Waiting for Parker
Apparently, an announcement is due this week on what the Government is going to do in lieu of the scrapped carbon tax. A carbon charge on power generation seems likely; in Minister David Parker’s words, “Having a price or risk of carbon cost to investors in generation is an important consideration for climate change policy.”
Too right. It’s economic tools that will produce the best results in the long run, by making it economically preferable not to pollute. But this affects more than just the electricity generation sector, which is why the original carbon tax was a much better proposal. We need, for example, to provide incentives for foresters not to cut down their trees for a quick profit, by letting them share in the economic benefits the country gains from the carbon credits they earn us, and the Kyoto Forestry Association agrees.
Hopefully David Parker will have taken this, and other suggestions from the Greens’ Turn Down the Heat Paper seriously. The forthcoming announcement will certainly be interesting.
Meanwhile, global warming has produced the milestone of the first olive grove in Britain. I love olives, but still…
June 27th, 2006 at 6:26 pm
Growing more tropical crops is a sensible thing to do in the face of climate change, unlike blaming it on CO2. After all, the
recent warming is not historically unique.
You’ll see much reference to where olive trees grew and died in this paper on Proxy climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years. No references to them growing in England, but then again fewer people travelled across the Channel then as they do now. Could olive groves have survived in England during the Medieval Warm Period?
There’s also an interesting graph putting this in perspective, on this page.
excerpt:
It also shows relatively rapid oscillations in climate associated with the waxing and waning of these ice sheets. These oscillations can be related to changes in the eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun, variation in the tilt of the Earth’s axis, and variation in the positions of seasonal extremes along the path of the orbit around the Sun.
Now excuse me while I don my flame suit. Please also observe the sign that says “CITE NO MANN”.
June 28th, 2006 at 11:31 am
Could’ve sworn the Romans planted olives during their time in Londinium, although they may not ever have harvested a crop!
But seriously, the use of a carbon charge to rein in the energy generators is a step in the right direction. If we can convince them that coal is a dead issue, and that sustainable, renewable energy sources, which surround us in NZ, should be our first option, then we’re halfway to becoming somewhere that might outlast the current crop of MP’s in Parliament (no swipe at our Green MP’s intended).
If current government energy policy was not so deeply ingrained in the concept of justifying the huge expenditure and rack-up of external debt that the “Think Big” projects of the 70’s created, we’d be having a much less difficult time getting some traction on these issues of sustainable energy generation.
And of course, the knee-jerk justifications for the Tiwai Point Alumnium Smelter, which I guess didn’t lose a days productivity while the rest of the South was without power for a week during the snow storm.
We sell cheap electricity to them, so that they can employ NZ workers cheaper than Australian workers, and export all of the product at profit to Australian, etc, shareholders.
After importing the bauxite from Australia.
The only raw material we put into that process is the electricity, which we sell them at hugely discounted rates.
And the amount they use is definitely enough to keep Auckland as well as the whole of the South warm and well-lit.
June 29th, 2006 at 2:43 am
Hey Wump!
Great entertainment, that first link. An amusing collection of anecdotes (note : the plural of “anecdote” is not “data”.) Shame it wasn’t written by independent climate scientists.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/124642_warming02.html
The study, “Reconstructing Climatic and Environmental Changes of the Past 1,000 Years: A Reappraisal,” was published several weeks ago in a British scientific journal, Energy and Environment. The authors contend in the 65-page paper that their reanalysis of data from more than 200 climate studies provides evidence of global temperature shifts that are more dramatic than the current one.
The research was underwritten by the American Petroleum Institute, the trade association of the world’s largest oil companies. Two of the five authors are scientists who have been linked to the coal industry and have received support from the ExxonMobil Foundation. Two others, who are affiliated with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, also have the title of “senior scientists” with a Washington-based organization supported by ExxonMobil Corp.
The poor old media : they see a paper like this and they say “scientists are deeply divided about global warming”. No they’re not : some of them are bought and paid for, and should be considered as PR people.
If you’ve got any peer-reviewed research that isn’t produced by shills for big oil, just be sure to let us know eh?
Readers may also be interested in Mann et al’s rebuttal of this shoddy piece of work :
http://www.geo.umass.edu/faculty/bradley/mann2003a.pdf
June 29th, 2006 at 1:57 pm
katie,
Your assessment of Tiwai Point would benefit from a few facts.
The Tiwai Point smelter adds value to the inputs you mention. Its profits are taxed
in New Zealand. The company pays suppliers in New Zealand. It pays rates to the
local council in New Zealand. In pays salaries to hundreds of workers in New
Zealand. New Zealanders can buy shares in the parent company.
