Climategate: The investigations begin

Posted on November 29, 2009 by energyprbe

Financial Post

Penn State University has announced that it has begun an investigation of the work of Michael Mann, the director of its Earth System Science Center, following revelations contained in the Climategate documents that have emerged from East Anglia University in the UK. This decision follows close on the heels of a decision Saturday at East Anglia University to release climate change related data, a reversal of its previous stance. In addition, according to East Anglia’s press office, it will soon be announcing details of its own investigation.

The announcement of the chair of the inquiry and its terms of reference is expected to be made Monday.

Here is the full Penn State announcement:

University Reviewing Recent Reports on Climate Information

Professor Michael Mann is a highly regarded member of the Penn State faculty conducting research on climate change. Professor Mann’s research papers have been published in well respected peer-reviewed scientific journals. In November 2005, Representative Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) requested that the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) convene a panel of independent experts to investigate Professor Mann’s seminal 1999 reconstruction of the global surface temperature over the past 1,000 years. The resulting 2006 report of the NAS panel (http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11676) concluded that Mann’s results were sound and has been subsequently supported by an array of evidence that includes additional large-scale surface temperature reconstructions.

In recent days a lengthy file of emails has been made public. Some of the questions raised through those emails may have been addressed already by the NAS investigation but others may not have been considered. The University is looking into this matter further, following a well defined policy used in such cases. No public discussion of the matter will occur while the University is reviewing the concerns that have been raised.

Financial Post
LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com
Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe and Urban Renaissance Institute and author of The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution, and fraud.

 

 

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Google’s climate ‘scholars’

Posted on November 27, 2009 by energyprbe

(Nov. 27, 2009) Methods used to tabulate the number of experts who are skeptical of climate change leave something to be desired. Continue reading →

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Hacked e-mails heat up climate-change debate

Posted on November 27, 2009 by energyprbe

(Nov. 27, 2009) Christmas came early this year for Diane Katz and other Canadians at the forefront of the most polarized political fight on the planet. Continue reading →

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Hacked e-mails heat up climate-change debate

Posted on November 27, 2009 by energyprbe

Richard Foot
Canwest News Service
November 27, 2009

Christmas came early this year for Diane Katz and other Canadians at the forefront of the most polarized political fight on the planet.

For many years Katz — the director of environment policy at the Fraser Institute, the free market Vancouver think-tank — has argued alongside her allies that global warming is neither a man-made phenomenon nor the doomsday crisis it is widely considered to be, and that the scientists who fuel such fears have in fact hoodwinked us.

Then last week Katz and her colleagues were handed an unexpected gift: a computer hacker had stolen hundreds of e-mails and other documents from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in Britain — an influential centre of climate change study — and posted the material on the Internet, only weeks before world leaders gather in Copenhagen on Dec. 7 to hash out a new global strategy on carbon emissions.

The e-mail exchanges, between a group of powerful, like-minded scientists based in Britain and the U.S., written over the past 13 years, suggest they may have rigged their data, suppressed contrary information and conspired to control what should be an independent peer review process surrounding the publication of their scientific papers.

It’s partly the work of these scientists — whose computer modelling research has formed the basis of reports published by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — that now compels many countries to write new laws on carbon emissions limits.

But Katz says the hacked e-mail exchanges prove the IPCC, and governments everywhere, have been seriously misled.

“The perversion of science exposed in these e-mails is a vindication of the scholars and analysts who have long questioned the claims of climate alarmists,” said Katz in an interview this week.

“It also shows that the real deniers are the researchers such as those at the CRU, who ignore evidence that man-made emissions are not causing global warming. It’s imperative now that governments not impose measures to mitigate global warming.”

In one e-mail, the CRU scientists and their U.S. colleagues discuss using a “trick” to “hide the decline” in temperatures presented on a set of data.

Other e-mails show the scientists may have plotted to eliminate from their modelling an entire set of temperature data from the Middle Ages, when the world may have been warmer than it is now.

And in others they discuss rigging the rules of the peer review process, to ensure that scientific articles on climate change are reviewed by friends, not critics.

When this doesn’t work, they resort to bullying. In 2003, when the journal Climate Research published an article contrary to the views of the CRU and its friends, one scientist suggested boycotting the journal or trying to manipulate its editors.

“Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal,” one e-mail said. “We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues, who currently sit on (the journal’s) editorial board.”

In another e-mail the scientists even refer to the death of a prominent climate change skeptic as “cheering news.”

Phil Jones, the director of the CRU, has admitted that “some of the published e-mails do not read well. . . . Some were clearly written in the heat of the moment.”

But he has also called it “complete rubbish” that he and his colleagues conspired to manipulate the data itself, or the journals that published it.

Michael Mann, a Pennsylvania State University scientist who wrote some of the offending e-mails, said the messages have simply been misunderstood, and wrongly turned from “something innocent into something nefarious.”

“What they’ve done is search through stolen personal e-mails, confidential between colleagues who often speak in a language they understand and is often foreign to the outside world.”

Asked about the furor on Friday, John Bennett, executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada, made the same argument, saying: “Mann and his colleagues were simply speaking in their own high-level code, and a number of things were taken out of context.

“They used the word ‘trick’ in one of the stolen e-mails,” Bennett said, “but they were simply referring to a way of dealing with a complicated mathematical problem. They weren’t using the word in the sense of, ‘I’m going to fool you.’ ”

In some of Mann’s e-mails, however, his meaning is perfectly clear, including the one to a New York Times reporter, in which he disparages Canadian climate researcher Stephen McIntyre as someone “not to be trusted.”

