The scientific debate over the reality of anthropogenic global warming has been over for some time, but as long as the opponents of science continued to dominate the political process, it was necessary to combat their claims.
But with the Howard government now supporting emissions trading, at least in principle, and with the overwhelming majority of the public convinced of the need for action, that necessity has now passed, at least in Australia. The main task now is to encourage the government to adopt the most efficient and effective strategies for mitigation and adaptation, in co-operation with other countries. That obviously includes signing Kyoto (with the latest change in position and with Bush a lame duck there’s no reason not to), but it could also include getting the (so-far merely decorative) AP6 process to do some work.
Of course, at least some of the denialists will keep on denying. But they’re in a hole and I’m happy to let them keep on digging. At this point, they’ll do less harm banging on about the hockey stick than they would if they accepted the reality of global warming and used what’s left of their credibility in an attempt to derail any positive response.
So from now on, I’m not going to bother refuting the absurdities of Bolt, the Lavoiser Group and other denialists. Rather than make all those who’ve enjoyed the stoush here go cold turkey, I may put up more open threads from time to time, but my future posts will be about the economics and politics of our response.
John Quiggin 
Interesting that you accept Howard’s position on this as being the last word.
C’mon Andrew, you heard him. The debate is *really* over now, so stop discussing things and start being carbon neutral !
Fearmongering and scapegoating did wonders for Hitler too. But the world eventually extricated itself from that dark period, as it will from this latest round of nonsense.
JQ, you never did tell us what you thought of the Stern report?
Oh this thread will go well, I can see it already.
AP6 is a sound idea, alongside Kyoto.
What I find hard to digest is how senior Coalition politicians talk about the need for a market solution, and dismiss Kyoto. WTF? One of it’s central themes is market based instruments. It’s rather probable that briefing notes from the bureaucracy have been rewritten so many times within the Ministers offices that they don’t actually have a clue about the contents of Kyoto. Time to recall Robert Hill from New York to tell them about it, I think.
(Uncanny that the AP6 acronym is similar to the most likely candidate for an Australian nuclear reactor, the AP1000 ( http://www.ap1000.westinghousenuclear.com/ )).
Howard was the last significant obstacle to Australia adopting a sensible policy, so of course he had the last word.
Can you please help continuing to refute Bolt’s other absurdities?
‘Howard was the last significant obstacle to Australia adopting a sensible policy, so of course he had the last word.’
You very optimistic here. There is no reason to believe the government will adopt ‘sensible’ policy – just look at how convoluted the WorkChoice Legislation is.
A Godwin’s Law violation at comment #3! I don’t think I’ve ever seen one so early in a thread.
Sinclair, I should have clarified. The Howard government now supports a sensible general approach to the problem (emissions trading). There is, as you say, no guarantee that the detailed implementaation will be sensible, and that’s where I plan to focus from now on.
I’ve always wondered why so many people who come at climate change from a passionate economic or political viewpoint spend so much energy on the science of it and so little on the politics and economics.
Good idea, let’s move on to the real issues.
I wonder if Howard thinks supporting some sort of emmission trading gives him enough greenie points so he can be taken seriously on AGW and can then role out his grand plan for nuc’s?
Simonjm,
If nuclear energy can be shown to be a way to safely reduce emissions, why not? Or do we say no just because it uses the “N” word?
Personally, I am sceptical that nuclear can be done effectively on a cost basis, but I have no philosophical objection to it.
AR, I agree with both parts of your last comment
I have some philospohical concerns relating to externalised risks and the catastrophically long term nature of any nuclear disaster. I think that the scope for leaving a negative intergenerational mess with nuclear power is considerably elevated. I don’t believe these concerns are insurmountable but they are significant.
Andrew I’ve no problem what so ever of having nuclear on the table, as long as all aspects of the business is included i.e. security, waste, decommissioning.
Once they are included I don’t think it will stack up but I’m willing to lets the facts speak for themselves.
I do hope that would include Thorium based technology, if I had to have nuclear power, one that doesn’t create weapons grade waste would be preferred.
If the environmentalists were smart they should be more than happy to see it on the table, like Howard and emissions trading, by giving ground on at least an investigation of nuclear it will help set an atmosphere more conducive to an open debate instead of knee-jerk pronouncements.
