Category: Book reviews

Blueprint for a global deal

The Global Deal: Climate Change and the Creation of a New Era of Progress and Prosperity

It is two and a half years since the landmark Stern Report to the UK government was released. It called climate change “the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen” and concluded that the benefits of strong and early action to reduce emissions far outweigh the economic costs of not acting. At 700 pages it was a daunting document.  Now Nicholas Stern has written a book which updates his thinking and explains it in terms which non-economists will readily be able to follow — The Global Deal: Climate Change and the Creation of a New Era of Progress and Prosperity (US edition – confusingly published in the UK under a different title Blueprint for a Safer Planet.) Stern has a long-standing involvement with efforts to overcome poverty in developing nations.  He makes it clear from the start that combating climate change is inextricably linked with poverty reduction as the two greatest challenges of the century and that we shall succeed or fail on them together – to tackle only one is to undermine the other. This theme is frequently sounded in the book, and is an indication of the humanity which he brings to his task, as well as the realism.

Stern recognises we are on track to end-of-century temperatures of 4-5 degrees centigrade or higher relative to 1850, enough to rewrite the physical and human geography, with the prospect of massive and extended human conflict.  He firmly dismisses those who deny the dangers and the urgency of action.

The target level he focuses on for risk reduction is a maximum 500 parts per million CO2 equivalent. (CO2e includes the greenhouse gases other than CO2 and 500 ppm is roughly equivalent to the more commonly used 450 ppm CO2. The current level of CO2e is estimated at around 430 parts per million.) The target of 550 ppm CO2e adopted by the Stern Report he now considers too risky.  He notes that even at 500 ppm CO2e the risks are high – a probability of over 95% of a temperature rise greater than 2 degrees, but only a 3% chance of it being above  5 degrees. So although he uses the 500 ppm CO2e target for the purposes of the book he readily acknowledges the likely need for downward revision – probably to 400 ppm CO2e to have a fifty-fifty chance of limiting the temperature rise to 2 degrees.

A very positive section outlines the technologies already available for the task and  summarises what we must do under four headings: make more efficient use of energy;  halt deforestation; put existing or close-to-existing technologies to work quickly, including carbon capture and storage; invest strongly in new technologies which are on the medium-term horizon. The resulting low-carbon world, ushered in by a new burst of innovation, creativity and investment, will be a very attractive one in which to live. “It is a world where we can realise our ambitions for growth, development and poverty reduction across all nations, but particularly in developing countries.” This is not a fancy. Previous examples of rapid change show it can be done.  Stern’s contacts in the many places he visits and speaks leave him with a strong impression of the vast entrepeneurship and creativity which can be released given the right policy frameworks. This is one of the cheering themes of the book.

The cost is reasonable.  Drawing on McKinsey analyses to discuss cost, he concludes that  2% of GDP per annum will do it, a level smaller than some which our economies already cope with in terms of exchange-rate movements or changes in trade terms. It can be thought of in terms of an extra six months for the world economy to reach the level of world income it would otherwise reach by 2050.

There is no ‘versus’ between mitigation and adaptation. Stern descibes several ways in which different countries are taking adaptation measures and makes it very clear that adaptation is particularly important for developing countries, hit earliest and hardest by consequences for which they bear no responsibility.  He quotes Archbishop Tutu with approval: “I call on the leaders of the rich world to bring adaptation to climate change to the heart of the international poverty agenda — and to do it now, before it is too late.”

So far as Stern is concerned the ethical demand to act on climate change needs no further justification than that provided by the risks of inaction and the costs of action which he covers in the early chapters of the book.  But because many economists use a more formal and model-based discussion of how to balance the costs of inaction against the cost of action he devotes 20 pages of the book to examining how and why a number of high-profile economic analyses have got things badly wrong. The costs of inaction are much larger than are understood by many of the economists who have argued for it.  Even his own Stern Report is now shown to have been too cautious on the growth of emissions, on the deteriorating absorptive capacity of the planet, and on the pace and severity of the impacts of climate change.  The “slow ramp” approach advocated by some of his critics would lead to concentration levels so high as to be unthinkable.

