Appearance and Reality

There is a new kind of politics which has emerged post Bush (41) and John Major which involves what might be termed a post-modern view of facts. Politicians and the chattering class have abandoned the idea that there is an independent reality “out there” which can be independently verified and assessed. The new political epistemology moves us from truths that can be proven and verified or falsified to narratives that can be constructed.


Lord Mandelson, the British cabinet Minister (for the third time) and ex EU Commissioner, speaks of the need to “create the truth” - of building a story that is compelling and enables the government to develop policies, positions and activities and take strong action. For him, narrative has the appearance of reality. The old dictum that “comment is free but facts are sacred” (C P Scott, editor at one time of The Guardian) is no longer the case, since in many cases (school standards, emission reporting, global warming, number unemployed) facts are “fitted” to the narrative. Even such simple things as the tracking of temperature from monitoring stations across the world are “adjusted” to fit the narrative of climate change.


What happens when this occurs is that Government lives in a parallel universe from those of us who still think that there is an independent reality out there that can be verified and that we seek to understand through science. They pursue policies – whether about climate change or schools, health care or grizzly bears – which are based on their own narratives and their own “fitted” data.

A case in point. The idea that climate scientists have, by some process, reached a “consensus” and that 4,000 of them have agreed on “the science” is an example of this kind of narrative based claim that cannot be verified by reference to facts. The figure of 4,000 scientosts comes from a press release from the UN/IPCC and is a media invention – it refers to how many people were involved in the IPCC process, not all of whom are scientists and very few of those who are happen to climate scientists. We cannot verify, however, their “views” about the science or the extent to which they would be willing to agree with all aspects of both the scientific documents in the IPCC or the Summary for Policy Makers. We do know, however, that not all of them supported the “science” and that several have called the process by the which the Summary for Policy Makers. Yet the 4,000 scientists claim is now established as if it were fact, and that is all that matters.

Equally, it is very clear that there is no consensus about the science. There is a dominant view, in part created by the usual process of gate-keeping access to publications and the very significant research funding available. But “dominant” and “only view” are not the same thing.
Science is not a democratic enterprise. It is a process of discovery based on evidence, theories and analysis. It just takes one compelling piece of evidence to disrupt the dominant view – just look at the history of science to see how important this observation can be. It is also worth noting that consensus does not mean correct. The current scientific dominant view about climate change is what it is – a view. It may or may not be correct.

The more dramatic area in which the new politics is becoming blatant is in the action plans for achieving the policies intended to reduce C02 emissions and “stop” climate change (another example of an illusion posing as a possibility).

The idea that one can reduce emissions in Canada by paying for a forest (which may or may not be planted and may or may not survive) in some other country or that we can trade carbon credits and this will reduce emissions is so obviously absurd, yet it is now part of the political reality (read myth).


Another example is the idea that emissions reductions will create Green Jobs. This rhetoric is rife, especially in the Obama administration. But the actual experience is very different. Spain is a case in point. Spain has a great many wind farms. By 2010 Spain will have 20,000 megawatts of installed capacity. Even in 2009 at the peak of the winds in February it was able to generate 11,800 megawatts – 29% of the energy requirements of Spain on a particular day (meaning that the turbines were working at 69% of their capacity). Spain ranks third in the world for wind power. Ahead of Spain are Germany, at nearly 24,000 megawatts of capacity, and the United States, at No. 1, with over 25,000 megawatts. Wind power has grown in Spain because of subsidy – also the case for solar power. In the case of wind, subsidy is market price (regulated by the Government with a requirement that the energy companies must buy wind power) plus 90% of the market price for a period of fifteen years, when it drops to 80%. In the case of solar power, the subsidy is 575% of the market price for twenty five years, when it falls to 460% above market. Contracts are underwritten by the Government at an annual cost of (app) €28.6 billion. It is not surprising, then, that the Government’s 2008 target for growth in installed capacity for renewable power of 371 megawatts was beaten by the actual new capacity created – 2,934 megawatts. The Spanish government has now capped growth.

A recent economic analysis from the Juan Carlos University in Madrid suggests that, rather than creating the 50,000 jobs the Spanish government claimed would be created, the net green jobs created are closer to 15,000. Most of these jobs are associated with construction, since few are required once construction is completed to maintain and manage the wind and solar installed capacity. What is more, renewable energy has led to lost jobs elsewhere (especially when coupled with the impact of the European Carbon Credit Trading System – cap and trade). The study just mentioned suggests that the net costs of creating a single sustainable green job are app. €500 million. It also suggests that, for every green job created, some 3.9 jobs are lost in other sectors – someone has to pay for this subsidy level.

Cap and trade is another of these cases where the rhetoric and reality are two very different things. The claim is that cap and trade for CO2 is the primary mechanism by which the world will achieve its targeted emissions. There is no convincing evidence that cap and trade in and of itself will lead to this result. It has yet to happen in any jurisdiction that operates cap and trade.

