Authors retract paper linking nuclear power to slow action on climate change

Look! No question mark in my title. This is from a post on retraction watch about “Nuclear energy and path dependence in Europe’s ‘Energy union’: coherence or continued divergence?” by Andrew Lawrence, Benjamin Sovacool, and Andrew Stirling, Climate Policy, 2016; 16 (5): 622 DOI: 10.1080/14693062.2016.1179616.

Given the title and conclusions the pro-nuke folk weren’t likely to like it, and it looks like they were right not to like it. Two criticisms (linked from the RW article, another I’ll skip because it was too shrill) are by Stephen Tindale and Suzanna Hinson and Nicholas Thompson. Those two crits cover the broad range from, effectively, the broad-scale methodology doesn’t make sense to the numbers are wrong. The numbers are wrong in many ways: simply mis-transcribed, calculated in the wrong way, and without reference to how the time period chosen affects the results. They also do questionable things with averaging: does it make sense to average an emission reduction, as a percentage, across Italy and Malta when the latter, in terms of absolute emissions, is tiny? I think you would expect at least some discussion of this point in the original paper, but it is absent. There doesn’t seem to be any attempt to evaluate statistical significant of the results either¹. On a more broad scale, the first criticism questions whether the groupings of the paper make any sense, which seems like a fair comment.

FWIW my own guess would be that the factors influencing renewables and nukes in a country are sufficiently idiosyncratic that this crude level of analysis would be unlikely to be useful.

Notes

1. Don’t miss their delightful response which, errm, fully answers the statistical issue. Errm.

Photogenic teens sue US government

To be fair, only one of them is known to be photogenic¹. Bizarrely, according to Slate, the young plaintiffs “range in age from 9 to 20”². Brian reports but doesn’t comment on the weirdness of having 9-year-olds suing in the courts. Are we really to believe that a 9-year-old has sufficient command of the issues? It seems utterly weird to me, more of a piece of performance art than a real thing, but the USA is a funny place. Apparently,

climate change violates their constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property by causing direct harm and destroying so-called public trust assets such as coastlines.

This sounds like just the sort of judicial overreach that got Trump elected; not a point Brian considers. Coastlines, assuming they are “public trust assets”, aren’t your property so even if they were destroyed that wouldn’t violate your right to property. And of course they won’t be destroyed, they’ll just migrate inland. The invocation of “liberty” is, umm, I was going to say bizarre but I’ve used that already, perhaps I’ll just say hard to understand. And “life”? Cars kill many many more people in the USA than climate change presently does, or even than would in the future for any plausible forecast. So should they not sue to ban cars instead? No, of course not. Firstly, it would be doomed, because USAnians like cars even more than they like guns-n-pizza. And secondly, because there’s a trade off: cars kill people, but they also provide benefits that people like. Burning fossil fuels is exactly the same, although perhaps that’s hard for a 9-year-old to understand.

Continuing,

the children and their lawyers say these government actions are willfully prioritizing short-term profit, convenience, and the concerns of current generations over those of future generations. The plaintiffs state that the government and these companies have continued to prioritize these short-term gains for more than five decades with full knowledge of the extreme dangers they posed.

I’m not sure this makes sense. They claim the government and the Evil Corporations have been prioritising short-term gains – let’s say “short term” means “decadal”, shall we, since they provide no clear definition themselves – for the last five decades at least. And that “short termism”, iterated for at least five intervals of short-term time, has clearly brought great material prosperity. So it can’t really be considered a short-term strategy. And are the winsome teens proposing to give up that prosperity? Of course along with that prosperity has come many problems, not uniformly distributed along with the prosperity, and not by any means restricted to the USA, though I’m not sure the court case considers harm to non-USA-type folk to be terribly important.

This in turn is just the to-the-present-day version of the familiar problem: that all the standard scenarios say that our descendants will be richer – in a material sense; they are responsible for their own metaphysical welfare; though I suppose they won’t be too happy if we f*ck over all the wildlife – than we are. So you can call it “short termism” if you like, but other people will call it “making us all richer”. Since these are the people who disagree with you, why do you think this is likely to convince them?

The fight to Do Something about GW is multi-faceted, and although my preferred route would be to convince people it is a good idea to Do Something (well, a carbon tax in fact, though I confess my efforts to persuade people of the bleedin’ obvious have not been successful so far) rather than sue them into doing something³, I can’t complain too much if other people prefer the grand theatre of the court system. And standing unbending on the Moral High Ground is so much more satisfying than arguing for a carbon tax. And I don’t suppose 9-year-olds are going to really understand the complexities of the process anyway. But I do wonder if now is a great time to be doing this. The case, inevitably, will go to the supreme court if it isn’t dismissed earlier. And so will concentrate the minds of Trump, and his advisors, on making damn sure that those he appoints will not pass this case. You’ll likely say – correctly – that he doesn’t need any more pressure to appoint the sort of judges who would oppose cases-like-this; but in that case, what’s the point, other than a few feel-good headlines?

