Why Climate Change is Unbearably Naked

What do I find so impossibly sloppy to bear, about Climate Change in its contemporary definition, as the result of human activities (also known as “Anthopogenic Global Warming” or AGW, and usually associated to CO2 emissions caused by humans)?

Yesterday’s incredible (counter-)discovery by Anthony Watts on CO2 measurements getting corrected upwards after having gone downwards “for the first time in history” provides an opportunity for a non-exhaustive list (I may add links to each point next week) of all that depaupers Climate Change of actual meaning:

• Climate models are all based on forcings, something that cannot be measured. The tool has become the cause.
• Those same models are demonstrably “right” whatever happens, either warming or cooling (once again, as all they show is that forcings are supposed to do)
• Proponents are fixated on negativities (not just the newsmedia and the Stern Report…I have some interesting findings about a recent book on Climate Change, and I will publish them this week or next)
• Climate change is improbably comprehensive in its effects, and yet “Attribution”, the ability to pinpoint a particular change as having something to do with Climate Change, is still up in the air
• The IPCC itself cannot see much evidence for change in 2/3 (two-thirds!) of the planet
• The “truth” is that temperatures are going up but if one looks at actual measurements, they are continuously adapted and adjusted. Measurement stations are not increasing in the number, and locations are far from perfect.
• And now of course, on-the-fly upward adjustments of CO2 data appear just as values begin to go “the wrong way”.

I personally agree with Watts when he writes: “While nefarious motives may not be there, its just damn sloppy IMHO, and given this is the crown jewel for CO2 data I expect far better“.

And please don’t get me wrong…I am perfectly aware that such generalized sloppiness is part-and-parcel of modern Science, with genetists looking for Mendelian transmission of what is not Mendelian and a whole generation of Cosmologists trained on calling 96% of the Universe as “Dark Matter” and “Dark Energy”, two names for the same thing (”Total Ignorance”).

“Institutionalized Science” is of course 80% rubbish, as per the famous 80/20 rule.

But the whole Climate debate is much more than Science. And for that, there is still so much it needs to be dressed with, before it can be shown as properly thought of, and ready for being a solid basis for a revolution in societal mores.

If I read about “scientists demonstrating that train travel is impossible” I may get a laugh, as people at the time surely did. But when I see all the massive propaganda machine put in place to convince people to turn carbon-free by way of guilt, there isn’t much to be amused of.

If the keys to absolute gullibility are ever found, we may as well all turn back to live up the trees.

Whither a Climate Debate?

Gavin Schmidt writes at RealClimate

“The obvious ineptitude of this contribution underlines quite effectively how little debate there is on the fundamentals if this is the best counter-argument that can be offered.”

But it has been my impression that the main story, Monckton’s press releases notwithstanding, has been (and still is) the FPS Editor remarking that there is a considerable number of scientists skeptical of the IPCC conclusions.

The FPS Executive Committee now states on the FPS July 2008 page that they do not agree with the previous remark, suggesting it is all a matter of opinion.

However, with the APS jumping in against Monckton’s paper with red inks (thankfully now turned to black), and more than one call for the FPS Editor to be “fired” from his volunteer position for the mere reason that he made that remark, I wonder what kind of “debate” could at all be possible?

Actually, I’d rather the APS had replied with Gavin’s words “The obvious ineptitude of this contribution etc etc” challenging any of its readers to come up with something better than Monckton’s.

That would have given debate a chance. As things stand, I pretty much doubt any against-consensus contribution would appear on the FPS in the future, even were such a contribution to surface (and am sure, it won’t: otherwise yet more people’s bosses will receive e-mails asking to “fire the heretics”, an ominous metaphore it there’s ever been one)

“Global” Warming Consensus Forgets Two-Thirds of the Landmass

More figures to understand how awfully incomplete is the current knowledge of global climate.

And it’s very clear for all to see in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report - Working Group 2 (AR4-WG2), in Chapter 1 and in the Summary for Policymakers.

A bumper 96% of reported changes are from Europe and Europe alone. And what does that mean?

It means that for the whole of Australia/New Zealand, the IPCC could find only 6 significant changes (SC). For the whole of Africa, 7 SCs. For the whole of Latin America, 58 SCs. For the whole of Asia, 114SCs.

