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The biased leading the blind Gareth Renowden Sep 25

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homer.jpgTwo of New Zealand’s most prominent climate cranks, “inexpert witness” Chris de Freitas and Bob “great communicator” Carter are no strangers to the art of misrepresenting facts in support of their peculiar political visions, but recent articles by the pair set new standards for economy with the truth. Here’s De Freitas, writing in Energy NZ:

…no one has yet found even a shred of objective scientific evidence that humans are causing damaging global climate change.

No to be outdone, in Aussie “journal of ideas” Quadrant Carter revives the oldest zombie fact of them all:

As the temperature trend for ten years now has been one of cooling, since the unusually warm El Nino year of 1998, this requires a precautionary response to cooling rather than warming.

De Freitas’ piece is — even to my jaundiced eyes — remarkable for how liberally he misleads his readers…

Fit the first:

In preparation, the Government has committed New Zealand to cut up to a third of current emissions by 2020.

The economic, social and moral implications are immense, since carbon taxes and tradable emissions alone cannot make such a massive reduction. Sweeping legislation restricting the use of oil, coal and natural gas would be required, along with far-reaching reforms in pastoral farming to cut methane release.

De Freitas is ignoring the fact that any 2020 target will be for net emissions, that is, emissions after taking into account the carbon stored away in New Zealand’s growing forests. The government is aiming to weaken the emissions trading scheme, but still apparently expects forestry to play a major role in helping NZ to meet the target. But de Freitas prefers to spin a scary fairy tale…

Second fit:

…no one has yet found even a shred of objective scientific evidence that humans are causing damaging global climate change.

Breathtaking in its ignorance. But he continues:

There are no published scientific papers that show irrefutable proof of human-caused global warming.

Oh really? Depends what you mean by irrefutable, I suppose. There’s a very large attribution literature, handily summarised in Chapter 9 (PDF) of the WG1 report in IPPC’s Fourth Report (AR4). It starts: Human-induced warming of the climate system is widespread, and references approximately 550 papers. Either de Freitas has read them all and prepared detailed rebuttals, or his refutation technique is to deny the evidence exists, or if it can’t be denied, to stick his fingers in his ears and say “la la la, can’t hear you”. Effective at playgroup level perhaps, but odd behaviour by an associate professor at the University of Auckland.

After a ritual swipe at the IPCC, he then makes the following astonishing assertion (fit the third):

It is a conveniently forgotten fact that most of the industrialised world went into hysterics during the 40 years of global cooling beginning in the late 1930s.

This is — not to put too fine a point on it — complete invention. There were a few magazine and newspaper articles about possible cooling, and at least one book, but no-one was having hysterics. Undaunted, de Freitas continues with his fictionalisation of climate history:

Fifty years ago it became clear that global carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere were increasing at a rate of about 1.8 ppmv per year. It was assumed that this was the prime contributor to an observed increase in global temperatures. On this basis, the carbon dioxide data were used in climate model projections for future global warming.

Assumed? What about the fact — understood for 150 years — that CO2 has an impact on radiation passing through the atmosphere? No assumptions required. There was sound theory supported by measurement, and to have left that out of the models would have been academic suicide.

de Freitas then trots through a few crank tropes, including the mandatory assertion of global cooling:

By 2006, despite the ongoing rise in global carbon dioxide emissions, data showed that mean global temperature rise had slowed, and currently shows signs of falling.

Now that’s he’s working up a bit of steam, he delivers this final fit:

Government decision-makers should have heard by now that the basis for the longstanding claim that carbon dioxide is a major driver of global climate is being questioned; along with it the hitherto assumed need for costly measures to restrict carbon dioxide emissions. If they have not heard, it is because of the din of global warming hysteria that relies on the logical fallacy of ‘argument from ignorance’ and predictions of computer models.

Risible. The only person arguing from ignorance is de Freitas. The “din of global warming hysteria” comes not from the real science that underpins our understanding of the problem, but from sceptics like de Freitas who have to make ever more shrill and ridiculous pronouncements to be heard.

On the other side of the Tasman, Bob Carter is the better writer, but equally ridiculous in his arguments:

…the real climatic risks faced by our societies, not least because it assumes that global warming is more dangerous, or more to be feared, than is global cooling. In reality, the converse is true.

