Note to the Observent

Bunnies may notice that the tag line above has been changed and the give to save the Keeling curve link removed.  There are two reasons for this.

First, thanks in part to you, maybe a little to Eli, funding for the Scripps program has been saved.  As Ralph Keeling writes:

The Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego O2 and CO2 programs have received funding from multiple sources that put these operations on a relatively secure footing for the next few years. Support for the Scripps CO2 program has come in from three significant sources: Eric and Wendy Schmidt, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF). The O2 program has received a new line of support from National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which also operates the Mauna Loa Observatory where Keeling Curve measurements are made. 

People around the world have also taken it upon themselves to support ongoing Keeling Curve measurements. A crowdsourcing campaign was effective in communicating the importance of the project and has helped us meet our operational needs. I’m very, very grateful for all the great support that continues to come from members of the public who demonstrate that they care about preserving careful long-term observations of nature.

Second, today, the American Chemical Society is dedicating a plaque at Scripps, designating the Keeling Curve as a National Chemical Historical Landmark 

The ceremony to unveil a plaque marking the National Historic Chemical Landmark designation will take place at 11:45 a.m. at Ritter Hall on the Scripps campus in La Jolla, Calif., the site of Keeling’s lab, where the current Scripps CO2 Group operations continue today.

"This plaque is a great tribute to all the people who worked tirelessly over the years to sustain these detailed measurements,” said Ralph Keeling. "The Mauna Loa CO2 record changed how we view the world. It proved for the first time that humans were altering the composition of air globally, and it thereby legitimized the concern over human-caused climate change."

“The Keeling Curve is an icon of modern climate science,” said Thomas Barton, PhD, immediate past president of the American Chemical Society. “Dave Keeling’s meticulous research provided scientifically credible evidence that has proved critical to understanding and addressing human impacts on our environment. Keeling recognized in 1960 that fossil fuels are driving global atmospheric change, which presents serious challenges for Earth and its people. The global impacts of climate change are what make Keeling’s work so important, and so celebrated, today.”

Congratulations to all

Nick Stokes Goes There

A while ago the GWPF (yes, just as dumb as trying to pronounce Joe Btfspik) tried one on, claiming that they were going to conduct a "temperature data review".  Nick Stokes has made a habit, indeed a retirement of going there, in his own way, of challenging the ungodly in hell, or Climate Audit and the like, but Eli repeats himself.  Bunnies should read Nick's submission, but there is one paragraph that Eli would like to emphasize, because while it is obvious, it is so obvious that entire castles of fancy have been built on ignoring it

Global averages are averages of millions of individual readings. Unbiased noise is very heavily damped in the result. The big source of error is bias, which is not damped in the same way. The essential purpose of homogenisation is to identify and minimise this bias. The tradeoff vs added unbiased noise is advantageous, because of that damping. 

In short averaging handles noise, homogenization is necessary to take care of bias.

GCMs: Explicative value is strong, predictive only in the long run

Twitter, can be succinct

@E__Strobel @CColose @ClimateOfGavin @AdamFrank4 Explicative value is strong, predictive only in the long run

— eli rabett (@EthonRaptor) June 9, 2015

Damn well better, but Steve Easterbrook has a nice explanation of what GCMs are and are not.  As he points out,

you don’t actually need a computer model to predict climate change. The first predictions of what would happen if we keep on adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere were produced over 120 years ago. That’s fifty years before the first digital computer was invented. And those predictions were pretty accurate – what has happened over the twentieth century has followed very closely what was predicted all those years ago. Scientists also predicted, for example, that the arctic would warm faster than the equatorial regions, and that’s what happened. They predicted night time temperatures would rise faster than day time temperatures, and that’s what happened.

So in many ways, the models only add detail to what we already know about the climate. They allow scientists to explore “what if” questions. For example, you could ask of a model, what would happen if we stop burning all fossil fuels tomorrow. And the answer from the models is that the temperature of the planet will stay at whatever temperature it was when you stopped. For example, if we wait twenty years, and then stopped, we’re stuck with whatever temperature we’re at for tens of thousands of years. You could ask a model what happens if we dig up all known reserves of fossil fuels, and burn them all at once, in one big party? Well, it gets very hot.

Post Script: Isaac Held has some essays on the speakable and unspeakable in climate models. Last The quality of the large scale flow simulated in GCMs, instructions on How Not to Evaluate Climate Models, and a bug-a-boo of Eli's, Addicted to Global Mean Temperature.

On the Margins

Recently, there has been considerable interest in a paper showing that rainfall in the Sahel has increased likely due to sea surface temperature trends in the North Atlantic as compared to the oceans in general.  Now Eli is not here to tell you about that paper by Alessandra Giannini, she has done it herself,

and so have others, but a related one that seemingly has snuck in under the radar, "The dominant role of semi-arid ecosystems in the trend and variability of the land CO2 sink", by a large group of authors, including Michael Raupach to whom the paper is dedicated as he died before publication. The paper appeared in Science, 11 May 2015.

The authors show that while the carbon sink is dominated by forests, especially tropical forests, the annual variability (hi Victor) in the carbon sinks is dominated by arid lands such as the Sahel which makes sense, because in wet years, the semi-arid lands will bloom, in dry ones, not much.

