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  • Emission figures don’t stack up: professor

     

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    Dr Williamson has relied on the official government figures and studies from the Environment Department and the former Australian Greenhouse Office into household energy use and household emissions.

    He concludes that the benefits – as currently claimed – are bogus.

    Two other experts who provide advice to federal government departments on greenhouse gas emissions told The Australian yesterday Dr Williamson’s analysis was correct.

    The emissions reduction claims did not withstand serious scrutiny, they added.

    “The numbers claimed are absurd — they are complete crap when you do the calculations,” one eminent expert said.

    Dr Williamson challenged the Department of Climate Change to prove its claims by releasing its modelling calculations.

    “The benefits have been exaggerated by a considerable factor, and none of the government’s numbers stack up,” said Dr Williamson.

    The average household’s energy use is responsible for about eight tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions a year.

    Dr Williamson said the most optimistic scenario could see the emission reduction get to 0.4 tonnes per household, which meant that the total carbon reduction by 2020 would be about 10 million tonnes.

    This would mean that the scheme had cost taxpayers more than $200 a tonne.

    A Department of Climate Change spokesman said the estimated abatement of 1.65 tonnes of carbon per installation per household year “takes into account average energy use by households as well as the split of electricity and gas use.

    “It is also averaged over Australian climate regions.”

  • Another election promise broken

     

    The opposition health spokesman, Peter Dutton, said the government ”did not want to accept even relatively minor changes … It was politically convenient for the government to say this measure was being blocked”.

    The stand-off over the dental scheme has centred on the government’s refusal to introduce its program until the opposition agreed to axe an increasingly popular Medicare dental scheme which funds up to $4250 in dental treatment for patients who have an associated chronic medical condition.

    More than 400,000 patients have received treatments under the Medicare dental scheme, which has been most popular in NSW – with about 250,000 recipients – and is gaining in popularity in Victoria where about 100,000 have benefited.

    However, the Medicare dental scheme, introduced by the previous government, has been associated with allegations of rorting and Medicare is investigating claims involving about 50 dentists who may have undertaken and been paid for work not eligible for the Medicare payment .

    Labor’s more modest scheme, which would have cost less than half the $700 million so far paid out for the Medicare program, would have reached more people but would not have provided the treatment many would need, the Association for the Promotion of Oral Health has said.

    The talks aimed at a compromise foundered over the opposition’s bid to ease the government proposal for a clamp on high-end dental services.

  • Only a carbon tax and nuclear power can save us.

     

    But the actions require a change to business-as-usual. Change is opposed by those profiting from our fossil-fuel addiction. Change will happen only with courageous political leadership.

    Leaders must draw attention to the moral imperative. We cannot pretend that we do not understand the consequences for our children and grandchildren. We cannot leave them with a situation spiralling out of their control. We must set a new course.

    Yet what course is proposed? Hokey cap-and-trade with offsets, aka an emissions trading scheme. Scheme is the right word, a scheme to continue business-as-usual behind a fig leaf.

    The Kyoto Protocol was a cap-and-trade approach. Global emissions shot up faster than ever after its adoption. It is impossible to cap all emissions as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy.

    There is zero chance India and China will accept a cap. And why should they? Their emissions, on a per capita basis, are 10 times less than those of Australia or the US.

    Fossil fuels are not really the cheapest energy. They are cheap because they are subsidised, because they do not pay for damage they cause to human health via air and water pollution, nor their environmental damage and horrendous consequences for posterity.

    An honest effective approach to energy and climate must place a steadily rising price on carbon emissions. It can only be effective if it is a simple flat fee on all carbon fuels, collected from fossil fuel companies on the first sale, at the mine, wellhead or port of entry.

    The fee will cause energy costs to rise, for fossil fuels, not all energies. The public will allow this fee to rise to the levels needed only if the money collected is given to the public. They will need the money to adapt their lifestyles and reduce their carbon footprint. The money, all of it, should be given as a monthly “green cheque” and possibly in part as an income-tax reduction. Each legal adult resident would get an equal share, easily delivered electronically to bank accounts or debit cards, with half a share for children up to two children per family.

    Sure, some people may waste their green cheque on booze or babes. Such people will soon be paying more in increased energy prices than they get in their green cheque. Others will make changes to keep their added energy cost low, coming out ahead.

