A review and commentary on topical matters concerning the science, economics, and governance associated with climate change developments.

By Alan Moran,

May 2017

Science

Tallbloke identifies an increasing number of scientific papers forecasting that earth is likely to cool over the coming decades.

Anthony Watts draws attention to the newly published paper by the Max Planck Institute’s Christopher Hedemann and others saying, “the gap between observations and models persists”, and is a challenge to climate science.

Its temperature estimates include this chart illustrating the “hiatus”. Temperatures fell from the late 19 century until around 1960 then rose significantly until the mid 1990s after which they have fallen.

And here is an interesting graph from Warwick Hughes of an Antarctic weather station that could not have been contaminated by urban growth or been relocated and has shown no warming trend since 1955.

In contrast, an article in Nature claims the Arctic is said to be warming twice as fast as the rest of the world and by the end of the century this may bring a 520-740 cm increase in ocean levels.

In an article in the Wall Street Journal a former Energy Department Under Secretary explained how federal scientists had misled the debate on hurricanes by selective use of data. Patrick Michaels and Ryan Maue show this in the following chart.

Politics

The Paris Agreement’s $100 billion climate aid fund is disappearing and becoming relabelled money from other aid allocations. 

The Trump administration is proceeding to dismantle barriers to fossil fuel use. Two developments in the past week concern freeing up offshore drilling, and amending national monuments designations. Much remains to be done. 

A US decision on whether to stay in the Paris accord and undermine it from within or simply leave is expected by the middle of May. One suggestion is that it could readily be killed by declaring the agreement a treaty requiring Congressional endorsement.

Environment Protection Agency Administrator Pruitt favours leaving the fraudulent Paris Agreement. Others wish to remain perhaps to work within the agreeement to reduce its harm a concern of Myron Ebell, who headed the Trump EPA transition team is that One concern is that Energy Secretary Rick Perry appears to have gone wobbly. This video is designed to pressure Trump into keeping his pledge. 

Senator Lamar Smith points out that in the US, in relation to their output, solar and wind obtained subsidies 345 and 52 times those of fossil fuels.  

For its part, the UK is seeking to reduce its renewable energy commitments post Brexit with Bloomberg quoting one insider "with knowledge of the mattter" saying, “the far easier option for Brexit Britain is to take its foot off the clean energy accelerator, rather than press ahead with scaling up investment in wind and solar power". Britain has a long way to go as, following the Labour-Conservatives consensus on climate change, its subsidised renewables share of supply is higher in per capita terms than the EU average as illustrated below. 

Some good news from Germany where the Greens are now facing oblivion.

Green policies are really, as UN climate officials have proudly proclaimed, about ending fossil fuel use and capitalism, redistributing the world’s wealth, and controlling people’s livelihoods, living standards and liberties, but as Andrew Follett points out A MoneySuperMarket report listed Mozambique, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe as having “the most environmentally friendly people in the world,”. ‘Green friendly’ correlates with poverty stricken despotisms.

Political Posturing

April 22 was Earth Day and a claimed 200,000 joined 300 coordinated marches across the USA to forestall climate change.  Among them was multiple house and yacht owner, party-boy Leonardo DiCaprio. 

Bernie Saunders called for a renewed focus on stopping climate change which is prejudiced against ‘low income families and communities of color’ and The Guardian found yet another proud alarmist who declared, we “must choose to intervene or be defined by our failure.

The bad news on climate change gets worse! It is now claimed that it will destroy some of the best wine making regions.

Australian Quackery

Australian university media eagerly hyped the latest taxpayer funded alarmist junk study which said coastal marine food webs could be in danger of collapse as a result of rising carbon dioxide levels with the boost to algae being offset by “the increased stress to species further up the food chain such as predatory fish”.  But though the wild catch has stabilised, the total catch continues to surge (except in places like Australia where regulations hinder fish farming).

Westpac, one of Australia’s leading banks has said it is now an environmental NGO and will not lend to certain coal projects, including the largest prospective mine in Australia. Actually the bank does not provide the sort of long term loans that are needed and its decision was simply a virtue signalling gesture.

The fevered alarmism that has propelled Australia from having the lowest to among the highest cost energy remains in vogue. I wrote about the thirty year plan of AGL, the biggest electricity company, to exit its extensive coal generation business.  Ironically, this year, because subsidised renewable energy has forced coal station closures, the electricity wholesale price has trebled bringing a likely trebling of profit for the firm, primarily through those very coal generation facilities.  

I also drew attention to warnings given to the government, by the former head of its regulatory agency, of the likely disaster looming as a result of renewables policy. Australia faces a double green whammy – renewable subsidies are killing coal that produces electricity at one third the cost of the renewables and at the same time political pusillanimity is preventing gas exploration, a matter I covered here.

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