The news that 2005 was the warmest year ever recorded in Australia comes at the end of a year in which, to the extent that facts can settle anything, the debate over human-caused global warming has been settled. Worldwide, 2005 was equal (to within the margin of error of the stats) with 1998 as the warmest year in at least the past millennium.
More significantly, perhaps, 2005 saw the final nail hammered into the arguments climate change contrarians have been pushing for years. The few remaining legitimate sceptics, along with some of the smarter ideological contrarians, have looked at the evidence and conceded the reality of human-caused global warming.
Ten years or so ago, the divergence between satellite and ground-based measurements of temperature was a big problem – the ground based measurements showed warming in line with climate models but the satellites showed a cooling trend. The combination of new data and improved calibration has gradually resolved the discrepancy, in favour of the ground-based measurements and the climate models.
Another set of arguments concerned short-term climate cycles like El Nino. The late John Daly attributed the high temperatures of the late 1990s to the combination of El Nino and solar cycles, and predicted a big drop, bottoming out in 2005 and 2006. Obviously the reverse has happened. Despite the absence of the El Nino or solar effects that contributed to the 1998 record, the long-term warming trend has dominated.
Finally, there’s water vapour. The most credible of the contrarians, Richard Lindzen, has relied primarily on arguments that the feedback from water vapour, which plays a central role in climate models, might actually be zero or even negative. Recent evidence has run strongly against this claim. Lindzen’s related idea of an adaptive iris has been similarly unsuccessful.
Finally, the evidence has mounted up that, with a handful of exceptions, “sceptics” are not, as they claim, fearless seekers after scientific truth, but ideological partisans and paid advocates, presenting dishonest arguments for a predetermined party-line conclusion. Even three years ago, sites like Tech Central Station, and writers like Ross McKitrick were taken seriously by many. Now, anyone with access to Google can discover that they have no credibility. Chris Mooney’s Republican War on Science which I plan to review soon, gives chapter and verse and the whole network of thinktanks, politicians and tame scientists who have popularised GW contrarianism, Intelligent Design and so on.
A couple of thoughts on all this.
First, in the course of the debate, a lot of nasty things were said about the IPCC, including some by people who should have known better. Now that it’s clear that the IPCC has been pretty much spot-on in its assessment (and conservative in terms of its caution about reaching definite conclusions), it would be nice to see some apologies.
Second, now that the scientific phase of the debate is over, attention will move to the question of the costs and benefits of mitigation options. There are legitimate issues to be debated here. But having seen the disregard for truth exhibited by anti-environmental think tanks in the first phase of the debate, we shouldn’t give them a free pass in the second. Any analysis on this issue coming out of a think tank that has engaged in global warming contrarianism must be regarded as valueless unless its results have been reproduced independently, after taking account of possible data mining and cherry picking. That disqualifies virtually all the major right-wing think tanks, both here and in the US. Their performance on this and other scientific issues has been a disgrace.
John Quiggin 
What does ‘MARTA’ mean?
Will – I agree. Again in Perth the Northern line is really fast and efficient. It runs down the middle of the freeway so you can see all the people stuck in traffic for hours while you zip past at 110Km/hr. I really value the 35 or so mins that it takes me to get to the city as it is one time I can read without interruption. I usually ride my pushbike to the station if it is fine so I get a bit of exercise as well.
Freedom is in the mind not in gadgets and cars. One of the great tragedies of modern life is that people have been convinced that freedom is a car. Private transport is very convenient and I use it extensively as my suburb is really set up for cars not people. If I lost my car I would still be free.
MARTA?
“Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority”
or
“Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta” if you actually live in Atlanta
Thanks very much, Ender. How many drivers are able to read a book at the wheel for 40 minutes?
In Sydney, where the public transport is unusually crappy (Tangara cattle wagons etc), some anonymous genius came up with a new form of psychological torture, which was noted by secret policeman the world over. Into already loud, ugly, ceramic-lined train stations, they started broadcasting commercial TV . Has anyone else here experienced the joy of standing in Kings Cross Station on a summer day with Channel 9 at full volume? It’s something you’ll never forget.
Its pretty simple for me…
We can safely assume that the 6 billion of us, constantly and increasinly releasing excess energy and pollutants into the atmosphere, is an action that results in change in our climate.
We need to treat the problem at its root cause, that we pollute our atmosphere. We need government action to change the economical focus to a more environmentally driven option, where true costs on the planet are (somehow) calculated.
Kyoto represents a tactically significant, but not technically perfect, attempt at formalizing the above stated economic focus.
You can argue about the statistics of weather all you want, but you can’t change the above argument.
