Kiwiblog

Isaac Davison at NZ Herald reports:

Prominent climate sceptic Christopher Monckton has arrived in New Zealand for a series of public talks, but his hosts are struggling to find a platform for his views.

Scientists approached to challenge the hereditary peer say debating well-established facts about climate change is a backward step which is bound to mislead the public.

Belief in man-made global warming has plummeted in recent years for a number of reasons. One of them is the arrogance of the scientists who say things like debating the science is a backward step, and refuse to do so.

Green Party MP and climate change spokesman Kennedy Graham, who was invited to challenge the Englishman, said there was no longer a debate about greenhouse gases.

Yes there is.

I actually accept the science that the more greenhouse gas emissions you have, the warmer it will get. I also think a price on carbon is a sensible thing to do. But my God I despair of the likes of Dr Graham who declare there is no longer a debate, when a massive proportion of the population do not accept the linkages.

You win people over by debating. If Monckton uses cherry picked facts, then you point that out. Why should anyone listen to people unwilling to debate?

Charles Chauvel at Red Alert blogged:

I’m in Cancun, Mexico, at the 16th UN Climate Change Conference. Like last year at the 15th Conference in Copenhagen, I am representing Labour as its climate spokesperson; I paid my own way to get here; I am part of the delegation from the International Trade Union Confederation (thanks to Helen Kelly and Sharan Burrow).

I wonder what would be the reaction if a National MP turned up at an international forum as part of a business lobby group?

I’m here to support efforts to get an ambitious, binding, global deal to limit the problems that we are all likely to face as a result of human-induced climate change, and to support a just transition to the different world we are all to shortly going to find ourselves living in.

There will be no binding deal at Cancun. Cancun will make progress in a number of areas but no one expects a binding deal.

So why am I here? Well, just because the media isn’t talking about it so much doesn’t mean that the issue isn’t just as serious as it was last year. My aunts’ home in Tahiti, 6m from the high tide line, is no less likely to be washed away by rising sea levels than it was last year.

This is th part which I think is ridicolous scare-mongering – I expect it from ill informed people, but not from the official Labour Spokesperson on climate change.

The IPCC 4th report had a number of scenarios. In the most optimistic the mean sea level rise by 2100 would be 18 cm and the most pessimistic would be 59 cm.

So the IPCC have said the worst case scenario is that by 2100 the sea level may have risen 10% of the 6 metres above high tide.

If that rate kept up, Charles’ auntie’s place will get swept away in the year 3000. Now regardless of sea level change, Tahiti is also sinking or subsiding at around 25 cm every 100 years. So in fact around 2700 or so it might get hairy.

Of course by then it will be 18 generations or so on from Charles and his aunt.

I’ve often said politicians who scare-monger like Charles are in fact very damaging to their own cause. Such ridicolous statements (which strongly implied that a six metre rise could happen in his aunt’s lifetime) just provide ammunition to sceptics.

[UPDATE: Several commenters have pointed out that a more likely meaning is that the house is 6 metres along the beach from the high tide mark. If that is the case, then it all depends on the angle of the beach. If the angle is more than 9 degrees, then it still isn't until 2100 that you get problems.

The projected rate of sea level rise is not dramatic (it is undesirable though). The increase per decade last century has been 1.8 cm/decade. From 1993 it has been 3 cm/decade and the IPCC projects the worst case scenario is 6 cm/decade up until 2100.]

An interesting interview with Bjorn Lomborg at the Daily Beast. First his profile:

Bjorn Lomborg is one of the best-known (and most controversial) participants in the global debate on climate change. A professor at the Copenhagen Business School, he founded the Copenhagen Consensus Center, an organization that brings together many of the world’s leading economists to ponder the great environmental and material questions of our time—in particular, the question of whether we are getting our priorities wrong in focusing as obsessively (and expensively) as we do on manmade global warming, instead of on other problems such as clean drinking water, or malaria.

Lomborg is well known as the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist. But note he is not sceptical on climate change itself – just the response to it.

Gore got our attention and pointed out that global warming is real, but he also scared the pants off people, and hysteria makes for pretty poor political judgment. So, this film acknowledges Gore’s fundamental point: Global warming is real, manmade and important. But it does two important things: It rolls back the fear by pointing out that global warming is not the end of the world, and it shows us lots of ways in which we can start tackling climate change smartly and efficiently.

The reason there is a backlash against whether climate change is even real is because of all those who exaggerated its impact and painted Armageddon as imminent.

That is a very good question. I think part of it is due to the nature of the debate: It is easier for the people who predict the worst-case outcomes to be heard, and similarly it is easier for the people who entirely reject those propositions to be printed in response. However, it is entirely crucial for our ability to tackle global warming that we enable ourselves to have a more nuanced debate, a place where we can find a middle, or third road, where we can recognize the reality of global warming while not having to subscribe to the poor, ineffective Kyoto-style policies.

The Armageddon extremists on one side of the debate have given rise to the outright denialists and sceptics on the other. And really the debate should be on what is the most effective response.

I hope that the film will make a connection with the vast majority of Americans who indeed are in the middle of this conversation, tentatively subscribing to global warming, but unwilling to commit vast resources to amazingly poor policies.

Allow me just to give you one example: The European Union’s “20-20” policy, which will reduce emissions by 20 percent below 1990 levels in 2020, will cost $250 billion per year for the rest of the century. Yet after spending $20 trillion, it will only have reduced temperatures by a minuscule 0.1°F. This simply is not smart.

Mitigation can be very expensive. There can be costs to not mitigating also of course.

The overwhelming evidence points to the reality of anthropogenic global warming. Even very skeptical scientists such as Richard Lindzen at MIT and Patrick Michaels point out that more CO₂ in the atmosphere means higher temperatures. This is really rather simple physics.

Again, the debate is over the extent of the indirect effects of greater CO2.

Fundamentally, we should be asking for governments to spend 0.2 percent of GDP on research and development into green energy. This is 50 times as much as we spend today, yet it is much less than what is typically being proposed to spend on inefficient Kyoto-style policies. Since it is so comparatively cheap, it is much more likely that we could get every nation on board (and developing countries would be paying proportionally less). But even if not everyone were on board, it would still make sense to move forward. In that sense, some countries could move ahead, fund the R&D and take us much closer to tackling global warming, without everyone participating.

