Rob High’s Talk on Global Warming took place at Merimbula RSL on Monday, July 20th, 2009 at 7pm.

Abbreviations used in this document:

I am flattered and delighted that so many of you have come to hear what I have to say about Global Warming.   

Although this has been billed as a TALK I want to answer as many of your questions as possible. I will repeat your questions so that everyone knows what is going on – please – questions only – no speeches – this is my TALK not a public meeting.

Because this is a technically complex subject, we need to avoid getting bogged down in technical arguments that would probably cause most of you to just switch off. I personally would be delighted to answer technical questions but if they are too technical they may have to be deferred to be answered by email – all questions will be answered with answers published on our website – shown in the centre of your programme poster. My notes for this talk will also be posted.

So much for the rules for the evening.

Now I want to discuss something that is not too controversial.

Transparency 1: RAINFORESTS = OXYGEN?

Click here to view Transparency 1

Has any body heard this before?

Unfortunately this is not true – much as we all might love trees, the mature rainforests do not produce oxygen – even though each growing tree does – all the oxygen produced in its lifetime is used up when it eventually dies and rots.   

Transparency 2: RAINFORESTS / COAL DEPOSITS

Click here to view Transparency 2

This little exercise was to make everyone aware that what we have been led to believe is not always true.

The oxygen in our atmosphere was produced billions of years ago by algae and perhaps added to by plants that produced coal deposits two hundred million years ago.   Our atmosphere has plenty of O2 to allow us to burn all the coal and oil and forests that we can find and still have plenty of O2 left for us to breathe.

The basic cause of GW is the increase in atmospheric levels of Carbon Dioxide, a GHG – it collects in the atmosphere and traps some heat which would otherwise be radiated into space from the surface of the earth – this leads to an increase in the surface temperature above what it otherwise would have been – the CO2 causing the warming is mainly a result of our burning of coal, oil and forests.

The history of the GW debate goes back to the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. At the Rio conference, largely because of pressure from green groups – the UN set up a body called the International Panel on Climate Change – IPCC, which for convenience I will refer to as the “UN”, to look into mmGW. The UN recommended that we move away from our reliance on fossil fuels – coal and oil – and instead develop renewable sources of energy for the long term future.

In 1996 the UN came up with the Kyoto Agreement which called for a reduction in CO2 emissions by the developed world – reducing CO2 emissions by an average of 5% below 1990 levels by 2012. And a binding agreement on all countries to be finalised by 2010.   

The UN proposed two basic solutions:

1.      Conservation – to reduce energy consumption, and greater use of renewable sources of energy –  so that future generations would not run out of fuel. Conservation has not been as successful as initially hoped – if a poor peasant in the developing world consumed NO electricity it is impossible for him to reduce his consumption – as his standard of living increases he will want access to more and more energy. The citizens of the developed world talk glibly about cutting consumption, but in order to enjoy their affluent lifestyles they finish up wanting more of everything, especially air conditioners. Industry, in general, has not done enough.

2.     Renewables – sounds like an excellent idea.    

I am now going to digress to describe some of our energy alternatives – with costs in  $A cents/kWhr.

Coal Power Stations
The coal is ground up – pulverised – and burned in a furnace lined with water/steam tubes, the steam is used to run a turbine attached to a generator that makes the electricity. The steam is then condensed with cooling water and re-used. The exhaust gas, mainly nitrogen and CO2 has fine particles of ash filtered out, and if the raw coal had a high Sulphur content, the resultant sulphur dioxide gas has to be removed to avoid the production of acid rain.   

In Oz our coal power stations produce electricity for about 4 cents/kWhr – the 12 cents that we pay is to cover cost of distribution, line losses etc.

Clean Coal
Geosequestration – Carbon Capture and Storage – now usually referred to as “clean coal” captures the CO2 from the chimney and stores it permanently underground. No power station does this yet, because it is cheaper to just let it go up the chimney. However, all of the elements of such a process are already in operation – Norway has to remove the large amount of CO2 present in their North Sea Gas – they have been capturing it and reburying it for about 10 years. Germany has built a demonstration plant and in the USA oil companies have been storing CO2, which they buy, storing it in underground reservoirs for subsequent use to help extract the last drops of oil from their wells.   

