Climatologist James Hansen points out that cutting coal use must be our main focus. Forget tree planting and similar cures as they will be too slow and unreliable. Meanwhile we shut our minds to the coal burning connection; not far from the Melbourne firestorms are some of the worlds dirtiest brown coal burning power stations. We also decline to admit Australia's huge coal exports could have any bearing on global emissions yet I believe that within a decade Australia may be one of the few countries left with any spare coal to export. As a uranium exporter we could call the shots by telling customers they can have uranium if they cut back on coal. So not only is Australia a poor example to the developing world but we are in a position to strongly influence global emissions.

Perversely we continue to build new coal export terminals and largely exempt the worst domestic emitters from the 2010 emissions trading scheme. That scheme has a pathetic target of 5% reductions by year 2020 relative to 2000. Meanwhile our largest river system dries up, firestorms decimate city fringes and the Great Barrier Reef has repeat episodes of coral bleaching until one day there is no recovery. That doesn't seem to be enough to make us rethink however.

As to the predicted world coal production peak around 2030 even if that only causes 2C warming we have had enough trouble with just 0.6C warming. Of course that coal fired warming might set off polar ice melt and frozen methane releases so it keeps going without human assistance. Therefore coal burning must be drastically slowed starting yesterday.

Something for our own nutters, with nothing to do on March 2, to copy from this American nutter.

Mmm, thanks for the namecalling Leigh, very deep - you should write for the Herald Sun.

Coal is too dangerous to burn.
We should dig a big hole and throw it all in there.
Burying it is less dangerous and cheaper than capturing and burying CO2.
Dig it all up now and bury it to save the world.

Perhaps they are correct. My favourite "philosopher" asserts that we should rapidly wean ourselves off of our addiction to the carbon "economy".

Leigh Wendell Berry is not a nutter. He is deeply conservative in the REAL sense of the meanings of that work.

Neither is Bill McKibben for that matter.

CONSERVATIVE as distinct from the all of the right-wing shock-jocks and "conservative" newspaper hacks both here and in the USA---the adolescent yahoos and hooligans who wouldnt know their butts from a hole in the ground.

Berry is even sometimes claimed by those on the "right" of the culture wars as one of them---at least when it suits them.

His is writings are even praised and referenced in many right wing publications--both on paper and on the internet/blogoshere.

He wrote an essay The Idea of a Local Economy in response to Sept 11. And also a companion essay Thoughts in The Presence of Fear. Both of which had nothing in common with war-drum-thumping responses of those on the "right".

http://www.relocalize.net/node/4770

Berry's action described in this essay are in keeping with what he has been practising and advocating all of his life.

The big losers are the people who own coal burning power plants.

Give a fiscal boost to the economy by giving companies who close a power plant a zero interest loan of an amount needed to be spent on a renewable energy plant that generates the same amount of energy as the coal plant. The companies repay the loan from the profit on the renewable energy plant.

Everyone wins. It helps solve the liquidity crisis. It compensates the power companies and it helps save the planet. It does not increase government debt because the companies have the loans.

At the same time give zero interest loans to any person or company who spends the money building infrastructure to make other non polluting use of coal - turn coal into animal feed?, plastics, paint etc.

This will take care of the coal companies as they will still have a market. You can give some of the zero interest loans to the poor in the population. They can sell the loans if they wish but the loans must be spent on non polluting ways to use coal.

Leigh is right, they are all nutters here and the USA.
I am all for reducing waste of energy or of consumption of materials but I am not keen on nutters telling me what I should do while they live in harbourside apartments. The nutters also seem to make a lovely living out of telling me what I should do!

Unfortunately, the climate extremists have alienated a lot of support the movement might have otherwise had. People are learning to dismiss climate doomsayers as nutters because extremism does not appeal to the mainstream. It is likely to lead to less rather than more respect. A balanced, reasoned approach is much more effective, even if the situation is dire.

Looks like the author is attempting to extract sympathy for himself and his cause by this self-flagellatory effort however, it is hardly likely to gain any more support for the cause, nor will it have any discernable effect on the climate, so getting arrested and telling the world beforehand is a peculiar bit of self indulgent martyrdom we could well do without.

Bill McKibben (for any who have not read the article, the author):

"More importantly, we need a powerful and active movement not to force the administration and the Democrats in Congress to do something they don’t want to, but to give them the political space they need to act on their convictions. Barack Obama was a community organiser - he understands that major change only comes when it’s demanded, when there’s some force noisy enough to drown out the eternal hum of business as usual, of vested interest, of inertia."