Still not the slightest mention about energy efficiency, why is that do you think?
Also I would follow the trend in Europe for the business that creates the waste to take it back, so that would include us taking back any nuclear waste produced through our exports.
But is that fair? CO2 energy exporters aren’t penalized in a similar way only the users.
BTW it has been pointed out that if we bury C02 we are locking up oxygen, should that matter?
Unless of course the rodent has been smart enough to be backed into a corner that the only way out of is clean coal and nuclear.
“Still not the slightest mention about energy efficiency, why is that do you think?”
Because clean coal and nuclear are only viable in large amounts. If we used less electricity then renewables become much more viable.
Ender,
How does that last statement make any sence. National or even state demand for electricity towers over the supply capacity of any single power plant.
Regards,
Terje.
I think you will find that the carbon trading/nuclear debate will pave the way for the mining and export of uranium.
“If we used less electricity then renewables become much more viable.”
Therefore renewables are not viable.
If the debate really is over why is it so damn cold?
John,
It is probably worth noting that some initial work has already been done on the potential design of an emissions trading scheme for Australia. There were a series of four discussion papers on this topic produced ny the Australian Greenhouse Office back in 1999. They are available online at the following website:
http://www.greenhouse.gov.au/emissionstrading/papers/index.html .
There is also other material on emissions trading available online (along with the discussion papers mentioned above) at the following website:
http://www.greenhouse.gov.au/emissionstrading/ .
Disclosure: I used to work in the Emissions Trading Team at the Australian Greenhouse Office. I was involved in the production of the following two discussion papers:
Australian Greenhouse Office (1999), Establishing the boundaries, National Emissions Trading Discussion Paper 1, Australian Greenhouse Office, Canberra; and
Australian Greenhouse Office (1999), Issuing the permits, National Emissions Trading Discussion Paper 2, Australian Greenhouse Office, Canberra.
Regards,
Damien.
Well you can ignore the denialists. But what you cannot ignore is the fact that when the Kyoto Treaty went up to the US Senate for confirmation, it was sunk 0-95. That’s right, not one senator, no matter how left-leaning, voted for enacting it. There are simply too many problems with the science and the so-called solutions. Your best best is to continue denying the denialists and work for compliance by all countries other than the US. And then clasp hands and sing songs in celebration.
Pretty shocking that Australia was alone on the island with the USA on Kyoto in the first place. It’s becoming increasingly clear that Bush is a complete, utter lame duck and more and more former ‘allies’ like Blair and Howard to break with him publicly…
http://www.minor-ripper.blogspot.com
Umm, the Kyoto treaty was never put up for confirmation to the US Senate.
And the most recent relevant vote was on the McCain-Lieberman bill which went down 57-42. Quite a few of the “no” votes lost their seats a few weeks ago.
JQ – I come here for the latest on debunking denialists like Bolt, although a recent post on LP about the Stern Report was excellent. Keep up the good work. And would someone ask Bolt whether he knows what a “steady-state system” is, whether he understands “negative feedback”. Having lost public opinion on the line that “its not happening”, the denialists are now segueing into the line that its happening, but its a very slow process eg Peter Costello on Insiders last sunday telling us that we have 40-50 years to find a techno-fix because its only a very gradual increase in temps. These idiots seem to be wilfully blind to the fact that apparently minor but sustained disruptions to steady state systems like the global weather system (like 1-2 degrees C) can produce catastrophic changes, like wild swings in local weather, as the whole system wobbles out of balance. Icebergs floating past New Zealand, snow in November – these are small signals that something is going radically wrong (and the public knows it in their bones). Yet you will hear the denialists laughing like drains because its not getting hotter, but colder, for now.
I know in my bones that another layer of government rules is like pissing on your own leg except without the warm feeling. Last time I checked I was a member of the public.