The figure to the right requires some explanation.  The y axes are percent contribution to the biosphere's net carbon flux from each of the land types listed at the bottom.  It is the difference between the global primary production and the respiration.  LPJ-GUESS is a biogeochemical vegetation model and TRENDY is a model intercomparison project, go read the paper for details.  IAV is the interannual variation.

Semi-arid lands like the Sahel dominate both the trend and the interannual variation, which makes sense, they are on the margin and small differences in weather make a large difference in the amount of vegetation.

The paper points out that in 2011 there was a large increase in the carbon sink, which is attributed to a very wet year in Australia.

As to the future, a large increase in the carbon sink appears when it is cool and wet in the semi-arid regions, a large decrease when it is hot and dry.  In general the level of precipitation is more important than the temperature.

Taking this into account bunnies should go back and look at Giannini's video.  If the Sahel is wetter, then there will be more primary production of vegetation, but if it is hotter, there will be more respiration and decay.  That means more food, a very good thing, but not as much natural carbon sequestration as if it were cooler

Maxim Lott must be a great uphill runner

Maxim Lott sees the slope of the line for the last 17 years as being virtually flat. I imagine that if he went for a run and came to a hill, he wouldn't even notice it.

The NASA data he cites is here (which doesn't include any of the scorching 2015 data), and his article here. Sadly, his article is a cut above the normal Fox News piece in that it least includes, if buried somewhat down the piece, the statement by scientists that possibly-increased rain in Africa is outweighed by risks and costs of climate change.

The article otherwise contains the mixed messages that the climate isn't changing, the climate is always changing naturally, and that the climate change we're causing is having beneficial effects. Fox News and Maxim Lott haven't quite figured out what the message is, but I doubt many Fox readers click on the link they're given to see if NASA actually says what's claimed.

I emailed Lott last week about this. I assume he's very busy.

And yes to the idly curious, he is John Lott's son, the "Ma" of Mary Rosh. That's not his fault, but this article is.

Egypt, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Ukraine

Haven't done a foreign policy post in a while, so here's three in one:

1. The list above shows messed-countries and messed-up outcomes, so that part's consistent, but what's inconsistent is the level of effort by the US to change the outcome. Whether the US did relatively little like in Syria or a lot like in Libya, things didn't go well.

For Egypt in particular, the US has done everything right AFAICT since the beginning of the Arab Spring and it made no difference to the final outcome. It might have helped save Egyptian students from a massacre in 2011, and that's not nothing, but it's not permanent change either.

Overall I think the lack of results counsels in favor of less interference. I'd also say it might support defensive support over aggressive support. Stopping Qaddaffi from massacring people in Benghazi is good, as is stopping ISIS aggression in Syria. OTOH, helping what appears to be Shiite militias in Iraq with little government control attempt to take over a major Sunni city sounds like a situation to stay away from, at least until government control and Sunni support become real and not fig leafs.


2. One thing Obama did that has turned out fantastically well is in making his Syria red line comment. Before the comment, Syria had lots of chemical weapons, and now they're gone. I'm still incredulous that people call it a loss for the US, including in the current issue of The Economist.

A good thought experiment is to imagine what an honest answer from Assad would be, as to whether the hundreds of millions of dollars Syria spent over the decades on chemical weapons turned out to be money well spent. Or imagine whether some tinpot dictator in some other country thinking about establishing a chemical weapons program to be deployed on his own or neighboring people would be encouraged or discouraged by what happened with chemical weapons in Syria. Yet many people who think they're qualified to discuss foreign policy would prefer that Obama had ignored any chance to consult Congress and blow up a few air bases in Syria, and count that a better outcome.

I could see an argument that the US was lucky in how it turned out, but there's no question that the world's in a much better shape with how it happened.


3. An accountability moment for myself - in early 2012, when things were going really well in Libya, I offered a bet over Libya's long-term future:

So, Freedom House gave Libya the worst possible ratings in 2010 on a scale of 1 to 7, with a 7 for political rights and 7 for civil rights.  I predict at the end of 2013 there will be at least three grades of improvement, e.g. political rights could improve to at least 5 and civil to at least 6, but it could be in other combinations.  My guess is that it'll be more like four or five (and one has already happened), but I think three grades clearly represent a benefit to the country.

No one took the offer. Somewhat strangely, I would've won. Things weren't that bad in 2013 but got much worse starting in 2014 - although Freedom House still gives Libya slightly better ratings than under Qadaffi. I don't think a technical victory from my perspective is much of a vindication. 

FWIW, I think Libya still has a shot at a much better future than the past it had under Qadaffi or the pretty-rotten present.

Where Did That Come From

In the discussion about Fred Seitz that John threw the burning tree onto Willard pointed to an answer that Eli had not known.  Maybe John Mashey had figured it out but not Eli.

So everybunny today older than about 12 years knows about the OISM petition, a mail campaign started in 2003 based on a Monckton class deceptive paper by Soon, Baliunas and Robinson, Robinson being Art Robinson, a chemist who used to work with Linus Pauling and went off to form a home schooling operation housed in a barn in Oregon called the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine.

