Geoff Davies: Jayb,You really ought to get informed on consequences.

Please inform me of your idea of consequences. I beg of you. Have you had a look at the Sahull graphic? Does that say anything to you?

rstuart: Editor's Note: this letter is published as the last request of the grandmother, who died of malaria last week. It was returned to the sender as the grandchildren and their parents didn't survive the Category 6 cyclone that hit Cooktown that June. The grandfather that same year from heatstroke. He refused to conceded it was hot despite having no air conditioning. The summer load sheding that had just started at the time and he was intent of writing a letter to the premier, pointing out the huge refugee intake was pushing the states infrastructure to breaking point.

I have lived in the the Australian Tropics most of my life. Ayr & above. I've spent a few years in Sth East Asia. I haven't died from Malaria/Ross River/Dengue. I've had the last two. I've lived through almost all the cyclones, bar 4, in the past 60 years. I'm still here. By the way, those wild storms through Melbourne/Sydney & Sth East Qld... much worst than a cyclone. The floods through Grafton... much worse than through Tully/Innisfail. People in North live in a hot humid envirnoment & West of Australia they live in a hot dry environment. It's no problem to them, you'll aclimatize. People have been living up here quite safely for 150 years.

You have frightened yourself for nothing. They have got to you. What you are frightened of is change. Unfortunately the Earth changes. Change is enevatable. Embrace the change. Work with it & you will survive. Remember; Panic & you'll die.

Jayb: "You have frightened yourself for nothing."

My reply was joke with a serious side - to highlight what the comparative downsides are. (I hark from North Queensland too, as it happens.) If the proposed ETS or whatever is done is a big a mess as it opponents make out and causes a lot of pain, we will just change it and the pain will go away. Besides if peak oil is right we have to go through some of that pain anyway, and like AWG the sooner start the better off we will be. So it is no big deal really. Don't frighten yourself about it.

But if the predictions of AGW are real and we ignore it, the downsides are pretty bad and these is no quick fix, no escape.

So it is as exactly Geoff Davies said - a choice between a low risk path and a high risk path.

PS, what is the Sahull graphic?

OK Jayb, I’ll treat your request as serious.

Preface: there is a serious danger that a shift to much higher temperatures (4-7C) could become unstoppable if tipping points are crossed, such as vast amounts of methane and CO2 being released from melting Arctic permafrost. There are around 10 such potential feedbacks that could take it out of our control. Therefore we need to consider a large climate shift.

Start with loss of much of the productivity in the Murray-Darling basin. You can think of it in terms of livelihoods and towns lost, Australia having barely enough food to feed itself, lost export income, whatever.

The GB Reef would certainly go, and may anyway, whatever we do now.

Loss of much of the SE forests in catastrophic fires. A couple of big burns and the whole ecology changes, as it did after 1939 in many areas, maybe just scrubland.

Ecosystems are highly integrated. If it warms some large animals could migrate, but little ones and trees can’t. Ecosystems are torn apart and thrown out of balance. That means some species go extinct and others go rampant, yielding plagues and epidemics.

One third to one half of all species on the planet are at risk, even given current rates of extinction due to all our other assaults. That would rank as a major extinction event on the planet. See above regarding ecosystems, only planet-wide.

Sea level rises of 1-15 meters, if not this century then next. Most major ports out of action, Bangladesh and many other places flooded. Most major cities in deep trouble.

Our global financial/industrial system nearly collapses under its own internal dysfunctions. It’s extremely doubtful it could survive even the mild end of these external shocks. That means potentially massive poverty, starvation, major loss of human life, wars, who knows what, until we localise economies again.

Remember there’s also peak oil, peak soil, peak fresh water, globally disruptive pollution, destruction of forests, etc., whether there’s global warming or not. We have to change the way we live on the planet. It’s not infinite.

Well, that’s a start.

Just for you, again, rstuart. http://sahultime.monash.edu.au/ How many times do I have to write this?

