GreenBlog

By popular demand, here is the entire Brisbane Institute-sponsored green debate, featuring Lord Monckton, Prof Ian Plimer, Prof Barry Brook and couriermail.com.au blogger Graham Readfearn.

Because Graham has left us to pursue other professional opportunities and won’t be able to respond here, I won’t be inviting comments on this post.

Update:
Some IE users appear to be having trouble with this. We’re looking into that - but it seems to run well in Firefox.

SO that’s that then.

This will be my final post (#656) for the blog I started in July 2008. Late yesterday I resigned my post as a journalist and feature writer at The Courier-Mail, thanking the editor for the 3+ years of gainful employment and the chance to publish my thoughts here on this blog.

For a bunch of reasons (some personal), I’ve been enjoying my day-to-day work less and less of late and feel it’s time to refresh the beast to hopefully become a less cynical, happier human/journalist. In a short and shameless plug, I’m looking for a new gig.

Earlier today, I got a call from a journalist at the Sydney Morning Herald asking me if I had resigned because of the way my now former employer, The Courier-Mail, had reported the story about the high-profile climate change debate in Brisbane. My honest answer was that it wasn’t.

There’s very little to say, in fact, about the debate at the Brisbane Institute. I’m not claiming victory, because there was no contest in the first place. Both Professor Plimer and Lord Monckton repeated all their well-rehearsed pseudo-science. In a room full of supporters, it’s hardly surprising their rhetoric was cheered.

But as a journalist or a commentator, going to Lord Monckton and Professor Plimer for a view on climate change is akin to asking the Faroe Islands soccer team if the Australian cricket captain’s training regime is good enough to win them the Ashes.

Monckton and Plimer are clearly the Faroe Islands soccer team (apologies to FIFA) of the climate change advisory industry. Neither have published a single peer-reviewed article on anthropogenic climate change and every science academy in the world disagrees with the thrust of their argument. Their errors are continually pointed out from credible scientists, but they repeat those errors, ad nauseam.

As I said to people in the audience, if they choose to buy their climate science from non-qualified sources continually shown to be incorrect, then that’s their choice. It would make an interesting psychology study to understand their willingness to accept such views.

As for how the climate change issue is being reported in some quarters, I’ve made my thoughts pretty clear on that too.

So why did I resign?

Sometimes in life you just get a feeling in your gut that it’s time to make a change. 

Here’s what our Graham’s been up to. Is this your idea of a holiday?

http://media01.couriermail.com.au/multimedia/mediaplayer/main/index.html?id=1416

and

http://player.video.news.com.au/couriermail/#3jxzBuoKQqHgfW1I0hA2He4u5TsyhfuU

THERE won’t be too much happening here for the next 12 days. I’m off on leave. The time has come to usher our oldest child into the brave new world of school. He’s got his hat and everything.

There’ll be much to discuss on my return, as the Australian Government launches it’s third attempt to pass an emissions trading scheme. After the last failure, I blamed The Greens. Perhaps this time, it will be different.

I will be part of a panel “debate” at the Brisbane Institute on 29 January and may drop in a thought on that at some point pre- or post-event.

COLUMNIST Janet Albrechtsen in The Australian today calls for calm and reason in the climate change debate, which would be fine if she didn’t go on to repeat the very untruths which foster the confusion she laments.

Continue reading 'Would you take your climate “facts” from this man?'

SEVERAL people have asked me if there’s an online version of a feature of mine, published in print in The Courier-Mail last week, that looked at climate change in relation to your fruit and vegetables. If you want to read it, then keep going.

Continue reading 'Feature: Climate change and our fruit and vegetables'

WHEN I said last October I thought the design of Brisbane’s new public space - King George Square - was hot, it looks as though I was right.

One of my colleagues here, James O’Loan, took a thermometer into the square yesterday and came back with a maximum reading of 56.3C. Have a look at his report.

REMEMBER the Exxon Valdez - the oil tanker that ran aground in Alaska in March 1989?

As a bit of a memory jogger, the ship spilled 257,000 barrels of oil coating virtually all life on 320 kilometres of coastline and killing, according to the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, an estimated 250,000 seabirds, 2,800 sea otters, 300 harbor seals, 250 bald eagles, up to 22 killer whales, and billions of salmon and herring eggs.

According to Exxon, the company spent about $2.1 billion on the clean-up which at its height involved 10,000 workers and hundreds of boats, planes and helicopters. Local industry, communities and lives were ruined and the knock-on effects of the disaster were felt across the region.

Now you might think that after all that effort, and more than 20 years, the environment would have recovered. But according to a new study in Nature Geoscience, the oil is still harming wildlife there.

Oil spilled from the tanker Exxon Valdez in 1989 persists in the subsurface of gravel beaches in Prince William Sound, Alaska. The contamination includes considerable amounts of chemicals that are harmful to the local fauna.

The study found that the reason the black stuff had managed to hang around so long, was that it had lowered oxygen and nutrients in the waters which are needed to foster micro-organisms and “aid in aerobic biodegradation” of the oil. One of the authors, Michel Boufadel, said had “created a sort of sheltering effect on the oil”.

