The Australian government has the ability to set the direction for restructuring the Australian economy towards a more sustainable model that will enable generation Y's grandchildren to live decent lives. Instead of supporting the development of solar technologies, both federal and state governments are subsidising existing industries adn overseas corporations.

Governments need to govern Australia for current and future generations of Australians.

Why did the NSW government give the care flights contracts to Canadians when the Australian operators were established as world best practice?

Why don't state governments install solar panels on all government buildings? Think of all those schools that put power back into the grid outside school times.

Why does the federal government pay research subsidies to the coal industry for a very dodgy technology like geosequestration.

Why do state and federal governments permit logging in old growth forests and replace the boidiversity with monoculture, aren't they aware of the devastation occurring in the Canadian lumber forests of British Columbia and Alberta. Whats with the Tasmanian Devil cancers showing up in Tasmanian platypus. What are the local forestry practices?

Why do we permit the importation of fresh foods from China? What happens when the Australian growers have been forced out of business by low farm gate prices and the oil shortage really starts to impact transportation costs?

Climate change has and always will affect the price of fruit and vegies. It has been that way since Adam and Eve existed. Harping on about the Aussie battler when anyone who breathes can get a job is a bit rich.

The continual scare mongering from enviromentalist who continue to predict doom and gloom (what happened to the whole in the ozone layer that was going to destroy us all by now) leaves me highly suspicious.

Every honest person knows that any affect that Australia has on climate change is very minute in the context of the world. Why then does Dr Mc Neil feel the need to have a cheap shot at Mr Howard. It seems to easy to sit in an ivory tower and predict the future. I would love to see the predictions from 20 years ago and see how accurate those predictions were.

One thing you can be sure of and that is the climate will continue to change day by day. We will have earthquakes, floods, fires and everyone will interpret them through their own rose coloured glasses.

runner,
surely you're not suggesting that people with a job are not battlers, ask you local Woolworths check out lady how her finances are going, the console operator at your local service station, then wake up to yourself. Billie, I agree solar, hydro, etc should be used by all governments to give the community a lead, which is what leadership is all about. We have very little time 10-15 years to turn things around, and with any problem, if you don't even acknowledge it, you won't fix it. Perhaps as the globe slowly deteriorates, and the rich realise that they haven't yet found another inhabitable planet, things will heat up at a faster rate than global warming.

It’s drawing a long bow to link our present drought directly to climate change, or AGW, as the author implies in his article. I agree that solar energy has great merit as a non-polluting energy source (modern cells have an energy payback period less than 2 years), but it wouldn’t matter what Australia does, it won’t change the big picture. Assuming AGW is causing recent warming, unless the whole world acts together, our climate will become hotter anyway.

Robg - all scientists at the CSIRO and Weather Bureau think that the increasing frequency of drought in southeastern Australia is directly attributable to global warming.

Billie

and increasingly HUMAN INDUCED Global warming is being questioned as the computer models are found lacking and other more influencial factors (e.g. Sun's magnetic field) are being investigated.

SO if AGW is not so much factor then not much we can do about it. I mean we cannot help the other planets (Mars, Saturn etc) which are exhibiting global warming at the moment.....

But maybe we are wrong.....or maybe not.

Anyone reading this might be forgiven for thinking that farmers must be getting increasingly rich - look at how much the prices for their produce have gone up! Lets just confirm that SOME farmgate prices have risen due to shortages from the drought. However, a lot of livestock producers have suffered huge setbacks, as many had to sell off their stock quickly, and suffered the results of a flood of stock onto the market (not that food buyers saw much of a decrease -when lambs went from $80/head to $20/head, did our supermarket prices take a 75% dive??).

Consider that a lot of the price hikes are wholesalers and retailers taking advantage of a situation where they can put the blame for rising prices elsewhere, and dont forget the impact of higher fuel prices on the transport of this food!

So much gets blamed on climate change - its an easy scapegoat. Notice that so many of the "records" that we have had recently are measured against some previous high/low. Eg, its been the lowest rainfall for 75 years - dont forget this means that its been lower than this in the past. Lets remember to take everything we hear with a pinch of salt (or two - plenty of that to go around)!

Nothing the Australian government, public or industry does will make any discernable difference to greenhouse-gas induced climate change. So the poor battler the author purports to be concerned about will be paying no less for their food in whatever the government does. If government imposes solar energy requirements or demands other costly greenhouse initiatives, however, the battlers will also be paying much more for energy, transport, and everything else that needs energy to make or to transport.

