The Australian publishes deliberate misuse of scientific data
April 23, 2008 by Tim Hollo
Those of you who might still read The Australian would have seen that they splashed on their opinions page and in the news pages today the claims of Phil Chapman, Australia’s first astronaut, that climate change is bunkum and an ice age cometh.
Apparently global warming has stopped, we are now cooling, and it’s all down to sunspot activity.
The story might be worthy of consideration were it not for the fact that it is based on a completely inexcusable misuse of scientific data.
Chapman’s thesis, “that 2007 was exceptionally cold”, is based on “anecdotal evidence” and the claim that:
“All four agencies that track Earth’s temperature (the Hadley Climate Research Unit in Britain, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, the Christy group at the University of Alabama, and Remote Sensing Systems Inc in California) report that it cooled by about 0.7C in 2007″.
Now, your average reader, seeing that, particularly followed by the statement that 2007 was “exceptionally cold”, would assume that these highly respected institutions had said 2007 was a cold year. Firstly, that conclusion would be largely irrelevant to climate science, being an analysis of weather, not climate, which looks at long-term trends. But secondly, it is not actually true.
To take these one by one, Chapman’s claim takes the weather vs climate confusion a step further. Instead of comparing trends, or even yearly averages, he is comparing January 2007, one of the hottest months on record, with January 2008, 0.7C cooler and one of the coolest Januaries in recent years thanks to La Nina. This comparison has about as much bearing on climate science as whether this Monday happened to be cooler than last Monday. In fact, if Chapman had applied the same methodology to March of 2007 and 2008, he would find that the warming trend has returned. If you doubt me, check out these NASA graphs [slow to load, but you can see them smaller below the first break on this page].
To the second point, Chapman’s misuse of the data was deliberately calculated to disguise that fact that all four of the respected bodies he cites concluded that, far from being “exceptionally cold”, 2007 was the equal second or third hottest year on record around the globe.
For a far better explication of why the sunspot argument is bunkum check out this post at climate progress or any of these posts at Real Climate, in particular this one.
The real question is, why does The Australian continue to publish this stuff which a basic fact check would show to be not only wrong but a deliberate falsification of science?
Tim Lambert at Deltoid has been following what he calls the Australian’s war on Science for some time now, see http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/the_war_on_science/
Fantastic Post - thanks for quickly getting to the bottom of this crackpot. You can see how most people would be so confused now, just reading the comments on new.com.au is truly scary. Oh well, really, what more can you do? Garnaut’s on the case, right?
[...] time in The Australian courtesy of Phil “Australia’s first astronaut” Chapman. Greensblog comprehensively debunks his arguments, which basically rest on totally cherrypicked graphs and figures. Let’s just remember that [...]
I’m a big fan of Tim Lambert, Stu. I don’t know why it still surprises me each time…
Thanks, Goshen! I think Garnaut is pretty much on the case, but these regular bursts of anti-science do a lot of damage to the cause…
The cooling stuff is not opinion based on anecdotal evidence but the empircal measurements of high tech instruments including satellites and gadgets on the ground. All 4 systems measure different places and conditions but there was confluence in their various measurements to a rapid and unusual cooling over 2007. The cooling did not represent any challenge to the overall warming. The unusually rapid and severe cooling began from a record high point as Tim points out. The measurements do not indicate an exceptional low temperature but an exceptionally rapid and severe cooling - the greatest single cooling since the high tech gagetry began their measurements in the 70s..
My untrained mind is satisfied with the explaination of the El Nino/La nina transition.
But it did happen, it is not a hypothetical opinion of scientific spokespeople but an analysis of data collected by these agencies.
The debates have been about the various formulae used to interpret (and misinterpret) the data including the various denialist hypotheses such as sunspots/ ice-age, but this should not be confused with the measurements themselves.
Correction, the cooling appears to be the second greatest since 1979, but it was more rapid than the greatest in 1998.
This link is the second on the subject where Anthony Watts presents his analysis, this one admits mistakes he made in the first. Much of the “new information” from the denialist/sunspot brigade has come from Watts.
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/03/06/a-look-at-temperature-anomalies-for-all-4-global-metrics-part-2/
I dont know what experience or qualifications,ethics training or experimental scientific field is your history Tim,but, if you are going to suggest that the Australian is capable of finding candidates that provide evidence for the sureness of your opinions and selected proofs,then I basically think,you have the problem as much as they have.I am sure they had no intention to add non carbon dioxide emissions for your blogging skills.I have been reading about these developments within scientific communities and wether or not climate change can be taken seriously or not,since I started to realise the conservation agenda had been taken over by meteorologists.And are they sacrosanct with many!.I havent been able to commit myself to every nuance of paranoia over climate change since I noticed how the dance steps changed with every expert.So apparently ,in your wisdom,you didnt notice over a long period now.. the honesty and truth of climate change came with some strange upheavals of demand on ones attention!?.So how many actual research centres are there on the matter versus actual science journals,who are discovering for themselves many scientists,from what I have read,remain unconvinced they hold the key of scientific progress!?. I want to be as intelligent about this matter as I can be,but really feel,if Chapman is such a worry for you and The Australian,I cannot share that,and it isnt because I am in love with this paper,but close to its opposite!? Wether you and the Greens will ever figure out,the reason, Al Gore should be treated as absolute poison or not is up to you. Not anyone who already has seen his mouth in action! As it happens nothing here convinces me that what can often be found at KeeleyNet.com or DavidIcke.com is the complete idiocy of disbelief!? I like most of what the Greens stand for,this stuff about Chapman could of been approached significantly in another way.And doesnt forward their case about Australia and Climate Change. The Australian will use people like you up as convenient fodder. And I will be non the wiser by default.
[...] quickly pointed out that Chapman may have been "cherry-picking" the data. A strong La Nina formation in the [...]
[...] does not soon recover, we will have to conclude that global warming is over." Critics quickly pointed out that Chapman may have been "cherry-picking" the data. __________________ The [...]
Thank you for that article Tim. I didn’t know man had a satellite positioned near the periphery of Earth’s gravitational influence. The SOHO satellite could be an extremely valuable tool for investigating global warming, unfortunately its pointed in exactly the wrong direction.
As for the article, hmmm. Cherry picking data, and unjustifiable speculation as to the pace that global cooling can occur (due solely from sunspot activity). Perhaps a case for global cooling can be made, but that article certainly didn’t do it for me.
