Climate change dropped even further from the world's headlines and newscasts last year. 
Weird weather, Australia's carbon tax and Solyndra fracas weren't enough to stem a decline that started in 2009.

Taxpayers will have to pay billions of pounds a year equipping council houses, town halls, hospitals and other public buildings with the latest green technology, under new proposals by the European Commission.

Geese, ducks and swans that spend winter in wetlands of Northern Europe are changing their migration patterns as temperatures rise, say scientists.

Researchers in Finland found some waterfowl delayed migrations by up to a month compared with 30 years ago.

The Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT) says that numbers of some very familiar species are decreasing in the UK, as many birds do not fly as far.

Read some of the previews of what the summary from the updating for policy makers from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) would say and you might think much of this climate change business was being overstated. Take the example from page one of Friday’s The Australian illustrated here.

Or this preview story from the BBC earlier in the week on which The Australian (a Murdoch paper) based its coverage:

The draft, which has found its way into my possession, contains a lot more unknowns than knowns.

On the one hand, it says it is “very likely” that the incidence of cold days and nights has gone down and the incidence of warm days and nights has risen globally.

And the human and financial toll of extreme weather events has risen.

But when you get down to specifics, the academic consensus is far less certain.

There is “low confidence” that tropical cyclones have become more frequent, “limited-to-medium evidence available” to assess whether climatic factors have changed the frequency of floods, and “low confidence” on a global scale even on whether the frequency has risen or fallen.

In terms of attribution of trends to rising greenhouse gas concentrations, the uncertainties continue.

Well, the Summary for Policymakers of the Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation prepared for this week’s IPCC meeting in Uganda is now available to all 0f us online. Judge for yourself if these findings justify a heading “Review fails to support climate change link.”

CLIMATE EXTREMES AND IMPACTS

Confidence in projecting changes in the direction and magnitude of climate extremes depends on many factors, including the type of extreme, the region and season, the amount and quality of observational data, the level of understanding of the underlying processes, and the reliability of their simulation in models.

Term                                Likelihood of the outcome

Virtually certain             99-100% probability

Very likely                        90-100% probability

Likely                                 66-100% probability

About as likely as not           33 to 66% probability

Unlikely                            0-33% probability

Very unlikely                     0-10% probability

Exceptionally unlikely      0-1% probability

Models project substantial warming in temperature extremes by the end of the 21 st century. It is virtually certain that increases in the frequency and magnitude of warm daily temperature extremes and decreases in cold extremes will occur in the 21st century on the global scale. It is very likely that the length, frequency and/or intensity of warm spells, or heat waves, will increase over most land areas.

It is likely that the frequency of heavy precipitation or the proportion of total rainfall from heavy falls will increase in the 21st century over many areas of the globe. This is particularly the case in the high latitudes and tropical regions, and in winter in the northern mid-latitudes. Heavy rainfalls associated with tropical cyclones are likely to increase with continued warming. There is medium confidence that, in some regions, increases in heavy precipitation will occur despite projected decreases of total precipitation in those regions.

Average tropical cyclone maximum wind speed is likely to increase, although increases may not occur in all ocean basins. It is likely that the global frequency of tropical cyclones will either decrease or remain essentially unchanged.

There is medium confidence that there will be a reduction in the number of extra-tropical cyclones averaged over each hemisphere. While there is low confidence in the detailed geographical projections of extra-tropical cyclone activity, there is medium confidence in a projected poleward shift of extra-tropical storm tracks. There is low confidence in projections of small spatial-scale phenomena such as tornadoes and hail because competing physical processes may affect future trends and because current climate models do not simulate such phenomena.

There is medium confidence that droughts will intensify in the 21st century in some seasons and areas, due to reduced precipitation and/or increased evapotranspiration. This applies to regions including southern Europe and the Mediterranean region, central Europe, central North America, Central America and Mexico, northeast Brazil, and southern Africa. Elsewhere there is overall low confidence because of inconsistent projections of drought changes (dependent both on model and dryness index). Definitional issues, lack of observational data, and the inability of models to include all the factors that influence droughts preclude stronger confidence than medium in drought projections.

Projected precipitation and temperature changes imply possible changes in floods, although overall there is low confidence in projections of changes in fluvial floods. Confidence is low due to limited evidence and because the causes of regional changes are complex, although there are exceptions to this statement. There is medium confidence (based on physical reasoning) that projected increases in heavy rainfall would contribute to increases in local flooding, in some catchments or regions.

