Crikey comments...

As a bit of background Crikey's Christian Kerr (see article at the bottom of this post) is a serial anti-green antagonist and at best an unhappy climate change accepter. But I think the debate ought to move on....especially from the views of comments from people like Stuart Glazebrook....

Here is what I wrote...

Cormo writes: Mr Glazebrook's comments highlight the polar nature of current debate in Crikey and more widely on human induced climate change. As a fact we know that over the last few years the Earth has been warming (as compared to the last 150 years at least) and we also know that the concentration of carbon dioxide, methane and other so-called greenhouse gases have been increasing in the Earth's atmosphere. We know that many of our activities contribute to this increased gas concentration. While we can't say for sure that our emissions contribute to this warming, on the balance of probability the majority of climate scientists believe that they do. As the only way to find out if the dire environmental consequences predicted by climate modelling are true or not is to keep doing what we are doing and see what happens, it seems prudent to take some action. What we also know is that with incremental change to our lifestyle/energy production/travel methods etc. we can probably seriously reverse this pattern of emissions in 40 to 50 years. Where the debate is in Europe and in many US and Australian boardrooms now is: how can we make the most of this? Where are the opportunities? What is the cheapest source of greenhouse gas abatement? How can reduce our emissions? Sure, it's probably a fad, but capitalism thrives on innovation and the next area of innovation seems to be green - renewable energy, sustainable development, energy efficiency, carbon trading and the financial/trading systems and capital that follows it. A corollary is the improved energy security situation and the development of new industry (perhaps even export !). But it seems to me that it comes down to which dire circumstances you believe - dire climatic outcomes of the IPCC or dire economic outcomes that those who believe a move toward emission reductions will bring. Both are probably overstated, but even a large blip on the economic radar in the 2010's will probably mean very little to us or our kids or grand kids compared to major climatic change in 40 to 50 years' time.

Two others had slightly more evidence based answers...


Mike Martin writes: Stuart Glazebrook (yesterday, comments) appears, in questioning man-made global warming, to be suffering from gross adverbial and adjectival over-sufficiency and a severe shortage of facts. He asks for "one irrefutable, non-emotive, scientifically incontrovertible element of proof that man has contributed" to global warming. Science does not provide irrefutable, incontrovertible proof of any scientific theory. This is why physicists continue to scratch their heads over, for example, Einstein's theory of relativity (which of course contradicted Isaac Newton's theory of gravity). A century after relativity theory was formulated and long after its successful application to the design of nuclear bombs, scientists are still wondering if there is something seriously wrong with it. The consensus view about global warming that Glazebrook disparages is in fact a consensus that, despite all efforts to date by sceptical scientists, nobody has come up with a better explanation for current climate change than that it is due to increasing concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and that the increasing concentration is substantially due to human activity. It is unclear whether Glazebrook denies that global climate is changing, or just that the change is substantially a consequence of human activity. If the former, the Bureau of Meteorology has on its website a useful collection http://www.bom.gov.au of trend charts and datasets which he might like to consult.

Mark Byrne writes: Stuart Glazebrook claims that the evidence for man-made global warming is derived from little more than complex computer models. This claim fails to acknowledge the basic physics of heat trapping greenhouse gases. Svante Arrhenius didn't use computers when in 1896 he calculated that doubling atmospheric CO2 would cause a temperature rise of five degrees Celsius. Glazebrook also requests "one irrefutable, non-emotive, scientifically incontrovertible element of proof" that man has contributed to global warming. This is quite a limiting request, simply because any scientific theory, such as the theory of gravity and theory of evolution are explained with a sequence of evidence, rather than a single element of evidence. However, given Glazebrook's lack of acknowledgement of the relationship between CO2 and temperature, I would nominate for him, the robust correlation between CO2 and temperature as demonstrated by the analysis of Antarctic ice cores running from present to 400 thousand years ago (graphic link). At the risk of exceeding Glazebrook's limit, I'd add that current CO2 concentrations now exceed all records for ice core data.


Here is what Stuart had to say earlier....


