It's Only Fair

Tim Blair writes:

A huckster pounces:

Greens leader Bob Brown says the coal mining industry should foot the bill for the Queensland floods because it helped cause them …

“It’s the single biggest cause - burning coal - for climate change and it must take its major share of responsibility for the weather events we are seeing unfolding now,” he told reporters in Hobart on Sunday.

Fine, Bob. Let’s do it this way. First, we’ve got to work out how much carbon dioxide is being emitted worldwide. This should help:

The human component of carbon dioxide that is injected into the air each year is very small, on the order of 3%. Half the carbon dioxide emitted into the air by human activity each year is immediately absorbed into nature. Carbon dioxide is 8% of the greenhouse effect; water in the air is 90% of the greenhouse effect. By volume, carbon dioxide is currently at about 390 parts per million in the atmosphere, increasing at about 2 parts per million annually. In other words, carbon dioxide is increasing at a rate of .5% per year. Since human activity adds 3% of the carbon dioxide that gets into the air each year, the human component of the increase in carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year is 3% of .5%, or just .015%.

Australia’s annual contribution to global carbon output is just 1.5 per cent, which works out to .000225 per cent of the overall human component. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that the coal industry generates an entire third of Australia’s amount – a mighty .000075 per cent of the carbon emitted globally which ends up hanging around in the atmosphere.

On current estimates, the floods may result in damage worth $13 billion. The total bill owed by the Australian coal industry (and this assumes that the floods are entirely due to carbon-driven climate change): $9749.99.


<End of Tim Blair's article>

I'm pretty sure that Australian mining companies have already contributed much more than this!

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