A report published in October 2012 by the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI) links soaring corn and agricultural commodity prices to food riots and turmoil in North Africa and the Middle East.

Although several factors may contribute to political unrest, acknowledge Dr. Yaneer Bar-Yam and two co-authors, “the timing of violent protests in North Africa and the Middle East in 2011 as well as earlier riots in 2008 coincides with large peaks in global food prices.” In poor countries with little or no local agriculture to “buffer” swings in global supply conditions, the central government “may be perceived to have a critical role in food security. Failure to provide security undermines the very reason for existence of the political system.”

In short:

When the ability of the political system to provide security for the population breaks down, popular support disappears. Conditions of widespread threat to security are particularly present when food is inaccessible to the population at large.

Soaring food prices triggered food riots in both 2008 and 2011.

Figure explanation (references omitted): Time dependence of FAO Food Price Index from January 2004 to May 2011. Red dashed vertical lines correspond to beginning dates of “food riots” and protests associated with the major recent unrest in North Africa and the Middle East. The overall death toll is reported in parentheses. Blue vertical line indicates the date, December 13, 2010, on which Dr. Bar-Yam and colleagues submitted a report to the U.S. government, warning of the link between food prices, social unrest and political instability. Inset shows FAO Food Price Index from 1990 to 2011.

At first glance, the NECSI report may seem to belabor the obvious. Hunger breeds desperation; desperation, violence; and violence, instability. But the report does more than correlate food riots with food prices. It also postulates a threshold beyond which food prices likely trigger violence.

In a follow-on study published last month, Bar-Yam and colleagues examine the political repercussions of the U.S. 2012 summer drought, which led to a new increase in corn prices. Through the fall, global maize (corn) prices ”remained at a threshold above which the riots and revolutions had predominantly occurred” in 2011. On the other hand, commodity prices in general “remained at the threshold above which violence was found in 2008-09 and 2010-11.” So what happened?

Violent protest broke out in South Africa, “a heavily maize-dependent country” where ”consumer food indices have increased dramatically.” 

Coinciding with the food price increases this summer, massive labor strikes in mining and agriculture have led to the greatest single incident of social violence since the fall of apartheid in 1994. Worker demands for dramatic pay increases reflect that their wages have not kept up with drastic increases in the prices of necessities, especially food.

Food-related protests and riots in 2012 also occurred in Haiti and Argentina.

The graph below shows the food price threshold above which riots are predicted to occur. The authors note that since mid-2011 the global food price index has “hovered around the threshold value.”

Figure explanation (references omitted): Global food price index since 2002. The threshold above which widespread food riots and revolutions occurred in 2008-08 and 2010-11 is shown both without (solid red) and with (dashed red) inflation. Whether incomes of poor populations increase with inflation depends on local conditions and national policies.

The authors argue that, “When prices are significantly higher than the threshold, as they were in 2007-08 and 2010-11, widespread violence can be expected. When the prices are proximate to the threshold, incidents of violence should be more sensitive to the specifics of local conditions,” such as national income support policies and the extent to which local prices move with global prices.

In South Africa, though, “The unusually violent and deadly worker riots at platinum mines starting in August of 2012 coincided both with record global maize prices and record high prices for basic food items . . .” Similarly, “xenophobic riots in May of 2008 stood out as the bloodiest violence since apartheid. These riots coincided with food riots around the world during a previous peak of global food prices.”

Figure explanation (references omitted): Consumer price index for bread and cereals in South Africa since 2002 (black, left axis) and global maize prices (blue, right axis). Red solid vertical line indicates beginning of deadly riots in platinum mines, and red dashed line indicates period of severe xenophobic riots. Local prices have increased with global prices but have not correspondingly decreased when prices declined.

So in 2012-2013 what is pushing maize prices up to and beyond the violence threshold? The drought is a factor. The researchers also blame two policies: the “deregulation of commodity futures markets” and the “diversion of almost 50% of the US maize crop to ethanol.” Those policies, they contend, “are ill-advised and should be changed.”

