Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Archives for March 2008

‘Plantstones’ Could Allow Farmers to Claim Carbon Credits

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Grasses such as wheat and sorghum can store large amounts of carbon in microscopic balls of silica, called phytoliths. Phytoliths, also known as plantstones or plant opals, are formed in and around the cell wall of many plant species replicating the cell wall shape and encapsulating the inner organic content. These silica bodies are deposited into the soil when a plant dies and are highly resistant to decomposition.

Southern Cross University researchers recently completed field trials that reveal cane can retain three-quarters of a tonne of carbon dioxide equivalents per hectare in the soil each year, and will continue to do so for thousands of years. Cane farmers may therefore be able to cash in on carbon credits because of their crop’s new-found ability to lock away large amounts of carbon.

“This could be worth millions to the sugar industry and all grass-growing industries,” said researcher Jeff Parr of Southern Cross University.

Draft rules for a national emissions trading scheme are being discussed with a view to being implemented by 2010, but the rules regarding global emissions trading don’t yet fully factor in agriculture, or any role it may have in carbon sequestration.

Read more:

Landline: Calculating Carbon

Cairns.com.au:Carbon credit option for cane farmers

Sydney Morning Herald: Grass could help save the world

Thanks to Gavin for his note about plantstones.

Climate Change Conference, New York – Day 2, In Review

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The 500-strong contingent of skeptics currently in New York for The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change were up early to hear Robert Balling and Ross McKitrick speak at breakfast.

A key message from the address by Professor Balling was that there are a lot of non-greenhouse signals that can impact climate including sulphates, dust, ozone, biomass burning and land use change. Given even the IPCC agrees that we have a poor understanding of the impact of these different variables on climate – how can the debate be over? The Professor concluded with the Thomas Huxley quote, “Skepticism is the highest of duties, blind faith the one unpardonable sin”.

Ross McKitrick gave a very different type of address getting into the detail of the recent temperature record – how it is measured and how there is a large population effect on the US temperature data which accounts for about half the observed warming since 1980. Dr McKitrick went into the detail of the statistic analysis and his arguments with the IPCC and scientists at Realclimate.

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Ross McKitrick speaking to the title ‘Quantifying the Influence of Anthropogenic Surface Processes on Gridded Global Climate Data’, 7am Breakfast Session

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Bob Carter amongst the crowd who woke early to hear Dr McKitrick

Following the breakfast we had a choice of 6 different tracks on either paleoclimatology, climatology, impacts, economics, politics or movies. I spent most of the day in the ‘impacts’ track and thoroughly enjoyed myself.

I even got to meet polar bear expert Mitch Taylor. He followed a presentation by entomologist Paul Reiter which emphasised malaria is not historically a tropical disease with outbreaks in the England, Sweden and Finland before the advent of DDT. Dr Reiter also made the point that Al Gore was completely wrong in his documentary to suggest that Nairobi did not have a history of malaria outbreaks – in fact here were five major epidemics to the 1950s.

Of course the best photographs for the day were from Mitch Taylor who told us about his field work in the Arctic counting polar bears – or more correctly field sampling using mark-recapture techniques. Dr Taylor said that these demographic studies indicated at least two subpopulations of polar bears in the Artic had a constant population size, that two were increasing in number and that two were in decline – one of these from over hunting and the Churchill subpopulation from climate change in particular a reduction in the amount of sea ice. Accepting the climate models Dr Taylor indicated that bear numbers could decline across the Artic from present numbers of about 24,500 to around 17,000 over the next 100 years.

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Jennifer Marohasy and Mitch Taylor, Marriott Hotel, March 3, 2008 International Climate Change Conference

My colleague Alan Moran told me that the best speakers of the day were Tim Ball and Fred Singer at lunch, but still slightly jet lagged and still recovering from a breakfast of scrambled egg, hash-browns, spinach, bacon, fried tomato and a bit more I decided to sleep through lunch. I also missed Dr Moran’s presentation as it clashed with Dr Taylor’s.

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Denis Avery giving a television interview.

