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

By Alan Moran,

2 April, 2017

US politics and climate change

The Obama administration's climate strategy fabricated a “Social cost of carbon” value at $36 per ton of CO2 and involved:

• tightening vehicle fuel economy standards;
  • the Clean Power Plan designed to cut, by 2030, carbon dioxide emissions from electric power
    generation plants by 30 per cent below their 2005 levels; and
• a moratorium on federal coal leasing.  

President Trump's budget proposes a 31 per cent reduction ($2.5 billion) for EPA, eliminating most of the agency’s climate change programs, including the regulations to control CO2 emissions from power plants, funding of international climate change programs, climate change research and the Energy Star voluntary certification program for energy-efficient products. The Department of Energy has a $2 billion cut in programs to promote carbon free energy technologies.

EPA Administrator Pruitt has hinted that Trump is preparing to renege on the Paris deal with its pledged reductions in the power sector's carbon dioxide emissions.  Consistent with this, an Order "Promoting energy independence and economic growth" rescinding the Obama era constraints on coal was signed on 28 March 2017.  This requires all government agencies to review, with the intent to remove within 180 days, regulations potentially burdening the development and use of oil, gas, coal and nuclear energy. The Order immediately revokes power sector carbon pollution standards, the banning of mining (including fracking for gas) on Federal lands and the methane emission standards which vastly increased coal mining costs.

The 28 March Order unleashed howls from the green left mainline media all searching for the most dramatic epithets. The Washington Post predictably said the Order puts the planet on a dangerous path, GQ said it will put us all under water, while on The Hill the call was ”We must slow, stop and reverse the carbon pollution that is turbo-charging climate danger. And we must act now”,  and the Daily Kos predicted the Order will bring 40,000 premature deaths in 2030 and more than 120,000 premature deaths in 2050. 

Ronald Bailey at Reason has a measured analysis showing likely economic benefits from the change, and at CEI Myron Ebell welcomed the changes and hoped they foreshadowed a formal withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. The G20 finance ministers recently axed climate finance from a communique under US pressure.

Concerns remain among those wishing to see the Obama era programs eliminated. First, since the “endangerment finding” of the EPA (that greenhouse gas emissions threaten human health and welfare) is to be left in place possibly for administrative reasons but this may entail continued regulation of CO2.  Secondly, Defense Secretary Mattis is on a different page claiming that “Climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today.” And 20 of the 237 Congressional Republicans have apparently suggested that climate change is a threat to be combated.

Like the EPA, the State Department has replaced its climate propaganda page on its internet site with one that is far more neutral. .

New carbon abatement measures in the rest of the world

Johan Rockström has led research to demonstrate the incredible series of steps required to meet the Paris Agreement. Among the measures needed would be:

1) Global CO2 emissions from energy and industry have to halve in each decade in an analogy to Moore’s law for transistors; 

2) Net emissions from land use — i.e. from agriculture and deforestation — have to fall steadily to zero by 2050. 

3) Technologies to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere have to start scaling up massively, until we’re artificially pulling 5 gigatons of CO2 per year out of the atmosphere by 2050 — nearly double what all the world’s trees and soils already do.

The following illustrates the findings:

The Australian government announced yet another review of policies to ensure the Paris Agreement goal of 26-28 per cent emission reductions are met. The review will build on parallel processes, including the Finkel review of the reliability and security of the National Electricity Market, and the work of the Ministerial Forum on Vehicle Emissions.

Australia’s grasping at straws includes the PM’s plan to use the Snowy Hydro scheme as pump storage; at an alleged and somewhat fanciful cost of $2 billion; far from increasing the supply of energy, because pumped storage costs around 20 per cent of the original energy it would actually mean less net energy.

South Australia is grasping at other straws. Having watched subsidised wind force the closure of its coal fired power stations, the state is now pursuing alternatives that involve battery storage and a new “reserve power” gas plant. Aside from leading to blackouts, this abandonment of cheap coal fuelled energy in pursuit of the green myth of renewables has already led to a doubling of wholesale prices. I addressed the issue here, here and in my recent book.

Rupert Darwell demonstrates how UK carbon taxes have inflated electricity prices more than has occurred elsewhere in Europe and crippled UK competitiveness.

Meanwhile an EU paper shows how companies have fabricated emission reductions from forestry to avoid the €5 per tonne carbon emission price. Some €600 million has been “saved” by the firms involved.

Assessing research into the state of the environment

The environment is in good shape according to a sober analysis by Professor Ove Humlum.  He finds that:

• it is likely that 2016 was one of the warmest years since about 1850 but by the end of 2016, global air temperatures were essentially back to the level of the years before the recent 2015–16 oceanographic El Niño episode.
• The troposphere and stratosphere have recorded measured temperature ‘pauses’ since 1995 and 2002 respectively.
• Much of the heat given off during the 2015–16 El Niño appears to have been transported to the polar regions.

Average global sea-level rise of 1–3 mm/yr. Since 1979 Arctic sea ice has decreased while Antarctic sea-ice has increased. The overall tendency (since 1972), is a stable overall snow extent.

The Oceans are estimated to be warming faster than had been thought, though the data indicate that the temperature at the beginning of 2017 was similar that three years earlier.

Activist scientists still emphasise hottest-year-on-record type statements in addressing climate but focus more on extremes, a matter deflated by many authorities (e.g. see my latest book Climate Change: Treaties and Policies in the Trump Era p.28) and now have found big high waves as a cause of the carbon bogy.

By contrast, studies funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation expect human-induced global warming to tail off slightly over the next few decades. A weaker sun could reduce temperatures by half a degree.

Gesture politics and whimsy

Kuwait is virtue-signalling that it is among the supporters of energy economies as a path to saving-the-world with its dignitaries lighting candles for Earth Hour, which originated with the WWF in Sydney (here is the picture on 25 March):

There is now a global following with the Pakistanis getting into the act, and here is petroleum-reliant Dubai going over to the dark side:

Psychologists are also on the climate scare gravy train explaining how climate change is leading to mental stress.

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