Paul

Climate change ‘a bigger threat than terrorism’

CLIMATE change, not terrorism, will be the main security issue of the century, with potential to cause death and destruction on an unprecedented scale, Australia’s top policeman believes.

In a surprise foray into the politics of global warming, Australian Federal Police commissioner Mick Keelty described how climate refugees “in their millions” could create a national security emergency for Australia.

His provocative comments, made in a speech in Adelaide last night, are likely to be diplomatically sensitive after he described a scenario in which China was unable to feed its vast population.

Law enforcement agencies would struggle to cope with global warming’s “potential to wreak havoc, cause more deaths and pose national security issues like we’ve never seen before”, Mr Keelty said.

“It is anticipated the world will experience severe extremes in weather patterns, from rising global temperatures to rising sea levels,” he warned.

“We could see a catastrophic decline in the availability of fresh water. Crops could fail, disease could be rampant and flooding might be so frequent that people, en masse, would be on the move.

“Even if only some and not all of this occurs, climate change is going to be the security issue of the 21st century.”

Read more.

The Associated Press article ‘Rising Seas Likely to Flood U.S. History’ is criticised here.

The article begins:

Ultimately, rising seas will likely swamp the first American settlement in Jamestown, Va., as well as the Florida launch pad that sent the first American into orbit, many climate scientists are predicting.
In about a century, some of the places that make America what it is may be slowly erased.

Global warming—through a combination of melting glaciers, disappearing ice sheets and warmer waters expanding—is expected to cause oceans to rise by one meter, or about 39 inches. It will happen regardless of any future actions to curb greenhouse gases, several leading scientists say. And it will reshape the nation.

Rising waters will lap at the foundations of old money Wall Street and the new money towers of Silicon Valley. They will swamp the locations of big city airports and major interstate highways.

Storm surges worsened by sea level rise will flood the waterfront getaways of rich politicians—the Bushes’ Kennebunkport and John Edwards’ place on the Outer Banks. And gone will be many of the beaches in Texas and Florida favored by budget-conscious students on Spring Break.

That’s the troubling outlook projected by coastal maps reviewed by The Associated Press. The maps, created by scientists at the University of Arizona, are based on data from the U.S. Geological Survey.

Few of the more than two dozen climate experts interviewed disagree with the one-meter projection. Some believe it could happen in 50 years, others say 100, and still others say 150.

Sea level rise is “the thing that I’m most concerned about as a scientist,” says Benjamin Santer, a climate physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

“We’re going to get a meter and there’s nothing we can do about it,” said University of Victoria climatologist Andrew Weaver, a lead author of the February report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in Paris. “It’s going to happen no matter what—the question is when.”

Sea level rise “has consequences about where people live and what they care about,” said Donald Boesch, a University of Maryland scientist who has studied the issue. “We’re going to be into this big national debate about what we protect and at what cost.”

Critics included John Christy:

Alabama State Climatologist Dr. John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, stated that the AP mischaracterized his views on sea level in the article promoting climate fears a hundred years from now.

“[My] discussion [with the AP reporter Seth Borenstein] was primarily about the storm surges which come from hurricanes – that’s the real vulnerability. The sea level is rising around 1 inch per decade, but sea level is like any other climate parameter – its either rising or falling all the time. To me, 16 inches per century is not a significant problem to deal with. But since storm surges of 15 to 30 feet occur in 6 hours, any preventive strategy, like an extra 3 feet of elevation, would be helpful,” Christy wrote to the Inhofe EPW Press blog.

“Thinking that legislation can change sea level is hubris. I did a calculation on what 1000 new nuclear power plants operating by 2020 would do for the IPCC best guess in the year 2100. The answer is 1.4 cm – about half an inch (if you accept the IPCC projection A1B for the base case.) Also, there doesn’t seem to be any acceleration of the slow trend,” Christy explained.

Science magazine 21st September:

Extracts from: Panel Gives U.S. Program Mixed Grades

An expert panel says the Bush Administration deserves “a pat on the back” for advancing the science of climate change. But the scientists assembled by the National Academies’ National Research Council (NRC) have serious concerns about the management, funding, and emphasis of the $1.7-billion-a-year Climate Change Science Program (CCSP). President George H. W. Bush created the U.S. Global Change Research Program in 1990 to bring under one umbrella the government’s efforts to understand climate change. In 2002, his son reshuffled the climate deck to create CCSP. Last week, the NRC panel took the first outside look at that program and concluded, says chair V. Ramanathan, an atmospheric scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California, that its efforts to understand how and why climate has changed and to make predictions are “proceeding well.”

