UN CLIMATE TALKS GO NOWHERE

Parties to the UN's Kyoto Protocol wound up troubled talks here Friday with broad pledges, but no specific commitments, to deepen cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions blamed for global warming. In a final document issued after hours of wrangling, they ditched a proposed text whereby industrialized countries would consider cutting their emissions by 25-40 percent by 2020 compared to their 1990 levels, diplomats said.

The goal had been spelt out in a draft statement backed by countries of the European Union but opposed by other delegations, notably Canada, Japan, Switzerland, New Zealand and Russia, they said. The figures had been spelt out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -- the world's top climate-change experts -- as an option for policymakers seeking to keep global warming to less than two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to pre-industrial levels.

Instead, the Vienna paper said Kyoto parties "recognized" the IPCC range and described it as providing "useful initial parameters for the overall level of ambition of further emissions reductions."

The talks took place under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). A total of 175 of the 191 UNFCCC's members are parties to the Kyoto Protocol, which runs out at the end of 2012. Negotiations on a successor treaty to Kyoto take place in Bali, Indonesia in December, gathering all UNFCCC members.

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Eco-Narcissism

When you hear the phrase `eco-car', probably the first thing you think of is the Toyota Prius. Toyota's hybrid car, which combines electric and petrol engines to reduce fuel usage, and thus helps to `save the planet' from too much oil-use and grey exhaust fumes, has been a huge hit and has won widespread celebrity endorsement (1). Indeed, the word `Prius' has become synonymous with `hybrid car'. Just getting hold of a Prius can be hard work, as there are long lists of eco-aware drivers who want one.

Now, Japanese rivals Honda are getting a bit jealous of the success of Toyota's car. After all, Honda launched a planet-friendly hybrid driving machine of their own well before the Prius hit our roads. But Honda's models haven't proved nearly as popular as the Prius. Why not?

The success of the Prius isn't exactly based on how much money one will save. Yes, it will save you some money at the petrol pumps, as a Prius doesn't require as much petrol as other cars do, but the difference in the cost of upkeep between a Prius and a normal car isn't that great. In fact, there is some doubt as to whether the Prius is any better than many comparable diesel-powered models (2), which is a bit of a choker when you consider that the similarly sized Toyota Auris costs about 5,000 less than a Prius.

The saving grace for Prius owners is that the car has been given a privileged status by many city and regional authorities around the world. In London, the Prius is exempt from the Congestion Charge, saving drivers œ8 per day. Consequently, London's private-hire fleets of cars are buying more and more Prius vehicles. This privileging of one kind of car over another on London's streets shows, as we have argued on spiked, that the Congestion Charge actually has little to do with congestion, and is more about making moral judgements about good and bad kinds of driving (see London: still stuck in a jam, by Nico Macdonald). In California, Prius drivers won access to the car pool lane, in theory making their commute to work quicker; however, after the Californian authorities revised their fuel economy figures, they withdrew this privilege from the Prius.

Honda makes perfectly serviceable hybrid cars, too; in fact, it was the pioneer in the field. So why do so few people buy Honda hybrids? Why have `Civic' or `Insight' not entered the eco-lexicon in the way that `Prius' has? The answer is, partly at least, because they look the same as regular Honda cars. Honda made a conscious decision to keep the look of their regular models so that buyers would not be put off by hybrid cars that looked too new or exotic. But as MSNBC reported this week, that is no good for many eco-motorists who buy distinct-looking hybrid cars precisely to show off their green credentials.

`That's a big part of why I bought the Prius', said one New York retiree who traded in his Honda Civic for the better-known, and more easily identified, Toyota Prius. `It opens up conversations, and I push my theory that we've got to do our best to conserve. If I'm driving a hybrid, I want people to know it.' (3) He's in good company, with right-on celebs like Leonardo Di Caprio happy to parade their planet-saving hearts on their sleeves (or in their driveways at least). Honda is so cheesed off with all of this that it is withdrawing its current hybrid models and replacing them with more distinctive designs.

Some of this desire to drive instantly recognisable `good cars' is vanity, wanting to be seen to be part of a new in-crowd. As such, green living has become a currency by which you can prove you're an intelligent, caring kind of person. Eco-living may prove to be as superficial as any other passing fad (remember the catwalk models who campaigned against fur only to be seen wearing it a couple of years later?) And there's more than a whiff of hypocrisy about rich celebs who make a song-and-dance about their Prius-driving ways but who keep a private jet parked in their personal hangars for long trips.

