Climate politics – Page 146

Support John Abraham

Potty peer Christopher Monckton has stepped up his campaign to shut down John Abraham’s debunking of one of his talks last year, by asking supporters to flood Abraham’s university with emails demanding it start a disciplinary inquiry. George Monbiot points out the obvious irony in the Guardian today:

Reading these ravings, I’m struck by two thoughts. The first is how frequently climate change deniers resort to demands for censorship or threats of litigation to try to shut down criticism of their views. Martin Durkin has done it, Richard North has done it, Monckton has done it many times before. They claim to want a debate, but as soon as it turns against them they try to stifle it by intimidating their opponents. To me it suggests that these people can give it out, but they can’t take it.

Monckton has since posted at Watts Up WIth That, including this appeal for support:

May I ask your kind readers once more for their help? Would as many of you as possible do what some of you have already been good enough to do? Please contact Father Dennis J. Dease, President of St. Thomas University, and invite him “even at this eleventh hour” to take down Abraham’s talk altogether from the University’s servers, and to instigate a disciplinary inquiry into the Professor’s unprofessional conduct, particularly in the matter of his lies to third parties about what I had said in my talk at Bethel University eight months ago? That would be a real help. [My emphasis, Dease email removed]

In other words, please help me to bully Abraham and the University into caving in to my absurd demands, and take Abraham’s presentation off the web.

In my view, it’s time to stand up to the potty peer’s attempts at intimidation of Abraham and his University. Rather than flood them with email, I propose that anyone who supports the statement below leave a comment with their name, location and academic affiliation (if any). You will need to leave an email, but that will not be published. I will enforce strict moderation. If you want to support Monckton, go elsewhere. I will ensure that Abraham and the university are aware of the thread. Please leave a comment and encourage as many people as possible to join in.

We the undersigned offer unreserved support for John Abraham and St. Thomas University in the matter of complaints made to them by Christopher Monckton. Professor Abraham provided an important public service by showing in detail Monckton’s misrepresentation of the science of climate, and we applaud him for that effort, and St. Thomas University for making his presentation available to the world.

[Update 17/7: Thanks to everyone who has signed up so far — keep them coming! And thanks to all the bloggers and tweeters who have spread the word — Hot Topic’s been seeing record traffic, and this post has been speeding up the chart of our popular posts to number two (with a bullet). John has been reading your comments, and I know appreciates the tremendous support you’ve given him. Dan Moutal of Mind Of Dan has started a Facebook group: Prawngate: Support John Abraham against Monckton’s bullying, so if you’re active on Facebook join and get the word out.]

Monckton: still digging for failure

Stoat alerts me to Monckton’s response (pdf — be warned, it’s an industrial grade whinge) to the epic debunking of one of his 2009 US tour talks by John Abraham . This prompts Eli the lovable lagomorph to crowd-source answers to the 500 questions the potty peer poses for Abraham by way of “reply”. I have been advised by certain sources (who might be expected to know) that the peer is indulging in a little inflation of his credentials. So, let’s have a go at #126…

Continue reading “Monckton: still digging for failure”

NZ ETS passes the Kyoto bill to our children

This guest post is by Simon Terry, Executive Director of the Sustainability Council and co author with Geoff Bertram of “The Carbon Challenge: New Zealand’s Emissions Trading Scheme” (published by Bridget Williams Books).

New Zealand’s failure to reduce emissions to its Kyoto Protocol target means the taxpayer still faces a $1.1 to $5.7 billion net liability after all the ETS charges have been paid. That is the bottom line after taking account of what the ETS will contribute to paying off the Kyoto bill and Treasury’s advice about how to price what is left.

Years of narrow accounting, which had given the impression that the government was at various times in credit under the Protocol, was finally abandoned in the May Budget – at least in part. It broke with the past by recording key deforestation liabilities on the books, thereby signalling the real cost of New Zealand’s 22% overshoot of its Kyoto target.

This Budget entry officially scotches the myth that the government faces no financial impacts under the Protocol because it can rely on offsetting credits from plantation forests. Those plantation forests are earning credits now, but the credits must be paid back when the trees are harvested in the 2020s. Using these credits to pay the Kyoto bill is the equivalent of putting the cost of these emissions on the plastic for the next generation to pick up.