McIntyre is a Toronto-based blogger who has become a thorn in the side of Mann and his colleagues, fact-checking their research and pointing out their inconsistencies on his website climateaudit.org.

What kind of effect the “climategate” revelations will have on the future of the global warming debate isn’t yet clear. Next month’s meeting in Copenhagen is unlikely to be influenced by the scandal, says Katz, because expectations are already low that the meeting will produce any kind of serious new plan on carbon emissions.

But the longer-term impact could be greater. Nigel Lawson, a former British Chancellor of the Exchequer and a well-known climate change skeptic, has called for a public inquiry into the CRU and the scientific study of global warming.

“I am confident that we’ll see a major inquiry within the next one to three years,” says Lawrence Solomon, another skeptic, and executive director of the Toronto think-tank Energy Probe.

He says if an inquiry isn’t opened by Britain’s Labour government, the Conservative opposition, widely expected to win power in the next election, will almost certainly convene one. A U.S. congressional committee might also decide to hold hearings into the science of climate change.

An inquiry, says Solomon, is likely to produce “a lot more e-mails like the ones we’ve seen so far in ‘climategate.’ ”

He also hopes an inquiry would include a forensic analysis of the computer codes, or programs, that produced the climate models now being relied on by the IPCC.

Even if governments don’t investigate the matter, the affair may have permanently shifted the momentum of the debate.

“Until now, what these scientists have said is, ‘trust us.’ Now, what the scandal has almost certainly done is put the onus on these people, the doomsayers, to demonstrate the validity of their data. They’ve never been required them to do that before.”

Says Katz: “Proponents of the more alarmist chain of thinking have always assumed this mantle of moral superiority, even going so far as to call those who disagree with them ‘deniers.’ This has now changed all that. It shows in fact that they don’t have any moral superiority, because they’ve been fixing the data.”

Bennett brushes aside those claims, insisting the scandal will be short-lived.

“I think it will have no impact whatsoever,” he says.

For one thing, the computer modelling studies that have now been thrown into question aren’t the only form of science behind the climate change crisis. Observational science — witnessed evidence of melting glaciers, disappearing polar ice, rising sea levels and changing ocean acidity — also inform the world’s understanding of global warming.

“In the last 10 years, there’s been a tremendous amount of observed changes in the climate,” says Bennett. “We’re observing the very changes that Mann’s models predict. So his work, and that of his colleagues, remains pivotal and important.

“All this controversy will prove is the desperateness of the fossil fuel industry, and those they back, the tiny, minuscule group of pseudo-scientific deniers, who are so desperate they will resort to this kind of criminal tactic — stealing e-mails — to make their point.”

Posted in Climate Change, Energy Probe News, The Deniers | Leave a comment

Google’s climate ‘scholars’

Posted on November 27, 2009 by energyprbe

Lawrence Solomon
Financial Post
November 27, 2009

Methods used to tabulate the number of experts who are skeptical of climate change leave something to be desired.

There you go,” concluded Anna Maria Tremonti of CBC’s morning radio show, The Current. “According to Jim Prull’s database, of the 615 scientists who published papers on climate change, the skeptics are outnumbered 601 to 14.”

Case closed, she was saying, after Prull, a computer network manager, explained how anyone can use a spreadsheet and Google Scholar searches to separate the real climate experts from the phony ones. Just key someone’s name into Google Scholar if you think he’s a scientist and see how often he has been cited. Those who aren’t cited much have little scientific credibility, CBC’s national audience was told, and those who are cited a lot have lots. Not once during her interview of Prull did Tremonti question Prull’s methodology or his premises or his results.

She didn’t, for example, try a reality check by asking him to search Google Scholar for Al Gore. Had she done so, she would have seen that Gore, with 30,000 Scholar hits and untold citations, was closing in on Einstein’s 36,000.

On what basis did Tremonti, formerly a CBC investigative journalist, grant so much credibility to Prull’s techniques? Perhaps because, as he explained to the CBC audience, Google Scholar “studies just the scientific literature. They look at peer-reviewed journals.” She might have done a reality check on that premise, too. Google Scholar finds articles in popular newspapers and magazines. A search for The New York Times yields 101,000 hits, for The Economist magazine 18,000 and for The Wall Street Journal 17,000. Google Scholar also finds articles on global warming websites, including those of the skeptics.

Prull claims to have objectively investigated 2,940 names, of scientists on both sides of the debate, including those who signed various petitions protesting global warming doomsterism. Yet he dismisses the biggest petition of all — the 31,000 scientists on the petition organized by the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine — on the grounds that organizations like DeSmogBlog say that they’re not really scientists. DeSmogBlog, an organization that Prull donates to, was specifically created for the purpose of discrediting skeptics.

The Oregon Petition, for those who are unfamiliar with it, was organized by Frederick Seitz, a past president of the National Academy of Sciences, and Arthur B. Robinson, the former president and research director of the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine and the man who, according to Nobel laureate Pauling, was “my principal and most valued collaborator.” You can’t fault Prull for not wanting to go through all 31,000 names — he has a day job keeping computer systems running — but his dismissal of the Oregon Petition calls his objectivity into question, particularly since that petition includes renowned scientists such as Freeman Dyson, America’s most famous scientist. Moreover, those 31,000 signatories didn’t sign some meaningless motherhood statement — they unequivocally asserted that carbon dioxide benefits the planet and that the danger that we face comes from a misguided Kyoto Protocol.

