Is cap and trade the solution? Don’t bank on it!

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Watch this: “The Story of Cap and Trade” from the people that brought you “The Story of Stuff”. I love this animation for so many reasons, starting with the Einstein quote in the opening credits, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them”.

Annie Leonard outlines that there are three major problems with cap and trade: free permits, false offsetting, and distractions from the real solutions.

Cap and trade has previously been used for sulfur dioxide to stop acid rain. Its success was limited because the permits were over allocated and “banked” by the polluters so that they could drag out their emissions. And while some reports claim that cap and trade worked, a 40% reduction in SO2 emissions is not entirely a success.

K-Rudd recently tried to bring cap and trade to Australia but his Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) was opposed and now he is directly attacking the polluters with the proposed Mining Tax. This carbon tax methodology is similar to the cap and trade except that it doesn’t involve trading on the market and has the potential to be implemented fairly by the government.

Unfortunately, these solutions are essentially the same- the carbon tax is just implemented through the government while cap and trade is implemented through the market. Through the market, there are loopholes and incentives to cheat which could lead to the next bubble and stock market crash. Through the government, the same loopholes and cheating incentives exist but the bubble could crash the Australian budget rather than the carbon market. As Annie Leonard points out, a crash in the market (or budget) is too risky when our planet is the collateral. Furthermore, we haven’t really been very creative here… what happened to using a new kind of thinking as Einstein suggested?

K-Rudd couldn’t get the ETS through and now he has shifted to the Mining Tax in an attempt to save his position as Prime Minister. K-Rudd’s incentive relies on the power of the democratic voter. However, there is no monetary incentive to vote for Cap and Trade or the Carbon Tax because both of these methods will potentially lead to less money in the bank as the costs are passed on to the consumer. If there is no incentive to vote for it, then there is no incentive for K-Rudd to bring in the policy. At the moment, green energy costs more than fossil fuel energy and this needs to change. K-Rudd should give money to green energy initiatives now so that the price of green energy is cheaper than fossil fuel energy. To fund this we will need to stop fossil fuel subsidies and add the carbon tax. But the only way this will work is if the voters can see that Carbon Tax + Green Energy = no extra cost to consumer. Good luck! I still think we need some more creativity in our solution to this problem.

And while Watts tours, global warming continues.

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Professor Neville Nicholls, Monash University

Contrary to the impression you might have gained from the media, the global climate is NOT cooling. In fact, the last twelve months, June 2009 – May 2010, has been the hottest June-May period on record, in both the 31-year satellite record of lower atmosphere global temperature and the 131-year surface global temperature record. In both data series the last 12 months have been more than 0.4C hotter than the average temperature of the last two decades of the 20th century.

The figure below plots the time series of twelve-month (June-May) global mean temperature anomalies. The data in the figure are the Spencer-Christy lower atmospheric temperatures from satellites (labelled “UAH” in the figure) and the surface temperatures from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (labelled “GISS”). Both datasets are freely available (UAH from http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt; GISS from http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt). Both datasets have been plotted as anomalies relative to 1979/80-1998/99, ie the first twenty years of the satellite observations.

Simply eyeballing the graphs of the surface and satellite temperature record should convince anyone that global warming never “stopped”. Fitting linear trends to the data since the start of the satellite observations produces virtually identical trends in the two data sets. Even the variations from year-to-year in the two temperature series are close matches.

The close match between the surface and satellite variations and trends confirms that the warming trend at the surface is NOT due to the urban heat island effect. Nor is it due to changes in the numbers of stations used in the surface analysis, or any problems with the locations of the surface instruments. None of these potential problems affects the satellite data, and the satellite data are completely independent of the surface data.

Nor is the warming due to the Sun getting stronger. Satellite measurements show that total solar irradiance has decreased since the start of the 21st century, and this would probably have caused some weak cooling rather than any warming (http://acrim.com/TSI%20Monitoring.htm).

Neville Nicholls is an Australian Research Council Professorial Fellow in the School of Geography and Environmental Science at Monash University, President of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (www.amos.org.au), and an Executive Editor of Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change (wires.wiley.com).

Watts Up With That? Tour hits an obstacle: the truth.

