Category: Australia

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Australia Denial

February 28, 2007 – Australian denialists release idiotic regurgitated pamphlet, as part of attempted spoiler operation

Eighteen years ago, on this day, February 28th, 2007,

2007 Nine Facts about Climate Change Ray Evans [Originally published in November 2006 as a PDF (click here, 1.5 Mb). Launched in Canberra by Sir Arvi Parbo on 28 February 2007]

http://www.lavoisier.com.au/articles/greenhouse-science/climate-change/evans2007-4.php

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 384ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the Lavoisier Group had been banging on since 2000 to the partial embarrassment of would-be allies. Now that climate was so steadily back on the agenda, the old war horses like Ray Evans were saddling up for another battle, possibly one last battle. 

And the date, of course, is to coincide with a Labor Party summit in Parliament House where Kevin Rudd would talk about “the great moral challenge of our generation.”

What’s interesting about this one is that senior business figure Avi Parbo, by this time fairly ancient and a major figure in 15 years earlier in seducing Hawke’s Labor Party was lending his name to this tosh. RDS?

What I think we can learn from this is that for every action, there is an equal and spittle-flecked reaction, maybe not equal, but there’ll be one, because denialists want to provide sympathetic journalists with an opportunity to do a “yes, but” story.

What happened next

Evans kept pushing his nonsense faded and died in I think about 2014. But denialism did not die, and never will.

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Also on this day: 

February 28, 1984 – Carbon Dioxide and the Greenhouse Effect hearings

Feb 28, 2003- Australian business lobby switches from opposition to “no position” on Kyoto ratification #auspol

February 28, 2010 – Australian Prime Minister says won’t walk away from climate. (Then does, obvs.)

Categories
Australia United States of America

February 27, 2002 – an embarrassing “technology partnership” is launched (as Kyoto spoiler attempt)

Twenty three years ago, on this day, February 27th, 2002,

Climate Action Partnership Announced Between Australia and the United States

The governments of the United States and Australia today announced an agreement to establish a Climate Action Partnership. The agreement was reached following meetings on climate change held in Washington this week between Dr. David Kemp, Australian Minister for the Environment and Heritage, and several senior members of the U.S. Administration, including: EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman, Chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality James Connaughton, Deputy Secretary of Energy Francis Blake, and Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky.

The U.S.-Australia Climate Action Partnership will involve the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Commerce, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the U.S. Department of State and their Australian counterparts.

The initial meeting will be coordinated by Under Secretary of State Dobriansky and Dr. Kemp.

The partnership will focus on practical approaches toward dealing with climate change.

Informal working groups will involve officials, under senior-level leadership, from the Departments of Commerce, Energy and State and the Environmental Protection Agency, and their Australian counterpart agencies, as well as research bodies and industry. They will focus on such issues as emissions measurement and accounting, climate change science, stationary energy technologies, engagement with business to create economically efficient climate change solutions, agriculture and land management and collaboration with developing countries to build capacity to deal with climate change.
Released on February 27, 2002

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 373ppm. As of 2025 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that George W. Bush had already pulled the US out of negotiations around the Kyoto Protocol. Everyone assumed that Howard, sooner or later, would announce that Australia was going to follow this because of the 1997 leak (LINK).  and also Howard wanting to remain in total lockstep with the Americans, especially after September 11. But more generally, Australia has always been a 51st state or colony since 1942.

If you’re not going to ratify Kyoto, then you need something else to soothe potentially worried voters. The most obvious something else is “tchnology will save the day.” It’s a brilliant narrative because it goes with the grain of technophilia, and because you can dismiss opponents of it as Luddites.

Here we see the Federal Environment Minister, David Kemp, who’s replaced Robert Hill, at the US Embassy, wittering about technology. 

What I think we can learn from this: There’s no bullshit so humiliating that greasy pole climbers in vassal states won’t eat it up and ask for seconds.