Notes

1. I lie; see https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/us/federal-lawsuit/⁴. See-also this pic – is that a familiar green hat I see in the background?

2. Ah: “…and Dr. James Hansen, acting as guardian for future generations.” Oddly, neither Slate or Brian mention that.

3. Similarly, Brexit, where I’d rather the losers didn’t try to “win” through the courts.

4. From where I find the judgement itself (Brian’s link didn’t work for me). I wrote this post from Brian’s post and the Slate article; I suppose I’m going to have at least pretend to read a vast slab of legalese now.

The judgement

I pressed “post”, as noted above, before reading the judgement. Some of it is interesting. For example, This lawsuit is not about proving that climate change is happening or that human activity is driving it. For the purposes of this motion, those facts are undisputed.3 It is good to see that, although “climate change is happening or that human activity is driving it” is one thing “those facts are undisputed.3” is somewhat different, as you’ll see if you follow footnote 3. Which is:

For the purposes of this motion, I proceed on the understanding that climate change exists, is caused by humans, and poses a serious threat to our planet. Defendants [state] that “[c]limate change poses a monumental threat to Americans’ health and welfare by driving long-lasting changes in our climate, leading to an array of severe negative effects, which will worsen over time.”… Obama declared “[n]o challenge … poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change.” … When asked… intervenors declined to take a clear position.

So while I’m not entirely happy that the addition of “and poses a serious threat to our planet” occurs only in a footnote, and I’m not totally happy with the failure to resolve that against the rather stronger assertions form the teens; I do admit they have Obama on their side. And the bit about the other side shuffling their feet, looking embarassed, but not actually finding anything coherent to say, is nice.

The bit where it gets bad is the immeadiately following:

The questions before the Court are whether defendants are responsible for some of the harm caused by climate change…

which appears to totally fail to understand that this has to be a cost-benefit problem. Burning fossil fuels has costs. It also has benefits, otherwise people wouldn’t do it (duh). If the case really is that badly one-sided then it is doomed to fare badly further up the chain.

Plaintiffs adequately allege injury in fact

I kid you not, the judge has accepted Plaintiff Zealand B. alleges he has been unable to ski during the winter as a result of decreased snowpack. as an example of “injury in fact”. What a bunch of special snowflakes these people are.

Refs

* Basic Geo-Engineering or Cosmic Rays Bite the Particulates – Eli
* Trump could face the ‘biggest trial of the century’ — over climate change – WaPo

Economists agree: economic models underestimate climate change?

Tis David Roberts, at Vox. I say that up front because although I’m pretty sure I’ve disagreed with him on just this kind of stuff before, I can’t find it now. Although maybe I was thinking of the related How much is climate change going to cost us? at Grist, which is presumably much the same thing. DR starts with:

It’s fairly well-established at this point that there’s a robust scientific consensus about the threat of climate change. But analysts and journalists often say (or imply) that there’s less of an economic consensus, that economists are leery of the actions recommended by scientists because of their cost.

The bit about the scientific consensus isn’t in doubt; but “economists are leery of the actions recommended by scientists because of their cost” reads oddly. As we all know, there is an economic consensus on a carbon tax, which I share. But what does “actions recommended by scientists” mean? If I go to Expert Consensus on the Economics of Climate Change which is what DR’s article is based on I find the scientific community has developed widespread consensus that action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is necessary, which I think is reasonable, as a representation of the views of scientists. However I think I’d argue that those views are subtly wrong, because they mis-state’s scientists place in the process. (Climate) scientists get to investigate, determine that GW is happening and will proceed in such-and-such a way in the future under certain conditions (principally, emission scenarios). However they don’t have any especially privileged position as regards “policy recommendations” as to what to do about it. Why should they? Their expertise is in the science, not in economics or in policy. They can – rightly – complain if politicians do nothing about GW. So I think economists are leery of the actions recommended by scientists is entirely likely, and likely to be both a correct reflection of economists views, and that the said views of the said economists are likely to be correct, too (the title also doesn’t make sense, of itself. Should it read economic models underestimate economic impacts of climate change? That would make sense, as a question. But I won’t waste time on titles).

At that point I realised the survey was from 2015 and I’ve already blogged about it. FFS.

Other than that there’s a lot of confusion about “climate model” and failing to distinguish physical from economic, which I think is a poor show; and then there’s the standard stuff about social cost of carbon and discount rates, but there’s nothing new in that, of course.

In the end, as I said before, what’s most interesting about the survey of economists is the degree to which they think Something Should Be Done. As the graph I’ve inlined at the top shows, a clear majority, 56%, plump for “very serious” as the answer to “If nothing is done to limit climate change in the future, how serious of a problem do you think it will be for the United States?” and 50% go for “Immediate and drastic action is necessary” as the answer to “Which of the following best describes your views about climate change?” So it is pretty odd the way everyone beats up on the Evil Economists; it is almost like people are fighting strawmen.