Bar-Yam and his colleagues are surely right about the Soviet-style central planning scheme euphemistically called the “Renewable Fuel Standard.” They do not explain (at least in these papers) why curbing economic liberty would make commodity markets more efficient or make food more affordable over the long term. Blaming speculators for causing or exacerbating food shortages and famines is one of the world’s oldest economic fallacies.

According to an article in the Washington Post, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley’s long-sought offshore wind project is positioned to win approval from the state legislature within the upcoming weeks.  Environmentalists have fought hard to encourage States and developers to build off-shore wind projects on the East Coast. At least six wind farms have been proposed in the region. However, owing to the inefficient and costly nature of offshore wind farms, combined with the need for heavy subsidization, none of these projects have managed to gain any traction.

The new bill, known as the Maryland Offshore Wind Energy Act of 2013, will designate a “Wind Energy Area”, a zone in coastal waters situated about 10 miles east of Ocean City. It will also establish a $10 million Offshore Wind Business Development Fund designed to provide incentives and support for small businesses entering into the newly created industry.

Past attempts to approve the Maryland project have been met with strong opposition from both the state legislature and developers.

The Maryland legislature in 2010 refused to bring the issue up for a vote, warning that the project would cost Maryland taxpayers twice the initial estimates of $1.5 billion. Further opposition to the project arose after it was revealed that the governor’s former chief of staff was one of eight bidders to develop the project.

Developers of the project have been equally pessimistic.  Many developers have noted the high price and low energy makes the project an unappealing investment.

While developers continue to withhold support for the proposed project, several modifications that have been made to the new bill have managed to garner support from lawmakers.

What are these changes?  The Washington Post article details the following:

To win support from some lawmakers, O’Malley has embraced a financing model involving renewable energy credits that is unproven in the risky realm of offshore wind. To win over others, he has limited the cost of the subsidy to about $1.50 a month per household. The subsidy will amount to $2.5 billion over 20 years.

Also to reduce costs, the project was downgraded from a rated capacity of 500mw to 200MW. Because wind is intermittent, windmills typically generate less than a third of their rated capacity.

Responding to the anti-Renewable Fuel Standard Hill briefing discussed on this blog yesterday, Tom Buis, CEO of ethanol trade group Growth Energy, asserted that “homegrown American renewable energy provides consumers with a choice and savings” (Greenwire, subscription required). Rubbish. Under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), ethanol consumption is a mandate, not a choice. 

Buis’s claim that ethanol relieves pain at the pump sounds plausible because a gallon of ethanol is cheaper than a gallon of gasoline. However, ethanol has about one-third less energy than gasoline and does not make up the difference in price. Consequently, the higher the ethanol blend, the worse mileage your car gets, and the more money you spend to drive a given distance.

FuelEconomy.Gov, a Web site jointly administered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Energy (DOE) calculates how much a typical motorist would spend in a year to fill up a flex-fuel vehicle with either E85 (motor fuel made with 85% ethanol) or regular gasoline. The exact bottom line changes as gasoline and ethanol prices change. The big picture, though, is always the same: Ethanol is a net money loser for the consumer.

For example, at prices prevailing in late November 2012, it cost $500 more per year to drive on E85. When I checked FuelEconomy.Gov last week, E85 cost the average motorist an additional $600 per year.

A bad deal just got worse. At today’s prices, it would cost an extra $700-$900 a year to switch from regular gasoline to E85. Some savings! Small wonder that our ‘choice’ to buy ethanol must be mandated.

Over at the Daily Caller News Foundation, reporter Greg Campbell takes a long look at ex-Colorado Governor’s qualifications to become the next Energy Secretary, a cabinet position for which he is rumored to be in the running. The President’s due diligence team should take note. Campbell writes:

One of Ritter’s main legacies as governor is a package of legislation called “the new energy economy” that was meant to kickstart renewable energy initiatives.

But his administration has come under scathing criticism recently for its handling of new energy projects. A state audit of the Colorado Energy Office — which began focusing on renewable energy initiatives during Ritter’s tenure — showed that it could not account for how it spent $252 million in state and federal money since 2007.

