Kiwiblog

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?

A fascinating article in The Guardian, which I saw tweeted by Public Address. It is from someone in the room with the Heads of Govt, and makes it very clear China went out of their way to sabotage the Copenhagen conference. The title is:

How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room

As recriminations fly post-Copenhagen, one writer offers a fly-on-the-wall account of how talks failed

And then the article:

Copenhagen was a disaster. That much is agreed. But the truth about what actually happened is in danger of being lost amid the spin and inevitable mutual recriminations. The truth is this: China wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Barack Obama, and insisted on an awful “deal” so western leaders would walk away carrying the blame. How do I know this? Because I was in the room and saw it happen.

China’s strategy was simple: block the open negotiations for two weeks, and then ensure that the closed-door deal made it look as if the west had failed the world’s poor once again. And sure enough, the aid agencies, civil society movements and environmental groups all took the bait. The failure was “the inevitable result of rich countries refusing adequately and fairly to shoulder their overwhelming responsibility”, said Christian Aid. “Rich countries have bullied developing nations,” fumed Friends of the Earth International.

This says a lot about the so called environmental NGOs that fell for China’s trick hook line and sinker. They are so anti-west that they don’t know what to do, when it is not the West’s fault.

All very predictable, but the complete opposite of the truth. Even George Monbiot, writing in yesterday’s Guardian, made the mistake of singly blaming Obama. But I saw Obama fighting desperately to salvage a deal, and the Chinese delegate saying “no”, over and over again. Monbiot even approvingly quoted the Sudanese delegate Lumumba Di-Aping, who denounced the Copenhagen accord as “a suicide pact, an incineration pact, in order to maintain the economic dominance of a few countries”.

Sudan behaves at the talks as a puppet of China; one of a number of countries that relieves the Chinese delegation of having to fight its battles in open sessions. It was a perfect stitch-up. China gutted the deal behind the scenes, and then left its proxies to savage it in public.

Yes China controls a few Governments by blocking UN Security Council action against them.

What I saw was profoundly shocking. The Chinese premier, Wen Jinbao, did not deign to attend the meetings personally, instead sending a second-tier official in the country’s foreign ministry to sit opposite Obama himself. The diplomatic snub was obvious and brutal, as was the practical implication: several times during the session, the world’s most powerful heads of state were forced to wait around as the Chinese delegate went off to make telephone calls to his “superiors”.

This wasn’t even the Minister of Foreign Affairs. It was someone with no ability to decide anything at all.

To those who would blame Obama and rich countries in general, know this: it was China’s representative who insisted that industrialised country targets, previously agreed as an 80% cut by 2050, be taken out of the deal. “Why can’t we even mention our own targets?” demanded a furious Angela Merkel. Australia’s prime minister, Kevin Rudd, was annoyed enough to bang his microphone. Brazil’s representative too pointed out the illogicality of China’s position. Why should rich countries not announce even this unilateral cut? The Chinese delegate said no, and I watched, aghast, as Merkel threw up her hands in despair and conceded the point. Now we know why – because China bet, correctly, that Obama would get the blame for the Copenhagen accord’s lack of ambition.

China, backed at times by India, then proceeded to take out all the numbers that mattered. A 2020 peaking year in global emissions, essential to restrain temperatures to 2C, was removed and replaced by woolly language suggesting that emissions should peak “as soon as possible”. The long-term target, of global 50% cuts by 2050, was also excised. No one else, perhaps with the exceptions of India and Saudi Arabia, wanted this to happen. I am certain that had the Chinese not been in the room, we would have left Copenhagen with a deal that had environmentalists popping champagne corks popping in every corner of the world.

Now will we hear this from Greenpeace, or even the Greens? Of course one could do a deal without China, but it would be pointless as their emissions growth would dwarf any reductions the rest of the world manages.

