The most prominent scientific issue facing the world in the new decade
is that of global warming. The crucial questions are:
* Was the observed warming during the 20th century, greenhouse
warming? Or put another way, was this warming the result of
human-caused changes to the composition of the atmosphere?
* If it were, will continued greenhouse warming pose in time
a threat to human well-being and the environment?
* By sufficiently limiting anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse
gases, can we ‘stabilise’ global climate?
Answers of “Yes” to the above questions, albeit still qualified on scientific grounds, led to the Kyoto Protocol of 1997. This treaty now awaits ratification by the world’s developed nations, including Australia, which will then take on defined obligations to reduce their GHG emissions.
The scientific basis for the Kyoto Protocol is Climate change 1995: the science of climate change from the Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, (Houghton et al Eds, 1996). Even now, the Australian Government accepts this Report “as the most authoritative source of information on the science of global climate change”.
1.2 Should Australia ratify the Kyoto Protocol?
This is not an academic question. Neither is the ‘precautionary
principle’ an adequate guide to public policy in this instance. The
Kyoto Protocol is designed to confer environmental benefits in the long
term, through making a start - but only a small first step - toward the
demanding task of alleviating future global warming.
But ratification will bring with it immediate and much-more-certain
disbenefits. More expensive energy will be the obvious and early
outcome. This will translate into reduced world economic growth,
reduced international trade and reduced human welfare. In Australia’s
case, an added burden will be the export of jobs from our energy-intensive
industries to nations which don’t take on treaty commitments 2.
______________________________________________________________________________________
2. An analysis by the Australian Greenhouse Office sets this
point in context. In its Discussion paper 2 National Emissions Trading:
issuing the permits of June 1999, AGO puts the likely market price of permits
to emit carbon dioxide at $10-50/tonne (p 14) with a “mid-range estimate
approaching $30 per tonne ..... or $12 billion per year”. In fact,
$30/tonne of CO2 translates to $110/tonne of contained carbon in Australian
coal - which now generally sells at below $50/tonne. The consequences
of Australian ratification are explained by AGO (p 11) as follows:
Trade-exposed industries are a particular concern because of
their limited capacity to pass on cost increases. Within this
group, those industries in competition with producers in non-Annex B
countries would be especially vulnerable to costly abatement action.
Australia is unusual in this regard, as the major export industries
in most other industrialised countries compete with each other rather
than with industries located in developing countries.
More-closely related to the stated justification for ratification, is the adverse impact the Protocol will have on the environment. This treaty might help in the distant future, perhaps; but it will divert money and attention now from better-founded and more-pressing environmental threats.
In Australia’s case these are:
* fragmentation and alienation of native habitat;
* over-use of fresh water resources, plus draining and filling of wetlands;
* over-harvesting of edible marine species, and alienation of littoral
environments;
* erosion or salination of arable land, and rising salinity in available
water resources;
* introduction and spread of alien plant and animal species.
and recently,
* growth of new agricultural industries, such as fish-farms and monocultural
carbon-sequestration plantations - without an adequate consideration of
their environmental implications.
Irreversible loss of endemic biodiversity is the consequent outcome.
Applying the precautionary principle in this instance will ensure harm to Australians and to the biodiversity of which we are the custodians. This submission will provide the scientific basis for arguing that a decision on ratification by Australia be deferred until the underlying science has been examined in the broad. This is too important an issue for us to base our ratification decision on an uncritical acceptance of IPCC’s narrow view of the science.
1.3 ‘Group Think’ in action
1.3 1 What IPCC is now saying
Greenhouse is a relatively new science. It is both complex and
inter-disciplinary; and its analysis suffers from a paucity of long-running
observational data. Despite these obvious handicaps, work released
by IPCC has never borne signs of the contention and debate on which the
advancement of scientific understanding necessarily depends.
Scientists are a well-educated, diverse, and ill-disciplined lot of free-thinkers - and lateral thinkers. And yet, consensus has been paramount in the workings of IPCC. Where are the dissidents?
In fact, a little before COP6 on 13-24 November 2000 3 (and just prior
to the US Presidential election of 7 November - in which Al Gore
appeared as booster and George W. Bush as sceptic on greenhouse), a leak
from IPCC appeared in the New York Times and elsewhere, which showed that
IPCC’s collective conviction of the supremacy of its version of climate-change
science has strengthened.
______________________________________________________________________________________
3. Conference of Parties no.6 to the (1992) UN Framework Convention
on Climate Change was intended to settle how the obligations of individual
nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under the (1997) Kyoto Protocol
were to be met and recognised. (In fact, COP6 was left in Limbo,
with its task not completed.)
An Editorial in Science of 10 November 2000 (v 290 p 1091) under the
title “New Climate News” covered the leak as follows:
The preface of the latest draft report from the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change was leaked last week and was widely reported
in the press. ..... Here are the surprises. .....
