That last post by Thebas is a classic illustration of the complete and utter insanity afflicting popular political discourse in this country.

Adam Bandt makes a perfectly legitimate observation on the effect of climate change on the severity of bushfires and he gets ridiculed and, even worse, lambasted as a political opportunist.

Adam Bandt is the only member of the current parliament that has any credibility whatsoever. He's the only parliamentarian that I trust, and I hope he will continue to make statements of truth regardless of how much they go against the grain of popular opinion.

Climate change doesn't start bushfires. Lightning or d1ck-brained kids who should have been drowned at birth start bushfires. But climate change makes the effect of bushfires exponentially worse than they would have otherwise been.

Anyone who doubts the effect of climate change should try playing Pennant Bowls in Melbourne this season. Three consecutive rounds played in gale force winds. Concepts of line and length utterly destroyed by the rogue forces of a climate that has been perverted by the industrial revolution and everything that has flowed from it.

Climate change did not cause Pennant Bowls ... but climate change is making the experience of playing pennant bowls utterly unbearable for more and more Melbournians. So much so that our 9 division competition has been cut back to 8 divisions this season. And it keeps getting smaller and smaller every year.

And this is ALL because of climate change and Tony Abbott, the worst prime minister in the history of Australian sport.

btw AFL' fav reporter who for some reason actually makes sense


F LAP, flap, flap. See the global warming vultures over the NSW fires, searching for a feed. 
 
The biggest is deputy Greens leader Adam Bandt, who at the height of the fires urged us to read his latest green sermon.

Showing a picture of smoke over Sydney and linking to his article in the far-Left Guardian, he tweeted: "Why Tony Abbott's plan means more bushfires for Australia and more pics like this of Sydney."

Click his link and you find Bandt claiming that "by repealing the carbon tax, Tony Abbott is failing to protect his people".

Worse, even. Bandt claims Abbott, the volunteer firefighter, is actually starting the fires: "Donning a volunteer firefighter uniform for the media is a con if you're also helping start fires that put people's lives in danger." Says Bandt, who never fought a fire in his life.

Sure, Bandt is not the only vulture.

Tim Flannery's Climate Council also claimed global warming was bringing "the sorts of weather conditions that increase the risk of fire", and Sydney Morning Herald columnist Peter FitzSimons jeered: "And who should be repenting, Prime Minister?"

Some critics mistakenly think the worst of this politicking is the timing - and, true, even Bandt once claimed he was against it.

Three years ago I said Prime Minister Julia Gillard had blood on her hands after some 50 boat people drowned off Christmas Island.

As I argued, Gillard had rewritten our border laws to make them much softer, and had dismissed earlier reports I'd cited showing dozens of boat people had already been lured to their deaths at sea.

Bandt was livid: "I think that, using this opportunity to say the Prime Minister has blood on her hands, I think that that's just outrageous.

"I saw a similar thing happen here in response to the bushfires that we had (in Victoria), there were people who would jump in and say it was all the fault of not having enough burning off ...

"I don't think that trying to turn a tragedy so quickly into some kind of perceived political advantage is how we want to be characterised as a nation, and I think those comments are outrageous."
Now who's being "outrageous"? What a hypocrite. Still, I'd excuse Bandt if he was right - if Abbott's global warming policies really did leave us more vulnerable. Trouble is, Bandt is completely wrong.

Ironically, the higher fire risk in NSW this year is due mainly to the very thing the Greens once told us not to expect from global warming.

For years these alarmists claimed warming had dried up the rains. In 2006 Greens leader Bob Brown warned southern Australia faced "the spectre of permanent drought".

Instead, NSW over the past three years has had two years of massive rain, followed by one of above-average falls. Brown fields turned lush green and top bushfire experts grew alarmed.

The NSW Rural Fire Service last year warned, "Widespread rain in the past two years has led to grass growth not seen in more than 30 years", and as it dried, NSW faced a greater risk of "large and fast-moving fires".

The Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council recently repeated the warning: "Above-average rainfall for much of the preceding three years is likely to continue the trend of heavy grass fuel loads throughout the grassland areas of NSW."

Add some hot weather and a big fire was bound to go off - just as NSW saw in 1957, 1976 , 1991 and 2001, when years of fire also followed years of rain.

