I have just been alerted to new papers at the ‘Centre for Science and Public Policy’ website:
‘Unmasking An Inconvenient Truth’ by William Kininmonth
http://ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/20070330_kininmonth.pdf (pdf, about 1Mb)
‘Human-caused Global Warming’ by Robert M. Carter
http://ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/20070330_carter.pdf (pdf, about 1MB)
Europe and the UK have committed to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases by 60 percent by 2050 and the Australian Labor party has now followed suit.
Labor spokesperson for the environment, Peter Garrett, writing for Ninemsn.com.au, claims:
“There is a national consensus developing. Mums and Dads, farmers, business people, scientists, religious leaders and working people are coming to agreement on some broad principles we can adopt to address and deal with dangerous climate change.
These include: setting targets to reduce our greenhouse gas pollution — just like the UK, European Union and many US States have done; creating a carbon emissions trading scheme so business and farmers can take the opportunities such an agreement would give them; ratifying the Kyoto Protocol and joining the 166 other counties who are signatories; and finally, increasing our Mandatory Renewable Energy Target, so we can produce more energy from renewable sources.
That’s why Federal Labor has committed to ratifying the Kyoto Protocol, substantially increasing our Mandatory Renewable Energy Target, cutting our carbon emissions by 60 per cent by 2050 and establishing a carbon emissions trading scheme.” [end of quote]
All of this at a time when the British government is admitting it will fail to meet its target, set before the 1997 general election, of cutting CO2 emissions by 20% between 1990 and 2010. The UK’s carbon emissions rose by 1.25% last year, but overall the general trend is still down with total greenhouse emissions equivalent to 658.10 million tonnes of CO2 last year down about 15% from 775.20 million tonnes in 1990.
from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6506223.stm#backup
So how has the UK managed to get its emissions down? And should Labor win the federal election in Australia later this year, what is Peter Garrett really planning?
“In the past 2 weeks there has been considerable press about a forthcoming article in the journal Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology. This article ‘New Analysis of a Rat Feeding Study with a Genetically Modified Maize Reveals Signs of Hepatorenal Toxicity’ by Gilles-Eric Séralini, Dominique Cellier and Joël Spiroux de Vendomois, purports to show that a genetically-modified corn causes damaged to the livers and kidneys of rats and hence is likely to be dangerous to humans…
Read the full blog post entitled ‘Lies, damn lies and statistics’ over at GMO Pundit: http://gmopundit.blogspot.com/2007/03/lies-damn-lies-and-statistics.html
And there is more information in an earlier blog post entitled ‘WA Ag Minister Kim Chance wrong on GM food safety concerns’ also at GMO Pundit including comment that:
“Quite aside from the statistical procedure used it was found that the adverse toxicology results that they reported occurred only when 11% GM maize was fed – they did not occur when 33% maize was fed. This lack of a dose response alone should have alerted them to the fact that their procedure might be wrong, but it did not stop them publishing without explaining the anomalies! Their publication also contained four totally incorrect statements that have since been addressed by several groups. What is quite extraordinary is that these anomalies were not picked up by the reviewers of their paper.”
So much for peer review and eating corn.
“Today the Australian Government launched a Global Initiative on Forests and Climate. This represents a material advance in the global effort to tackle climate change and protect the world’s forests, according to a media release from the office of the Australian Prime Minister.
The media release continued, “the Australian Government has committed $200 million to kickstart this world leading initiative that will reduce significantly global greenhouse gas emissions.
Almost 20 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions come from clearing the world’s forests – second only to emissions from burning fossil fuels to produce electricity, and more than all of the world’s emissions from transport.
Globally, more than 4.4 million trees are removed every day or 1.6 billion trees each year – almost 1 billion of which are not replaced. An area twice the size of Tasmania is currently cleared each year – this is the equivalent of removing around 71,000 football fields of trees every day.
If the world could halve the rate of global deforestation we could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by three billion tonnes a year – more than five times Australia’s total annual emissions and about ten times the emissions reductions that will be achieved during the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol.
Reducing deforestation, planting new forests, and investing in sustainable forest management practice are among the best ways to reduce global emissions now.
Working with both developed and developing countries the Australian Government’s $200 million investment will:
• support new forest planting;
• limit destruction of the world’s remaining forests;
• promote sustainable forest management; and
• encourage contributions from other countries.
Specific activities include:
• building developing countries’ technical capacity to assess their forest resources;
• putting in place effective regulatory and law enforcement arrangements to protect forests, including through preventing illegal logging; and
• promoting the sustainable use of forest resources and diversifying the economic base of forest-dependent communities;
Since Kyoto negotiations began more than a decade ago, Australia has consistently and strongly argued for effective international action on deforestation as an essential part of the global response to climate change.
