California climate offsets and additionality

I spent two days last week at the Association of California Water Agencies' spring conference.  What is that?  Yes, I am an exciting person always seeking thrills and experiences.  Why do you ask?

The conference had an interesting-to-me panel on the financial aspects of California's cap-and-trade auctions.  Entities subject to the cap are allowed to get up to 8% of their carbon allowances through offsets.  The 8% max isn't for total allowances, it's for each emitter - one rich emitter can't satisfy all the obligation through offsets.

All offsets have to be certified through the California Climate Action Reserve - you have to do more than just say "I paid JimBob to add solar panels to his roof, so I'm done now."  The Reserve's protocols then has to be accepted by the California Air Resources Board, and only a few have so made it so far. The key idea is that offsets are going to be like wetland mitigation banks - people will be financing new actions that reduce emissions, certify them, and then sell the allowances that result from the decreased emissions.  This could assist in establishing a distance between buyer and sellers of offsets.

Additionality has some interesting twists - to the Reserve, satisfying additionality must go beyond legal requirements, must be initated in a timely manner (no backdating old projects to claim they deserve credit as offsets) and must exceed standard business practices.  Last one's the trickiest, of course.

I did a write-up for my water district about the conference:

 3.    AB32 and tidal wetland restoration
One panel focused on cap-and-trade.  Afterwards I talked to panelist Joel Levin of the California Climate Action Reserve, a state-created nonprofit that certifies third party carbon offsets that can be sold to entities that have to comply with greenhouse gas reductions.  I asked him if they have done any work with tidal wetland restoration as a carbon offset.  He said they had and believe the technique could be used as a carbon offset and therefore a financial benefit to those who are certified as creating the offset.  However, they presently do not have an accurate estimate of how much carbon is sequestered in order to certify an offset.  It is an ongoing area of scientific analysis. 

 There are two other barriers to Water District benefits from tidal wetland restoration as a carbon offset.  First, we don’t own the baylands that are being restored – the federal government does.  However, we are helping restore them, so we might be able to reach an agreement to share in any offsets created.  Second, the Reserve does not now accept offsets created on federal land, but it is working on eliminating that restriction. 

We have some big plans to do tidal wetland restoration of 16,000 acres in South San Francisco Bay.  This has potentially huge carbon offsets that could help tremendously with financing this project.  My understanding is that tidal wetlands have as much or more carbon sequestration benefit as freshwater wetlands, with none of the counterbalancing methane emissions.

OTOH, selling offsets eliminates the carbon benefit from restoration, at least to the extent you sell offsets.  Still there are countless other benefits from getting back wetlands, including other climate benefits.  Tidally-influenced areas can catch sediment that otherwise sweeps out to sea, making it at least somewhat more likely that the marsh areas can keep pace with sea level rise.


I'll just add a tangent from the memo about another topic that might interest people, putting solar panels on canals and reservoirs:

 1.    Solar power on canals and reservoirs
I talked to two solar power exhibitors, SunPower and SolarCity.  I asked both of them if anyone had used canals or reservoirs as areas to place solar panels.  Both brought up the potential advantage of reducing evaporation and the “free” space you wouldn’t have to rent or buy.  Both also mentioned an experiment by a winery that set up panels over a small reservoir/pond using a series of pontoons.  Neither company was the contractor in that case and the experiment has not been repeated.  They believe maintenance would be expensive.  SolarCity said something like it has been discussed for the State Water Project. 

 I mentioned to both of them that there might be advantages in many districts in reducing algae growth in reservoirs, and that our District in particular might benefit from reduced mercury methylation.  They hadn’t considered those potential benefits.  I told them this was just speculation on my part, and both said that if the District is interested, they’d be happy to talk to us.  My impression is that both thought this would be difficult. 

Not impossible, but not easy.

The Weasel Gets To Get His Fix

 Through Bob Grumbine news that Japan has successfully launched their Global Change Observation Mission Shizuku, with lots of video showing the launch separation and more.  Carrying the AMSR-2 this should soon (in time for watching ice melt) be giving us the detailed Arctic maps we all crave.  Sea ice concentrations will be reported on a 15 km grid but other important products will include integrated soil moisture and snow cover.

Mad Crowd Sourcing Climate Science Experiments for Kids

Eli is looking for some climate science experiments that you can do with kids, K-12 roughly although also maybe first year of university.  One quick one he came up with is have them record the temperature and altitude shown on the monitors on the seat in front of you when you get bored with the movie.  Since many people fly with their kids (or dad or mom can be given an assignment), this might be an interesting way to teach the lapse rate.

If there was a high enough hill in the neighborhood, standing kids at different levels with calibrated thermometers and cell phones (assuming there was a nearby tower) might also be a way of doing this.

Also, such things as plotting ozone levels as a function of time of day an winds in urban areas might be something that could work.

These are but simple getting started ideas.  Eli appeals to the madness of crowds of bunnies for other suggestions.  Given the low budgets of most schools, yes, you cannot afford an IR spectrometer, but you might be able to handle a Spencer box or an IR thermometer level of expense and pretty much everyschool has a Weather Bug these days.

Steve Napalms Another Tree

In the comments at Climate Audit as relayed to Eli by Stoopit.

Steve, I’m horrified by your slipshod work. You did not define what you compare, what dataset used in each case, how data were processed, and what was the reason for that, what limitation there are, what kind of additional information you need to know. Why didn’t you ask me for all the details? You even aren’t ashamed of using information from stolen letters.

Do carelessness, grubbiness, dishonourableness are the necessary concomitants of your job?

With disrespect…

Rashit Hantimirov

UPDATE:  To follow this up a bit, part of Steve's game is splitting, and his target after Michael Mann has been Keith Briffa.  To split the Yamal Russians off from Briffa would have been a major accomplishment, and the beginning of the letter is a strong hint that there has been an ongoing correspondence.  However, this letter is in the last straw category.  Eli suspects that Hantimirov has been trying to tell McIntyre for a while that Steve's card forcing act sucks, but in a constructive way.  He now recognizes the futility of that, coupled with another baseless attack on his colleagues Keith Briffa.

One further point.  McIntyre hauled out the old bleat that

As to the CRU emails, I do not know that they were “stolen”. Many people believe that they were released by someone within the University. Nor was any disrespect shown to you in the quotation from the email, which showed you in a professional light.

which, of course, neglects the fact that employee theft is the largest source of loss in most stores.  Whoever stole the Emails, whether inside or outside the University, stole them.

Even Evil Has Standards

The rightous flee Heartland, the lukewarmers the sky dragons

Eli has discovered a blog with much to say about the usual evasions that one finds in the comment, and in the posts at other blogs than Rabett Run, among other things, the ultimate in Godwin.  Blogs have been awash commenting on the Heartland Institute seppuku act and its possible effects

TV Tropes gets the recent walk back by the insurance companies and others from Heartland pretty well right, but this equally applies to some of the lukewarmers and coolers to some of the Kramm like pap that is out there.

Eli is particularly fond of the description of Australia

Australia. 

That's right, Australia. Australia isn't a very important country (thanks a lot, mate), but is still an enormous piece of real estate, so the Big Bad can make it look like an impressive gift while keeping his mitts on the more important countries like the US, the UK, Russia, China, etc. Also, it has 25% of the uranium in the world and is the largest exporter of beef by... quite a large margin. Not to mention most of the capital cities are naturally defended by terrain, which is very useful for a supervillain. (Take Melbourne: the only way in by sea, Port Phillip Bay, requires a map or you hit rocks in the shallows; by air you have to travel a few thousand kilometers from anywhere; and by land you have to put up with lots of forests and distant homes.) Plus, they have great beaches. 

