Climate Security
Here is my letter published in The Australian newspaper on 28 April 2023.
As published it read “Peta Credlin questions whether climate change is a security problem (“Lest we forget what’s worth defending”, 27/4). There is a serious risk of several metres of sea level rise this century. This change could destroy ports, beaches and coastal wetlands, and create millions of climate refugees. Climate is a core security problem. Climate security can only be addressed by international co-operation.”
The letter is available to subscribers only behind a hard paywall at https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/letters/day-of-reckoning-as-energy-crisis-starts-to-hit-home/news-story/1eab87feb11c726981e6c90ac1f124a3.
The article I responded to by Peta Credlin is copied at the end of this post. It mentioned climate briefly in the bolded paragraph near the end. Ms Credlin is a leading Australian conservative commentator who was chief of staff for Prime Minister Tony Abbott and now has a regular TV program on Sky News.
The newspaper edited my letter – here was what I sent: “Peta Credlin questions whether climate change is a security problem (‘A country that’s in doubt about itself, that often thinks patriotism is a dirty word, is in no position to fight’, 27/4). There is serious risk of several metres of sea level rise this century, destroying all ports, beaches and coastal wetlands, and creating hundreds of millions of climate refugees. Extreme weather is steadily worsening. Climate is a core security problem. However, cutting emissions does nothing about temperature, only generating political polarisation and destruction of our energy system. Climate security can only be addressed by international cooperation on solar geoengineering.”
They deleted my criticism of cutting emissions, my mention of extreme weather, my numbers of refugees and my call for solar geoengineering.
On Saturday 28 April the newspaper published the following two letters in response, reflecting the conservative derision about this topic.
“I am grateful to Robert Tulip (Last Post, 28/4) for his warning that sea levels are rising. It has prompted me to look over my “tinnie” runabout, check my Wellington boots for leaks and dust off the sou’wester. Always best to be prepared.”
“Predictions of humanity’s demise by the end of this century are just baseless predictions, despite the credentials of the predictor. If governments thought sea level rise was a threat, they would not promote building developments close to current sea level – and as far as I know there’s no recommendation we should all head for the hills.People are entitled to their personal fears but we should not be forced to join the panic.”
There was a lively discussion in the online comments section, visible to subscribers only. There was no sympathy for my view. Given this universal condemnation within the conservative echo chamber, I should note prediction of over two metres rise is supported by the US Ocean Service NOAA, who stated in this 2022 report that global mean sea level rise in 2150 could be 3.7 metres. Other scientists consider the result could be even worse.
In response to a comment, I wrote:
“Security analysis of climate change should apply the precautionary principle regarding risks. The biggest risk is that focus on ineffective emission reduction efforts crowds out effective ways to cool the planet. Solar geoengineering could be deployed safely in ways that do not disrupt the economy, allowing ongoing use of fossil fuels. When CO2 was last above its current level the seas were about 20 metres higher. That is the commitment created by Earth System Sensitivity, but we cannot know the time scale, like a turkey awaiting Thanksgiving. Emissions apply constant forcing to fragile and sensitive ice systems in Greenland and Antarctica, destroying their protective sea ice and warming the ocean water. These glaciers lock up more than 70 metres of sea level rise, and are collapsing in unpredictable ways, more rapidly than consensus models suggest. Recent scientific papers have found climate impacts are bigger and faster than models predicted. A 2020 study in Nature found Greenland is losing ice seven times faster than it was in the 1990s, now melting at over 280 billion tonnes per year. Other studies show climate tipping points have cascading effects that accelerate these processes. Moving to Higher Ground, a credible scientific analysis by John Englander, states sea level rise of 2.5 metres this century is predicted, with higher levels considered possible. Security policy should take precautions against these serious risks. This requires a change of thinking. Cutting emissions only marginally slows the rate of warming, and can do nothing to mitigate these risks. The international cooperation required is for action to brighten the planet, enhancing albedo to create equal and opposite cooling to balance the warming from greenhouse gases. Research into solar geoengineering offers the most precautionary option, as a rapid, effective and cheap way to mitigate climate risk. The climate goal should be Net Zero Heating, not Net Zero Emissions.”