The greens don’t like the idea of “clean coal”, perhaps because they don’t want anything to do with multinational oil and coal companies, our Oz government thinks clean coal is worth developing and have made clean coal the centrepiece of our GW programme by committing $100 million dollars to an international project in the Latrobe Valley.   

The estimated cost of clean coal is an additional 2 cents/kWhr which gives a total of 6 cents/kWhr for coal + clean coal  – still below the current, or projected, cost of any renewable power.

Because coal is cheap and plentiful, China is building large coal fired power plants at the rate of one or two a week – these plants are designed to run for at least 40 years.   The USA, India, Canada, Italy and others are building so many coal plants that total production is expected to double before 2050. If we don’t use clean coal technology then I can’t see how we can hope to reduce GHG production. Clean coal will only be added to power plants if there is an international agreement demanding it.

Now, returning to the renewable sources of power that the UN recommended we look at:

Solar Cells - Solar Photo Voltaic
The most popular idea – sunlight is free – we just convert it into electricity  and the GW problem is solved. Unfortunately, it is not that simple. The cost of solar – PV- electricity – which was predicted to become much cheaper over time – is still at least 10 times that of coal.   

Wind
Wind is the current renewables front runner and easily the biggest by volume, still costs twice as much as coal and can’t provide base load – the power we need to run fridges, trains and TV’s when the wind is not blowing.

Solar Thermal
Solar Thermal is not to be confused with Solar PV – although the PV people are always implying it is the same thing. Solar Thermal involves using solar radiation to boil water and running steam turbines in a large central power station. It is being actively pursued in Queensland, Spain, USA and elsewhere – it promises to be much cheaper than Solar PV but still costs more than twice as much as coal.

Biomass
Using crops and waste organic material as fuel to boil the water for steam generation.   So far costs are too high and a lot of oil is needed to transport to a large central plant – smaller plants save on transport but are less efficient. In 1996 I worked in a paper mill near the mouth of the Amazon which burned 2,000 tpd of dried eucalypt logs in their 75MW power station, they harvested 750,000 tpy and after burning 2/3rds there was only 250,000 tpy of logs available for paper pulp.

Biofuels
Biodiesel produced from waste vegetable oil was a great idea – it got rid of waste and generated fuel without net CO2 production – expanding production by using palm oil from Indonesia resulted in destruction of tropical forests and orang-utan habitat.   Using fresh sunflower oil put tremendous demands on world food production. Gasohol – production of alcohol fuel from cane sugar or corn starch – has also put pressure on world food supplies – consumption of fuel, chemicals etc makes biofuels expensive and perhaps of negligible environmental benefit.

As with biodiesel, a great idea if using a waste product, but expansion leads to other problems. It has been estimated that even using all of the farmland in the UK to grow biofuels instead of food would not produce enough biodiesel for the UK’s own needs.

Wave and Tides
Sounds possible but still not competitive.

Hydroelectricity
Using water running from a dam to drive turbines to generate electricity – Snowy River Scheme, Niagara etc. No pollution and cheap but we seem to have run out of rivers to dam – there are also other demands on the river systems.     

Nuclear Power
Cost is about 7 cents including waste reprocessing and storage. Nobody in Oz wants a nuclear power station nearby. Other countries, Japan, Taiwan, France, Korea have nuclear power plants because they don’t have much oil or coal. It is much cheaper to transport a small quantity of uranium around the world than millions of tons of coal.    We won’t talk too much about nuclear tonight because it is an emotive issue – we eventually want to talk about GW.

Geothermal
As with solar, this term is very ambiguous – in Oz geothermal refers to extracting heat – steam or boiling water – from large, very deep deposits of granite found in central Oz that are kept hot by the radioactive decay of trace elements – they contain, Uranium, Thorium etc. So far these projects are not well known and have been plagued by mechanical problems at start up – costs still unknown. In New Zealand geothermal refers to power extracted from volcanic areas where the heat is coming from the molten core of the earth. Volcanic areas are very unstable and have little major potential.