I did wake up in time to hear William Briggs who gave a fascinating insight into the worldwide hurricane data concluding there is no discernable increase in either number or intensity. This conclusions was supported by Stan Goldenberg from NOAA who emphasised the importance of understanding how hurricane data has been collected historically in his presentation which included photographs taken inside the eye of hurricanes from flights within NOAA’s Hurricane Hunters – WP-3D Turbo Prop Aircraft.

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Leon Ashby, South Australian landholder and director of the Australian Environment Foundation, films conference proceedings.

I sat in on one of the economics sessions and the talk by Michael Economides, University of Houston, focused on our past, present and likely future dependence on oil and gas explaining that these hydrocarbons account for 87 percent of the world’s energy needs and suggesting that there was no alternative to hydrocarbon energy in the immediate future with wind and solar only likely to ever meet half of 1 percent of our energy needs over the next century. This presentation, in which the professor explained he considered AGW “unadulterated nonsense” contrasted sharply with the presentation from Benny Peiser. Dr Peiser spoke at the last session for the day in the impacts track asking the question “What if Al Gore is right?” He put it to the audience that the current response from the world’s skeptics was not reassuring to the public or politicians and that given our “cultural baggage” people had reason to fear climate change. Dr Peiser, like the other speaker in this session, Dr Stan Goldberg from NOAA, suggested regardless of the cause of climate change we should prepare for it.

Dr Peiser acknowledged government across the world had no real solution to rising emission levels but that solutions would come through geoengineering. In contrast to Professor Economides, Dr Peiser suggested the world might one day be run on solar energy and that within a 100 or so years we would know how to make it rain.

With the conference over for the day, my colleague Alan Moran and I decided on a brisk walk through Central Park before a wine and meal at Morrell’s in Rockefellar Plaza.

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A racoon in Central Park. March 3, 2008

Another great day thanks to conference organisers The Heartland Institute.

More tomorrow.

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And you can read about yesterday here: https://jennifermarohasy.com.dev.internet-thinking.com.au/blog/archives/002809.html

Economic Implications of Climate Change Measures: Alan Moran

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A matter that has received less attention than it should is what are the energy consumption and cost implications of the measures proposed to abate carbon dioxide and what would be the economic consequences of success in this.

There are many emission abatement goals that have been floated. Perhaps the two most conservative are an emission stabilisation goal and a 20 per cent reduction goal. In Australia and England the respective Garnaut and Stern reports have envisaged much deeper cuts than these.

The first chart show business-as-usual – with emissions in 2030 projected forward at the 1990-2004 rates of 1.3 per cent for the OECD and 5.7 per cent for the developing countries; the former Soviet bloc is held constant. This shows emissions at an aggregate 43 billion tonnes, almost 50 per cent higher than 2004.

Chart 1

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Even though emissions in the developing world probably overtook those of the OECD in 2007, their per capita emissions were very much lower 2.4 tonnes compared with 11.5 tonnes (with the former CPEs at 7.9 tonnes). Notwithstanding the fast growth of the developing country emissions in business-as-usual 2030 they remain little more than a quarter of those of the OECD.

If now we were to call for a 20 per cent reduction on 2004 levels and apportion that equally in per capita terms, the outcome is a standard 2.5 tonnes per capita. For the OECD countries this is a dramatic reduction. The OECD’s aggregate 16 billion tonnes under BaU (12 tonnes per capita) becomes 3.3 billion tonnes. Developing countries, though above their 2004 levels are well below their BAU on a per capita basis, as are the former soviet bloc countries. Chart 2 illustrates this.

Chart 2

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The most recent Australian report on the emission control measures, by Professor Garnaut, acknowledges that the easy gains in emission reductions have been made, especially with the dismantling of the command economies of the Soviet bloc and China. Those countries’ CO2 intensities have now stopped falling, in fact are rising. Indeed, China has already surpassed the magic 4 tonnes per capita which would be the level required for stabilisation of emissions and has only pulled a fifth of its population out of poverty.

Mr Garnaut suggests that Indonesia and PNG could become vast sinks to offset other countries’ emission levels. This is a pipe dream. It may allow for a windfall gain for the two economies but there are not enough trees for this to offer anything but a pinprick.