WHERE was it warmer in March of this year, IT IS April here in southern B.C. Canada and instead of putting up my pool it is SNOWING. Get with the program the global warming fear mongering is over.
So, what will you eco-nazis do if LaNina ends and the earth’s temperatures continue to decline? Of course the temperature is suddenly “rising” again… you guys always back change the data to add an increasing fudge factor called heat islands. Even the temperature isn’t honest with you people anymore. So when, Mauna Loa’s CO2 measurements come down less, this year, are you guys going to back adjust that data too? You can poo-poo this guy all you want, but if it does get colder, then you are as screwed as the Mayan priest that missed the solar eclipse.
by the way, the reason that the hockey stick software isn’t even in the public domain…is because the scientist that wrote it also used it to help predict the American mortgage market. That worked well. This might be the most colossally bad piece of code of all time.
The publishers make money on controversy - that’s why they print this material. Duh. Second, from my view as a scientist, a consensus on global warming is not a proof, nor even something to boast about - consider the very recent history of science! Nobody knows what’s next, period. That being said, I’d love to see the world stop burning oil - it’s too valuable.
Gore’s IT movie is filled with controversial unproven and likely incorrect statements - why “publish it?” - to make money. Duh.
But all the IPCC models show temperature going up year after year. Are you saying that the IPCC models don’t account for La Nina? How about El Nino?
Rick, look at the graph linked from the body of the post. It may well have been a cool March in B.C. Canada, but globally it was warmer than March 07.
Ed, is it just about controversy to sell papers? Or do they have a political axe to grind? Those of us who read the paper daily might see evidence of the latter.
Raul, a cursory look at the IPCC’s data would show you that what you say is simply and utterly untrue. IPCC data shows year by year temperature going up and down, peaking and coming back, then rising again. That’s weather. It’s the multi-year trends that keep rising.
Why do they do this? One must conclude that they (the Australian editors and journos) have another planet to retreat to once this one is stuffed. Someone should lend them a copy of the Ben Elton book STARK.
It would be useful if Tim actually posted some recent global temperature data (satellite and thermometer).
While carbon dioxide levels have continued to increase, global tempertures are in fact starting to fall. There is some data here: http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/002922.html .
Inconvenient facts don’t cease to exist, just because they are ignored - by Hollo or Lambert .
There is a pretty decent argument to suggest that our civilisation arose as the result of a delay to onset of a natural ice age. Apparently we are overdue for the start of an ice age one by something like thousands of years.
That delay gave us enough time with favourable conditions to develop the technologies we have. An ice age would have seriously hampered us achieving this otherwise.
The cause of the delay is purported to be due to the advent of agriculture (starting 10,000) years ago. And overall that was pretty mild warming and arguably has been kind to us. The last 200 years of fossil fuel burning are a different story.
If the anthropogenic ice age delay concept is true (and it does sound good, with data to back it up) then AGW is a mixed blessing. A little bit (when you are due for an ice age) is good, too much is bad.
It all seems to fit with the ability to make observations about a declining solar output and such, but it also explains why those observations would fail to predict an ice age.
Oddly enough this all may be another argument against clean coal. If we sequester as much carbon underground as the clean coal lobby intends (and as securely as they expect) then we may rob ourselves of the ability to ward off a future ice age which would otherwise inevitably come.
Better to leave the coal in the ground, its nicely sequestered already and available if needed for a real crisis.
and so the debate continues and we fiddle as the planet burns
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/04/24/2225980.htm
New Scientist article is extracted below on China’s coal shortfalls. The upshot is the price support for coal is supremely strong, and our export tonnages are rising. Our coal exporters will be making a motza filling this demand for a good while yet. The coal industry is no danger of imminent collapse, their business case is rock solid with coal much less than half current prices.
The silver lining (small though it is) is that they are exporting it for more than cleanup cost these days. A moral and responsible government (i.e. good global citizen) would levy them to meet the clean up cost of those exports. Its shameful how cowardly our government is when dealing with this industry.
NS Article follows now …
China down to 12 days of coal stocks.
Author: Fred Pearce
China’s booming economy could be running out of steam – literally.
At the end of a cold and stormy winter, the country has just 12 days of coal reserves at most power stations. Some provinces, including Hebei, bordering Beijing, have less than a week’s coal left. This is a record low, the state electricity regulatory commission revealed on Tuesday.
China relies on burning coal for 70% of its electricity. Even though Chinese coal production in the first quarter of this year was up almost 15% on the same period last year, it has apparently not been enough to meet rapidly growing demand.
Coal imports, which started last year, have also failed to meet the difference between supply and demand. Such is the demand for power from an economy that has been growing by 10% a year for more than two decades.
Coal-fired growth
The International Energy Agency says China increased capacity at coal-fired power stations by 100 gigawatts in 2006, the most recent year for which figures are available.
It is often claimed that China builds a new coal-fired power plant once a week but the IEA figure suggests that it in fact builds two, assuming a typical plant size of one gigawatt.
Even that is not enough to meet soaring demand. The deputy head of the Chinese electricity regulatory commission, Wang Yeping, said the country is likely to be short of 10 gigawatts of electricity generating capacity by this summer.
Power shortages
That will cause brownouts and power shortages, particularly in southern provinces such as Guangdong, where the spread of air conditioning systems is competing with industry for power.
The coal mining industry, and the rail network needed to bring the coal to the power plants, are both struggling to keep up with the drive to build ever more generating capacity. The strains raise questions about how much longer China’s breakneck industrialisation can continue.
Last year, by most calculations, China exceeded the US to become the world’s largest carbon dioxide emitter – though its emissions per head of population remain far lower. Both countries are heavily reliant on coal for their power, which produces more CO2 per unit of energy than other major fossil fuels.
Jennifer, welcome to Greensblog. Speaking of inconvenient facts, please add March 08 data to your graph and try to repeat your argument. We had a globally cooler second half of 2007 and Jan 08, but March 08 is back up to the levels seen in 2005.
One sparrow does not a summer make, and one cool January does not contradict decades of warming trends.
As usual, it all depends on when you start and stop your data. You conveniently start at 1998, the hottest year, and end at January 2008, when it was nice and cool. Track the data over different periods and you get different responses. That’s why you need to take long periods and see long term trends. Basic scientific honesty.
mcfarm, thanks for the ABC post. Don’t just take my word for it, folks. Look at what David Karoly and Graeme Pearman say.