Policies need to be effective, efficient and equitable. Different countries can have different combinations of policies relating to carbon taxes, carbon trading on the basis of quotas, and regulation. But the overall level of ambition needs to be strong and equitable, and there must be a strong role for trading schemes which allow international trade in greenhouse gas reduction – this trade both improves efficiency and provides incentives for developing countries to join in international action. He has an excellent section on the conditions which will enable trading schemes to work to the desired end.  The explanations of the necessity of international trading schemes as part of the mix for emission reduction were one of the highlights of the book for me, and made very clear the contribution that economists can bring to the enterprise.

We must have a global deal. The world needs an overall 50% cut in emissions by 2050 relative to 1990. Towards achieving this the developed countries need to agree to a 20% to 40% reduction in their emissions by 2020 and to 80% by 2050.  Within this time frame they need to demonstrate that low carbon growth is possible and affordable.   The developing countries need to commit, subject to the developed countries’ performance, to take on targets by 2020 at the latest. Their emissions should peak by 2030, or 2020 for the better-off among them. They should be integrated into trading mechanisms both before and after their adoption of targets.

In discussing funding he focuses on three areas. First, deforestation, responsible for 20% of global emissions.  There is a need for strong initiatives, with public funding, to move towards halting deforestation now. We should prepare to to include avoided deforestation in carbon trading.  Second, technologies must be developed and shared.  Carbon capture and storage figures strongly here and elsewhere in the book. It is highly important if only because of the significance of coal for China and India and he calls for financial commitment to help fund thirty-plus new commercial-size plants in the next seven to eight years.  His final plea is that rich countries deliver on their commitments to overseas development assistance, with extra costs of development arising from climate change.

He relates climate change policy to the current economic turbulence by pointing to two key lessons. First, that the financial crisis has been developing over 20 years and surely tells us that ignoring risk or postponing action is to store up trouble for the future. Second, to grow out of the recession we need a driver of growth which is genuinely productive and valuable.  Low-carbon growth can easily be that driver.

The book is a mine of information and helpful explanation of how proposed policy measures can work. Stern has worked closely with politicians and policy makers and obviously has familiarity with how they work and think. That doesn’t mean he has been taken over by political calculations as to what is possible or not.  Quite the contrary.  He is firm on the primary responsibility of the rich nations to steer the world through to a co-operation on climate change which will both lower emissions and at the same time bring the benefits of development to the poorer nations.  He is not afraid to sound a visionary note when he considers the good that can flow to all countries if we rise adequately to the challenge of a planet in peril. I was heartened as well as informed by his book.

Giddens on the politics of climate change

Politics of Climate Change

A couple of weeks ago I read Will Hutton’s column in the Guardian announcing that sociologist Anthony Giddens’ new book The Politics of Climate Change was an attack on the “mystic, utopian views of the green movement” and its impossible demands that we give up our current standard of living. I had Gidden’s book on order and felt dismayed at the prospect of reading the accusations Hutton expatiated on in his column. I needn’t have worried. Hutton was using the book to launch his own, not Giddens’, diatribe. Giddens does say some rather facile things about the green movement, but not to the extreme that Hutton suggested.

Giddens takes climate change seriously though he insists, in passing, on a degree of respect for the ‘sceptics’ which suggests that he isn’t fully conversant with the science. He speaks of a crisis of epic proportions, and one of his opening sentences describes his book as “a prolonged enquiry into a single question: why does anyone, anyone at all, for even a single day longer, continue to drive an SUV?”  The SUV is a metaphor – “we are all SUV drivers, because so few of us are geared up to the profundity of the threats we face.”

The scale of global warming and the fact that it is mainly about the future make it a unique problem, and paradoxically a difficult one for us to engage with, he says. We are dealing with dangers that seem abstract and elusive, however potentially devastating. What should be a front-of-mind issue becomes a back-of-mind one.

Giddens develops a number of concepts in the course of the book. Two of prominence are political and economic convergence. Political convergence occurs when policies relevant to mitigating climate change overlap positively with other areas of public policy and each can be used to gain traction over the other. Areas such as energy security and energy planning, technological innovation, lifestyle politics, the downside of affluence and the need for a sense of human welfare greater than mere GDP. This oblique approach avoids what he sees as the inadequacy of focusing on global warming alone, in view of the perceived inability of people to act on dangers which aren’t immediate or visible.

