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

By Alan Moran

August 2017

Climate Science

Global temperature measurements are stagnating in contrast to the bubbling rhetoric.  On trends since 1989 it would be 170 years before the 2°C Armageddon increase occurred; on trends post 1995, we would never get there!

The Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) recently published the latest measurements on Greenland. According to DMI, the largest island in the world recorded the coldest July temperature measured in the northern hemisphere (previous record -30.7 degrees) at -33 degrees Celsius. The coldest ever recorded. Climate expert Peter Harris has drawn attention to this piece showing the cooling is consistent with lower heat content in N Atlantic since 2005.

But the Guardian breathlessly reported that England recorded its hottest weather since 1910 and there was, as ever, no shortage of scientists claiming this is the shape of things to come.

Other sources thought that British seabirds were in for a hard time in warmer waters. Less interesting was Perth which, in spite of possible Australian data fiddling (see below), last year had its coldest winter in 25 years.

All the talk a few years ago was of endless droughts in Australia and California caused by climate change. Now these droughts have broken, in California the boot has shifted and the soothsayers are predicting endless years of flooding. You get what you pay for in climate modelling!

GWPF reports senior warmista scientist, Ben Santer, has mutually inconstent papers published in the same month.  One in Nature's Scientific Reports says there is no levelling-off in measured warming; another in Nature Geoscience says measured warming has stopped due to “systematic deficiencies in some of the post-2000 external forcings used in the model simulations”.  

“Total bunk”. The verdict of Marc Morano on Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power,” and one shared by leftist media. Morano has been asking Gore about his previous prediction that without drastic measures, the planet would reach a “point of no return” in a decade. Visiting Australia to promote his film, Mr Gore was awarded an honourary doctorate from Melbourne University

Data Measurement Issues

A study authored by James P. Wallace III, Joseph S. D’Aleo and Craig Idso determined that the EPA's warming conclusions based on of all three global data sets were "invalidated," with nearly all of the apparent warming accounted for by the "adjustments" made by scientists to past temperatures. 

Meteorologist Joe D’Aleo, said, “Each dataset pushed down the 1940s warming and pushed up the current warming.”

Data reconstructions have reduced temperatures recorded 100 years ago and there was less prominence to cold temperature records. Indeed, the charge of data manipulation is levelled at the Australian Met Office by Jennifer Marohasy who has shown how low temperature occurrences have been excised from the record.

Climate Perceptions

A poll of 10,000 European citizens in 10 countries shows that a majority (54%) of Europeans reject the claim that climate change is mainly or entirely caused by humans.

However, Americans identifying as “environmentalists” show a rapid decline, especially among Republicans, only 18 per cent of whom (compared to 66 per cent of Democrats) say they are worried about global warming.

By contrast (and contrary to the Europe-wide numbers) 71 per cent of Germans were said to be worried by climate change – more than the 63 per cent were said to be worried by terrorism.

Climate Change Economics and Outcomes

Roger Pielke looks to the data not the rhetoric and finds we are in an unusually low cost period of natural weather-related disaster losses.

Eric Worrall examines the claim that climate change will bring about 59,300 Indian suicides and demonstrates the claim’s absurdity by illustrating how wheat yields have grown over the years.

Morgan Stanley are the latest in the Nirvana line forecasting of imminent renewable breakthroughs. 

All those renewables are supposed to lower prices but a funny thing happened. Australia’s retail prices to businesses showed a stepped increase once the renewables killed off two coal generators.

I wrote about the matter here showing how a surfeit of “governance” (the polite term for regulatory intrusion) had, largely through subsidising renewables, destroyed Australia’s once low cost electricity supply. This piece showed that renewable subsidies, by forcing the early scrapping of fossil fuel plant, have raised wholesale prices and a profit bonanza for firms with coal generators; firms with coal generation as their outputs' backbone nonetheless proclaim their clean green energy credentials.

Shocking news from the US as a New York Times journalist reports from Florida “the jaw-dropping fact that the majority of respondents (64 percent) said their clients have not mentioned climate change and sea level rise as an issue when purchasing properties”.

In a desperate attempt to staunch a Paris Climate treaty exit (PREXIT?) France promised that Turkey would be eligible for compensation for some of the financial costs of compliance.

Politics and Regulatory

EPA says the Clean Power Plan exceeds statutory authority under the Clean Air Act. The agency plans to roll back the rule, which required states to craft plans to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants and which spuriously claimed to bring up to $45 billion annually in net public health and climate-related benefits.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt dismissed European critics of President Donald Trump's climate policies as hypocrites, while chastising German Chancellor Angela Merkel for phasing out her country's nuclear power plants.

Two major German states have rejected that country’s policy on climate change in moves said to undermine the whole national policy. 

In a world gone mad the UK is planning for no petrol or diesel cars by 2050 and banning their sale by 2040. In spite of generous subsidies the electric vehicles to replace cars account for just 0.15 per cent of the global fleet.

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