Geoff: such as vast amounts of methane and CO2 being released from melting Arctic permafrost.

Hmmm... Methane. A potential source of minable energy. CO2 stop drinking & Manufacturing fizzy dirink & making CO2 fire extingushiers.

Therefore we need to consider a large climate shift.

I choose to see a potential blessing in disguise, not disaster.

Start with loss of much of the productivity in the Murray-Darling basin. You can think of it in terms of livelihoods and towns lost, Australia having barely enough food to feed itself, lost export income, whatever.

Just think about this a bit. where does the water come from that feeds the MD basin. Nth Qld. With all that extra rain that will fall in the nth the MD basin will become a bread basket again

The GB Reef would certainly go, and may anyway, whatever we do now.

No. It will move Sth. The northern section may go but the greater debth will make the Eastern Aust. coast more navigable to bigger ships.

Loss of much of the SE forests in catastrophic fires. A couple of big burns and the whole ecology changes, as it did after 1939 in many areas, maybe just scrubland.

It's Victoria. Who gives a s#!t ;-)

Ecosystems are highly integrated. If it warms some large animals could migrate, but little ones and trees can’t. Ecosystems are torn apart and thrown out of balance. That means some species go extinct and others go rampant, yielding plagues and epidemics.

Yep. That's natures way for millions of years, accept it.

One third to one half of all species on the planet are at risk, even given current rates of extinction due to all our other assaults. That would rank as a major extinction event on the planet. See above regarding ecosystems, only planet-wide.

Ditto

"Remember there’s also peak oil, peak soil, peak fresh water, globally disruptive pollution, destruction of forests, etc., whether there’s global warming or not. We have to change the way we live on the planet. It’s not infinite" - that really is the issue.

rstewart " If the proposed ETS or whatever is done is a big a mess as it opponents make out and causes a lot of pain, we will just change it and the pain will go away." what pollie will give it up once it's in regardless of how much it hurts?

If any of the income stream from it becomes part of consolidated revenue or an asset for electoral pork-barreling they won't be able to afford to give it up.

If every cent of the income stream goes directly to combatting AGW or research in that field (with some safeguards to reduce the risks of that being part of the pork-balleling) then it may be a different thing.

R0bert

Jayb: "Just for you, again, rstuart. http://sahultime.monash.edu.au/"

Ta.

There are some things about it you probably don't realise.

The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old, so it shows only the last 0.01% of Earth's history. If you were looking at just that you might be forgiven for thinking the sea level is at a maximum. Actually, it is lowish by geological standards. If all the ice melted, it would be around 80 meters higher. http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs2-00/ and we would look like this: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_hpUJPjLjGlc/SnJCb_ZLrII/AAAAAAAAAGM/GNHDidxFh1o/s1600-h/80m+Austl+01.png However, as I understand if that isn't going to happen anytime soon. 7 meters might though, and 7 meters is higher that any time shown in your link. Look here: http://flood.firetree.net/

The second thing you don't seem to realise is "natural variation" include various extinction events. The biggie was the Permian–Triassic. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extinction_event 99.5% of all individual organisms on the planet died in that one. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian You know how we joke about only the roaches would survive a nuclear war? Well they didn't survive the Permian–Triassic. It took out most of the insects as well. The extinctions were caused by some sort of CO2 / thermal run away, of the sort Geoff is fretting about. We don't really have a clue what caused it.

So when you see people like Bob Carter say CO2 levels were higher in the past, his isn't lying, but he isn't telling you the whole truth either. If particular he doesn't mention bit about us all being about to die if this was the end of the Permian.

Right now, it seems to me this run-away is unlikely. (Bear in mind I would not trust my understanding of climate science as far as I could kick it.) If you look at the figures just prior to the Permian–Triassic we are nowhere near them. Yet. We would not be too far off if we burnt all the coal in the ground over the next few centuries.

Jayb: "How many times do I have to write this?"

Just once. But you have to spell it correctly when you refer to it.