Through this initiative we will work with like-minded countries and will be inviting nations such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Brazil, New Zealand, Japan and Indonesia to join the Initiative. We will also work with international organisations including the World Bank, and businesses, to reduce emissions from deforestation and to sustainably manage the world’s forests.
Harnessing our combined resources will make a difference for world forests and the climate.
This Initiative also builds on the almost $20 billion invested by the Australian Government for the environment over the past 11 years.
The Global Initiative on Forests and Climate delivers practical action that will substantially reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.
Facts Sheet
The Australian Government is providing $200 million for ‘Global Initiative on Forests and Climate’. This funding will be used to support projects in selected developing countries (particularly, but not exclusively, in the South-East Asia and Pacific regions) to:
• build technical capacity to assess and monitor forest resources, and to develop national forest management plans;
• put in place effective regulatory and law enforcement arrangements to protect forests, including through preventing illegal logging;
• promote the sustainable use of forest resources and diversify the economic base of forest-dependent communities;
• support practical research into the drivers of deforestation;
• encourage reforestation of degraded forest areas;
• develop and deploy the technology and systems needed to help developing countries monitor and produce robust assessments of their forest resources;
• pilot approaches to providing real financial incentives to countries and communities to encourage sustainable use of forests and reduce destruction of forests.
These projects will be developed in cooperation with regional countries and relevant international organisations including the World Bank. They will reflect the priorities of the countries concerned, while seeking to achieve the maximum possible benefit for forest management and the global climate.
In relation to the provision of incentives to developing countries for sustainable forestry practices and reducing net forest loss, we expect to explore a range of approaches that reflect the differing needs and circumstances of different countries. However, a common element of any incentives is that they will be provided only on the achievement of pre-agreed forest sustainability milestones (e.g. agreed reductions in national deforestation rates). Measurement of achievement of these milestones will be underpinned by the investment in the technology and systems to robustly monitor forest resources.
Effectively tackling the issue of global deforestation will require a huge investment from governments and businesses around the world. The Australian Government will therefore be working closely with governments and businesses from other developed countries to build support for and help in the delivery of this global initiative, so that we can harness the collective effort required.
The contributions that other countries may make will obviously be a matter for them, but we will be talking to key countries about the initiative over the next few weeks. Those discussions will also address the most effective means for countries to mutually identify areas and projects for joint activity, and how best to form clusters of partners to undertake those activities.
As a soon as we have a good initial picture of the views of key countries and others, we will decide how best to proceed with this initiative, including through engaging key Ministers from these countries.
Planning and delivery of the Initiative in Australia will involve a whole of government effort, including through the Environment, Foreign Affairs (including AusAID) and Forestry Departments.” [End of media release.]
I was fascinated by some of the issues raised and explanations given by Arnost, posted here as a comment late last night in response to a comment from Paul Biggs:
“Hi Paul,
Kudos to you for asking great questions and especially questions that risk undermining your position: I may not be a “solarphile” but by the same token I also believe that there is “something” that we as yet don’t understand which has a significant role to play in the case against CO2.
Food for thought…
Fact: CO2 tends to mix quickly into the atmosphere.
Fact: Anthropogenic CO2 emissions have historically increased at a (relatively) steady rate (in line with population growth).
So when we look at the direct measurements of CO2 at Mauna Loa or at the South Pole we should not expect to see any major spikes and troughs. And in fact we don’t.
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/graphics/mlo145e_thrudc04.pdf
But we should expect step increases if there are additional, non anthropogenic emissions. When there are serious volcanic events such as those listed in the following link – we would expect a step increase in CO2 levels ON TOP of the anthropogenic emissions.
http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/largeeruptions.cfm
We would expect that there be steps corresponding to other natural events like the fires in Indonesia or even the bushfires we had in Victoria early this summer where 100’s of thousands of square km of vegetation was converted into CO2. The list goes on…
We would logically also expect step increases corresponding to Man’s folly such as the burning of the oilfields in the first Gulf War.
Yet, these don’t appear in the record.
So, the inevitable conclusion must be that there HAS to be a signal that overrides this.
Fact: Atmospheric temperatures have increased and the correlated assumption: ocean temperatures have therefore increased proportionally.
Fact: As water heats up, it has less capacity to carry CO2.
Fact: The key CO2 sampling stations are at Mauna Loa (in the middle of the Pacific), and at the South Pole (in a biologically sterile environment that is surrounded by ocean).
Inductive conclusion: The reason that the CO2 measurements don’t exhibit expected “steps” is that what actually is measured is the release of CO2 from the ocean AND that this release of CO2 from the ocean is a stronger signal that masks the other, anthropogenic/natural fluctuations.
