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EU Backs Away from Kyoto; Replacement for Kyoto Urged; talists Target BP and Shell

by William Yeatman on October 29, 2003

in Kyoto Negotiations

EU Backs Away from Kyoto

According to the Wall Street Journal Europe (Oct. 29), European Union diplomats are suggesting that some member governments are backing away from a promise under the Kyoto protocol to give aid to poorer countries. The EU had promised in 2001 to contribute 450 million ($523 million) from 2005 on to developing countries in order to help them reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The dispute centers on how the cost will be shared, with Spain, Greece and Portugal wanting to contribute less than had been agreed. The southern EU member countries argue that they are poorer than northern countries and so should pay 20 million less each, but EU law requires that countries pay in proportion to their emissions rather than to their wealth.

Meanwhile, the Journal also reported that the European Parliament is delaying the first reading of a bill designed to regulate emissions trading, putting at risk a deadline of 2005 for implementing the legislation. The EU estimates that trading would reduce the 3.4 billion cost of implementing Kyoto by about 680 million.

The EU is currently on target to cut by emissions by 4.7 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-2012. The Kyoto protocol requires an 8 percent reduction.

Replacement for Kyoto Urged

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)

Environmentalists Target BP and Shell

Despite BPs image (“Beyond Petroleum”) as the most environmentally-friendly oil giant, it is coming under increased attack from environmental groups in the UK. Rising Tide — described by Londons Guardian on Oct. 23 as a “loose-knit group of green activists” — organized a rowdy demonstration at a talk given by BP chairman Lord Browne in London that day. The activities included a protestor interrupting Lord Browne during his speech with a series of accusations against the company.

Friends of the Earth also confirmed that it was “re-evaluating relations” with BP and Royal Dutch Shell because of their “apparent failure to turn rhetoric into action.”

A climate change campaigner at Friends of the Earth, Roger Higman, told the Guardian, “ExxonMobil is still the bad guy, but we are getting increasingly frustrated with BP and Shell, which talk about climate change but put their money into [oil and gas] developments in places such as Russia and the Middle East rather than renewable schemes. We are not going to be cosy with them because they are doing bad things.”

Rising Tide claims BP invests less than 1 percent of its annual budget on solar and other renewable energy sources, which it points out is much less than they spend on advertising and public relations. It said, “Don’t be fooled by oil company public relations that the only people opposing their destructive agenda are privileged western environmentalists. In fact resistance to big oil’s constant need to find new oil-rich frontiers is most determined amongst some of the world’s poorest people.”

Kyoto Ratification Latest; Prebon Reads Writing on the Wall; Wind Farms in UK Raise Environmental Objections

by William Yeatman on October 20, 2003

in Kyoto Negotiations

Kyoto Ratification Latest

Since March of this year, eleven more countries have ratified the Kyoto Protocol: Botswana, Ghana, Guyana, Kyrgyzstan, Marshall Islands, Myanmar, Namibia, Moldova, St. Lucia, Solomon Islands, and Switzerland. Of these, Switzerland is the only Annex I country subject to emissions controls under the pact, responsible for 0.3 percent of the emissions concerned.

Switzerland’s ratification brings the total percentage of Annex I emissions belonging to countries that have ratified the protocol to 44.2 percent. The USA (36.1), Australia (2.1) and Russia (17.4) together make up 55.6 percent, meaning that as long as either Russia or the U. S. fails to ratify the protocol, it cannot go into effect.

Prebon Reads Writing on the Wall

Prebon Energy, a leading global energy broker, has got out of the emissions trading business. The following is the statement from the company’s president explaining the decision:

“To our Emissions Customers,

After careful consideration, Prebon Energy has decided to exit the air quality trading markets effective immediately. Given current market conditions, we have decided to focus our energies in other areas where we believe we can offer value to our customers; including, but not limited to, the natural gas and electricity markets. Staff will be available to handle any queries regarding emissions trades that have either been consummated or are pending.

Sincerely, Edward Novak, President, Prebon Energy.”

Emissions trading prices in Europe have failed to hit the levels predicted, while the voluntary exchange in the US has suffered from a dearth of buyers.

Wind Farms in UK Raise Environmental Objections

A long article in London’s Observer on October 5 pointed out the many and varied objections locals and environmentalists are raising against the wind farms springing up around the country in an effort to meet the United Kingdom government’s target of generating 10 percent of electricity from renewable sources by 2010.