Refs

* Peak Oil Was Correct – It’s Just It Was Peak Demand, Not Peak Supply

Trump’s Plan to Eliminate NASA Climate Research Is Ill-Informed and Dangerous?

Ah, excellent. I was looking for a post to hang my musings off, and Phil Plait’s rant is a splendid peg. Not only that, but via fb I find this charming astronomer fox in Discarding Images; it is clear that the stars have aligned so I’ll proceed.

PP is not just sad but outraged that

In an interview with the Guardian, Bob Walker, a senior Trump adviser, said that Trump will eliminate NASA’s Earth science research. This is the mission directorate of NASA that, among other important issues, studies climate change

and so on. And if you read the Graun’s headline Trump to scrap Nasa climate research in crackdown on ‘politicized science’ you might get much the same idea. Or even if you read the Graun “paraphrasing” what Bob Walker said, you get Donald Trump is poised to eliminate all climate change research conducted by Nasa as part of a crackdown on “politicized science”, his senior adviser on issues relating to the space agency has said. However, if you read what he actually said you find something rather different:

“We see Nasa in an exploration role, in deep space research,” Walker told the Guardian. “Earth-centric science is better placed at other agencies where it is their prime mission. My guess is that it would be difficult to stop all ongoing Nasa programs but future programs should definitely be placed with other agencies.”

[Note that I have deliberately truncated that quote to remove all the goo and dribble about “politicised science” because whilst it is undoubtedly part of their motive, it is also deeply stupid, and not really relevant to what I want to talk about.]

I doubt that were such a shakeup to occur, all that would happen is that the funding would transfer to other agencies. Almost inevitably the sort of folk that DT would select would choose to cut some science in the process. And perhaps you might like the idea of climate science being mingled into NASA, and thus hard to cut cleanly, rather than being in some clearly labelled and easily attackable or defundable agaency. But that’s a political or bureaucratic defence, and obviously not one that can be put openly, so let’s not discuss it.

Regrettably PP (and everyone else I’ve seen commenting on this) is so utterly and blindly outraged (The motivation behind this is clear: Utter and complete denial of science… the modern day Joseph McCarthy… the Earth is a planet, and studying it, studying its climate and our effect on it, is absolutely part of NASA’s mission) that he doesn’t even pause for a moment to wonder if DT’s people have a point.

Why does NASA do climate research?

NASA is a large organisation and doubtless does lots of things. Some of which probably connected together in sensible ways in the past; but that’s no reason they should continue that way in the future. Sending probes to Pluto has very little to do with running GCMs (notice: I said very little, not none. Please don’t bother point out that people run GCMs of Mars and Jupiter and so on).

One upon a time NASA knew lots about launching rockets, which was useful for putting climate-type satellites into orbit. But more and more (just today: SpaceX wins contract to launch NASA Earth science mission; also ULA in general) other people can do that. So the need for a tight connection to NASA is much less obvious now.

I did the smallest amount of legwork consistent with my elastic conscience and found science.nasa.gov/earth-science which is nominally NASA Earth science. But it doesn’t even mention modelling, so clearly isn’t the full story.

Anyway, the question I wanted to ask my readership is the title of this section. Why should NASA do this stuff, rather than someone else? Answers of the nature of “well, it grew up this way, and would be painful to disentangle” won’t get you any points.

I wandered over to WUWT, confident that I’d find myself on the same side as them and then having to desperately explain why that’s all right. But instead I found State of the art weather satellite launched over the weekend promises huge gains in many areas by Anthony Watts / 2 days ago November 21, 2016: NOAA’s GOES-R satellite launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida this weekend at 6;42pm on November 19, 2016 wherein they’re being positively enthusiastic about NASA. But, there’s just now an Eric Worrall rant about “Trump Crackdown on “Politicized Science”: NASA Climate Division to be Stripped of Funding”. EW is a nutter, of course.

Update: Gavin – oddly enough – has some interesting things to say. Although he doesn’t address my question so loses prescience points. Doesn’t he look smug in the picture though? Just the sort of liberal elitist to wind up the rednecks.

Update: via Gavin – it’s him again! On Twitter I find climate.nasa.gov/nasa_science/history/, and it is kinda interesting: When NASA was first created by the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, it was given the role of developing technology for “space observations,” but it wasn’t given a role in Earth science… Other agencies of the federal government were responsible for carrying out Earth science research… cross-agency research failed during the 1970s, though, due to the bad economy and… congressional leaders wanted to see NASA doing more research toward “national needs.” These needs included things like energy efficiency, pollution, ozone depletion and climate change. In 1976, Congress revised the Space Act to give NASA authority to carry out stratospheric ozone research, formalizing the agency’s movement into the Earth sciences… Declining planetary funding and growing scientific interest in the Earth’s climate caused planetary scientists to start studying the Earth. It was closer, and much less expensive, to do research on. And NASA followed suit, starting to plan for an Earth observing system aimed at questions of “global change.” This phrase included climate change as well as changes in land use, ocean productivity and pollution. But the Earth science program that it established was modeled on NASA’s space and planetary science programs, not the old Applications program. NASA developed the technology and funded the science. In 1984, Congress again revised the Space Act, broadening NASA’s Earth science authority from the stratosphere to “the expansion of human knowledge of the Earth.”