Raul, the IPCC’s graphs do not show temperature going up year after year. If you actually look at them you will see they go up and down but more smoothly than the actual data. Why? Because natural variability is hard to model but in the long run, doesn’t make a big difference. Plot any sequence of 5 years and fit a trend line. You will see that the r-squared value which is a measure of how well the trend line fits the data is close to zero.
Natural variability, which you can measure by looking at an era before industrial pollution was significant enough to make a difference, e.g., 1850-1899, is about +/-0.5C (found by looking at minima and maxima in annual average over that period). The warming trend is currently about 0.02C per year (2C per century). You won’t see that if you just look at a few years: it is overwhelmed by natural variability.
The Australian obviously has noticed that this article was based on a factual error. Yesterday it was in their home page-linked opinion area, open for comment. By last night, that version had been hidden, and only versions that didn’t have comments were easy to find. A good fraction of the comments noted that the author had mistakenly used a monthly figure to represent change over the whole year. It’s nice to see that even The Australian is capable of embarrassment though it would be even nicer if they published a correction.
The sun has been on a cooling trend since about 2002, and is likely to hit a minimum soon. The average total solar irradiance (TSI) over the last year of available values is over 1W/m^2 less than the 2002 average. Given that doubling CO_2 is estimated to increase warming by about 4W/m^2, this is a significant drop — yet we have not seen a significant decline in average temperatures, in fact, over the time of the drop in TSI, we have still had some of the hottest years on record. The total climate effect has to take into account natural plus anthropogenic effects; if the sun was on a warming trend, things would be even hotter.
I don’t see the evidence that the global warming trend has broken, despite the odd cold snap (you get this sort of short-term variation all the time, as the denial crew reminded us when we had killer heat waves in Europe a few years back).
All I have to say is that the author of that article and editors of The Australian are bloody disgraceful for putting up such deliberate propeganda. The worrying thing is that this will continue as a tactic to influence the masses so they hush up and shun those that want to take action. And what concerns me is that people like my mum would read that paper and just accept it because they are too old, tired or concerned only with what directly effects them to read between the lines.
I just feel like I woke up listening to Alan Jone this morning - all pissed off!
If you want to see what was left out from Marohasy’s graph, go here.
Tim Hollo,
I have provided 10 years of data up to February 2008.
If you have data now for March 2008, I suggest you present it. Why not add some data to this post?
Ten years is certainly not a long enough period to say much about climate - indeed we have had a general warming trend for the last 16,000 years.
But the trend over the last 10 years is not what the climate models predict. Indeed the last ten years of data do not support the hypothesis that carbon dioxide is having a major influence on climate.
More evidence for global cooling!!
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/04/24/2226285.htm
Tim -
It’s pointless arguing with Marohasy. She is immune to both facts and reasoned argument (or she’s dishonest - take your pick). It’s best to just ignore her, as otherwise she derails the discussion - she’s made a career of it.
Actually this is better, but we all know the ABC is a pinko commie conspiracy.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/04/24/2226189.htm
And please stop feeding the trolls, it only encourages them
Jennifer, please look at the graph linked from the original post. There’s plenty of data if you read the post and follow the links.
Interesting. What a shock it is to see a conservative news paper bash science! It presents a threat to the status-quo - quick, pull out all the stops and allow the mass media to assume its natural position as ‘legitimator’ of the ideological hegemony which consumes our society.
Sorry Tim Hollo, Not sure which link you mean. And in this thread you have specifically criticised me for not providing data for March 2008. If you provide a link to a specific graph with data for March 2008 that might help. I am not particularly interested in reading an interpretation of a graph. Just some good data/link to a specific graph with recent temperature data might help progress the discussion.
The piece mcfarm links to is a pretty sad reflection of where things are at. Why would he want to close down all discussion? The skeptics are already a minority with both sides of politics, and big business, all keen to subscribe to the Al Gore climate crisis concept and carbon trading.
Marohasy! I’m impressed to see you down on the Greens blog slumming it with us. How’s your mates down at the Institute of Public Affairs?
Founded any front groups lately? Like,
the Australian Environment Foundation - which campaigns for weaker environmental laws, or
the Independent Contractors of Australia - which campaigns for an end to workplace safety laws and a general deregulation of the labour market, or,
the Owner Drivers Australia, which campaigns against safety and work standard for truck drivers?
Got any big donations from BHP-Billiton lately?
How about WMC?
Monsanto?
News Limited?
Phillip Morris?
British American Tobacco?
Caltex, Esso Australia, Shell and Woodside Petroleum?
Gunns?
Murray Irrigation?
Ah, but you wouldn’t know, would you? After all, you don’t take an interest in who funds IPA. That’s what you told a government committee in 2004 after persuading them to overturn recommendations to increase environmental flows to the Murray… after Murray Irrigation gave $40,000 to the IPA.
What was it you said a moment ago? Ah:- “Inconvenient facts don’t cease to exist, just because they are ignored.”
Giving “independent” advice to a government committee which favours a company funding your institute… that funding’s a rather inconvenient fact, wouldn’t you say? But you didn’t know it. You ignored it, apparently. After all, how could you possibly know?
Of course, you might have learned that some time after June 2006 when Bill Hetherington, Chairman of Murray Irrigation Ltd from 1995 to 2005 - including the period when Murray Irrigation Ltd was a major funder of the IPA - was appointed to the IPA’s board of management. Perhaps Hetherington told you then, eh?
Of course, even though you’re paid to say what you say, it might be true anyway. And maybe Liz Ellis really does credit all her success to her Dunlops.
Jennifer, click here and go to the lower right hand graph below the first fold. To help you read it, the numbers on the x axis are months of the year (1 = January, 3 = March, for instance), and the y axis is the temperature anomoly above long-term average.
It’s been there all along, linked from the original post very clearly if you cared to look, at the end of the second para below the blockquote.
Dear Philip Travers,
Please put a space after every comma, and a space after every full stop.
Please learn to use paragraphs.
Cheers.
“The real question is, why does The Australian continue to publish this stuff which a basic fact check would show to be not only wrong but a deliberate falsification of science?”
- Because the Australian is a conservative pro capitalist newspaper, and in case you haven’t noticed the Australian ruling class makes alot of its profits out of coal.
So you might say our local capitalists might be even more inclined to try and propagate lies about climate change than capitalists from other countries might be. They are right up there with the Saudis and the Yanks.
