a hint, the satellite discrepancies weren’t resolved until 2004, and if you ignore everyone except Christy and Spencer, you can still extract a crumb of comfort from them.
Rog, ignore our lefty commenters – the rhetoric about “public goods” and governments being able to take away the property rights they granted in the first place may sound scary, but it’s all in fun.
tam o’shanter (6.43 pm)
If I understand you correctly you seem to be saying that the decrease in the diurnal range of temperature is a problem for the greenhouse warming theory.
This puzzles me. I thought that that’s exactly what the greenhouse theory was mostly about: shortwave radiation during the day penetrating the earth’s surfaces (and the depths of the oceans) where it gets converted to “heat”, and that heat then becoming trapped within the troposphere because of that troublesome property of CO2 (and other gases) to inhibit the re-radiation of that energy in the form of long wave radiation back to the black night sky. A kind of diode effect.
For the Earth’s energy budget to balance, longwave radiation to the night sky must equal the daytime gains.
If we’re not quibbling over decimal points, just where do you feel the case for greenhouse warming is being undermined by the examples you have given ?
You also mentioned clouds, and referenced a modelling experiment conducted more than a decade ago that could not be correlated with more recent actual observations of a reduction in diurnal variation in China, where there was a (reported) decrease in cloud cover, as opposed to a modelled increase in cloud cover in the original experiment.
Have you considered that there might be a local effect in China whereby the diurnal variation might continue to decline, with or without variation in cloud cover simply because of the unprecedented atmospheric polution ?
“rather than debating ad infinitum the reality of climate change”
Hasn’t taust heard of http://www.climateaudit.org ?
Econoclast:
So? That is not inconsistent with my comments.
Rog:
Then Econoclast again:
and then quiggin:
You three are ignoring a simple fact: water rights for most irrigators were granted at a time when environmental flows and shortages in urban areas were far less of an issue. The value of the irrigation licenses was based on the usage to which the water was to be put (ie, irrigation), not based on the value of water as a tradable property in a scarce market.
Nothing I have said is inconsistent with water being traded. But the irrigators should not be granted windfall profits.
If the federal government buys back the water licenses, it is constitutionally bound to pay “due compensation”. The question is, should due compensation be based on the (essentially windfall) value of the water as a tradable property, or based on the loss in asset value if the licenses or portions of the licenses are rescinded? Particularly in the case of Queensland cotton farmers, the latter value is likely much smaller than the former, and is, in my opinion, the more reasonable basis on which to calculate compensation.
There’s plenty of legal precedent (in private contracts) for such an action.
Of course, if any of you three lefty fools (just responding in-kind here) had ever actually been involved in private contract negotiations or litigation you might actually understand some of this.
Proust, I honestly sympathise with you on this. I complained about these allocations at the time, and I’ve been complaining ever since. But the horse really has bolted, and there is no way of resuming these rights without paying for the water. The COAG declarations establishing the National Water Initiative make this absolutely clear.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about low-cost ways of transferring water out of irrigation, and the best I’ve come up with is the idea of buying now the right to acquire the water ten years from now, when most of them will otherwise become permanent. I have an article on this topic coming out in the Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
As an aside, while the view that cotton is a low-value water use is widely held, it’s not so clear. Most of the analysis I’ve done suggests that flood irrigation for rice and irrigated pasture are the uses most likely to contract as water prices increase. This depends on a lot of local conditions and inter-farm variations, however.
Rog, the fact that the use of those sources was already priced in to land values (unfortunalely) is proof that those rights did exist. It’s unfortunate because their use now causes a negative externality, a need to alter the incentives for use exists.
But sorry, Prof JQ, you shouldn’t lump me in with the lefties you were referring to – I’m saying pay them their market value, ie. let them trade them (with the government and others). I agree the horse has bolted in terms of allocating those rights, so we have to buy them back (in some instances), to get water to its most highest end use value.
This means Rog, where they are bought back, the price should represent the opportunity cost for those farm owners. They can then use those funds toward another more sustainable means for making a living.
Do you mean no way politically or no way legally?
The government should at least test the waters legally. I am no constitutional lawyer, but it seems the intent of the constitution was not to grant windfall profits, particularly not with respect to a public good. Besides, if the government loses in the High Court it can always achieve the desired outcome by forcing the farmers to sell their water licenses at market rates and then levy a windfall water profit tax.
Politically, my sense is the urban population (90% of the country) is thoroughly fed up with farmers socializing their losses while capitalizing their gains (if only I could get away with that in my business!). If the mass media got behind a campaign against the farmers on this issue, public opinion would likely follow.
In my posts I have maintained a consistent view that anthropomorphic climate change is real. That for Australia adaptation is the major rational strategy that will reduce the impact of climate change and that the human cost of mitigation measures is not well known.
Part of a recent posting in supporting these points stated
‘—–It was the same situation with the Competition reforms. A great public debate on what most economists were agreed on: the need for reforms. No debate on who was going to get hurt by the reforms —‘.
This posting elicited the response
cs Says:
October 6th, 2006 at 8:07 am
It was the same situation with the Competition reforms. A great public debate on what most economists were agreed on: the need for reforms. No debate on who was going to get hurt by the reforms.
You see some funny things in the blogosphere, but this one should get a prize. It’s akin to someone complaining to Keith Richards that guitarists don’t play riffs.
I have done a Google search to find out whether there is a body of literature that addressed the cost to humans through the disruption to employment by competition reforms and similarly I searched to see if there was a body of literature for the disruption of employment by climate change mitigation measures.
