You frequently hear complaints that with all our sunlight Australia ought to be a leader in solar energy. They reached a crescendo about the time that Dr Shi Zhengrong was revealed as a billionaire after training at the University of Sydney and taking his solar research home to China where he made his fortune.
Of course the problem for any country is that you can only back so many projects, and just because one that got away has made a lot of money it doesn’t mean that you should have backed it, let alone every project that is put up.
So I was interested to see the CSIRO announcement that they are starting a print-run of solar cells using a similar process to that used to print dollar bills.
This sounds like the sort of project that could easily make billions of dollars if it is successful. Odds of that sound good, paritcularly as the researchers are 6 months ahead of schedule already.

Beware the policy that has no opponents in high places. During the US elections it was a reality check when the financial crisis came to a boil, and instantly both parties were in complete agreement about the need for a bail out. Much less being said about the redesign of the system to deter future foolishness.
Here, the outrageously badly designed CPRS, known to activists as the Carbon Pollution Reinforcement Subsidy, has equally wide support, with the help of the coal industry’s deep pockets.
Cracks are starting to appear, in the form of a Parliamentary Enquiry, but this won’t report until after the legislation is tabled, ironically around Earth Day in late March.
Disencentivising individuals and small business to consider different approaches to their energy and consumption habits, because their credits will just be bought up by the big polluters, is public policy insanity. Complexity is another hallmark of bad legislation, and the CPRS has that going for it, too.
These days the smart money (if that’s not an oxymoron, given the state of the money markets) is with a carbon tax. This could be as low as $25 a tonne, but should probably be higher to get the message across.
We need a strong disencentive to change our direction. We cannot continue to produce electricity from coal and export this most filthy of fossil fuels. Why? Because it is bad for us, our economy, and for Australia’s image in the world. Short term, maybe we can get away with it, but what do you really think lies around the corner?
People clearly differ in what they consider obvious, or there wouldn’t have been an article in the paper about the intelligence of paying more than the minimum off your credit card.
You know the world is starting to ‘get’ climate change when the latest James Bond movie makes the point that water is now more precious than oil. Our smart businesspeople don’t want the green boat to leave without them.
We need to be very clear on sending the right signals to other alternatives. These alternatives are not just for renewable energy, as that has clear limitations. The incentives for change have to be strong enough to reach into what some might call the ‘soft’ economy. This includes urban design, better small scale transport, and flexible arrangements such as community gardens, recycling centres and social learning databases.
Green entrepreneurs are turning a quid in California with projects that make you scratch your head, but somehow work. The desire for change is a deep well.
Such approaches may now be small bickies, but they offer the hope of building what the CPRS as currently framed will further erode: actions by civil society working together with small business and green entrepreneurs. Who has ever really counted the contributions of these groups? There is lots of research on volunteers, carers, and non-profits, but the collective impact of a change of consciousness?
All technologies and public policies have implications for the design of society, and dealing with climate change is a colossal challenge for democracy as we now know it.
Not for nothing does Al Gore call it a ‘crisis of governance’. There is a surge in the ALP to stregthen the embryonic Labor Environment Action Network; a Sydney friend is shaking the branches of that democratic tree. I’m hoping the first rotten fruit to fall is the CPRS.

(Cross posted from What the people want)
The federal government appears to have been reading our research, or similar, on an emissions trading scheme.

According to The Australian Online

TREASURER Wayne Swan has asked a powerful House economics committee to judge whether the proposed emissions trading scheme is the best way to tackle climate change…
The Australian Online understands the move may be an attempt to gather evidence to discredit opposition to emissions trading by the Coalition.
There is also speculation it is designed to pre-empt any findings of a Senate committee inquiry.

Perhaps.
It could also be a rational response to research like ours showing that for a variety of reasons voters across the spectrum are unhappy with it.
It is probably coincidental that the decision occurred only days after we released our research. But then again, I have started emailing summaries of key research to federal parliamentarians, and some have even been responding on our comments threads, so who knows?
If you are not already a member of our online research panel and would like to be considered for future polls, then please send us your name and email address by clicking here.

A few days ago I drew attention to work that suggested the Indian Ocean Dipole was responsible for causing drought in southern Australia . I contrasted that to a view from the Bureau of Meteorology that the change was caused by the hole in the ozone layer over the South Pole.
Now there is an another candidate – aerosols (a fancy name which covers any fine particle in the atmosphere including dust and soot). According to CSIRO scientist Leon Rostayn:

Recent climate modelling at CSIRO shows that there may be important effects on Australian climate due to aerosol pollution from the Northern Hemisphere. These include an increase of rainfall in north-western Australia, and an increase of air pressure over southern Australia, which may have contributed to less rainfall there.

Would be good to know whether either of the other two are included in this model.

The Northern Irish Environment Minister, Sammy Wilson, “has banned government television adverts in Northern Ireland warning of the effects of climate change“.
This might seem a little “Irish” on a couple of fronts. For it to make sense you have to realise that England has devolved power to Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, so as in Australia, you can have three levels of government in the one area. It’s not his own government ads that he is banning, but the UK government’s.
Still, while I am used to government propaganda telling me Global Warming is a problem, this is the first instance of which I am aware where a government has turned the propaganda off.
I have a fair bit of sympathy for Mr Watson when he cricises the ads for “attempt[ing] to tell people that simple measures like changing their lightbulbs and turning off TVs from stand-by mode could help prevent them ‘wrecking the world'”. Whatever your stance on global warming this is not just clearly nonsense, but the same level of empty activism that has been recommended by our own just-past and now-present federal governments.
In Australia, the latest Newspoll figures suggest that belief in Anthropogenic Global Warming is near universal. Perhaps colder temperatures this winter in the northern hemisphere have changed sentiment there, or the Irish were smarter to start with.
The bushfires here may well have done the opposite, intensifying belief. I’ve found it distressing that the propagandists like Clive Hamilton and David Karoly have already been out before the fires have even gone cold. It’s a ridiculous proposition that 0.6 degrees of temperature change would have made a difference one way or the other with the weather patterns that prevailed in Victoria over the last week or so, meaning it’s unethical and unscientific to trade on the tragedy in this way.