MICHAEL MANN, BEN SANTER AND THE IPCC

An email from Paul Driessen [pdriessen@cox.net]

What an amazing world we live in. Scientist Michael Mann, creator of the broken hockey stick temperature graph, informs us that "Allowing governmental delegations to ride into town at the last minute and water down conclusions, after they were painstakingly arrived at in an objective scientific assessment, does not serve society well." (New Scientist, 8 March 2007)

What was his view just a few short years ago, when Ben Santer altered the 1966 IPCC Report, after it had been painstakingly arrived at and agreed to by the panel of scientists -- to ensure that the Report would agree with the rather politicized Summary for Policy Makers, and would garner ample headlines and television news coverage.

Santer added the famous claim that the evidence "now points to a discernable human influence on the global climate." He deleted at least five statements that inconveniently contradicted his assertion. I don't recall Mann criticizing any of Santer's actions.

For more on the 1996 shenanigans, see here




BRITISH CLIMATE STATEGY IN SHAMBLES AS EMISSIONS REACH 10-YEAR HIGH

A six-million-tonne question mark was placed over Britain's climate change strategy yesterday with the release of figures showing that UK greenhouse gas emissions, which the Government has pledged to cut radically, are actually soaring. Emissions of the principal greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, from power stations, motor vehicles and homes, amounted to 560.6 million tonnes last year, 6.4 million tonnes higher than the 2005 figure. The increase of 1.15 per cent means that Britain's emissions are now at the highest level since Labour came to power a decade ago, nearly 3 per cent above 1997.

The disclosure, which seems to be a stark illustration that Britain's climate strategy is not working, despite all the pronouncements of Tony Blair and his ministers, was greeted with concern in Whitehall and with anger and scorn by environmentalists and opposition politicians. They said the Government was clearly not on course to meet its targets of cutting CO2 by 30 per cent by 2020 and 60 per cent by the middle of the century. (It has already admitted it will not meet its long-standing target of a 20 per cent cut by 2010.)

It is especially embarrassing for the Government as only a fortnight ago it launched with much fanfare its Climate Change Bill, proposing to make future targets to cut emissions legally binding and thus - in theory - unmissable. British official rhetoric about action on global warming has hit new heights in the past six months, with the Treasury-sponsored Stern Review on the economics of climate change, and the publication of the latest report from UN scientists saying that climate change is now an "unequivocal" fact. Yet Britain's own emissions, as yesterday's figures show, are moving in the opposite direction. "2006 was the year of government green spin, but the numbers don't lie," said Charlie Kronick, Greenpeace climate campaigner. "For all the announcements and reports only one thing really matters, is New Labour reducing Britain's carbon footprint? And the answer is no."

The Environment Secretary, David Miliband, acknowledged the concern. "While these figures are provisional, they underline why concerted effort to tackle climate change, both from Government and wider society, is absolutely critical," he said. Mr Miliband's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said the rise in emissions last year was "primarily as a result of fuel switching from natural gas to coal for electricity generation". High international gas prices have recently led big power stations to move from gas to cheaper coal, which is much more carbon-intensive.

Environmentalists counterclaimed that the rise in emissions was the result of inadequate government measures. "Ministers get frustrated with us when we give critical reactions to their policies," said Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth (FoE). "But more than any complex piece of analysis, these figures show that we are right - they're not doing enough." Mr Juniper repeated FoE's demand that the Climate Change Bill should include annual targets for cutting CO2 emissions by at least 3 per cent each year (which has been rejected in favour of five-year targets.) "This would force successive governments to put climate change at the core of all their policies and ensure that the UK moves towards a low-carbon economy," he said. "Most of the solutions to climate change already exist. It is the political will that's lacking."

The Green party MEP Caroline Lucas commented: "It isn't setting the right targets alone that matters, it is also enacting the policies to meet them - and the Government has so consistently failed on this front that it gets harder with each passing day to believe a word it utters on the subject." UK transport emissions were the other sector which showed a large rise last year. But the figures show that Britain is still on course to meet its obligations under the Kyoto protocol, the international climate treaty, to reduce emissions of a "basket" of six greenhouse gases by 12 per cent by 2010.