Add to that the fact that the first British settlements in Australia were penal colonies, and that Australia's greatest national hero was a criminal, and you can see where the Australian people could be inclined to welcome most supervillains with open arms. Funnily enough there are reports stating the Australian army is the second best trained in the world, and there's 75,000 ADF (Australian Defence Force) members to boot. 

On the other hand, it's the single most infertile continent save for Antarctica, precisely because Australia has had little tectonic activity during the past 30 million years, its soils are amongst the oldest in the world, and rainfalls are scarce except in the cyclone-ridden tropical northern parts and in coastal areas, which are subject to heavy floods. Oh, and there are a lot of thunderstorms and lightning (very very frightening), 

And bushfires. Don't forget the bushfires, especially since they can lead to exploding trees. Eucalyptus trees have very hard wood and highly flammable oil. Add extreme heat to them and they tend to pop like giant popcorn kernels. And spiders so big, they have health bars. In fact, why stop at spiders? A huge percentage of Australian animals are venomous and/or homicidal, and a ridiculously huge percentage of deadly animals are Australian (last count was six of the top ten deadliest of the world enjoy warm Decembers and frigid Augusts). 

The entire continent can be certifiably considered a deathtrap. So it's the perfect place to set up a lab if you're a Mad Scientist and need a thunderstorm to zap your Frankenstein's Monster with lightning or to power your flux capacitor. Not so much if your plans include an active volcano Supervillain Lair with Lava Pit. But at least you can get the Shark Pool filled with sharp-toothed predators even on a low budget. Note that any opinions actual Australians may have on this plan are irrelevant (Oi!) - except in more realistic works that take their military capabilities into account. 

 * Eli wishes to point out to Roger, Andy, Lucia and Fred, that the above cartoon falls under the heading of ironic exaggeration.  In this he is with Micha Tomkiewicz.  YMMV

I Used To Be Called a Heartland Expert

Interesting developments in Postergate (TM Eli Rabett).  Big City Lib has been writing to all of those Heartland Experts and has turned up at least one, Chris Landsea, who was listed as such and now, in view of the recent faux up, has asked to be removed.  Among other things Landsea writes

I recall that several years ago that Heartland had asked if i could be listed as an expert in the issue of hurricanes and climate variability and change. I haven't had any direct interaction with Heartland in any other capacity.

Now as bunnies with far too little to do know, there has been a somewhat ill tempered dust up between Eli's friend Roger Pielke Jr, and Eli's friend Joe Romm whether Roger was simply an expert acknowledged on its web page by Heartland without Roger having any other connection with Heartland or a Heartland Expert.  Albatross, to give due credit, set it off.  This is, indeed, one of those Schleswig Holstein Succession problems which will be debated long after those involved are buried and the continuing cause of wars.

But wait, there is more, somebunny whispers in Eli's ear that the archived 2009 version of the Heartland blurb for Heartland Expert Roger Pielke Jr. had the same text, clearly about RP Jr, but had a picture of RP Sr.  Is it possible that dad got the letter from Heartland, and that Heartland mixed up the RPs??  Is Heartland the gang that couldn't get its Pielkes straight? If the Lord has a sense of humor, please, oh please. . . .

Dems reforming filibusters, Repubs abandoning no new tax pledges

Two undercovered items:

1.  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has finally backed the reformers in his own party calling on limitations of the filibuster.  Critically, he agrees that the change in Senate rules at the beginning of the legislative session, per the US Constitution, are not themselves subject to a filibuster.  So this can only happen starting next year.

Reid finally got fed up with the Rs.  I sure wish this happened in 2009, then we could've had cap-and-trade in place for two years by now, as well as other critical legislation.  The problem with our democracy is that it's not a democracy.  California is a perfect example of that, with two-third's vote needed to raise taxes.

I'm guessing the Rs will say very little about this for now.  If they stay as the minority party in 2013, they'll fight "Democrat tyranny", but if they win control of the Senate, they'll adopt the cause themselves and say the Dems have no right to complain.

The constitutional option has been threatened in the past to get compromises, so that may be how it plays out next year.

2.  Matt Yglesias scores with the realization that Congressional Republican attempts to reduce deficit and increase military spending via reduced child tax credit puts tax-cutting promises in a new light:

It's interesting that the child tax credit is considered fair game in this context. Instead of a "no tax hikes" pledge it now seems to be "no tax hikes except on low-income working parents."

More info here on the cuts, although not a whole lot more.  I'd be interested in some details.

I'd describe what happened a little differently from Matt.  The Grover Norquist Americans for Tax Reform Pledge the Rs signed is pretty clear:

ONE, oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rates for individuals and/or businesses; and
TWO, oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates.

(Emphasis added.)  What the Rs did is to violate and abandon the pledge.  Time to acknowledge who's doing some class warfare.

A New Blog on the Blogspot

Micha Tomkiewicz is a professor of physics at Brooklyn College who has a story to tell.  As a child he survived Bergen Belsen, grew up and was educated in Israel and made his way to the US where he got involved in catalytic water splitting and better battery research.  This lead him into energy and energy policy issues which are his current interests.  Micha founded and directs the Environmental Studies Program at Brooklyn College.

He has started a blog, Climate Change Fork, with something to say

But I’ve taken up this challenge - today, on the 42nd anniversary of Earth Day – because I simply couldn’t stand by and watch while climate change “deniers” continue to try to take center stage and to keep all of us from doing what’s necessary to head off the impending climate change disaster.

As a professor, a scientist, a Holocaust survivor and someone who has just written a book on climate change, I think I am uniquely positioned to tell the climate change story.  I know that once people really grasp the science behind climate change and how each person really can help us reverse course, they take action and feel hopeful.  I’ve seen it happen.  Despite everything, I feel hopeful too.

So please, read on, leave comments and let’s start a discussion.

Some friends are already there, so let us hence

On Economics

A direct steal from Brad de Long who stole it from John Emerson, but right on target to what Eli, MT, Ankh and others have been trying to tell the Weasel and apologies to John Quiggin, Paul Krugman, Noah,  Angry Bear, and even Brad de Long
=================

John Emerson:

Brad DeLong: Luke Lea Gets It Wrong, I Think: Assessing John Cochrane's "Can't I Let Sleeping Dogs Lie?" Department: Brad's argument would make sense if none of his bullshit artists had been awarded Nobel Prizes for economics, or if most of them did not outrank DeLong in the profession. As it is, laymen can have no trust in the economics profession as such or professional economists as such. There are no internal standards, and any credentialed PhD can say anything he wants with no worries about sanctions. My understanding is that economics has all the right answers sitting there on shelf, mixed in with all the wrong answers. Every once in awhile someone like Minsky or Veblen or Kalecki or Pigou is moved forward on the shelf to patch the failed consensus.

For the last 30-40 years I've been fighting a losing battle with well-regarded Chicago School and neoliberal economists and watching the society I live in being degraded in front of my eyes. During that time the economics profession was doing harm. As long as thing were going well by their standards, there was nothing I could say; I was a laughable crank, fanatic, and slave of archaic ideology. Only now when they've caused a disaster have I become marginally respectable. I don't think that the profession can self-correct fast enough to make it useful in the world it lives in. Maybe by 2050 the profession will have remediated itself enough to become capable of understanding the world of 2012, but that's not soon enough. There needs to be a serious pruning and thinning, but that's not institutionally possible using normal methods. The tumbril and guillotine method is precluded too. A parallel discipline needs to be developed.

