Crikey has an article by Ian Dunlop of ASPO Australia explaining why he is running for the BHP board - Ian Dunlop: why I am nominating for the board of BHP Billiton.

In August this year I nominated to join the board of BHP Billiton, the world’s largest diversified resource company, on the basis that the company needs to take far more extensive and urgent action to address climate change and its potentially destructive impact on BHP’s shareholder value. BHP maintains it is well aware of climate change risk and is taking appropriate action; accordingly, the board has recommended that shareholders vote against my appointment. So why pursue this course?

Over the past 20 years it has become evident that conventional politics in Western democracies will never provide the leadership necessary to address climate change. The recent Australian election, the denialist stance of the Abbott government and the ineffectiveness of its ALP predecessors just rams the point home. It is impossible for politicians driven by short-term electoral considerations and ideological paranoia to take a balanced view on an all-pervasive, existential issue like climate change.

However, as Voltaire put it: “Men argue, Nature acts.” The latest science confirms that fossil-fuel emissions from human activity are warming the planet at an accelerating rate, and that both the extent and speed of that warming have been badly underestimated.

Current climate policies are leading to a world with an average temperature increase in excess of 4 degrees above pre-industrial levels — a world where population would fall from the current 7 billion to below 1 billion, caused by a combination of heat stress, escalating extreme weather disasters, sea level rise, disease, food and water scarcity, and consequent social disorder and conflict. Early signs of this are already evident in the conflicts in Egypt and Syria, where climate change has been a significant contributing factor.

These impacts are being locked in by our investment decisions and inaction today, but the full, catastrophic effect will only evolve over time. Typhoon Haiyan sadly is providing a foretaste.

Dangerous climate change is already happening at the 0.8-degree temperature increase we are experiencing now. The “official” limit of 2 degrees now represents the boundary between dangerous and extremely dangerous climate change. To have a reasonable chance of staying below even the 2-degree limit, we have virtually no carbon budget left to burn, not even the 20% of global proven fossil-fuel reserves frequently quoted. To avoid catastrophic outcomes we must take emergency action now to halt new fossil-fuel investment, and rapidly wean ourselves off established fossil-fuel use.

In the absence of political leadership, business in its own self-interest must act — business as we know it in a world that is 4 degrees hotter is not possible.

Ugo at Cassandra's Legacy has some thoughts about this presentation (PDF) from ASPO Australia's Ian Dunlop - Recognizing good science when you see it: climate change seen by depletion scientists.

One of the most interesting talks at the recent meeting on Energy organized by the Club of Rome in Basel, was the one given by Ian Dunlop, of ASPO Australia (photo on the right). It was not so much on energy, but on the interconnection of energy with climate change. It was up to date and saying the things that needed to be said. That is, Ian Dunlop didn't shy away from saying that climate change is threatening the very existence of our civilization and that we must do something quick about it. It was an excellent talk, give a look to the slides if you have a moment, here is the link.

What I found surprising were the several comments that I heard later on from people attending the meeting. Some of those who didn't have a specific background in climate science seemed to be shocked. They didn't know, it seems, that the climate situation is so bad and that it is so urgent to act - but they now recognized the problem. This experience of mine in Basel parallels very well the one I had in Brussels for the ASPO-9 conference, when climate scientist Jean-Pascal van Ypersele gave a good talk on climate change. Also there, the reaction of some of the people attending the conference was of surprise; they never had a chance, apparently, to hear a comprehensive report on the climate situation.

Of course, I have no statistics about the average competence in climate science of the people who work with peak oil and similar subjects (let's call them "depletion scientists"). But my experience with this issue has been often disheartening: many depletion scientists are badly outdated in what they know about climate science. A few (just a few, fortunately!) make a banner of their ignorance and they fall for the most obvious propaganda tricks diffused by denialists or scoff at the whole idea with the simplistic statement "not enough oil for climate change". Alas, things are much more complex than that!

That doesn't mean that depletion scientists are not smart people; by all means they are. And it doesn't mean that there doesn't exist a parallel bias on the part of climate scientists who, often, appear to be totally oblivious of the situation in terms of resource depletion. The point is that we all suffer of narrow vision. The Internet is vast and we tend to go in depth only in the areas that we know well; the rest of our information often comes by a haphazard mix of what we read in the media. In this, we all suffer of "confirmation bias." (see below)

So, what you get from the media about climate change is that it is all a question of small details: did we see a warming during the past 10 years? What is the meaning of "hide the decline"? Didn't scientists fear "global cooling" in the 1970s? And so on. Even people who are on the side of climate science often seem to engage in the debate worrying about minor details. How many tons of CO2 can we save if we install double paned glasses in public buildings? Should we use public transportation instead of a private car for commuting? So, the general impression that you can get is that climate change is a minor issue affected by great uncertainties.