That’s the version of reality that Bob and his crank mates occupy. It’s a strange planet, but not ours. They have odd models too…

Some computer models (General Circulation Models; deterministic) project that the global temperature in ten years time will be warmer than today’s. Other computer models (statistical; based upon projection of past climate patterns) project that global temperature will be cooler ten years hence. The reality is, therefore, that no scientist can tell you with confidence whether the temperature in 2020, let alone 2100, will be warmer or cooler than today’s.

Told you Bob’s planet was a strange place. On the one I inhabit there are plenty of people, scientists even, who would happily accept a wager that the next ten years will be warmer on average than the last ten. And I know of no credible “statistical models” that project cooling — but I do know of at least one that projects continued warming.

Bob then delivers a broadside against Australia’s planned emissions legislation, and finishes with this dramatic flourish:

If such a monstrously socially damaging and environmentally ineffectual measure as the government’s carbon dioxide taxation bill becomes law, it will stand for decades as an indictment of all the parliamentarians who voted for it.

In which event, be sure to remember their names, for nothing is more certain than that you are going to want to exercise retribution thereafter.

The names that will be remembered as the world burns will be those of the vocal minority who were willing to prostitute their academic reputations in service of delaying action. One wonders what “retribution” Carter and de Freitas will face. Opprobrium and ridicule will be the least of their worries when harsh reality intrudes on their ideology.

National’s nine ways to stuff up: Oram on climate policy in NZ Gareth Renowden Sep 21

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Rod Oram’s column in yesterday’s Sunday Star Times so perfectly captures my own feelings on the government’s proposed watering down of the emissions trading scheme that I asked Rod if he would allow me to post it here as a guest blog. I’m glad to say he agreed…

To understand how the government is destroying the Emissions Trading Scheme, it’s important to remind ourselves why we need an ETS in the first place.

Governments representing a majority of people on the planet believe climate change is happening. So they’re taking steps to reduce their nation’s emissions of greenhouse gases. Some have entered into international commitments to do so. Many more will do so in coming years.

In 1997, New Zealand committed to cut its emissions during 2008-12 to its 1990 levels. However, they are currently 24% above. So the National-led government has upped the ante with two new targets: a 10-20% reduction below 1990 levels by 2020 and a 50% reduction by 2050.

To achieve them, we need to invest heavily in new energy and carbon efficient technology for electricity generation and transport and processes in industry and agriculture. And we need to maximise the potential for our forests to act as profitable carbon sinks.

To do that we need to:

  • Put a price on emissions to incentivise change. We chose an ETS as the most effective price signal, a decision shared by virtually every other price-setting country.
  • Put in place a big set of powerful complementary measures such as financial incentives for households and businesses to adopt new technology, plus standards and other mechanisms to foster the take-up of technology.
  • Persuade other countries in international climate change negotiations to give forestry the regulatory framework it needs.

The three are inextricably linked. A good ETS sets a price signal and generates revenues that government and business can invest in the changes we must make. Those are exciting business opportunities which stand to improve the economy and our environmental performance.

In the meantime, revenues help fund some temporary relief for households from the cost of migrating to energy and carbon efficiency. And an effective ETS increases our international negotiating power in forestry.

If these are the virtues of an ETS, how would you destroy them if you were politicians in the clutch of heavy emitters?

How would you achieve an ETS so bad it sets a weak price signal and delivers little revenue, or better, neither? Then households and businesses would carry on with their old technology and ways. The government (ie, taxpayers) would then have to buy credits to cover emissions above the target volume the country has committed to.

Thus, in a bad ETS, we taxpayers pay to perpetuate our current technology while much of the rest of the world plunges into better technology. We become less competitive and badly damage our international trade and investment accounts, not to mention our reputation. Over time we get poorer.

If this were your political agenda, you’d do nine things:

  1. Place no limits on how much greenhouse gas a company exposed to international competitors can emit for free. To give business such a valuable break, you set a very arbitrary measure. If a company emits no more greenhouse gases than the average for its industry based on tonnes of gas per million dollars of sales revenue, you let it keep growing its emissions without having to pay for them.

    Instead, the government keeps supplying it with free emission credits. But there’s no such thing as a free credit. Under the Kyoto treaty, each country is allowed to emit for free up to its commitment level, in our case 1990 volumes. Above that, somebody has to buy credits to emit more. If business doesn’t, then the government does out of taxes.

    And this concept of intensity-based allocations of credits has other failings. For example, the industry benchmark is local and thus it won’t hold most sectors to international best practice. Again, this locks us into old technology rather than incentivise investment in new.

    This is exactly what National intends to do.