And so on. So you can try replying to the question with the answer “because Congress told it to!” (the Tweet does this) which is true, but of course is then vulnerable to the answer “fine. But now we’re telling you to stop.”

Refs

* The Real Climate Catastrophe – Gavin (again!)
* Plus ca change (NASA US Election Edition) – Eli reminisces.
* A Portrait of a Man Who Knows Nothing About Climate Change by Jonathan Chait. Not a good article, but does make the obvious point that Trump’s lack of commitment to the cause of climate-science denial is rooted in a comprehensive failure to grasp the issue but then fails to understand the consequences of his own point.
* Threat to NASA climate role a ‘disaster’ for global warming action: researchers including our Stefan
* Impact of ocean resolution on coupled air-sea fluxes and large-scale climate – Hadley folk: Malcolm J. Roberts, Helene T. Hewitt et al. DOI: 10.1002/2016GL070559
* Tracing global supply chains to air pollution hotspots – Daniel Moran and Keiichiro Kanemoto, Environmental Research Letters, Volume 11, Number 9, 2016.
* Five reasons why cutting NASA’s climate research would be a colossal mistake
* More besides-the-point ranting if you’re interested.

A response to a response to a proportionate response

In A proportionate response to Trump’s climate plans?” I reported RT’s opinion that WTO rules only permit border taxes if there is an equivalent domestic tax. VV, no great fan of Tol, replied

William, a scientific article published this May came by on Twitter. It states: “The implementation of such measures is likely to be technically possible under WTO rules (Veel, 2009 Veel, P.-E. (2009). Carbon tariffs and the WTO: An evaluation of feasible policies. Journal of International Economic Law, 12(3), 749–800. doi: 10.1093/jiel/jgp031; Zhang, 2009 Zhang, Z. (2009). Multilateral trade measures in a post-2012 climate change regime? What can be taken from the Montreal Protocol and the WTO? Energy Policy, 37(12), 5105–5112. doi: 10.1016/j.enpol.2009.07.020) and a credible threat.”

Veel is a good reference, and also the top Google hit for “are carbon tariffs permissible under WTO rules”. You need to be very careful with words like “technically possible” because that includes vast wads of not easily digestible verbiage and legalese about whether the idea would be in principle even possible, before then going on to even more words to consider under what specific conditions that “technically” might be satisfied by. As far as I can see, the end result of all that is tht RT is broadly correct and VV’s hopes will be dashed, as will Chris Hope’s, even more than I previously though.

If there is anyone out there who can actually be bothered to wade through all of Veel in detail, or who has other more easily digested refs available, I’d be very grateful for pointers.

Reading Veel shows that this stuff isn’t new (which is interesting; I don’t see the meeja reports on the present proposals (note, BTW, that Sarko is out so all this stuff is probably dust until the next pol wants to say something populist aanywaay) having pointed that out); see e.g. NYT from 2006.

Perhaps more amusingly, it also points to a José Manuel Durão Barroso speech from 2008 which sayeth

We are however conscious of the need to allow the industrial sector to adapt. Energy intensive industries face a particular challenge during the transition, and especially those exposed to international competition from countries without low carbon measures. There would be no point in pushing EU companies to cut emissions if the only result is that production and indeed pollution shifts to countries with no carbon disciplines at all. Of course, an international agreement would reduce, or even remove, this risk. Sectoral agreements would also help. But in case of need, I think we should also be ready to continue to give the energy intensive industries their ETS allowances free of charge, or to require importers to obtain allowances alongside European competitors, as long as such a system is compatible with WTO requirements.

Note that JMDB isn’t sure that the WTO would be happy. Note also that he does think domestic and international “tariffs” would have to match.

The obvious implication from this would therefore not be to tax imports at the social cost of carbon type price which Chris Hope proposed – around $150 / tonne CO2e – but instead at the ETS trading rate – around €5 per tonne CO2e (whether you tax them at that rate or require them to buy ETS credits at that rate I’m not sure). $150 versus €5 is dramatically different. Continuing reading from Veel I find (skipping over vast mountains of legalese I was not very interested in):

1. The types of taxes amenable to border tax adjustment. As noted above, the essence of carbon tariffs — particularly those being examined by the EU and the USA—is that they are measures which are designed to force importers of goods to bear the same charge for emitting a given quantity of CO2 in the course of production of those goods as do domestic producers.