Whilst it is true that certain places on the planet have been getting “colder”, it is most likely that the majority of places are getting warmer and will continue to warm into the future. And our human activity constitutes the majority of that change.
Responsibility and Respect.
Two words the right wing hate to hear
Thanks very much, Ender. How many drivers are able to read a book at the wheel for 40 minutes?
You’ve obviously never driven on the Cross Bronx Expressway
“You also ignore the fact that the embodied energy that goes into the process of making many modern solar cells is often larger than the net life time yield of the cell itself (reference Environmental Accounting, Odum, Wiley and Sons, 1996)”
Citing sources is good citting sources that aren’t almsot a decade-old is better.
The 100 megawatt+ solar thermal plants Sterling Systems is building in California should settle decisively (one way or another) questions about the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of large-scale solar energy facilities.
From Atlanta (Scarlett O’Hara territory) to the Bronx, examples of what we should avoid are pouring in. Clearly, Sydney’s public transport is not ‘unusually crappy’ (WD) by world standards. Only by Australian standards.
To the death of the car, that unique symbol of pure freedom.
alphacoward,
I could understand, if not agree with, your post up to the last two lines.
To me, one of the differences between the left and the right is that the right believe that humans can be innately responsible and respectful and the left believe that government action is the only way to ensure that responsibility and respect occur – usually under the banner of ‘it is for your own good’.
We on the right do not hate to hear those words – many of us believe that they are innate or at least do not need a strong State apparatus to enforce.
There are, of course, exception on both sides.
>This ignores Plimers arguments that sea levels have varied greatly over time, and that the cost of relocating people because of the rise of sea levels would be less than the cost of switching to supposedly ‘green friendly’ power sources.
Not so much ignored as assumed their silliness was evident to anyone with half a brain.
Let’s take a lower estimate of 100 million people requiring relocation.
Let’s assume you need to build $100,000 in infrastructure (including in this context houses, factories and shops as well as powerplants, roads, hospitals etc). For developed countries that’s actually a seriously conservative estimate.
That comes to $10 trillion – or one third of annual global GDP.
You can buy a lot of wind-turbines for that -especially when you’re talking about not the total cost but the cost increment over the cost of conventional power sources.
I’ll also interested to hear where exactly the population of Bangladesh (80% of which is only a few metres above sea-level) are supposed to relocate to.
Ian Gould has said
‘The 100 megawatt+ solar thermal plants Sterling Systems is building in California should settle decisively (one way or another) questions about the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of large-scale solar energy facilities.’
What news of the giant solar chimney (1 km high) to be built near Mildura?
>The so-called greenhouse effect has given our Greens and their media mates a vital weapon in their war against economic growth. They know that energy is the life blood of any industrialised society. Apply a severe turnkey to the flow of energy and not only will you slow growth but you will cause major disruptions to the economy. And that is what carbon taxes will do. Once again The Australian showed its green colours with several items supporting this destructive policy. John MacLeay, its resident Green propagandist, provided Greens with another platform to attack the Australian Bureau of Agricultural Resource Economics econometric study claiming that global cuts to ‘greenhouse emissions’ would cost Australians $9000 per head (The Australian 5/5/97).
Ah yes that’d be the ABARE study that assumed a long-term average oil price of around US$10 a barrel and an Australian dollar in the low US-50 cents range.
The world has moved on since 1997.
It’d also be nice if people read the actual reports and understood the difference between “out-of-pocket” costs and the effects of slightly lower economic growth.
It’d also be nice if figures for costs several years in the future were subjected to standard discounting to an NPV.
“That’s what I don’t believe has been established. Yes, hybrids will appeal to a segment of the market but they certainly won’t appeal to everyone, or even to most people.”
You can put a hybrid-drive into any type of vehicle.
The cost goes up but the fuel bill goes down.
So far as I know, the hybrid large cars and SUVs coming on the market match the performance of their conventional counterparts so it becomes a straight maths problem – do the fuel savings offset the higher upfront cost?
If anything. big cars with equally big fuel bills should be MORE attractive to switrch to hybrids. You’ll need larger batteries but much of the hybrid system will be much the same as for a smaller car.
>Ender, if I asked you, “Is that car red or blue�, you’d give me a monologue about experiments with reflected light frequencies in various atmospheric conditions. Then I’d put a bullet in my head.
Sounds like a win-win outcome, let’s do it.
“The cost goes up but the fuel bill goes down.”
Have you ever actually MET any Americans?
>What news of the giant solar chimney (1 km high) to be built near Mildura?
Enviromission, the proponents have been unable to raise the funding, to date.
They’re now claiming that advances in their turbines and other elements of the design will make a much smaller (and cheaper) design viable.
Hopefully, they’re correct.