Ominously, Garnaut hints strongly about the necessity of trade pressures on developing countries to reinforce their sense of public spirit. That in itself would destroy the world trading regime and retard all countries’ living standards. And, the process is already underway with the EU negotiations of bilateral “Free Trade Agreements” with developing countries. As Rasheed Sally points out, “The EU is also increasingly interested in linking trade policy to climate change. New FTAs will likely contain trade-and-sustainable-development chapters, which could house climate-change provisions in the future.”

If targets for reduced carbon dioxide emissions could be met by replacing baseload power stations with nuclear power, the cost increases for most countries would be relatively small. For countries like Australia, where coal is cheap and massively abundant, a premium on existing prices of perhaps 30-40 per cent would be expected. Many European countries would face no cost increases since nuclear is already the cheapest option.

However, several of these countries have already gone a good way to a nuclear power based electricity industry. And this illustrates the difficulties in making the required level of cuts. Even France with over 70 per cent nuclear emits 6 tonnes per capita. France is therefore way above the magical 2.5 tonnes of CO2 per capita and has already used up its scope to make the cuts by substituting out of carboniferous fuels.

And France, like many other European economies has outsourced many of its energy intensive industries like smelting to areas like Eastern Europe and the Gulf where energy is cheap but greenhouse emissions are no less than if the production was left at home.

Chart 3 Emissions and GDP per Capita

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The impossibility of meeting emission reductions by replacing coal with nuclear, in itself the least fearsome solution, is illustrated by the relative shares of electricity and gas in the emission profile.

All OECD countries are a bit different but the magnitudes are similar. For Australia, electricity is only 35 per cent of emissions and this starts to define the maximum that can be achieved by making the use of coal prohibitively expensive.

Chart 4

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The report to the former Australian government examined the switch to emission levels at 80 per cent of 1990 levels by 2020 . This estimated the CO2 equivalent trajectories were as follows.

Chart 5

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Noting that a 37 per cent reduction was required, it argued, “To illustrate the magnitude involved, this is equivalent to, for example, replacing Australia’s entire existing fossil fuel–fired electricity generation capacity with electricity from nuclear energy while at the same time removing all existing vehicles from our roads.”

Moreover, these measures are not taking place in a vacuum. A great many greenhouse mitigating regulatory programs are in place even in those Kyoto recalcitrants which used to comprise Australia as well as the US. For Australia:
• There is a vast number of subsidies for emission management renewable energy technology and installations,
• We have regulatory impositions on electrical equipment and most importantly on new houses which have to meet a “5 Star” energy efficiency standard; this is a convenient means by which those that presently have their own homes can shift costs onto those looking to buy them and salve their consciences without incurring any expense – indeed profiting since the higher costs of new houses is automatically transmitted to the value of the existing stock,
• There are obligations on electricity retailers to use a specific and growing share of renewables in their mix of energy sources. These renewables, as well as requiring costly additional management expenditures to deal with their intermittency, are about twice the cost of conventional coal fired electricity. By 2020, 20 per cent of electricity is to be from renewables, less than 6 per cent of which will come from commercially viable hydro sources.

These existing measures are the equivalent of a tax on stationary sources of electricity of about $10 per tonne, or 30 per cent of the ex-generator cost.

A carbon tax or auction of permits would come in over and above this. Early work on the level of such a tax that would be required put the level on $10. That is a distant dream. Stern put the number at US$100 but also had a lot of persuasion and education to assist – calling upon what the economist Lionel Robbins famously referred to as “that very scarce commodity, human love”. And by bending the rules of finance and allocating very low discount rates to the net present value estimates of costs, he managed to argue that the costs would be minor and swamped by the benefits.

Energy costs have already risen strongly in OECD countries in the light of self-inflicted measures to reduce CO2 emissions. To do the task that is sought by those promoting the notion that catastrophic human induced global warming will take place in the absence of rigorous control measures will result in massive industrial disruption and loss of income as investment is diverted to energy resources that offer poor productivity and as industries and consumers reduce and restructure their demand.

