Aussie Govt Report: Climate Change could be Beneficial

“Where regions become warmer or wetter this may allow for increased agricultural output – while others may be harmful,”

Eric Worrall reports:

A new government report is creating shock in the Australian climate fraternity, with its almost blasphemous suggestion, that in some respects, the current global temperature  might not be the ultimate climatic optimum we all thought it was.

According to The Age, a major Aussie daily newspaper;

“Climate change could have economic spin-offs, a new government report says.

The Intergenerational Report released on Thursday includes a chapter on “managing the environment”, which has been a feature of previous versions of the five-yearly economic and budget update.

The report sets out the government’s plan to reduce carbon pollution through its $2.55 billion Emissions Reduction Fund.

But it also says “some economic effects may be beneficial”.

“Where regions become warmer or wetter this may allow for increased agricultural output – while others may be harmful,” the report said.

“For example, lower rainfall may reduce crop yields, or transport infrastructure (such as roads, ports and rail networks) may become more susceptible to damage from extreme weather events.””

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/latest/intergenerational-report-finds-climate-change-benefits/story-e6frg90f-1227249323766

The full report is here, if you enjoy that kind of thing. http://treasury.gov.au/PublicationsAndMedia/Publications/2015/2015-Intergenerational-Report

I have noticed personally, that in the tropical climate where I live, staple vegetables such as tomatoes, zucchini (courgettes), egg plant, capsicum (peppers), even carrots and chives, seem to grow a lot more vigorously, and produce much higher yields, than when the same vegetables are grown in cooler climates. Obviously my simple empirical observations should be discarded, in favour of climate model predictions, which suggest that if global temperature rises by a few degrees, we’re all going to starve.

0 0 votes
Article Rating

Discover more from Watts Up With That?

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

138 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Bruce Cobb
March 5, 2015 6:19 am

More leprechauns could also be beneficial.

logos_wrench
March 5, 2015 7:51 am

The Aussie govt must have acquired some adults.

G. Karst
March 5, 2015 8:40 am

Brandon, you are master of argumentation. One of the best I have witnessed, for a long time. WUWT can become over the top, at times, with over enthusiastic contrariness. It is when you shine best, by reminding us, that our claims must be validated and reasoned with logic, also.
I suspect you are not really all that convinced that AGW WILL result in irreparable harm, OR that immediate global restructuring and mitigating action is a proper response. I think you are just having a great time rubbing our noses in our less robust statements. I think you enjoy the attention and it’s narcissistic flush.
I look forward to the time when you realize the logic (and science) is not on the alarmist perspective and find more “fun” baiting the rabid “end of the world” crowd. I hope I’m not being overly optimistic in my reading and the depth of your self pleasuring.
At some point in time, this climate vinyl record, will have to be flipped to the other song, on the reverse side. After all, cooling is the bigger threat. Can you see the writing on the wall. Cheers GK

mpainter
Reply to  David A
March 5, 2015 5:34 pm

AGW is a monumental flop, wrong on every count:
Atmospheric CO2 is entirely beneficial for all forms of life; the very basis of life and the more the better.
A warmer world is a wetter, better world and a cooler world is the scythe of death for all life forms.
Too bad that increasing atmospheric CO2 does not give us a warmer world, it would be nice.

Brandon Gates
Reply to  G. Karst
March 5, 2015 5:14 pm

G. Karst,

I hope I’m not being overly optimistic in my reading and the depth of your self pleasuring.

Wrong question. The future of the climate does not hinge on the size of my ego no matter how much hot air you think it produces.

After all, cooling is the bigger threat. Can you see the writing on the wall.

In a word, no.
See: ftp://ftp.soest.hawaii.edu/engels/Stanley/Textbook_update/Science_297/Berger-02.pdf
Not open-access, but more recent: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-013-1012-0
The next 20 kyr will have an abnormally high greenhouse effect which, according to the CO 2 values, will lengthen the present interglacial by some 25 to 33 kyr. This is because the perturbation of the current interglacial will lead to a delay in the future advance of the ice sheet on the Antarctic shelf, causing that the relative maximum of boreal insolation found 65 kyr after present (AP) will not affect the developing glaciation.
Open-access from 2014: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014MS000326/full
5 Conclusion
These calculations suggest the existence of a threshold for anthropogenic forcing, beyond which the climatic response to Milankovitch orbital forcing will be damped and the 100,000 year glacial-interglacial cycle will cease. Identifying this threshold will require the use of sophisticated atmospheric-oceanic general circulation models coupled to ice sheet models in order to approach deterministic, rather than stochastic, predictions about future changes to ice age cycles. Nevertheless, the simpler calculations presented here provide a robust and computationally efficient method for demonstrating anthropogenic effects on climate variability.
If long-term anthropogenic forcing is relatively weak or if climate sensitivity is low, then the onset of the next glacial cycle may be delayed by ∼50 kyr [Mitchell, 1972; Loutre and Berger, 2000]. But with stronger anthropogenic forcing or high climate sensitivity, the cessation of glacial-interglacial cycles will indicate a permanent transition to the geologic epoch of the Anthropocene.