Okay, Ian Gould, thanks for that.
“They’re now claiming that advances in their turbines and other elements of the design will make a much smaller (and cheaper) design viable.”
Awfully convenient in light of their inability to raise the money for the original design….
avaroo says: “But isn’t that the great part – that we all get to decide for ourselves what IS a smart choice?”
That is just a bit too solipsistic for me. In many areas of life I agree that the individual is the best placed to determine a smart choice for their lives, but not in all areas. Should we let every individual arbitrarily decide what voltage to use in their house, or what side of the road to drive on, or which antibiotic to use? If AGW is occurring (not to mention peak oil), then it cannot possibly be said to be a smart choice to buy a (hydrocarbon) fuel guzzler, especially when it is just for personal transport. The only smart environmental AND economic choice for energy use is to use it more efficiently for all purposes. Making a smart choice also assumes the individual is informed of both the full range of choices, and their consequences. The false assumption of perfect knowledge, so beloved of all free marketeers.
avaroo also says: “Remember, Americans didn’t voluntarily pay more for pollution control devices, they had to be mandated.” And later: “Not everyone thinks that government mandating lifestyle is a great idea.”
So, was mandating pollution control a good idea or not? If it was, then how else do you do it except via government fiat?
If we don’t mandate or at least strongly encourage through the tax system some of these technological changes, and hence provide a level playing field for all manufacturers, then the changes may never get taken up, no matter how worthy they may be. I agree that government fiat may not be the total answer, but it does have an important role. I am not convinced that the market left to its own devices will deliver the goods.
Finally, there is a big difference between mandating, for example, increased fuel efficiency and pollution control, as opposed to true personal lifestyle choices like who you marry or what colour you paint your bedroom or what music you listen to or what career you follow. Mandating increased fuel efficiency and pollution control DOES NOT seriously or adversely affect an individual’s important ‘lifestyle’ choices, unless you believe it essential to be able to drive to work in a large V8, when a four cylinder of half the capacity (or less) would do the same job perfectly adequately. No one is suggesting people shouldn’t have access to private means of transport, but the ideology of freedom of personal choice only goes so far, and it stops when your choices are seriously affecting others without substantial justification, and using more energy than is necessary is unjustified, and frankly, just plain foolish and self-indulgent. I read recently that while Americans (5% of world population) account for about 25% of the world’s total energy consumption, they use about 50% of its gasoline. If true, then how can that possibly be justified? Personally, I am perplexed and disappointed that America refuses to seriously bite the bullet on automotive fuel efficiency, especially given the technology to at least double fuel efficiency is already well proven. Sometimes governments have to lead, not follow.
Terje says: “The electric motor is not some weak pussy of a propulsion system.”
True, true, especially since the advent of the very powerful rare earth magnets.
Andrew Reynolds says: ” To me, one of the differences between the left and the right is that the right believe that humans can be innately responsible and respectful and the left believe that government action is the only way to ensure that responsibility and respect occur – usually under the banner of ‘it is for your own good’.”
I disagree with a lot of what you say, but have always appreciated that your comments are articulate, considered and non-abusive. However, and with respect, that is a foolish and offensive caricature, and I don’t buy your weak qualifier about there being exceptions on both sides. Responsibility and respect (ie morality/ethics) is a combination of the innate and the learned, and in my experience its prevalence within individuals is spread pretty evenly across the socio-political spectrum, excluding the extremes on either end. The onus is definitely on you to provide some solid evidence for your claim. Take responsibility for your comment and substantiate or retract.
Seeker, I’m not a big believer in government fiat, nor am I a believer in government “leading”. That is up to the people. Nor do I believe that it is government’s purpose to “provide a level playing field for all manufacturers”. Important philosophical difference with you, but I think most Americans share my views on these issues rather than yours.
Not sure why you’d think anyone would “justify” Americans using 50% of the world’ gasoline. Justify to whom?
>Awfully convenient in light of their inability to raise the money for the original design….
And awfully familiar to people who follow companies trying to commercialise new technology.
“Not sure why you’d think anyone would “justifyâ€? Americans using 50% of the world’ gasoline. Justify to whom?”
How about to the rest of the planet that pays the (environmental) price for the American indulgence in gasoline.
“Nor do I believe that it is government’s purpose to “provide a level playing field for all manufacturersâ€?.”
Then who is going to do it? How are alternative enrgy sources ever going to be able to compete with strong, well established oil and coal corporations? We are buying cheap oil at the cost of the environment for both us and future generations and the market isn’t going to solve that.
avaroo, do you believe that pollution controls on motor vehicles are a good idea? If so, can you explain how these controls would have been introduced without government fiat, solely on the volition of the manufacturers. Are you seriously suggesting that one vehicle manufacturer would have taken the lead without all the other manufacturers being required to do so by government directive? If so, then why didn’t they? Why did governments have to do it for them? And I could ask similar questions about other sources of pollution, safety issues, technical standards, etc. Why is government intervention automatically bad?