That doesn’t mean we should ignore greenhouse, but it means we should be clever about how we respond. Do the low-cost easy stuff first, invest in technologies for the future and participate in the global initiatives that are the only real hope of doing anything that will actually have any effect

Country Gal et al.,

We have known about climate change for decades. I recall in the 70S reading about "Cow Boy" [sic. cattleperson] and "Spaceman" [sic. spaceworker]. The former frontier and latter controlled, of obvious reasons.

Circa 1970, plans should have been in place to relocate farmers away from existing contributions towards new ones. This happens in Commerce, between the 60s-present department stores have become suburban. When I was child we would go into "the City" to shop Waltons and Woolies.

Think farming groups [protected by the Oz taxpayer]whom wish to preserve their way of life and a week-a-head-minded politicians have slowed progress.

In Scandinavia, policies have some farmers work part-time on farms and part-time in locate industries, not corner stores, manufacture.

If I own a newagency or a pie shop and my sales fall, because of a Westfield complex, I consider moving to a new site or opening in Westfields. Farmers seem to just stay put and wont move. They have the right to do so, but, Australia is the most arid countries going, and, we know it is only going to become worst, yet, farming is protected, in ways others are not.

Once, I recall interviewing farmers for research purposes; I was told told a property depreciated in value from eighteen times to three time the value of a house in an exclusive neighbourhood. I see some point. But, the property was presumably inherited, without a mortgage. The farmer held an assettaht a more needy young couples in the City could on dream about.

[Likewise: The eighty year old granny in a million dollar terrace in the inner city on a small fixed income, does have the option of moving to the environs. Street kids and poor families are not similarly placed.]

Handling the rural climatic crisis means, not taxing the income to support the asset rich, retraining/multitasking, and, importantly relocation. It will break-up communities? Yes. But this is War. War against nature. That's the toll. If its a rout. This is the penalty for our procastination.

If this bloke has any expertise in the carbon cycle, or anything else, he sure hid it well. His article is the greatest pile of male cow manure to be posted here, for qiute some time.
I wonder if emotive claptrap earns some sort of promotion, or just brownie points.

Gotta love it. Talk about lacking scientific rigour.

Climate change is a useless notion designed to scare the masses. Almost always it has to do with how human activity has influenced it.

The problem is....there is no way to confirm this. Worse still is the logical shennanigans used to justify it.

For instance
Nasty cyclone is given as evidence of climate change, but when america has a really quiet hurricane season shouldn't this be given as evidence against?

Temperatures going up is evidence of climate change, but the record low temperatures we are having are also given as evidence of climate change.

Lets make it obvious...the climate always changes, the scientific record makes this clear (including large amounts of 'green house' gases being present way way back)....whether it is the human caused catastrophe that the chicken littles keep screaming about is another question entirely

Oliver wrote:
“We have known about climate change for decades. I recall in the 70S reading about "Cow Boy" [sic. cattleperson] and "Spaceman" [sic. spaceworker]. The former frontier and latter controlled, of obvious reasons.”

We did not know in the 1970’s that we would experience the warming that we have had through the 1990’s, neither could we have predicted that El Nino conditions would dominate the 6 years to 2007. We also don’t know for sure that we will get drought more often in the future.

Oliver wrote:
“If I own a newagency or a pie shop and my sales fall, because of a Westfield complex, I consider moving to a new site or opening in Westfields. Farmers seem to just stay put and wont move. They have the right to do so, but, Australia is the most arid countries going, and, we know it is only going to become worst, yet, farming is protected, in ways others are not.”

It’s very easy to move a shop – you just take out a new lease. You can even set up a virtual shop: there is no limit. Farms are very different. Firstly, selling a farm and buying a new one is burdened by stamp duty. Secondly, a farm is limited by the need for good soils and reliable water, which there isn’t much of in this country. Thirdly, agriculture sectors in all developed countries receive special attention. Were we to deny ours special attention, we would immediately disadvantage our international position. By adopting your brilliant ideas Australia may have to import all its food in order to feed your precious young city couples. That won’t help our appalling trade position either.

Grey obviously does not understand basic statistics:

"Nasty cyclone is given as evidence of climate change, but when america has a really quiet hurricane season shouldn't this be given as evidence against?"

No, neither of those events alone can be an argument either for or against. A single data point tells us nothing about anything. It is the ongoing trend shown by a multitude of data points that tells us what is happening. And the overall trend is very clear by now - the climate IS changing, much faster than it ever has before in recorded history.

This accelerating warming trend also correlates with the changes in human activity such as massively increased burning of fossil fuels and industrial-scale land clearing. The vast majority of scientists around the world agree without doubts that the OBSERVED (ie, it has already been seen happening) warming trend is directly caused by humans.
Scientists are people whose stock-in-trade is truth and evidence-backed theories. When there is this much agreement, only the terminally stupid or those with an agenda try to spread doubt.

