'Both Sides' Of The Climate Change Debate? How Bad We Think It Is, And How Bad It Really Is

The Guardian - Greg Jericho

It’s time to stop being mealy-mouthed about this. No more silent passes to climate science deniers

‘All efforts at the moment are assuming if we reduce emissions by 45% by 2030 we can limit warming to 1.5C. That might now be rather too optimistic.’ Photograph: Keith Virgo/AP

Over the past couple of weeks things have been happening on the climate change front but, unfortunately, little is changing in parliament, where the government’s direct action policy has continued to be an utter failure and a Queensland LNP MP suggested in his first speech in the House of Representatives that schools should teach both sides of the climate change debate in school – to prevent them being “brainwashed with extreme left or right ideologies”.
Last week came news that BHP was going to spend US$400m over five years on a “climate investment program to develop technologies to reduce emissions from its own operations as well as those generated from the use of its resources”.
Its CEO, Andrew Mackenzie, stated in a speech in London, “Society’s combustion of fossil fuels and industrial processes like steelmaking and agriculture have released greenhouse gases at rates much faster than at any other time in the geological past.”
To ram the message home he concluded: “The evidence is abundant: global warming is indisputable. The planet will survive. Many species may not.”
Just ponder that: many species will not survive.
Thus it was not particularly surprising really to hear this week that the NSW HSC was going to include climate change in geography classes. The surprising element was that it doesn’t already.

The government is utterly failing to achieve even its own pathetically low emissions reduction targets

Neither was it surprising to see conservatives across the media come out against it, arguing that if they are to teach climate change then they need to teach “both sides”. The IPA’s “director of the foundations of western civilisation program” Bella d’Abrera (yeah, I know) suggested on Sky News that “they’re going to hear hopefully that climate change is not necessary manmade”.
Or in other words, students should hear that conspiracy theories are real.
This is the type of guff that you expect to hear from the libertarian romper room that Sky News is now. It’s a station that gives a voice to the likes of Andrew Bolt, who this week devoted a column to calling 16-year-old climate-change activist Greta Thunberg “deeply disturbed” and mocking her autism diagnosis.
She responded by flicking him away with ease – which to be honest was not wholly difficult given I’ve had cases of tinea that have contributed more to our national intelligence than has Bolt’s entire media career. But she did it with class.
In parliament you would hope for better than the dredge we get on Sky News. But no.
On Wednesday, newly elected Queensland MP Terry Young gave his first speech, in which he stated “we want our children and grandchildren to hear the theories of evolution and creation, different religions, climate change advocates and climate change sceptics. I can say what we don’t want for us and our kids is to be brainwashed with extreme left or right ideologies.”
“Theories of creation”? Religion is a theory now?

Liberal member for Longman, Terry Young: “We want our children and grandchildren to hear … climate change advocates and climate change sceptics.” Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

He continued arguing, “When I hear a school principal stand up at school assembly and say ‘if this government doesn’t do anything about climate change, the world will end in 2030’ I get angry, because we should not indoctrinate our kids with fear mongering.”
Now, firstly, I’d like to know where that happened because I can find no record of it. It sort of happened in the TV show Big Little Lies, so maybe that was it.
But here’s the thing, he should get angry if he hears that – not because it is brainwashing but because his government is not doing anything about climate change.
The world is not going to end in 2030, but if we have not taken massive steps by then, our ability to prevent massive global degradation and harm due to climate change will be beyond us.
This is not extremist, it is science – science that was announced in October by the UN IPCC. Its co-chair said at the time: “This is the largest clarion bell from the science community and I hope it mobilises people and dents the mood of complacency.”
But no, it didn’t.
Young went on to suggest personal responsibility was more important and the fact his family own a hybrid car and have solar panels was a sign of how conservatives go about things the right way.
It is much the same line we have heard by so many conservatives – a variant of if we all plant a tree and recycle then that’s all we can do.
It won’t be anywhere near enough, and it might seem like “common sense” to Young but it is not. Just how lacking the LNP’s climate change policy is in anything approaching substance was revealed this week when its latest auction under the “emissions reduction fund” bought cuts equivalent to only 0.01% of Australia’s annual greenhouse gas pollution.
The government is utterly failing to achieve even its own pathetically low emissions reduction targets.
And time is running out fast.
This week in the Monthly, ANU climate scientist Dr Joëlle Gergis wrote that, while in 2013 scientists had estimated that a doubling of CO2 levels from pre-industrial levels (which we’re on track to do by 2060) would lead to a temperature increase of between 1.5C to 4.5C, now as scientists continue to get more data, their models suggest the temperature increase is more likely to be between 2.8C and 5.8C.
That’s scary because all efforts at the moment are assuming if we reduce emissions by 45% by 2030 we can limit warming to 1.5C. That might now be rather too optimistic.
Add into the mix came further news this week that glaciers appear to be melting 10 to 100 times faster than expected.
It’s time to stop being mealy-mouthed about this and to give silent passes to those peddling climate-change denialism either explicitly or implicitly by demanding we listen to both sides.
But OK, here’s both sides of the debate – for well over 40 years scientists have been researching and testing evidence that climate change is occurring due to CO2 emissions. They have found conclusive evidence that there is a link and that on the current path by 2100 global temperatures will likely reach 3C above pre-industrial levels.
The other side is that they have kept researching and testing the data, and sorry, they were wrong – it’s even worse than they thought.

Links

• BHP boss announces $US400m plan to combat 'indisputable' climate crisis
• We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN
• Greta Thunberg hits back at Andrew Bolt for 'deeply disturbing' column
• Coalition's emissions reduction fund labelled 'a joke' after first post-election auction
• Alarming Sonar Results Show Glaciers May Be Melting Faster Than We Expected