Category — Climate policy

In my last post, I pointed out a problem with the EPA’s major finding that:

Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG [greenhouse gas] concentrations.

I showed that it could be reasonably and straightforwardly argued that less than half of the warming since 1950 contained in the “observed” global temperature history can be attributed to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. This is bad for the EPA, as this finding was simply parroted by the EPA from the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4)—a report relied on heavily by the EPA in underpinning its Endangerment Finding (that greenhouse gases released by human activities “threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.”). When the IPCC is wrong, so is the EPA.

Another new problem with the IPCC’s AR4 was reported earlier this week. This one involved the IPCC’s reliance on a book chapter instead of the peer-reviewed literature to conclude that sea ice extent around Antarctica had changed little since the late 1970s. In fact, it is well-established in the scientific literature, dating both prior to and subsequent from the production of the AR4, that there has been a statistically significant increase in the extent of sea ice in the Antarctic. That the IPCC AR4 projects Antarctic sea ice declines to accompany global warming, it is little wonder why the IPCC AR4 Chapter 4 authors wanted to downplay the actual behavior of Antarctic sea ice.

The Antarctic sea ice problem adds to an ever growing list of problems uncovered recently (since the EPA’s Endangerment Finding) that exist within the IPCC AR4 reports. Other errors involve IPCC findings on Himalayan glaciers, Amazon rainforests, African agriculture, Dutch geography, attribution of extreme weather damages, and several others.

And none of these problems have been exposed as a result of the Climategate email release. Well, maybe as a general result of the heightened nature of inquisitiveness that the Climategate emails evidenced as being warranted, but not as a direct result of the content of the any particular email.

But, don’t let this leave you thinking that the Climategate emails are just much ado about nothing, as many IPCC apologists would like you to believe. Far from it. [Read more →]

The findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are often held up as representing “the consensus of scientists”—a pretty grandiose and presumptuous claim. And one that in recent days, weeks, and months, has been unraveling. So too, therefore, must all of the secondary assessments that are based on the IPCC findings—the most notable of which is the EPA’s Endangerment Finding—that “greenhouse gases taken in combination endanger both the public health and the public welfare of current and future generations.”

Recent events have shown, rather embarrassingly, that the IPCC is not “the” consensus of scientists, but rather the opinions of a few scientists (in some cases as few as one) in various subject areas whose consensus among themselves is then kludged together by the designers of the IPCC final product who a priori know what they want the ultimate outcome to be (that greenhouse gases are leading to dangerous climate change and need to be restricted). So clearly you can see why the EPA (who has a similar objective) would decide to rely on the IPCC findings rather than have to conduct an independent assessment of the science with the same predetermined outcome. Why go through the extra effort to arrive at the same conclusion?

The EPA’s official justification for its reliance on the IPCC’s findings is that it has reviewed the IPCC’s “procedures” and found them to be exemplary.

Below is a look at some things, recently revealed, that the IPCC “procedures” have produced. These recent revelations indicate that the “procedures” are not infallible and that highly publicized IPCC results are either wrong or unjustified—which has the knock-on effect of rendering the IPCC an unreliable source of information. Unreliable doesn’t mean wrong in all cases, mind you, just that it is hard to know where and when errors are present, and as such, the justification that “the IPCC says so” is no longer sufficient (or acceptable). [Read more →]

“Politically oriented capitalism, whatever particular form it takes, involves the granting by the state of privileged opportunities for profit. Such openings are available only to those with connections or to those who can pay for influence.” 

-          Scott, James. Comparative Political Corruption. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1972, p. 52.

Joe Romm at Climate Progress (Center for American Progress) is holding out hope against hope that a climate bill–just about any climate bill–will be passable in 2010. He regurgitates a Boston Globe piece under the headline, Graham, Kerry, Lieberman meet with Rahm Emanuel — and then Chamber of Commerce, whose VP of Gov’t Affairs said, “generally we were in synch”!

This brings up the question: why is the Chamber of Commerce negotiating with the enemies of true (consumer-driven) economic recovery?

