Essay by Eric Worrall
Aussie climate academics demanding better international compliance with their diktats.
No more excuses: restoring nature is not a silver bullet for global warming, we must cut emissions outright
Published: July 4, 2022 4.09pm AEST
Kate Dooley Research Fellow, Climate & Energy College, The University of Melbourne
Zebedee Nicholls PhD Researcher at the Climate & Energy College, The University of MelbourneRestoring degraded environments, such as by planting trees, is often touted as a solution to the climate crisis. But our new research shows this, while important, is no substitute for preventing fossil fuel emissions to limit global warming.
We calculated the maximum potential for responsible nature restoration to absorb carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And we found that, combined with ending deforestation by 2030, this could reduce global warming 0.18°C by 2100. In comparison, current pledges from countries put us on track for 1.9-2℃ warming.
This is far from what’s needed to mitigate the catastrophic impacts of climate change, and is well above the 1.5℃ goal of the Paris Agreement. And it pours cold water on the idea we can offset our way out of ongoing global warming.
The priority remains rapidly phasing out fossil fuels, which have contributed 86% of all CO₂ emissions in the past decade. Deforestation must also end, with land use, deforestation and forest degradation contributing 11% of global emissions.
…
Retaining the possibility of limiting warming to 1.5℃ requires rapid reductions in fossil fuel emissions before 2030 and global net-zero emissions by 2050, with some studies even calling for 2040.
Wealthy nations, such as Australia, should achieve net-zero CO₂ emissions earlier than the global average based on their higher historical emissions.
We now need new international cooperation and agreements to stop expansion of fossil fuels globally and for governments to strengthen their national climate pledges under the Paris Agreements ratcheting mechanism. Promises of carbon dioxide removals via land cannot justify delays in these necessary actions.
…
Read more: https://theconversation.com/no-more-excuses-restoring-nature-is-not-a-silver-bullet-for-global-warming-we-must-cut-emissions-outright-186048
I’m afraid I’ve got news for you University of Melbourne academics. The Paris Agreement is dead in every way which matters. Germany and the rest of Europe are frantically scrabbling for as much coal power as they can get their hands on.
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And the Chinese and Indians were never even promising to reduce their emissions, so anything any other country did would be pure virtue signaling.
How dare you! . . .
Point out realities.
China, India, Russia and every undeveloped nation in the world.
What virtues are they signaling. I never considered idiocy and petulance to be virtues,
Actually both have promised to reduce their emissions, a long time from now. Political promises of course.
However, both are rapidly increasing their emissions.
Actually I think China agreed to stop increasing their emissions by 2030. They may have subsequently made MORE “empty promises,” but that’s only to encourage the ‘west’ to continue its economic suicide while they laugh at us behind our backs.
And some 120 other states only want their Paris Agreement climate money. Meanwhile some Australians are now nostalgic about the drought. If CO2 emissions are to be reduced significantly we definitely need better options than the ones on offer right now. The odds that the Kate Dooley and Zebedde Nichols’ projections are reliable are negligable.
Australia – when your yard is 2 foot deep in floodwater, you better be preparing for a drought next summer.
That’s the way it’s always been . . .
Yup. Build those dams – call them pumped storage to get them approved. Put some wind turbines on top for decoration.
Now that’s the way to work the system!
Australia – If it’s not on fire it’s because it’s underwater.
Worse. Any reductions in use of fossil fuels directly correlates with loss of GDP, economic and military power and reduction in the standard of living of citizens
It would be great to live in a world where so-called experts are forced to back up their advice to governments and voters about important issues with evidence substantiating their conclusions and, failing to do so, forfeit their positions, income, access to media and the trust of the people.
You mean, lead by example? Waiting….waiting……waiting………..
It would be great to live in a world where so-called experts would be real experts: inquisitive, with sound culture, humble towards their ignorance of other fields of knowledge, respectful of the real experts of other fields of knowledge, having an unprejudiced approach to science completely independent of their beliefs and agendas, … (and a rather long “etc.”).
So all other scientists should be respectful of Climate Scientists?
Yes! …
…
…if the so-called “climate scientists” are real scientists!…
BIG ‘IF!’
We are. Unfortunately no climate scientists qualify as real scientists, since they have abandoned all the principles of science.
“Restoring degraded environments, such as by planting trees, is often touted as a solution to the climate crisis. But our new research shows this, while important, is no substitute for preventing fossil fuel emissions to limit global warming. “
**********
Dear University of Melbourne:
Congratulations! You have been selected to participate in a program designed to fight global warming in Australia. Please be aware that you will be taken off of the nation’s electric grid in about six months. Between now and then, we will assist you in transitioning your school to run exclusively on solar panels and wind turbines to power your day-to-day operations.