That the results of more than half a century of work in climate science have been reduced to such narrow terms in the media is a victory for denial: it is a way to keep people in the dark about what is really happening. But climate change is not something that can be stopped by double paned windows. It is a major upheaval of the whole earth ecosystem and it has the potential to do to us immense damage. The problem must be faced for what it is, in its complexity, and with the risks that come with it. Uncertainty is not an excuse for doing nothing: what we don't know is what is most dangerous for us.


So, it is very good to see that a good scientist can always recognize good science when he sees it. It has been the case of Colin Campbell (left), founder and honorary chairman of ASPO, who stated to the audience "I am convinced" after having heard the talk by Van Ypersele at the ASPO-9 Brussels conference. It was the same for several colleagues at the Basel meeting after the heard the talk by Ian Dunlop. I also noticed in other occasions that climate scientists can understand the depletion message when they hear it presented for what it is. They are good scientists, too.

So, it is time to recognize good science when we see it. And it is time to tell everyone how things stand, just as Ian Dunlop did in Basel.

PAddy Manning at the SMH has an article on a recent speech by Ian Dunlop at the Australian Institute of Company Directors - Corporate leaders in a climate of disbelief. Dunlop also has an interview at 2SER.

Scepticism hung heavy in the air. At a packed Australian Institute of Company Directors lunch on climate change, the institute's former chief executive, Ian Dunlop - a petroleum engineer who was a Shell executive and now is the deputy convener of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil - rose to put a question to keynote speaker, David Mortimer, the chairman of Leighton Holdings, the world's biggest contract coalminer.

In full, Dunlop's question ran for three minutes: ''The temperature increase we've seen so far is about 0.8 degrees Celsius. We've already seen a clear trend in extreme weather events related to just that increase. We probably have locked in already a temperature increase of around 2.4 degrees. If we were to follow the path that you're suggesting in terms of continued fossil fuel usage to 2030, the likely outcome will be a temperature increase somewhere between 4 and 6 degrees. That probably means world population drops to a carrying capacity of somewhere around a billion people (you can argue 1 to 2 billion).

''My problem with your outline of what the board does at Leighton is that I don't see, in terms of the long-term or medium-term objectives that you've raised, anywhere a question of leadership from the board in trying to get across to governments and the community, the seriousness of the problem we are dealing with.

''It is much more serious than anybody's admitting officially. Any big company that's following the science would know this full well. We complain about lack of certainty. We complain about proliferation of different sorts of legislation and regulation around the country.

''But for the last 15 years senior business people in this country have not been prepared to get out publicly and lay it on the line that this is a serious issue, and it's one where we want leadership and we want genuine results.

''It's too hard a problem really for the political system to deal with. We've set up a system that's incapable of actually handling issues which are long-term. The business community should be the ones taking the lead, because they're the ones who are going to have to solve it in the end. I just wonder whether there's not a whole arena in there which we are completely missing, which is that chairmen and chief executives of major corporations should be getting out there and demanding of government, that they start to treat this thing in a completely different context from the way we've been treating it, and we want completely different solutions coming through, because we're trying to solve at the moment the wrong problem, with the wrong solutions.

''Where is the leadership from senior corporate business people in this country? Where is it going to come from? Because if we don't get it fairly soon, we can't solve this. The problem is that what we do today manifests itself in terms of extreme weather on a continuing basis from now on, but we won't see the full impact for 20 or 30 years' time.''

Clang! Mortimer, who had been arguing, among other things, for a consumption-based rather than production-based carbon tax, answered that his take on the outlook for fossil fuel use was based on World Economic Forum statistics - which he accepted were probably realistic - and proceeded to fob the question off.

Dunlop's question drew on science from Europe's best climate research centres - including the Tyndall Centre in Britain and the Potsdam Institute in Germany - and you could have heard a pin drop as he asked it. But my bet is most of the audience that day thought he was being alarmist.

Which shows how loose the ''climate sceptic'' handle really is. Sceptical of what? That climate change is happening? That we are the main cause? Or that billions could die this century as a result?

Some scepticism sounds pretty reasonable. The president of the Business Council, Graham Bradley - the chairman of the developer Stockland, HSBC Australia and the coalminer Anglo American Australia - doubts the increased value and incidence of extreme weather-related insurance claims provides evidence of an increase in the incidence or severity of extreme weather events. Higher population, asset values and insurance coverage all mean a given weather event has more impact nowadays.