The first is that the global warming estimate itself - at least its
upper bound - has received an upward adjustment. The last IPCC
estimates, in 1995, put the average global temperature increase by the
end of this century at 1.5 0 to 4.0 0C. This newest estimate
is 1.5 0 to 6.0 0C. The second surprise is that a firmer
association between human activities and climate has emerged.
Even the most skeptical climatologist in the IPCC group now concedes
that warming bears an anthropogenic handprint.
and
Even without an unpleasant surprise, the new IPCC report raises
the prospect of serious risk to a new level. And it’s about
time: Right now, climate change has drifted off the radar screen,
warranting scarcely a glance in this season of electoral politics.
IPCC harbours no doubts; and neither do Top People 4, it seems.
At COP6, French President Jacques Chirac began his address of 20 November:
I arrive in The Hague with a sense of urgency. Yesterday’s
hypothesis has turned out to be true. Scientists now have no
doubts: global warming has set in, as a result of the prodigious
concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere over the past
century. This is a manmade phenomenon, since humans have caused
it. .... The time has come for action. We can all imagine
the dreadful consequences, ultimately, of inertia and hesitation,
such as the disappearance of regulating mechanisms such as the Gulf
Stream which gives Europe its temperate climate.
After the suspension of COP6, the message is no different. An
editorial in Nature of 30 November (v 408 p 501) says under the heading
“Critical politics of carbon sinks”:
It was the conclusions of IPCC working groups about the severity
of impending climate change that prompted agreement on the need for
action in Kyoto. Since then, further research has strengthened
those conclusions.
______________________________________________________________________________________
4. The President of France can afford to take the moral high
ground. His country is already one of the most decarbonised in the
world, because much of its electricity is nuclear-sourced. But M
Chirac is not the only high-profile believer in greenhouse. Michael
Hanlon (science editor of the Daily Express), writing in The Spectator
of 11 November 2000 (“Rain of terror” pp 28, 9), begins:
Our future king is wrong. This week Prince Charles plunged
his oar into the muddy waters of Britain’s flood crisis and announced
that he has ‘no doubt’ that our misery results from mankind’s ‘arrogant
disregard’ for the delicate balance of nature. The prince - along
with most commentators - may be sure that global warming is to blame
for the floods; and one naturally hesitates, in the royalist pages
of The Spectator, from dissenting.
and
Everyone in the media seems to want the storms to be caused
by global warming, and indeed they might well be; it is just that
unfortunately we have no evidence whatsoever that they are.
1.3.2 What the concerned public is now hearing
Under the double-entendre “It’s a cool place to live. Let’s keep
it that way.” is a full page advertisement in Scientific American of December
2000. Beneath a photo from space displaying a segment of the Globe
is a single paragraph, saying:
Increasing air pollution means our world is warming faster
than at any time in the last 10,000 years, affecting the world’s
forests. oceans, atmosphere, animals and ourselves. WWF is
urging governments and businesses to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions
responsible for global warming.
And in the lower RH corner is the ‘WWF panda’ logo, and the words “Let’s leave our children a living planet”.
Here it is in a nutshell: CO2 is a pollutant, its human-caused emission is warming the globe, and that warming is bad for us and for biodiversity. But there is no hint here of awareness that money spent on greenhouse is not then available for the here-and-now protection of the World’s vanishing wildlife.
In the previous (November) issue of the same journal, is a double-page
ad by Shell. On the left, it asks the rhetorical question:
The issue of global warming has given rise to heated debate.
Is the burning of fossil fuels and increased concentration of carbon
dioxide in the air a serious threat or just a lot of hot air?
and on the right, it answers:
Shell believes that action needs to be taken now, both by
companies and their customers. So last year, we renewed our
commitment not only to meet the agreed Kyoto targets to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions. but to exceed them. .....
The cover of Science & Public Affairs for December 2000 promises “Science and politics in climate research” inside. This journal is published by the British Association for the Advancement of Science with support from the Royal Society. It is the public voice of the Scientific Establishment; and it certainly delivers on its promise in this instance.
The Focus article (pp 10, 11) “Stormy weather at The Hague” by Ehsan
Masood (Opinion Editor of New Scientist) begins:
Last month’s UN summit at The Hague ended in failure when
the US and Europe failed to agree on concrete steps to tackle global
climate change. Many environmentalists weeped (sic) in the
belief that the planet is doomed.
and later tells us that:
The world’s climate scientists warn that emissions of carbon
dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide need to be cut by around 60% for
global warming to be turned around.
The Feature article (pp 18, 19) “A stormy moral microclimate” by Wayland
Kennet warms to the Journal’s promised theme. Lord Kennet is a founder
member of the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, but I have
no information on his political affiliations. He says (I am not pulling
your leg, here):
Fewer scientists may be employed in the defence industries
than during the Cold War but the increasing number of scientists
in industry still represents a misuse of scientific talent.
and
Today, the industry lobbies are bad-mouthing the precautionary
principle .....