The agency could not say how much its programs cost or how much money was spent on them. The audit concluded that because of poor accounting, the energy office could not show that any of its programs were cost effective.

Much of the mismanaged money alluded to above came from the stimulus. In this respect, an Energy Secretary Ritter would provide a seamless transition from outgoing Secretary Steven Chu, whose tenure was characterized by pound-foolish stimulus spending.

According to Ritter, however, the state auditor has it all wrong:

He [Ritter] said that documents showing “in great detail” what was spent on various projects, as well as their outcomes, exist on the Internet and that there were “other avenues” for auditors to locate information.

Sooooo…….the missing exculpatory evidence is “on the internet”…..I’ve heard worse excuses, but not many.

In addition to the mismanagement of taxpayer money, Ritter also has a deep well of experience making energy more expensive. While in office, Ritter championed an agenda he labeled the “New Energy Economy.” In practice, it meant forcing Colorado ratepayers to use more green energy, and also fuel switching from coal to natural gas. Because green electricity costs more than natural gas electricity, which in turn costs twice as much as coal electricity in Colorado, Ritter’s New Energy Economy necessarily inflated electricity costs. As Campbell reports,

Indeed, a new report examining the financial impact of New Energy Economy legislation shows that Xcel Energy customers paid $484 million last year complying with the state’s tough new renewable energy standards and other clean energy measures, an amount that comprised 18 percent of Xcel’s total electricity sales in 2012.

The “new report” showing the costs of the New Energy Economy was published by none other than me. [I’ve embedded the full report below, after the conclusion.] Unfortunately for Coloradans, it gets worse. New Energy Economy electricity wasn’t merely expensive, it was also superfluous.

As I explain in the report, Xcel this year projects a surplus of dependable capacity (in excess of a 16% reliability reserve margin beyond peak demand) of 462 megawatts. The surplus is due primarily to the sagging economy. By comparison, in 2013, Xcel counts 457 megawatts of dependable capacity attributable to the New Energy Economy. The surplus is greater than the New Energy Economy contribution! This suggests that New Energy Economy policies required the purchase of expensive energy that Coloradans don’t need.

Shoddy accounting…picking losers…expensive energy–these are Governor Bill Ritter’s legacy on energy policy. Sounds like the perfect candidate to make electricity prices skyrocket.

William Yeatman – 2012 Cost Analysis of the New Energy Economy by Competitive Enterprise Institute

This morning I attended a briefing on “The Renewable Fuel Standard: Pitfalls, Challenges, and the Need for Congressional Action in 2013.” Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense moderated a panel of six experts. Although each expert spotlighted a different set of harms arising from the RFS, reflecting the core concern of his or her organization, this was a team effort, with panelists frequently affirming each other’s key points. Collectively, they made a strong case that the RFS is a “costly failure.” The briefing’s purpose was to demonstrate the need for reform rather than outline a specific reform agenda. Panelists nonetheless agreed that, at a minimum, Congress should scale back the RFS blending targets for corn ethanol.

Kristin Sundell of ActionAid explained how the RFS exacerbates world hunger, undermining U.S. foreign aid and international security objectives. The RFS diverts 15% of the world corn supply from food to fuel, putting upward pressure on food prices. A recent Tufts University study estimates that U.S. ethanol expansion during the past 6 years cost developing countries more than $5.5 billion in higher prices for corn imports. In Guatemala, the additional expense ($28 million) in 2011 effectively cancelled out all U.S. food aid and agricultural assistance for that year. Food price spikes, partly due to the RFS, were a factor in the recent turmoil in the Middle East. ”Congress can’t control the weather, but they can control misguided energy policies that could cause a global food crisis,” Sundell said.

Kristin Wilcox of the American Frozen Food Institute discussed the RFS’s impact on food consumers. Corn is both the chief animal feed and an ingredient in about 75% of all frozen foods. Consequently, RFS-induced increases in corn prices drive up “the cost of producing a wide range of foods and leads to higher food bills for consumers.” In addition, when corn prices go up, so do the prices of other commodities that compete with corn such as wheat and soybeans. ”Our position is very simple,” Wilcox said: “food should be used to fuel bodies, not vehicle engines.” She concluded: “Trying to change the price at the pump should not burden consumers with increased prices in the grocery check out aisle.”

