Alarmist stories about greenhouse gases causing catastrophic warming continue to be aired in the media.
Notwithstanding the lack of evidence, global warming is even being blamed for hurricanes and an apocryphal disappearance of polar bears.
Yet, the only solid measure of the warming, the NASA satellite data, shows that over the 27 years that data has been available, warming has been at a negligible rate of 0.13°C per decade. This level is engulfed by the statistical variation for reliability. Although there is an increasing level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant nor does it pose health risks. Its effects, other things being equal, are to raise temperatures, but by how much is highly contentious.
Also contentious is the effect of the higher temperatures that some people predict. Some argue it will mean an erosion of the ice caps. Others point out that higher temperatures mean increased precipitation and the ice caps should thicken.
Similar arguments rage around climate changes in Australia and other regions.
At issue beyond the scientific debate is what to do about it and does it really matter.
The much-violated obligations that nations agreed to at Kyoto in 1990 have proven difficult to meet. Some, like Australia, have changed the basis of measurement and claimed victory.
That aside, if all developed countries were to meet their obligations by the target year of 2012, the effect would be negligible. The outcome would, on the basis of the climate models, retard the forecast rise in temperature by just six years.
Over recent years, we also have seen the economic rise of non-participants, India and China in particular, which are determined to do nothing about their carbon dioxide emissions.
The rise of these colossuses places the stabilisation of emission levels as an ever-receding mirage. They make any reductions from a Kyoto Mark II even more unlikely to be achieved than those that are falling short of commitments in the original agreement.
For Australia to get in front and lead on programs of emission reduction is futile and extravagant. Our economy depends on low-cost energy. The cost of saddling ourselves with another tax impost undermines our future prosperity.
Moreover, the effect of reducing a tonne of carbon dioxide in Australia will result in increased emissions elsewhere. Aluminium will continue to be smelted whether in the Persian Gulf, China or Australia.
Indeed, as the Australian power industry is relatively efficient, displacing a tonne of carbon dioxide is likely to result in more than a tonne elsewhere.
The arguments against imposing costs in Australia are all the more persuasive in their application to state schemes. The Bracks Government is proposing a tax on emissions, the Victorian Renewable Emissions Target, designed to foster windmills that are twice the cost of conventional energy. NSW already has such a scheme.
These measures mean that energy-intensive industries and electricity generation will migrate elsewhere.
No politician in the Queensland election campaign is suggesting saddling local industry with the sort of imposts that the southern states have or are contemplating.
Victoria's scheme is designed to take out 4.9 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, at a cost to the Victorian economy of $146 million a year.
We could achieve the same curtailment of emissions by reducing air travel. Every return air trip to Europe costs 5.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide per person, enough to heat five houses for a year. Each long-haul jumbo return trip from Australia produces, on average, about 1700 tonnes of carbon dioxide. There are about 3000 such flights each month. If 8 per cent of long-haul international flights were cancelled, we would achieve the same reduction in carbon dioxide.
Any number of permutations would achieve the sort of carbon dioxide reductions the VRET scheme will buy if the goal were considered worthwhile.
But few would bail out the ALP-supporting union super funds that have invested heavily in wind farms. Better to soak the public for money that contributes to the re-election of the Labor Government, eh, Mr Bracks?
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