  2. Slavishly follow the ETS in Australia, a small neighbour and international laggard struggling miserably to deliver one.

    Even better, cut our ETS off from America’s. After all, the US is only the biggest market for carbon credits and the biggest source of investment in and markets for clean technology.

    Easy to do. Section 728 of the Waxman-Markey bill on climate change passed by the US House of Representatives explicitly bans the US from linking its ETS with any country that shuns volume caps in favour of intensity-based allocation.

    This is exactly what National intends to do.

  3. Keep giving free allocations as long as possible. This again reduces the incentive on businesses and households to change. For example, phase out allocations at the rate of 1.3% a year, rather than 8% in the ETS approved by parliament last year. That’s nonsense. No technology remains current for 75 years.

    This is exactly what National intends to do.

  4. Place a $25 a tonne cap on the price of carbon until at least the end of 2012. This mutes the price signal and thus the business incentive to change.

    It also creates another big subsidy for business that taxpayers will have to fund when the government goes shopping for credits. The higher the international price, the bigger the subsidy.

    Also, halve emitters’ obligations over the same period. Let them surrender only a credit for one tonne of emissions for every two tonnes of gases.

    This is exactly what National intends to do.

  5. Allow forest owners to sell their carbon credits overseas. It’s absolutely fair they should get the best price they can. But if there’s a price cap here, they will sell lots of our home-grown credits overseas. So when the government has to buy credits to meet New Zealand’s obligations, it will have to buy more overseas.

    This is exactly what National intends to do.

  6. Buy off a minor party to secure the votes to demolish the ETS. Promise to plant some trees together, wave the possibility of increased beneficiary payments and enshrine some other special treatment in legislation.

    The Maori Party is a willing accomplice. For these few favours, the Maori Party has repudiated its sustainability, climate change, economic and social justice principles it articulated in its minority report in the recent select committee report on the ETS.

    Among other things the Maori Party said then: It opposed emissions trading because it…

    …allows sectors to pollute and trade up to the Kyoto target (and) does not include incremental emission reduction targets in its design.

    We are also deeply concerned about protection in the form of intensity-based allocation and subsidies, which distort the market model by allowing protected businesses to increase their emissions without penalty, and to be rewarded for it.

    This is exactly what National intends to do.

  7. Axe complementary measures such as fuel efficiency standards for cars and minimum volumes for biofuels.

    That is exactly what National has done.

  8. Keep households and businesses dependent on taxpayer subsidy. Sow the seeds of dependency now by giving in to special pleading. This will make it even harder to remove price caps and other favours later.

    This is exactly what National intends to do.

  9. Create uncertainty for business. Do so by passing legislation that does not have broad political support. Even better, devise an ETS that will require subsequent governments (even ones led by your own party) to radically overhaul it to stem the ballooning taxpayer subsidies and to impose at last the disciplines and incentives that are needed to drive change.

    10. The government admits these nine actions will cost taxpayers at least $400m by 2013. The NZ Business Council for Sustainable Development, whose 63 member companies’ annual sales of $59 billion equate to about 43% of GDP, says its expects the costs to “run into billions of dollars”.

    There’s no knowing how big the bill will be. But the dynamics are obvious. National’s changes would drive up emissions, perpetuate old technology, necessitate ever-greater subsidies and reduce New Zealand’s international competitiveness and reputation.

    This is exactly what National intends to do.

Climate change policy myopia Gareth Renowden Sep 21

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This is a guest post by associate professor Ralph Chapman, senior researcher Andy Reisinger, professor Jonathan Boston and senior associate Judy Lawrence from Victoria University of Wellington. It’s a succinct explanation of how and why the government’s climate policy is wrong-headed and ineffective, and is required reading for anyone following the policy debate in NZ. It first appeared in the Dominion Post on Sept 18th.

The deal between National and the Maori party over the emission trading scheme raises serious questions about strategic policy making in New Zealand. The agreement has positive features – a price on carbon will apply from mid-2010 in some sectors – but it raises major concerns about the capacity of our democratic institutions to serve the common good of New Zealand and avoid capture by vested interests.

The deal rests on four myths about climate change policy.

Myth 1: Doing the minimum is good enough

Is doing the minimum still credible? It might have been pragmatic while climate science was being clarified in the 1990s, and then with the US refusing to join Kyoto, but it is now clear that urgent action to cut emissions is needed, globally and nationally. The new law committing the UK to cut emissions by 34% by 2020 is one example of international responses.