Lead by the researchers at your College of Climate and Energy, we have little doubt that you will be proud to be one of the first academic institutions in Australia to fully engage in the fight against climate change. Once the success of this transition has been confirmed, we will begin transitioning other academic institutions in Australia to wind and solar as well. In addition, all of your institution’s autos that run on petrol or diesel will be replaced with electric vehicles.
Again, congratulations for being selected for this very important program!
Signed,
Prince Charles
It’s amusing that Brits call someone who is a gormless dullard a “Charlie”.
QEII was certainly prescient when she named her first born.
Way back in BC there was a BBC program called “My Word” that was re-broadcast on Oz ABC.
One session was built around “Charlie is my darling” with the exception noted that “In the case of Lady Diana Spencer it was “My darling is a charlie”
Hope Chuck will be paying for that.
Hey, I hope we do get 2°C of warming – that would be a good start, shame they are saying it will take almost a century.
I’m in Canada, by the way.
Me too. And I would consider that a rather modest wish.
Yes, Timmy Flano should be sued for his idiotic predictions of climate doom during the last drought” even if it rains it won’t be enough to fill our dams and rivers” and because of that dud prediction, governments state, federal didn’t bother building any dams. Stupid Gillard payed Timmy $180 000 a year for 5 years, we should be demanding he pay all the money back for his voodoo climate predictions.
I have a feeling that Tim has been given a job, by the new elected Labour government as it has reinstated the “Department of Climate Change”. Former prime minister Tony Abbott sent, Tim and his department packing. The cat is back.
It’s actually a bit worse than that. Because we haven’t built any more dams and the constant warnings that there won’t be any rain what dams we have are kept too full. This drastically reduces their ability to mitigate floods. It increases flooding because the dams fill and then there has to be an emergency release of water to save the walls from collapse. This usually happens at the height of the flood downstream.
And don’t forget their government pensions.
These people are, in my opinion, evil. By calling for an end to the expansion of fossil fuels globally, they are calling for the world’s poorest people to have no hope of a better life or an increase in their life expectancy.
Bingo – closet racists. Hate the brown, the black and the yellow? Force them away from reliable, efficient energy, to wind and solar. But the people of the rest of the world are to smart for the Green Neo-Neo-Nazis.
“they (the Catholic Church et al.) are calling for the world’s poorest people to have no hope of a better life or an increase in their life expectancy.”
Cause that’s what Jesus would have done.
I want to thank the author for so many good articles here — he is a writing machine interested in many different subjects. I don’t care what academics think but as someone from Michigan USA who will never get to Australia I have to ask:
Starting with World War II, just when did Australia drift so far off the track to where it is now (energy policy)?
I mean, your nation has lots of coal and uranium, but seems determined not to use them … using no uranium for electric power, and also being the world’s largest coal exporter. What sense does that make?
If you mine coal, ship it to China, and they burn it,
the CO2 emissions are the same as if you burned it yourself.
Worse actually.
Yup, pollution controls are so fussy!
And the added cost of the CO2 to ship it to China.
Think of the money….
In my observation, Oz lost the plot in 2007 when voters were sucked in to the “presidential” style of electing media-favourite candidates for office like Kevin Rudd.
The fundamentals of sound policies to steer the nation’s economy were ignored in favor of “progressive” engineering of social behavior by government fiat.
Without fawning media treatment as if he was some kind of Hollywood celebrity on a promo visit to Australia, Rudd and his “boy band” of oh-so-progressive advisors would have sunk into the obscurity they deserved.
And it’s all been downhill since then, with politicians more concerned about their “likes” than working for the good of the nation.
And virtue-signaling “compassion” for the treatment of fringe sections of the population (ye shall know them all by the acronyms they go by).
Bugger the 90% of the population who do all the work, pay all the taxes, mind their own business – there’s no accolades from the media for politicians who champion this section of the citizenry, let’s treat them with disdain and instead worship all those 0.005% of the population groups.
It’s worse than that I’m afraid. Only 50% are net tax payers, that is contributing more than what they take back. Oversized public service with duplications from council to federal level. Rorts and highly paid make work schemes everywhere.
Yes, one actual example I was gobsmacked by a few years ago –
I had demanded our local shire mayor explain what a “General Manager – Sustainability” did.
So she arranged an appointment for me to meet with this bloke.
What it boiled down to was that this bloke spent his time preparing reports to support applications for grants from the Federal Gov to count emissions throughout the shire (ie – CO2), and then implement the “remedies” that the Fed dept had scripted for all industry sectors.
Oh, and administer the local tip (strictly a desk job).
So, what we had was ratepayer revenue (property taxes) being soaked up to get $$$s from the Feb Gov that taxpayers had already provided.