It is very likely that mean sea level rise will contribute to upward trends in extreme coastal high water levels in the future. There is high confidence that locations currently experiencing adverse impacts such as coastal erosion and inundation will continue to do so in the future due to increasing sea levels, all other contributing factors being equal. The very likely contribution of mean sea level rise to increased extreme coastal high water levels, coupled with the likely increase in tropical cyclone maximum wind speed, is a specific issue for tropical small island states.

There is high confidence that changes in heat waves, glacial retreat and/or permafrost degradation will affect high mountain phenomena such as slope instabilities, movements of mass, and glacial lake outburst floods. There is also high confidence that changes in heavy precipitation will affect landslides in some regions.

There is low confidence in projections of changes in large-scale patterns of natural climate variability. Confidence is low in projections of changes in monsoons (rainfall, circulation) because there is little consensus in climate models regarding the sign of future change in the monsoons. Model projections of changes in El Niño – Southern Oscillation variability and the frequency of El Niño episodes are not consistent, and so there is low confidence in projections of changes in this phenomenon

 

Tawny owls turn brown to survive in warmer climates, according to scientists in Finland.
Feather colour is hereditary, with grey plumage dominant over brown. But the study, published in the journal Nature Communications, found that the number of brown owls was increasing.
As winters become milder, the scientists say, grey feathered tawny owls are likely to disappear.
This study indicates that the birds are evolving in response to climate change.

It's almost enough to make a green republican turn monarchist! Britain's Prince Charles overnight delivered a speech on the consequences of the pursuit of economic growth at the expense of the environment that would have done any Green Party politician proud. Addressing the European Parliament climate change conference in Brussels His Royal Highness - see I'm writing like a monarchist already - warned about the pursuit of economic growth at the expense of the environment and condemned climate change sceptics for their ''corrosive'' impact on public opinion.

I have to say, this process [towards an innovative approach to sustainability that actually saves money] has not exactly been helped by the corrosive effect on public opinion of those climate change sceptics who deny the vast body of scientific evidence that shows beyond any reasonable doubt that global warming has been exacerbated by human industrialized activity. Their suggestion that hundreds of scientists around the world, and those who accept their dispassionate evidence - including presumably and gentlemen myself, rather ironically I am constantly accused of being anti-science - are somehow unconsciously biased creates the implication that many of us are, somehow, secretly conspiring to undermine and deliberately destroy the entire market-based capitalist system which now dominates the world! I would ask how these people are going to face their grandchildren and admit to them that they actually failed their future; that they ignored all the clear warning signs by passing them off as merely part of a “cyclical process” that had happened many times before and was beyond our control; that they had refused to heed the desperate cries of those last remaining traditional societies throughout the world who warned consistently of catastrophe because they could read the signs of impending disintegration in the ever-more violent, extreme aberrations in the normally, harmonious patterns of Nature. I wonder, will such people be held accountable at the end of the day for the absolute refusal to countenance a precautionary approach, for this plays I would suggest a most reckless game of roulette with the future inheritance of those who come after us? An inheritance that will be shaped by what you decide to do here in this Parliament.

Bear attacks have risen in Japan this year and sightings of the animals have spiked in the last six months, as climate change means they have left their natural habitat in the search for food.

The United States is the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide in the world. So without action by by the US Government the idea of an international agreement on climate change is simply a joke. And a sick joke it will prove to be if the predictions about the likely result of next month's Congressional elections prove correct. Republicans are strongly fancied to take control of the House of Representatives and are given a 50 per cent chance of controlling the Senate as well. Yet the chances of a Republican dominated Congress taking action to stop global warming are virtually nil. As the New York Times explained in an editorial this morning: With one exception, none of the Republicans running for the Senate — including the 20 or so with a serious chance of winning — accept the scientific consensus that humans are largely responsible for global warming. The candidates are not simply rejecting solutions, like putting a price on carbon, though these, too, are demonized. They are re-running the strategy of denial perfected by Mr. [former vice president Dick] Cheney a decade ago, repudiating years of peer-reviewed findings about global warming and creating an alternative reality in which climate change is a hoax or conspiracy.

Julia Gillard will move fast to try to reassert the government's credentials on climate change when Parliament sits for the first time since the election tomorrow.

The Prime Minister will announce as early as today the make-up of a committee to forge the way to a price on carbon, a signal of the government's wish to gain the initiative on an issue that bedevilled its first term in office.

The committee is expected to include the Minister for Climate Change, Greg Combet, the Greens' climate change spokeswoman, Christine Milne, and academic experts.

An academic study of eight years of Gallup opinion poll data on climate change knowledge and concern in the US general public has found women know more about the subject than men. Not that men let their greater ignorance deter them from professing to be more expert. Consistent with much existing sociology of science research, the study author Aaron M. McCright finds women underestimate their climate change knowledge more than do men.

