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In order to bestow upon future generations a planet like the one we received, we need to win

In 2010, Christopher Monckton and James Hansen both toured Australia. Monckton is a fruitcake with no scientific qualifications at all. He is paid by people like Gina Rinehart, as is Ian Plimer, to promote climate change denial. Hansen is an American adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. He is best known for his research in the field of climatology, his testimony on climate change to congressional committees in 1988 that helped raise broad awareness of global warming, and his advocacy of action to avoid dangerous climate change.

Maurice Newman was the chairman of the ABC at the time. He believed that climate sceptics and denialists didn’t get a run in the media. Monckton was given extensive national coverage on television, radio and online. Hansen did one interview with Philip Adams. Monckton was discussed 161 times on the ABC while Hansen was only mentioned nine times.

Lately we have all devoted a lot of time and research into exposing the climate change deniers, their methods, lies, and money trail. Time to hear from the REAL experts in this paper by Hansen et al published on Dec 3, 2013.

Assessing “Dangerous Climate Change”: Required Reduction of Carbon Emissions to Protect Young People, Future Generations and Nature

Humans are now the main cause of changes of Earth’s atmospheric composition and thus the drive for future climate change. The principal climate forcing, defined as an imposed change of planetary energy balance , is increasing carbon dioxide (CO2) from fossil fuel emissions, much of which will remain in the atmosphere for millennia. The climate response to this forcing and society’s response to climate change are complicated by the system’s inertia, mainly due to the ocean and the ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica together with the long residence time of fossil fuel carbon in the climate system. The inertia causes climate to appear to respond slowly to this human-made forcing, but further long-lasting responses can be locked in.

More than 170 nations have agreed on the need to limit fossil fuel emissions to avoid dangerous human-made climate change, as formalized in the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change. However, the stark reality is that global emissions have accelerated and new efforts are underway to massively expand fossil fuel extraction by drilling to increasing ocean depths and into the Arctic, squeezing oil from tar sands and tar shale, hydro-fracking to expand extraction of natural gas, developing exploitation of methane hydrates, and mining of coal via mountaintop removal and mechanized long-wall mining. The growth rate of fossil fuel emissions increased from 1.5%/year during 1980–2000 to 3%/year in 2000–2012, mainly because of increased coal use.

A crucial point to note is that the three tasks [limiting fossil fuel CO2 emissions, limiting (and reversing) land use emissions, limiting (and reversing) growth of non-CO2 forcings] are interactive and reinforcing. In mathematical terms, the problem is non-linear. As one of these climate forcings increases, it increases the others. The good news is that, as one of them decreases, it tends to decrease the others. In order to bestow upon future generations a planet like the one we received, we need to win on all three counts, and by far the most important is rapid phasedown of fossil fuel emissions.

It is distressing that, despite the clarity and imminence of the danger of continued high fossil fuel emissions, governments continue to allow and even encourage pursuit of ever more fossil fuels. Recognition of this reality and perceptions of what is “politically feasible” may partially account for acceptance of targets for global warming and carbon emissions that are well into the range of “dangerous human-made interference” with climate. Although there is merit in simply chronicling what is happening, there is still opportunity for humanity to exercise free will. Thus our objective is to define what the science indicates is needed, not to assess political feasibility. Further, it is not obvious to us that there are physical or economic limitations that prohibit fossil fuel emission targets far lower than 1000 GtC, even targets closer to 500 GtC. Indeed, we suggest that rapid transition off fossil fuels would have numerous near-term and long-term social benefits, including improved human health and outstanding potential for job creation.

A world summit on climate change will be held at United Nations Headquarters in September 2014 as a preliminary to negotiation of a new climate treaty in Paris in late 2015. If this treaty is analogous to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol , based on national targets for emission reductions and cap-and-trade-with-offsets emissions trading mechanisms, climate deterioration and gross intergenerational injustice will be practically guaranteed. The palpable danger that such an approach is conceivable is suggested by examination of proposed climate policies of even the most forward-looking of nations. Norway, which along with the other Scandinavian countries has been among the most ambitious and successful of all nations in reducing its emissions, nevertheless approves expanded oil drilling in the Arctic and development of tar sands as a majority owner of Statoil. Emissions foreseen by the Energy Perspectives of Statoil, if they occur, would approach or exceed 1000 GtC and cause dramatic climate change that would run out of control of future generations. If, in contrast, leading nations agree in 2015 to have internal rising fees on carbon with border duties on products from nations without a carbon fee, a foundation would be established for phaseover to carbon free energies and stable climate.”

I wonder if Tony Abbott has a contingency plan for when China slaps tariffs on our exports because we don’t price carbon.

 

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24 comments

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  1. Kaye Lee

    Yes I hit publish too soon. Has that fixed it?

  2. Dan Rowden

    It’s fine for me.

  3. Kaye Lee

    Thanks Dan. My novice publishing skills leave a lot to be desired, though it is fun learning.

  4. bighead1883

    This article will not Load on Google or Chrome or Yahoo you must have a prob at your end

  5. John Lord

    I’m still learning.

  6. Dan Rowden

    Well, there’s a difference between learning how to to write and show regard for things like proper attribution and so forth that an on-line author has to consider, and trying to navigate the idiosyncrasies and failures of the WordPress format. The latter is frankly much harder. You pay money for it and yet so many of its features suck. Oh well.

    More on topic, it’s increasingly disturbing how many persons with no scientific credentials think themselves qualified to not just questions scientific models, but outright dismiss and condemn them. A second dark age is coming unless we stop it, now.

  7. Kaye Lee

    I agree Dan. When people like Pell and Newman think they have the right to speak out and to advise senate committees it is time to draw the line and tell them to shut up and get back where they belong and leave it to the REAL experts. How dare they try to influence public opinion. We have to win.