Nor is there is anything unusual about the size of last week's fires, which burned 100,000 hectares.

NSW suffered far worse in 1968, when 14 people died in fires that burned more than a million hectares. Another 1.5 million hectares were burned as fires raged for 151 days from 27 September 2002.

Nothing in the records shows ­global warming has made bushfires bigger or deadlier in NSW - or ­globally. The US is recording its quietest fire season a decade.

The most telling point against Bandt's alarmism, of course, is that global temperatures have barely changed for 15 years. Indeed, Canberra last week recorded its coldest October night in history. Like Sydney's hot spell, it's called weather, Adam, not climate change.

So Bandt is wrong about the cause of the fire and wrong to pretend these fires are worse. He's wrong to imply global temperatures have been steadily rising, and wrong to claim Abbott could make the slightest difference.

Just ask Professor Roger Jones, an author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which estimates that even if Abbott kept Labor's carbon tax policies, Australia would at best cut temperatures by an imperceptible 0.0038 degrees by 2100.

So Bandt is wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong. And a hypocrite as well as a vulture. Oh, and a disgrace.


first class hypocrite is bandt

and Thebas good post to rebut the clown thread starter who has deep hatred running through him ffs calls for a new govt before this one is sworn in and hadn't implemented any legislation yet

oh dear bushfires please if you have to come , please come in the right season

The NSW Rural Fire Service last year warned, "Widespread rain in the past two years has led to grass growth not seen in more than 30 years", and as it dried, NSW faced a greater risk of "large and fast-moving fires".

the climate always changes womble you know as well as I do
OMG its never going to rain again , the dams will never fill etc etc, ALARMIST BULL$HIT

humans are having an impact

i couldn't agree more womble .. the co2 statement bears some more investigation

for example the surface temp of the earth is increasing

the land based thermometers show that

but consider this

if the world changed today to a new energy source that was NOT a greenhouse gas to achieve the levels of electricity required by citizens and business

in relation to surface heat ... would an air-conditioning exhaust outlet produce less heat driven by a non-coal original source

we may kill off coal when we settle ona suitable alternative

but the "surface temp" of the planet may still rise

what might the alarmists wish to kill off then

-----

and phil please

Anyone who doubts the effect of climate change should try playing Pennant Bowls in Melbourne this season.

Three consecutive rounds played in gale force winds. Concepts of line and length utterly destroyed by the rogue forces of a climate that has been perverted by the industrial revolution and everything that has flowed from it.

..... i enjoy your humour

having been raised as a kid in melbourne in the 60's i still remember the days where the temp soared past 40 C (in the old F in those days of course)

42 C was quite common and the days when the westerlies blew in from the Mallee the heat was so searing on your skin it burned

one season as a kid we had the Mallee dumped in Melbourne ... red soil in the south-east suburbs picked up and dropped hundred of kms away from its source

i would imaging playing bowls in the dumped red dirt would affect the lines & angles also

some things (unlike the climate) never change

could you imagine the ALARMISTS today .. if red Malle soil got dumped in Frankston .. there would be a climate change uproar amongst the alarmists 

Childhood reminiscences of hot days and dust storms in the 1960s do not weaken the argument against climate change. Climate change was happening then. It's been happening ever since the industrial revolution.

The 1950s and 1960s were two of the most environmentally destructive decades in human history. It was the beginning of mass consumerism in the western world and the evidence of the destruction was blatantly obvious in the thick pall of smog that hung over all western cities. It was in those so-called halcyon days when countries like Australia still had manufacturing industries. The suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney were full of factories producing goods for mindless consumers and pumping out never-ending plumes of pollution.

So, where did all the smog go?

Anyone remember the Beijing Olympics?

What a fkn sh1te hole of a city that is. The worst pollution ever seen in a major city. And guess why. Because all our manufacturing industries got exported to places like Beijing. Asia is now just one great cess-pool of urban filth. These mugs were dumb enough to take our smog away, all in the name of industrialization and consumerism, and now they're stuck with it.

Unfortunately foul air doesn't just stay in one place. It eventually spreads itself out, and the world is a finite sort of place. It can only take so much.

