Tom Arup

Tom is a reporter for The Age newspaper based in the Press Gallery in Parliament House. He covers environment, water, climate change, energy and agriculture. He has worked for The Age since February 2008. Before that he was finishing his honours in Public Policy at Melbourne University.

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7 Responses to “Tom Arup”

David Arthur Says:

September 15, 2009 at 8:23 pm
Gday Tom, The Age ran your story on the World Bank report on climate change adaptation costs.

The story is good, the World Bank really is saying that.

However, the World Bank is talking through its hat; it’s as though the ghost of Paul Wolfowitz was still there. A report just published by IIED and Imperial College’s Grantham Institute for Climate Change (http://www.iied.org/pubs/pdfs/11501IIED.pdf) reckons that climate change adaptation will cost 2-3 times more than otherwise estimated.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090911191721.htm

We’d have been better off to mitigate early, just like Stern said.

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David Arthur Says:

November 3, 2009 at 2:17 am
Gday Tom,

the first global meeting to agree to CO2 cuts was in Toronto in 1988, when they agreed to cut emissions by 20% from 1988 levels by 2005. (ref “the economics of avoiding action on Climate Change”, Clive Spash, Adbusters #75 16(1) January/February 2008)

21 years later, another bunch of knobs will gather in Copenhagen to do nothing other than invent tradeable commodities. The only people who win out of CRaPScheme are inventive commodity traders. That’s short-term; their own children will eventually cop it along with the rest of us.

So what’s wrong with phasing in a Carbon tax? You’d bring it in on the back of the GST at a rate of $1/tonne C in all fuels, and raise it by $1/tonne C for every year thereafter.

What you also do is cut other taxes, $ for $, so that the taxation burden is taken off people who work out how to emit less carbon. Say, by getting rid of the SUV, putting up solar hot water, solar power, investing in wind farms, and transferred on to all the recalcitrants.

By putting the carbon tax on fuel oil, you’d even encourage local manufacturing industry, replacing all those imports and giving redundant coal miners jobs.

How about writing something like this up in the paper? At the moment, Australia’s LibLab party is having conniptions over its CRaPScheme, or whatever they want to call it.

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Phil Davison Says:

November 18, 2009 at 3:55 am
Hi Tom, Im looking to spread some awareness of whats happening to the worlds reefs as a result of enviornmental changes that are already happening. An article on the BBC website today said that the world is heading for 6 degrees C rise in temperatures!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8364926.stm

This will be a disaster for the worlds reefs.

Recent research I have done has concerned me enormously, there is an annual report that the Australian Government has commissioned – The Great barrier reef outlook report which essentially says that should carbon levels reach 450ppm (with a 2 degree temperature rise) then “errosion will out strip growth” on the reef. There is also a report by the Royal Society in Britain which has a much less cheerful outlook.

With temperature rises of up to 6 degrees as your article suggests, there is almost no hope for the survival of the worlds reefs in their current form. Apart from the huge loss of sealife that this would effect, (90% of life in the sea lives on reefs), this would result in the loss of natural protection that reefs offer the land from Tsunamis. Also given amount of revenue that people make from reefs, and the number of people who rely on them for their livlihood, I would have thought that people would be more concerned, but i feel that this knowledge is not widely enough known.

The governments of the world are sitting down in a few weeks to begin the process of deciding how to deal with the environmental crisis that we are facing. People need to be made aware of the importance of what will happen in Copenhagen as it will dramitcally affect us all.

I would be interested in seeing a story on the reef systems and how they will be affected by the environmental changes that are coming. And hopefully spread some awareness about the urgency of the situation and encourage the worlds leaders to take responsability for it.

Regards
Phil

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Cathy Van Elden Says:

February 3, 2010 at 9:50 pm
Mr. Arup:
1. ‘Mad Monk meets Monckton’ is a juvenile header designed to trivialize the two people involved.
2. Lord Monckton is not a “globally divisive figure” – he simply presents an alternative view of man made global warming.
3. The insensitive photo of Lord Monckton plays upon his affliction of Grave’s Disease. It is obviously designed to suggest to readers that his “unusual look” due to this (unacknowledged by The Age) terrible disease, suggests a “weirdo” with “weirdo” views.
It’s time this sort of demeaning reporting, ceased.

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Jordan Says:

February 5, 2010 at 8:00 am
Tom I just wanted to say that I didn’t think your short article about Lord Monckton meeting with Tony Abbott was as weak as most and I was wanting your reason for the strange photo- only his eyes being the focus of his photo…

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Shane McDonald Says:

July 10, 2010 at 12:50 pm
Tom

Thought our companies developments might be of interest to you in terms of enviroment, water and climate change.

We got fed up with waiting for an industry to change and are doing it ourselves. We formulated a business plan and financial model that does not require any state or federal govt funding (although that would of been nice).

With the Data centre industry consuming a large amount of power consumption we see a change here of significant importance.

We are building a chain of small data centres throughout Australia. Our differentiator as we are going off the grid for both our primary and secondary (redundancy) power sources.

We intend to pump our profits back into R&D for a second phase of power development which will be purely renewable.

Our findings show that within 18 months the entire State and Federal governments data centre requirements could be up to 60% more green before we look at developments in hardware and software design and build.

The difficulty is that the industry is consumed with self defeating strategies on using power from coal burning grids and rather than eliminate it completely are more reducing it to raise prices/profits as demand esculates and supply dwindles.

We have also looked at ways to reduce the cost of the NBN (National Broadband Network) through private funding. ie for the extreme ends our multiple data centres can connect as hubs and increase the reach of the main NBN.

An interesting joint venture we are now in talks with involves a company that will reconstruct some major water treatment plants throughout regional victoria. Their by product is high grade gas (ideal for our data centres.

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James Hayton Says:

July 11, 2011 at 3:39 am
Tom.
Read with interest your article in the Age 11/07/11. re clean energy.
I am at present developing a suggestion that a centre could be built in Melbourne, on the lines of the Sydney Power House, but devoted entirely to the future rather than the past or present.
This is an entirely private and personal venture ( I am very much retired now) but my aim is to stir the Victorian government into doing something useful with a large area of at present idle land.
It would be, if taken up a great place to house working agencies in the renewable energy field in the same building where they can talk to each other.
I would be pleased to hear your views.
Incidently I recognise your name as presumably of Danish origins. I worked for most of my life for another “Great Dane” (pardon the pun) Sir Ove Arup the great engineer. Any relationship ?

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