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I have just returned from a series of off-campus meetings to find that there has been little excitement in my absence.  Apparently, I have been portrayed as some sort of hothead who tried to interfere with the “Watts up with that?” tour by denialists Anthony Watts, David Archibald and Bob Carter.

“Unprofessional and arrogant academic interrupts poor old denialist weatherman.”  Goodness– that does sound believable.  That is until one examines the complete audio record, which my trusty ‘photographer’ (Dr. John Bruno) and I were able to obtain.

What transpired was triggered by some inconvenient questions John and I that I asked during question time.  Nothing more and nothing less.  Judge for yourself – here are my responses to the following outlandish claims:

a.    Bob Carter: “billions of dollars had been spent and the scientific community has not come to a consensus”  Have a listen.  How hostile do I sound?  Persistent yes, but that is something else.

[audio:https://climateshifts.org/media/Carter.mp3]

b.    David Archibald: “Ocean acidification is the last resort of the global warming  scoundrel”. Yep – he said it.  Have a listen (yes, I do get a little hot under the collar – but who wouldn’t.  After all, Oilman Dave had essentially called me corrupt.)

[audio:https://climateshifts.org/media/watts2.mp3]

By the way, I tried to say hello to Anthony when I arrived, but he turned his back on me.  So much for a friendly discussion.  Who are these people?

A profile of Josh Cinner in Science mag

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See a great profile of Josh Cinner by Helen Fields in Science mag here.   And see our past coverage of Josh’s work here and here.

In the late 1980s, things were not going well for the coral reefs at Jamaica’s Montego Bay Marine Park. Overfishing had taken out a lot of the fish that eat algae, and algae were taking over the reef. “It was a classic case of ecosystem decline,” human geographer Joshua Cinner says. He arrived in Jamaica in 1996 as a Peace Corps volunteer after graduating from the University of Colorado, Boulder, with a double major in environmental conservation and geography. He was particularly interested in parks and preserves.

He’d landed in the middle of a war. Lobbying by tour operators and others got spearfishing, one of the main culprits in overfishing, banned in the park. The ban did not go over well with local people. “All the park equipment got vandalized. We had park rangers get threatened; their families got threatened at spear point,” Cinner says. Spearfishing equipment is cheap and you don’t need a boat; men who do it are generally poor and are fishing as a last resort. “The cultural lens through which the fishermen viewed this issue was of struggle in a post-slavery society, of the rich, predominantly white expatriates making a law that oppressed the poorest of the poor locals to benefit the wealthy.”

The Rational Optimist is greatly exaggerated

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So I missed all the initial discussion, but apparently the New Scientist published a critique of a recent book by Matt Ridley called “The Rational Optimist”, who amongst other things believes that ocean acidification is ‘greatly exaggerated’. You can read his response to the critique over at his website. It’s an entertaining dialogue, but here’s where his argument starts to fall down:

My source was the Herfort et al 2008 paper, which Ridgwell says is irrelevant, because of its experimental design. That’s his opinion, which others in the field do not share (Read more)

His opinion? As Chris Langdon pointed out, the Herfort paper it is not relevant to predicting what will happen in the future. What Ridley misunderstands is that it isn’t based opinion. Journalism is based upon opinion, science is based upon fact. Here’s what Chris Langdon had to say about the Herfort paper:

In their experiments, they increased both the bicarbonate and the carbonate concentration. This is what happens when you add sodium bicarbonate to seawater. They have no way of knowing if the increase in coral calcification was due to the increase in the bicarbonate or the carbonate.

In the real world, and in the experiments that I and others have performed, the bicarbonate concentration is increased by 13 per cent and the carbonate concentration is decreased by 40 per cent. When you do this the calcification of the corals is observed to decrease.

Here’s what we had to say about the Herfort paper back in June 2008:

Herfort’s experiment focused on the effects of increasing bicarbonate concentrations on rates of photosynthesis and calcification of coral reef organisms. I hear some of you ask: “But, is that not the same as ocean acidification?” Well, in a nutshell – no. Ocean acidification is the result of declining pH caused by the uptake of atmospheric CO2. Herfort et al. kept their pH (the parameter that determines acidity) constant at 8.2 across all treatments. This also means that Herfort’s results are totally irrelevant to the major problems of ocean acidification – (1) carbonate saturation state and (2) acidosis of cellular mechanisms such as photosynthesis.

