Dear ALP: Keep the 'no more uranium mines' policy

The ALP are currently on the verge of changing their current 'no new uranium mines' policy. A party vote is expected in the next couple of days. I have sent an email to give voice to my protest but - I have a blog - I can do more, and I might inspire others to do same.

Open e-letter to Senator Stephens of the Australian Labor Party:

Senator Ursula Stephens
senator.stephens@aph.gov.au

Dear Senator,

As your classic swinging voter, I want to voice my extreme disapproval of the proposed move away from the current ALP 'no new mines' policy, and I want you to know that I will be actively campaigning against uranium mining on my blog, Global Warming Watch.

My objections are based upon the following reasons:

• India is not a sig. to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
• Our uranium may end up as plutonium in Iran, Pakistan, or a resources-hungry China in the near future.
• Once Iran develops their nuclear capabilities, we can expect the rest of the middle-east to. Australia should not be party to this proliferation.
  
• Much of the world, and Australia, has left it way too late to build nuclear power stations in order to combat global warming. Most experts say we have a window of 10 years to make deep cuts to our GHG emissions in to avoid hitting the global warming tipping points that are expected to push us into run-away climate change. If we start building now, most nuclear power stations will only be three-quarters complete in then years and would have generated hundred of thousands of tonnes of GHG in their construction.
• Uranium mining, processing, transportation, and the storage of spent uranium all involve processes that generate carbon dioxide. It is not as green some people say. Until you are glowing like Homer, that is.
• The mining and processing of uranium that is proposed in Australia requires using a lot of water, water we currently don't seem to have enough of. In addition, prevention of contamination of the water-table and aquifers cannot be guaranteed.
• Nuclear power stations cost a fortune to decommission.
• The cost of nuclear power does not survive the free-market without government subsidy. How is this a long term energy solution?
• There still is no solution to the nuclear waste problem.
• A 'dirty-bomb' is the holy grail of terrorist groups - if we can't stop individuals in our Army from covertly selling weapons to criminal elements sympathetic to these terrorists, especially during the so called 'war-on-terror', what hope do we have of stopping uranium and derivatives from being subjected to same. Put another way, if a rocket launcher is worth $5,000 on this black market, how much is an ounce of uranium worth?

These reasons are off the top of my head, so may not be finessed as yet. But you can be sure they will be further explored, as my campaign develops, should the ALP persist with abandoning their no new mines policy.

Despite these objections, I am prepared to reconsider once we develop a way to detoxify spent uranium rods, say, within an individual's lifetime, and I would be happy to support any political party prepared to spend money researching this.

Kind regards,

Wadard
Global Warming Watch

I will keep readers posted. Thanks to Don Henry, Executive Director of the Australian Conservation Foundation for his email alerting me. You can make donations to the ACF here.

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PM voices dustbowl fears for Australia's breadbasket

To my mind it is the biggest news in Australia this century, if fair dinkum. Maybe even since Federation in 1901.

Prime Minister John Howard appeared on television today and threatened to cut off water supplies to the farmers of the Murray-Darling basin, if there are isn't heavy rainfall in the coming months. :::[Video: SMH]

If you are not familiar with the geography - the Murray Darling Basin is the food basket of Australia, and many other parts of the world that we export to. The immediate upshot of denying these farmers their water allocations is that this would radically increase prices for many food products. The longer term effect is that the many types of crops, citrus, stone fruit and the like, that take up to five years to become established, will die. So will a lot of farming enterprises.

I am completely taken by surprise. Gob-smacked. Yes I know there is a tough drought happening, and that it had been exacerbated up until last month by the El Niño Southern Oscillation. Yes I know global warming is very gradually taking its toll, slowly changing the climate in southern Australia to a drier one.

But this announcement has me disturbed.

It still seems so out of the blue. It's also not one that you would imagine a Prime Minister would be happy to make in an election year - why wouldn't a canny man like Howard leave it to his Minister for Environment and Water Resources, Malcolm Turnbull, to take to the podium alone? As I write I am almost starting to hope that this just might be typical Howardian politics, rather than drastic reality. Howard is desperately trying to get the Victorian Premier, Steve Bracks to be part of his $10 billion water initiative; Could he be trying to scare Bracks into signing over his state's water powers to the Federal Government?