Which again looks to be the same conclusion: you can’t tax the US at the full social cost, whilst taxing your own people at the very much lower ETS cost.

Sea ice: wossup?

Sea ice, having been rather dull this summer – though it was also briefly interesting in April / May – has suddenly become really quite interesting. Which is odd; the minimum is usually the only time anyone pays attention.

Tamino has a nice post as does Mark Brandon and so does every man and his rabbit. What does that leave me to say? I have to fill in quite a few lines before I get to the bottom of my inset image, after all.

While NH ice is clearly low – indeed, a record for the time of year – it will look much less exciting if it recovers (duh!); just as in summer the April / May excursion became less exciting. MB does a better job, by actually analysing the patterns to some extent, from which you might begin to attribute why it is behaving as it is, which is after all the interesting bit; few people care about the ice for its own sake.

Speaking of which, what about the Antarctic, and by extension the global ice extent? The Antarctic is much more interesting that the Arctic, after all.

Update: Antarctic sea ice 2016: Historic lows by Mark Brandon • November 24, 2016.

The downside of the Antarctic stuff, of course, is that we’ve spent years explaining why the growth of ice there isn’t terribly surprising oh no not at all. Browsing my past, I discover that just in August I was less than convinced by Antarctica’s sea ice said to be vulnerable to sudden retreat? (OTOH I’m happy to say that the DEVM is now looking pretty good even for 8DPSK). However, I don’t think that was intended to apply on the interannual timescale. But how time flies! It looks like it was way back in 2012 that I was waving away the increase based on Paul Holland’s analysis (wind driven). Eli (bizarrely, IMO, because he’s quoting a Curry paper that I didn’t like) attributed the increase to snowfall; SKS seem to go for “its complicated” but what all these analyses have in common is that they didn’t predict the change, and – at least at the moment – don’t provide any explanation for the sudden decrease.

Quite possibly the lack of prediction or explanation is because the answer is “its weather”, but in that case its also dull. Vastly more interesting would be if the retreat that “should” be there in the Antarctic but has been “masked” for years has finally kicked in. Only time will tell.

Refs

* Silly me to be puzzled. Phil Plait knows exactly what is going on.

A proportionate response to Trump’s climate plans?

An interesting article by Chris Hope (a climate change policy researcher, PAGE model developer, and faculty member at Cambridge Judge Business School, interested in environment and energy; archive) of – oh dear – Arctic methane ‘time bomb’ could have huge economic costs fame. But never mind that. CH looks at Sarkozy’s mooted plans to levy a “carbon tax” on US goods if trump leads the US out of the Paris agreement.

Tol, in the comments, correctly points out that France couldn’t do this alone: it would have to be EU-wide. Never mind, pretend its a EU wide plan. Tol, in the comments, points out that WTO rules only permit border taxes if there is an equivalent domestic tax which if you think about it is fair enough. If you’re going to penalise the US, you should be penalising domestic folk too. You can’t penalise the US just for storming out of your favourite agreement in a huff. But you could probably finesse that if you could demonstrate that your membership of Paris had imposed equivalent tariffs on domestic production. However, lay that aside and consider the proposal assuming it is possible.

Which brings me to part 2, which is CH’s rough calculation of the tariffs required. His numbers, which I won’t check, are that $1000 of production costs 0.4 tonnes of CO2-equiv, and the EU-cost of a tonne² is $150. Which is $60 per $1000, or an implied tax rate of 6%. Whether you agree or not, it is interesting to see the numbers written out like that. And of course you could put in your own pet cost of carbon; and you could fiddle it into energy cost per dollar for particular industries, if you wanted to make it too complicated to be usable.

How does that compare with the tariffs that are actually imposed? I find I haven’t a clue. The top Google hit is Trade in goods and customs duties in TTIP (TTIP! Horrors! Remember to hiss under your breath at the very sight of the initials). It says At just under 2%, average [I do hope they mean value-weighted, let’s hope so] customs duties between the EU and the US are generally low. But the average hides a different situation for individual products¹. So, 6% is bigger than 2%. But, since the US wouldn’t actually do a great deal under Paris in the near future even if it doesn’t leave, there’s no obvious reason why you’d whack on the full 6% immeadiately; it would be more reasonable to ramp up slowly. So you could just do nothing at all, except label the existing tariffs as “carbon tariffs”, if you were feeling somewhat dishonest.

Notes

1. The document is mad, of course. Or rather, reveals the madness of existing policy (and not just in the EU). [F]or train carriages… the EU charges only 1.7% on imports from the US. WTF? Why do we charge any duty at all on train carriages? Let alone having a special category for it. No wonder we’re drowning in bloody stupid regulations when things like this are allowed to occur. It continues The EU wants to remove these duties and other barriers to trade… but doesn’t explain why, if the EU wants to remove duty on train carriages (and it bloody well should) it doesn’t simply do so; instead of pratting around producing stupid documents. But I digress.