Hydrogen
This is not really a potential fuel because it needs a lot of fuel to make it in the first place – it is more like electricity which can be carried around. Hydrogen may have potential as a transport fuel when we have run out of oil but today it is much more expensive than oil.

At long last we have worked our way through the background material and are ready to resume our talk on GW.

In 2007, the UN reported that their experts were over 90% certain that mmGW was real and that we had a window of only a few years to take the steps necessary to avoid catastrophic GW.  

Nearly time to panic – hence this meeting tonight.

Burning coal, or oil or clearing forests produces CO2 gas which has been building up in the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution in the 19th C, and has risen from around 280 to 380 ppmv and now continues to increase at an increasing rate – currently about 2ppmv/year. Because CO2 is a GHG, any increase in CO2 will lead to an increase in average global Temperature above what it would otherwise have been.

During the 20th century CO2 increased and so did average GT. The UN body of climate experts, produced a graph which summarised this in 2005.

Transparency 3: 1990 GOVERNMENT PREDICTIONS

Click here to view Transparency 3

The UN graph is now hard to find anywhere on the internet so I have shown graphs produced by the US and Oz gov’ts who both support the UN’s position. In the left hand graph which also shows CO2, you can see a nice correlation between the level of CO2 and the temperature.

Skeptics – now I – and this is a personal definition which I use for convenience – define skeptics – as those who accept that:

Average Global Temperature,  increased during the 20th century – i.e. GW is real

and

Man has caused an increase in CO2 which will cause some GW.

A denier is somebody who denies that GW occurred in the 20th century – since all scientists agree that GW has occurred since the Little Ice Age 300 years ago – we will discard deniers as irrelevant to our discussion tonight.

So all scientists agree that the average global temperature increased in the 20th C, man is causing at least some of the increase in the level of CO2 in the atmosphere, CO2 is a GHG which will cause some warming.

The UN reports claimed that the world temperature has increased directly because of the mmCO2 increase – and continued burning of coal, oil and forest clearing will further increase the level of CO2 and lead to an increase in the average global temperature of 2-3 deg C/century – if we carry on burning coal and oil at ever increasing rates, the averageGT will rise  >3 deg C by 2100 and we will be in a big mess.

So what is left to argue about?

The problem is that skeptics do NOT believe that CO2 is the major cause of GW and so burning fossil fuels will not lead to catastrophic GW – GW has been happening since the LIA in the 15th C and is due to natural non mm causes and will possibly turn into GC – maybe it already has. Reducing mmCO2 might make no real difference – it might even stop the world getting too cool. We shouldn’t try to fight GW but just go with the flow and adapt as needed.   

Tonight we are not going to try to unravel the technical debates but we can look at the temperature trends – we have all read a thermometer at some stage in our lives and have heard the weather forecast giving us tomorrow’s expected temp range. I now like to stay in bed until the frost has gone!

The skeptics complained that the UN’s temperature graph – 1990 Government Predictions – in the shape of a hockey stick – was too smooth and didn’t show big enough bumps for either:

the Medieval Warming Period – when England grew a lot of grapes and Greenland was colonised

or

the LIA – when people skated on the Thames and the Greenland colony starved and froze to death.

Skeptics also complained that the UN report that had claimed that mmGW was already 90% certain was not justified by the scientist’s own data and that this statement had been inserted later by a Dr Santer without their agreement.

It is very important that we understand just what the argument is about, because it is crucial to the whole question of GW/Climate Change which leads to the Kyoto protocol, Prime minister Rudd’s Emissions Trading Scheme, the need for Solar power subsidies, Copenhagen meeting later this year etc. It is not enough just to show that GW is occurring – scientists have known for over a hundred years that global temperature has been increasing since the LIA of the 15th C  and this warming definitely continued during the 20th C, with normal ups and downs – it has to be shown that the warming in the 20th C is directly caused by mmCO2 and not something else such as Solar variation or simply unknown effects.

Part of the problem is that graphs like the above show very little temperature variation because of the scale used.    

