Tag: Australia

The Climate Show #13: James Hansen and the critical decade

Special guest on this week’s show is Dr James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies and perhaps the best-known climate scientist in the world — the man who put the 350 in 350.org and a forceful advocate for leaving coal in the ground. We caught up with him during his recent NZ tour, and grabbed an interview during his whirlwind visit to Canterbury University (thanks Bronnie!). John Cook’s back from the tour launching his new book Climate Denial: Heads In The Sand, and talks about his experiences on the road as well as debunking the “CO2 lags warming” myth. Plus the Australian Climate Commission’s new report, The Critical Decade, Britain’s ambitious new carbon targets, and a couple of new solar power initiatives.

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The Critical Decade: time is tight

Australia’s Climate Commission (established by government, but “not subject to government direction“) today released an overview of the current climate state of play — The Critical Decade: Climate science, risks and responses (key points, full report). It’s important and timely — especially in the Australian political context, but it also has lessons for most of the world’s policymakers. Here are the key findings:

  1. There is no doubt that the climate is changing. The evidence is overwhelming and clear
  2. We are already seeing the social, economic and environmental impacts of a changing climate
  3. Human activities – the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation – are triggering the changes we are witnessing in the global climate
  4. This is the critical decade. Decisions we make from now to 2020 will determine the severity of climate change our children and grandchildren experience

The last point is the most important. It underlines much of what we’re learning about the climate system’s response to the pulse of greenhouse gases we’re forcing it to swallow. Here’s one of the bullet points under point four:

This decade is critical. Unless effective action is taken, the global climate may be so irreversibly altered we will struggle to maintain our present way of life. The choices we make this decade will shape the long-term climate future for our children and grandchildren.

This is what Jim Hansen was on about in his tour of New Zealand — the duty we owe to our children and our children’s children. Please read his latest draft paper: The case for young people and nature: a path to a healthy, natural prosperous future. And look in particular at the emissions paths therein. We have a limited window in which to prevent unimaginable damage to the planet.

To do that, we need policy that starts where the laws of physics finish, not pretends that they can be bent to economic theory. We need more bodies like the Climate Commission, willing to speak truth to power, and we need politicians who will listen.

[See The Conversation for comments from senior Aussie academics.]

[Booker T and the MGs]

Climate rap – scientists fight back

This is a preview of a section of tonight’s Hungry Beast show (Wikipedia explains) on ABC in Australia — I’m A Climate Scientist — a rap attack on climate denial. Opening lines:

Droppin facts all over this wax/
While bitches be crying about a carbon tax/
Climate change is caused by people/
Earth Unlike Alien Has no sequel/
We gotta move fast or we’ll be forsaken/
(Politician): Cause we were too busy suckin’ d*** in Copenhagen

Slightly not safe for work, or if you are sensitive to rude language. Full lyric at Youtube. But hilarious, and well worth watching. I’d pay good money to see a version with Gavin Schmidt, Mike Mann, Kevin Trenberth and Phil Jones. Or do I mean “Bad”? Hat tip: John Cook via @skepticscience.

Garnaut: no reticence on risk

I appreciated the candidness with which economist Ross Garnaut introduced and concluded his recently released update on the science of climate change, one of a series of updates to his 2008 Review which have been commissioned by the Australian government. In the introduction he explains how he began his original Review with no strong views and no more than a common knowledge of climate change science. He read a fair bit of climate science in the course of preparing the Review, including paying due attention to sceptics with genuine scientific credentials, and his investigations led him to the premise for his Review that “on a balance of probabilities” the central conclusions of the mainstream science were correct.

Since then he has moved in his thinking to regard it as highly probable that most of the global warming since the mid-20th century is human-caused. Further, he declares that he would now be tempted to say that those who think that temperatures and damage from a specified level of emissions over time will be larger than is suggested by the mainstream science are much more likely to be proven correct than those who think the opposite.

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Garnaut update on climate science: avoiding high risks will require large changes

Ross Garnaut, the Australian government’s climate change adviser, today published the science update [PDF] to his 2008 report. It warns that recent research has “confirmed and strengthened” the view that the earth is warming and humanity is to blame. Temperatures and sea level continue to rise, and there are worrying signs that a 2ºC target may no longer be “safe”. Garnaut comments that it is an “awful reality” that his 2008 review did not overestimate the risks of climate change. Most telling, though, are the update’s final lines. After a section discussing scientific reticence as a possible reason (pace Hansen) why published science appears to systematically underestimate the extent and dangers of probable climate change, Garnaut states:

We should, however, be alert to the possibility that the reputable science in future will suggest that it is in Australians’ and humanity’s interests to take much stronger and much more urgent action on climate change than might seem warranted from today’s peer-reviewed published literature. We have to be ready to adjust expectations and policy in response to changes in the wisdom from the mainstream science.

In other words, don’t bank on getting an easy ride. Full details below the fold.

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