Interestingly, the biggest farmers are not panicking. They say they need Mr Howard to clarify what he means before they worry. :::[SMH: Water ban threat questioned]

The owner of one of Australia's 10 largest stone fruit farms is nonplussed by Prime Minister John Howard's declaration that no water will be allocated to irrigators in the Murray-Darling Basin for the coming year unless there is substantial rain in the next six weeks.

John Corboy, of Corboy Fresh Fruits, which operates 400 hectares near Shepparton in Victoria, said he would need more information on what Mr Howard means by "very substantial" inflows into the Murray-Darling Basin before he paid attention to it.

Mr Howard did not specify how much rain would be needed by the end of May to make irrigation allocations a possibility.

Here is what Howard said:

"Unless there are very substantial inflows - and for that read heavy rain leading to run-off into the catchment areas - prior to mid-May 2007, there will be insufficient water available to allow any allocation at the commencement of the 2007-08 water year for irrigation, the environment or for any purposes other than critical urban supplies."

And what Corboy said in response when asked:

"It's not enough to really comment on, other than, 'Hang on mate, you're flying off the handle here and you're being fairly emphatic when there's so many unknowns.' "

"Realistically we're out of the el nino effect and the indicators are showing us that clearly, the oceans temperatures have come back to normal. The pundits are telling us within our area that we have 50 per cent chance of having higher than average rainfall [this season]."

"People tend to be getting into the view that it's just never going to rain again, well that's not the case, it will, we just don't when. And there's only one bloke who knows when it will, and he's not giving interviews."

I think I'll go with the man on the land this time. The manner in which the announcement was made seemed a touch incongruent for the gravitas of the situation - if it was for real. In addition, when one journalist queried whether the drought was linked to climate change, Howard was completely emphatic in saying that it was not.

How can anyone be so sure?

Global Warning Climate Change Drought Australia

Wall Street Journal reading Global Warming Watch

A good April so far; First Reuters picked up an post of mine, now the WSJ Online reckon they are reading me. I would love to put this down to my sexy blogging prowess, but it is more likely that global warming is a hot, hot, hot, topic now.

The bad news is that it is not going to go away soon.

WSJ reading DeSmogBlog is heartening news though - they are the Canadian PR folk who expose 'tricks of the trade' of the fossil-fuel funded global warming denial industry. They do such a great and useful job that I am always happy to plug them lately.

clipped from blogs.wsj.com WSJ.com’s look at energy news clipped from blogs.wsj.com Blogs We’re Reading: Energy Outlook DeSmogBlog GristMill Celsias Global Warming Watch – Mark Gongloff

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Carbon dollars help individuals fight climate change

Carbon rationing with penalties for private citizens who exceeded quotas might be needed to tackle climate change, according to the former NSW premier, Bob Carr.

clipped from www.smh.com.au Carbon credit debate gets personal A range of regulations and carbon trading schemes were emerging in Britain and the US, but rationing an individual's carbon use was one of the most interesting ideas, Mr Carr told a business conference in Sydney yesterday. Speaking as chairman of an advisory council for think tank the Climate Institute, Mr Carr said the British Labour Government and the Conservative Party Opposition were taking the idea seriously. "Here is the most exciting concept. That is, the idea that every citizen be given a carbon credit," he told the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants. "Every time you buy fuel at the garage or pay a gas or electricity bill or get on a plane, carbon will be deducted from your account.

Global Warning Climate Change

Solomon needs his temple foundations examined

David Solomon needs to take great care with his statistical work, if he does not want to be tarred with the same 'Chicago school of economics' oily brush that brought us the Iran-Contra affair, the invasion of Iraq, and Paul Wolfowitz.

