January 2008

As I have previously noted, every possible benchmark that can be applied to the European Union’s carbon cap-and-trade scheme is pointing downward. Still, supporters of imposing Kyoto-style cap-and-trade schemes in the U.S. insist, against all evidence, that after three years of operation “it is too early to call Europe’s ETS a failure.”

So what constitutes failure?

Maybe this. We now can add to the pile of evidence a remarkable report of how cap-and-trade is subject to rampant rent-seeking. According to the AP, well-heeled lobbying interests (much like those pushing for such a scheme here, come to think of it) have made tens of millions of dollars in pure windfall by working their pals in government and gaming the greenhouse gas regulatory regime.

Norwegian author Onar Åm, took IPCC's chairman Rajendra Kumar Pachauri to task at a debate at the University of Stavanger, Norway on Monday this week.

Åm published his book "Battle over climate –In defense of humanity" in December at the Press Club in Oslo. I have only leafed through the book so far, but its choked full of hard science, mixed up with the same moral argument that Bjørn Lomborg makes; we have to prioritize our resources, and poverty is more pressing than anything else. He is also a very well known figure in the Norwegian blogosphere.

According to Norwegian Aftenbladet, Pachauri had done his usual alarmist presentation in a good mood. He even included a joke about 20-30 percent of species will die out as a cause of global warming, and this extinction would include climate skeptics.

Åm had done his homework and disproved the outrageous statements, and concluded by accusing the IPCC of committing scientific fraud. One of his strongest points was the scientific critique of the hockey graph that the climate alarmists love so much.

Personally, I have read so many science reports discrediting that graph that it is hard to believe that IPCC is still using it with a straight face, but that is just my meager science reporter opinion…

Pachauri did not take kindly to the accusation of scientific fraud, but was not able to turn room back around after Åm's devastating debunking according to Aftenbladet.

After the debate, Aftenbladet asked Åm what his scientific credentials on climate science was, and Åm answered "I have the same credentials as Al Gore".

From WeatherQuestions.com

Many people believe that we should act now on global warming, as a sort of "insurance policy", just in case it ends up being a serious threat. For instance, there has been quite a bit of buzz lately about a YouTube video in which an Oregon high school teacher, Greg Craven, uses logic to convince viewers that the only responsible course of action on global warming is to act as if it is manmade and catastrophic. In other words, the potential risk of doing nothing is so high that we must act, no matter what the science says.

Unfortunately, as in all exercises of logic (as well as of scientific investigation), your conclusions are only as good as your assumptions. The bad assumptions that Mr. Craven makes that end up invalidating his conclusions are these:

1. That there are actions we can take now that will greatly alleviate the global warming problem if it is manmade, and

2. That the cost of those actions to the world will, at worst, be only economic.

Both of these assumptions are false. Humanity's need for energy is so vast that, until a new energy technology is developed, fossil fuels will continue to dominate our energy mix. The only way to substantially reduce the risk of catastrophic manmade warming in the near-term (the next 20-30 years) would be to bring the daily activities of mankind to a virtual standstill.

Using Mr. Craven's logic, I could argue that people should stop eating because, no matter how small the risk, people can (and do) die from choking on food. Paraphrasing Mr. Craven, not eating is the only responsible course of action to prevent choking to death. The only problem with this, of course, is that we would all die of starvation if we quit eating.

While this is admittedly an extreme example, in the case of reducing mankind's greenhouse gas emissions it is much closer to the truth than what Mr. Craven portrays. People tend to forget that every decision we make in life, whether we know it or not, involves weighing risks against benefits. Mr. Craven incorrectly assumes that the benefits of immediate action on global warming will outweigh the risks.

From Orange Punch, the Orange County Register’s Liberty Blog

Today’s global warming quote comes from Czech-born U.S. climatologist Dr. George Kukla, a research scientist with the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University.

