Diary dates, megadeath edition

The Edinburgh Geological Society has a lecture on 25 November about ocean acidification.

At the boundary of the Permian and Triassic, ~252 million years ago, is the greatest mass extinction documented, where we estimate that more than 90% of Earth’s species died. The “PT” or 'Great Dying' hit marine species the hardest - killing off, for instance, the once ubiquitous trilobites.

Recent work has shown that ocean acidification triggered by Siberian Trap volcanism was a possible kill mechanism for this mass extinction. We present a high-resolution seawater pH record across this interval, using boron isotope data from the UAE combined with a quantitative modelling approach. In the latest Permian, increased ocean alkalinity primed the Earth system with a low level of atmospheric CO2 and a high ocean buffering capacity. The first phase of extinction was coincident with a slow injection of carbon into the atmosphere, and ocean pH remained stable. During the second extinction pulse, however, a rapid and large injection of carbon caused an abrupt acidification event that drove the preferential loss of heavily calcified marine biota.

As such, the extinction holds a cautionary lesson for today: because of CO2 released by burning fossil fuels, oceans could now be acidifying even faster than they did 250 million years ago, although the process hasn’t yet persisted nearly as long.

Details here.

Nursery Rimes - Josh 347

On the eve of the opening of the COP 21 in Paris, a new study published Oct. 12 in the journal Nature Climate Change by an international team of researchers based at KEDGE Business School, University of Leeds, University of Bonn and University of Rome demonstrates that Summaries for Policymakers produced since 1990 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are too difficult to read.

Read about it in Nature here.

Cartoons by Josh

Has the BBC banned all non-alarmist views?

Peter Lilley has just issued the following press release.

BBC PUTS IMPARTIALITY AT RISK BY ATTEMPTS TO CENSOR AND DISCREDIT MPs

The BBC is undermining its reputation for impartiality by apologising for “giving a voice” to two MPs and by putting a ‘health warning’ on the BBC website casting doubt on their credibility – even though the accuracy of what they said is not disputed: says Peter Lilley MP in a letter to the Director General.  

He added: “It is particularly outrageous that the BBC should try to discredit the only two scientifically qualified MPs who served on the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee; absurd to suggest my views are “outside the scientific consensus” when I said on the programme that I accept the proven science of global warming though my views on the likely amount of warming are at the “lukewarm” end of the range given by the IPCC; thoroughly unscientific to claim the Met Office views are upheld by scientists when, on the matter under discussion, their predictions had been falsified; and discourteous to publish these insulting and untrue remarks without even informing me.”

The letter in full:

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Justiciable climate?

Attempts by environmentalists to gain an advantage in the climate wars through the courts continue to attract the interest of commentators, particularly those on the sceptic side. Judith Curry has a review of some recent developments and Booker was discussing similar questions behind the Sunday Telegraph's paywall over the weekend.

I'm unsure about just how far the legal system is going to accept the kinds of cases that the greens are hoping for. It may well be that it depends on the particular jurisdiction. Philippe Sands reckons that because international courts involved themselves in the question of whether the Japanese whaling programme was scientific, they can (and should) involve themselves in questions of climate change. This seems an almost preposterously weak argument for a senior lawyer to make. Whether some activity is scientific or not is a question of categorisation - quite different to questions such as "What is the value of climate sensitivity?"

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Is good news actually news at all?

Over the weekend there was a minor kerfuffle when the Sunday Times' Jonathan Leake breached the embargo on a press release about the latest GWPF report. Ho hum.

The report itself is by Indur Goklany and is about the benefits of higher carbon dioxide levels - increased crop yields and a general greening of the planet being the principal ones. Richard Betts has been taking a look and has come up with some interesting and some not so interesting points.

For example, he reckons that Goklany is inconsistent, accepting climate model predictions of a reduced threat from water shortages but pointing to the failures of climate models in general. This doesn't seem an unreasonable point to make, although neither do I think it unreasonable of Goklany to point out that even the models, flawed though they may be, are predicting benefits from global warming.

