It is very hot today

Posted on 5 February, 2009 by alloporus

It has been hot and humid here for the past two weeks. Even the trees are wilting. Needless to say the media are onto it.

‘Is this heat wave global warming?’ they ask Dr David Jones, Acting Head of the National Climate Centre in Australia.

‘It’s a complex discussion. What global warming does is… it increases the frequency of hot events and decreases the frequency or likelihood of a cold event.’

I wonder how many of us know what this solid answer from Dr Jones means?

Is it hot because of global warming? No, it is hot because it is summertime. And in the Australian summer there is a chance that it will not only get hot, but also that it will stay hot for several days. Down under hot means over 40 degrees Celsius. What Dr Jones was saying is that as the globe heats up, so there will be a greater chance of these warm events occurring.

It is like weighting a coin. Spin a normal coin and there is an equal chance that it will fall heads or tails. Put a little extra weight on the head side and it will fall head side down more often than 50% of the time.

So warming weights these hot events, they are more likely to occur.

Global warming is really global climate changing. Especially change in the frequency of certain events.
Dr Jones did a good job. It’s a tough gig being the person everyone asks when there is a question about the climate.

Mark

I will if you will

Posted on 22 December, 2008 by alloporus

Earlier this week Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced that the interim 2020 carbon emission reduction target for the Australian governments Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme would be 5%. …but his government would consider up to 15% if the rest of the world was committed.

The night before I made a bet with my wife that the target would be 10%, not the minimum of 25% that most environmentalists wanted and that most climate scientists reckon is needed to stabilize atmospheric CO2 concentrations below 550ppm.

I underestimated the power of the fear factor. They went for 5%. Was it fear or the political expediency of getting legislation through the complex Australian political system? I heard a comment that said if the decision had been for a tougher target than 5% the senate would block passage of any bill. I reckon we can always find an excuse for leadership failure.

What we get instead is fence sitting and a very sore behind. 5% is a decision – if you can call it a decision – which is as close to business as usual as possible.

And the excuse seems to be: I will if you will, otherwise I won’t.

The trouble is that somebody has to otherwise the market mechanism for emission reductions triggered by cap and trade simply won’t deliver because the price of carbon will be too low to shift investor behaviour away from carbon intensive business activity.

Mark

Do they think we are stupid?

Posted on 15 December, 2008 by alloporus

Astonishing! That is all I can say. This morning I was astonished, shocked and speechless at what I heard on the radio.
ABC Sydney 702 presenter Deborah Cameron was on the phone to the NSW Minister for Environment and Climate Change Carmel Tebbutt. Very good, a senior Minister and Deputy Premier providing sound bites to the masses on issues of the day….only the topic was this:
The NSW Government is helping introduce technology that will capture the fumes, sorry I should say carbon emissions, from every petrol bowser in Sydney. That’s the smelly stuff you can see drifting skyward in tiny wisps as you fill your tank with liters of liquid carbon.
Yes, of course. Why did I not think of that? The Clean Development Mechanism take note, the solution to our carbon glut is at hand.

Do they think we are completely stupid?
Maybe they do, just maybe they do.

Is Britney bigger than global warming?

Posted on 2 December, 2008 by alloporus

Whenever there is a topic that sparks debate in our house we usually need information to help resolve the issue. My wife will often jump up and announce that “the Google Gods will know” and, sure enough, they do. She will skip back after a minute or two on the browser with a useful answer.

Recently I discovered that the Google have made available a really neat tool in Adwords that estimates of the number of times people type key words into search engines (go to Adwords then click on Get keyword ideas). That’s all searches, not just those taking the heat out of dinner discussions.

My curiosity aroused I typed ‘environmental problems’ into the key word field and the software returned a respectable 74,000 searches per month. Then I tried ‘climate change’ and returned 823,000 followed by ‘global warming’ for a sizable 3,350,000.

Clearly we are worried about things getting warmer.

I took encouragement from this result – three million souls a month are curious enough to ask the Google Gods a question on an environmental issue.

Then I went mad and typed ‘Britney Spears’ and yes, the answer you were expecting…. 9,100,000 per month. Nearly half the population of Australia type in this search once a month – Ouch! If you add ‘Paris Hilton’ who manages a paultry 6,100,000 requests, we are looking at enough requests for every adult Australian. Even the celeb blogger ‘Perez Hilton’ manages to get 2,240,000 searches per month.

Bizarre as it this result appears, we did not need the Google Gods to explain this one. It is escapism. We can escape our worries and concerns for our own lives, and any lingering worry about the planet, through a fascination with celebrity. The thing that amazed me was that we do it a lot.

It may just be hierarchy of needs and avoidance of pain, but I reckon it is worth a thought.
Either that or Britney is bigger than global warming.