Only last year, Exxon was ordered to pay an extra $480 million in damages to victims such as fishermen and tourism operators.

And what of the actual ship? Well the Valdez is just as persistent as the oil it was carrying 20 years ago. These days the single-hull tanker is called the Dong Fang Ocean, and it carries ore, rather than oil.

Photo courtesy of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council.

TODAY’S front page of The Australian carries this headline: UN’s blunder on glaciers exposed.

The first paragraph of the story then goes

THE peak UN body on climate change has been dealt another humiliating blow to its credibility after it was revealed a central claim of one of its benchmark reports - that most of the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035 because of global warming - was based on a “speculative” claim by an obscure Indian scientist.

On reading this story, I head straight for the IPCC Assessment Report 4 Synthesis Report - the one which acts as an executive summary for the three main reports - to find this “central claim”. The Synthesis Report even has the Summary for Policy Makers in it, which are the bits which the IPCC thinks important people should read if they can’t get round to looking at the rest of the report. If this “central claim” about the glaciers of the Himalayas being almost gone by 2035 was anywhere, it’ll be somewhere in the Synthesis Report.

Except it’s not in there, which means it can’t really be a “central claim” at all.

Continue reading 'Those Himalayan glaciers and the mistake of 2035'

PROFESSOR John Quiggin suggests one reason not to take part in a debate with climate change deniers later this month in Brisbane.

There is, obviously, little to be achieved by debating lunatic conspiracy theorists, especially if they have plenty of practice and no scruples about lying and dodging questions.

(via reader Ben)

ECOLOGIST and herpetologist (that’s reptiles and amphibians) Dr Paul Hamilton and his team have got a bit of a race on and it’s all to do with, among other critters and creatures, a snail-sucking snake and a frog with hatchlings the size of a pinhead.

The executive director of the US charity Reptile and Amphibian Ecology International and his team have uncovered what he suspects to be as many as 30 new species of frog and several new reptiles, including the snail-sucker (pictured, courtesy of Dr Hamilton), on trips to ecosystems in coastal Ecuador.

Dr Hamilton says one “cloud forest” area on the Cerro Pata de Pájaro mountain is only “a couple of miles wide” but it’s got at least 14 examples of what he thinks are new species.

But knowing for sure if a species really is unique can be costly and time consuming and it’s time which Dr Hamilton says these areas don’t have. Pressure from land clearing for cattle grazing, hunting and timber harvesting are all to blame, he says.

We found the slug-sucker snake in a tropical dry forest area that’s about 95 per cent gone. We arrived there at night with our headlamps on. We were there for less than half an hour and looked straight above and there’s this snake… right above our heads. It shows to me what little we actually know about some of these places that are almost gone.

Go here for a stunning picture gallery from Dr Hamilton.

Guest post from Dr Tim Seelig, The Wilderness Society campaign manager.

Queensland has some of most pristine, globally-significant and last free flowing rivers on the planet, and our Wild Rivers laws are about ensuring they are safe from destructive development.

Wild Rivers is about setting sensible environmental standards and conditions for sustainable development, which keeps mining, dams and intensive irrigation away from the rivers, while permitting smaller-scale uses such as eco-tourism and sustainable economic activities.

Traditional hunting, fishing, management and conservation are all clearly supported through protection of native title rights and employment of Indigenous Rangers.

Last year, the government protected the first three Wild Rivers on Cape York; next will be the spectacular Wenlock River, under threat from future bauxite mining. A number of other rivers on Cape York and in Western Queensland will be nominated for protection this year.

Thanks to Wild Rivers, places like the extraordinary Aurukun wetlands are now safe from sandmining. However, there has been a concerted campaign by conservative Indigenous figure Noel Pearson to undermine the Wild Rivers initiative.

Now, Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott – who bizarrely regards himself as a “fair dinkum environmentalist” - has proposed to overturn the state laws. He claims they limit Indigenous development opportunities, but really this is about political grandstanding and attention-seeking.

Wild Rivers has been endorsed in three successive state elections, and subjected to three rounds of legislative amendments, each involving Mr Pearson and other Indigenous representatives. There are differing views about wild rivers on the Cape, but most Traditional Owners want to see their land and rivers protected, and wild rivers helps achieve this.

Addressing Indigenous disadvantage is essential, but the suggestion that we can only do this by allowing mining and other unrestrained destructive development in our pristine rivers and sensitive landscapes is bad and dangerous policy. If you want to know some facts on Wild Rivers, go to www.giveusabreak.org.au.

For a region like Cape York we should be protecting the natural environment, especially its rivers, and using the opportunities this provides to build sustainable eco-tourism enterprises, and other employment opportunities.

We can then enhance Indigenous social and economic futures in ways that don’t trash the joint.

A guest post by Nicola Beynon, Senior Program Manager, Humane Society International

KEVIN 07 promised the Australian electorate he would throw the book at Japanese whalers on two counts.

