O YE OF LITTLE faith, who still doubt that greenery is our official pseudoreligion, or that “C of E” should now stand for the Church of the Environment! Look ye upon the results of this week’s Times/Populus poll, surveying Britons’ exaggerated claims about our ecofriendly habits, and weep! The poll found a gaping “green divide” between what people say they do to save energy, and what really happens in Britain today. So 65 per cent claim only ever to buy those dim energy-saving lightbulbs — yet these account for less than 20 per cent of bulbs sold; 76 per cent say they recycle everything possible, yet only 22 per cent of British household waste is recycled. It was a similar story with everything from flying to leaving the TV on standby.
Here we have a set of pious beliefs observed more in the breach than the observance. Remind you of anything? As with other religions, in between the sermons and prayers, believers have to get on with real life; even many Catholics use birth control these days. Thus do people feel obliged to repeat the green catechism, yet still eschew the bus and grab cheap flights. They consume, but weighed down with guilt as well as shopping bags, and a feeling that they should atone perhaps by paying extra to plant a tree.
The eco-religion has as many rituals as the old faiths, only more fashionably look-at-me. Not for the green faithful the privacy of the confessional box or the pew; we are supposed to show off our piety in the recycling box or the organic produce aisle.
What’s more, it is a state religion, backed by all parties in our eco-theocracy, soon to be able to charge a modern tithe through new green taxes. No wonder leaders of the old C of E are attracted to the new one, where calling on us to repent in the name of global warming gives them a rare moral authority. Thus the Archbishop of Canterbury has cautioned that “millions, billions” will die from climate change and a bishop told last weekend’s demo on climate change that global warming is caused by humanity playing God. For that he got a cheer from the secular zealots of the new crusade.
Unlike the old faiths, the new pseudoreligion does not even offer us the prospect of salvation in the next life. Just a miserable existence in this one, while we wait for the four horse-persons of the eco-apocalypse — pestilence, war, famine and death by boredom.
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PESKY METHANE
Somewhat mysteriously, the rise in atmospheric methane levels has ceased
Worry over the effects of fossil-fuel carbon dioxide in the air has become a familiar theme in public discourse about climate change. But news accounts (and movies by former Vice Presidents) that focus exclusively on CO2 in discussing global warming neglect an inconvenient truth: Other gaseous emissions add substantially to the atmosphere's ability to trap heat. In particular, methane (CH4) produces a climate forcing that is more than a third of that produced by carbon dioxide. The concentrations of methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have both risen dramatically since the start of the industrial revolution, but unlike its more familiar greenhouse-gas cousin, atmospheric methane has recently stopped increasing in abundance.
This happy development wasn't entirely unanticipated, given that the rate of increase has been slowing for at least a quarter-century. Yet the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has predicated many of its conclusions on scenarios in which methane concentrations would continue growing for decades to come. Thus the recent stabilization of methane levels is something that some scientists are trying very hard to explain.
Edward J. Dlugokencky, an atmospheric chemist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has tracked atmospheric methane for many years. He says that "even as the reduction was happening, people doing emission scenarios weren't accounting for it." Dlugokencky maintains that the evolution of methane levels in the atmosphere mostly just reflects the attainment of a chemical equilibrium, such that methane production is balanced by its destruction. In sum, he says, atmospheric methane "looks like a system approaching steady state."
Methane has many sources. Some are natural; others are clearly the consequences of modern society. Natural sources include wetlands and also terrestrial plants, which earlier this year were discovered to give off methane. Sources tied to human activities include fossil-fuel production, landfills, ruminant animals, rice agriculture and wastewater treatment. Methane is destroyed principally by its reaction with the hydroxyl radical (OH) in the lower atmosphere.
Given that people have been extracting fossil fuels from the earth, dumping their garbage in landfills, cattle ranching, growing rice and treating sewage in ever-increasing amounts, it is indeed hard to understand why atmospheric methane levels are not going up and up. One hint might come from the recent discovery that land plants constitute a significant source of methane (though one that is poorly quantified at the moment). Frank Keppler of the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany, and three colleagues reported this surprising result in Nature last January. In that paper, they note that "severe anthropogenic deforestation has considerably reduced tropical biomass over the past decades," suggesting that this "reduced biomass has probably contributed to the recent decrease in the atmospheric growth rate of CH4 concentration." That is to say, cutting down rain forest might have reduced the atmospheric methane burden.
Another possible explanation comes from work published in June in Geophysical Research Letters. Arlene M. Fiore of NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Dlugokencky and two colleagues report the results of their efforts to simulate in detail the evolution of methane concentration using a sophisticated numerical model of the atmosphere. That paper, titled "Impact of meteorology and emissions on methane trends, 1990-2004," suggests that changes in the weather may have played a key role in what Fiore regards as an anomalously abrupt flattening of the methane curve. In particular, an increase in the prevalence of tropical thunderstorms may have raised the amounts of the various nitrogen oxides (gases often referred to collectively as "NO x ") high in the atmosphere. There NO x has the side effect of boosting the production of OH, which in turn acts to destroy methane. Rising temperatures over this interval contribute to the elimination of methane as well, but to a lesser extent.