What happened next

These various “Technology Partnerships” took up a lot of bandwidth and achieved nothing, And the emissions kept climbing

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Also on this day: 

February 27, 1988 – Canberra “Global Change” conference ends

February 27, 1989 – Barron’s “Climate of Fear” shame…

February 27, 1992 – climate denialists continue their effective and, ah, well EVIL, work

Feb 27, 2003 – the “FutureGen” farce begins…

Categories
Australia

February 26, 2007 – ABC’s Four Corners tackles climate (again)

Eighteen years ago, on this day, February 26th, 2007,

Four Corners documentary – Read extended interviews, key reports and international commentary on the global warming debate.

Date: 26/02/2007

CLIMATE CHANGE REPORTS

http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/129911/20141213-0133/www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2007/s1857355.htm

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 384ppm. As of 2025 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that in sort of September, 2006 the climate issue had burst back on to the Australian political agenda thanks to the Millennium drought, Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth, the Stern Review, etc, There had been a massive “walk against warming”, and the question over as well, what was going to replace the Kyoto Protocol, and would Australia be in it?

 By now Kevin Rudd had seized control of the Australian Labor Party from Kim Beasley, and was using climate as one of the sticks to beat John Howard with. So climate was extremely salient, and of course Four Corners, which is the ABCs flagship current affairs program had already tackled climate repeatedly in the 90s. In early 2006 it had broken the story about the “greenhouse mafia.” 

What I think we can learn from this is that when you’re on the upswing of an issue attention cycle iI feeds on itself. It’s easy to write more stories. The public’s appetite for more stories has not been sated

What happened next is that climate stayed high on the political agenda for a surprisingly long time. This was because no solution was successfully implemented. Then the minority government of Julia Gillard, between 2010 and 2013 needed to push through carbon pricing legislation (this was exceptionally bloody). 

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

References

Xxx

Also on this day: 

Feb 26, 1981 – Science writer warns readers about the greenhouse in the Guardian….

February 26, 1988 – Australian climate scientist Graeme Pearman warns of “Dramatic Warming”

 Feb 26, 1998 – Australian “clean coal” is on the way (again).

February 26, 2014 – Advanced Propaganda for Morons

Categories
Australia Carbon Pricing

February 25, 2003 – Australian Treasury says “carbon pricing. It’s not rocket science”

Twenty two years ago, on this day, February 25th, 2003,

In an attachment to a cabinet memorandum dated 25 February 2003, Treasury warned that “the current approach to domestic emissions mitigation is not a sustainable long term approach, with its heavy reliance on spending programs, prescriptive regulation and ‘picking winners’”.

Treasury said this would come “at a very high economic cost” whereas any credible long-term climate change strategy must involve shifting the bulk of the responsibility to emitters.

It said a broad-based market mechanism, such as an ETS, had the benefit of “inducing a least-cost path to reducing emissions and best positioning the economy to respond to future developments” https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/jan/01/liberal-coalition-cabinet-papers-emissions-

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 376ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that in June, 2002 John Howard had said that he would not be putting Australia’s membership of participation in the Kyoto Protocol forward for ratification,e. Australia would be outside. 

But the climate issue was still live, with the Millennium drought ongoing and various attempts to sensitize people. There had been an attempt to get an emissions trading scheme through Howard’s cabinet, in August of 2000. That had been defeated thanks to Nick Minchin as the front person. And at this point, I suspect it was fairly clear that there was going to be another attempt at putting an ETS through. Treasury was simply saying what was obvious .

What I think we can learn from this is that there really was, among people who work on the economy, not a lot of debate about the need for some sort of price on carbon. That’s what you do. You raise the price of things that are causing harm, and hopefully you use the money to research things that will cause less harm. That’s the theory anyway.

What happened next Howard would literally, single-handedly killed off the emissions trading scheme later, in 2003. The emissions kept climbing, and we are absolutely toast. 