When I said governments can and sometimes should level the playing field, I didn’t mean on every single issue, but on issues that need attention and which would not be dealt with properly by the market alone, such as pollution, safety, and technical standards. I don’t want government in my life anymore than necessary, but I recognise that it is sometimes necessary and as such not a bad thing. Governments are elected to do stuff that no one else can. As long as they are democratically chosen and generally accountable what is the problem?
With respect, I don’t think you addressed the substance of my post.
Tom N said that his earlier reading of the Castles & Henderson (C&H) critique and the IPCC response was that the latter was all at sea, and asked “whether there had been some more recent developments that have revealed a serious flaw(s) in the C/H position� (Jan. 5, 2.29 pm). In response, jquiggin offered the opinion that “the Castles critique is a complete beatup� and that “Up to a first approximation, it makes no difference, for an exercise like this, whether you use PPP or exchange rate conversions� (Jan 5, 2.49 pm).
There are other views. Last July, after receiving evidence from Professor Henderson and me as well as from Dr Pachauri (Chairman of the IPCC) and the Coordinating Lead Author of the IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (Professor Nakicenovic), reviewing five articles by one or both of us and many contributions to the debate in academic journals and elsewhere, an all-Party Committee of the House of Lords unanimously reported as follows:
“We found no support for the use of [exchange rate conversions] in [long term emissiions scenarios] exercises, other than from Dr. Nakicenovic of the IPCC. We consider that Professor Henderson and Mr Castles were right to raise the issue. In so doing, they have helped to generate a valuable literature that calls into question a whole series of issues relating to the IPCC SRES, not just the issue of MER versus PPP… It seems unlikely that the debate over the emissions scenarios would have occurred at all had Professor Henderson and Mr. Castles not persisted in their views. We consider that they have performed a public serviceâ€? (“The Economics of Climate Changeâ€?, para. 54).
The Committee were “concerned to hear from Dr Nakicenovic that IPCC had no intention of undertaking any significant reappraisal of the SRES for the IPCC Fourth Assessment exercise (AR4) for 2007� and called for “a wholesale reappraisal of the emissions scenario exercise� as a matter of urgency (ibid, paras. 55, 60). They agreed with the C&H criticism of the failure of the SRES to validate the scenarios using long term historical data and quoted with approval the view of Professor Richard Tol of Hamburg University that “Their [the SRES modellers] knowledge of economic development is lacking� (para. 56). They acknowledged the judgment of Professor William Nordhaus of Yale University that “the jury is still out� on the extent to which PPP conversion rather than MER conversions will affect emissions predictions, but said that “several critiques show that predictions could be significantly affected by the use of PPP exchange rates�. They stressed that “PPP is the right procedure, as Professor Nordhaus’s study amply clarifies� (para. 72).
After the House of Lords Committee Report was completed, Professor Peter Dixon of Monash University presented a paper (co-authored with Maureen Rimmer) on “Analysing convergence with a multi-country computable general equilibrium model: PPP versus MER� at the 8th Annual Conference on Global Economic Analysis in Lubeck, Germany. Dixon and Rimmer’s first main finding was that “the MER/PPP distinction matters.� They found that the convergence-induced increase in the real GDP of China after 25 years was 149 per cent under their MER simulation, compared with a corresponding increase of 96 per cent under the simulation using their preferred version of PPP. They concluded that “If PPP is the right basis for estimating technology gaps, then the use of MER-based analysis runs the danger of significantly overestimating convergence-induced growth in developing countries and thereby overstating environmental concerns such as the emission of greenhouse gases.�
Following peer review, the Dixon and Rimmer paper was published in Energy & Environment, vol. 16, no. 6, November 2005. Thus John Quiggin’s opinion that “up to a first approximation, it makes no difference, for an exercise like this, whether you use PPP or exchange rate conversions� is in direct conflict with the findings of this paper, the principal author of which is one of Australia’s most respected economic modellers.
So far as I know, Professor Quiggin’s contrary assessment has not been published in the academic literature. I see no need to take it seriously until it is. But in any case the PPP versus MER issue is only one of many criticisms of the economic and statistical work of the IPCC that have been raised by David Henderson and me. Some of the others will doubtless be considered in the review of the economics of climate change which is currently being conducted by Sir Nicholas Stern, former Chief Economist at the World Bank and now Head of the UK Government Economic Service. Professor Henderson has made a submission to the Stern Review, in collaboration with Sir Ian Byatt, Professor Colin Robinson and Professor Sir Alan Peacock. I will be surprised if Sir Nicholas finds that the C&H critique was “a complete beatup�, but let us wait and see.
