There’s no longer any serious debate among climate scientists about either the reality of global warming or about the fact that its substantially caused by human activity, but, as 500+ comments on my previous post on this topic show, neither the judgement of the overwhelming majority of climate scientists, nor the evidence that led them to that judgement, has had much effect on the denialists[1].
And the Australian media are doing a terrible job in covering the issue. I’ve seen at least half a dozen pieces this year claiming that the whole issue is a fraud cooked up by left-wing greenies, and January isn’t over yet.
The latest is from Peter Walsh in the Oz. Walsh is still banging on about the satellite data, and the Medieval Warm Period, suggesting that his reading, if any, in the last few years has been confined to publications emanating from the right-wing parallel universe. But that hasn’t stopped the Australian from running him, and a string of others.
If an issue like genetically modified food, or the dangers of mobile phones was treated in this way, with alarmist cranks being given hectares of column space, most of those who sympathise with Walsh would be outraged and rightly so.
Walsh does make one valid point however, saying. “If your case is immaculate, why feed lies into it?” To which, I can only respond, “If the cap fits …”
fn1. At this point, the term “sceptic” is no longer remotely applicable. Only dogmatic commitment to a long-held position (or an ideological or financial motive for distorting the evidence) can explain continued rejection of the evidence.
John Quiggin 
# pls excuse my bad editing I’m a bit preoccupied .
I’m all for letting in more immigrants – adding a new “climate asylum seeker” category is fine by me.
SJ: b)
Hans – “the developing countries stepped in the car (Porsche or 2CV, we don’t know) and are sitting in the drivers seat pressing the accelerator, the developed countries are mere passengers.”
So why are we pressing the accelerator?
Simonjm,
I see that the argument challengeing global warming deniers to be in favour of the acceptance of climate change refugees can easily backfire.
Many of those, such as dogz who oppose action to curb global warming, also have no apparent grasp of the limits of this country’s carrying capacity.
People in the population growth lobby may well see the overwhelming of this country by millions of climate refugees as yet another business opportunity, particularly if they have investments in real estate, and not give a toss about the long term sustanability of this country.
Let’s try to do whatever we can now to avoid einvironmental catastrophe, so that we don’t, in future, find it necessary to stretch too much further our already overstretched natural resources.
Not we Ender, they. Or are you perhaps living in a developing country?
Yes James S I appreciate your point, if they had any idea about the numbers -note the gov refuses even to consider it- they woundn’t be so blasé about saying yes.
In my opinion no amount of science or warning will shift the diehard sceptics and to a certain degree the public and through them the governments.
It is only when the climate starts to have a serious impact costing lives and jobs will countries like the US and Australia -through a shift in public attitudes- start to pick up their game. By then there is a good chance we will have passed the tipping point and will have to adjust to the rise and try to avoid making it worse.
Many will die, economies will suffer, wars may even result; and the sceptics will change their line to yes it happened but there wasn’t enough information to warrant action even though mainstream science said there was.
It will certainly be interesting if this all happens while there is a crisis from peak oil, bird flu hits and the Atlantic conveyor shuts down. At least Europe won’t have to worry about refugees while they frezze their butts off during their winters.
Bird flu in Turkey is peaking because chickens are kept indoors because of the cold.
Corrolary: global warming will lead to less flu pandemics.
These reasoning by analogy of the earth as a complex machine that is tampered by human activity with betrays some unproven and untrue assumptions:
“Machine” implies some design for purposeful functional interaction of parts, “tampering” implies some interference with designed functions,
so Prof Q:
Where is is your list of earthly design features, functions that selected for the planet, and who did the designing? What about all the extinction events in the past- why did the assumed design features of well oiled planetary machine fail then, when humans were not there to tamper?
Last question was to James Sinnamen, sorry Q
d,
Obviously the analogy of the biosphere being like a complex machine is not wholly precise.
Nevertheless, the point remains, the biosphere remains an extremely complex system, which we are unlikely to ever be able to fully comprehend.
