Life

Season’s greetings!

7 Comments

Christmas-Bells-2_175

Climate Plus wishes you a pleasant Christmas/New Year and health and happiness for 2015.

Personally it’s been an up and down year. I’m rather looking forward to 2015!

For the blog it has been up and down too. I’ve been grateful for your support. We’ve struggled a bit since I took a holiday, but have just had the best day traffic-wise in months! I think Hockey’s budget was a great blessing for us. Now if Abbott would only do the decent thing and resign!

I had originally thought to have a blogging hiatus for a few weeks over the festive season. I need to do my tax, which is a major production – much ado about almost nothing, really – and some other personal stuff. On reflection, I think I’ll keep the blog open but at reduced volume. I’d hate to miss out if Abbott really did make an honest man of himself.

So as it stands I hope to get back to full production by about the third week in January. Certainly I plan to carry on from there, health permitting, while foreshadowing that we have booked a European holiday and river cruise down the Danube in October. We’ll certainly be back for the Paris climate conference in December.

I’ll leave you with this photo, packing up at Purni Bore in the Simpson Desert, which captures some of my mixed feelings about the year:

11_DSC04691_500

Politics & Government

Changing the barnacles

11 Comments

Abbott_Bishop_4394486-3x2-225

Would you believe Abbott has made 16 changes in all. Three barnacles have been dropped to the bottom of the ocean – Arthur Sinodinos, the already benched Assistant Treasurer, Defence Minister David Johnston and Brett Mason, Parliamentary Secretary to the Foreign Affairs Minister.

Some have had their role expanded. Ian Macfarlane is now Minister for Industry and Science; Christopher Pyne is now Minister for Education and Training.

The big movers are Kevin Andrews from Social Services to Defence, Scott Morrison from Immigration and Border Protection to Social Services, Peter Dutton from Health to Immigration and Sussan Ley from Assistant Education Minister to the cabinet post of Minister for Health and Sport.

Also Josh Frydenberg scored the Assistant Treasury ministry, whereas Hockey’s pick, Steve Ciobo, got a sideways flick as Parliamentary Secretary from Treasury to Foreign Affairs and Trade and Investment. Ciobo has been replaced at Treasury by newbie Kelly O’Dwyer.

Mungo MacCallum sees it as rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic as the ship founders on. Scott Morrison, he says, now has “an opportunity to prove that he can be as brutal with welfare recipients as he has been with refugees.”

Paula Matthewson thinks the reshuffle is built on paranoia rather than progress.

Tony Abbott’s ministry reshuffle may appear to be a reset in preparation for 2015, but in reality it is more about the PM’s paranoia and tenuous leadership than it is about his Government’s rejuvenation.

For example, the Victorian young guns have been rewarded to quell their noisy agitation over Peta Credlin.

Julie Bishop has lost a friend and fellow West Australian in David Johnston.

Scott Morrison, she thinks, has been given a poison chalice, “a way for Abbott to push through one of his toughest reform agendas while also reducing the appeal of one of his competitors.”

The future is not bright for Kevin Andrews and Peter Dutton:

Kevin Andrews’ move to Defence will likely see him begging to be let go by the next election, for the Department is known for chewing up and spitting out their civilian “masters”. The future doesn’t look particularly rosy for former Health Minister Peter Dutton either. Dutton may be a retired policeman but it’s difficult to see him bring the same steely resolve that served Morrison so well in the Immigration and Border Protection portfolio.

Overall:

Prime ministers usually reshuffle their ministry to provide a fresh aspect on their government while hopefully also evoking a sense of stability through the regeneration. But with one or two exceptions, like the promotion of Ley, Abbott’s reshuffle is characterised by concessions to antagonists, throwing competitors in the deep end, and leaving the deadwood to atrophy.