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Also on this day: 

 February 25, 1981 – National Party senator nails the climate problem

Feb 25 1992- business groups predict economic chaos if action is taken on #climate

Feb 25, 2007 – “Clean Coal Initiative” as move in game of one-dimensional electoral chess #auspol

February 25, 2011 – Alan Jones versus sanity

Categories
Australia Carbon Pricing

February 24, 2011 – the fateful press conference of Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the Greens Bob Brown…

Fourteen years ago, on this day, February 24th, 2011,

She announced this in her courtyard, alongside the Green party (as for the multi-party committee the previous year) and this time also bringing in the independent MPs. Look, it said, parliamentary numbers are locked in, this is not a hypothetical any more – she had the will, and it would be done. An hour later in question time the PM would describe the carbon price as ‘a scheme that would start with a fixed price for a fixed period, effectively like a tax’ – no lawyer language or weasel words, no hiding: she was going to make the case.

I was one of those who thought it seemed like the best of a bad lot of options at the time.

Instead, it became proof that she’d lied.

(Cooney, 2015: 87)

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 392ppm. As of 2025 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the 2010 Federal election had led to a hung parliament (not as much fun as it sounds, say the ‘comics’). This meant that neither Labor nor the Coalition could form a government without getting the agreement of a bunch of independents (and one Green). And most of the independents wanted… a carbon price. So Julia Gillard signed on the dotted line and created a Multi-Party Committee on Climate Change. The Liberals and Nationals were invited, but declined to take part. The MPCCC beavered away and on this day a press conference was held. The evening held extra horrors for the PM, who – and this is hard to believe – had not workshopped/rehearsed a response to the obvious question “How come you’re introducing a carbon price when you said days before the last election that you wouldn’t?” 

Here’s some more quotes –

Prime Minister Julia Gillard called a media conference for mid-morning on 24 February 2011 to announce the Discussion Paper on a proposed carbon mechanism. It was a showing of the prime minister flanked by other MPCCCC members from the Labor Party, the Greens, Rob Oakeshott and me. Before I went down to join the group for a photo my policy adviser, John Clements, cautioned me about standing with the group. He thought that being seen with the Greens might be interpreted as agreeing with their agenda. He didn’t quite say it would be, ‘A courageous decision, Mr Windsor,’ in the best Yes Minister’s Sir Humphrey voice, but that’s what he meant.

(Windsor, 2015: 137)

It is my greatest regret that I did not provide more fearless advice to Julia to avoid this error [tax/fixed price]. Labor’s carbon price was an emissions trading scheme and we should have argued that until we were blue in the face.

(Combet, 2014: 252)

Within twenty-four hours the ‘no carbon tax’ election pledge cut through the electorate like a scalpel. Every media interview for months was dominated by a broken promise that was falsely marketed as a ‘lie’. Debate on climate change and carbon pricing was derailed by the poisonous politics. My job was to try to make the science and policy the issues once again.

(Combet, 2014: 252)

On 24 February 2011, six months after the election, a proud Julia Gillard announced agreement in principle between Labor and the Greens on a carbon pricing scheme for Australia. The Greens and the independents stood beside her in the prime minister’s courtyard, Bob Brown given virtually equal status. Gillard was making minority government work. In the process she signed her death warrant as prime minister.

(Kelly, 2014:362)

Abbott’s media conference the same day saw one of the most brutal assaults by an Opposition leader in a generation. Labor never saw it coming. Abbott called Gillard’s position ‘an utter betrayal of the Australian people’ and predicted a people’s revolt. He enshrined the issue as trust: ‘If the Australian people could not trust the Prime Minister on this, they can’t trust her on anything.’ He said ‘the price of this betrayal will be paid every day by every Australian’ in terms of higher power prices. Abbott launched a campaign that would make Gillard unelectable. Yet most of the ALP thought they had just negotiated a minority government triumph.

(Kelly, 2014:362)

What I think we can learn from this is that optics matter.

