Tony Abbott's speech to the Global Warming Policy Foundation provides a mix of partial truths that are designed to create a plausible whole.
As one leading climate change scientist noted in private on Tuesday, "most statements have the classic element of truth but once confronted by the balance of evidence the statements are true but irrelevant, or true to a point and then misleading - classic sceptics' stuff".
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Here are some of Abbott's standout claims, and the charts that counter them.
'Only 0.3 degrees'
"Temperatures in Australia have only increased by 0.3 degrees over the past century, not the 1 degree usually claimed," is one of Abbott's statements.
According to the bureau and CSIRO's State of the Climate 2016, here's what we're seeing in Australia:
The only pockets of Australia to have warmed less than 0.5 degrees since 1910 are located in a couple of places in NSW (though not Manly, as it happens) and Western Australia.
'Photos show no sealevel rise'
Staying local, Abbott has this to say about sea-level rise: "More than 100 years of photography at Manly Beach in my electorate does not suggest that sea levels have risen despite frequent reports from climate alarmists that this is imminent."
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| Global warming is obvious to the overwhelming majority of scientists, despite what a few deniers would tell us. Photo: Daniel Munoz |
Imagine, too, the future lawsuits when owners of coastal developments that have been washed away submit to the court grainy, faded photographs explaining they had no idea what they were buying into.
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| Tony Abbott has made another pitch declining the significance to climate change. Photo: Daniel Munoz |
In the meantime, this readily available information from CSIRO showing global sea-level rise is accelerating:
Abbott might want to acquaint himself with the reasons for that rise in sea levels, including the well-understood fact 93 per cent of the extra heat being trapped by extra greenhouse gases ends up in the ocean.
A warmer ocean, not surprisingly expands. The melting ice caps, glaciers and sea ice absorb about 2 per cent of that extra heat and most of that ice melt ends up in the ocean, lifting their levels.
While just 2.3 per cent of the extra warming ends up in the atmosphere and 2.1 per cent in the land, that happens to be where most of the temperature readings are made and where our own lives are lived out.
Blame the sun
So here's Abbott's interpretation of what's been going on, temperature wise: "Certainly, no big change has accompanied the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration over the past century from roughly 300 to roughly 400 parts per million or from 0.03 to 0.04 per cent."
And if anything is going on, let's not blame it all on CO2, he would have us believe: "Evidence suggests that other factors such as sun spot cycles and oscillations in the Earth's orbit are at least as important for climate change as this trace gas."
Blaming the sun, as it happens, is one of the top two climate myths raised by deniers, according to the Skeptical Science website, and one of the first ruled out.
The following chart from that website helps to knock a few of Abbott's misleading interpretations on the head:
Solar radiation has in fact been on a cooling trend for the past three
decades, and yet temperatures have continued to climb. And they are
clearly much closer to 1 degree higher over the past century than 0.3
degrees.This chart, also helps to put this claim by Abbott into perspective: "Even the high priests of climate change now seem to concede that there was a pause in warming between the 1990s and 2014."
News Corp commentators such as Andrew Bolt regularly play up that "no warming" has occurred in the past 10, 15, 18 or so years.
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| Illustration: Matt Golding |
While examining a single month rarely tells us about longer-term trends, September surprisingly set global records according to preliminary data even without an El Nino influence.
'More good than harm'
Abbott would like to have it both ways. If there is warming, and if we were to be driving it, perhaps it's not a bad thing after all.
"At least so far, it's climate change policy that's doing harm; climate change itself is probably doing good; or at least, more good than harm," he said in his speech.
Australians happen to live in a nation with a highly variable climate, especially for rain.
There are ample signs of recent heatwaves, including in this spring, to have people worried with reason about the threat of worse bushfires, among other challenges.
Recent research pointing to Sydney and Melbourne likely to have 50-degree days in coming summers was dismissed as "groupthink" by Abbott on Fairfax Media's 2GB.
As the bureau and CSIRO note in their report, though, Australia has been reporting a big increase in the number of extreme heat events, with all the stresses on the health of humans (and other creatures) that they bring:
As the report notes, extreme days are defined as those above the 99th percentile of each month from the years 1910 to 2015.
"In 2013 there were 28 days over this threshold," the report said. "This compares to the period prior to 1950 when more than half the years had no extreme days."
Abbott's speech made little of the fact it was during his two-year stint as prime minister that Australia signed up to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 26-28 per cent by 2030 compared with 2005 levels.
The pledge "was a compromise based on the advice that we could achieve it largely through efficiencies, without additional environmental imposts, using the highly successful emissions reduction fund; because, as I said at the time, the last thing we want to do is strengthen the environment (but) damage our economy".
What's 'Herculean' in Chinese?
Quite apart from the ERF being "highly successful" (see here or here), Abbott goes on to say this: "Even if reducing emissions really is necessary to save the planet, our effort, however Herculean, is barely better than futile; because Australia's total annual emissions are exceeded by just the annual increase in China's."
Well, it turns out China's emissions have actually been flat for several years.
Whether the recent plateau holds or starts to climb again remains to be seen. Concern about urban pollution and the massive construction that has already filled many of the major cities with ample subway lines, highways and tower blocks suggest returning to the run-up of emissions during the 2000-2010 is unlikely.
Perhaps the following chart from Climate Change News, though, is a better pointer to the trends in China, the world's largest carbon emitter:
It shows annual growth of energy consumption. Fossil fuel use has a
diminishing share of the extra energy needed to drive what will soon be
the world's largest economy.Giving the cost of solar and wind energy continues to decline at a rapid rate - while fossil fuel extraction is if anything getting more costly as easy to access resources disappear - it's a fair bet if China's energy demand does pick up, coal and oil aren't likely to provide the lion's share of extra supply.
Links
- Tony Abbott's climate change speech in London reveals his true self
- Tony Abbott speech: Allies go to ground and Labor lashes 'loopy' ex-PM over climate change views
- Tony Abbott says climate change is 'probably doing good'
- 50-degree days possible for Sydney, Melbourne: research
- How 'unprecedented' early season heat baked Australia
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