UN Climate Action Summit: Shut Up, Australia.

A number of free-loaders countries, including Japan, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, the US, Japan, and South Africa will not be sending delegates/speaking at the UN Climate Action Summit to start next Monday in New York.

Scott Morrison’s Australia joined the ranks of international pariahs. Apparently, António Guterres, the UN Secretary General, wants speakers to have something substantial or at least truthful to say and Angus Taylor’s sophistry on GHG emissions reduction doesn’t make the cut (Taylor is the federal Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction).

I think Guterres is right. Wanna know why?

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Using data the Commonwealth Department of Energy and the Environment released belatedly (Quarterly Update of Australia's National Greenhouse Gas Inventory: September 2018) I produced this chart last March:

Note how Australian CO2-e emissions fell only between 2007 and 2013: during Labor’s Rudd/Gillard/Rudd interregnum. During the COALition’s Howard years (which ended in 2007) and the subsequent COALition’s Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison current period (starting in 2013) emissions rose.

This is what the latest data release (Quarterly Update of Australia's National Greenhouse Gas Inventory: March 2019) shows:

:

It turns out that now, CO2-e emissions, which had been rising, appear almost flat during the current COALition’s Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison period. Funny, isn’t it?

The chart below compares the data in both releases:

Emissions not only remain flat in the incumbent climate change denialist COALition Government, but also start falling from higher levels allegedly reached during the Labor period.

Is changing one’s data the secret to “curb” GHG emissions?

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Readers’ skepticism about my own skepticism would be understandable -- indeed reasonable -- if I were the only person feeling perplexed by politically sensitive official data released during the Morrison Government.

But I’m not. Professors Frank Stilwell and Peter Saunders, plus Christopher Sheil, have been scratching their heads over official data recently released as well.

Nor is CO2 emissions the only cause of concern: there is income and wealth inequality. Here is what Stilwell and Sheil found, and this is what Saunders have to say.

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But, let’s leave that aside. Even with the currently “lowered” emissions, there is no way Morrison’s Australia will reach the reduction target set by IPCC for 2030: according to Taylor’s data, CO2-e would need to fall to approximately 320 Gg (45% of the 2010 baseline: 580 Gg), from 530 Gg in 2017.

Man, those guys will have to do a lot of data “magick”.

Indeed, even in the case of Australia’s much more modest target (26% of the 2005 baseline level by 2030) that seems dubious: even if one believed Taylor’s data, emissions show no sign of falling and they would need to fall to 460 Gg.

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After a festival of mutual sucking up between the Man of Titanium and the Rusty Iron-Skinned Man, where they even held hands like two pre-pubescent kids in love for the first time, it seems they may have many things in common. Among them a close approach to “truth”.

I just wonder if The Donald gave ScoMo his infamous “hand shake”. I mean, The Donald must have known somehow that ScoMo was made of titanium.