The emission reductions required are much greater than the previously horrific calls like 20 per cent below 1990. For OECD countries, we are talking about emission levels of a quarter and less of current levels. Moreover, none of this will do very much for emission controls if Developing Countries are not also forced into making emission reductions or holding them at current levels. In the absence of this we would see emissions of developed countries being largely transferred to developing countries and the emission intensive goods being imported.

To combat this requires a comprehensive new form of currency in the form of carbon ratings. All goods would need to be rated and their producers would be required to demonstrate the required credits. In the case of imports that did not meet these stipulations, the importer would be required to meet the deficit. Pretty soon we would see a world trading economy unrecognisable from that we now have.

At the very least this will create tensions as developing countries will maintain that they are being denied the opportunity to reach the levels of economic wellbeing that the OECD countries have achieved.

In addition, developed countries themselves, aside from denying themselves cheaper goods from the third world, will be incurring inefficient expenditures on investments in green energy (an especially favoured approach by the two Democrat candidates for the US Presidency). This reduces the overall productivity of investment thereby reducing income levels over and above the transitional costs incurred in economic reconstruction.

This is a copy of the address by Alan Moran, Institute of Public Affairs,
to the The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change , New York, March 3, 2008

Certified Tasmanian Seafood or Not: A Note from Jane Rankin-Reid

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“Fishermen are worried a certification row will confuse consumers, says Jane Rankin-Reid in Saturday’s Mercury newspaper.

Fishermen are unhappy with radio advertisements sponsored by the Marine Stewardship Council promoting their March 2nd “Sustainable Seafood Day”. “Buy only sustainable seafood products branded with the MSC gold label”, the advertisement urges listeners.

“We haven’t been advised of Sustainable Seafood day”, snorts Rodney Treloggen, CEO of the Tasmanian Rock Lobster Fisherman’s Association. “This aggressive campaign is really only about internal certification industry rivalry. Its very bad for the local fishing industry to send false messages to consumers when we’re working so hard to protect our fish stocks and have achieved so much in this region.” Many Tasmanian Rock Lobster Fisherman’s Association members has undertaken a voluntary industry initiated program, the award winning, Clean Green, MSC’s main Australian rival, which also runs best practice environmental and fishery stock management awareness courses for local fishermen. “We’ve yet to see the market need to sign up for MSC’s certification program” says Treloggen. It’s very expensive at $200,000 per fishery. I’m not sure of the benefits to Tasmania, given the success of our own sustainability initiatives.” All exporting Australian fisheries must be certified with the Federal Environmental Protection Biodiversity and Conservation Act. “We must be certified every 5 years and if we don’t get it, we’re can’t export. It’s more far reaching than MSC certification”, says Treloggen.

The Marine Stewardship Council is a prominent UK charitable foundation, sponsored by leading British supermarket chains, Tescos, Marks and Spencers, Whole Foods Market Inc and multinational food corporation Unilever, Europe’s largest seafood importer. Seafood sustainability certification has become big business in Europe with consumers increasingly urged to shop with their consciences. But MSC’s certification outreach has had little impact in Australia to date with only two regional fishing bodies, the West Australian Rock Lobster and the Australian Mackerel Icefish (Heard and MacDonald Islands) fisheries signed on to its program.

The MSC’s fifteen month certification process is “onerous”, according to West Australian Fishing Industry Council CEO Guy Leyland, but worth it for Australian fisheries aiming to sell in US and UK retail markets where consumers are increasingly demanding independent third party sustainability certification for their seafood products. Although West Australian rock lobster is the only Australian fishery certified in WAFIC’s catchment to date, very few if any of its MSC gold labeled products are actually available to Australian consumers. Why promote the MSC exclusive “Sustainable Seafood Day” when there are so few certified products available to Australian seafood buyers? “It’s political”, says Leyland. “It’s about creating consumer awareness so there’ll be demand for sustainability certification”.