The simultaneous catastrophes of flooding in Pakistan, wildfires in Russia and landslides in China are evidence that global warming predictions are correct, according to climate change experts.

Global climate change talks have moved backwards since last year, say negotiators from both rich and poor nations at discussions in Germany.

The US envoy said some countries had "walked away" from commitments made at Copenhagen last year to contain greenhouse gas emissions.

But the top UN climate official, Christiana Figueres, said progress had been made towards an eventual deal.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has sought to play down her widely-criticised plan to have a citizens' assembly on climate change.

The proposal, to have 150 people consider the need for a carbon price before the government makes a decision, has been panned as an unnecessary move that would delay action.

"That's a small part of a broad suite of (climate) policies," Ms Gillard told ABC Radio, as she sought to focus attention on other policies including greening up the electricity grid.

THE number of climate change sceptics is rising in the wake of failed international negotiations, political posturing and damaging publicity about scientific research.

A Sun-Herald/Taverner poll of 609 NSW voters shows 8 per cent of people do not believe climate change is real and another 29 per cent think it is real but not caused by humans and 60 per cent of people believed in man-made climate change.

Last year, only 3 per cent said climate change was not real and 18 per cent said it was happening but not caused by humans. In 2008 2 per cent did not believe and 14 per cent said it was real but humans were not responsible.

Copenhagen Mayor Ritt Bjerregaard sent postcards to city hotels warning summit guests not to patronize Danish sex workers during the upcoming conference. Now, the prostitutes have struck back, offering free sex to anyone who produces one of the warnings.

With the Copenhagen talks almost upon us it seems like an appropriate time to launch a scoreboard on how the world is progressing in efforts to limit global warming and the not-for-profit Sustainability Institute has this week done just that. The institute'sClimate Scoreboard was built by SI, the Sloan School of Management at MIT and Ventana Systems and based on the C-ROADS (Climate Rapid Overview and Decision Support) computer simulation. This, in turn, is carefully calibrated to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report results.
C-ROADS emerged from research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and allows users to input mitigation proposals for China, India, the US, the European Union, and other nations and regions. It then simulates these emissions' impacts on greenhouse gas concentrations, temperature change, per-capita emissions, cumulative emissions, sea level rise and other indicators.
Press the button and, hey presto, we have the score!
Today, in advance of the opening of the Copenhagen Conference, the Climate Scoreboard shows that, while current proposals would reduce warming in 2100 relative to a scenario with no reductions in emissions, proposals are not yet ambitious enough to limit temperature increase to 1.5-2°C (2.7-3.6°F) over pre-industrial temperatures. The scoreboard estimates a temperature increase of 3.8°C (6.8°F) over pre-industrial if current proposals were implemented as compared to 4.8°C (8.7°F) temperature increase by 2100 without emissions reductions.
I have no idea how accurate a gauge this climate scoreboard presents but I sure do know that looking at it every day during Copenhagen as the haggling goes on will beat reading the tens of thousands of words on the subject that are about to descend on us.

Kevin Rudd does not need to hurry into a decision about whether or not to call a double dissolution election if the Liberals stick together and either postpone or defeat his emissions trading legislation. There is no way he will want to be out campaigning over the Christmas holidays. When children are just about to go back to school at the end of January is the earliest he will make an announcement with an election to follow early in March.

That is on the assumption that Prime Minister wants to have an early election at all. The odds are in favour of him deciding that he does, but much will depend on what actually happens at the Copenhagen Conference which begins next week. If there is not broad international agreement on measures to curb carbon emissions then the new Liberals and Nationals Coalition policy as enunciated by Tony Abbott will be looking far more sensible than it does today. If substantial progress is made in Copenhagen towards a world-wide agreement, however, Labor would be more than happy to have climate change as the major campaign issue.

To win a modern day election a party needs to position itself as close to the mid-point of public opinion on as many issues as possible. For three years - one as Opposition Leader and two as Prime Minister - Kevin Rudd has proved quite masterful at doing that. On climate change he now is in the happy position of having the Greens on one side saying that he has not gone far enough to tackle the problem, having sold out to the major polluting industries, with the Coalition now saying his emissions trading scheme goes too far. That's perfect positioning given the state of public opinion on this issue at the moment.

The other, and perhaps more compelling, reason to be giving serious consideration to an early election is that economic circumstances are unlikely to be better at the end of a full term in November than they will be at the end of February. Another interest rate rise by the Reserve Bank early next year will not push mortgage rates beyond the comfort zone of most home buyers. Three or four rises by the end of the year would have people really starting to grumble.