The delayed entry of agriculture from 2015, and snails-pace (1% per year) adjustment path for other industries are too slow to be credible when our domestic policies are exposed in international negotiations. Other developed countries are moving towards emission cuts of 80% by 2050. New Zealand farming and other sectors cannot afford to defer adjustment to a changing world. Our businesses are innovative; they need a chance to apply their skills within the changing world order. Sheltering them from the inevitable will increase costs in the long run and foreclose business opportunities. This is the clearest lesson from the economic restructuring of the 1980s. Minimising the exposure of businesses to the price of carbon is just poor economics.

Myth 2: We mustn’t get out ahead, especially ahead of Australia

PM John Key has commented that “It’s not my government’s approach for New Zealand to be way out ahead of other countries.” There’s no chance of being ahead of Europe’s 2005 ETS and countries such as Finland, Norway and the Netherlands, which introduced carbon taxes in the early 1990s, or British Columbia which did the same in 2008. But isn’t our ETS different? Well, no. The introduction of a fixed price cap in New Zealand ($25 per tonne) makes the ETS effectively a tax.

Ironically, delaying our efforts to enable a link with the Australian scheme (not yet enacted) could damage New Zealand. An ETS works best if we can trade with bigger partners, such as the EU and the emerging US emissions trading market. In addition, by opting for an intensity-based allocation scheme aligned with the Australians we rule ourselves out of trading with not only Europe but probably also the US.

New Zealand should include the agricultural sector in the ETS as soon as possible to incentivise innovation, improve efficiency, and encourage agricultural gas-reducing technologies and processes that can then earn export dollars and ensure New Zealand’s leading role in supplying high-value markets with its own distinctive brand. New Zealand cannot afford not to be ‘out ahead’ in the sectors that shape its unique economic and international trading position.

Myth 3: Households should and can be protected from price rises

The debate on the costs of the ETS has been woefully misleading, with exaggerated claims of direct impacts, and a failure to analyse indirect impacts, and the policy adjustments other countries are making. The focus in the agreement is on short-term direct impacts on households. Yet, when emitters are shielded from paying for their emissions, the costs fall on the taxpayer, so households still pay indirectly but in a manner that is less fair.

New Zealand has a legally binding Kyoto Protocol commitment and will likely have similar post-2012 commitments. The question is how the costs of these commitments are shared and minimised. The deal means households will pay most through higher taxes than otherwise, with no incentive to contribute to emission reductions and support innovative businesses. Placing the costs largely on taxpaying households is both inefficient and represents a significant wealth transfer to companies and their shareholders, some of whom are foreign.

Myth 4: Market principles are being adhered to

Business sector disapproval defeated the 2005 carbon tax proposal in favour of a trading scheme, yet the ETS with a price cap acts like a tax. Moreover, why should market-responsive business people prefer market signals to be muted? The international carbon price is currently about NZ$30 per tonne: why should that signal be capped? If interest rates were capped, the price signal they send would be undesirably distorted. The carbon price signal proposed is to be further weakened by the ‘2 for 1’ deal, cutting the market signal to $12.50 and halving the efficiency of the market response (and leaving the taxpayer to pay for the rest). Again, this is poor public policy.

The most egregious aspect of the agreement is the intensity-based allocation arrangement that some companies demanded. This allows emitters to increase their emissions at no cost as long as emissions per tonne of product are below the industry average. In conjunction with the slow phase-out of free credit allocations, this dramatically weakens the signal to cut emissions.

Other aspects of the agreement are problematic, such as the fuel subsidy to the fishing industry: this is sheer political horse trading. But the four myths above are the main concern, and create two problems. First, they have resulted in a low-quality public policy agreement. This may reflect the poor quality of independent climate policy analysis in this country. Second, we now have a policy hotch-potch at a time when a strategic vision in support of urgent action is needed.

Critically the deal is intensely myopic, creating escalating future costs by deferring inevitable adjustment. A far-sighted and enduring policy is required, based on a broad consensus, that benefits both the economy and the environment. The National/Maori deal is not durable as it is out of line with New Zealand’s long-term strategic needs and interests.

Oxfam: poor countries need funds to adapt Bryan Walker Sep 19

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Climate change is already having disproportionate effects on the populations of many poor developing countries, a situation which will only get worse as the global temperature rises. Such countries do not have the resources to develop the adaptation measures they are going to need. Nicholas Stern devoted considerable attention to this question in The Global Deal, where he called for funding from the rich countries additional to their normal aid commitments (such as they are) to assist with the adaptation measures the poor developing countries will have to put in place.