In terms of SC per square kilometer, Europe has:

1- 11,978 more than Africa
2- 85 more than North America
3- 853 more than South America
4- 1066 more than Asia
5- 3,702 more than Australia/New Zealand
6- 270 more than Antarctica

But one may reply to that, I am putting too much emphasis on the 28,000+ European biological SCs.

Let’s recompute the above with reference to North America then. In terms of SC per square kilometer, North America has:

1- 142 more than Africa
2- 10 more than South America
3- 12 more than Asia
4- 43 more than Australia/New Zealand
5- 3 more than Antarctica

It is blazingly blatant that before we can speak of global warming, more data has to be collected at least about Africa/Asia/Australia-New Zealand/South America .

We are talking 67% of the total land area of the planet.

Is anybody in the IPCC/Al Gore/James Hansen/Tim Flannery crowd pushing hard to get a complete picture of what is changing where and how?

Surprising Remarks in NASA-Endorsed Website

Cosmic rays stream down into Earth’s atmosphere from the sun and elsewhere beyond the solar system. Recent studies show that these particles penetrate into the troposphere and alter the way that droplets condense to form clouds, rain and snow with important weather and climate consequences. Changes in the sun’s ultraviolet light affects the ozone layer and the energy input into the upper atmosphere. As the upper atmosphere is heated, it expands into space causing increased friction for satellites.

The ISS must be ‘re-boosted’ every three months to prevent it from burning up in the atmosphere. The Skylab station on July 11, 1979 reentered prematurely because of a solar storm event.

The above from the Solar Storms “Space Weather” website, listing NASA more than once in its endorsements page.

The below is instead from their Climate page:

Scientists have examined the climate record for other signs of the connection between space weather and climate-weather changes with many surprising results listed below.

The Trends page, alas, loses out on many of those “surprises”…

Is Monckton the Wrong Target?

It didn’t take long for critiques to Monckton’s article at the FPS to appear. But I am inclined to believe that they are pretty much irrelevant.

what is the point of shooting against Monckton when the real offending statement for AGWers, the one that elicited all the “blogosphere brouhaha”, was written by FPS editor Jeffrey Marque?

There is a considerable presence within the scientific community of people who do not agree with the IPCC conclusion that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are very probably likely to be primarily responsible for the global warming that has occurred since the Industrial Revolution

Without the above, there would have been no NewsBusters article, no DailyTech comment, etc etc…

Monckton is one, a “considerable presence” is MANY

Why Rational Skepticism is Proper Response to AGW Claims

Many thanks to Ed Darrel at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub for pointing once again to the extraordinarily compelling case put together by Patrick Frank in “A Climate of Belief“, an article for the Skeptic society’s online magazine, Vol.14, no.1, May 2008, that:

the claim that anthropogenic CO₂ is responsible for the current warming of Earth climate is scientifically insupportable because climate models are unreliable

I had mentioned it at the time but had not had the time or memory to read it again. For those in need of a quick, heavily emphasized (by me) quote:

The proper response to adamant certainty in the face of complete ignorance is rational skepticism. And aren’t we much better off accumulating resources to meet urgent needs than expending resources to service ignorant fears?

Here a longer extract, from the final remarks (my emphasis):

It’s not that we, “lack … full scientific certainty,” it’s that we lack any scientific certainty. We literally don’t know whether doubling atmospheric CO2 will have any discernible effect on climate at all.

If our knowledge of future climates is zero then for all we know either suppressing CO2 emissions or increasing them may make climate better, or worse, or just have a neutral effect. The alternatives are incommensurate but in our state of ignorance either choice equally has two chances in three of causing the least harm. Complete ignorance makes the Precautionary Principle completely useless. There are good reasons to reduce burning fossil fuels, but climate warming isn’t one of them.

Some may decide to believe anyway. “We can’t prove it,” they might say, “but the correlation of CO2 with temperature is there (they’re both rising, after all), and so the causality is there, too, even if we can’t prove it yet.” But correlation is not causation, and cause can’t be assigned by an insistent ignorance. The proper response to adamant certainty in the face of complete ignorance is rational skepticism. And aren’t we much better off accumulating resources to meet urgent needs than expending resources to service ignorant fears?