The Budget’s inclusion of a contingent liability for harvesting forests that are earning credits today is an important step, but it covers only the five years of the ETS to 2012. What the Budget failed to show is that the next period from 2013 to 2020 will be even more costly. New Zealand is actively negotiating a new international commitment that it expects will involve a stricter emissions target, while official projections are for the nation’s emissions to keep rising and carbon prices to also go up.

During that period there will be an even larger volume of forest credits earned by New Zealand and a corresponding contingent liability for their harvesting, which the Budget still does not record. This is despite a Treasury statement a year ago that it “will be necessary to recognise” a contingent liability right out to 2020. While the detail of the international commitment New Zealand will take on remains to be agreed, based on pledges to date and the current ETS settings, there would again be a very significant taxpayer liability after all ETS charges are paid.

The ETS simply fails to collect enough revenue to cover expected international commitments.

The ETS simply fails to collect enough revenue to cover expected international commitments. During the first Kyoto period, after all the exemptions, rebates and compensation payments are allowed for, the Government will receive just 12 million emission units net under the ETS, with each unit accounting for a tonne of greenhouse gas emissions. Compared to the current estimate for the Kyoto liability of 69 megatonnes (Mt), the ETS will reduce this by only a sixth during the Kyoto period.

That means over 80% of the cost of dealing with today’s emissions is to be dumped on a future generation of taxpayers.

You can imagine the reaction if someone proposed that the government take out a loan to cover 80% of everyone’s power bills and that loan was not due for payment until the 2020s. Yet that is the direct equivalent of what is happening under the ETS during its first five year at least. Consumers may not be accustomed to facing a price on carbon, but newness is hardly a moral defence for passing the bill to our children. Unless Parliament votes to withdraw from Kyoto (and only Act supports this), it is basic that today’s polluters pay today’s emissions bill.

The remaining unpaid liability of $1.1 to $5.7 billion is calculated as set out below:

The Budget lists, as a contingent liability, the need to cover 86.1 Mt of emissions resulting from harvesting forests that earn credits between 2008 and 2012. On the basis of the low carbon price of $20.29/tonne used in the Budget, it puts the gross liability for this at $1.747 billion.
The deficit from the Kyoto agreement however is only 69 Mt and once ETS revenue equal to 12 Mt is accounted for, the shortfall of 57 Mt represents a net Kyoto liability of $1.1 billion. Yet the Treasury warned in July 2009 that carbon prices could go as high as $100/tonne, and so the net liability could be as much as $5.7 billion.
During the next period from 2013 to 2020, the Treasury has projected a related contingent liability of roughly another 100 Mt. On that basis, the Budget should also show a further entry for this of about $2 billion at the $20/tonne carbon price.
It is possible that certain forests that are earning credits today will never be cut down, but there is no scenario under current government policy in which forest owners do not need to be paid for the newly stored carbon in those forests.

For today’s polluters to fully meet the Kyoto liability, total ETS payments obviously need to rise a great deal. However, households and small businesses are paying their fair share of the Kyoto bill, and it is major industrials and pastoral farmers that receive the heavy discounts at the taxpayers’ expense.

These subsidies and other compensation arrangements dominate the ETS flows such that only one in five of each dollar charged under the ETS becomes available to the Government to pay off the Kyoto liability.

Households already bear half the total costs resulting from the ETS during its first five years (52%), while accounting for just a fifth of all emissions (19%). Together with small-medium industry, commerce and services, and transport operators, they would pay 90% of the costs resulting from the ETS during the first five years while being responsible for 30% of total emissions.

With a tighter international commitment to come and New Zealand’s gross emissions still rising, the scale of the subsidies to major industrials and pastoral farmers is set to deliver increasing fiscal stress that will build up pressures for change in addition to the inequity that will be increasingly observed. Other moves overseas will also tend to put pressure on the ETS, including carbon border taxes.

Fortunately, New Zealand is well endowed with low cost options for reducing its carbon footprint

Fortunately, New Zealand is well endowed with low cost options for reducing its carbon footprint, including agricultural efficiency measures that cut emissions and the planting of permanent forests to newly store carbon. Once the notion that doing nothing will be costless is abandoned, it is surprising how much progress can be made under even modest assumptions. There are a series of options that together could deliver a 40% net reduction on the business-as-usual emissions otherwise expected in 2020 – and at no economic cost if the effective carbon price is assumed to be $30/t or higher.