My book, The Deniers, warrants a special place on Prull’s website. He has investigated 37 of the scientists that I profiled and generally found them wanting. Reid Bryson, for example, fares poorly on Prull’s spreadsheet — he’s ranked 290th — with an inexplicably low number of citations. Yet Bryson, who is known as “the father of scientific climatology,” holds the title of “the world’s most cited climatologist,” according to an analysis in the journal of the Institute of British Geographers.

I don’t mean to be hard on Prull — his professional discipline is outside the ken of climate science or environmental policy, and there’s no reason for him to be especially able to judge whose science counts and whose doesn’t. But what does it say of the standards at CBC and The Current that they would prefer the judgment of a well-meaning amateur to that of the Institute of British Geographers? Or that they would unquestioningly assume that crude returns from a Google Scholar search were worth imparting to its audience?

Even if Prull were capable of judging which scientists qualify as climate scientists, and even if Google Scholar only searched peer-reviewed sites, CBC and The Current would have been remiss in assuming that appearances in peer-reviewed journals mean what they appear to mean.

For one thing, governments have provided some $80-billion in climate research funding over the last 20 years, virtually none of it to the skeptics. With only one side of the debate funded, it’s hardly surprising that one side dominates the publications. For another, as the recently surfaced Climategate emails demonstrate, scholarly publications have been under pressure to refuse any work from skeptics. As The Wall Street Journal Europe put it, “The impression left by the Climategate emails is that the global warming game has been rigged from the start.”

The impression left by the performance of Anna Maria Tremonti and The Current is that they — wittingly or not — have been helping to rig the game in Canada.

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe (energy.probeinternational.org) and Urban Renaissance Institute, and author of The Deniers: The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming ­hysteria, political persecution, and fraud.

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New Zealand's Climategate

Posted on November 26, 2009 by energyprbe

An agency of the New Zealand government has been cooking the books to create a warming trend where none exists, according to a joint research project by global warming skeptics at the Climate Conversation Group and the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition. The chief cook? Dr. Jim Salinger, considered one of the country’s top scientists, who began the graph in the 1980s when he was at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the UK. CRU, of course, has become ground zero of Climategate at Dr. Salinger has maintained close relations with CRU since, as seen in the Climategate emails.

What do the uncooked books show? Rather than warming over the last hundred years, New Zealand’s temperature has been steady.

For the full story, visit the site of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, here.

For the rebuttal by New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, visit here. 

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Aldyen Donnelly: Obama is going to Copenhagen: Expect to hear that “China is In”

Posted on November 25, 2009 by energyprbe

On December 6, 2009, expect Obama to announce that the US, Japan, South Korea and China have agreed to announce national GHG targets before the summer of 2012 and to implement common domestic "cap and trade" systems. (None of the national targets will be legally binding, but the national leaders will downplay that reality.)

India will likely not announce a series of national targets, but will appear to be a part of the group.  Exporting nuclear reactors (based on technology India stole from AECL in the late 1970s) is the centerpiece of India’s new trade plan, and the US/Japan/South Korea/China GHG market collaboration potentially creates a new market for India’s proprietary nuclear reactor technology that is essential to the successful execution of India’s new economic development strategy. The parties are not willing to negotiate their individual national GHG targets with each other or other nations. They have agreed that each can set its pwn national target on its own terms, and each will announce its target sometime before 2012.  None of the other partners will announce any target or domestic implementation plan until AFTER the US Congress passes Climate Change legislation.  Congress is now targetingg passage of the US cap and trade bill by spring 2010.

On December 6, or so, the collaborating nations plan to announce their commitments to implement common domestic "cap and trade" systems that will largely be based on or derived from the final US cap and trade law, by or before the end of 2012. US "Cap and trade" is nothing more (or less) than a global quota-based supply management regime that covers the combined energy, building products and food markets. In US-style "cap and trade" each nation converts a series of annual national  GHG targets into a new currency – a unique series of "vintaged" quota units. Each party in this carbon-importing nation cartel will  then rule that DISTRIBUTORS (domestic producers AND importers) of key carbon-based products )will be obliged to remit sovereign GHG quota units to their governments equal to the GHGs arising from the production and consumption of those regulated carbon-based products that are SOLD (as opposed to produced) within their boundaries. The key regulated products will be: petroleum products, natural gas, electricity, cement, aluminum, iron & steel, pulp & paper, wood products, beef, pork, grain, rice, glass and industrial chemicals, which account for over 85% of the global GHG inventory.  Coal will only be regulated indirectly through the electricity sector coverage.  GHGs arising from manufacturing sector consumption of coal will not be covered by any carbon-importing nation’s GHG cap.

Distributors of the regulated products will be obliged, under the regulations, to remit/surrender domestic GHG quota units to their home governments covering the GHGs arising from the production (including foreign production emissions for imported products) and domestic and petroleum product suppliers will be obliged to hold and then surrender GHG quota covering both their supply chain (domestic and foreign) and customer end-use GHGs.  In every one of these nations, GHGs arising from the domestic production of regulated products that will be exported WILL BE EXEMPT from the obligation to surrender GHG quota to their governments. (The carbon importing nation cartel will suggest that domestic GHGs arising from the production of exports are "liabilities" for the importing nations, not the exporting
nations.)

Then, each government in the carbon-importing nation cartel will freely allocate 85%+ of its early vintage national quota supply to DOMESTIC PRODUCERS (including exporters) of the regulated carbon-baed products. There will be NO FREE QUOTA allocation to importers of the regulated products, but imports are equally required to remit quota to the national governments.  Therefore, as soon as the domestic implementation regulations are in full effect, Any US, Japanese, Sout Korean or Chinese importer of Canadian electricity, natural gas, petroleum products, pulp & paper, wood products, aluminum, iron & steel, glass, beef, pork, grains, rice or industrial chemicals will have to acquire GHG quota covering the Canadian supply chain GHGs AND any domestic GHGs arising from the consumption of Canadian products in their markets, which GHG quota may only be acquired from either competing domestic producers of regulated products or government quota auctions.

