Category: Environment

Last year I posted an entry calling attention to the weak evidence of an upward trend in the temperature data for Dublin. As we learned from the debates about climate data before the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, it is important for scientists to explore data that do not neatly fit their models. So I thought it would be worth adding another year to the material I posted last year. All but the most recent data are taken from the CSO database. For recent months I have used the Met Éireann data.

In 2009 the average temperature recorded at Dublin Airport was 9.5 degrees C, the same as that reported for 1958, the first year in the CSO’s database. The average for the thirty-year period 1961-1990 – used by Met Éireann to represent the long-run – was 9.6 degrees C.  The year 2009 was the second in a row when the average temperature was at or below the long run average.

There was no very warm weather in Dublin during the last two years. The highest temperatures recorded in both years were in June – only 22.3 degrees in 2008 and a somewhat better 24.8 in 2009.  Back in August 1990 a torrid 28.7 was recorded.

The warmest month in both 2008 and 2009 was August, with the same average temperature of 15.3 in both years. These values are low compared with July 1989, the warmest month since 1958, when the average was 17.9 degrees.

Last winter (December 2008, January and February 2009) was cold in Dublin, with an average temperature of 4.6 compared to the long-run average of 5.9. As we are well aware, December 2009 was very cold, with an average of 3.9, but the month was not as exceptionally cold in Dublin as in other parts of Ireland. A lower monthly temperature (3.7) was recorded in Dublin as recently as February 1996. However, record lows were recorded around Christmas and the New Year and into January 2010, so if things don’t warm up soon this winter (December 2009, January and February 2010) is set to break the record lows for Dublin too.

In December 2009 many newspapers carried headlines to the effect that the first decade of the twenty-first century was the warmest on record in many countries. Not so in Dublin, where the 1990s were fractionally warmer than 2000s. However, the variation between decades is very small – the standard deviation for the averages of the five decades since 1960 is only 0.21 degrees, compared with 0.42 for the fifty years of this period. The 1960s were relatively cold – average temperature of 9.4 – but since then the decade averages have only varied between 9.7 in the 1970s and 10.0 in the 1990s. The relatively low temperatures recorded in the 1960s prompted a lot of discussion of global cooling.

As shown in my previous post, the evidence of an upward trend in Dublin’s temperature is weak. The graph below shows the annual averages over the 52-year period 1958-2009. As noted above, the series actually ends up in 2009 where it starts in 1958, at 9.5. In most statistical analyses it would be hard to maintain the existence of a significant trend if over fifty years the series reverted back to where it started from!

In fact, for the whole 52-year period there is weak evidence of a statistically significant positive trend:

TEMP = 0.0097 (YEAR-1958) + 9.5163 R² = 0.1189

However, the relationship is unstable between sample sub-periods. This is illustrated simply by splitting the 52-year period into two halves. The result for the first sub-period (1958-1983) is

TEMP = 0.0144 (YEAR – 1958) + 9.4553 R² = 0.0796

The result for the second sub=period (1984-2009) is:

TEMP = 0.0062 (YEAR-1958) + 9.8118 R² = 0.0121

which is not significant at any of the usual levels.

There seems to have been a shift in emphasis from temperature to rainfall statistics in commentaries on Irish weather patterns. This is natural given the wet summers of 2008 and 2009 and the flooding during last November. But the rainfall at Dublin Airport last year was only 25% above the long-run average and well below the levels recorded in 2002, 1966, 1960, and 1958. There has been no significant trend in yearlt rainfall over the past fifty-two years.

Observations for fifty two years at one weather station may not have much significance for global weather/climate trends, but the lack of evidence for warming in Dublin surely merits more attention than it receives in Irish discussions of climate change.

John Bruton has a peculiar piece in the Irish Times of last Saturday. He argues that there are so many externalities between nation states that countries should grant their sovereignty to a “new system for global decision making”. Bruton puts climate change forward as his main argument.