This incident reminded me of a section from my book Capitalism at Work (chapter 6, pp. 172–74) that deals with the Chamber of Commerce in a historical sense. (There is a Ken Lay surprise–read on.)

A collection of speeches given in 1966/67 by the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was published by McGraw-Hill as The Business of Business: Private Enterprise and Public Affairs. M. A. “Mike” Wright, chairman of Humble Oil & Refining Company (now ExxonMobil), urged his fellow executives to be more proactive in public and government affairs to improve the business environment and better society. “Virtually every business decision today is affected by public laws, regulations, and policies,” he stated, yet industry leaders were often “indifferent” or “negative” rather than “creative” and “positive” toward lawmaking. [Read more →]

Editor note: This post from one year ago is reprinted for its continuing relevance to the climate-change debate. The “bootleggers” are hard at work in the post-Enron era with nearly 150 companies, lead by Exelon Corp., Entergy Corp., and Constellation Energy Group Inc., buying 30-second television spots running from today through President Obama’s State of the Union address on Wednesday. 

The climate-change public policy debate might be thought of as a straightforward morality play. In one corner, we have the good guys laboring mightily against all odds to save the planet from rampant consumerism, human short-sightedness, and corporate greed. In the other corner, we have the bad guys, laboring mightily to preserve their profits by stoking materialism, economic selfishness, and fear of big government. Behind the curtains of this morality play, however, is a fascinating dance between the “good guys” (the Baptists) and “bad guys” (the bootleggers) to pass some form of mutually beneficial prohibition.

The emergence of the bootlegger and Baptist coalition in climate change politics has never been more obvious than last week, when the United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP – a coalition of big business and big environmental groups) put forward its plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent below 2005 levels by 2050 through a mandatory, economy-wide cap-and-trade program. While this is somewhat less ambitious than President Obama’s proposal (an 80 percent reduction over that same time period relative to 1990 levels), the real give-away about what’s going on can be found in the proposed emissions standards for new coal-fired power plants. To wit:

• any such facility permitted after Jan. 1, 2015, could not emit more than half of the carbon dioxide emissions now considered normal for coal-fired power plants; and

• any newly permitted coal-fired power plant today would have to have the ability to be retrofitted to meet that standard.

This, dear readers, is little but a replay of the old-source/new-source standards incorporated in the Clean Air Act (CAA), which likewise established tough emissions standards for future power plants but much lighter rules for plants currently in operation. The best review of what happened then and why is the classic Clean Coal/Dirty Air, pointedly subtitled How the Clean Air Act Became a Multibillion-Dollar Bail-Out for High-Sulfur Coal Producers and What Should Be Done about It (Yale University Press, 1981). The authors, Bruce Ackerman and William Hassler, were environmentalists with sterling credentials who simply could not stomach the deal necessary to bring the business community into the pro-CAA camp. Alas, their whistle-blowing operation gained so little attention and had such little impact that, today, environmentalists cannot discuss the Clean Air Act without making the sign of the cross and whispering in awed reverence. [Read more →]

I recently had an opinion-page editorial in the St. Paul/Minneapolis Pioneer Press in which I pointed out that the recent behavior of the earth’s weather/climate system was not much in accordance with some of the rather alarming predictions/projections coming from climate models or interpretations thereof. Perhaps we don’t understand the inner workings of the earth’s complex climate system as well as some people think we do.

A large collection of observations are indicating that our forecasts seem to be erring on the high side (notice I didn’t say that observations suggest that climate change wasn’t occurring, but that they suggest that the projections of climate change are too extreme). As such, I suggested that we ought not rush headlong into efforts aimed at attempting to restrict carbon dioxide emissions for the sake of trying to alter the course of future climate, considering that a) the future course of climate doesn’t seem to be all that bad, and b) that any impact that we may make would likely be minimal.