Reply to  Brandon Gates
March 5, 2015 7:01 pm

From those ^silly papers^:
The next 20 kyr will have an abnormally high greenhouse effect…
They keep saying it will, as if they know. But they don’t.
In fact, they cannot even quantify AGW. No one can. Thus, it is all rank speculation.
Take away the grant money, and the carbon scare will fold like a cheap card table. Is there any doubt about that?
The man-made global warming hoax is money-driven. I can understand that, even if I don’t agree with it.
What I can’t understand are the mindless lemmings constantly arguing as if MMGW is a verified fact. It isn’t. It is only a conjecture — a conjecture without a single measurement to validate it.
The lemmings who insist on arguing for the MMGW scare are so deluded that I don’t even want to think about what motivates them. For sure, it is no different than what motivates a Jehovah’s Witness, or a Scientologist. It certainly is not science. All it amounts to is True Belief.

Jimbo
Reply to  G. Karst
March 7, 2015 12:40 pm

For years many warmists hoped to see a sure sign of the devastating effects of global warming climate change in the Sahel. Their hopes have been dashed by climate change itself. I urge Brandon Gates to understand one thing: observations are the key.

IPCC – 2007
…..After having concluded that the effect of changing rainfall-gauge networks on Sahel rainfall time series is small, Dai et al. (2004b) noted that Sahel rainfall in the 1990s has recovered considerably from the severe dry years in the early 1980s …..
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch3s3-3-2-2.html
============
Abstract – 8 January 2015
Ground- and satellite-based evidence of the biophysical mechanisms behind the greening Sahel
After a dry period with prolonged droughts in the 1970s and 1980s, recent scientific outcome suggests that the decades of abnormally dry conditions in the Sahel have been reversed by positive anomalies in rainfall. Various remote sensing studies observed a positive trend in vegetation greenness over the last decades which is known as the re-greening of the Sahel…………a trend analysis was applied on long time series (1987–2013) of satellite-based vegetation and rainfall data, as well as on ground-observations of leaf biomass of woody species, herb biomass, and woody species abundance in different ecosystems located in the Sahel zone of Senegal. We found that the positive trend observed in satellite vegetation time series (+36%) is caused by an increment of in situ measured biomass (+34%), which is highly controlled by precipitation (+40%). Whereas herb biomass shows large inter-annual fluctuations rather than a clear trend, leaf biomass of woody species has doubled within 27 years (+103%)………
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.12807/abstract
============
Paper – 3 March 2014
Local Vegetation Trends in the Sahel of Mali and Senegal Using Long Time Series FAPAR Satellite Products and Field Measurement (1982–2010)
………..Significant greening trends from 1982 to 2010 are consistently observed in both GEOV1 and GIMMS3g FAPAR datasets. Annual rainfall increased significantly during the observed time period, explaining large parts of FAPAR variations at a regional scale. Locally, GEOV1 data reveals a heterogeneous pattern of vegetation change, which is confirmed by long-term ground data and site visits. The spatial variability in the observed vegetation trends in the Sahel area are mainly caused by varying tree- and land-cover, which are controlled by human impact, soil and drought resilience. A large proportion of the positive trends are caused by the increment in leaf biomass of woody species that has almost doubled since the 1980s due to a tree cover regeneration after a dry-period.
============
Paper- 22 August 2014
The Re-Greening of the Sahel: Natural Cyclicity or Human-Induced Change?
…..From the 1990s to 2000s, the rainfall increased as shown the rainfall isohyets maps (Figure 4) as well as the rainfall curve of the study area (Figure 5). This has had a positive impact on the
environment with decreased barren lands in the study area as confirmed by Anyamba and Tucker [8] who found that the period 1994–2003 was marked by a trend towards wetter conditions with
region-wide above normal NDVI conditions and maxima in 1994 and 1999. Our finding is also in
keeping with previous regional-scale findings for the same period
…..
http://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/3/3/1075/pdf

Eric
March 5, 2015 9:41 am

Oy Vey… we need to stop feeding the troll…

Reply to  Eric
March 5, 2015 2:48 pm

The shlemiel is plotzing my mind with his shtik.