Source





A TYPICAL BRITISH "FUDGE"

Changing policy without seeming to

Ministers will still be able to hit their proposed statutory carbon dioxide reduction targets without making deep cuts to transport sector emissions because actions by UK bodies to reduce emissions abroad will count towards target achievement. The little-reported proposal to include international action is contained in the draft Climate Change Bill published earlier this month which outlines statutory targets to cut CO2 emissions by 26-32% by 2020 and 60% by 2050 (against a 1990 baseline).

The Bill also proposes that the Government would have to meet statutory five-year C02 budgets set by a new Committee on Climate Change. These would provide a trajectory for the 2050 target to be achieved. A number of research teams have been looking at how transport can contribute to the 60% reduction target. Earlier this month a team from University College London's Environment Institute reported that the Government was off course and that rising transport emissions were a major barrier to progress (LTT 15 Mar). Such assessments, however, overlook the possibility of including emissions reductions from abroad.

Just how significant a contribution this international effort could be is revealed in the Bill's regulatory impact assessment. This cites an analysis for the forthcoming Energy White Paper suggesting that the cost of achieving the targets could be about 25% lower if one-third of the CO2 reductions needed to reach the 2050 target came from international emissions reduction credits. The RIA explains that having to achieve all the emission reductions by domestic effort would make the UK economy less competitive and limit the environmental benefits for any given expenditure. [These effects] would occur if it were necessary to raise the carbon price in markets for heat and transport above that prevailing in the international market, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs explains.

The Bill therefore proposes that emissions reductions achieved overseas but paid for by UK bodies should contribute towards progress against targets and budgets. Carbon credits bought by UK bodies through the EU's emissions trading system will count, as will any mechanisms that form part of a post-Kyoto protocol treaty (measures such as upgrading energy inefficient factories in developing countries already count towards countries' Kyoto protocol targets but the protocol ends in 2012).

This does not mean that all (or an unlimited amount of) emissions reduction effort should or would be achieved overseas, says the draft Bill consultation. It is proposed that the Committee on Climate Change should have a duty to advise the Government on the optimal balance between domestic and overseas effort. DEFRA admits that relying on international contributions does have its downsides; it would, for instance, restrict the pace of decarbonisation of the UK economy and potentially reduce the ability of the UK to demonstrate leadership by transforming the carbon intensity of domestic transport and heat markets.

The Committee on Climate Change will comprise five-eight members drawn from a range of areas of expertise including: economic analysis and forecasting; business competitiveness; technology; energy production; climate science; emissions trading; and the social impacts of climate change policy. It will produce annual reports outlining the UK's progress towards its budgets and targets.

Changes to the 2050 and 2018-2022 targets will require parliamentary approval and will only be approved under two circumstances: changing scientific knowledge about climate change; and international law and policy that requires the UK to act differently. Failure to achieve targets or stay within the budgets (allowing for an ability to borrow1% from the subsequent budget period) would leave the Government open to judicial review.

Source






"Urban sprawl" causes warming too!

Greenies loathe "sprawl". That's what all their failed "smart growth" nonsense is about. So some NASA scientists are using warming data to knock sprawl too. They are correct in identifying heat island effects for a rise in recorded temperatures but are entirely illogical in blaming the recorded rises on "sprawl". Sprawl should REDUCE the heat island effects by spreading settlement more widely. What they REALLY mean, I guess, is that it's all those nasty PEOPLE who are to blame. Post below lifted from Pasadena Pundit

This past week NASA issued a news release of a study "Recent California Climate Variability" reported in many California newspapers (e.g. here) and posted widely on many online websites (e.g. here).

The co-authors of the climate study, NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Bill Patzert and Cal State University Los Angeles' Professor Steve LaDochy, are quoted in the newspaper as attributing the warming trend to urban sprawl and the urban heat island effect.

"According to the analysis of more than 330 weather stations, California's average temperature has increased 2 degrees Fahrenheit in the past 50 years, said JPL climatologist Bill Patzert. Perhaps even more striking, though, is the impact that urban sprawl has contributed to the temperatures - even more than global warming, Patzert said."

The conclusion that California climate warming is due to urban sprawl appears contradicted by the news release and the abstract of the study by Patzert and LaDochy released by NASA, which "found a strong correlation between air temperatures and Pacific coastal sea surface temperatures."