Forty years ago I was saying that this planet could not sustain the sort of population explosion that was happening. People chose to ignore the predictions of people like Dr Paul Ehrlich and the global population continued to expand. We have to either lower our standard of living or lower the number of people, as it is the quantity of humans that are overpowering the ability of nature to support us. We see it in the continuing and increasing destabilising of our climate with all the disastrous consequences. Yet still most Western governments continue to subsidise us all to breed. The excuse now seems to be to have a workforce to support the elderly in their later years. ( Peter Costello and his "one for father, one for mother and one for the country") In spite of being in my seventies, I think that this is a short sighted course to take as we shall all soon suffer the result of less food availability, and of course higher prices. Unfortunately, too much time has passed and during the time when we were greedily espousing the theory that more was better and that the economics of producing in quantity, was what was required. We should really have realised that expansion had to stop somewhere on a finite planet. It has now been taken out of our hands by nature.

I share your concerns fully snake. To me Peter Costello is the antichrist of Australia, blatantly taking us in the wrong direction; directly away from a sustainable future, with his absurd promotion of our birthrate and endless high economic growth coupled with high population growth.

.
Climate change is presumably leading to drought or overall lower rainfall in agricultural areas or overall lower productivity due to both lower rainfall and more floods and cyclones. So I agree with Ben McNeil to that extent.

But while he implores Howard to deal with the issue and thinks that he should have started a long time ago, he doesn’t say how.

Presumably he is thinking along the lines of reducing fossil fuel consumption and hence GHG emissions, and developing alternative energy sources. But quite frankly, even if we had started three decades ago and got right into solar, wind, hydro and biofuels, the climate change situation would not be much different today, unless the rest of the world had done the same.

We need to accept climate change as being too big to deal with.

The thing we absolutely have to do in this country in the face of a probable reduced ability to feed ourselves and reduced quality of life due to water problems and rising food prices… is to direct ourselves as quickly as possible onto a basis of genuine sustainability.

And the first and most important factor is to abandon the incredibly stupid continuous growth paradigm, by reducing immigration right down to a minimum, stabilizing our population, and refocusing our economy away from ever-increasing gross domestic product and onto real per-capita increase indicators.

Howard’s leading us to ruin. None of the various opposition leaders during his reign have addressed the core issues. And the Greens just don’t seem to get it either.

The problem is NOT the lack of attention to climate change issues per se. The big problem is that real sustainability is still just completely outside the mindset of any of our pollies.

Building Solar Thermal Power stations for Sydney would be less expensive than building coal power stations, cost the same to operate as coal power stations, need no subsidies: unlike a nuclear power stations.

Only about 27 sq km for the solar catchment area to produce sufficient power would be needed.

It is not just photo-solar panels, STP is technology that includes a reflective bowl of photo-solar panels into a central point and coal with the water in the throat is heated to over 800 c, circulating into power turbines. Some is also stored into molten salt to power the populace at night.

NSW already has a mini solar power station at Lidell, near Mussellbrook. Science has since found improvements in generation efficiency. It makes the technology feasibility undeniable.

STPs can be built in about 3 years.

Nuclear power stations would take over a decade to build and operate.

STP stations would produce more than enough power for the City of Sydney.

Spain, Germany and the USA already use STP stations: significant in their power grids. Ours would have improved efficiency.

There is more than enough sunny land available near Mooree and Cobar to place the power stations: no pollution.

In this debate, why is it media only ask the ALP or the Liberal Party for comments? All you get from them is fear and doom and gloom. Solutions really are not that difficult.

Nuclear lobbyists in the Liberal Party and Coal Lobbyists in the ALP chose to ignore this technology as they thought that there was no money or labor to benefit from it.

Global warming is a serious fact.

Indirectly, we can not afford not to deny STP technoloy in a sunburnt country any longer.

The Greens have the figures, raw data and information that the major parties don't want you to know: some from other countries.

With sufficient new STP stations you can rest easy with air conditioners and plasma screens as much as you like.

saintfletcher

You might be interested in this article on concentrated solar power in Mail &Guardian Online recently.

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=295228&area=/insight/insight__international/

The replies by the would be environmentalist highlight that climate change is more about dogma than anything else

Lucky we live in a global economic environment which softens the impact of extreme weather events on the climate. The increase in the cost of Bananas was due to protectionism as much as a cyclone, just ask a Kiwi about the cost of their Bananas last year. Or better yet, ask a Kiwi apple farmer about exporting apples into Australia.