Fiore admits that "there's huge uncertainty" in her estimates of the size of these effects and that other explanations are certainly possible. She suggests, for example, that anthropogenic sources of NO x may also have increased-or perhaps that the distribution of these pollutant gases has shifted toward the equator as low-latitude nations industrialize. (These gases are that much more likely to foster the destruction of methane there, because that process depends on the amount of incoming solar radiation, which is greatest at low latitudes.)
M. Aslam Khalil, a physicist at Portland State University in Oregon, helped establish a sampling network for methane as long ago as 1979. He, like Dlugokencky, believes that the recent stasis in methane levels fundamentally represents the system coming to equilibrium. Khalil suspects that there have been no significant changes in the overall magnitude of emissions, but he does recognize that some of the individual sources must have become larger over the past few decades. The explanation for the enigmatic stabilization of methane levels, in his view, is that at least one of the other sources-rice agriculture in particular-has simultaneously become much smaller.
In a paper soon to be published in Greenhouse Gases and Animal Agriculture: An Update (Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Greenhouse Gases and Animal Agriculture), Khalil and his Portland State colleague Martha J. Shearer point out that China has produced much of the world's rice for many decades, yet for the past 30 years, the area devoted to rice agriculture in that country has fallen from about 37 million hectares to a little more than 27 million. Khalil and Shearer further note that in these rice paddies nitrogen-based fertilizer has to a large extent replaced animal manure or "night soil" (human wastes). This change in how rice is grown in China reduces the amount of methane given off. What is more, these rice farmers are using less water than they did before-another change in agricultural practice that has the unintended side benefit of reducing methane emissions.
Clearly, it will be some time before atmospheric scientists are able to quantify with great certainty the changing sizes of the various sources of methane. But as Khahil says, it's important to get at least a crude handle on what is going on for the purpose of shaping policy: "You don't want to try to control something that's already going down."
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REALITY CHECK: CHINA'S GROWTH AND COAL PRODUCTION
China has seen a massive increase in greenhouse gas emissions over the past decade despite ratifying the Kyoto Protocol - and the situation will only worsen as coal remains its main energy source. The nation is the world's second-largest emitter of climate change gases after the United States and the world's largest coal burner. But as a developing country it is not obliged to reduce emissions under the protocol.
About 70 percent of China's energy comes from burning the fossil fuel and with hundreds more coal-fired power plants being built - often with old, heavy-polluting technology - the situation is only going to deteriorate. China last year built 117 government-approved coal-fired power plants - a rate of roughly one every three days, according to official figures.
But even the central government conceded the real number was much higher, with local and provincial governments building many unauthorised coal plants in an effort to ensure economic growth steamed ahead. A report issued by the International Energy Agency in July said that every two years China was adding new electricity capacity equivalent to that of the total annual output of France or Canada.
FULL STORY here
AUSTRALIAN PM: STERN PREDICTIONS WILL BE QUESTIONED
The economic predictions of the Stern Report into climate change would increasingly be questioned, Prime Minister John Howard said today. "I think as time goes by, some of the economic underpinnings of the Stern review are going to be continually and increasingly questioned," Mr Howard said.
Mr Howard has long been critical of some of the harsher assessments of global warming. He has previously warned against people being mesmerised by the British government-funded Stern Report. Among the report's dire economic warnings on climate change is that global warming could cost as much as the world wars and the Great Depression. Sir Nicholas Stern's report also warns the worst outcome of climate change could result in global consumption falling by 20 per cent.
Mr Howard described the review as "another report". "We should not get mesmerised by one report," Mr Howard said. "But I do accept that we need to take steps, take out insurance, be certain that we do reduce greenhouse gas emissions."
However, Mr Howard maintained his support of Australia's large coal industry. "I'm certainly not going to target the coal industry ... because that would do great damage to the economy of this country," he said. "One thing I am frozen in time about and that is a determination to protect the industries of this country that give us a natural competitive advantage."
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GREENIE ATTACK ON AUSTRALIAN COALMINING
It used to be that carrying coals to Newcastle was considered the height of idiocy, a wasted effort without the hope of a financial return. The new height of idiocy is to stop coal going from Newcastle.
The backbone of NSW's second-largest city - a Labor town built on the steel of the BHP mills and the coal from the Hunter Valley - is still coal, despite all the changes the valley has been through. It is also the undeniable backbone of Australia's domestic energy needs for decades to come and will continue to supply the bulk of the world's energy until 2050. And this is not the pipedream of a fossil industry but the conclusion of the British Stern report, which urges economic changes to fight greenhouse gas emissions. We can't do without coal; we have to learn to live with it.