So if the correlation to coast sea surface temperatures is strong, are we to deduce that the correlation to other causes such as urbanization and sprawl was weak? Then why report it? And of what real importance is it to state that an analysis of more than 330 weather stations indicates California's average temperature has increased 2 degrees Fahrenheit in the past 50 years due to urban sprawl? Wouldn't State temperature readings be expected to rise over 50 years weather stations which may have been located in orange groves transitioned to subdivisions with concrete roadways which absorb heat? Are most of these temperature recording stations located on CalTrans freeway rights of ways which reflect the radiant heat of the concrete?

A prior study by Patzert and LaDochy attributed California weather variation to the "Pacific Decadal Oscillation" (PDO), which may last decades, rather than the ocean current El Nino effect, which is of shorter duration. Interestingly, neither Patzert or LaDochy claim urban sprawl was a significant factor in climate change in this earlier study.

Neither do Patzert and LaDochy say why the "cold phase" of the "Pacific Decadal Oscillation" which occurred from 1950 to 1976, was unconnected to urban sprawl, when Los Angeles arguably was building more houses and removing more orange groves than today.

The claim that the average annual minimum temperature increased 9 degrees (Fahrenheit) since 1878 at the Los Angeles Civic Center is a gross exaggeration and distortion. As even JPL's Bill Patzert admits in another unmentioned NASA news release, the move of the central Los Angeles weather station from the Civic Center to the campus of the University of Southern California (about 4 miles) in 1999 can attribute for most of the huge climate change. See here.

Another climate researcher connected with the recent NASA study is quoted as making an apocalyptic statement which no reputable scientist should ever make:

"The one reason I stayed on is because I've got seven grandkids, and I know how bad it could get," said Tim Barnett, a researcher at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego. 'By the time they're my age, L.A., Phoenix and Sacramento could be ghost towns."

Despite public funding by NASA, the authors have shrouded their full study and the data by publishing it in the Journal of Climate Research, which is available to subscribers only for a fee of 585 euros. See here.

If the public paid for this study shouldn't it have free access to the data and the full report for public inspection? If the Federal Freedom of Information Act is to be complied with, how does one get a copy of this study without having to pay an exorbitant sum for it? Where is the outrage by the local newspapers and civil rights advocacy organizations? Newspapers should have an ethical obligation not to report scientific studies which are not fully available to the public. But don't expect this any time soon.

A rule should prevail here. Any purported scientific study, especially about the politically-charged topic of global warming, which does not make the full study, including the data, available for public review should not be considered credible. This is an ongoing problem with global warming studies, especially those by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (see here). And newspapers which report such shrouded studies should only be considered as tabloids.

Another interesting observation is that meteorologists and academic climate change scientists differ greatly over whether there is or isn't global warming. Most meteorologists, whose livelihoods are not dependent on research grants, say there is not sufficient proof of global warming. While academic climate scientists, whose livelihoods depend on research grants, generally assert there is global warming and sub-regional warming caused by urban sprawl. So we're not measuring a "climate variable" as much as a "sociological variable." See here and here.





Stern words, but short shrift for the economics of climate change

By Australian economics journalist Terry McCrann

BRITISH economist Sir Nicholas Stern made a flying visit to Australia last week. Via, apparently, South Africa, India and Indonesia. So much for carbon-neutral burning the oil at midnight, and all the other hours through the day.

Sir Nicholas is the putative author of the 700-page The Stern Review, the Economics of Climate Change, which purports to establish the world will be better off pre-emptively reducing carbon-based greenhouse gas emissions, than living with them. That's, to stress, establish supposedly in entirely unemotional analytical terms. Its bottom line: cutting emissions will cost 1 per cent of global GDP. It will "save" somewhere between 5 and 20 per cent of global GDP.

Yet, in watching Sir Nicholas at the National Press Club and reading the reports of his press interviews, he had almost nothing to say about the economics of climate change. Instead it was almost all about the science. What increased concentrations of greenhouse gases would purportedly do to temperatures, to weather, and so on. Intriguingly, at one point, musing that it almost always involved water.

One of two ways he came closest to talking about his own speciality, the only reason he is "in the discussion" at all, was to prophesy massive population shifts. In other words, it was all boilerplate preaching from another High Priest in the First Church of Climate Apocalypse. Repent of your emissions and you will be saved.