Economic convergence refers to situations where low-carbon technologies and lifestyles may overlap with economic competitiveness. In other words environmentally progressive policies may well coincide with what is good for the economy, and attention should be focused on this.  He somewhat qualifies this with the recognition that growth should not be treated as an unalloyed benefit, especially in the developed countries.

Political transcendence, another of his concepts, means the question of climate change has to move beyond party divides and have an overall framework of agreement that will endure across changes of government.  Giddens notes that he has never agreed that the political centre is the antithesis of radicalism. Sometimes overall political agreement is the condition of radical policy-making, definitely so in the case of climate change.

In considering the track record of countries to date he does some thumbnail sketches of a few who have been the most successful in controlling carbon emissions – Sweden foremost, Germany, Iceland, Norway, Cost Rica, Denmark.  He includes New Zealand largely on the grounds of our ambitions which he thinks look unlikely to be realised.  It’s not clear whether he’s caught up on the fact that NZ’s present government has disavowed any wish to show leadership in the matter. The case of the UK is examined in detail, some of which I’ll traverse here as an example of the kind of detailed useful information the book incorporates. The ambition of the 2008 Climate Change Act is recognised. It set a statutory target of an 80% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 over a 1990 baseline. A progress report will be published every five years and reviewed by Parliament, along with the ongoing results of an adaptation programme. A carbon budget will be established to cover each five-year period.  A Committee on Climate Change will advise the government on the level of carbon budgets and the optimal path towards emission reduction targets.  The Energy Act of the same year recognised how closely climate change and energy change policy are intertwined. Giddens acknowledges the determination shown by these two pieces of legislation and notes the high degree of cross-party support in their passage through parliament. Although some sceptics used the opportunity to air their views the main clauses were strengthened rather than weakened.  He goes on to discuss weaknesses and problems which remain, the following among them: the policies are more about ‘what to do’ than ‘how to do’; both Acts are organized mainly in terms of negatives and lack a positive vision; the Climate Change Committee is only advisory; the objectives of the Climate Change Act are not necessarily reconciled with other government policy – eg. Heathrow.  The chapter concludes with the recognition that progress is relatively limited even among the best performing nations. There is a long way yet to go.

Giddens goes on to consider the role of the state in ensuring that a serious impact is made on global warming. While he agrees that international agreements will be essential and that many other agencies, including NGOs and businesses, will play a fundamental role, it is the state which retains many of the powers that will need to be invoked. A few examples follow.

The state must help us to think ahead. Political leaders must introduce policies for the long term. This means a return to planning, in some guise or another. Targets may make government ministers feel good, but it is means which must be concentrated on in planning. Governments should also encourage other sectors of society and individuals to shift towards long-term thinking.

The state must intervene in markets to institutionalise ‘the polluter pays’ principle, thereby ensuring that markets work in favour of climate change policy rather than against it. So-called externalities must be brought into the marketplace.  Environmental costs must not be permitted to remain outside the economic system.

The state must counter business interests which seek to block climate change initiatives. A tall order given the dominance of big business, Giddens agrees, but large-scale change must be achieved.  He believes governments acting together with enlightened corporate leaders could find a confluence of interests – an example of economic convergence.

The state must keep climate change at the top of the political agenda. Competing political parties must agree that climate change and energy policy will be sustained in spite of other differences and conflicts. Climate change should feature in the curriculum of all schools.

The state must provide subsidies to enable new technologies to thrive, since, in the beginning, they will be unable to compete with fossil fuels.  Giddens discusses in some detail the function carbon taxes can play in stimulating innovation. He inclines towards carbon taxes over carbon emissions markets, though sees no reason why the two can’t co-exist.

Later in the book Giddens examines the function of international agreements. He expresses reservations about the effectiveness of the Kyoto-style approach in terms of the danger that an elaborate architecture may be created but no buildings actually get constructed. The national and local level are the places where binding targets are most likely to work.  He does not suggest we turn our backs on international cooperation, but thinks there is a role for agreements or partnerships between individual nations, groups of countries and regions which could act to strengthen more universal measures. The US and China surely need to get together, since where climate change and energy security are concerned they hold the future of the world in their hands.  If the EU is treated as a single entity then just six countries have produced 70 percent of cumulative world emissions, twenty have been responsible for 88 percent. These groups should be meeting to contribute to collective efforts.