Other scepticism seems outlandish. In an interview published online by Australian Mining this week the coal and iron ore miner Gina Rinehart argued Australians were ''not swayed by the global warming fear campaign''. She told the magazine: ''I have never met a geologist or leading scientist who believes adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere will have any significant effect on climate change.''

What seems likely is that Australian business leaders, on average, are just as sceptical as everyone else, and right now the sceptics are fighting back. According to a Newspoll this week, 78 per cent of Australians believe climate change is happening and 72 per cent believe humans are partly or entirely the cause. That suggests roughly 28 per cent of the population, or 6.3 million people, see no problem.

Ian Dunlop has an article at the ABC looking at the influence of the fossil fuel industry on climate change policy in Australia - Absolute carbon corrupts absolutely.

The resource industries wield enormous power in Australia and their opposition to action on human-induced climate change is well documented.

At virtually every turn in the tortuous path of climate reform over the last two decades, resource interests have prevailed without regard to the increasing risk of catastrophic climate impacts. Gradually, as the evidence has mounted, outright denial has given way publicly to grudging lip service to the need for action, whilst privately delaying tactics continue.

The scientific consensus that, on the balance of probabilities, human activity is causing most of the warming occurring globally, is overwhelming. 

Prudent risk management suggests that an emergency response is now required.

To have a 50 per cent chance of not exceeding the “official” limit of 2 degrees Celsius global temperature increase relative to pre-industrial levels, Australia must stop emitting carbon completely in around eight years. This constraint only allows around 50 per cent of existing global fossil-fuel reserves to be consumed. So why continue expanding reserves of oil, gas and coal, with increasingly risky, and environmentally damaging, ventures such as deepwater oil exploration, tar sands, shale oil and underground coal gasification?

It begs the question whether the power of the resource industries is being used responsibly, or is this a case of “power tending to corrupt and absolute power corrupting absolutely”?

Buoyed by bullish demand forecasts, the resource sector is forging ahead with fossil fuel developments, doubling coal exports, expanding LNG exports, creating a coal seam gas industry - but with no proven means of sequestering the associated carbon emissions.

The supposed justification is that developing nations such as China and India, require our cheap resources to lift millions out of poverty, irrespective of their climate change impact. But fossil fuels are not cheap. Their real cost is only just becoming evident as the economic damage and human suffering caused by the upward trend of extreme weather events around the world demonstrates – for example in the USA, Russia, China, India and Pakistan this year alone.

The lack of accounting for these impacts represents “the greatest market failure the world has ever seen”; pricing carbon is not the imposition of a “great big new tax”, rather it is the removal of a “great big old subsidy”, a subsidy which is the major barrier to establishing low-carbon industries.

China and India are well down the track developing these industries, far more so than Australia. As the true cost of climate change hits home, their transformation away from fossil-fuels will accelerate, notwithstanding that they continue to make substantial fossil-fuel investments in the short term.

This should be cause for caution. Instead, the boosters are continually talking up the prospects of developing increasingly remote resources, and costly conversion technologies; fortunes are being made trading assets for inflated prices on which to build projects which will be largely uneconomic once the true price of carbon is incorporated.

But when national priorities, driven by escalating natural disasters, take precedence over short-term profit, authoritarian regimes such as China will change direction very fast. This is a world for which Australia is ill-prepared, as the hypocritical stance of our resource industries demonstrates.

Key industry players publicly proclaim that climate change is real and requires urgent action to reduce emissions. But the expansion of the coal industry is predicated on the success of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, which we are asked to take on faith by allowing mines and power stations to be built before these technologies are proven at the enormous scale now required. Unfortunately there is virtually no chance CCS will provide the hoped-for panacea to cut emissions in the time frame needed.

At the same time, the industries fight tooth and nail to prevent the introduction of a realistic carbon price, the lack of which undermines the viability of CCS, whilst excessive compensation rung out of a weak government dampens low-carbon technology innovation. The net effect is continuing rapid growth in carbon emissions, completely at odds with industry rhetoric.

The major investment required to transform Australia into a low-carbon economy should come in part from the super profits generated from the use of our non-renewable resources. However the rabid reaction against the proposed resource tax, suggests an industry hell-bent on preserving the status quo, rather than promoting the sustainable pathways which feature so prominently in company reporting. A sensible resource tax makes good sense for both industry and the community, and “sensible” means far more than the royalty replacement kite recently flown by Clive Palmer!

