In an odd article titled “Producing CO2 is what we’re good at“, the Herald Sun‘s resident… uh, whatever it is that Terry McCrann is, gives the old “l” word a bit of a ridiculous beating:
In sharp contrast to the clarity and accuracy of Emerson’s speech, Combet’s was littered with verbosity and the deliberate lies incumbent on campaigners like him.
From the 48 times he used the term “carbon pollution” to quite deliberately foster the false impression of bits of dirty grit, to the pretence that China is not embarked on dramatically increasing its absolute levels of emissions of carbon dioxide.
“Deliberate lies”? “Deliberately foster the false impression”? (Or, as it becomes in Andrew Bolt’s paraphrase, “48 times Combet lied about ‘carbon pollution’”.)
Look, I’m not a climate scientist, and it’s a long time since I studied chemistry, but even I understand that the reason the term “carbon” is used is that the substances in question are mainly carbon compounds. Carbon dioxide is not the only carbon-based gas that carbon pollution reduction schemes are designed to tackle.
The attack McCrann and others have made on using the word “pollution” in this context, as if it’s somehow dishonest to apply it to a substance that is natural or non-toxic, is also absurd. If the surfeit of something in the natural environment is harmful – and clearly an excess of carbon compounds in the atmosphere that ultimately alter the climate could reasonably be called “harmful” – then it’s a form of pollution. Yes, we all breathe it out – but that’s no reason why we should encourage our industries to spew out ever-increasing, unprecedented quantities of them.
I don’t know where Terry gets the idea that “carbon pollution” puts most people in mind of “bits of dirty grit” from, but perhaps before he starts talking next time about “deliberate” falsehoods and “lies” he might consider that neither word in the phrase that upsets him so much is inapplicable to the situation. The phrase makes perfect sense and does not mislead. It is not a lie.
It’s really the most embarrassingly flimsy attack the climate deniers have manage to devise. That some of them still think it’s got legs is highly amusing.
Meanwhile, I’d also like to hear from one of these people McCrann apparently knows who think that the greenhouse effect is about soot. Because whoever that is has clearly not understood a word the climate scientists have been saying. If there are a lot of them, then Terry’s made a pretty good case for an informative government advertising campaign right there.
41 Comments
This is by far the stupidest argument of the anti-emissions-reduction crowd.
Nobody, but nobody, thinks that when somebody says “carbon pollution” in the context of greenhouse gasses, they mean soot. We already have emissions rules for particulates – soot is an entirely different matter, and it is regulated.
And the claim that “it’s already in the environment so it’s not pollution” shows a fairly breathtaking lack of awareness about environmental chemistry (and that’s coming from a guy who has never, ever studied biology – and even I know that much). Phosphorus and nitrates are both found naturally in the environment, and they’re definitely beneficial … but shove a bunch extra into your waterways, watch what happens next and tell me that’s not pollution. Similar applies to sodium and potassium.
I think they’re on much more solid ground when it comes to the “we don’t really know exactly what will change and how much” argument.
“Producing CO2 is what we’re good at”
Terry seems to have absolutely no sense of the tragedy and challenge of that statement.
Let me suggest they consider what would happen if they locked themselves in lifts for the time it takes for the O2 to run out – if they survived the CO2 poisoning they could tell us all about it. {EDIT: Sentence slightly amended to make it clear that no-one is calling for Terry McCrann to actually do that. -Jeremy}
Excessive CO2 suffocates everything, that is the problem we are facing. Just ask the 750,000 Chinese who die per annum from it.
““Producing CO2 is what we’re good at””
I can make methane too. Demonstrations on request.
What are the plausible explanations for McCrann repeatedly trotting this one out?
1) He knows it’s stupid but knows many readers are too dumb to work it out and he’s desperate to rubbish climate science and any policies related to climate change
2) HE is too dumb to know it’s a stupid argument
3) No one’s explained to him properly why it’s a stupid argument so he keeps on making it
Any others?
I got into an argument once in AB’s comments about methane, a particular fan had heard methane would be included in the “carbon dioxide” tax, and he was posting this as though it were some kind of scandalous revelation. They did not really accept the explanation that methane is a carbon compound and greenhouse gas, hence naturally part of a carbon tax.