But the Prius fad is also a symptom of the deeply conformist nature of green living, where it seems the chosen ones are desperate to show their piety, just as the religious bores of the past did. From their pulpit in the front seat of their energy-saving eco-car, the enlightened can lecture the rest of us about our sinful ways. Their message? `Driving is bad - but if you must drive, make it a Prius.'

This desperate desire to be seen to be green is not just about the car you drive. From organic food to recycling, out-and-proud ethical living is all the rage. Ethical living is not entirely about impressing other people; for many, it also seems to serve a therapeutic function, a way of assuaging their guilt about their excessive consumption and comfortable lifestyles. But it seems that an important strain of the eco-lifestyle is to let everyone know you are being ethical, to proclaim your inherent goodness from the rooftops (in the form of ostentatious but largely useless windmills) or from the front of your recognisable hybrid cars (in the form of a smug look of concern at other, lesser drivers). Welcome to the era of eco-narcissism.

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Storm Surge

By BJORN LOMBORG

Even as the clean-up continues in the Atlantic Basin, a lot has been written about Hurricane Dean. Some commentators believe nature is sending us a message. They say that the effects of climate change are getting out of hand, and it is time to take action. We have heard this point many times before. With every "extreme weather event," passionate climate change activists ride a public wave of concern. Former Vice President Al Gore believes we must make drastic reductions in carbon emissions because weather-related disasters are on track to cost as much as $1 trillion by 2040.

Mr. Gore is right that there is a growing problem, but he has identified the wrong solution. The global cost of climate-related disasters has increased relentlessly over the past half century. Hurricane Dean has left behind many billions of dollars of damage. But when Mr. Gore links global warming to the spiraling increase in weather-related insurance costs, he misses the fundamental points.

It has become more popular than ever to reside in low-lying, coastal areas that are particularly vulnerable to extreme weather. In Florida, more people live in Dade and Broward counties today than lived in all 109 coastal counties from Texas through Virginia in 1930. It's obvious that more damage will occur when many more people with much more wealth live in harm's way.

No matter how you look at it, however, the prospect of $1 trillion of weather-related damage by 2040 is frightening. But it is just as frightening that we have developed a blinkered focus on reducing carbon emissions as a way to somehow stop the devastation of events like Hurricane Dean. Presumably, our goal is to help humans and the planet. Cutting carbon is a very poor way of doing that. If coastal populations kept increasing but we managed to halt climate warming, then research shows that there would still be a 500% increase in hurricane damage in 50 years' time.

On the other hand, if we let climate warming continue but stopped more people from moving into harm's way, the increase in hurricane damage would be less than 10%. So, which policy knob should we turn first: The climate knob that does so very little, or the societal knob that would do 50 times more?

It is obviously unrealistic to believe that we could turn either knob all the way. We cannot halt climate change entirely, just as we cannot hold back the wave of people moving into beach houses. If the United States and Australia were to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol and its binding restrictions were to last all the way until 2050, very little would be achieved: Hurricane damage would increase by half a percent less than it would without Kyoto. There are many more effective things we could do. Communities at risk should have better education, evacuation plans and relief distribution.

These are "ambulance at the bottom of the cliff" measures, but there are also plenty of proactive options, like regulating vulnerable land and avoiding state-subsidized, low-cost insurance that encourages people to build irresponsibly in high-risk areas. Policy makers can improve and better enforce building codes to ensure structures can withstand higher winds, and maintain and upgrade the protective infrastructure of dikes and levies. More investment could be made in improved forecasts and better warning systems. Reducing environmental degradation and protecting wetlands would mean fewer landslides and stronger natural barriers against hurricanes.

Conservative estimates suggest we could halve the increase in damage through these incredibly cheap and simple social policy measures. This was shown powerfully in a previous weather disaster, Hurricane Katrina, when one insurance company found that 500 storm-hit locations that had implemented all the hurricane-loss prevention methods experienced one-eighth the losses of those that had not done so. By spending $2.5 million, these communities had avoided $500 million in damage. Often, big benefits can come from cheap and simple structural measures like bracing and securing roof trusses and walls using straps, clips or adhesives.

We shouldn't ignore climate change. We should tackle it smartly. We should make a 10-fold increase in research to make zero-carbon energy cheaper in the future. This would be much more efficient than Kyoto, yet cost almost 10 times less.