What happened next?  An indescribably wild six month fight about carbon pricing, with it on the front page of the Australian “newspaper” almost every day…

See also all the misogynistic crap about “Ju-Liar,” “Ditch the Witch” and “Bob Brown’s Bitch”

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Categories
Australia

 February 23, 1993 – Peter Walsh spouting his tosh again

Thirty two years ago, on this day, February 23rd, 1993, Peter Walsh’s brain vomit confronted readers.

The substance of O’Brien’s paper was that greenhouse scaremongering – embraced and promoted by the chattering classes – was wildly speculative, potentially dangerous and, to the extent that it had any scientific basis, was based on dated estimates of temperature and sea level rises which in most cases the original authors had revised downwards. Moreover, the scientific findings of the 1990 International Panel on Climate Change had been widely misrepresented.

Walsh, P. (1993) PUTTING GREENHOUSE IN ORDER The Australian Financial Review, February 23, page 17

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 357ppm. As of 2025 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Peter Walsh had stopped being an MP at the 1990 Federal election. The former Treasurer, perhaps suffering Relevance Deprivation Syndrome, had thrown himself into various causes, including greenhouse denial. This particular column was a gloating attack on the ACF’s Mark Diesendorf.

What I think we can learn from this

Old White Men who’ve had all the power they’ll have but still breathe: what are you gonna do?

What happened next

Walsh went on to be a leading light in the Laughable Group Sorry “Lavoisier” Group.

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Categories
Australia Carbon Capture and Storage

February 21, 2004 – “Turning coal clean and green.” Sure. Any day now.

Twenty one years ago, on this day, February 22nd, 2004, we were promised clean coal…

JUDGING by the heavy hitters attending a conference on the Gold Coast this week, geosequestration is about to get a substantial workover in Australia in the next few years.

Geosequestration is the capture of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and placing them underground. To some environmentalists the concept is about as popular as toxic waste.

For Australia’s biggest export industry, coal, geosequestration may be the difference between death and survival.

Wilson, N. 2004 Turning coal clean and green. The Australian, February 21.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 377ppm. As of 2025 it is 426ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that interest in technological solutions to climate change –  solutions is doing a lot of work in that sentence –  were being promulgated especially by the Australians and Americans because they had not signed up to the Kyoto Protocol. The Australian coal industry was going along with the fantasy of “clean coal” – , at least rhetorically, but not putting any of their own money where their mouths were. They have the skills to deal with digging stuff up, solids and moving it from place to place. CCS is all about pipes and valves and so forth. I mean that you can overstate this. The coal industry does have some experience with these sorts of things, but not enough. 

Also, the sums of money involved in making CCS “work” are staggering.

What I think we can learn from this is that people have been wittering about CCS loudly in public for a very long time. And we don’t have any CCS worthy of the name. 

What happened next

The CCS bubble in Australia burst in 2010. Chevron did its ridiculous Gorgon plant, (signed off by one P. Garrett, then Federal Environment Minister) which has never met its promises. However, CCS is now currently having another “moment.” 

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

References

Categories
Australia

February 20, 1970 – South Australian premier sets up an Environment Committee

Fifty five years ago, on this day, February 20th, 1970, a “Committee on the Environment” is set up by South Australian Premier Steele Hall

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 325ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that from the middle of 1969 people in Western countries (at a minimum Australia, the UK and the US – probably the same in a lot of other places, idk)  were beginning to be up in arms about air pollution, water pollution, species loss, etc, etc, j

And there were calls for immediate action. There had been the Senate, the Federal Senate Committees on air pollution and water pollution was coming too. And so all across the states, you would see these sorts of well, let’s set up a committee with stakeholders, with scientists, with business, with leading lights in civil society and the wise men will come up after a year or two with a series of recommendations. That’s what this was.

What I think we can learn from this is that there was a real push in 1969-1971, to respond institutionally, culturally, to what was clearly a major problem. This was part of that. 

What happened next The Environment Committee eventually released a report in May 1972 just before the Stockholm conference. It included mention of carbon dioxide, by the way, as a potential problem but kicked it into the “more research needed” basket (not unreasonably, given the state of knowledge at the time).

