Category: Environment

Climategate

This continues a previous discussion.

My piece in today’s Irish Times was meant for Friday.

The chair of the IPCC has now called for an investigation. A day later, WG1 of the IPCC declared that all was fine. A vice-chair of the IPCC declared that this whole affair is a waste of time.

The Irish Times published two regular articles on this matter, under foreign affairs (here and here). The environment correspondents was in the Maldives (at the taxpayers’ expense), incorrectly claiming that “it could be lost unless progress is made at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen”. The momentum in sea level rise is such that atolls are doomed, now matter what we do about greenhouse gas emissions. Frank McDonald is now in Copenhagen, where he toes the IPCC WG1 line. The Irish Times today published an appeal to Copenhagen, writing that “the science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to two degrees”. This suggests that science demands such a limit. This is not true. Any target is a value-judgement. The two degrees target is a political fact, not a scientific one. (See here.) It seems that, like the Climate Research Unit, the Irish Times mixes up science and politics.

The large welfare costs of second-best EU climate policies

The EU is committed to limiting the rise in global average temperature to 2°C above pre-industrial levels and aims to achieve this through a range of policy instruments. This column warns that climate policy need not cost a lot, but imperfect implementation could cause hundreds of billions of euros’ worth of unnecessary welfare losses.

CRUgate

The Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia is a leading research centre on climate change. They are known for the data that they provide, particularly their estimate of the annual, global mean surface air temperature since 1850 or so. One of their servers was hacked and some 1000 emails and 3000 documents were stolen, most of them 10 years old. These emails were posted on the web, and are now being scrutinised by every one who has a grudge against climate change or climate policy, and against people who harbour such grudges.

What has emerged? There is a lot of chit-chat, and bitching about colleagues (with perhaps ground for a defamation suit or two). There are attempts at blocking other people’s careers, but no signs of success. There are hints of data manipulation. None of this surprised me. There are also indications of a systematic obstruction of freedom of information requests.

What does this mean? Not much really, although some people may end up in jail for stealing data and others may lose their jobs for breaking legal and academic rules on transparency.

Doubt has been cast over the CRU data. Insiders never really trusted their data, and it is actually little used as an input to other climate research. The global mean temperature record is used for communication rather than research. Most of the temperature graphs you have seen in the newspaper are from the CRU, but independent research has corroborated their main findings. Statistical analyses similarly have used alternative data series, and the results are broadly the same.

Some people have portrayed the climate debate as noble scientists versus savage businessmen. That image is now shattered, but it was pretty naive anyway. There are bad apples on both sides of the debate.

So? Objectively, nothing has changed. Climate change is still real, and still a real problem. A carbon tax is still the right policy. Subjectively, things are different. It is harder to argue that wise scientists of impeccable standing recommend action. Proponents of climate policy have to make a real case. I do that here.

UPDATE (26 Nov)

This story keeps growing. The latest person to get entangled is John Holdren, the science and technology advisor of President Obama. While Holdren’s email contains nothing untoward (in fact, he’s remarkably patient and polite), it does demonstrate a closeness between Holdren and people who are tainted.

Another new development: One of the CRU emails has language that may be read as financial irregularity.

UPDATE (30 Nov)

CRU has belatedly agreed to open its data bases.

It appears that it deleted duplicate records. While that is fine for archiving reasons, combined with the poor documentation of CRU’s algorithms, it does imply that the CRU’s homogenized data cannot be reconstructed.

UPDATE (2 Dec)

Penn State U had already announced an internal inquiry into the conduct of Michael Mann, citing the results of an earlier inquiry (but omitting the results of another) in its press release.

U East Anglia has now also announced an internal investigation, and Phil Jones (whose mailbox was hacked) has temporarily stepped down as director.

My prediction that the mainstream media of Ireland will soon report on this matter, is unfounded.

No Green Growth Without Innovation

Bruegel has published a new briefing note on the role for policy in encouraging ‘green’ innovation: you can read it here.

The Green New Deal (ctd)

I’ve written about the Green New Deal before. Here’s my main points in a nutshell:

  1. Stimulating renewable energy creates jobs in the renewable energy sector.
  2. Stimulating renewable energy destroys jobs in the non-renewable energy sector.
  3. Renewable energy is more expensive than non-renewable energy. Stimulating renewable energy therefore reduces competitiveness. This slows down economic growth and job creation.
  4. 2+3>1, so stimulating renewable energy destroys more jobs than it creates.
  5. The jobs created depend on subsidies and other forms of government protection.
  6. There is little chance that Ireland will ever become a net exporter of energy at a significant scale. Anything we can do with wave and wind, the Scots can do too, and they will always be closer to the market.
  7. There is little change that Ireland will ever become a net exporter of intellectual property on the renewable energy generation. Our current strenghts in R&D do not match the required skills, and countries that do have the required skills already are developing new energy technologies as well.

Why does this bear repeating? Well, Labour just promised 80,000 jobs while Commins et al. just reconfirmed the negative impact of energy taxes on employment.

Previous posts on the Green New Deal are here and here.