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Report from COP-9 – December 9, 2003

by William Yeatman on December 8, 2003

in Kyoto Negotiations

Milan — A fresh breeze blew into Milan today, but it didn’t reach the COP-9 meeting at the Fiera Milano or Milan Trade Fair. At a seminar organized by Francesco Ramella and held downtown near the great cathedral or Duomo, Fred Singer and other climate scientists made a strong case for anti-alarmism. Dr. Singer showed why there is little reliable evidence that the climate has warmed since 1940 and much better evidence that it has not warmed appreciably. Dr. Willie Soon explained why climate models are still no better than palmistry for predicting future climate. Dr. Gerd Weber from Germany compared the inputs into the climate models used by the IPCC with the actual recent data. If the models use phony inputs, it should not be surprising that they produce phony outputs. It is a sad comment on the official establishment that they dismiss such analyses, when anyone with minimal scientific understanding can see they are true. In addition, Franceso Ramalla and Carlo Stagnaro of the Bruno Leoni Institute made a compelling econimic case against the Kyoto Protocol. The costs simply outweigh the benefits many times over. Professor Gerelli gave an excellent analysis of the psychology and sociology of the alarmist community and why these fantasies arise and persist in modern culture.

As pleasant as it was to get away, it meant that I missed an important side event–the discussion sponsored by the Swedish government on gender equity and climate change. I guess global warming is supposed to affect men and women and transgender beings differently, but now I’ll never know how unless they publish the transcript. Perhaps it has something to do with wearing fewer clothes.

I did attend a side event on “Negotiating Post-Kyoto: a Bridge Too Far”, in which a high-level panel discussed what to do next now that Kyoto is not working out as well as expected. There are a number of side events on this topic during the week, so I think I will put off reprting on this one and instead summarize what I have learned after attending several of the others. In short, the forces od darkness are gloomy and depressed, but they are not giving up and indeed are making even more ambitious plans for turning out the lights all over the world.

(This report is being sent a day late because of technological difficulties, but since there is little news from COP-9, but a fair amount of amusement, I hope it is not too dated.)

Report from COP-9 – December 8, 2003

by William Yeatman on December 7, 2003

in Kyoto Negotiations

Milan — At the COP-9 meeting today in Milan, the World Wildlife Fund held a side event on “probems and perspectives” with Russian ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. The speaker from WWF Russia said that ratification by Russia was being delayed because of misunderstandings. Russians did not know that the protocol was only in effect for four years, required no obligations by industry or business, and carried no financial penalties for non-compliance. Once these misunderstandings were cleared up, then Russia would ratify the protocol. In other words, he seemed to be saying that it was in a country’s best interests to ratify Kyoto if it was completely meaningless. As long as we pretend that Kyoto ends in 2012 with no further compliance periods with increasingly lower limits for CO2 emissions, I guess this makes a wacky sort of sense.

The Intergovernmetal Panel on Climate Change today sent out a press release attacking Ian Castles and David Henderson (hereafter C and H). C and H have produced a devastating critique of the IPCC’s projections of future temperatures that were produced by an ad hoc committee called SRES. C and H have shown that the SRES committee came up with the scary predictions of up to a 10 degree F rise in the global mean temperature by using ludicrously unrealistic scenarios. For example, the most extreme SRES scenario assumes rapid global population growth, rapid economic growth by poor countries so that they surpass US GDP, and no change in energy technologies (a Brezhnev-ian future of stasis). In particular, C and H showed that the SRES committee underestimated current economic output in poor countries by comparing GDPs by using currency conversion rather than the usual purchasing power parity conversion. A member of SRES told me that the committee was created and charged with coming up with scarier predictions as a result of pressure from the Clinton administration and that he and other members were aware that their scenarios were based on implausible assumptions.

The IPCC press release accuses C and H of spreading disinformation and attacks them personally as “so-called ‘independent commentators'”. The attack on Castles goes further. “Mr. Ian Castles is a member of the Lavoisier Group, a group founded in Australia, whose sole mission is to opposes anything that aims to protect the environment.” As a good friend of the great Australian who founded Lavoisier, Ray Evans, I can attest to the monstrous falseness of this statement. The Lavoisier Society has done outstanding work opposing the Kyoto Protocol and opposing the environmental movement’s anti-environment agenda. I asked Harlan Watson, senior climate negotiator for the U S State Department at a briefing for NGOs about the IPCC press release. He said that it was “intemperate and inappropriate” and that I could quote him on it.

A short time later at a wine and cheese reception after a briefing by NGOs, I introduced myself to one of the speakersn Dr. Rajendra K Pachaurin chairman of the IPCC and asked him about the press release. He was not apologetic or defensive at all. He said that C and H were not competent to assess the IPCC’s scenarios. And as for my complaint about the ad hominem attack on C and H, Pachauri replied that the only personal attack was saying that Castles was a member of Lavoisier, which did oppose protecting the environment. Further discussion revealed that Pachauri equates opposing environmental groups with beong anti-environment. By the way, Castles is former Chief Statistician of the Australian Government, and Henderson is former chief economist for the OECD and also a high-ranking official at the World Bank (two notorious right-wing fringe groups).