If Giddens stands with the optimists, it is not in the sense that the risks we face have been exaggerated. Doomsday is a possibility imminent in our society and economy. He is optimistic in the sense that he sees risk and opportunity belonging together and considers it possible that we can mobilise to meet the opportunities through appropriate new technologies.

The book occasionally irritated me in its attitude to the green groups which have for some time sounded the alarm on climate change and spoken of the need for changes in society’s direction. I could sometimes detect a tone of “move over naïve ones, the sophisticates will take up the reins now”. I also wonder at the assertion of these sophisticates that the public can’t usefully be confronted head on with the realities of climate change. I was, when I started to read in the area, and it has galvanised me far more than any oblique approach would have done. I am inclined to think that the problem with public opinion and the politicians who fail to guide it is not simply that they are unwilling to face the facts, but also that they have not yet received a clear picture of climate change and the measures needed to abate it. The organised denialist movement bears a heavy responsibility here.

However I am no sociologist, and Giddens does not in any case exclude the more direct approach. Nor does he evade the need for policy measures to be fully adequate to the challenge. I thought his book a useful, often engaging discussion of the political options and an informative account of what is under way in many parts of the world.

Poles Apart

Poles Apart: The Great Climate Change Debate

“The Alarmists were right, and we shouldn’t call them alarmists any more – or at least not all of them!” For rather dubious reasons Gareth Morgan and John McCrystal decided to call serious climate scientists Alarmists throughout their book. A retraction on the last page seemed to me rather late. But the appellation  suited the tenor of their title: Poles Apart:  Beyond the Shouting, Who’s Right about Climate Change?

(For the benefit of readers not familiar with the New Zealand background, Gareth Morgan is an economist and investment adviser who commissioned scientists, including sceptics, to answer the authors’ questions about climate change. The book reports the findings. Information about some of the papers they commissioned can be found on their website.)

The fancy on which the book proceeds is that there are two unruly groups of scientists, designated Alarmists and Sceptics, much occupied with hurling abuse at each other and consequently confusing the poor general public. But the authors have entered this baffling arena and emerged with a verdict, making suitable admonishments to the scrapping parties along the way.  It’s not a scene I recognise from my three years of reading about the sober work of climate scientists, but it’s the presentation framework chosen by the authors for what proves on the whole to be a genuine engagement with the science of climate change.

It’s the seriousness of that engagement which made their favourable verdict almost inescapable. Their exposition of how global warming is occurring, according to the science, is clear. Their account of the case for anthropogenic global warming covers both the evidence for warming — in the cryosphere, the oceans, the atmosphere and the biosphere — and the evidence that it is due to increased CO2 from fossil fuels and unable to be explained by any other cause.  The treatment is often quite detailed, and while they always have an eye open to the possibility of  overstatement they don’t actually accuse anyone of it in this section of the book. (Though in an earlier chapter they describe Michael Mann’s so-called hockey stick thesis as a grievous overstatement of the case and accuse the IPCC of conspiring to send a resoundingly false message to the public — a rather grievous overstatement itself.)

They do their best with the case against global warming, but it is apparent they are having difficulty with it. They lean towards Svensmark’s theory of the significance of cosmic rays, finding its graphs carry some conviction but they don’t make a big deal of it. They consider the argument that increased precipitation will decrease the impact of increasing water vapour as a feedback mechanism. Some attention is given to Lindzen’s theory that there is a self-correcting mechanism in high cirrus changes above the tropics, depending on warmth, but they acknowledge that it has not fared well against evidence. In fact this chapter ends with the acknowledgement that the objections to the theory of anthropogenic global warming are weak, but adds they do leave doubts about the IPCC’s numbers, especially the projections of how much warming to expect.

However when the book turns to that question it reaches the conclusion that the result of doubling the CO2 level in the atmosphere is highly unlikely to lead to anything less than a 2 degree temperature rise and settles for the IPCC’s estimates of a range between 2 and 4.4 degrees. Incidentally at the end of this chapter Bob Carter’s five ‘tests’ against anthropogenic global warming are examined and found seriously wanting. ‘Straw man tests’ they conclude.