He doesn't take care, and so his latest work is gleefully used by Andrew Bolt to prove that activities directed towards 'global-cooling' are a waste of time. What results is an insight into the workings of noble-lie theory.

clipped from anonymouse.org Earth Hour made not even a minute difference 16 Comments | 0 Trackbacks | Permalink | Andrew Bolt Blog By Andrew Bolt, Wednesday, April 18, 2007 at 06:34am Sydney’s Earth Hour - in which global warming cultists turned off their lights to symbolise what green policies would mean to us - was claimed to have saved enough carbon emissions to offset, er, just four return flights to London. David Solomon of Chicago University’s Graduate School of Business checks the figures and works out that stunt was even more useless than that: ‘Earth Hour’ shows a decline of only 2.10%, statistically indistinguishable from zero… In terms of reducing electricity consumption, ‘Earth Hour’ was, statistically speaking, a failure.

Solomon's caveats in the conclusions of his work tell us the real story of not comparing apples to oranges:

It is nevertheless possible that ‘Earth Hour’ may have had a significant effect in a more localized area than New South Wales. The Energy Australia estimates were based on Sydney CBD only, and so may not be directly comparable.

Keep in mind that the majority of the 57% of sydneysiders who tuned-in and 'switched-off' would have necessarily been in the suburbs, because the CBD doesn't support 2.2 million people, except on NYE, and it certainly didn't that night.

Taking the point estimate of the EarthHour Dummy variable in the full specification after controlling for EarthDay fixed effects, the estimated impact of half of Sydney apparently sitting in darkness using no appliances was to reduce statewide electricity use by around 2.1%.

Here's Solomon's conclusion:

This is a useful, albeit rough, example of the potential economic cost of some currently debated policies that seek to reduce Australian greenhouse gas emissions by 60% by the year 2050.

All it tells us is that a 10.1% drop in electricity usage observed within the Sydney CBD and not the suburbs, results in a 2.1% drop in electricity being consumed in the state of New South Wales.

Is that useful? Solomon's right about it being rough, though.

Italics and bolding mine.
Global Warning Climate Change

Aussies up for a fight against global warming

I don' think our federal leaders and oppositions are going to get by on simple global warming tokenism any more.

clipped from www.worldpublicopinion.org Poll Finds Worldwide Agreement That Climate Change is a Threat An international poll finds widespread agreement that climate change is a pressing problem. This majority, however, divides over whether the problem of global warming is urgent enough to require immediate, costly measures or whether more modest efforts are sufficient. Twelve countries were asked whether steps should be taken to address climate change and majorities in all but one of them favored action. The largest majority in favor of measures to combat global warming is found in Australia (92%). China and Israel are the next most likely (83%) to favor such measures. Eighty percent of respondents in the United States—the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases—also support taking such measures.

Doing your global warming homework

clipped from www.desmogblog.com Truthiness vs. Science

Global Warming Watch picked up by Reuters

Upon randomly checking my BlogBurst workbench I discovered that one of my posts in early April was picked up by Reuters UK. It's a buzz for this blogger, and explains the recent spike in traffic . As I am experimenting with Clipmarks' clip-to-blog function, I clipped the first few paras.

clipped from uk.reuters.com Bush forced to regulate carbon dioxide from cars POSTED: Monday, April 02, 2007 FROM BLOG: Global Warming Watch - This blog is currently heating up at an average of 0.2°C per decade. Come back often. The following blog post is from an independent writer and is not connected with Reuters News. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not endorsed by Reuters.com. In enormous news for the mitigation of global warming, the US Supreme Court has forced their federal government to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from cars. The directive forces the Bush Administration into a major policy u-turn: :::[CNN] In a 5-4 decision, the court said the Clean Air Act gives the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to regulate the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from cars.

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The 3rd man in history to ever walk on water

clipped from www.funny-potato.com The 1st one was Jesus Christ... The 2nd one was Peter (the apostle)... ..... Then there was this guy .......Jose

Global Warning Climate Change

At last! Al Gore planning to run...