And, as always, those who rail against the forces of industrialization are regarded as lunatics ... like the great English poet William Blake, who wrote about the "dark Satanic mills" that were taking his country over during his lifetime.

That's where all this man-made climate change started ... back then in William Blake's time. It's not something that Al Gore thought up.

Sure there was climate change before then, but the rate of change was infinitely more gradual. Any significant change happened over millions of years. But the last 250 years or so that rate of change has begun to escalate to the point where major environmental changes are visible over a single person's lifetime.

This is the work of humans ... greedy destructive humans ... and unless humans change their ways YESTERDAY if not sooner, we are all fooked

People who say climate change didn't light the fires, an arsonist did, suffer from a special kind of acute dumb fcukery. IMO

People who say climate change didn't light the fires, an arsonist did, suffer from a special kind of acute dumb fcukery. IMO


sadly Ted, imbeciles like adam bandt just don't understand their country at all


... this page from our Australian Govt website has their pie-chart suggest that a mere 6% of the total bushfires in australia each are from natural causes ... half being deliberate or suspicious with 35% accidental

bandt nothing more than a disgraceful political opportunist who, while abbott was out with the volunteers, was probably tweeting from his coal fired electricity driven air-conditioned office ffs.


http://www.bushfirearson.gov.au/about/Pages/default.aspx

bigted
People who say climate change didn't light the fires, an arsonist did, suffer from a special kind of acute dumb fcukery. IMO


... and sadly from yesterday's news bulletins


http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/515409/20131021/australia-new-south-wales-fire-nsw-children.htm

As New South Wales continues to battle the bushfire disaster, it is being reported that two boys, aged 11 and 14, have been charged with starting two separate fires - one near Newcastle and another one at the Hunter Valley.

Global warming amplifies the risk factors for extreme weather events - and that is all that Climate Science claims.


Climate Myth...

Extreme weather isn't caused by global warming

"The 30 major droughts of the 20th century were likely natural in all respects; and, hence, they are "indicative of what could also happen in the future," as Narisma et al. state in their concluding paragraph. And happen they will. Consequently, the next time a serious drought takes hold of some part of the world and the likes of Al Gore blame it on the "carbon footprints" of you and your family, ask them why just the opposite of what their hypothesis suggests actually occurred over the course of the 20th century, i.e., why, when the earth warmed - and at a rate and to a degree that they claim was unprecedented overthousands of years - the rate-of-occurrence of severe regional droughts actually declined." (source: CO2 Science)

WHAT THE SCIENCE SAYS....

Whenever there is an extreme weather event, such as a flood or drought, people ask whether that event was caused by global warming. Unfortunately, there is no straightforward answer to this question. Weather is highly variable and extreme weather events have always happened. Detecting trends takes time, particularly when observational records are rare or even missing in certain regions. An increase in extreme weather is expected with global warming because rising temperatures affect weather parameters in several ways. Changes in the frequency of extreme events coinciding with global warming have already been observed, and there is increasing evidence that some of these changes are caused by the impacts of human activities on the climate.
How global warming affects weather parameters

Rising temperatures can have several effects on the factors involved in weather. For example:

    They increase the rate of evapotranspiration, which is the total evaporation of water from soil, plants and water bodies. This can have a direct effect on the fequency and intensity of droughts.

    A warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapour. The atmosphere now holds 4% more water vapour than it did 40 years ago as a result of increasing temperatures. This increases the risk of extreme rainfall events.

    Changes in sea-surface temperatures (SSTs) also have an effect by bringing about associated changes in atmospheric circulation and precipitation. This has been implicated in some droughts, particularly in the tropics.

These changes don't automatically generate extreme weather events but they change the odds that such events will take place. It is equivalent to the loading of dice, leading to one side being heavier, so that a certain outcome becomes more likely. In the context of global warming, this means that rising temperatures increase the odds of extreme events occurring.
Changes in extreme weather events are already being observed

In the US, the Global Changes Research Program published a report in 2009 entitled Global Climate Change Impacts in the US. The National Climate Change chapter reports the following findings for recent decades:

    Heavy rainfall events have increased both in frequency and in intensity by 20%, and are the main cause behind the increase in overall precipitation in the US. The Northeast and Midwest have seen the greatest increase in such events.