Norman Abjorensen takes a somewhat similar view. The big threat, he thinks, is from Julie Bishop. A familiar scenario is taking shape in Canberra:

It runs like this: persistently poor polling for both the prime minister and the government creates anxiety over the next election, especially among those in vulnerable seats; a path is beaten to the door of the hitherto loyal deputy leader, who just happens to be a woman; the message is blunt: you have to challenge or we are gone.

Hockey, he says, is no longer a threat:

Then there is Treasurer Joe Hockey, who was once laughably seen as a future leader, and is shown in the polls as the most unpopular minister and as the least regarded treasurer in the past 40 years. He is a poor communicator – always ready to deflect a hard question with a smirk or a sneer rather than an answer – who has palpably failed in framing a budget that he is unable to negotiate through parliament. This violates the cardinal rule of politics: that it is all about the art of the possible.

Abbott, he says, is moving from a position of weakness, so the changes are essentially minor. He couldn’t undertake a big call like sacking Hockey, which at least one powerful member of the business lobby has privately advocated.

I’m staggered that Social Services is considered a key economics ministry. We know that is where the most money is spent, and certainly the Minister gets to join the so-called Razor Gang.

Andrews to Defence is, I think, a clever move. Abbott no doubt wants to run defence, with a white paper and submarine contracts on the go. Also Matthewson is probably right in that Andrews will beg to be released after a year, allowing another reshuffle.

From these reactions it is clear that leadership speculation, much loved by the media, has begun in earnest and will continue unless Abbott can turn the polls in his favour. Meanwhile his attention has been drawn to his own office, with leaks, shuffling staff and concern about communication strategy.

Update: Tim Dunlop has done a great piece on the reshuffle. He reckons it’s

like changing who wears which colour skivvy in the Wiggles: it doesn’t make any difference, and they all end up singing the same old tunes.

Tony Abbott is still the Prime Minister. Joe Hockey is still the Treasurer. They are still committed to their budget and its underlying philosophy of market liberalism and a wholesale attack on the pillars of the welfare state.

Let’s focus on that, not which Wiggle is wearing which skivvy.

Climate Science

The end of the warming pause that wasn’t

3 Comments

The bottom line is that statistically there never was a recent ‘pause’ or ‘hiatus’ in warming. If you ever thought there was you’d have plenty of company, but 2014 sees temperatures returning to the trend line.

At RealClimate Stefan Rahmstorf took a look at global surface temperatures since the satellite record in 1979. He used Kevin Cowtan’s interactive temperature plotting and trend calculation tool and HadCRUT4 hybrid data, which now has the most sophisticated method to fill data gaps in the Arctic with the help of satellites. This is what he found:

trend1_600

Rahmstorf then looks at some shorter intervals using more recent starting dates. He finds:

There simply has been no statistically significant slowdown, let alone a “pause”.

He then displays an analysis done for Realclimate by Niamh Cahill of the School of Mathematical Sciences, University College Dublin using a technique called change point analysis. This time GISTEMP data from NASA GISS is used from 1880 to the present. 2014 was represented by January to October data, the latest available.

The algorithm used sorts through the data looking for changes in the trend lines, which it finds automatically. This is how it came out:

TempCP3_600

Change points were found approximately at 1912, 1940 and 1970. The trend since 1970 is firmly in place.

Tamino at Open Mind took a look at the same data. People often cherry pick a starting date so using a different statistical technique he examined whether there had been any change in trend starting from any year between 1990 and 2008. Often people choose a data set that suits their argument so he ran the technique over all eight commonly available data sets.

He could find no trend change – not even close.

I repeat: not only is there a lack of valid evidence of a slowdown, it’s nowhere near even remotely being close. And that goes for each and every one of the 8 data sets tested.

He then plots the GISTEMP data from 1970:

giss2_600

It’s all happening between the trend lines. Of course there are fluctuations, but none of significance. Not yet.

For a time the Hadley data simply left out the Arctic area where there are no weather stations. Of course the Arctic is warming faster than lower latitudes and it came to a point where this mattered. Recently they’ve corrected this by using satellite data, not directly, as the satellites measure the troposphere rather than the surface. I gather the satellite data is used comparatively to infer the surface temperature across the Arctic.