To try to kill off the $9 billion coal industry in NSW and the exports shipped from Newcastle is to condemn the city and thousands of workers and businesses. Yet this week, in the grip of greenhouse hysteria, the Newcastle City Council, at the behest of Greens councillors and supported by Labor councillors, determined that Newcastle's coal shipments should be limited. The motion said the council recommended "the NSW Government establishes a cap on coal exports from Newcastle at existing levels" and "initiates a moratorium on new coalmines at Anvil Hill and elsewhere in the Hunter Valley and Gunnedah Basin". It went one further by backing calls from conservation groups to shut down the coal industry, and called for the industry "to fund the just transition to sustainability in the Hunter beyond coal". That is, levy the coal industry to fund its own closure and find jobs for the displaced workers. "Just transition" is greenhouse-friendly code for sack workers.
Not surprisingly, local federal MP Joel Fitzgibbon, a Labor frontbencher and former resources spokesman, went ballistic: "Extreme environmentalists are launching a jihad against the industry in an attempt to close it down, and the community must be told the other side of the story," he said. "We must strive to increase the share of electricity produced by renewable technologies, burn our coal more cleanly and efficiently and tighten environmental safeguards. But killing King Coal would be a disaster for the valley."
The heresy committed in Fitzgibbon's electorate allowed him to publicly vent feelings about anti-coal campaigns being conducted by conservationists in the name of fighting greenhouse gas emissions. There is trepidation in the ranks of Kim Beazley's supporters about the ALP being swept along in the emotional surge of anti-coal feeling.
Endorsed federal Labor candidate and potential ALP leader Bill Shorten and Victorian state Labor candidate Evan Thornley both suffered collateral damage this week because of their links with the GetUp campaign. As the national secretary of the Australian Workers Union, Shorten was defending the pay and conditions of the unsung heroes of the Melbourne Cup, the jockeys, but at the same time GetUp, of which he and Thornley are board members, was calling for an end to the coal industry and a "just transition". Both rapidly distanced themselves from any suggestion they supported the closure of the coal industry.
Beazley also made it clear yesterday that the future of Australia's baseload electricity power would come from coal and that he was backing the coal industry: a clean coal industry. The Opposition Leader was emphatic about the Newcastle council's ban: "That's not the right answer. The right answer is to go down the road of active measures for clean coal technology. We've got to become the world experts at clean coal technology and, as we export coal, we need to export those technologies with it, make sure we can survive economically and also survive environmentally."
Beazley is right: it's a mixture of surviving economically and environmentally. But there has been too much emphasis from Labor on the potential effects of greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power stations. Certainly there is a clear political differentiation between the Howard Government and Labor over the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol and entering a carbon emissions trading scheme that makes coal more expensive. But Labor has to be careful not to be seen as embracing unreal emotional claptrap that threatens the livelihoods of tens of thousands of Australian workers. Labor's industrial relations campaign and its position on Iraq have rebuilt the ALP base and secured it a steady spot above the crucial 40per cent of the primary vote in opinion polls, but it cannot afford to alienate that base in pursuit of a new campaign to pick up concerned green Liberals in leafy suburbs and keep faith with the progressive Labor Left.
Howard's response on climate change and greenhouse gas emissions has been ad hoc and sloppy. Some sort of an emissions trading scheme is inevitable, yet the Coalition is poorly placed to deal with the politics. However, don't dismiss the prospect of Howard preparing an important statement on greenhouse emissions and climate change before Christmas in which he sets out a more coherent agenda that is unapologetically worker friendly. Howard learned in 2004 that playing cat and mouse with Mark Latham over the Tasmanian forest issue worked in his favour in two ways: first, Latham went too green too early, and second, the reverberations of defending jobs went far beyond Tasmania. Putting forward practical steps to address greenhouse emissions and protecting jobs is a political winner.
The anti-coal brigade is already damaging Labor by association and creating internal tensions, and the next frontier of forests is yet to be reached. Fisheries, Forestry and Conservation Minister Eric Abetz started the forest fire in the Senate this week when he pointed out that plantation forests cut carbon emissions and offset greenhouse gas emissions from industry. Conservation groups have also pointed to a forgotten aspect of the Stern report, which urges a halt to deforestation and highlights the positive aspects of planting trees and using wood instead of other materials in building.
Howard was surprised last week in the face of Senate committee evidence that in 2002-03 electricity generation emitted 160 megatonnes of greenhouse gases while in just three weeks bushfires released 130 megatonnes. Old-growth forest management, logging state forests, plantation timber and pulping are the next frontiers in the greenhouse war. Howard has been slow to enter the fray but Labor has more to lose if the realisation dawns before the election that there are drastic and unjustified changes being proposed in the name of greenhouse panic.
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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.
Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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