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Categories
Australia

 February 19, 2007 – Australian gas lobby hard at work…

Eighteen years ago, on this day, February 20th, 2007, the Canberra Times reports on the gas industry’s lobbying efforts around the recently-returned issue of climate change and greenhouse gas emissions…

If you’re a federal politician expect a call in election year from Belinda Robinson, chief executive of the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association. 

Dutt,K. 2007. Pushing case for gas in changing climate. Canberra Times, 19 February.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 384ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that climate change had burst (back) onto the public policy scene in Australia in, say, September of 2006. Prime Minister John Howard had been so spooked that he’d had to appoint the a civil servant, Peter Shergold to chair a committee to write a report about emissions trading schemes. Fossil fuel interests realized that climate was back on the agenda, and the gas lobby was pushing there “we are more efficient line.” Inevitably, 

What I think we can learn from this is that the gas lobby will do this regardless of the fugitive emissions and the life cycle analysis and all the rest of it that shows that gas really isn’t that much “cleaner” ie less polluting than coal. I.e. they are throwing coal under the bus. 

What happened next

Well, eventually APPEA, decided to take the word petroleum out of its name, as so many other outfits have, like Statoil, for example. And you can read more about appear in Royce Kurmelov’s book Slick.

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Categories
Australia Kyoto Protocol

February 17, 2003 – “please ratify Kyoto Protocol” advisory group begs John Howard

Twenty three years ago, on this day, February 17th, 2003,

Even though the Kyoto Protocol “does not offer a global solution to climate change,” an Australian government advisory group wants the country to ratify the international climate change agreement anyway.

Why? Because the treaty is a “step towards a global climate change response,” according to a report released Feb. 18 by the Kyoto Protocol Ratification Advisory Group.

Additionally, the cost of meeting the treaty’s first commitment period would be low, with or without Australia’s inclusion, the report noted. However, if Australia ratifies Kyoto, “economic costs associated with meeting the target are estimated to be less than half of the costs that would be incurred if Australia takes action to meet the target from outside the treaty framework,” the report concluded.

The report was prepared in response to a request from the premiers of New South Wales, South Australia and Victoria.

While Australia’s ratification would certainly improve the protocol’s chances of entering into force, the treaty still relies heavily on a pending commitment from Russia, which is responsible for 17.4% of the world’s total emissions. The Russian government had hinted it would ratify the treaty by the end of last year, but that still has not happened.

http://elibrary.cenn.org/Report/Report%20of%20the%20Kyoto%20Protocol%20Ratification.pdf

 AUSTRALIAN GOV’T ADVISORY GROUP WANTS COUNTRY TO RATIFY KYOTO Oxy-Fuel News

Vol. 15, Issue: 9 [Copyright 2003 Chemical Week Associates. All rights reserved.]

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 376ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was there seems to have been a concerted push by various entities(stat governments especially)  to make it possible for Australia to ratify the  Kyoto Protocol, even though Howard had ruled it out six months previously. Decisions can be overturned, U turns can be forced. And they’ll have known that. These people will have known that an emissions trading scheme proposal was planned to come forward to a Howard cabinet again (one had been defeated in 2000.)

What I think we can learn from this is that business was severely split, because Kyoto was going to make some of them some money in terms of consultancy fees and all the rest of it for carbon trading. And this is a case where business interests are trying to exert pressure on politicians. Politicians are running for their own show as well. And there’s also the geo-politics with Howard wanting to be absolutely in lockstep with George W Bush. (I mean, essentially, Australia is a US colony, frankly, let’s not kid ourselves.)

What happened next?  The Business Council of Australia had to say they had no position on Kyoto ratification. Howard scuppered an ETS with his own personal veto. And eventually, in ,Australia did ratify Kyoto – for what that was worth. I.e. not much. See also, the academic article “The Veil of Kyoto.” 

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.