..his house on solar power. I think it is great that the Get Gore campaign got Gore going. When it comes to walking-the-talk, he is running - emissions-free, from his manor. So thinks Green Options:

clipped from www.greenoptions.com Sign seen in front of Al Gore's mansion in the posh Belle Meade section of Nashville Thursday, indicating Gore is moving forward with plans for solar panels to help power his mansion. Here's a link to the the Belle Meade Board of Zoning Appeals meeting agenda - there are no details on the size of the solar panels, how much power they'll generate, or whether or not they'll be tied into the grid via a "net metering" arrangement so Gore can sell excess power to the grid through a "net metering" arrangement. by Ecotality blogger Bill Hobbs

Global Warning Climate Change

One Bolt doeth not a thunder-storm maketh

Climate change denial advocate, Andrew Bolt, doesn't know that the increase in average temperatures from around the globe, measured over time is what we commonly call "global warming". That's a lot of individual measurements, in the googles, yet he persistently claims to debunk the theory based on his observations of the temperature on any one day somewhere in the world. :::[Andrew Bolt Blog: Snowing on the warming parade]

Love the headline:

Snow won’t dampen global-warming rallies

And the story isn’t bad either:

The weather forecast for Saturday’s global warming rallies in Grand Rapids and Holland calls for snow and cold rain and temperatures in the 40s—about 10 degrees below normal.

For some, this might make global warming a tough sell.

It's a neat trick of the skeptics; I am sure it will get his regulars howling, "If they can't get a seven day weather forecast right, how can they get one of them one hundred years climate-model forecasts right, huh?".

Hmmm. Here's what global warming looks like as a snapshot of a real-time compilation of a gigantic network of ocean-borne sensors on bouys. The blue represents unexpected cooling, the yellow through to red represents unexpected temperature increase, and the white tells us that this area is as we would expect. As it should be. :::[The Age]
The absurdity of picking on a single temperature point somewhere in the world, "Grand Rapids and Holland", to support the "no-global warming" hypothesis; Yet Bolt soldiers on with his cunning brand of mendacity.

This is what one of his regular commenters, Nobull Warning, posted to the "Boltmoderators bouncing his blog", and then emailed me saying, "just in case it doesn't get posted, would I...?".

Dear Andrew,

The snowmaster speaks. This bit caught my attention...

"... but if we're really reasonable about it, we're not talking about individual weather on individual days," Locke said. "We're talking about something much larger, on a global scale, which science has been tracking for decades."

Funny that, a cultist calling for reason.

I thought the journo was ok, but a bit fuzzy with this line.

Opponents in the debate say natural events such as solar activity are causing the warm-up.

Everyone knows there are no opponents in the scientific debate, and as for the media debate, well that's just a pr smog job.

Nobull Warning from Leichhardt

Would I?

It wasn't the Bolt Moderators who roughly bounced me out his blog, it was the big man himself. Totally unreasonably too, I thought. Figures.

Global Warning Climate Change

Let them eat my gasses

A few weeks ago the ruling Australian Liberal Party dealt themselves into the upcoming green elections by outsourcing our environmental policy to Indonesia: :::[The Road to Surfdom]

So, Malcolm Turnbull and his boss, The Rodent*, have suddenly come out with this policy to pay $A200m to encourage developing nations in the southern hemisphere with significant rainforest, such as Brazil, Australia and Indonesia, to stop logging them.

An audible gasp went around the country. After ten years of aggressive denial, these people are now really serious about combating climate change, even if they won't protect our own significant rainforests.

Today, at the annual Council of Australian Governments meeting we found out just how serious: :::[SMH]

The rift over how to tackle climate change widened today with Prime Minister John Howard refusing to back a plan by state premiers to set up a national carbon emission trading scheme.

At the end of their annual Council of Australian Governments meeting, Mr Howard told a news conference he would "put jobs and economic opportunity ahead of targets" on greenhouse gas reductions.

The states and territories want emissions trading operational in 2010 and backed up by legislation in 2008. They want Australia's emissions cut by 60 per cent by 2050.

Victorian Premier Steve Bracks, who has been leading the state's reform campaign, voiced his disappointment.

The premiers of every single state and territory of the Commonwealth of Australia at last want to work together with the Federal Government to do something about the challenge of the aeon, and Howard says 'no', offering his typical platitudinous, vapid crap as the reason. Poor guy just does not get that the economy is but a sub-system of the environment. Poor guy just does not want a job after November.