    There will be strong economic incentive for businesses to find products that help consumers reduce fossil fuel use. Every activity that uses energy will be affected. Agricultural products from nearby fields will be favoured, for example, as opposed to food flown in from half way around the world. Changes will happen as people compare the price tags.

    The rising price on carbon will spur energy efficiency, renewable energy, nuclear power, all sources that produce little or no carbon dioxide. Bellyaching howls from coal moguls must be ignored. Let them invest their money in renewable energies and nuclear power.

    Australia is blessed with abundant nuclear fuel as well as coal. Nuclear power plants are the ideal base-load power for Australia; their excess power in off-peak hours can be used to desalinate water. Power stations can be sited near coastlines, where cooling water is plentiful.

    But all potential energy sources must compete, with each other and with energy efficiency. If renewable energies can do the whole job economically, as some people argue, that would be great. Put a price on carbon and let all parts of the private sector compete.

    Fee-and-green-cheque is simple, designed to do an honest job. Emissions trading, in contrast, is designed by big banks that expect to make billions out of the carbon market. That means out of your pocket; every dollar will come via increased energy prices to the consumer, with no green cheque to soften the blow.

    I mentioned that cap-and-trade will never be accepted by developing countries. But why would China accept a carbon price? China does not want to become a fossil fuel addict, with the requirement of protecting a global supply line. It wants to clean up its atmosphere and water. It is investing as fast as its can in wind and solar energy and nuclear power.

    China knows that these clean energies will boom only if they put a rising price on carbon. It seemed willing to negotiate that approach in Copenhagen, but was handed a cap-and-trade edict. Results were predictable.

    What the world needs is a nation that will set an example, stop pandering to special interests, do what is necessary for the people and the rest of the life on the planet. It is a moral issue. We cannot turn our backs on our children and grandchildren. Is it possible that Australia could provide that example, that moral leadership?

    James Hansen is director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He is a guest of the University of Sydney and Intelligence Squared Australia and will speak at the Adelaide Convention Centre tonight.

  • IMF Green Fund will raise $100bn a year.

    The managing director of the International Monetary Fund has announced that his staff are working on a ‘Green Fund’ that has the potential to raise $100bn per year by 2020.

    During a speech in Nairobi, Kenya, which focused on Africa’s need to rebuild following the global economic crisis, Dominique Strauss-Kahn said the fund would help with climate change adaptation and mitigation in developing countries.

    Mr Strauss-Kahn called upon the international community to marshal the resources needed to help low-income countries to tackle climate change – an issue he called “the shock to end all shocks.”
    “Without action, Africa will suffer more from drought, flooding, food shortages, and disease, possibly provoking further instability and conflict,” he said.

    “[While] some may rightly argue that climate change is not in the mandate of the IMF…the amount of resources needed has clear macroeconomic implications, sustainable growth in developing countries will require large-scale, long-term investments for climate change adaptation and mitigation.”

    He emphasised that while the IMF did not intend to manage such a fund, it aimed to offer something that “can make a significant contribution to the global debate and for consideration by the international community.”

    He acknowledged that launching such a scheme would entail a major political effort but he also said that the “potential pay-off is enormous–for Africa and the world.”

    Nicholas Stern, author of what is perhaps the most influential report on the economics of climate change, welcomed MR Strauss-Kahn’s speech.

    Lord Stern, chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at London School of Economics and Political Science, said: “The ‘Green Fund’ is a creative and constructive idea which shows that the International Monetary Fund recognises clearly the very serious risks that climate change creates for future global economic growth and development.

    “Both the risks and the necessary response have major macroeconomic implications. As serious as the current economic crisis is, climate change poses an even more profound and fundamental threat to the world if we do not tackle it; as Mr Strauss-Kahn said: “This could well be the shock to end all shocks”.

    “As the world attempts in this decade to manage the build-up of debt in many countries and global saving-investment imbalances, we must at the same time embark on a path of radical reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions, and with this new idea, the IMF is rising to a huge and urgent challenge.

    “The two great challenges facing the world this century are managing climate change and overcoming poverty. If we fail on one, we will fail on the other.