So, then, what about melting ice-sheets, rising sea levels, the extinction of polar bears, and more extreme weather events? What if unusually intense hurricane seasons really do cause widespread disaster? It is critical to keep a firm grip on reason and rationality, most especially when social invitations to frenzy are so pervasive. General Circulation Models are so terribly unreliable that there is no objectively falsifiable reason to suppose any of the current warming trend is due to human-produced CO2, or that this CO2 will detectably warm the climate at all. Therefore, even if extreme events do develop because of a warming climate, there is no scientifically valid reason to attribute the cause to human-produced CO2. In the chaos of Earth’s climate, there may be no discernible cause for warming. Many excellent scientists have explained all this in powerful works written to defuse the CO2 panic, but the choir sings seductively and few righteous believers seem willing to entertain disproofs

Against-AGW-Consensus Article on the FPS Before Monckton’s

I can’t help but laugh at the incredible somersaults being performed by the Council of the American Physical Society (APS) to reaffirm thieir unshakeable belief in AGW, after allowing the publication in their “Forum on Physics & Society” (FPS) of an article by Christopher Monckton, “Climate Sensitivity Reconsidered“.

Note: there is one thing I agree with the APS. Monckton’s paper has not undergone any scientific peer review. You see, he’s a Lord (a Viscount, no less) whilst on the ”Council of the APS”’s side there is obviously no trace of nobility. They have been “discorteous” indeed.

Time will tell about the position (and nobility) of Jeffrey Marque, the Editor of the FPS that has seen his July 2008 comments severely rebuked by the Executive Committee of the FPS. Who’s going to choose what will be published in the October 2008 issue, is anybody’s guess.

Interestingly, the FPS and the APS did not make too much of a fuss in the past, when publishing “heretical” climate-related opinions. For an example, see Gerald E. Marsh’s “Climate Stability and Policy” in April 2008.

Mr Marsh is not exactly your average AGW proponent: he argues that current CO2 levels are too low and contributing to climate instability, suggests that even 750ppmv could still be not enough to stop an upcoming, catastrophic Ice Age. and recommends that the IPCC switch its focus towards “determining the optimal range of carbon dioxide concentrations that will stabilize the climate, and extend the current interglacial period indefinitely”.

For some reason, the above did not cause any digestive pain at the FPS, either with its Editor, with its Executive Committee, or with the Council of the APS itself.

Is Monckton’s paper simply too hot to handle? Plenty of nutrients for conspiracy theorists there, no doubt.

Greenhouse Gases: The Laboratory Fallacy

It is often said that the greenhouse effect by anthropogenic CO2 emissions is an established fact, as laboratory studies have been showing the interaction between CO2 and infrared radiation since before the times of Arrhenius.

That’s not necessarily true.

I am not saying that all those experiments have been wrong or that there is an international cover-up on the lack of greenhouse properties by carbon dioxide. That’s obviously not true, or else there’s something very wrong with quantum physics…

What I am referring to is the logical fallacy of stepping from the laboratory to the real world.

For an example of established chemical reactions that fail to live up to expectations outside of the laboratory, just look at the history of “Antioxidants“, an entire class of molecules supposed to slow down aging and prevent diseases.

Only, they don’t. Or if they do, it’s hard to tell. Perhaps some of them might even shorten one’s life.

This has not prevented the birth and sustainance of a whole industry of dietary supplements, just as the complexity of the real atmosphere mean nothing to those trying to take advantage of the carbon taxes or markets.

The underlying tragedy is that there may be something important about antioxidants/micronutrients, under specific conditions, but the true knowledge about it has been buried for decades by too quick claims disseminated for public health concerns: yet another analogy with CO2-based greenhouse warming…

G8 and Climate Change: the “Sad” Truth

There’s nothing like a G8 meeting to showcase what next “broken promise” might be

G8 vows to halve greenhouse gases
World leaders have agreed to set a global target of cutting carbon emissions by at least 50% by 2050 in an effort to tackle global warming…

Africa’s broken promises
Both the leaders of the industrialised world - the G8 - and the presidents of Africa are failing to keep the promises they made at Gleneagles summit in Scotland in 2005…

If I were a climate change campaigner I’d be particularly angry at the result. Richard Black at the BBC sounds particularly pessimistic

So far, then, this G8 summit has confused the issue rather than clarifying it.