NZ is spending a fair bit on R&D on reducing agricultural emissions, and in fact created a global alliance of other countries working towards this goal.

But 0.2% would be around $300 million a year. Sounds a lot. But it’s less than the subsidies in the ETS!

I blogged on Tuesday a comparison between the NZ ETS and the European ETS, concluding the NZ ETS is more “pure” as it includes all gases and all sectors.

The British High Commission has sent me this response, articulating the European view:

Same Game – Shared Targets

Many people note that New Zealand generates only a small proportion of global emissions and ask whether it matters if NZ acts or not. It very much does matter. If New Zealand – with its clean, green image – can’t make the move to low carbon, what hope for other countries? The important statistic in terms of global responsibility is greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per person, that puts New Zealand near the top of the global league table.

Accurate figures vary depending on the source but the global average is around 7 tonnes of GHG per person per year. The UK and EU average is about 10 tonnes per year while New Zealand is around 19 tonnes GHG per person per year. To meet our global target of reducing emissions by 50%, everyone in the world needs to be at around 2 tonnes per capita by 2050. This shows the scale of the challenge facing New Zealand and all other countries.

The EU’s Game Plan

The ETS is only part of Europe’s response (more on this below). Commentators can only sensibly critique the European approach if the ETS is viewed in this context. More generally, no comment on European efforts should be made without acknowledging what Member States’ are already committed to. For example, by 2050 the UK is committed in law to having GHG emissions 80% less than those in 1990 (and so move from 10 to 2 tonnes per capita). In the nearer term the EU as a whole is committed to 20% (or possibly 30%) reductions by 2020.

It is misleading to make too much of a direct comparison between the EU and NZ ETSs. The crucial fact is that action to reduce an economy’s greenhouse gases requires a portfolio of policies. This is what we have in the EU. The key issue is to look at the best policy tool for reducing emissions in each sector. For example, the EU has looked at light vehicles (cars and vans) and recognised that they produce 12% of the EU’s emissions and so need to be tackled. So the EU passed legislation on the fuel efficiency of cars. It is now EU law that the fleet average for all cars registered in the EU is 130 grams per kilometre (g/km). This is being phased in over the next few years and there are hefty fines for companies that exceed the limit (up to 95 Euros per extra gramme of CO2 over the limit!). This is a sensible and effective approach to tackling transport emissions. So the fact that it is not in the EU ETS does not mean action is not being taken.

The same argument applies to housing, agriculture and waste. Each country also has a binding renewable energy target and their own range of policies (energy tax, feed-in tariffs etc) to ensure those targets are met. In addition the EU is contributing EUR 7.2 billion to climate finance over the next three years. Ultimately when comparing and contrasting the response to climate change of different economies the most important fact is the overall impact on GHG emissions. This shows that the EU is on the right track – 2009 emissions were around 17% below their 1990 level.

If forced to compare the NZ and EU ETS one key difference is that the EU ETS sets binding caps on emissions. So participants in the scheme will have their allocations gradually reduced to 21% below the 2005 level by 2020. There is currently no similar cap in the New Zealand scheme.

Climate change matters

Every country in the world will face stresses from climate change. Increased frequency and severity of floods, storms I and droughts will have a direct impact on New Zealand’s agriculture sector and infrastructure. The faster we all move to a low carbon economy – and there are a whole range of policies to get us there – the better.

Its great to get a response on what is a complicated and challenging issue.

Our per capita emissions are high, but that is partly because of the large number of cows we have, relative to humans. I have not calculated what it would excluding the cows, but suspect we would then be close to the UK average.

The UK response does impress upon me that doing nothing is not a viable option. Even Tony Abbott is not a proponent of doing nothing – he just proposes direct Government spending on climate change mitigation rather than an ETS.

Oh my God. What sick little fuckers. The 10:10 campaign ha produced this campaign ad. They are campaigning for people to reduce their carbon emissions by 10% in 2010, and by every year thereafter.

Watch the video as the school kids get blown up, for not taking part in the campaign.

What an insight into the mentality of the zealots.

Hat Tip: Act on Campus

NZPA reports:

The country’s state-owned weather and atmospheric research body is being taken to court in a challenge over the accuracy of its data used to calculate global warming.

The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition said it had lodged papers with the High Court asking the court to invalidate the official temperatures record of the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa). …

The coalition said the New Zealand Temperature Records (NZTR) were the historical base of NIWA’s advice to the Government on issues relating to climate change.

Coalition spokesman Bryan Leyland said many scientists believed although the earth had been warming for 150 years, it had not heated as much as Government archives claimed.

He said the New Zealand Meteorological Service had shown no warming during the past century but Niwa had adjusted its records to show a warming trend of 1degC. The warming figure was high and almost 50 percent above the global average, said Mr Leyland.

The coalition said the 1degC warming during the 20th century was based on adjustments taken by Niwa from a 1981 student thesis by then student Jim Salinger, a Niwa employee who was later sacked after talking to the media without permission.

The Salinger thesis was subjective and untested and meteorologists more senior to Dr Salinger did not consider the temperature data should be adjusted, it said.

The coalition would ask the court to find Niwa’s New Zealand Temperature Record invalid.

It would also seek a court declaration preventing Niwa from using the NZTR when it advised the Government or any other body on global climate issues. It would also ask the court to order Niwa to produce a full and accurate NZTR.

One doesn’t go to court on a whim, so the CSC obviously feel they have a case. It will be fascinating to hear the details once it reaches court.

The Herald reports:

Scientists involved in last year’s “climategate” leaked emails controversy, which added to scepticism about the science of global warming, were not open enough with their data and unhelpful with requests for information, an independent review of the affair found yesterday.

They and their institution, the University of East Anglia, did not embrace the “spirit of openness” enshrined in the Freedom of Information Act, according to a long-awaited report.

However, the review found that the researchers concerned, led by the director of UEA’s Climatic Research Unit Professor Phil Jones, could not be faulted for their “rigour and honesty as scientists”, and there was no evidence that they had behaved in a way that might undermine the conclusions of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The review effectively clears those involved of dishonesty and corruption; it absolves them of the allegation made by climate sceptics that they had manipulated both climate data and the scientific peer-review process to serve their predetermined views that climate change is man-made.