So Australian capitalism’s ‘cheer squad’- Fairfax and Murdoch, Stokes and Packer- are thus going to give press to whoever is the most credible tripesmith of the month like our friend Phil Chapman.
This time its cooling, last time it was clean coal, next time it will be carbon trading, the month after it will be biofuels, and then we will once again hear how bad wind turbines are for rare parrots and how they barely generate any electricity anyway, let alone baseload, and they are basically an elaborate investment scam.
And all the while we will hear about the fantastic growth in coal exports, the inexcusable amount of bottlenecks stopping the coal from getting to port, the marvellous annual profits of BHP and Rio, and when the walk against warming happens again, the big gun Paul Kelly will once again remind us that the ‘economic reality’ is that coal aint goin nowhere, sister.
Or perhaps I am just being too left wing and there is a far more innocent explanation, and we shouldn’t be too concerned by this latest in a string of minor oversights by our 1degree friends at NewsLimited.
Ouch Kiashu, but a well funded thick skin should help.
Jennifer Marohasy@32, far from being desirous of closing down discussion, I am all for open, honest, passionate, even heated debate on all things. However to settle on a restricted point in time with a few figures viewed in isolation, as you have, is disingenuous.
That said, I stand firm with Voltaire, “I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend until death your right to say it”. I strongly support your right to express a hypothesis gleaned from ‘cherry picked’ figures, just don’t expect me, or others with a scientific and statistical bent, a to pay serious attention to it.
In short, it is a lack of intellectual rigour that warrants a troll award. You may very well think that you are worthy of such an award, but I couldn’t possibly comment.
OK. I think I found the bit Tim Hollo considers most relevant. According to James Hansen, globally March 2008 was 0.6 degrees above the 1951-1980 average.
I can’t see how this information supports the belief that we currently have a climate crisis or falsifies what I have written in the above thread.
Jennifer:
1 - this isn’t a question of “according to James Hansen”, it’s NASA’s measurements, and the same ones that you rely on. Kind of credible.
2 - the March figures don’t “support the belief that we currently have a climate crisis”. No single month figures do. That’s the point.
3 - of course the figures falsify what you have written in the above thread. They utterly contradict the theory that warming has stopped and we are now on a cooling trend. If you are willing to claim that a 12 month downward trend has global significance that can be compared to the fastest cooling ever, then you have to equally admit that the warming trend over the following two months after the famous 12 months, which cancels out almost the entire cooling, must be equally significant.
I’m glad you finally looked at the data. Now try to fit what it tells you in with your ideas instead of refusing to grapple with it.
Hi Tim Hollo,
1. There is more than one NASA data set - you have quoted from the James Hansen set, the one that uses his methodology. There is also NASA satellite data that looks a bit different. Then there is NOAA data (also from the US) and Hadley data from the UK.
2. Agreed
3. The data don’t falsify my conclusion which is based on the last 10 years of data. And I think the plot I linked to was based on NASA satellite and also UK Hadley data.
I agree there has been a general warming trend over the last 150 years and over the last 16,000 years.
I am also interested in the data over the last 10 years and interested in why you have a different interpretation of global temperature trends than I do.
The trend over the last ten years only looks like it does because 1998 was such a hot year, due to a confluence of factors including a particularly strong El Nino. The only reason the trend you choose looks static is because you have chose convenient start and end points to give you the readings you want.
But it was predicted, that because of the more recent El Nino, 2007 would be particularly hot even hotter than 1998.
Indeed the Hadley Centre predicted, and the BBC reported as much, late 2006.
My contacts at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology also told me 2007 would be hotter than 1998 when I discussed the issue with them.
But 2007 turned out to be relatively cool - in the scheme of things - except at the North Pole.
As regards trends.
If you look at global temperatures as measured by the NASA satellites since first recorded in 1979 through to the end of last year it also shows some recent cooling.
Tim, the analogy I usually choose is income.
I have $4,000 in my bank account on Monday. One month later I have zero in my account. Am I getting richer or poorer?
Or, on Monday I have zero in my bank account. A month later I have $4,000. Am I getting richer or poorer?
In fact, I am getting neither richer nor poorer. I’m paid once a month, and through the month spend my money until I’m broke the day before payday. So my income as a graph would look like,
|\|\|\ and so on.
The month-to-month variations of the money in my bank account can’t tell you whether I’m getting richer or poorer. You have to look at the trend over years.
Still less could you tell anything by looking at how much cash I had in my wallet.
So I explain it to people that the weather over a season is like the money in your bank account, the weather today is like the money in your wallet, and the climate is the trend of your savings or debt over many years. You could pick any particular bunch of days and argue that I’m getting richer or poorer, but it’d be bollocks.
So in the first place the astronaut’s linked article and the corporate shill Marohasy are picking and choosing data. In the second place, they’re making some data up, or strongly misrepresenting it. Chapman says that there’s only one sunspot on the sun right now, and this is a big worry. Neither is true. The site he refers to, spaceweather.com, currently shows zero sunspots. They talk about sunspots here.
“Counting sunspots is not as straightforward as it sounds. Suppose you looked at the Sun through a pair of (properly filtered) low power binoculars — you might be able to see two or three large spots. An observer peering through a high-powered telescope might see 10 or 20. A powerful space-based observatory could see even more — say, 50 to 100. Which is the correct sunspot number?”
The Sun, like a teenager, always has spots. It’s just that sometimes we don’t see them clearly, and they also follow a cycle.
They provide a graph which shows the 11 year cycle of the sun and its sunspots. This image shows the way solar irradiance - the actual heat from the Sun reaching the Earth varies over time. The difference is rather small, around 1 Watt per square metre. That’s like the difference in heat you’d get if you put six incandescent lightbulbs over the average suburban block, and then turned them off. It’s relatively little, other things - like greenhouse gases - have a much larger effect.
And well-read people who are not in the pocket of mining, tobacco and oil companies all know this.
Kiashu, that’s a solid analogy. Nice work.
Jennifer:
Come off it. Don’t take us for uninformed fools here. Sure, 2007 didn’t end up being the hottest year on record, because the last months ended up being cooler than predicted. But to say the year was relatively cool is just wrong. It was either the third hottest ever or the equal second hottest, depending on the different analyses.
Its fair enough to be sceptical about warming. And I’m pretty sure its valid for at least some people with reasonably good critical thinking skills to reach a conclusion that an ice age is a bigger risk than dangerous warming.
