What would ha say about this ??


http://www.lavoisier.com.au/papers/articles/Evansninefacts.html

I tried to cut and paste a few graphs in there, but no success

There is no need to make drastic changes to our economy. I agree that the scaremongering is wasting time. We do need to take action and the sooner the better, but it is possible to reduce our emissions significantly without noticalbe changes to our standard of living.

Did anyone else catch the show? There were some interesting points:

CO2 emissions, temperature increases and sea level rises have all been at or above the upper limits that were previously predicted.

Reducing greenhouse emissions will probably only reduce GDP growth from 2.2% to 2.1%. We need to start the changes early as a rapid switch later on will be far more costly. The potential downsides, even in purely economic terms will be far more significant than the cost of the switch. Industry needs a firm signal to plan around. Many industries are taking a big risk by investing in renewables even though our government hasn't made any firm committments yet. Our biggest businesses have gotten together and looked at the risks and decided that it is worth it for them to start changing even though our government is unwilling to because it doesn't understand the risks invoilved.

CO2 has a half life in the atmosphere of 100 years.

Pricing signals were the key to making supply side decisions. While they usually used the term broadly, when they did get specific they said or implied trading. Taxation was not mentioned once. They also failed to acknowledge the role of pricing signals in demand management.

Nuclear power was the only industry in which the government needs to play a direct role, because the risks are uninsurable and it needs to be a community wide decision. All other electricity supply options can be left to the free market once you get the price signals right. Which option we choose depends in part on how much we value carbon emissions. We should be exporting Uranium as it is both dangerous to withhold such a resource from a world that needs it and bad for the environment. We should also consider a role in waste disposal as we have an unusual combination of stable geology and stable government.

Transport and agriculture were also mentioned. Flannery did 'give credit where it's due' in acknowledging the coalition's commitment to reforestation in the tropical north.

Whether nuclear power is the best option depends on local factors, such as whether there is already a nuclear industry and whether there were good alternatives. Australia fails on both of these accounts. We have a better alternative: gas. It has roughly one quarter the emissions of coal (I think it was 0.4kg vs 1.5kg of CO2 per GWh - not sure about the units). We have 60 years worth of gas that we know about. By the time that runs out clean coal technology may be well established. We have at least 300 years worth of coal.

China is now using Australia's recalcitrance as an excuse not to reduce their greenhouse emissions any further. They have made much bigger investments in renewables than we have and have made far greater sacrifices. Australia needs to lead the way, not hold the process up.

Kyoto was flawed, but it is the forum that it created, not the negotiated details that were significant. Global carbon trading is a lofty but risky goal as it depends a lot of the trustworthyness of every government involved. We are more likely to see lots of regional agreements that gradually merge into a global agreement. Reforestation in tropical areas is a key way to recapture CO2.

It was widely agreed that switching to renewables would create more jobs.

freediver wrote on May 1^st, 2007 at 9:37am:

This I find extremely alarming. I don't think most people grasp the vast quantities of energy that are involved with making any measurable increase in average temperature of the oceans and atmosphere. In thermodynamics oceans, rivers and the atmosphere are modelled as thermal energy reservoirs, meaning they are bodies that are capable of absorbing thermal energy without changing temperature. Dumping the thermal output of all of our power plants into the atmosphere as we do does not make that energy just go away.

Anyway, this is slightly off topic. I missed the show and now I'm disappointed that I did.

The party has nothing to do with religion.