Back from the brink

A sudden outbreak of sanity seems to have taken hold Canada. Firstly the idea of a carbon tax appears to have been killed off for good:

Conservatives kill carbon tax

Conservatives have kiboshed a carbon tax, Environment Minister Peter Kent confirmed Thursday.

"It's off the table," he told reporters Thursday after accepting an award from World Wildlife Fund International on behalf of Parks Canada.

"There's no expectation of cap-and-trade continentally in the near or medium future."

...and then this:

Government delays pulling plug on old-fashioned light bulbs

Tories propose pushing deadline to 2014 over lack of alternatives to incandescents

(H/T to Ross McKitrick, who offers to send a real estate guide)

Sense about Science lecture

Times Higher Ed has a report about last night's Sense About Science lecture by Cambridge historian Richard Evans. From the sounds of it, this was pretty interesting, with Prof Evans noting that calls for the public to trust scientists are  "inadequate" given the propensity of scientists to get things wrong - he cites the BSE and miasmatism as examples. That said, Prof Evans, like so many others finds it difficult to cope with dissenting voices, and you sense that underneath he longs for consensus and certainty and a nice-neat top-down world. But I wonder if there is some significance in the fact that climate change sceptics were no mentioned alongside the anti-vaccinators (is that a word?,) who he gives as examples of the fringe groups who have taken advantage of the public distrust of scientist.

If someone can lay their hands on the video, do please post a link.

Procuring a short but fleshy paper

I was thinking about Sarah Muckherjee's comments about NGOs funding climate science, which still seems a bit odd to me: if I recall correctly various people have looked at CRU's funding and seen no signs of NGO money. However, I then came across this email in the Climategate file (No 1060196763).

To: [L. Grass and Klaus Hasselmann both at DKRZ in Germany, Per Carstedt at something called Ecosystem in Sweden, someone called Mueller at a group called Ermine at Oxford, Michael Grubb of Imperial, London, Joyeeta Gupta of the Free University of the Netherlands, Carlo Jaeger and Martin Welp of the Potsdam Institute, Bert Metz at the National Institute for Health and Environment of the Netherlands, Mike Hulme of UEA,  and a few WWF guys]

Subject: economic costs of european heat wave

Date: Wed, 06 Aug 2003 15:06:03 +0200

Cc: [Lots of WWF people]

dear all,

i think we all have seen [if not commented on] the devastating heat wave presently in europe - gives us a feeling on truly global warming. WWF has assured some money - a few thousand EUROS what is not much to be honest but at least a start - to ask an economist with climate policy understanding to assess in a short but fleshy paper [max 10 pages] the economic costs of these weather extremes in europe. This can be put in context with the mitigation costs of ambitious climate policies which are often quoted as a barrier to clean technologies unfortunately. I think, we as an NGO working on climate policy need such a document pretty soon for the public and for informed decision makers in order to get a) a debate started and b) in order to get into the media the context between climate extremes/desasters/costs and finally the link between weather extremes and energy - just the solutions parts what still is not communicated at all.

In short, can you advise us on a competent author who is readily available [can be one of you, of course], to bring together the conventionally accessible costs of reduced transport loads on rivers, in railway networks, forest fires, disruption of water supply and irrigation, closure of hydro power and even nuclear in some locations, health costs, agricultural failures [if accessible] etc etc etc...resulting from the heat wave?

Of course, i could not sent this e-mail to all competent sceintists, so fell free to share please and come back to me - at best ASAP

many regards

stephan singer

Stephan Singer

Head of European Climate and Energy Policy Unit

WWF, the conservation organization

I wonder who finally wrote the paper for WWF and I wonder if WWF's involvement was disclosed.

Windfarms paid to switch off

From the Sunday Times (not online; via commenters)

Wind farm operators in Scotland were paid nearly £900,000 to keep their turbines idle for a night because the National Grid did not need the power.

The payments, up to 20 times the value of the power the wind farms would have produced, were offered by the National Grid because it urgently needed to reduce electricity entering the system.
It was oversupplied with power on a wet and blustery night last month when demand for electricity was low.

The National Grid confirmed it had made the payments. “On the night of April 5 and 6, the demand for power was low but the nuclear generation plants in Scotland were running as expected. There was also heavy rainfall, which meant hydro power plants were operating well, too,” a spokesman said.

Green jobs - Josh 93

Biofuels cause starvation

That's according to the head of Nestlé, the global food conglomerate:

Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, the chairman of Nestlé, lashed out at the Obama administration for promoting the use of ethanol made from corn, at the expense of hundreds of millions of people struggling to afford everyday basics made from the crop.

Mr Brabeck-Letmathe weighed in to the increasingly acrimonious debate over food price inflation to condemn politicians around the world who seem determined to blame financial speculators instead of tackling underlying imbalances in supply and demand. And he reserved especially pointed remarks for US agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack, who he said was making "absolutely flabbergasting" claims for the country's ability to cope with rising domestic and global demand for corn.

Read the whole thing.