The mailing was wall to wall and was fronted by a deceptive introduction from Frederick Seitz

Enclosed is a twelve-page review of information on the subject of "global warming," a petition in the form of a reply card, and a return envelope. Please consider these materials carefully.  The United States is very close to adopting an international agreement that would ration the use of energy and of technologies that depend upon coal, oil, and natural gas and some other organic compounds.  This treaty is, in our opinion, based upon flawed ideas. Research data on climate change do not show that human use of hydrocarbons is harmful. To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful.  The proposed agreement would have very negative effects upon the technology of nations throughout the world, especially those that are currently attempting to lift from poverty and provide opportunities to the over 4 billion people in technologically underdeveloped countries.  It is especially important for America to hear from its citizens who have the training necessary to evaluate the relevant data and offer sound advice.  We urge you to sign and return the petition card. If you would like more cards for use by your colleagues, these will be sent.  Frederick Seitz Past President, National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A. President Emeritus, Rockefeller University Now Seitz, say what you will about his politics and ethics, was a BSD as Drug Monkey would put it.  BS here standing for Big Swinging, while Robinson, at best would fit neatly into any box labelled crank.  Baliunas was an astronomer at Harvard Smithsonian, but also connected to the George Marshall Institute, an organization that Seitz, William Nierenberg and Robert Jastrow had formed to support Star Wars. What, Eli has frequently asked himself, brought these two sides together? Willard points to a post by Things Break which was written during the Nierenberg matter, a back and froth five years ago now when Nicholas Nierenberg appeared at the Weasels to defend dear old dad.  TB had found a video of WN talking to the 17th annual meeting of the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness, an ur-prepper group connected both with OISM and the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, that published the Soon, Baliunas and Robinson paper after people pointed out that what Seitz had mailed out was not a refereed paper, but garbage wrapped up nicely to look like a PNAS paper.  Doctors for Disaster, obviously was well aligned with GMI on star wars and related issues. What is interesting that remains, is why did the GMI not send out the letter themselves? Implausible deniability suggests itself.

Problems with Wood for Trees data

UPDATE:  problem seems fixed, for now anyway. See comments.

David Appel says Wood for Trees, a fun site for us amateurs to play with climate data, has wrong data and unclear sources. Too bad, but worth passing along.

Maybe they'll fix things.

The role of Fred Seitz

Apparently in criticizing Fred Seitz I have hit a nerve in Russell Seitz.

From my files:
On October 11, 2007, I received a letter from Frederick Seitz, signed as

“Past President, National Academy of Sciences, U. S. A.
President Emeritus, Rockefeller University.”

Seitz (Fred, not Russell) writes that “Research data on climate change do not show that human use of hydrocarbons is harmful. To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful”.

The letter from Seitz has a return address of
GWPP
Box 1925
La Jolla, California 92038

The GWPP stands for Global Warming Petition Project.
Fred Seitz urged me to read an article by Arthur Robinson, Noah Robinson, and Willis Soon, published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (vol. 12, pp. 79-90, 2007), entitled Environmental Effect of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide. The institutional affiliation of the three authors is listed as the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, in Cave Junction, Oregon. The article has the same format and font as the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The NAS took the unusual step of specifically denying any connection with the article. Here is the Robinson, Robinson and Soon article.

In his letter, Fred Seitz urges me to sign and return a petition rejecting the Kyoto protocol of 1997. The petition asks for my name and my academic degree (BS/MS/Ph.D).
The number of people who signed and returned the petition were later touted as people who denied global warming in the Global warming Petition Project.

Rabett Run Goes to the Movies

On April 17, I took my wife to the movies to see Merchants of Doubt, the movie.

I have already read the book, by Orestes and Conway.

The movie has its own website! All new movies do these days.

The movie starts off with Stanton Glantz, professor and tobacco-control activist, speaking about the efforts of the tobacco companies to deny the findings of medical science, that smoking causes cancer.
The tobacco companies fought back with a PR campaign. They did not bother to engage with the scientific community, because that would have been hopeless. Instead, the tobacco companies aimed to propagandize the public directly, bypassing the scientific community. The tobacco companies financed the work of a handful of denier scientists, including Fred Seitz and Fred Singer.

The movie is quite thorough in describing the tobacco companies and their PR strategy. Doubt is their real product. They didn’t have to win the debate, they just aimed at a draw.

After a thorough discussion of the tobbacco companies and their strategy, the movies discusses the climate change deniers.

Same PR strategy, and some of the same cast of characters.

Fred Singer is shown in three consecutive clips:
in clip #1 he denies the climate is warming,
in clip #2 he proclaims that the climate is warming, but it’s not manmade.
And in clip #3 he proclaims that the climate is warming, and the warming is manmade. But he says it would be ruinous to the economy to stop global warming.

Other global warming deniers featured include Stephen Malloy (junkscience.com), and Marc Morano (former Inhofe staffer, now running the fog machine at ClimateDepot)

The film features an honest conservative, Robert Inglis, former Republican Congressman from South Carolina. Inglis is a conservative Christian with a lifetime rating over 95% from the American Conservative Union, and support from the anti-abortion lobby and the NRA. He was upset in the Republican primary in 2010, attributed to his rejection of global warming denial. Inglis strikes an oddly positive tone to the movie.