Japanese Carbon Tax Faces Stiff Opposition; European Auto Makers Set to Miss CO2 Reduction Targets; Environmental Group Looks to

by William Yeatman on December 2, 2003

in Kyoto Negotiations

Japanese Carbon Tax Faces Stiff Opposition

Nippon Keidanren (the Japan Business Federation) told Japan s Environment Ministry on November 18 that a carbon tax would harm the countrys economy.

Keidanren chairman Hiroshi Okuda expressed his concerns at a meeting with Environment Minister Yuriko Koike, claiming that the tax would hollow out industry and put a damper on the recovering economy (Japan Times, Nov. 19).

The Japanese governments position had been that it would meet its Kyoto targets through voluntary measures only, but concern that not enough progress was being made led them to propose the tax on importers and processors of fossil fuels. The Japan Times wrote that, Since the proposal, the Ministry has been trying to gain acceptance from business, but opposition to the tax seems to have no end.

The Environment Ministry reacted angrily, with Vice Environment Minister Shigeru Sumitami asking reporters, If Keidanren officials say they cannot accept the proposed tax, what other steps would they come up with to achieve the goals set in the Kyoto Protocol? Sumitami also reacted incredulously to the groups claim that Japan can significantly reduce its emissions through technology. He asked, Do they believe they can really make it only through such measures?

European Auto Makers Set to Miss CO2 Reduction Targets

According to a report in Automotive News Europe (Nov. 17), European car makers are unlikely to meet their voluntary target of cutting CO2 emissions significantly by 2012.

ACEA, the European carmakers association, had pledged in 1998 to reduce the new car fleet emissions average in 2008 by 25 percent from 1995 levels, to 140 grams of CO2 per kilometer, with a further reduction to 120 g/km by 2012.

Monitoring figures to be released in December, however, are said to show that 2002 emissions averaged 165 g/km, up slightly from the 2001 figure of 164 g/km. Carmakers blame their consumers for preferring SUVs. They also claim that, Cars have also become heavier and less fuel-efficient as more equipment is added to meet safety regulations.

ACEA chairman Louis Schweizer, also the CEO of Renault, admitted that meeting the 2008 commitment would be tough and that the 2012 target was no longer practical.

Schweizer also admitted that the reductions made to date were largely a result of the unexpected surge in demand in the late 1990s for diesel cars, which use less fuel per kilometer. As a result, PSA/Peugeot-Citroen, a major force in automotive diesel technology, will probably be the only European carmaker to meet the 2008 requirement.

Reacting to the news, European Union officials ruled out sanctions against the manufacturers and suggested instead that the EU may encourage member governments to offer tax incentives aimed at persuading consumers to buy greener cars.

Environmental Group Looks to Future without Kyoto

The World Resources Institute has suggested that the COP-9 meeting of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change could reflect a growing number of regional groups committed to forging their own paths toward emissions control. The suggestion follows the realization that the Kyoto Protocol is unlikely to be ratified soon.

WRI expert Jonathan Pershing told reporters that a so-called coalition of the willing made up of members of the EU and a growing number of developing nations could go ahead with the Kyoto protocol regardless. This group is likely to set a target of ensuring that global temperatures average out to an increase of no more than 2 degrees Celsius.

Pershing observed that this unilateralism would change the framework for future talks, creating a funny institutional process, with countries moving away from the UN negotiating system.

The WRI analyst also predicted that the New Partnership for Africas Development could look at creating its own guidelines on climate change, while Asian nations could also form a group which has common cause about Asian problems meeting in an individual set area and not following the global route. He also suggested that NAFTA may operate as a bloc instead of joining the UN system.

Pershing said he expected the coalition of the willing to make a formal ministerial announcement during the opening days of the Milan meeting, but also expressed extreme uncertainty over whether the group could rescue Kyoto as a result.

Energy Departments Proposal Omits Transferable Credits; Is COP-9 the Beginning of the End for Kyoto?; Russian Emissions Rising R

by William Yeatman on December 2, 2003

in Kyoto Negotiations, Politics

Energy Departments Proposal Omits Transferable Credits

On November 26, the Department of Energy unveiled its long-awaited proposals to enhance the Voluntary Reporting of Greenhouse Gases Program, established under Section 1605 (b) of the 1992 Energy Policy Act. In a major surprise, the proposed enhancements do not include awarding transferable credits for voluntary reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

President George W. Bush directed the Energy Department in his February 14, 2002 speech on climate policy to make the voluntary registry more accurate, reliable, and verifiable. All signs suggested that DOE intended to include transferable credits in its package. DOE does propose that company executives be required to attest to the accuracy of claimed emissions reductions. Also, reductions cannot be claimed when caused by production declines.

The lack of any crediting scheme in DOEs proposal is a major victory for friends of affordable energy, said Marlo Lewis, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Lewis assembled a coalition of non-profit groups, including many members of the Cooler Heads Coalition, in opposition to any crediting program.

Lewis and his coalition questioned whether DOE had legal authority to award credits for emissions reductions and argued that early-action credits would create the institutional framework and lobbying incentives for Kyoto-style cap-and-trade policies.

The proposals are available online at http://www.pi.energy.gov/enhancingGHGregistry/proposedguidelines/generalguidelines.html . There is a sixty-day public comment period and a stakeholder workshop in January. Comments may be sent to 1605bgeneralguidelines@hq.doe.gov .