Obama needed to be able to demonstrate to the Senate that he could deliver China in any global climate regulation framework, so conservative senators could not argue that US carbon cuts would further advantage Chinese industry. With midterm elections looming, Obama and his staff also knew that Copenhagen would be probably their only opportunity to go to climate change talks with a strong mandate. This further strengthened China’s negotiating hand, as did the complete lack of civil society political pressure on either China or India. Campaign groups never blame developing countries for failure; this is an iron rule that is never broken. The Indians, in particular, have become past masters at co-opting the language of equity (“equal rights to the atmosphere”) in the service of planetary suicide – and leftish campaigners and commentators are hoist with their own petard.

This article from Mark Lynas, should be carried in every newspaper that has covered Copenhagen.

Copenhagen was much worse than just another bad deal, because it illustrated a profound shift in global geopolitics. This is fast becoming China’s century, yet its leadership has displayed that multilateral environmental governance is not only not a priority, but is viewed as a hindrance to the new superpower’s freedom of action. I left Copenhagen more despondent than I have felt in a long time. After all the hope and all the hype, the mobilisation of thousands, a wave of optimism crashed against the rock of global power politics, fell back, and drained away.

I suspect this article is going to be quite catalytic, and may lead to a trade backlash against China. Time will tell.

John Key is quoted in the Herald:

Prime Minister John Key returns home this morning from the Copenhagen climate change conference saying a binding agreement could be concluded in Mexico next year but that the negotiating process has to change.

“It’s progress, but there is a lot more to be done if we are going to achieve the outcome that we need,” he said last night from Los Angeles.

“There is a lesson to come out of Copenhagen and that is that trying to build uniform consensus across 193 countries on such a complex issue is not going to work. It is not the right process.” …

“Small countries like Bolivia and Sudan can jump up and down and stamp their feet but they are irrelevant when it comes to solving the challenge of climate change.

There would be no credible response to climate change without the United States and China, coupled with Brazil, India, South Africa and the European Union, the PM said.

Anyone country can veto a line in the agreement under UN rules. This makes agreement painstakingly slow.

As an example, at ICANN meetings you have meetings of the ccTLD managers (ccNSO) and also of the Governments (GAC). In the ccNSO the comminque is usually drafted by two or three of us over a beer, and circulated the next day, and approved basically within 10 minutes.

The GAC will usually spend most of their final day just approving their communique.

The PM is making a similiar point (by coincidence) to the one I made about who are the countries that make up 80% of the emissions. There are only about 20 of them (less if you take the EU as one bloc), and really you just need to get them in a room and get an agreement. The ask the rest of the world to vote to adopt it or not.

They’d be better to remove the negotiations from the UN, and give them to say the G20. The G20 includes 17 of the 20 biggest emitters – only ones left out are Iran, Spain and the Ukraine.

Fran thinks big:

Instead of tilting at windmills, the dairy industry should think big.

If cows are housed indoors for much of the time, their poop can easily be captured for commercial biogas.

And while they are about it, why not invent a gas exchange system to extract methane from the air inside cowsheds.

We could even follow the Swedes and run a railway on biogas produced from digesting the parts of cows that usually get discarded at slaughterhouses to extract residual methane.

The big upshot is our tourism industry will also be protected. And I will get my fishing back.

Is this genius or lunacy? Or both?

As the Copenhagen summit looks like ending with no agreement, around the only substantial achievement (to date) was the launch of the Global Research Alliance on agriculture greenhouse gases.

This is hugely important both for NZ and internationally.

The importance for NZ is it could help find a way to reduce methane emissions from livestock, which would save the country billions in reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.

The importance for the world is to avoid what happened with biofuels – that food producing land is converted into other uses, leading to global food shortages.

So it is one of those rare initiatives that almost everyone from business lobby groups to the most hardened Greenie supports. And kudos to Tim Groser and others for getting 20 countries to all pledge funding to it – from Australia to Vietnam to the US. Much better than NZ funding all the research,

Back in NZ, it won support from the Wgtn Chamber of Commerce (no fan of an ETS):

“The reality is that rather than the current proliferation of poorly designed cap and trade systems, science and technology are the real keys to solving the greenhouse gas emissions challenge, and this initiative plays to New Zealand’s research strengths,” said Chamber CEO Charles Finny. …

“This is a good example of trans-national cooperation with a number of countries pooling their expertise to solve a global problem. New Zealand going it alone would be less likely to produce results and it runs against the grain of what this global issue is all about.