“That’s a complete load of…”, says Treloggan. “It’s a negative scare campaign, manipulating local consumers to reject Tasmania’s award winning Clean Green standards. Why promote a consumer branding program with no products available if they’re not trying to muscle in on local certification turf and create serious doubt in Australian shoppers’ minds about the integrity of our industry?” In Britain earlier this month, another aggressive MSC sponsored sustainable seafood campaign backfired badly, when condemnation from the UK’s statuary marine agency Seafish, the Scottish Salmon Producers’ organization and rival certification body Friends of the Sea accused MSC of “confusing rather than educating consumers”, by sponsoring the World Wildlife Foundation’s “Stinky Fish” Sustainable Seafood Shopping Survey. The WWF’s online viral marketing campaign is anchored by an animated puppet, Stinky Fish who interrogates restaurant owners and fish sellers about their seafood’s sources. Launched in mid January, Stinky Fish advises seafood shoppers to only buy fish that bears the exclusive MSC gold label for sustainability fishing assurance because “everything else is stinky!” Although MSC staff initially believed Stinky Fish would raise awareness about sustainable fishing amongst a hard to reach online audience, “they did not foresee the negative reaction that the video would engender with its partners and colleagues in the seafood industry”, MSC said in a statement last week. As the charity distanced itself from the fishing furor, it advised WWF to immediately remove any reference to MSC from its website.

“Seafood Sustainability Day” is designed to raise Australian consumers’ awareness quickly”, says Duncan Ledbetter, MSC’s Asian Pacific representative. “You’ve got to remember that as much as 70% of seafood sold in Australia is imported. A lot of the fish products available in Coles and Woolies are not from sustainable fisheries, so looking for a sustainability label is a good thing”. Ledbetter insists that MSC’s radio advertising campaign doesn’t condemn non certified seafood but Australia’s fishing industry experts worry that sending confusing messages to shoppers will do far more harm than good.

from The Mercury in Tasmania, Saturday March 1, 2008

Weighing up protection – public versus environment

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The picturesque watercourse in the header on the main page of the Politics & Environment Blog, is Cooper Creek. It is a relatively short watercourse (∼8 km), running between Thornton Peak and its mouth, which drains an enormous catchment in one of the world’s highest rainfall areas.

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Over these past three days, about 250 mm of rain has fallen and as expected the causeway crossing over the Cape Tribulation Road has flooded (please excuse the blurred photo).

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This is a regular occurrence in the wet season. Two years ago, students living north of Cooper Creek were unable to access 25% of their first term, because of flooding. It is also an almost annual occurrence that a driver will unsuccessfully attempt to cross, losing their vehicle to the power of the flood and being tumbled downstream into crocodile habitat.

Invariably, the impassable floods cause stress to large numbers of travelers on unforgiving schedules. Hundreds of vehicles and pedestrians crowd either side of the water’s edge in a forlorn hope that the combined vigilance and force of will will somehow speed the recession.

Yesterday I witnessed a particularly ugly display of road rage as tensions rose, stopping just short of physical violence. Last time the causeway flooded, a frustrated traveler described the scene as a new order of official mayhem, “Working in Queensland Mental Health, I thought I knew administrative incompetence,” she remarked, “but this is in another order of ineptitude, entirely!”

So how is it that such a well-used and strategically important facet of transportation infrastructure is kept so inadequately low? Surely there is a duty of care to protect the public from such well-known vulnerabilities? Then again, there haven’t yet been any deaths; just a large number of very close calls.

In the lead-up to the Local Council elections (15th March ’08), one candidate has told of the ecological integrity of Cooper Creek as occupying the highest consideration – leaving the causeway incapable of being elevated. As absurd as this notion may sound, it was indeed the ecological values of the Cooper valley that justified unparalleled regulatory protection, under World Heritage and, downstream of the causeway, so that Queensland can compare all potential impacts on all other mangrove communities. So rigorous is this special provision that a person can be fined up to $225,000 if caught fishing, though such sensitivity would seem to fly in the face of the ecological damage of heavy machinery, recovering vehicles washed downstream.

Climate Change Conference, New York – Day 1, In Review

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I arrived in New York this morning for the first ever international meeting of ‘global warming skeptics’.

It’s actually called ‘The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change’ but many of the speakers and delegates are well known AGW skeptics and they have never gathered before in one place and time. At least certainly not the 500 or so said to be here today. [And of course none of them are skeptical of climate change – but rather the extent to which carbon dioxide drives warming.]

Perhaps appropriately for a first meeting of AGW skeptics it has been a chilly day. It has been probably close to zero outside with a blustery wind.