Here is an excerpt:

There’s a certain urgency these days to take action to mitigate climate change. World leaders assembled last month at the U.N. conference in Copenhagen to try to forge a global plan aimed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Back home, Congress, the EPA, and individual states (including Minnesota) are considering their own plans to do the same. All in an effort to steer the Earth’s climate in a direction other than the one in which it is projected to be heading.

But what if the climate projections are wrong? What if the earth’s climate isn’t plotting a course of death and destruction? Would it still make sense to restrict the kinds of energy we use even if it has little impact on the climate and/or future climate change was benign or possibly beneficial (for example, longer growing seasons, more precipitation)? . . . . [Read more →]

A recent NYT article discussed a proposal by economist Ross McKitrick to tie CO2 taxes to global temperature increases. McKitrick’s overall aim is to offer a compromise that, he argues, should satisfy those who think the government needs to take drastic action and those who think carbon emissions pose no serious long-term threat. Although McKitrick’s idea is clever, it has theoretical difficulties and (in my opinion) would certainly not work in practice.

McKitrick’s Proposal to Tie CO2 Taxes to Temperature

The NYT story does a good job summarizing the idea:

[McKitrick] suggests imposing financial penalties on carbon emissions that would be set according to the temperature in the earth’s atmosphere. The penalties could start off small enough to be politically palatable to skeptical voters.

If the skeptics are right and the earth isn’t warming, then the penalties for burning carbon would stay small or maybe even disappear. But if the climate modelers and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are correct about the atmosphere heating up, then the penalties would quickly, and automatically, rise.…

Specifically, [McKitrick] proposes tying carbon penalties to the temperature of the lowest layer of the atmosphere (called the troposphere, which extends from the surface of the earth to a height of about 10 miles). He suggests using the readings near the equator because climate models forecast pronounced warming there.…

The carbon tax might start off at a rate that would raise the cost of a gallon of gasoline by a nickel — or, if there were political will, perhaps 10 or 15 cents. Those numbers are all too low to satisfy environmentalists worried about climate change. [Read more →]

Matthew Curtin’s Heard on the Street in the December 22nd Wall Street Journal, Green Investments Are Being Clouded by Copenhagen, caught my eye. Copenhagen not so much failed as energy reality won. The 19th century British economist W. S. Jevons would have smiled as neo-Malthusian politics fell victim to old fashioned consumerism, economic growth, free trade, and energy economics 101.

Copenhagen also brings into review the risky political capitalism model where profit-making is tied to special political favor rather than underlying consumer demand. Enron’s core business model was tied to rent-seeking, part of the problems that brought down the company in spectacular fashion.

Here is what Mr. Curtin wrote:

The Copenhagen climate summit will do little to spur further investment in environmental technologies.

That is hardly surprising given the fundamental flaw at the heart of the process: Negotiations to reduce global carbon dioxide emissions were premised on how much of the gas nations produce, rather than what they consume.

Industrializing countries feared the emissions curbs being demanded of them were a protectionist ruse by the developed world. One country’s production cuts, if achieved by reducing local CO2 emissions by relying on imports, is another country’s production increase, with no gain for the world’s climate.

The nonbinding accord cooked up by the world’s biggest industrial nations looks like the lowest common denominator you would expect from countries skeptical of each others’ motives and increasingly mistrustful of the science that predicts global warming.

For investors and business leaders, there is no extra clarity on an international regulatory framework that might help them predict the cost of CO2. [Read more →]

Last week, I appeared on the premier of John Stossel’s new show on Fox Business – a show titled (appropriately enough) Stossel.  The topic was global warming and, happily, I had an hour (well, actually only about 43 minutes once you subtract out the commercials) to discuss the issue with John and members of the studio audience.  If you missed the show, you can catch it here.

My arguments on Stossel tracked those offered here at MasterResource last month.  In short, I had no interest in engaging in a debate about the physical science of natural versus anthropogenic climate change.

I was entirely interested in the implications for public policy if we accept the most recent IPCC report at face value.  I think it’s quite interesting that even if one accepts the common definition of what constitutes “mainstream science” on this issue that one is still hard pressed to put forward a defensible mitigation scheme.