The lowered pH from ocean acidification leads to low concentrations of carbonate ions, the building blocks of all marine calcifying organisms, which can lead to critically low rates of calcification and even shift to net rates of calcium carbonate dissolution. Also, the proper functioning of cellular mechanisms such as photosynthesis are sensitive to pH change, so keeping pH constant would not capture those stresses.

Bottom line, Herforts’ experiment did the opposite of any realistic future scenario: by keeping pH constant while increasing bicarbonate (HCO3-) concentrations they boosted carbonate ion (CO3=) concentrations and thereby rates of calcification, and ignored any effects of acidosis. Idso et al (2008) is another sad example of uninformed propaganda, running with one of two sentences from a study they do not comprehend – and then leaping to their own naive conclusion that the overwhelming amount of good science predicting negative effects of ocean acidification, is simply alarmist (Read more)

Matt Ridley concludes with:

In conclusion, I rest my case. My five critics have not only failed to contradict, but have explicitly confirmed the truth of every single one of my factual statements. We differ only in how we interpret the facts.

Interpreting the facts? Oh well. I guess opinion sells books! See this paper released today in Science (Ocean Acidification Unprecedented, Unsettling) by Richard Kerr:

As hydrogen ion concentrations go up, more and more of the ocean’s carbonate ions—the building block of all carbonate shells and skeletons—combine with hydrogen ions to form bicarbonate, driving down the concentration of the essential carbonate. Organisms have a harder time extracting the carbonate they need from the surrounding water. In a compilation of controlled acidification studies, marine chemist Scott Doney of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and his colleagues found that all 11 species of tropical coral studied under falling pH slowed their aragonite production. Among noncoral calcifiers, most also slowed their carbonate building, though a few, such as certain coralline red algae and echinoderms, increased it.

Campaign for disinformation: Watts up with that?

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Seems like Anthony Watts is a little upset over Ove and John’s appearance at his seminar here in Brisbane the other day. We mentioned earlier on the blog:

The Climate Shifts crew and other scientists will be there en masse to record and debunk the lies that will be told.

After the event, Anthony noted that the:

“en masse” was about 5, maybe 6 people by my count.

After seeing the event, i’m thinking that maybe Anthony is right, this isn’t all big oil funding. For a little context, here’s what the ‘lecture tour’ looked like:

As for Ove? See for yourself. More on the ‘lecture tour’ shortly…

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=12637530&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=00ADEF&fullscreen=1

Nikon Camera Lost at Sea Found 1,100 Miles Away With Video Taken by Sea Turtle

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Epic! Camera and waterproof housing found intact in Florida, turns out it was lost in Aruba 6 months prior, complete with video footage taken by a sea turtle somewhere in Honduras:

On May 16, Coast Guard investigator Paul Shultz was walking along a Key West, Florida marina when he came across a red Nikon L18. Although the underwater housing surrounding the camera was battered from what appeared to be a long period at sea, the camera was in tip top shape.

After finding nothing in the photos and videos on the memory card that pointed to the owner, Shultz turned to the Internet, posting the photos to Scubaboard.com. Within days, it was determined from clues in the photos that they were taken in Aruba, about 1,100 miles from where the camera was found.

The clues included a plane’s tail number that revealed that the plane was in Aruba the day the photo was taken, a blue roof that was located on Google Maps, and a school poster written in Dutch (Aruba is a Dutch island).

Once the camera’s origin was known, Shultz published the photos to Aruba.com. Within two days a woman recognized the children in some of the photos as her son’s classmates and, after contacting the family, the mystery was solved.

Dick de Bruin, a sergeant in the Royal Dutch Navy, was salvaging an anchor from the USS Powell for a WWII memorial when his camera floated away. One way or another it ended up 1,100 miles to the north and into the hands of Paul Shultz.

An interesting part of this story is that among the things found on the memory card was a video recorded by a sea turtle that dragged the camera for a period of time during the journey. The shaky video has amassed hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E43sg-Ytt58&hl=en_US&fs=1&&w=480&h=385]

(via Reddit)

The lies of Bob Carter and Anthony Watts

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Denier disciples Bob Carter and Anthony Watts are giving a talk in Brisbane tonight at The Irish Club (175 Elizabeth Street, 7:00 pm).

