Monday, April 11, 2005
The Climate Change View from Down Under
This article discusses three recent Australian conferences on climate change as a Debate Down Under on what the science is and what policy is wise in a post-Kyoto world. The Australians seem to be taking a refreshingly open and realistic look at the facts and options. The article really says it all quite well and is worth the read. A few key points are :
"Science featured prominently in the discussions. For the first time in Australia, Australia's leading advocates of the Kyoto model were required to publicly defend the "official" UN science supporting Kyoto to their peers. They were not successful. Doubts about the UN science are increasing in Australia.
Meanwhile, the Kyoto Protocol is moribund. This was crystal clear at the UN climate change conference in Argentina last November. The US, Italy, China and developing countries decided Kyoto would not extend beyond 2012. Overtures by the EU to extend it were rejected.
Most greens pretend this did not occur. They also ignore something else. Most governments around the world are not persuaded by the claims that global warming presents a cataclysmic threat. It they were, they would not have walked away from the Kyoto Protocol.
The Australian conferences all focused on one question: What climate change strategies should we adopt in the future? Two options have emerged. Replace the fractured Kyoto model with another model using regulations to reduce greenhouse gases; or change tack and foster technologies that reduce emissions."
"The preferred international approach now is the US strategy to develop low emission technologies. It is the only realistic global strategy. Kyoto stalled because the threat to growth it presented was unacceptable to developing countries. The more radical alternative is even more unacceptable."
The following two statements address the underlying science issues and view the current global climate situation from a longer term earth science perspective:
"Dr. John Zillman, former head of Australia's meteorology bureau and Australia's leading scientific member of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) argued its processes were as good as you would get and its science sound. Ross McKitrick from the University of Guelph, Ontario, took the conference through the detail of research which demonstrated as unsupportable the analysis which produced the famous "hockey stick" chart. This chart demonstrated the twentieth century is the hottest on record. It was endorsed by the IPCC which headlined it to support the case that human activity was causing global warming. McKitrick's analysis that the modeling was fundamentally flawed and the data unrepresentative is now regarded as correct. The work behind the chart was not checked before the IPCC endorsed and headlined it."
"Professor Bob Carter, a geologist from the University of Townsville, then put the discussion over the IPCC climate change science into an Earth science framework. He considered it suspicious that the IPCC work only used the last 1000 years as the frame of reference. He demonstrated that in a million year timescale we were in one of the few interglacial warming periods and the next expected long term development in climate should be a cooling possibly leading to an ice age. He also produced analysis which showed that the historical pattern is that levels of CO2 in the atmosphere rise after temperature increases, not the other way around, as is supposed in the "official" science of greenhouse warming which presumes increases in carbon dioxide are causing global warming. In passing he debunked the conventional claim that most scientists are agreed on the "official" science."
Finally, this last statement is crisp and honest and applies equally strongly to us.
"The debate on science is just starting in Australia. There has never been an independent assessment in Australia of the science of global warming or the implications for Australia. Most focus has been on the economic effects. This was a result of an unspoken decision by government officials and big business over a decade ago not to contest the science. The result is that most Australian officials in government agencies who work on climate change policy are uninformed about the science. This is true in most countries."
Indeed.
"Science featured prominently in the discussions. For the first time in Australia, Australia's leading advocates of the Kyoto model were required to publicly defend the "official" UN science supporting Kyoto to their peers. They were not successful. Doubts about the UN science are increasing in Australia.
Meanwhile, the Kyoto Protocol is moribund. This was crystal clear at the UN climate change conference in Argentina last November. The US, Italy, China and developing countries decided Kyoto would not extend beyond 2012. Overtures by the EU to extend it were rejected.
Most greens pretend this did not occur. They also ignore something else. Most governments around the world are not persuaded by the claims that global warming presents a cataclysmic threat. It they were, they would not have walked away from the Kyoto Protocol.
The Australian conferences all focused on one question: What climate change strategies should we adopt in the future? Two options have emerged. Replace the fractured Kyoto model with another model using regulations to reduce greenhouse gases; or change tack and foster technologies that reduce emissions."
"The preferred international approach now is the US strategy to develop low emission technologies. It is the only realistic global strategy. Kyoto stalled because the threat to growth it presented was unacceptable to developing countries. The more radical alternative is even more unacceptable."
The following two statements address the underlying science issues and view the current global climate situation from a longer term earth science perspective:
"Dr. John Zillman, former head of Australia's meteorology bureau and Australia's leading scientific member of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) argued its processes were as good as you would get and its science sound. Ross McKitrick from the University of Guelph, Ontario, took the conference through the detail of research which demonstrated as unsupportable the analysis which produced the famous "hockey stick" chart. This chart demonstrated the twentieth century is the hottest on record. It was endorsed by the IPCC which headlined it to support the case that human activity was causing global warming. McKitrick's analysis that the modeling was fundamentally flawed and the data unrepresentative is now regarded as correct. The work behind the chart was not checked before the IPCC endorsed and headlined it."
"Professor Bob Carter, a geologist from the University of Townsville, then put the discussion over the IPCC climate change science into an Earth science framework. He considered it suspicious that the IPCC work only used the last 1000 years as the frame of reference. He demonstrated that in a million year timescale we were in one of the few interglacial warming periods and the next expected long term development in climate should be a cooling possibly leading to an ice age. He also produced analysis which showed that the historical pattern is that levels of CO2 in the atmosphere rise after temperature increases, not the other way around, as is supposed in the "official" science of greenhouse warming which presumes increases in carbon dioxide are causing global warming. In passing he debunked the conventional claim that most scientists are agreed on the "official" science."
Finally, this last statement is crisp and honest and applies equally strongly to us.
"The debate on science is just starting in Australia. There has never been an independent assessment in Australia of the science of global warming or the implications for Australia. Most focus has been on the economic effects. This was a result of an unspoken decision by government officials and big business over a decade ago not to contest the science. The result is that most Australian officials in government agencies who work on climate change policy are uninformed about the science. This is true in most countries."
Indeed.
