SOME AWKWARD HISTORY

The ABC showed a documentary at 5pm on Sunday Night, 21 November 2004. "Secrets of the Barbarians", in which Richard Rudgley goes in search of evidence for the barbarians of the dark ages. The documentary starts in England just after the Romans left, and noted that a new peoples seemed to have arrived on the east coast of England, a people known as Saxons and Angles - barbarians.

Next we find Richard flying eastwards to Germany, to the northern coastal regions of sourthern Denmark, ancient home of the Saxons. There we see the deserted habitations of the Saxons, large mounds of earth built above the swamps on which they built their settlements. The Saxons were a seafaring peoples, building large well constructed boats.

Next we discover the Angles, and other ancient peoples, living further north - another peoples which deserted their homelands only to settle in England.

Why? Well according to Richard, Europe was experiencing climate change, a change so severe that the Saxons had to flee their homelands because of sea-level rise. Indeed much happened in those times - 5-6th Centuries AD. And climate change was noted all through Europe. It was a time of mass migrations of peoples, in the far east, and elsewhere. Something happened in the 6th Century and we can be fairly certain it wasn't the result of greenhouse gases. And we can be certain of another thing - according to the IPCC it didn't happen, and if it did, it was extremely localised.

Source




AUSTRALIA ONLY HALF-RIGHT ON THE KYOTO TREATY

Now that Europe has bribed Russia into ratifying the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions, it will come into force early next year. We can expect a swelling chorus of demands that Australia should also ratify. Fortunately, John Howard has no intention of doing so and, even more fortunately, Mark Latham, who had every intention of doing so, lost the election.

The Kyoto Protocol is a deeply flawed approach to dealing with climate change. Even if its targets were adhered to by all the countries signing it, this would have only a minor effect on global warming. In fact, there is little prospect of several European countries, probably Japan and many other signatories meeting their targets.

Some of the world's largest emitters of greenhouse gases, notably China and India, are not covered by the protocol and the science behind it is subject to a great deal of uncertainty. The climate models that drive the various forecasts of global warming, more modestly called projections or scenarios these days, have widely recognised limitations.

These are all serious problems, but Kyoto's fatal flaw is identified by Warwick McKibbin, one of Australia's leading international economists and an increasingly active participant in global discussions on climate change policy. Behind Kyoto, with its rigid emission targets and timetables, is the assumption that the risks posed by global warming are so serious that emissions have to be reduced no matter what the cost. Given the considerable uncertainty about the causes, the future extent and consequences of global warming, it would be irresponsible for any Australian government to sign up to Kyoto when it is impossible to say if the costs of doing so will exceed the benefits. This is particularly so given Australia's massive natural endowment of energy resources. The Howard Government's white paper, Securing Australia's Energy Future, recognises the threat to domestic industries and employment based on cheap power and to our energy exports from ratifying Kyoto. It also happens to be true, although rarely mentioned, that even if Australia shut down all its greenhouse gas-emitting industries tomorrow, wiping out a large part of its economy in the process, the effect on global emissions would be insignificant.

However, because it has taken the right decision in refusing to sign Kyoto doesn't mean the Howard Government has a sensible domestic climate change policy. It hasn't. Its basic mistake has been to accept the Kyoto framework target even though it hasn't signed the protocol. It has compounded this error by funding a range of schemes designed to subsidise and encourage uneconomic alternative energy technologies. Australia is committed to achieving a Kyoto target of limiting emissions to 108 per cent of their 1990 level by 2008-12. This will be made a lot easier because a substantial part of the target can be achieved by stopping land clearing, but this still leaves substantial problems.

One is that even if Australia were to refuse to accept any further reductions in this target after 2012, it will become increasingly difficult and expensive to achieve. The stopping-land-clearing lurk is a one-off. If Australia continues with its present policies, which amount to trying to solve the problem by throwing taxpayers' money at alternative energy technologies, then greenhouse gas abatement is likely to eat up at least as much of future budgets as health care -- which Treasury estimates will rise by more than four percentage points of gross domestic product by 2040.

The Government has effectively acknowledged this problem in its decision earlier this year not to extend its Mandatory Renewable Energy Target because of its effect on the budget and electricity prices, but its basic approach is still wrong.

More here

***************************************

Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Comments? Email me here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

*****************************************