Brad:

I used to--six years ago--be certain that people like Emerson were wrong.

It seemed to me that economics had a powerful technocratic core and a powerful set of analytical tools that helped to make sense of the world.

But the treatment that the world has gotten from the Lucases, Cochranes, Famas, Kocherlakotas, and many others, not to mention the Prescotts--none of whom seems to have made any effort to mark their prejudices to reality--has shaken my confidence to the core. They seemed to me and seem to me to have simply not done their homework, and not be trying to do their homework.

=====================

Oh yes, J. P. Morgan lost $2 Billion today on a wise guy bet.

Galileo or Bozo, a binary choice

More from LATimes on Heartland's disarray.

John should use his blogauthor key, but this was too good to leave in the comments:

John said... 

As recently as the fall of 2009, the Heartland Institute's website featured a banner that flashed portraits of famous thinkers, including: 

Benjamin Franklin
Thomas Jefferson
John Locke
James Madison
Thomas Paine
Joseph L. Bast 

Dear bunnies, which of these names doesn't belong in a list of famous thinkers? 

Sometime in fall 2009, Heartland removed Bast as a famous thinker. Joseph L. Bast founded the Heartland Institute, with the help of Big Tobacco money. Bast's most noteworthy publication is Please Don't Poop In My Salad, which is a collection of essays about freedom. Needless to say, one of the most precious freedoms (according to Bast) is the freedom to smoke, at a low tax rate per pack.
Source: The Inquisition of Climate Science, James Lawrence Powell (Columbia University Press, 2011).

James Hansen Doubles Down

In an op ed in today's New York Times, James Hansen doubles down.  Pointing out that the amount of carbon in Canada's tar sands, if completely exploited are the CO2 equivalent of twice what has been burnt to date Hansen tries to help Barack Obama evolve (Eli knows, this is today's INTERNET tradition) on climate change.  Hansen sees the world on a path to Pliocene conditions

That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk.

and getting there will be no fun

That is the long-term outlook. But near-term, things will be bad enough. Over the next several decades, the Western United States and the semi-arid region from North Dakota to Texas will develop semi-permanent drought, with rain, when it does come, occurring in extreme events with heavy flooding. Economic losses would be incalculable. More and more of the Midwest would be a dust bowl. California’s Central Valley could no longer be irrigated. Food prices would rise to unprecedented levels.

If this sounds apocalyptic, it is. This is why we need to reduce emissions dramatically.

  The paragraph where the usual suspects are going to try and wedge out an attack is about recent heat waves

The global warming signal is now louder than the noise of random weather, as I predicted would happen by now in the journal Science in 1981. Extremely hot summers have increased noticeably. We can say with high confidence that the recent heat waves in Texas and Russia, and the one in Europe in 2003, which killed tens of thousands, were not natural events — they were caused by human-induced climate change.

Eli's POV on this is rather simple.  If you have natural variability on top of a rising base, then the hotter extremes are going to get hotter and you don't need a degree in meteorology or statistics to figure that out, so the Bunny is with Hansen.  If you want to argue that it is going to cool like crazy Roy in the next decade, well, good luck with that, but Eli has a slightly used Sky Dragon to sell you complete with its own play time lawyer. 

Hansen's policy recommendation with a bit of economic analysis thrown in is

We should impose a gradually rising carbon fee, collected from fossil fuel companies, then distribute 100 percent of the collections to all Americans on a per-capita basis every month. The government would not get a penny. This market-based approach would stimulate innovation, jobs and economic growth, avoid enlarging government or having it pick winners or losers. Most Americans, except the heaviest energy users, would get more back than they paid in increased prices. Not only that, the reduction in oil use resulting from the carbon price would be nearly six times as great as the oil supply from the proposed pipeline from Canada, rendering the pipeline superfluous, according to economic models driven by a slowly rising carbon price.

Grandpa Jumps the Curve

How could Eli have forgotten the longest running shark jump of them all, the Heatland Expert good Dr. Roy Spencer, over at Heartland Expert Anthony Watts' blog,

 The 3rd order polynomial fit to the data (courtesy of Excel) is for entertainment purposes only, and should not be construed as having any predictive value whatsoever.

 What could be better.  Ready for those sub-zero (Celsius of course,  no ethical scientist uses Rankin) summers in thirty or so years bunnies.  According to Mom Rabett, 1910 was a very hot year.

Jumping the Hockey Stick Doesn't Break It

Eli was innocently tip typing away when Ethon flew in.  After some liver tarts, the big guy started to giggle.  You know Eli, he said (well Eli has always assumed he, but to tell the truth, bird sexing ain't a Rabett's thing), remember when Fonzi jumped the shark, well, our friend Roger, jumped the hockey stick and all he broke was his cover.

 What do you mean the Bunny asked, munching on a carrot.  Well, you know how PJ likes to kind of smarm about, about a week ago he put up a post on 

A new research paper just out in the journal Psychological Science by John et al. seeks to quantify the incidence of what are called "questionable research practices" in psychological research.

which, of course, was about practices in psychology papers.  None to complementary it was, and down at the bottom he just, by accident slipped an image and a few words in

 The authors suggest that the prevalence of questionable research practices may help to explain the finding the many studies cannot be replicated:

QRPs can waste researchers’ time and stall scientific progress, as researchers fruitlessly pursue extensions of effects that are not real and hence cannot be replicated. More generally, the prevalence of QRPs raises questions about the credibility of research findings and threatens research integrity by producing unrealistically elegant results that may be difficult to match without engaging in such practices oneself. This can lead to a “race to the bottom,” with questionable research begetting even more questionable research. If reforms would effectively reduce the prevalence of QRPs, they not only would bolster scientific integrity but also could reduce the pressure on researchers to produce unrealistically elegant results.

I think I am on safe ground when I say that the problem of questionable research practices goes well beyond the discipline of psychology.

Eli was shocked.

Chance for Anthony Watts to show his worth

Anthony Watts now has two separate posts ringing with condemnation of Think Progress for a post last year that noted the terrorist Anders Breivik had accused climate science of actually being an eco-Marxist plot (that post disappeared temporarily but now it's back).

Watts to his credit condemned Heartland's revealing billboard campaign but AFAIK has stopped there.  I've already shown that HI has done this before, equating Al Gore with Ted Kaczysnki.  When I found that Heartland post, I also found another that I haven't written about until now:

Environmental Extremist Gunman Attacks Discovery Channel Headquarters 

James M. Taylor, J.D. – James M. Taylor – September 1, 2010 

An environmental extremist gunman has entered the Discovery Channel headquarters in Silver Spring, Md., and has taken a number of people hostage, according to Montgomery County Police. Police are trying to negotiate with the gunman, who may have armed himself with a bomb. Roughly 1,900 employees work at the building, which broadcasts a number of science-related programs. 

 The gunman has issued a manifesto and a list of demands, much of which reads like an environmental activist wish list....Much like the media largely ignored the environmental extremism that motivated the Unabomber, the mainstream media currently is largely ignoring the Discovery Channel gunman’s environmental motivation.

