Author: Neville

Sceptics cool on climate studies

Date December 11, 2012 96 reading now
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Lenore Taylor

Chief Political Correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald

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Tony Abbott … says he accepts “we only have one planet and we should tread lightly upon it.” Photo: Glenn Hunt

THE most prominent political climate sceptics see no reason to change their minds, despite the welter of studies over the past fortnight showing forecasts of global warming were correct or underestimates.

Many of the climate sceptics, influential in elevating Tony Abbott to Coalition leader, say they see nothing to convince them that human activity is causing the climate to change.

The Global Carbon Project has released forecasts that the planet could warm by between 4 degrees and 6 degrees by the end of the century and Nature Climate Change on Monday published a study finding that warming is consistent with 1990 scientific forecasts.

Influential … Cory Bernardi, who along with Barnaby Joyce has not changed his view despite the forecasts.

South Australian senator Cory Bernardi, formerly Mr Abbott’s parliamentary secretary, said: ”I do not think human activity causes climate change and I haven’t seen anything that changes my view. I remain very sceptical about the alarmists’ claims.”

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Queensland senator Barnaby Joyce said the whole debate about whether humans were causing the climate to change was ”indulgent and irrelevant”.

”It is an indulgent and irrelevant debate because, even if climate change turns out to exist one day, we will have absolutely no impact on it whatsoever … we really should have bigger fish to fry than this one,” Senator Joyce said.

Barnaby Joyce. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

West Australian backbencher Dennis Jensen, who had read the recent scientific literature, said he interpreted the findings in different ways and believed climate scepticism within the Coalition was increasing.

”The scientific papers saying it is as bad as we thought, or worse, are talking about concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere – and concentrations are indeed increasing – but global temperatures have not gone up in a decade,” he said.

”It’s the impact of the increased concentrations of CO2 that is in dispute and I agree with [US professor] Richard Lindzen that it is more likely to be 0.4 degrees than 4 to 6 degrees … the doomsday prophesies do not stand up to reason.”

Mr Abbott now says he accepts ”we have only one planet and we should tread lightly upon it”.

Questioned about climate science last year, Mr Abbott said: ”I think that climate change is real, mankind does make a contribution and we should have strong and effective policies to deal with it. As far as I am concerned, the debate is not over climate change as such. The debate is over the best way of dealing with it.”

He has never repeated his 2009 comment that the ”settled” science of climate change was ”absolute crap”.

His $10.2 billion ”Direct Action” climate policy was deliberately crafted to straddle the deep divisions over climate science within his party.

To qualify for grants from the Coalition’s proposed emissions reduction fund, a proposal must ”deliver additional practical environmental benefits” as well as reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

Mr Jensen said it was this proviso that allowed him to back the Coalition plan.

”At least we will be doing things that make sense for other, practical reasons,” he said.

Tasmania senator David Bushby said he remained a true ”sceptic”.

”I know eminent scientists have one view but I know other eminent scientists – usually ones who have retired and are no longer reliant on government grants – have a totally different view,” he said.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/sceptics-cool-on-climate-studies-20121210-2b5kg.html#ixzz2EhLjWIdq

Julia Gillard hit on trust in end-of-year poll slump

Simon Benson
The Daily Telegraph
December 11, 201212:00AM

JULIA Gillard has suffered an end-of-year hit in the polls with the fallout from the AWU scandal driving Labor’s primary vote back to disastrous levels as the government faces new challenges with slowing economic growth.

An exclusive Newspoll published in The Australian today, the final one for the year, shows a dramatic four-point drop in the party’s primary vote from 36 per cent to 32 per cent.

The Coalition’s vote increased three points to 46, bringing the two-party preferred vote to 54-46 and pointing to a crushing defeat for Labor if an election had been held at the weekend.

In a sign that trust continues to be an issue for the PM, Ms Gillard’s personal standing has also taken a hit. On the ranking of better PM, she dropped three points to 43.

But whatever damage Opposition Leader Tony Abbott may have inflicted with the Coalition’s relentless pursuit of the 20-year-old union scandal, his own figures failed to improve substantially, suggesting people still regarded him as too negative. Ms Gillard is still well ahead of Mr Abbott as preferred PM, with his score up only one point to 34 per cent.

The poll shock, coming as the government continues to prevaricate over its promise to return the budget to surplus by May, will occupy Labor strategists over summer, considering if an early election is now even an option.

The poll figures appear to have cruelled the momentum of the past three months which had shown the electoral fortunes of the government improving to a point of being within striking distance of the Coalition.

The last two polls, published before the full weight of the opposition’s attack on Ms Gillard’s character over the AWU scandal, had Labor on an almost equal footing with the Coalition on a two-party preferred basis.