Sound familiar? How about the following:

"Germany needs a powerful and active movement not to force the patriotic Germans in the Reichstag to do something they don't want to do, but to give them the political space they need to act on their convictions. Adolf Hitler is a peoples' leader - he understands that major change only comes when it is demanded, when there is a force noisy enough to drown out the eternal hum of business as usual, of vested interest, of inertia." - attributed to Josef Goebbels.

Brownshirts.

A 'kristallnacht'.

And a fire in the Reichstag.

So there! I've fulfilled the letter of Godwin's Law.

Yanks, if you cop this, you'll show the world you have come a long way since the 1930s.

Read 'em all the Riot Act. Arrest the lot of 'em if they do it. The really concerned people of the world will be in need of lots of 'indentured labour' for the real work of looking after the planet. Start 'recruiting' with this lot: you'll be getting some of the worst trouble-makers off the streets. They propose to dishonour what is shaping up to be a good presidency, under which things proven to be necessary for the future of civilization can be set in train under the rule of law, and in accord with equity.

You don't need a rabble-rouser setting the agenda. Such demagogues need a powerful and active movement to fulfill their ambitions and delusions of grandeur, nothing else.

Zero tolerance.

Pseudo science is almost as bad as no science. We are all carbon units, supported by carbon, made of carbon, nourished by carbohydrates, and CO2 is the fertilizer that laid down the coal deposits in the first place. Instead of marching to close down the fertilizer factories giving life giving carbon a chance to have its day in the sun, this tunnel visioned protester should be devoting his energy to finding ways to encourage plants and oceans to take up the carbon produced.

I was once involved in an experiment that supplied trace elements to a grossly deficient ecosystem which was producing about 200 kg a hectare of measurable carbon sequestration in the form of grass, above ground, and the same below annually. By the addition of all of the twenty six elements necessary for optimal plant growth, this two hundred kilograms, was increased to 2000 kg per hectare. There are millions of hectares of land in the world, where this same science would recycle carbon, to end starvation everywhere. Instead of paying forty dollars a tonne to end carbon emissions, that forty dollars a tonne spent on essential plant foods in places where it rains, would be a positive step.

I am not an oceanographer, but I have been told that fertilizing the ocean with algae encouraging trace elements, would have the effect of sequestering enormous amounts of carbon, and cycling it into food. I am a landlubber, and I do know how to make plants grow. Here in Australia we have the equivalent of the Mississippi flowing under the middle of this continent and I am told it is fresh water suitable for irrigation. Give us water, sun and fertilizer, and all the carbon delivered out of our coal plants could be made into food.

Instead of being a Luddite, this misguided individual should be joining the Freedom from Hunger campaign. We have scientists who can teach us how to use carbon wisely, instead of trying to use it to push an idiologicaly bankrupt wheelbarrow of starvation and frigid politics. Carbon is a blessing, lets enjoy

Leigh and others,

We need and have a police force to prevent nutters from causing others harm. Crimes such as steeling and assaulting others are not acceptable and we endeavor to prevent them or punish the perpetrators.

There is no police force in this country empowered to prevent the harm the nutters who run or support coal-fired power stations are inflicting on humanity. So Bill McKibben and others have to do the job.

They have my wholehearted support.

Kulu, you used coal-fired electricity to make that post, didn't you?

Further to Peter the Believer, its clear that the general public knows little science. Do they realise Carbon is the basis of virtually all life on Earth? No, I imagine they think its a poison produced by coal fired power stations.

If our leaders would simply realize that instead of sending all that iron to China, they would divert some to rectifying an iron deficiency in the warm tropical waters of the great oceans, them the ocean would simply love to suck enormous quantities of carbon from the air, and turn it into food.

To reach its full potential as a carbon sink, the ocean needs phosphates and sunlight and iron. The one missing is iron. Fill an eighty thousand tonne freighter with iron sulfate, equip it with a pump and mixing bowl, and send it out to fertilize the oceans, and it would generate enough carbon credits, to be a huge profit making machine.

I am told NZ has had to pay a Carbon Penalty to the UN. If it simply paid the same amount to irrigate the nearby Pacific with iron, purchased from Australia naturally, every tonne of carbon generated could be offset, by the massive amounts of carbon sequestered in an algal bloom.