To have been so certain, with our limited knowledge of our biosphere, that we could have caused changes, on the huge scale as we have, particularly in regards to carbon dioxide emissions, as I have discussed above, and not seriously risk enormous and extremely damaging outcomes up to, and including, the outright extinction of the human species, is a degree of stupidity which still defies my capacity to comprehend.
SimonJM,
I am glad we see eye to eye on much of this question.
I tend to have left wing views on most issues, but I have never been comfortable with the orthodoxy (which most of the Socialist movement shares with extreme right wing neo-liberals) that open borders and population growth are inherently good things.
Any living organism has to have boundaries between its different parts, right down to its individual cells in order to function properly. The same applies to nation states, particularly on this planet with its huge imbalances in the distribution of both wealth and population. (Have borrowed this analogy from Geoff Davies’ “Economia”).
This is not to say that these imbalances can, or should, be maintained indiefntely, but simply breaking down those borders is a recipe for social, economic and environmetal calamity.
production of CO2 is a side effect of pricipal human activities for survival:
breathing, heating, manufacturing and transport.
now breathing doesn’t count as it is sustained, for the rest, do you have affordable alternatives that don’t wreck the economy immediately?
If not be patient: when solar power is cheaper than oil, people will switch over massively. (Have you bought any grammophone records lately?)
BTW A recession is very beneficial for CO2 reduction.
Ian Gould says:
“Steve,
I know your post is tongue-in-cheek but I don’t think we should be mocking these gentlemen for their age – especially since in most cases they’ve provided us with numerous other more pertinent bases on which to mock them.”
You are correct Ian. I must admit my emotions too often overwhelm reason. (I blame it on my French ancestry!). May I say that your relentless honesty, integrity and decency earns my utmost respect, even when I disagree with you. Please keep up the good work. 🙂
Hans – you have not answered my question – What is your ‘sides’ Plan B? What if you are all wrong and climate change happens? Are you going to take responsibility for inaction on climate change?
BTW the USA is the worlds largest emitter of CO2 and is not making ANY real attempts to curb this.
We can argue the points of climate change science for 400 posts but what about morality and responsibility – are they words in the skeptics vocabulary?
I don’t oppose action to curb global warming – I just think the jury is still out on how much humans are causing and how warm it is going to get. If you have conclusive answers to those questions or at least well-established probabilities for different scenarios then I am happy to talk seriously about the costs and benefits of mitigation.
As for Australia’s carrying capacity: Australia is enormous, largely unpopulated, currently exports a huge portion of its agricultural output (eg 80%-90% of our wheat) and is floating on uranium. We have vast areas of geologically stable desert into which we can dump nuclear waste. We could build lots of nuclear reactors and use them to power desalination plants to solve the one resource shortage we do have: water. Lets do it and throw open the doors to a couple of hundred million of the best and brightest from Asia before they catch up and no longer see us as an attractive destination.
Dogz,
As profesoor Quiggin has pointed out repeatedly, the ‘jury’ of international scientific opinion has long since returned a near-unamnimous verdict that global warming is happening and that it is almost certainly the result of changes made to the biospehere by human activity.
If you can’t see that now you never will.
Only a small minority of extreme cranks, or people who are in the pay of those who stand to benefit from continued pollution of our atmosphere with greenhouse gases, stand opposed to that view.
Arguing that we wait until your alternative imaginary ‘jury’ finishes its imaginary deliberations, is practically the same as arguing for no action.
As I have already written in my earlier post, that global climate changes may happen anyway, independant of human activity, is completely beside the point. We should have done our utmost to prolong the Earth’s largely unprecedented 10,000 years of climatic stability by not having rapidly changed our atmosphere’s chemical composition and by not having made other drastic changes to the surface of our planet.
Intead have, by our own hand, made higly detrimental changes to our global environment a practical certainlty.
We must act now to stop our species further compounding the changes already made to our biosphere. This must include ending Australia’s economic dependence upon the export of coal as a necessary first step.
As for your fantastic vision of Australia with a population of hundreds of millions drinking water desalinated with nuclear power, I suggest you read one of my posts in regard to nuclear power on the Peak Oil forum, and the articles linked to from it.