The lasting impression is that unless there is something big happening that can be linked to global warming, Governments will simply and slowly drift away from it.

On Satellite Observations and Climate Change

An open letter to the Planetary “Sponsored Global Warming” Society

Dear Directors of the Planetary Society, dear Editors of the society magazine “The Planetary Report”

Your decision to dedicate a whole issue of the Planetary Report magazine to Planet Earth is commendable.

Too often one forgets that for the study of the universe there is a celestial body available to study 24/7, without the need for expensive trips to outer space. And that “body” is our own planet, the “cradle of humanity”.

All “missions to planet Earth” in the forms of orbital satellites and probes are worthwhile almost de facto, as new data can help us better understand our “motherworld”, and together with the accompanying experience may allow us to build the satellites and probes needed to explore the rest of the Solar System, and beyond.

But the July/August issue of the Planetary Report is not a celebration of past “missions to planet Earth” nor a comprehensive description of all the challenges lying ahead, and of all the questions still unanswered about our planet.

It’s just a collection of articles about global warming.

Is that what I and surely many other members await two long months for, every time? (and yes, I do follow Emily Lakdawalla’s blog).

Let’s assume “global warming” is indeed a big planetary issue, if not an emergency. Is it not talked about already in countless newspaper articles, movies, Nobel Prize wins, parliamentary sessions the world over, and now even a major topic of discussion at the G-8 “major industrialized nations” meeting?

And what purpose could it ever serve for a space-advocacy group to throw in its lot, especially since the issue has become so heavily politicized? Then one reads behind the magazine’s cover, and the “partial sponsorship” by Northrop Grumman Corporation starts explaining things.

After all, They are definitely not the first ones to jump on the “global warming bandwagon”, as demonstrated by a recent article on the International Herald Tribune. In the Planetary Report, they are the Company using the picture of a polar bear to advertise on the back cover that their “satellites above are safeguarding life below”.

Too bad though, Northrop Grumman Corporation wouldn’t survive a week by sticking to the environmental satellites market, and has to build some other pieces of hardware far less safeguarding for the lives experiencing a close encounter with their weapons.

But the problem is not with Northrop Grumman. The issue is what is the Planetary Society doing by jumping head first in the “global warming” debate, and also how it is doing it: because oversimplifications and mistakes abound. And that is definitely a no-no for something like the Planetary Society, that bases all its work of course on Science and on precision.

Here a quick list of observations:

(1) Contrary to what the Editor Charlene M. Anderson writes in the opening column, the Earth’s climate is not being recorded as undergoing a “steady warming”. There has been no warming in the past 10 years. Previous decades have seen warming and cooling episodes. If we are undergoing a warming, it’s definitely “not steady”

(2) In “Earth is, after all, a planet”, Charles F Kennel talks about “moving from knowledge to action”, because “human actions change our planet in ways that are not beneficial”. Note that certitude in those words. Does Mr Kennel realize that those words could be used to demonstrate there is no real need for more satellites to observe our planet? On the other hand: if the “global perspective” can “be found only in space” and therefore more satellites are needed indeed, what is the certitude on global warming based upon?

(3) Editor Charlene M. Anderson is then back in action with a “Venus and Mars, Earth’ s sister worlds” box making improbable connections between Venus’s clouds of sulphuric acid and acid rains on Earth (the two phenomena have little in common apart from elementary chemistry) and between Mars’s tenuous atmosphere and the Antarctic “ozone hole” (UV levels for the former are way higher than for the latter).

(4) In the same piece, we are told that Mars and Venus have shown us how “fragile, precious and unique” Earth is: I am not sure how anybody familiar with the evidence of periodical “asteroidal bombardments” on the surface of the vast majority of solar system bodies could define Earth as “fragile”, given that it has deleted almost all traces of four billion years of impact.

(5) Finally some fresh air in Michael D King’s “The Earth’s changing environment as seen from space” that actually is a list of all that can be done with satellites to monitor our planet. King’s piece is a good reminder of what it means to stick to the facts, instead of trying to “knit” one’s preferred interpretation around them. On the same tone, Editor Charlene M. Anderson’s box “Here, there and not quite everywhere” about analogies (rather than forecasts of doom) between what is seen on Earth and what happens on other planets and on natural satellites.