In response to a follow up question, I wrote
“Net Zero Heating means restoring preindustrial temperature using technology to cool the planet with equal and opposite effect of the warming from greenhouse gas emissions. It is a faster, safer, cheaper and more effective climate policy than the futile effort to achieve net zero emissions.”
Further comments included the following 40+ responses, all condemning the idea we should worry about sea level rise.
- As a Coastal Scientist who started work in the 1980s, I remember all the forecasts with which almost every coastal Council required compliance, a prediction of 2m rise by 2020. The rise has not occurred, no one has been held to account for the destruction this caused to the lives of many individuals. It hasn’t even been publicly acknowledged. Don’t repeat our previous mistakes.
- Sea level rises around the world at present are in the range of 2-3 mm per year, the same rate it has been for about the last 200 or so years since the end of the Little Ice Age. Yet one of your correspondents thinks there is a risk sea-level rises will be several metres in the near future, although no explanation how this might happen. Does anyone ever fact-check these extraordinary claims about the climate which are invariably shown to be completely unfounded?
- The likelihood of a 2 metre+ rise in sea levels this century is on par with being invaded from outer space. Get a grip!
- Did the Clown Caucus get together and agree to send in a wave of letters?
- Where does Robert Tulip get his information from? Several metres sea level rise is something not even Al Gore has been guilty of spouting. After all he has a number of first class beach front properties and if there was any possibility of several metres rise surely our panic stricken and woke state and local governments would be refusing development permits on all our land adjoining our beaches.
- Are sea levels rising in the northern hemisphere, if so God help Iceland and Ireland!
- Robert Tulip I have been a Coogee Beach, Sydney, fan for 72 years and the water level has not changed.
- If the sea levels are rising as Robert Tulip suggests, why are so many wealthy climate catastrophisers such as Michael Cannon-Brookes buying waterfront homes?
- Apparently the sea level rise at Port Denison is less than 10 centimetres in 100 years.
- Robert Tulip, these insane predictions have been in the mix for almost 50 years now. None have eventuated or even come close. “Climate is a core security problem” now seems to be emerging as the new alarmist’s mantra. These climate alarmists have no shame when it comes to their failed prophecies. Be gone the lot of you.
- Claire Lehmann writes an illuminative piece in today’s Australian about the fragility of today’s youth as a result of progressive ideology being pushed on the young, even starting in kindergarten, frightening children about many things, especially the fear of climate change and the prospect of not reaching adulthood. It is insidious and against the evidence of the continuing failure of doomsday predictions to eventuate. The long term damage to vulnerable children is indefensible and regular writers are continuing to add to the problem with hysterical predictions.
- And Robert Tulip needs to read it
- Robert Tulip, you say that “There is a serious risk of several metres of sea level rise this century.”
Are you serious? - Well, Mr Tulip is from the ACT.
- Absolutely unbelievable! Water covers two thirds of the earth’s surface! A seven metre rise requires seven metres of extra water covering two thirds of the planet?
- Considering the fact that the amount of rise in sea levels in the last Century has been so minuscule it’s hardly recordable, how in earth will sea levels rise by metres in the next 75 years? More doomsayer nonsense with zero justification.
- Maybe Robert got his millimetres mixed up with his metres
- ‘(he) can NOT be serious!’ (apols. McEnroe, J)
- Robert Tulip where is your source that would lead you to believe that there is a risk of metres of sea rise this century? That is an old trope once used by the profoundly unreliable and discredit Tim Flannery….which lead to the song of building a beach house in the Blue Mountains..humour can be devastating. Indeed climate scientist Judith Curry did a study specifically of sea rise a few short years back and concluded that the rise is completely manageable amounting to some 200mm per century…of course it will vary in different parts of the planet but that is a sound number. Being a scientist she said of course if the volcanoes under the antarctic landmass erupt it would produce different and far more dangerous results …an event she assessed as highly unlikely….and incidentally nothing to do with climate change. The great Richard Lindzen arguable one of the greatest living climate scientists made the general point a few months back (google his interviews) (in essence) that the misinformation about climate change and the reaction to unrealistic perceived threats is in many instances ludicrous…beyond parody I think he said. A thrust of his position is that people who know precious little about this hideously complex issue make absurd statements that are picked up by politicians and others who know even less about the science and yet they are the ones who usher in remedies that have no affect on the misdiagnoses. Australia’ plan to address climate change with approaching 100% renewables is a perfect example of this phenomena, indeed a few years back Lindzen opined (in essence) ..what are the aussies doing? The western world is in a period of collective madness and until good engineering, good science and sound economics are respected as they should be, we will continue to be at the mercy of the modern version of snake oil salesmen who have no answers but they will fool a lot of people a lot of the time.