My wife and I saw the movie in a nearly empty theater: Only about ten seats were occupied, in a theater with a capacity of a couple hundred. The movie only played for a few days in Las Vegas, whose metropolitan area includes two million people. I didn’t see any advertisement for the movie.
Documentaries sometimes jump through hoops to qualify for consideration for awards. There was acknowledgement of support from the Omidyar Network, founded by Pierre Omidyar, eBay founder whose fortune is estimated at $9 billion. So there are backers for the movie.

Let's hope the movie wins an Oscar.

The envelope please!

Die Paradigmgemeinschaft

IEHO, paradigms is one of those word like elucidate whose time has come and deservedly gone.  Eli remembers when elucidate had crept into every other abstract as in this paper elucidates the changing climate or whatever.  Paradigm is another.  Of course one can wish for a paradigm shift in the use of paradigms, unlikely to be granted as it is the go to for every third rater on the planet.  

However, Eli's friend Willard is one to dig in to such things and has sent Eli a note about one Oliver Geden, who is trying to set up as the next honest broker, sitting astride the science/policy interface and telling all what to do.  To be frank Eli finds Dr. Geden's take a bit less than sophomoric as shown by a couple of twits

@Oliver_Geden @shubclimate What is political science but a discussion of motives and means? http://t.co/7Z9FHFhsTT

— eli rabett (@EthonRaptor) May 31, 2015

But parsing such is Willard's joy, and so Eli gives you Die Paradigmschaft

-----------------------------------------

Dr. Oliver Geden (hereafter Oliver, as we’ve been introduced), Head of the EU/Europe Research Division of the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, has circled around the contrarian bandwagon, e.g. at Pierre’s or Judy's. The title at Pierre’s intrigued me: Oliver sees a “paradigm shift.” This may not predispose Eli, who is not exactly a Kuhn fan. However, there is a stupendous entailment: this paradigm shift leads to a “depolitization” of climate science. I find the possibility tempting enough to start to believe in paradigms beyond hi-fi stuff. (No affiliation; I’m a Lynn snob.)

So, what’s up with Oliver’s paradigm shift?

Let’s start in May 2012. Like any ClimateBall episodes, it starts with something in disarray. At the time, twas international climate diplomacy. Congeneric to Nietzsche with God, Fukuyama with History, and REM with the World, Oliver proclaims the End of Climate Policy as We Know It:

Without a paradigm shift, the path of climate diplomacy leads directly into self-inflicted irrelevance and “the end of climate policy”. The well-practised strategy of papering over current failures by announcing even greater future efforts cannot be maintained for long with the 2 degree target formally accepted at Cancún in 2010.

As soon as science tells us that reaching the 2 degree target is impossible, the top-down paradigm will eventually fall apart.

Will everything collapse?  Not if we accept some paradigm shift. Good. No need to hold our breath and count to ten.  

As we will see, Oliver’s ultimatum will become important in his punditry.

***

August 2013. A New Climate-Policy Paradigm is more than looming:

In order to ensure this outcome, the EU must begin preparing a Plan B that accounts for the coming climate-policy paradigm shift. Such a plan would prioritize measurable progress toward decarbonizing the world’s largest economies over the establishment of global climate treaties or long-term global targets.

Brace yourselves, forewarns Oliver, paradigms are shifting (see photo).  We need measurable progress, not treaties. With a different semantic field, targeting a different audience,  with another suggested presentation of policy products, Oliver rediscovers Eli’s plan to save the world. That would be a paradigm that ought to make Eli happy, no?

No, he told me: too much grand proposals to write. It looks too much like the honest broker dance to be true. Plus, Eli's in the East Coast frame of mind.

***

March 2014. Energiewende, the flagship project of Germany’s energy sector, raises concerns. What would be the biggest one, bunnies may ask Oliver? Why, of course, a paradigm shift:

In light of the complex constellation of interests in EU negotiations, the paradigm shift underway in energy and climate policy, and the continued broad consensus on the transformation of the German energy system, a relatively pragmatic strategy appears to be the most advisable.

The last sentence is impressive: we get “the 2 degree target is impossible” and “the top-down paradigm” right next to one another. How these two constructs are connected is left as an exercise to readers everywhere Oliver can spread the P word.

***

April 2015. Suppose we submit the “Palestinian question” to Oliver. (Which question matters little - it's dissertation parlance.) His solution? Wham. Europe needs a Paradigm Shift:

The historic December 17 vote is not solely definitive of this paradigm shift; rather, this vote is the culmination of a recent and unprecedented trend where countries across Europe–such as Sweden, Ireland, England, France, and Portugal–have passed resolutions at the national level asserting their wishes to recognize Palestine as a free and independent state.

Shifts in paradigm are seldom temporary, more so when Oliver's around.

***

May 2015, Oliver makes a conceptual breaktrough with his P idea, and connects it with good ol’ “pragmatism”. Let's all come down to earth:

As a consequence, to many observers, little seemed to change in EU climate policy after the failure of Copenhagen. Frictions inside the EU and a paradigm shift in EU climate governance, however, became evident with the beginning of the negotiations for a new energy and climate framework until 2030.

Not only is the paradigm shift becoming necessary, it already is self-evident. Many observers, whose job is to observe such things as frictions, told him so. As the Energy Post states in its tagline: independent, international, and incisive.