Is COP-9 the Beginning of the End for Kyoto?

The ninth Conference of the Parties (COP-9) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change opened in Milan, Italy on December 1 amid increasing doubts that the Kyoto Protocol will ever go into force.

While the usual array of hundreds of meetings, events, and sideshows will be offered, the private talks between government ministers and UNFCCC officials are likely to be largely about how to keep the process (of moving the world toward an energy-rationing regime) going without the protocol.

Both the United States and Russia threw cold water on the hopes of Kyoto s supporters as COP-9 began. From Moscow , Reuters reported on December 2 that President Vladimir Putins top economic adviser, Andrei Illarionov, said, Of course, in its current form, this protocol cannot be ratified. It’s impossible to undertake responsibilities that place serious limits on the country’s growth.

In a Financial Times op-ed (Dec. 1), U. S. Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs, Paula Dobriansky, wrote, ( Kyoto is) an unrealistic and ever-tightening regulatory straitjacket, curtailing energy consumption.

On the other hand, sources have told Cooler Heads that the European Union and Japan are putting strong pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to ratify the protocol and thereby bring it into force.

Several leading alarmist officials and NGOs have already made suggestions about what to do when and if Kyoto collapses (see the third story in Economics section for one example). The ideas put forward so far cover a wide range, which suggests that it might take some time agree on future steps. COP-9 continues until December 12, with government ministers scheduled to arrive on December 10.

US Official Rejects Any New Kyoto-Style Treaty

Dr. Harlan Watson, senior climate negotiator at the State Department, told journalists in Paris on November 14 that the United States would not back any new proposal to curb greenhouse gas emissions if it resembled the Kyoto Protocol.

Its going to be very difficult for the United States to get back to a Kyoto-type (agreement) because it has a rigid target and timetable agreement (for emissions cuts), Watson was reported as saying by Agence France Presse. He continued, For the foreseeable future, anyway, the United States would not be particularly pleased with the Kyoto framework. We think that there are basic difficulties, [and] there are also some operational difficulties.

The United States is on course to exceed 1990 emissions levels by 30 percent by 2012. Under the Kyoto agreement, it would have had to reduce emissions to 7 percent below 1990 levels.

Russian Emissions Rising Rapidly

According to an article in Canada s National Post (Nov. 13), Russian carbon dioxide emissions may be much higher than anticipated.

Part of the reason given by Russian officials for putting off ratification of the Kyoto Protocol was the projection that meeting President Putins target of doubling GDP by 2010 would entail exceeding the countrys Kyoto targets by that date. According to the Post, Russian emissions may be greater even than those projections.

The paper quotes Alexander Nakhutin of the Institute of Global Climate and Ecology as finding that, since 1999, Russian greenhouse gas emissions have ballooned by as much as 13 percent annually.

It goes on, If Nakhutin’s projections are correct-and he is one of only a very few researchers with access to the best Russian industrial data-by the time the Kyoto treaty is due to be implemented in 2008, Russian carbon emissions will be 6 percent greater than they were in 1990, or 30 percent higher than originally envisioned.

Kyoto s plans for Russia require Russian emissions in 2008 to be 20 percent below 1990 levels. The entire edifice of carbon trading is based on this assumption. Can it work without Russia ? That’s the key question, Stephane Willems, a Russian greenhouse gas inventory specialist with the International Energy Agency in Paris , told the Post.

The article also quoted Richard Baron, a carbon-trading specialist with the OECD in Paris , who said that, If Russia’s emissions are not well below 1990 levels in 2008, the all-important carbon market will at the very least suffer a radical change in expectations.

The story also reveals how Nakhutins work may have contributed to Russia s seeming about-face on the Kyoto issue: According to Nakhutin, when Kremlin officials reviewing the case for Russian ratification got wind of his findings, they expressed worry, and demanded details. We have a full-scale carbon emission inventory underway right now, he says. The government wants this information for a decision on whether or not to ratify Kyoto .

As a result, the article concludes, Nakhutin’s results won’t be in for a while yet, but even so, enthusiasm for Kyoto in the Kremlin is fading fast.

CEI Drops Junk Science Lawsuit after White House Acknowledgement; Chinese Emissions Skyrocket; India Rejects Emissions Restricti

by William Yeatman on November 11, 2003

in Politics

CEI Drops Junk Science Lawsuit after White House Acknowledgement

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) has acknowledged that the National Assessment on Climate Change was not “subjected to OSTP’s Information Quality Act guidelines.” This statement now appears prominently on the document posted on the U. S. Global Change Research Program’s web site (http://www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/nacc/).

As a result of this admission, the Competitive Enterprise Institute withdrew its complaint in federal court that the National Assessment did not meet the minimal scientific standards required by the Federal Data Quality Act.

“The record shows that the Clinton White House pressured bureaucrats to rush out an incomplete and inaccurate report despite protests from government scientists,” said Christopher C. Horner, legal counsel and senior fellow at CEI. “The government also subsequently confirmed that the two climate models selected for the National Assessment are ‘outliers’ chosen to guarantee extreme results and are incapable of replicating even past climate trends.”

CEI argued in its complaint that the National Assessment violates legal requirements of objectivity and utility by employing computer models proven unreliable and by incorrectly revising climate history to portray the climate of the 20th century as unusual.