ECB
March 5, 2015 9:50 am

The troll helps to educate newbie readers as to why WUWT is the leading science site. WUWT welcomes debate. WUWT does not delete adverse discussion like RealClimate, Desmogblog(Suzuki) etc.
WUWT has won hearts and minds as a result. Congratulations AW!

March 5, 2015 10:34 am

Another beneficial effect of climate change (and noting the fact that the BBC used the phrase in the context of real climate change versus phony climate change), was that humans don’t live in trees anymore (well not so much !!):
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31718336?ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbc_breaking&ns_source=twitter&ns_linkname=news_central

March 5, 2015 2:31 pm

All plants grow faster in Summer than Winter where these seasons occur. In the tropics, plants grow fast all year round. In greenhouses, level of 5,000 ppm. of CO2 are used, as the plants lap it up and grow faster. Combine higher CO2 and higher temperature and agriculture really goes ahead.
These facts are what terrify the Warmistas, as their disaster-meme is contradicted by both of these widely acknowledged facts.

March 5, 2015 2:41 pm

Yo, DUUUUDES !!! Do me a favor, P U L E E Z E !!!
Stop feeding the Gates troll … really bored silly with his cut and paste.
************
(Agreed. Threadjacking violates site Policy. -mod)

March 5, 2015 3:15 pm

Perhaps it is the new government responsible for the “new government report”? Hopefully we’ll now see a trend away from the left wing lunacy.

pete
Reply to  Tony
March 5, 2015 4:37 pm

Not just the new government. The previous Treasury Secretary was a devout warmist and environmentalist, and his green bias was allowed to flourish under the previous Labor government. He was far more balanced when he first commenced in the role under the Howard government.
He is no longer there. The IGR is quite a reasonable document despite the howls of protest, and the course suggested by the government a very sensible one (you do need to get over the shock of a govt that doesnt believe more debt and more govt spending is the answer to all problems, quite refreshing!).

March 5, 2015 5:38 pm

I’m with Streetcred – stop feeding the troll who obviously is a “soccer” fan as he said “play the ball not the man”. But here in Canada, we say: “Take the man, not the puck.” With no one standing to shoot the puck, it is hard to score. But then, I am just a silly Canucklehead,
Many parallels here but unfortunately, as we have seen with Dr. Soon recently, some folks on the CAGW side are already taking the men out and ignoring the “puck”/science.
;_; or ;_(

Brandon Gates
Reply to  Wayne Delbeke
March 7, 2015 3:42 am

“play the ball not the man” — dbstealey

Reply to  Brandon Gates
March 7, 2015 6:21 am

A troll is not a man.
What brought on your unsolicited comment, anyway, Mr. T?

kim
March 5, 2015 8:34 pm

You’ve all said it repeatedly, but I’ll say it again. A warmer world sustains more total life and more diversity of life. Paleontology shows both that the upper limit for that has never been exceeded, and that any cooling is devastating for total life and for diversity of life.
You should have seen the trouble I got in once when I substituted ‘supports’ for ‘sustains’ in my mantra above. Why, they threatened to cut off the fat supporting checks. I mean the fat ‘sustaining’ checks.
===================

kim
March 5, 2015 8:38 pm

Gates used to be both amusing and informative. I think he’s been to climate re-education camp.
=============

kim
Reply to  kim
March 5, 2015 8:47 pm

Oops, no wonder I’m confused; I’ve entered the wrong Gates.
====================

March 6, 2015 12:44 am

Brandon has enormous educational value. It was the contrariness of other Doom and Gloom proponents that made me start the journey from being a very concerned AGW believer to sceptic.
My particular “Road to Damascus” was attending a Climate Change talk by Dr Caroline Lucas of the UK Green Party. As someone who has a reasonable first degree in a science subject I was appalled at what Lucas said. It was truly dire! – but what I now call the “faithful” lapped up her every word.
It was so bad I checked what the Green Party’s “Climate Change Expert” qualifications were – as I felt sure it was nothing scientific.
And I was correct – “Dr” (as she was introduced) Caroline Lucas has a PhD in “Romantic Elizabethan Literature” from Exeter University.
So the enormous effort Brandon puts into this site, his hiding behind snide and innuendo, huge chunks of cut n paste and his wonderful ability to dig a hole for himself an never realise when to stop digging is something we can show to people.
So please be polite to Brandon and let his own words and actions produce more questioning minds.

Non Nomen
March 6, 2015 1:12 am

In other words: adaptation is the name of the game.