(6) Things turn to the worse with 6 pages given to Richard J Sommerville to explain the results of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). We are told that it is “90% certain” that us humans have caused “Earth’s atmosphere to warm up in recent decades” by emitting “greenhouse gases” in all our activities: too bad there is no space to explain where is this 90% figure coming from, for example why not 85.6% or 92.4%. We are just told it means “very likely” (why not stick to those words then).

(7) Furthermore, in the section “Recognizing climate change” Sommerville does nothing of the sort, and instead further dwells in the IPCC statements, before listing a rather selective group of observations (he forgets to mention the expansion of Antarctic ice, for example). And then after stating that “the IPCC does not specifically forecast what the climate will do”, Sommerville nevertheless writes that “sea level will rise perhaps by 18 to 59 centimeters”, with uncertainties due to scientists being unable to “assess the potential for further sea level rise”. Perish the thought of being unable to assess the potential for lower-than-expected sea level rise…

(8 ) In section “Absolute certain truth” we are told that the IPCC is “simply an honest and competent assessment of published peer-review science”. Hopefully so. But then on what basis did the IPCC get the Nobel Peace Prize? Not to mention the fact, reported by Sommerville, that the IPCC Working Group reports are approved line-by-line by governmental representatives.

The IPCC must have performed the miracle of uniting “honest”, “competent” and “government” under the same roof for the first time in history.

(9) The pictures accompanying Sommerville’s articles seem chosen for old-style PR purposes. There is a refinery emitting gases (those are not greenhouse gases); impressive satellite pictures before and after cyclone Nargis (that had nothing to do with climate change); and another satellite picture of the Ross ice shelf in Antarctica seemingly breaking up into icebergs (there is little indication that the southernmost continent is warming at all, apart from its Peninsula).

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Ironically, there are other ways to advocate for more “missions to planet Earth”, rather than parroting the most trite global warming slogans.

For example, there is no mention in the Planetary Report issue of the first chapter of the IPCC’s Working Group Two report, where it is clearly shown that the overwhelming majority of data confirming the climate is changing come from Europe alone.

We are talking 96% of evidence coming from 7% of the planet’s land area.

A major Earth observation plan is definitely in order: for the most basics of reasons, in order to observe and understand what is truly happening. If the first step instead is to declare our knowledge more or less settled, a couple of satellites will suffice.

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(10) As Berrien Moore III writes in the final article “As riders on the Earth together”, “to act wisely we require information and understanding”. Whoever is worried about global warming, they better concentrate on getting more environmental satellites up there, instead of declaring as a matter of principle that “we simply must take some of the pressure off Earth” as Mr Moore unfortunately states at the end of his article.

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Tellingly, we Members of the Society are not provided anything else from this issue of the Planetary Report. No Society news, no items on sale, no information about upcoming events, nothing about existing projects. Perhaps those folks at Northrop Grumman didn’t want to pay for the additional couple of pages. Or perhaps if climate change is afoot, all other activities of the Society will not be of interest any longer.

regards

maurizio morabito - london (uk)

Honesty on Nature’s Climate Feedback

I want to thank Olive Heffernan for being so honest: her blog at Nature’s Climate Feedback, that will surely make Lord Lawson proud despite a tad too many personal attacks, is definitely neither cool nor rational. Exactly “what it says on the tin”…

As for Rosenzweig et al.: could anybody please confirm or deny if the “30,000 phenomena” are the same 30,000 phenomena mentioned in AR4-WG2, chapter 1?

Hansen’s “Desperation 350″ - And Still They Travel

Full-page ad on the IHT on June 23 by the Taellberg Forum:

<350

Remember this number for the rest of your life

It is left to the reader’s imagination to hear music like in an old Bela Lugosi movie…

Anyway: such an effort is apparently linked to the 20th anniversary of Hansen’s warning to the US Congress about global warming.

We are told, CO2 concentration at the time was 350 ppm, and now it’s 385. We are also told that “Science says” the worst effects happen above the level of 450ppm.

Looks like it’s not too much of a worry then? Don’t even think about it.