Members of the National Assessment Synthesis Team reacted strongly to the admission, with 30 people involved in its creation signing a letter to James Mahoney of the Office of Climate Change Science Program protesting the admission. The letter asserted, “We would suggest that the additional statement in bold is misleading and incorrect in at least two very important ways. First, OSTP’s guidelines did not exist or apply at the time that the National Assessment report was prepared.

“Second, and more important, the statement implies that the National Assessment Report was not properly reviewed and would not meet the OSTP guidelines; this is misleading at best and most likely false in the view of any independent review of the situation. We request that you eliminate the new phrase.”

The letter does not address the issue of how the two models that passed through the four layers of review outlined in the letter failed to predict the climate any better than tables of random numbers.

Chinese Emissions Skyrocket

Contrary to an earlier claim by the New York Times that China was reducing its coal production and consumption, the newspaper reported on October 22 that, “China’s rapid economic growth is producing a surge in emissions of greenhouse gases that threatens international efforts to curb global warming, as Chinese power plants burn ever more coal while car sales soar.”

The previous assumption had been based on Chinese official statistics. These have now been revised to confirm “what energy industry executives had suspected: that coal use has actually been climbing faster in China than practically anywhere else in the world.”

The paper quoted the International Energy Agency in Paris as estimating that, “The increase in greenhouse gas emissions from 2000 to 2030 in China alone will nearly equal the increase in the entire industrialized world.”

The article points out that China has begun to import coal from Australia and has also become the world’s fastest growing importer of oil. The nation has also become “the world’s largest market for television sets and one of the largest for many other electrical appliances.” The story points out that China is the world’s fastest-growing market for cars, with sales increasing by 73 percent this year alone.

China, as a developing nation, is exempt from the Kyoto protocol. Chinese officials have made it clear that, while they would like to see the protocol adopted, they will accept no restrictions on Chinese emissions now or in 50 years’ time.

India Rejects Emissions Restrictions

Indian Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani told a climate change conference in New Delhi that India would accept no restrictions on its emissions of greenhouse gases.

The Times of India reported (Nov. 11), “India on Monday categorically said no to the introduction of fresh commitments for developing nations under the UN convention on climate change. It demanded early operationalisation of special climate change fund and fund for least developed countries.” Mr. Advani stated, “The existing equilibrium of commitments and differentiation between developed and developing nations has to be maintained.”

The New York Times article mentioned in the story above points out that, while China will account for 18 percent of the growth in new car sales by 2012, India will account for 9 percent, just 2 percent less than the United States. India’s demand for energy use is expected to grow by 8-10 percent annually over the next decade.

Hockey Stick Critics Speak on Hill; Satellite Wars Rage On; Methane Emissions Leveling Off

by William Yeatman on November 11, 2003

in Science

Hockey Stick Critics Speak on Hill

Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, authors of the paper that raises questions about the quality of the data underlying the IPCCs hockey stick graph of temperatures in the last 1000 years, briefed congressional staff on the issue at a meeting organized by the George C. Marshall Institute and the Cooler Heads Coalition on November 18.

McIntyre gave a compelling account of how he became interested in the hockey-stick controversy and then suspicious of the claim that the last decade was the hottest in the third millennium A. D. His experience in the mineral explorations business taught him that all data must be checked, so that is what he and McKitrick did in their paper.

The authors gave a chronological account of the charges made by the inventor of the hockey stick, Michael Mann, since their critique was published in Energy and Environment in late October. Mann first claimed that they had analyzed the wrong data sets, which had mistakenly been sent to McIntyre by one of Manns collaborators. Instead they should have used the data sets that had long been publicly available on an ftp site.

According to McIntyre and McKitrick, this criticism was irrelevant since they had rebuilt Manns 112 data sets from original sources. They then discovered that the data sets that they had been sent were the same as those on the ftp site. Mann has since deleted the data sets from his ftp site.

Mann then explained that McIntyre and McKitricks results showed a warm period in the fifteenth century because they had failed to include three key principal components. McIntyre and McKitrick replied that they omitted one because it double counted readings included in another component and updated another with newer data from the original source. This updated data changed the components effect considerably. McIntyre pointed out that the hockey-stick graph, at least for the 1400s, appears to be driven by only three of 112 principal components, which is a slender database upon which to base any conclusion.

McIntyre and McKitrick stressed throughout the presentation that they were not saying that they had proved the 1400s were warmer than today. What their statistical re-analysis had demonstrated was that it was not possible to conclude from the data Mann used that temperatures in the 20th century were unusual. Access to all the documents in the ongoing controversy can be found online at www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/trc.html.

Satellite Wars Rage On

Modellers at the Remote Sensing Systems firm continue to raise objections to the University of Alabama at Huntsville satellite temperature readings of Roy Spencer and John Christy. In a new article in the Journal of Climate (published by the American Meteorological Association), they claim that a re-analysis of the dataset show[s] a global trend of 0.097 0.020 K decade−1, generally agreeing with the work of Prabhakara et al. but in disagreement with the MSU analysis of Christy and Spencer, which shows significantly less (0.09 K decade−1) warming.”

The article re-asserts the claim already made by RSS that their imputations from climate models are more reliable than the actual data from weather balloon radiosonde readings, which corroborate the findings of Christy and Spencer.