The quota allocations and fact that the domestically regulated parties will be carbon-based product DISTRIBUTORS (not producers) in the carbon importing nation cartel comprise a system that generates new revenues and subsidies and significant global competitive advantage for producers of the carbon-based products wiho operate facilities and pay taxes in the IMPORTING nations, which revenues are essentially EXPROPRIATED from the owners of production assets in the exporting nations (i.e. Canada). This is a key economic reality that is not reflected in most of the carbon market analysis that has been published by Canadian or US academics to date. To date, most of the academic and government-sponsored analysis of different GHG control options assumes that the market value that attaches to GHG quota comes out of the air.  They deem it an economic "windfall" for which there is no balancing liability. However, in every quota-governed market, 100% of the market value that attaches to quota is directly expropriated from the production assets whose output cannot be sold without quota. 

When carbon-importing nations cover all domestic SALES with the quota regime and freely allocate quota to domestic producers only, the lion’s share of the value of quota in those end-use markets will reflect an equivalent reduction in the value of the foreign assets that produce carbon-based products for export to those markets.  (This reality is evident in all existing quota-governed market, including Canada’s dairy, chicken, turkey markets and municipal tax license markets. It was also highly evident in the recently phased-out global garment and textiles quota-covered markets.)

The sole objective of US-style "cap and trade" is to effect a wealth transfer – through the quota market – to the world’s energy, building product and food importing nations at the sole expense of the largest exporters of those commodities. The US government successfully achieved such a wealth transfer when it unilaterally used domestic quota allocations to manage the phasing out of lead in gasoline (see case study attached), CFCs and HCFCs in refrigerants and to protect US biofuel producers at the expense of foreign suppliers under the US Renewable Fuel Standard (law since September 2008).  But the key to successfully implementing this wealth transfer is to ensure that the regulated product importing nation is a price-setter, not a price taker.

In each US "cap and trade" precedent,s (leaded gasoline, CFC and HCFC-based refrigerants, biofuels) US demand for the regulated products so dominated global demand that the US remained the commodity price-setter after introducing their domestic quota allocations. US phaseout, entities that legally exported leaded gasoline to the US during the phase out financed almost 100% of US refinery modification costs (through their purchases of the US lead allowances/quota required for market entry) and that less than 30% of the foreign suppliers allowance acquisition costs were passed through to US consumers as price increases.  Over 70% of the cost of US leaded gasoline allowances/quota was born in the form of reductions in export sales margins and tax revenues for the exporting nations.  But US negotiators have long since assumed that a cartel of carbon-importing nations must be established, the member of which will be committed to implement a common quota system design, to ensure that the carbon-importing nation cartel will have sufficient global market power to set and not take prices.  US negotiators are confident that if the US, Japan, South Korea and China act in concert, they will become energy, building product and food price-setters, not price takers. India will support the initiative and will be a net beneficiary from the forced decline in global oil prices.

US advisors anticipate that the carbon importing nation cartel will have the power to drive the global price of oil down to $35/bbl. and that global capital investment in value-adding manufacturing will shift from commodity exporting nations (those nations that will be perpetually short of GHG quota) to importing nations (whose domestic producers will be perpetually long in quota supply).

The carbon-importing nation cartel member nations have no intention of cutting their carbon-based energy, building product or food imports in the short or medium terms. They do anticipate, however, that the successful launch of their cap and trade cartel will cause a massive  evaluation of exporting nation energy, building product and food production assets (including oilsands production facilities), as economic rents shift from these production assets to importing nation-issued GHG quota units.

Once existing investors in Canadian carbon product manufacturing assets write down the value of in Cda’s production capacity (as economic rents shift from the production facility owners to the quota holders), importing nation quota-holders will acquire the Canadian assets at deep market discounts. After the existing investors write off their expected returns to capital, the new owners of the Canadian carbon-based production facilities will profit will supplying Canadian energy, building products and food to their home markets at signficantly reduced prices. The foreign-owned Canadian assets will legally "transfer price" exports, operate a breakeven and pay minimal or no taxes in Canada.

Canada can easily turn the tables on the carbon importing nation cartel with 4 rather simple domestic regulations that we could, conceivably, make law within a few months.  The regulations will serve the combined purposes of: (1) competently and efficiently regulating GHGs in Canada to ensure Canadian compliance with our previously-announced commitment to cut national GHGs to 80% of 2006 levels by 2020, (2) form the foundation for efficient and successful defences against the protectionist nature of the carbon importing nation cartel’s strategy at both the WTO and (more importantly) IN US COURTS, and (3) show the rest of the world how to efficiently achieve environmental protection without the element of trade protectionism.

It is in Canada’s best interest to implement these 4 regulations as a pre-emptive strike, before the US Congress passes their trade protectionist cap and trade bill in the spring os 2010. I am of the opinion that 3 of the 4 essential Canadian initiatives can be passed by regulation (no new legislation is required) and 1 is a 2010 Federal Budget item that should easily garner all-party support.

The problem is that it is not apparent that Canadian federal and provincial policy-makers understand how essential it is for Canada to: (1) launch this pre-emptive strike and (2) lead a global debate regarding the true nature of US-style "cap and trade".