Alas, my inbox suggests that a number of people who watched the show thought I was too willing to accept the contention that there has been warming and that man likely has a lot to do with it.  Instead, a number of Fox viewers wanted me to launch World War III over the climate record. 

I didn’t for two reasons.  First, I am not a scientist and am more comfortable leaving that debate to those engaged fully in that field.  I know that this doesn’t stop a lot of people from holding forth regardless, but it stops me.  Second, one can be correct about the climate history being short of what Al Gore or Michael Mann make it out to be without being correct about the contention that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions has little to do with the warming at present.  For some reason, that’s an impossible point for many people to grasp. [Read more →]

Editor’s Note: Jim Manzi is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and blogs at both National Review’s The Corner and at The American Scene.

It is amusing to watch advocates of rapid, aggressive carbon dioxide emissions reduction, when confronted with the plain facts of the consensus scientific projections for climate change and its associated damages, move from “science says we must do this or die” to “well, actually, the science is pretty uncertain, so it’s possible that we might die,” and then proceed to some restatement of Pascal’s Wager.

Friedman’s Throw

Tom Friedman’s recent New York Times column is a perfect illustration of this logic.  I’ll quote him at length, before demonstrating that his emission-cuts-as-insurance analogy breaks down once you plug in actual numbers:

This is not complicated. We know that our planet is enveloped in a blanket of greenhouse gases that keep the Earth at a comfortable temperature. As we pump more carbon-dioxide and other greenhouse gases into that blanket from cars, buildings, agriculture, forests and industry, more heat gets trapped.

What we don’t know, because the climate system is so complex, is what other factors might over time compensate for that man-driven warming, or how rapidly temperatures might rise, melt more ice and raise sea levels. It’s all a game of odds. We’ve never been here before. We just know two things: one, the CO2 we put into the atmosphere stays there for many years, so it is “irreversible” in real-time (barring some feat of geo-engineering); and two, that CO2 buildup has the potential to unleash “catastrophic” warming.

When I see a problem that has even a 1 percent probability of occurring and is “irreversible” and potentially “catastrophic,” I buy insurance. That is what taking climate change seriously is all about.

Computing the Odds

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the leading bookie for this game.  The current IPCC consensus forecast is that, under fairly reasonable assumptions for world population and economic growth, global temperatures will rise by about 3°C by the year 2100 (Table SPM.3). Also according to the IPCC, a 4°C increase in temperatures would cause total estimated economic losses of 1–5 percent of global GDP (page 17). By implication, if we were at 3°C of warming at the end of this century, we would be well into the 22^nd century before we reached a 4°C rise, with this associated level of cost. [Read more →]

When you fly overnight from Johannesburg to Europe the lights become thin just north of Lusaka, Zambia, a few more in Zambia’s Copper Belt and then nothing (and I mean nothing) until the North African coastline. For most of this 11-12 hour flight there are no artificial lights below. From the Sahara on south, but excluding South Africa, a region that is home to more than 400 million people consumes less electricity than New York City.

The World At Night (courtesy of Bert Christensen. Click to enlarge.)

• And yet this area includes major oil producers:
  Nigeria produces 2.1 million b/d oil and consumes 19 billion kWh/y
  Angola produces 2.0 million b/d oil and consumes 3.2 billion kWh/y
  Equatorial Guinea produces 0.36 million b/d and consumes 26 million kWh/y
  Other sub-Saharan Africa oil producers supply more than 1 million b/d to world markets.
  New York City produces 0 b/d oil and consumes 75 billion kWh/y

Apparently some are bothered by the prospect that Africa could light up.

We Don’t Want What You Have (Wanna Bet?)

Many of those who would save the earth from the scourge of modern energy want us to believe that it is no big deal that as many as 1.5 billion people, more than three fourths of the population of the world’s poorest countries, lack any access to modern energy. They still use wood and charcoal for cooking, and sometimes a bit of kerosine for lighting. For most of these people the only realistic way to gain access to modern energy is to leave the village or town and move to the city. [Read more →]