Although the finding was widely reported as confirming human influence on global warming, Christy told the New York Times (Nov. 18) that the evidence was pointing more firmly toward a modest impact from rising greenhouse gases, “We’ve had enough years of this human-induced forcing to get some boundaries on it, and it’s just not going in the dramatic and catastrophic direction.”

This view was confirmed in Newsweeks coverage of the same story (Nov. 23). In a remarkably candid paragraph, the magazine said, Recently scientists predictions [of future temperature increases] have begun to converge on a narrower range, and the forecasts have gotten more modest. James Hansen of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York has pointed out that in recent years the actual rise of greenhouse gases hasnt accelerated as fast as the IPCC predicted. Carbon-dioxide emissions increased 4.7 percent a year from 1945 to 1973, but since then, the average increase has been only 1.4 percent a year. The rate for methane, another powerful greenhouse gas produced in landfills and rice farming, is barely increasing at all. Hansen thinks that even if nothing is done, the planet would warm only 1.5 degrees by 2050.

It is a shame, then, that Newsweek followed this anti-alarmist finding with the distinctly alarmist suggestion that, If [developing nations] succeed in making the air cleaner, temperatures may soar-perhaps by as much as seven to 10 degrees Celsius.

Methane Emissions Leveling Off

Australian scientists have determined that atmospheric concentrations of methane have leveled off. Over the past four years there has been no growth in atmospheric methane concentrations compared to a fifteen percent rise over the preceding twenty years and a 150 percent rise since pre-industrial times, said Paul Fraser, a chief research scientist at the atmospheric research section of Australias Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (The Australian, Nov. 25).

The findings come from CSIRO and the Australian Bureau of Meteorologys gas monitoring station at Cape Grim in Tasmania. Methane (the principal ingredient of natural gas) is a potent greenhouse gas, but persists in the atmosphere for a far shorter time than does carbon dioxide.

According to the Australian, Dr. Fraser thinks that methane levels “would start to fall if this global decline in methane emissions continued. He speculated that emissions are declining due to better management of the exploration and use of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) and the increasing recovery of landfill methane.

Announcements

Cato Conference on Global Warming

The Cato Institute is holding a daylong conference on Global Warming: the State of the Debate, on December 12 at the institutes Hayek Auditorium, 1000 Massachusetts Ave., N. W., Washington, D. C.

Speakers include: Patrick Michaels (University of Virginia and a Cato Senior Fellow), Robert Balling (Arizona State University), John Christy (University of Alabama at Huntsville), Michael Schlesinger (University of Illinois), Robert Mendelsohn (Yale University), and Indur Goklany (Department of Interior).

The complete program and registration information may be found on the internet at http://www.cato.org/events/gw031212.html.

“Provably False Statements” in Defense of Hockey Stick?; Antarctic Ice Expands while Arctic Contracts; The Next Ice Age is a Rea

by William Yeatman on November 11, 2003

in Science

“Provably False Statements” in Defense of Hockey Stick?

As mentioned last issue, the initial response by University of VIrginia Assistant Professor Michael Mann to the questions raised by Canadian analysts Steven McIntyre and Ross McKitrick over the data underlying the infamous “hockey stick” graph of temperatures over the last 100 years (MBH98) was to allege that his critics had used an incorrect data set. Mann said that they should have used data available on a “public” FTP site.

McIntyre and McKitrick have now replied to this allegation. The summary of their detailed rebuttal (available at http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/trc.html) states, “We refute suggestions by Professor Mann that collation in the proxy data set criticized in [our paper] were introduced in a special purpose Excel spreadsheet prepared for McIntyre in April 2003…. [W]e have determined that the uncollated series at the Mann FTP site are identical to the versions in the data set we examined and criticized in MM [that is, the paper by McIntyre and McKitrick].

“Accordingly, the criticisms of MM in respect to unjustified truncation and fills, use of obsolete data and geographical mislocations apply equally to the acknowledged MBH98 data archive.”

Referring to the detailed allegations made by Mann on the web site of freelance propagandist David Appell, McIntyre and McKitrick say, “It is self-evident that Mann’s comments are a pastiche of false statements. The rebuttal also relates how the contents of the FTP site were changed without notice between when MM were first informed of the site and Nov. 8.

McIntyre and McKitrick conclude that “Professor Mann’s public comments regarding MM contain many provably false statements.” They also point out that, as data he suggested were “meaningless” are identical to those contained in the FTP site, “Professor Mann himself has made a prima facie case for a new refereeing of MBH98.”

Antarctic Ice Expands while Arctic Contracts

New research from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center reveals that a 30-year satellite record of sea ice at the poles shows that while Arctic ice has melted, Antarctic ice has increased in recent years. Although the volume of Antarctic ice has decreased over the entire period, this was due to a dramatic loss of Antarctic sea ice between 1973 and 1977.

The researchers suggest that the greater loss of sea ice in the Arctic “may be due to a general warming trend in the Arctic as well as the influence of long-term oscillations or other changes in atmospheric pressure systems, which could pull in more warm air from the south.”

In the Antarctic, the researchers say, “The gradual advance of ice from the late 1970s may be related to long-term atmospheric oscillations in the Southern Hemisphere resulting in stronger westerly winds and cooler temperatures.”