This is largely what I expected.

Nevertheless, the review’s condemnation of the lack of openness at UEA amounted to “significant criticisms”, and its practices needed to change. …

* Dr Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a sceptical think-tank, said the Russell report was a “damning indictment of the university’s handling of freedom of information requests”. “I don’t think the university can just claim this is a vindication.”

* Andrew Montford, a climate sceptic who is conducting a review of how the three Climategate inquiries were set up and carried out, said the Russell review “has picked up some of our concerns on freedom of information” but had “brushed other issues under the carpet”. He said: “Not to ask Professor Jones if he had deliberately deleted emails so they could not be requested is a pretty extraordinary omission.”

* David Holland, a retired engineer and sceptic, one of the principal seekers of information from the CRU, said: “When it was set up 20 years ago the IPCC rules required climate science to be assessed on ‘a comprehensive, open and transparent basis’. Sir Muir Russell’s inquiry has rightly reported that UEA has not lived up to this.”

More transparency is needed. Even basic stuff such as a schedule of adjustments to recorded temperatures which details when an adjustment was made, and why, is not available from most agencies (including NIWA).

Now this does not mean that there is some global conspiracy to convince the world that temperatures have been increasing, when they have not been. Such a conspiracy would require 1000s of scientists to be colluding over the last 100 years.

I am sure adjustments to recorded temperatures series have been done in good faith, for reasons such as the moving of a recording station. However when decisions that may economies billions of dollars are dependent on the integrity of the data, it it reasonable to insist on total transparency.

I agree with the sentiments expressed by BusinessNZ CEO Phil O’Reilly:

In business there is a wide range of opinion stretching across the spectrum, from zealous green through to emissions denial. The most common reaction has been concern about increased energy costs just as businesses start to recover from the recession.

Why not delay it, they say – especially since Australia is now pulling back from its earlier commitment to emissions trading. The answer is probably that delay wasn’t a feasible option.

New Zealand’s situation is very different from Australia’s. Australia has never had an emissions trading scheme, so delaying the introduction of one would have been relatively straightforward.

To delay it in New Zealand would mean introducing amending legislation under urgency and ramming it through Parliament without even going to select committee. This would be Labour’s wet dream – National breaking its election promise and doing an u-turn, and even worse forcing it through under urgency to over-turn previous legislation that had been the subject of three years or consultation and debate.

If National did this, they would be suffer much the same fate as Kevin Rudd just has (fallen behind in the polls for the first time ever), but arguably even more.

But New Zealand has been committed to it since the trading legislation passed in 2008 by the previous Labour-Greens Government.

The present Government came into power that same year, on an election promise to improve the scheme passed by Labour and the Greens. Their mandate wasn’t to dismantle or delay it but to improve it.

The failure of Copenhagen has happened since then, and we should respond to that failure. But scrapping the entire scheme is daft and would lead to higher Government debt.

Had the Government sought to dismantle or delay it we would have had a fourth parliamentary/select committee process in as many years, with even more divisive, rancorous debate.

With Labour committed to returning New Zealand to the previous draconian emissions scheme and the Greens unwilling to compromise on their climate change stance, the issue would have become a long-running, festering sore.

Labour’s scheme had less protection for trade exposed industries, and would see greater costs on businesses, despite their competitors not having them.

Taking the longer view, it’s hard to deny the certainty that the world is headed towards a price on carbon. Whether it’s by way of carbon taxes or emissions trading schemes and whether within two years or 20, the clear intent of Governments around the world is to restrain emissions using economic tools.

I agree a price on carbon is almost inevitable. Even if you do not believe the claimed indirect warming effects of carbon emissions (which there is debate about), even the direct warming effects (which there is almost no debate about) makes a price on carbon sensible.

Official figures show New Zealand is on track to meet our 2012 Kyoto target. In 2012 our gross emissions will be 23 per cent higher than in 1990, but this will be more than offset by forests planted since 1989, with many New Zealand foresters actively receiving tradeable carbon credits.

This is key. Forestry is already in the scheme. You can not simply scrap a scheme that has already started. Forest owners are owed hundreds of millions of dollars for their forests under the scheme.

The fact that we already had the legislation as far back as 2008 and the kinds of decisions made by other Governments over the last year have led to the situation where New Zealand is now a leader in taking action on emissions, rather than our desired position of fast follower.

And this is a concern. But the answer is not to scrap a scheme that has been in place since 2008. It is to use the 2011 review to decide whether to amend the rate at which businesses get exposed to the full cost of carbon, and when sectors such as agriculture enter the scheme.

We are scheduled to have a review of the scheme before the end of next year. Business NZ believes this review should be brought forward starting no later than the end of this year.

The review should cover issues like the cost impact on consumers and businesses, competitive disadvantage issues and the position of agriculture and other sectors within the scheme.

Positions need to be developed based on current economic and international considerations.

We should all keep in mind the fact that the world’s consumers are increasingly seeking low-carbon goods and services and our trading scheme is the vehicle for nudging our producers on to a profitable low-carbon path.

And we shouldn’t forget that taking action to reduce emissions and look after our environment is, in the long run, the right thing to do.

I think it would be useful to wait for the Mexico conference, and see if that is as unproductive as Copenhagen. If it is, then the review of the ETS should look towards slowing or delaying the impact of the ETS in trade exposed sectors especially.

The Herald is on judicial transparency:

The legal profession, at least in its upper echelons, is so small that there are bound to be close and long-standing relationships between senior lawyers and judges which may create the appearance of conflicts of interest.

The possibilities have been amply demonstrated by the case of Supreme Court Justice Bill Wilson, who finds himself facing the Judicial Complaints Commissioner because, when he was a Court of Appeal judge, he failed to fully disclose the extent of his indebtedness to a lawyer appearing before him.

And that is the problem – the lack of disclosure. The debt, by itself, does not mean the Judge could not sit on the case, and be impartial. In fact Justice Wilson ruled against the lawyer’s clients in a number of cases.