    “Developing countries need significant financial support for their plans to make the transition to low-carbon economic development, and to help them adapt to those impacts of climate change that cannot now be avoided. All countries of the world must both reduce emissions and adapt, but Africa will be hit earliest and hardest.

    “A ‘Green Fund’ could raise resources for developing countries quickly and effectively; speed is of the essence as there are great dangers in delay as concentrations of greenhouse gases continue to rise in the atmosphere.”

    Sam Bond

  • Train project goes off the rails

     

    Uncertainty has dogged the monoline insurers backing the project in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Financial Guaranty Insurance and Syncora have been forced to work on restructuring plans.

    Moody’s said the rail consortium’s financial profile would be weaker due to higher long-term funding costs related to uncertainty over the monoline insurance market.

    It pointed out Reliance Rail’s original financial forecasts were based on the availability of AAA-wrapped debt. ”This raises considerable uncertainty which is not consistent with the ratings remaining at investment-grade levels,” it said.

    Reliance Rail, which is 49 per cent owned by the maker of Sydney’s Millennium trains, Downer EDI, sought to allay fears about the project’s financial stability. Shares in Downer closed down 20c at $7.88.

    The consortium chief executive, Terry Kearney, said there were ”plans in place to manage its commercial arrangements should the position of its financial guarantors change”.

    But in a veiled warning, the Transport Minister, David Campbell, said Reliance Rail and Downer had obligations under the contract ”and the government expects these to be met”. The first train is due to enter service late this year. Downer last week dismissed suggestions that changes to its senior management were a sign the contract faced difficulties.

    The head of rail, Guy Wannop, was shifted from the project and responsibility for it has been handed to Downer’s former chief financial officer, Peter Reichler.

    Moody’s raised concerns about the project early last year when it discovered it was running five months late due to a slower-than-expected design approval process.

    Reliance Rail outsourced carriage building to Changchun Railway Vehicle Company in China, which has little experience supplying a developed country. Its carriages run in Iran, Pakistan, Zimbabwe and North Korea.

  • Humans driving extinction faster than species can evolve, say experts

     

    However until recently it has been hoped that the rate at which new species were evolving could keep pace with the loss of diversity of life.

    Speaking in advance of two reports next week on the state of wildlife in Britain and Europe, Simon Stuart, chair of the Species Survival Commission for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature – the body which officially declares species threatened and extinct – said that point had now “almost certainly” been crossed.

    “Measuring the rate at which new species evolve is difficult, but there’s no question that the current extinction rates are faster than that; I think it’s inevitable,” said Stuart.

    The IUCN created shock waves with its major assessment of the world’s biodiversity in 2004, which calculated that the rate of extinction had reached 100-1,000 times that suggested by the fossil records before humans.

    No formal calculations have been published since, but conservationists agree the rate of loss has increased since then, and Stuart said it was possible that the dramatic predictions of experts like the renowned Harvard biologist E O Wilson, that the rate of loss could reach 10,000 times the background rate in two decades, could be correct.

    “All the evidence is he’s right,” said Stuart. “Some people claim it already is that … things can only have deteriorated because of the drivers of the losses, such as habitat loss and climate change, all getting worse. But we haven’t measured extinction rates again since 2004 and because our current estimates contain a tenfold range there has to be a very big deterioration or improvement to pick up a change.”

    Extinction is part of the constant evolution of life, and only 2-4% of the species that have ever lived on Earth are thought to be alive today. However fossil records suggest that for most of the planet’s 3.5bn year history the steady rate of loss of species is thought to be about one in every million species each year.

    Only 869 extinctions have been formally recorded since 1500, however, because scientists have only “described” nearly 2m of an estimated 5-30m species around the world, and only assessed the conservation status of 3% of those, the global rate of extinction is extrapolated from the rate of loss among species which are known. In this way the IUCN calculated in 2004 that the rate of loss had risen to 100-1,000 per millions species annually – a situation comparable to the five previous “mass extinctions” – the last of which was when the dinosaurs were wiped out about 65m years ago.

    Critics, including The Skeptical Environmentalist author, Bjørn Lomborg, have argued that because such figures rely on so many estimates of the number of underlying species and the past rate of extinctions based on fossil records of marine animals, the huge margins for error make these figures too unreliable to form the basis of expensive conservation actions.