Co-author Claire Parkinson of NASA said, “Trying to explain why these things happen becomes tricky. The temperature connection where warmer temperatures lead to greater melt is reasonably direct, but far from the complete story. Winds and waves move ice around, and consequently the ice can move to places where it is warm enough that it wouldn’t have formed.”

The lead author of the study, NASA’s Don Cavalieri, said, “It seems the two regions are responding to different hemispheric variations. What remains is to sift out and understand how these variations are driving the sea ice in each hemisphere.” (Eurekalert, Nov. 12)

More Problems for Hydrogen Technology

A New York Times article on November 12 pointed out that, “Even some hydrogen advocates say that use of hydrogen could instead make the air dirtier and the globe warmer.”

The paper points out that the most cost-effective way to produce hydrogen involves the burning of coal, rather than using renewable energy sources, and quoted Ronald Kenedi, Managing Director of Sharp Solar, as saying, “It seems like hydrogen is the buzz word right now, with the president talking about it, and maybe putting some money towards it. But the first stop on the hydrogen trail will be coal.”

According to the article, carbon dioxide emissions are a problem: “According to the Energy Department, an ordinary gasoline-powered car emits 374 grams of carbon dioxide per mile it is driven, counting the energy used to make the gasoline and deliver it to the service station, and the emissions of the vehicle itself. The same car powered by a fuel cell would emit nothing, but if the energy required to make the hydrogen came from the electric grid, the emissions would be 436 grams per mile, 17 percent worse than the figure for gasoline.”

The Times also found the cost problematic: “Reuel Shinnar, a professor of chemical engineering at City College of New York, reviewing the options for power production and fuel production, concluded in a recent paper, ‘A hydrogen economy is at least twice as expensive as any other solution.'”

The Next Ice Age is a Real Problem

Continuing with our New York Times-theme issue, the Times’s Tuesday science section celebrated its 25th anniversary on November 11 by running short articles on “25 of the most provocative questions facing science.” Surprisingly, global warming was not on the list, but, “When is the next ice age?” was addressed by veteran Times science writer Andrew C. Revkin.

“The next ice age almost certainly will reach itspeak in about 80,000 years,” wrote Revkin, “but debate persists about how soon it will begin, with the latest theory being that the human influence on the atmosphere may substantially delay the transition.”

Since the next ice age would be a calamity for human civilization, “It would seem that human-driven global warming, although perhaps a disaster on the scale of centuries, may be a good thing in the long run if it fends off the next ice age.” So those who really care about, as former President Bill Clinton might have put it, their children’s children’s children’s descendant’s grandchildren should be burning a lot of gasoline in their Ford Excursions and GM Hummers.

Now Here’s a Really Scary Future

According to a former United Kingdom environment minister, environmental apocalypse is imminent and the solution is–a world environment court!

“The most important issue is enforceability…. What is really needed is a world environment court,” wrote Michael Meacher, MP, in London’s Guardian on October 25. Meacher served as environment minister in the Blair Government from 1997 until he was fired earlier this year.

Meacher continued: “The right to bring cases before such a court should not be confined to the governments of nation states, but should include public interest bodies, notably NGOs. The court should also have permanent specialist bodies to investigate damage to the global environment, whether inflicted or threatened, with powers to subpoena evidence and prosecute individuals and corporate bodies. This would only work if properly funded. However, if the fines imposed on corporate offenders were recycled, the court’s investigative and legal work would quickly become self-financing.”

Raise a Glass to a Warmer World

Many news outlets carried the story in early November that Southern Oregon University researcher Gregory Jones had ascertained that global warming would be good for wine harvests.

According to his press release, “Jones and his colleagues used records of Sotheby’s 100-point vintage rating scale data (where wines scoring over 90 are ‘excellent to superb’ and under 40 are ‘disastrous’) along with climate records dating back to 1950 to look for trends in wine quality or growing season temperatures. What they found was an average temperature rise of 2C rise over the past 50 years and higher vintage ratings.

“‘There were no negative impacts,’ Jones said of the apparent temperature rise in the world’s most renowned wine producing regions.”

IPCC’s “Dangerous Incompetence”; GAO Finds U. S. Climate Change Initiative has Little Effect

by William Yeatman on November 11, 2003

in Blog

IPCC’s “Dangerous Incompetence”

In a damning assessment in its November 6 issue, the Economist revisited the issue of the implausible economic scenarios used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to underlie its predictions on global warming.

The newspaper repeated the criticisms of distinguished critics Ian Castles and David Henderson, who argued that the methods used by the IPCC economic team gave an upward bias to the projections. The Economist called the emissions forecasts based on those “implausibly high” growth rates unsound.

Castles and Henderson’s critique had been met by catcalls from the IPCC team, who complained of “deplorable misinformation.” The Economist concluded that the reply “fails to answer the case… that the IPCC’s low-case scenarios are patently not low-case scenarios, and that the panel has therefore failed to give a true account of the range of possibilities.”

The analysis went on to mention, “Disaggregated projections published by the IPCC say that-even in the lowest-emission scenarios-growth in poor countries will be so fast that by the end of the century Americans will be poorer on average than South Africans, Algerians, Argentines, Libyans, Turks and North Koreans. Mr Castles and Mr Henderson can hardly be alone in finding that odd.”