In any event, hurricane damage is increasing, whether we like it or not. Kyoto would cost trillions and reduce increased damage by about 0.5%. Simple preventive measures would cost a small fraction of that cost, but do a hundred times better. Hurricane Dean is a reminder of nature's force. Over the past few years, we have focused on only one "solution" to extreme weather events. Imagine if we had spent our time and energy on approaches that would actually make things better in the future. We still have an opportunity.

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Another stabilizing feedback mechanism

Played down, of course

Permafrost - the perpetually frozen foundation of North America - isn't so permanent anymore, and scientists are scrambling to understand the pros and cons when terra firma goes soft. Permafrost serves like a platform underneath vast expanses of northern forests and wetlands that are rooted, literally, in melting permafrost in many northern ecosystems. But rising atmospheric temperatures are accelerating rates of permafrost thaw in northern regions, says MSU researcher Merritt Turetsky. In the report, "The Disappearance of Relict Permafrost in Boreal North America: Effects on Peatland Carbon Storage and Fluxes," in this week's online edition of Global Change Biology, Turetsky and others explore whether melting permafrost can lead to a vicious feedback of carbon exchange that actually fuels future climate change.

"The loss of permafrost usually means the loss of terra firma in an otherwise often boggy landscape," Turetsky said. "Roads, buildings and whole communities will have to cope with this aspect of climate change. What this means for ecosystems and humans residing in the North remains of the most pressing issues in the climate change arena."

Working closely with researchers from Southern Illinois University, Villanova University and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Turetsky, assistant professor of crop and soil sciences and fisheries and wildlife, found that permafrost degradation has complex impacts on greenhouse gas fluxes from northern wetlands. Their study focused on peatlands, a common type of wetland in boreal regions that slowly accumulates peat, which is an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation. Today, peatlands represent a massive reservoir of stockpiled carbon that accumulated from the atmosphere over many thousands of years. Peat blankets the permafrost and protects it like a thick layer of insulation.

"We find permafrost in peatlands further south than in other boreal ecosystems due to the insulating qualities of peat.So we have argued that these ecosystems serve as a very sensitive indicator of climate change," Turetsky said. "What will happen to peatlands when climate change disrupts these frozen layers, or perhaps more importantly what will happen to all of that stored carbon in peat, have remained big questions for us."

Their results were surprising.Turetsky and her colleagues studied areas affected by permafrost degradation across a large region of Canada. They initially expected to find that the melting ice would trigger a release of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, as previously frozen plant and animal remains became susceptible to decay. "This could serve as a positive feedback to climate change, where typically warming causes changes that release more greenhouse gases, which in turn causes more warming, and more emissions, and so on," she said.

But what the researchers actually found is not such a clear-cut climate story. Permafrost collapse in peatlands tends to result in the slumping of the soil surface and flooding, followed by a complete change in vegetation, soil structure, and many other important aspects of these ecosystems, Turetsky said.The study showed that vegetation responds to the flooding with a boost in productivity. More vegetation sequesters more carbon away from the atmosphere in plant biomass. "This is actually good news from a greenhouse gas perspective," Turetsky said.

However, the report also cautions that this flooding associated with collapsing permafrost also increases methane emissions.Methane is an important greenhouse gas, which is more powerful than carbon dioxide in its ability to trap heat in the earth's atmosphere. Turetsky said it seems the permafrost degradation initially causes increased soil carbon sequestration, rather than the large releases of carbon to the atmosphere originally predicted.But over time high methane emissions will balance - or outweigh - the reduction of carbon in the atmosphere. "Not all ecosystems underlain by permafrost will respond the same way," Turetsky cautioned. "It will depend on the history of the permafrost and the nature of both vegetation and soils." What is clear, she said, is that not even northern ecosystems can escape the wide reach of climate change.

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Greenie fiction about the planned Tasmanian pulp mill

HAS anyone bothered to ask Tasmanians if they really want to be "saved" by mainland "celebrities"? But what would Tasmanians know about their own island, right? That's why more than 100 kinda-famous people from nowhere near Tasmania have signed a petition to stop the island from building itself a $2 billion pulp mill in the Tamar Valley. Led by millionaire Sydney businessman Geoffrey Cousins, they are campaigning against another mainlander, Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull, warning that if he doesn't stop this satanic mill he could lose his Sydney seat.

