An initial reaction to Garnaut

The failure to recognise that these are real issues for any government trying to grapple with climate change is the most disappointing aspect of the Draft Report. Garnaut admits uncertainty, but says that delay is not a solution, because it cancels the possibility of low-cost mitigation put in place now. You would have thought that logically he would first have to look at the probability of the IPCC scenario’s being correct. But no.

Reading the scientific chapters is deeply depressing. Again and again a summary statement is made for which one can produce a series of contestations. For example, even the “scientifically reputed sceptics” (oh dear) accept that an increase in CO2 concentrations will lead to warming. I guess they do, as do I, but they would also point out that the effect is logarithmic and diminishing. Does Garnaut? No, there’s not a word about that, and it is most important.

Section 3.1.4 is entitled “Are humans causing the earth to warm?” Great, you think, let’s learn. What we learn is that the IPCC is 90 per cent confident that what humans have done since 1750 has led to warming. But how much warming have we caused? Ah, well, we don’t know about that. But he says we need more research to find out, and I agree. Yet if the human contribution were small in scale, what would that mean? We seem to be rushing ahead as though, to restate the point, the human contribution is all or nearly all.

Garnaut gives no evidence to support his position and his ally, the IPCC, meanders around with what its models say. Later on (sections 5.1.2 and 5.3.3) we learn that the seas are rising. Not a word there about the Argo buoys, which have been measuring ocean temperatures for the last five years in the largest and most sophisticated experiment in oceanography of recent times. These buoys say that there has been no warming - if anything, there has been a slight cooling. What does that mean? Glaciers have been retreating since 1850 - because of CO2 concentrations?

How this Report will help the Rudd Government I cannot imagine. There’s nothing new in it that would cause those who take an interest in the debate to sit up and take notice, notwithstanding the screaming headlines that accompanied its release. Fuel prices are going up, but warming isn’t.

Getting us all to imbibe some Dunkirk spirit and accept a decline in our living standards, after 16 years of increasing prosperity, would be a huge ask at any time. It is really impossible now, and Garnaut has made it harder. He must have wished, more than once, that he’d had the good sense to decline the original invitation.