DO NO HARM.
by: Geoffrey H Sherrington
Scientist
24th April, 2015

Question 1:
“What should Australia’s post-2020
target be and how should it be
expressed?

“In responding to this question you could
consider
the
base
year
(e.g.
1990/2000/2005), the end year (e.g.
2025/2030), the type of target and why
the suggested target is preferred.”
Answer 1:
Australia should not set any target.
Alternatively, if we need to set a target
to keep a place at the international table,
the target should be minimal and nonbinding.
Reasoning 1:
Australia has shown negligible global
warming since the start of reliable
surface temperature measurements.
There is no significant issue to address.
The background Issues Paper 2015 notes a claim from CSIRO
and BoM –
“…. Australia has warmed by 0.9 degrees C since 1910 ….”
That claim is highly contestable.
While it might be numerically true for the 104-year
homogenised BoM ACORN-SAT dataset, the longer,
unadjusted temperature change for Australia shows
roughly a third to a half of that warming.
This outcome is derived from 3 official Commonwealth
publications. Please click for detailed calculations.
1) Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia, issue
#39 published in 1953 including tabulated mean temperature
readings from 1911 to 1940 at 44 locations across the country
used by the Weather Bureau at that time to accurately portray
Australia's climate record on the world stage.
4) Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia, issue
#40 published in 1954 including tabulated mean temperature
readings at a further 40 locations across the country to give 84
stations able to be compared to CDO and ACORN.
5) Meteorological Data for Certain Australian Localities
published in 1933 by the Council for Scientific and Industrial
Research CSIR collating minima and maxima from the earliest
records at hundreds of weather stations up to and including
1931.
(The simple method used here is to subtract
temperatures from these early, official publications
from matched temperatures for the modern period
2000-2014 or so. Warming calculated this way is
between 0.3 and 0.5 deg C, depending on the match os
stations with data from both old and new sources.
These calculations were done mainly by a small group
of volunteers, with Chris Gilham being the principal
compiler of these sets of Excel data. He has authorised
their unconditional use).
Agencies such as CSIRO and BoM seem not to have
publicised these official compilations and their
comparisons with recent temperatures.
Such agencies might argue that the purpose of
constructing the adjusted ACORN-SAT data set was to
correct errors in these official figures. That argument
mostly fails, because the official figures from the Year
Books and CSIR Pamphlet were already quality
controlled at the times of their publications.
These agencies might also argue that a low average
warming figure for Australia, say 0.3 to 0.5C per
century, as we derive, would be at odds with
measurements from other countries, or the rest of the
world. This is not so. For example, each of the following
trends is for data from 1850 onwards:
1.UK Met Office HadCRUT4 series: 0.46C per century
2. UK Central England series: 0.46C per century
3. New Zealand NIWA 7-station: 0.47C per century
4. Northern Ireland Armagh series: 0.6C per century
Unless and until the early Year Book & CSIR data cited here
can be shown to be wrong, it must be accepted that
Australia’s historical warming pattern is so small that it can
be essentially ignored.
It follows that the Greenhouse Gas Hypothesis is not
following the ‘official scientific scenario’ for Australia.
There is essentially no evidence that atmospheric CO2, for
example, is causing an Australian problem sufficiently large
to require control through emission targets. There is some
informed belief, but there is no hard evidence.
Further, the much-cited pause in the Global Averaged
Surface Temperature is casting doubt on the whole
GHG Hypothesis. The graph that follows shows
satellite-based time series of temperatures (in deg C, Yaxis) of the lower troposphere presented by the official
body, RSS.
There are about 6 main global data series, with RSS
being the one that shows the longest period of no
statistically valid warming in the time span starting now
and working back to earlier dates. That period is now
18 years and 3 months for RSS data. The shortest
period is from the NASA GISS group, at 14 years and 7
months.
(Graph credit Werner Brozek. Click for source)
The atmospheric concentration of CO2 at Mauna Loa
increased by about 10% over this period, but there is no
correlation between global CO2 and global temperature.
(Graph credit Danley Wolfe – click for source)
Finally it is emphasised that the most recent report by the
IPCC, AR5 issued in 2013, fails to provide a firm link between
atmospheric GHG and temperatures near the surface.