Self-professed ‘left-wing environmentalist,’ Martin Wright, told the paper: “Since the Second World War, there’s been a consensus that landscape matters…. That’s broken down here. If people in London knew the place, they would be appalled. And yet we’re portrayed as nuclear-loving nimbies in the press…. Wind turbines are a good idea in the right place…. But sticking hundreds of them on wild land is not a good idea. For a small, heavily populated country we have some stunning landscapes, but they’re under threat of industrialization.”

The article also points out the threat to local avian wildlife: “Research shows, however, that wind farms are killing far more birds than the public realizes. A five-year study in California revealed that the Altamont Pass wind farm kills an average of 40 to 60 golden eagles a year, along with ‘several hundred’ hawks, falcons and other birds of prey. In Spain, a report commissioned by the regional government of Navarra concluded that 368 turbines at 10 sites had killed nearly 7,000 wild birds in a single year, including 409 vultures, 24 eagles and 650 bats.

“In Germany, studies show turbines have killed dozens of rare red kites…. Red kites are a conservation success story, brought back from the brink of extinction in this area [of the UK], but two were killed at this small site alone last summer. Other rare British birds are also under threat as the turbines proliferate…. A farm of 27 turbines, each 325ft high, at Edinbane on Skye has planning consent, despite RSPB objections that the site was too close to sea eagles and several breeding pairs of golden eagles, as well as merlin and hen harriers. All four species have the highest possible legal protection.”

Finally, energy consultant and TV personality Professor Ian Fells pointed out that, “To meet the 2010 target, Britain will have to build 400 to 500 turbines each year. Each will be a 3MW machine, bigger than anything yet seen. ‘I think they’ll be doing well to get there by 2020,’ Fell says. ‘There’s some wishful thinking in the latest White Paper. And wind power is not completely clean. You have to build huge concrete foundations and service roads and so on.'”

Return of Malthus; Lindzen Meets the Mayors

by William Yeatman on October 20, 2003

in Science

Return of Malthus

In an inversion of the way Malthusian arguments usually run, a team of Swedish geologists has said that constraints on fossil fuel resources mean that there is not enough oil and gas available to fuel the doomsday scenarios of greenhouse gas production envisaged by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Geologists Anders Sivertsson, Kjell Aleklett and Colin Campbell of Uppsala University say there is not enough oil and gas left for even the most conservative of the 40 IPCC scenarios to come to pass. Their research suggests that the combined reserves of oil and gas amount to barely 3500 billion barrels of oil, which is considerably below the 5000 billion barrels assumed by the “best-case” IPCC scenario. The “worst-case” assumes 18,000 billion barrels, a level Aleklett calls “completely unrealistic.”

Nebojsa Nakicenovic of the IPCC team counters that their scenarios included a much broader and more internationally accepted range of estimates than the “conservative” Swedes put forward and told New Scientist (Oct. 3) that coal could be used to make up the difference. Aleklett conceded that coal could fill the gap, and both agreed that its use in such an eventuality would be “disastrous.”

Lindzen Meets the Mayors

In response to steps taken by the Mayors of Newton and Worcester, Mass., to mitigate the effects of climate change on their townships, Richard S. Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, published an open letter in The Washington Times on October 9.

He concluded, “Capping CO2 emissions per unit electricity generated will have a negligible impact at best on CO2 levels. It certainly will, however, increase the cost of electricity, and place those states pursuing such a path at a distinct competitive disadvantage. Why would any elected official want that, even at the admittedly severe risk of appearing politically incorrect?

“It is important to understand that the impact of CO2 on the Earth’s heat budget is nonlinear. What this means is that although CO2 has only increased about 30 percent over its pre-industrial level, the impact on the heat budget of the Earth due to the increases in CO2 and other man-influenced greenhouse substances has already reached about 75 percent of what one expects from a doubling of CO2. “Assuming that all of the very irregular change in temperature over the past 120 years or so-about 1 degree F-is due to added greenhouse gases-a very implausible assumption-the temperature rise seen so far is much less (by a factor of 2-to-3) than models predict.

“If we are, nonetheless, to believe the model predictions, the argument goes roughly as follows: The models are correct, but some unknown process has canceled the impact of increasing greenhouse gases, and that process will henceforth cease. Do we really want to put the welfare of the nation, much less any one community, at risk for such an argument? I for one would hope for greater prudence from my elected officials.”

