Download Climate facts Labor overlooked

Climate facts Labor overlooked
by Bob Carter, Alan Moran & David Evans
April 3, 2011
Addressing the facts on climate change and energy
An internal strategy paper has been provided to Labor MPs for use in the
promotion of the Government’s proposed new carbon dioxide tax.
We offer critiques of the two most substantive parts of that paper, namely “Carbon
Price” and “Climate Impact on Australia”. The full text of the paper is (pdf)here...
An analysis of the strategy paper
Statements in bold italics are allegations (numbered by us) from the strategy paper;
our responses are in ordinary typeface:
CARBON PRICE - TOP LINES
Key Facts
1a. We believe climate change is real ……..
Climate change is real and continuous. 20,000 years ago present day New York was
under a kilometre of ice and lower sea levels meant that early Australians were able to
walk to Tasmania; and just 300 years ago, during the “Little Ice Age”, the world was
again significantly colder than today.
Australians who witnessed the 2009 Victorian bushfires or this year’s Queensland
floods and cyclones need no reminder that hazardous climate events and change are
real. That is not the issue.
The issue is that use of the term “climate change” here is code for “dangerous global
warming caused by human carbon dioxide emissions”. The relevant facts are:
(i) that mild warming of a few tenths of a degree of warming occurred in the
late 20th century, but that so far this century global temperature has not risen;
and
(ii) that no direct evidence, as opposed to speculative computer projections,
exists to demonstrate that the late 20th century warming was dominantly, or
even measurably, caused by human-sourced carbon dioxide emissions.
1b. …… and taking action is the right thing to do.
The primary action that is needed should not be controversial.
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It is to combat and adapt to hazardous climatic events and trends (whether natural or
human-caused) as and when they happen. Of course, the required activities should
be undertaken within a framework of careful cost:benefit analysis.
Spending billions of dollars on a penal carbon dioxide tax fails the cost:benefit test.
Such a measure acts only to reduce Australia’s wealth, and therefore our capacity to
address the real-world problems of natural climate change and hazard.
2. We want the top 1,000 biggest polluting companies to pay for
each tonne of carbon (sic) pollution they produce.
Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, but rather a natural and vital trace gas in Earth’s
atmosphere, an environmental benefit without which our planetary ecosystems could
not survive. Increasing carbon dioxide makes many plants grow faster and better, and
helps to green the planet. If carbon dioxide were to drop to a third of current levels,
most plant life on the planet, followed by animal life, would die.
As Ross Garnaut recognises, all businesses, including even the corner shop, are going
to be paying for carbon dioxide emissions. In the long run, businesses must pass on
the tax to their customers and ultimately the cost will fall on individual consumers.
A price on carbon dioxide will impose a deliberate financial penalty on all energy
users. This will initially impact on the costs of all businesses, and energy-intensive
industries in particular will lose international competitiveness.
The so-called “big polluters” are part of the bedrock of the Australian economy.
Ultimately, any cost impost on them will either be passed on to consumers or will
result in the disappearance of the activities, with accompanying direct and indirect
employment.
3. A carbon price will provide incentives for the big polluters to
reduce their carbon pollution.
All companies must pass on their costs to consumers, or go bankrupt. A price on
carbon dioxide will encourage firms to reduce emissions, but their ability to do so is
limited.
The owners of fossil fuelled electricity power stations that are unable to pass on the
full cost of a carbon dioxide tax will see lower profits, and the stations with the
highest emission levels will be forced to close prematurely. If investors expect the tax
to be permanent, power stations with higher emissions will be replaced by power
stations with lower emissions whose lower carbon dioxide taxes enable them to
undercut the tax-enhanced cost of the established firms. The higher cost replacement
generators will set a higher price for all electricity.
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Alternatively, if investors lack confidence that the tax will be permanent, the new
more expensive, lower emissions power stations may be perceived as too risky to
attract investment. This will cause a progressive deterioration in the system’s ability
to meet demand.
4. Australia is the worst per head carbon emitter in the developed
world.
This statement is untrue.
According the latest UN Human Development Report, Australia emits 18 tonnes per
capita of carbon dioxide. Other countries with high emissions include Luxemburg
(24.5 tonnes), the US (19 tonnes), the UAE (32.8 tonnes), Qatar (56.2 tonnes), and
Kuwait (31.2 tonnes). Australia’s emissions are higher than those of many other
countries largely because we have cheap coal, little hydro-electric potential, and have
banned nuclear power.
Low energy costs allow Australia, unlike other developed countries, to export
products like aluminium whose production incorporates high carbon dioxide
emissions. Most other developed countries import these products, effectively oursourcing their emissions but not reducing them.
Importantly, countries are not better or worse emitters. Countries’ levels of emissions
depend on their geographical and industrial structure and their living standards rather
than any policy decisions their governments may have taken on carbon dioxide
emissions.
5. Other countries are taking action, even China and India.
Australia must make a start or our economy will be left behind.