Umm, the Kyoto treaty was never put up for confirmation to the US Senate. – Quiggins
Cute. But you’re right. It wasn’t put up because Clinton knew it would fail. From Wikipedia:
On July 25, 1997, before the Kyoto Protocol was finalized (although it had been fully negotiated, and a penultimate draft was finished), the U.S. Senate unanimously passed by a 95–0 vote the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 98)[37], which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or “would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States”. On November 12, 1998, Vice President Al Gore symbolically signed the protocol. Both Gore and Senator Joseph Lieberman indicated that the protocol would not be acted upon in the Senate until there was participation by the developing nations. The Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol to the Senate for ratification. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Treaty
Unless serious changes are made to the treaty and scientific research is performed that establishes to greater degree of certainty that man can do something meaningful to combat global warming, cooling, or just righting, it has no chance of being passed by the US Congress. Even one with a small Democrat advantage for the next two years. The US simply will not sacrifice bilions, perhaps trillions, of dollars of economic activity for a half-baked theory that will likely result in no discernable benefit.
Thinking otherwise is simply engaging in academic fantasizing.
Terje – “National or even state demand for electricity towers over the supply capacity of any single power plant. ”
Not really the state peak summer demand for electricity in the South West Integrated System here in WA is about 3 GW. The total installed capacity of Australia is about 45GW
http://www.esaa.com.au/media_releases/2005_media_releases/further_growth_in_australia's_electricity_consumption.html
The point I am making is that to justify the enormous expense of nuclear power and/or carbon sequestration the utilities will have to sell a lot of electricity therefore energy conservation is not in their best interests. Both these systems emit large amounts of base load power which is only 30% of demand. Peak demand was 62.4% more than average demand.
For a sustainable model with renewables, lower energy use and energy conservation are the first 2 vital steps. Fossil fuels can continue to supply a 30% baseload for as long as they last. Renewables plus storage in electric transport and distributed nodes can supply the rest. Electric transport solves the peak oil problem.
And rog the fact that we need to conserve energy does not mean that renewables are not viable. In all things we need to reduce waste before thinking about new supplies.
“Icebergs floating past New Zealand, snow in November – these are small signals that something is going radically wrong (and the public knows it in their bones).”
Don’t the denialists get it? The icebergs are fleeing the warming Antarctic! Can there be clearer evidence of glowbill whorming??
“The scientific debate over the reality of anthropogenic global warming has been over for some time”
Professor,
IMHO your assessment of the debate being “over” shows a clear disconnection from reality. Economics mainly deals with theory as opposed to reality; this could be a basis for misconceptions clouding your judgment on this issue.
Rupert Murdock’s comments quoted in today’s SMH, would IMHO be a more balanced portrayal of the situation:
“I don’t believe all the science about climate change is necessarily right. But I’ve heard enough about it to think maybe there’s a 10 or 20 per cent chance that it’s right and we owe it to the planet to take the insurance that they may just be right.”
Paragraph 11
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/murdoch-rebukes-libs-on-tax/2006/11/15/1163266639817.html
A useful piece on the no longer hidden crisis of ideological environmentalism.
http://www.reason.com/news/show/28411.html
Most renewables (with the exception of hydro) are not suited to peaking power or any form of despatch based supply. At best they can be aggregated to reduce the need for some output from base load sources, however they don’t necessarily relieve the need for conventional baseload capacity.
Its fine to talk about storage however other than reverse pump hydro there are not many good large scale electricity storage options. And the small scale options (eg batteries) are very inefficient. Building more hydroelectric schemes generally faces stiff environmental opposition.
There are a few scalable alternate energy sources on the drawing board however the inefficient use of electricity does not represent a barrier to entry.
“other than reverse pump hydro there are not many good large scale electricity storage options
…
Building more hydroelectric schemes generally faces stiff environmental opposition.”
That’s given me an idea. What if your reverse-pump hydro scheme used seawater? Build the renewable (say solar) power plant on top of an ocean cliff (in Australia we have no shortages of those). Put in some huge ponds (again on top of the cliff). During the day you fill up the ponds with seawater pumped up from the base of the cliff using excess electricity. At night you empty the ponds through some hydro turbines back into the ocean.
Overnight load problem solved. No dams required.
Why on earth would anyone quote Rupert Murdoch as a respectable climatologist??
Terje Geothermal and ocean based thermal are suitable for base load plus I’ve already posted that a Sydney academic says we can meet emission cuts with renewables + gas in the short term.
Don’t remember if that included energy efficiency but I imagine it would.