Posted in Aldyen Donnelly | 2 Comments

Hadley / CRU data leak

Posted on November 24, 2009 by energyprbe

by Aldyen Donnelly

Do you think last week’s release of emails, code and calculations from the CRU wil undermine the Copenhagen process?

No.  This is a serious situation, but it will take the larger scientific and academic community time to sort it out.  What the emails and other documents reveals is the authors’ disdain for Freedom of Information legislation and the peer review process.  Of course, I am of the view that peer review has fallen on event that might motivate the academic and publishing community to clean this situation up.

The most significant problem that the released documents reveal is that the CRU appears to have destroyed the raw data records they used to model climate trends.  Given raw data, the scientist made many adjustments to the data before it was incorporated in their modelling.  I don’t think the released documents PROVE that the data modifications were inappropriate (however they do suggest that might be the case).  But the fact is that the only record CRU can release, now, is the modified data, not the raw data.

Since a large share of other climate change research has relied on CRU for basic temperature/climate data, it is toing to prove expensive to address this problem.  Hopefully, the weather stations and research initiatives from whom CRU initially sourced raw data still have complete files, so the raw dataset can be reconstructed.  It will only be through the release of both the raw dataset and the modified dataset, along with explanations for the data modifications, that the wider scientific community will be able to determine what is good and what is not so good in this situation.

I agree that the CRU crew has behaved arrogantly and unprofessionally.  It will take some time to determine whether their analysis and modelling should be rejected.


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Question on Flannery's assurance that Australia likely to meet Kyoto target and "patience has worn thin" with Canada

Posted on November 23, 2009 by energyprbe

by Aldyen Donnelly

With respect to Australia’s ability to comply with its Kyoto commitment, I am not sure who is briefing Tim Flannery, but he appears, to me anyway, to harbour a number of misconceptions — about both Canada and his home land, Australia.

The Aussie facts are a little bizarre.  In 2004, the Howard government decided to introduce an unusual, uniquely Australian GHG inventory accounting practice that is not recognized anywhere else in the world or by the parties to the Kyoto Protocol.  The newer Rudd government has maintained the Howard government inventory accounting method for purposes of reporting to and communicating with the Australian people..  The Aussie target of "8% above 1990 levels" is likely within reach using the unique, bizarre Aussie GHG inventory method.  But Australia’s Kyoto target is impossible to reach. While all of the official national GHG inventories that appear at the Australia Greenhouse Office incorporate the bizarre, unique GHG accounting method, Australia still complies with IPCC/UNFCCC guidelines for all of their official GHG inventory submissions to the UNFCCC/COP.

Using the bizarre Howard/Rudd Austrlia GHG inventory method, Australia’s GHG itotalled 546,328,000 in 1990 and 597,197,000 in 2007. (source http://www.ageis.greenhouse.gov.au/).  If you elect to recognize these GHG inventory estimate, an Australian commitment to cap GHGs at 8% above 1990 levels for 2008-2012 is very much within reach.

But according to Australia’s official inventory submissions to the UNFCCC–and for purposes of determining Kyoto Protocol compliance–Australia’s GHGs (including land use change) totalled 453,794,000 in 1990 and 825,888,000 in 2007 (see Australia’s official GHG
inventory submissions to the UNFCCC, below, source):

http://unfccc.int/national_reports/annex_i_ghg_inventories/national_inventories_submissions/items/4771.php

Below, I should tell you both the Aussie UNFCCC inventory excluding and including land use change and forestry ("LULUCF")  You may recall that all parties were invited to elect to report target progress in reference to either UNFCCC inventory option — with or without LULUCF.  Canada elected to report progress without LUCLUCF (which means that under Kyoto we are not permitted to count forestry and land use change credits towards our Kyoto target) and Australia elected to report with LUCLUCF (which means that Australia can use forestry and land use change credits when they report progress towards their Kyoto target). 

Yes, you are reading this correctly.  With its much smaller population, Australia’s total reportable GHGs (including land use change) exceeded Canada’s by roughly 30,000,000 TCO2e in 2007.  Australia’s 1990 to 2007 GHG growth rate has also been significantly higher than
Canada’s when the reference is the internationally sanctioned IPCC/UNFCCC Inventory method.

In fact, both inventories are posted at the Australia Greenhouse website (http://www.ageis.greenhouse.gov.au/).  The first inventory is labelled "National Greenhouse Gas Inventory", while the inventory that is used to determine Kyoto compliance is labelled "UNFCCC Inventory". Because of their election to include LUCLUCF in their progress reporting, the Aussie government shows only the GHG inventory that was at 825,888,000 TCO2e in 2007 as the UNFCCC Inventory at the AGO website.

It is, therefore, inconceivable that Australia can comply with its Kyoto target, which compliance — by definition–must be achieved using the IPCC/UNFCCC GHG inventory accounting methods.

Of course, this Australian government inventory game-playing is highly confusing for the Australian people.  I would have thought that Tim Flannery, of all people, would have been above playing this game.