Moscow Conference Casts Doubt over Kyoto’s Future; Schwarzenegger’s Campaign Cheers Environmentalists

by William Yeatman on October 20, 2003

in Kyoto Negotiations, Politics, Science

Moscow Conference Casts Doubt over Kyoto’s Future

The United Nations’ World Climate Change Conference, which concluded in Moscow on October 3, ended without reaching a consensus on the issue. A senior economic adviser to President Putin stated that he found the answers from the scientific organizers to his detailed questions over climate change science (which for the most part simply quoted from the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report issued two years ago) were unconvincing. When the debate was opened up to the floor on the final day, conference chairman Bert Bolin was forced to admit that nine out of 10 questions from the floor questioned the “consensus” on anthropogenic climate change.

After the conference, Russian advisers were at pains to stress that their skepticism towards Kyoto was based on genuine misgivings over the treaty’s scientific basis and the effects of climate change on Russia rather than simply a negotiating tactic to extract more concessions from the west. An unnamed source told Reuters Oct. 14, “I do not know how clearly what [the senior adviser] said was translated, but judging by the commentaries that appeared the words were interpreted as brinkmanship…. This is not a game, it is a very serious question…about the theory that (the protocol) is based on, and a number of other questions such as the economic issue.”

At time of writing, there has been little official reaction to the conference’s outcome from Kyoto-supporting governments or environmental lobby groups. Annie Petsonk of Environmental Defense, who attended the conference, alleged to Greenwire (Oct. 15) that, “Scientists and economists who spoke in favor of Kyoto often found their microphones cut off and were not allowed to speak until the last day of the conference.”

However, sources suggest that high-level officials preparing for the UNFCC’s ninth Conference of the Parties in Milan in December are bowing to the inevitable. BNA’s Daily Environment Report reported (Oct. 10) that, “For the first time since its drafting, official discussions will include the possibility of combating climate change without the Kyoto Protocol, although talks will focus more on other issues that include the use and transfer of new technologies, capacity building in developing countries, and sustainable development.”

Schwarzenegger’s Campaign Cheers Environmentalists

According to Greenwire (Oct. 15), California Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger’s “policy agenda reads like an environmentalist’s wish list.” He has set a target of reducing “air pollution by up to 50 percent, through incentives for clean fuel usage, and build hydrogen car fueling stations along California highways. The governor-elect also supports the state’s renewable portfolio standard (RPS), which would require that 20 percent of the state’s power come from solar and wind power by 2017.”

In addition, he has promised to defend the state’s greenhouse gas legislation against legal challenges, saying, “California’s landmark legislation to cut greenhouse gases is now law, and I will work to implement it and to win the expected challenges in court along the way.”

Schwarzenegger’s campaign was not wholly attractive to the environmental lobby, which reacted badly to his suggestion that he might want to close down the state’s environmental protection agency as part of his campaign against government bureaucracy. However, Terry Tamminen, an unpaid adviser to Schwarzenegger on environmental issues, and executive director of Environment Now, told Greenwire that he hoped the new Governor would be able to work more closely with the White House than Gov. Davis did on issues like global warming and air pollution, saying, “As a Republican governor, Arnold is much more likely to be able to work with the Bush administration to resolve differences…. California could persuade the federal government to take another look at those policies.”

Deal on Energy Bill “Close”

Progress on the energy bill conference stalled over recent weeks, but Republican conference leaders are now confident they are ‘close’ to a deal on the outstanding disagreements over electricity, tax, and MTBE issues. Those disagreements are over whether merchant power generators should have to pay for transmission upgrades and issues surrounding liability protection for and a federal ban on the fuel additive MTBE. Sources suggest that one of the issues (it is not known which one) has been sent to the offices of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R.-Tenn.) and House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R.-Ill.) to try to reach some resolution. The package of tax incentives has not been finished, either. The conferees have agree to drop the Senate’ bill’s three climate titles and the 10% renewable porfolio standard for electric utilities. There is confusion over whether the provisions for oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and for an inventory of oil and gas resources in the outer continental shelf have been dropped. Sen. Joseph Liebermen (D.-Conn.) had issued a press release congratulating Republican conference leaders for removing the provisions, but retracted his statement when no announcement was forthcoming.