Now this is not another bleat from a so-called "climate sceptic". But a critique of Stern specifically in his/its own (purported) terms. What we saw was that Stern in person was as empty of any serious economic analysis of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change as his review was in 700 pages. Indeed, for the purpose of the discussion, assume that everything predicted about temperatures and climate was likely to prove correct. One can't say accurate because the ranges of possible outcomes are so wide as to be almost analytically useless.

What would you then expect from an economist? To take that foundation and first, analyse the costs and benefits of the outcomes. With appropriate ranges to reflect the range of outcome uncertainties. To take one example: global temperature up, say, 2 degrees. What are the costs and, yes, the benefits of that? It might be easier to understand that there really are benefits from a warmer world if you lived in Moscow than in Manila. But there are, and they need to be netted out against the costs.

Let us assume the alarmists are right and the costs far outweigh the benefits; the net costs will still be something less. Critically, these should only be the economic costs. It's not for Stern the economist to "value" that a hotter Manila or a stormier Brisbane would be "unpleasant". His only analytical concern should be any economic consequences, including measurable externalities. To incorporate anything else is to pollute, and so fundamentally compromise, the economic analysis. Indeed, it builds in a self-reinforcing feedback bias. Hotter is economically bad. The world is getting hotter. So does that have good or bad economic consequences? Why, bad.

Then an economist, working off the net costs (or benefits), would analyse the net, to stress again, economic costs of cutting emissions. And compare that net cost with the first net cost. That would "tell" you whether the cost of cutting emissions was worth the cost of avoiding their consequences.

Two other points need to be made. You have to incorporate the ranges in the analysis; and weight them relative to likelihood, and to risk. And you also have to adjust for different time periods. The costs of cutting emissions come now and in the near future; the costs of the consequences come later, perhaps much later. Hence the need to discount those future costs of climate change back to today, to measure directly against the costs of cutting emissions.

Now the economist has to turn a blind eye to those broader issues. Otherwise you won't get robust information on which to base either subjective or objective decisions. Objective: maybe it is economically better to live with a 2 per cent hotter world, and deal with the consequences. Because net-net we would be better off. But then it would be perfectly appropriate to make the subjective judgment: no, 2 per cent is non-negotiable. Yes, we will take a second-best economic outcome. But we will do so with our eyes open and fully understanding what we are doing.

This is critically important in another way. Properly informed, you might decide to live with a half-way outcome. To opt for, say, 1 per cent in temperature and less damage to the global economy.

Now the trade-off highlighted at the start would suggest the Stern Review does this, and the bottom line is so overwhelmingly favourable to action against emissions that it must cover the range of uncertainties. One per cent versus 20 per cent could live with a huge adjustment. It does no such thing. It is fundamentally compromised because the analysis builds in the climate theology. But in any event the analysis itself is seriously flawed. As a distinguished panel of economists has demonstrated in a punishing shredding of the economics of the review.

The panel included the former chief economist at the OECD, David Henderson, our former chief statistician, Ian Castles, and the biographer of Keynes and distinguished economist in his own right, Robert Skidelsky. Their withering analysis, published in World Economics, concluded Stern was deeply flawed. "It does not provide a basis for informed and responsible policies." The single most damming flaw was Stern's choice of a discount rate to "value" those future climate benefits in present terms. Just 2.1 per cent. A statement essentially of climate hysteria. Even more damming, it was not actually disclosed in the review. A statement essentially of guilt.

Stern in person rather embarrassingly confirmed the review's flaws - and his own theological hysteria - with his second venture towards economics in his Press Club appearance. Explaining why the developed world had to take most of the carbon cuts - by between 60 and 90 per cent - and so the reduction in economic growth, he said inter alia, that the developing world like China and India had to be allowed to "catch up". To have their economic growth.

In very simple terms, were the developed world to seriously cut carbon and growth, the developing world would not have its growth. China is only growing at 10 per cent-plus because of its access to the US and other developed country markets. You would expect a former World Bank economist to know that access to our growing markets is the absolute foundation of 4 billion people moving out of poverty, disease and early death. Cutting carbon emissions might make an "apocalyptic churchgoer" like Stern feel purer. It will have a much more salutary impact on the people of those countries he has recently been flying over.

Source

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is generally to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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