All you really need to know about climate change

All you really need to know about climate change. We're one big civilisation and climate is changing fast given a sudden imbalance of carbon since the industrial revolution. The mechanism of greenhouse gasses has been known to science for 150 years or so and we're at 400ppm and adding another couple each year, and 2 degrees warming (guessed to come at 450ppm) is a rough, perhaps optimistic, estimate of where runaway climate change could happen given various feedback loops (the ubiquitous "tipping points") and it looks to me like we've got buckley's chance of staying within 2 degrees. With business as usual, IPCC estimates 3-6 degrees rise by 2100. That's just 87 years. Scientists provide the proof of all this for honest readers. To me it looks like game over and sooner than we think. I just hope I'm wrong because nobody wins an argument with physics.

The doom we never mention

Markus' article is lost to me in the mists of time, but I wrote this letter to the editor of the Canberra Times back in August 2012. Things have changed for the worse since then. These days, if I were brave enough, I'd write the last sentence with "probably" in place of maybe.

Markus Mannheim ("The doom that we never mention", Forum, August 25, p1) sounds as defeated as me on climate change. Why no talk of it?

Clearly exponential growth into a finite world doesn't go. It's cheaper to deal with it earlier; it's not at all controversial in climate science; it's not controversial outside the English-speaking world. But it is here. Climate change is insidious in human timescales.

I ask people: if Queensland floods every five years, can it survive the cost? People understand this. Do pollies or the press? I'm sure they do, but politics and commerce and the short term win out. I expect we will be too late; maybe we already are.

Aginspin's Forward-Thinker-Of-The-Year Award

"In his penultimate blog for the year, Abbott's parliamentary secretary Senator Cory Bernardi summed up his 2011 in a way which would appear to sit uncomfortably with Coalition policy.

'Emissions have continued to rise, the few dams we have are full again, the Earth has stopped warming and the deceivers in the AGW (anthropogenic global warming) alarmist industry are increasingly exposed for what they are. By my count, it's a happy ending to the apocalypse scenario and I think it would make an excellent movie. I even have a title in mind. Perhaps it could be called An Inconvenient Truth,' he wrote."

Year of the faux protester / Lenore Taylor IN Sydney Morning Herald online, 25 Dec 2011. http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/year-of-the-faux-protester-20111223-1p8d4.html#ixzz1hXA7177d

Now I take a stand

10 May 2010

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd

Dear Prime Minister

I write at a time of stress for Labor and you, with dropping support and coming up to an election. I too am disappointed with Labor. You did well with the GFC, but then you had no debts leading into it, and that was a product of Howard’s year (damn that man). You did well with the Apology and Kyoto, but they were easy. You’ve since dropped so many of your commitments, even the “greatest challenge of our time”. Conviction politician? Don’t think so. Practical politician. Yes, clearly. A politician who can argue a case, lead a country when the need is great and evident? Clearly not that. Despite the articles in the Monthly and the corny down to Earth language.

My vote has been ignored

I am of the centre left, quite moderate. I am reasonably informed and interested. My vote has been ignored – Labor has always expected it in a two-party preference. And you know what? You’ve always had it. But to avoid being taken for granted (for my electorate, for my 2nd preference, etc) I must take a stand.

Now I take a stand

Labor will not get my vote, second preference or otherwise, without these changes below. Neither will Liberals. Perhaps no-one will and it will be wasted. So be it.

Labor will not get my preference in the Senate, either. That’s important to you, because my vote may be worth something there.

Labor will get my vote if …

CLIMATE CHANGE -- Labor must present a committed and intelligent response to Climate Change. This is most likely a carbon tax, but more is required. Read James Hansen or other. This does not mean rolling over for industry. It does mean some interim limited pain, but it avoids greater pain for all our children, and establishes a long-term sustainability. Read Nicholas Stern. Disastrous change is that close.

INTERNET CENSORSHIP -- Labor must cease the dangerous move to censor the Internet. I attach a letter I sent previously to the minister, the PM, Greens and Liberals, and for which I didn’t receive one receipt. (How poor are our manners these days). I heard on the radio today Conroy saying he would come out against abused censorship. What a stupid statement. He is building the infrastructure for abuse, by him or others. I don’t care what he wishes. I care what opportunities for abuse that he establishes. This is the short end of a dangerous straw.

There are a string of other matters, too. Human Rights Act; workplace relations; immigration; poor administration (insulation, schools); school league tables; many more. But you will get my vote if you satisfy me on those two issues above: Climate Change and Internet Censorship.

If you present policies I can believe, I may give you even first preference, but it’s not looking likely.

I write as only one, but I am not alone.

Freakout!

I've been reading the latest book by the climate change guru, James Hansen. These quotes were new to me and hit me with the proverbial sledgehammer. 1,000 breeding pairs? That is virtual extinction and we've been there once already. It's the sort of intensely frightening scenario that I've heard James Lovelock suggest on ABC Radio National's Science Show. What have we got awaiting us, given we're doing nothing much about it.

“Twenty thousand years ago, sea level was 110 metres … lower than it is today, exposing my of the present continental shelves. The rate of sea level rise can be rapid once ice sheets begin to disintegrate, About 14,000 years ago, se level increased 4 to 5 metres per century for several consecutive centuries – an average rate of 1 meter every 20 or 25 years” p.38

“The decent our of Eemian warmth into ice age conditions must have been stressful on humans, even though it took thousands of years. Indeed, the final descent into full ice age conditions 70,000 years ago was rapid and coincided with the one near extinction of humans; as few as one thousand breeding pairs are estimated to have survived during the population bottleneck.” p.39

Storms of my grandchildren / James Hansen. London : Bloomsbury, 2009