Most certainly IS a pollutant
http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-pollutant.htm
I’ve been resting for a while and need a good argument to cheer me up. Along pops the old chestnut, carbon pollution. I can’t resist.
So far in this entry we’ve heard some rippers.
Jeremy re “carbon” means everything with carbon in it. And “pollution” means too much of it. Next we’ll have drunk people suffering from alcohol pollution and fat people suffering from fat pollution … whooops … sorry to say those evil things have carbon in them and we can call them “carbon pollution”. Voila. The government will fix this “pollution” with a “carbon tax”.
Bullshit. Carbon is carbon is carbon. Nothing else! Other things, more appropriately called greenhouse gases, are actually involved in the thing they want to blame “carbon” for.
MoC says, “Nobody, but nobody, thinks that when somebody says “carbon pollution” in the context of greenhouse gasses, they mean soot.” I agree the government doesn’t mean soot. It wants YOU, dear uninformed citizen, to believe that, so you’ll support them. After all we all know soot is bad, black, dirty, evil … and at the same time we all know CO2 is the good, delicious, refreshing fizz in beer and we wouldn’t want flat beer.
shepherdmarilyn re CO2 = “Excessive CO2 suffocates everything … Just ask the 750,000 Chinese who die per annum from it.” Well for a start, I guess they’d be quite voluble, if they weren’t dead, that is. But my sceptical mind and bullshit detector both rang alarm bells. I say bullshit. You can’t possibly prove that. I’ll bet $1 million of my very own money … and still give you odds. Whaadya want? 10:1? Astronauts, submarine crews and many other workers don’t drop dead in concentrations of 8000ppm. Grow up.
And Terry McCrann, well said. You are 100% right.
Carbon is a pollutant!
And water is poisonous!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication
“I agree the government doesn’t mean soot. It wants YOU, dear uninformed citizen, to believe that, so you’ll support them.”
Col, can you point me to anyone stupid enough to think that “carbon pollution” in the context of climate change means “soot”? Name just ten.
“at the same time we all know CO2 is the good, delicious, refreshing fizz in beer and we wouldn’t want flat beer.”
You get that CO2 is only one of several carbon-based gases that contribute to climate change, right?
Ok, we get it Captain Col – ‘Carbon tax’ its a dumb simplification of reality, a phrase used so we don’t have to reexplain the hundreds of years of back history behind every single thing we say. So is ‘climate change’. So is ‘global warming’. All stupid and simple. I’m over it. Are you?
He ain’t called Capt Coal for nuttin’
“Col, can you point me to anyone stupid enough to think that “carbon pollution” in the context of climate change means “soot”? Name just ten.”
Jeremy, if I knew ‘just ten’ I’d speak to them and change their minds. But the government fervently hopes there are millions. And they fervently hope those millions don’t complicate the issue by asking too much more. You know. For explanations. The government fervently hopes that the few people who are involved in the debate don’t get through to the generally-uninterested masses of millions who they want to just hear the words “carbon pollution” followed by “we (your Labor/Greens saviours) will only tax the evil, big polluters – not you dear citizen”.
And it’s not just soot I’m talking about (as you know). It’s the misleading language of deception (again, as you know). Why use “carbon pollution” when “excessive greenhouse gas” will be more accurate? It’s simple. It sounds scarier. It sounds dirtier. It sounds bad. It will convince people we need to do something.
Perhaps you are new to politics. To language. To getting what you want by words. Oddly, I don’t think you are so stupid to actually believe the tripe you wrote. You seek what all Greens seek – power over the evil masses to mend their destructive ways. So using some sneaky language is a small price to pay. And when others do it in the ‘noble cause’ of climate change, you back them to the hilt. Facts? Irrelevant. The object is winning.
“You get that CO2 is only one of several carbon-based gases that contribute to climate change, right?”
Yup. Got that. But have the millions? Nup. So which one does the government pick on? CO2. Because it’s the only one that’s easy to deal with. Just stop burning fuel (any fuel) and you cut CO2. Cow farts? Agriculture? Too hard. CO? turns naturally into CO2. Funny sounding other gases? Miniscule quantities.