And its important that such views are not suppressed provided a coherent basis for those views can be demonstrated.
Anyone both competent and honest will admit that in spite of the IPCC says there is at least a very small probability that such a conclusion may be the most accurate one.
We should be cognizant of risks of being too zealous in pursuing the global warming agenda and aggressively rejecting the ice age view. Such a risk is that it may lead us to engineer a solution to warming that leads to an ice age.
It isn’t really necessary to prove to Jennifer she is wrong. Actually its probably a futile exercise as even if you succeed someone else will pop in her place since there is too much at stake for vested interests to let the issue rest. So not much is gained by wasting our time debating with the likes of Jennifer. Her ilk (like the ID crowd) will always exist.
It is sufficiently revealing of Jennifer’s agenda that she thinks its important to try to convince non-scientists that AGW is a myth. If she were even vaguely scientific she would submit her paper and let it do the talking as comprehensive debunking of global warming would be sensational research with no need for a mouthpiece.
Clearly she is no scientist.
Sadly when I read stuff like the above I get the sinking feeling the Greens get a bigger kick out of squabbling than they do out of taking responsibility for the hard, gritty and boring yards of putting solutions in place.
Here is a test for the Greens if you are up to it.
1) What percentage of Australian electricity generation is renewable today as a consequence of action by the Greens?
2) What percentage of Australian electricity generation is renewable today in spite of action by the Greens?
On point 1, I am not aware of anything, but I’d be glad to be updated. Soundbites don’t qualify, it has to action with actual outcomes of renewable generation. Oddly I am more aware of things the Democrats achieved in this regard than the Greens.
The answer to question 2 would include Tasmanian hydro which has been opposed by the Greens.
Now more than ever we need responsible outcomes. I wish I had more confidence that the Greens will contribute to bringing about the outcomes we need.
You can view the data at:
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/02/19/another-global-temp-index-dives-in-jan08-this-time-hadcrut/
This is interesting regarding perspectives. 1998 was the peak. We have been declining since then. However, after we crossed a peak, we are still higher than the lowlands, but not has high as the peak. So is temperature up or down?
Depending upon the point you want to make, you cast your location differently. If you compare to 1990, 2007 was higher, 2008 is about the same. You could thus say temperatures are higher than in the early 1990’s. Thus we are up.
If your perspective is the direction of the terrain, we are pointed down. 1998 was a peak. We are dropping from there. 2007 Jan was data was up, but all data following was pointed down, yet higher than the lows.
A reason for your confusion is that much of science has been corrupted by politicians and government money. How do you know what to believe when some scientists lie? Which scientists lie and how do you know? Politicians are easy to understand, 99% lie.
A core corruption is those politicians who have coopted the environmental movement as a method of control and to hold back developing countries.
One core point in Chapman’s argument is of real concern. Where are the sunspots? You can look at the sun and they are not there, as predicted. As of today, none.
http://www.spaceweather.com/
Concerned, this kind of ’squabbling’ may seem like a waste of time, but it is very easy for this kind of deliberately misleading and wrong argument to become accepted wisdom if people don’t expose it for what it is. That is why we chose to do so.
Re what we have achieved, in recent weeks the clearest greenhouse benefit we have achieved is, by publicising the fact that the Climate Dept is moving into inefficient buildings, extracting a commitment from the government to retrofit that office and increasing pressure to move other government offices into more efficient buildings or retrofit the ones they are in.
Re renewables, our office working closely with the SA Green MP, Mark Parnell, the Greens have ensured a high quality and effective solar feed in law will shortly be in place in SA. We have a private members’ bill on the same which we are attempting to secure support for in the Senate.
The question you omit, of course, is how much more renewables would there be in Australia’s supply had the previous or current Federal Governments taken on more of our policies. If our Sun Fund or Farming Renewable Energy policies, for example, were official government policies, we’d see a huge increase in renewables penetration.
The thing is, concerned, we are a political party, not a developer. If the overwhelming majority of the parliament oppose our policies, what can we do? Keep trying is all. keep trying to convince the Australian people and to convince the other pollies. That’s what we are expending a lot of energy on, and, hopefully, we are slowly but surely getting somewhere, along with all the others fighting for the same cause.
The feed in law is a positive, and I sincerely hope you achieve this uniformly Australia wide.
I disagree though with the relevance of the omission you mention. What counts is what has been actually achieved. Is it possible that your good policies not being adopted suggests misjudgments in brinkmanship?
Regardless of your minority status you will always have the power to conceive of policies that are both attractive to the majority and will make progress towards your goals. Managing this well demands solid commitment to understanding the tradeoffs required. Don’t fall into the trap of believing you are powerless. Where there is a will (and focus) there is a way.
Uncompromising stands by minority players are rarely an effective or desirable way to effect change. Sadly though adopting an uncompromising stand is highly seductive since it offers the avenue (in the likely event of failure) for the zealot to subsequently wallow in self righteousness. This can be a big enough private payoff to more than compensate for not achieving the desired result. Awareness of the availability of this psychological payoff directly undermines the likelihood of the passionate believer achieving best outcomes.
Many would prefer to be comfortably “right” without ever wanting to assume the risk of being saddled with the responsibility of seeing their ideas adopted. So they self-sabotague and the whole exercise is reduced to a tragic mind game.
You can do much more than keep on trying. For one thing you can do the introspection required to identify the personal sacred cows that get in the way of your ideas being taken up. Every such internally created obstacle should be forced to prove why its continued support is justified. Sometimes the obstacle is as simple as bandwidth. That is you don’t have enough intellectual resource to support an idea since it interferes with your ability to conceive of winning policies in more critical areas.
A merely good idea that is adopted is infinitely more useful than an excellent idea that is not adopted due to the baggage that is saddled to it.
The Oz also misrepresents research into literacy education. They’ve been doing it for years. They haven’t worked out that ” Whole Language” is not the same as ” whole word” . Nor do they understand that alphabetic script evolved to help the writing process and has lit tle to do with effective reading.
Concerned,
you might want to do some of the hoof-work yourself; just have a look at the Greens’ policies and its very easy to start spotting all the good ideas that others co-opt.