Firstly, he said a Labor Government would enforce Australian law prohibiting whaling within the Australian Whale Sanctuary - penalising any whalers found to be breaching Australian law. Secondly, he would take Japan to an international court to end the slaughter of whales.

Using the scientific whaling loophole, the Japanese Government issues itself a permit to kill up to 935 minke whales and 50 fin whales every year in Antarctica and the International Whaling Commission routinely condemns it.

On taking office the Rudd Government quickly back-tracked on the first promise. This Government has also failed to enforce the injunction that Humane Society International (HSI) obtained in the Australian Federal Court, which declared Japanese whaling in Australian Whale Sanctuary in our Antarctic territorial waters unlawful under Australian law and ordered that it be stopped.

With Japan not recognizing Australia’s Antarctic territorial claim, the Government bottled-out of having a barney with Japan and other Antarctic Treaty partners over Australian sovereignty in Antarctica. So, instead of sending the Oceanic Viking to enforce Australian law, in December 2007 the Rudd Government sent the ship to “monitor” the hunt and “gather evidence” for the international court case.

So what of that international court case?

It is a case that HSI first outlined to the Australian Government in 1998 which would challenge Japan for “abusing their rights” under international law (in taking advantage of the loophole in the whaling treaty that allows for lethal scientific research) and the global moratorium on commercial whaling. It is a matter of international law and not tied up with Australian sovereignty.

The Howard Government as good as threatened Japan with that case at the International Whaling Commission meeting in Adelaide in 2000 – and Japan essentially said “bring it on!” - which the Howard Government never did.

Continue reading 'Guest post - Mr Rudd… about those election commitments on whaling'

HOW do you have a debate with someone who calls environment campaigners the Hitler youth, claims predictably and repeatedly that climate change is a socialist conspiracy and believes that he’s basically never wrong?

Well, of course, you don’t.

The “someone” in question is Lord Christopher Monckton, a former political adviser to a British Conservative Prime Minister (Margaret Thatcher) who is on his way to Australia.

A little bit like most rational people dismiss the idea that the Earth was created 6,000 years ago, extreme positions held without inhibition can, in my view, be fairly ignored when they skirt around the extreme fringes of society.

But what happens when such continually debunked views about climate change science begin to attract a mainstream forum and are courted by popular radio personalities (scary ones, like Alan Jones) and politicians elected to represent constituents?

The answer is, they should be challenged.

Lord Monckton - dubbed the ”high priest” of climate denialism - is being flown to Australia by climate change sceptics and opponents of regulation on carbon emissions for a countrywide speaking tour later this month. On Crikey, Clive Hamilton takes a look at Lord Monckton’s over-egged CV.

During this tour, Lord Monckton will be chaperoned by wealthy mining consultant and geologist Professor Ian Plimer. Lord Monckton will also be getting a fee of $20,000 and all his travel and accommodation - somewhere in the region of $100,000 - will be paid for.

Late last week I was asked by the Brisbane Institute if I would be willing to take a role in a “debate” about climate change during a business lunch with Lord Monckton and Professor Plimer on 29 January. I pointed out that this will not be a “debate” of any meaningful sort, but accepted the invitation in any case for the reasons I’ve already outlined. And no, I’m not getting a $20,000 fee - or any fee at all - although they are going to pay for my lunch.

Professor Barry Brook, of the University of Adelaide, has also agreed to take part. He is, ironically, the only legitimate climate scientist on the panel.

Details of the event and how to book will appear on the institute’s web page later today. At $130 a ticket, it ain’t cheap.

I’ll have a bit more to say on this in the coming days.

UPDATE: Event details here.

IF still waters run deep, then warmer waters all chopped-up by cyclones which then go on to flatten homes, destroy crops and ruin lives are (in the scientific community at least) running even deeper.

For several years there have been some intense and dividing opinions on cyclones - those wild clockwise manifestations of warm tropical waters and falling air pressures. The question - has climate change already affected their frequency and general angriness?

Three years ago, some of Australia’s governmental meteorological experts (try saying that before a long black) joined with other leading experts in the field of tropical meteorology to state that in terms of linking cyclones to global warming, the science most certainly was not settled. In a statement to the World Meteorological Organization, they said:

… while some recent studies have suggested the intensity of tropical cyclones has increased substantially over the past 50 years due to climate change, the scientific community is “deeply divided”. Some researchers believe the climate record is too inconsistent to draw such a conclusion due to changes in observations equipment and methods over time. The panel says it cannot come to a definitive conclusion in this “hotly debated area”.

The latest research on cyclones from seven Australian government meteorologists is only likely to intensify this debate. After looking at 26 years of satellite data and images, the group has concluded that so far, they cannot see any clear evidence of a rise or fall (decreases in numbers have been postulated too - see this discussion on the RealClimate blog) in either the numbers of cyclones or the proportion of those that are more intense (grumpier). This paper from Science in 2005, for example, said that climate change was already having an effect, but only in the northern hemisphere.

So what does this mean for the science? Well, in Australia at least, nothing much. If you look at Australia’s scientific position three and half years ago, it’s pretty similar to what it is today.

Continue reading 'No clear climate signal on cyclones… yet'