Other than that my only other comment is that you have further confirmed what I had written, that is that you have no grasp of the physical limits of this country, or for that matter, the planet.
Hans Erren did you watch any of those news reports on poor villages in Turkey where even after the initial outbreak that you still had chickens roaming about outside and in close proximity with children. Obviously not.
The richer countries in Europe were already moving their chicken indoors but that was not because of the cold & BTW the cull has nothing to do with the drop?
Have another go.
Dogz nice that you raised our agricultural surplus, from reports from the CSIRO we could lose a lot of that. BTW they also just published a report of an accelerated rate of sea level rise
Sea-level rise is quickening pace
Data crunch confirms model predictions of flooding coastlines.
http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060116/full/060116-11.html
“Lets do it and throw open the doors to a couple of hundred million of the best and brightest from Asia before they catch up and no longer see us as an attractive destination.�
With due respect you really don’t have any idea do you, a couple of hundred million you say. You honestly think we have the financial let alone natural resources to take that number in a short period of time? & your side talk about the loony left!
Dogz,
Are you saying you are certain that the probability of a positive relationship between the external effects of human activity and climate change is zero?
Quick poll:
a) Successful businessman, PhD in mathematics, damn good scientist and impartial critic, or
b) Pathetic, self aggrandising w**ker?
Good to see that Pr. Quiggin’s anti-bad language and uncivilised discussion policies still only apply to right-leaning commentators. Left-leaning commentors attacking the right are still free to type whatever insults they like.
Some things never change.
In electromagnetic and inertial terms, Earth is but a small cog in a very big wheel. Anyone who believes in a self-contained climate, can believe anything. At all human-relevant time-scales, the Sun is the dominant driver of our ever-changing climate. But what about the “consensus”? The advancement of scientific understanding is not a matter of voting.
Yobbo, I’m feeling lazy at the moment. I didn’t edit Dogz description of me as an SOB or the response. But given that you’re still feeling aggrieved about this, can I remind everyone of the policy and ask them to adhere to it.
Provided we are selective and only take those who are likely to be net contributors to the economy we can do it. Increase the population by 10% pa and we’d be over 100 million in 17 years time.
JS:
So what? That’s not inconsistent with my previous remarks. If you want to talk about mitigation then the extent to which we’re contributing and by how much the earth will warm is what matters. Not just whether we are having some effect or not.
EG:
No, in fact I say the opposite: the probability of a positive relationship between the external effects of human activity and climate change is almost certainly one. But that statement just says that humans affect the climate, which is trivially true (if I fart it has some miniscule effect on the climate). As above, what matters is the extent of the effect, not just the sign.
Dogz – “We have vast areas of geologically stable desert into which we can dump nuclear waste. We could build lots of nuclear reactors and use them to power desalination plants to solve the one resource shortage we do have: water.”
Do you have references for this? Most of our ‘stable’ areas have groundwater problems. Our sea of uranium will last about 70 years withour reprocessing. Who is going to pay for the nuclear reactors at 2 billion each plus desalination plants? Who is comfortable with nuclear fuel travelling through populated suburbs.
For crying out loud enough with this science isn’t a matter of voting crap try something original.
A ‘working consenus’ isn’t about voting or a popularity contest. Studies are published checked if possible repeated it then becomes the working knowledge and science and the scientists move on.
So what instead a scientist has to check/repeat every study ever published in a discipline and go back to first principles or that in fact he rings round to see how many of his colleges think before he accepts the validity of a study and its implications?
So give it a break no one is saying its a matter of voting.
“At all human-relevant time-scales, the Sun is the dominant driver of our ever-changing climate. ”
Oh and there are no other factors that can influence climate in our time scales?
Volcaneos, mass fresh water flooding events that have effected the Atlanic conveyor in the past were on the scale of decades.
Dogz anything is possible if you have deep enough pockets, apart from the cost of the nuclear reactors and desalination plants, factor in the rest of the infastructure and it is a pipe dream. It would seem from teh advice even one desalination plant isn’t viable.
Even the current neo-liberal champions haven’t got this on the radar screen because of the costs.