Quote of the day

This was apparently posted to the comments on Christopher Booker's article today:

I have worked in government for 28 years as an economist, and for the last 20 years I have worked on environmental programs. In that time I have not seen a shred of evidence to justify global warming, let alone man made global warming and I have not seen a shred of evidence that there is going to be a green economic boom. The only evidence I have seen is that there is a green economic bust, that money invested in green technologies is usually wasted and simply consumes investment that could be better used elsewhere. I think that anybody in government or industry who can not understand this is either dishonest, stupid, or both. That applies to Cameron - I think he is both.

H/T Messenger

Rolls Royce minds

A must-hear interview with Jill Duggan, the bureaucrat in charge of Britain's emissions trading scheme. The Australians who are conducting the interview are worried that perhaps an ETS is not such a good idea.

Having heard the interview you will understand why they feel this way - Duggan's performance is truly catastrophic, with our the woman from Whitehall apparently unable to quantify either the costs or the benefits of the scheme she runs. It's hilarious, toe-curling and utterly compelling.

These, ladies and gentlemen, are the Rolls Royce minds that run the UK these days.

Excerpt (2Mb)

Perverse incentives in the ivory tower

From the comments at Judith Curry's blog, a contribution from economist, Curt Doolittle.

The degree to which the academic scientific community in the west, since the 1970s has undermined scientific credibility is not understood in the incestuous circle of academia. To counter this effect: Write books not papers. Falsify your own work. Seek to justify opposing views. Ruthlessly attack others who undermine scientific credibility in the public debate. Reduce the number of graduate students and hide their work unless it is extremely well argued (this is a contrary incentive). It’s not about writing stories. It’s about doing good science. And right now, climate science is insufficiently articulated for human beings to justify paying the huge cost associated with the apocalyptic visions. Human beings are rational. They just need a rational argument and to understand the costs and benefits in relation to all their other costs and benefits.

The whole comment is worth a read.

I wonder where Sir Paul Nurse stands on the perverse incentives of academics?

Green jobs cost you more

Updated on Feb 28, 2011 by Bishop Hill

Updated on Feb 28, 2011 by Bishop Hill

As if any further evidence were required to demonstrate the point, the Scottish Government has received a report showing that their policies are costing us dearly.

Government support for the renewable sector in Scotland is costing more jobs than it creates, a report has claimed. A study by consultants Verso Economics found there was a negative impact from the policy to promote the industry. It said 3.7 jobs were lost for every one created in the UK as a whole and that political leaders needed to engage in "honest debate" about the issue.

Click to read more ...

CC Question Time

Tonight I was on the panel for a Climate Change Question Time at Strathclyde University, as part of their green week. As the lone sceptic on a panel of five I was somewhat apprehensive about the reception I would receive - one imagines booing and hissing and throwing of eggs - but it was actually all very congenial and polite. I was somewhat concerned to find myself agreeing at times with some of the other panellists, who included a green MSP, a LibDem, an ex-BBC weatherman and an environmental officer from business.

I thought it went quite well on the whole. I managed to tick off the LibDem for extolling the virtues of green jobs, which got a measure of agreement from others on the panel and a laugh from the audience, and I made some criticisms of the Stern report, which I hope may have opened some eyes.

Thanks are due to Linzi at Strathclyde University for inviting me and for organising a very interesting event.

Statistical literacy

An interesting paper by Gerd Gigerenzer et al, looking at statistical illiteracy and what might be done about it. I'm struck by the emphasis on "statistical thinking" and how it is either taught too late, badly or not at all.

Rather like economic thinking, critical thinking and logical thinking.

Greens want your pension

The Confederation of British Industry appears to have designs on your pension, which it thinks should be spent on green boondoggles. This is from the British bosses organisation's latest press release (H/T Damian Carrington).

"Some bold initiatives would be in order. For example, rebuilding large parts of the nation’s power generating industry will require more investment capital than the market left to itself is likely to supply. So I would favour the development of a green investment bank designed to channel long-term finance from the pensions institutions into energy infrastructure – not easy to do, but perfectly possible with a bit of imagination and courage.

Yes, that's right. Your pension manager doesn't want to invest in the green scam, but with a bit of "imagination and courage", for which I take it we should read "compulsion", all difficulties can be overcome.

Ignorance in academe

Tim Worstall has a lovely post looking at a new Campaign for the Public University. The campaign, featuring the cream of UK academia says it is "seeking to defend and promote the idea of the university as a public good".

As Tim explains, they seem to be a bit mixed up about what a public good is though. Which is not very impressive for the cream of UK academia.

European carbon market suspended

The Telegraph (among others) is reporting that the European carbon market has been suspended for a week following the theft of emissions permits from the Czech registry.

More than €2bn (£1.7bn) of trade is likely to be disrupted after the European Commission said it would prevent transactions until January 26.

The suspension follows allegations that 475,000 carbon credits worth €7m were stolen in a hacking attack on the Czech carbon register. It appears that the intangible allowances were bounced between eastern European countries before disappearing without a trace.

I'm not sure I understand why they feel it necessary to suspend the market this time. According to the same article,

[The market] has been plagued by fraud, with Europol estimating that carbon trading criminals trying to play the system may have accounted for up to 90pc of all market activity in some European countries during 2009. Fraudulent traders mainly from Britain, France, Spain, Denmark and Holland pocketed an estimated €5bn.

Industrial-scale fraud - environmentalism's legacy to the world.