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

By Alan Moran

29 December 2017

Climate observations

Anthony Watts addresses 25 studies into ocean temperature. Typically they find little or no change in long term trends. This from de Jong and Seuer shows a slight decrease

This from Turney shows a slight increase but one that occurred before 1940, prior to which greenhouse gas accumulation could not have had any affect:

While some studies estimate a decline in Arctic ice, others show no decline over the past 10 years.

Ole Humlum shows a decline of sea ice in the Arctic and an increase in the Antarctic. 

Lending support to these empirical findings, new research by Svensmark et al points to the overwhelming importance of variations in solar radiation in creating the coolings and warmings of around 2°C that have occurred repeatedly over the past 10,000 years.

Politics and energy measures

EU is requiring more stringent rules for the aggregate level of renewable energy, seeking a 27 per cent share, but at the same time is relaxing the prescriptive levels on individual member nations.  

In the UK the backlash against wind farms in scenic areas has forced the first of these to be dismantled.  Significantly, the Global Warming Policy Foundation sued activist groups to withdraw an ad fronted by Peter Capaldi of "Dr Who" and “The Thick of It” fame, which inaccurately said wind power costs had halved over the past two years. Even the price that was quoted, £57.50 per megawatt hour, was almost 70 per cent above the $A60 per megawatt hour claimed for new wind contracts in Australia. 

The Global Coal Plant Tracker reports that, while the number of new coal plants in the pre-construction phase around the world almost halved between 2015 and 2016, there are currently over 1,600 new coal plant units still planned, predominantly in developing countries.  Moreover, in spite of Australian banks expressing opposition to loans for new fossil fuel plant, there are many willing lenders. According to Banktrack most of the top 20 banks involved in financing and guaranteeing loans for coal generators in the three years to September 2017 were Chinese but they also included Mizuho and Citi.

Next year Germany is to open another new coal power station, and two other new power stations are planned. The new power station, Datteln 4, was held up by green litigation for seven years

At a climate summit in France, Emmanuel Macron mimics Donald Trump with ‘Make Our Planet Great Again’ awards to encourage the relocation to France of warmista climate scientists.  Unperturbed, 

President Trump placed particular emphasis on removing Obama era restraints on coal mining with claims his deregulation achievements so far have brought savings of $570 million a year.

Responding to the low tax and deregulatory measures that reject carbon impositions of the Trump Presidency, one of Australia’s richest men, Anthony Pratt ($), has pledged a $2 billion paper mill investment program in the US.  It’s doubtful that such a commitment could be made for Australia with its present investment-unfriendly policies.

California is moving contrary to the rest of the union, planning half its electricity will be from renewables in 2030 and that greenhouse gas emissions will be 40 per cent below 1990 levels in 2030. But Pennsylvania ($) is promoting its low cost energy, induced by fracking policies, to entice Australian firms to relocate there.

Snowy 2 ($) Malcolm's Turnbull’s brave new thought bubble solution of pumped storage is now estimated to cost $4 billion not the $2 billion originally estimated. At least a further 50 per cent will be added before, hopefully, the white elephant is abandoned.

Species Loss

In Australia, Professor Peter Ridd co-edited an article in the Marine Pollution Bulletin detailing improved procedures on scientific finding assessments to prevent false conclusions and inefficient procedures being followed. The authors drew from the alarmist findings of grant-seeking scientists who created concerns about climate-induced damage to the Great Barrier Reef.

Anna Marsden, the head of one government funded body, The Great Barrier Reef Foundation (“We believe climate change is the biggest threat to the Great Barrier Reef. We support the Paris Agreement”) called for more funding and, when questioned why reefs exist in much warmer waters than in North Queensland, argued that it was not the heat but the temperature variability that caused damage. But pressing beyond the limits of practical refutability, David Attenborough declared the reef will be dead by 2100.

Idiocy

Climate heroes of 2017 include a telegenic Fijian boy who has been told to say that climate change (a hurricane) wiped out his village.  And, predictably, the Guardian ended the year on a cataclysmic note “Each day increasingly dangerous hurricanes, wildfires, and floods betray the influence of climate change”. Well, here is the actual record of cyclonic activity.

The hoary old chestnut of climate change spurring refugees has yet another run with a paper co-authored by Wolfram Schlenker, an economist at Columbia University, and echoed by others. Actually, people fleeing warmer weather with potentially more productive agriculture do so to obtain western style living standards that are unrelated to climate or its supposed change. As statistician William Briggs points out, “There appears in this paper to be no recognition that politics inside the EU plays any role,”  

Wit and wisdom

Echoing the Vicar of Bray

“William York”, who has a close association with AEF, penned the following:

In George Bush Senior’s golden days when climate change no harm meant,

A climatologist was I, and so I gained preferment.

I quickly knew more CO2 might further my promotion:

I wrote computer code to push the global warming notion.

And this is law that I’ll maintain: my forecasts you shall cite, sir,

For, hot or cold or drought or rain, my model’s always right, sir.

When William Clinton took the oath, with climate change in fashion,

And Big Al Gore bestrode the world, Apocalypse his passion,

IPCC provided me with excellent connections:

Who needs to be a Wall Street quant? Do climate change projections.

And this is law…

When nations signed the Protocol to ease our planet’s fever,

The Hill said Nay and I became a bright Green eager beaver.

I got to know an NGO to champion my predictions,

And (never mind what physics says) to swear they were not fictions.

And this is law…

George Bush Junior took control and challenged our consensus,

And Nature whined that governments must ever recompense us,

Conformist manuscripts alone the editors selected,

And all who swam against the stream they hastily rejected.

And this is law…

When Barack next stretched forth his hand to stop the oceans rising,

The times had changed: I knew by then that this was not surprising,

So when Solyndra, subsidized by half a billion dollars,

Went bust I switched to Hyperloop from fossil-fuel’d Corollas.

And this is law…

When Trump the Paris pact denied, and shock’d the true-believers,

I did not know whom I should back – the stayers or the leavers.

But batteries, it seemed to me, might offer a solution,

And so I bought a Chevy Volt – my pride and absolution.

And this is law…

The gravy train will trundle on with each Inauguration

And, though the temperature may fall, the code of our creation

Will ever show a warming world: our models shall not falter.

Though we be wrong we’re always right — although the times may alter.

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