***

Since 2012 at least, the paradigm shift has shifted. The shift is still occurring as we write. Where does that leave us? Down to earth. Totally evidence-oriented. More pragmatic than ever. Witness what Andrew Adams tweeted me the other day:

Personally I've always been inspired by MLK's "I have a pragmatic expectation" speech.

@nevaudit Personally I've always been inspired by MLK's "I have a pragmatic expectation" speech.

— Andrew Adams (@andrewadams99) May 29, 2015

I remember the maps of the Holy Land. Coloured they were. Very pretty. The Dead Sea was pale blue. The very look of it made me thirsty. That's where we'll go, I used to say, that's where we'll go for our honeymoon. We'll swim. We'll be happy.

...into the bucket of jellied eels, spread across the Toast Of The Not Knowing

Not Toast Of The Not Knowing

A little more on the lawsuit flop against John Mashey - Stoat has posts (one of them with a brilliant headline), and John M links to his lawyers' brief arguing for dismissal. If you thought the summary of the flaws in the case looked bad, read the full brief. The jaw drops.

Per Stoat, it made Retraction Watch, but just a tiny mention and not a full article that it deserves. I poked around George Mason websites for a combative student newspaper to cover this, but wasn't sure I found much.


UPDATE:  thought I'd respond to the speculation about motivations and timing, that when the effort is this haphazard and flawed, it will be very difficult to figure out what "rational" intent lay behind it.

Needs more glaciers

Good start though.

Weird paper claims climate change helps biodiversity

ScienceDaily says a paper found that climate change has less impacts on biodiversity than land use has. My first thoughts were that it's plausible, that the negative effects are combined, and that the priority might depend on the assumptions. I tried to RTFA, but it was paywalled other than a long abstract. The long abstract, however, nearly contradicts ScienceDaily, saying climate change has a mostly positive effect on biodiversity. Weirdly, it said that the climate change effect on biodiversity distribution by altitude was a positive effect in its study area, when I'd think that all other things being equal, a species will find less land available to it as its habitat range moves from lower to upper areas.

So, after some waffling I forked out the six bucks for temporary access, and I now have thoughts. I should be hesitant to pass judgment as a total amateur, so qualify this accordingly, but the main issue I'm fixating on is that they examined a single watershed catchment of a small, steeply-sloped river (1700 square km, elev. 45m to 1700m) in rural China. Your classic watershed is pie-shaped, with more land as you move uphill, even though our planet's land surface isn't similarly shaped. I think their finding, that in their case climate change benefits biodiversity when it moves habitat ranges uphill, is an artifact of their study area's topography. I looked for any discussion of this disparity between their study area and the terrestrial world in general, and didn't see it.

Other thoughts:

• It studies stream macroinvertebrates, just one specialized aspect of biodiversity, and is very dependent on projected changes in hydrology. I'm surprised to read the claim that one could do meaningful, quantitative predictions for future hydrology at a small scale. Maybe I shouldn't be.

• Speaking of predictions, the paper ends its predictions in 2050. I'd guess wildly that 2050 is about when land use impacts would've hit their maximum for a rural part of China, but climate change impacts are just beginning. Extending the analysis to a full century might give a different sense about the negative aspects of climate change.

• The paper discusses the issue of a "summit trap" where the species habitat hits the maximum altitude and then disappears, but apparently it just wasn't an issue in this study.

In summary, I have no sense that paper is denialist or the authors were skewing it in that direction, but the catchment area and 2050 timeline IMHO exclude applying this analysis to saying climate change is secondary to land use in impact, let alone that climate change has a positive impact on biodiversity.

Plain Speaking

Jeff Nesbit on Twitter points to a bit of plain speaking.

Bureau of Meteorology rejects Australia PM business advisor's climate denial claims as "incorrect"and "irrelevant" http://t.co/9jfcV7HU5F

— Jeff Nesbit (@jeffnesbit) May 25, 2015

Maurice Strong Newman, is the usual "business" advisor to the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott.  Strong Newman has the expected attitude about the science of climate, and has expressed on occasion the beleif, well  you can go read his oped in the Australian.  If anything could bring Tim Lambert out of retirement for another go at The Australian's War on Science, this is it folks.  Perhaps some of the refugees from Deltoid might have a crack, which Eli would be proud to publish,

Anyhow, in a meeting of the Australian Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee, Senator Larissa Walters asked Rob Vertessy, the Director of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology about some of Mr. Strong Newman's beliefs.  Lisa Cox in the Sydney Morning Herald has a report on the hearing.  Strong Newman's beliefs had already been called out as a joke by Christine Figueras, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

There were some lovely deadpan answers, but also a classic example of how to handle mansplaining by Senator Walters after the chair of the committee (a woman) tries to close off her line of inquiry at the start.

Among the highlights was Vertessy's answer to the old red herring of how can there be global warming if people in New Hampshire (people in New Hampshire always freeze their butts off)  the south of England are freezing their butts off.

