Click for print sized Al Gore Halloween Mask, courtesy Forbes.com
SAFETY NOTE: Please don’t use this image to frighten children, oh wait, that happens in schools everyday when AIT is shown, nevermind…
From The West Australian newspaper
Climate change could haunt humanity forever: Garnaut
30th September 2008, 14:00 WST
Failure to deal with climate change now will “haunt humanity” forever, the nation’s top greenhouse adviser has warned as he issued a rallying cry for action.
Professor Ross Garnaut has warmed to the idea of a deep, fast cut to Australia’s emissions in his final report, released today.
After infuriating green groups earlier this month by calling for a 10 per cent cut in Australia’s emissions by 2020, he’s now more open to a deeper 25 per cent cut.
Prof Garnaut issued a blunt assessment of the dangers of climate change as he launched the 620-page report.
“If we fail, on a balance of probabilities, the failure of our generation will haunt humanity until the end of time,” he told reporters in Canberra.
“We are entering territory here that humanity has not been in before.
“We will delude ourselves if we think that uncertainty about the climate change science… is a cause for delay.”
And Australia would probably be “the biggest loser” among developed countries from climate change, he said.
Prof Garnaut has recommended Australia push for a strong global climate pact, which would mean a 25 per cent cut in emissions by 2020.
“Strong mitigation, with Australia playing its proportionate part, is in Australia’s interests,” the report says.
This ambitious target would be in the context of a global deal to keep atmospheric carbon concentration to 450 parts per million (ppm).
However, Prof Garnaut is pessimistic about the possibility of the world agreeing to this “strong mitigation” deal.
If his scepticism proves correct, Prof Garnaut wants the nation to push for a global atmospheric carbon concentration of 550 ppm, which means Australia cutting emissions by 10 per cent by 2020.
And if no climate deal is forged out of the United Nations process, Australia should cut emissions by five per cent, Prof Garnaut says.
“There’s no point in hiding from reality,” he said about the possibility of a strong global climate pact.
He wants Australia to start emissions trading in 2010, and warned consumers would pay more.
“Consumers will wear the majority of the cost of an emissions trading scheme, paying more for a range of goods and services as businesses pass on the emissions price,” he said.
Electricity would cop the biggest price rise, rising by 37 per cent by 2020 if a deep emissions cut was made, and by 21 per cent if a more modest cut was made.
Other prices would rise too, although the impact would be less than the GST had been.
“Petrol and food prices, general prices, will increase to some extent as a result of the ETS.”
Prof Garnaut wants Australia to spend $2.7 billion a year on research on low-emissions technology.
He wants emissions trading to start in 2010, with a fixed, rising carbon permit price until 2012.
Less than 30 per cent of the permits should be given to trade-exposed, emissions-intensive companies. Coal-based electricity generators would not get free permits or compensation.
Prof Garnaut thinks half the revenue from emissions trading should go to households, 30 per cent to businesses, and 20 per cent to research.
Householders would be able to access a “green credit” arrangement to install energy-smart appliances.
Prof Garnaut said the global financial crisis, which worsened overnight, was no excuse to delay acting on climate change.
“Financial crises are short-term phenomena … climate change is a long-term structural issue.”
He also lashed out at various business groups and industries which have warned they will have to shut plants, cut jobs and move offshore due to emissions trading.
“Why would you expect public policy advice in the national interest from the chief executive of a business who’s responsible to his board and shareholders for maximising the profit of that business?” Prof Garnaut asked.
“I think you are just looking at the world through the wrong end of the telescope if you think that that’s where you go to for objective public policy advice.”
AAP
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Certifiable. How do these people get any audience? But really are there any other masks? HS eyebrows?
As long as we’re having fun…
clicky1
clicky2
clicky3
clicky4
clicky5
Enjoy!
Oh the hyperbole!
“We are entering territory here that humanity has not been in before.”
Oh the ignorance!