    The frequency of drought has increased in areas such as the Southeast and the West, and decreased in other areas. Rising temperatures make droughts more severe and/or widespread, and also lead to the earlier melting of snowpacks, which can exacerbate problems in vulnerable areas.

    Atlantic hurricanes have increased both in power and frequency, coinciding with warming oceans that provide energy to these storms. In the Eastern Pacific, there have been fewer but stronger hurricanes recently. More research is needed to better understand the extent to which other factors, such as atmospheric stability and circulation, affect hurricane development.

Similarly, Australia has seen the odds of both heavy rainfalls and droughts increase, and similar patterns are being observed worldwide, coinciding with rising temperatures over the past 50 years.  Heat waves are also occurring more frequently as temperatures shift upwards:

Source: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center GISS and Scientific Visualization Studio

In conclusion, although it isn't possible to state that global warming is causing a particular extreme event, it is wrong to say that global warming has no effect on the weather. Rising air and sea temperatures have a number of effects on the water cycle, and this increases the odds for more extreme weather events.

Last updated on 16 January 2013 by dana1981

Soil Carbon in the Australian Political Debate (Part 2 of 2)
Posted on 18 August 2011 by alan_marshall

Written before the Denying Liars were elected....

Introduction

In the first half of this post, I discussed the means by which CO2 can be sequestered in agricultural soils while allowing continued productive agricultural land use. We looked at various estimates of the cost of this technology, for both Kyoto-compliant and voluntary offset markets. Key features of Kyoto-compliant offsets are the guarantee of permanence (defined as 100 years) and the testing and verification that permanence requires.

It was accepted that voluntary offsets, reflecting mostly the cost of getting CO2 into the ground, might be created for as little as $15 per tonne. It was argued, however, that Kyoto-compliant offsets would require an additional stewardship payment to guarantee permanence, which I estimated at $20 per tonne.

In Australia, both sides of politics have recognised the potential for soil carbon to a role in reducing overall carbon emissions, but it is the Opposition who imagines soil carbon is some kind of panacea. I will now examine their policy in detail.

Implications for the Federal Opposition

In Australia, this costing carries serious implications for the federal Opposition, which has placed itself in a vulnerable position, relying heavily on soil carbon for 60% of abatement purchased though its Emissions Reduction Fund. If this cost is significantly underestimated, the Opposition will not be able to meet their commitment on emissions reduction.

Their Direct Action Plan gives an indicative cost of $8 to $10 per tonne of CO2 for soil carbon, and budgets on an average maximum of $15 per tonne of CO2 for all purchased abatement. These figures are based on advice provided to them by a number of small companies seeking to promote the technology, but none of these companies can yet satisfactorily answer is how they can guarantee the stored carbon will be locked up for the required 100 years. Carbon Coalition, a company cited by the Opposition when they first released their policy, now says that the price paid to farmers would need to "start at $25 and head north". [i]


Some case studies do indeed suggest that $15 per tonne might cover the cost of the initial sequestration, but in limiting its proposed expenditure to this figure, the Opposition is locking itself in to only purchasing offsets on the voluntary market. It has not yet factored in the stewardship payment that would guarantee permanence. As we shall see later, there are many in the Opposition who do not believe the scientific consensus on climate change. There is not much point in paying for permanence if you are hoping the problem will go away.

If through failing to properly address the issue of permanence, the Opposition has underestimated the cost of soil carbon by $20 per tonne, then sequestering 85 million tonnes per year by 2020 will cost an extra 1.7 billion dollars per year. This will more than double the outlay under the Opposition’s scheme, and negate its claimed cost advantage over the Government’s plan.

Soil carbon is covered by article 3.4 of the Kyoto Protocol, an article which Australia has not signed up to because it would require us to account for soil carbon loss due to drought and bushfires. Unless Australia joins Portugal in signing article 3.4, soil carbon offsets achieved under the Opposition’s plan would not count towards meeting Australia’s commitments under the Copenhagen Accord.

If we want to realize the potential of carbon sequestration in soils, and if we are serious about combating climate change, we need to address the debit side of the soil carbon ledger. Therefore, I believe Australia should consider adopting article 3.4 in the context of a carbon price high enough to produce a net reduction in emissions from Australian soils.