And another, also by James Taylor, J.D.:

Environmental extremist took an ugly turn Aug. 1 when activist James Lee, armed with two guns and several bombs stormed the Discovery Channel headquarters in Silver Spring, Md., took employees hostage, and attempted to force the Discovery Channel to air environmental propaganda on global warming and other issues. The assault ended in the late afternoon when police shot and killed Lee as it appeared he was preparing to detonate a bomb and kill some or all of the hostages.... 

Gore Movie as ‘Awakening’

Lee was first arrested for engaging in disruptive environmental protesting outside Discovery Channel headquarters in 2008. At the time, he explained he had had an environmental “awakening” after seeing Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth.
In An Inconvenient Truth, Gore bemoans the fact that peaceful, democratic means have not motivated people to enact his desired global warming restrictions. “I used to believe in democracy,” Gore says near the end of the film. 

History of Violent Rhetoric 

In 2006, Grist magazine staff writer David Roberts wrote, "When we've finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we're in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards—some sort of climate Nuremberg.” The penalty imposed in Nuremberg for war crimes was death.... 

In 2008 NASA global warming activist James Hansen said CEOs of fossil energy companies “should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature." The penalty for high crimes against humanity is death....

According to Anthony Watts, noting these parallels is evil when Think Progress does it.  I've previously shown one other blog post where Heartland is substantially worse.  By Watts standard, that post and these two new ones also deserve condemnation.

For my part, I did not bring up these two posts when I found the first one equating Gore and Kaczynski.  I think the second of these posts is particularly stupid and inaccurate, but remember it's from James Taylor, and it's unsurprising that he doesn't understand the range of penalties available at Nuremberg and the International Criminal Court.  Still, I think these don't equate environmentalism as a whole with violent nutcases.  I don't see them as strong arguments, nor do I see the Breivik argument as that strong, but they're not innately wrong.

Watts disagrees with me on Breivik.  Presumably then he disagrees with Heartland on all three of the blog posts in addition to the billboards, and I hope he says so.

UPDATE Eli:  Anthony is going after Nick Stokes.  More hockey stick jumping.

UAH satellite temps being corrected by others. Knock me over with a feather

Here it is:

One popular climate record that shows a slower atmospheric warming trend than other studies contains a data calibration problem, and when the problem is corrected the results fall in line with other records and climate models, according to a new University of Washington study. 

The finding is important because it helps confirm that models that simulate global warming agree with observations, said Stephen Po-Chedley, a UW graduate student in atmospheric sciences who wrote the paper with Qiang Fu, a UW professor of atmospheric sciences. They identified a problem with the satellite temperature record put together by the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Researchers there were the first to release such a record, in 1989, and it has often been cited by climate change skeptics to cast doubt on models that show the impact of greenhouse gases on global warming.... 

"There's been a debate for many, many years about the different results but we didn't know which had a problem," Fu said. "This discovery reduces uncertainty, which is very important." 

When they applied their correction to the Alabama-Huntsville climate record for a UW-derived tropospheric temperature measurement, it effectively eliminated differences with the other studies.... 

Once Po-Chedley and Fu apply the correction, the Alabama-Huntsville record shows 0.21 F warming per decade in the tropics since 1979, instead of its previous finding of 0.13 F warming. Surface measurements show the temperature of Earth in the tropics has increased by about 0.21 F per decade..... 

Usual cautions apply - maybe this correction will turn out to be incorrect.  If not, this will be the second time the UAH series will turn out to have a mistake that bias it to underestimate warming.

Probably just a coincidence.

UPDATE:  post title revised per comments.

UPDATE 2:  per John Mashey, more than twice. See p.100, and especially see "Corrections made" table in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UAH_satellite_temperature_dataset showing there are 4 ups and 3 downs, not counting the latest up. Ups tend to be bigger than downs.

UPDATE 3:  thinking maybe I'm a bit too snarky here.  When's the last time I created a satellite temperature series?  Anyway, yet another case of observations falling in line with standard theory.

UPDATE: Eli:  Strictly speaking this paper is about the TMT product, the mid-trop, not the TLT, the lower trop, however since both use the same satellite, and TLT is a mix of detectors using some majic software that Roy and John have not shared, if the Fu fits, Roy can wear it.

Onward to apartheid in Greater Israel

The surprise agreement bringing Israel's leading opposition party into the governing coalition will have uncertain impacts.  Andrew Sullivan has the rundown - I tend to think it makes a disastrous attack on Iran somewhat less likely.

I'm less optimistic about the effect on apartheid in Greater Israel, where there's some bad news:

• Israel bringing back collective punishment, destroying the family homes of terrorists.

• American Congressman Joe Walsh supports soft ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, with annexation, second-class citizenship for Palestinians and incentives to leave the country for Jordan.

That second proposal is only somewhat different from the present situation, where there's a longstanding, tacit agreement that a ruling majority will not rely on Arab parties to survive no confidence votes.  (Sorry I can't find a link referencing this, please leave one if you've got one in the comments.)

To The Point discusses Israel's decision to exclude visiting foreigners whose political viewpoints it dislikes (the US has also done this in the past, but I don't know of it happening recently for people not supporting violence).  The show discusses more extensively Peter Beinart's book, which seems to make a lot of sense about how Israel is betraying the democratic dream and what American Jews should do about it.

While I think partial democracies can last for a long time, they're not stable at a fixed level of partial democracy but instead change over time.  While it usually changes towards improvement, that's not always the case.  The pre-Civil War American South became more oppressive in some ways in the 1800s, criminalizing attempts to discuss abolition in the press.  Israel can become more democratic in some ways (gay rights) at the same time that it may double down on oppressing West Bank Arabs.  An oppressive policy creates its own tension - do you ease off on the policy, or double down to reinforce it?  We're seeing that in play in Israel.

And despite that fact, the room for political discussion on this is still wider in Israel than in the US.  A major Israeli politician can accurately call the situation apartheid, while a retired American president gets pilloried for doing the same. Whether either country will do anything to fix the problem is much less clear.

Guilt, Culpability and Responsibility

We are sailing into a moral storm.

The moral dimensions associated with the Anthropocene has long interested Eli, and to be honest many others on a deeper level.  While philosophy is associated with personal responsibility, law concerns itself with assignment of responsibility to others.  As our command of the Earth increases, these must come together, and indeed they will on this Friday, May 11 at the University of Chicago, where folks will gather to discuss Climate Change Justice

In their recent book, Climate Change Justice, Eric Posner and David Weisbach argue for a relatively narrow climate treaty that would require nations to limit greenhouse gas emissions, but that would not redistribute wealth, correct for past injustices, or address other issues not immediately connected with the urgent task of mitigating climate change. At this conference, scholars will respond with criticisms of the Posner/Weisbach argument or provide their own views about how a climate treaty ought to be designed. Topics will include the role of distributive and corrective justice in the design of climate treaty, discounting the future, abatement strategies, and the possibilities and limits of international cooperation.

Ray Pierrehumbert is one of the presenters, and usefully most of those who are to speak have provided manuscripts, which Eli hopes that the bunnies will look at, here, he wants to discuss the analysis of Yoram Margalioth who summarizes Posner and Weisbach's argument as

(1) The US is not morally required, on distributive justice grounds or on an alleged responsibility for the stock of GHG in the atmosphere due to past emissions, to assume the costs of (or reimburse) other countries that participate in a global climate change mitigation scheme. 

(2) Countries differ in their vulnerability to climate change. In the absence of distributive or corrective justice claims, the cost of mitigation should be allocated according to the benefits from mitigation. The US is relatively less vulnerable to climate change than other countries, including many developing countries, and should therefore bear a relatively small share of the cost.