Greens ‘good policies’ regularly get co-opted when it suits the big parties, and frequently have the support of industry - the latter if usually not too loud about it though as it costs them access to the major parties. The reality as to why Green policies don’t get picked up, or when they are acknowledged as Green policies is pretty simple - politics. It very much suits the major parties to portray and have the media lazily fall in line with the portrayal of the Greens as wacky fring-dwellers, while quietly picking up their policies.
Just a few examples from recent times:
Garrett trying to puruse container deposit legislation and review the controls on packaging to create a nationally consistent system with producers responsble for the packaging disposal - been a Greens policy at state and national level for several years. Banning plastic bags is another obvious example.
- Garrett is now starting to increase the National Reserve System, Threatened Species, Ramsar - Greens, in particular Siewart backed by long-standing Green policies have been pushing for this for over 10 years.
- Setting Greenhouse targets for the short & medium term - the Greens set the agenda clearly here.
- assisting farmers with addapting to climate change - Christine Milne has raised this continually, as has Rachel Siewart
- significantly increasing early childhood support, education and healthcare - Rudd’s coming up with good ideas that the Greens have had policies on for years.
- addressing the crisis in Indigenous health and life expectancy, and the national apology: the Greens apologised in parliament to the stolen generations in 1997, and have continually raised the shameful discrimination against Aboriginal Australians.
- increasing funding to universities and decreasing the debt burden on students - both things Gillard has publicly supported, long standing Greens policies.
- raising the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target - straight Greens policy lift.
- a harm minimisation approach to drugs, including alcohol - longstanding Greens policies howled at by the major parties, but quietly adopted, and recognised by all health sectors as world best practice.
So it’s pretty clear that Greens policies are attractive, effective and relevant, it’s just that it suits far too many in the media and major parties to pinch without crediting.
Uncompromising stands by minority players are rarely an effective or desirable way to effect change. Sadly though adopting an uncompromising stand is highly seductive since it offers the avenue (in the likely event of failure) for the zealot to subsequently wallow in self righteousness.
I think if you’re not going to do a little searching yourself on Green policies being adopted, you certainly need to provide some specific examples around this paragraph. It’s lovely to throw stones and make assertions, but what examples can you give? - because basically what you’ve written above is the tired old meme used by the mainstream media and the big parties about the Greens, and I wonder if you’ve ever examined if its actually true?
And a follow-up question: why is it only up the Greens to compromise? As we can see above, the Greens have many policies and initiatives that are clearly attractive and get adopted, which belies the claim that the Party spends all its time being extreme, refusing to compromise and not listening. Have you considered that the shoe might actually be on the other foot?
You know you’ve got it made when Fox News links to you.
The best debunking I have seen of the stuff that ended up in the Murdoch press is at:
http://climateprogress.org/2008/04/13/breaking-news-the-great-ice-age-of-2008-is-finally-over-next-stop-venus/
There are graphs of the data too. Temperatures did go down to near baseline for about 2 months, then surged back up to around 0.7 degrees C above baseline. Looks like there won’t be an ice age anytime soon…
graphs I have seen over a hundred years show climate variability …. within a range of tolerability …
but
a clear trend to rising temperatures over the last 50 years or so …
that’s global warming
Ooh, Jennifer Marohasy’s started posting here. Have fun, Tim(s)!
Brother Tim, you may want to have a read of tigtog’s post here, although you’ll see it soon enough on LP. I suspect you’ll want to turn off “Possibly related posts”, although for now the one link is innocuous.
Thanks, Brother Peter. Shall do so post haste.
Made it where, exactly, Sam?
oh look, now the liberals are stealing green policies too
Made what, exactly, Sam?
Some pretty unrelated posts up there, Doc…
Forget logic and scientific method,the Greens will have to fight this herecy just like the Catholic Church.
What if Jesus really died?What if CO2 was not the evil devil and the Great Global Warming God did not exist?
Those evil deniars need to be relegated to the bowels of discredibility.They are surely rich capitalists whose only philosophy is self interest.
Yes, myriad, but look at my comments towards the bottom. It’s a clayton’s feed-in law that they’re proposing, with payments only for net use. Not much use for anyone…
Thanks Tim, I hadn’t gone back to the thread since it had a few comments, very interesting discussion!
And what a “surprise” to see as seems to often happen our (greens) language /ideas being superficially co-opted to greenwash, rather than the principle and the substance being adopted.
Glad to see you’ve got Robert Merkel over at LP thinking. I find his attachment to “big is the only way” to solve everything from the energy crisis/climate change to agriculture too frustratingly narrow to have the time to engage with it often.
look forward to the further discussion on your proposition to him
Tim, is there any good trend data on weather volatility? We seem to be getting a higher than expected incidence of the hottest/coldest/wettest/driest months in decades.
Myriad, I quite like Hunt. Where were the Liberals hiding him before the last election? In opposition its easy for the Liberals to embrace policies which promote winners and losers (such as feed in tarrifs), after all, its not their political capital that will be burnt by the Rudd battlers facing rising energy prices.
I don’t mind Hunt either Zoltar. For professional reasons I’ve had some interactions with him when he was actually Parliamentary Secretary for (bits of) the Environment under the Howard Gov’t., and the guy definitely has a brain, and definitely has a genuine interest in these issues. If we have to have Liberals, I take him over the many others on offer any day. I think there are also good signs that he and other more progressive Libs are looking to the conservative party of England for a way to launch a policy renaissance - and the conservative party of England is often argued to have better climate change policies than Blair/Brown.
OTOH, he’s obviously got a ways to go (if we assume he’s genuinely sincere) if he doesn’t realise the manifest problems with the feed-in tariff that Tim’s rightly pointed out - or he’s actually an ardent greenwasher. Time will tell I guess, but at least he’s putting forward intelligent critiques of Labors environment policies on occasion, which is certainly refreshing.
Zoltar if we tax coal exports then Rudd’s battlers won’t need to face nearly so much pain. A coal export levy does not flow through to domestic energy prices, since domestic coal would be unlevied.
But then these forums tell me taxing coal exports beyond $1/tonne would be BAD policy because:
a) the gangbusters coal industry is so fragile it would immediately crash
and;
b) if they didn’t crash it would raise money that could be used by government to fund building large scale solar thermal
I think its kind of weird. Apart from the fact that a) is nonsense, both of those things would be good, really good, not bad. I wish a) would happen, it would immediately raise the global price of supply constrained coal another $100/tonne and this really would make renewables more competitive. But then of course that exposes the nonsense of the claim they will crash if they face an export levy beyond $1/tonne.