Looking back over the archive, there was a study by Cowtan and Way (see RealClimate and Climate clippings 89, Item 4) which compared the HadCRUT4 data of that time with ‘filled in’ data. This is how it looks:

Cowtan-600

Notice how the heavier corrected lines make 1998 a little cooler and recent peaks a little warmer.

Even so, I recall that Ross Garnaut in preparing his report about five years ago asked two leading statisticians to examine the trends. They said the long term warming trend was still in place. Seems they were right.

Climate Change & Sustainability, Climate Science

Climate clippings 118

4 Comments

1. Growth in CO2 slows

Global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuel use and cement production grew 2% in 2013 to the new record of 35.3 billion tonnes of CO2. This was about half the average for the last 10 years and less than global GDP growth of 3.1%.

2. Aradhna Tripati gets a gong

The Center for Biological Diversity presented its third annual E.O. Wilson Award for Outstanding Science in Biodiversity Conservation to Dr. Aradhna Tripati for her groundbreaking research on carbon dioxide’s role in climate change.

Tripati’s work revealed that the last time CO2 levels were as high as they are today was 15 million to 20 million years ago, when the distribution of plants and animals was dramatically different, global temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees warmer, and the sea level was 75 to 120 feet higher than today. Her research suggests that the CO2 threshold for maintaining year-round Arctic ice may be well below modern levels.

Converting from Fahrenheit to Celsius and feet to metres that would make 2.7 to 5.5°C and 23 to 36 metres.

I would caution that the shape of the ocean basins may have been different, but these are alarming findings.

3. 1000-year drought history of Queensland and New South Wales

By analysing ice cores Australian scientist have found that there were eight droughts in the last millennium that lasted more than five years, with one of the so-called mega droughts lasting for almost 40 years. That was back in the 12th century.

This tends to indicate that the Millennium Drought and the Big Dry from 1997 to 2009 were not unusual.

From the official news release:

Explaining the findings, Dr Vance said the ice core analysis had significantly enhanced our understanding of a relatively poorly understood phenomenon known as the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO).

The IPO describes a roughly 25-year cycle in the sea surface temperature, wind and other factors in the Pacific Ocean.

The IPO’s positive phase is closely linked with longer and more severe droughts in the United States and Australia. The risk of droughts occurring in Australia is higher during the IPO’s positive phase.

I’m not questioning the findings but how drought in Queensland and NSW can be derived from drilling ice cores in the Antarctic is not immediately obvious.

Where does this leaves global warming? The authors don’t say, but the clear implication is that severe droughts are part of the natural cycle. Warming is a given. The most recent analysis I recall is that drying along the southern edge of the continent has a climate change component. North of the Victorian border there is uncertainty.

4. Lifters or leaners?

Or backmarkers. UK PM David Cameron thinks Australia does not want to be a “backmarker” on climate change action. Global pressure will make us do more. Has he met our Tones?

Christian Downie thinks the real achievement of the Lima climate talks

wasn’t the goals set, but the fact that international talks like these make it increasingly hard for breakaway countries to ignore the issue.

John Kerry spells it out:

“If you are a big developed nation and you do not lead, you are part of the problem.”

Part of the problem indeed, and perhaps an active climate change vandal. Kieran Cooke reports that in Lima Australia was “lobbying for rules that undermine the integrity of the emissions accounting system”.

5. Antarctic sea ice

One of the conundrums of climate science has been the question of why the Antarctic sea ice has been expanding. Eric Steig at RealClimate takes a detailed look. One of the complexities is that the sea ice is expanding in some places and contracting in others. This, he says, rules out simplistic notions like an increase in westerly winds.

However, if you take into account the changes in all the wind patterns in the Antarctic you get a better match, indeed a good match.