“The only thing to worry about is the damage that can be done by worrying. Why are some scientists worried? Perhaps because they feel that to stop worrying may mean to stop being paid,” according to Kukla . “What I think is this: Man is responsible for a PART of global warming. MOST of it is still natural.”

Accelerating warming of the Earth isn’t caused by man, but by regularities of planets’ circulation around the Sun, he wrote last June in the Prague Monitor.

“The changes in the Earth’s circulation around the Sun are now extremely slow. Moreover, they are partially being compensated by the human impact on the climate. I think we will know more in about 50 years,” said Kukla, who is considered a pioneer in the study of solar forcing of climate changes.

As if the nonsense written about ‘global warming’ were not bad enough, that over the supposed retreat of tropical forests has tended to be even worse.

Luckily, there are some brave and meticulous scholars who seek the truth. One of my former colleagues, Dr Alan Grainger, Senior Lecturer in Geography at the University of Leeds, is one such, and an internationally-renowned expert on tropical deforestation, having studied the issue in great depth since 1978. He has now produced a major study, ‘Difficulties in tracking the long-term global trend in tropical forest area’, published in the Proceedings of the US National Academy of Sciences [see for full details: ‘No convincing evidence for decline in tropical forest’, EurekaAlert, January 7].

Dr. Grainger states: “The errors and inconsistencies I have discovered in the area data raise too many questions to provide convincing support for the accepted picture of tropical forest decline over the last 40 years. Scientists all over the world who have used these data to make predictions of species extinctions and the role of forests in global climate change will find it helpful to revisit their findings in the light of my study.”

As EurekaAlert points out:

“Dr Grainger first examined data published every 10 years by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) since 1980. These cover all forest in the humid and dry tropics and appear to indicate decline. FAO’s Global Forest Resources Assessment 2000, for example, showed that all tropical forest area fell from 1,926 million hectares to 1,799 million hectares between 1990 and 2000. Ten years earlier, however, FAO’s previous report said that tropical forest area fell from 1,910 million ha to 1,756 million ha for the same 90 countries between 1980 and 1990.

‘Owing to corrections to the earlier study, the 1990s’ trend was just like a ‘re-run’ of that in the 1980s,’ said Dr Grainger. ‘The errors involved in making estimates for forest area could easily be of the same order as the forest area reported cleared in the previous 10 years. Even if you take enormous care, as FAO does, I argue that large errors are inevitable if you produce global estimates by aggregating national statistics from many countries. This has important implications for the many scientists who rely on FAO data.’”

This time round, Grainger found no evidence for decline since the early 1970s. Indeed, while his own estimate in 1983 of tropical moist forest area in 1980 was 1,081 million hectares, the latest satellite data led to an estimate of 1,181 million hectares for the same 63 countries in 2000 – a small increase.

Although one should rightly be cautious about this putative small increase in area (as Grainger is himself), all this indicates that the apparent decline in tropical moist forest area is being offset by natural reforestation at a higher rate than previously thought.

Now let me stress, so that nobody tries to dismiss this important study out-of-hand: Alan Grainger is an excellent, main-stream researcher, and I respect his opinion completely.

So, yet again, we have clear scientific evidence of the yawning gap between reality and Green myth-making, this time in relation to tropical forests. This is perhaps not so surprising when it comes to ‘tropical rain forests’ per se, which are largely a Western, or Northern, construction of knowledge.

In this respect, you may like to read my own piece, ‘Jungles of the Mind: the Invention of the Tropical Rain Forest’, which was first published in History Today Vol. 51, May 2001, pages 38 – 44. This is available to read online here [premium web content] or in a very basic version for university students here.

Grainger has done us all a service, because the figures for tropical forest decline are used unquestioningly in so many studies, including those on climate change.

I would ask everybody who reads this blog to ensure the very widest reporting of Grainger’s new study. Thank you.

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Please visit Philip's new blog, 'Global Warming Politics: a Hot Topic Blog' at: http://web.mac.com/sinfonia1