September 29, 2005 - Sydney Morning Herald

Spending trillions of dollars to possibly lower the planet's temperature is madness, writes Bob Carter.
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MANY Australians are worried, rightly, by the possibility that avian flu might infect the nation. They should be just as concerned about the disease of Mother Earthism which has reached our shores, and is now approaching epidemic status.

One of its most virulent strains is called Hansenism, after James Hansen, the high-profile NASA scientist who started the global warming scare campaign running back in 1988.

These diseases attack persons who venture public opinions on matters of environmental concern. Its most recent manifestation is in two alarmist books on climate change by popular science writers Ian Lowe ( Living in the Hothouse) and Tim Flannery ( The Weather Makers).

Mother Earthism has complex symptoms. Foremost is a touching belief in the Garden of Eden, the halcyon state of the Earth in times before the wicked Industrial Revolution. This balmy, and barmy, garden existed in a state of existential ecological balance, within an unchanging, benign environment. The roots of its philosophical trees lie with Rousseau, and those who tend these trees deny the dynamic, ever-changing character of our planet, its biota, and its climate.

Secondary symptoms of Mother Earthism include: appeal to authority rather than explanation or discussion of the science; false claims of consensus among scientists; cherry-picking of research and opinions which support a desired world view; guilt-by-association smearing and vilification of those who hold alternative views; the erection of conspiracy theories about improper industry influence; endless repetition of inaccuracies, or facts out of context; a preference for computer model predictions over real world measurements; recourse to the intellectually vapid precautionary principle; the exploitation of guilt among ordinary citizens; and, above all, an unwavering alarmism that the world is going to hell in a handbasket - and it's all our fault.

The biggest serpent in this Garden of Eden is alleged to be carbon dioxide, and we must give up our fix. Why? Because it's causing global warming, silly. And so it is.

The Earth's comfortable (for us) average temperature of about 15C is maintained that way by the atmosphere. The presence of small amounts of water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide - the "greenhouse gases" which absorb Earth's outgoing heat radiation and re-emit some of it downwards - causes warming. Most of the total warming of 33 degrees is caused by water vapour (more than 30 degrees), carbon dioxide contributing only about 1.2 degrees worth. And of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, just 3per cent comes from human sources, which equates to a warming effect of about four-hundredths of a degree.

Against this, computer models suggest that a further human-caused increase in temperature of perhaps two-tenths of a degree might be averted.

To crucify the world's industrialised economies by spending trillions of dollars for a possible temperature drop of 0.20 defies comprehension. The hairshirt policy exemplified by the Kyoto accord is a classic non-solution to a non-problem.

As Flannery points out in a different context in his book, the individual members of the public can exert influence by witholding their memberships and donations from the organisations (including especially green groups) responsible for spreading the disease, and by not buying alarmist books.

The Government could do its bit by dis-establishing the professional greenhouse lobby groups that now dominate its own environmental and energy policy bureaucracies.

A goal to "stabilise world climate" is misplaced, not to mention unattainable. Climate is a dynamic system within which extreme events and dramatic changes will always occur, irrespective of human actions or preferences. Witness hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

As for other major natural disasters, the appropriate preparation for extreme climate events is to mitigate and manage the negative effects when they occur. Climate impacts are generally slower to appear than those of other "instantaneous" disasters like earthquakes, tsunami, storms, volcanic eruptions, landslides or bushfires. This difference is not one of kind, and neither should be our response plans.

Needed is more research, together with the preparation of response plans for climatic coolings and warmings. Not needed is more futile feelgoodery espoused by those infected with the Mother Earthism syndrome.

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Bob Carter, a research professor at James Cook University, is an experienced environmental scientist.

September 24, 2005
Sydney Morning Herald

Mankind is at the edge of an abyss, its very survival dependent on urgent action, warns Tim Flannery. Deborah Smith reports.

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The hurricanes devastating the American coast are the wake-up call the world needs. Do nothing about climate change, and the collapse of civilisation is "inevitable", according to Dr Tim Flannery.

Do too little, the Australian scientist says, and society will "hover on the brink for decades or centuries".

Action needs to be taken now to slow global warming, says Flannery, the director of the South Australian Museum.

"The delay of even a decade is far too much," he says.

Ferocious storms, melting glaciers, prolonged droughts, bleached coral reefs and disappearing species have convinced other leading scientists - including the Nobel laureate Professor Peter Doherty and Lord May of Oxford, president of the Royal Society, the world's oldest scientific academy - to call for immediate efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels.

Lord May, a pioneer of chaos theory, warns against delay in a dynamic system like global climate. "Small actions now … are more important than big actions later," he told the Herald on a recent trip to Australia.