Finally Steig says:

Not incidentally, changing winds also have a lot to do with what’s been happening to the Antarctic ice sheet (meaning the land-based glaciers, distinct from the sea ice). I’ll have another post on that later this month, or in the New Year.

Life, Sundries

Simpson Desert crossing 10: Cooper’s Creek to Emerald

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Len remembered a perfect camping place on Cooper’s Creek from a trip he’d taken with a friend a few years ago, so we eschewed the main camping area and headed down a side-track on the left. When we got there it just didn’t look right. We decided to walk through the bush along the river bank looking for the spot. After about 10 minutes we found it. Continue reading Simpson Desert crossing 10: Cooper’s Creek to Emerald →

Life, Politics & Government, Sundries

Saturday salon 20/12

9 Comments

voltaire_230

An open thread where, at your leisure, you can discuss anything you like, well, within reason and the Comments Policy. Include here news and views, plus any notable personal experiences from the week and the weekend.

For climate topics please use the most recent Climate clippings.

The gentleman in the image is Voltaire, who for a time graced the court of Frederick II of Prussia, known as Frederick the Great. King Fred loved to talk about the universe and everything at the end of a day’s work. He also used the salons of Berlin to get feedback in the development of public policy.

Fred would only talk in French; he regarded German as barbaric. Here we’ll use English.

The thread will be a stoush-free zone. The Comments Policy says:

The aim [of this site] is to provide a venue for people to contribute and to engage in a civil and respectful manner.

Here are a few bits and pieces that came to my attention last week.

1. Eight children dead

What can one say?!

Eight children from the same family are dead following a stabbing incident which has left the Cairns community in shock.

The 34-year-old mother of seven of the children is in hospital with chest and neck injuries and police say there is no safety threat to the public.

The victims are aged between 18 months and 15 years.

The injured woman is helping police with their inquiries.

Cairns children_2a9e6404-9727-4964-96d6-7b7f788e285e_500

There’s more at the BBC and The Guardian.

I heard initially that the woman called the ambulance, who alerted the police. There’s a story now that a 20 year-old sibling came to the house and called the police.

We are told that there are no suspects, but there is nothing to fear. It doesn’t make sense.

2. 132 children dead in Peshawar

And nine teachers.

The Pakistani city of Peshawar is burying its dead after a Taliban attack at a school killed at least 132 children and nine staff.

Seven Taliban attackers wearing bomb vests cut through a wire fence to gain entry to the school, before launching an attack on an auditorium where children were taking an exam.

Gunmen then went from room to room at the military-run school, shooting pupils and teachers where they found them in a siege that lasted eight hours, survivors say.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif declared three days of mourning over the massacre, which has sparked national outrage.

Mr Sharif pledged to avenge a “national tragedy unleashed by savages”.

Ken Fraser says that the attacks, while repellent and unforgivable, were not the work of mindless monsters. He explains the complex web of political interests and and cultural factors at play.

Samina Yasmeen warns against the danger of desensitisation. She says:

unless the resolve is sustained, with active participation from all political parties in supporting the moves by the military to eliminate terrorism, the situation will not change.

This requires an end to the oppositional politics being played out in Pakistan by PTI but also requires the government to take solid measures to train national law enforcement agencies, and strengthen counter-terrorism agencies.

But:

The religious fraternity needs to promote the message of peace, openly counter the reading of religious edicts as justifying offensive and indiscriminate killings of citizens and soldiers in Pakistan and elsewhere.

3. ‘Shirtfront’ is word of the year

The runner up, apparently, was “Team Australia”. Frankly, either we have been particularly unimaginative or the Australian National Dictionary Centre has lost the plot.

4. Early Christmas present for Bill Shorten

I think Newspoll didn’t bother, but Roy Morgan did and found that ALP support had surged to 57.5% (up 4%), well ahead of the L-NP 42.5% (down 4%) on a two-party preferred basis. This is what it looks like:

Morgan D 2014_cropped_600

5. Gillard cleared of criminality

Gillard was cleared of criminality by the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption although they found some issues with her professional judgement and her evidence.