2. Clarified. Happy now ;-?

Refs

* Trump carbon and the Paris agreement – RC
* Slate Star Codex – You Are Still Crying Wolf; via Scott Adams (If you insist that Trump would have to be racist to say or do whatever awful thing he just said or did, you are giving him too much credit. Trump is just randomly and bizarrely terrible. Sometimes his random and bizarre terribleness is about white people, and then we laugh it off. Sometimes it’s about minorities, and then we interpret it as racism.)

Myron Ebell and Wikipedia

In Myron Ebell, Evil Arch Climate Uber Villain I touched on his wiki entry which is as of now rather better. Naturally, I’d like to claim to have been the impetus for all that but I rather doubt it.

A largeish blob of critical stuff got ripped out but it soon went back. More interestingly, someone tried to supply my “{{cn}}” for “In 2001, Ebell stated his belief that global warming is a hoax perpetrated by the [[European Union]] and the rest of the world to harm America’s economy”, although in the process they felt obliged to change it to “Ebell has stated his belief that global warming is a hoax”. The proposed cite is Trump Relies on Washington Insiders to Build Administration. However the text therein is Trump’s pick to oversee the transition for the Environmental Protection Agency is Myron Ebell from the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, which has voiced the false view that man-made global warming is a hoax so that’s a fail; the quote has to come from ME himself, not the CEI. So it is currently out as “not supported by these sources”.

Just so you don’t feel too sad, the lede includes In these organizations, Ebell has been central in promoting climate change denial, distributing his views to the media and politicians.

[Update: ooooh, naughty wiki: the offending text now reads Through CEI, Ebell has stated his belief that global warming is a hoax. Veeeery dodgy. Who wuzzit? BatteryIncluded. Hmmm.]

Judith Curry WTF?

JC has been veering more and more to the dark side in recent years¹. Or maybe not so recent? I find that all the way back in 2010 I wrote Hopefully Curry isn’t going to fall off that cliff, but she is teetering. And I managed to be nice to her soon after. But in August of that year I felt obliged to announce her shark-jumping. And by 2013 it had only got worse to the point where I think I stopped reading her, and certainly made an effort to stop writing about her. She is suffering – uninterestingly – from having nowhere to go. Her scientific papers are of no interest but she is, by now, accustomed to a role in the “scientific debate”. With nothing to say on the “light side” she is inevitably left talking to the dark side. Somewhat like Richard Lindzen.

[As a token gesture to talking about science, why not read Record heat despite a cold sun at RC or Apocalypse now? by James instead of reading on here. Or even – I’m trolling you, don’t worry, I know what you’re like – Trump Should Repeal Frank Dodd – And Replace It With Obama And Clinton’s Sensible Alternative by Timmy.]

Anyway, the post that had Things Break reacting with “What. The. Fuck.” (and more amusingly, RP Sr reacting with @curryja Thanks! You have provided an excellent summary of Donald Trump’s views on environmental and climate issues. I learned from it) is Trumping the climate (aren’t you just sick of people inserting the word “Trump” into phrases? Still, not as stupid as a certain well-known presidential ex-hopeful who was dumb enough to use it in her own slogan good grief will some people never learn? But I digress).

Hoax

Disclaimer and/or FYI: I started writing this post after reading her first few paragraphs and being almost unable to believe the drivel she was writing. So I do hope I’m not going to have to change my mind after I read more. But I feel quietly confident I can “trust” JC in this.

So, just to to-and-fro this a bit, sourced from Politifact: Bernie Sanders says (as, I think, do many others): Donald Trump “thinks that climate change is a hoax, invented by the Chinese.” JC’s response is to go off on one of her ludicrous anti-UNFCC rants, yawn (Sou really really didn’t like that bit). A better answer is to read Trump’s words which she quotes: Well, I think the climate change is just a very, very expensive form of tax. A lot of people are making a lot of money… But this is done for the benefit of China, because China does not do anything to help climate change. They burn everything you could burn; they couldn’t care less. They have very — you know, their standards are nothing. But they — in the meantime, they can undercut us on price. So it’s very hard on our business. I don’t think Trump has the science, the economics, and the politics straight in his mind (he is, of course, far from unusual in this). He isn’t thinking through this stuff carefully. His “hoax” can be taken to apply to the science; but more plausibly it applies, not absolutely literally, to things like the Kyoto treaty as attempts to solve the problem. Or to many of the “subsidy regimes” created in the West (which I too have been critical of). I can’t defend his original The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive, because that is clearly stupid and unthinking. But then again, he wasn’t a pol then. He does appear to have learnt to back off from such unsustainable positions; which of itself is good. Politifact rates BS’s claim “mostly true” and I’d agree, but not without hope.