I’d love five minutes with Professor Garnaut and his followers to show him what the good climate record shows for the Late Holocene interglacial we are in now.
Should I take this post as being indicative of where the skeptic movement is at these days?
Australia is going down a crazy path to economic suicide, thanks to Kevin Rudd, Penny Wong and Ross Garnaut. If Australia slashed its emissions to half (i.e. a 50% cut) overnight it would reduce global emissions by 0.7% – and what effect would that have on global climate (even if CO2 is a driver of temperature)? Nothing. Zip. Zero. And it will cost us billions of dollars. Until or unless some kind of global agreement is reached, Australia should do nothing.
Australian Climate Madness
I guess we don’t have a monopoly on crazy environmental folks. See what they are thinking about in UK
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=307754036977947
…not to mention the price or a pair of kangaroo boots!
[…] Happy Halloween: Climate change could haunt humanity forever […]
Speaking as an Australian, I think Garnaut et al are just digging a deeper and deeper hole for themselves.
I suspect this is the high water mark for the green movement; after this we face up to a colder, poorer future as reality seeps in and the sun remains desperately quiet.
thats “of a pair” Sorry, eye/finger coord dropping off in 6th decade!
Meanwhile – Selling Coal is keeping the Australian Current Account in the Black http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24435412-20142,00.html
And for some timely MSM (even our MSM ?s this loony guy) comment that acknowledges the economic delusions of Garnaut look here http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24428264-36281,00.html
Also he seems very willing to use the AGW excuse for personal benefit as is recorded here http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23786397-11949,00.html
“Financial crises are short-term phenomena … climate change is a long-term structural issue.”
The period of time from not having a job… to not paying the mortgage… to not having a home is also a “short term phenomena”. And industries, once crushed out of existence don’t come back easily.
Note that exporting Coal is currently keeping Australia in the black at
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24435412-20142,00.html
[…] http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/10/01/happy-halloween-climate-change-could-haunt-humanity-forever […]
That mask is just too scary, another sleepless night ahead I’m sure. Thanks a lot!
In a later interview the gracious Professor Guano admitted that without co operation of the rest of the world, Australia’s economic sacrifice to AGW would not amount to two hoots.
40 years ago another Australian Prime Minister famously quoted “All the way with LBJ” and then led Australia in participating in the Vietnam conflict.
This current Prime Minister Kevin Krudd has sided with another U.S. leader in Al Gore. Since this alignment, criticism of AGW in Australia is hardly tolerated.
The Krudd government is ambitiously trying to introduce an Emissions Trading Scheme to Australia in 2010 – an election year. I would like to bet that this scheme will be back pedalled and Guano’s admittance of non world wide participation be used as an excuse.
Professor Guano was handpicked by KRudd to produce this (Stern like) report.
It’s interesting to see how shrill the prophets of doom have become over the last few months. “Ice-free Arctic this year” screams one headline.
This Garnaut report has been festering all year. Hopefully, it will end up like all the other Rudd promises: hot air and empty rhetoric. The failure of FuelWatch was benign, the laughable disaster that is GroceryWatch is harmless. The Garnaut plan is economic catastrophy.
Still, one can hope that the financial maelstrom continues for some time. “Enviromentalism is a rich man’s hobby” is a classic line I heard on a radio interview yesterday morning. If people are diverted away from this nonsense and towards more important matters, even for a short time, AGW and it’s associated hatred of a free market might die a quiet, lonely death.
Finally, that mask is just plain creepy!
Don Shaw (21:31:43) :
“The limit prescribed by the British group is four ounces of meat every other day and one liter of milk, “just about enough for cereal in the morning” — or 100 grams of cheese — each week.”
These people are MCPs ( male chauvinist pigs, or she-followers) since it is well known that women and menopausal women need large quantities of milk and cheese to avoid osteoporosis in old age.
As for the Garnaut report, reminds me of the Aesop myth where the fox lost by an accident its tail and was going around trying to convince everyone it was the fashion. That is what will happen to Australia if some idiots follow this advise.