You might recall that this was a big issue late in 2012, when the Roy Morgan poll above shows that Labor under Gillard was competitive in the polls. Julie Bishop led a merciless campaign in Question Time on Gillard’s credibility with Abbott eventually making a direct accusation of criminality.

Gillard says she is owed an apology. She is right.

6. Crook’s a crook

OK, there is the presumption of innocence, but things look a bit crook for Andrew Crook:

Clive Palmer’s media adviser and confidant Andrew Crook has been granted bail after being charged over the alleged kidnapping of a National Australia Bank executive on an Indonesian island.

Palmer reckons it’s a plot to embarrass him politically.

We do these things in Queensland to keep the nation amused.

Life, Social Science and Society

Sydney siege

67 Comments

By my count we are now going to have four inquiries into the Lindt Cafe siege – a coroner’s inquiry, internal incident reviews by the NSW and Commonwealth police and a federal-state review undertaken by the Prime Minister’s department and the NSW Premier’s Department.

The latter will include an an investigation of how gunman Man Haron Monis slipped through state and federal security and legal nets, at his arrival in Australia, the decision to grant him of asylum, permanent residency and citizenship, as well as the social security support he received. I can’t see what social security support has to do with anything. I’m more interested in how he came by a pump-action shotgun.

Greg Barns believes bail laws are already an infringement on our liberty. The possession of personal freedom and the presumption of innocence are important principles in our society. New laws in NSW appear to contain a presumption against bail.

It is inappropriate for us to be second guessing what the magistrates had before them and we tend to be wise after the event about the risk that Monis constituted.

New Matilda details what we know officially. Listening to media reports there is a fair bit we know beyond that, but I’m happy to wait for the official reports.

I’ve yet to get a clear idea of what the gunman’s motivation was. What demands was he making to police, or was he just creating an incident and waiting to be shot one way or another? It’s possibly significant that the cafe was opposite Channel 7. There is a suggestion this morning that he wanted to talk to the Prime Minister. What were we supposed to make of the banner held up to the window?

Lindt1L_0

Rachel Kohn discusses the inadequacy of the lone wolf theory. Monis was bad as well as mad and had a record that should have given concern. It does seem as though Monis may have written off as a harmless fruitcake when he was dropped from the watch list. It has been pointed out that resources to monitor individuals are always limited, so judgements need to be made.

Randa Abdel-Fattah asks whether we take crimes against women seriously enough. I gather here she is referring to the fact that he got bail for being an accessory to his wife’s murder and, separately, 40 sexual assault cases. Others have pointed out the weakness of the prosecution case for accessory to murder, also that both charges can vary from the relatively trivial to the extremely grave, depending on the specifics. We are in no position to know.

Also from Abdel-Fattah:

There is another issue though, too. And that is whether Australian Muslims will be entitled to grieve the deaths of the two hostages and the trauma suffered by the survivors in a way that does not make their empathy and grief contingent on condemning, apologizing and distancing themselves from the gunman.

David Connery reviews security aspects of the case:

While it’s still early to be analysing a situation that’s just concluded with two of our compatriots dead, the Martin Place siege this week shows that Australia’s high-level arrangements for responding to a terrorist attack are largely effective.

Still, we can expect to see a few near-term changes to our counter-terrorism arrangements in areas like public alerts and compensation for victims.

If the attack had occurred overseas, and was declared a terrorist attack, the Commonwealth government would offer compensation payments to victims and their relatives.

There is a need to resolve the long-running negotiations between the Commonwealth and the states over the allocation of dedicated broadband spectrum for emergency services.

The incident highlights how vulnerable we are to a lone actor.

Elsewhere Rachel Jacobs tells how #illridewithyou began.