I think it is referring to a bit of an old red herring that suggests that just because you are getting cold weather in the northern hemisphere it somehow discredits the fact that there is global warming occurring. There is a perfectly good explanation for that.  The theory of global warming does not hold that there will be no any cold weather anywhere.  In fact there is evidence to suggest that global warming will actually intensify the onset of some cold weather due to the effect of the changing behavior of the jet stream  which wanders around a hell of a lot more latitudinally than it used to as a result to the changes to the global climate system and that has the effect of  actually  bringing more polar air into some populated areas of the northern hemisphere as well as bringing up some hot weather as well. So it is by no means any kind of proof that global warming is occuring 

California Democratic Party convention becomes first to call for climate divestment

I was at the party convention when it happened last weekend, but worked on campaign finance disclosure rather than divestment (disclosure got supported too). It's good news:

The California Democratic Party approved a sweeping resolution on Sunday to drop fossil fuel stocks from the state's two major public pension funds, valued at about $500 billion.  

The party also wants the state's 33 public universities to purge such investments from their $12 billion in total endowments. The resolution will not likely result in new legislative action soon.  

However, it could generate enough support among the Democratic majority to pass a less aggressive divestment bill, Senate Bill 185, working its way through the state legislature. Beyond California, this resolution adds to the fast-growing momentum of the fossil fuel divestment movement, which kicked off on college campuses in 2011 and has spread to cities and major corporations worldwide.  

Before the final vote, RL Miller, chair of the California Democratic Party's environmental caucus and author of the resolution, delivered a one-minute speech. In an interview with InsideClimate News she recounted her message: "The world is watching...We need to send a moral message that California will not invest in those businesses that burn our planet in the name of profit and this resolution is that message. Divestment from South Africa helped bring down the system of apartheid and [divestment] will likewise bring down our dependence on fossil fuels. And further, [the] passage of this resolution will help pass Senate Bill 185."

AFAICT and from asking around, it's the first party convention to do this. I was surprised at the lack of coverage originally, but a little more has leaked out over the last few days.

This helps mainstream the divestment movement and show the party leadership where its activist base is coming from. We'll see what happens in coming months.

I've heard from South Africa divestment veterans that climate divestment is happening at a more rapid pace - I guess it depends on whether the starting point for South Africa was 1977 or 1984. Regardless, climate divestment is at least comparable.

UPDATE:  wiki says the South Africa divestment movement got 53 educational institutions to fully or partly divest in 1984, 127 in 1987, and 155 in 1988, so there are some markers to measure against. The link at the top says about two dozen universities have done some form of climate divestment so far.

Falling out of the clown car, down the stairs and into the electric eel pond.

I don't have much to say beyond go read how the $2m lawsuit against John Mashey by luckwarmists didn't go well. It's a heartwarming tale, and congrats to the Climate Science Legal Defense Fund for their great work.

My one semi-serious comment is that this is the quality of the opposition. We ought to be kicking their butts.

The Sound of Global Climate Change

From the University of Minnesota, Daniel Crawford, Scott St. George and GISSTemp comes

The sound of climate change from the Amazon to the Arctic from Ensia on Vimeo.

The Climate Club Adopts Eli Rabett's Simple Plan

In the New York Review of Books, William Nordhaus(the intelligent one, not Ted of the BTI) looks Climate Shock: The Economic Consequences of a Hotter Planetby Gernot Wagner and Martin L. Weitzman. Nothing in the review and book will come as a surprise to bunnies who have been paying attention.  Nordhaus discusses the three themes of the book, that attempts to control climate change have a serious free rider issue, that tail risks must dominate any discussion of policy to deal with climate change and that geo-engineering to control climate change has serious risks that make it inadvisable (see, Eli can be nice).

The free rider issue is the key to action,

If the fat tails of climate change are perilous, and geoengineering is itself a dangerous solution, what remains? Here, Wagner and Weitzman largely follow the standard economists’ prescription: “Stick it to carbon.” We might think that capitalism is the problem because economic growth has led to rising emissions. But, they argue, a modified invisible hand is the only workable solution: “It’s capitalism with all its innovative and entrepreneurial powers that is our only hope of steering clear of the looming climate shock.” 

 and Nordhaus has another suggestion

The major challenge for climate policy is to overcome free-riding. The answer, I would suggest, is to rethink the design of climate treaties. We can look at successful treaties such as the European Union, the World Trade Organization, or military alliances as models for a more promising climate treaty.The essence of these successful treaties is the “club model.” A club is a voluntary group deriving mutual benefits from sharing the costs of producing an activity. Members get the benefits but also pay the dues. The benefits of a successful club are sufficiently large that members will pay dues and adhere to club rules in order to gain them. If we look at successful international clubs, we might see the seeds of an effective international system to deal with climate change.

I recently described a possible Climate Club in the American Economic Review.4 Under the club rules, participating countries would undertake harmonized but costly emissions reductions. For example, they might agree that each country would implement policies that produce a minimum domestic carbon price of $40 per ton of CO2. The easiest way to raise the price is through a carbon tax, but countries might prefer other approaches such as setting quantitative limits on emissions, or hybrid approaches.

A crucial aspect of the club is that countries who are outside the club—and do not share in the burden of emissions reductions—are penalized. Penalties for those outside the club are central to the club mechanism, and penalties are the major difference from all other proposals from Kyoto to the upcoming meeting in Paris. Economic modeling indicates that the most promising penalty is uniform percentage tariffs on the imports of nonparticipants into the club region. A country considering whether to undertake costly abatement would have to weigh those costs against the potentially larger costs of reduced trade with countries in the club.