Although several European countries have created conditions that force or encourage
electricity producers to invest heavily in wind/solar, these high cost sources of
electricity comprise a greater share of total output in Australia than in most other
countries. Compared to the share in Australia of 1.5 per cent, the US obtains 0.8 per
cent from these sources, Japan 0.4 per cent, China 0.5 per cent and India 1.7 per cent
(sources: ESAA, EIA, IEA).
Australia has a Mandatory Renewable Energy Tariff (MRET) which requires that
20% of electricity is to be generated by renewables by 2020. Because renewable
sources such as wind and solar are uncompetitive, by 2020 MRET will impose a tax
equivalent to $14 per tonne of carbon dioxide emitted. Though these subsidy
measures have often been trumpeted as promoting new Australian technologies, none
have materialised. Nor are they likely to do so in the future, but in any event Australia
cannot be left behind technologically, because if any practical research breakthroughs
occur these will become available in all countries
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More broadly, any expectation of a global agreement on emissions reduction has
collapsed with the failure of the Copenhagen and Cancun climate meetings, and the
world’s largest emitters (USA and China) have made it crystal clear that they will not
introduce carbon dioxide taxation or emissions trading. The Chicago Climate
Exchange has collapsed, and though a dozen US states had previously committed to
anti-carbon dioxide schemes some of those (e.g. New Hampshire and New Mexico)
are now withdrawing from the schemes.
Contrary to assertions, neither China nor India is taking substantive action specifically
to mitigate their carbon dioxide emission level. China has already surpassed the level
of per capita emissions said to be necessary to stabilise atmospheric levels of carbon
dioxide. In both countries, nuclear power and efficient coal-fired electricity generators
are being embraced, but these choices are directed at energy supply efficiency not
carbon dioxide emissions. Minister Combet has claimed that India has a form of
carbon tax, but that “tax” is actually an environmental levy on coal mining at about $1
per tonne, which is similar to long standing levies faced by coal mining in Australia.
China and India together deliberately undermined the Copenhagen negotiations in
2009. Both countries refuse to commit to any quantified emissions reduction targets,
other than that the carbon dioxide per dollar of GDP will progressively decline as
their electricity generators are increasingly modernised and their economies develop.
As in Australia, there are many voices in both countries rejecting theories of manmade global warming[1].
6. We will protect existing jobs while creating new clean energy
jobs.
The whole point of a carbon dioxide tax is to force coal-fired power stations out of
existence. No amount of subsidy will “protect” the jobs of the workers involved.
It has been shown that in Spain, 2.2 conventional jobs are destroyed for every new job
created in the alternative energy industry, at a unit cost of about US$774,000/job. In a
comparable UK study the figures were even worse, with the destruction of 3.7
conventional jobs for every 1 new job.
7. Every cent raised by the carbon (sic) price will go to
households, protecting jobs in businesses in transition and
investment in climate change programs. There will be generous
assistance to households, families and pensioners (tax cuts are a
live option).
As with any tax, the proceeds are returned to the community. One part of this, perhaps
20 per cent or so, is required to administer the program and is a deadweight loss. The
rest is a redirection of funding to areas that the government considers to be more
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productive, or more politically supportive. The effect of this invariably leads to a loss
of efficiency within the economy and to a slower growth rate.
It is also the case that introduction of a new tax generally results in unanticipated
costs, which, because they are unknown, taxpayers cannot be compensated for.
CLIMATE IMPACT ON AUSTRALIA
8. We have to act now to avoid the devastating consequences of
climate change.
Of itself carbon dioxide, even at concentrations tenfold those of the present, is not
harmful to humans. Projections usually assume a doubling of emissions and associate
this with an increase in global temperatures.
There is no “climate emergency”, and nor did devastating consequences result from
the mild warming of the late 20th century. Global average temperature, which peaked
in the strong El Nino year of 1998, still falls well within the bounds of natural climate
variation. Current global temperatures are in no way unusually warm, or cold, in
terms of Earth’s recent geological history.
9. If we don’t act then we will see more extreme weather events
like bushfires and droughts, we will have more days of extreme
heat, and we will see our coastline flooded as sea levels rise.
These alarmist statements are based exclusively on a naïve faith that computer models
can make predictions about future climate states. That faith cannot be justified, as
even the modelling practitioners themselves concede.
The computer models that have yielded the speculative projections quoted in the
strategy paper are derived from organisations like CSIRO, which includes the
following disclaimer at the front of all its computer modelling consultancy reports:
This report relates to climate change scenarios based on computer modelling. Models
involve simplifications of the real processes that are not fully understood.
Accordingly, no responsibility will be accepted by CSIRO or the QLD government for
the accuracy of forecasts or predictions inferred from this report or for any person's
interpretations, deductions, conclusions or actions in reliance on this report.
10. This [human-caused climate impact] will hurt Australia’s
industries, jobs, our infrastructure and our way of life.
