Bishop Hill How policy is made
Sep 30, 2011 Climate: WG2 Climate: WG3 Having heard Lord Turner the other day I wondered what sort of policy recommendations somebody with his approach to facts might come up with and so I decided to take a look at some of the outputs of the Climate Change Committee, on which he sits alongside such luminaries as Sir Brian Hoskins and Lord May.
This is the report I've been reading, and in particular I've looked at the bit where they try to determine what the global target for temperature stabilisation should be.
As far as I can tell the process is this:
1. Examine a section of the IPCC AR4 WGII report on impacts which looks like this:
;)
Click for full size
and this...
;)
Click for full size2. Note that above 2°C things get really bad.
3. Decide that 2°C should be the target.
I'm a great one for keeping things simple but, assuming I've got things straight, this seems to err rather on the side of the back of an envelope. Is that really all there is to informing climate change policy in the UK?
And another thing. Why are they only examining costs? What about the benefits of climate change?
Reader Comments (69)
Sep 30, 2011 at 12:03 PM | golf charley
No, I'm not the only one that doesn't like those charts.
However they were in the Working Group 2 report, and I was an author with Working Group 1. It's generally acknowledged that there was not a good connection between the different Working Groups in AR4. Should be better in AR5 though (hopefully......)
Hi Green Sand
Thanks - good question about whether we get asked to look at cooling scenarios.
The question posed to climate modellers is not so much "please simulate the impacts of a warming world" as "please simulate the impacts of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations" - the warming is an output of the models (along with precipitation changes etc), not an input.
Of course it was also suggested on theoretical grounds before computer models were invented!
The closest we come to answering your question is when we do simulations of the hypothetical impact of a collapse of the thermohaline circulation, which then (in the models) causes the north Atlantic and NW Europe to cool. However, we don't think this is particularly likely to happen in reality, despite the large amount of attention it used to get as a scary "tipping point". We have to artificially force the models to do it, it does not emerge as a natural consequence of a simulation of future global warming (at least, not in the climate models that simulate the full ocean and atmosphere circulation).
Our models are also used to simulate the last glacial maximum, but those simulations aren't applied to human impacts studies (because large parts of currently inhabited areas are under ice!)
Sep 30, 2011 at 1:42 PM | ZedsDeadBed Sep 30, 2011 at 1:04 PM
In reply to Buck's query:
"would you care to tell me of a time in human history when world food production has been higher than it is today? If you can, I'll concede your point."
Zed Dead Beat responded "Yet another Bishop Hill Strawman. Key drivers for this are technology, knowledge and demand, not climate."
Actually food crop yields are always higher cet.par. in warmer than colder places, cf. cane sugar in Sudan with beet sugar in Suffolk (if they could grow cane sugar in the latter I think they would).
As it happens I have published a peer review paper on Climate Change and Food production (it's at my website www.timcurtin.com) using regression analysis of world food production as a function of GMT, [CO2], and fertiliser usage:
Yt = −507.99 + 0.365Tt + 5.756Ct − 0.047Ft (2)
(42.55) (0.475) (0.159) (0.069)
(The figures in parentheses are SEE and need to be aligned with the coefficients. Casual inspection shows of the ratio between the coefficients and the SEE indicates that the CO variable has the only statistically significant t-statistic (>2) with p-value (0.012), and R2 = .99, indicating no omitted variable bias). The paper also discusses the role of the "Green Revolution's" improved varieties.
Its findings support those of the report commissioned by the Garnaut Review (2008:128–132) which found that under “no-mitigation” until 2100 (i.e. “business as usual”), rising [CO2] would raise
Australia’s wheat yields by up to 20% by 2030, averaging 15% across ten of the main
wheat areas, despite assumed rising temperatures of up to 4o C and reduced rainfall of
up to 30% (Crimp et al. 2008:6).
Sep 30, 2011 at 1:42 PM | ZedsDeadBed Sep 30, 2011 at 1:04 PM
In reply to Buck's query:
"would you care to tell me of a time in human history when world food production has been higher than it is today? If you can, I'll concede your point."
Zed Dead Beat responded "Yet another Bishop Hill Strawman. Key drivers for this are technology, knowledge and demand, not climate."
Actually food crop yields are always higher cet.par. in warmer than colder places, cf. cane sugar in Sudan with beet sugar in Suffolk (if they could grow cane sugar in the latter I think they would).