With a bigger scale and only looking at recent data we see that the temperature curve is not so steady and so the link to CO2 is not so obvious.

I have skipped a lot of the technical arguments about the nature of GHG’s but the link between the level of CO2 in the atmosphere and average global temperature is the essence of the GW debate.

My opinion is not worth much because – many would disagree with me on principle –  but more importantly, the question of – mmGW versus naturalGW is a question of fact and cannot be decided by a vote, even of 1000’s of experts.   

I have been interested in GHG’s and GW for over 20 years. I accepted the UN claims for mmGW at face value – the fact that George Bush and John Howard rejected them was nearly proof enough. I knew that CO2 was a GHG gas and that it had been increasing since the start of the industrial revolution around 1850 – 1500 UN climate experts couldn’t be wrong.

Then the predicted mmGW slowed down around the end of the 20th C and then turned into cooling. When I looked deeper I found that the skeptics were not just a small bunch of nutters – there were hundreds or even thousands of climate experts who did not accept the UN’s claims of mmGW and their numbers were increasing. I found some, but certainly not all, of their technical arguments convincing and at the same time the UN’s claims more strident and tenuous – meanwhile the temperature kept falling.

I started to wonder if some of the greens had been able to hijack the whole climate change debate.

Ian Plimer’s book, Heaven and Earth raises a lot of questions – I looked up a number of his references at random through the internet and they checked out. I bought a copy of “Climate Change Reconsidered” – nearly $200 from Amazon – hold up both books – but these aren’t exactly light reading.   

Additional notes added after talk.

The Rudd government is hoping to introduce legislation for an ETS – emissions trading scheme – in advance of the Copenhagen climate conference at the end of 2009. The legislation is being blocked in the senate – senator Fielding holds some of the balance of power with Bob Brown’s greens. Steve Fielding has an engineering degree from RMIT and paid for his trip to USA to discuss GW and met with skeptics at the Heartland Institute – dismissed by the UN as “stooges” for big oil and tobacco.   On his return he posed a few questions for Minister Wong and requested a meeting with their respective technical experts to discuss GW. Fielding remains a skeptic.

Then senator Fielding’s questions – and the responses from Penny Wong and her group – came to light.

I no longer felt able to give an even-handed talk – yes I am a climate change/mmGW SKEPTIC.   

Transparency 4: SEN WONG RESPONSE TO SEN FIELDING

Click here to view Transparency 4

The temp drops until 1910, rises until around 1940, drops rapidly to 1950, climbs to a sharp – el Nino peak in 1998 – locate spike – until the last few years when, despite steadily increasing CO2 levels, the temp has been dropping – not so say the UN – BUT THIS IS THEIR GRAPH. Note that cooling does not mean that it is cold – merely “less hot”.

From this graph it is hard to see how the temperature can be linked directly to the level of CO2 which has increased continuously for 150 years, whereas the top pair of graphs showed a neat lockstep correlation.  

Minister Wong – through her technical experts – advised Sen Fielding that we have to allow for “natural or random” temperature variations and so we should not be surprised if there were periods of a few years when the temp dropped. I have added this effect to her graph by measuring the actual temp difference from the UN predicted trend during the last 15 years and adjusting the temp from 1979 to 1985 as if this “random variation” had occurred 30 years earlier – this is shown as a dotted line on this graph.   

(Graph not shown on website because nobody understood what I was trying to show.)

Not strictly scientific but I think it is reasonable – it shows that it would have been very difficult – maybe impossible – for the UN group to convince anyone that we were faced with DANGEROUS mmGW had the recent “temp dip” taken place 30 years ago instead of during the last few years.

Skeptics do not claim to know what is causing GW – we merely claim that CO2 cannot be the major factor because of the poor correlation between CO2 levels and temp since 1900 and especially now that the temp seems to be going down over the last few years even though the level of CO2 has continued to rise, largely because of our continued burning of coal and oil, and clearing of forests.

