Greenhouse gas emissions Glass half empty or half full? The expressions ‘glass half full’ and ‘glass half empty’ are used to describe optimists, who rejoice that the glass is still half-full, and pessimists, who lament that the glass is already half empty. But in dealing with Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions, the terms apply the other way round. In 2005, which was the baseline year for Australia’s 2030 target under the Paris Agreement, emissions were about 630 million tons. Over the last twenty years they…
CLIMATE CHANGE SCEPTICISM Global dimming vs warming The famous Swedish scientist Svente Arrhenius warned about the potential dangers of global warming as far back as 1896, when he confirmed that carbon dioxide absorbs heat. But it was thought at the time that the effects would be too small to be significant, and in any case, the oceans were likely to absorb the surplus CO2. Indeed, an ecology textbook that I read from the early 1970s, was more concerned that the particulate matter being pumped into the atmosphere, as a result of human industrial activity, would reflect sunlight back into space…
COMMENTS ON THE 50TH ANNIVERSAY OF THE LIMITS TO GROWTH1 by Robert Phillips In 1972, a high-powered think tank called the Club of Rome published The Limits to Growth, a book that caused considerable interest and controversy at the time. It was a book of predictions rather than prophecies, relying on a complex computer model and trend analysis of five key variables: World population growth Amount of arable land Amount of non-renewable resources (especially oil) Capital for investment; and Pollution The modelling was actually done by a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who had use of some…