But the matter does not end there because now the Judicial Complaints Commissioner must decide whether the judge’s conduct in failing to promptly and fully disclose the nature of the relationship needs to be referred to either the Chief Justice or the Attorney-General. Unfortunately, either course of action may also raise questions of the kind mentioned by the Supreme Court because Justice Wilson has had close associations with both office holders.

He and Mr Galbraith have been in a racehorse-owning partnership with Chief Justice Dame Sian Elias. On the other side of the equation, Justice Wilson and Attorney-General Chris Finlayson were partners at the law firm Bell Gully and Mr Finlayson is on record as calling him a friend. So whichever way this case may turn, it gives rise to the very kinds of doubts that the courts, quite rightly, are at pains to avoid.

The Attorney-General is friends, I am sure, with a large number of Judges. I think we have to be careful about not having unrealistic expectations that Judges and lawyers have no dealings with each other at all, except in court.

But whatever the outcome of this particular case, the courts should reconsider the old policy of secrecy and remoteness as a means of preserving confidence in the system generally. More openness in the form of a public register of judges’ pecuniary interests – much like that which applies to MPs – would be much more effective.

Compulsory listing of such things as business interests, partnerships, trusts and, importantly, debts would make any possible appearance of conflicts of interest immediately apparent and therefore defuse any controversy such as the one engulfing Justice Wilson before it had a chance to arise.

The idea of a register is worth considering.

The Press suggests the winner of the UK elections will inherit a poisoned chalice:

When the British deliver their electoral verdict on Thursday, the winning party will be presented with a poisoned chalice. The huge cuts the new government will have to make to spending ensure it will be hounded into deep unpopularity and be long branded as the Scrooge that ended a decade of prosperity.

The reality that the golden economy has been dead for two years and has been sustained by massive borrowing will not ease the predicament of the incoming administration. In the cause of weathering the economic storm, spending and borrowing was maintained; only now do the bills have to be paid.

Yet the Lib Dems and Labour keep insisting one should go on borrowing and spending more for a wee bit longer.

The Dominion Post marks World Press Freedom Day:

For most New Zealanders, today is just another working day to be endured before the next long weekend heaves into view. To journalists, however, it means more than that. May 3 is the annual date that Unesco has set aside as World Press Freedom Day, an occasion to celebrate the value of a free media.

It is a prize worth winning, but comes at a price. New Zealand journalists don’t get killed for doing their jobs in this country, but that is not true elsewhere. In 1975, Kiwi Gary Cunningham was one of five journalists murdered by Indonesian forces in East Timor wanting to prevent the world knowing of their invasion. And already this year, at least 12 journalists have been slain for following a vocation with attendant dangers.

Here, the risk normally involves being called a “little creep” by an angry prime minister, being ejected from the team bus by an irate sports coach, or being sued for defamation for – perhaps – wrongly criticising someone with a reputation to defend.

True.

Thus it is harder in a modern democracy to persuade a cynical populace that to do away with a free press is to do enormous damage to the body politic and civic discourse. In the West, it is more common for the public to dismiss the work of reporters as sensationalism, trivia, and “lies”. Sometimes, they are right.

More usually, they are wrong. People often forget that everyone errs and that their errors are rarely exposed for others to judge. Chefs’ mistakes are buried in the rubbish; doctors’ mistakes are in a graveyard.

In the media business, mistakes can be of fact, emphasis or omission – and are usually inadvertent. Unlike the mistakes of others, however, journalists’ errors are published or broadcast for everyone to see, and – in the best of the breed – corrected publicly.

Alas the public correction is all too rare.

The ODT calls for no delay to the ETS:

Having once claimed to be a “follower” of our trading partners in such legislation, New Zealand, the critics claim, now looks likely to be an international leader – out on a limb with a feigned carbon tax that may in time come to be regarded as either innovative or foolish.

Businesses, for one, have not been slow to remind the Government of this risk, arguing that the policy will make it even more difficult to trade successfully with other countries which have yet to implement climate-change responses, or plan to defer them.

They have asked for New Zealand’s policies to be “aligned” with those of our major trading partners – a request that on the surface appears reasonable but is realistically impracticable. …

Yet, if the world has so much to lose from climate change, then it behoves countries to take whatever steps they can to minimise the effects – as a matter of urgency.

A global solution is obviously required and Western nations, including New Zealand, must lead it, since they are in the best possible position to afford the costs and provide the technology and innovation to achieve it.

Here the ODT is wrong. If China is not part of a deal to reduce emissions, then the efforts of the rest of the world will be futile. China by 2020, will be producing more greenhouse gas emissions than the rest of the world does today – even if they live up to their Copenhagen pledge.

For New Zealand to now delay further what has already been a slow, step-by-step procedure, would deny pragmatism in favour of the changing winds of political fortune.

I don’t support a change to the ETS legislation being done under urgency. If however there is no post Kyoto agreement, which includes commitments from China, then the rationale for an ETS is greatly reduced.

Fran O’Sullivan writes:

John Key’s refusal to postpone the implementation of the next phase of the emissions trading scheme (ETS) is setting the scene for a ‘winter of discontent’ with New Zealand business.

In just two days the perception of the Key Government as a climate change laggard has morphed into an unwitting climate change leader as our major trading partners, like Australia and the United States, prepare to defer their own schemes leaving this country out in front of the pack instead of the “fast follower” the PM promised.

The decision by Kevin Rudd to delay his ETS until 2013 does place pressure on NZ. It is almost ironic that National is at risk of accidentally achieving Helen Clark’s aim of being a global leader rather than a fast follower in terms of responses to climate change.

Of course the Australian ETS has never been passed into law – it is easy to delay something not yet legislated for.

The NZ ETS was passed into law by Labour in 2008, and them amended by National in 2009. It is already in effect for sectors such as forestry.

The Auckland Regional Chamber of Commerce has been adding fuel to the fire by asking its membership to email Key directly to ask for the July 1 cost hikes to be deferred.

The chamber reckons it will increase electricity prices by 5 per cent and add 4c a litre to the cost of petrol and diesel. Its boss Michael Barnett reckons the cost hikes will jeopardise the profitability of small to medium businesses as they get back on a growth curve after the lengthy domestic recession.