As it happens I have published a peer review paper on Climate Change and Food production (it's at my website www.timcurtin.com) using regression analysis of world food production as a function of GMT, [CO2], and fertiliser usage:
Yt = −507.99 + 0.365Tt + 5.756Ct − 0.047Ft (2)
(42.55) (0.475) (0.159) (0.069)
(The figures in parentheses are SEE and need to be aligned with the coefficients. Casual inspection of the ratio between the coefficients and the SEE indicates that the CO variable has the only statistically significant t-statistic (>2) with p-value (0.012), and R2 = .99, indicating no omitted variable bias). The paper also discusses the role of the "Green Revolution's" improved varieties.
Its findings support those of the report commissioned by the Garnaut Review (2008:128–132) which found that under “no-mitigation” until 2100 (i.e. “business as usual”), rising [CO2] would raise
Australia’s wheat yields by up to 20% by 2030, averaging 15% across ten of the main
wheat areas, despite assumed rising temperatures of up to 4o C and reduced rainfall of
up to 30% (Crimp et al. 2008:6).
"Padi" is Indonesian for "rice'. A "rice padi" is therefore a "rice rice". Rice field or padi field, please :)
It is all a bit late in the day to start griping about Lord Stern's disaster. The Climate Change Committee needs to read something slightly more complex than the set of IPCC crystal balls. Try giving them the Nordhaus review (Journal of Economic Literature Vol. XLV (September 2007), pp. 686–702). Nordhaus is a distinguished economist with some interesting contributions to global warming economics, and he is clearly a warmist, yet he says:
"The effect of low discounting can be illustrated with a “wrinkle experiment.” Suppose that scientists discover a wrinkle in the climate system that will cause damages equal to 0.1 percent of net consumption starting in 2200 and continuing at that rate forever after. How large a one-time investment
would be justified today to remove the wrinkle that starts only after two centuries? Using the methodology of the [Stern] Review, the answer is that we should pay up to 56 percent of one year’s world consumption today to remove the wrinkle.- -In other words, it is worth a one-time consumption hit of approximately $30,000 billion today to fix a tiny problem that begins in 2200."
I have found a number of politicians who have been struck by the force of Nordhaus' argument. Others, unfortunately seem masochistic enough to prefer Stern treatment.
GDP beats greenhouse gas every time .
Sep 30, 2011 at 2:15 PM | Sebastian Weetabix
I'd agree with that. We will cope with, and likely benefit from, climate change by deploying wealth and ingenuity.
Trying to manage CO2 emissions is far too expensive as currently proposed and will impact horribly on the wealth producing the worst of all worlds.
Richard
Many thanks for that reply.
If you read you right, methane is more potent than CO2 (which was what I understood to be the case) but that it is not really relevant to the arguments about AGW unless we plan to starve or freeze!
Presumably the "bit from industry" is not significant enough to warrant the sort of action that would be needed to eliminate it, at least on a cost/benefit basis.
The Committee all have irons in the global warming fire. In 2006, Turner joined Al Gore in launching the Carbon Disclosure Project, in 2009 he identified attending a cocktail party given by Al Gore, as a "gift" in his FSA expenses report. Gore was addressing the US Senate that day, so it wasn't just down the road.
In a collection of essays called Do Good Lives Have to Cost the Earth, Turner argues that 'growth has to be dethroned' if the planet is to survive surging population growth and global warming. He is in favour of the contraction and convergence idea of cutting western CO2 emissions and handing wealth and technology to developing nations and has spoken in favour of global taxation, (the “Tobin Tax”).
Professor Jim Skea is Research Director at UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC), based at Imperial and was previously Director at the Policy Studies Institute. He was Launch Director for the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership (One of the Directors is Tim Yeo, Tory MP and Chairman of the Climate Audit Committee) and was Director of the Economic and Social Research Council’s Global Environmental Change Programme.
The Climate Committee’s first report said that “Subsidies for the car industry should encourage 1.7 million electric cars onto the roads by 2020.”
Professor Michael Grubb is Chief Economist at the UK Carbon Trust and Chairman of the international research network Climate Strategies. He is an IPCC Lead Author.
Brian Hoskins is of course in charge of the Grantham Institute at Imperial, where the CEO's of WWF-US and Environmental Defense sit on the management board. Lord May holds a Professorship jointly at Oxford University and Imperial College and has said that religious leaders should be doing more to persuade people to combat climate change. Also an IPCC author.
