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Don’t listen to shock jocks on carbon

By Bob Carter - posted Wednesday, 1 June 2011


"Last Monday, I received a report from the Climate Commission confirming again that climate change is real. It provided very real evidence that we need to act now. Not in a couple of generations time, or even a couple of years time, but now." - Julia Gillard

Climate change is like motherhood: of course it’s real, and whoever would doubt it?

If, instead, the PM actually means to say “dangerous global warming caused by human-related carbon dioxide emissions is real”, then she is wrong.

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That such warming is occurring is a hypothesis which can be tested against the last ten years of data, which are: carbon dioxide increase – +5%; temperature decrease – -0.05O C.

The hypothesis is invalidated by the test. There is therefore no urgency to act now - or, indeed, at all – by penal taxation against carbon dioxide such as the PM is suggesting.

What the report shows is that in the past 50 years the number of record hot days in Australia has more than doubled. Australian natural wonders such as the Great Barrier Reef are already being damaged and the risk of coastal flooding could double by the end of the century. Most significantly, the report says the greatest contributor to recent climate change is carbon pollution caused by humans.

As detailed in a scientific audit published at Quadrant Online, the facts related in this paragraph are a manifestation of natural environmental variability, and the speculation about human causation is based on discredited advice from the United Nations IPCC.

These reports are not the first of their kind. They build on past work from scientists around the world who have been tracking the effects of climate change for years.

Thousands of independent scientists have expressed different views from the extreme alarmism of the IPCC and its advisors. Most have moderate, middle ground views. They accept that natural climate change is a hazard that we should prepare for, and note that hypothetical human-caused global warming, should it ever emerge, is best dealt with in the same way. Which is by contingency preparation in advance, and adaptive response when a climate hazard, of whatever causation, is actually visited upon us.

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And like ones past, these research papers have been peer reviewed by other scientists to make sure findings are accurate.

Peer review does not ensure accurate findings. It is simply an editorial device used in an (often vain) attempt at quality control.

With the science so clear we shouldn't waste time on shock jocks or politicians who rely on false claims to run their scare campaigns. They quote one crank or another in the same way people have argued the world is flat.

 “The science” doesn’t exist. As for all contentious topics, there are a very wide range of interpretations put and views held by different scientists about the causes and mechanisms of climate change. “Cranks” are not an issue given that protagonists of the highest scientific quality can be found on all sides (and there are many more than two) of the public debate about global warming.

The best way to cut carbon pollution is to make up to 1000 of our biggest polluters pay for every tonne of carbon they generate. Not households. Not small businesses. Just the top 1000 polluters.

There is no carbon pollution, as particulate matter is filtered out prior to smoke stack venting at all modern industrial plants.

If the PM means “carbon dioxide pollution”, then she is wrong again, for carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. Rather, it is an environmentally beneficial trace gas that underpins plant photosynthesis, and therefore most planetary food chains.

Imposing a carbon dioxide tax on large businesses will result in any unavoidable costs of that tax being passed straight down to ordinary consumers.  

We know some industries will pass some of these costs on to consumers, which is why we will give more than half of the money raised back to families.

And for how long will this largesse continue? And what about families that do not fall within the PM’s definition of being worthy to receive a refund?

The rest will go to supporting jobs in existing industries and creating new jobs by investing in clean energy and technology.

Studies in Europe show that for every new job created in the “clean energy” industry, between two and three jobs are destroyed.

Putting a price on carbon pollution means companies will look to cut that cost to their business by decreasing their pollution, so much so that we are confident our plan will reduce Australia's emissions by 160 million tonnes in 2020. This is equivalent to taking 50 million polluting cars off our roads in 2020.

No matter how many times the mantra is repeated, carbon dioxide emissions are not pollution, but, instead, help to green the planet.

For the first few years of the scheme the price per tonne of pollution paid by big polluters will be fixed, working effectively like a tax. After that, a cap will be put on the amount of pollution that these polluters can generate and a market will exist in which firms will buy and sell permits to emit a tonne of pollution.

In other words, as soon as possible we intend to pass control over to the same financial wizards whose trading of derivatives recently brought the world financial system to the point of collapse. What a great idea.

In this emissions trading scheme, companies that find ways to reduce their pollution will make money by selling permits to pollute and big polluters will have to spend money to buy permits. The forces of supply and demand for permits will set the price. But the golden rule will be: the less a firm pollutes, the better off it is.

In actuality, the same thing will happen to any Australian carbon dioxide trading market as has already happened to the Chicago (now closed down) and European (hopelessly corrupt) exchanges.

As the commodity  - which, remember, is a piece of paper that represents a colourless, odourless, tasteless, invisible and beneficial trace gas - changes hands, every man and his dog will clamour to clip the ticket, and the market will be rife with speculation and corrupt trading.

Overwhelmingly our nation wants to act on climate change but some worry it won't be good for us if we get out in front of the world.

What Australian citizens want the PM to act upon is to ensure reliable and cost-effective energy supplies, to stem the escalating cost of living and to indulge in good environmental stewardship. Imposition of a carbon dioxide tax will have exactly the opposite effects.

They don't have to worry because the world is moving too.

Just this month the U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron pledged to cut his country's emissions by half by 2027.

New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key is enhancing a carbon trading scheme that has been in place in New Zealand since 2008. On May 29, the U.S. state of New Jersey announced its withdrawal from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a market designed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. Northeast.

Meanwhile, Russia, Japan and Canada have told the G8 nations that they will not join a second round of carbon dioxide cuts under any continuation of the Kyoto protocol, and the U.S. has reiterated it intends to remain outside the treaty. The reason is because the rest of the world, outside of Europe, has chosen not to implement penal imposts on coal-fired power stations, nor to tax carbon dioxide more generally.

Western governments are in fact moving in precisely the opposite direction to PM Gillard’s demonisation and intended taxation of an environmentally beneficial trace gas. 

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The original article by Prime Minister Gillard (italicized paragraphs, above) first appeared in The Daily Telegraph on 30 May 2011.



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About the Author

Professor Bob Carter is a researcher at the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University. Copies of scientific papers and other media articles by Bob Carter can be accessed through his website.

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