Oxfam has now entered the fray with a report Beyond Aid: Ensuring Adaptation to Climate Change Works for the Poor, insisting that a small proportion of industrial nations’ GDP be devoted to investment in adaptation in poorer countries.  0.1 percent is the proportion they think necessary.  And it must be additional, not sneakily transferred from existing aid assistance.  

After pointing to the progress that has occurred towards development goals the report points out that:

“Climate change now threatens to unravel this progress and drive a larger wedge between industrialised countries – which became rich through decades of fossil fuel consumption – and poor countries – which are being hit the hardest.

“The impacts of climate change on people’s lives are already clearly apparent. Ranging from the sudden and catastrophic to the creeping and insidious: storms, floods, droughts, sickness, shifting seasons. For people living on the margins, even a small increase in climate risk can have catastrophic consequences that can span generations.”

 The report’s plea for adaptation investment is not vague or general.  Such adaptation finance as is already being delivered is coming through “a spaghetti-bowl of different bilateral and multilateral channels.” It is mostly driven by donor priorities and preferences. The result is adaptation that is not nationally owned, and is fragmented and incoherent, making it extremely difficult to integrate into national development processes.  

However the report acknowledges that developing countries have a responsibility to clearly understand and communicate the nature of the demand, and most of them have not yet estimated the requirements of their economies at any depth. This plays into the hands of the rich countries, such as Japan, that argue that poor countries must do more to define their adaptation needs before funding can be agreed.

What adaptation measures are called for? We can’t be sure about the future, but there is much that can be done now that will be robust in the face of uncertainty, if adequate funding is made available. 

“Access to reliable weather forecasts; reversing the degradation of soil, water and vegetation; Disaster Risk Reduction measures; and countless other interventions will help communities to deal with the impacts of climate change in any circumstances”.

 “Adequate, new, and additional funds” of at least $50 billion per year in the first instance need to be provided. They must not be cannibalised from existing aid promises. Doing that would stymie the millenial development goals. It would leave developing country governments with an impossible trade-off between helping their populations adapt to climate change or providing them with basic services such as healthcare and education. The report claims that India is already having to spend nearly three times as much on adapting to climate change as it does on health.

“It cannot be a case of continuing development or adapting to climate change – without both, neither will happen.”

The report goes into a good deal of detail on the sort of international framework that would overcome the failings of the present approach. It points to the successes of other international funding mechanisms, such as the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria which was the result of a united vision and decisive action among the international community. To fund adaptation measures it proposes a single equitably governed entity through which funds can be channelled. The nascent Adaptation Fund set up under the authority of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and already operating on a small scale is favoured for this role. The advantages of such centralisation are listed: reduced transactions costs; greater stability of finance due to wider pooling; de-politicisation of finance since funds won’t be tied to the interests of donor countries; impoved learning which is very much needed in the new challenges climate change presents.  Funds should be raised predictably either through the sale of international emissions permits or through binding commitments based on responsibility and capability.

The report is combative. It warns that without a commitment to finance adaptation, there will be not be a deal at Copenhagen.

“Developing countries are being hit hardest by climate change, but are least responsible and have the least resources with which to adapt. They rightly see financing adaptation as an obligation of rich countries – those that created the problem and became rich doing so.

“The reluctance of many rich country politicians and policy makers to make this commitment is undermining the negotiations. They remain mired in the aid mindset, and would rather repackage old aid promises as adaptation finance, and channel this through an out-dated aid framework that marginalises the voice of developing countries. In particular, rich countries favour bilateral channels and the World Bank, in seeking to preserve their influence over how funds are spent.

“In the meantime, these countries provide a litany of excuses as to why what is required cannot be delivered.”

Let’s hope it is only in the meantime and that justice and good sense will be the final arbiters.

It is worth taking note of the World Bank’s newly published  World Development Report 2010: Development and Climate Change. Many see ambiguities in the bank’s lending on climate change related projects, but at least in this report they are unequivocal about the urgent need for a rapid scaling-up of spending on clean energy research and climate change protection for poorer countries.  In the press release accompanying the report the bank’s President, Robert B. Zoellick says, as he calls on the countries of the world to “act now, act together and act differently” on climate change:

“Developing countries are disproportionately affected by climate change – a crisis that is not of their making and for which they are the least prepared. For that reason, an equitable deal in Copenhagen is vitally important.”