I’ll have to read the ETS legislation to check, but am unsure whether or not the Government can defer the entry of those sectors, without amending or repealing the ETS law. If a law change is needed, it couldn’t realistically be done by 1 July.

The ODT alarms:

Dunedin could face some stark choices by the end of the century, with sea-level rise expected to force either the retreat from, or complete evacuation of, South Dunedin, St Kilda and St Clair.

Dunedin will just be one giant swimming pool!

A report on climate change and its effect on Dunedin includes a prediction of an upper level for sea-level rise of 1.6m by 2090.

Okay that is 1600 mm over 80 years which is an average rise of 20 mm a year.

Predicting the upper range for sea-level rise was also “problematic”, he said, with the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggesting 0.6m, but more recent research suggesting 1.6m was a more prudent prediction.

I prefer to wait for the IPCC to update their report, rather than have people cherry pick individual more alarmist pieces of research.

The IPCC report said that the likely increase in sex levels was 180 to 590 mm, which is an average rise of 1.8 to 5.9 mm a year – between one tenth and one third of what the ODT story reports.

So how likely is a sea level rise of a massive 20 mm a year?

What has been the rise so far in NZ?

Consequently, sea levels around New Zealand have risen on average 1.8 mm/year over the last 40 years with the total sea level rise over the last century of 0.17 m.

So the rise over the last 100 years has been 1.7 mm a year and last 40 years has been 1.8 mm a year. So that is 10% of the 20 mm Dunedin will be flooded scaremongering.

Now in the last 17 years, sea level rises have been greater – an average 3.1 mm a year. That is consistent with the IPCC 590 mm increase, but still a long way off the 1600 mm talked about in the ODT article.

Also one has to understand that to get an average of 20 mm a year over 80 years, you need quite massive increases in the latter section to make up for the current slower rises.

If you assume a linear increase in the average annual rise, then the amount of annual rise has to increase by 0.45 mm a year. What this means is that by 2020 the rise will be 7 mm/yr, by 2030 12 mm/yr and by 2090 it would be 39 mm/yr.

Is anyone willing to bet money that by 2020 the average sea level rise will be 7 mm/yr?

Simon Upton writes:

I am shortly to take up a position at the OECD leading its Environment Directorate. …

The OECD was established to help governments with their thinking. While its origins may have been in the reconstruction of Europe after 1945, it has become a genuinely global policy resource with new members (such as Chile) joining as rising living standards dissolve the boundaries of the old “developed” world.

The OECD is one of the more useful global bodies.

As an economics-based institution, the OECD is dedicated to using economic analysis to highlight the tradeoffs its members face. It is easily caricatured (like Treasuries) as an organisation that seeks to reduce everything to dollars and cents. Clearly, not everything can be reduced to monetary values. But many things can be, and to the extent that the costs of alternatives can be placed on a common footing, decision-making should be improved.

To provide one very simple example: work at the OECD has shown that the costs of alternative CO2 reduction policies can vary by several orders of magnitude. Subsidies to biofuels can, in some instances, mean spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars for each ton of CO2 avoided – way above the sorts of carbon taxes that have been discussed and discounted.

And biofuel subsidies or quotas have been shown to have devastating effect on food supply, as land is converted.

Countries may be able offer good reasons for such outcomes. But it is harder to do so when the costs of alternatives are made transparent. This may explain one of the conundrums surrounding much environmental policy analysis. Consistently, the advice is to place a price on scarce resources. If they carry a price, they need to be measured; if they’re measured, they get managed. We don’t tend to waste things we have to pay for.

And this is why I do support putting a price on carbon – either through a carbon tax, or an ETS. It’s the same reason I don’t like tertiary courses which are “free” to the user – you get huge wastage, and the moment people do have to pay for something, you do have an incentive not to waste it.

There is dispute over the indirect warming effects of greenhouse gas emissions, but there is basically no dispute over the direct warming effects. Hence for me the debate isn’t over whether one should have a price on carbon, to cover externalities, but what that price should be.

The Daily Mail reports:

Two government advertisements which use nursery rhymes to warn of the dangers of climate change have been banned for exaggerating the threat.

Commissioned by Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, the adverts are based on children’s poems Jack and Jill and Rub-A-Dub-Dub and assert that climate change will cause flooding and drought.

The Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) ruled the adverts – which attracted 939 complaints – made exaggerated claims which went beyond mainstream scientific consensus.

The proponents of man-made global warming are basically their own worst enemies. If they didn’t feel the need to over-state the position and scare-monger, then there wouldn’t be such a backlash against them.

The news that the UK Government’s own advertisements were so unbalanced, as to be banned, will just drive thousands more people towards the view that it is all a crock of shit – even if it is not.

The latest Blunt.

A refrain we often hear is that we should listen to the scientists, when it comes to issues like climate change. And I agree.

Now the Climategate e-mails have been debated at some length. Poneke did an extensive blog post where he advocated that there was real cause for concern about what they unveiled. Some attacked him for this and said it was no big thing.

The UK Parliament is holding hearings on the e-mails, and one notable submission is from the Institute of Physics, representing 36,000 scientists.

Some quotes from their submission:

The CRU e-mails as published on the internet provide prima facie evidence of determined and co-ordinated refusals to comply with honourable scientific traditions and freedom of information law. The principle that scientists should be willing to expose their ideas and results to independent testing and replication by others, which requires the open exchange of data, procedures and materials, is vital.

That was the opening, and then:

There is also reason for concern at the intolerance to challenge displayed in the e-mails. This impedes the process of scientific ‘self correction’, which is vital to the integrity of the scientific process as a whole, and not just to the research itself. In that context, those CRU e-mails relating to the peer-review process suggest a need for a review of its adequacy and objectivity as practised in this field and its potential vulnerability to bias or manipulation.

The whole peer review process for climate science needs reviewing they say.

Fundamentally, we consider it should be inappropriate for the verification of the integrity of the scientific process to depend on appeals to Freedom of Information legislation. Nevertheless, the right to such appeals has been shown to be necessary. The e-mails illustrate the possibility of networks of like-minded researchers effectively excluding newcomers. Requiring data to be electronically accessible to all, at the time of publication, would remove this possibility.