As a ratepayer, you were paying a portion of your rates (property tax) for the property tax collector (shire) to act as an agent to petition the Fed income & consumption tax collector, to whom you had already paid tax, to please reimburse some of your $$$s to the local yokels so they could implore local businesses to spend some of their $$$s on reducing an airborne trace gas that nobody could see, feel or smell.
Meanwhile, the potholes just kept getting bigger and more prolific . . .
“Oh, and administer the local tip (strictly a desk job).”
For those not familiar with a “tip” – its a garbage dump, land fill.
Thank you. I had no idea what that meant.
The rot started long before WW2.
Most people think Australia was settled by a bunch of Crocodile Dundee types, rough and resourceful outdoorsy people who had maybe gotten into a little trouble in England, but who went on to found a new nation.
But there was a second group of settlers, minor British aristocrats who had done something so heinous back in England they couldn’t show their faces anywhere in the civilised world, so they were banished to Britain’s most remote colony.
Sadly its the descendants of the second group who now run our governments.
Of course, you ARE a monarchy.
The US was close to getting back to that system until Obama beat Hilbillary in the Democrat primary.
Think Bush I, Clinton I, Bush II, then Clinton II, but instead Obama, then it would have been Clinton II but for TRUMP!
With Clinton II, then Obama II with Michelle the US would officially be down the drain.
The transition must have been sometime after the late ’80s. I, too, am from Michigan and am a retired automotive engineer. In the late ’80s Australia built a nuclear powerplant out in some outback area with large bauxite deposits. The power was used to manufacture aluminum, which requires lots of electrical power. This allowed Australia to become a major exporter of aluminum brake parts.
Nuclear power is now a no-no to the Warmists.
G’Day Tom
“In the late ’80s Australia built a nuclear powerplant out in some outback area with large bauxite deposits.”
Couldn’t find it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Australia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bauxite_mining_in_Australia
These are not smart people. If I went on a 3 day holiday, I wouldn’t trust them to feed my cat.
It wouldn’t matter if they were in charge. First, they wouldn’t let you go on holiday. Second, you couldn’t own a cat; too big a carbon footprint and all.
Please stop feeding the narrative. It’s CO2 footprint these idiots are concerned about. Stupid is as stupid does. If they are so concerned with CO2 emissions that are man made, my advice to them is stop breathing. That way you can really make a statement.
Sitting at a desktop computer, playing with made-up numbers in spreadsheet scenarios about politicians’ bullshit “pledges” has exactly what connection with the atomic chemistry and meteorological physics that are needed to explain climate functioning.
Deep down, these academics must despise themselves for indulging in this blatant fraud.
At best it’s a misanthropic rant, you can sense the self-loathing.
The University of Melbourne… bring your own straight jacket.
Strait jacket.
I think Fretslider meant a jacket that isn’t festooned with sequins and other baubles.
“Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience” – Adam Smith
I always liked this one by CS Lewis:
Seems to fit most of the monsters calling for the death of three-quarters of the human population for the sin of living with fossil fuel energy. Of course part of the problem is most of them are not smart enough to understand that those deaths would be the direct and unavoidable result of their utopian policies being implemented.
The second part of that quote is also fitting, and important:
The conversation that hosts their profiles is 5 goosesteps to the left of Stalin
He is a climate modeler and she dicks around with forests and indigenous people. And I should take advice from them for fundamentally altering our society, economy and energy systems?
I’m indigenous to the British Isles. As was Newcomen, Trevithick, Watt, Stevenson, Boyle, Arkwright, John Harrison, Faraday, Tommy Flowers, Frank Whittle, Joseph Lister, Rutherford, Adam Smith, Newton, Maxwell, Charles Parsons, Henry Bessemer, Rutherford, Shakespeare, Pepys, Dickens (better and more readable than Marx), Berners-Lee, John Wycliffe, Purcell, Cromwell, Queen Elizabeth I…….
Rutherford was a Kiwi
So, now we should take orders from a mere PhD student? Give me a break. Even if he was fully tenured he would still be a clown.
They want to shut down fossil fuels and forestry. Great. This makes total sense. Cars will become near worthless without fuel to run them, but house prices will sky rocket since there will be no new houses. But we have the fix! People can buy a car for next to nothing and live in that.
Shut off all electricity, gas, running water and sewage to all these greentards everywhere. Force them to live what they claim to want for everyone else.
#fjb and while you’re at it, #fAussieClimateScientists
Anyone else remember this video from 2011? Probably it inspired the career choice these clowns made.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/11/what-climate-science-has-come-to-a-rap-music-video-with-expletives/
I feel sorry for the young people that get drawn into cults such as the college of climate and energy, masquerading as scholarship.
My research indicates that Australian Saltwater Crocodiles are on the verge of starvation. We are willing to make sacrifices to avert this existential disaster. Sacrificing these two is an excellent start.