Therefore: 

When countries demand that the US bear a significant share of mitigation cost as, for example, was expected of the US under the Kyoto Protocol, they ask the US to become a net loser. International cooperation is voluntary. Countries will not sign treaties that make them net losers, unless they are ethically required to do so and choose to act morally. As claimed in (1) above, the US is not morally required to do so.

Ethically, this position is bankrupt for obvious reasons, something that Eli expects Paul Baer to deal with in his talk (no paper yet posted) titled Who Should Pay for Climate Change?  “Not Me.”  In addition to ethical questions, with respect to the US and the industrially developed countries, the practical answer is who else has the resources? But here the Bunny is more concerned with an argument advanced by Margalioth

Unlike Posner and Weisbach, I find merit in the argument that there is a moral flaw in the US’s lack of significant action to reduce its relatively high per-capita GHG emissions in the years after it became general knowledge that dangerous climate change was taking place and that it was anthropogenic.

he later develops this idea in a discussion of culpability

Until relatively recently, developed countries were not (and could not have been) aware of the effects of GHG emissions, and so should not be held accountable for past emissions. 

Setting the cut-off date is an empirical question. It could be 1992, because in that year, nearly all countries, including the US, signed an international treaty – the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – “to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”

In Eli's opinion this argument confuses guilt, culpability and responsibility in a way can only lead to disaster (Posner and Weisbach are even worse).  As Stephen Gardiner pointed out, climate change is a moral storm, not an economic or legal one because of the separation of time and place of cause and effect.  Actions taken today will primarily influence the future.  The physics of the situation does not concern itself with whether the emitters knew that what they were doing had harmful effects, that is an issue of culpability or guilt, the distinction between involuntary manslaughter and murder as it were, with the former being the case if the emitters recklessly or without reasonable care, and the later with malice and aforethought.  In both these cases a retributive response is justified.

Responsibility does not require knowing beforehand knowing that your actions caused harm, but recognizing afterward that it has and accepting responsibility for both the harm as well as working to reverse that harm. Accepting responsibility is a sign of growing up, and with our increasing control of the planet growing up is increasingly becoming a survival trait.

There are levels of denial.  The Sky Dragons, who deny that increasing greenhouse gas concentrations will increase global temperatures are denying science in totallity.  The lukewarmers, merely deny the conclusions flowing from that science.  Margalioth is denying responsiblity, and Posner and Weisbach are denying culpability.

Pick one.

(Picture from Deviant Art)

The Commenters are Smarter Than the Posters

In which Felix Salmon falls for a rip off and his readers set him straight.

Here’s an even better idea: why not get rid of fiber cables entirely, and use neutrinos to transmit information, at the speed of light, right through the center of the earth?

At the very least, this could provide a fantastic revenue bump for physicists working at extremely expensive particle accelerators in a world of fiscal austerity. In order to make this happen, you’d need to either build your own accelerator, or lease some capacity from an existing one. The sums involved are both big enough to make physicists salivate, and small enough that the private sector could raise the money quite easily:

and elicits a response

Neutrino detection is so hard that experiments such as that in Italy beaming them through the Alps come up with bizarre results like neutrinos traveling faster than light. (Which nobody, not even the physicist who presented those results, believes to be true. It is at this point a curiousity and a group in the USA is trying to reproduce it.)

The amount of energy required to produce detectable levels of neutrinos is very high. This would be an incredibly energy-inefficient method of communication if it could be made to work.

And of course, if it were possible to create a detector and coding scheme that worked well enough, neutrino communications would be the most perfectly insecure method ever.

This sort of proposal is the kind of thing that gets picked up by con-men who cobble together some apparatus that investment bankers haven’t a clue about.

 Eli, of course, is waiting for the Breakthrough Institute Experts to pick up the ball.

Eli Can Retire Part XII: The Australian Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency Responds to Ian Plimer's 101 Questions

Worldwide, energy and environmental agencies are contributing to Eli's retirement fund by whacking the moles.  Today the Australian Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency offs Ian Plimer's 101 questions.  Eli has had a whack at a few of them, but really, this was a job for the real climate scientists.

This document provides answers to the 101 questions on climate change posed by Professor Ian Plimer in his latest book, How to get expelled from school: a guide to climate change for pupils, parents and punters (2011). Many of the questions and answers in Professor Plimer’s book are misleading and are based on inaccurate or selective interpretation of the science. The answers and comments provided in this document are intended to provide clear and accurate answers to Professor Plimer’s questions. The answers are based on up-to-date peer reviewed science, and have been reviewed by a number of Australian climate scientists.

Plimer asks

8. If global warming is human in origin, when will we feel it and when will it be dangerous?

And the AU Department of Climate Change Responds

Climate change becomes dangerous when it takes natural and human systems beyond environmental thresholds to which they can easily adapt. The more rapid the change, the less likely that adaptation can occur. Projections indicate that without action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions:

»temperatures in Australia could increase by up to 5 degrees by 2070;

»sea levels could rise by up to 80 cm by the end of the century (baseline of 1990), with larger increases possible; and

»we are likely to see more severe and intense extreme climatic events.

World governments have agreed that limiting temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures would help to reduce many of the most dangerous impacts of future climate change.

and, this could be a dangerous drinking game, 99

99.  Why do those advocating human-induced global warming vilify scientists who disagree rather than addressing genuine scientific questions?

And: Genuine scientific disputes are normally addressed through publication of alternative theories in peer-reviewed scientific journals. However, the scientists and others disagreeing with the consensus on human-induced climate change have rarely published in such journals, therefore avoiding critical scientific assessment of their work.

There is no single paper, or set of papers, that provides a plausible alternative explanation of recent warming. The few papers that do exist have been demonstrated to be flawed by the weight of peer-reviewed literature. There is now a vast body of literature supporting the mainstream understanding of climate change.

And a bit of optimism from the first comment

Brad Johnson Pins the Contributions on Heartland

UPDATE:  Stones roll downhill, crush Heartland.  Insurance and other sponsors throw in the towel

Brad Johnson has a piterest page up with the names and amounts from corporate donors to Heartland.  In the interest of false balance, Eli will utter the number 10 twice so you can go and jump all over Keith, Andy and the guy behind the curtain, but it is interesting to read the list.  An awful lot of big pharma, Eli wonders what the connection is in the Casablanca sense?

 Speaking of which, Eli has noted that certain "Heartland Experts" are disassociating themselves

Despite the claims of an enthusiastic commenter named Albatross here (#24) and elsewhere that I am an “expert advisor for Heartland” — I have absolutely no association with them, never have. Apparently, Heartland considers me an expert, so they are obviously not wrong about everything.

 The Bunny is shocked, shocked to think that Joe Bast added someone to the multiple expert lists without their permission. Eli is shocked to think that while they send names to legislators like Monckton, etc, they include such a fine expert as Roger, who might confuse listeners who otherwise would get a 100% consistent message from the other “experts.

Shocked, shocked. (now ,where are my winnings) and how many other of those "Heartland Experts" are really not "Heartland Experts".  Eli leaves it to others to decide how many of them are not experts or at least "experts?"

Stolen thought of the day, plus riffs

Stolen thought:  if fracking is such a boon to the economy by cratering the cost of power, why can't we use a fraction of that economic benefit to sequester the resulting carbon?

Riff 1:  yeah! You tell 'em!

Riff 2:  preventing methane leaks in production and transmission might be just as important as sequestering.