“It is increasingly likely that this will be one of the few concrete initiatives to come from Copenhagen and so John Key and Tim Groser deserve full congratulations for the leadership they have shown in delivering this outcome,” Mr Finny concluded.

So business likes it. And what about the Greens. Well this is Kennedy Graham:

Minister Tim Groser advised that, on Day 1, some US$150 m. had been pledged, and it was hoped that this would leverage private funding as well.  But he stressed that it was not just a question of finance – the essence was coordination, of research already underway and new research yet to be funded.  France, for example, already has some 500 researchers in agriculture and climate change who would form part of the Alliance.  India’s contribution would be immense as well.  Once the political momentum was underway, it was important to turn it over to the scientists.

Denmark gave the most impressive example of the potential of the Alliance. Since 1990 it had increased agricultural production by 16% yet agricultural emissions had dropped by 23%.   This had been achieved through optimisation of the nutrient chain and improving water management. …

We should take a positive view of this initiative.

And Jeanette Fitzsimons said:

The Green Party today welcomed the announcement that New Zealand will lead a Global Research Alliance for reducing climate change emissions from agriculture, adding that it is crucial to pursue science and ideas that enhance our clean green reputation.

“I am delighted that New Zealand is finally doing something serious about fighting climate change and reducing agricultural emissions,” said Green Party Climate Change and Agriculture spokesperson Jeanette Fitzsimons. …

So New Zealand has achieved around the only positive announcement from Copenhagen, with an initiative that pleases both ETS sceptical businesses and the Greens. So who does that leave?

Labour’s Charles Chauvel. In a bizarre press release (one which Clark would have called treasonous if she was still PM) he has attacked the Global Alliance claiming NZ should have gone it alone:

“The multinational nature of the Global Agriculture Fund will inevitably mean that New Zealand won’t own the results of any research paid for by it.

“So, as well as there being substantially less money for investment in the reduction of emissions from agriculture, New Zealand will be poorer because we lose the opportunity to sell or share emissions reduction technology in our singular area of expertise on our own terms.

“Despite the self-generated fanfare and bright lights, National’s approach represents a failure. It totally lacks ambition and is a huge missed opportunity for New Zealand,” Charles Chauvel said.

Yes Chauvel thinks NZ could have solved the problem all by itself. He also misrepresents intellectual property laws (being pat of a multilateral alliance does not mean individual institutions abandon intellectual property rights over their inventions). It is a shockingly stupid stance.

In Opposition, there are times when mindless opposition just for the sake of a press release is a bad idea. As the Greens show, there are times you can say this is a good initiative – even if we don;t like the other things you are doing.

I wonder what Phil Goff, a respected former foreign and trade minister, thinks of his MPs claim NZ should not have helped set up the global research alliance, and gone it alone? I can’t imagine he possibly agrees.

Many people know of the 80/20 rule. It is used in many situations. One of them is an adage about how you can fix 80% of the problem easily, and the last 20% with much more difficulty.

This got me thinking about reducing greenhouse gas emissions. There are 150 countries at Copenhagen, and in theory all of them have to agree. But in reality the countries that are the biggest emitters really matter – the ones who make up 80% of emissions. Without them, no agreement will work. While if they do agree, what the rest of the world wants or does not want is of little moment. That is not to say that you do not want as many parties as possible agreeing, but those who make up 80% are the key ones.

So who are they. Well based on CO2 emissions, you only need 20 countries to make up 80% of emissions. They are:

The top six make up 60%, and the top 20, 80%.

The Associated Press has had five staff go through all 1,073 stolen e-mails. Their conclusion is:

Emails stolen from climate scientists show they stonewalled sceptics and discussed hiding data – but the messages don’t support claims that the science of global warming was faked, according to an exhaustive review by Associated Press.

I don’t think there was a global conspiracy on climate change, any more than I think there was a conspiracy around the 9/11 attacks.