Yes, I know that #illridewithyou is not enough in itself but I think it indicates how far we’ve come from the general islamophobia that was rife after the Twin Towers event in 2001.

Politics & Government, Social Science and Society

Hockey: dark strategy or a muddle?

2 Comments

Some of each, I think.

In one sense the MYEFO (Mid-year Economic and Fiscal outlook) statement was not so bad. The bottom line is $10 billion worse and the budget will reach a surplus a year later, in 2019 instead of 2018. Ross Gittens gives Hockey a tick for not panicking.

Yet the MYEFO assumes that the Senate will co-operate in the new year and pass all those lovely cuts to higher education and welfare benefits along with other measures like the GP visits co-payment scheme.

Laura Tingle finds little to show that the Government has a clue on what to do about the collapse in revenue from the terms of trade and long-term fiscal consolidation. It’s blindingly obvious that we need to pay more tax, but the Government has taken the soft option of soaking the unseen poor by taking $3.7 billion from foreign aid.

Ben Eltham in an excellent budget review finds the Coalition’s economic policy “hopelessly confused”.

Last week Ian McAuley took a look at the Government’s economic strategies, which he finds based on three planks:

The first plank, revealed in the 2014 Budget, is an attempt to tilt income distribution towards the already well-off. The idea is that, given enough breaks, the rich will save and invest, providing employment for everyone else.

It’s a policy based on heroic assumptions about how the rich behave, most notably an assumption that rich people are rich because they are clever and industrious. Suffice to say that this was the disastrous approach known as “supply side economics” or “Reaganonomics” in America in the 1980s. If it stimulates any employment it is likely to be among workers in BMW car plants in Bavaria and real-estate agents in Sydney’s north shore.

The Australia Institute’s report The budget’s hidden gender agenda points out that this also favours men over women.

The second plank is about sustaining material living standards as long as possible on the back of the resource boom.

The benefits of the resources boom have been distributed in tax cuts and middle class welfare. Wayne Swan in his book The Good Fight points out that Peter Costello received a total of $334 billion in revenue upgrades and managed to spend $314 billion of it. A once in a century chance to upgrade our infrastructure was missed.

The Coalition’s third plank is pursuit of “small government”, even though Australia has one of the smallest public sectors of all developed countries, and we have pushed privatization to the extent that we are paying far more for poorer services than we would be had we retained public ownership of assets such as roads, airports and energy and water utilities.

Yet Eltham tells us:

With spending at 25.9 per cent of GDP, the Abbott government is indeed spending more than Julia Gillard’s government – more, in fact, than every year of the Rudd-Gillard era, except the stimulus year of 2009-10.

I’ve always thought there was an ideological dimension to Howard-Costello’s distribution of goodies. We are expected to take more responsibility for ourselves. But why does Labor follow suit? Purely for political reasons, I think. To avoid the ‘big spender’ tag and demonstrate economic management.

Labor might do better to take a different and more honest approach. Australia could become a better, fairer and more decent place to live if we taxed and spent to, say, 30% of GDP. We’d still be near the bottom of the league tables.

I’ll leave you with this graph of the underlying cash balance as a percentage of GDP from MYEFO via the AFR:

Cash balance 2 001_cropped_600

You’ll notice that Swan had the balance down almost to minus one percent before Hockey came and created a mess. I agree with Chris Bowen, Hockey is simply not up to the job.

Climate Action, Climate Policy & Planning

Weak climate deal salvaged in Lima

2 Comments

Seems the most important thing that can be said about the Lima climate change conference (earlier post here) was that it did not fail. The prospect is still there for a deal in Paris next December, but it looks like being a weak deal – a deal that does not limit warming to two degrees, a deal that will not be legally binding, and a deal that may lack some of the major participants.

The most exciting thing about the conference was that the reference to ensuring the world has net-zero emissions by 2050 is still there:

The mitigation section of the draft text states countries must aim for “a long-term zero emissions sustainable development pathway” that is “consistent with carbon neutrality / net zero emissions by 2050, or full decarbonization by 2050 and/or negative emissions by 2100.”