The paper was unusually blunt in its assessment of the IPCC team’s economic abilities, mentioning that it relied on “strength in numbers (lacking though it may be in strength at numbers).” It summarized its concerns as follows: “The problem is that this horde of authorities is drawn from a narrow professional milieu. Economic and statistical expertise is not among their strengths. Making matters worse, the panel’s approach lays great emphasis on peer review of submissions. When the peers in question are drawn from a restricted professional domain-whereas the issues under consideration make demands upon a wide range of professional skills-peer review is not a way to assure the highest standards of work by exposing research to scepticism. It is just the opposite: a kind of intellectual restrictive practice, which allows flawed or downright shoddy work to acquire a standing it does not deserve.”

The Economist concluded by referring to the new head of the OECD’s economic policy committee, Gregory Mankiw, who is also President Bush’s chief economic adviser: “If Mr. Mankiw is asking himself what new work that body ought to take on under his leadership, he need look no further than the dangerous economic incompetence of the IPCC.”

GAO Finds U. S. Climate Change Initiative has Little Effect

The U. S. General Accounting Office has found that President Bush’s initiative to cut greenhouse gas emissions intensity by 18 percent between 2002 and 2012 would reduce the rate by just 4 percentage points more than if no such action were taken.

Intensity is measured by dividing the year’s emissions by that year’s economic output. The report found that, because economic output will rise faster than emissions, the intensity will dropeven while emissions rise.

The GAO report examined greenhouse gas emissions in ten countries-the United States, China, Japan, India, Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom, Italy, South Korea and France-that between them account for 59 percent of global emissions. It found that emissions will increase while emissions intensity will decrease in all ten countries. The report also found that intensity would decrease in the US by 14 percent even without government action. Emissions intensity reduction would continue, reaching 30 percent in 2025.

Senate Defeats Lieberman-McCain Bill to Cap Greenhouse Gas Emissions; Attorneys General Appeal EPA Decision on CO2; Reactions to

by William Yeatman on October 29, 2003

in Kyoto Negotiations, Politics, Science

Senate Defeats Lieberman-McCain Bill to Cap Greenhouse Gas Emissions

The U.S. Senate defeated a scaled-down version of Senators Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) and John McCains (R-Az.) Climate Stewardship Act, S. 139, on October 30 by a vote of 55 to 43. Forty-five Republicans and ten Democrats voted against the measure. Thirty-seven Democrats were joined by six Republicans in favor.

The Democrats voting against were: Baucus, Breaux, Byrd, Conrad, Dorgan, Landrieu, Levin, Lincoln, Miller, and Pryor. Republicans voting for were: Chafee, Collins, Gregg, Lugar, McCain, and Snowe. Democrats Edwards and Ben Nelson missed the vote.

Lieberman and McCain gained some additional support for their cap-and-trade bill by making special deals for some sectors of the energy economy and by offering only the phase one target of cutting emissions to 2000 levels by 2010. The obvious hypocrisy of this ploy became apparent during the floor debate. The initial emissions cap will do nothing to address the alleged potential problem of global warming, so further, much more expensive reductions would be necessary. S. 139 would create the structure and incentives necessary to make those further reductions. This goal is made explicit in the section on “Ensuring Target Adequacy,” which would require the Under Secretary of Commerce to review the emissions reduction targets in relation to the aim of stabilizing greenhouse gas levels at a safe level.

Senator McCain warned repeatedly that they would be bringing the bill back to the floor again and again. However, immediately after the vote, Senator James Inhofe (R-Ok.), who led the opposition to the bill, moved that S. 139 be referred back to the Environment and Public Works Committee, which he chairs. S. 139 was discharged from the committee to the floor as part of the unanimous consent agreement to pass the energy bill in July. It lacks the votes to be voted out of committee

Attorneys General Appeal EPA Decision on CO2

An article in Environmental Science and Technology (Oct. 13), the journal of the American Chemical Society, suggests that a global treaty focusing on intercontinental air pollution could be a better approach to controlling climate change than the Kyoto Protocol. The researchers claim that, by cooperating to reduce pollutants like ozone and aerosols, countries could address their own regional health concerns, keep their downwind neighbors happy and reduce the threat of global warming in the process.

The study, from researchers at Columbia, Harvard and Princeton universities, acknowledges a need to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, but proposes that a treaty dealing with air pollutants, like ozone and aerosols, could be a better first step because it unites the interests of all countries concerned. As aerosols and ozone contribute to large-scale climate problems, the researchers argue, the implications of controlling them go beyond air pollution into the realm of climate change.

The researchers suggest a treaty based loosely on the 1979 Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (LRTAP), which initially addressed acid rain deposition in Europe through voluntary participation. The convention has since been amended to cover a broad range of pollutants, and participants include countries from Western and Eastern Europe as well as the United States and Canada.

Expanding such a treaty to include Asia would give the United States even more incentive to participate, the researchers claim, since westerly winds spread pollution from that part of the world to North America. (Eurekalert, Oct. 15)

Reaction to Russia

Russian President Vladimir Putins decision to put off ratification of the Kyoto Protocol has led to a variety of confused reactions from the climate change industry and their backers.

IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri was only able to assert, “I don’t think a negative decision on Kyoto would be in Russia’s interest overall.” He went on to say: “Russia is a large country with a rich history and has ambitions to emerge once again as a global power. It cannot, therefore, gain in standing politically if it does not join hands with other countries in doing what is required to mitigate the emissions of greenhouse gases.” (Reuters, Oct. 17).