- “Several metres” of sea level rise this century? Let’s say “several” means more than two, and actually means three or more. So 3000 mm in the next 75 years? That equates to 40mm per year every year beginning today. The best estimate is around 2mm per year. Mr Tulip needs reminding that using hyperbole runs the risk of derision.
- It is ludicrous and most people have absolutely no idea of reality in this very important issue.
- Well deserved derision.
- Robert Tulip, I don’t believe that any of those wealthy, woke, believers in global warming who seem to readily snap up properties sitting just a meter above high tide marks on the ocean shore would agree with you.
- Not just properties by the shore – I’ve read quite a few are buying islands! As if they would spend millions on land that just won’t be there in a decade or two!
- I see a few of the technical fairies have emerged from the bottom of the garden in todays letter page. When the lights do go out could we see a few more letters telling us we told you so. Sea level rises of metres before the end of the century, really, I won’t be here but I’ll probably be still laughing from my grave.
- Robert Tulip: I suggest you move to the summit of Black Mountain, & wait for it to happen, But don’t hold your breath. We were promised sea level rise two decades ago!
- Robert Tulip we have been told for four decades that catastrophic sea level was imminent. Show us the evidence.
- There is NO risk of several meters of sea level rises this century.
- Robert Tulip, I’m waiting and watching the shoreline weekly. Sea level rises have been mooted for a couple of decades and clearly government policy makers and investors don’t believe it given the ocean shore and river bank development occurring across Australia. An interview with two Antarctic scientists i watched this week had the southern ice cap growing, not shrinking.
- Mr Tulip. If sea levels are going to rise by several metres this century our new submarines will need longer periscopes.
- Hopefully the 3 metre sea rise will cover Canberra. Is that Mr Tulips concern?
- I have it good grounds to believe that Canberrans are snapping up Braidwood property to get sea views.
- Robert Tulip says that international cooperation is needed for climate security. Then why are countries around the world building more than 1000 coal fired power stations and Australia is getting rid of its remaining six to save the planet. Methinks Australia is no longer the clever country. It is quickly sinking into energy poverty because of the madness of renewables. Only when the lights go out will the climate zealots see that we are going down the wrong path. And by the way nothing Australia does makes one skerrieg of difference to the climate but then better to believe in a false climate narrative based on ridiculous climate modelling.
- the zealots will never see that we are going down the wrong path. Don’t imply that they can understand anything.
- I think someone is tiptoeing through the tulips. The ocean is not going to rise by metres. Wheres your facts. Stop scare mongering.
- Robert Tulip claims there is a serious risk of several metres of sea level rise this century. That is about 10 times the predictions by the IPCC which are on the high side because they are based on models that overestimate the effect on temperature of increased CO2. Half the rise since 1700 occurred before the industrial revolution and that natural rebound from the Little Ice Age is likely to still be influencing temperature much more than CO2.
- Relax. The rising sea level prediction will never eventuate. Just like the myriad of past predictions that bit the dust
- Mr Tulip – there is no credible prediction of several metres of sea rise by the end of the century. It would be helpful if you cited your sources.
The IPCC has made no such prediction as yours.
Sea level rises in Australia since 1900 are negligible. A 1.1 degree temperature increase since 1860 is not a basis for alarmism and frightening young and impressionable minds. - The CCP can’t have got this message or it might not have produced the man made islands in the South China Sea.