The law sets out the minimum necessary disclosure, but ethical scientists should be disclosing far more than the minimum.

Now the practises disclosed by Climategate do not mean that there is not a link between greenhouse gas emissions and increasing temperatures. Few people argue that.

But what it does mean is that you can’t expect the nations of the world to commit hundreds of billions of dollars on mitigation efforts, when the key scientists involved in climate research have failed to follow good scientific practice with their data, and make it open.

The climate science “industry” needs to not ignore Climategate but adopt a universal policy of full and open access to all data, and to not treat those with different scientific theories as enemies.

Stephen Franks blogs:

Take a look at this NCPA collection of sobering figures (drawn from the work of a physics professor at UCAL Berkeley) for an explanation.

• China’s emissions intensity (CO₂ per dollar of GDP) is five times greater than that of the United States.

President Hu Jintao plans to reduce China’s CO₂ emissions per unit of GDP by 4 percent per year for 5 years. If carried on it would reduce China’s CO₂ emissions intensity 70 percent by 2040. But even if it works:

• If China cuts its emissions intensity 45% it will still surpass the U.S. in per capita annual CO₂ emissions by 2025.
• Indeed, every 10% cut in U.S. emissions would be negated by one year of China’s growth.
• Because China’s economy is growing by 10% p.a. a 4% cut in intensity is actually a 6% annual increase in emissions.
• CO₂ emissions are increasing similarly in India and other developing countries – far surpassing rich countries’ output.
• Even if China and India’s goals are met – and other developing countries make similar cuts- total atmospheric CO₂ would rise from 385 parts per million currently to 700 parts per million by 2080

The leaders of China and India can not risk constraining their growth, even if they were persuaded that they should give higher priority to CO2 emissions.

I did my own calculations a few weeks ago:

China said it will “endeavour” to cut the amount of carbon produced per unit of economic output by 40 to 45 percent by 2020 from 2005. The “carbon intensity” goal would let emissions keep rising, but more slowly than economic growth.

Now even putting aside the fact China won’t agree to any verification of their emissions (ie they can simply make up their figures), what does their pledge mean.

Let us assume that their business as usual case is that emissions will increase in line with economic growth.

Now their GDP in 2005 was US$2.24 trillion. In 2020 it is estimated to be around US14.6 trillion. That is a 640% increase in GDP.

Now if their emissions intensity is 40% less, then the increase in emissions will be 385%.

So China’s pledge is they will only increase emissions by 385% by 2020.

Now their level of emissions in 2006 was 6,103 million tons. So China’s projected increase in emissions is around 23,000 million tons. …

In fact China’s pledge to reduce intensity by 40% means their total level of emissions in 2020 could be as high as 33,000 million tons.

And you know what. That is more than the rest of the world produces today. The world, excluding China, produces 22,000 million tons. With China it is 28 million tons

So the entire world could go carbon neutral, and China would still push world emissions up 20% from 2006.

This is the reality the world faces. It does not matter what the USA does, what the EU does, even what India does. Global emissions are going to increase significantly, just from China alone.

The BBC has a Q&A with Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia (UEA).

I found it very interesting, and recommend people read it. He is very upfront on what do know, and do not know, and what periods of warming have and have not been significant, such as:

As for the two periods 1910-40 and 1975-1998 the warming rates are not statistically significantly different (see numbers below).

and

B – Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming

Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.

C – Do you agree that from January 2002 to the present there has been statistically significant global cooling?

No. This period is even shorter than 1995-2009. The trend this time is negative (-0.12C per decade), but this trend is not statistically significant.

So from 1995 to 2009, there has been warming, but not at a level to be deemed significant, and likewise from 2002 to 2009 there has been cooling but not at a level to be deemed significant.

What this signifies to me is that the data over the next five years or so will be very important – it may either push the post 1995 era into significant warming, or the post 2002 era into significant cooling. The chances of post 2002 era being a statistically significant cooling are less, as it is a shorter period.

Populus polled the UK on climate change in early November 2009, before Climategate, and again in early February 2010.

The findings, and the changes from November to February are:

• 75% (-8%) agree global warming is happening
• 34% (-16%) of that 75% agree it is an established scientific fact that climate change is largely man-made
• 50% (+11%) say man-made global warming is a widespread theory but has not been conclusively proved
• 14% (+5%) say man-made climate change is environmentalist propaganda with little or no evidence

Now to look at these numbers as shares of the total population, they are:

1. 25% (+8%) say there is no global warming
2. 11% (+4%) say there is global warming but it is natural
3. 38% (+6%) say there is global warming but it has not been conclusively proven it is man-made, however that is the widespread theory
4. 26% (-16%) say that there is global warming and it is an established scientific fact it is largely man-made

So this shows the magnitude of the changes. Those who say it is a fact we have man-made global warming has dropped from 42% to 26%. That is a relative decline of almost 40%, so one in three people who believed global warming is definitely man-made have changed their minds.

UPDATE: This Blunt cartoon seems topical

The Press editorial:

For those concerned about climate change and trying to persuade politicians and populations that something must be done about it, these are not good times.

First, there was the hacking of emails from one of the world centres for climate research, at the University of East Anglia, some of which show scientists behaving in ways that fall far short of the candour and integrity expected of top researchers.

Then there was the disappointment of Copenhagen, where an attempt to agree on a legally binding accord that would give the world something to succeed the Kyoto Protocol was sunk, primarily by the machinations of China and India.

And since then it has emerged that two rather startling predictions of climate-change disaster turn out to rest on nothing more substantial than a magazine interview and an article by non-scientific members of a pressure group.

And the combination of these events means that there will be no reductions in emissions in the foreseeable future. As I calculated a few weeks ago, China’s growth in emissions alone massively out-strips any reductions the rest of the world might make.

For all their headline-grabbing appeal, the glacier and the Amazonian rainforest stories are, so far as the science is concerned, insignificant. Far graver, from this point of view, are the underhand practices of particular climate researchers revealed in the leaked emails. Both stories do, however, severely damage public trust that the IPCC operates according to the most rigorous standards.

There is a mass of evidence that suggests that man-made climate change is a problem and that political action will need to be taken to avert severe consequences for the globe. But that evidence, like all scientific evidence, must be properly weighed and must be subject to challenge. That is necessary not only to get good science but also to get the public consensus required for any action that may need to be taken.