But of course they could always deal with the biggest of GHGs – dihydrogen monoxide. Not evil, black and dirty and also innocuous sounding by its common name -water.
Jeebus Col, you’re friggin hilarious tonight!
You just single-handedly took out both Flemington and Randwick track record for the Gish Gallop there.
Genius!
You know diamonds are PURE CARBON!
Now, who has diamonds? That’s right, RICH PEOPLE DO!
So who HATES RICH PEOPLE AND WANTS TO TAKE AWAY THE ECONOMY?
Again, spot on: People Who Think Carbon Is BAD!!!
Anyone read anything there that makes the slightest difference to a sane person?
its also important to note, that climate scientists, when presenting information simplify the differing contributions of various other green house gases by converting them into C02 equivalent amounts.
for example,
1 million metric tonnes of methane is equivalent to 25 million tons of carbon dioxide.
1 million metric tonnes of nitrous oxide emissions is equivalent to 298 million tons of C02.
so you would simplify by saying 323 Million tons of C02 to describe it in terms people are more familiar with.
that said, C02 itself is by far the most significant emitted greenhouse gas.
Depends. Who are you insinuating is sane?
Remember, ” DON’T FEED THE TROLLS!!!!!!!”
Captain Col is a troll. If we ignore this troll and other of his slow, lumbering ilk, we may be able to have a sensible conversation.
quantize, Not me, nothing, except my opinion of CC, which I honestly thought couldn’t get any worse.
I was referring to the absurd vomit of lunacy @13, SHV
“Jeremy, if I knew ‘just ten’ I’d speak to them and change their minds. But the government fervently hopes there are millions.”
Says who? If that’s their “fervent hope” you’d expect there’d be at least a couple of hundred people out there so stupid as to think a climate change policy is about soot.
As your hero Andrew Bolt would say – name just ten.
The good Captain went:
How do you propose we deal with the biggest of GHGs – dihydrogen monoxide, Col? Given that atmospheric water vapour is temperature dependent, do you think it might be a good idea to somehow limit the increase in global mean temperature? And given that the only identified process that is primarily responsible for current climate change is anthropogenic carbon extraction, oxidisation and emission, do you think it might be an idea to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases we emit into the atmosphere?
For your edification, here’s a “misleading” and “deliberately deceitful” primer from NASA about the Carbon Cycle, or as you and Terry might put it, the Soot Cycle.
The only good thing about Terry is the photo’s of him next to his by-line. Very funny stuff.
When we talk business/economics around here, it’s the rule that it has to be done in ‘Terry Mode’. My fav is Terry with the hands out in front, the ‘Give it to me straight Tezza!’ style. How can anyone take him seriously with those photo’s (not to mention the gibberish he spouts)?
One might add, Alan, that there’s about as much “dihydrogen monoxide” in the flux in the biosphere as there was 4.3bn years ago. It has resisted all attempts by humans to augment it and imposed a very high cost on even redistributing it. And as you say, the atmospheric residence times of it are driven in very large measure by … CO2.
CO2 on the other hand …
Although the term “carbon pollution” is imprecise, given that we are principally discussing the oxidation of carbon to release heat in turn to transfer to a mediaum such as water or air to turn a turbine or move a piston, then the resultant waste can fairly be descibed as carbon pollution — including, but not limited to the soot. PM5 & 10 is also “carbon pollution”, since that is its provenance and if the measures proposed by the state abate havest, transport and combustion of fossil hydrocarbons then they will also abate this form of carbon pollution.
The principal problem with deniers denying CO2 status as a pollutant is that it is a composition fallacy. Components of the biosphere that do not prejudice ecosystem services of value to humans are not pollutants. Whether they do prejudice these services derives in part from their concentration. Thus, beneath a certain threshhold, atmospheric CO2 underpinned the life cycle of life on Earth, of which hyumans are a subset. At a certain point (possibly 240ppmv) the marginal utility to humans of every extra molecule of CO2 fell to zero. Some time after that point (possibly 280ppmv), its marginal utility became negative because it began disrupting access to services we humans value — the climate and patrterns of heat and precipitation, the Ph balance of the oceans, the vegetation mix on the land, the movement and distribution of small fauna and the pathogens they carry etc … That makes each new molecule of CO2 a pollutant in the way that those below the threshhold were not.