Richard also notes that the IPCC discusses carbon dioxide fertilisation in its reports and reckons Goklany's contribution is therefore not newsworthy.

CO2 fertilization is already considered in IPCC reports http://t.co/h9OXFLMmrm http://t.co/DkisNAsla6 #notnews https://t.co/xyzuHYg1Vp

— Richard Betts (@richardabetts) October 11, 2015

This is true, but I'm not sure that represents a criticism of Goklany's report. I'm struggling to recall an occasion on which the IPCC has proclaimed the benefits of higher carbon dioxide levels to the general public, so the new report represents a valuable contribution to the public debate, filling in the bits the IPCC didn't want to discuss in public.

I hope Richard welcomes the public gaining a deeper understanding of climate science, both the bad news and the good news.

Guenier on Sands

Those following the recent developments on the "law and climate" front will be interested in the article at Paul Matthews' site from Robin Guenier.

The perils of delegation

As a follow up to the last posting, consider this excerpt from the Guardian article by Client Earth director James Thornton (pictured above on a long-haul holiday):

The most obvious liabilities for companies and their directors relate to physical loss or damage. The residents of Tuvalu in the Pacific and Kivalina in Alaska, whose homes are disappearing beneath rising waters, have both threatened challenges against polluters.

Follow the Tuvalu link to its source and you find a national Geographic Article entitled:

Will Pacific Island Nations Disappear as Seas Rise? Maybe Not

and which contains this:

Some islands grew by as much as 14 acres (5.6 hectares) in a single decade, and Tuvalu's main atoll, Funafuti—33 islands distributed around the rim of a large lagoon—has gained 75 acres (32 hectares) of land during the past 115 years.

I wonder if Mr Thornton wrote the article himself?

Zac paying greens to sue city bigwigs

A group called Client Earth is threatening to sue big UK businesses for not doing as greens tell them on the climate change front.

The Companies Act 2006 codifies directors’ duties in law for the first time. They must “promote the success of the company”, first by considering “the likely consequences of any decision in the long term”. Failing to plan for climate change is incompatible with this and other duties and leaves directors open to legal challenge.

The case for climate litigation against reckless directors grows ever stronger. Increased regulation, changing market dynamics and heightened risk to physical assets means maintaining the status quo is no longer an option for those keen to protect their finances and reputation.

We at ClientEarth are closely monitoring the activities of FTSE 250 companies. We will pursue those directors who fail to protect their investors from the challenge that climate change presents. Those intent on following a business-as-usual model, be warned: the “usual” has changed.

Even Guardian readers seem unimpressed.

So who is behind Client Earth? A list of their funders is quite interesting, including the City of London Corporation Charity and...wait for it...the personal charity of Zac and Ben Goldsmith. Yes that's right folks, the aspirant mayor of London is paying greens to sue the companies that bring the wealth to the city.

It's an interesting tactic.

A gallery of rogues, spivs and wideboys

There's an article at the Guardian today that really takes one aback. Taking into account the author, the author of the underlying report, and those it quotes, it's quite a gallery of rogues.

Guardian energy editor Terry Macalister writes that wind energy is now the cheapest technology for electricity generation in the UK. Yes, folks this is the Great Levelised Cost Lie in action again. Here's how Macalister explains it:

The numbers drawn up by Bloomberg are a “levelised cost of energy” (LCOE) which takes into account financing, intermittency and other issues, so that different technologies can be fairly compared. However LCOE does not account for the cost of managing intermittent power in the national grid electricity system.

Everybody, but everybody in the energy policy debate knows that levelised costs are grossly misleading because the cost is only one half of the equation. The value of the output matters just as much, and the value of intermittent renewables is only a fraction of the value of dispatchable technologies. So when Macalister - or Doug Parr of Greenpeace, or Seb Henbest of BNEF - tell you that LCOE is a way to "fairly" compare different technologies it's not true. And when they tell you that wind is "fully competitive" with other technologies it's not true either.

They are behaving like the worst kind of city spiv, the most shameful dealer in dodgy share schemes.