- why do so many politicians buy waterfront properties if the sea is going to rise so much? How can the sea rise in one spot and not all over? Remember, we were told the dams and rivers would never fill again…..
- Robert Tulip, 5 years ago we bought a house 1.5 metres above sea level on the beach in Geographe Bay for $1.3m. Today the beach is as far away as it ever was and the property is valued at $1.6m. I reckon the real world thinks your fears of “several metres” of sea level rise is wrong. Stop reading the models, start reading the real world. Calm down, it’s not as frightening as you think.
- Robert Tulip, a climate change “expert” stated in a newspaper in 2000 that my home town would be under water by 2020. Obviously it’s still there, with no noticeable rise in water levels. Given every prediction so far by the “experts” has been wrong, I think we should stick with reliable 24/7 power until the scientists actually understand the “science”.
- And my Palm Beach Q, beach, refuses to do anything different, and insists on acting like a beach. Tides are the same since the Jellurgal people fished it, with a slightly higher Christmas tide, every year. The Jellurgal people can be found on the north side of the Tally Bridge, they share great knowledge about their land, so if on the Goldie, pop in and see them. They make a great coffee, but good luck with trying to convince them, anything has changed.
Article by Peta Credlin Published in The Australian
‘A country that’s in doubt about itself, that often thinks patriotism is a dirty word, is in no position to fight’
APRIL 27, 2023
“This week the paradox of modern Australia was on full display. With hundreds of thousands of spectators cheering them on, tens of thousands of veterans and serving military personnel marched on Anzac Day to honour everyone who has fought for our country.
On that day, though, the Australian War Memorial’s new chairman pledged that the memorial soon would honour the Aboriginal warriors who’d fought against the British settlement of this country, even though such recognition would be more appropriate in the new $316.5m Indigenous centre called Ngurra, to be situated opposite the AWM on Lake Burley Griffin.
Yet again, it looks like popular enthusiasm versus official ambivalence when it comes to being positive about Australia.
So what’s it to be: pride in our country or shame? Is the Australian War Memorial – which World War I historian Charles Bean intended as the Anzacs’ shrine “in the heart of the land they loved” – now to be turned into a place of division and embarrassment?
It should be possible to come to a nuanced appreciation of our strengths and weaknesses as a nation. Yet it’s hard to be optimistic about getting this balance right in an era so given to fretting about toxic masculinity (even though it’s strong men who have kept us safe in the past and likely will again in the future); the history wars; claims that it’s racist to vote No to giving Indigenous Australians a special say in government based on ancestry; and the tendency to deny those with a uterus the right to be called women while biological men can, if that’s what they choose.
Former Labor MP Michael Danby says the Defence Strategic Review is a “damn squib” and “very disappointing”.… “If you can’t identify the problem, then the Australian people aren’t going to know why we’re spending all of this money,” Mr Danby told Sky News host Peta Credlin. “I thought More
All this matters because the Defence Strategic Review the government released this week says that not since the end of World War II have we been so close to major conflict.
READ MORE: Home-made drones pack undersea punch | Guided missile production ‘within two years’ | Bullseye or bulldust? Our experts’ verdicts on the Defence Strategic Review | US admiral to review Australian fleet | Why cyber warfare is the new front line | It’s same same but going backwards | Defence review blind spot leaves our flanks — chillingly — exposed | Albanese, Labor face test of ticker over Defence review
Yet a country that’s in doubt about itself, that often thinks patriotism is a dirty word, is in no position to fight.
In his Anzac Day address this week, Governor-General David Hurley, the former defence force chief who commanded the Australian contingent in Somalia, said what had most concerned his men was not the risk of getting hurt but the worry that they might fail to be worthy of the example of their forefathers.
That’s the key question: if called upon, would we live up to their example? And do we believe in our country and our values enough to fight for it as our veterans did?
For current and former military personnel, obviously the answer is yes. And for the hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, who attended dawn services and marches around the country this week I suspect the answer is also yes. But for others, I wonder.
