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

By Alan Moran

1 May 2018

Scientific findings

Robert Zimmerman notes that we have arrived at a “solar minimum” in terms of sunspots. Many scientists have logged the relationship of this and a cooler climate – the last such event was in the 1600s and was followed by the “little ice age”. The IPCC places little weight on sunspot activity but the next 20 years will provide the empirical evidence.

A new study by Nicholas Lewis and Judith Curry, using the IPC database, estimates temperature increases of 1.3°C with a doubling of CO2, 30 to 45% lower than suggested by the IPCC simulations. Such increases are much closer to those actually being recorded. Roy Spencer has determined this, building upon earlier work of Judith Curry, to be a fundamental scientific breakthrough.

Currently EPA regulators are able to craft rules using non-publicly-available science data. But in a bid to outlaw “fake science” the EPA is considering including evidence only from work that has its data publically available. Howls from the professional agitators!

Bad news for rusted-on doomsters, good news for modernity: a new enzyme has been developed that rapidly breaks down plastic bottles said to be polluting even the most remote oceans.

Counterfeit science and its outcomes

The Global Change Research Program in Washington is gearing up for the next IPCC report with the usual alarmism. Four of its authors claim increasing evidence of a host of terrifying prospects including this statement. It argues, “As ice melts at the poles, sea levels are now rising faster, leading to coastal flooding in many major US cities. Little is known about the stability of the Antarctic ice sheet. It has the potential for a major impact on sea level".

However, as West Australian Emeritus Professor Cliff Ollier has demonstrated, “The deep ice cores reveal all the annual layers for about half a million years, so it never melted at the surface in all that time. Under its own weight and gravity the ice flows towards the sea, where it eventually calves off as icebergs and melts“.

A string of conferences are being held to further the Paris agenda, the latest one being in Bonn, but if you missed that there’s another at the end of the year in Katowice. The UN has provided a handy “progress tracker” to demonstrate the cavalcade’s momentum.

In the UK, this winter is set to total at least 48,000 deaths due to cold weather. A major cause is the increased electricity prices due to the cost of environmental levies that Paul Homewood reports are at £11.3 billion this year. Per person, that is about double Australia’s $5 billion+ a year of renewable imposts which the Opposition Labor Party would sharply increase by unwinding the pause in new subsidies that commenced with the now deposed Tony Abbott’s election in 2013.

Mark Perry recalls 18 spectacularly wrong predictions the green left made at the first Earth Day of April 22 1970. These include Ehrlich’s forecast of 200 million a year deaths from starvation, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half”, Kenneth Watt warned about a pending Ice Age in a speech. “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.” Ronald Bailey, who drew attention to the failed forecasts of the Earthday doomsters in 2000, predicts, “the hype, hysteria and spectacularly wrong apocalyptic predictions will continue, promoted by the virtue signalling environmental grievance hustlers.” 

Political developments

Climate change policy was the issue that divided Trump and Macron at the latter’s visit to the US where he addressed Congress urging US to rejoin Paris and saying “there is no Planet B”. This was the “speck of dandruff” that an unconvinced Trump theatrically feigned to flick off Macron’s jacket. Pending the “US rejoin”, billionaire Michael Bloomberg has pledged to provide the $4.5 million in dues that the US needs to pay to retain membership.

Rupert Darwell shows how the climate change establishment is attacking coal (One year after Obama appointed Dr. Kim as its President, the World Bank adopted a blanket ban on financing new coal-fired power stations). That same establishment is sifting through expenditure of EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt seeking to discredit the man who is threatening to roll back the Politically Correct climate nonsense.

And, a Texas judge has determined California officials are using the courts to orchestrate a coordinated conspiracy by several cities to punish Exxon Mobil for the company’s views on climate change. Who would ever have thought that?

In the UK, Boris Johnson, much to the dismay of the Guardian, has cut the climate change contingent in Foreign Affairs by 25 per cent and has made a few disparaging remarks about the faux science.

Globally newsworthy was the $500 million earmarked by Australia’s green-led Turnbull Government to combat the effects of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). The “crisis” is manufactured by green activists and grant-hungry academics as demonstrated by AEF Director Professor Peter Ridd, one dispassionate scientist whose truths about the generally good health of the reef have brought attacks from green activists and his GBR grant-reliant University, James Cook, to seek his dismissal.

Regulatory changes and the costs of energy

EPA is starting the process of winding back the standards on cars and trucks that add much to costs in the vain attempt to reduce CO2 emissions. 

A Yougov survey found Australians are generally keen on government action to control and lower energy prices - even if this means government direct investment.

At least one investor was listening. People who claimed nobody would ever again invest in Australian coal power now have been proven wrong. Chinese owned Alinta ($) seeks to profit by buying Liddell which AGL hopes to shutter in order to raise prices for its other generation assets.  

Meanwhile, in California an energy expert asks, So why am I paying $65/year for other, mainly affluent people, to have solar?

Reflecting these same concerns, German solar production has started to decline; new investment was down 90 per cent last year as a result of the reduction in the subsidies it receives (feed-in tariffs have been reduced from 49 euro cents to 12).

The energy transition is expected to cost Germans two to three trillion euros by 2050. The new economics minister Peter Altmaier (CDU) wants to end to subsidies in four to five years.

In spite of setting very aggressive benchmarks for emission reductions post 2020 Ireland faces fines of €600m a year from the EU for failing to meet renewable energy targets and cutting carbon emissions by 2020.

New Zealand ($) is embarking upon an intensification of self-harm under a new government that has halted the issuance of new exploration permits for offshore oil and gas to protect future generations from climate change.

Whimsey

To help reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Los Angeles by 45 percent below 1990 levels by 2025, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (a mooted 2020 Presidential candidate) is painting the roads white. LA has 23,000 miles of road and the US 4.2 million hence at $40,000 a mile an ineffective policy would cost LA just under $1 billion and if adopted US-wide the tag would be $1,700 billion!

According to yet another bunch of grant-chasing academics the Great tits are suffering from climate change “With spring coming earlier due to climate change, leaves and caterpillars emerge earlier” and the birds’ chicks have less food.

And yet another grant funded “official” university body has found merit in fighting human induced climate change, success from which it says will save lives. But, as they say about the lining of every cloud, climate change is held to be making Bolivian women stronger!

To read my recently published pieces on climate change and related matters see:

• Catallaxy Files on the political push-back within the government on energy regulations here and here, and on energy ministers meeting to advance the National Energy Guarantee designed to implement Australia’s Paris Commitment; and
• The Australian on demonstrating the disaster to energy caused by Australian renewable programmes and associated regulations

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