As it currently stands, the ETS will reduce gross emissions by less than 1% during its first five years – relative to what they would have been anyway. Emission actually keep growing, but at a slower rate. Much the same is true out to 2020 if the ETS settings are not changed. Getting the Kyoto accounts straight is the starting point for a major reworking of carbon pricing policy.

Note: The Budget estimates of contingent liabilities can be viewed at: http://www.treasury.govt.nz/budget/forecasts/befu2010/038.htm The Treasury document drawn on states with respect to the gross liability for both periods: “180 million forestry credits will be used … At a price of $100/unit, this contingent liability could be as much as $18 billion for the period 2008 – 2020”. See: 2020 Emissions Reduction Target: Further Analysis, T2009/1811, 31 July 2009, p.7. While the Treasury amended the government’s online accounts following this July document, it has not registered a contingent liability for harvesting on its own website that tracks the Kyoto “net position”.

Climategate: the missing context

The Muir Russell report into the “climategate” email affair has its good parts (the seven points on page 154 make certain prominent CRU critics and their “free the data” campaign look — how shall I put it — less than competent, more than disingenuous), but it also exemplifies a key failing of all the investigations that have exonerated Phil Jones and his team. It makes no attempt to examine the real context for the theft of the emails and their use as a pre-Copenhagen propaganda tool. All three UK investigations have looked at the accusations being levelled at Phil Jones et al (where al is climate science in general), but have done so within the framing of the issue established in the days following the publication of the stolen mails.

Here’s an egregious example of how that framing operates.

Andy Revkin, writing on his Dot Earth blog:

The press, including me, was excoriated for devoting too much ink (and electrons) to the disclosed files in the first place. Some coverage was indeed far too focused on the sense of conflict, which is not surprising given that — as my screenwriter friends always say — conflict is story.

But what such critics forget is that many of the e-mail messages enabled the allegations that were then propounded by folks like Anthony Watts and amplified by professional anti-climate-policy campaigners like Marc Morano.

In other words, because a few scientists used strong language in emails they fully expected to remain private, they somehow enabled the attacks! Astonishing. What enabled the attacks was the theft of the emails, not what they contained — as the subsequent investigations have shown. Revkin does go on to provide some context, but relegates it to a few links and platitudes. The reality confronting climate scientists was much more brutal, as one submission (pdf) to the Muir Russell investigation (by Ray Bradley, Malcolm Hughes, Michael Mann, Michael Oppenheimer, Ben Santer, Gavin Schmidt, Stephen Schneider, Kevin Trenberth and Tom Wigley) demonstrates:

…if one’s research findings tend to support human-caused climate change – means to live and work in an environment of constant accusations of fraud, calls for investigations (or for criminal prosecutions), demands for access to every draft, every intermediate calculation, and every email exchanged with colleagues, daily hate mail and threats, and attempts to pressure the institutions that employ us and fund our research. Through experience, we have learned that there is no review of climate scientists’ work that isn’t deemed a “whitewash” by climate change contrarians; there is no casual remark that can’t be seized upon, blown out of proportion and distorted; and there is no person whose character can’t be assassinated, no matter how careful and honest their research.

Last week the Guardian looked at some of that hate mail. Leo Hickman quotes Stephen Schneider, one of the signatories to that submission:

Schneider said the FBI had taken an interest earlier this year when his name appeared on a “death list” on a neo-Nazi website alongside other climate scientists with apparent Jewish ancestry. But, to date, no action has been taken.

“The effect on me has been tremendous,” said Schneider. “Some of these people are mentally imbalanced. They are invariably gun-toting rightwingers. What do I do? Learn to shoot a Magnum? Wear a bullet-proof jacket? I have now had extra alarms fitted at my home and my address is unlisted. I get scared that we’re now in a new Weimar republic where people are prepared to listen to what amounts to Hitlerian lies about climate scientists.”