The link is customarily expressed by a measure such as
Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity, ECS. This quote is from the
Approved Summary for Policymakers of Working Group 1,
IPCC, page 11:
The equilibrium climate sensitivity quantifies the
response of the climate system to constant radiative
forcing on multi-century time scales. It is defined as the
change in global mean surface temperature at
equilibrium that is caused by a doubling of the
atmospheric CO2 concentration. Equilibrium climate
sensitivity is likely in the range 1.5°C to 4.5°C (high
confidence), extremely unlikely less than 1°C (high
confidence), and very unlikely greater than 6°C
(medium confidence)16.
The footnote to that page 11 adds –
16 No
best estimate for equilibrium climate sensitivity can
now be given because of a lack of agreement on values
across assessed lines of evidence and studies.
Put simply, after 20 years of research costing maybe trillions of
dollars, the estimate is almost unchanged. This type of
estimate is fundamentally critical to testing the whole global
Warming Hypothesis. Many are now saying that it falsifies the
Hypothesis.
Summary 1:
The Australian Government should take care to
avoid committing large sums of money to a
series of global warming hypotheses that are
failing to be verified.
****
Question 2:
What would the impact of that target be on
Australia? In responding to this question you
could, for example, consider the impact on our
economy, jobs, business and on the
environment.
Answer 2:
This ‘no emissions target’ will free the relevant
economy to act more in accordance with
market forces.
The distribution of jobs will be enhanced by the
transfer of people from low-value work to
higher-value work.
Business will respond to the greater certainty
created when emissions targets are eliminated
from the agenda.
There will be no significant changes to the
environment. It will continue to improve, as
has been forecast by numerous papers linking
national
prosperity
to
environmental
improvement.
Reasoning 2:
Emissions have not been shown, to date, to be
harmful to the economy or to the environment.
There must be a reduction of present
incentives, such as favouring renewables, to
treat this non-problem with its imagined harm.
At present, there is no known way to essentially
separate climate change into natural variation and
anthropogenic forcing. People have made informed
guesses, but none can be substantiated. Therefore,
there should be a cautionary limit to the attention
given to ‘suspected’ man-made warming. It is too
easy to overestimate the benefits of reductions of
fossil fuel use.
If Australia was to suddenly stop its use of coal, oil
and gas – as some extremists are seeking – there
would be huge detriment. This is so obvious that it
does not need to be modelled.
Australia’s National contribution to greenhouse
gases is below 3% of the global total. If Australia was
to reduce its use of coal, oil and gas in steps spread
over decades, there would be a small reduction in
the growth rate of global greenhouse gases, ceteris
paribus. If there was a policy target of reduction of
current atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse
gases, other countries would need to be involved,
especially China and India. For this reason, there
might be political value in keeping in touch with
those countries that are attempting to reach that
target.
It would be unfortunate if any nation had reduction
rules made for it, in absentia, by other countries.
Rather, it is preferable for a Nation like Australia to
show leadership by declaring that it will accept only
valid science about greenhouse gases; and that it
will not be taken along for a ride whose basis is
faulty.
A major, current, faulty assumption is that
renewables can supply all of Australia’s energy
needs at some time in the near future. This is not so.
Experience in countries with large scale wind and/or
solar installations has shown that these have
intermittent outputs that need to be covered by
back-up energy, commonly from fossil fuel
combustion. On current indications, the output of
the back-up needs to be above 50% of the output of
the renewables operating in good conditions.
Absent nuclear energy (see Q3 below), the reality is
that fossil fuel consumption will continue into the
indefinite future. The question then becomes a
rowdy one, of how much consumption is necessary,
desirable, sufficient, etc. The argument then tends
to degenerate into a matter of beliefs rather than a
matter of hard science, engineering, etc.
Current Federal Ministers tend to say “We accept
the science behind greenhouse gases” then leave
the discussion at that, as if the matter was settled.
It is unsettling to delve deeper and deeper into
‘accepted’ climate science, to discover that much of
that science is of pathetically poor standard,
compared to the standards of hard sciences like
physics and chemistry.
It is time for the Federal Government to start
holding forums where the science defects can be
openly discussed.
Summary 2:
Apart from going nuclear, efforts by Australia
to curb GHG emissions will be expensive and
ineffective in the long term.
