El Nino weather event puts gloss on another stinker of a year

Relief that last year’s temperatures didn’t match 2016 record is misplaced, writes Peter Boyer

IF you are feeling relieved that the average temperature in 2017 around the world and in Australia was slightly lower than that of the record-breaking year of 2016, stop right now.

There is nothing in the latest temperature data to feel good about.

While 2016 experienced an El Nino weather event, which tends to push global temperatures markedly higher, 2017 didn’t.

Even so, the European Union’s climate-monitoring service Copernicus says last year was still warmer than 2015 and 2014 and all other years on the record going back to the mid-1800s.

It was also half a degree warmer than the 1981-2010 average and 1.2C warmer than in the 1700s.

The Bureau of Meteorology announced last month that the world was in a weak La Nina phase, which may help ensure 2018 remains below 2016. But that’s little comfort.

In Australia, the bureau said that 2017 continued the trend of warmer-than-average years, coming in third hottest behind 2016 and 2015, both of which had been affected by a strong El Nino.

Nobody could be surprised by any of this.

Science revealed 150 years ago that carbon dioxide retains heat energy. It’s 70 years since we knew that carbon dioxide levels in the air were rising, and strong evidence that this was causing global warming surfaced in the 1980s.

In the 25 years since nations resolved to act in 1992, the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide has continued to climb ever more rapidly. It is now well clear of 400 parts per million everywhere in the world – 45 per cent higher than in pre-industrial times.

Some nations, notably in Europe, are performing better than others, but China still depends heavily on coal to power its growth and President Donald Trump and the United States Congress continue to behave as if nothing is happening. Small successes are being dwarfed by monumental failure.

All nations are culpable, but as the only nation to ditch carbon pricing, Australia is especially so. We replaced a promising but deficient pricing scheme (that did not tackle transport) with a mishmash of ineffectual measures that skirt around the central problem, fossil-fuel emissions.

In these pages on January 1, Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg took issue with my negative comments about his government’s performance on climate, writing that my Talking Point contribution on December 27 overlooked “significant action”. He wrote that the Federal Government would easily surpass its 2020 emission target and had a much better emissions outlook than when Labor was in power. He said the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency had lowered the cost of innovation.

While both those agencies are doing well, Frydenberg underpinned an argument with Labor initiatives without mentioning his own government sought to abolish them.

And surpassing modest targets using highly uncertain

land-use data is nothing to be proud of.

Frydenberg said I had belittled key measures of his government. I admit to angry words, but my message was that the emissions-cutting capacity of the schemes was overblown.

Ignoring transport emissions, for instance, is surely a shortcoming as it was under Labor’s carbon price.

The failure of existing measures to bring down fossilfuel emissions is on clear display in the Government’s own data. The passage of time means new measures need to be tougher than what previously applied. My complaint is that they are actually weaker.

The Prime Minister and his environment minister may mean well, but they have fallen captive to a minority sentiment in their party that sees global warming as nothing more than politics, a leftist plot.

Such a sentiment precludes rational discussion of climate issues.

It is a disease that has persisted here and elsewhere in the developed world, led by perhaps the most ideologically driven, least informed US president ever to sit in the Oval Office.

With gung-ho Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke as his attack dogs, Donald Trump has presided over the systematic dismantling of previous administrations’ climate measures, while also sacking or silencing government scientists.

So far successive Coalition governments have not rejected wholesale the advice of professional scientists and other specialists, although Tony Abbott as PM dipped a toe in this murky water.

In light of its repeated failure to respond to scientists’ pleas to put teeth into climate measures – not to mention Malcolm Turnbull’s demotion of science to a non-cabinet portfolio during the Christmas rush (funny, that) – it is reasonable to conclude the Government is putting ideology ahead of reality.

The world has wasted precious time playing politics with climate change. Now we are reaping the miserable consequences.