The last Newspoll of the year was taken a week after the end of the final parliamentary sitting week, during which the PM was forced to again face difficult questions about her knowledge of the AWU slush fund she advised on for her former union boyfriend, as a lawyer almost 20 years ago.

She had also been forced to abandon her position on opposing a United Nations resolution to recognise Palestinian statehood, after her caucus refused to back her because of fears of a backlash from Middle Eastern communities in vital western Sydney seats. Australia abstained from the vote.

The Newspoll figures mirrored those of an Essential Media poll published yesterday – research that is normally regarded as more Labor-leaning. It showed Ms Gillard’s popularity had slipped in the past two weeks.

It also found that her personal approval rating had slumped four points to 37 per cent over the month, with 53 per cent of voters disapproving.

Mr Abbott’s approval remained steady at 33 per cent, while his disapproval rating improved two points to 56 per cent.

China’s economy to outgrow America’s by 2030 as world faces ‘tectonic shift’

National Intelligence Council also sees water and food shortages and suggests world is at a ‘critical juncture in human history’
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Chris McGreal, US correspondent

guardian.co.uk, Monday 10 December 2012 20.38 GMT

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The report said: ‘China alone will probably have the largest economy, surpassing that of the United States a few years before 2030.’ Photograph: Toshifumi Kitamura/AFP

A US intelligence portrait of the world in 2030 predicts that China will be the largest economic power, climate change will create instability by contributing to water and food shortages, and there will be a “tectonic shift” with the rise of a global middle class.

The National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends Report, published every five years, says the world is “at a critical juncture in human history”.

The report, which draws in the opinion of foreign experts, including meetings on the initial draft in nearly 20 countries, paints a future in which US power will greatly diminish but no other individual state rises to supplant it.

“There will not be any hegemonic power. Power will shift to networks and coalitions in a multi-polar world,” it says.

The report offers a series of potential scenarios for 2030. It says the best outcome would be one in which “China and the US collaborate on a range of issues, leading to broader global co-operation”. It says the worst is a world in which “the US draws inward and globalisation stalls.”

“A collapse or sudden retreat of US power probably would result in an extended period of global anarchy; no leading power would be likely to replace the United States as guarantor of the international order,” it says, working on the assumption that the US is a force for stability – a premise open to challenge in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East and beyond.

The NIC report draws a distinction between what it calls “megatrends” – things that are highly likely to occur – and “game-changers”, which are far less certain. Among the megatrends is growing prosperity across the globe. “The growth of the global middle class constitutes a tectonic shift: for the first time, a majority of the world’s population will not be impoverished, and the middle classes will be the most important social and economics sector in the vast majority of countries around the world,” the report says.

With prosperity spreading across the globe will come shifts in influence and power. “The diffusion of power among countries will have a dramatic impact by 2030. Asia will have surpassed North America and Europe combined in terms of global power, based upon GDP, population size, military spending, and technological investment. China alone will probably have the largest economy, surpassing that of the United States a few years before 2030,” the report says.

That change will mean that the economic fortunes of the US and European countries will have a diminishing impact on the global economy. “In a tectonic shift, the health of the global economy increasingly will be linked to how well the developing world does — more so than the traditional west. In addition to China, India, and Brazil, regional players such as Colombia, Indonesia, Nigeria, South Africa, and Turkey will become especially important to the global economy.

“Meanwhile, the economies of Europe, Japan, and Russia are likely to continue their slow relative declines.”

The report also says that “individual empowerment” will accelerate with the growth of the global middle class and reduction in poverty combined with new types of communications. The NIC warns that also has a downside.

“In a tectonic shift, individuals and small groups will have greater access to lethal and disruptive technologies (particularly precision-strike capabilities, cyber instruments, and bio terror weaponry), enabling them to perpetrate large-scale violence – a capability formerly the monopoly of states,” it says.

The megatrends also point to increased instability because of rising demand for water, food and energy compounded by climate change.

“Demand for food, water, and energy will grow by approximately 35, 40, and 50% respectively owing to an increase in the global population and the consumption patterns of an expanding middle class.

“Climate change will worsen the outlook for the availability of these critical resources. Analysis suggests that the severity of existing weather patterns will intensify, with wet areas getting wetter and dry and arid areas becoming more so. Much of the decline in precipitation will occur in the Middle East and northern Africa as well as western Central Asia, southern Europe, southern Africa, and the US south-west.”

The NIC says that a world of scarcities is not inevitable but “policymakers and their private sector partners will need to be proactive to avoid such a future”. It says any solution will require more able countries to help more vulnerable states.

Among the less predictable but possible “game changers” identified by the report are the collapse of the euro, a severe pandemic, or a nuclear attack by Pakistan or North Korea. It also says a democratic or collapsed China, or the emergence of a more liberal regime in Iran, could have a significant impact on global stability.