UPDATE

John Howard has not lost all the wiles. He dealt himself back into the game at the last moment: :::[SMH]

John Howard softens his trenchant opposition to a greenhouse gas emissions trading and target reduction scheme.

He did the right thing, if the Internet poll by the SMH is anything to go by:

Reader Poll

Climate Change
Who is right about Climate Change?
The states who want a carbon trading scheme and targets - 73% The Prime Minister who won't put targets ahead of jobs and the economy - 16% Neither side - 11% Total Votes: 3451

* Note for non-Aussie readers. One of John Howard's own Liberal Party senators once referred to him as "the Lying Rodent", and, bizarrely enough, it stuck.

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IPCC Report specifics for Australia

IPCC Report implications for Australia:

* more drought, fires and inundation caused by sea-level rises
* withdrawal on private insurance on coastal properties
* increased water security problems
* areas of the coast, especially Cairns and south-east Queensland, face increased risks from sea-level rises and "increases in the severity and frequency of storms and coastal flooding"


"Hot spot" regions:

* the Murray-Darling Basin
* south-east Queensland
* Kakadu
* the Queensland wet tropics
* the Snowy Mountains
* the drought-prone south-west of Western Australia


Are Aussies seriously going to stand back and let this happen to our World Heritage sites? Or the rest of the planet? :::[SMH]

The draft summary noted that many of these hot spots include World Heritage sites, but the Federal Government had this reference cut during the process where every line of the report's summary for policy makers is debated.

It's time to vote in a government that serious about dealing with climate change and vote out the one that would betray our trust... and then get on with the job of saving those sites as best we can. It's going to be a long haul, inter-generational. And we have to start now.

Global Warning Climate Change Environment Science CO2 Carbon Sink Earth Australia Kyoto Energy

IPCC's clarion call

Coming to an IPCC Report near you. :::[SMH: Window closing on planet's chances]

"Unmitigated climate change would, in the long term, be likely to exceed the capacity of natural, managed and human systems to adapt."

The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is due out tomorrow, and that is some of the wording just agreed upon between scientists and governments after last-minute objections from the US, China and Saudi Arabia over wording and graphics sparked an all night dispute.

I've been listening to the BBC coverage of the release. AGW's happening. And it's alarming. There is no other word. There is good observational data, now, to prove that the climate-models are accurately forecasting. Game over for sceptics, and game over non-renewable energy sources. Or it's game over for life as we know it. That's what they are telling us.

Global Warning Climate Change Australia Kyoto Energy

Bush forced to regulate carbon dioxide from cars

In enormous news for the mitigation of global warming, the US Supreme Court has forced their federal government to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from cars. The directive forces the Bush Administration into a major policy u-turn: :::[CNN]

In a 5-4 decision, the court said the Clean Air Act gives the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to regulate the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from cars.

Greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the landmark environmental law, Justice John Paul Stevens said in his majority opinion.

The EPA had previously argued that the tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases were out of its jurisdiction. A coalition of 12 states and 13 environmental organisations, frustrated with Bush Administration inaction and obstruction on global warming, took the EPA to court:

The court had three questions before it.

--Do states have the right to sue the EPA to challenge its decision?

--Does the Clean Air Act give EPA the authority to regulate tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases?

--Does EPA have the discretion not to regulate those emissions?

The court said yes to the first two questions. On the third, it ordered EPA to re-evaluate its contention it has the discretion not to regulate tailpipe emissions. The court said the agency has so far provided a "laundry list" of reasons that include foreign policy considerations.

The majority said the agency must tie its rationale more closely to the Clean Air Act.

Justice Stevens' says his position "involves no judgement on whether global warming exists, what causes it, or the extent of the problem". The decision clears the way for the state of California to gain EPA approval for its own programme to limit tailpipe emissions. Federal law considers the state a laboratory on environmental issues and gives California the right to seek approval of standards that are stricter than national norms.

This is world-changing. California was the first state to introduce laws requiring catalytic converters to eliminate toxicity from fuel emissions, in 1975. This had implications for the rest of the world as it embraced the change. An additional benefit was the phasing out of high-octane leaded petrol that masks the effect of catalytic conversion.

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