A Chinese diplomat told reporters Wednesday a substantial content is more important than the title of the outcome of the forthcoming climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Over in the Department of Climate Change, established by the Labor Government as part of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, they have given themselves three tasks: reducing Australia's greenhouse gas emissions; adapting to the impacts of climate change we cannot avoid; helping to shape a global solution. As it becomes clearer and clearer that a global solution is still a long way off and reducing Australia's emissions is pointless without other countries doing the same, the middle task must take on an increased importance. Planning what to do when (or "if" for those of a sceptical disposition) temperatures rise is the sensible thing to do.

So it was good to see at the end of last week that the Department has started seriously looking at such future options. The report it released —  Climate Change Risks to Australia's Coasts — is the first continental scale mapping of residential buildings at risk from climate change. It also details the risks to coastal infrastructure, services and industry in Australia as a result of climate change.

In the short term the timing of the release might help put some pressure on Liberal Senators to support the Government's emissions trading legislation. The before and after pictures of what might happen to coastal towns and cities as sea levels rise was great fodder for Saturday's papers and a reminder to people that there are potentially greater costs by not doing anything about climate change than there are by getting the world to take united action.

But the real importance will be in turning the minds of state and local government to the decisions needed to mitigate the impact from rising sea levels. As the report says in its executive summary: "Where possible, avoidance of future risk is the most cost-effective adaptation response, particularly where development has not yet occurred. While little analysis has been done to date, the application of planning and building regulations to constrain an increase in risk from climate change impacts will deliver considerable savings in damages avoided."

This report is a sensible start to a debate where "detailed regional and local assessments under worse case scenarios are needed to inform decision-makers of future risks and enable climate change adaptation to be incorporated into planning approaches."

We can but hope that Australia's own three levels of government are quicker at reaching agreement on the need to take action that the governments of the world appear to be.

Barack Obama conceded on Sunday that next month's Copenhagen summit would not produce a legally binding agreement to tackle global warming, in a move that prompted groans of disappointment from environmental groups.
Stating "we should not make the perfect the enemy of the good," Mr Obama made official what observers had anticipated for months.
The decision to downgrade ambitions for Copenhagen occured at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation in Singapore where it was supported by all 21 participants, including China.

Not under my backyard is what the residents of Barendrecht in the Netherlands are saying about carbon dioxide storage in the latest outbreak of numbyism. The good citizens of this town, which is a 15-minute train ride from Rotterdam, are objecting to a plan to use an old gas field under their properties to store carbon dioxide pumped from a nearby Shell oil refinery. The project would pump 10 million metric tons of carbon dioxide starting from 2011 into two depleted gas fields two kilometres (more than a mile) under the town. The gasfields are considered by some a safer choice than current experiments under the the North Sea and the Sahara Desert where a water-bearing rock layer, or aquifer, is being used. The Dutch government  — which has set a target of lowering CO2 emissions by 30%from 1990 levels by 2020  — has made available a subsidy of €30 million. It is providing the same amount for a second project in South-Limburg.

Shell will handle the storage and monitoring of CO2 at Barendrecht with OCAP, a joint venture of Linde Gas and VolkerWessels, responsible for transport and compression. The plan is that once the CO2 is in place, it will be permanently sealed with concrete plugs up to 100 metres in length. The city council in Barendrecht has voted against the plan and the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment are expected to decide later this year if the project should go ahead.

CLIMATE change could lead to "killer cornflakes" with the most potent liver toxin ever recorded, an environmental health conference has been told.

The effects of the toxins, known as mycotoxins, have been known since the Middle Ages when rye bread contaminated with ergot fungus was a staple part of the European diet, environmental health researcher Lisa Bricknell of Central Queensland University (CQU) said.

All the nonsense being talked by the Australisan Federal Government about its efforts to keep down petrol prices is a perfect illustration of the problem to come when it stops talking about the need to curb carbon dioxide emissions and starts doing something about it. Labor keeps telling us that reducing emissions is essential and the best way of achieving that is by increasing the price of things like petrol that causes them. So why all this effort to reduce the petrol price? Logic suggests the Government should be happy that oil companies in reacting to higher crude oil prices are doing the job for it.
Perhaps the answer is provided by some work done in the United States by the polling group American Environics who last year found that voters consistently rated energy costs as a higher concern than global warming, and resisted policies that would increase the cost of electricity and gasoline. The survey, jointly conducted by American Environics and EMC Research ranked global warming dead last of the 16 issues tested, trailing the cost of gas and electricity, dependence on foreign oil, and even "quality of the environment." Voter concern over the cost of gas and electricity was evident in a number of question responses, from both a strong preference for proposals to lower the cost of clean energy (68%) over proposals designed to reduce consumption by making dirty energy more expensive (18%), to a majority opposing a carbon tax (58%) with 39% strongly opposing such an action. The poll also divided the sample to observe the effects of various psychological primes on global warming public opinion, including using specific consequences of global warming expressed by the environmental community such as the movie An Inconvenient Truth.
Telling voters about these consequences did not increase their desire to take action on global warming.
"Telling voters that global warming will lead to environmental disaster did not lead to increased support for action on global warming," noted Dr. John Whaley who conducted the survey for American Environics. "In addition, when voters were told that specific proposals would lead to higher energy costs, support for policies to limit carbon dropped dramatically."