Considering their own difficulties in finding substance in sceptical positions it seems unreasonable of them to complain that climate scientists haven’t paid sceptics the attention they deserve.  The authors’ evidence for this seems to be largely anecdotal. They nowhere point to wilful neglect of serious hypotheses. They describe the peer-review process and the difficulty of achieving publication in prestigious journals as if it is open to abuse of power, but don’t venture that accusation themselves.

Cautions about science are always in order, of course, but the authors overstep the mark with comments like these: “The self-assurance with which climatology presently speaks may have more to do with the brash presumption of youth than with wisdom.”  This on the grounds that it is a comparatively recent science. I can’t say that I’ve noticed much self-assurance in what I’ve read of climate science – one often senses almost a reluctance to report what investigations are revealing – but in any case the comparison of climate science with human adolescence is hardly evidence of its inadequacy. It fits the fanciful framework of the book, that’s all.

The arrogance of the IPCC is an overworked theme in the book.  The authors don’t take serious issue with the IPCC findings, but still claim that the aggregate level of certainty in the reports is unwarranted. “It’s as though there has been a general agreement to bring back a verdict before all the evidence has been heard…a conspiracy to overstate the case.” They also accuse the IPCC of not communicating reasonably with the general public. It seems to me that the IPCC bends over backwards not to overstate the case, and if anything errs on the side of caution. And so far as talking to the general public goes, the media’s frequent failure to engage systematically with the subject has made clear communication difficult. However, many illuminating books and articles are readily available to anyone who will take the trouble to read them. I’m no scientist, but I could follow Elizabeth Kolbert and Tim Flannery and James Lovelock (all borrowed from the library at no cost) when I first tried to get a proper handle on climate science three years or so ago, and since then I’ve found no shortage of material available for lay consumption. I don’t know why Morgan and McCrystal weren’t satisfied with such sources, but far be it from me to disparage journeys of discovery, however expensive and whatever the conveyance. They ended up at a fitting destination, and their explanations of why they got there are generally well told and accessible to the general reader.

Their accompanying claims that great uncertainty still surrounds the extent of climate change and its impact are beside the point. All the scientists will acknowledge that there’s a great deal not yet understood. The question is whether there’s enough that is understood to add up to a scientific consensus that we’re in a danger zone.  If there is, then the reservations the authors express hardly measure up against the seriousness of the issue. In a brief concluding comment on policy decisions they advise against using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. (Some likelihood!) When I saw that I wondered whether they have quite realised the consequences of their favourable verdict.

Incidentally on policy matters, the book is incorrect about China and the Kyoto treaty. China ratified it in 2002. Admittedly Kyoto didn’t require them as a developing nation to cut emissions, but they were part of the agreement. The US is the only member to have signed the protocol and then refused to ratify it.

Heaven is a place on earth

Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science

The Australian twin to Wishart’s Air Con is Professor Ian Plimer’s Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, the Missing Science, published last month. According to Bob Carter (in all his oleaginous glory here) on Leighton Smith’s Newstalk ZB programme recently it’s “an excellent book”. Carter assures Smith that “the authoritative science is in Ian Plimer’s book”. Fortunately, to save Hot Topic the chore of wading through Plimer’s prose, The Australian (noted for a tendency to push crank arguments) has published a most interesting review of Plimer’s opus by Michael Ashley, a professor of astrophysics at the University of New South Wales. What does he make of Plimer’s “authoritative science”?

Perhaps we will find a stitch-by-stitch demolition of climate science in his book, as promised? No such luck. The arguments that Plimer advances in the 503 pages and 2311 footnotes in Heaven and Earth are nonsense. The book is largely a collection of contrarian ideas and conspiracy theories that are rife in the blogosphere. The writing is rambling and repetitive; the arguments flawed and illogical.

Just like Wishart then.

Plimer has done an enormous disservice to science, and the dedicated scientists who are trying to understand climate and the influence of humans, by publishing this book. It is not “merely” atmospheric scientists that would have to be wrong for Plimer to be right. It would require a rewriting of biology, geology, physics, oceanography, astronomy and statistics. Plimer’s book deserves to languish on the shelves along with similar pseudo-science such as the writings of Immanuel Velikovsky and Erich von Daniken.