Note: Cape Grim is at the northwest point of Tasmania and with the prevailing weather being from the west, really only measures the CO2 from the Southern Ocean atmosphere.
A bit about statistics:
The principal use of statistics is to identify trends and correlations from a “sample” of one or more (incomplete) data sets. It is perfectly acceptable, or even obligatory to exclude outliers from a sample so that any derived trends are not (potentially) distorted.
On this basis, it is perfectly acceptable to discard the data as per Beck as contaminated and unrepresentative.
Unfortunately, science is not statistics.
In fact science is the antithesis of statistics. It is perfectly acceptable in statistics to exclude the observed relativistic perturbations of Mercury’s orbit (using SJT’s favourite example) from an estimation of (not theory of) the force of gravity.
In science this is not the case. It is in the method of science to either show that the observation is flawed or to account for the observation as “data” – and you can never arbitrarily “discard” inconvenient “data”.
So we come to Beck.
I would suggest that nobody disputes the CO2 measurements reported as per Beck’s analysis. What is in dispute is whether these are “representative”.
What Beck does is to bring to light the fact that a “uniform” increase in anthropogenic CO2 emissions does not exit. And if you think about this – this is a rational proposition. Given that the Mauna Loa/South Pole observational data shows “uniformity” this means that there HAS to be some other and stronger signal that masks the non-uniform anthropogenic (and natural) increase in CO2 emissions.
Now to Glassman as per the other thread.
In view of the above, his [Glassman’s] argument has merit. In a cooler environment, CO2 saturated surface water is naturally sub-ducted into deeper and even colder layers which can cope with more CO2 (via the oceans “conveyor belt”), and then brought back to a surface environment (where the water is warmer than that originally sub-ducted). Since in a warmer environment, and this surface is already saturated with CO2 (and therefore can’t hold any more CO2), this will result in a degassing i.e. release of CO2 into the atmosphere.
Given the above, it is plausible that as the water warms and as it gets CO2 rich, water from below the ensuing CO2 degassing is potentially in excess of any anthropogenic/natural emission. This therefore masks the anthropogenic/natural emission signal as measured at Mauna Loa/South Pole.
Given the length of time that the oceanic conveyor belt can take to do the circle, this is also a great explanation for carbon dioxide lagging temperature in the ice core data.
There is a big question that needs to be resolved however: Is the ocean already saturated with CO2 throughout the entire water column and in equilibrium?
If it is, then the CO2 in the surface water can not “sink” with it.
As I said, this is food for thought, I am not going to make any further conclusions/guesses at this point.
It’s too late… readers can extrapolate on this and make their own.
Cheers, Arnost
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** There has been minor editing of the orginal text/comment to make it hopefully easier to read.
Meteorologists know a lot about climate, or at least they should. But are they the best group to be promoting policy responses to say ‘climate change’? Once upon a time scientists mostly just provided quality information, and then those with, for example, expertise in economics, looked for best potential policy solutions?
Anyway, I have just received** this information from the American Meteorological Society explaining that they more-or-less have the science of climate change sorted, and now want to mediate a very open and very public discussion on potential policy responses:
“The American Meteorological Society, the nation’s leading professional society for those in the atmospheric and related sciences, recently launched a new weblog (blog) to address the challenging policy issues related to climate change. The goal is to help decision makers at all levels make sound policy based on the
best available information.”
“From a policy standpoint, the important scientific questions about human caused climate change are largely settled. Society faces serious risks and complex choices about how to handle them. We need to confront the most contentious policy issues as openly and straightforwardly as possible. That way we may be able to overcome
the stumbling blocks that keep preventing us from dealing with climate change. AMS wants to help by making sure that it is knowledge and understanding that drive our policy choices.
“ClimatePolicy.org will encourage exchanges among experts, policy-makers, journalists, and the broader society. The blog will build on the knowledge of some of the world’s leading climate experts who come from the United States’ most renowned institutions. The core contributors include Joe Aldy (Resources for the Future), Scott Barrett (Johns Hopkins University), Dan Kammen (University of California, Berkeley), Mike MacCracken (Climate Institute), Mike Mastrandrea (Stanford University), and Michael Oppenheimer (Princeton University). With this broad range of expertise, ClimatePolicy.org will explore and analyze society’s options for reducing climate risks while also increasing economic opportunities and incorporating ethical values. These expert contributors, along with reader input from around the world, will help encourage a full assessment of potential responses to the threats posed by climate change.” [End of quote]
As I see it there are two options: mitigation and/or adaptation.
In order to mitigate, countries like Australia are looking at reducing emissions through the introduction of carbon trading or alternatively a carbon tax. There is always the option to do nothing, what a friend described to me the other day as “the third way”.
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** Information received via David, thanks.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.
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