JC reflections

The stuff after that until “JC reflections” is just dull. But my eye was caught by In my post Trumping the elites [WILL YOU STOP F*CK*NG USING THE WORD “TRUMP” IN ALL YOUR BLOODY BLOG TITLES YOU HOPELESS IDIOT -ed], I stated that Trump’s election provided an opportunity for a more rational energy and climate policy. Many in the blog comments and the twitosphere found this to be an incomprehensible statement. I, by contrast, find it a comprehensible statement, so that’s great. What does she mean by it? Well apparently:

Here is what I think needs to be done, and I do see opportunities for these in a Trump administration:
* a review of climate science that includes a faithful and transparent representation of uncertainties in 21st century projections of global and regional climate change
* reopening of the ‘endangerment’ issue, as to whether warming is ‘dangerous’
* a do-over on assessing the social cost of carbon, that accounts for full uncertainty in the climate model simulations, the integrated assessment models and their inputs.
* support funding for Earth observing systems (satellite, surface, ocean) and research on natural climate variability.

Apart from the last one, which is sane in a dull and uncontroversial way (as long as you take care to pass over her pointed introduction of “natural climate variability” as though it was a concept she’d invented), the first three are mad hobby-horse riding kind of stuff (she must be hoping for a post from Trump, Shirley?). A rational energy policy would begin by removing all subsidies for biofuels, since that’s about the most insane part of the entire system. Will she advocate it? I doubt it. Will Trump: and piss off all those lovely midwest farmers? Ho ho ho.

Overall: doesn’t really live up the the outrage that her ridiculous “here is the dictionary definition of a hoax” stuff first stirred in me, but stands as a useful marker in her long slow slide off into the dark.

Refs

* (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang and Temptation – Heaven 17
* You might not like the TPP. You are going to like the alternative less – Bronte Capital
* Curry update: looks like she’s fucking off: see WATN 2016

Notes

1. And now (February 2017) comes evidence that she has moved over to the total shithead side.

Myron Ebell, Evil Arch Climate Uber Villain

It has been drawn to my attention that Myron Ebell will be Mr. Trump’s lead agent in choosing personnel and setting the direction of the federal agencies that address climate change and environmental policy. Not everyone is entirely happy about this³ and doubtless Trump will be distressed by that, but he is unlikely to take this unexpected opposition too seriously. Scratching my head and trying to think of a contrarian way to approach the matter, I thought I’d try reading what he has actually said, instead of reading what other people who don’t like him say. First of all, slightly to my surprise, I discover that I’ve had no cause to edit his wikipedia page⁵.

The NYT tells me that

Mr. Ebel leads the Cooler Heads Coalition, a loose-knit group that says it is “focused on dispelling the myths of global warming by exposing flawed economic, scientific, and risk analysis.” He has been one of the nation’s most visible climate contrarians, known for dispensing memorable sound bites on cable news shows and at events like the annual conferences sponsored by the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based group that rejects the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change. Mr. Ebell has said that “a lot of third-, fourth- and fifth-rate scientists have gotten a long ways” by embracing climate change. He frequently mocks climate leaders like Al Gore, and has called the movement the “forces of darkness” because “they want to turn off the lights all over the world.” No one, it seems, is immune to his criticism. He called Pope Francis’s encyclical on climate change, issued in mid-2015, “scientifically ill informed, economically illiterate, intellectually incoherent and morally obtuse.” “It is also theologically suspect, and large parts of it are leftist drivel,” he added.

Well, I didn’t like Laudato Si all that much either. But since the NYT points me at the CHC, whose wiki page I certainly have edited, let’s read what he has to say there.

But before we go on, here’s a lovely sunny picture from, errm, the summer to cheer us all up in these dark rainy days².

Scrolled down? Jolly good. On we go. Here are ME’s posts at the CHC¹. Let’s go through them:

* [2016/01] UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat Announces Steps for Signing and Ratifying the Paris Climate Treaty. The Next Step Is Up To the Senate. Gloss: politics, not science. The point he is trying to make – and if we’re honest, it is a good one – is that the Paris Treaty is actually, errm, a treaty and should therefore be presented for ratification. Obama is not doing this – he is at best sidestepping the law – and we guardians of Law and Decency really don’t give a toss about that, do we, because a Higher Duty says it’s the Right Thing To Do.
* [2016/01] Robert M. Carter, RIP Meh: Carter wasn’t worth his time, but then he wasn’t worth mine, either. No scientific content, and in an obituary niceness is expected, unless you’re me.
* [2015/12] President Obama Thinks Paris Climate Treaty Will Bind Next President – more not-science.
* [2015/09] Pope Francis Will Try To Meet with Ailing Fidel Castro and Will Be Met by Obamas at Andrews AFB – Da Pope has betrayed him, so he’s taking the piss, but without the accompanying pic it is hard to even tell.
* [2015/08] EPA’s Colossally Costly Power Plan Fulfills Obama’s Campaign Promise – again: politics, not science.
* [2015/06] Pope Francis’s Climate Encyclical: Help Poor People by Dismantling Industrial Civilization – a familiar theme: the Left are anti-lifting-poor-out-of-poverty la la la. There’s more to say on that, but not here. Although it briefly touches on the science: Laudato Si’ fails to get the science right (see paragrahps 2026 [he means 20-26 I think -W]) it is mostly about politics, as is LaSi itself. He is, of course, wrong to say so unreservedly that it “fails to get the science right”.
* [2015/04] AEI Holds Carbon Tax Love-In. Apart from the “love-in” of the title, a straight report of a carbon tax event, which as you know I’m in favour of as are all right⁴-thinking people.
* [2015/02] New York Times Repeats Scurrilous Greenpeace Attack on Willie Soon Without Checking the Facts: here he is defending the indefensible, but as with the Carter obituary (has anyone heard from Soon recently?) he’s just defending someone on his own side; and once again there’s no science in there.
* [2015/02] British Political Elites Unite In Economic Suicide Pact – more politics.