Everyone who ahs studied biology knows this principle. Each of us needs a microscopic amount of copper to maintain good health. Yet only marginally more copper is toxic. So copper is both a nutrient essential to life and a toxic metal that accumulates in bodily tissue. There are plenty of other examples.
Nobody is suggesting that we attempt to completely deplete the atmosphere of CO2, nor would there be the technical means to do this in any event. What is being suggested is that over time, we reduce concentrations to that which is optimal for the humans of the day. The fallacy here is thus a composition error, which seeks to make each microcosm of the system identical to the macrocosm — the CO2 cycle as a whole — not that Terry McCrann would be aware of that.
Captain Col gives a bad name to my rank.
McCann’s column argues that the reduction is tariffs is different to the carbon tax in affecting productivity.
I’m a bit concerned about his mental health here.
Clearly it is the _same_. A carbon tax, or a tariff reduction, reduces the relative cost of imports and destroys jobs. The remaining industriesm must make more from less so productivity “improves”.
This is year 9 Economics here.
It is an academic point anyway ; Abbot will soon be in and the carbon tax will be gone.
Anyone seen these great clips?
‘Climate Denier Crock of the Week’
Here’s one on what atmospheric CO2 is really all about. Includes the Amazing Monckton claiming that CO2 is good for you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFGU6qvkmTI
Corporal Planet.
Sorry. Had to be done in the interests of discipline.
You tossers have missed the obvious point: that both you and Bolt/McCrann are members of the fomentariat: driven by partisanship. ( eg: look at Bernard Keane’s batting average- it’s in single figures because he insists on swinging where he wants the ball to be, not where it is. Enthusiastic, but catastrophic).
This bit of Bolt/McCrann Hyper Bole (as Banal Julia would say) is just a fragment of the Great Lexiconn.
The incredible shrinking language…
Haven’t you noticed the bizarre reductionism applied to Progressive keywords in the last couple of years? A carbon tax is “reform”; “pollution” has shrunk to CO2; “clean” is no CO2; “green” is no CO2; “renewable” is CO2-free energy; “emissions” are now just CO2 (I wonder what “nocturnal emissions” now means. Farting?); “environmentalism” now means “climate action”, as does “progress”. “Modernisation”, “development” and “investment” have all been abducted and forced into linguistic servitude…as if the piddling “carbon tax” was something more than a piece of political engineering tying the Greens to the government to keep it alive….
Tomorrow’s exercise: measure as many approbatory terms as you can think of. If they’ve shrunk, post them here. Call it Sears’ Lexiconn Catalogue.
Root out lingofascism!
It’ll make a change from knitting.
‘You tossers have missed the obvious point’
coming from you Frank, that IS funny
Capt.Col: “You seek what all Greens seek – power over the evil masses to mend their destructive ways”
While I can’t deny that many Greens have a mean, Puritan streak (the Greens do drive climate millenarianism, after all), made uglier by the hypocrisy of their own hyperconsumption, many greens/Greens are deeply troubled by both the futility and political ineptitude of the climate cult. Linguistic reductionism is only a symptom. All Green energy (non-renewable) is pumped into prosecuting the cult. There’s bugger all left for anything else. Quite apart from the dismal fact that power is being gifted to the Naked Jesuit and his unsavoury associates. Cattle in the Alpine National Park is a whiff of what’s to come, thanks to the brain-dead ALP and crusading Greens.
Rightwing commenters on sites like this actually make things worse: they confirm the prejudices of Progressives. Just look at the pleasure that Crikey spear-carriers get when the odour of their tribal enemies reaches their nostrils.
Only the Left can rehabilitate the Left.
Note that 30% of Greens in the latest poll prefer Abbott/Hockey to their putative ally Turnbull…Brown’s cows are jumping the fence…
‘made uglier by the hypocrisy of their own hyperconsumption’
bullshit like this needs actual proof. Step outside your echo chamber Frank.
Frank @31: what can I say? You’ve convinced me.
Now, shouldn’t you be taking your medicine?
CO2 is a waste product of humans. So is urine. I don’t see anyone arguing that urine is not a pollutant.