For unfathomable reasons (=otherwise a lot of people would become inconsequential), the ad says that we have to go back to levels lower than 350ppm anyway (and yes, there is no scientific basis at all for choosing the value “350″) “peacefully and deliberately, with all possible speed” (rather ominous words if you ask me…): because “<350 is essential to maintain human and planetary well-being“

(planetary???)

Why then “350″? Perhaps as a celebratory level for Hansen’s true guidance. But with planetary temperatures refusing to go up, I do expect lots more of this stuff in the near future

I have a small question though: if they believe in what the ad says then…why are they still travelling so much? For example, to the Taellberg Forum, june 26-29 in Sweden.

Spare a Thought for IATA

They emit very very little CO2 compared to everything else, they have set up a “4-pillar strategy to address climate change”, they have been hardly hit by gigantic fuel prices.

They have also been plagued for decades and decades by poor managerial and cost-control skills, resulting in a multitude of bankruptcies and often disappearance of once-thriving companies.

Still, that’s not enough for the miserabilists at the EU trying to force emission trading schemes on anything that moves. And so today, IATA, the International Air Transport Association, decided to pay for a full-page ad on the International Herald Tribune, detailing their perfectly mainstream ideas about climate change.

Much has been said about coercing evil Big Oil and Big Energy companies into emission trading schemes. Let’s see if airlines will be treated any better: one fears not, as the underlying goal is not so much actual emissions, rather the removal of whatever can provide fun

Algorino’s Opera

Very funny and inspired yesterday John Tierney in his parody of a letter to Al Gore about the upcoming opera based on his book “An Inconvenient Truth“.

No prize to guess who the main character Prince Algorino is meant to resemble closely…

Why Are Weather Forecasters Skeptical of AGW?

An interesting topic via the Global Warming blog on Accuweather, where Brett Anderson points to an article by Bill Dawson of The Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media.

Note in a couple of Dawson’s interviewees, a slight-but-steady series of slurs against weathercasters that don’t buy into the AGW faith:

Broadcast meteorologists are so busy disseminating information about near-term weather conditions[...] that they simply don’t have much time to keep up with scientific developments related to longer-term climate conditions

many “naysayers” [...] are coming from a perspective of the policy first

they’re against it because they think it will hurt the economy

[the "naysayers"] are putting their own personal views - sometimes even fundamentalist religious beliefs - first

[they] have no academic training or degrees in meteorology

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Luckily, Messrs Anderson and Dawson don’t engage in such awful rhetoric, with the former publicly declaring

“from what I personally see, there are also a number of current and retired TV meteorologists with a good deal of atmospheric science eduaction/professional background that are also skeptical about man-made global warming”

Myself, I have a weather forecasting background…who knows, that might explain my skepticism about AGW…in any case, I find it natural to respect people whose forecasts are challenged by thousands of viewers against the hard evidence of each day’s weather.

Andrew Revkin, (Language) Gymnastics Olympic Hopeful

Who needs to clarify between what’s certain and what’s possible, when it’s so much more useful to mix those up, especially if all you want to do is push forward your single-minded agenda about upcoming climate disasters?

For an example, step forward Andrew C Revkin, AGWer extraordinaire at the New York Times, and his recent article “Increase in carbon dioxide to have dramatic effects in U.S., report says“. A few excerpts (my EMPHASIS):

“IS influencing”
“WILL…disrupt”

“changes are unfolding in ways that are LIKELY to produce”
“main value of its PROJECTIONS”
“high CONFIDENCE”

“western states WILL face”

“anticipated water flows…are LIKELY”

“runoff…is EXPECTED”
“farmers…WILL face”

“plants are LIKELY to grow…”

“…but WILL BE more subject to…”

As you can see, all you need is a clever use of tenses, then you will be able to say pretty much anything. Including: “Increase in carbon dioxide may or may not have dramatic effects in U.S., report says”

Too bad there’s no “language” competition at the Olympics, otherwise Mr Revkin would have been an almost-sure winner!

What Have VP Dick Cheney and Activist AGWers Got in Common?

What have VP Dick Cheney and activist AGWers got in common?

They all subscribe to a version of the One per Cent Doctrine, a kind of Precautionary Principle.