Actually, as Geoff Moody of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers pointed out, the RFS aggravates rather than alleviates pain at the pump. Graphs from the Energy Information Administration show that biofuels are more expensive than gasoline on an energy-content (per-mile) basis. The higher the ethanol blend, the more expensive it is to drive, which is why fewer than 4% of flex-fuel vehicle owners fill up with E85 (motor fuel blended with 85% ethanol).

Moody’s major point was that the RFS is becoming increasingly unworkable. Already the 135 billion gallon U.S. motor fuel market is nearly saturated with E10. By 2022, U.S. motor fuel consumption is projected to be about 25% lower than Congress assumed when it expanded the RFS in 2007. If Congress does not revise the RFS, refiners will have to sell E20 or higher, but the existing retail infrastructure is not equipped to handle blends higher than E10. A typical service station may clear a profit of only $45,000 on motor fuel sales, but replacing pumps and storage tanks to handle higher blends can cost $50,000 to $200,000.

Scott Faber of the Environmental Working Group discussed the RFS program’s environmental impacts, especially changes in land use. From 2008 to 2011, high crop prices and crop subsidies contributed to the conversion of 23 million acres of wetlands and grasslands, an area the size of Indiana. About 8.4 million acres were converted to corn production. “We have lost more wetlands and grasslands in the last four years than we have in the last 40 years,” Faber said. If lawmakers knew in 2007 what we now know about the RFS’s many serious unintended consequences, they would not have enacted the program, Faber opined.

Tom Elam of Farm Econ LLC discussed the RFS program’s impacts on livestock producers and meat and poultry consumers. Since Congress created the RFS in 2005, annual feed costs have increased by $8.8 billion for chicken producers and $1.9 billion for turkey producers. Consequences of those higher costs include an 8 billion pound decline in poultry production, eight major bankruptcies, a half billion dollar loss in farm income, and higher prices for consumers.

Retail broiler prices, for example, increased from $1.74/lb in 2005 to $1.97/lb in December 2012. Turkey prices similarly rose from $1.07/lb in 2005 to $1.80/lb in early 2012. Beef and pork prices too rose along with feed costs, with the result that U.S. per capita meat and poultry consumption declined by about 10% since 2008.

The RFS may be good for corn farmers, but it fosters economic inefficiency. For every $1 of added ethanol production, food production costs increased $2.89. In other words, food producers bear a cost “more than twice the value of the ethanol created.”

Jim Currie of the National Marine Manufacturers Association explained the perils of E15 to the $72 billion per year U.S. recreational boating industry. Boats and other small gasoline-powered engines are designed to run on motor fuels blended with 10% ethanol or less. Consequently, “anything above E10 poses serious problems, including performance issues like stalling, corrosion leading to oil or fuel leaks, increased emissions and damaged valves, rubber fuel lines and gaskets.”

Higher blends are trouble for two reasons. First, ethanol is a solvent and at increased concentrations eats away at engine components. Second, ethanol is an oxygenate, and the higher the oxygen content of a fuel, the hotter the burn. Tests supervised by the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Lab prove “time and time again that marine engines and, by extrapolation, other types of engines, simply cannot tolerate the high levels of additional oxygen that this fuel blend forces into the engine.” Currie presented lab test photos of such engine damage (pp. 3-7 of this Power Point).

Valve rupture from E15

Touching on the potential risks E15 poses to automobiles, he quoted the AAA’s statement of last December: “Only about 12 million out of the more than 240 million light-duty vehicles on the roads today are approved by manufacturers to use E15 gasoline.”

Currie’s conclusion drew applause from the Hill crowd:

As I am the last presenter today, let me offer a hypothetical scenario, based on what you have heard. Suppose an organization approached the Hill today and said, “We have a great idea for a new policy. It will largely benefit a small number of people in one part of the country, and members of Congress from there will support it wholeheartedly. The downside is that it will hurt the environment; and conservation practices; and will drive up food costs; and hurt people in developing countries; and will potentially damage every small engine in the country, including those in motorcycles and snowmobiles and ATVs and lawnmowers and generators; and it will damage boat engines; and it will potentially damage most automobile engines and will void your engine warranty if you use it. But we want you to enact a law requiring the American consumer to use it anyway.” That’s where we are today, and we think this law needs to be changed.

