http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/carbon-guru-stumped-by-two-questions/story-e6frfhqf-1226020074441
Carbon guru stumped by two questions Andrew Bolt From: Herald Sun March 12, 2011 12:00AM
THERE are two fundamental questions journalists never ask the Gillard Government about its mad scheme to cut our emissions.
They're the two questions we'd ask whether buying a ShamWow cloth or a Merc.
One, how much will this cost?
Two, how well will it work?
So when you get a government selling you a huge new plan to cut our emissions by 5 per cent by 2020 to help stop global warming, it seems even more critical to ask them.
Prime Minister, how much will your plan to transform our economy cost? And by how much will it cut temperatures?
Basic, right? So why have you never heard these questions asked?
Why has this government never told you how much the temperature will fall in exchange for the X billions we'll pay?
I'll tell you. If they tried to answer, they'd look as silly as Jill Duggan.
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Duggan helps to run Europe's emissions trading system, which is the biggest in the world, covering 25 times more people than we have here.
And if anyone should be the full bottle on that scheme - which has in fact been rorted sideways while achieving bugger-all for a Europe with 10 per cent unemployment - it should be her.
After all, Duggan is from the European Commission's Directorate General of Climate Action and is the EC's National Expert on Carbon Markets and Climate Change.
And now she's in Australia to lecture politicians and students about how good Europe's scheme is and why we should rush to do something similar.
Well, see what happened this week when on MTR I asked Duggan those two questions - how much does your scheme cost, and what will it achieve.
AB: Your target is to cut Europe's emissions by 20 per cent by 2020?
JD: Yes.
AB: Can you tell me how much - to the nearest billions - is that going to cost Europe, do you think?
JD: No, I can't tell you but I do know that the modelling shows that it's cheaper to start earlier rather than later.
AB: Right. You wouldn't quarrel with Professor Richard Tol - who's not a climate sceptic but is professor at the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin? He values it at about $250 billion. You wouldn't quarrel with that?
JD: I probably would actually. I mean, I don't know. It's very, very difficult to quantify.
AB: Right. Well, you don't know but you think it isn't $250 billion . . . What sort of temperature reduction do you imagine (you'll get) from that kind of investment?
JD: Well, what we do know is that to have an even chance of keeping temperature increases globally to 2 degrees ... you've got to reduce emissions globally by 50 per cent by 2050.
AB: But from the $250 billion -- or whatever you think the figure is -- what do you think Europe can achieve with this 20 per cent reduction in terms of cutting the world's temperature?
JD: Well, obviously, Europe accounts for 14 per cent of global emissions. It's 500 or 550 million people. On its own it cannot do that. That is absolutely clear.
AB: Have you got a figure in your mind? You don't know the cost. Do you know the result?
JD: I don't have a cost figure in my mind. One thing I do know, obviously, is that Europe acting alone will not solve this problem alone.
AB: So if I put a figure to you - I find it odd that you don't know the cost and you don't know the outcome - would you quarrel with this assessment: that by 2100, if you go your way and if you're successful, the world's temperatures will fall by 0.05 degrees? Would you agree with that?
JD: Well, I think the climate science would not be that precise. Would it?
AB: Ah, no, actually it is, Jill. You see, this is what I'm curious about; that you're in charge of a massive program to re-jig an economy. You don't know what it costs. And you don't know what it'll achieve.
How grossly irresponsible to impose untold costs for an unknown outcome that is, in fact, so very small as to make the whole exercise pointless.
Now, if that's the case with huge Europe, how much more so is it with us?
In fact, if Gillard shut down our economy completely and shot every burping cow , the temperature by 2100 would fall just 0.01 degrees.
All pain, zero gain. Hear it from John R. Christy, who this week gave evidence on global warming to the US House of Representatives' Energy and Commerce Committee.
Christy - unlike our new Climate Commissioner, paleontologist Tim Flannery - has impeccable credentials in climate science.
He is a professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and was a lead author for the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Over the past 32 years, he said, the warming trend seemed to be a third of what global warming models predicted, which suggested they "overestimate the response of temperature to greenhouse gas increases".
Recent natural disasters in Australia were just part of the natural cycles, and plans to "stop" warming with, say, an emissions trading scheme were futile.
"We calculate that the impact of legislative actions being considered on the global temperature is essentially imperceptible." Huge cost. No effect.
So I urge you: ask the politicians flogging this "carbon tax" the most basic questions you'd ask any salesman: How much? And what will it do?
And if their answers are as clueless as Duggan's, tell these shysters you're not buying.
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