The Climate Shifts crew and other scientists will be there en masse to record and debunk the lies that will be told.

But as a primer, we thought a simple compilation of the lies these two fools have been spreading would be valuable background information for any media planning to cover the event.

Bob Carter: Bob is a geologist associated with James Cook Uni.  Bob was a key player in one of the most recent denier scandals, aka “Cartergate” (see here and here).  The CS collection of articles on Bob’s falsehoods and shoddy science is here.  Also see Deltoid’s impressive collection here.

Anthony Watts: Tonight’s headliner is a former TV weatherman, known for his claims that the earth is cooling and is really square.  Well see here and here and  watch the videos:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7OdCOsMgCw&w=640&h=385]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_0-gX7aUKk&w=640&h=385]

The art of denial

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I was sent this insightful article by ANU academic Andrew Glikson about denialism written by two medical scientists, Pascal Diethelm and Martin McKee.

Whether it is the belief that the world is only a few thousands of years old, that HIV does not cause AIDS, or greenhouse gases don’t affect the energy balance of the planet, there are five unifying characteristics of denialism according to Diethelm and McKee.

As I listed them here, I found myself ticking them off one by one.

See what you think:

1. Belief that a major conspiracy is blocking the truth from being told (yes, we’ve heard that one!  A massive army of thousands of zombie scientists are keeping a dark secret about climate change).

2. The use of fake experts which is accompanied by the denigration of established experts and researchers (anyone come to mind … Watts, Carter, Bolt?)

3. Selectivity – drawing on isolated papers that challenge the consensus or highlight flaws in the weakest papers so as to discredit an entire field (sunspots anyone?).

4.  Creation of impossible expectations of what research can deliver (… GCM models can’t predict the weather next week … so we can’t use them to study climate change!)

5. Use of misrepresentation and logical fallacies (remember Bob Carter’s line several years ago?  Atmospheric CO2 went up this year but global temperature didn’t, therefore climate change does not exist).

According to Diethelm and McKee, the normal academic response is to engage with the opposing argument, testing the strengths and weaknesses of the differing views. But as the authors point out, this only works as long as both parties obey certain ground rules, such as a willingness “to look at the evidence of the whole, and to reject deliberate distortions and accept the strength of logic”.

If either party chooses not operate under those rules, then they will tend to win (unfairly), often resulting in a false impression of the resolution of the debate to the non-expert observer.

Diethelm and McKee argue that the end of this article that “it is necessary to shift the debate from the subject under consideration, instead exposing to public scrutiny the tactics (denialists) employ and identifying them publicly for what they are. An understanding of the five tactics listed above provides a useful framework for doing so.”

After the frustrations of trying to pursue rational academic debate with people like Peter Ridd, Bob Carter and others, I would tend to agree with this perspective.

Four grader wins NSF science contest for a project proving AGW isn’t real?

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Now this is something you’d think all those self-proclaimed skeptics would be skeptical about.  But you’d be wrong, e.g., see here, here and here.  Note that despite being debunked days ago, all these sites are still carrying the story with no correction.  Including Mark Morano’s Climate Depot:

It took scientist Michael Tobis, a scientist at the University of Texas, just a few emails and questions to debunk the entire crazy story.

See full coverage here on the excellent Yale Forum on Climate Change and the Media.

A Cruel Climate Hoax Perpetrated On Texas Fourth Grader in Name of NSF

By Zeke Hausfather | June 8, 2010

On June 5th the local newspaper in Beeville, a small town in Southern Texas, published a story about a local 4th grade student who had it said had just won the Junior Division of the National Science Fair for a project entitled “Disproving Global Warming.” The student, Julisa Castillo, had received a package containing a trophy, medal, and plaque, along with a letter purporting to be from an official at the National Science Foundation and announcing her selection as the first place winner out of 50,000 projects entered from 50 states.

In the course of two days, the story had spread around to dozens of blogs, hundreds of twitter posts, and various media outlets. It also appears to have been an elaborate hoax.