environment and ecology – Page 144

The Trans-Tasman carbon test

Hot Topic reader and regular commenter Simon Johnson (aka Mr February) was spurred by the discussion here about Australia’s new carbon pricing policies to dig into the details. In this guest post he looks at how the new Aussie scheme compares with NZ’s Emissions Trading Scheme…

I have to admit I did rush to conclude that the Australian carbon pricing scheme would be a “leapfrog” ahead of the NZ Emissions Trading Scheme. I also admit that I generally think the NZ ETS is worse than nothing as a policy to reduce GHG emissions. So of course the Australian scheme must be more effective!

Now that I have actually read Julia Gillard’s carbon pricing proposal I can offer a slightly more considered opinion. The carbon price scheme has a name which we should be using; Securing a Clean Energy Future. The full document is Securing a Clean Energy Future, The Australian Government’s Climate Change Plan, Commonwealth of Australia 2011, ISBN 978-0-642-74723-5.

First of all, the ‘Clean Energy Future’ is not a carbon tax. It is a cap and trade emissions trading scheme with a safety valve. Page 25 says:

“Large polluters will report on their emissions and buy and surrender to the Government a carbon permit for every tonne of carbon pollution they produce.”

That’s very much an emissions trading approach, but with a fixed carbon price for three years. The price is $AU23 per tonne from 1 July 2012, then $AU24.15 in 2013-14 and $AU25.40 2014-15 (p 26). From 1 July 2015, the carbon price will float within and upper and lower ceiling with the Government setting an overall ‘Cap’ or limit on GHGs (p 27).

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Carbon pricing comes to Australia

Australia will set a price on carbon from July next year, Aussie PM Julia Gillard announced yesterday. Cost per tonne will be set at A$23, rising 2.5% per annum, and the initial tax will morph into an emissions trading scheme from 2015. A full list of the key points and links to comment and reaction below the fold (as they used to say at the News Of The World)…

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Another green world (please)

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Geoff Ross, founder of vodka maker 42 Below, explains the thinking behind the Pure Advantage campaign, launched last week to persuade New Zealand that “green growth” is the best way (some might say the only credible way) for the NZ economy to develop [Herald, Stuff]. Pure Advantage is the brainchild of a group of NZ business leaders, convinced that NZ’s existing reputation as (relatively) clean and green place can be leveraged to give the country an advantage as the world moves to embrace “green growth” — something already worth, they say, $6 trillion a year worldwide.

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Ocean acidification: How much is too much?

Over at Skeptical Science we (Doug Mackie, Christina McGraw, and Keith Hunter) have started a long series (18 parts) about ocean acidification (Introduction , 1, 2). We all deride blog science. Blog science is what happens when people try to get a complex message across in 800 words or less. Real science takes time to explain. There is too much et voila in writing about climate change in general and ocean acidification in particular. Denialists have not touched ocean acidification because they don’t understand it. The chemistry is very subtle and even posts on normally reliable blogs like Skeptical Science have made errors.

A local Dunedin denier sent me ‘proof’ that ocean acidification was not real and even if it was then it wasn’t a problem. The ‘proof’ was a document published by the SPPI. The document was previously ‘published’ (cough) in Energy and Environment. Really, they very best argument the denialists have is “acid means pH less than 7 but ocean pH is greater than 7 so there is therefore no acidification”.

In this document (which I am not linking to because they don’t need the traffic) 5 of the 12 points for policy makers are variations on the pH greater than 7 argument. At first I puzzled at this: Do they really think policy makers are so dumb they won’t notice the same thing said 5 ways? Then I remembered Don Brash and had to concede the point. Yes, many policy makers are that dumb. (6 more points in the summary for policy makers are variations of ‘the gravy train’ meme and the last point says that measurements to date agree with IPCC projections – while mangling the terminology).

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Hulme: gone soft

Mike Hulme has added his ambiguous contribution to the climate change series on The Conversation. As per usual he’s in effect protesting that those who take the science at its face value are alienating the public. He offers an alternative to the first statement in the open letter from the scientific community which kicked off the series.

Here’s what the scientists said:

“The overwhelming scientific evidence tells us that human greenhouse gas emissions are resulting in climate changes that cannot be explained by natural causes. Climate change is real, we are causing it, and it is happening right now.”

Here’s what Hulme offers in its place: Continue reading “Hulme: gone soft”