The report warns that a number of countries are at high risk of becoming failed states by 2030, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi. The risk of civil wars and internal conflicts remains high in Africa and the Middle East, but is declining in Latin America.

The intelligence assessment will add to pressure on Barack Obama to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because it backs the president’s view that the issue feeds instability in the Middle East alongside Iran’s alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons. But it says the Arab spring could prove a stabilising force.

“On the one hand, if the Islamic Republic maintains power in Iran and is able to develop nuclear weapons, the Middle East will face a highly unstable future. On the other hand, the emergence of moderate, democratic governments or a breakthrough agreement to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could have enormously positive consequences.”

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Pyne caught red-handed with the airbrush

Date December 10, 2012 – 1:15PM Category Opinion 424 reading now
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Lenore Taylor

National Affairs Correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald

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Christopher Pyne … “I was simply making the point that the Coalition’s economic management is better than Labor’s.”

Christopher Pyne had his airbrush out yesterday – erasing the entire global financial crisis from Australia’s economic history.

“Well if there had been a Coalition government for the last five years … I think most people accept that we would have had continuing surpluses,” he told Sky television.

Actually most people do not accept that.

In 2009, a forecast $20 billion surplus became a $57 billion deficit in part because Labor spent more than $50 billion as stimulus in the face of an international economic meltdown and in part because company tax revenue collapsed due to the financial crisis.

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What Coalition leader Malcolm Turnbull said at the time was that we should have spent less on the stimulus – maybe $25 billion or $30 billion. The Coalition waved through the first $10.2 billion stimulus package but opposed the second $42 billion package on the basis that it was too big – and that spending of about $15 billion to $20 billion would have been more appropriate.

It’s pretty safe to assume that revenue would have collapsed just the same, no matter who was in the Lodge.

In retrospect, what Mr Turnbull said looks pretty smart (he also argued it was implausible to effectively and efficiently spend $16 billion on school halls in the timeframe proposed and that the pink batts scheme should be means-tested or require a co-contribution from the householders, which might have saved a whole lot of pain) But even if Australia had done exactly as the Coalition said we should do at the time, we’d still have come out of the crisis about $180 billion in debt, rather than $200 billion. And the nation would still have run very large budget deficits.

Mr Pyne has every right to question where the Gillard government intends to get the money to pay for its promises on a national disability insurance scheme and the Gonski education reforms, and it is possible that a Coalition government might have now been in a better fiscal position. But breezy statements that the Coalition would have “got through the global financial crisis quite easily” do not match the facts.

For the record, he told Fairfax Media we were were taking his statements “too literally . . . I was simply making the point that the Coalition’s economic management is better than Labor’s”.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/pyne-caught-redhanded-with-the-airbrush-20121210-2b4rq.html#ixzz2EcZUkSCo

Doha climate change deal clears way for ‘damage aid’ to poor nations

EU, Australia and Norway also sign up to new carbon-cutting targets as fortnight-long conference in Qatar closes
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Fiona Harvey in Doha

The Observer, Saturday 8 December 2012 19.19 GMT

Delegates attend the last day of the UN climate talks in Doha, where poor nations secured a pledge of ‘damage aid’. Photograph: Karim Jaafar/AFP/Getty Images

Poor countries have won historic recognition of the plight they face from the ravages of climate change, wringing a pledge from rich nations that they will receive funds to repair the “loss and damage” incurred.

This is the first time developing countries have received such assurances, and the first time the phrase “loss and damage from climate change” has been enshrined in an international legal document.

Developing countries had been fighting hard for the concession at the fortnight-long UN climate change talks among 195 nations in Qatar, which finished after a marathon 36-hour final session.

Ronald Jumeau, negotiating for the Seychelles, scolded the US negotiator: “If we had had more ambition [on emissions cuts from rich countries], we would not have to ask for so much [money] for adaptation. If there had been more money for adaptation [to climate change], we would not be looking for money for loss and damage. What’s next? Loss of our islands?”

Ruth Davis, political adviser at Greenpeace, said: “This is a highly significant move – it will be the first time the size of the bill for failing to take on climate change will be part of the UN discussions. Countries need to understand the risks they are taking in not addressing climate change urgently.”

Ed Davey, the UK energy and climate secretary, said: “It’s about helping the most vulnerable countries, and looking at how they can be more resilient.”

But the pledges stopped well short of any admission of legal liability or the need to pay compensation on the part of the rich world.

The US had strongly opposed the initial “loss and damage” proposals, which would have set up a new international institution to collect and disperse funds to vulnerable countries. US negotiators also made certain that neither the word “compensation”, nor any other term connoting legal liability, was used, to avoid opening the floodgates to litigation – instead, the money will be judged as aid.