By 2020, Europe must cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20%, produce 20% of its energy from renewable sources and increase energy efficiency by 20%, according to the proposals – or "20/20/20 by 2020," as commission President Jose Manuel Barroso called the targets.

In an interview with the Guardian today Sir David King, who stepped down last month after seven years as the government's chief scientific adviser, says any approach that does not focus on technological solutions to climate change - including nuclear power - is one of "utter hopelessness".

He says: "There is a suspicion, and I have that suspicion myself, that a large number of people who label themselves 'green' are actually keen to take us back to the 18th or even the 17th century."

He characterises their argument as "let's get away from all the technological gizmos and developments of the 20th century".

"People say 'well, we'll just use less energy.' Come on," he says. "And then there's the real world, where everyone is aspiring to the sort of standard of living that we have, which is based on a large energy consumption."

THE Liberal Party has allegedly told its federal and state members to decline invitations to events starring former US vice-president Al Gore.

Since his failed presidential run in 2000, Gore has been an advocate for reducing carbon emissions and tackling climate change, reaching a wide audience through his Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.

Invitations to the events run by public relations heavy Max Markson were issued to Liberals from the Prime Minister down. Only one accepted, then promptly cancelled.

The influence of that little worm Australians were introduced to when the Nine Network started televising political leadership debates is growing. Measuring the immediate public reaction to words is now beginning to dominate the public debate as our leaders embark on their triennial effort to confuse and obfuscate. We can gauge the findings by listening to the daily grabs on television and for the Liberals the latest in word is fanaticism.
Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull started using it during television interviews on Sunday as in this description of climate change: ""Labor is verging on becoming fanatical about this issue in the sense that they do not care how poor we have to become as long as we become pure. I think religion is a very poor guide to public policy." Mr Turnbull was repeating it again this morning on ABC Radio National: "The problem with labor is that they have locked themselves into essentially an ideological exercise… Now Kevin Rudd is so determined, he and …Peter Garrett are bordering on fanaticism now. Because they are blind and a fanatic is someone who is obsessed with a particular goal and pays no regard to any of the facts or any other distracting things like reality."
We can expect to hear a lot more about the fanatical Messrs Rudd and Garrett in the weeks ahead as the American Republican Party guru famous for stressing the importance of emotional words is a great believer in the power of repetition. Frank Luntz is the pollster credited with getting the Bush administration to stop talking about global warming, because the term is frightening to people, and speak instead of climate change which is far less threatening. He described his technique in an interview on PBS television:
I've got a certain rule that I always teach my staff: It's not what you say; it's what people hear that matters. I may respond to you effectively, but if you edit it in such a way that they only hear the negativity of what I do, then that's all they're going to know. And so they're going to conclude that my profession isn't an honorable profession. And that's why how I say it has as much of an impact on what people think of me as what I say.
[Regarding consistency,] there's a simple rule: You say it again, and you say it again, and you say it again, and you say it again, and you say it again, and then again and again and again and again, and about the time that you're absolutely sick of saying it is about the time that your target audience has heard it for the first time. And it is so hard, but you've just got to keep repeating, because we hear so many different things -- the noises from outside, the sounds, all the things that are coming into our head, the 200 cable channels and the satellite versus cable, and what we hear from our friends. We as Americans and as humans have very selective hearing and very selective memory. We only hear what we want to hear and disregard the rest.
Kevin Rudd has not quite got the Luntzian message though. There was nothing simple this morning when he spoke of climate change being the first post partisan political issue. Most people would not have a clue what he was talking about with that expression and for a party trying to scare people in to believing that new policies are needed, global warming should be the description of choice. Climate change is for those who want us to believe that things are not really all that serious.
What Mr Rudd might like to appropriate is the phrase Healthy Forests that Mr Luntz tested as being a wonderful way of describing a policy that allows the clear felling of native forests. Labor will surely need something clever if it is to appease the workers of Tasmania while attracting the environmentalists of the cities.