Efforts will be of questionable value as it
emerges that the current science of the GHG
hypothesis is being shown unreliable, more
with each passing day.
*****
Question 3:
Which further policies complementary to the
Australian
Government’s
direct
action
approach should be considered to achieve
Australia’s post-2020 target and why?
Answer 3:
The only policy change recommended is to
move to active encouragement of nuclear
energy.
Reasoning 3:
Nuclear is the only proven form of energy
generation that is safe, cost-competitive,
reliable and very low on emissions of GHG.
Of course, adoption of nuclear energy bypasses much of the
argument about greenhouse gas reduction. Many specialists
who have spent careers involving nuclear energy are
puzzled about Australia’s persistence in preventing it,
overtly or covertly, by successive Federal Governments.
Practically, it is the answer to many relevant political
problems.
Nuclear energy does not currently power global
transportation a great deal. Its first practical use, as in
France, is to provide the majority of base load electricity.
The experience of the French should leave no doubt as to its
ability to provide most of the electricity required by a
country, in contrast with solar and wind with their
fundamental defects of intermittency and low energy
density.
If the Australian Government deems it politically expedient
to be involved in greenhouse gas emission reduction
schemes, the current Direct Action Plan is a suitable mask,
but it is not likely to be a long term solution. Ideas of GHG
storage by trees, by man-made increases in soil carbon, etc.,
have obvious limitations as saturation is approached,
whereby there is no more room to grow trees sensibly and
whereby carbon stored in soils reverts to its long term
natural concentration, below the man-made one.
Summary 3:
A major part of the Federal funding now
earmarked for the Direct Action plan should be
redistributed to encourage Australia to be
serious about nuclear energy generation and to
commence it.
****
The author.
Geoffrey H Sherrington, B.Sc., M.Sc. (qual.) graduated from
Queensland University in 1969, emphasis on chemistry.
After employment in CSIRO, with Austral-Pacific Fertilizers and with
his own commercial laboratory, he joined Peko-Wallsend Limited in
1974 as Chief Geochemist of the Geopeko exploration group. Initial
work was heavily on development of the Ranger Uranium resource
that colleagues had discovered in 1969.
Geopeko was structured with Chiefs in Geology, Geophysics and
Geochemistry and management – especially of budget proposals –
was by this trio for much of the time. At times, there were up to 70
graduates in the team.
Geopeko discovered about 10 new mines in the 30 years 1960 to
1990, a rate that was leading the mineral exploration world. This
success added billions of dollars to Australia’s resource stock. Much
of the resource value has now been realised, fed back into
Consolidated Revenue for matters such as funding academic
research into climate and payment of the salaries of politicians.
The author became more interested in climate matters about 1989,
commencing what might have been a world-wide first, by auditing
the employer’s complete corporate activity (then about 7,000
employees) for the production and capture of carbon dioxide and its
atmospheric balance. At that time, the parent company, North
Limited, was one of the larger forestry operators in Australia, so
data was gathered about carbon sequestration by trees, among
other matters.
In 1992-3, the author was advising Tasman Institute, a think tank
funded by resources companies and wealthy private people, when
approached by geologist Warwick Hughes, who had climate data on
temperature/time series for Australia collected by Prof Phil Jones of
University of East Anglia. This was the connection that led to the
later, now-publicised Jones quote of (approximate – original is lost)
“Why should I send you my data when all you want to do is find
errors in it?”
There is considerable overlap between geochemistry and climate
work in sub-disciplines like statistics and carbon sequestration in
soils. It was natural for the author to become immersed in the study
of Australian climate developments relating to emissions in
particular. This work, as a hobby, rapidly revealed that ‘climate
science’ was more politics than science; and that climate science
was, overall, of quite poor quality.
In the latter part of his career, the author moved to the
management of government relations for North Limited, in
particular for the satisfaction of increasing bureaucratic demands for
data prior to major project approval. So, the fit has been natural
rather than forced.
The author ‘has no dog in the fight’ about climate change. It is
lamentable that polarisation of views has impeded progress of good
science. The sole motivation for this submission is the hope that
poor science will be replaced by solid science, before too many
more reckless political decisions are made.
End.
24th April 2015.