Another grave problem with the Opposition’s plan is that it overestimates the potential abatement of soil carbon. According to the peer-reviewed science [ii], the potential sequestration in agricultural soils is between 0.5 and 1 tonne of CO2 per hectare per year. Even if we take the higher figure, the Opposition’s plan would require 85 million hectares, or 850,000 square kilometers (km). This is a square 922 km x 922 km, a very substantial parcel of land indeed!

Any plan to mitigate CO2 emissions that relies heavily on soil carbon is risky. While land use change has the potential to make a contribution in an overall strategy to combat climate change, the heavy lifting will only be done by a switch to clean sources of energy.

Doubts about the Opposition’s Commitment

Even more disturbing than the apparent flaws in their Direct Action Plan is the rhetoric used by the Opposition in opposing the climate change policy of the Government and in casting doubt on the science. They have railed against the Government for putting a price on carbon, even though their own plan puts a price on carbon by a different means.

They have constantly argued that whatever action Australia takes will make little difference given that Australia’s emissions form less than 2% of the global total. They ignore the fact that Australia is the highest per capita emitter in the OECD, and that the UK, which also generates less than 2% of the global total, has committed itself to halving emissions by 2025!

They maintain Australia’s efforts should be limited until China and India commit to absolute reductions, ignoring the fact our per-capita emissions exceed those of China by a factor of 5 and India by a factor of 16 [iii]. They also ignore the fact that Australia is among the developed nations that are largely responsible for historical emissions.

High profile members of the Opposition, including the leader, constantly question the scientific consensus, preferring instead the nonsense peddled by Plimer, Carter, Monckton, and the conservative think tank Heartland Institute. Some high profiles members deny AGM outright, while the leader, Tony Abbott, has expressed his own skepticism in these words:

    I am, as you know, hugely unconvinced by the so-called settled science on climate change. [...] I mean, I just think that the science is highly contentious, to say the least.[iv]

At Skeptial Science, we have previously examined Abbott's climate myths. He constantly refers to “so-called carbon pollution”.  He has also insisted that his already inadequate budget for climate change action will not be increased [v]. This means of course that the Opposition, should they form Government, will not be able to meet the 2020 bipartisan emissions reduction target which is 5% below 2000 levels, or 23% below business-as-usual.

Not only does Abbott cast doubt on the science, he also thinks he knows more than the economists. Conceding at a recent conference that most economists think a carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme the best way to go, all he could say was ''maybe that's a comment on the quality of our economists" [vi].

[/b]And it Gets Worse ...[/b]

In recent weeks the Opposition's rhetoric has become surreal. Abbot has described the Government's 2020 target as "crazy" [vii], apparently forgetting that he had commited the Opposition to the same target. Then, perhaps still believing that soil carbon is a magic solution, he reneged on his commitment to close Australia's dirtiest brown coal fired power station [viii]. Finally, in an astonishing act of insincerity, Abbot's shadow treasurer has suggested that if the Opposition win the next election, they may abolish the Department of Climate Change! [ix]

Responsible Government requires keeping in step with the science and international efforts to tackle climate change. It involves taking the bold reforms that will be necessary to de-carbonise our economy. It means being part of the solution rather than part of the problem. In this respect, the Opposition is demonstrating that it cannot be trusted with our future. The House of Representatives is finely balanced, with the minority Government having an agreement with independents that only just gives it the numbers. Hopefully, the Opposition's flawed plan will never be realised, at least in its current form.



Conclusion

Soil carbon will ultimately play an important part in Australia and the world’s efforts to reduce our carbon footprint, though the timeframe at this point is uncertain. What is clear is that for both renewable sources of energy and agricultural sequestration of carbon to be encouraged, a robust broad-based price on CO2 emissions will be necessary. The Opposition needs to stop looking for “magic bullets”, but instead provide industry with the incentive it needs to become more energy efficient.

Lest there be any accusations of political bias, we affirm that Skeptical Science is not in the business of promoting one philosophy or ideology over another. In fact, while taking the conservative parties in Australia to task for their lack of commitment to tackling climate change, we applaud the conservative Government of the UK, led by David Cameron, for its leadership on the issue. We also applaud the conservative Government of the New Zealand, led by John Key, for its support of an ETS which it successfully introduced last year.