“They found that the convergence-induced increase in the real GDP of China after 25 years was 149 per cent under their MER simulation, compared with a corresponding increase of 96 per cent under the simulation using their preferred version of PPP. ”
This is scarcely surprising, since the PPP measure gives China a higher starting income. It follows (assuming convergence in incomes implies convergence in energy use) that the income elasticity of energy demand should be higher in a model using PPPs. So I don’t see any reason to dispute the modelling results quoted here, but I don’t think they have the claimed implications.
The question of interest here is the effect of the choice of measure on estimates of emissions growth. I agree with Nordhaus that the jury is still out, but I’m think its likely, for the reasons I’ve given, that the effect of switching to PPP measures will be small. As I understand it, the IPCC is switching to PPP, so we’ll see soon enough.
John,
You wrote, “The basic physics of AGW theory is straightforward.” That’s simply not true. We don’t even understand most of the physics relevant to climate change, and most of the so-called physics in the climate models is simply wrong. Not because of incompetence on the modeler’s part, but because of our general ignorance of the physical processes of the climate system.
The best discussion of this issue still seems to be that of Warwick Mckibbin et al(McKibbin W., D. Pearce and A. Stegman (2004) “ Long Run Projections for Climate Change Scenarios).
See http://een.anu.edu.au/download_files/een0405.pdf
The two key points are
1)that in the Mckibbin model it does make a material difference whether or not MER or PPP is chosen (and this allows for the fact that use of MER overstates energy inefficency in poor countries).
and
2)we can’t tell whether or not this would be true in the IPCC scenarios because there is simply not enough published information about how they scenarios were constructed to tell.
And there is no doubt at all that PPP measures should be used, see the Nordhaus paper.
I agree that PPP is better, since it’s always better to use a more welfare-relevant measure. But I don’t think it makes much difference.
As I recall, McKibbin found differences of up to 20 per cent in projected emissions by 2050 depending on which basis you used. The variation between different IPCC scenarios was much bigger than this.
As I noted, there’s a straightforward argument to show that in an aggregate model, the effects cancel out. Hence, I think “zero up to a first approximation” is right. But, as McKibbin shows, a disaggregated analysis can produce material but modest effects.
There’s a regular procession of people who say things like “the climate models are still not good enough to be sure that global warming is happening so we should carry on as usual until the models become accurate enough to be sure that it’s happening”. The point these people miss is that climate theory and modelling have long been sufficiently accurate to prove that at least SOME global warming is being caused by increasing atmospheric CO2. The only difference improvement in models is going to make is to improve the accuracy of temperature rise forecasts, not whether or not there will be any temperature rise at all. Following what I said earlier, if you put more blankets on a bed with an electric blanket in it, you know for certain that it WILL get hotter, even if you don’t know the mathematical value of the insulation of the blankets. The only hope sceptics have is that there is some incredibly strong negative feedback mechansim that counters most of the insulation ability of the increased CO2. Needless to say, no-one has ever found such a mechanism and in actual fact the vast majority of feedback mechanims are strongly positive, e.g. water vapour, shrinking ice area, wetting ice. James Hansen discusses feedbacks in his paper at http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2003/2003_Hansen.pdf and realclimate mentions feedback in its discussion of climate sensitivity (the ratio of temperature rise to CO2 rise, analogous to insulation value) at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=115 . Climate sensitivity is the net result after all the feedbacks have been adding on to the basic climate sensitivity of CO2 on its own. The realclimate article discusses the estimates of climate sensitivity and points out that it’s not just computer models that can be used to estimate this sensitivity, it can be estimated from records of temperature and CO2 in the past. This gives us a cross check with the computer models. (BTW the most advanced models give a climate sensitivity of 2.6 to 4.1 degrees C per doubling of pre-industrial CO2 while an estimate from ice-core data from the peak of the last ice-age when climate was fairly stable gives an estimate of 2 to 4 degrees C per 2xCO2.) Of course to the greenhouse denialists all this is completely wrong and the actual sensitivity is zero because somewhere somehow there is a hidden -100% feedback factor which even though it is so strong has never even been noticed let alone found or else the climate system through sheer complexity and good luck might amazingly create a -100% feedback effect simply by being very complex.