As reported by Jeremy Waldron on the London Review of Books commenting “Worst-Case Scenarios” by Cass Sunstein, according to Ron Suskind’s “The One Per Cent Doctrine” (2006) this is what the US Vice-president has to say on how to deal with potential nuclear threats:

If there’s a one per cent chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaida build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response . . . It’s not about our analysis, or finding a preponderance of evidence. It’s about our response.

It’s way too easy to read in there one of the favorite AGW lines:

If there’s a one per cent chance that anthropogenic CO2 emissions are tipping the planet towards an environmental catastrophe, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response . . . It’s not about our analysis, or finding a preponderance of evidence. It’s about our response.

Readers of this blog may already know that I find all Precautionary Principles as literally abominable, a refusal of what makes us human. All proponents of Precaution as a Principle should just curl up on the floor and happily wait for life eventually to end, without fear of any danger of course.

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Still, as acknowledged by Waldron, there exists the issue of how to deal with unlikely-but-catastrophic problems. On this, I do not think anybody’s got a clear answer yet. The only sure thing is, Precautionary Principles won’t help, as explained by Waldron:

The trouble with the One Per Cent Doctrine, for example, is that it does not say enough about the costs that may be involved in our response [...] we rely on regulatory regimes to investigate the consequences of the introduction of the new product. But the regulatory process takes time, and time may produce its own catastrophes. Many people believe, Sunstein says, that prohibitions on genetic modification or its over-regulation ‘might well result in many deaths’, presumably from hunger in developing countries which the stronger crops might have helped alleviate. [...] The point is to alert us to ‘substitute risks’: ‘hazards that materialise, or are increased, as a result of regulation’. If governments take responsibility for avoiding catastrophic outcomes, they must also take responsibility for the catastrophes that attend their efforts at avoiding these outcomes, including other catastrophes that are not addressed because of the expense of addressing this one. [...]

Interestingly, Waldron ends his review lamenting Sunstein’s “failure to devote more sustained attention to issues of rich and poor, advantaged and disadvantaged. [...] Worst-Case Scenarios [...] would have been a better book had it spent more time on the issues of distributive and corrective justice that attend the prevention of catastrophic harm“.

Because as things stand at the moment, AGW policies mostly hit the poor…

 

Economist: AGW Policies Mostly Hit the Poor

Any way you turn the topic, there is no escape: AGW policy interventions such as a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system for CO2 emissions, will end up falling hardest on the poor.

That’s not my conclusion. It is what the Economist magazine (a convinced proponent of AGW) just published under the heading of “Buttonwood”. And it needs no commentary:

The fundamental problem is difficult to get round. If governments desire people to use less energy, they have to ration supply by price. They can limit frivolous use (gas-guzzling cars, televisions on standby and the like). But there may be a core demand for energy (heat, light, commuting) where consumers will resist cuts. For that part, the rich will always be able to outbid the poor (not to mention the politically powerful middle class). And that will plague green campaigners

Has Nordhaus Demonstrated We Better Do Nothing About CO2 emissions?

Kudos to the climate-change-believers at the New York Review of Books for providing almost 3 full pages to climate-heretic Freeman Dyson’s review of William Nordhaus’ “A Question of Balance: Weighing the Options on Global Warming Policies” (Yale University Press) (and of Ernesto Zedillo (ed)’s “Global  Warming: Looking Beyond Kyoto”).

Well it does provide a welcome change from the usual doom-and-gloom of Hansen, Flannery and McKibben, doesn’t it

Dyson (whose article has been rebuked on RealClimate with way too quick a contempt) doesn’t actually deal with the reasons for his skepticism on the dangers of global warming. After a long preamble on how efficient vegetation is at capturing atmospheric carbon dioxide, the NYRB article deals (among other things) with Nordhaus’s conclusions about costs and benefits of various possible climate-related policies, in a 100- and 200-year timeframe.

First of all, Nordhaus is very convinced about the need to put a “price” to carbon, to avoid “economic inefficiencies”.

It doesn’t sound such a bad idea, if the majority of people are truly convinced CO2 is a harmful emission. My main concern is, how does anybody find out what that “carbon price” should be, if not an arbitrary value?