However enough was revealed in the e-mails, to ring some warning bells that some leading scientists have acted improperly. Some extracts from the lengthy article:

The scientists were so convinced by their own science and so driven by a cause “that unless you’re with them, you’re against them”, said Mark Frankel, director of scientific freedom, responsibility and law at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He also reviewed the communications.

Frankel saw “no evidence of falsification or fabrication of data, although concerns could be raised about some instances of very ‘generous interpretations’.”

My worry is that there is now a mindset where only data that fits the thesis is considered.

One of the most disturbing elements suggests an effort to avoid sharing scientific data with critics sceptical of global warming. It is not clear if any data were destroyed; two United States researchers denied it. The emails show that several mainstream scientists repeatedly suggested keeping their research materials away from opponents who sought it under American and British public records law. It raises a science ethics question because free access to data is important so others can repeat experiments as part of the scientific method. The University of East Anglia is investigating the blocking of information requests.

The issue is not just whether data was destroyed, but also whether one can have any confidence in those scientists who proposed it.

When Climate Research published a sceptical study, Mann discussed retribution this way: “Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal.”

That brings in a new meaning of peer-reviewed.

Most readers will know that NZ’s emissions target for 2020 is between 10% and 20% below 1990 levels. Greenpeace and others have run a campaign demanding it be at least 40%, despite the fact it would mean shooting (or killing off by some means) at least 20% of our dairy herd.

Most analysis of targets for a country are facile, and do not take account of the conditions in each country such as the profile of the emissions, how possible is it to reduce them, what has happened since 1990, population growth etc etc.

A great example of the superficial approach is the Climate Action Network zealots who have today declared that NZ given NZ a third place for “fossil of the day” because the Government refuses to unilaterally agree to a higher reduction target. The media will report this was huge column cms and broadcast time.

What they will not report to the same degree is the work of the Climate Action Tracker that has done detailed assessments of each developed country, based on multiple factors. The Greenhouse Policy Coalition drew attention to their work earlier this week.

They rate 49 countries (27 EU countries are rated as a group), and NZ is actually rated 10th highest in terms of the commitment made. I’ve put in brackets what their share of global CO2 emissions is. The top ten are

1. Costa Rica (0.3%)
2. Maldives (<0.1%)
3. Brazil (1.2%)
4. Japan (4.6%)
5. Norway (0.2%)
6. Iceland (<0.1%)
7. India (5.3%)
8. Indonesia (1.2%)
9. Mexico (1.6%)
10. New Zealand (0.1%)

The bottom ten are:

1. United States (20.2%)
2. Ukraine (1.1%)
3. South Africa (1.5%)
4. Russia (5.5%)
5. EU27 (13.8%)
6. Croatia (0.1%)
7. China (21.5%)
8. Canada (1.9%)
9. Belarus (0.2%)
10. Australia (1.3%)

Now I believe New Zealand (being one of the smallest countries) does have to make a reasonable commitment. It would be economic suicide to tell the rest of the world to fuck off, and declare we will do nothing.

But the current target of 10% to 20% is at the upper limit of what is achievable by 2020, and those calling for it to be higher are ignoring the evidence that it compares pretty favourably to most of the rest of the world.

Marty G at The Standard shows off his expert knowledge of Arctic polar bears, and declares this photo shows how climate change has turned polar bears into cannibals. He says:

This is climate change. This is just the beginning.

I have a terrible feeling that this picture is an omen of things to come.

Oh yes, next there will be cannibal geckos, cannibal crabs and worse.

Or one could talk to someone who actually lives in the area, as the Daily Mail did:

But this theory is disputed by Inuit leaders in Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, who claim it is wrong to connect the bears’ behaviour with starvation.

Kivalliqu Inuit Association president Jose Kusugak said: ‘It makes the south – southern people – look so ignorant.

Ignorant indeed. Unless you prefer Marty’s knowledge of polar bears to the local Unuit leader.

‘A male polar bear eating a cub becomes a big story and they try to marry it with climate change and so on, it becomes absurd when it’s a normal, normal occurrence.’

What a shame – it could have made a great film – revenage of the cannibal polar bears.