Ramanathan says he’s troubled by the program’s limited success in “assessing [climate change] impacts on human well-being and adaptation capacities.” Those assessments would require reliable forecasts of climate change at the regional if not the local level, Ramanathan notes, a capability the world’s climate modelers are still struggling with. But gauging impacts on humans and figuring out how humans might adapt to climate change will take far more than the $20 million per year now spent within the program on social science studies, the committee said. It will also take better communication between the program and business interests, other agencies, and the general public. For starters, 21 synthesis and assessment reports were due from CCSP by now, but only two have been delivered.

One can tell – with a high degree of confidence – what topics are expected to be raised here, this morning when it comes to discussing the key challenges of today’s world. The selection of the moderator and my fellow-panelists only confirms it. I guess it is either international terrorism or poverty in Africa. Talking about both of these topics is necessary because they are real dangers but it is relatively easy to talk about them because it is politically correct. I do see those dangers and do not in any way underestimate them. I do, however, see another major threat which deserves our attention – and I am afraid it does not get sufficient attention because to discuss it is politically incorrect these days.

The threat I have in mind is the irrationality with which the world has accepted the climate change (or global warming) as a real danger to the future of mankind and the irrationality of suggested and partly already implemented measures because they will fatally endanger our freedom and prosperity, the two goals we consider – I do believe – our priorities.

We have to face many prejudices and misunderstandings in this respect. The climate change debate is basically not about science; it is about ideology. It is not about global temperature; it is about the concept of human society. It is not about nature or scientific ecology; it is about environmentalism, about one – recently born – dirigistic and collectivistic ideology, which goes against freedom and free markets.

I spent most of my life in a communist society which makes me particularly sensitive to the dangers, traps and pitfalls connected with it. Several points have to be clarified to make the discussion easier:

1. Contrary to the currently prevailing views promoted by global warming alarmists, Al Gore’s preaching, the IPCC, or the Stern Report, the increase in global temperatures in the last years, decades and centuries has been very small and because of its size practically negligible in its actual impact upon human beings and their activities. (The difference of temperatures between Prague where I was yesterday and Cernobbio where I am now is larger than the expected increase in global temperatures in the next century.)

2. As I said, the empirical evidence is not alarming. The arguments of global warming alarmists rely exclusively upon forecasts, not upon past experience. Their forecasts originate in experimental simulations of very complicated forecasting models that have not been found very reliable when explaining past developments.

3. It is, of course, not only about ideology. The problem has its important scientific aspect but it should be stressed that the scientific dispute about the causes of recent climate changes continues. The attempt to proclaim a scientific consensus on this issue is a tragic mistake, because there is none.

4. We are rational and responsible people and have to act when necessary. But we know that a rational response to any danger depends on the size and probability of the eventual risk and on the magnitude of the costs of its avoidance. As a responsible politician, as an academic economist, as an author of a book about the economics of climate change, I feel obliged to say that – based on our current knowledge – the risk is too small and the costs of eliminating it too high. The application of the so called “precautionary principle,” advocated by the environmentalists, is – conceptually – a wrong strategy.

5. The deindustrialization and similar restrictive policies will be of no help. Instead of blocking economic growth, the increase of wealth all over the world and fast technical progress – all connected with freedom and free markets – we should leave them to proceed unhampered. They represent the solution to any eventual climate changes, not their cause. We should promote adaptation, modernization, technical progress. We should trust in the rationality of free people.

6. It has a very important North-South and West-East dimension. The developed countries do not have the right to impose any additional burden on the less developed countries. Imposing overambitious and – for such countries – economically disastrous environmental standards on them is unfair.

No radical measures are necessary. We need something “quite normal.” We have to get rid of the one-sided monopoly, both in the field of climatology and in the public debate. We have to listen to arguments. We have to forget fashionable political correctness. We should provide the same or comparable financial backing to those scientists who do not accept the global warming alarmism.

I really do see environmentalism as a threat to our freedom and prosperity. I see it as “the world key current challenge.”

www.klaus.cz

An Inconvenient Truth or a convenient teaching aid?Readers may recall that the then Education Secretary Alan Johnson, and then Environment Secretary David Milliband sent a DVD of Al Gores film ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ to all secondary schools in England as part of the ‘sustainable schools’ programme (Newsletter 13th April). The government, enthusiastically endorsing the view that the debate over the science of climate change was over, saw this as a good way of getting the message over to the next generation.

But not everyone agrees. Thursday’s Daily Telegraph carries a report of a legal challenge by one parent and school governor: Stewart Dimmock, who has two children at a school in Dover . He is asking for a judicial review of the government’s action. With Mr Milliband now having moved on to higher things, the challenge is actually to Ed Balls, the current Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families. On 27th, there will be an oral hearing. If successful, Mr Dimmock’s case will be heard and a decision made by the judge.