Collusion Charges “Absurd”

Following an allegation by the Attorneys General of Connecticut and Maine that the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a member of the Cooler Heads Coalition, had colluded with administration officials to sue the Environmental Protection Agency under the Federal Data Quality Act over its dissemination of the junk-science based Climate Action Report 2002, Sen. Joe Lieberman (D.-Conn.) has written to the White House asking officials to release to him any documents relating to the alleged collusion.

CEI rejected the charge as preposterous. “This started as a suit against a Clinton administration global warming report,” CEI President Fred L. Smith, Jr. said in a press release. “The accusations of collusion are absurd and just an attempt to divert attention from the real issue-that junk science is being used as the basis for climate change reports, which could lead to policies that cost Americans hundreds of billions of dollars with little, if any, benefit.”

CEI’s legal action began against the Climate Action Report’s predecessor, the National Assessment on Climate Change, in October 2000.

Satellite Data under Fire Again; European Flooding Not Unusual; Russian Scientists Question Alarmism

by William Yeatman on September 16, 2003

in Science

Satellite Data under Fire Again

Satellite readings of atmospheric temperature have long been a thorn in the side of greenhouse theorists, because they fail to show atmospheric warming at the level their theory demands. A new study manipulates the current data to provide that warming trend. Konstantin Vinnikov of the University of Maryland and Norman Grody of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration published a paper on scienceexpress.org, the online supplement to Science magazine on September 11, in which they calculate that the lower atmosphere has warmed by 0.5 F per decade since 1978.

The findings have been attacked not only by John Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville, who along with colleague Roy Spencer produces the generally-accepted satellite temperature data, but also by Frank Wentz of Remote Sensing Systems in California, which has published data that finds more of a warming trend than Christy’s data. Wentz told the Wall Street Journal (Sep. 12), “It just adds noise to the whole debate.”

Christy went further, saying, “I think it’s a paper that should not have been published … There are many fatal problems with it.” The principal objection is that Vinnikov and Grody did not correct the measurements for inaccuracies introduced by the heating up of the satellites by the sun. “They allowed it to remain in the data,” he told Cox News (Sept. 12), “and it corrupted all of their calculations, like a computer virus.” Grody responded that he did not think Christy should have made the adjustments. He did not address the objection that Christy’s data are closely corroborated by weather balloon measurements.

Michael Mann, an assistant professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia who has recently played historian in an attempt to back up his claim that 20th century warming was unprecedented in human history, took on the role of satellite expert in the Cox News story. He said, “It becomes increasingly difficult for climate change ‘contrarians’ to try to make the argument, as they often do, that this satellite information in any way calls into question the far more robust ground observations.”

European Flooding Not Unusual

European headlines in the summer of 2002 were dominated by the news of severe flooding across central Europe. The Vltava flooded the Czech capital of Prague and its floodwaters then caused the Elbe to break its banks in Dresden and other German cities. Five years earlier, the river Oder had caused similar problems in Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic. The media and politicians pointed the finger of blame firmly at global climate change, with the clear implication being that something new was at work and things could only get worse.

New research from Michael Mudelsee and colleagues from the University of Leipzig published in Nature (Sept. 11) looks at data reaching as far back as 1021 (for the Elbe) and 1269 (for the Oder). They conclude that there is no upward trend in the incidence of extreme flooding in this region of central Europe.

The researchers write, “For the past 80 to 150 [years], we find a decrease in winter flood occurrence in both rivers, while summer floods show no trend, consistent with trends in extreme precipitation occurrence. The reduction in winter flood occurrence can partly be attributed to fewer events of strong freezing-following such events, breaking river ice at the end of the winter may function as a water barrier and enhance floods severely. Additionally, we detect significant long-term changes in flood occurrence rates in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, and conclude that reductions in river length, construction of reservoirs and deforestation have had minor effects on flood frequency.”

UK Met Office Gives Everyone a Climate Model

Taking a leaf from another scientific quest for something of which there is no scientific evidence, SETI-the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence, the UK Meteorological Office has decided to enlist the public’s help in refining its data. They have released a computer program that runs a version of their climate model on a desktop computer, enabling the Met Office to assess its performance. The model will produce different results depending on what information is fed into it. By having the model run on a great many machines, the researchers will get a better idea of the range of results it produces and how they are distributed.