You get the idea. I’ll stop going post-by-post, because they are all much the same: politics, and economics, not science. When given the chance he takes minor sideswipes at the science, yes, but it is never his major focus. He takes the piss out of John Kerry getting the GHE wrong (Kerry has probably mistaken it for the ozone layer). There’s a post in July 2014 pointing to him being interviewed by James Delingpole. ME insists that he puts forward freedom and open markets above all else; and he and JD are worried about the Vast Socialist World Gummint Conspiracy. ME repeats the tedious “flat 20 years temperature” which is silly (also seen slightly earlier in the 17 year version), but such talk wasn’t uncommon in 2014 (Kevin Trenberth took the pause seriously in Science in 2015 and didn’t give an unambiguous answer; that’s not the same as “flat” of course, but still). There is also interesting discussion – worry, perhaps, about the success of the tactic – of the way their opponents make GW a moral issue (a strategy I wasn’t terribly happy with just recently). And his assertion that this makes it necessary for him to show that GW is fake. But they spend almost none of the interview talking about science. Another fragemnt is “…we first have to make the scientific case that the planet is not in peril and we’re not all going to fry; yes there may be some warming and yes there has been some warming but its not really in the top 20 challenges that we face…”.

I think the best clue to his thinking on this does come from the interview⁶. You should listen to it, if you want to know what he’d be like in charge. If he walks-his-talk, he’ll be in favour of repealling regulation, just like Trump promised.

I got bored reading all those essentially-similar blog posts. So I switched to wiki, which told me, under the heading “Global warming denial”, that In 2001, Ebell stated his belief that global warming is a hoax perpetrated by the European Union and the rest of the world to harm America’s economy. He justified the allegation with a quote from European Commissioner Margot Wallström in her response to Bush’s withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol.[20]. The [20] is a ref to EU sends strong warning to Bushover greenhouse gas emisssions. Unfortunately, it is only a ref to what MW says, and doesn’t even mention ME. This falls rather short of wiki’s normal standards.

Googling throws up the smoggies who provide the damming:

Believing that man-made climate change exists, as I do, does not necessarily mean that you think that it is rapid or a serious problem or that the policies to address it will actually do anything or that you are willing to pay the costs of those policies

which is the only quotable quote they can find for him since 2007.

You might say, since it is so clear that science is not his major focus, but politics and economics is, then why should he get the task he has been given? And the answer, obviously, would be that those agencies and policies do have major political and economic ramifications. Asking someone pure science, or possibly even mostly-science-with-little-understanding-of-economics, to do the job wouldn’t obviously make sense.

Afterword: ME could have written my We Don’t Need a ‘War’ on Climate Change, We Need a Revolution?

Aafterword, 2018/04: or, try Snopes.

Notes

1. Also known as “globalwarming.org”. I’ve never been too sure how seriously to take the identity of each fragment of this clearly interlinked group, but really, who cares exactly who he is writing the words for, it is words that are identifiably his that matter.

2. If you’re in the northern mid-latitudes, at least.

3. Conversely, the nutters are both delighted by the appointment and by the outrage it has caused.

4. “right” as in “correct”, not as in “wing”.

5. Well I have now but I hadn’t then: check the timestamps.

6. Listening to that I thought he sounded quite unpolished. Entirely unlike a pol; in that he took some trouble to clearly articulate a logically coherent message. He very much was not just ramming home pre-made talking points. This is roughly congruent to Gavin’s “I’ve been at events & on radio w/Ebell – he’s not that impressive” which I’ve only just seen.

Refs

* The US Libertarian party
* They may not like it, but scientists must work with Donald Trump say Jack Stilgoe and Roger Pielke Jr. ATTP has a convoluted reason for not liking it, but ter be ‘onest guv I didn’t finish parsing it.
* The CEI (though not explicitly ME) are cautiously in favour of a Universal Basic Income; even citing Hayek.
* Love Global Warming: What’s wrong with mild winters, anyway? – ME in Forbes, 2016/08. A useful antidote to anyone who thought his views were actually sensible.