These days we spend so much time acknowledging “country” – with the inference that it’s really the country of only 4 per cent of us – rather than the country of all of us. Among the official class and elites, we spend so much time in angst about our past and rewriting history, even though ordinary people still sense that, in terms of freedom, justice and a fair go, Australia remains the best country on earth and has to be worth defending. But how long will this hold?
There were some very important messages in this week’s DSR. That we can’t count on 10 years’ notice of major conflict. That China’s militarisation of the South China Sea is a direct threat to Australia’s national interest. That our armed forces on their own need to be able to defeat any adversary – China included – that seeks to attack Australia. And, most worryingly, that we’re not ready for armed conflict, on any serious scale.
Shadow Assistant Defence Minister Phillip Thompson is “making an issue of the wrong thing” by criticising the… timing of the Defence Strategic Review’s release rather than its contents, says Sky News host James Macpherson. Mr Thompson on Tuesday slammed the Albanese government for releasing the review the day before More
But it seems that the review, as usual, dances around some of the really important issues. As just about every defence analyst now says, communist China is getting ready to attack Taiwan. Because democratic Taiwan is never going to submit to communist rule, that means an assault on Taiwan is all but inevitable.
All but inevitable, that is, unless the free world makes it clear to Beijing that any assault on Taiwan wouldn’t be just giant China against tiny Taiwan but dictatorship versus democracy.
Deterrence through strength is the only way to raise the stakes enough to deter Beijing because anything other than the status quo would be a catastrophe. A successful Chinese assault on Taiwan, unresisted by the democracies, would up-end the world order as we know it as countries arm themselves to the teeth against Beijing or roll over and make the best accommodation they can with the communist superpower. But helping Taiwan risks a war between the superpowers, with all that entails, in terms of sending the world back towards the Stone Age.
There’s not much in this review, at least in the unclassified version, about how Australia might work to maintain the peace across the Taiwan Strait even though the US would certainly expect our help. What there is, though, is yet more reviews: a further review into our fuel security, given that we have just a few weeks of onshore fuel reserves; and a further review of the surface fleet. There’s plenty of talk about more missiles but, again, no hard dates for their acquisition.
In fact, the only specific commitments to come out of this review are to scrap the acquisition of most of the new infantry fighting vehicles and not to go ahead with the purchase of more self-propelled artillery. Even though the lesson of history is “to expect the unexpected”, as we’ve seen with the rise of Islamic State and the Russian assault on Ukraine.
There’s the obligatory reference to climate change, which the review says is “amplifying our challenges”. Seriously? With China commissioning hundreds of new coal-fired power stations and engaged in the biggest military build-up in peacetime history, we need to get our head out of the sand on energy security being critical to our national security and drop this climate obsession within the bureaucracy.
| THEAUSTRALIAN.COM.AU05:04 Defence Strategic Review is govt’s ‘cannibalisation’ of Australia’s army capability |
The Defence Strategic Review is the government’s “cannibalisation” of Australia’s army capability, says Shadow… Defence Minister Andrew Hastie. “The government has promised a lot with this DSR but what we’re seeing is no new money, we’re seeing cost-shifting and we’re seeing cannibalisation of army capability,” he told Sky News More
The Albanese government deserves credit for sticking with its predecessor’s plan for nuclear-powered submarines under AUKUS. But like its predecessor, it seems better at delivering words than at delivering actual military capability. For the most part, the plans are good, but there’s no real urgency at putting them into practice and no real attempt to persuade the public that spending on the armed forces might actually be a higher priority than, say, the NDIS. Probably because the government itself is unpersuaded.
If the situation is as serious as the government says, deeds must better match words. The other thing that really needs to change is how we think about ourselves. We can’t honour Australia and Australians on Anzac Day only to spend the rest of the year denigrating our country and undermining the rationale for defending it. Maybe that explains why it’s so hard to recruit the young people our armed forces need. Whatever the reason, let’s hope we all wake up before it’s too late.
COLUMNIST
Peta Credlin AO is a weekly columnist with The Australian, and also with News Corp Australia’s Sunday mastheads, including The Sunday Telegraph and Sunday Herald Sun. Since 2017 she has hosted her successful prime… Read more