Did Schneider enable those attacks, simply by being a working climate scientist? Try applying that logic in a different context. Do women enable rapists just by being women? That idea is offensive in the extreme, as is the failure of the media in general to report this context to “climategate”. Even worse is the complacency of the people who promote the framing. Here’s McIntyre fanboy Andrew “Bishop Hill” Montford, author of The Hockey Stick Illusion, drawing attention to the Schneider (et al) submission:

They need Sir Muir to protect them from harassment, they need Sir Muir to defend the “consensus” and they want Sir Muir to write off some of the evidence completely as not being in good faith. Oh yes, and does Sir Muir know they were harassed?

Give me strength.

If Montford were receiving emails that suggested he gargle with razor blades, he might need that strength. Instead he implies the scientists are crying wolf. Forgive me for being unimpressed. And I’m putting that mildly…

The Muir Russell report explores none of this context, beyond a few anodyne statements about debate becoming “highly polarised”:

As a result, the work conducted by CRU became the focus of intense scrutiny and challenge with multiple demands from both fellow scientists and laymen for background information and data. (Introduction, 2.1.5, p19)

That’s more than bending over backwards to avoid judgement, it amounts to a travesty of reality. The people who ran the climategate campaign — the US think tanks, right-wing talking heads and the sceptic echo chamber on the internet — were not trying to further any scientific debate, they were intent on flinging as much mud as possible, to make the loudest possible noise before Copenhagen. They revelled in their success. Morgan Goodwin at DeSmogBlog provides what even one of the key climategate propagators, Steven Mosher, considers an accurate timeline of events, well worth reading in full. But there’s one key coincidence to consider.

The hackers obtained access to a server that hosted a backup copy of the CRU’s entire email database. When Muir Russell’s computer forensic specialist attempted to check the files (under strict police rules), he found that there was 7.95 GB of data and that it would take too long to do the sort of analysis originally envisaged — specifically, to examine the totality of the unit’s email correspondence to see if there were any other examples of “bad behaviour” to be uncovered. Here’s what Professor Peter Sommer had to say (pdf):

I strongly suspect that any high level analysis I can conduct within a reasonable time would produce an unmanageable quantity of material. Any further analysis would have to be conducted by those familiar with the material and they would have to learn how to use the analysis programme. There is the further practical problem, familiar to me from various legal instructions, that email traffic is often highly informal and allusive, with the consequence that any investigator has to relate large numbers of emails to other types of evidence of particular events.

The hackers however were familiar enough with the material to be able to trawl through the whole database (apparently on a computer with its clock set to east coast US time) and extract a sequence of mails (0.3% of the total) that fitted well with the narrative long established at Steve McIntyre’s Climate Audit blog. Declines being hidden, tree rings counted upside down, tricks being deployed. And when the mails were released, the hackers made sure that they were seen first by the people best able to appreciate them — all of them, especially Mosher, intimately familiar with the species of nits being picked at McIntyre’s blog. As Goodwin’s article establishes, the main attack lines were established within days of that first release, and then played for all they were worth by the loudest voices in the inactivist choir — Morano, Beck, Watts and the rest.

In all this — and in the Muir Russell report’s generous interpretation of those harassing the CRU for information — McIntyre is often portrayed as a “citizen scientist” auditing the contentious work of climate scientists. But McIntyre is far from being an objective and disinterested seeker after truth. Canadian blogger Deep Climate has shown just how far back McIntyre’s links to the PR campaign to derail action on climate change go, and just how deeply involved he has been with the key players in Canada and the US. It’s fair to say that McIntyre’s obsession with hockey sticks enabled the attack on Phil Jones and the CRU, and that people intimately familiar with the arguments he’s been making were clearly involved at every step.

The rest of the development of the campaign to derail action in Copenhagen and the USA is familiar enough territory — the finding of a few errors in IPCC reports, most blown up out of all proportion by the world’s media following the maxim Andy Revkin outlined: the story is the conflict, not the facts. With the jury now very much in on climategate, Amazongate and all the others, will there be a wave of retractions and apologies in newspapers and on TV, or — preferably — some in-depth reporting of the background to the affair? Last week, Media Matters for America and 12 “clean energy and progressive organizations” wrote to the editorial boards of top US newspapers:

Every newspaper, magazine, and television show that reported on these bogus scandals owes it to its audience to set the record straight with the same forcefulness and frequency that it reported the original, disproven charges. Failure to publicly correct the record undermines the very heart of journalism — to report the truth.