The Herald reports:

This year is likely to be among the 10 hottest years on record, early figures from the World Meteorological Organisation indicate.

As delegates gathered in Copenhagen for the second day of world climate negotiations, the WMO said average global temperatures from January to October placed 2009 about 0.44C above the long-term average – making it the fifth warmest year since instrumental climate records began in 1850.

The 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 1997, the WMO said.

The decade of the 2000s (2000-2009) was warmer than the 1990s, which were warmer than the 1980s.

I’ve been studying a fair bit of the raw data around average temperatures, and it is far more complex than one might assume, mainly because there is no actual way to calculate it, as the temperature varies every few kms. The spread of temperature stations is not even. In an ideal world you might have a measuring point every 100 square kms, but that is impossible.

That is why most of the data we read talks about the deviation from a long-term average. Because that doesn’t have to be spread evenly. If you use the same measuring place, you can accurately say the temperature at this point was higher in year x than the average of these years. And if you choose lots and lots of locations, and they are not hand picked to give you selected data, then it is fairly safe to say average temperatures are rising.

And that is fairly uncontroversial. Even amongst “skeptics” few people are saying the average temperature is not warmer. There is some talk of whether it has warmed since 1998, but that is useful to view in context.

The above graph I have created myself using the raw data on the web from three sources – the US National Climatic Data Centre (holds the world’s largest collection of climate data – they have 1.2 PB of digital data), NASA and the UK Met Office (the infamous Hadley).

Each centre compares to a different “average” period. The US NCDC compares to the century 1901 – 2000. NASA compares to the period 1951 – 1980 and the UK Met Office to 1961 to 1990.

They all show much the same direction, but not to the same magnitude. This is what one would expect. The graph does put post 1998 in context somewhat. 1998 was a very high year, and there is still an upwards trend – even if it has not yet exceeded 1998. The 2009 data is based on te monthly data for the first ten months of the year.

In yesterday’s thread there was a very good comment by Ben:

Global warming from GG emissions is the sum of two parts. First, a direct warming effect: a doubling of CO2 adds 1 to 1.5C to temperatures. No controversy there. But to get warming beyond that requires a second effect, positive net climate feedbacks, and the science on both the sign and magnitude of feedbacks is completely up in the air. About 80% of the IPCC’s 6.4C maximum warming depends on large positive feedbacks, which are completely unknown. It is not yet clear whether clouds and water vapor damp or add to underlying variation.

So there is consensus on direct effects, but on feedbacks, none at all.

I am not a scientist. But it is basic science that more greenhouse gases will increase temperature, if everything else remains constant. Ben says (I have not checked) that a doubling adds 1.5C. This is (as I understand it) uncontroversial and not disputed. This means that an option of do nothing is not particularly wise.

There is debate over whether there is “positive feedback” or not, and to what extent. Most scientists say there is, but this is not a case of something proven beyond dispute – it is based on models.

I have tended to take the formal IPCC reports as the most likely scenario. The stolen e-mails have damaged some of the credibility of IPCC processes – especially the boasting about making sure certain dissenting opinions are kept out. That really has rung some warning bells.

However even if one doubts this projections in terms of positive feedback, it is worth remembering there is really no doubt over the direct effects.

Where I think the debate should really be, is how much one spends on mitigation instead of adaptation. I do have real doubts that spending a trillion dollars or so globally on mitigation is sensible. Spending on adaptation may well be a better spend. However it is not quite a case of either/or but a mixture of both. Spending nothing at all on mitigation (ie never decreasing emissions) will result in inevitable temperature increases that will make life difficult in the future. Now this may not be in the next 100 years, but in the next thousand.

I have little time for those who claim that the world is doomed if by Xmas Eve there is not a decision to reduce emissions to a certain level by 2020.

But likewise I have little time for those who say it is all a giant conspiracy, and there is no need to do anything at all. I hasten to say that even prominent sceptics such as Ian Wishart do not hold that view. Almost every sceptic I know, says they are sceptical about how fast the planet is warming, and how much of it is due to mankind. Very few say that there is no warming at all, and that greenhouse gases are not contributing to that.