The challenge is based on a provision in the 1996 Education Act requiring that local education authorities, school governors and head teachers ‘shall forbid… the promotion of partisan political views in the teaching of any subject in the school’. If material of a political nature is presented to children, then the same parties have an obligation to take ‘such steps as are reasonably practicable to secure that…they are offered a balanced presentation of opposing views’.

The success or failure of this challenge rests, therefore, on two decisions: whether or not ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ does indeed represent a partisan view and, if so, whether sufficient balance is being provided when it is shown to children. In practical terms, it is the first decision which is more important. If a judge rules that the film is indeed partisan and unbalanced, then this would be both highly embarrassing for the government and should give politicians both here and in other countries pause for thought about how certain the science espoused by the IPCC truly is.

It is interesting to contrast the reception given to Al Gore’s polemic and the Channel 4 documentary ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’. The latter came in for virulent criticism both for the science on which it was based and its presentation. With such a challenging title, it was bound to court controversy, and some of the criticism was indeed justified. However, it presented a point of view, rather than putting forward incontestable truth. If balance is needed, perhaps the answer is to show both programmes and then debate the points raised.

‘An Inconvenient Truth’ on the other hand, not only received a rapturous reception (including an Oscar for Gore himself) but valid criticisms have been brushed aside. More worrying than any factual errors is the exaggeration and use of emotional imagery to ram home the points. A viewer is left with the misleading impression that a large rise in sea level is likely to cause major coastal flooding this century, at a time when the IPCC is actually reducing its forecasts, and also that polar bears are immediately threatened, whereas most colonies are thriving. That doesn’t strike us as a balanced view, and it will be interesting to see if the judge next week is of the same opinion.

Environmental costs and benefits
This week, a new report by John Llewellyn of Lehman Brothers has been published. Entitled ‘The Business of Climate Change II’, it is a follow up to one published in February. In it, Llewellyn estimates the effective cost of carbon implicit in some of the policy choices made by government, and some may be surprised by his findings. His argument is that a proper macroeconomic analysis would show that some initiatives simply are not cost-effective.

The headline figure is for photovoltaics, or solar power. Because the equipment is so expensive and the output so low, the effective cost of carbon (borne to a very large extent by the taxpayer via government subsidies) is $6,300 per tonne. This compares to a current market price of around $70 per tonne in the European carbon trading system. Germany is sometimes held up as an example to follow because of the relatively high penetration of solar cells, but this is simply because the government is prepared to put in far more subsidies than other countries. Whether German taxpayers would agree if they knew the full picture is a moot point.

But ultimately, the wisdom of going down this route has to be questioned when there are much more cost effective alternatives available. They may not be as sexy, but low energy light bulbs can reduce carbon emissions at a cost of only $10 per tonne. In the meantime, European governments continue to push ahead with other more expensive options. Offshore wind comes in at a relatively reasonable (but still uneconomic) $150 per tonne, but the estimate of the implicit cost of carbon to meet the EU’s new car emission targets is $700-$2,300 per tonne.

The message from governments seems to be to reduce carbon at any price. This is both wasteful and foolish. New technologies need to be nurtured until they become economic, but actively commercialising them at taxpayers’ expense is surely not sensible when more cost-effective alternatives are available.

Electric cars
Much is heard from time to time about electric cars. On the face of it, they sound ideal: clean, silent and not a whiff of CO2 emitted. But the reality is somewhat different. Despite continued improvements in battery technology, any practical car developed so far can travel only a very limited distance before needing recharging. This may be OK for cities if there are sufficient charging points available, but would be no good for longer journeys. Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see what the motor industry comes up with and whether all-electric cars will become competitive with internal combustion or hybrid vehicles.

A more important point, though, if electric cars really do take off, is the source of the power and the overall efficiency of the whole system. Petrol engines are not particularly thermally efficient (less than 30%), while diesels may typically achieve over 50% efficiency. But coal-fired power stations operate typically at about 37% efficiency, and gas ones at up to 45%. In both cases, transmission losses to the consumer are estimated at 7.7%. The electric motors which drive the cars themselves are over 90% efficient, so the power losses at this stage are relatively small. On the face of it, generating electricity and distributing it to cars gives a similar overall efficiency to the petrol engine, but is beaten by diesels.

So, a move to electric cars would make little difference to overall energy use and, if fossil fuels are used to generate power, pretty much the same carbon emissions would result. Adding extra renewable generating capacity to power the cars would be both more expensive and give only an intermittent supply: perfect for those whose cars only need recharging when it’s sunny or windy. The only reliable answer would be additional nuclear capacity. For any country which seriously wants to reduce carbon emissions, this is surely the only way forward.

Electric cars, as any supposed panacea, need to be looked at more carefully before we rush to judgement. And, of course, if they are successful, they do nothing to ease congestion, but would be exempt from congestion charges. An interesting conundrum…

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