Parody Singularity

Submitted by VFTS, from The Australian:

Scientists have found camels to be the third-highest carbon-emitting animal per head on the planet, behind only cattle and buffalo. Culling the one million feral camels that currently roam the outback would be equivalent to taking 300,000 cars off the road in terms of the reduction to the country's greenhouse gases.

But Climate Change Minister Penny Wong told The Australian there was little point doing anything about Australia's feral camels as only the CO2 of the domesticated variety is counted under the Kyoto Protocol. That equates to only a small number of the beasts, the sort found lugging tourists around Cable Beach in Broome and at Monarto Zoo, southeast of Adelaide...

Opposition climate action spokesman Greg Hunt reckons the government has "lost its marbles". "It's now reached the absurd situation where a camel in captivity is a threat to the planet but a feral camel in the wild is absolutely fine," Mr Hunt said, "While culling feral camels may or may not make a minor contribution to reducing our emissions, the real issue is the absurdity of Kevin Rudd's focus on meeting a bogus international accounting system rather than worrying about direct action."

A camel emits 0.97 of a carbon-equivalent tonne per year. According to the Carbon Reduction Institute, an average 1.8-litre car running on petrol and travelling 20,000km per year emits about 3.5 tonnes of carbon emissions annually. On that ratio - which is backed by the Federal Chamber of Automotive Industries - if 300,000 cars were taken off the road Australia's emissions would be slashed by an average of 1.05 million tonnes a year.

But exactly what sort of difference a large-scale camel cull would make to our carbon footprint remains in dispute. Senator Wong's office claims a camel cull would be the equivalent of taking just 500 cars off the road. But that is 1/600th of the 300,000-car assessment given by the opposition, which has vowed to cull the mammoth herd...

The Australian obtained two independent assessments of the mathematics of taking out the one million-strong feral camel herd: from the federal Parliamentary Library and also veterinary scientist George Wilson, an expert in animal greenhouse emissions.

Dr Wilson, who is head of consulting group Australian Wildlife Services, remains sceptical of the proposal to eradicate feral camels due to practical problems. But he, like the library, maintained that the Coalition had its numbers right.

A spokeswoman for Senator Wong said the "500 cars" carbon analogy was appropriate because only emissions from tourist ride-type camels counted under Kyoto. "The figures provided relate to anthropogenic emissions that count towards our national emissions target," the spokeswoman said. "This same principle applies elsewhere. For example, we don't include the emissions from bushfires or drought, because even though they impact on our emissions, they are not something in our direct control."

The absurdity of the UN carbon accounting systems was also highlighted by Mick Keogh, executive director of research group the Australian Farm Institute. Mr Keogh noted that while emissions from a deliberately lit bushfire count under Kyoto, they did not if the fire was caused by lightning. And it also varies depending on whether it razes privately owed land or a national park.

"When it's burning in the park, none of those emissions officially count, but when it spreads back out of the park to private land on the other side, it starts to again contribute to greenhouse emissions as measured by the UN's rules," he said.