Regarding hydro a study has just come out that they give off slightly more emissions than gas due to decomposition of organics in the dam.
Some great topics in the last 2 Science Show
Scienceshow
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/default.htm
Britain considers personal carbon quotas
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2006/1772097.htm#transcript
Saturday 11 November 2006
[audio src="http://www.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/feeds/ssw_20061111.mp3" /]
* 00:00: Nuclear reactors of the future – operation and security
* 10.35: US attitudes to climate change
* 15:18: Sunshade in space Read Transcript
* 22:47: Global warming and economics
* 30:30: Changing views to global warming
* 33:46: How climate affected the rise of civilisation
In fact, there’s no need to situate the hydro storage scheme and the solar plant anywhere near each other: you just the solar plant and the storage scheme to be on the grid.
Simonjm, the results for hydro dams offgassing relate primarily to tropical dams, as I understand it. Temperate dams don’t rot at nearly the same rate. Though where a new dam could be put in Australia, and when it would be filled, are pertinent questions.
Wilful said:
“Why on earth would anyone quote Rupert Murdoch as a respectable climatologist?�
I didn’t, I simply alluded to the fact that Murdoch’s opinion of the science as having a “10 or 20 per cent� chance of being correct as a sensible statement, especially when compared to an economists ludicrous view that the debate is over because the science is 100% correct.
nice try, but I don’t think anyone has ever asserted that the science is 100% correct. Although 100% of professionals in the field say that the science is essentially correct. By essentially, I would infer they mean much more than “maybe ten or twenty percent”.
That’s a cop out Wilful,
They are either 100% correct and the debate is over or they are “essentially� (partially) correct and the debate is still on.
econwit which debate AGW or the cost of AGW?
“The debate really is over now” debate or
“The scientific debate over the reality of anthropogenic global warming has been over for some time”
debate.
I presume that would be both as one is reliant on the other.
Simonjm,
Geothermal and solar thermal and no doubt ocean thermal are all likely to be good sources of baseload power. Although scalable forms are mostly still on the drawing board. NZ has used geothermal for years but it only becomes scalable once you can make it work in a wider variety of locations.
Regards,
Terje.
Pseud, I presume you know enough about the scientific method to understand that we are well within confidence limits about the general theories and predictions of ACC. But science never claims to be 100% correct, there is plenty of space for discussion and refinement within the general acceptance of the existence of ACC.
They are >95% correct (as close to 100% as would not concern a policy-maker) about the existence of ACC, they are now just cleaning up their predictive abilities. And they will never claim to be 100% correct, falsifiability and all that.
So, the debate you are interested in having is over. The debates they need to have amongst themselves will continue for a long time to come.
You need to move on from the science. It’s over. In reality it has been for a while. The debate you should be focusing on is the costs of mitigation and adaptation.
Proust,
On the wholesale electricity market there is a significant price differential between night and day and summer and winter. As such there is already a market for reverse pump hydro. However there are only so many places you can build suitable dams. And those that already own such a dam are making a killing.
Electricity is a product with a shelf life measured in seconds. It is routinely arced to earth and discarded when buyers switch off because there is nowhere to store it. If you can’t accurately track demand then you end up with a highly inefficient setup.
Regards,
Terje.
I presume “ACC” is Anthropogenic Climate Change? I guess AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) was too close to being falsifiable, insofar as it actually makes a prediction about the sign of the temperature change. Climate Change is much better: now your theory is supported by all the evidence, regardless of what happens. Nice little sleight of hand. Look for more references to CC coming from the environazis.
proust, you presume correctly, ACC has been used as the preferred time for quite a while, as climate change is predicted, while it is anticipated that some parts of the world may actually cool (though, overall, there’s a heating of the system).
Seeking some vast conspiracy in this is fun to watch. You may (or may have not) noticed that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been called by that name since it’s formation in 1988, and it has never been called the IPGW.
Hey what’s with your Hitler obsession, proust? Comment 3 and now this.
Hey I think I’ve just got it – you’re Andrew Bolt, aren’t you? He’s the only person I’ve ever read before who debates on this level, and seriously uses the epithet ‘environazis’.
Professor, could we get some traceback on proust, see if they’re coming from Herald Sun servers?