Actually some of my reading on feedback processes came from http://climateprediction.net/science/cl-intro.php where it talks about the greenhouse effect. It pointed out that Svante Arrhenius in 1896 used knowledge of how CO2 absorbs radiation to estimate a climate sensitivity of 2 degrees C per doubling of pre-ind CO2. This estimate ignored any feedback processes. It just comes from the effect of the CO2 alone. Feedback processes discovered so far have increased this estimate. The greenhouse effect denialists would have us believe that there is an unknown negative feedback process with a value more negative than -100% to cancel out not only the effect of the CO2 itself but also the net positive feedbacks that we know about. This sounds awfully close to violating some law of physics.
“As I understand it, the IPCC is switching to PPP, so we’ll see soon enough” (jquiggin, 7 Jan., 12.02 am). So the scores (maybe hundreds) of impact studies that have used the socio-economic scenarios in the SRES will now be redone using the PPP projections that the IPCC should have reported in the first place? Can this be done in time for AR4? Do the SRES lead authors still claim that “Mr. Castles and Mr. Henderson have focused (at tedious length) on constructing a ‘problem’ that does not exist”? Does the IPCC still claim that C&H were purveyors of disinformation for “questioning” the use of MER in the SRES? If the IPCC have finally got round to questioning it themselves, that’s progress. I await their apology.
“How about to the rest of the planet that pays the (environmental) price for the American indulgence in gasoline.”
Why on earth would any American need to justify anything to “the rest of the planet”? Who do you actually mean by “the rest of the planet”?
“Then who is going to do it?”
Someone should have told you a very long time ago that there is simply no such thing as a level playing field. And even if there were, the moment any field becomes level, it immediately slides towards being “unlevel” again. Face it, some people and some companies work better than others, just the way it is.
“Why is government intervention automatically bad?”
It’s not, but it’s also not the answer to every problem.
“When I said governments can and sometimes should level the playing field, I didn’t mean on every single issue, but on issues that need attention and which would not be dealt with properly by the market alone, such as pollution, safety, and technical standards.”
Surely you realise that we would all have different ideas on what can and cannot be “dealt with” by the market alone.
“Governments are elected to do stuff that no one else can. ”
I disagree. But each nation and every people must make their own decision on why a government is elected.
In my view, government is elected TO SERVE the people, not the other way around.
Re: avaroo’s MARTA quip – I sure hope I don’t read anything that racist here again.
Seeker has said:
‘Personally, I am perplexed and disappointed that America refuses to seriously bite the bullet on automotive fuel efficiency, especially given the technology to at least double fuel efficiency is already well proven. Sometimes governments have to lead, not follow.’
Yes, true. Successive American administrations have fiddled with fuel efficiency, to no avail. Recently, according to a ‘New Yorker’ article, a poll of many American economists found that most of them support a tax on gasoline. It would be fairer and would encourage real fuel efficiency. Americans pay ridiculously low prices for gasoline.
mndean has said
‘Re: avaroo’s MARTA quip – I sure hope I don’t read anything that racist here again.’
Yes, I was very surprised by it, too.
Avaroo:
“How about to the rest of the planet that pays the (environmental) price for the American indulgence in gasoline.�
Why on earth would any American need to justify anything to “the rest of the planet�? Who do you actually mean by “the rest of the planet�?
“Then who is going to do it?�
Someone should have told you a very long time ago that there is simply no such thing as a level playing field. And even if there were, the moment any field becomes level, it immediately slides towards being “unlevel� again. Face it, some people and some companies work better than others, just the way it is.
Resposne: You know I suspect if Mexico and Canada decided to locate a large number of lead smelters and other grossly polluting industries on the US borders in locatiosn where the rivers and prevailing winds carried the pollutants into the US you’d expect those countries to take into effect the views of the US.
Chris O’Neill,
I don’t dispute that the climatologist’s models give the results you report. The problem is in the validation of the models. When there are large numbers of tunable parameters, it is easy for the models to overfit. Combined with a paucity of high quality historical data, unbiased validation of the models is difficult.
That said, there is one figure that doesn’t rely on modeling: global energy imbalance. That can be measured – and as far as I can tell the process of measurement is fairly uncontroversial – and it is definitely going up [Figure 6d in the Hansen paper you referred to]. If the earth is radiating less energy than it is absorbing, then it would be very surprising if the atmosphere did not eventually heat up.
The problem with global energy imbalance is that it does not tell you who the culprit is: is it caused by human activity or not? However, I don’t think it really matters. If we’re fairly sure the earth is getting hotter, and we’re fairly sure bad stuff will happen to humans if the earth gets hotter, and if we want to do something about it, then we should be looking for ways to control the climate.
That might mean reducing CO2 emissions, or inducing more volcanic eruptions, or spreading reflective disks over the Pacific Ocean, or whatever. Or it may mean doing nothing, because we decide the benefits of creating an entirely new habitable continent (Antarctica) outweigh the costs of sea-level rises.