This, of course, is Eli Rabett's Simple Plan to Save the World, proposed in 2007

Nations wishing to make major progress on decreasing greenhouse gas emissions should introduce emission taxes on all products. These taxes should be levied on imports as well as domestic goods at the point of sale, and should displace other taxes, such as VAT, sales taxes, and payroll (e.g. social security, health care) in such a way that tax revenues are constant, and distributed equitably. 

These should be introduced as an Emissions Added Levy (avoiding the bad jokes). EAL would be imposed on sale for emissions added in the preceding step and inherent to the consumption of the product, as would be the case for heating oil and gasoline. Manufacturers would pay the EAL on electricity they bought, and incorporate this and the levy on emissions they created into the price of the product they sell.

Imports from countries that do not have an EAL would have the full EAL imposed at the time of import. The base rate would be generic EALs based on worst previous practices in the countries that do have EALs, which would be reduced on presenting proof that the actual emissions were lower.

All countries with EAL systems would reserve a portion (say 5%) for assisting developing countries with adaptations (why not use acclimations?) and mitigating programs.

By basing the levy on emissions rather than carbon all greenhouse gases stand on a common level, sequestration is strongly encouraged as well as such simple things as capturing methane from oil wells and garbage dumps (that gets built into the cost of disposal). The multipliers would come from CO2 equivalents on a 10 year basis.

The process can be effective without across the board agreement which means the ability of countries such as the US to bargain the process down is decreased. Further, early adopters will control the process and establish the base rates in concert. Imagine a world wide EAL system controlled by the early adapters. The Simple Plan will advantage them and the world.

Paul Krugman adopted the Simple Plan in 2014, and now Nordhaus comes on board. 

Heartland Institute - Convenient Cognitive Dissonance

Coal at any cost to help the poor of Africa and elsewhere has become the cudgel of climate change denial.  Led by Bjorn Lomborg the usual suspects, who never otherwise really gave a moments worth of notice for the people of the developing world, have tried it on.

Eli, Eli is a museum goer, and has seen the pollution and illness caused by burning coal in the world both in pictures from the 19th century and in person. Eli thinks that the developing world does not have to replicate the mistakes and misery the developed world suffered through to get to where it is, which is not such a bad place. The developing world does not need telephone poles, they have cell phones and working cell phone systems.  The same cannot so clearly be said about their centralized electrical generation and distribution systems.  Mini-networks based on solar and wind have many advantages.

So, how bad is it out there in China, whose energy economy is built on coal?  Kevin Drum at Mother Jones, prints a letter from a reader about the quality of life there and economic growth

I believe the macro-level statistics and phenomena you discuss are all trailing indicators. I left China with my family almost five years ago as a large number of interrelated quality-of-life issues became increasingly unbearable. Those factors have continued to worsen since then at an accelerating rate, to the point where the economy is now largely driven by people trying to earn or steal enough money to leave.

The once-thriving expat community in Beijing has shriveled to nearly nothing. The cost of living is approaching world-capital (NY, London, Tokyo, etc.) levels for a  miserable existance. The local culture has become increasingly desperate and cutthroat. And Beijing is one of the more attractive places in China to live, work, and raise a family.

People, generally, and Chinese especially, will tolerate all sorts of deprivation in service of a better future for their children. And that is largely what has driven the rapid pace of Chinese development since the end of the Cultural Revolution and the beginning of Deng Xiaoping's opening and reform policies. My feeling is that biggest challenge ahead for China is when the population at large concludes that a better future for their children is no longer in the cards.

When it happens, it will happen gradually, then suddenly. And what happens after that, no one can say, but a continuation of the policies driving hyper-accelerated GDP growth over all else probably isn't it.

It is this sort of misery that lead to the Chinese pledges on climate action for the upcoming Paris talks.

The Rabett's friends at the Heartland Institute, on the other hand, have again shown their adherence to the hypocrats oath.  They too have taken up the Lomborgian call for more coal now, more coal tomorrow, and more coal forever

These policies prolong reliance on open fires fueled by wood and dung. They mean families are denied lights, refrigeration and other benefits of electricity, and millions die every year from lung and intestinal diseases, and other effects of rampant poverty. With hydrocarbons still providing 82% of the world’s energy – and China, India and other rapidly developing countries building numerous coal-fired generating plants – retarding Africa’s development in the name of preventing climate chaos is useless and immoral.

But, of course, the US EPA's new regulations for cleaner burning wood stoves, is to the Heartlanders, an abomination

According to University of Houston professor Larry Bell, “80 percent of wood-burning stoves currently used by homeowners [do not meet the new standards.]”

Close to 2.5 million homes in the United States, 2 percent of all households, use wood as a primary heating source, a figure that has increased 38 percent since 2004. Another 8 percent of households use wood as a secondary heating source.

Of course, the smoke from burning biofuels for cooking and heating indoors, according to the Heartlanders, does nothing in the US, nothing.  Indoor air pollution from burning biofuels only kill Africans and Indians who don't burn Matt "King Coal" Ridley's special blend healing coal.

When EPA proposed the rule in 2014, Stonehill College professor Sean Mulholland submitted comments stating there are “several reasons to be skeptical of the level of benefits claimed from this regulation.” He cited literature questioning the link between particulate matter and mortality, and he criticized EPA for assessing benefits based on national averages rather than accounting for local variability. 