The Dom Post editorial:

Last night, NZ time, representatives of 192 countries gathered in the Danish capital of Copenhagen for the start of a two-week conference devoted to global warming.

Depending on your point of view, the conference represents either a last chance for humanity to save the planet from a man-made apocalypse, or the culmination of a giant fraud.

If the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is to be believed, the planet is warming, sea levels are rising and humans are to blame. The panel, a United Nations body, is forecasting temperature rises of between 1.1 degrees celsius and 6.4C this century and sea-level rises of between 18 centimetres and 59cm – sufficient to cause drought and coastal flooding and render some island countries uninhabitable.

If the sceptics are to be believed, fluctuations in the planet’s temperature are normal and there is no conclusive proof that human activity is to blame for the changes in the past 50 years.

What I find interesting is that the editorial even mentions the views of sceptics. A few months ago, and I suspect it may not have.

Notwithstanding the recent publication of emails suggesting that some climate-change scientists have sought to suppress data that does not conform to their theories, the weight of scientific evidence is on the side of the climate-change believers.

However, even if the sceptics are eventually proved correct, it makes sense to take a precautionary approach. If the sceptics are right, the cost of reducing carbon emissions will be measured in lower standards of living. Consumers will have to pay more for electricity and fuel, goods will be more expensive and inhabitants of developed countries such as New Zealand will have to compensate inhabitants of poorer countries for reducing their use of the polluting technologies with which developed countries built their wealth. If the sceptics are wrong, the cost will be drought, famine, the destruction of productive land and, as an editorial published by 56 newspapers today says, the drowning of whole countries.

A fair point. However the projected increase in sea levels by 2100 is from 19 cm to 69 cm – not metres and metres.

The challenge facing negotiators is to find a formula that rich and poor countries can agree to. An agreement to which the world’s biggest emitters, China and the United States, are not party to is an agreement not worth the paper it is written on. So too is an agreement from which other developing countries exclude themselves.

Absolutely. At present NZ has a more ambitious target than both China and the US. No way should NZ agree to a higher target unless the big emitters do.

Now that John Key has announced he is going to Copenhagen, has Lucy Lawless handed over the cheque for $5,000 to cover his airfares?

I think Treasury should send someone over to Greenpeace to collect the money.

The Herald reports:

The chief of a British research centre caught in a storm of controversy over claims that he and others suppressed data about climate change has stepped down pending an investigation, the University of East Anglia said.

The university said that Phil Jones, whose emails were among the thousands of pieces of correspondence leaked to the internet late last month, would relinquish his position as director of the Climatic Research Unit until the completion of an independent review.

The stolen e-mails do not prove a global conspiracy to fake data, but they do show that several leading climate change scientists have developed a siege mentality, where they see all criticism as invalid, and will go out of their way to denigrate and obfuscate those they disagree with.

Andrew Bolt quotes Lord Monckton’s take on the e-mails.

Some blogs have run a story that local NIWA data has been altered from the public data, but this has been easily explained by NIWA that what happened is their monitoring station moved from Wellington Airport to Kelburn, so the back series of data was adjusted to take account of the average difference between the two sites.

What NIWA did was absolutely correct in my opinion, and I have no issues with their professionalism. However the problem is that some of their peers overseas have had e-mails about changing data to make the case that temperatures are rising, and this rightly makes those sceptical even more sceptical. Trying to pretend the stolen e-mails are of no consequence is not going to work.

While some of the e-mails are benign, very dated, or out of context – there are some that quite appalling – especially references to keeping non supporting research out of the IPCC. It is hard to see how the author of that e-mail can remain involved with IPCC work in future.

UPDATE: Heh love this cartoon from Clint Heine:

Barack Obama has said the US will wim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 17% by 2020, but this is 17% on their 2005 levels, not 1990 levels.

The growth from 1990 to 2005 has been around 17%, so in fact their target is to be around the same as in 1990 – a 0% change.

Now bear in mind the Greens have got hysterical because NZ has *only* pledged a 10% to 20% reduction on 1990 levels. Obama’s target makes NZ’s target seem wildly ambitious, not bottom of the pack.