Ex-BHP Chief: Scrap Paris Now
H/t hotscot
News from Australia where ex BHP chief calls for the scrapping of the Paris Agreement:
From Quadrant:
Ex-BHP Chief: Scrap Paris Now
The company he once led continues to pleasure the warmists by bowing and scraping before Gaia’s carbon-free altar, but ex-chief Jerry Ellis has had enough: the Paris accord is “a farce” and a sane government would exit the pact in a heartbeat
Ex-chairman of BHP (1997-99), Jerry Ellis (left) ex-chancellor of Monash University, and an ex-director of ANZ Bank, has called for Australia to dump the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Ellis’s intervention puts cat among climate pigeons.
The alarmists like to lie that sceptics are a fringe group. Ellis is hardly fringe. His former BHP continues to promote the story about human-caused catastrophic CO2 warming, as does Monash University. Ellis is an awkwardness for both.
By coming out against climate alarmism, Ellis is giving added respectability to scepticism, much as ex-PM Tony Abbott did with his London sceptic speech of last October.[i] The credibility of the sceptic case, of course, rests not on authority figures but data such as the more than two-fold exaggeration of warming since 1980 by the climate models on which the CO2 scare is based.
Here is Ellis’s statement on Paris.
Why Australia should Clexit Paris Treaty
It is clear that the push to meet the Paris carbon dioxide emission targets is leading to higher power costs, and hence prices, and unreliable supply.
It is also a fact that the predictions of the warmists have not happened.
The IPCC scientific reports are stated in possibilities, yet the guidance for policy makers is written as certainty. A farce.
I hope the new leadership of the Australian Government has the courage to guide our country in a rational manner on this subject. as Angus Taylor seems keen to do, and abandons the Paris Treaty.
Jerry Ellis AO
Ellis’ intervention comes on the heels of calls from Green Climate Fund supporters for Australia to add another $400m to its $1b plus commitment and $200m contribution to date. The fund under the Paris accord is supposed to parcel up $US100b a year in developed country donations to help the third-world combat climate change. The fund peaked at $US10b – thanks particularly to President Obama – but has only $US3b left. Its July meeting of donors and third-worlders disbanded in chaos with no decisions made and the resignation on the spot of its executive director, Australian ex-climate bureaucrat Howard Bamsey.
It’s just a pity those in current positions of power can’t pluck up the courage to do the same
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Those in current positions of power don’t speak up because they know they wouldn’t be current for very much longer!
Those in position of power are lawyer/politicians with little or no scientific backgrounds. They receive their current wisdom from those they help fund to create models that create problems for politicians to solve. And the cycle continues from “dangerous” Ice-Age global cooling to catastrophic impending warming… and back again.
Climate Debate: What Politicians need to know
Politicians and heads of state have done themselves and those they represent a serious disservice when they use the term “Carbon Pollution”. Carbon in the form of carbon dioxide (CO2) is a gas that is vital to life on Earth and is not a pollutant.
The Climate Debate really revolves around the public fully understanding the benefits of CO2. Through the process of photosynthesis, plants absorb CO2, water, and light to give off oxygen, while producing the food (sugars) they need to thrive. When there is more CO2, plants of all types do better, and they are at the foot of the food chain. Commercial greenhouse growers strive to provide the ideal growing conditions and typically boost the CO2 levels in their greenhouses to three times the level of CO2 in the open air. Even the rise from the pre-industrial CO2 levels of 280 ppm to the current 405 ppm has produced real, positive results around the world. For instance, the Leaf Area Index – a measure of the number of leaves – has grown by 14% over the last 30 years (a land area equivalent to two extra USAs). The area south of the Sahara, called the Sahel, is now a broad green belt from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, clearly visible from the International Space Station. The scientific papers on this research attribute 70% of this green expansion to CO2 and about 30% to extra rainfall.
Burning fossil fuels – hydrocarbons – does produce pollution but now it is possible to reduce this pollution to virtually zero with the best modern techniques. Japan and Taiwan have power plants, which burn relatively low-grade coal from Australia, and yet they can remove most of the soot particles (pure carbon) and the toxic oxides (e.g. carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and sulfur oxides) so that their tall chimney stacks have a clear plume of CO2 coming out. Many people think the visible clouds coming out of power plant cooling towers is pollution; but it is condensed water vapour – clean, drinkable water. CO2 is not a pollutant. Pollution from transport can still be reduced further.
The UN and its International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have demonized CO2 and accused the extra CO2 of being the primary source of climate change. Recent research has now shown that the IPCC models do not correctly predict the last 40 years, let alone any future period. The climate impact of CO2 is overestimated by a factor of two in the IPCC models. Also, CO2 is a minor greenhouse gas and overpowered by water vapour when it comes to absorbing radiation by a large factor (based on the global relative abundance – typically 40 times more water vapour than CO2).
Temperatures have always fluctuated up and down historically and rather than blaming rising trends over the last century on CO2 we need to find the answers in the solar and ocean current cycles that exist. There are more effective models than the IPCC ones that do a much better job of tracking temperature changes and pass validation over the last 40 years. Demonizing CO2 is not the answer.
Below are two references to back up these assertions. They were both produced this year.
The easiest one to follow is a real climate debate by four experts in the field. For a quick example of the debate watch Judith Curry starting at minute 15 of the video, and then Patrick Moore at minute 41. The second is a set of 30 slides with extensive notes and links on the topic.
Yes, this is a complex field but if politicians can understand that CO2 is much more beneficial to all life than any problems with it, they can avoid being vilified themselves for making inappropriate decisions. Politicians need to understand the vital role that CO2 plays and the imperative to reduce pollution from hydrocarbons. This will be a more effective use of resources than the amounts squandered on expensive alternative sources of power.
References:
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVXHaSqpsVg or Google Mann Curry Moore
2. https://goo.gl/3qwtaS
30th September 2018
Gerald Ratzer
Professor Emeritus
McGill University
“The Climate Debate really revolves around the public fully understanding the benefits of CO2.” Wouldn’t it be nice if that were so?
NO… the debate revolves around control of our energy by a few to the detriment of many. Nobody can control the Earth’s climate. They cannot even predict when and where the jet stream, the polar vortex, the ENSO, earthquakes or volcanic activity will show up. Remarkably, they won’t tell us where the climate and its weather will be if we do as they say. It’s only that we must lower CO2 back to 350 ppm. Ok… But that’s the climate of 1987. Is that what it’s all about?
A flood always starts with a trickle.
There seems to be some enlightenment going on in Canada now as they remove global warming legislation. The damage to the economy is starting to be clear. Sadly the UK and Australia ( and California) are the only ones still charging ahead with moving backwards.
Gerald Ratzer’s comment should be widely published. What a fantastic resume of the whole farce.