Your analysis might also benefit from the following inclusion, taken from Comalco’s
website: “Aluminium ranks seventh in New Zealand as a commodity export
earner…Independent analysis of the economic benefit of NZAS to the New Zealand
economy is NZ$3.65 billion.” (www.comalco.com/document_get.aspx?id=300)
> “And of course, the knee-jerk justifications for the Tiwai Point Alumnium
Smelter, which I guess didn’t lose a days productivity while the rest of the
South was without power for a week during the snow storm.”
Your anger is rather misplaced given that the south is suffering a transmission
problem, not a generation problem. If there is any knee-jerking going on, it is all coming from your direction.
And when there is an actual generation problem, due to low water levels in the hydro dams?:- “Aluminium producer Comalco, which uses 15 per cent of New Zealand’s power, has cut
production by more than 10 per cent at its Tiwai Point smelter over the next few
critical weeks.”
(subs.nzherald.co.nz/topic/story.cfm?c_id=245&ObjectID=10371964)
You also appear to be somewhat behind the times with your claims about the company getting inordinately cheap power:- ‘”It might have been cheap power in the 1970s but that has long since disappeared”…The smelter now buys 90% of its power on contract, with the final price adjusted depending on wholesale power prices in the previous year. That meant last year’s power price for the smelter reflected the high prices in 2003 when hydro lake levels were low and wholesale prices were high.’
(powermarketers.netcontentinc.net/newsreader.asp?ppa=8knpq_ZmsrmmmnXSe c%7DGJ%7Bbfek%5C!)
> “And the amount they use is definitely enough to keep Auckland as well as the whole of the South warm and well-lit.”
Possibly, but what of it? Again, Auckland’s problem is transmission, not generation.
Either more capacity has to be built in the north, or the transmission from the south has to be upgraded: Neither of these issues has anything to do with the Tiwai Point smelter.
June 29th, 2006 at 2:37 pm
Alistair,
It may have escaped your notice but the recent National Academies of Science review of Mann’s hockeystick chart - which purported to prove that recent climate change is unprecedented in 1000 years - found serious problems with it.
Whilst politely saying that such a theory was “plausible,” the report says that we can have confidence in only the last 400 years of data - a period which is composed mainly of the Little Ice Age. In other words, the central assertion of the hockeystick chart has been firmly rejected.
The only claim you can make with any credibility is that the earth is currently warmer than it was during the recent Little Ice Age. Well, duh.
This is, without wishing to sound hyperbolic, a shattering blow to global warming believers like yourself. Claiming any significance for any climate event based on just 400 years of reliable data simply opens yourself to ridicule.
If you have a reliable climate history going back more than 400 years, well, as you might say, “just be sure to let us know eh?”
June 29th, 2006 at 3:37 pm
so mouldy one, are you going to actually link to the research you cite? Otherwise your claims are just hot air.
Did you see the NZ Herald special on Saturday about the plight of the Inuit? I’m sure the Inuit will be very relieved to know that the severe climatic disruption that is negatively impacting on their quality of life is not real.
Ice 40% thinner so that you can’t drive your snowmobile about? Hungry polar bears attacking human settlements? According to mouldboy that’s a “plausible” theory but it has no basis in fact. Open your eyes mouldboy! The ice IS melting. Storms ARE increasing.
June 29th, 2006 at 10:08 pm
Geez, a twofer
Mouldwarp.. you got one right, because Tiwai point is simply in the business of making Aluminum which is going to market one way or another. The difference between our Al and Al smelted in Oz is that the electricity for the Australian plant is going to be coal generated.
However, as pointed out before, you ignore the real data at your peril. You are I think pointing at this
http://darwin.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11676&page=1
which reads in part -
The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes both additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions and pronounced changes in a variety of local proxy indicators, such as melting on icecaps and the retreat of glaciers around the world, which in many cases appear to be unprecedented during at least the last 2,000 years.
This does not sound like a shattering blow at all. The document is 155 pages in length and obviously you are reading some parts of it and not the rest. It is not a trifle to get through and I haven’t had time to get at it myself, but I did take the time to look it up and try to see if it was as you claim.
Not hardly.
You get full credit from me about Tiwai point. I do not think it correct to assail it on the basis of any “green” principle or concept, but you wipe out completely when you wander into science. I found this report within twenty seconds on the web, most of which was spent reading through to find a reference to Mann…
You have to divorce your ideology from this. I know the acceptance that there is a need for government to take a hand in something besides enforcing property rights will be hard for you… but EXCEPT for that, you’d be in agreement with most greens on a lot of things.