 

Annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for Australia, in Gg CO2 equivalent

Query results for Party: Australia – Years: All years – Category: Total
GHG emissions excluding LULUCF/LUCF – Gas: Aggregate GHGs

Category
Base Year
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
Last Inventory Year(2007)
1 Energy
286,433.06
286,433.06
288,301.58
294,536.63
298,927.27
301,172.86
312,795.28
318,702.89
328,977.53
342,863.55
349,717.30
358,623.05
365,123.66
368,640.12
381,635.46
387,039.68
392,830.15
400,103.83
408,162.69
2 Industrial Processes
24,141.44
24,141.44
23,411.06
24,039.63
23,882.18
24,069.93
24,268.94
24,079.50
24,165.23
25,442.53
25,690.74
25,731.17
26,381.40
26,831.19
27,936.86
29,018.65
27,792.74
29,386.59
30,342.89
3 Solvent and Other Product Use
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
4 Agriculture
86,832.12
86,832.12
87,000.54
85,328.50
84,845.84
85,374.57
86,332.68
86,628.17
87,848.27
88,048.65
91,225.69
94,676.97
98,236.03
95,646.16
91,230.08
91,286.62
89,571.32
90,798.01
88,106.04
6 Waste
18,807.32
18,807.32
18,787.06
18,580.34
18,507.59
17,998.98
18,039.86
16,649.98
16,440.74
15,799.14
15,958.64
15,823.60
15,996.48
16,072.35
15,125.52
14,739.68
14,441.26
14,182.29
14,567.10
7 Other
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Total
416,213.94
416,213.94
417,500.24
422,485.10
426,162.88
428,616.33
441,436.75
446,060.54
457,431.77
472,153.87
482,592.36
494,854.79
505,737.57
507,189.82
515,927.91
522,084.63
524,635.47
534,470.72
541,178.73

Note 1: The reporting and review requirements for GHG inventories are different for Annex I and non-Annex I Parties.
The definition format of data for emissions/removals from the forestry
sector is different for Annex I and non-Annex I Parties (see details).

Note 2: Base year data in the data interface relate to the base year under the Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC).
The base year under the Convention is defined slightly different than the base year under the Kyoto Protocol.

Note 3: — means "No data available"; * means "Emissions were reported with notation keys"; n.a. means "not applicable".

 

 

Annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for Australia, in Gg CO2 equivalent

Query results for Party: Australia – Years: All years – Category: Total
GHG emissions including LULUCF/LUCF – Gas: Aggregate GHGs

Category
Base Year
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
Last Inventory Year(2007)
1 Energy
286,433.06
286,433.06
288,301.58
294,536.63
298,927.27
301,172.86
312,795.28
318,702.89
328,977.53
342,863.55
349,717.30
358,623.05
365,123.66
368,640.12
381,635.46
387,039.68
392,830.15
400,103.83
408,162.69
2 Industrial Processes
24,141.44
24,141.44
23,411.06
24,039.63
23,882.18
24,069.93
24,268.94
24,079.50
24,165.23
25,442.53
25,690.74
25,731.17
26,381.40
26,831.19
27,936.86
29,018.65
27,792.74
29,386.59
30,342.89
3 Solvent and Other Product Use
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
4 Agriculture
86,832.12
86,832.12
87,000.54
85,328.50
84,845.84
85,374.57
86,332.68
86,628.17
87,848.27
88,048.65
91,225.69
94,676.97
98,236.03
95,646.16
91,230.08
91,286.62
89,571.32
90,798.01
88,106.04
5 LULUCF
37,579.65
37,579.65
133,227.28
60,564.39
-2,559.59
-43,356.47
101,010.49
-15,260.84
-56,971.07
129,938.70
-46,012.73
-90,462.68
-78,658.29
283,885.46
114,111.83
-193,623.41
71,603.29
16,587.76
284,709.69
6 Waste
18,807.32
18,807.32
18,787.06
18,580.34
18,507.59
17,998.98
18,039.86
16,649.98
16,440.74
15,799.14
15,958.64
15,823.60
15,996.48
16,072.35
15,125.52
14,739.68
14,441.26
14,182.29
14,567.10
7 Other
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
Total
453,793.59
453,793.59
550,727.52
483,049.49
423,603.29
385,259.86
542,447.24
430,799.70
400,460.70
602,092.57
436,579.63
404,392.10
427,079.28
791,075.28
630,039.74
328,461.22
596,238.75
551,058.48
825,888.42

Note 1: The reporting and review requirements for GHG inventories are different for Annex I and non-Annex I Parties.
The definition format of data for emissions/removals from the forestry
sector is different for Annex I and non-Annex I Parties (see details).

Note 2: Base year data in the data interface relate to the base year under the Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC).
The base year under the Convention is defined slightly different than the base year under the Kyoto Protocol.

Note 3: — means "No data available"; * means "Emissions were reported with notation keys"; n.a. means "not applicable". 

 

 

 

 

Why Canada failed on Kyoto and how to make amends

by Tim Flannery, Toronto Star, November 22, 2009

Whatever you may think of the climate problem or the upcoming Copenhagen meeting, it’s indisputable that Canada, by virtue of its history of engagement with the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, finds itself facing a profound dilemma. More than anything else, reducing carbon emissions requires bold policies that guide the responsible production and use of energy, and examining Canada’s federal structure and history on this issue helps to frame the realistic options available to the country at this critical juncture.

Canada’s problem with Kyoto goes to the very heart of its system of government, for Canada is a federation with a weak centre. While the federal government has the authority to negotiate multilateral agreements and enact legislation to respect their terms, in the case of climate change the brunt of this legislation affects energy, which is of provincial jurisdiction.

The debate surrounding Kyoto and its implementation raised spectres that had, in the early 1980s, nearly torn the country apart. So from the very beginning it was clear that only the strongest, most resolute federal leadership had a hope of honouring the promises it had made. One only need mention the words National Energy Program in the province of Alberta to experience an echo of that crisis. The sense that the province was being unfairly targeted is still so raw that no federal government since has been brave enough to forge a new energy policy. And without such a policy, how can Canadians deliver on international obligations that involve fossil fuels?

Canada was an early and strong promoter of a global climate treaty, reflective of its longstanding commitment to international environmental and development agendas. At the Kyoto meeting in 1997, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien negotiated an obligation to cut Canada’s annual emissions of greenhouse gases by 6 per cent below their 1990 levels from 2008-2012.