In Australia, the potential annual carbon offsets via agricultural activities are still much less than current industrial emissions. Sequestering of CO2 should not be seen as an alternative to reducing industrial emissions, but as supplementary. Avoiding catastrophic climate change will require us to make use of every available tool.

The planet is already well on its way to a future environment less hospitable to mankind. Australia, as the OECD’s highest per-capita emitter, must at least make a proportionate effort towards realizing the global goal of stabilizing, and then reducing, total emissions. I believe that carbon farming, including soil carbon, has a bright future, but it requires a realistic carbon price, and at the moment, only the Government’s proposals are offering that.

A country full of trees .........and NODES on every Nature Strip......if there is any room left....


STOP THE TREES.......AND THE NODES.

A Gov't FULL OF CLIMATE CHANGE DENIERS AND NUT CASES.

Uruguay is legalising marijuana and the government is going to sell it for $1 a gram, how will that affect co2?

I was in Uruguay recently and said Hi to a person, they replied yes ffs

why not womble swan spent willy nilly for 6 years to put us where we are , whats another lazy $50B?
fires have and always be severe whilst we have thousands and thousands of KM of uncleared bush , doesn't matter one iota how much carbon is in the atmosphere once started will take off , especially after a good rainy season to grow the fuel to then dry out, its been happening since the dinosaurs were here , a tax will NEVER EVER stop it

hardly a blank cheque womble

cruelly for australians the gillard-swan era was the worst fiscal accounting by any govt australia has had

everyone seemed to know that ... except wayne himself

we will find out after the audit exactly what debt labor has again left this country and our children


http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-22/joe-hockey-announces-commission-of-audit-details/5038314

This is Labor's legacy," he told ABC TV's 7.30 program following the announcement.

"They were leaving us with a debt of $370 billion on their own projections.

I've been advised that it will be significantly larger, and we are not going to allow ourselves to get into the position that the US is in where there's tremendous uncertainty about the capacity of a country to live within its means."

would probably not have wayne swan ... defend wayne swan ... afl ... if anyone else can come to his side and i will read on

he mentions australia have a AAA rating

well ffs so do the USA  .. that's how much the AAA means lol

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/10381671/Fitch-threatens-to-strip-America-of-AAA-credit-rating.html

Rating agency says it could downgrade America's prized rating, while further delays to raising the debt ceiling will damage the country's credibility


... but they still have them gold plated wonderful economy things going well AAA AAA AAA AAA 

i enjoy our banter afl ... and while i don't necessarily agree ... i don't necessarily disagree either

the big problem with swan tho imo ... was that he just didn't know whether it was up or down ... arthur or martha

scary when you think about it 

all the best mate

No worries Thebas

Cheers.

they are all farked Teddy - at least the Labor / Green ACT government is embracing love and same sex marriage

Thebas - Labor did a fine job of getting us through the GFC in tact and an awful job of explaining what and why they did what they did.  Revenues haven't recovered as expected, not just by Swan but by Treasury - that's part of why we still have large deficits.  I.e. large deficits that Hockey and Abbott were screaming about before the election but don't seem to give a flying fig about now

In the Costello years, when these structural deficits were put in place, the mistakes were mostly on the upside so no one cared as much - sorry folks we underestimated the surplus by $20 billion - rivers of gold.  Worst treasurer of all time that Costello guy imo

Labor did a fine job of getting us through the GFC in tact and an awful job of explaining what and why they did what they did

... in fairness labor did get us through a time when there was a global meltdown ... so well done there

the communication issue was more an internal problem where they had no singular method or ddirectional awareness due to the infighting and petty personal bikering between the two leaders (who just swapped jumpers a couple of times depending on who the backroom boys felt best served the public image)

but why ... gillard in a moment of complete madness .. after witnessing the fiscal mayhem in europe ... decided ... against her STATED POLICY PROMISE to the nation ... to join hands with europe and go down the co2 tax route

cost her .. cost labor .. and ina way cost our country two lost years never to be recouped

we are all hoping our new govt can show internal party solidarity and a direction forward through trade, enterprise and renewed business confidence

will be a rocky three years, and yes belts will have to tighten, which will cause uproar amongst the left, but hopefully in the end a ... stronger and more confident australia as we approach 2020