There is an ancient greek proverb “σπευδε βραδεως” : rush slowly, particularly where angels fear to tread.
I think maybe some propaganda poster is necessary for the skeptical side if we are going to make any political progress, other than ridiculing Gore.
I am thinking on the line of the IPCC temperature plot with its catastrophic prediction, the real temperatures, and superimposed in bold the assumed albedo value with its measured error, and what the prediction would be if the albedo changed by one sigma.
The blurb could talk of what this means in terms of probabilities people understand, betting, business decisions etc.
Unfortunately I am not good at graphics ( everything has changed since my time) .
Money could be raised to place this in prominent spots in the media.
A video would be nice too: show the low temperature one sigma ( high albedo) curve and build up the skepticism from there.
[…] See more here: Happy Halloween: Climate change could haunt humanity forever […]
Oh for anthropgeneically-modified-heaven’s sake! The quality of journalism in this country (Austraila) continues to languish somewhere just above rock bottom while the egos of some of our senior academics goes the other way.
I am happy to accept that Professor Garnaut, like the UK’s Sir Nicholas Stern before him, is an excellent economist. But these people are just that – economists. NOT climate scientists. Their jobs are to advise government about the economic costs of a range of actions (or inactions) given the state of science allegedly demostrated by the UN’s IPCC, not to comment on the validity or otehrwise of scientific opinion. For the media to refer to Garnaut as “the nation’s top greenhouse adviser” is just plain wrong. For Garnaut himself to pontificate on climate change as if he IS an expert on the subject
“If we fail, on a balance of probabilities, the failure of our generation will haunt humanity until the end of time,”
is grossly misleading.
To his credit Garnaut does at least indicate the economic costs of action (an emissions trading scheme) particularly with regards to electricity prices, however did anyone else find some irony in his last comments in this report? Garnaut is employed as a policy advisor by a government desperate to garner support for its policies on man-made climate change, which include the introduction of an emissions trading scheme.
“Why would you expect public (PARTY POLITICAL) policy advice in the national (GOVERNING PARTY’S) interest from the chief executive of a business (THE REVIEW COMMITTEE) who’s responsible to his board (THE GOVERNING PARTY) and shareholders (THE MEMBERS OF THE GOVERNING PARTY) for maximising the profit (VOTES) of that business (THE GOVERNING PARTY)?”
Why indeed would one expect anything else?
re: Don Shaw (21:31:43)
We already have three meatless days a week in our home.
Not by choice. As pensioners we have adapted. My good
wife does wonders with soya. Sign of the times.
No laws needed.
This is nothing more than the funding of Socialism. 2.7 billion dollars of tax payers money will be distributed among Socialists and environmentalists in the guise of research and development… With Budgets like that, there is no fighting against them.
Science and industry will be corrupted by government handouts and funding. The Science will be used to justify and validate the policies.
Nothing good will come from any of this.
Given that Australia is prone to massive bush fires, and given that those bush fires account for 80 to 90 percent of Australian carbon emissions, and given that the Australian government cannot prevent those bush fires even if they wanted to, then how on Earth is Australia going to reduce carbon emissions by anything more than a point or two, even if the Australian economy is completely snuffed out?
I suppose all this global warming “mitigation” means I will never see the flying car that was predicted as a possible common mode of transportation in a 1962 Seattle World’s fair Tomorrowland exhibit.
*Sigh*
but, but, kangaroos do not trump. They are good (green) animals.
Bison do trump however (bad, bad bison).
Maybe the great US herds of bison saved us from the LIA.
Unsung heroes.
lol.
How times change.
Who’s the scapegoat, rabbits, bison, and / or humans.
Who’s the heroe, kangaroos and / or AGW politicians….?
Stop the world, I want to trump. Dam the consequences.
I’m so bad me………………..
NB – Smokey’s post above,
brilliant clickys.
Well worth clicking.