Riff 3:  many people view sequestering carbon from coal to be economically achievable, maybe adding 20-40% to the price.  Let's generously assume the cost figure is true.  If it was economically achievable with coal, then that should indicate even more that it's economically achievable with natural gas because of the lower baseline.

Riff 4:  when coal was the cheapest baseline power then the argument that sequestration for coal was economically viable had the strongest claim.  Now that natural gas is cheaper it actually gets harder to argue for coal carbon sequestration.  Still justified, but harder.  Requiring gas to sequester just like coal could attract support from coal interests.

Riff 5:  maybe offsets in lieu of sequestration could be done.  Carefully.


(Update:  edited a stupid typo in first sentence, from "can" to "can't".)

Billboards are just repeats of garbage on Heartland's website

They've done this before:

July 2006 column by Heartland President and CEO Joseph Bast:

The Inconvenient Truth About Al Gore 

....I have difficulty taking Gore seriously on environmental issues ever since it was reported that Ted Kaczynski, the murderous “Unabomber,” kept a heavily marked-up copy of Gore’s book, Earth in the Balance, in his tar-paper shack and liberally borrowed from it when writing his anti-humanity treatise. There’s even a Web site (http://www.crm114.com/algore/quiz.html) that offers a quiz to see if you can tell Gore’s words from Kaczynski’s. I bet you can’t.

Was that a cheap shot? Maybe....

The Unabomber also was absolutely sincere in his belief that technological progress was an evil that had to be stopped, with violence if necessary. Fortunately, Kaczynski didn’t have access to the incredible powers of the Presidency of the United States. Unfortunately, Al Gore still aspires to that post.

I'm glad people are taking it seriously, but don't expect it not to happen again so long as this organization is given the time of day.  There's a lot at stake, so this repetition of history goes beyond a farce.

Heartland Seppuku

One of the bunnies sent Eli a note.  Being a bunny he sent the IRS definition of what a 501 c3 ain't

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/rp_1986-43.pdf , Rev. Proc. 86-43, 1986-2 C.B. 729 )

 "Educational Purpose" section:

SEC. 3. CRITERIA USED TO DETERMINE WHETHER ADVOCACY BY AN ORGANIZATION IS EDUCATIONAL 03 The presence of any of the following factors in the presentations made by an organization is indicative that the method used by the organization to advocate its viewpoints or positions is not educational.

1. The presentation of viewpoints or positions unsupported by facts is a significant portion of the organization's communications. 

 Check

2. The facts that purport to support the viewpoints or positions are distorted. 

 Check

3. The organization's presentations make substantial use of inflammatory and disparaging terms and express conclusions more on the basis of strong emotional feelings than of objective evaluations. 

 Check

4. The approach used in the organization's presentations is not aimed at developing an understanding on the part of the intended audience or readership because it does not consider their background or training in the subject matter.

Double check

In memoriam Heatland Institute

 

Heartland Hacked Again

Unbelievable





Oh, you mean they did this to themselves???

P.S.  Go take a look at the comments at WUWT.  This is a world's best own goal, and you have to wonder why. Have donations fallen through the floor?  If so, this will kill them completely, but the whole thing has  the stink of extreme despair about it. 

Time to set up the American Business Chamber

JBowers makes a good catch in a prior comment thread.  From one chamber to another:

Climate change dispute erupts with Aspen telling U.S. Chamber of Commerce to take a hike 

Aspen's chamber of commerce isn't the first to sever ties with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over political differences. The chamber in Homer, Alaska, made national headlines when it canceled its membership last year....  

At a retreat on Tuesday, the Aspen Chamber Resort Association's board voted 11 to 1 to withdraw its membership from the national organization. Tension between Aspen's chamber and the national one existed for years. The 680-member local chamber penned a letter to the national group in 2010 delineating its differences. But this year — which saw the driest winter in Aspen since the 1976-1977 season — politics are in overdrive thanks to the coming November general election. Several weeks ago, Aspen's chamber began feeling pressure from Schendler and his Aspen Skiing Co. bosses, the mayor, a pair of county commissioners and residents who had had enough of the local chamber's affiliation with the right-wing U.S. Chamber and its obstruction of solutions to climate change. .... 

The local chamber's recap continued: “Aspen’s economy is inextricably tied to the future of the global climate and all area entities have deeply embraced the idea of reducing our carbon footprint. With our resignation from the U.S. Chamber, the ACRA shows its solidarity with this position.” 

Two small cities are more than enough to christen this a trend sweeping the entire country.  Okay, maybe it's just a good sign, but I'll take it.  There are plenty of other small liberal resort towns and ski towns.  As the article notes, there are also a number of large businesses that have had enough of the US Chamber and its decision to favor conservative-leaning businesses over moderate and progressive businesses.

I think our local Silicon Valley chambers, and other places with strong green energy business interests, should be following the same steps to support their local business interest, along with the national and human interest.  I've gone back and forth in the past over whether businesses should fight to change the US Chamber from the inside or the outside, but I think the outside is looking more like the best alternative.

There already exists a Green Chamber of Commerce, pushing for business-friendly environmental solutions.  I think that's a great idea, but in addition to that maybe we need an umbrella American Business Chamber to be the Gandalf to the US Chamber's Saruman - to be what the US Chamber should have been.  The Green Chamber, local Chambers, and individual businesses rejecting Saruman could join a politically neutral, national level American Business Chamber rather than one that's decided to be a tool and player on one side of the political spectrum.  They should get back to ABC.

Keith Kloor highlights his own strawman; can't see it

I haven't decided yet what I think of Keith Kloor - maybe one of those people who resists acknowledging where reality is headed, but occasionally nods his head in its direction.  His latest stuff isn't very good though, with a Discover article labeling environmentalists as anti-technology and anti-city, while contrasting them with a few "green modernist" exceptions.

The anti-city claim is just vastly outdated and requires no further discussion.  Anti-technology is a little more interesting.  Kloor later clarified what he meant:

Environmentalism is anti-technology. By this I mean anti-nuclear power and anti-genetically engineered crops.

He says this in the context of explaining that he was being attacked as creating strawman arguments and responds with the above statement, and later adds, "Where’s the strawman here?" How about right where you highlighted it in those two sentences. His statement is not a strawman if you think that nuclear power and GMOs roughly encompass the majority of all human technologies. Actually, even that's not totally correct. By Kloor's reckoning, you can't, like me, be even mildly skeptical of nuclear power, or note that not all opposition to GMOs is unscientific, without being anti-technology. I do think some environmental opposition to nukes and GMOs is overblown, but that doesn't make them anti-technology.

This "above the fray" type of journalism gets old, and the strawmen are rickety.

One last note: writing this involves figuring out who I'm writing for, and the thought crossed my mind that Kloor might read it. I considered trying to persuade him rather than criticize him, and ended up with a mushy compromise style that doesn't try and cajole him but certainly pulls a few punches back. Oh well.

UPDATE:  Tim Burden has more, and there's a good discussion thread at Stoat.

The Climate Casino

As the bunnies know, Eli is not a fan of the Breakthrough Institute, and it ain't because of some of the senior fellows and wanna be senior fellows, it is because there are no guarantees in life and technology.  One can hope for miracles and ponies, but expecting them because of a wistful reading of history is not recommended.

There is, of course, one case where such a bad strategy is worth following, and that is if things are so bad, or soon going to be so bad that one has abandoned all other hope, somewhat like the question of your driving up a narrow road on a mountain with rock on one side and a fall off on the other only to see an eighteen wheeler coming at you at 100 mph.  What do you do?  You drive over the edge and hope the fall is not to steep.  Otherwise you are dead anyway.