The etymological and pedantic arguments are a fair sign they’re clutching at straws now. Let them flail. Terry’s not doing much for his credibility by writing such nonsense.
When I write letters to The Curious Snail, I get about one in four published. Except when I write about Tezza, in which case the letter goes AWOL.
Zoot: I did
Quantize: “Bullshit like this needs actual proof”.
Even the castration of sociology by corporatism can’t disguise the social mobility of low post-code greens. LPGs colonised the inner city when it was cheap, as well as dead towns like Daylesford. I used to take busloads of uni students to Daylesford and similar towns before they were gentrified. What fun we had, breaking into derelict buildings…
LPGs inadvertently reaped the benefits of excessive urban sprawl (MelSyd becoming unbearable for those further out) and consequent inner-city real estate boom.
Ironically, I observed extreme LPG hypocrisy recently at an anti-industruial wind demo near Daylesford. The locals stood in the mud on the edge of the main road, harrassed by numerous police. The occasion was the commencement of the so-called “community windfarm” at Leonard’s Hill. Many of the 1400 “investors” came to the party, but it was the manner of their coming which revealed the class and regional ugliness: hundreds of flash cars and gleaming 4WD, most bearing their Brighton/Carlton/Malvern/Esternwick caryard stickers…then a bus arrived. It disgorged about 25 mainly elderly LPGs in beanies and woolly jumpers. Not the beneficiaries of any boom. Finally two young, athletic men arrived on bicycles. Admirable. Carbon misers. But the only ones.
The real locals were and are traumatised. They’ll have two huge turbines generating infrasound, flicker etc for the next 25 years. Their lives and property values have been ruined at a stroke. The LPGs have outsourced their carbon guilt – never in their backyard.
And who’se running this scam? Simon Holmes a’Court, son of Janet, heir to the vast Holmes a’Court corporate-raider fortune. Robert the Robber Baron, now dead.
These two turbines cost $13 million- for a tiny amount of utterly useless power which can’t light a single bulb 24/7. Massively subsidised by consumers via the MRET rort.
It gets worse. A billion dollars on domestic solar subsidies which produce 0.1% of total power- much of this money goes to well-meaning Greens who want to do the right thing. But this Right Thing is also an environmental fraud.
Bob Brown was right: “We Greens are very mobile”. In every sense. Travel, social, and the ability to exploit every “green” rort to the max.
Meanwhile, the daily pack rape of the real environment goes on with impunity. I don’t see a single Green (as opposed to green) out here hunting down rednecks, fighting rapacious plantation corporations, paddock-thrashing “farmers”, or pursuing half-pissed urban scum (armed to the teeth and bent on shooting anything that moves)…
LPGs don’t live in the environment. Their relationship with it is abstract. Class rules.
My goodness you write some prejudiced, unsubstantiated, generalised twaddle Frank.
Frank Campbell
Sorry, this Green vs green distinction isn’t clear to me. Are you saying the Green Party isn’t “hunting down rednecks etc etc.”? If so, who’s doing all the protesting, petitioning and volunteer scrutinising of the reams of bullshit puring out of Gunns, the the Cth and State guvmints that support pillaging the landscape? Who’s making a stink about commercial development in national parks, and protesting about gung-ho cockies turning the Snowys into a giant eroded paddock? The Labor/ Liberal coalition? Fred Nile? The Nationals?
Frank’s been to Daylesford in a bus. This means he is a true Country Person and his opinion is now unassailable against that of the inner city leftist.
Typical fucking elitists.
Fractious: “If so, who’s doing all the protesting, petitioning and volunteer scrutinising of the reams of bullshit puring out of Gunns, the the Cth and State guvmints that support pillaging the landscape? ”
That’s what the Greens were formed to do back in 1992. And they did it, up to a point. But people’s energy isn’t renewable or limitless: in recent years the party has directed most of its effort to the War on Carbon. There’s less and less scrutiny of environmental abuses- they just go through the motions…Another symptom is reductionist language- “pollution” is now CO2, “reform”- the carbon tax, etc.
The ALP may be a mere shell inhabited by opportunistic cockroaches, but the Greens have lost their way. Or rather they’ve taken the millenarian path to Salvation…the path that leads straight to the wilderness.