Climate science

CLIMATE SPECTATOR reports: About 1000 experts from the emerging solar thermal energy industry have gathered in Grenada, Spain, for the IEA-sponsored SolarPACES conference, with several dozen Australians also in attendance. Groups from the Australian Solar Institute, the ANU solar thermal research centre, the CSIRO, the ACT government and technology developers such as Transfield Novasol and Wizard are also in attendance.

Matthew Wright, the head of Beyond Zero Emissions, says two major themes seem to be emerging from discussions – one is a concession that solar PV has won the day in terms of costs of electricity generated, and the other is that the future of solar thermal lies in storage. These themes are being played out in the US, where non-storage thermal projects funded by government loan guarantees are being substituted by solar PV because of costs, but projects with storage are going ahead.

How many wake up calls do we need? The latest International Energy Agency figures, published in today’s Guardian newspaper, show global carbon emissions are at their highest ever levels.

As IEA chief economist Fatih Birol notes “I am very worried. This is the worst news on emissions. It is becoming extremely challenging to remain below 2 degrees. The prospect is getting bleaker. That is what the numbers say.”

Alongside recently released reports from Professor Ross Garnaut and the Climate Commission this is yet another resounding wake up call for Australians to focus our vision and energy on the nation building challenge of our time: designing and constructing a just and sustainable road to a post-carbon economy and society.

There are practical and effective ways for Australia to tackle the cause of climate change and its effects.

Many native-born Australians, and those born overseas who migrated to Australia in search of a better life, did not anticipate that our expectations might be prematurely curtailed by population growth, peak oil or climate change. A decade ago, when we celebrated the new millennium, such ideas were hardly on the radar.

Not on our radar, perhaps, but not entirely unexpected. A little thought would have told us that exponential growth in our use of natural resources is bound to end when those resources run out, or if damaging by-products compromise our environment.

In 1972 the Club of Rome's report, The Limits to Growth, warned of just such a scenario, and from 1990 onwards the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change drew attention to the risks of climate change.

Governments and corporations were well aware of these assessments. Some, including the Europeans, took notice. But successive Australian governments, under Hawke, Keating and Howard, took no heed: ''She'll be right''.

In “The Return of Dr Strangelove”, a September 6 lecture hosted by Melbourne University and Beyond Zero Emissions (BZE), Clive Hamilton, author of Affluenza, Scorcher and Requiem for a Species gave a short history of the research and investment in geo-engineering solutions to global warming.

A move from fossil fuels to renewable energy is the logical “Plan A” response to human-caused climate change, but such a response would threaten corporate profits.

Geo-engineering has become “Plan B”: a technological quick fix that will avert the threat of catastrophic climate change without threatening profits. Entrepreneurs such as Bill Gates and Richard Branson are investing in “global cooling research”.

Scientists have worked on global dimming techniques and efforts to remove some of the CO2 from the atmosphere for some time. But this has gone largely unreported, perhaps, Hamilton suggested, so as not to arouse “resistance to their fiddling with the world’s dimmer switch”.

This is part four of Clive Hamilton's searing exposé of climate change deniers published on the ABC website. We also highly recommend parts 1, 2, 3 and 5.

Although sceptics have been gnawing away at the credibility of climate science for years, over the last five months they have made enormous leaps owing to the hacking of emails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and the discovery of a number of alleged mistakes in the benchmark reports of the IPCC.

While the "revelations" have been milked for all they are worth, and a lot more, the science remains rock solid. If instead of cherry-picking two or three that lend themselves to spin, you read the 1000 or so emails that were posted on a Russian server the picture that emerges is one of an enormously dedicated group of men and women doing their best to carry out research of the highest quality.

By Kurt Kleiner

Warming goes global

The year started out with some sobering, if not altogether surprising, news: overall, the Antarctic continent is warming. Although some of the Antarctic Peninsula had previously shown rapid warming, parts of the continent — especially near the South Pole — seemed to be unaccountably cooling.