Eli thought of this proposition when reading William Nordhaus' reply to Roger Cohen, William Happer and Richard Lindzen in the New York Review of Books. 

The thrust of CHL’s argument is that the uncertainties are likely to resolve in favor of inaction rather than strong action to slow climate change policies, and in any case, they argue, policies are unimportant given the size of the uncertainties.

Are the uncertainties likely to be resolved in favor of inaction? Of course, if we knew the answer, we would not be uncertain.

Nordhaus likens CHL to gamblers in the Climate Casino

However, the major problem with the conclusions of CHL is that they ignore the perils of the climate-change uncertainties. To illustrate, think of the issues as if we are playing roulette in a Climate Casino. Each time the roulette wheel stops, we resolve one of the uncertainties. Our best guess is that CO2 doubling will increase temperatures by 3°C, but if the ball lands on black it will be 2°C while a ball on red will produce 4°C. Similarly, a ball in a black pocket will lead to minimal damages from a certain amount of warming, while a ball in a red pocket will lead to much larger warming than we anticipate. On the next spin, a ball in the black will produce low growth and slow growth in emissions, while a ball in the red will produce rapid growth in CO2 emissions. And so forth.

But, in the Climate Casino, the ball also might land on zero or double-zero. If it lands on zero, we find significant loss of species, ecosystems, and cultural landmarks like Venice. If it lands on double-zero, we find an unanticipated shift in the earth’s climate system, such as a rapid disintegration of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

and like a gambler they never think they will lose because they have not done the math and don't understand the economic issues

The point is that CHL have the impact of uncertainty exactly backward. A sensible policy would pay a premium to avoid the roulette wheel in a Climate Casino. This means that the economic model estimates of the cost of doing nothing for fifty years are understated because they cannot incorporate all the uncertainties—not just the obvious ones such as climate sensitivity but also the zero and double-zero uncertainties such as tipping points, including ones that are yet undiscovered.

William Nordhaus' penultimate paragraph explains succinctly the Breakthrough Bankruptcy Principle

It is possible that the world will not warm over the coming years. It is possible that the impacts will be small. It is possible that a miraculous technology will be invented that can suck CO₂ out of the atmosphere at low cost. But in view of the evidence we now have, it would be foolish to bet on these outcomes just because they are possible.

He is being kind.  These things are improbable.  Basing policy on finding ponies is not recommended.

But There's More

In the trove of advisory opinions from the VA State FOIA Advisory Council, this as it turns out in reply to a request by Dan Vergano for Email between Wegman and Said and Joe Barton's staff (read John Mashey for the details).

Dear Mr. Vergano:

You have asked two questions in regard to the responses you received to a records request you made to George Mason University (the University) under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). One question was in regard to whether the requested records are in fact public records the University must disclose under FOIA, and the other concerned the extent of the search performed by the University in responding to your request. As background, you requested "copies of information and documentary materials, including electronic mail and other communication" related to a climate change report authored by two University professors that was commissioned by the United States Congress in 2005 and released in 2006. You restricted the search by date to cover September 1, 2005 to the present. You specifically requested "background material for the report [that] was provided by a [named] political staffer." The University responded that it did not have the records you sought. The University did provide other documents that indicated that both professors did not use any University facilities, equipment, or resources in performing the work at issue, but instead worked on a pro bono basis at personal expense without state or federal funding. One professor also mentioned that his correspondence regarding the report was not handled through the University electronic mail system, and that the earliest electronic mail message the professor retained on the University system was dated July 20, 2009 (years after the report in question was issued). You were also provided a copy of an electronic mail message dated August 12, 2010 that was received by one of the professors on his University account, apparently because the named political staffer was also included in the distribution of that message.

 Now if you believe that Said and Wegman did not use the University library in compiling their report, well, Eli has a bridge for you and what they looked at could be interesting, but let us not go there, let us go here, which bears directly on the ATI vs UVa case, first the bmmmph

Turning to your questions, you asked whether the records you requested are related to the transaction of public business and therefore subject to release under FOIA, given that the professors were identified in the report as University professors, the report was commissioned by a public body, and that the issue in question is of high public interest. As previously stated by this office, the general policy of FOIA expressed in § 2.2-3700 is to ensure ready access to public records in the custody of a public body or its officers and employees....The affairs of government are not intended to be conducted in an atmosphere of secrecy since at all times the public is to be the beneficiary of any action taken at any level of government. The definition of public record set forth in § 2.2-3701 includes all writings and recordings ... however stored, and regardless of physical form or characteristics, prepared or owned by, or in the possession of a public body or its officers, employees or agents in the transaction of public business. There is no doubt that the University, as a public institution of higher education established by the General Assembly, is a public body, and by extension, there is no question that a University professor is a public employee. Therefore any records prepared or owned by, or in the possession of a University professor are public records under FOIA if they are in the transaction of public business. However, as stated in the first opinion published by this office, the phrase in the transaction of public business is not defined in FOIA. 

Then a restatement of the conclusions of the previous post at RR

In examining a similar issue, that opinion stated that electronic mail messages between members of a public body that are not related to the transaction of public business are not public records under FOIA, and therefore are not subject to its mandatory disclosure requirements. The fact that electronic mail messages go through a government agency’s electronic mail database does not, by itself, make them public records. It is also the subject of those electronic mail messages that determines their status as public records.

and now the main course

The circumstances you have presented are somewhat different from those in past opinions in that the professors assert they did not use the University's electronic mail system or other University resources or facilities in performing the work at issue. Accepting that assertion at face value, it still is not controlling in deciding whether the records in question are in fact public records subject to FOIA. Even if the professors only used personal electronic mail accounts and privately owned equipment in generating the records, the records could still be public records subject to FOIA because the professors are public employees, the records were prepared and possessed by them, and may have been in the transaction of public business. The final determination again depends on the subject matter or content of the records in question: were they in fact prepared in the transaction of public business? In this case, based on the facts you presented, the report was commissioned by and presented to Congress, not by the University. The professors and the University have asserted in the response to your request that the work performed was not part of the professors' duties at the University. Therefore the records are not in the transaction of the University's or the professors' public business.

You have noted that the work is of great public interest and was commissioned by a public body, which, based on the background provided, appears to be Congress. Given that background, it would appear that the work in question may have been performed in the transaction of public business, but again, it appears to be the transaction of the public business of Congress, not of the University. This situation highlights the fact that under Virginia FOIA, a public body is responsible for providing the records it uses in the transaction of its own public business. As the requested records do not appear to concern or relate to the transaction of the public business of the University, they would not be public records of the University.

which clearly applies to any of Prof. Mann's emails having to do with the IPCC or with other committees external to UVa.  The advisory letter concludes with some discussion of a further point, but Eli shall only set the table there

You also asked whether the University is required under FOIA to perform a search of its own electronic mail servers, as opposed to relying on the professors to provide any responsive records, given that it appears that the University asked the professors to provide responsive records but did not perform an independent search. FOIA does not specify the extent to which a public body must search for records in response to a request. Our research did not reveal any published opinions of the Virginia courts, Attorney General, or this office directly addressing this issue. However, in addressing the costs of a search, this office noted in a prior opinion that the law does not require that a public body make a detailed explanation of how the search was conducted.

While these letters may, indeed according to Brian, have been known to the lawyers on both sides, they certainly shed a different light on the opinions expressed by many.