What is interesting is that no one in the IPCC seems to have realised the damage done by the e-mails and the false claims. They keep repeating the mantra that it doesn’t undermine the basic linkage – and while they may be right scientifically, they are wrong politically.

These articles about the failings of the IPCC are not on obscure blogs or Page 23 of newspapers. They are appearing almost daily on front pages around the world. Even liberal newspapers such as the Guardian have devoted considerable space to the problems in the IPCC reports.

Business as normal will not work for the IPCC. Too much damage has occurred. There needs to be some resignations and some sort of announcement of additional fact checking if they want their next report to have influence.

The Herald editorial looks at the IPCC woes:

More than one mistake has been found recently in the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, set up by the United Nations to provide authoritative reports on global warming, and the errors are hardly peripheral.

The IPCC’s powerful Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 declared there was a probability of glaciers disappearing from the Himalayas by 2035 or sooner.

And those pointing out the error were labelled as pushing voodoo science by the IPCC Chairman.

If the Himalayan debacle was bad enough, the panel references to disappearing ice in the Andes, the European Alps and Africa are even more embarrassing.

They turn out to have been based on a student dissertation and an article in a climbing magazine.

And there is more …

Last week, the IPCC’s attempts to link natural disasters to global warming was critically examined.

Its claim in 2007 that the world had “suffered rapidly rising costs due to extreme weather-related events since the 1970s” turns out to have been based on a paper that had not been peer-reviewed or published at that time.

When the paper was published in 2008 it included a caveat that the evidence was insufficient to establish a statistical relationship between the global temperature increase and catastrophes.

Yet the panel said nothing about the caveat before last year’s Copenhagen Conference where the fear of natural disasters loomed large among African nations in particular.

The IPCC seem to have gone for any article anywhere that supports the thesis, regardless of whether or not it is peer reviewed.

These errors are not merely academic; they cause real worry in the regions concerned.

And generate lots of funding to study said problems.

Climate scientists are anxious to deny that these “slip-ups” discredit the IPCC’s conclusions overall but sceptics of climate change have seized upon them to do exactly that.

The IPCC’s reputation is not helped now by the argument of authority its supporters have employed for so long. Criticism was dismissed as conceit in the face of a “scientific consensus” that by implication could not be wrong.

Well the consensus has been wrong, or at least careless on several points. Scepticism has strengthened, but it is only scepticism; human-induced climate change has not been disproved. It remains too worrying to be dismissed.

Governments need dispassionate scientific assessments of it, not anecdotes, unchecked papers and agitators’ propaganda.

The IPCC urgently needs new leadership and a return to strict scientific rigour if it hopes to be taken seriously again.

At a minimum the IPCC Chairman needs to resign. Anything pubished under his watch will not be regarded as credible after his voodoo science comments.

iPredict has the chance of the Chairman resigning as 60%. It was only 20% up until the end of January and has shot up in the last few days.

Reuters reports:

Fifty-five countries, accounting for almost 80 percent of world greenhouse gas emissions, have pledged varying goals for fighting climate change under a deadline in the Copenhagen Accord.

“This represents an important invigoration of the UN climate change talks,” Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, said of the national targets for curbs on emissions until 2020 submitted by January 31.

It represents no such thing. As I said in NBR on Friday, the political tide has turned. Regardless of your views on the science, there is no chance of meaningful reductions in emissions. Even if the EU and Australia and NZ manage some reductions, 50% of the global total is basically China, India and the US.

What does India say:

Indian officials said they want the 1992 UN Climate Change Convention to remain the blueprint for global action, not the Copenhagen Accord.

That means they do not want to commit to any reductions at all for India.

And China:

China said it will “endeavour” to cut the amount of carbon produced per unit of economic output by 40 to 45 percent by 2020 from 2005. The “carbon intensity” goal would let emissions keep rising, but more slowly than economic growth.

Now even putting aside the fact China won’t agree to any verification of their emissions (ie they can simply make up their figures), what does their pledge mean.

Let us assume that their business as usual case is that emissions will increase in line with economic growth.

Now their GDP in 2005 was US$2.24 trillion. In 2020 it is estimated to be around US14.6 trillion. That is a 640% increase in GDP.

Now if their emissions intensity is 40% less, then the increase in emissions will be 385%.

So China’s pledge is they will only increase emissions by 385% by 2020.

Now their level of emissions in 2006 was 6,103 million tons. So China’s projected increase in emissions is around 23,000 million tons.

New Zealand’s total level of emissions is 30 million tons.

So we could go totally carbon neutral, and it would barely compensate for 0.1% of the increase from China.

In fact China’s pledge to reduce intensity by 40% means their total level of emissions in 2020 could be as high as 33,000 million tons.

And you know what. That is more than the rest of the world produces today. The world, excluding China, produces 22,000 million tons. With China it is 28 million tons

So the entire world could go carbon neutral, and China would still push world emissions up 20% from 2006.

As I have said before, you need to get an agreement between the major emitters first, and the rest of the world will then make sure they pick up their fair share.

And I would say there is no way China is going to agree to reductions beyond what they indicated at Copenhagen.

So regardless of what you think about the science, the fact is there will be no reduction in global emissions. Doesn’t matter what we do, what the US does, what the EU does.

Now I am not an advocate of New Zealand breaking away from the rest of the OECD, and saying we refuse to do anything, unless China comes to the party. We are too small to do that, without the risk of repercussions. But we should shy away from any emission reduction measures that significantly reduce economic growth, and focus mainly on improving technology.

China may change its stance over time – perhaps in ten years or so, if there has been clear evidence of rapidly rising sea levels for example. But for the next decade, global emissions will increase beyond doubt.

This week’s Dispatch from St Johnnysburg, at NBR, is titled “The summer the tide went out on global warming”.