Seawater desalination plants cost around $1 for each litre per day capacity, and about $1 for each kilolitre of desalinated water they produce.
Irrigation for agriculture consumes about 75% of Australia’s water, while individuals consume about 300 litres of water per day, although even then half of that goes on gardens.
If you include all water-use (industry, agricaulture, domestic), current per-capita water consumption is around 1M litres per year. That would likely fall dramatically with a larger population, as we would consume domestically a larger portion of the irrigated agricultural produce that is currently exported, rather than increase the amount of irrigated agriculture.
So best-case we can assume new immigrants will add 150 litres per person per day to our water bill assuming they don’t have gardens and agricultural and industrial use of water does not increase, worst case they’ll add around 3,000 litres per person per day assuming agricultural and industrial water use grows proportionally with the population (which, as above, it won’t).
So to add 1 million people to the Australian population we need to produce between 150M litres and 3,000M litres of extra water per day, so we need to spend between $150M and $3B building desalination plants.
The Australian government takes about $200B from the Australian economy each year in taxes, or around $10,000 per person. Now, most of that goes back out in “services”, but assuming a selective intake to favour more economically productive immigrants (ie ones that generate more in taxes than they consume in services), we could probably generate an additional $5,000 in government revenue from each new immigrant, or $5B for every 1 million.
So even assuming 100% govt funding of desalination infrastructure, in the worst case the government would have $2B per year left over to spend on nuclear subsidies for each 1 million skilled new arrivals.
Sounds like a plan to me.
James, the IPCC projections for 2050 suggest that the temperature rise will be between 1.2 and 1.9 degrees. By 2100, the temperature rise will be between 2.0 and 4.5 degrees.
I don’t know how hot it will need to be before only the poles are habitable, but it will be much much higher than 4.5 degrees.
As for Lovelock, while he is smart guy, there aren’t any published scientific papers which support his views.
Yes back of the envelope often look good without the fine detail, factor in the number of plants-your cost estimates seem cheap i thought it was about 1 bill per plant- extra power generation, the rest of the infastructure, land etc and your numbers wouldn’t add up.
BTW don’t you think that if it was this easy the pro-business lobby and the gov wouldn’t have already tried this, just add water and immigration and hey presto you grow your tax income and economy?
hmm I hope they are rich and healthy just imagine what our health system would react to these sort of increases.
Since NASA’s name is so often taken in vain by the denialists, the following links make interesting reading.
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/34662/story.htm
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/2005_warmest.html
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2005/
Politics of racism my friend. Any party that opened the door to 2M asians in a year would be ejected from office in an instant. Besides the voter backlash, both sides of politics are pretty against it. Labour hates large immigration because it tends to suppress wages. And I’m not sure Labour can even contemplate the notion of a large selective skilled and educated intake without causing a Political Correctness implosion. Howard hates large immigration from Asia because they’re the wrong colour and culture. Ten-pound British migrants are more his scene.
The US comes closest to an experiment like this with their enormous influx of illegals from Mexico. But in the US business holds greater sway over government than here. And they don’t need to be so selective about it because those on the bottom consume less government resources due to the much lower social welfare and minimum wage. The middle-class actually like it because it supplies a cheap source of labour to serve them in the stores and to clean their houses.
Dogz,
Why is it racist to be opposed to large numbers of people migrating to your country?
Dogz wrote : The middle-class actually like it because it supplies a cheap source of labour to serve them in the stores and to clean their houses.
Precisely!
… and that is precisely what I believe middle class advocates of IR ‘reforms’, ‘welfare to work’ and high immigration hope to achieve for themselves in this country.
“Why is it racist to be opposed to large numbers of people migrating to your country?”
Such opposition is usually motivated by xenophobia.
Impressive – do you have the whole comment archive cross-referenced?
Much better to get people off the dole into productive work, even if you spend their dole-money on tax credits in doing so. And there’s nothing wrong with cleaning houses for a living. I advocate high immigration for the economic benefits, so I’m not looking to import 100 million carpet cleaners.