It is worth remembering that we’ve probably already (inadvertantly) succeeded in avoiding the next ice age. If humans can have that much impact on the climate, lets exploit it. Reframe the debate away from the leftie stagnationist position of “global warming means capitalism is bad, humans are bad if left to themselves, so everyone stop having fun and submit to the control of the all-powerful state” to “hey, humans can control the climate too, lets run with that”.
On SUVs: the American love affair with SUVs over the last decade isn’t simply a result of consumer choice.
SUVs are classified as commercial vehicles not passenger vehicles, as such they are exempted from many of the safety and environmental laws which apply to passenger vehicles.
These laws add several thousand dollars to the cost of a passenger vehicle.
To see what actual relative consuemr preferences were you’d either need to subject SUVs to the same laws as passenger vehicles or exempt passenger vehicles from such laws.
‘the benefits of creating an entirely new habitable continent (Antarctica) outweigh the costs of sea-level rises.”
Yes we can start by relocating the population of Bangladesh there.
BTW – if the entire antarctic ice-cap melts we’ll be looking at catastrophic sea level rises far beyong those in the current IPCC projections.
One effect of that rise would to be submerge most of antarctica.
Source? My source says that East Antarctica (the biggest bit) will be well above sea-level after a melt. Total rise will be 55m if the whole lot melts. The lefties should be happy with that: all that waterfront property currently owned by rich people will be worthless, and a whole bunch of poorer people living inland will suddenly be living on the waterfront.
That’s the problem with you leftie stangationists: every silver lining has a cloud.
Looks like you’re right – I was mentally including the sea-ice fields in the area of Antarctica.
So yeah in 50-100 year anarctica might be almsot as inhabitable and attractive as Lapland or Siberia’s Kamchatka peninslua – if we ingore the absence of mative lifeforms (maybe we can relaocte soem polar bears there before they did out in the Arctic) and the total absence of arable soil (it takes hundreds of years of biologial activity to turn sand or pubverised rock into productive soil).
Maybe we can speed up the soil formation process by shipping the world’s sewage down there as fertiliser – as long as we’re shitting on the world figuratively why not do it literally as well?
On the suitability of solar power – are we to assume what we have now is what we will always have? Lots of novel ways to get electricity from solar energy keep emerging, new production methods keep being developed and mass production of materials with nano structures are being developed, with implications for solar cell production (with at least one serious proposal for solar films that can be applied like paint). These are evidence to my mind that we haven’t heard the last word on the cost effectiveness of photovoltaics. Certainly the claim that energy costs exceed energy production for PV have been shown to be false – for one example see http://www.homepower.com/files/pvpayback.pdf
for a study of this question.
Meanwhile solar thermal – water and space heating particularly – have shown themselves to be effective in terms of cost as well as energy benefits. Photovoltaics of course do require effective energy storage. They do exist – the Australian developed Vanadium redox battery for example has shown enormous promise at least for stationary applications like home power, with the better than 80% charge/discharge efficiency, and with the main chemical components being reusable and recyclable – see http://www.vrb.unsw.edu.au .
Again – is what we have now what we will always have? Doesn’t R&D have a significant place in this debate? As for my partly flippant remark about roads paved with solar cells, I think we could see something like that in our future. There is at least one project that’s utilising solar thermal energy from roads for commercial and residential heating and for keeping roads icefree through winter see http://www.ooms.nl/english/pages/divisie_gww/road_energy_systems.html
I’ve heard of proposals for a major effort to develop viable alternatives to our existing methods of energy production with the Nobel laureate and founder of nanotechnology Pr. Richard Smalley as chief proponent. see http://smalltimes.com/document_display.cfm?document_id=8154
I wouldn’t count solar out just yet.
I wouldn’t count solar out just yet.
I would, if someone came up with a cost effective solar system, you can almost guarantee that an oil company will offer a few million for the exclusive rights and then shelve it.
…and Lapland and the Kamchatka peninsula will be tropical resorts….
That’s more like it Ian. Antarctica is pretty mountainous too. Imagine the ski resorts in the summer. No more “ski all day, party all night”, just “ski 24 hours a day”. We could hold the first summer winter Olympics in Antarctica.
Careful, keep that positive attitude up and your side of politics will disown you soon.
I see we are to be blessed by joining a meeting of the big polluters under the auspices of the US SoS to discuss policy and emissions within the permissable sustainable limits (read keep on using oil, gas, coal) with the promise of investigating a technological solution to keep the energy machine rolling and industry moving. This should give the honorable Enviroment Minister and former property developing consultant from WA plenty to think about and take JWH away from his reverie reading about the vista of world history from the perspective of glorious western battles won and lost.