Finally, another Feature article (pp 22, 23) “UK climate research set
fair” by Mike Hulme, Executive Director of the Tyndall Centre5, and Ian
Dwyer, Global Change Co-ordinator at the Natural Environment Research Council,
says:
As the current floods in this country have shown, adapting
to climate change is not so much an issue of technical ability, but
rather a question of identifying socially and economically acceptable
precautionary policies, and implementing them.
Prince Charles and Science and Public Affairs are on the same wavelength, it appears, in regard to the cause of the UK floods.
It seems that neither Big Green, Big Business nor Big Science have reservations about the underlying science.
!.3.3 Meanwhile, back home in Australia .....
Following the suspension of COP6 without result, The Age of Melbourne
provided (on 27 November 2000, p 14) an editorial “Try again on greenhouse:
international consensus is the only way the world’s environment can be
saved”, quoted here in part:
The only real solution to stopping global warming is to reduce
the production of greenhouse gases at their source; and the truth
is that on this issue Australia’s position is very vulnerable.
We have done very little towards meeting even the generous targets
that were allowed us at Kyoto. Yes, our economy is unusually
dependent on the export of fossil fuels, but we are not the only country
that is being forced to make choices between jobs and the environment.
______________________________________________________________________________________
5. The UK Research Councils have collectively provided 10 million
pounds over five years to fund the Centre, with headquarters at the University
of East Anglia, and offices at Manchester and Southampton. The article
explains that:
The new Tyndal Centre for Climate Change Research aims to study
climate in holistic fashion, embracing science, engineering, sociology
and economics.
and
Tyndall Centre expertise will also provide underpinning research
for some of the activities of UK Climate Impacts Programme, particularly
through providing core scenarios and integrated assessment methodologies
for stakeholder participation.
Is everything clear now?
Greenhouse news, the newsletter of the Australian Greenhouse Office 6, underlines the point with an account of a National Press Club forum (of which more later) under the headline “Science supports global warming due to human activity”, and sub-heading “..... three distinguished Australian scientists concluded that there is indeed global warming caused by the increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases .....”
This forum was ‘facilitated’ by AGO and Environment Australia (both government agencies), and the “three distinguished Australian scientists” are fully or largely funded by Government. This is your government speaking.
The Australian government spends several hundred million dollars/year on promoting greenhouse and its various flow-ons, directly and indirectly. It spends no money directly on the contra view, and I suspect little or none of its broader funding finds its way there.
A recent arrival 7 includes a Foreword written by Senator Robert Hill,
Minister for the Environment and Heritage, and ‘Chair, Ministerial Council
on Greenhouse’. He begins:
Implementing an effective global response to climate change
presents an unprecedented policy challenge. It could mean significant
structural and technological change, and the acceptance of associated
adjustment costs for many countries. Yet science tells us there
is a real danger that if countries fail to act, subsequent environmental
changes may be significant and irreversible.
Minister Hill is telling us that the impending, and quite unprecedented, intrusion of Government into the lives of Australians in the name of greenhouse is aimed at avoiding environmental changes which may be significant and irreversible. Yet, degradation, fragmentation and alienation of habitat continues apace in Australia right now; and it will undoubtedly lead to the erosion of Australia’s rich and largely endemic biodiversity. (Clearing of native bushland in Queensland provides an example.) Government is on a path leading to reduced living standards for Australians, and the export of jobs in the energy-related industries, in the name of preventing future environmental changes - while it makes no comparable effort to prevent similarly-irreversible here-and-now changes.
Apparently, in the minds of Big Green, Big Business, Big Science and
Big Government, the underpinning science of greenhouse-induced climate
change is no longer an issue. If this is so, both human welfare and
the environment will be the losers. Autistic attention to greenhouse,
in the name of the precautionary principle and to the exclusion of better-founded
and more-pressing environmental needs, is itself a threat to the environment.
The science is still crucial.
______________________________________________________________________________________
6. greenhouse news (Summer 2000-2001, v 3 no 4 p3) reports the
National Press Club Telstra Address by Graeme Pearman (Head of CSIRO’s
Atmospheric Research Division), John Church (a senior scientist in CSIRO’s
Antarctic Cooperative Research Centre) and John Zilman (Director of the
Bureau of Meteorology) in Canberra on 13 September 2000. This forum
was broadcast nationally on ABC TV. (see comments on BoM pages)
7. Encouraging early greenhouse abatement action: a public consultation
paper, Ministerial Council on Greenhouse, Commonwealth of Australia, November
2000, 20 p.
You read it first here
© 2001 Bob Foster Posted
9, April, 2001
www.globalwarming-news.com
Back to "Duel
of the Hypotheses" contents page
Back
to Guests Page
Back to Front Page