Transparency 5: IPCC AR4 Fig. TS26 UPDATE

Click here to view Transparency 5

This graph is based on data from the UN’s  IPCC 4th Assessment Report which was made public in 2007. It is shown to highlight the recent measured temperature, as reported by the UK’s Hadley Met Office, the UN’s favourite, and the UN’s predicted continued warming trend – it shows the recent cooling much more clearly than the same data plotted on Minister Wong’s graph. The 1998 el Nino peak is easily seen here – and the temperature falling further and further below the UN prediction – the CO2 concentration continues to rise steadily.

The UN claims to know exactly what is happening – skeptics say “the climate system is incredibly complex, we don’t yet know and may never know all the factors involved.”

Many people believe that we – all of the people in the world – have to reduce consumption of all sorts of things like oil, electricity, money, water, forests, habitat etc. But the claim of mmGW is different – it says we are certain to cause catastrophic GW if we don’t spend $billions – all around the world – and very soon – to stop mmGW getting out of control – there are also many – including most of us SKEPTICS who don’t believe in mmGW while agreeing that we have to cut back on our consumption.  

Minister Wong in her reply to Sen Fielding now claims that air temp is not as important as ocean temp – which Wong claimed had increased – but we have almost no historical data – we need the temp 300m deep, not just the sea surface temp on which we have almost no historical data either –  OK, but it greatly weakens their previous argument – there is no longer a convincing link between CO2 and air temp BUT they previously argued that mmCO2 was the direct cause of the temp increase and nothing else mattered. What then is current basis for their mmGW claim?

Has the ocean temp increased?

Minister Wong’s camp says it has. Many skeptics say that satellite data shows that it hasn’t – the now familiar stand off – I say any change would be too small to measure.   The oceans have an enormous capacity to absorb heat – about 1000 times as much as the atmosphere for the same change in temp – so if the air temp is only supposed to increase by 0.3 deg/decade the ocean temp will change by << -.002 deg C which we can’t hope to measure. Historical data when sailors stuck a thermometer in a bucket of sea water is quite useless – the new fancy buoys that are now used might give us some answers in another decade or century – the time delay that Minister Wong is trying to get by switching her argument from air temp to ocean temp.

Some skeptics are predicting a further temp drop over the next 12 months.

Transparency 6: FIELDING’S TEMPERATURE GRAPH

Click here to view Transparency 6

This is the latest forecast by some skeptics – you can see the underlying increasing trend, + a 30 year random cycle. Based on recent lack of solar activity skeptics are expecting – not predicting or forecasting – a further drop in temperature.

Now that I have confessed – proudly proclaimed – to be a SKEPTIC and solved the mmGW v natural GW dilemma I will pause for questions – but please no speeches.   We will resume my talk in about 10 minutes to discuss what the future has in store for us.

Click here to view QUESTIONS/ANSWERS from the evening

OK I am delighted that so many of you felt strongly enough to participate in a discussion that, from the outset, was probably going to be seriously biased to my views as a self proclaimed SKEPTIC – hardly a non-aligned adjudicator.

The next part of my talk is going to be a bit light on science – a relief for most of you and hopefully a disappointment for a few – the really bad news is that my personal opinions – Rob’s so called FACTS – might substitute for science.

Since I do not believe mmGW is happening it is very difficult for me to describe its effects.

Certainly a random continuation of natural GW will be very mild compared to the disasters predicted by mmGW.

What are the likely effects of continued GW/mmGW?

Sea level rise
Further melting of Arctic floating ice is possible because of delayed effects of previous 20th C increases in ocean temp but both sides agree that satellite measurements show that the total amount of ice in Antarctica is growing despite the breaking off of large icebergs. They look great on TV but are not even proof of GW let alone mmGW – 25 km long icebergs were seen north of Capetown in the 1850’s, glaciers are “rivers of ice which naturally flow downhill and produce icebergs even in periods of GC – the future of Greenland’s ice cap is still “HOTLY” debated.

Some adaptation is definitely called for in parts of the world but Merimbula should be OK.

Bengalis may be flooded and millions could starve – especially if a tsunami or cyclone hits – very cruel and sad but probably inevitable – river delta lands always subside with civilisation, due to dewatering of the ground, drying of soil, loss of new sediment etc. E.g. Alexandria, New Orleans, Holland – and maybe parts of the Gold Coast.  