Key questions remain unanswered, including whether funds devoted to “loss and damage” will come from existing humanitarian aid and disaster relief budgets. The US is one of the world’s biggest donor of humanitarian aid and disaster relief, from both public and private sources. It will be difficult to disentangle damage inflicted by climate change from other natural disasters.

Another question is how the funds will be disbursed. Developing countries wanted a new institution, like a bank, but the US is set against that, preferring to use existing international institutions. These issues will have to be sorted out at next year’s climate conference, in Warsaw, where they will be bitterly contested.

Davis said: “This [text] is just the beginning of the process – you need to have a finalised mechanism. But it will concentrate minds on the fact that it is in the best interest of countries all over the world to start cutting their emissions quickly.” Governments also rescued the Kyoto protocol, the initial targets of which run out at the end of this year. The EU, Australia, Norway and a handful of other developed countries have agreed to take on new carbon-cutting targets under the treaty, running to 2020.

A separate strand of the negotiations, set up to accommodate the US because of its refusal to ratify Kyoto, was closed. This will allow unified discussions to begin on a global climate treaty that would require both developed and developing countries to cut their emissions. The treaty is supposed to be signed in 2015, at a conference in Paris, and come into effect in 2020.

The next three years of negotiations on the treaty will be the hardest in the 20-year history of climate change talks because the world has changed enormously since 1992, when the UN convention on climate change was signed, and 1997, when the Kyoto protocol enshrined a stark division between developed countries – which were required to cut emissions – and developing countries, which were not.

China was classed then as a developing country, and although it still has about 60 million people living in dire poverty, it is now the world’s biggest emitter and will soon overtake the US as the biggest economy. It has made clear its determination to hang on to its developing country status, and that the countries classed as developed in 1997 must continue to bear most of the burden for emissions cuts, and for providing funds to poor countries to help them cut emissions and cope with climate change.

Public health expert removed from water quality authority

Date December 10, 2012 28 reading now
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Sean Nicholls

Sydney Morning Herald State Political Editor

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Illustration: David Rowe

THE agency set up in response to the city’s worst drinking water crisis, the Sydney Catchment Authority, has been left without a public health expert on its board for the first time in its history, prompting concerns about the oversight of its operations.

The decision, part of a complete overhaul of the authority board, has been defended by the state government, despite its own legislation stipulating the need for the board to have public health credentials.

The catchment authority was established following the 1998 crisis during which Sydneysiders were forced to boil their drinking water after it was found to be infected by the pathogens crytosporidium and giardia.

Since its inception, its board has included an expert in public health.

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The first was Dr Kerry Chant, who is now the NSW Chief Health Officer. Dr Chant was succeeded by Dr Stephen Corbett, the director of the Centre for Population Health with the Sydney West Area Health Service.

But the Primary Industries Minister, Katrina Hodgkinson, has replaced the entire board without making an equivalent appointment.

The legislation that governs the authority stipulates board members must, individually or collectively, have ”qualifications and experience relevant to water quality and public health”.

Ms Hodgkinson said the new board was chosen ”on the basis of their collective depth of experience across a range of measures including water quality and public health, catchment management and protection, and water supply planning and asset management”.

The authority itself had ”extensive technical skills and expertise” to manage risks to water quality or public health, she said.

But a senior lecturer at the University of NSW and a member of the water quality advisory committee to the National Health and Medical Research Council, Dr Stuart Khan, said the presence of a public health expert was crucial.

”Managing water quality to protect public health is the core mission of the Sydney Catchment Authority,” Dr Khan said.

”It’s essential that appropriate expertise exists at the highest levels to ensure that this remains fundamental to the culture and focus of the organisation.”

There are also concerns about the appointment of a former treasurer of the federal Liberal Party, Mark Bethwaite, to the board.

Mr Bethwaite, who is set to become chairman, is a former director of two of Australia’s largest mining companies, North Limited and Renison Goldfields, but is also on the board of the Foundation for National Parks and Wildlife.

The appointment has raised fears about the authority’s future position on mining activity in the catchment.

A company not associated with Mr Bethwaite, Apex Energy, has plans to drill for coal seam gas in parts of the catchment area.

”One of the key challenges facing the new board will be the management of water-quality risks associated with coal seam gas drilling in Sydney’s water catchment,” the chief executive of the Nature Conservation Council of NSW, Pepe Clarke, said.

The opposition environment spokesman, Luke Foley, said 4.5 million people relied on water supplied by the Sydney Catchment Authority.

”The appointment to the board of a former Liberal Party official with an extensive background in the mining industry, while leaving it without a public health expert, is an abandonment of the obligation to protect public health,” he said.

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Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/health/public-health-expert-removed-from-water-quality-authority-20121209-2b3e7.html#ixzz2EbKV0FbT