The reasoning behind the decision reveals one of the biggest problems with climate models, that their interpretation is largely guesswork. “We can’t predict which versions of the model will be any good without running these simulations, and there are far too many for us to run them ourselves,” Dr Myles Allen of Oxford University told Reuters. “Together, participants’ results will give us an overall picture of how much human influence has contributed to recent climate change and the range of possible changes in the future,” he added.

The model can be downloaded from www.climateprediction.net, but needs a fairly modern computer to run. Several early downloaders have noted that it cannot be manipulated and provides little value to anyone running it. Some disruption to internet connections has also been reported.

Russian Scientists Question Alarmism

In an article dated September 9th for Novosti, the official Russian information agency, Alexander Frolov, deputy head of Russia’s Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring, stated baldly that, “Russia does not believe in apocalyptic forecasts” of global warming.

He wrote, “The “grimaces” of climate are due mainly to natural fluctuations, with man-made causes having only a partial effect. On the other hand, the climatic system is incredibly complex, depends on many factors, and is driven by direct and reverse forces that turn cause into effect and back again, and so are hard to translate into credible quantitative estimates of ongoing changes.” He went on, “I am not one inclined towards extreme views. Surely, one should take note of the climate warming, adopt preventive measures, evacuate people from risk zones, restore the rivers to their normal regimens, make adaptations, etc. Fluctuations that we observe are in effect random events resulting in an increasingly unstable climatic system. Growing instability, however, actually means only the possibility, not the inevitability, of some or other change.”

Meanwhile, according to co2science.org, “In a recent discussion published in the Russian journal Geomagnetizm i Aeronomiya (Vol. 43, pp. 132-135), two scientists from the Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics of the Siberian Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences challenge the politically-correct global warming dogma that vexes the entire world. Bashkirtsev and Mashnich (2003) say that ‘a number of publications report that the anthropogenic impact on the Earth’s climate is an obvious and proven fact,’ when in actuality, in their opinion, ‘none of the investigations dealing with the anthropogenic impact on climate convincingly argues for such an impact.'”

The Russians commend the work of Friis-Christensen and Lassen on the correlation between sunspot activity and climate and back it up with their own research. They find such a close correlation that they are able to predict that because of the lessening activity over the next few solar cycles, the Earth may enter a cooling phase. Indeed, they say, “The available data of observations support our inference about the cooling that has already started,” because “the average annual air temperature in Irkutsk, which correlates well with the average annual global temperature of the surface air, attained in 1997 its maximum equal to +2.3C” and afterwards “began to diminish to +1.2C in 1998, +0.7C in 1999, and +0.4C in 2000.”

Etc.

From the Miami Herald’s Cancun edition for September 12 comes this gem from a page 3 “point of view” column by Tere Carpinelli of Le Voz de Mexico:

“Believe it or not, one expert even believes that millions of menopausal Baby Boomer women are partly to blame for the rise in the Earth’s temperature! ‘There are more than 900 million middle-aged women worldwide in the early stages of menopause who are experiencing what are commonly known as hot flashes on a regular basis,’ professor of meteorology Dr. Cyrill Sanders told a convention of environmental experts in Osaka, Japan. “That is why the Earth is warming at an increasing rate and there is no end in sight. Sanders said he and his team discovered a clear correlation between the number of women entering menopause over the past 25 years and steadily increasing temperatures.”

As far as we can tell, the source of this ridiculous claim was an August 19 issue of Weekly World News, which ranks below Scientific American for credibility. Perhaps Carpinelli was not sure that this was a joke because of the constant confounding, perpetuated by environmental groups, of correlation and causality.

Energy Conference Steers Clear of Climate Change So Far; Russia Unlikely to Ratify Kyoto This Year Despite EU Bribes

by William Yeatman on September 16, 2003

in Politics

Energy Conference Steers Clear of Climate Change So Far

House and Senate conferees working to produce a comprehensive energy bill have made some progress in various areas. So far they have released draft language on the subjects of hydrogen, clean coal technology, the Alaska natural gas pipeline, energy efficiency and personnel. No mention has yet been made of any climate change provisions.