BJ
June 30th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
I have noticed oranges are growing better in Auckland. There is a silver lining to global warming :0.
Not an endorsement, just making the best of it.
June 30th, 2006 at 8:24 pm
Wump :
If you have a reliable climate history going back more than 400 years, well, as you might say, “just be sure to let us know eh?�
It may have drifted out of your short attention span, but I did exactly that a couple of weeks ago in this post :
http://blog.greens.org.nz/index.php/2006/05/29/agenda-video-online/#co mment-15678
That post linked to this eminently uncontroversial site :
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/howdo.html
(your comment at the time : “I’m not going to do a complete review of that reference at this point in time”. You’ve got a second chance now…)
It summarises numerous paeleoclimatological studies using a great variety of different proxies. (Straw)Mann’s work is one among many. Even if his work were to be debunked (and I do not concede that it has, since I have debunked the only debunking you have linked), you’ve got a lot of work to do on the others…
Yes, temperatures have varied widely over the ages, and the causes are pretty well-understood. Oddly enough, all of the proxy studies break down in explaining temperatures when applied to the past few decades, unless you figure in the contribution from greenhouse gases.
The science is conclusive. The flat-earthers will continue to deny it, because they have an ideological vested interest.
Happy reading!
June 30th, 2006 at 8:25 pm
Ben : Yeah, I’m thinking of planting bananas here in the Massif Central.
July 3rd, 2006 at 5:37 pm
What the media is saying :
Did anyone see the Panorama programme “The World Uncovered”
Sunday and Monday (1-2 July) on BBC (Channel 55 on Sky TV)?
It dealt with the current Republican Administration in the White House “editing” reports (including the major “Arctic Climate Report”) either by changing the wording or by removing whole sections (depending on what they could get away with) to change or at least minimise the impact at the behest of the “energy industry” etc.
(Apparently Texas, where Bush’s backing comes from, “if it were a country, would be the sixth greatest polluter of the atmosphere in the World.”)
The documentary showed the plight of Inuit people having to leave their homelands of 4000+ years (minimum) as the ice melts and the sea levels rise … They have been moving their houses year by year to higher ground, but their entire lands are now going under water.
So much for the “scientific” protesters who say that our climate /sea level records only go back about 100 years … “far to short a time for anything but anecdotal evidence”. (No prizes for spotting the chauvanism/racism in this.)
Locally, the NZ Listener (1-7 July, P6) gave its “Letter of the Week” award to John Blundell for a well written “there are very reasonable scientific grounds for adopting a view that the jury is still out” … letter on GLOBAL WARMING.
(Read it to get the flavour and I hope some will write your replies NOW! … less than 300 words to letters@listener.co.nz with name and postal address included)
Methinks we ALL need to discuss this topic (adeptly) in a much wider arena than “frogblog” …
eredwen
July 3rd, 2006 at 9:31 pm
Does anyone have a scan or link I can use to get at this listener leter? I can probably get to the library next weekend, but such nonsense has to be met with overwhelming rebuttal rather quickly to prevent it from taking hold in the media.
respectfully
BJ
July 3rd, 2006 at 9:40 pm
Hi BJ
The letter is at http://listener.co.nz/issue/3451/letters/6394.html
They published my letter refuting the claims made for Golden Rice several weeks ago, but I’ll have a go anyway.
July 4th, 2006 at 12:06 am
Stuey,
Nobody (and I mean nobody) is denying that climate change occurs. In fact, central to the skeptics’ case is the fact that the climate changes all the time quite naturally; and often very rapidly and significantly.
As a believer in the AGW theory, it is simply not enough for you to observe that the climate is changing: That much is a given. Rather, you have to demonstrate that recent climate change is unnatural. You also have to show that it is anthropogenic CO2 that is the primary cause and not any other anthropogenic effect such as land use change, aerosols/particles, pollution changing the earth’s albedo etc. And finally you have to prove that the effect is a harmful one on balance and that your proposed remedy meets cost/effectiveness criterion.
Sorry but sob stories about polar bears don’t cut it.
bjchip,
Who is being selective here? If you had continued with the quotation you would have come to the panel’s conclusions about the claims you quoted:-
‘The substantial uncertainties currently present in the quantitative assessment of large-scale surface temperature changes prior to about A.D. 1600 lower our confidence in this conclusion compared to the high level of confidence we place in the Little Ice Age cooling and 20th century warming. Even less confidence can be placed in the original conclusions by Mann et al.(1999) that ‘”the 1990s are likely the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in at least a millenium.”‘
In other words, the fundamental claim of Mann’s hockeystick - that we can say with reasonable certainty that the current temperature is unprecedented in 1000 years - has been firmly rejected.