As Dyson reports, Nordhaus follows “the conventional wisdom of economists” and does all computations for a 4% discount rate.

For mysterious reasons, this has become a point of contention, with the Stern Report using a discount rate close to 0%, and the RealClimate guys rather naively trying to argue for an equivalence between people actually living today and people possibly living in the future. Luckily, an AGW-believer with a solid experience in economics has torn such equivalence to pieces. It simply makes no sense, morally-economically speaking.

What is the point of stealing from the people of the present thereby removing plenty of resources from the very people of the future one is trying to provide resources to?

And what is the moral case, outside of economics? Well, let’s say you have a sick child and a single dose of medicine…would you really withold it just in case you would have another child, five or ten years in the future?

My criticism of Nordhaus is different. I would have rather preferred computations based on a progressively fuzzier discount rate, since the future gets harder and harder to predict (obviously) the further we try to look into the…future!

Leaving the rate at 4%, Nordhaus’ 1-century results are the following, compared to a “do nothing/business-as-usual” (BAU) situation:

(a) with a continuously-adjusted carbon tax, a $3 trillion net gain
(b) with an updated Kyoto protocol, a $1 trillion net gain (with the US), and zero (without the US)
(c) with draconian, Stern-like limits on emissions, a $15 trillion net loss
(d) with drastic-but-gradual, Gore-like limits on emissions, a $21 trillion net loss
(e) if a cheap way to capture and store CO2 (”low-cost backstop”) is discovered, a $17 trillion net gain

Dyson reports the conclusions as:

(1) Avoid the ambitious proposals
(2) Develop the science and technology for a low-cost backstop
(3) Negotiate an international treaty coming as close as possible to the optimal policy, in case the low-cost backstop fails
(4) Avoid an international treaty making the Kyoto Protocol policy permanent.

These objectives, according to Dyson, are valid for economic reasons, independent of the scientific details of global warming.

I am not sure I can agree with the above.

What I see is a strong case for doing absolutely nothing.

In scenario (a), in fact, the total loss for BAU is about $15 billion per year. Not much to cry about, really. 

Just the complex mechanism that needs to be setup and run for a continuously-adjusted carbon tax, with its load of intrinsic inefficiencies, should be more than enough to bring such a loss to zero.

Kyoto-like interventions (scenario (b)) look absolutely irrelevant, and of course both Stern and Gore (scenarios (c) and (d)) have the single-minded goal to make us all miserable (starting with the Chinese).

The one “hope” is in carbon capture and storing, something presented by Dyson in his preferred terms of genetically-modified trees that could reduce the atmospheric CO2 content “by half in fifty years”.

But…if you believe in CO2 as a greenhouse gas, reducing its atmospheric concentration by half will surely sound like absolute madness…a one-way trip to a worldwide refrigerator?

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All in all, then, it looks like the work of a convinced AGWer such as William Nordhaus has been useful in identifying what to do regarding CO2 emissions: nothing, zero, zilch, nada.

Will that accelerate the end of the AGW madness? I don’t think so. Perhaps the above is why Lord Stern, well aware of the overall situation, went through all the pains of trying to argue for a quasi-zero discount rate.

If logical arguments show the best course of action is to do nothing, that concept by itself will simply convince AGWer to become gloomier prophets of doom than ever.

You see…there simply is no AGW worry without catastrophism.

Consistently Working to Make Us All Poor

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard talks in his blog about a recent Goldman Sachs meeting about climate change. In particular, this is what Lord Nicholas Stern had to say after declaring that we have a 50% “chance of destroying civilization within the life-span of people already born, unless drastic action is taken to slow CO2 emissions“:

[We] will have to cut from 6 tonnes of carbon per capita to 2 tonnes

The above means a 90% cut in emissions for the USA, a figure that becomes “only” 83% for Europe. How can that be achieved?

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Well, we should acknowledge Stern’s consistency. He wants people’s activities to emit less carbon than at present; and he knows that the poorer people are, the less carbon they emit.

Hence his single-mindedness on getting everybody as indigent as possible, starting with a dent of 1.5 to 2.5% of world GDP “for insurance purposes“.

Actually, if only we were as destitute as the poorest landless peasant in Bangladesh or Zambia, there would be no reason to worry about the Earth’s climate.