P.S. I don't believe rising sea levels will have much of an impact on millionaires coastal property, the benefits of building sea walls far exceed their costs in these areas. Climate change will not hurt us anywhere near as much as it will hurt the third world, we can afford to adapt, they cant.

"Australian citrus growers declared recently that orange prices had risen from $80 a tonne to $200, with inevitable price hikes on orange juice.

Hehe, I remind you that that is 8c-20c a kg for oranges, which
effectively has little to do with what you pay for orange juice
at your supermarket. Given the 2.40-2.60 a litre for orange juice,
the cost of the ingredients is insignificant. Distribution,
processing, marketing etc are far large input costs. Westfield,
as owners of the shopping centre where you buy your juice, would
earn more then the grower of the oranges, from that 1 litre.

The same applies to meat, milk, etc. How much do you think is
the wheat cost, in a loaf of bread? In WA the milk producer gets
27c a litre for the milk, the consumer pays about 1.30-1.50.
If the milk was free, it would still cost well over a dollar!

What Australia does about climate change is purely a feelgood
exercise. Us 20 million simply don't matter in the bigger scheme
of things. World population keeps increasing at 80 million
a year, so if we were all wiped out tomorrow, we would be replaced
in 90 days. China opens another coal fired power station every
10 days or so. China and India, ie another 2 billion, are striving
for Western style lifestyles. Those two billion will simply wipe
out anything we do as irrelevant, thats the reality of it.

So peddle to work etc, but don't think it will make any difference,
as it won't, thats the sad reality. Ok, it will make you feel better,
but then thats what alot of this debate is about in the end.
Humans are emotional creatures who think a little, not the other way
around

(1) ”We did not know in the 1970’s that we would experience the warming that we have had through the 1990’s, neither could we have predicted that El Nino conditions would dominate the 6 years to 2007. We also don’t know for sure that we will get drought more often in the future.” – Robg

We did not know that specific system, nor, how it worked, but the “effects” of major weather trends have been known, since the 60s, based on data from the 50s.

Moreover, apt for advanced economies, the shift from agricultural economies to manufacturing has been evident for decades. Then, manufacturing to services. Luckily, Oz did make some adjustments.

I am very much aware of the protected markets in the EU, Japan and the States. If each says the protectionism must stay, because the other is protected, the system becomes self-sustaining. It sustains a protected elite. Elite not in the sense all farmers are rich; elite, in the sense, they are given “special” treatment.

If tax payer money is to be spent on industry, it should be on sunrise industries [nanotech] or profitable need to catch-up [Airbus], not dead or poorly located industries. Do not protect long-term unprofitable sectors.


(2) “Its very easy to move a shop – you just take out a new lease.” -Robg

There would be high costs involved, including losing and re-establishing patronage. Some might not survive the transaction. Farmers have the right to fail too. It is called, free enterprise. Conversely, farmers have minds and can adapt towards profitable activities.

(3) “Secondly, a farm is limited by the need for good soils and reliable water, which there isn’t much of in this country.” – Robg

So, then, one does not have a farm or moves to the water. Retrain. Sell your expertise to third world countries, with water. I am not suggesting that farmers be sent to the gallows! I am saying like others in the community they change according to the situation.

[Don't open your pork speciality shop in Tel Aviv.]

As mentioned, in Scandinavia, farmers train to work in industry “and” work on the farm. As a model, it works a bit like seasonality, between the Hemispheres, when, farm productivity is low, these farmers, go off to factories. Given Australia’s poor infrastructure, why did a ditch on a failed farm in drought, when that same ditch could be the foundation for a road?

(4) Rural Sector

The Australian GDP is largely domestic [unlike, say, an importer~re-exporter, Singapore]. Last year, reported [data for 2005?], the rural communities contributed 3.5% to the Oz economy and consumed 5%. That isn’t to say will not be successful sub-sectors, but, we may need to prune or transplant the rose. Some [profitable] roses can stay put.

-Keeping the dollar valued towards exports, in an economy not in-aggregate geared towards exports, means, highly capitalised US/EU companies have bought Speedo and Arnotts, at a good price. Overtime, their returns on that FDI leaves the country, as dividends, to other countries. That is the true domino effect.

(5) ” …agriculture sectors in all developed countries receive special attention.”

True. Agrarian socialism is a global problem. It is why Korean farmers cut-up the streets at every international trade event. These farmers can not see themselves putting on a white or blue shirt and becoming an employee [pride]. In a world of managerialism [since the 50s], being a clerk with a career to management can spell, higher income and higher efficacious productivity.