On hydrogen, the joint conference chairmen, Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) and Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La.), said that the “provisions include the full range of research, development and deployment actions required to advance the nation toward significant use of hydrogen as soon as possible.” The language does not mandate specific goals for utilization of hydrogen-powered vehicles by specific dates, as was required in the Senate bill. Instead, it sets a broad target that hydrogen-powered vehicles should make “significant inroads” into the market by 2020. The draft language sets aside $2.15 billion for the purpose by 2008, less than the Senate bill, but more than the House bill.

According to Greenwire (Sept. 10), “Conference leaders have expressed a desire to expedite the work of the conference committee by using as many of last year’s agreements as possible before working on the more controversial issues such as those dealing with electricity policy and market structure, climate change, oil and gas exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, renewable portfolio standards, taxes, ethanol mandates and hydropower reform.” CAFE standards are not regarded as controversial because the House and Senate bills treat the issue in similar fashion.

Russia Unlikely to Ratify Kyoto This Year Despite EU Bribes

The European Commission has allocated EUR2 million ($2.3 million) to Russia to support the Kyoto Protocol program. Jorge Moreira da Silva, permanent European Parliament Rapporteur on Climate Change, announced that Russian ratification of the Kyoto Protocol would lead to large investments from European companies, desperate to buy credits to enable them to continue operating without having to cut their emissions levels. Deputies of the Russian Parliament, however, have indicated that they will not be ratifying the protocol soon, despite statements from the environment ministry that they would do so. The parliamentarians seem to have sided more with Russia’s economics ministry, saying that Moscow needs to approach the issue gradually after examining its impact on the Russian economy. In a statement, deputies from parliamentary committees dealing with ecological and economic issues said, “It is necessary to examine the whole problem of Kyoto ratification, not just in its ecological aspect, but also studying the economic interests of the country.” (Russiajournal.com, gateway2russia.com)

Poor Families Cut Food Bills when Heating Costs Rise; Cinergy Pledges 5% Emissions Cut

by William Yeatman on September 16, 2003

in Blog

Poor Families Cut Food Bills when Heating Costs Rise

Stanford researchers have discovered that poor families cut back on food as well as heat when their heating costs increase. Both poor and rich families increase their spending on home fuel in winter, but rich families also spend more on clothing and food during the cold season. The poor, on the other hand, who spend less on clothing and on food at home, end up eating 10 percent fewer calories in the winter, according to research to be published in an upcoming issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

“Our results suggest that poor American families face stark choices in cold weather … and that poor parents are only imperfectly able to protect their children from cold-weather resource shocks,” said Jayanta Bhattacharya and colleagues of Stanford Medical School.

The researchers found that poor families spent an average of $9 less per month on food for the home with a 10-degree drop in temperature. By comparison, rich families increased their home food spending by $11 per month when the temperature dropped. “Poor families reduced food expenditures by roughly the same amount as their increase in fuel expenditures,” Bhattacharya explained.

The researchers also warned against any argument that the reduction in caloric intake would be a good thing in view of the supposed obesity crisis facing America. They pointed out that, “Seasonal cycles in calorie intake, which is what our results imply, may not have the same positive or even desirable health consequences as might caloric restriction among the obese.”

Cinergy Pledges 5% Emissions Cut

Cinergy Corp., one of the largest coal-fired electric utilities in the nation, has pledged to cut its emissions of greenhouse gases by 5 percent by 2012, at a cost of $21 million. Most of the money will be spent on upgrading the efficiency of current power plants and on incentives to reduce consumer demand during hot days. The company may also invest in “offsets” such as carbon sequestration projects in agriculture or forestry.

Cinergy has appointed political pressure group Environmental Defense as a consultant in the move. Fred Krupp, president of the group, called Cinergy’s decision, “the type of corporate leadership that’s going to help break the paralysis in Washington on this issue.” Krupp explained this by saying the initiative showed “You can generate a lot of electricity profitably and still protect the planet.”

Cinergy has long been a major proponent, alongside DuPont and the now-defunct Enron, of greenhouse gas credit trading schemes. Regarded as one of the “filthy five” by environmentalists, Cinergy has some of the oldest coal-fired power plants in the country, which were grandfathered in by the Clean Air Act, and will benefit from any credits given for upgrading its plants.

EPA Refuses to Label CO2 a Pollutant; Pressure Grows for Separate Electricity Bill

by William Yeatman on September 2, 2003

in Politics

EPA Refuses to Label CO2 a Pollutant

Attempts by environmental groups to circumvent Congressional authority and achieve their goals through the back door were set back on August 28, when the Environmental Protection Agency turned down requests to regulate emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The environmentalists hoped that EPA would use the Clean Air Act, which allows it to regulate substances if they are could be reasonably expected to harm human welfare. The Act lists “climate” as an area of human welfare.