Before I get monstered I am only discussing the impact on Australia and I am fully aware of the potential impact of climate change on people.
I have been unable to find any paper addressing either point. I am sure such papers must exist and would be grateful if anyone can give me a lead to discovering them.
I did find the following (and no I was not just Googling for JQ. The actual search was impact on people competition reform Australia sites only). I have taken only a few extracts from the article
Micro gains for micro reform
Australian Financial Review,
September 17, 1996
The Howard government has signalled a renewed commitment to microeconomic reform. In the recent discussion of the Budget, however, there has been little discussion of the role of microeconomic reform. ————————-
Because the policy elite is almost unanimous in the belief that microeconomic reform is a good thing, few have challenged claims about the benefits of reform. The tendency has been rather to accept the claim that reform will yield substantial gains, but to work on the implicit assumption that these gains will take place some time in the indefinite future. More than two decades after the era or microeconomic reform commenced with the Whitlam government’s twenty-five per cent tariff cut, and a decade after the Hawke-Keating government commenced microeconomic reform in earnest, this assumption has gradually taken on the character of a quasi-religious belief that virtue will, in the end, be rewarded, rather than a genuine expectation of real-world benefits.
The truth is that analysis based on mainstream economics suggests that the benefits of the microeconomic reform are likely to be too small to be noticed. To illustrate this point, the following examples are taken from my extensive study Great Expectations: Microeconomic reform and Australia.
—————————————–.
.
Attention to the costs of microeconomic distortions have led governments to ignore the far higher costs associated with unemployment levels of over 8 per cent, which have now been sustained for most of the past fifteen years. The annual cost of high levels of unemployment is between $40 billion and $80 billion per year, far in excess of any realistic estimate of the benefits of microeconomic reform. But advocates of microeconomic reform, notably the Industry Commission, have resisted any serious attempt to do anything about unemployment for fear that it would put obstacles in the way of their reform agenda. ————-.’
This expressed in 1996 a view close to my current views about the competition review process. I believe that statement could be made about the response to climate change being promulgated now.
We should better identify the Australian who will be placed at risk through our chosen responses to climate change and that we make more effective provisions for them than the dole.
An apology I am perceived as a troll:
1. troll (wikipedia version)
a troll is often someone who comes into an established community such as an online discussion forum, and posts inflammatory, rude, repetitive or offensive messages designed intentionally to annoy or antagonize the existing members or disrupt the flow of discussion, including the personal attack of calling others trolls. Often, trolls assume multiple aliases, or sock puppets.
I am reviewing my posting practice so that I can be a better behaved community member. Suggestions welcomed.
If by this post I have trolled I apologise to those impacted.
Proust
Your reference to cotton with respect to Bendigo is irrelevant, by a narrow interpretation, as there are no cotton farms in the catchment.
However, it did get me thinking. Vast areas and many people, from Queensland to Adelaide, are being damaged by Cubbie station. I’d like to see some mechanism for those people to combine to raise enough money to buy Cubbie, so they could legally breach the dam wall.
Look out! It seems “climate change adaptation” might soon become official government policy:
In other words: We will do absolutely nothing to reduce our GHG emissions, but we will help you move to higher ground and build cyclone-proof housing.
D McCarthy, have a look at this graph of climate forcings worked out by the NASA GISS people. How much natural and how much man-made?
TOS, the temperature difference between now and the last glacial maximum is, I understand, about 5C. Since the last ice age it is about 3C. CO2 levels rose from 180ppm to 280ppm. Now they are at 380ppm and rising at 2ppm per annum and increasing.
It is estimated that when CO2 levels double the temperature goes up by 3C.
The sea level has risen since the last glacial maximum (20,000 years ago) about 120m. Hansen estimates the “equilibrium sea level response” for 3C warming as 25m, plus or minus 10m. (This is from his Denver lecture – slide 26 of large pdf.) No-one has scientifically observed a large ice sheet decay, but he thinks it could happen in centuries rather than millennia.
In recent decades the temperature has been rising, as Flannery tells us, 25 times as fast as coming out of the last ice age.
Time to apply the cautionary principle, I would think, to stop greenhousing the planet and hope that the planet lets us off with a warning.
carbonsink, there was an article in the AFR on Monday, picked up by Crikey telling us that our PM has asked the ONA to assess the security implications of climate change. I doubt whether this was in direct response to the release of a report warning of millions of environmental refugees from our pacific neighbours.
This is actually a serious issue:
A tickle now, but what of the future? Dupont and Pearman have done an exceedingly interesting piece on climate change and security. It food for thought.
I’m bemused by commenters questioning the reliability of the Lowy Institute survey.
The results are very similar to those obtained by the Australian Election Study 2004. The AES surveyed 1765 respondents on various issues, including how they rated the urgency of global warming as an issue requiring action on a scale of 1 (not urgent) to 5 (very urgent). Of the 1710 respondents who answered the question, 41.5% rated it “5 – Very Urgent”, 24.0% rated it “4 – Urgent” and 23.6 rated it “3 – Fairly Urgent”. Only 7.4% of respondents rated it 2 (between “Fairly Urgent” and “Not Urgent” and 3.5% of respondents rated it “1 – Not Urgent”.
Could this because the sample surveyed were, by accident or design, an anomalous and unrepresentative bunch of lefties? I think not. The same sample’s responses to questions on other issues showed significant support for conservative and/or right-of-centre positions, and approval of the Howard government’s position and performance on a majority of election issues, although not on the environment.