Ron Arnold, executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, says the link between particulate matter and health problems is not as clear-cut as the agency claims.

“Does [a wood stove] cause smoke? Yeah, of course it does,” Arnold said. “And has that got particulate matter in it? Of course it does. Is it killing everybody? No, it’s not. Is it making everybody sick? No, it’s not. Do some people get sick? Yeah. Is that what’s causing it? Well, EPA says it is, but we really don’t know. But we’ve got predatory scientists who will say it is.”

Critics point out EPA’s new rules will place an increasing financial burden on poor and rural residents who rely on wood stoves as their primary source of heat.

The echos of convenient cognitive dissonance fills the sky.

Bjorn Lomborg demonstrates why universities should steer clear of him

Hat tip:  Greg Laden

Australia's do-nothing-on-climate government attempted to foist luckwarmist Lomborg on University of Western Australia, with a sweetener of a $4 million to take him. UWA's administration bent the knee so enthusiastically that they faceplanted, with the actual academics rising up successfully against having this guy join them.

While there are countless reasons why Lomborg doesn't belong at a university, his cover-up of how his "consensus" analysis deliberately underplays the impact of climate emissions shows the lack of honesty that should stop any university from associating with him. It's not just underplaying, it's how he covers up what he's done.

Here's the exchange in Danish newspapers (emphasis added, some typos corrected):

Kare Fog, a critic of Lomborg:

....Lomborg will presumably refer to his Copenhagen Consensus conference, where it is shown with - seemingly - matter-of-fact cost/benefit calculations that it pays better to solve other problems than global warming..... 

[The audience members] do not know that the figures have arisen by discounting calculations and that Lomborg has cheated in these calculations. He has used one discount rate for climate projects, and another discount rate for the remaining projects. 

 If he had used the same rate for all projects, an endeavour for the climate would have appeared much higher on the ranking list; it would have obtained a more favourable cost/benefit ratio than the endeavours against tuberculosis, malaria, child diseases and heart diseases....

Lomborg responding some days later:

Kåre Fog writes...that we in Copenhagen Consensus have "cheated with the calculations", because we have used one rate of interest for climate projects and another rate of interest for the remaining projects. 

This is simply wrong. Indeed, our Nobel laureates have stressed the importance of using the same rate of interest for all projects (which naturally is also the only fair approach), and this yields that solely CO2 cuts are an extraordinarily poor way of helping future generations....

Fog responds again:

....There really have been used different rates of interest. This appears from the papers in the Copenhagen consensus conference, and it has also been confirmed to me by one of the climate economists of the conference, Richard Tol.... 

...in Jamison´s text on diseases and in Horton´s text on malnutrition they will see that there has been used a discount rate of 3 percent (as prescribed by Lomborg) (the rate of discount is easily found by searching for the word "discount" in the text). But if they enter the climate papers, they will see that Yohe et al. has a discount rate of 4 to 5 percent, and Green has a discount rate of 4 percent.... 

[Green's] climate project gives a benefit/cost ratio of approximately 16 when he uses 4 percent, but if he uses 3 percent, like in the health projects, this yields a ratio of no less than 28.5.... 

So what does Lomborg do to ensure that the climate projects do not look so favorable? He has them evaluated at a more unfavorable rate of interest....

And then Lomborg again:

...KF claims that the health paper uses only a low rate of interest of 3%. This is wrong; on page 60 it clearly apears that the paper also evaluates a high 6 percent rate of interest.....all papers were asked to evaluate all projects at both 3 percent and 6 percent. In some fields, for instance the climate models, this is extraordinarily cumbersome, and therefore the climate economists chose one rate of interest "in the middle" and made a qualitative evaluation of the estimates at higher and lower rates of interest.

....all the papers have presented, as well as it is possible, costs and benefits for a range between 3 and 6 percent rate....the Nobel laureates insist on thereafter prioritizing all solutions at the same, consistent rate of interest.

Finally, the last from Fog:

....It is a rather large detective work to unravel how the calculations have been made, and especially it is unclear - remarkably unclear - how Lomborg has arrived from the particular cost/benefit calculations to the final ranking list.  

....It is actually true that all other projects than the climate projects have applied a rate of discount of three percent. In addition one has also worked out what the result would be with six percent, but the result of these supplementary calculations has not been used to rank the projects ...[Lomborg] has compared the profitability of non-climate-projects with a rate of three percent and of climate-projects with a rate of four-to-five percent. 
If the climate- and non-climate projects had been calculated with the same rate of interest, investment in climate technology would rank higher than vitamin A supplementation....Thus it must also be maintained that the project calculations are not comparable and that the ranking in Copenhagen Consensus is not worth the paper it is printed on.  

 I have actually waited for a long time when Lomborg would include this detail about the extra six percent as his next step in the process of confusing people....

None of this would have come out if Fog hadn't been as tenacious and knowledgeable, and if the Danish paper hadn't been willing to let the dialog happen. I expect in the vast majority of situations, Lomborg's initial denial would've been the end of it. He's another Benny Peiser, saying something he knows to be wrong when it's possible that the audience doesn't know.

My question for a university dean pondering whether to take the money and have Lomborg on campus is this:  does Lomborg's second response demonstrate whether his first response is honest? That first response demonstrates the quality of work you should expect. Then decide whether the money to take him in is enough.