Alpine Shire and Greenhouse emissions
A large chunk of the agenda for this month’s Alpine Shire Council meeting is devoted to Greenhouse emissions and climate protection milestones.
The agenda confirms that council received funding to employ a Greenhouse Officer. I joked here when the job was advertised that I thought it was a horticultural position.
But it’s no joke. Our council is seriously concerning itself with global warming.
Given our reliance on the ski industry some may say that’s reasonable. I say it’s a waste of taxpayers money regardless of where it comes from.
For interstate and overseas readers, our municipality is in one of the cleanest and greenest parts of Australia, with very little industry apart from one timber mill.
The objectives for council are to reduce corporate and community emissions by 20 percent between 2003 and 2010. A council manager is quoted in the local daily newspaper saying that council might switch its vehicle fleet from petrol to alternative energy. Hilarious.
What happens if the targets aren’t met? Probably nothing because everyone will have forgotten about this wasteful exercise the moment funding runs out.
I wonder how many trees will die to leave the necessary paper trail.
I had an email from an Albury reader on the weekend saying Alpine Shire Council is hypocritical on this issue because it supports fuel reduction burning. I have to agree with him.
I won’t argue against fuel reduction burns here, but the volume of emissions must be far greater than corporate and community use combined.
There are four councils in the so-called North East Greenhouse Alliance. Wangaratta and Indigo aren’t among them. Presumably they had more sense to hang onto their dollars.
Even though taxpayers may be funding this, I imagine there is some cost to council through in-kind support, office provision, management brainpower, etc.
My final point is that councils frequently complain they are involuntarily given more responsibility by state and federal governments. It looks like Alpine has walked into this one with its hands out and its heart willing.
I'm a 41-year-old father of four working as a newspaper editor at Mount Gambier in South Australia.
July 5th, 2005 at 7:27 am
“Global warming” is not fact, and it has many, many eminent scientists now speaking out against the idea. So you are right to laugh, Michael.
Many of EU’s the biggest (past) pushers of the Kyoto Protocol are now recognising this and actually turning their backs on their already legislated emmissions reductions. Thankfully, at least our Prime Minister has had the guts to stand up to the lefties and let the real science do the talking.
The fact is that the earth is simply moving through a small upturn in the very natural and regular temperature cycle. Remember the “ice age”? These things are not man-made. This one’s not all that big.
And in any case, those who are most worried about so-called GW say it’s through a concern for those in poorer nations who’d be most affected by increased temps. So let them show us how the warmer temperatures (which casue more rainfall–both in quantity and regularity–and more predictable seasons) can be a bad thing for farmers in marginal growing areas?
Phooey! A great Australian resource you may wish to show your Council is Greenie Watch.
July 5th, 2005 at 1:17 pm
I just cant let this one go. Andrew, you said
“Global warming” is not fact, and it has many, many eminent scientists now speaking out against the idea.
Can you please let us/me know who these scientists are? And when you say ‘eminent’ is that just because they say what you want to believe or are they truly ‘eminent’ and published in all the respected scientific journals? I have family members who travel to Antarctica every year to study this effect and guess what? The changes occurring now are occurrning at an unprecedented rate when compared to ice cores thousands of years old.
You continue by saying “The fact is that the earth is simply moving through a small upturn in the very natural and regular temperature cycle. Remember the “ice age”? These things are not man-made. This one’s not all that big.” Absolutely true. The earth does cycle through ice ages naturally. Unfortunately, as I mentioned earlier, this is moving at an unprecedented rate. I would love to hear your sources for your information so that I could check it out for myself as I would love to find out your criteria for judging this one as “not all that big.” Were you around for the last one?
“Many of EU’s the biggest (past) pushers of the Kyoto Protocol are now recognising this and actually turning their backs on their already legislated emmissions reductions.” Who are these past pushers and are they turning their backs on Kyoto because they suddenly dont believe the science or because they dont believe in something about the agreement? A very important point do you think? You can disagree with Kyoto and still believe the science.
“So let them show us how the warmer temperatures (which casue more rainfall–both in quantity and regularity–and more predictable seasons) can be a bad thing for farmers in marginal growing areas?” Please Please tell me your sources. And can you guarantee these results? The fact is that SOME of the climate models show an increase in rainfall in some areas, the majority of the climate models show these areas in fact getting worse. So you cant really have it both ways. On one hand you disagree with the climate models the predict Global Warming but then go on to say that the models say it could be a good thing. Which is it, are the models believable or not?
That is the rub isn’t it? We DON’T KNOW for sure. The facts are that we are adding vast amounts of chemicals into the atmosphere that levels that ARE NOT naturally occurring. The results of this has been modeled quite effectively and show that Global Warming is indeed occurring. We are in effect performing an experiment on the atmosphere of the only planet on which we can exist. Is this really such a smart thing?
Many folks such as yourself are saying that Global Warming isn’t going to destroy the earth. You are absolutely right. Earth will go on and adjust to whatever we do to it. The problem is that we are well on our way to making Earth inhospitable to ourselves.
And before you condemn me for being a left wing extremist, I can assure you that I am an equal opportunity critic. I vote left or right depending on the candidate. I am not driven by extreme idealogies and do not vote a party line. Unfortunately, some of the folks who feel the way you do DO vote party line regardless of the issues at hand. I trust that you do not and are able to think freely and make decisions based upon independent research that YOU do and not what others tell you.
July 5th, 2005 at 4:09 pm
Boy, that one sure drew them out! At the risk of seeming incredulous, perhaps this debate would be better conducted off Michael’s blog.
I’d be happy to discuss this further, but as a starting point a quick peruse of the link I inlcuded in my last post would provide you with very sound answers to your concerns.
In the meantime, something to ponder. Robert, your comment “I am not driven by extreme idealogies and do not vote a party line” is a bit rich, given the tenor of your post. It’s clear that you are VERY defensive (which indicates that you’ve bought much deeper into one particular perspective than you may have imagined) and that you’re much less interested in robust debate of the facts than “closing down” those with whom you diasgree. I’m guessing that the only swing voting you’d approve of is between the Greens and the Democrats (assuming you’re Australian).
Exactly who was measuring the earth’s surface temperature (at a variety of locations) many thousands of years ago, anyway? And how is it that you seem to know at what point the earth will become “inhospitable to ourselves”? Neither of these things is known as a fact. They are merely educated guesses based on the observations some people living today have made in the course of trying to prove what they already hold to be true. In contrast to your ideological assertions, true science is repeatable and observable … neither of which is possible for the cases in point. What IS observable over the past 150 years or so are slight (but quite normal) increases in temperatures in some places on the globe, and some slight (but quite normal) decreases in some places. Indeed, since scientists recorded a 1.5 degree decrease in global temperatures following the Krakatoa eruption of the late nineteenth century, it would surely be something quite unusual if, at about this time, we DIDN’T see a return to warmer temperature.
But enough. Email me directly so that Micheal doesn’t die under a bandwidth haemorrhage!