Global warming?

Taken from Mt Hotham looking towards Mt Bogong ~ click on photo to enlarge.

Do we really need a Minister for Climate Change? 

I’m certainly not a climate change ‘denialist’, in fact I met former CSIRO chief scientist Dr Graeme Pearman many times back in the 1980s and he was predicting these ‘weird weather’ events even back then. Graeme is still a leading authority on climate change and is often quoted and seen in the media and I can tell you that he’s a very conservative man not prone to exaggeration.

But this report  from ABC Online, that Victoria is experiencing its best start to the snow season in a decade, will no doubt add fuel to the debate:

There is 56 centimetres of snow at Mt Buller and about 40 centimetres at Mt Hotham, Falls Creek and Lake Mountain. Snow reporter, Maureen Gearon, says there will be eight lifts open at Mt Buller this weekend and six lifts will be operating at other resorts.

“These are the earliest and heaviest snow falls we’ve had since 2000,” she said. “[While] 2007 and 2003 were great … this is just spectacular, so we’re sitting around, average base of about 50 centimetres around most of the resorts.”

Comment:

Actually, 2008 was a great year for snow too. After a late start it fell in buckets with both Falls Creek & Mt Hotham having over a metre of snow right through July & August and well into September. I realise that the resorts always ‘talk it up’ but to me it really does seem like we’re returning to our normal seasons.

I don’t want to get into a debate about climate change but I do think there’s been a lot of hype about it. You can’t really compare the two but it strikes me that a lot of the people predicting climatic ‘armageddon’ also predicted the ‘Global Financial Crisis’ would lead Australia into a financial meltdown with massive unemployment, house prices plummeting and the end of the capitalist-based system as we know it. But as we’re seeing, this ‘recession’ is very mild compared to the early 90s recession and the impacts are nowhere near as dire as predicted.

I tend to be optimistic about the future of the world and I’m a great believer in man’s ability to adapt to changing circumstances and environment. We’ve always done that. I’m not saying we should ‘put our heads in the sand’ and just keep burning coal because even if CO2 is not the cause of the climate changes we are experiencing, pollution of the air is a major health concern anyway. Maybe just stop the panic and over-reacting though?

As for the main question, ‘Do we really need a Minister for Climate Change’, well quite frankly I am not impressed by Penny Wong, who strikes me as a rather bland and unthinking bureaucrat/career politician who doesn’t really give a sh*t about the impacts anyway.

Still, this is what Governments at all levels do, they create positions and whole departments where no real need exists. We’re even seeing that here in our own local Alpine council who have created all kinds of unnecessary (and very well paid) jobs …. even one for the footy coach!

As for global warming, well it’s bloody cold outside but then again … it’s winter!