Sir John Lawton, chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, said yesterday the increased intensity of storms like Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita was probably a result of rising sea temperatures.

He hoped the destruction would make climate-change sceptics reconsider.

"If this makes the climate loonies in the [United] States realise we've got a problem, some good will come out of a truly awful situation," he told London's The Independent newspaper.

Doherty also predicts that the enormous financial costs and higher insurance premiums from hurricanes will convince ordinary people "something very substantial is happening".

Climate modellers have been warning for years that on present trends, global temperatures will rise by 2 to 5 degrees this century.

But Flannery, the author of The Future Eaters, is arguably the only scientist in Australia able to get the sort of public attention for global warming that will come from ads on city buses for his new book on the issue.

In The Weather Makers, he says Australia's coral wonderland is particularly vulnerable to warming ocean waters.

"Visitors travelling to Queensland by 2050 may see the Great Stumpy Reef," he says.

Half of Australia's tropical rainforest is expected to be destroyed if global temperatures rise by only 1 degree.

"The generation held responsible will be cursed by those who come after," he says.

"What will they tell their children if their increasingly large homes, four-wheel-drives and refusal to ratify [the] Kyoto

[Protocol] cost them the nation's foremost natural jewels?"

Writing the book, which draws together the latest scientific research, was initially depressing, Flannery says. Then he realised ordinary people had the power to change the world's course, and it became "liberating".

Scientists say carbon dioxide emissions need to be cut by 70 per cent by 2050.

"If you own a four-wheel-drive and replace it with a hybrid-fuel car, you can achieve a cut of that magnitude in a day rather than half a century," Flannery says.

Public pressure can make governments reduce Australia's dependence on coal.

If an ice age were on the horizon, he says, people might react more quickly.

But global warming sounds cosy and comfortable to our tropical species - an illusion that has made it easier for the fossil fuel industry to dupe people into thinking global warming is a myth, he says.

Flannery - who generates his own electricity at home - is expecting criticism from the sceptics, but says they must know more than the US President.

"Even George Bush has now admitted that climate change is a very serious, human-caused problem," he says.

September 29, 2005 - 3:38PM
Sydney Morning Herald
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A Walrus sitting on melting ice, basks in the sun on the Chukchi Sea, between Alaska and Russia.

The Arctic ice shelf has melted for the fourth straight year to its smallest area in a century, driven by rising temperatures that appear linked to a build-up of greenhouse gases, warn US scientists.

Scientists at NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Centre, which have monitored the ice via satellites since 1978, say the total Arctic ice in 2005 will cover the smallest area since they started measuring.

It is the least amount of Arctic ice in at least a century, according to both the satellite data and shipping information going back many more years, says a report from the groups.

As of September 21, the Arctic sea ice area had dropped to 5.31 million square kilometres, the report said.

From 1978 to 2000, the sea ice area averaged 7 million square kilometres, the report said. It noted the melting trend had shrunk Inuit hunting grounds and endangered polar bears, seals and other wildlife.

The report warns that if melting rates continue, the summertime Arctic may be completely ice-free before the end of the century, echoing last year's findings from the Arctic Council, an eight-nation report by 250 experts.

The melting trend increasingly appeared to be caused by a build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the scientists said.

"It's increasingly difficult to argue against the notion that at least part of what we are seeing in the Arctic, in terms of sea ice, in terms of warming temperatures ... is due to the greenhouse effect," Mark Serreze, a research scientist at NSIDC, said in an interview.

"We've put a hit on the system and we are in the midst of a grand global experiment," Serreze said about the impact of global warming and ice melting on humans and animals. "We will have to live with the outcome."

The NSIDC, part of the University of Colorado at Boulder, helps NASA analyse satellite data.

Most scientists believe greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide that is released mainly from vehicles and utility smokestacks, cause global warming by trapping solar heat in the atmosphere. Many believe global warming can lead to catastrophic consequences, including raising sea levels and strengthening weather events such as hurricanes.

One Arctic variation, known as Arctic Oscillation, an atmospheric circulation pattern that can push sea ice out of the area, had become less of an influence in the region since the mid-1990s, the report said.

Inuit hunters, threatened by the melting of Arctic ice, plan to file a petition in December accusing the United States of violating their human rights by fuelling global warming. The Bush Administration has opted out of the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

The Inuit number about 155,000 in Canada, Alaska, Greenland and Russia.

Scientists say the Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the globe because water or bare earth, once uncovered, soaks up more heat than ice and snow. That process means melting can spur even warmer temperatures and more melting.