The most that can be now claimed (from Mann’s work, at least) is that the temperature now is (thankfully) warmer than it was during the recent Little Ice Age (which is, to be sure, a statement of the bleedin’ obvious.)
The hockeystick chart has been fundamental to the whole AGW scare and it has now been discredited. The only question is are you willing and able to update your worldview in the light of this informtation?
Note also that, in order to exaggerate recent climate change, the hockeystick team effectively whitewashed the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age from history, thus falsely depicting an eerily stable climate prior to the warming of the last 150 years. The glossary at realclimate does its best to dismiss the LIA
(www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=32). Yet the NAS panel concludes that in fact we have a “high level of confidence in the LIA cooling.” So, again, the hockeystick team got it profoundly wrong.
In addition, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the Medieval Warm Period was as warm if not warmer than now (http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/data/mwp/mwpp.jsp).
So the *evidence* is that temperatures now are about the same as they were a few hundred years ago. That being the case, an honest person must conclude that it is simply not possible to assert that recent climate change is in any way unnatural.
July 4th, 2006 at 1:43 am
Mouldwarp
Did you go on to read the rest of that piece or are you content to allow statistical uncertainty confuse you? The “hockey stick” isn’t “gone” it is simply statistically uncertain where the handle is from the sparser proxies. No such problem exists in the last 100 years, of which the last 10 are the warmest, and no such problem exists in the ocean data for the last 100 years either…. not a topic of the NAS but important nonetheless.
You seem to confuse “less confidence” with refutation, and that is not what happened.
I suggest you step all the way in to page 109 of the report.
Based on the analyses presented in the original papers by Mann et al. and this newer supporting evidence, the committee finds it plausible that the Northern Hemisphere was warmer during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period over the preceding millennium.
Note also that Mann said “likely” , which is to say, a WEAK scientific assertion not better that 2/3 likelihood and well outside the realm of certainty you appear to demand, but the more recent data is unambiguous about thbe most recent century, and they have no great doubt about the last 1000 years.
Finally, not all of AGW science rests on the “hockey stick” and that tentative assertion of Mann. Even though it is likely a true representation globally. It rests on the work of literally thousands of scientists who NEVER get their names in the papers, because they are unanimously of the opinion that this is happening and we’re doing it to ourselves. The only people who get into the news are the ones who argue the point still, SOME who at least are using scientific methods but getting odd results (compared to everyone else) and MOST who are using scientific methods but getting odd bank deposits (compared to everyone else).
The deniers get the press. So I have to answer you.
What a world.
BJ
July 7th, 2006 at 12:15 am
Hey that straw Mann has had the stuffing knocked out of him…
I’m still waiting (not!) for Mouldwimp to get back to us with a refutation of the rest of the palaeoclimatic data.
July 7th, 2006 at 4:16 pm
bjchip,
Let me just repeat what the panel concluded: “The substantial uncertainties currently present in the quantitative assessment of large-scale surface temperature changes prior to about A.D. 1600 lower our confidence in this conclusion compared to the high level of confidence we place in the Little Ice Age cooling and 20th century warming.”
Beyond that, the central claim of the hockeystick - that of unprecedented warming for the past 1000 years - is reduced to the merely “plausible”.
> ‘not all of AGW science rests on the “hockey stickâ€?’
Clearly so, but we are talking here specifically about the infamous hockeystick, a device which has been the principle propaganda tool for supporters of the AGW theory for many years. Either its claim to demonstrate warming unprecedented in the last 1000 years is valid or it isn’t. As it turns out, it isn’t.
From now on, anyone who produces the hockeystick chart as supporting evidence for the AGW theory will simply be revealing their ignorance. That’s why the hockeystick is shattered.
> “more recent data is unambiguous about the most recent century, and they have no great doubt about the last 1000 years.”
You can only make this claim if you dispute the existence of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP); a period when temperatures were as warm or even warmer than today. I provided a link to a site which is collating studies demonstrating that this is the case. Given that this is absolutely key to your argument, did you check it out, or do you prefer to remain in denial?
So, again, the most you can honestly claim is that temperatures now are the warmest they have been since the recent Little Ice Age. Such a reduced claim is obviously not one that even remotely suggests anything awry with the climate, much less that drastic intervention on an unprecedented scale is demanded.