Sunday Times 2
Australian PM abolishes climate watchdog
View(s):SYDNEY (AFP) -Australia’s new conservative government abolished an independent climate change commission set up by the previous Labor administration, as part of its plans to streamline bureaucracy. The Climate Commission was set up to provide apolitical and reliable information to the public about the science of climate change, emissions targets and international action being taken.
Australia's new Prime Minister Tony Abbott at the Government House in Canberra (AFP)
But Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s conservative coalition, which plans to repeal Labor’s tax on corporate pollution and is the first post-war Australian government not to have a science minister, said an independent body was not needed and the role would be assumed by the Department of the Environment.
“As part of the coalition’s plans to streamline government processes and avoid duplication of services the commission’s function to provide independent advice and analysis on climate change will be continued by the Department of the Environment,” said new Environment Minister Greg Hunt.
He said it would save the budget Aus$1.6 million a year in running costs. Climate Commission head Tim Flannery argued that there was a strong need for independent and accurate information on climate change as “propaganda” aimed at misinforming the public increases.
“I believe Australians have a right to know, a right to authoritative, independent and accurate information on climate change,” he said. Australia, which is among the world’s worst per capita polluters due to its reliance on coal-fired power and mining exports, has just experienced its warmest 12 months on record.
Average temperatures throughout the country in the year to August 31 were 1.11 degrees Celsius ( 2.0 degrees Fahrenheit) above the long-term average. Australia’s last summer — the hottest ever recorded — witnessed an unprecedented heatwave, bushfires and floods and Flannery, a professor regarded as one of Australia’s top climate scientists, said an informed public was key to action on climate change.
Australia’s chief scientist, Ian Chubb, told the ABC this week that the axing of any climate bodies would be a loss.
“These sorts of issues are not going away just because we ignore them,” he said. ”They are things we are going to have to deal with and grapple with and understand better and then make informed choices, rather than go out there and guess at what we might do.”Abbott was only sworn in on Wednesday but he has already taken the axe to three high-profile public service department heads and merged government aid agency AusAid with the Department of Foreign Affairs to cut costs.
He made clear on Wednesday that scrapping the carbon tax, which charges the country’s biggest polluters for their emissions at a fixed price and is due to transition to an emissions trading scheme next year, was his top priority. His government instead favours a “direct action” plan that includes an incentive fund to pay companies to increase their energy efficiency, a controversial sequestration of carbon in soil scheme, and the planting 20 million trees.
Abbott, who once said that evidence blaming mankind for climate change was “absolute crap”, ordered officials to immediately “prepare the carbon tax repeal legislation”, despite a battle looming in the upper house.
UN climate report will not sway US deniers: experts
WASHINGTON, Sept 21(AFP) -The upcoming UN report on climate change is not likely to rattle US deniers of global warming who hold sway in the halls of power, experts say. It will be released at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) next week, though most Republicans in the US government are expected to dismiss it outright.
“The IPCC report will help for the observers and the public to understand where the majority of the scientists’ opinion stands,” said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
“But I don’t think it will change the mind of the hard core deniers.” Meyer added: “We don’t call them sceptics, because they are not putting forward alternatives ideas and having them tested in a peer review journals. They basically deny this problem.” Climate sceptics and deniers dominate the House of Representatives, but Meyer said some legislators admit privately that the science is correct and that global warming is being exacerbated by fossil fuel use.
“But they cannot say it because they will be challenged in the primary (elections in 2014) by the Tea Party,” the ultraconservative wing of the Republican party. They “say what they have to say to get re-elected,” Meyer told AFP.
Americans’ views on climate change are closely linked to their political orientations; those who doubt the theory of evolution and believe in creationism are often climate sceptics or deniers, according to Joe Casola, an expert at the centre for Climate and Energy Solutions in Washington.
“With the IPCC report, the older arguments — that climate change does not exist or CO2 is not responsible for warming or the humans are not responsible — are harder and harder to make,” he said. The movement to deny climate change is bolstered by influence groups that oppose regulations that would limit CO2 emissions, the main greenhouse gas, which the United States emits more of than any other country but China.
According to Greenpeace, these lobbies have funnelled nearly $150 million to more than 80 conservative groups from 2002 to 2011. amongst the largest donors are billionaires Charles and David Koch of Koch Industries, as well as oil giant ExxonMobil.
“Their intent is to intimidate scientists and, indeed, to get them to second guess themselves,” said Michael Mann, professor at Penn State University and author of “The Hockey Stick and the Climate War.” “In that sense, the hundreds of millions of dollars spent by industry front groups and individuals like the Koch Brothers to attack and intimidate the scientists have partly achieved their goal,” Mann told AFP.
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