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[This statement is fleshed out with a further page of unvalidated computer projections
of a future that will be characterised by more extreme hot days, a higher bushfire risk,
enhanced sea level rise, an increased frequency of drought and an increased, negative
climate-event impact on tourist icons such as the Great Barrier Reef and the Victorian
ski fields.]
All these claims are speculative, and the accuracy of the computer models involved
can be judged from the following graph and its explanation.
Graph source
US government climate scientists started the global warming scare in 1988 when they
provided this forecast to a committee hearing in the US Congress. The actual
observed temperature that eventuated later has been superimposed on the model
projections in red.
The three black prediction lines are for three scenarios:
A. Carbon dioxide levels grow exponentially (top line, solid).
B. Carbon dioxide levels grow linearly (middle line, dashed).
C. Carbon dioxide emissions cut back so atmospheric CO2 stopped going
up by 2000 (bottom line, dotted).
The carbon dioxide levels that occurred in reality were almost exactly those in
scenario A, so it is the topmost line that is the relevant forecast.
Obviously the planet's temperature (red line) hasn't increased nearly as much as was
forecast by the computer models. After the temperature peak in 1998 (a strong El
Nino year), the temperature has levelled off and is now gently declining. The red
overprinted temperature is only plotted up to the beginning of 2010, but after a
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temporary peak in 2010 (below the 1998 peak) temperature has again declined, and is
now lower than at the beginning of 2010
The claims in the strategy paper that we have to stabilize carbon dioxide emissions
immediately or dangerous warming will occur, with manifold dramatic environmental
consequences, are based on faulty computer models that are unchanged in basic
character from those that have proved to be inaccurate since 1988.
THE ALL IMPORTANT DATA
In the real world, over the last ten years, and despite a 5% increase in atmospheric
carbon dioxide:
Global temperature has declined slightly (Liljegren, 2011)
Ocean heat content has declined slightly (Knox & Douglass, 2011); and
Global sea-level rise has remained stable, with no net acceleration (Houston & Dean,
2011)
In addition:
Tropical storm energy shows no upward trend, and is near its lowest since records
began in 1977 (Maue, 2011);
The number of cyclones in northern Australia has declined since the 1970s (BOM,
2011); seven times as many extreme tropical storms traversed north Queensland and
the GBR between 1600 and 1800 as occurred between 1800 and 2000 (Nott et al.,
2007).
No evidence exists that current Australian climatic phenomena - including droughts,
floods, storms, heat waves and snow storms – differ now in intensity or frequency
from their historic natural patterns of strong annual and multi-decadal variability; and
Tourists continue to flock to a Great Barrier Reef that (outside of very local resort
areas) remains in the same excellent natural health that Captain James Cook observed
in 1770.
The headline-seeking, adverse environmental outcomes that are
highlighted in the strategy paper are therefore as inaccurate and
exaggerated as were Hansen’s 1988 temperature projections.
There is no global warming crisis, and model-based alarmist
projections of the type that permeate the strategy paper are
individually and severally unsuitable for use in public policy making.
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Authors:
Bob Carter is a geologist and environmental scientist at James Cook University, and
a Fellow of the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA).
Alan Moran is an economist who specialises in energy policy, and Director of
Deregulation at the IPA.
David Evans is a consultant mathematician, engineer and computer modeller who
occasionally consults with the Department of Climate Change on the forestry and
agricultural model that they use for managing Australia’s greenhouse gas inventory.
References:
Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), 2011. Tropical cyclone
trends.http://www.bom.gov.au/cyclone/climatology/trends.shtml.
Houston, J.R. & Dean, R.G., 2011. Sea-Level Acceleration Based on U.S. Tide
Gauges and Extensions of Previous Global-Gauge Analyses. Journal of Coastal
Research, in press.
Knox, R.S. & Douglass, D.H., 2011. Recent energy balance of Earth. International
Journal of Geosciences 1(3), in press.
Liljegren, Lucia, 2011 (Feb. 19). HadCrut January Anomaly: 0.194C. The
Blackboard. http://rankexploits.com/musings/2011/hadcrut-january-anomaly-0-194c/.
Maue, R.N., 2011. Global Tropical Cyclone Activity. Global Tropical Cyclone ACE
does not show an upward trend in communion with global temperatures. Global
Tropical Cyclone Frequency and ACE remain near the lowest levels since 1977.
http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/.
Nott, J., Haig, J., Neil, H. & Gillieson, D. 2007. Greater frequency variability of
landfalling tropical cyclones at centennial compared to seasonal and decadal
scales. Earth & Planetary Science Letters 255, 367-372.
[1] For example, Low Carbon Plot, by Gou Hongyang 2010; India’s National Action
Plan on Climate Change (2008), which says “No firm link between the documented
[climate] changes described below and warming due to anthropogenic climate
change has yet been established.” [Page 15, section 1.4, pmindia.nic.in/Pg01-52.pdf
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