Jeffrey R. Holmstead, the assistant administrator who oversees air programs, said that the act “does give us authority to do research on climate change, not to issue regulation … Where there is a major public policy issue, Congress needs to decide.” The general counsel, Robert E. Fabricant, issued a memorandum that said, “E.P.A. cannot assert jurisdiction to regulate in this area.”

The EPA had been asked to declare the life-sustaining gas detrimental to human welfare by a coalition of environmental groups and two north-eastern states that filed petitions under the Act. Fabricant based his reasoning on the 2000 Supreme Court decision, Food and Drug Administration v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco, which said the F.D.A. could not try to regulate tobacco as a “drug” and cigarettes as a “device.”

Holmstead clarified, “The Supreme Court said where there is a major public policy decision to be made, an agency can’t just go out and use a broadly worded statute to deal with that.” Fabricant added, “It is clear that an administrative agency properly awaits congressional direction on a fundamental policy issue such as global climate change, instead of searching for an existing statute that was not designed or enacted to deal with that issue.” (New York Times, Aug. 28)

Pressure Grows for Separate Electricity Bill

Following the reaction to the August blackouts, senior Congressional Democrats led by House Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member John Dingell (D-Mich.) are pushing for the energy bill conference to strip out electricity reliability provisions into a separate electricity bill. The idea is reported to be gaining favor among Senate Democrats, who are considering adding electric reliability provisions as a rider to the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education appropriations bill currently being debated on the Senate floor.

Dingell has said his reliability proposal will address three issues: the reliability of the transmission system, the reliability of generating supply, and the adequacy of mechanical, human and electronic controls on the system. He told Greenwire (Sept. 3) that the particulars of his bill would be similar to the reliability language in the existing energy legislation, and that he might be able to accommodate other issues within the bill in order to get it through Congress. “But I can’t tell you what those are,” Dingell added. “In a poker game, I never show my hole card.”

Congressional Republicans have so far resisted the calls, stating that the issue is better dealt with as part of a comprehensive energy bill. Senate Energy Committee chairman Pete Domenici (R.-N.M.) has so far sent “mixed signals” as to his preferred route for ensuring electricity reliability according to a Schwab analyst quoted by Greenwire.

Scientists Play Historians; Satellite Wars

by William Yeatman on September 2, 2003

in Science

Scientists Play Historians

Stepping up the attack on the study by Willie Soon et al. that demonstrates that there is nothing unusual about temperatures in this century, Michael Mann’s coauthor Philip Jones of the University of East Anglia played amateur historian when he tried to explain away common knowledge about past warm and cold spells in Northern Europe. He pointed the Guardian (Sept. 1) towards the part of their paper (see last issue) that contends that many of the obvious indicators of past temperature variability do not mean what people suppose they mean.

Mann et al. contend that the medieval presence of vineyards in Britain is meaningless because there are 350 vineyards there now, compared to 50 or 60 in the Middle Ages. In arguing thus, they ignore advances in technology that allow vineyards to prosper in colder climates as well as increases in population (there were 5-6 million people in England before the Black Death, making the rate of vineyards to people almost twice as high as it is today).

They also allege that the Viking colonization of Greenland was motivated by exile, not by a search for good climate. This may be true, but has no bearing on the fact that evidence from insect habitats shows that Greenland was livable at that time but ceased to be afterwards. The Viking settlers were forced to abandon Greenland when they were no longer able to grow hay to feed their livestock.

Finally, the researchers allege that the Little Ice Age-era “frost fairs” on the River Thames in London were possible only because the design of London Bridge dammed the tidal flow of salt water upstream. This appears to ignore the fact that that particular design of London Bridge was first built in 1176, while frost fairs did not begin till much later. Whatever the effects of the bridge, temperatures much colder than today would still have been necessary for the river to freeze.

A wealth of information on the Little Ice Age as a global phenomenon may be found in University of California archaeologist Brian Fagan’s book, The Little Ice Age, published by Basic Books in 2000. The chapters on “The Great Hunger” and “The Specter of Hunger” are especially instructive. Apparently, Mann and Jones have not had time to read it.