  8. Greg Rapmund

    Yes yes and yes we have to win. What more can be done to help this greatly abused planet? As a parent and grandparent I do not want to be reviled as another arsehole that did nothing. Why am I crying

  9. dave farrell

    I feel an increase in the denialist point of view being thrust into the public sphere by Murdoch as Tony Abbott gets to put the removal of the carbon price up to the vote.It would be nice to put it up him in the W A Senate re-vote. The Libs here are concerned that the Barnett gov’t has lost the confidence of the people thru the breaking of pre election promises.Surprise for them,they can’t see Abbott’s joke of a gov’t is being seen for the liars that they are.I do hope the LNP voters in central and western Qld.suffer in their jocks as record temperatures take hold this week.It is not that they haven’t had drought before,but surely this extreme event is as the modelling shows.

  10. David Black

    Is anyone thinking about the warmists trapped in the Antarctic ice which was supposed to have been melted by global warming? This must be the most embarrassing PR disaster since Climategate. Notice how the ABC has stopped referring to “climate change” in its coverage of the debacle.

  11. Kaye Lee

    David Black, there is a difference between land ice and sea ice, There is also a difference between the Arctic and Antarctic. The leader of the expedition. who no doubt knows more then you or me, or even Andrew Bolt, said that the ice surrounding his ship is old, rather than recently formed, and likely from a particular 75 mile-long iceberg that broke apart three years ago. Climate change may have prompted the iceberg to shatter and float into the previously open sea where the mostly Australian team finds itself stranded.

    “The ice was swept across to this area by the South-East wind, its pieces creating a knock-on domino effect,” Turney told FoxNews.com, speaking from a tent erected on the stranded ship’s top deck. “We were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

    How come deniers say all of the extreme weather events – fires, floods, hurricanes, droughts – are NOT examples of climate change, but one ship stuck in ice is proof that AGW doesn’t exist?

  12. VoterBentleigh

    Thank you Kaye. Dave Farrell’s comment is on target, too. What else have the Murdoch rags to talk about in regard to the Government? The Prime Minister has not achieved the repeal of the carbon tax, even though he claimed the election was a referendum on it. The Abbottites are getting worried that the heat waves in much of Australia will weaken all the propaganda efforts they put in to get Abbott’s Coalition elected to repeal the carbon price, so, from what I’ve read here (I don’t read the Murdoch media), they are back in full propaganda mode. It’s a wonder that they do not start dropping leaflets from the sky.

    On the other hand, the Abbott Coalition has commenced wrecking a lot of good things the Government never promised to alter: the Great Barrier Reef, Medicare, jobs, wages for early childhood workers, etc. Gillard was right: Abbott only knows how to wreck. So what else can Rupert and the pro-carbon lobby do but push propaganda to distract from all the Government’s disasters? The carbon price repeal is all they have left.

    John Fraser, thanks for the link. Unlike all those who believe Abbott is the saviour, I am a perpetual doubter of him as I always note the opt-out clause in everything he says. There it was again. While claiming that he will start a conversation to recognise the first Australians and that this would complete our Constitution, he added the opt-out clause: “rather than change it”. We cannot recognise the first Australians without changing the Constitution! As you often say, Abbott is slick. I also think that the Greens have been duped into to believing Hockey will be open and transparent with the public on the budget and economy.

  13. Dan Rowden

    David,

    I’m not going to bother to ask you for any facts that show Climate Change science is wrong because I know you don’t have any, so I’ll simply ask you this: who is it that benefits from this “scam”?

  14. David Black

    The leader of the expedition has his nose in the global warming trough and he must be realizing that the wheels are starting to fall off the scam.
    Time for a new crusade, folks.

  15. Möbius Ecko

    I wish the deniers would stop misrepresenting what was said and stop mindlessly aping the paid for by vested interest falsehoods.

    Yes that’s you David Black. How about you source for us the exact statement Flannery made in full and in context?

    And of course the post is the usual furphy of climate change proponents being in it solely for the money and grants, whilst conveniently overlook the large sums of money spokespeople for the vested interests like the Heartland Institute and Koch Brothers get paid to deliberately peddle falsehoods and muddy the real science.

    Next David Black will role out the religious meme or one of the other standard rote by numbers attacks on the credible science and scientists.

  16. Möbius Ecko

    David Black, those deniers in record severe heatwaves approaching 50 degrees in some parts of Australia must be embarrassed by their denial.

    What an ignorant correlation to make, straight from the tweet of a certain Liberal Minister I believe. David Black can’t even think for himself but like most just repeats Liberal Party points almost verbatim.

  17. Kaye Lee

    David,

    140 foundations funneled $558 million to almost 100 climate denial organizations from 2003 to 2010.

    If a scientist could disprove global warming they would probably receive the Nobel Prize and would have unlimited funding from fossil fuel billionaires.

    Use your common sense here. Which scientist would NOT want to prove 97% of others wrong if they could?

  18. David Black

    Dan, look at the salaries and grants that people like Tim Flannery get for their crazy predictions, like “the dams will never be full again” just in time for the Brisbane flood. Look at the lavish life-style of arch scamster Al Gore. And who financed the Ship of Fools that is now stuck in the Antarctic? There have been big bucks in global warming and it’s all coming to an end.
    The Ship of Fools is not proof positive in itself; but, as I said, it has been a PR disaster on a biblical scale for the warmists .

  19. Chris

    The deniers have been using the same flawed arguments since I first developed a real interest in climate change which is just over 31 years ago, it’s time to change the record as it’s broken.

  20. Pingback: We don’t need no stinkin’ advice! « The Australian Independent Media Network

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