So true to form, Stage One, we have run line that the science is not proven argument, i.e. it is not happening. Now we move onto Stage two, well it sort of is happening, don’t be alarmed all we need is a new approach to the old technology argument. This will run for about another five years. Then on to Stage three….!
So with the freedom of will an choice available to me I have already made my choices based on the ever accumulating evidence about the ecological disaster in front of us, the impact of climate change on my life and the best place for me (us) to live with the change and grow old. Read the science guys and work it out for yourselves, a megacity dependent on high energy consumption, fossil fuel for transportation and food supply and increasing comptetion for scare water supplies, ain’t it. You work it out.
“if someone came up with a cost effective solar system, you can almost guarantee that an oil company will offer a few million for the exclusive rights and then shelve it.”
I have my own concerns about the use of patent laws which were,if I understand correctly, intended to see new ideas taken up widely whilst ensuring the originators weren’t ripped off. Instead they do appear to often be used to acquire exclusive rights to new ideas and prevent them from being taken up widely. Even without actual intent to stifle new developments, exclusive rights held by those who fail to adequately follow up on development and implementation, can see good ideas fail to make it to market. If it’s a truly important breakthrough that would verge on criminal in my eyes.
Many millions of people around the world live in settlements on poles above the water: Port Moresby, for example, is surrounded by large towns constructed a few metres above the waterline. Perhaps the western world could get used to it, too. Or wealthy westerners could live on vast barges. The sea breeze builds a powerful appetite.
Today’s Australian Financial Review has devoted about a kilo of paper to the pressing issue of, lor help us all, upmarket yachting marinas and their – yes, this is true – relative merits as investments.
So, here are the new boat people. Rose Bay is infested with them.
“the debate over human-caused global warming has been settled.” … “final nail hammered into the arguments [of] climate change contrarians” … “ideological partisans and paid advocates, presenting dishonest arguments” … “now that the scientific phase of the debate is over,” etc., etc.
Isn’t it nice that the science can be so quickly settled so that we can all get on to the truly soul-satisfying business of demonizing opponents.
Has it ever occurred to you, John, that interpreting “world events from a Social-Democratic perspective” is no more objectively meaningful than interpreting events from, say, a Christian perspective? It’s suddenly all just a matter of passionate but personal opinion, isn’t it.
Seen in that light the recourse to political climate change demonology becomes an obvious parallel with the religious ‘heretic’ and ‘infidel,’ and just as relevant. ‘Industry-funded lobbyists’ as devil-worshippers. It’s a charming and revealing analogy, isn’t it.
So, here’s a provocative but contextual statement: There is zero evidence that the current climate warming is due to human-generated CO2. And here’s why: The GCM climate models, which must be the source of any general objective meaning applied to data, are inadequate to predict climate.
See, for example, M. Colliins, et al. (2005) “How far ahead could we predict El Niño” GRL 29, 1492, who found, using the state-of-the-art Had3CM GCM, that under the experimental conditions of a perfect GCM and near-perfect initial conditions, El Niño couldn’t be predicted more than 8 months in advance, and that the climate model output was highly sensitive to very small changes in initial conditions.
In (2002) “Climate predictability on interannual to decadal time scales: the initial value problem” Climate Dynamics 19, 671-692, Collins showed the Had3CM GCM was globally unreliable extrapolating over times longer than a year.
Such poor results are far from isolated. I’ve read a number of papers by climate modellers, and by-and-large their consensus is that GCM models are not reliable predictors of climate. Given that, from whence comes the certainty that human-produced CO2 is doing anything noticeable to Earth climate? In the absence of a predictive theory, data can have no objective meaning.
When the reconstructed sharp variability over time of Earth climate is considered in that light, nothing climatological happening today is in any way unprecedented.
AGW promoters literally have nothing to stand on, except passionate conviction. And that leads right back to the religion analogy, which readily explains the frantic atmosphere of sin and redemption that so drives the fervid assertions of human-caused climate change, and the demonizing of those who honestly disagree.
You’re apparently a secular believer, John, just as religious in temperament as any church-goer.
McIntyre’s devastating critique of Mann’s proxy reconstruction, by the way, will surely prevail in the debate.
It turns out that those Rational Secular Atheist Moral Relativists were only possessed all this time. How wrong-headed could they be?
They’ll burn for this.
I’m curious that the AGW-skeptics aren’t howling with outrage at the $100 million in tax-payer money Canberra is committing to the new “Partnership” on global warming.
Come on guys, blast John Howard as a scientific illiterate and a socialist.