Aussie radio polemicist gets butthurt

You are just plain wrong about climate change, Mr Jones

As the media watchdog prepares to investigate talkback host Alan Jones over his climate change coverage, Bob Beale says Jones's numbers just don't add up.

We knew Sydney radio host Alan Jones was influential, but who would have guessed he could pull off a miracle?

Not by turning water into wine, but he has managed to transform something into nothing. That something is carbon dioxide. You know? It's the gas in the bubbles in your beer.

Jones wants us to believe that what is true for a glass of grog applies equally to our entire planet - carbon dioxide is just a harmless bit of fizz that enlivens the brew then, poof! It's gone and of no further consequence.

No wonder he has agreed to be the founding patron of Australia's newest and arguably most extreme climate-science denier organisation - the paradoxically titled Galileo Movement.

This group's leaders aren't merely sceptical about mainstream climate science - they outright deny that the world is warming (the thermometers are in the wrong place). They scoff at the idea that human activity can cause warming (carbon dioxide is just plant food); and they even reject that global warming could be harmful (relax, do nothing - it's natural).

Instead, they fervently believe that it's all part of a secret ideological conspiracy by corrupt scientists using fake data to collude with greenies, socialists, libertarians and the United Nations to falsely alarm the gullible and enrich themselves by stealing our money and sovereignty. Fair dinkum.

As for carbon trading, well, if you can't credit the idea that a teensy-weensy bit of carbon dioxide can have a really, really big impact on climate, it seems preposterous to spend good money on cutting that small amount of human emissions.

They're entitled to their opinions but it's disappointing that Jones is using his position to bamboozle his listeners and bash science. He's adopted his denier group's arcane arithmetic and is frothing with zeros to hammer home his point.

Here's how he belittles the massive amounts of carbon dioxide that humans pumped into the air last century and the extra 30 billion tonnes we're all now adding each year.

First, he rightly notes that the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere is roughly 0.04 per cent.

Next, he claims that out of all the carbon dioxide emitted annually into the air, 97 per cent comes from natural sources. Therefore that leaves humans responsible for only 3 per cent, and Australians for a mere 1.5 per cent of that.

So, let's see: that's 1.5 per cent times 3 per cent times 0.04 per cent - voila! Australians are responsible for an incredibly tiny 0.000018 per cent of global carbon dioxide. And if we cut our own emissions by 5 per cent, as Canberra has pledged, that's a reduction of 0.0000009 per cent.

"I mean, what are we talking about?" a belligerent Jones demanded to know from a bemused climate scientist on his program the other day. "These are zero amounts. Can you explain to our listeners how cutting our output by 5 per cent of 1.5 per cent of 3 per cent of 0.04 per cent will affect climate? Zero point zero zero zero zero one eight per cent.

"No one out there could seriously say that you could get closer to zero contribution than that?"

And that's the miracle right there. Australia's role in global warming is suddenly rendered so infinitesimally small as to be zero, zip, nothing. It's pitiful! Why bother? Case closed. Thanks Alan.

The real pity is not just that his much-ado-about-nothing arithmetic is wrong, that his logic is phony or that he apparently thinks our carbon emissions carry little Aussie flags to distinguish them from all the others.

No, the whole premise of his argument is a crock.

Admittedly, his reasoning would let us conveniently shrug off doing anything about many other vexatious global problems - and there's a long list.

After all, we could argue that we only produce 0.000018 per cent of the world's terrorists, of hungry and poor people, of malaria and cholera cases, and so on. Hey, and why tax Australians to help foreigners combat such distant scourges?

But it's just plain dopey to suggest that something in tiny concentrations can't have a significant impact or that small shifts in those concentrations can't matter.

Two quick schooners of beer, for example, will give you a blood-alcohol content of about 0.04. Have another beer and you're over 0.05, the limit where the law deems there's a high probability that you're not safe on the road. The global carbon dioxide level is already close to 0.04 per cent and the best available evidence points to a high probability that everyone's safety will be compromised if it reaches 0.05 per cent.

Or consider that without the sunscreen effect of ozone in the atmosphere we would all die of extreme sunburn, yet ozone molecules are about 1000 times less common than those of carbon dioxide.

For every 10 million molecules of air, a mere four are ozone, yet thankfully they repel about 97 per cent of the dangerous ultraviolet radiation from the sun.

Believe it or not, these tiny amounts of special gases in the atmosphere make life possible on our planet: small changes in their concentration could also make life far more dangerous.

Roughly 99 per cent of the atmosphere is not greenhouse gas - the piddling little 1 per cent somehow traps enough heat to make the surface of earth more than 30 degrees warmer than it would otherwise be.

The silly sums are time-wasting distractions that hinder debate on a complex issue. The real concern about carbon dioxide is not of quantity but quality: its potent heat-absorbing capacity is what counts. Cutting greenhouse gas emissions is not about trying to cool the planet a tiny bit, it's about trying to stop it getting a whole lot warmer and more unstable.

Another problem with Jones's arithmetical spin is that it grossly distorts reality. The alleged 97 per cent of carbon dioxide emitted each year from natural sources is recycled by plants and absorbed by the ocean. There's an equilibrium that makes the net effect on atmospheric concentrations effectively - you guessed it - zero. In fact, it's presently less than zero because the biosphere and oceans are soaking up about half of human emissions.

Think of it like a bathtub with a dripping tap and a leaky plug: if the same amount leaks out as drips in, the water level in the bath stays the same.

That's why for the past 6000 years the global carbon dioxide level was essentially constant at about 280 parts per million.

But this recycling system hasn't been able to respond fast enough to deal with all the extra carbon we've been suddenly adding to the air. What we've done is crank up the drip rate and the bath is filling: that is, carbon dioxide is steadily building up in the atmosphere.

Since the start of the industrial revolution the level has risen sharply from 280 parts per million to 390ppm - the highest it has been for a million years. That's not surprising when you consider that last century alone, fossil fuel burning and cement production emitted more than 1.1 trillion tonnes (that's a one followed by 12 zeros) of it.

Do the sums correctly and it's clear that human activity is responsible for more than a quarter (about 28 per cent) of the carbon dioxide now circulating in the atmosphere and the rate of increase in its concentration is doubling about every 30 years.

Australians are directly responsible for at least 1.5 per cent of all that. Our tally is probably twice as much if we include all the coal and natural gas we sell other countries to burn. Indeed, we're punching well above our weight.

For all their droning zeros and harmless flag-waving carbon molecules, Jones and his fellow deniers are headed down the same road as the rest of us, speeding inexorably towards 500ppm - and by then we'll all be well over the limit.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/you-are-just-plain-wrong-about-climate-change-mr-jones-20110601-1ffhd.html