EINAL

But he can use the Google, and reading the advisory opinions of the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Board (OK, Eli is indeed a lazy bunny) the Rabett found one that appears to contradict much of the dicta in ATI vs UVa . . .

You have asked whether records that are related to a public employee's activities and are maintained on a public agency's computer system are public records subject to the provisions of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

This, of course, is ATI (and a lot of evil bunnies claim).  The advisory opinion continues (Eli is going to quote the whole thing)

Specifically, you asked about records relating to a letter sent by a professor at George Mason University (the University), on University letterhead, signed as a professor of law, and sent to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee regarding a federal judicial nomination. You stated that when you initially requested documents related to this letter, your request was denied on the basis of attorney-client privilege. When you followed up by asking that the volume and subject matter of the withheld records be identified pursuant to subdivision B 1 of § 2.2-3704, you received a response asserting that any such records resulted from the professor's private activities on his own time and were not public records subject to disclosure under FOIA.

The opinion summarizes the FOIA law

The general policy of FOIA expressed in § 2.2-3700 is to ensure ready access to public records in the custody of a public body or its officers and employees....The affairs of government are not intended to be conducted in an atmosphere of secrecy since at all times the public is to be the beneficiary of any action taken at any level of government. The definition of public record set forth in § 2.2-3701 includes all writings and recordings ... however stored, and regardless of physical form or characteristics, prepared or owned by, or in the possession of a public body or its officers, employees or agents in the transaction of public business.

And agrees that state universities are public bodies subject to FOIA requests and that professors at such institutions are public employees

There is no doubt that the University, as a public institution of higher education established by the General Assembly, is a public body, and by extension, there is no question that a University professor is a public employee. Therefore any records prepared or owned by, or in the possession of a University professor are public records under FOIA if they are in the transaction of public business.

Note that last sentence bunnies.  But there is a catch, as everybunny would suspect, because the VA FOIA law specifically states that

Records that are not prepared for or used in the transaction of public business are not public records.

 and, as the VA FOIA advisory panel states

However, as stated in the first opinion published by this office, the phrase in the transaction of public business is not defined in FOIA. In examining a similar issue, that opinion stated that electronic mail messages between members of a public body that are not related to the transaction of public business are not public records under FOIA, and therefore are not subject to its mandatory disclosure requirements. The fact that electronic mail messages go through a government agency’s electronic mail database does not, by itself, make them public records. It is also the subject of those electronic mail messages that determines their status as public records

 Which considerably raises the bar for ATI and provides significant justification for UVa that it must examine all of the Emails in it's possession to insure that only those that meet the public records test AND are not subject to other exemptions are released.  The FOIA Advisory Board goes on to discuss what makes an Email, letter or other communication a public record

Following this opinion, the question here may be restated as whether records related to the letter in question are records in the transaction of the professor's public business as a University employee. That such records were prepared by the professor and maintained on University computers satisfies only part of the definition of public record. If, in addition, the letter was written in the transaction of public business, then it would be a public record, meeting the statutory definition in full. It then follows that other records prepared, owned, or possessed by the professor that are related to the letter would also be in the transaction of public business, and also would be considered public records subject to FOIA. It is therefore necessary to examine the letter and its subject matter in greater detail.

As UVa claims.  There now is a discussion of specifics

The first thing one notices when viewing the letter is that it appears to carry the imprimatur of the University: it was written on the professor's University letterhead, uses the University logo in oversized font, bears a University return address and contact information, and identifies the author as a "Professor of Law." These features convey an official appearance, and may be viewed as indicia that the letter was in fact written in the professor's capacity as a public employee of the University. However, the subject matter of the letter addresses points made in an article published online by a commercial news organization, regarding the conduct of a potential federal judicial nominee in his profession as a corporate attorney. The professor indicated within the letter itself that he wrote it in the interest of correcting perceived errors in the article, without having been solicited for his opinion, and without supporting or opposing the nomination.

and a point about academic freedom and research 

It does not appear from the subject matter or content of the letter itself that it was written as part of the professor's duties as a University employee, to be used as a teaching aid or otherwise in furtherance of his professional responsibilities at the University. As stated in the University's second response to your request, which you included with your message to this office, it is [the professor's] contention that the subject activities were on his own time. You may be aware that this University is not unique in permitting professors to pursue independent professional activities as a means of enhancing their instructional abilities.

This is interesting in the context of Mike Mann being a member of IPCC drafting committees and or other professional organizations which are not Virginia public bodies, a point discussed in more detail below.  Indeed the FOIA Advisory Committee does not consider materials prepared in such activities to be subject to FOIA requests.

Given the content of the letter itself and this assertion by the University, it appears that the letter and records related to it were prepared outside the context of the professor's University employment, not for a public purpose, despite being on University letterhead. Therefore, under the facts described, it appears that the letter was not prepared by the professor in the transaction of public business, and that the requested records thus are not public records subject to FOIA.

The FOIA Advisory Committee raises a flag of caution for faculty at state institutions

However, this conclusion is incomplete without a cautionary note regarding the use of public resources by public officials and employees. The letter at issue was written on University letterhead by a University professor, which lends it the appearance of being a public record written by a public employee on behalf of a public body. Assuming there are related documents resident on one or more University computers used by the professor, those would carry a similar appearance of being public records by virtue of having been authored by a public employee using public resources. However, the definition of public record for FOIA purposes turns upon the content of a record, not its appearance. Just because records bear indicia of being public records, such as a public body's letterhead and return address, and being stored on a public body's computer, does not necessarily or automatically make the records subject to FOIA. The records must also be in the transaction of public business. While records such as the letter at issue here do not meet that second requirement of the definition, it is easy to see how they could be perceived as being public records because they satisfy the other parts of the definition, and they look like public records. Public officials and employees would be well advised to avoid such indicia when conducting private business, in order to avoid understandable confusion on the part of requesters who perceive the records to be public in nature and thus, subject to mandatory disclosure under FOIA.

Quickly glancing through the various emails stolen from the CRU at UEA, it appears that Prof. Mann signed himself Mike, w/o a fancy address at the top or the bottom of the email.  So maybe he read this letter?

Buying and closing coal mines to benefit climate

Interesting idea (paper here, summary article here) that some fossil fuels have sufficiently low profit margin that buying the mineral rights to them might be the cheapest way to keep them from being burnt.  For example, tar sands take a lot of energy to get out of the ground, reducing profit margins.  This might become even more important in the future if we start pricing carbon, making the value of the resource less while increasing the cost of getting the resource out (if we fully taxed carbon this wouldn't be necessary, so I guess our grandchildren can skip this step).  The author points out that it's not very different from the REDD process for rewarding countries that refrain from destroying tropical forests.  Saving forests does have huge ancillary benefits, but I suppose the same is true from reducing ancillary pollutants from fossil fuels.

This sounds like another version of an offset to me, which doesn't automatically make it bad in my opinion.  It does create the same issue though of making sure you achieve real savings, instead of throwing money at mineral rights for an economically-worthless coal seam that never would've been mined.

I think I like the above part of the analysis better than the major component, arguing that reducing fossil fuel demand through demand reductions just makes fuels cheaper to buy in countries that aren't serious about climate change.  I think this has some validity, but that long term energy plans, like Mexico's recent climate laws, involve fuzzier politics of where people think the world is headed.  Decarbonizing the developed world will put real incentives to do the same in the developing world, as will carbon tariffs.