Crocs are known to eat their own.
As are leftists.
Sound judgement != (intelligence OR education)
Sack them all for being stooopid.
In London they are at it again
Just Stop Oil protesters glue themselves to Constable masterpiece The Hay WainActivists attach their own image of ‘apocalyptic vision of the future’ to famous painting at London’s National Gallery
Let them stand there forever.
In a couple of days they’ll be begging for mercy.
Just out of reach, put up a folding chair, pull out a large veggie pizza, bottle of water and after eating a piece or two ask if they would like a bite.
Just constantly play the sound of running water…
They appear to be seated.
Once again, they glued themselves to the frame not the painting.
Perhaps a little glue on their lips and noses would be appropriate, you know, no exhaling of CO2 that way.
Why am I not surprised?
Just Stop Oil protester who glued herself to John Constable masterpiece is a jet-setting former XR supporter who broke into an oil refinery and staged a red carpet demo at the Bafta awards
Djeez louise. There is no compliance on “Paris” because even if a party does not act on a promise, they still ARE within the bounds of the treaty. Yes doing nothing is a valid option.
Don’t these kids know how to read or just obstinate
No they don’t. All they know how to do is throw a temper tantrum or their toys out of the pram when they don’t get what they want. If they ever grow up then they might, just might, have something worth listening to but until then I’m not impressed with such childish behaviour.
They’ll never grow up. They’ll get well paid government or council jobs and keep on with their activism from inside while buying a house, having kids, getting old.
“We calculated the maximum potential for responsible nature restoration to absorb carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And we found that, combined with ending deforestation by 2030, this could reduce global warming 0.18°C by 2100.” I tried to repeat their calculations but found no valid relationship between global temperature and atmospheric CO2. I have to call their finding into question as it is apparently based on an an unproven assumption so their conclusions should be ignored by policy makers.
He’s a CliSciFi climate modeler and believes CO2 is the control knob for global temperatures. She plays around with indigenous people, whining about equity, forests and land uses. Neither he nor she exhibits any knowledge of atmospheric physics.
Just one demand is needed, PROVE IT!
There was a nasa/noaa press release a month ago that stated atmospheric co2 topped 421ppm in may, first time in 4 million years.
They also noted ominously that the temps back then were 7F hotter than today, i guess to scare us.
But if it was 7F warmer back then at 421ppm, if co2 controls temp then why is it 7F cooler today?
Shouldn’t it be the same?
Do these people even think about their BS before they say it?
weblink
https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/carbon-dioxide-now-more-than-50-higher-than-pre-industrial-levels
The sad thing is that these scientific illiterates, appear to believe that the only difference between the world of 4 million years ago, and today is the CO2 level.
Perhaps the CO2 levels were up because it was 7 degrees warmer, not the other way around.
Wasn’t that before the closing of the isthmus of Panama? A direct current between the Pacific and Caribbean/Atlantic might have moved heat around in a completely different pattern. (I always forget the estimated date of the closure of the isthmus, but I seem to remember something about 3 million years ago – I just looked and 3.5 million is the text book estimate though some researcher is claiming 10 million year old South American fossils on the North American side back in 2016, so who knows).
Have they turned off the A/C in their homes, offices, and classrooms and use no transportation requiring fossil fuels? Are they eating bugs and no meat? Have they shunned all clothing with synthetics produced using any fossil fuels? Have they figured out a place to buy computers that have not been produced using petroleum products?
When they have, get back to us.
Just a thought. The solvent for the glue that they used, is it a petroleum product?
The Cult of Climate Change will soldier on regardless of facts and circumstances.
Look out Oz
“UK heatwave to smash 41C barrier and unleash astonishing hot weather on Britain in days”
https://www.express.co.uk/news/weather/1635299/uk-heatwave-weather-forecast-latest-met-office-update-july-summer-maps
I’ll believe it when I see it
Ah yes, from the office of failed predictions and blatant lies. Haven’t they had enough of being wrong yet?
That would be a very strong Sahara jet. Usually they just drive upper 30s, but depending on the strength of the pressure cells driving the jet, 40+ is possible. It is still just weather and has likely happened 100s of times in the last 20 millennia.
As you can see from Nullschool, there is a high pressure system over the central U.S., where we are experiencing 100+F temperatures and will continue to do so for about a week or two, maybe more, and there is a high pressure system getting ready to move over Britain and Europe bringing high temperatures with it. It gets hot under high pressure systems in the summer.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/500hPa/orthographic=-59.76,19.11,264
“ It gets hot under high pressure systems in the summer.”
Ah! So that is the real reason that the controllers of electricity grids with W&S contributions get to sweat when they are around?
Sure, global warming that lasts a week, oh my, we’ll all be dead. Or swimming at the beach.