Storms / Droughts
Unlikely to get worse but world wide TV coverage will highlight every storm – another el Nino pattern is now being predicted so our local drought might get worse.   At the end of the current local drought it will rain! One of my few firm predictions!

Extinctions
Will continue due to increasing human population, loss of habitat etc.

Acidification of oceans
Possible bad effect of increasing CO2 – the ARGOS floats will give us accurate data by 2020!  These are several thousand new high tech floats that will accurately measure temperature and salinity down to 1,000 metres below sea level while drifting all around the worlds oceans.

Many $billions will continue to be spent on studies, legislation etc. Results so far have not been very impressive

CO2 has continued to increase – perhaps at a slower rate than otherwise but any such reduction would be difficult to prove – the current economic downturn probably has a much greater effect.

More renewables – especially wind turbines – but a continuing large absolute increase in coal and oil burning.

More poverty – food price increases.

No significant increase in biofuels – because of wider acceptance of the dangers they pose to forests, agriculture, food supply and poverty.

More $ wasted on mmGW studies but not much done on adaptation, especially in developing countries.

Further loss in credibility of science and environment campaigns – it will be much harder to get people interested in the inevitable future oil crisis, helping the foreign poor, conserving water and soil, deforestation etc.

HOW WILL WE KNOW IF mmGW IS REAL OR NOT?   

CO2 CAN’T BE THE MAJOR CAUSE OF GW BECAUSE THE EARTH HASN’T WARMED DURING LAST 5 YEARS DESPITE CO2 INCREASING FROM 375 TO 385 ppmv WHICH SOME CAIM AS A RECORD.

No one in gov’t or involved in mmGW campaigns, working for the UN or gov’t funded climate bodies is likely to say anything – they will just quietly concentrate on their pet projects while keeping all the funding they can lay their hands on.

We have already had 8 years below the UN trend prediction, another year will not make much difference but might cause more people to reconsider their views on mmGW. Since no warming is evident there must be little chance for Rudd’s ETS or the Copenhagen Conference to gain support – I predict that a country – India, China or even Canada – will claim it is all nonsense and the pack of cards will collapse – otherwise we can rely on US senate to make unreasonable demands on developing countries that they will refuse to accept.  Europe will make grand meaningless promises that they will not keep.

Climate Studies – The UN and governments are only looking at mmGW, not searching for other possible causes so not much real progress is likely in the short term.

WHAT CAN WE – CONCERNED RESPONSIBLE CITIZENS – DO?

The Rio – Earth Summit was a tremendous victory for the greens world-wide and set the agenda for the UN Forum on Climate Change which gave green groups a tremendous boost to their credibility. We have to make sure that they don’t just continue their take-over while quietly shelving their Climate Change mantra. We have to speak out or be swamped.  

Reducing our consumption of anything and everything and our load on the environment can definitely help – reducing deforestation, over fishing, over population.

Become better informed – especially of the global situation, not just in the Bega Valley.

Fight wasteful mmGW and emotional campaigns such as domestic solar power, opposition to clean coal and any campaigns that you consider too costly for the environmental benefit they might deliver. We – that is the world – need lots of money  to fight starvation, water shortages, adapt to GW or other climate disasters – tsunami, earthquakes, floods, storms etc.     

We – or our governments – may have to decide between a hospital and a solar farm for Bega.

Reduce oil consumption ahead of the inevitable future supply crisis.

Prepare for a reduced CO2 economy. We can’t expect the environment to cope indefinitely with ever increasing CO2 even if it doesn’t cause warming – maybe we need to switch to clean coal even if we have no GW.

Think and question everything, especially if it seems too good to be true – don’t believe anything simply because you would just like it to be true – things like solar energy have tremendous popular appeal but just don’t make practical economic sense.

The real world can be a nasty place but there is no reason for us not to help others.

We have a few minutes left for further questions before we close at 9.00pm.

Click here to view QUESTIONS/ANSWERS from the evening

Thank you for your attention – remember, further questions can be sent by email, the address is on your “programme”.

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