This was in line with the reduction targets accepted by other developed countries but contrasted sharply with the position of Australia, an economy markedly similar to Canada’s and heavily dependent on fossil fuels.

Australia negotiated an 8 per cent increase on 1990 levels, a target it is likely to honour, and which is the starting point for a new drive to finally reduce emissions which will commence in 2012.

So from the outset it was clear that Canada had set itself a difficult task. When the United States abandoned Kyoto in 2001, Canada was left as the only nation in the Americas considering the adoption of a binding emissions-reduction obligation. Canada forged ahead and announced its intention to ratify in late 2002, and when Russia’s ratification in November 2004 resurrected an agreement many had left for dead, it started to become clear that an energy-intensive economy like Canada’s would need to take bold steps to enable responsible economic growth accompanied by a dwindling emissions profile.

While many could empathize with Canada’s difficult position, patience has worn thin as months and years have now passed in the absence of a coherent and detailed climate strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

True it is that attempts at action were made, but differing provincial views as to how (or whether) action should be taken, coupled with federal indecision (under the Liberals) and then deliberate indifference (under Stephen Harper’s Conservatives) to the issue have left Canada adrift.

A NEW ADMINISTRATION in the United States has made clear its intention to take meaningful action, and Canada’s wait-and-see approach has left its provinces to take disparate and largely uncoordinated actions. Federal attempts at harmonizing this basket of approaches, and getting it to add up to a national emissions reduction target, have been slow and secretive, leaving many skeptical of the earnestness of Canada’s attempts to honour its international obligations.

The problem facing Canada is that its commitment to Kyoto is real. Though efforts have been made by the current administration to repudiate the emissions reduction obligation, Canada remains a Party to the Protocol and is expected to honour those obligations. Failure to deliver will have profound economic, political and moral implications. Current best-guess estimates project that Canada will overshoot these targets by some billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent during the Kyoto period, by far the worst breach of any nation.

And that is a real drag on the current negotiations, for given the sizeable penalty (30 per cent on top of a billion-tonne excess) that Canada would most likely be obliged to pay for its Kyoto breach, any target it would be willing to accept under a new agreement is likely to be unacceptable to every other nation around the table.

Every action has its consequences, and right or wrong, Canada will pay for its Kyoto default. In international politics, as among individuals, reputations are our most important asset, and before Kyoto Canada had one of the finest international reputations in the world. One only need think of the Montreal Protocol, where the world agreed to phase out CFCs and other materials that damage the earth’s ozone layer, or the great work done by Canada in international peacekeeping, to get a sense of how outsiders saw Canada prior to its Kyoto debacle.

As Canada seeks to engage with the Copenhagen meeting, it finds itself in the position of a seller on eBay who has pocketed the payment but not forwarded the goods. Such a loss of reputation in business is often irreparable, but in politics amends can be made. Making best efforts to address this issue will serve Canada well, for among nations as among people, goodwill is recognised and rewarded.

WERE I ADVISING the government of Canada, I would urge the Harper government, despite the fact that it didn’t create the problem, to take ownership of it and seek meaningful ways to make recompense. One avenue open to it is to play a leading role in financing adaptation to, and mitigation of, climate change impacts in the world’s poorest countries.

Canada has a proud history of engagement with Africa, which could be built on as a way of restoring the nation’s reputation. Just as importantly, Canada needs a national energy policy which forms the framework for a viable approach to national emissions reductions in future. The only way that this can be achieved is if it becomes the personal crusade of a highly capable Canadian prime minister who is capable of working effectively with provincial leaders. It would cost time, political capital and money, but nothing is more important for Canada’s reputation, nor its place in the world, than this.

In a few weeks I’ll be sitting down, here in Australia, to a very different Christmas from that enjoyed by most Canadians. It’s likely to be at least 35C, with worries about bushfires perhaps putting a damper on the barbecue. But still our fundamental thoughts will be the same. I’ll be thinking about my father, now in his 80s, who battles valiantly on through increasingly frail health, and of my son, aged 26, who will be enjoying his first Christmas away from home, in Europe. My son may well live to see the year 2080, and he will carry with him all his life the love of his grandfather and grandmother. As dispersed as we are, there’s a web of love connecting us all, which spans half a world and 150 years of time.

One thought has recently been much on my mind: what would our world be like today if the climate crisis had emerged in my father’s youth? What if, in the 1930s, scientists had discovered that a rapid increase in temperature brought about by human pollution was threatening the survival of humanity? I’ve no idea how my father and his generation would have risen to the challenge, but whatever their actions, science leaves no doubt that their decisions would by now be having a profound impact upon my world and quality of life. And when I look at my son that is just what I feel. That despite the difficulties and sorry history and scientific uncertainty about details, we need to do our best in dealing with the climate problem; the fate of our children depends upon it, and in the web of human love connecting families, a century is not a long time at all.

Australian scientist Tim Flannery is the author of The Weathermakers and Now or Never, which argue for public policies to reduce carbon emissions that scientists have linked to rising temperatures.

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"Carbon 20" and GHG regulation design in Canada

Posted on November 23, 2009 by energyprbe

by Aldyen Donnelly

What I find bizarre is the language that is repeated throughout the draft Copenhagen agreement that says the purpose of the agreement is to compel the nations that are most responsible for existing GHG concentrations (i.e. the nations most responsible for 1990 to 2000 GHG discharges) to compensate the developing nations for GHG impacts.