Deccline and fall

The man running UK energy policy?According to an article in the Ecologist, DECC is now no longer much more than a shell. It seems that the Treasury and the new Infrastructure commission headed by Lord Adonis are taking all the decisions related to energy projects, leaving Amber Rudd with little to do beyond talking about the weather (or at least the climate) with colleagues from around the world.

Unfortunately Lord Adonis seems to be enthusiastic about wind energy, so the insanity may continue for a while yet. But at least energy policy seems to have been removed from the hands of the deep greens.

The judge, the presidential hopeful and some strange conflicts of interest

Updated on Oct 7, 2015 by Bishop Hill

Donna Laframboise has been doing some interesting research on the Climate and Law conference recently held by the UK's Supreme Court. It seems that as well as Philippe Sands, several other judges used the occasion to advance their environmentalist views.

Prominent among them was Lord Carnwath, who called the Paris conference a test of our ability to address the challenges of climate change. It does seem extraordinarily unprofessional - if not outright corrupt - of these people to use public funds and their positions of public trust to promote their ideological fads.

Carnwath is an interesting chap. I read for example that tomorrow he is to hear a case in which Donald Trump tries to prevent an offshore windfarm being built next to his golf course development in Aberdeenshire.  At the start of the year he took part in a ruling on the Viking windfarm in Shetland, rejecting attempts to prevent it going ahead. He was also involved in a case in which a group called "Client Earth" forced the UK to formulate new air quality standards.

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Weather extremes don't harm insurance companies

With "Mystic" Mark Carney telling anyone who crosses his palm with silver (or, indeed, anyone who crosses his path) that the insurance industry is going to be sunk by climate change, it's interesting to see what the empirical evidence has to say on the subject. By happy coincidence, Ross McKitrick has just published a paper on just this subject. Here's what he says about it on his website.

Bin Hu and I have just published a study looking at how climate variations, in particular indicators of extreme weather, have historically affected the share prices of major insurance firms. The insurance industry has raised the concern that climate change poses a financial risk due to higher payouts for weather-related disasters. However, if extreme weather is increasing, presumably that means they have an opportunity to sell more insurance products as well, which may increase profitability. In our paper we examined historical data on a portfolio of insurance firms and estimate a three-factor model augmented with climate indicators. Short-run deviations in measures of climate extremes are associated with increased profitability for insurance firms. Overall we find that past climatic variations have not had a negative effect on the profitability of the insurance industry.

Patchi is history, Lee for IPCC

Last night the IPCC announced its replacement for its troubled head, Rajendra Pachauri, currently the centre of a sexual harassment case in his native India.

The new man is a hitherto somewhat obscure Korean economist named Hoesung Lee. Carbon Brief did an interview with him last month, if you want to know more. I think "technocrat" may be the apposite term.

Unchaperoned views

Any sceptic views in the offing?A few weeks back we all had a laugh over Quentin Letts' What's the Point of the Met Office? and the ensuing rumpus. As I noted at the time, it was a fairly trivial show (transcript here), and I had actually made my original posting as a simple link because I didn't think it worth listening to myself. However, the rumpus continues and the latest reverberations were felt today.

Any appearance on the airwaves by a sceptical voice necessarily leads to a formal complaint, and the outraged party this time was one Andy Smedley, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Manchester. The result has been an abject apology from the BBC:

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Wildlife thriving in Chernobyl

Updated on Oct 6, 2015 by Bishop Hill

Updated on Oct 6, 2015 by Bishop Hill

Pic Arctic Woof under CC licence https://www.flickr.com/photos/arcticwoof/7105477111To some extent, concerns over global warming have arisen as a direct result of environmentalists' scaremongering over nuclear energy. How much lower would carbon dioxide emissions have been if the world had gone nuclear in the 1960s?

That environmentalists were scaremongering is confirmed by a new paper in Current Biology, which reports long-term survey data from the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Despite numerous earlier studies reporting that radiation levels in the 1600 square miles zone are above dangerous levels, nobody seems to have passed the news on to the wildlife:

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