EU ministers responded by merely restating their position as held before the Moscow conference. The environment ministers of Britain, France and Germany issued a joint statement concluding, “Climate change is a real problem. Over the last few years, we have begun to experience more extreme climatic phenomena. This summer, parts of Europe faced an exceptional heat wave and drought that caused deaths and illness among older age groups, heat stress to livestock, forest fires, and damage to crops.”

They went on, “The scientific community has gathered convincing evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities. Extreme events, such as heat waves or heavy precipitation, will be more frequent, more intense. What we experienced this summer is effectively an illustration of what we are likely to see more frequently in the not too distant future. The international community needs to act with determination to deal with this problem. . . There is no credible alternative to [Kyoto] on the table. We call upon Russia to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.” (BBC News Online, Oct. 23).

The David Suzuki Foundation in Canada alleged that Putin was being “leaned on” by President Bush and could not have come up with his decision independently (http://www.davidsuzu ki.org/files/Climate/Ontario/Oct03Russia.pdf).

The World Wildlife Federations representative in Moscow, meanwhile, concluded that the current position was irrelevant: “But the Kyoto accord is a win-win proposition for Russia. One can expect the government and legislature to move ahead with ratification next summer, when the elections are over and they can return to considering Russia’s long-term interests.” (International Herald Tribune, Oct 28).

Hockey Stick Data Wrong?; Hockey Stick Crowd Dismiss Medieval Warm Period

by William Yeatman on October 29, 2003

in Science

Hockey Stick Data Wrong?

The “hockey stick” graph of temperatures over the last thousand years was featured prominently in the IPCCs Third Assessment Report and the National Assessment on Climate Change and is a key component of the case for action on global warming. It shows an unprecedented spike in temperatures in the 20th century. That graph is based extensively on research by University of Virginia assistant professor Michael Mann and others in 1998 and 1999.

Now, however, two Canadians with expertise in statistical analysis, Stephen McIntyre and economics professor Ross McKitrick, have looked again at the source data, supplied to them by Manns research associate at his request, and found considerable errors in the way the data was collated. They were unable to replicate Manns results either by re-running his calculations once the errors were corrected or by constructing their own data set from the original sources. Their reconstruction of the Mann et al. data set from the original sources shows clearly that there was a period of greater warmth than the last century in the 15th century, and that the spike is not unprecedented. They have suggested that Mann should account for the discrepancies.

Manns initial response was that this was a “political stunt.” Further comments were published on the web log of freelance propagandist David Appell. They suggested that McIntyre and McKitrick (“M&M”) had used the wrong data set and that the correct data was publicly available. McIntyre and McKitrick responded with the e-mail exchanges that showed that Manns associate had sent them the data they used at Manns request. Mann also suggested that they should have used 159 proxies rather than the 112 they did. McIntyre and McKitrick responded with e-mails showing that Manns associate referred to 112 proxies (which accorded with references to 112 proxies in the original published research articles). The article has been published on the web by Energy and Environment (http://www.multi-science.co.uk/ee_openaccess.htm) , an English journal, and will appear in the November printed issue. Further details can be found at McKitricks website: (http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/trc.html. No doubt there is much more to come before this controversy is settled.

Solar Frenzy

German scientists from the Max Planck Institute along with Finnish scientists from Oulu University have reconstructed sunspot activity over the past millennium. They conclude that the sun has been in what they term a “frenzy” since 1940, which may be a factor in global warming.

The research is based on amounts of the beryllium 10 isotope found in ice deposits in both Greenland and the Antarctic. The team also discovered a burst of activity between 1100 and 1250, which corresponds closely to the usually agreed extent of the Medieval Warm Period, but the scientists note that there were fewer sunspots then than today.

The scientists found that the current surge is 2.5 times as great as the long-term average and that solar activity closely matched average temperatures on Earth.

Spokesman Sami Solanki said that, despite discovering a new climate influence, the team still believed the recent surge in warming was caused by fossil fuel emissions. “Even after our findings,” he was reported as saying, “I would say the sharp increase in global temperatures after 1980 can still be mainly attributed to the greenhouse effect arising from carbon dioxide.” (News24, South Africa).

Hockey Stick Crowd Dismiss Medieval Warm Period

Raymond Bradley of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and Malcolm Hughes of the University of Arizona (partners with Michael Mann in the research referred to above), together with Henry Diaz of NOAA, have written an article concluding that the Medieval Warm Period was not global. In “Climate in Medieval Time,” published in the Oct. 17 issue of Science, they argue that there is not enough evidence to conclude that regional warm spells between 500 AD and 1500 AD occurred simultaneously.

The scientists concluded that medieval average temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere “were not exceptional” because some regions cooled whereas other regions warmed. They also dismiss solar arguments, noting that recent modeling studies show that increased solar irradiance does not warm Earth’s surface at all locations. Instead, they say, ozone absorbs ultraviolet radiation, warming the stratosphere and altering atmospheric circulation patterns. If such changes happened in the 12th century, they could well have altered large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns linked to the Arctic Oscillation, thereby warming some regions but not others. (Science Daily, Oct. 20)

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