That carbon would then simply be put into the food chain, recycled and turn itself into huge tonnages of fish, or is that fush, and be used to feed hungry millions. Carbon is not a menace, it is a boon. My chemistry teacher would be proud of me, because he must have been smart. He taught me to look at all the options, not just the obvious ones.

In his book, the State of Fear, the late Michael Crighton, looked at the jingoism associated with climate change, and concluded it was lawyer generated, fallacious, misguided and could not stand a jury trial with a totally unbiased panel of judges. Right in the middle of the book, over about two pages, he concluded that authorities had to generate something for the general population to be fearful of to retain control.

If the Federal Court of Australia would dump its Judges, and file a suit to test carbon sequestration, and comply with s 79 Constitution, and empanel the type of Special Jury, available in New South Wales until 1970, we may get to the truth

Well, if your protests are successful, you won't have to worry about being arrested any more, because there will be no police force.

There will be no police force because there will be no taxpayers' money to fund them.

There will be no taxpayers' money because nobody will be earning an income.

Nobody will be earning an income because no industry can operate without energy.

Welcome back to the Stone Age!

I have a better suggestion for reducing emissions -- anyone who is stupid enough to think the answer is this simple could just stop breathing.

"On March 2, environmentalist Bill McKibben will join demonstrators who plan to march on a coal-fired power plant in Washington DC."
No doubt Bill will also be waving a placard supporting nuclear generated power plants... the only realistic alternative to coal-powered stations at present.
And he will also be calling on his fellow Americans to financially support the Chinese whose future standard of living will be seriously curtailed if investment in coal-fired power stations is curtailed. How dare they aspire to a Western standard of living.

Until 1970, in New South Wales there was a way to get twelve highly educated individuals, drawn from a panel of about 3,600 to calmly review and decide upon weighty matters such as global warming. They had the power to overrule any Act of Parliament they considered bad government. In such a forum, blokes like this protester could have their say, and the miners could have theirs, and the newspapers and media would have had to stop publishing inflammatory stories until such time as they had examined the evidence.

Given the results of experiments conducted in the Southern Ocean, and data showing that there is more carbon in the sea than on the land and in the atmosphere combined, then if it becomes necessary, there is no need to stop burning coal, but the oceans could be seeded with iron, and encouraged to work a little harder at what it seems they do best; take carbon from the atmosphere.

When the Liberals abolished a whole raft of legislation in 1970, to establish a lawyers republic in New South Wales along the lines of the Soviet Union, they paved the way for minority groups to unduly influence governments, in order to have them accommodate their extremist views. The Liberals were stopped by S 80 Constitution, from totally dismantling the Commonwealth, but they made a pretty good fist of it anyway.

Instead of stealing carbon from farmers to offset coal production, as the Liberals did for the past eleven and a half years, by prohibiting land clearing, the government would have had to find another way to strut the international stage claiming green credentials. Now we have signed Kyoto the need is even greater. The federal Liberals formed an unholy alliance with Labor States, and for money, had them steal carbon from farmers on their behalf without compensation. They are directly responsible for the holocaust in Victoria. If farmers and householders had been permitted to clear carbon residues and trees from around their houses, many more would have survived.

The federal Liberals have called the tune: let them now pay the piper

I would be more impressed by climate hysterics, like Bill McKibben, and their assertions that atmospheric CO2 levels above 350ppm are potentially disastrous, if they could show a valid refutation of the geological evidence extending over the last 600million years, showing that CO2 levels up to 20 times current levels have not led to the climate disasters they so lovingly espouse.

Over this time scale, CO2 levels have been below 400ppm for only two relatively short periods, the mid-Carboniferous/Lower Permian and the Late Tertiary, including the present. See: http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html for a reconstruction of CO2 levels (after Berner), and temperatures (after Scotese) covering the whole of this period.

Why they think Earth will suddenly go south on a trivial, by historical standards, rise in CO2 defies comprehension, other that a willful disregard of hard evidence to the contrary.

This is a really pointless article as it proposes no alternatives to the burning of coal, even though energy efficiency, renewables and nuclear energy are highly viable options. The article reminds me of the thoughtless diatribes written over the years against native forest logging and against a reintroduction of Aboriginal burning practices in our forest and bushland. Today, in south west WA, we have virtually no logging and the forest is dying through benign neglect. In Victoria, opposition to prescribed burning has cost 200+ lives and 3000+ homes.
The McKibben article is, at best, shallow; at worst, it's irrelevant.

I hope you didn't catch a chill in that unseasonable snowstorm while you were protesting global warming.