Satellite Wars

The attempts to discredit John Christy and Roy Spencer’s satellite data that show no appreciable warming in the atmosphere over recent years continue. Ben Santer and his colleagues, who prefer the recalibration of the data from Remote Sensing Systems because it fits their climate model better, argue in a letter to Science (Aug. 22) in response to Christy’s criticisms of their data that the independent validation of Christy’s data by weather balloon measurements are “not an unambiguous ‘gold standard’ for the evaluation of satellite data.”

The Greening Earth Society comments (www.co2andclimate.org/co2report/int_0902.html), “Different agencies and researchers have put together several different compilations of the weather-balloon data records. Each has been carefully scrutinized and corrected to the best ability of the respective researchers in order to account for the data problems Santer describes. The methods used to make these corrections vary across research groups. Yet, when the final data are combined and global trends examined, the trends fall very close to (and in most cases are slightly less than) the UAH satellite record.

“Santer and his co-authors would be in a much stronger position if the global trends from weather-balloon data were all over the board, with some closer to the RSS trend than to the UAH trend. But that isn’t the case. The consistency of results indicates that the weather-balloon record errors Santer is so worried about are not nearly as problematic as they lead the reader to believe they are. This is because the errors are accounted for. As a consequence, any claim that climate models are better than actual observations rings hollow.

“There remains a large discrepancy between the patterns of temperature change at the surface and those in the lower to middle atmosphere (especially in the tropics) that the model does not replicate. This discrepancy indicates a fundamental weakness in the current generation of climate models. Something in their internal workings fails to parameterize negative feedback loops that appear to be ridding the atmosphere of excess greenhouse heating. As a result they overestimate future warming rates. The controversy continues.”

Announcement

The Cato Insitute will hold a briefing on “McCain-Lieberman on Global Warming: a Journey to Nowhere,” at noon on Friday, September 12, in Room B-369, Rayburn House Office Building. The speaker will be Patrick Michaels, Cato senior fellow and professor at the University of Virginia. Lunch will be provided. Reservations, which are required, may be made on the Cato web site at www.cato.org or by calling Krystal Brand at (202) 789-5229. The briefing will also be broadcast live online.

Economists Suggest Environmental False Alarms are Justified; Australia’s Howard Rejects Carbon Trading Advice

by William Yeatman on September 2, 2003

in Blog

Economists Suggest Environmental False Alarms are Justified

Straying from hard science into the realm of economics, Science magazine published an article in its August 29th issue entitled “False Alarm over Environmental False Alarms.” The authors, S.W. Pacala and S.A. Levin of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton, E. Bulte of the Department of Economics at Tilburg University, the Netherlands, and J.A. List of the Agricultural and Resource Economics Department at the University of Maryland (and the President’s Council of Economic Advisers), argued that the potential downside risks of environmental hazards are so great that the environmental community should continue to raise alarms on which policy might be based even in the knowledge that “some of them will turn out to be wrong.” The authors conclude that, “Given the potential to save millions of additional lives, this is no time to turn down the sensitivity of our environmental alarm” (emphasis added).

The article appears to be little more than an economic justification of Stephen Schneider’s admission to Discover magazine in 1989 that, “To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective, and being honest.” Schneider, along with Paul Ehrlich and Maurice Grubb, provided the authors with “helpful comments on an earlier draft.”

The article also contained disparaging remarks about Bjorn Lomborg’s book, The Skeptical Environmentalist. An early draft called it “officially discredited,” although the published article softened that to a mention of the decision of the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty.

Australia’s Howard Rejects Carbon Trading Advice

Australian Prime Minister John Howard rejected a carbon trading scheme in the face of advice to pursue the policy from the Treasury and the Department of the Environment, according to the Melbourne newspaper, the Age (Sept. 1). Other special interests advocating the scheme included the Business Council of Australia, which alleges in a report circulated to Australia’s top 100 companies that restricting greenhouse emissions would be less damaging to the economy than the “uncertainty” created by the Federal Government’s current voluntary greenhouse reduction measures.

Howard’s cabinet rejected carbon trading primarily on the basis that it would drive existing industry abroad. An official spokesman told the Age, “Australia remains opposed to adopting the whole Kyoto framework because that would impose penalties on Australian industry which would not be imposed on industries in competitor countries.”

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