Dr Samuel Fankhauser is a Principal Research Fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at LSE. He is an advisor at IDEAcarbon, (along with Lord Stern who is chairman of the LSE Grantham Institute) and Chief Economist at Globe International. Also an IPCC author.
Dr. Andrew Dlugolecki is consultant on climate change in the insurance and finance sector. He is an IPCC author and is an advisor to the Carbon Disclosure Project, Munich Climate Insurance Initiative and the UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative. He is also a Visiting Research Fellow at CRU.
Professor Martin Parry is visiting professor in environmental science at the Grantham Institute at Imperial. He was Co-Chair of AR4 WGII (Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability) and is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of UNEP Climate Impacts and Responses Programme.
He was chairman of the UK Climate Change Impacts Review Group, and a CLA in the IPCC first, second and third assessments. He was the first Director of the Oxford Environmental Change Institute, (ECU), in 1991 and was Director of the Jackson Environment Institute, UEA and professor of environmental science at UEA.
He is a private contractor to DEFRA as "Martin Parry Associates". The Met Office were awarded a contract worth £1,436,000, to run WGII and Martin Parry Associates got a contract worth £330,187, to be Co-Chair of it.
These people and their organisations are the ones running the show and government of whatever colour happily accepts whatever they say, in their attempts to be greener than green.
Comment under Lord May above, "also an IPCC author", refers to Brian Hoskins.
It's amazing just how dim clever people can be. Or perhaps Turner is proof of the Yorkshire saying that there's none so thick as them that wants to be.
The UN's own calculations are that world population will stabilise after 2050 and start to decline by about the end of the century. About the only thing guaranteed to ensure that does not happen is to keep the poor in the developing world impoverished and therefore the birth-rate high.
And nothing that Turner or anyone else can do will make the situation any better. All they can do — and appear hell bent on doing — is to make things worse.
Shame all the people,
Smother with blanket of guilt.
Serfs don't need much air.
==============
Richard Betts
Thanks again for engaging and responding here.
I once attended a lecture given by a property lawyer. She was asked about writing legal letters, and part of her response included the advice that before you send a letter, reread it, and imagine how it would sound, if read sarcastically in court by a barrister.
I hope you apply a similar test to whatever has your name against it for AR5, in terms of how it will be dissected here!
Interesting research Dennis. As usual it comes down to "follow the money".
Quote: Is that really all there is to informing climate change policy in the UK?
Small minds can not take large steps.
From recent personnel experience; I've come to the conclusion that liars tend to believe liars, rather than the guy telling the truth. I don't know what psychological explanation there may be for this, it’s just an observation of mine (repeated and demonstrated to be consistant).
Does anybody know if they can count past two?
Mike Jackson,
Re methane, you asked
"Presumably the "bit from industry" is not significant enough to warrant the sort of action that would be needed to eliminate it, at least on a cost/benefit basis."
Actually in most western countries actions were initiated back in the 80's and 90's to cut methane release. Back in the early 90s, in the US, for example, the main producers of methane were landfill sites, animal husbandry and the natural gas business, in that order. Regulations have reduced the quantity of materials going to landfill and obliged the larger landfill sites to implement gas recovery systems. Tighter enforced and voluntary controls on fugitive gas and improved equipment have led to major reductions in released gas from the natural gas industry. So I think, but I am not sure, that animal husbandry, or cow farts if you prefer, now represents the main industrial source in the West. The situation is somewhat different outside the western world. Russia is the World's biggest gas producer and yet processing and distribution systems (which include several hundreds of thousands of kms of ageing pipelines) have suffered from underinvestment and poor maintenance. They leak, basically. Methane losses from this source are very large, but not well reported. Even in Russia, however, Gazprom has been slowly getting to grips with the problem to cut losses.
As Pharos pointed out above, the total volume of natural releases of methane from seepage, as well as submarine hydrate exposure through erosion of overburden, are unknown, but probably dwarf anthropogenic emission.
Paul K - good points, exept that you do not recognise that animal husbandry is both CO2 and CH4 neutral as livestock cannot emit more of those than the CO2-equivalent it has imbibed.
Mike Jackson,
Forget my last sentence above. On checking what I had written, I found that although bottom-up estimation of natural emissions is a notoriously difficult problem, the total emission (natural plus anthropogenic) into the atmosphere is constrained by monitoring change in atmopheric concentration of methane and the contribution from "old" methane is constrained by monitoring the C14 component. So it seems unlikely that geological emissions are greater than anthropogenic emissions.