Giles Parkinson says this was explicitly supported by over 100 countries. Julie Bishop was not bloody-minded enough to insist that it be removed.

The phasing out of fossil fuels as a reality is now part of the conversation and capital for fossil fuel exploration and development should begin to dry up.

Once again The Carbon Brief provides a handy summary:

  • Lima Call for Climate Action outlines main aspects of a new global climate deal.
  • Keeps goal of limiting global warming to less than two degrees.
  • Contains reference to ensuring the world has net-zero emissions by 2050.
  • Doesn’t clarify if a new deal will be legally binding.
  • Doesn’t give countries the power to alter other country commitments.
  • Doesn’t offer new assurances on the flow of climate finance.
  • Leaves all options on the table regarding compensation for countries worst hit by climate change.

Ambition

The principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibility’ is enshrined by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Accordingly in the Kyoto deal only the developed countries were required to limit emissions.

This time everyone is going to have to front with a climate mitigation plan, but

countries must work to ensure a 2015 deal “reflects the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in light of different national circumstances.”

Initial plans should be submitted by March. Australia has said that we will submit ours by June. Work has not yet begun, but it is clear that Tony Abbott himself is going to take control of the process.

The UN will do an analysis and report on the overall impact of the country targets by November. There is no chance that it will add up to a plan to limit warming to two degrees.

The EU wants ‘contributions’, once established to stand for 10 years. Some other countries favour five years, for greater flexibility.

Legally binding

The EU, some of the smaller countries and Australia want targets, once set, to be legally binding. There seems no chance that this will happen. Luke Kemp at The Conversation says that for the US to agree two-thirds of the Senate have to vote in favour. They won’t vote for a legally binding agreement and China won’t sign up unless the US does.

Frankly, I can’t see the US Senate agreeing to any kind of a climate deal in the foreseeable future, so the Paris deal, like Kyoto, may have to start without some of the major players.

Kemp says that Australia was softening its stance, so fears that Australia was playing a game to torpedo the talks seem to be misplaced.

Accountability

Each country’s official plan to cut emissions and tackle climate change will be known as an ‘intended nationally determined contribution’ (INDC). The conference could not agree whether INDCs should be scrutinised.

The EU is willing to agree to the INDC system if governments can scrutinise each country’s INDCs, and suggest how they may need to change to increase ambition. Other countries, such as China and India, are very much against such scrutiny, known in the process as ‘ex-ante review’.

Lima’s draft text doesn’t determine whether the INDCs will be subjected to official review.

I’d say forget it.

What next?

There was more, of course, including financial assistance (never satisfactory). The draft document contains as many as 11 alternative versions of the text. There is masses of work to do.

Work will continue in various working parties and in a major conference in Bonn in June. No doubt discussions will continue in other forums, such as the G20 in Turkey. The next step is to submit INDCs by March. We’ll cheat by looking at everyone else’s homework. So will the Abbottistas be proudly recalcitrant, or will we track near the back of the peloton but try to pretend we are in the middle?

Elsewhere Graham Readfearn has annotated Julie Bishop’s speech.

Climate Action, Climate Policy & Planning, Climate Science

Two degrees

10 Comments

Carbon Brief has compiled a series of three posts on the so-called 2°C ‘guardrail’ used in global warming discourse:

This post will pick out some of the highlights, but is not a substitute for reading the posts. Continue reading Two degrees →

Life, Politics & Government, Science, Sundries

Saturday salon 13/12

2 Comments

voltaire_230

An open thread where, at your leisure, you can discuss anything you like, well, within reason and the Comments Policy. Include here news and views, plus any notable personal experiences from the week and the weekend.

For climate topics please use the most recent Climate clippings.

The gentleman in the image is Voltaire, who for a time graced the court of Frederick II of Prussia, known as Frederick the Great. King Fred loved to talk about the universe and everything at the end of a day’s work. He also used the salons of Berlin to get feedback in the development of public policy.