Dogz sorry cannot source this as I don’t remember where it came-proabbly a news report or the 7.30 report- from but I heard that some source found that they found that by in large Australians understand the need for immigration but you are partly right i don’t think there would be any country who would take that sort of numbers and have the populace comfortable even if they were skilled or rich.
BTW wasn’t there a statment by the gov recently on a study that showed you don’t get as much economic benefit from immigration as others hope?
I also think you you back of the envelope still doesn’t take into consideration what the real cost or the factors that are taken into consideration for a nations carrying capacity.
Dogz wrote :
Oh, that explains it perfectly, thanks.
People are just incapable of appreciating know how much good an influx, within a year, of two million migrants will do for them, because of their irrational xenophobic fears.
… but you know better, and even our pollies know better, but they lack the moral fibre to bring this about in the face of voter oppostion.
Dogz wrote :
Like getting single mothers to work as live in nannies in middle class households, as in the US, whilst their own children are neglected.
James,
I’m sure that I could extend several of your positions into absurdity too. Why did you not say 10 million immigrant within a few weeks? It makes an even stronger point.
Answer the substantive point rather than attempting to extend into absurdity and then saying “look it’s absurd!!!”.
Andrew,
I didn’t intoduce the absurdity of 2 million immigrants in the space of a year. I suggest you check out Dogz‘s posts :
and :
The trouble is that when such stratospheric levels of population increase are discussed, apparently, in all seriousness, it can have the effect of having other population boosting schemes, such as Queensland Premier Beattie’s plan to increase South East Queensland’s population by ‘only’ 1.1 million by 2026, when we don’t now have adequate water and power generation capacity for SEQ’s existing population, seem rational, by comparison.
Be interesting to look at how fast Australia’s population grew during the rapid growth periods, eg after WWII.
I agree that there are all sorts of factors to consider when considering large immigration, and I don’t know what the largest sustainable percentage growth per annum is, but I certainly don’t buy that resource shortages are the fundamental limitation in a country with the natural wealth of Australia.
Take a look around you: Australia is fast becoming an Asian country anyway. Might as well accelerate the inevitable and grab the best and brightest while we have the opportunity. In 2050 it’s going to be much harder to attract the talented Chinese etc here because they’ll have far greater opportunities at home.
looks like we finally got off topic
John,
Science and consensus are mutually exclusive positions.
There is no consensus that that the sun shines, for example. It just does. The blindingly obvious is not in need of a consensus. Only doubt has a need for consensus.
Climate consensus is not science. Never was.
So please stop advertising climate science as science, it isn’t.
Hi Louis,
It’s not surprising to see you on a thread with the terms “nonsense” and “global warming” in its title.
Of course there is a consensus that the sun shines. That it is obvious only strengthens the consensus.
In electromagnetic and inertial terms, Earth is but a small cog in a very big wheel. Anyone who believes in a self-contained climate, can believe anything. At all human-relevant time-scales, the Sun is the dominant driver of our ever-changing climate. But what about the “consensus�? The advancement of scientific understanding is not a matter of voting.
Hi Bob, how’s it going over at the Lavoisier Group?
Unfortunally, like pretty much everything else at the Lavoisier Group, your totally wrong. At “human-relevant time-scales” the sun is not the dominant driver of climate change. It is a significant driver, but it is far from being dominant.
I even posted a citation which shows this, on this very thread. In case you forgot to read it before making a factually incorrect comment, I’ll give you the details again: “External Control of 20th Century Temperature by Natural and Anthropogenic Forcingsâ€? by P Stott, S. Tett, G. Jones, M Allen, J. Mitchell and G. Jenkins (Science 290 15 DECEMBER 2000 pg. 2133)
Of course, if you have a peer reviewed scientific publication which suggests otherwise, now would be a very good time to give some details.
But I won’t hold my breath.
Perhaps the timing of declaring the global warming debate settled could be a bit better….