    However Stuart said that the IUCN figure was likely to be an underestimate of the problem, because scientists are very reluctant to declare species extinct even when they have sometimes not been seen for decades, and because few of the world’s plants, fungi and invertebrates have yet been formally recorded and assessed.

    The calculated increase in the extinction rate should also be compared to another study of thresholds of resilience for the natural world by Swedish scientists, who warned that anything over 10 times the background rate of extinction – 10 species in every million per year – was above the limit that could be tolerated if the world was to be safe for humans, said Stuart.

    “No one’s claiming it’s as small as 10 times,” he said. “There are uncertainties all the way down; the only thing we’re certain about is the extent is way beyond what’s natural and it’s getting worse.”

    Many more species are “discovered” every year around the world, than are recorded extinct, but these “new” plants and animals are existing species found by humans for the first time, not newly evolved species.

    In addition to extinctions, the IUCN has listed 208 species as “possibly extinct”, some of which have not been seen for decades. Nearly 17,300 species are considered under threat, some in such small populations that only successful conservation action can stop them from becoming extinct in future. This includes one-in-five mammals assessed, one-in-eight birds, one-in-three amphibians, and one-in-four corals.

    Later this year the Convention on Biological Diversity is expected to formally declare that the pledge by world leaders in 2002 to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010 has not been met, and to agree new, stronger targets.

    Despite the worsening problem, and the increasing threat of climate change, experts stress that understanding of the problems which drive plants and animals to extinction has improved greatly, and that targeted conservation can be successful in saving species from likely extinction in the wild.

    This year has been declared the International Year of Biodiversity and it is also hoped that a major UN report this summer, on the economics of ecosystems and biodiversity, will encourage governments to devote more funds to conservation.

    Professor Norman MacLeod, keeper of palaeontology at the Natural History Museum in London, cautioned that when fossil experts find evidence of a great extinction it can appear in a layer of rock covering perhaps 10,000 years, so they cannot say for sure if there was a sudden crisis or a build up of abnormally high extinction rates over centuries or millennia.

    For this reason, the “mathematical artefacts” of extinction estimates were not sufficient to be certain about the current state of extinction, said MacLeod.

    “If things aren’t falling dead at your feel that doesn’t mean you’re not in the middle of a big extinction event,” he said. “By the same token if the extinctions are and remain relatively modest then the changes, [even] aggregated over many years, are still going to end up a relatively modest extinction event.”

    Species on the brink of being declared extinct

    The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists 208 species as “possibly extinct”, more than half of which are amphibians. They are defined as species which are “on the balance of evidence likely to be extinct, but for which there is a small chance that they may still be extant”.

    Kouprey (or Grey ox; Bos sauveli)

    What: Wild cattle with horns that live in small herds

    Domain: Mostly Cambodia; also Laos, Vietnam, Thailand

    Population: No first-hand sightings since 1969

    Main threats: hunting for meat and trade, livestock diseases and habitat destruction

    Webbed-footed coqui (or stream coqui; Eleutherodactylus karlschmidti)

    What: Large black frog living in mountain streams

    Domain: East and west Puerto Rico

    Population: Not seen since 1976

    Main threats: Disease (chytridiomycosis), climate change and invasive predators

    Golden coqui frog (Eleutherodactylus jasperi)

    What: Small orange frog living in forest or open rocky areas

    Domain: Sierra de Cayey, Puerto Rico

    Population: No sightings since 1981

    Main threats: Unknown but suspected habitat destruction, climate change, disease (chytridiomycosis) and invasive predators

    Spix’s macaw (or little blue macaw; Cyanopsitta spixii)

    What: Bright blue birds with long tails and grey/white heads

    Domain: Brazil

    Population: The last known wild bird disappeared in 2000; there are 78 in captivity

    Main threats: Destruction of the birds’ favoured Tabebuia caraiba trees for nesting, and trapping

    Café marron (Ramosmania rodriguesii)

    What: White flowering shrub related to the coffee plant family

    Domain: Island of Rodrigues, Republic of Mauritius

    Population: A single wild plant is known

    Main threats: Habitat loss, introduced grazing animals and alien plants

    Source: IUCN and Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. To mark the International Year of Biodiversity, the IUCN is running a daily profile of a threatened species throughout 2010. See iucn.org.