Indeed when I ventured out onto Broadway for brunch this morning in a warm coat I thought my ears were going to freeze off. Then I found a shop full of hats and bought something lined with fake fur – and I was slightly warmer.

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Jennifer in her new hat, Manhattan, March 2, 2008

After a long nap – I hadn’t really slept for 36 hours having missed my connecting flight from Sydney to New York in San Francisco – I registered for the conference at 5pm.

The conference is at the New York Marriott Marquis right on Broadway. I am also staying at the hotel and I think you can get everything here except a pot of tea.

Anyway, it was good to see some Australians here including my colleague Alan Moran, Bob Carter and his wife Ann, Viv Forbes, Ian McClintock, Tom Quirk – and that was just who I met this evening.

I was asked to mind a table for the Australians for dinner at the request of Viv Forbes, anyway, next thing a couple of Italians asked if they could join me and I thought what the heck, then three New Zealanders turned up and sat down, and Viv returned to find his dinner table full of ‘others’ and me – but I think he had a good night anyway.

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My colleague Alan Moran (the good looking one) with a fellow from Sweden and another from Holland at the conference reception. Manhattan, March 2, 2008.

The conference dinner was opened by Joseph Bast, President of The Heartland Institute. He began by saying that Jim Martin, Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment, recently told the Denver Post, “You could have a convention of scientists who dispute climate change in a relatively small phone booth” and went on to say that we finally hope this conference will put this misinformation to rest for good. He mentioned some of the 101 speakers from around the world joining the 400 or so delegates including skeptics from Russian, France, Canada and Australia.

Mr Bast also mentioned that Al Gore had been invited to the conference and to speak and that The Heartland Institute was prepared to pay his US$200,000 speaking fee – but he declined the invitation.

There were few formalities, no head table or pledges of allegiances. We were asked to respect diversity of opinion and the freedom to disagree.

The first speaker was a comedian Tim Slagle who was absolutely hilarious. He began by complaining that he had looked many of the delegates up at Sourcewatch before coming and was disappointed to find he was the only one not getting a million dollars from an oil company. [It was a joke, which the dinner crowd enjoyed, and by-the-way The Heartland Institute organised the conference without any money from oil or gas companies]. Most of Slagle’s jokes were so politically incorrect I shall not repeat them here and he included a plea for the legalization of cannabis and a comment that “global warming would be a God sent for Canadian citrus growers”.

The keynote speaker was Dr Patrick Michaels. He gave a really interesting address focusing on whether global temperature is still on a warming trend and what is happening at the Arctic and Antarctica concluding that the temperature trend is still one of increase – when ENSO, volcanoes, solar variability and carbon dioxide are taken into account – but that the warming is not much of a global threat. [The presentation also included a couple of good Al Gore impersonations.]

Much of the discussion that followed the key note address was around the subject of warming trends right back to the so-called Medieval Warm period and Ross McKitrick was invited to the stage to comment on the extent to which there is now a consensus regarding the last 1,000 or so years of the temperature record. For those who have read ‘Taken by Storm’ you may not be surprised to know that his answered was long and interesting.

All in all it was a great day and dinner and I would like to thank The Heartland Institute, The International Policy Network and The IPA for the opportunity to be here.

More tomorrow.

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The view from my room. Even at midday Broadway was lite up.

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From today’s New York Times:

Skeptics on Human Climate Impact Seize on Cold Spell
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Published: March 2, 2008

“The Heartland Institute, a public policy research group in Chicago opposed to regulatory approaches to environmental problems, is holding a conference in Times Square on Monday and Tuesday aimed at exploring questions about the cause and dangers of climate change.

“The event will convene an array of scientists, economists, statisticians and libertarian commentators holding a dizzying range of views on the changing climate — from those who see a human influence but think it is not dangerous, to others who say global warming is a hoax, the sun’s fault or beneficial. Many attendees say it is the dawn of a new paradigm. But many climate scientists and environmental campaigners say it is the skeptics’ last stand.

Read more in the New York Times here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/science/02cold.html?_r=2&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin

But of course don’t believe everything you read.