The slow roast

Left on the cutting room floor at the Sydney Morning Herald...

With CO2 about to breach the 400ppm barrier and likely to continue rising over the coming decades (Greenhouse gas levels highest in 3M years, 29/4) I'm sure readers will be heartened to learn that recent estimates of the climate's sensitivity to this greenhouse gas are lower than previously thought (see link below*). Based on current best estimates (1.6 degrees C per doubling) we are likely to experience further warming of about 0.8 degrees C by the end of the century. The lower climate sensitivity goes some way to explain why the IPCC's climate models have failed to forecast the current hiatus in global temperatures since 1998 despite massively increasing CO2 emissions.
This slow roast hardly represents what former PM Rudd called "the greatest moral, economic and environmental challenge of our generation".  It also pulls the rug from under the feet of ardent alarmists like Clive Hamilton who has moved from calls to suspend democracy to save the planet, to supporting civil disobedience against the coal industry (whatever that entails). Ironically, an industry that through its taxes helps fund Hamilton's generous salary.

*See http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00473.1

Lewis N., 2013. An objective Bayesian, improved approach for applying
optimal fingerprint techniques to estimate climate sensitivity.
Journal of Climate 2013 ; e-View
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00473.1

A warped view

This letter left on the cutting room floor at The Age...

Dear Editor,

If Clive Hamilton and others on the loony left are so concerned about Gina Rinehart influencing editorial direction at Fairfax (Mining in a new vein, 2/2), perhaps they should dig deep into their own pockets, put their combined money where their mouth is, and get Clive a seat on the board. However, given that no one on the loony left has any entrepreneurial nous, relying as they do on government handouts of one sort or another, perhaps Clive can just organise a suspension of democracy, ban Gina from Fairfax and in the process stop anyone else from thinking anything that conflicts with Hamilton's own warped world view.