It is one of my longer columns – 1,300 words, and I think a good summary of the political climate around this issue, such as China and India now refusing to even sign the non binding Copenhagen Accord. A couple of extracts:

I believe the chance of there being a post-Kyoto agreement in the next five years or so to now be minimal. In reaching this conclusion, I look at recent reports of opinion within Governments, then the public and finally what it may mean for the NZ Government. …

The loss of the Massachusetts Senate seat has been a clear message to the Government to focus on the economy and jobs. This is reflected in a Pew Research poll on priorities for 2010. Citizens were polled on 21 potential priorities, and asked for each issue whether it should be a top priority. The three top issues were the economy, jobs and terrorism – all at over 80%. The very bottom issue, of all 21 issues, was climate change at 28%. Three years ago it was at 38%, so has been declining every year. Amongst the all important “Independent” voters, it is bottom ranked at 25%,

My conclusion, focused on what it means for New Zealand, is somewhat provocative.

Many readers will have seen by now reports of the correction by the IPCC, retracting the claim in the 2007 4th report that the Himalayan glaciers may have 80% melted by 2035. The IPCC report said:

“Glaciers in the Himalaya are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high if the Earth keeps warming at the current rate. Its total area will likely shrink from the present 500,000 to 100,000 km2 by the year 2035.”

Now one error doesn’t negate the proposition that if you keep increasing greenhouse gases, it will place upward pressure on temperatures. But what the error does do is allow us to understand better how rigorous, or not, the IPCC reports are. You see there was not just one error, but three, in that paragraph:

1. The 2035 date is absolute nonsense, and was either made up or was 2350 transposed.
2. The rate of receding by the Himalayan glaciers are not in fact receding faster than anywhere else in the world.
3. The size of the Himalayan glaciers is around 1/15th of 500,000 square kms – 33,000 square km.

So what does this tell us about IPCC processes:

1. An assertion made by a single scientist in a phone conversation in 1999 is deemed credible enough to make the IPCC report (even outting aisde whether the assertion is true).
2. No one in the IPCC applied a common sense test to the claim, that there is no way the Himalayan glaciers would be mainly melted in under 30 years – something that would require an 18 degree c warming in 30 years.
3. An obviously incorrect assertion can remain in an IPCC report for around three years before it is retracted.
4. No one in the IPCC fact checked whether Himalayan receding was in fact faster or not than aothe rglaciers.
5. No one in the IPCC face checked the size of the Himalayan glaciers, despite them being out by a factor of 15.
6. That when someone attacks an aspect of an IPCC report, the Chairman labels your attack as “voodoo science”, even though you were in fact correct.

To my mind this casts more doubt on “the science is settled” than the Climategate e-mails. It just points to a process where any assertion that was supportive was included, without checking.

Now again, for me this doesn’t change my basic viewpoint that there is a link between increased levels of greenhouse gases and upwards pressure on temperatures (other factors can exert downward pressure).  But it certainly changes my view as to the robustness of the IPCC reports, and when they publish their 5th report, they’d better display a far higher level of basic competence, if they want policy makers to place much reliance on it.

Poneke has done something very few people have done. He has read every single of the 1,000+ Climategate e-mails. He has a lengthy 4,500 word blog post on his findings. Poneke introduces it by saying:

This is the longest and most important article I’ve yet written for this blog and I make no apology for its 4600 words — more also than in any newspaper article. As a journalist, I believe the Climategate emails have exposed one of the most significant news stories of the decade. As the mainstream news media has so far barely gone beyond giving those who wrote them and their supporters time and space to deny their undeniable contents, I present here an extensive journalistic account of what they actually say in the context of the dates and events in which they were written, with full links to all the emails.

Now, for those who don’t know who Poneke is, or his background – he is not just a “blogger”. He has spent at least a couple of decades in journalism, and I think it is fair to say that he was regarded by many as one of the finest investigative journalists we have had. His work on the Peter Ellis case especially was peerless.

Poneke’s conclusions:

Having now read all the Climategate emails, I can conclusively say they demonstrate a level of scientific chicanery of the most appalling kind that deserves the widest possible public exposure.

The emails reveal that the entire global warming debate and the IPCC process is controlled by a small cabal of climate specialists in England and North America. This cabal, who call themselves “the Team,” bully and smear any critics. They control the “peer review” process for research in the field and use their power to prevent contrary research being published.

The Team’s members are the heart of the IPCC process, many of them the lead authors of its reports.

They falsely claim there is a scientific “consensus” that the “science is settled,” by getting lists of scientists to sign petitions claiming there is such a consensus. They have fought for years to conceal the actual shonky data they have used to wrongly claim there has been unprecedented global warming this past 50 years. Their emailed discussions among each other show they have concocted their data by matching analyses of tree rings from around 1000 AD to 1960, then actual temperatures from 1960 to make it look temperatures have shot up alarmingly since then, after the tree rings from 1960 on inconveniently failed to match observed temperatures.

The emails show that some of them at least concede in private that the world was warmer 1000 years ago (in the Medieval Warm Period) than it is today, but the emails also show they had to get rid of the MWP from the records to claim today’s temperatures are unprecedented.

They show Team members becoming alarmed and despondent at global temperatures peaking in 1998, then slowly falling to the present, while publicly trying to hide the fact that there was a peak and now a decline.

Revealingly, they show them even smugly nominating each other for prestigious awards, using factually wrong details in the information sent in nominating letters in support of the awards.

He looks at the peer review process:

AGWarmers parrot the mantra that their view is supported by learned articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals and that peer-reviewed contrary views cannot be found. The Climategate emails conclusively show that the Team control the peer-reviewed literature, to the extent they “peer review” each other’s reports, and veto publication of research they do not support, bullying the editors and owners of scientific journals.

Worse, though, is the emails’ revelation that even material they put into the hallowed reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was not peer reviewed, and knowingly shabby.

And the “hide the decline” trick:

What this is saying – and no amount of obfuscation can alter the fact – is that a 1000-year “global temperature” chart was created – fabricated – by using tree-ring proxy data from 1000 to 1960, then using actual temperatures from 1961 on, to “hide” the fact that the tree ring proxies showed a “decline” from 1960 onwards. There can not be a more blatant example of using apples and oranges to “prove” a point than this, and they would have got away with it if not for the Climategate whistleblower.

Poneke’s full post is a must read.  It is also the sort of journalism that should be in the mainstream media. Has any daily newspaper assigned a reporter to read all 1,000 e-mails?