[Hat tip: Deltoid]
See also; Prof Barry Brooke’s review of Plimer’s book.
[Belinda Carlisle]

Picturing the Science

Climate Change: Picturing the Science

“It is simply the best available collection of essays by climate scientists on the nature of human-induced climate change, the ways scientists have come to understand and measure the risks that it poses, and the options that we face.”
Thus Jeffrey Sachs in his foreword to Climate Change: Picturing the Science edited by Gavin Schmidt and Joshua Wolfe. He has a somewhat proprietary interest in the publication in that much of it is written by scientists associated with his Columbia University’s Earth Institute, but his declaration is not overblown.

Gavin Schmidt is well known to readers of the RealClimate website, of which he was a co-founder. He is a climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.  Joshua Wolfe is a documentary photographer much of whose work focuses on climate change.  His is one of three splendid photo essays which punctuate the book, along with many other carefully selected illustrative photographs on almost every page.

Medical terms head the book’s three parts – symptoms, diagnosis and possible cures.  Seven climate scientists contribute chapters with one or two experts in technology and policy joining them in part three.

The symptoms section has five headings: the unequivocal warming of the globe; the changes occurring in the Arctic; changes to the chemistry, biology and level of the sea; the likelihood of extreme events; the threat to biodiversity. In all these areas troubles are already apparent or can be seen developing.

The diagnosis section has three chapters.  The first describes the drivers of climate and the part played by anthropogenic forcings.  The second explains the study of climate “one of the most complex and lively branches in all of Earth science.”  Dozens of different fields are involved. The chapter lists some of them: meteorology, oceanography, biology, chemistry, quantum physics, orbital mechanics, and ecology. It has a useful characterisation of the four overlapping groups into which climate scientists can be broadly split: those studying the physical processes in the current climate system, others looking for indications of how and why climates were different in the past, yet others documenting the impacts of change today, and some bringing all these elements together to try and say something about the future.  The third chapter discusses prognoses for that future, making a helpful distinction between forecasts, predictions and projections before examining prospects for rising temperatures, rainfall changes, rising sea levels, ocean changes, greenhouse gas feedbacks, decreasing biodiversity, human health risks, and agricultural impacts. Surprises are inevitable, and they are not likely to be benign.

These two sections of the book are straightforward explanations of where the science stands today.  They acknowledge plenty of uncertainties. Schmidt states that the book has eschewed polemics “in favour of a ‘warts and all’ exposition of what we know, what we don’t know, and what is already being seen.”  The tone is restrained, the content factual.  The complexities of the science are not compromised, but the findings are laid out in terms that any general reader can comprehend.  Although the path to understanding what is going on has its complications, and there have been major intellectual feats (and sometimes physical ones as well) along the way as the clues have been put together, the basic picture which has emerged is not hard to grasp.

Turning to possible cures in the book’s third section the various, now familiar technologies are surveyed and the political aspects of emission reduction explored.  The difficulties of adequate action and internationally agreed policy are acknowledged, but a degree of somewhat dogged hope also finds expression.

Slightly aside from the main thrust of the book, it’s worth drawing attention to a couple of the brief contributions which interleave the major chapters.  Elizabeth Kolbert (whose Field Notes from a Catastrophe was my introduction to the seriousness of climate change) has an illuminating reflection on why it has been hard for journalism to communicate the reality of global warming.  Naomi Oreskes writes thoughtfully about the scientific consensus on climate change and why it is under no challenge from contrarian claims.

We need to see climate scientists making the kind of communication to the public this book represents.  Straight from the horse’s mouth.  I don’t imagine all scientists would relish the task, but certainly those chosen for this publication write clearly and accessibly for the lay person. The reader gets not only a survey of where things stand in the areas each of the writers is engaged with but also an awareness of the scope and range of the scientific activity associated with climate change. I doubt most people are aware of the magnitude of the scientific attention the subject is now receiving.

A full picture is what the book provides, mostly through words but also through the striking images which accompany the text.  It will be a very helpful aid to readers who want to see that full picture, either because they don’t have hold of it yet or because they want to fill in gaps in their understanding.

It is a large, handsomely produced volume which will adorn any surface on which it lies while its reader works through it. Not at one sitting, I would suggest, but filling in the picture slowly chapter by chapter.