Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Rudd to decrease emissions by how much?

Almost exactly a year ago, Kevin Rudd supported cutting greenhouse emissions by 25 to 40%:

THE Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, signalled his support for developed countries, including Australia, agreeing to making deep cuts in their greenhouse gas emissions in the next 12 years.

In a significant move last night the Australian delegation to the UN climate talks stated it "fully supports" the proposal that developed countries need to cut their greenhouse gas emission by 25 to 40 per cent by 2020.


But just yesterday, the Prime Minister announced a 5% reduction is his plan on cutting the deadly gas by 2020. So what does 5% actually mean? Bob Brown and the Greens for example, want a 100% reduction.

Well Australa's CO2 emmisions are currently at 326,000 thousand metric tonnes. Which is about 1.2% of the worlds.

If we assume that CO2 has caused 100% of the 0.7 degre increase that we have seen over the past 100 years (extremly unlikely - even the IPCC don't perscribe to this, but still - for interests sake), then australia cutting greenshouse gasses by 5% will result in a decrease of

0.00042 degrees per 100 years, or

0.0000042 degree decrease per year.

Well done Kevid Rudd!!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Actually I do think it feels a little cooler already!

John Nicklin said...

Jonathan,

I was in your wonderful country when this news broke. It was interesting to see that your media has swallowed the same cool-aid that our Canadian media has. The story about Rudd backing down to 5% made it difficult for me to listen to the radio for the remainder of my trip, too much rhetoric, not enough logic.

Have a happy and prosperous New Year, I'm looking forward to skiing in Aus when those temps fall.