Bruton makes two factual mistakes: “The failure of world leaders to come up with a meaningful and binding agreement on climate change at the long-planned meeting in Copenhagen means that the binding, if incompletely applied, agreement in the Kyoto protocol will now expire and will not be replaced in time, if ever.” The targets in the Kyoto Protocol will expire in 2012, and the rest of the Kyoto Protocol has no sunset clause. There are three more major international meetings scheduled before the Kyoto Protocol expires, in 2010 (Mexico City), 2011 (Johannesburg) and 2012 (location to be decided).

He also write that “many in the US Senate are still wedded to the idea that international rules should not bind the United States and should never override US law.” Once ratified, an international treaty is binding in US law, and it is exactly because of this that the US is so reluctant to ratify international treaties. EU countries happily sign up because rules will be ignored if inconvenient — the “growth and stability pact” of the monetary union being a prominent example.

The main flaw in Bruton’s analysis, however, is the apparent assumption that, if the USA and China were to give up their sovereignty over their energy, transport, industrial and agricultural policies, they would follow the European aspirations for a low carbon economy.

If the “new system for global decision making” would be in any way democratic, chances are that Europe would be forced to abandon its visionary climate policy and focus on things that matter now to the majority of the world population, such as clean water, enough to eat, and freedom from infectious disease.

It is our sovereignty that allows our pretensions as planetary saviours.

The carbon tax was ruled to be in conflict with the constitution of France. The proposed French carbon tax is very similar to the Irish carbon tax (but 2 euro higher). The stated reason (IN THE GUARDIAN) is that emissions already regulated under the EU ETS would be exempt from the carbon tax. This is exactly as it should be. Anything else would be double regulation. In fact, as I argue here, a domestic tax on an internationally traded permit would not reduce total EU emissions (it would reduce French emissions and increase emissions elsewhere in the EU) but it would increase costs in France and the EU as a whole.

[DELETE: A bad decision, so.]

This may well have ramifications for EU climate policy, probably in the form of a renewed call for an EU wide carbon tax.

ADDITIONs: translated press release, original press release by the Constitutional Court

The court’s decision seems to rest not so much on the fact that some will pay taxes and others need permits, but rather that the permits are given away for free. The court did not rule in favour of double regulation, but against grandparenting for some.

FURTHER ADDITION:

Courtesy of Sarah Parlane, a new translation

Press release
Decision n° 2009-599 DC – December 29, 2009.
Finance Act for 2010.

On December 29, 2009, the Constitutional Council, by its decision n ° 2009-599 DC, ruled on the Finance Act 2010 which had been seized by over sixty members and over sixty senators. Applicants challenged the reform of the business tax which will be substituted by a territorial economic contribution. They also challenged some propositions relative to the carbon tax plan, the per diem work injury, the increase of the
domestic consumption tax for fuels and the extension of the active solidarity income to some young people under twenty-five years.

[…]

Secondly, the Council found that, in relation to the carbon tax, the broadly applicable authorized exemptions were contrary to the objective of reducing global warming and generated some “tax discrimination” in relation to public contributions. As a result it has censored the whole policy regime relative to the carbon tax (articles 7, 9 and 10).

II – Contribution carbon.
Article 7 of the law introduced a carbon tax. The parliamentary analysis outlined that the objective of this measure is to introduce a mechanism capable of reducing greenhouse gas emissions significantly in order to reduce global warming. To achieve this, it advocated “to impose an additional tax on fossil energy consumption” to induce businesses, households and governmental agencies to reduce their emissions.

However, Articles 7 and 10 of the Act also stipulated some exemptions, discounts, partial refunds and specific rates. According to these, the following emissions were not subject to the carbon tax:
– those of the thermal generating plants producing electricity,
– those of the 1018 most polluting industries such as refineries, cement producers, coke and glass factories,
– those of chemical industries relying heavily on energy,
– those of double-use products,
– those of energetic products used in electricity consumption,
– those of air and public transportations.
Furthermore, a discounted rate applies to the emissions issued from agricultural production, fishing, road freight and shipping.