New Australia

Climate Change

Melting ice at Cape York, Greenland. Greenland is about the size of Queensland and has an average ice- depth of 2.1km - or 7 times the height of Eureka Tower. (Image: Wikipedia)

Human-induced Climate Change caused by the release of fossil carbon into the atmosphere as CO₂ and CH₄ is the most serious threat to our biosphere.

The World of Climate Change

A Largely Uninhabitable World. The consequences of a 4 degrees temperature rise. See NewScientist article How to survive the coming century. (Click to enlarge.)

Carbon Trading

After all the fossil industries have been compensated Carbon Trading is too weak to achive anything. Carbon Trading has been repeatedly ruled out by India and China so will never happen on a global scale.

Climate Change Solutions

NewAustralia proposes to address this problem in the following ways. Click the link for greater detail:

• Climate Taxes - on Carbon Dioxide and Methane emissions with all net revenue used to abolish or reduce other taxes such as income or payroll.
• Renewable Energy - after the Carbon Tax has been introduced many more renewable energy generation options become economic in their own right, or at least require a far smaller subsidy.
• Energy Efficiency - with a Carbon Tax in place the economic case for efficiency becomes far clearer.
• Reformed Agriculture - Switching to non-ruminant animals such as kangaroos for meat production and to industrial hemp for fibre production. No Income Tax on Carbon Farmers.
• Sustainable Transport - reducing demand on fossil fuels by providing better Public Transport.
• Decreasing Population - by removing incentives to have large families and reducing economic migration.
• Taking it Global - once introduced in locally the above can be taken global. Since none of the involve a net change in taxation, spending or employment Australia is not disadvantaged by these measures being introduced locally first.

Other measures such as spending all the Eco Tax revenue subsidising renewables and efficiency could solve the Climate problem faster. However, the Greens have had no success selling this idea to the Australian electorate.

Environmental solutions that people don't vote for are irrelevant.

What's the NewAustralia Reduction Target?

NewAustralia advocates action not targets.

We do not have a specific limit on carbon reduction for Australia such as "40% by 2020". Instead we advocate a massive shift to Climate Taxes and Renewable Energy. It is too easy to set some target then leave action to a future administration.

What's the NewAustralia Carbon Dioxide Stabilisation Goals?

Again, NewAustralia does not have a specific target of reducing CO₂ to (say) ~280 ppm. Setting targets achieves nothing. However, a high climate tax regime and other carbon capture measures would be expected to steer the economy in that direction fairly rapidly.

The Data

Carbon dioxide variations over the last 400,000 years, showing the sharp rise since the industrial revolution. (Wikipedia)

Instrumental Temperature record of the last 150 years. (Wikipedia)

Geo-Sequestration

In 1986 1.6 million tonnes of CO2 leaked from Lake Nyos in Cameroon killing 1,700 people within 20 km of the lake as well as 3,500 livestock. (Image: Wikipedia)

NewAustralia does not support Geo - Sequestration as the long term security of the gas cannot be assured. Unlike nuclear waste, CO₂ remains volatile and will not break down into less harmful components over the millennia.

Plan B: Geo-Engineering

As the likelihood of getting governments to take climate change seriously in time start to fade NewAustralia accepts that other possible solutions should be examined.

These include:

• Aerosols: Particles in the stratosphere reflect the sun's rays. (Risk to Ozone layer, unknown weather effects, fails to prevent ocean acidification.)
• Cloud seeding. (Patchy success, unknown weather effects, fails to prevent ocean acidification.)
• Space mirrors in space between the Sun and the Earth. (Big impact, huge cost, fails to prevent ocean acidification.)
• Bio-char based solutions to absorb and store carbon dioxide.
• White roofs or gardens on all buildings to reduce urban impact of climate change. (Small impact.)
• Planting large areas with new forests. (Large area of arable land needed)
• Ocean fertilisation. (environmental problems, small effect.)

Many of these 'solutions' are problematic, impractical and/or ineffectual but they should all be examined in detail. (See NewScientist article Hacking the planet.)

New Scientist Climate Page

For all the latest science on Climate Change see the NewScientist Climate Change pages.

BeyondZeroEmissions

A site suggesting ways to quickly reduce Victorian CO₂ emissions to zero and below.

Climate cash up in smoke

15^th Feb 2011: More than $5.5 billion has been spent by federal governments during the past decade on climate change programs that are delivering only small reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. more...

Carbon Credits Scam

2^nd July 2009: How Goldman Sachs has created and exploited succesive bubbles to enrich itself and how it plans to exploit the next bubble: Carbon Credits. more...

Symbolic climate pledge

9^th Jul 2009: "The G8 agreement was overshadowed by major developing nations rejecting even an aspirational goal for 2050. They wanted to see rich nations commit to emissions reductions of 40 per cent by 2020 before agreeing to a long-term goal." more...

India Rejects Cap

27^th May 2009: India states again that it wants the same cap per head as Australia...which is why a global ETS will not work. more...

Politicians Won't Act

15^th Apr 2009: Almost nine out of 10 climate scientists do not believe political efforts to restrict global warming to 2 degrees will succeed.  more...

Wilkins ice shelf breaks up

7^th Apr 2009: Accelerating warming in the Antarctic causes the Wilkins ice shelf to break up.  more...

Scrap emissions trading

23^rd Feb 2009: "Economists on the left and the right who are concerned about global warming are now openly opposed to carbon trading as proposed by the Government and in favour of a carbon tax." more...

5% Target Announced

Rudd government announces pathetically weak greenhouse target + vast subsidies for coal miners and polluters. Surprise, surprise!  more...

Act fast on emissions: Swan

30^th Oct 2008: AUSTRALIA could lower the cost of tackling global warming by 15% if it moves quickly rather than waiting until the world is ready to act, according to Treasury modelling to be released today. more...

Planning for a flood

29^th Sep 2008: "...growing anxiety among scientists about the pace of climate change, with key indicators of planet's geophysical system running ahead of the modelling by as much as 50 years. " more...

Garnaut is wrong

9^th Sept 2008: "Three authors with the UN's climate change panel told The Age Professor Garnaut had made a mistake by advising the Government to accept a deal that would all but guarantee environmental and social disaster. " more...

Surprise at ice shelf collapse

12^th July 2008: "Scientists surprised by midwinter collapse of massive ice shelf...satellite images show losses growing in recent days, so that at last sight, only a thin and fractured ice bridge held the bulk of the giant shelf in place. Its loss would put the rest of the 14,500- square-kilometre ice shelf at risk, the European Space Agency said. " more...

'No return' fears on climate change

12^th June 2008: "...Professor Brook said a global temperature increase of three degrees might result in the collapse of the Amazon rainforest, a four-degree increase would lead to the displacement of hundreds of million of people and the extinction of up to half the world's species, and a five-degree increase would create an ice-free planet and sea- level increases of 80 metres." more...