As you saw in one of my prior postings, if we just consider energy-related discharges since 1990, China, Russia and India are among the top 6 nations responsible for current GHG concentrations in the atmosphere.  I have not replicated other estimates of national discharges since 1900, because in most cases they are at best guesses.  But while %s may change, it is unlikely that more than one or two of the rankings of the 30 countries listed below would change if we had good data back to 1900.

What does this mean?  It means that the commitments outlined in the draft Copenhagen agreement are largely inconsistent with the objectives of the agreement, as they are stated in the agreement. I do not intend to suggest that the developed world should not act unless/until at least the developing nations listed below also commit to caps.  As I wrote previously, it is essential that the international negotiations drop the quota-based supply management market control strategy ("cap and trade") and introduce a new GHG treaty that relies on product standards (as outlined below), which is much more consistent with the very successful Montreal Protocol model

United States, 23.4%;
China, 13%;
Russia, 9.8%;
Japan, 4.8%;
Germany, 3.6%;
India, 3.4%;
United Kingdom, 2.6%;
Canada, 2.3%;
Ukraine, 2%;
Italy,1.8%;
France, 1.8%;
Poland, 1.6%;
South Africa, 1.5%;
Mexico, 1.5%
South Korea, 1.4%;
Australia, 1.3%;
Brazil, 1.2%;
Spain, 1.2%;
Iran, 1.2%;
Saudi Arabia, 1.1%.

This list of 20 nations accounts for 80% of anthropogenic discharges of GHGs to the atmosphere over the 27 year period ending in 2007. Obviously, the top 5 listed nations account for over 50% of atmospheric GHG concentrations.

To get anywhere, the US has to drop its desire to impose a quota-based carbon supply management regime ("cap and trade" on the world.  Quota-based supply management always delivers unprecedented market power to incumbents, which market power the incumbents use the quota regime to secure in perpetuity.  It is obvious why a global GHG quota regime advantages the US and the consolidates EU and Japan vis-a-vis the rest of the world.  It is equally obvious why newer economies, including Canada, should never accept such a proposal.

We did not need to introduce global quota allocations to reduce sulphur levels in diesel, lead in gasoline, PCBs in electricity supply systems, lead in paint, etc.  We achieved these objectives by adopting product standards that regulated limits to pollutants and/or pollutant precursors in the products that we allow to be sold in our nations (as opposed to regulating domestic production and introducing tariffs on imports of those products).  If/when we regulate fossil carbon content limits that decline over time for all electricity, petroleum product, cement, aluminum, iron & steel, pulp and paper, wood product and glass sales in the "C5", let alone the "C20" nations, as long as we rule that any combination of regulated product distributors can "comply jointly" and any entity that over-complies with their annual fossil carbon content limit (on an overall sales portfolio average basis) can bank that over-compliance for future use, then a simple set of fewer than 10 international product standards is all we need to convert our 2020 and 2050 GHG reduction objectives into reality.

For a model for product performance standard regulatory language, simply download Canada’s PCB regulation from:
http://www.ec.gc.ca/CEPARegistry/regulations/DetailReg.cfm?intReg=105

Note, in particular:

"Application 2. (1) These Regulations apply to PCBs [insert "greenhouse gases"] and to any products containing PCBs [insert "fossil-based carbon"]."

Most of the issues blocking any kind of international or domestic consensus on GHG mitigation derive from the fact that in the international and domestic contexts we are addressing only production-level GHGs and failing to address the sale products the consumption of which results in the discharge of GHGs.  In every Canadian pollutant regulatory precedent we clearly understood that we cannot regulate domestic production pollutant discharge unless/until we are also prepared to regulate the sale of products that contain the target pollutant or pollution precursors. 

I am at a loss to explain how we managed to completely forget all of our prior regulatory experience when it came to GHGs.

"PROHIBITIONS Release into the environment 5. (1) No person shall release PCBs [insert "GHGs"] into the environment, other than from the equipment referred to in subsection (2), in a concentration of (a) 2 mg/kg or more for a liquid containing PCBs [insert   fossil-based carbon"] ; or (b) 50 mg/kg or more for a solid containing PCBs [insert "fossil-based carbon"]."

What should the allowable GHG intensity limits be for fossil-based carbon-containing products for: (1) 2013-2017, (2) 2018-2022, (3) 2023-2027, etc?  For example, Canadian and US Renewable Fuel Standards that oblige distributors to acheive 5% biofuel conent targets (% total weight of liquid fuels) will likely prove highly inefficient regulatory measures.  However, a regulation that caps fossil carbon content in liquid fuels at a kg/kg level that equates to 95% of baseline average carbon content for those fuels will likely prove an highly efficient regulatory measure.

"Prohibited activities 6. Except as provided in these Regulations, no person shall (a) manufacture, export or import PCBs or a product containing PCBs [insert "fossil-based carbon"] in a concentration of 2 mg/kg ["??? kg/kg"] or more; (b) offer for sale or sell PCBs or a product containing PCBs [insert "fossil-based carbon"] in a concentration of 50 mg/kg  ["??? kg/kg"] or more; or (c) process or use PCBs or a product containing PCBs [insert "fossil-based carbon in a concentration of 50 mg/kg  [??? kg/kg] or more."]

Note that for any such regulation, not just GHG regulation, it is essential to address all of the following activities: a) manufacture, export or import… (b) offer for sale or sell..(c) process or use…

Of course, much in the PCB regulation does not apply in the GHG context or required radical modification to address the GHG context.  But I find it is still a very, very good exercise to start with this or a similar Canadian pollutant regulation when you are attempting to draft regulations that will work for GHGs.

 

 

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