It should come as no great surprise that the Federal Government’s Climate Commission has produced a new report with dire warnings backing Labor and the Greens’ case for a carbon tax.
The report would really have created headlines if it said climate change was not real or that a carbon tax was not a necessary part of measures to prevent it, along with carbon sequestration.
There was nothing much new, apart from a claim that sea levels could now rise up to one metre by the turn of the century, which is higher than even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s top range forecast of 0.18m to 0.76m.
The commission said the oceans around Australia were rising faster than the rest of the world - and they were rising fastest on the northern coastline, placing infrastructure such as Brisbane Airport under threat.
Interviewed on the ABC with report author Prof Will Steffan, chief climate commissioner Prof Tim Flannery said reasons for variations were “complicated” and depended on various factors, one of which could be land sinkage.
If some Pacific islands are gradually disappearing, is the sea rising or the islands sinking, as some sceptic scientists have long claimed?
And while Brisbane could be in for a hard time with more frequent flooding, ports further north apparently won’t be at much risk judging by planned massive expansions to coal export facilities including Gladstone, Abbott Point and Hay Point. This will cater for increases in exports of more than 90 million tonnes to a total of 250 million tonnes of coal a year by 2015, or more if rail infrastructure could also be developed.
At Gladstone, existing stockpiles sit on reclaimed land just a couple of metres above sea level, a big new coal terminal is planned on low-lying Wiggins Island and less than a kilometre away, land clearing is progressing on Curtis Island near the water’s edge in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area. This will cater for the first of several huge Liquified Natural Gas plants costing a total of around $60 billion, with the blessing of State and Federal Governments.
All this seems at odds with the Climate Commission’s predictions about sea level rises and the effects of CO2 emissions from fossil fuels driving climate change.
How can the Federal Government justify a plan to tax Australia’s 1000 worst polluters, compensate those that are “trade exposed”, over-compensate low and middle-income earners for rising costs and somehow expect all of this to have some effect on world climate?
Unlike the Greens, I would not advocate curtailing the coal industry which now contributes an essential $50 billion a year to our economy. But it must be rank hypocrisy or stupidity for the government to continue exploiting what it says it accepts is a major culprit in driving climate change.
You can’t have it both ways. We do not live in a bubble where we can control our own climate such as the futuristic world depicted in the old sci-fi film classic, Logan’s Run, yet we continue to ship as much coal to countries without our stringent emission controls as our ports can handle.
We also plan to ship most of our lower-emission LNG overseas to places such as Japan and China for a few cents a litre when much more could be utilised domestically to convert older coal fired power stations and even power our national car and truck fleets rather than relying on diminishing and expensive OPEC oil supplies.
Our massive reserves of coal seam gas could push concerns about Peak Oil into the background as it can be readily converted to petroleum products or used directly as a fuel, with companies such as Ford, Mercedes and Honda producing models overseas running successfully on compressed natural gas.
That should be a topic on its own which I hope to revisit, and which both governments and Opposition should consider if they are serious about tackling our carbon dioxide emissions.
Meanwhile, the Climate Comission again emphasised there is no question about global warming, claiming the science is settled and most world governments accept it is happening.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard recently said this was accepted “by every reputable climate scientist in the world”, but there are many who would disagree, including emininent international scientists Profs Richard Lindzen, Henrik Svensmark, John Christy, Dr Ferenc Miskolczi, Dr Miklos Zagoni, our own Profs Bob Carter, Ian Plimer, Dr David Evans plus more than 30,000 US scientists who have signed a petition refuting man-made global warming.
With so much at stake, it highlights the fact we really do need a proper scientific debate at a national level rather than another report by a government-sanctioned commission to sort out these claims.
The latest report will do virtually nothing to convince the many sceptics and others opposed to a carbon tax who will regard it as just more hot air.
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