Bone-chilling Arctic weather claimed dozens more lives in Europe Monday after an already deadly weekend, with 24 freezing deaths in as many hours in Ukraine alone, and rising tolls in Turkey, Poland, Russia and Germany … glacial temperatures swept the Baltics to the Balkans, brought rare snowfalls to Istanbul and sparked a scramble for heating fuel …
“You’d have to go back at least 10 years, sometimes 20 years, to find such sharp colds,â€? said Patrick Galois, a meteorologist with Meteo-France …
The last time the [Czech Republic ] saw such cold weather was 66 years ago, in 1940, when the temperature dropped to a record 31.5 below zero, the meteorological office told the Czech News Agency.
This terrifying era of global warming is too cold for penguins.
At the zoo in Dresden, Germany, 21 Humboldt penguins were moved from their minus 6 outdoor environment into a building where the temperature was a more comfortable 32 degrees to ensure their feet didn’t freeze, zoo director Karl Ukena said.
avaroo, you just don’t get it, do you? The extreme cold snap in Europe is some of the best evidence yet that AGW is real, just ask greenpeace:
We hear an overwhelming chorus of protest from the pro-AGW scientific community whenever a sceptic gets something wrong, but deafening silence whenever greenpeace speaks, no matter how stupid or irresponsible their statements.
greenpeace……lol
I was disappointed when the harpoon missed that idiot from greenpeace.
1 million Minke whales. The Japanese take 500 a year. And greenpeace act like they’re saving the planet by getting in between the whalers and the whales. Morons.
“Greepeace Discovers Weather Changes From Year to Year….”
Some Years Wetter……Some Years Drier….Some Years Colder…..Some Years Warmer……
Keep those donations rolling in……
Avaroo, Dogz, I suggest you read the following from an article “Cold Snap Heating Up Global Warming Debate” in the UK :
From the NASA web site (thanks, Peter Norton) the top five warmest years since 1890 are:
Against this, global warming deniers such as yourselves have, predictably, seized upon the recent cold snap in Europe, which is said to be the coldest in 10 or 20 years (or in the case of the Czech Republic, since 1940), to convince the rest of us that all is well, after all. We need no longer entertain any fear that having dug up and burnt, so far, nearly half of all the carbon sequestered into the ground over many tens of millions of years may have dire consequences for the world’s climate patterns.
Whilst a few simpletons may be swayed by your argument, I predict that this latest example of extreme variablity in our weather patterns, even predicted by some scientists as a consequence of global warming, will not shift the near unanimous body of opinion of the world’s scientists that global warming is real and that it is here now.
Dogz,
Re your reply to my post:
Good. At least one uncertainty as to who says what is resolved.
Are you saying that the aggregate and cumulative external effects of human activities on climate change are negligible for the relevant time horizon (ie until life on earth stops for reasons not under the control of humans) or are you saying you disagree with all or some of the quantifications methods available at present?
Incidentally, cost-benefit analysis, as applied in economics, works only if there is only one externality and it is globally negligible but locally significant (ie it does not work if all prices are measurably affected).
Ken Miles,
Even if James Lovelock’s dire prediction is not realised then you would still agree that we still have a good deal to be extremely concerned about : receding polar ice caps, the melting of the Greenland ice shelf, both contributing to runaway global warming as heat will no longer be reflected to such an extent back into space, rising sea levels inundating some of the most populous regions of our planet, the threat to Australia’s capacity to grow food, according to Tim Flannery, etc, etc?
“We hear an overwhelming chorus of protest from the pro-AGW scientific community whenever a sceptic gets something wrong, but deafening silence whenever greenpeace speaks, no matter how stupid or irresponsible their statements.’
Maybe this is because everyone knows Greenpeace is an advocacy group, pushing a case to support predetermined policy positions. By contrast, lots of people seem to be under the impression that “sceptics” are independent researchers with some sort of credibility.
As you appear to be aware, anyone who relies on either Greenpeace or the “sceptics” for their information on scientific issues, is likely to be led astray on a regular basis. When they agree with the mainstream scientific community (Greenpeace on AGW and the “sceptics” on the dangers of GM) they’re redundant (as sources of scientific information) and when they disagree they’re of negative value.
That’s not to say that advocacy groups don’t have an important and valuable place. Just that when they disagree with mainstream science, it’s wise to back mainstream science.