Fred would only talk in French; he regarded German as barbaric. Here we’ll use English.

The thread will be a stoush-free zone. The Comments Policy says:

The aim [of this site] is to provide a venue for people to contribute and to engage in a civil and respectful manner.

Here are a few bits and pieces that came to my attention last week.

1. CSIRO cuts


From ABC Rural:

The CSIRO is set to lose one staff member in five over the next two years.

The effect of the Federal Government’s cut of $114 million is now becoming clearer, with at least four regional research sites under threat.

National organiser for the CSIRO Staff Association, part of the CPSU, Paul Girdler, says 878 staff are to be cut over two years, until June 2015.

“It’s over 100 more than originally forecast.

“Over two years, the CSIRO is losing 21.5 per cent of its workforce, or one in five jobs.

“This new analysis demonstrates the cuts are even worse than when they were announced.”

Given the cuts last year, the total tally is 1,400 jobs at the Science Organisation.

CSIRO Chairman Simon McKeon says the organisation has “cut into the bone”.

We should be redoubling if not doubling our science effort.

Julian Cribb, science writer and author of The Coming Famine, says every government since Labor under Bob Hawke has slashed the CSIRO.

I simply can’t understand Industry Minister Ian McFarlane saying year-on-year funding is increasing, unless you cut overall first and then increase the funding each year. In which case he is intentionally misleading.

There’s more on the 7.30 Report.

Stephen Luntz at Crikey explains that many scientists will have unfinished projects, which doesn’t help them establish a reputation to find a job elsewhere.

Those made redundant include Nobel prize contender San Thang.

2. Farewell Stella Young

Stella Young, comedian, journalist and disability advocate, has died aged 32. I gather her death was unexpected. She will be missed.

3. Gillard’s My Story

I finished Gillard’s My story a while ago and have been meaning to report on it. Generally speaking I agree with Natalie Mast’s review but have a query about her final summation:

My Story is a substantial piece of work, yet there are times where policy wonks will be wishing for greater detail on negotiations or even why certain policy decisions were taken. Still in a work this size, limits must be made. For the most part Gillard’s focus is on key issues and those close to her heart.

The lucid presentation of Gillard’s case ultimately provides a cogent defence of the reasons for the challenge to Rudd, the difficulties her government faced, both internal and external, and an insight into Gillard herself.

I thought her detail on individual policies was more than one would expect. As PM she was impressively across a wide range of briefs and her recall is astonishing.

Lucid, yes, also very reflective and self-critical.

The first 130 pages tell the story of how she came to power and governed. In the following 331 pages she takes policy areas one by one, explaining how and why decisions were taken and in some cases an assessment of what still needs to be done, but laced with back stories and relevant anecdotes. The book forms a valuable resource.

Natalie Mast is right in saying she supported Rudd to the hilt and praises him where she thinks he did good work. I too found it surprising that she virtually took over organising his office for him. Also in areas such as health she ended up running the policy internally because Rudd was incapable of doing so.

Surprises include her attitude to gay marriage, which has always been painted as conservative. She says her brand of feminism historically saw marriage in general as an oppressive institution, so it was marriage that she opposed, not the gay bit. She concedes that views have now moved on.

I’ve come the the conclusion that Rudd probably did cause the leaks during the 2010 election campaign. Probably. Gillard reckons it wasn’t to bring her down, Rudd wanted to be foreign minister in her government and she was intending to give him something else. She was told the leaks would continue until she changed her mind. When she conceded his wish the leaks stopped.

One thing is certain, she will never respect Rudd as a person, a view he probably reciprocates.

Finally, I’d love to say more about the misogyny speech. Spoken unscripted with such eloquence and passion, yet she wasn’t personally angry. There is a lesson in there, but it will have to wait for another time.

Climate change, sustainability, plus sundry other stuff