Stop Tasmania's mill, demand playwright David Williamson from the Sunshine Coast; tennis star John Newcombe from Sydney; actor Rachel Ward from near Coffs Harbor; radio host Wendy Harmer from Sydney; Fairfax executive Mark Burrows from Sydney; TV chef Kylie Kwong from Sydney; film director Phillip Noyce from Hollywood; A-list ex-headmistress Rowena Danziger from Sydney and arts critic Leo Schofield from Sydney. Hear them cry from their concrete haunts: Stop those Tasmanians from building their forest-murdering, planet-choking, water-fouling, wine-tainting pulp mill in the Tamar Valley, that Garden of Eden, or face ruin by people who live nowhere near the place.

That's quite some bullying, and by people who have little on their side but more cash and cachet than the average voter. Certainly more cash and cachet than the workers who'll get a job at this planned mill, or a cut of the taxes on its earnings. It's odd that these far-away celebrities can so easily assume the right to block a project in Tasmania that's been backed by that state's Government, checked by its environment experts and approved by its parliament with the support of Labor, the Liberals and independents. What kind of patronising is this?

But out of this celebrity intervention comes both a lesson and laugh. The lesson is in the hazard of green dreamers making a cause of some project far away, of which you and they know little and thus imagine much. For instance, from all the hype and the soft-focus pictures, you will by now think - as these celebrities seem to think - that the Gunns pulp mill will be built in a valley as pristine and beautiful as the day Gaia made it.... see the lingering footage on the ABC's 7.30 Report this week of misty fields, babbling brooks and serene hills, all with a soundtrack of dreamy music - a vision of paradise soon to be torn to shreds and blackened by A STINKING LOUSY PULP MILL.

Ah, the advantages of a little local knowledge, rather than some long-distance Dreaming. Attention: the mill is not going to be built in Eden, or in any of the 40 per cent of Tasmania that's now national parks and reserves, but in the Bell Bay industrial precinct. Its neighbours there will not be fauns and woodsprites, but heavy industries of the kind that have been in this zone for many, many years - a steel smelter, an aluminium smelter, a wood chip mill, a fibreboard plant, a power station, a fuel depot, and a few other factories of a kind to give a green believer the vapors. Shocking, I know, that such grunting, clanking, sweating businesses are allowed to exist, even with their emissions cut to negligible - as the emissions of the pulp mill most certainly will be.

But I have a newsflash for the denizens of Sydney's smartest cafes: man cannot live on green fundraising calendars alone. It's in fact industries such as these that give Tasmanians the cash that allows them, too, to enjoy the shows a Schofield recommends, the films a Noyce directs, the dinners a Kwong cooks, the private schools a Danziger runs, the plays a Williamson writes, and the health cookies of the nearby bakery which Cousins part-owns. Who knows, they might even choose to spend their dirty dollars on the high-minded paper that Burrows publishes.

Oh, did I mention paper? That reminds me of the laugh in this campaign to stop a mill that pulps wood for paper. How are the celebrities fighting this plant? Not just by running ads in a newspaper published in Turnbull's electorate. Cousins is also stuffing 50,000 letterboxes in Sydney with copies of the endless and emotive essay of author Richard Flanagan, which he says inspired him to go on his crusade. Wow - 50,000 copies of this booklet? That's quite some paper these anti-mill campaigners are using. Tasmania will need a new pulp mill to cope.

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The Lockwood paper was designed to rebut Durkin's "Great Global Warming Swindle" film. It is a rather confused paper -- acknowledging yet failing to account fully for the damping effect of the oceans, for instance -- but it is nonetheless valuable to climate atheists. The concession from a Greenie source that fluctuations in the output of the sun have driven climate change for all but the last 20 years (See the first sentence of the paper) really is invaluable. And the basic fact presented in the paper -- that solar output has in general been on the downturn in recent years -- is also amusing to see. Surely even a crazed Greenie mind must see that the sun's influence has not stopped and that reduced solar output will soon start COOLING the earth! Unprecedented July 2007 cold weather throughout the Southern hemisphere might even be the first sign that the cooling is happening. And the fact that warming plateaued in 1998 is also a good sign that we are moving into a cooling phase. As is so often the case, the Greenies have got the danger exactly backwards. See my post of 7.14.07 and a very detailed critique here for more on the Lockwood paper

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL 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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