Stuart Glazebrook writes: Graeme Major (22 January, comments) represents the very worst of the global warming Kool-Aid drinkers in his recent attack on Christian Kerr. Rather than provide counter to his perceived holes in Kerr's arguments, Major instead adopts the time-honoured 'consensus' view in support of his own spurious beliefs, chiding that he could provide Kerr with "all the factual evidence he could possibly want". "Flooding rains, big droughts and mega bushfires" are cited by Major as proof positive of global warming. Nonsense. Extreme weather patterns have been a fact of geological life on Earth well before bipedal hominids first invented the steam engine. Here is a challenge to all the backyard and dining table scientists: please provide just want one irrefutable, non-emotive, scientifically incontrovertible element of proof that man has contributed to what is the "general theory" of global warming. Documented climate change has occurred on this planet for 4.3 billion years. Data supporting the belief in man's supposed destructive impact would not even go back 150 years. Disturbingly, this largely chimerical and emotive argument and the ever-increasingly shrill demands of its supporters risks committing countries like Australia and their populace to financial larceny in its pursuit of a solution. The so-called "factual evidence" for man-made global warming is derived from little more than randomly generated data scenarios fed into overly-complex computer models that produce wildly inconsistent and often misleading and inconclusive results. Unfortunately, it seems many in the media and government have also supped at this font and accepted without question the most direst and catastrophic predictions for humankind's future. Major would do well to consider the "statistically huge standard error involved" in such scientific investigation when next offering his layman's views.

In response to.....


Graeme Major writes: Christian Kerr doesn't get it or pretends he doesn't get it. It is about time he understood what is causing global warming - too much carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere. The concentration of those gases is increasing all the time and contributing to the higher frequency of extreme weather events. At the molecular level carbon dioxide and methane absorb far more heat than the oxygen and nitrogen which make up most of the atmospheric gas mixture. This fact has been a proven fact for decades. If anything, the flooding rains, big droughts and mega bushfires are examples of the effects predicted from global warming, not the converse as he implies. Perhaps Christian could kindly state precisely what more evidence he needs to be convinced global warming is real. Unless he is really dumb, I would be happy to present him with all the factual evidence he could possibly want. The device of choosing one, two or three apparently exceptional examples, ignoring the statistically huge standard error involved, and extrapolating them to debunk a general theory or principle is a standard trick of journalism.


From the original....



Er, yes, the weather's like that in Australia

Christian Kerr writes:



Green fundamentalists haven't just brainwashed the soppy-minded middle classes. Journalists in normally intelligent newspapers seem to have fallen prey to their propaganda, too.
"Central Desert awash in wake of monsoon deluge," Nicholas Rothwell and Andrew McGarry write in http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21082610-2702,00.html The Australian today:
Rain is falling in the Central Desert, its misty veils hanging like nets around the peak-line of the MacDonnell Range at Alice Springs and bringing to life the sandy bed of the town's Todd River...
The rain has also deluged the opal mining town of Coober Pedy, in South Australia's north, which received its biggest rains in five years: 50mm fell in less than 12 hours.
"It's just great - basically the first decent rain we've had in two years," Mayor Steve Baines said...
That's what the weather does in Australia. Our climate runs on boom-bust cycles. Even bushfires play their part. Think of those native species that need fire as part of their lifecycles.
Indeed, if you want a media account that tells it how it is, you can't beat this Quadrant editorial from five years ago http://www.the-rathouse.com/quadedit49.html :
Here we go again. Once again there is grandiose talk of "drought proofing" Australian agriculture, of mounting huge projects to take water from one part of the continent to another, of turning back rivers and making them flow inland, of pumping sewage from the cities to the country, and of more and better irrigation. Not to mention vast amounts of relief to farmers who have been and will, most of them, be in the future better off than the recipients of welfare in the cities.
It is bizarre that while every galah in the pet shop has signed on to slogans about global warming and other simplistic environmental scares, it is possible for such nonsense to be talked at a time when large parts of Australia is in the grip of a drought which, while severe, is not exactly unusual or unprecedented. Even if it proves to be the worst for a century. Surely we have learned by now that the pattern of rainfall in our country is cyclical, affected by factors like the El Nino phenomenon, and drought is as much a fact of life every few years as flood and bushfires. That is what our native flora and fauna have evolved to deal with, as every explosion of life when eventually the rains come shows...
That's what the weather's like in Australia.