Senator David Vitter (R-La.) has hit the ground running as the new ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.  Last week Vitter and Representative Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, sent a letter to James Martin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 8, asking whether Martin had used a secret, private e-mail account to conduct official business.

As Vitter and Issa note in their letter, “The use of personal, non-official e-mail accounts raises concerns that you could be attempting to insulate this and other e-mail correspondence from a Freedom of Information Act request. Moreover, your actions may also constitute violation of the Federal Records Act.”  It may also be used to evade congressional oversight of federal agencies.

Several of Martin’s private e-mails were released by the EPA as a result of a lawsuit by the Competitive Enterprise Institute.  The efforts of CEI’s Chris also revealed that EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson was using an alias official EPA account in the name of Richard Windsor.

Sens. Vitter & Alexander Ask AG Why Oil Is Prosecuted for Killing Birds, but Not Wind

Also last week, Senator David Vitter (R-La.) and Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) asked Attorney General Eric Holder to explain the Department of Justice’s selective enforcement of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. Oil and gas producers have been prosecuted for unintentionally killing small numbers of birds, while windmill owners are never prosecuted for killing thousands of birds protected under the legislation and underlying treaty.

Vitter and Alexander argue that the legislation was never intended to cover incidental killings of protected birds, as occurs frequently with windmills and rarely with oil and gas production.  “Owning a cat could be subject to criminal prosecutions if this precedent is set.”

Sen. Vitter Objects to EPA’s Absurd Mandate for Non-Existent Fuel

Senator David Vitter (R-La.) made a statement objecting to the EPA’s 2013 requirements for the Renewable Fuels Standard.  The EPA is proposing to require refiners to use 14 million gallons of advanced biofuels, primarily cellulosic ethanol.  Fourteen million gallons is a huge increase over the 2012 requirement of 8.65 million gallons.  A few thousand gallons of cellulosic ethanol were produced in 2012.

Last week, the federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the EPA must base its requirements for advanced biofuels on reasonable estimates instead of on pie-in-the-sky hopes.

Vitter has replaced Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) as ranking Republican on the EPW Committee.  Inhofe has replaced Sen. John McCain (R-Az.) as ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee.

The world will burn around 1.2 billion more tons of coal per year in 2017 than it does today — an amount equal to the current coal consumption of Russia and the United States combined.

Today’s Climatewire (subscription required) summarizes data and projections from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) and the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) from which we may conclude that EPA regulation of greenhouse gases (GHGs) is increasingly irrelevant to global climate change even if one accepts agency’s view of climate science.

Basically, it all comes down to the fact that China’s huge and increasing coal consumption overwhelms any reduction in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions the EPA might achieve.

From the Climatewire article:

Chinese coal consumption surged for a 12th consecutive year in 2011, with the country burning 2.3 billion tons of the carbon-emitting mineral to run power plants, industrial boilers and other equipment to support its economic and population growth.

In a simple but striking chart published on its website, the U.S. Energy Information Administration plotted China’s progress as the world’s dominant coal-consuming country, shooting past rival economies like the United States, India and Russia as well as regional powers such as Japan and South Korea.

China’s ravenous appetite for coal stems from a 200 percent increase in Chinese electric generation since 2000, fueled primarily by coal. Graph courtesy of U.S. Energy Information Administration. 

In fact, according to EIA, the 325-million-ton increase in Chinese coal consumption in 2011 accounted for 87 percent of the entire world’s growth for the year, which was estimated at 374 million tons. Since 2000, China has accounted for 82 percent of the world’s coal demand growth, with a 2.3-billion-ton surge, the agency said.

“China now accounts for 47 percent of global coal consumption — almost as much as the rest of the world combined,” EIA said of the latest figures.