A publican has a moral (and legal) duty not to serve alcohol to a drunk. Don’t we have an even greater moral duty not to export ‘unoffsetted’ coal to those that we know for sure would simply burn it without implementing their own offsets.
Personally I think we greens need a more consistent moral code. The coal industry really should not be mollycoddled by the Greens as a protected species. Has the greenhouse mafia gotten to the Greens as well! Spare us from that.
Myriad, my only exposure to Hunt has been a couple of his appearances on Lateline, and in each he has come across as sincere and committed to environmental/climate causes. If anything he seemed slightly “too committed”, if this was just greenwash, then I got comprehensively snowed. I’d prefer to see Hunt rather than Wong as environment minister, there is no denying that they both are talented, but Penny’s main talent of late seems to be obfuscation and question dodging.
Gilbert, I read what you had to say about a levy on coal exports at LP too. I see a couple of problems with this tax: the more coal exported = the greater the government tax take, I can see government getting addicted to this income stream and encouraging even greater coal exports (like the states addiction to gambling revenue); if there is no price imposed on Carbon domestically, then there is little incentive to move away from coal fired power, and we need to decarbon the local economy to meet Kyoto commitments; and lastly the tax isn’t going to work, if the cost of the tax on export coal is low enough that it doesn’t cause foreign energy producers to shift to renewables then it has achieved nothing (apart from economic pain), and if the tax is high enough to cause a shift away from coal in our export markets then it kills off our coal exports. I’d much prefer to see an export quota for coal rather than a tax, export permits could be auctioned.
Zoltar
I read it over there to, but I must have read a different one to you! It looks like the levy has to be applied to renewables otherwise how does the carbon credit he is talking about happen? So the government can’t get fat off it. The government could get fat off a different proposal sure, but not the one I read. If that happened I’d sure rather the government taxed coal than my income.
Everyone else apart from Gilbert thinks a tax will reduce exports, at least you have a unique take that the tax will increase them!
The best bet is exports will increase but in spite of the tax, not because it. Basically demand will drive the export increase and the tax won’t be enough to stop it. I also think the tax would cause a small, maybe hard to measure, hike in global coal prices given enough time. The effect of that would be a little less coal consumed than without the tax, as Peter Wood says, but not enough to write home about.
Also its an adjunct to a domestic scheme that looks designed not to overlap. My take is it meant to work side by side with a domestic scheme. It is just that this adjunct wouldn’t appear to cause a domestic energy price hike above that caused by the domestic scheme.
Failing to shift foreign energy producers to renewables is not proof it achieves nothing. If the plan only pays to help shift our domestic generation towards renewable then it has proved its worth! If you tell me it won’t do that then you are reading a different plan that I didn’t get to see.
Coal tax! What a good idea. We could use it to build subsidised energy efficient homes for the next generation, better public transport, an electric vehicle manufacturers subsidy and a National 4:1 green energy i/p tarrif scheme.
Why wouldnt a smart government add tax to the exploitation of a booming finite natural national resource? Why would any one attempt to suggest that it could be a bad idea, unless they are just damn greedy or deluded?
A tax where a good percentage is turned back into those communities which are directly relient on the industry, to improve sustainability in the inevitable ‘down’ times is just coomon sense.
A tax which is spent on offsetting the impact of the global use of the resource is just responsible behaviour.
A tax which can be utilized to assist in developing incentive for a healthier future, is just.
Coal miners have always been hero’s of the proletariate, why pretend it isnt still just so?
Burn that fat, raise that hat!
Except that, the existing export structure for the coal economy is based around pricing and guaranteed supply contracts, isn’t it?
Before any discussion relating to possible export tariff increases could be seriously entertained, these contracts would have to be understood.
If there is no flexibility built in to the no doubt standardised contract architecture allowing for the increase export tariff to balance with buy costs, then the tariff will naturally be passed on to the lowest common denominator. As per standard modus. That would start with the industry workers and spread from there.
Worse, if there is not enough flex in the contracts to ensure that the ceiling price is only limited by known conditions over the life of the agreement they are sure to become a dead albatross for whatever entity entertains the belief that we are in a predictable, business as usual future environment.
Any coal export tariff would only be sensibly acceptable as applied with new coal supply contract negotiations.
Unless there is a definite pass on to the purchaser ability for the tariff under the existing architecture it could cause large problems for any pragmatic Government. It would not pass tabling.
The industry must have known or at least suspected increased tariffs and environmental issues would be on the agenda for the Rudd Govt, the coal has been here going there since supply and demand made it so, yet the most recent and largest supply contracts to be publically announced where rushed through just on the change of guard, so to speak.
The digging up and selling of coal is a known inevitable devil. Despite sensible global pressure to evolve and exploit alternative fuel energies right now, the economic and in place engineering momentum behind the industry is a force probably more akin to glacial behaviour than a big train (as previously described). Even so the demand for the resource is growing a pace with the concern about the impacts of its use, for me as I am sure for others out there this is concern in a tedious gut wrenching grind like the sheering of rock faces as the glacier travels down hill.
You cannot just turn it off, the more immediately severe the action the more destructive the consequences, it’s a directly proportional relationship.
Given the movement for change and the industry momentum it would seem just another force of nature then that an increased tariff would come into being.
Carefully negotiated and included in the factoring for new coal supply contracts the tax could be well spent on establishing exit strategies for the future. At some point a great big smile in a suite gets to turn it off, or at least down with blessing from all but the most behind.
But please, not at the expense of the working folk.
Myriad
When I report I am not aware that any Australian electricity generation is renewable today as a consequence of action by the Greens, then I am conveying information that should be of interest to a political party. A party must know how it is perceived. A central function of a political party is to ensure that the voting public is aware of the achievements of that party. A party knows that the vast bulk of its potential voters will not work hard to learn about the party. Such voters will instead operate from a series of take home messages. If the Greens have actually ensured green generation then it should be important to the Greens that their constitutents know this. Your response that I should work harder to educate myself about Greens achievements completely misses the point of the information I convey to you when I say I am not aware of such achievements.
Having said that, not a single one of the examples given by you and Tim satisfies the first question. Many of them are off topic and the closest are only prospective. If two insiders can’t find such examples what hope would I have of finding such an example. With the available information above I am left with the surprising conclusion that no present energy generation in Australia is renewable as a consequence of action by the Greens.