(6) Fair Comment? A Hypothetical…

Perhaps, you feel me unfair. BUT… What if climate scientists told the National Australia Bank and BHP to move its computer centres away from the coast, owing to the possibility of sea levels rising in 2020. The companies don’t. Come 2020, those billion dollar IBM mainframes are assigned to Davey Jones’ Locker. Next, we have CEO’s running around like Chicken Little:

IT’S A DISASTER! IT’S A DISASTER! GOVERNMENT ASSISTANCE!

Likewise, in the 1960s, Nauru was warned to invest, don’t spend, or else. Well, you know what happened… or else, happened!

China increases it's pollution by the sum total of Australia every ten months.The Kyoto Protocol excludes China and developing countries from restricting green house gases,yet developed countries must suffer in a so called globalised community?

The end result will be that intelligent people will gravitate towards countries like China with no democracies or pollution controls.China can continue to keep their masses subjugated and enslaved,while destroying our environment with impunity.

It has been a long term agenda of many on the left to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor, and they have been working away like diligent little termites for years through the UN & various NGOs to achieve it.

While there may be something basis to global warming, many on the band-wagon simply see it as another way to blame & bleed the west.

When I hear the proponents of Kyoto talk earnestly of western responsible for world woes based on per capita formulas, which effectively proscribe low population western nations like Australia with high development levels, while they put-off-till-later any talk of curtailing the population growth or industrial development of countries with populations 100 times bigger (& increasing exponentially ) , all of whom will ultimatly aspire to reach western levels of development - IT MAKES ME SMELL A BIG FAT RAT.

Horus, in a way the West is responsible for all the world's woes.The West started the Industrial Revolution back in the 1860's.We were the bleeding hearts who brought the science of better food technology and antibiotics so third world populations could expand expodentially with no responsibility for birth control.

Disease and wars in the past were the moderators of population explosions.The world population is fast approaching 7 billion people,and there seem to be no urgency by the UN or the whinging left wing do gooders to address this lack of discipline by third world countries as regards birth control.

All they do is cry for more aid that increases populations artifically,that have no sustainable future.

With climate change and our diminishing resources,we are all in for a very bumpy ride.

Maybe China should be encouraged to accept the Kyoto Protocol as a developed country for its Eastern provinces in the immediate term and be given third country status ONLY for its other provinces until, say, 2015 (lesser developed) and 2020 (least deveveloped).

As I look from my Hong Kong habourside apartment, I can see only two kilometres into the bay. Smog.

Lol, Daves_not_here_man.
It isn't me that is trying to use the example of single data points as evidence, it is the author. (e.g. the record hot temperatures mentioned in this article...what about the record cold temperatures we have been having in the last month? Is that global 'warming' too?)

Try to keep up.

Also, repeat after me this simple scientific truth.
Correlation is not causation.

Scientists are not unbiased, objective observers. Only a fool would try and imply they were. Even if you want to claim that the 'vast majority' of scientists believe in human caused global warming, many do not. Science is meant to be about evidence, not authority.

Why not check out this article, about a physical oceanographer, who recounts a little about this scientific community and climate change.
http://alangrey.blogspot.com/2006/12/global-warming-revelations.html

If people don't believe in the living God they put their faith in a man made religion. In the case of global warming they use pseudo science to make their arguements look half intelligent. More fear preached from those with a self interest than anywhere else. Funny how people accuse Christians of using fear to evangelise.

All of the above is great grist .......... but the fact is, We just don't know. And at present we are trying to live in an evidence based world. So we should try to find out. The answers to the most pressing questions. And this in turn means that we must muster the skills to ask the best and most incisive questions. The issue is not "How much should we charge for water / fuel / power, and how do we manage the political fallout from that" but "How do we ensure we have a future with optimal solutions to the questions of supply and demand?" And, as far as I can tell there is still the same amount of water on the planet - it's just not in the places and in the form that we want! And we always knew that in relying (for the time being) on fossil fuels we were busily consuming a finite resource. And that all renewable energy models recognise that the sun is the source ....... So, why act surprised and agitated ? For an investment of about $25K in solar technology (at current inflated prices) an average household can be independent from the grid. And our expectations of being able to travel great distances or simply move about our home communities on a whim are simply unrealistic. And there are just too many of us ......notionally a VERY simple matter to remedy. But we lack leadership and resolution. And so we will pay the price ........

And yes you will keep paying the price until you decide to do something about it.

25k for 1 house

not bad

how much in consultations
political buck passing but that means you would have to care.

people on this site talk big but actions are nil that is why we have to keep paying.

And until you really make a descision than labor or liberal to a party that wants to fix and not just talk then you will get change.

Email:swulrich@bigpond.net.au

Australian Peoples Party