 Climatewire also observes:

The rising consumption numbers reflect a 200-plus percent increase in Chinese electricity generation since 2000, with most of the new power coming from coal-fired power plants. Chinese growth averaged 9 percent per year from 2000 to 2010, more than twice the 4 percent global growth rate for coal consumption. And when China is excluded from the tally, growth in coal use averaged only 1 percent for the rest of the world over the 2000-2010 period, according to EIA. . . .

According to the Paris-based International Energy Agency, China’s share in global coal consumption is more than twice that of the demand for oil in the United States. And last year China reigned as both the world’s No. 1 coal producer (3.7 billion metric tons) and the world’s top buyer of foreign coal, with an estimated 270 million tons of imports, according to the China Coal Transportation and Distribution Association.

In its latest projections on global coal demand, issued last month, IEA said that by 2017 coal will come close to surpassing oil as the world’s leading energy source, with every region of the world except the United States relying more heavily on the carbon-intensive energy resource.

In fact, the world will burn around 1.2 billion more tons of coal per year in 2017 than it does today — an amount equal to the current coal consumption of Russia and the United States combined, IEA noted.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) is not bullish on biofuel. That’s what I infer from “Biofuels in the United States: Context and Outlook,” a Power Point presentation given by the agency at a biofuels workshop in Washington, D.C. last week. I suspect many in attendance were not pleased. 

Three slides in particular are noteworthy.

Slide no. 19 projects that even in 2040, the quantity of biofuel in the U.S. motor fuel market will be about 10 billion gallons lower than the 36 billion gallons per year required by the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) by 2022.

Slides 8 and 9 may explain why. Simply put, although a gallon of ethanol is cheaper than a gallon of petroleum-based fuel, gasoline and diesel deliver more bang for buck than their ‘renewable’ counterparts. It is cheaper to drive one mile on gasoline or diesel than on ethanol or biodiesel fuel.

That ethanol aggrevates rather than alleviates pain at the pump may also be inferred from FuelEconomy.Gov, a Web site jointly administered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Energy (DOE).

Because ethanol has one-third less energy than gasoline and does not make up the difference in price, the higher the ethanol blend, the more money you spend on each mile driven. At current prices, it would cost the average driver $600 a year to switch from regular gasoline to E85, a fuel that is 85 percent ethanol.

Source: FuelEconomy.Gov

Or, if you don’t trust your government, check out the American Automobile Association’s Daily Fuel Gauge Report. The report for today, Jan. 28, 2013, is posted in the marquee and at the top of this page.

The UK-based Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) has published prize-winning author Matt Ridley’s A Lukewarmer’s Ten Tests: What It Would Take to Persuade Me that Current Climate Policy Makes Sense. 

For coercive decarbonization to make sense, Ridley argues, climate alarmists would have persuade us of ten things, none of which is plausible in light of either recent science, economic data, or moral common sense.

Such articles of alarmist faith include the propositions that the urban heat island effect has been fully purged from the surface temperature record, water vapor and cloud feedbacks will eventually amplify the modest observed warming trend since 1979, mankind will fail to adapt to climate change even though there has already been a 98% reduction in the probability of death from extreme weather since the 1920s, and today’s relatively poor generation should bear the cost of damages that may not materialize until a far wealthier future generation.

Ridley concludes that the UK’s “current energy and climate policy is probably more dangerous, both economically and ecologically, than climate change itself.”

Ridley is well aware of the argument that “even a very small probability of a very large and dangerous change in the climate justifies drastic action.” But he notes that ”Pascal’s wager cuts both ways.” 

To climate alarmists, Ridley would reply that “a very small probability of a very large and dangerous effect from the adoption of large-scale renewable energy, reduced economic growth through carbon taxes or geo-engineering also justifies extreme caution.” Big picture: “At the moment, it seems highly likely that the cure is worse than the disease. We are taking chemotherapy for a cold.”