Why is it only up the Greens to compromise? This is a completely disingenuous question. Of course its not only up to the Greens to compromise, if you really looked up you would see compromise occuring everywhere. Those who genuinely intend to change the status quo are most called upon to compromise. Those who prefer things as they are need to make the fewest compromises. Those who refuse to compromise either secretly prefer the status quo or are not skillful change agents.
The notion that “they” stole “your” policy is very tenuous. After all where did the seed ideas for “your” policy idea come from. You read, they read. It is almost certainly the case “they” were at least already part the way there before your policy appeared. If not they couldn’t so easily produce something similar. This phenomenon is well known in science and is called synchronicity. Two independant scientists at the time produce the same breakthrough. The reason is that all the seed concepts (necessary for the next breakthrough step) have been established by other scientists and are widely known. The application of this is politics in even more obvious since political operatives spend more of their time publicly expounding ideas than do scientists.
The notion that parties should not eagerly absorb the best ideas floating around in the politosphere is absurd and if adopted would be counterproductive. We should demand (not oppose as you appear to) the free sharing and development of political ideas. That you don’t want this has bothered me enough to get me to write this piece.
What really counts is when Greens negotiate acceptance of an idea that other parties wouldn’t automatically adopt. That is the skill, work and value of politics. This is something the Democrats did and its exactly because of this I am unambiguously aware of existing green generation attributable to the Democrats.
Concerned, let me say firstly that I completely agree that it is up to us to effectively communicate our successes. That is, of course, an extremely difficult thing to do in the current political and media environment, but that is not to excuse our failure in doing so. It is one of our top priorities for the coming term of government to get better at doing so.
Re ’stealing policies’, it is absolutely one of the measures of our success that the policies we articulate have begun to achieve more mainstream support and are finally being implemented. I don’t think many of us regard that as a problem at all, and indeed, I don’t think myriad regards it as a problem, either. It is rather a measure of our success that is extremely hard to communicate and quantify, particularly since there will be those who claim that the policy’s acceptance came despite our advocacy rather than because of it. Surely, though, you would acknowledge that our long and hard advocacy of an significantly increased MRET, with many years briefing advisers, bureaucrats and journalists about the benefits, may have contributed to the ALP’s adoption of a 20% target at the 2007 election, up from their 5% target at the 2004 election? That will now have a huge impact on the renewables sector. At the time, we welcomed the target, although it was not as high as ours, and claimed some credit for it, but, of course, this was largely ignored in the crowded media environment.
It is one of the biggest tensions of our work, one that we often have extended discussion about internally, that we most often achieve our goals when our work is lowest profile. If we quietly advocate a policy and work behind the scenes with government advisers and bureaucrats to convince them of its merits, they will not uncommonly be more open to the idea than if we shout it from the rooftops. That is entirely understandable, politically, since it is not easy for a government to publicly be seen to adopt the policies of one of its opponents. Of course, the problem for us is that our constituents then don’t realise that we were behind the adoption of that policy. A key example of that is Christine’s negotiating gay rights laws in Tasmania, and brokering gun law reform after Port Arthur. Post facto, it is very hard to claim credit.
Regarding renewables specifically, there is a very good reason why we haven’t yet had a huge success federally - because up until now, we’ve been a very small party up against the might of the Howard anti-renewables government. I must say, I find your statement that you are “unambiguously aware of existing green generation attributable to the Democrats” a bit hard to credit. Can you give a concrete example? I can’t think of a single one. They are not responsible for the MRET or the small R&D subsidies to renewables, which are currently the only federal support mechanisms. Those policies exist because of public pressure brought to bear on the Howard Government by a range of NGOs as well as the Dems and us.
The Dems can readily claim credit for getting the NHT funded, certainly. But, firstly, that hasn’t led to increases in renewables generation. And, secondly, the fact that it was negotiated in exchange for the GST is indisputably one of the contributing reasons for their demise as a political force. That’s not a great example to follow…
At a state level, of course, Greens have been successful in balance of power situations in NSW and WA and SA in negotiating stronger support for renewables already. That’s more than you can say for the Democrats, and bodes well for what hopefully can happen once the Senate changes in July.
This strand of discussion is very interesting to me, and is informing quite a bit of my thinking on our communications strategy post July. Thanks for raising it.
Hi Tim, thanks for the thoughtful post, many good things articulated there. The transcript at the URL below probably does a reasonable job of summarising what was behind my forming the view that renewables benefited from the Democrats:
4/6/1999
Renewable energy big winner in GST deal
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/stories/s27990.htm
That’s right, I’d forgotten that the remote power generation support was part of the GST deal. Thanks for reminding me - and you are right, then. The Dems can claim credit for a very tiny amount of renewable energy generation that might not have already happened.
Of course, Howard dumped the RRPG program as soon as he could possibly get away with it…
Of course, the question has to be asked - would the emissions reductions from the RRPG outweigh the fact that the GST, as negotiated by the Dems, taxes public transport?
We hope to be able to bring a greenhouse-conscious eye to every relevant piece of legislation once the Senate becomes a real house of review again, and see how much we can achieve, as well as through promoting ideas of our own and attempting to win support for them.
A coal export levy has merit as a response to inflationary pressure.
The RBA will tell us that demand in the economy is creating inflationary pressures, and that this demand is largely driven by the mining boom. The RBA has a single crude lever to curb demand in the economy. That lever takes from everyone, regardless of whether they are a beneficiary of the mining boom.
The government on the other hand has more flexibility. It can directly tax the mining boom, which will curb the available capital to flow through to the economy creating demand. The government can thus reducing inflationary pressure in a manner which doesn’t harm mortgage holders who aren’t beneficiaries of the mining boom.
Now we might expect that broadly taxing the mining boom would not be well received by foreign investors. However taxing exported coal would be much easier to understand given the backdrop of climate change and Australians being dreadful over-emitters. A coal export levy could be part of us simply doing our bit and no great threat to free enterprise for ordinary industry.
If the mining boom revenues were causing inflationary pressure last year, then it doesn’t take genius to understand that doubling of coal export revenues will amplify the inflationary pressure.
If we don’t tax coal (and so take some of the steam out) then the RBA will likely be forced to raise rates again, thereby increasing mortgage stress among innocent punters. Or even better it might give the RBA a chance to drop rates earlier than otherwise expected.
So tax coal exports and thereby help out Glenn Stevens so he can take a breather from giving us rate rises.