This is the context in which the recent comments by BHP Billiton CEO Marius Kloppers should be judged. Finally, a CEO of a major resource company has had the courage to publicly state what has been obvious for some time – human-induced climate change is a serious problem and we need a price on carbon to have any chance of addressing it. All credit to him for taking this long-overdue leadership position. But publicly crossing that threshold carries with it fiduciary responsibilities which he did not acknowledge in his speech.

The Climate Spectator has an article by Ian Dunlop on peak oil, global warming and the implications for the Australian economy and its dependency on resource extraction - Playing resource roulette. The column is based on a chapter from Dunlop's new book, More Than Luck.

Australia has had a dream run since the end of World War II, built on our natural wealth. Despite the occasional hiccup, our economy has expanded year after year, with increasing prosperity. Much of our success has been built around supplying agricultural products and raw materials to the expanding economies of the world, particularly in Asia – initially Japan, then Korea and south-east Asia, now China and India.

Understandably, we are proud of being world leaders in agriculture, mining and processing, but we have also created a strong and vibrant society in many other areas, all built around a capitalist, market economy model.

Our resource base is formidable and expanding. Not only do we have substantial energy resources of gas and coal, but we have the world’s largest uranium and thorium resources and enormous untapped renewable energy – solar, wind, ocean, geothermal and bioenergy. Beyond that, iron ore, other metalliferous minerals and agricultural assets abound.

However, that bounty may well become our Achilles heel unless carefully managed. Much of our exports are carbon-intensive – thermal and coking coal, alumina, natural gas, with coal being the largest export earner of around $36 billion in 2009-10. Our domestic energy system is highly carbon-intensive, largely a result of readily available and inexpensive coal. Our carbon emissions are correspondingly high, around 19 tonnes CO2 per capita in 2007 – among the highest in the world.

A weak point is oil, where Australia has a particular vulnerabilty. We are around 50 per cent self-sufficient in oil, a situation that is declining rapidly unless new discoveries save the day, which seems unlikely. We rely on long supply lines from Asian refineries for around 85 per cent of our daily product use, offset by high exports.

We do not comply with the requirements of IEA membership – to maintain a 90 day net-import strategic petroleum reserve – relying instead on operational stocks and just-in-time delivery. With a small, geographically dispersed population in a large land mass, we are heavily dependent on transport fuels.

The cost of our oil and gas imports is now close to twice our oil and gas exports, with high coal exports saving the day. This will represent an increasing burden on our current account deficit as our level of self-sufficiency declines.

Despite this vulnerability, peak oil is not on the federal government's agenda. While some state governments have taken it seriously, studies at the federal level have been dismissive, even though it may have far more impact in the short term than climate change.

If the world now moves rapidly to a low-carbon footing due to climate change, while facing increasing oil scarcity due to peak oil, many of our traditional advantages turn into major strategic risks – that is risks beyond our control which have the potential to fundamentally change our way of life, and undermine our economic strength.

Whilst our raw material exports will not cease overnight, given likely strong demand from the developing world, a worldwide shift toward low-carbon alternatives will seriously disadvantage Australia if carbon sequestration technologies fail. Similarly, we may not find it that easy to secure the oil imports we require. Domestic alternatives, based on our coal and gas resources, such as Coal-to-Liquids (CTL) and, to a lesser extent, Gas-to-Liquids (GTL) technologies are likely to be expensive and environmentally damaging.

In agriculture, Australia is already experiencing the impact of changing temperature and rainfall patterns, which may well be the result of human-induced climate change, with serious drought in many areas and an overabundance of rainfall in others fundamentally altering farming patterns and water supply.

As the Garnaut Review pointed out: "Australia has a larger interest in a strong mitigation outcome than other developed countries. We are already a hot dry country; small variations in climate are more damaging to us than to other developed countries."

On the positive side, we have enormous undeveloped renewable energy resources, and there is great potential for the biological, as opposed to geological, sequestration of carbon, which has substantial benefits for agriculture, and possibly for our coal industry.

A Janus nation

The scenario, of rapid climate change combined with the onset of peak oil, while becoming part of mainstream thinking overseas, is still regarded as extremism in Australia, and not as part of the "official future."

Ironically, we have some of the best scientific and analytical advice in the world on the implications of climate change and energy supply, in studies such as the Garnaut Climate Change Review and extensive work by the CSIRO and other bodies. They indicate the need for rapid change – advice which is blithely ignored.

On the other hand, the vested interests defending the status quo, particularly those linked to some sections of the resource industries, are among the strongest in the world – which is not surprising, given the importance of those industries, historically, to the development of Australia and the resulting power they have accrued. ...