Why Australia Must Not Ratify The Kyoto Protocol
By Bob Foster

Advocates of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change would have us believe that human-caused global warming (plus consequent sea-level rise) is the greatest threat facing the planet. This is not so; and IPCC is diverting attention from real-life environmental imperatives. IPCC's supporters assert that the modest warming of about 0.6 0C observed during the 20th Century was largely the result of human-caused changes to the composition of the atmosphere. Instead, it is mostly natural rebound of our cyclic climate from the Little Ice Age.

IPCC's computer-modellers forecast global average surface warming of up to 5.8 0C in the century ahead. But for the century past, the modellers have failed to provide a plausible reconciliation of under-warming reality with their over-predicting models. Furthermore, models can't replicate a world where sudden non-linear transitions between climatic states - like the abrupt cooling in the 1940s or the abrupt warming at 1976/77 - are, and will continue to be, a prominent natural feature. Any forecast of climate a century ahead is spurious.

Substantial human-caused greenhouse gas emissions during the 20th Century, largely carbon dioxide from the combustion of fossil fuels, appear not to be an environmental negative. Atmospheric CO2 remains much depleted compared to the time when our plants evolved, and benefits to growth are already apparent from the increasing availability of this vital plant food. If Australia should ratify the Kyoto Protocol it will be for reasons unrelated to the environment. Already, this treaty is diverting money and zeal from here-and-now environmental needs. While Ministers talk at The Hague, Bonn and Marrakech about saving the environment, in our home region habitat destruction continues apace in Sumatra, Borneo, Melanesia - and Queensland. Biodiversity is being lost because attention is focussed on greenhouse.

The Protocol is a weapon in a Northern Hemisphere economic and political war. If Australia ratifies, we must then begin a process of decarbonisation; and the Latrobe Valley's vast wealth of low-ash, low-sulphur, low-extraction-cost brown coal will be set at naught. But economic hardship and job losses will not stop at the Valley; and our country with its LDC-like economy will be harmed more than any other nation. Having ratified, if we then fail to meet our treaty commitments, we will be punished with as-yet-undefined financial sanctions imposed from Europe. Australian living standards will become collateral damage in the Battle of the Giants; and the human misery thus caused offers no countervailing environmental benefit.

Australians have not been told what is at stake in terms of sovereignty and economic wellbeing. Neither have we been told that 'doing the right thing' about GHG emissions cannot stabilise climate nor prevent extreme weather events. As was always the case, adaptation and mitigation will be required. Tell it like it is - now, before the decision is made on ratification.
______________________________________________________________________________
Robert J Foster (Ph 61 3 9525 6335, Fax 6345, and Email fosbob@bigpond.com) is an Adelaide engineer by qualification, a Shell geoscientist by experience, a former GM Marketing at BHP Petroleum, and latterly a consultant in energy economics. Bob is a founding director of The Lavoisier Group which is putting a view to Australians on climate-change contra to that of IPCC. His detailed analyses, including graphs and charts, are at www.lavoisier.com.au and Warwick Hughes' site www.webace.com.au/~wsh. All this work is unfunded.