That’s all very true, and perhaps some newspapers and journalists will respond in an appropriate manner, but what’s really needed is some genuine investigative journalism, a commitment by a major media organisation with the resources required to dig up the real climategate story and tell it to the world.

Someone hacked the CRU server. Someone selected the emails for release. Somebody probably paid for that expertise, and the public needs to know who they were. Who has decided that their personal or business interests override the rest of the world’s? We know who delivered the noise-making that followed — the usual Scaife and Koch-funded suspects — and they too deserve their day in the harsh light of public opprobrium. After all, if they want to sling mud, they should be prepared for some of it to bounce back. Who will enable that, I wonder?

A new journalistic fiction

Of all the comments on Muir Russell’s climategate report the one that resonated most with me was that of Oxford physicist Myles Allen (pictured). “What everyone has lost sight of is the spectacular failure of mainstream journalism to keep the whole affair in perspective.” When the Guardian is part of that failure the word ‘spectacular’ is warranted.

Unfortunately Fred Pearce, presumably with the support of environment editor James Randerson, continues to treat the East Anglia scientists as if they have been guilty of serious offences. Here’s how he opens his ‘analysis’ of the Russell report:

Generally honest but frequently secretive; rigorous in their dealings with fellow scientists but often “unhelpful and defensive”, and sometimes downright “misleading”, when explaining themselves to the wider world.

On the report:

Many will find the report indulgent of reprehensible behaviour, particularly in peer review, where CRU researchers have been accused of misusing their seniority in climate science to block criticism.

Have been accused by whom? Why, by none other than Pearce himself. He presumably remains disgruntled that his suggestions of serious misconduct haven’t been upheld.

And there’s more in this vein.

Pearce appears determined to vindicate his own rush to judgment on the matter, and he seems to have editorial support. The Guardian editorial, although acknowledging that the main thrust of the Russell report is that the science of climate change is solid, goes out of its way to emphasise blameworthy behaviour from the scientists:

There was an attempt to restrict debate, denying access to raw data and peer-reviewed journals to outsiders and the unqualified. In a sense, climate change scientists began to ape the obsessive culture of their sceptical critics… One can understand why the scientists behaved as they did. But this does not make it right…

[The emails] show a closed and arrogant attitude on the part of some of those involved, protective of their data sets and dismissive of outsiders.

My dismay that the Guardian should give what seems to me disproportionate weight to the Russell report’s findings related to freedom of information was exacerbated when I opened our copy of the current Guardian Weekly yesterday to find that an article of Pearce’s written prior to the release of the report was given prominence. In it he consulted Mike Hulme, Judith Curry, Hans von Storch and Roger Peilke Jr amongst others to demonstrate that climategate has changed science “forever”. The thrust of the article is that scientists have heretofore been secretive with their data and have hidden the uncertainties of their science from public view, but they won’t be able to do that any more. Not being a scientist I have no knowledge of what secretiveness with data means, but in all the books and articles and reports I have now read by climate scientists or about climate science I have seen no sign at all of uncertainties being hidden. Quite the opposite. Pearce reports Curry as saying that as a result of climategate the outside world now sees that “the science of climate change is more complex and uncertain than they have been led to believe”. That’s a baseless and foolish comment. “Led to believe” implies that some kind of deliberate deception has been going on. Roger Pielke Jr of course doesn’t hesitate to speak of “the pathological politicisation of the climate science community.” Von Storch draws the conclusion that “People now find it conceivable that scientists cheat and manipulate, and…need societal supervision…” Mike Hulme is more circumspect, claiming only that a new tone has appeared in which researchers “are more upfront, open and explicit about their uncertainties.”

A new journalistic fiction is in the making..

Perhaps it’s inevitable that journalists like Pearce will remain determined to justify the significance they initially saw in the hacked emails (Gareth adds: especially if, like Pearce, they have a book to sell on the subject). If so, one can only hope that they will get it over with quickly. May Gareth’s “final fizzle” prove an apt description. At least Pearce and the Guardian do not deny the reality and seriousness of climate change. But the whole issue has been a sidetrack from the main thoroughfare along which we might have made some progress in the months of virtual standstill. Myles Allen has got it right when he speaks of an absence of perspective. It has helped draw attention away from the looming threat ahead. It has also provided the forces of denial and delay with ammunition which they have used to maximum effect.