Last week the Research Council of Norway announced the results of a new assessment of the climate system’s “sensitivity” taking into account the leveling off of global temperatures during the decade from 2000 to 2010. The study projects that a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations over pre-industrial levels will increase global temperatures by between 1.2°C and 2.9°C, with 1.9°C being the most likely outcome. That is considerably cooler than the UN IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) estimate of 2°C to 4.5°C, with 3°C as the most probable outcome.

Climate sensitivity is an estimate of how much warming results from a given increase in CO2 concentrations. Estimates typically project the amount of warming from a doubling of CO2 concentrations over the pre-industrial (year 1750) level of 280 parts per million (ppm). At the current rate of increase (about 2 ppm/yr), a doubling to 560 ppm is expected by mid-century.

Climate alarm depends on several gloomy assumptions — about how fast emissions will increase, how fast atmospheric concentrations will rise, how much global temperatures will rise, how warming will affect ice sheet dynamics and sea-level rise, how warming will affect weather patterns, how the latter will affect agriculture and other economic activities, and how all climate change impacts will affect public health and welfare. But the chief assumption is the range of projected warming from a doubling of CO2 concentrations — the sensitivity estimate.

When the reseachers at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research – Oslo (CICERO) applied their computer “model and statistics to analyse temperature readings from the air and ocean for the period ending in 2000, they found that climate sensitivity to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration will most likely be 3.7°C, which is somewhat higher than the IPCC prognosis.” However, ”when they entered temperatures and other data from the decade 2000-2010 into the model, climate sensitivity was greatly reduced to a ‘mere’ 1.9°C.”

Referring to the IPCC AR4 warming forecasts, project manager Terje Berntsen, a geoscience professor at the University of Oslo, commented: “The Earth’s mean temperature rose sharply during the 1990s. This may have caused us to overestimate climate sensitivity.”

No single study can make a dent on the self-anointed “scientific consensus.” But the Norwegian study is one among several recent studies that call into question the IPCC sensitivity assumptions. Cato Institute climatologist Patrick Michaels recently summarized a partial list of such studies in Forbes magazine:

Richard Lindzen gives a range of 0.6 to 1.0 C (Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, 2011); Andreas Schmittner, 1.4 to 2.8 C (Science, 2011); James Annan, using two techniques, 1.2 to 3.6 C and 1.3 to 4.2 C (Climatic Change, 2011); J.H. van Hateren, 1.5 to 2.5 C (Climate Dynamics, 2012); Michael Ring, 1.5 to 2.0 C (Atmospheric and Climate Sciences, 2012); and Julia Hargreaves, including cooling from dust, 0.2 to 4.0 C and 0.8 to 3.6 C (Geophysical Research Letters, 2012). Each of these has lower and higher limits below those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

In Addendum: Climate Change Impacts in the United States (pp. 26-28), Michaels and his colleague Chip Knappenberger discuss those studies in greater detail and also illustrate with two graphs how the IPCC AR4 warming projections should be adjusted in light of more recent climate sensitivity research. Note that the ‘long, fat tail’ of high-end warming projections in AR4 is absent from projections based on more recent science.

TOP: A collection of probability estimates of the climate sensitivity as presented in the IPCC AR4.  The horizontal bars represent the 5 to 95 percent ranges, and the dots are the median estimate. BOTTOM: A collection of post-IPCC AR4 probability estimates of the climate sensitivity showing a lower mean and more constrained estimates of the uncertainty. The arrows below the graphic indicate the 5 to 95 percent confidence bounds for each estimate along with the mean (vertical line) where available.

Michaels comments: “People are beginning, cautiously, to dial back 21st century warming because there has been none. Because dreaded sea-level rise is also proportional, those estimates are going to have to come down, too.”

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Update (Jan. 29, 2013). I noticed yesterday (but neglected to mention) that there is no link to the Bernsten team’s sensitivity study in the Research Council of Norway’s press release. Now I know why. The ever-vigilant Anthony Watts reports that the study has not been peer reviewed. The press release should have mentioned this; it didn’t. Indeed, it is shoddy to issue press releases about studies that have not passed peer review and have not been accepted for publication by a reputable journal. Bloggers too should abstain from commenting on studies they have not read with their own eyes. I have always followed that rule — until yesterday. Apologies. Never again.