So when we look at Copenhagen and its outcomes, we should distance ourselves from the language and the rhetoric and look at evidence. After all, this is what we scientists do.

Last Chance Saloon in Copenhagen

Heavy snow and -12C temperatures will blanket Copenhagen over the next few days. This will nicely match the fog and gloom permeating the conference rooms and plenary policy sessions. Copenhagen is in danger of being a failure.

Something will be pulled out of a hat at the last minute, but it will not be the climate change strategy that was talked about in the lead up to this summit. We can expect compromise and trade offs all around, but whatever happens is likely to have little real impact on the earths global temperature rise over the next one hundred years.

Most informed observers now look to the US to salvage something from this summit. In particular, if the US steps up with significant funds to compensate developing countries for the pollution of the atmosphere and if it can commit to lowering emissions beyond the already declared level, then others may be willing to move and make additional compromises to get a two track deal – Kyoto for most and an alternative for others.

They will also agree to hold another meeting in 2010 to try and resolve remaining issues – another attempt (this is the fifteenth conference of the parties, not the first) is likely to perpetuate the current disagreements, but with a clearer understanding of the extent and exact nature of the differences between the parties.

However you look at it, none of this is good. George Monbiot, writing in The Guardian, captures the despair many climate change activists feel about Copenhagen. His message is simple – we deepened our understanding of the future, we better understood what is expected of us and we made a deliberate choice, through our representatives, to avoid dealing with it. We went further: we substituted surrogate decisions (offsets, cap and trade) for the real decisions – dramatically lowering emissions.

While the skeptics may see the outcome as “satisfactory” and many citizens appear disinterested, serious commentators will now observe that the ability of governments to work together on a challenge that affects the world is so weak as to be a cause for serious concern.

If there is to be a deal, it will have to emerge during Wednesday for the momentum to be created for signature by the majority of countries present. At the time of writing, this looks like a stretch. Watch this space.

US NOW IN THE LINE OF FIRE

Ministers and world leaders are beginning to arrive at Copenhagen and several are already dismayed by the lack of progress on key issues both in the lead up to Copenhagen and at the summit itself.

Ed Milliband, the British Minister, and Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister of Britain have both urged delegates to set aside differences are reach out for an agreement. Mr Blair recognized that the talks are most likely “one of the toughest negotiations that international leaders will ever have been involved in.” He also acknowledged the so-called Climategate scandal. He said “that the science around climate change is not as certain as its proponents allege”, but he went on to say “ it doesn’t need to be. What is beyond debate, however, is that there is a huge amount of scientific support for the view that the climate is changing and as a result of human activity.” Using the precautionary principle was appropriate, he observed, and he urged action now.

Meanwhile, China has signaled a challenge to the US both in terms of its emission targets and its willingness to provide finance to China, India and other countries for adapting to climate change. The chief negotiator for China want the US to go far beyond its commitment to cut emissions at 3% below 1990 levels and to offer substantial sums for adaptation by less developed countries, including China. He rejected the US negotiators position announced last week that China was not eligible for such funds.

China was also instrumental in the walk out on Monday by 130 countries, focused on process issues and the decision to abandon Kyoto. The Danish leaders at the summit confirmed that Kyoto was still on the table – something that will also displease the US.

So all eyes are now on the US and Barrak Obama, who arrives in Copenhagen on Friday. His lead Secretary of State for Energy gave a speech which was treated with some incredulity by most of the delegates. He used as examples of leading edge and breakthrough technologies things that have been in use for ten or more years. For examples, sensors that can measure the emission levels and heat footprints of any property – in use in the EU for a decade. It appears clear to many that, despite some gifted people and much improved rhetoric, the spirit of George W Bush is alive and well.

Something will happen between now and Friday. But it will have little to do with climate change.

Copenhagen Suspended as One Hundred and Thirty Nations Walk Out

The developing nations group known as the G77, which actually represents some one hundred and thirty nations, as well as the small island states walked out of the Copenhagen Summit today in protest over the way the talks are progressing.

They did so for two reasons. First is their fear that the developing nations are putting the Kyoto Protocol to one side and instead focusing on a completely new agreement. Only the Kyoto Protocol provides the framework for legally binding emissions targets – something they see the developed nations seeking to avoid.

The second reason is more about process – they are concerned that the developing nations are playing a game of brinkmanship, leaving key issues to the last few days so as to steamroller developing nations into an agreement they see as detrimental. They fear that key decisions will be made by G20 leaders on the final day of the summit.

The Kyoto Protocol is problematic for several of the developed and developing nations. First, the US Congress has failed to support it. Second, the treaty has not been signed by China or India and they have made clear that they have no intention of doing so, seeing it as a road-block to their rapid economic development. Third, the treaty fails to deal with some of the issues now on the table and would need substantial re-writing.

The walk out is a dramatic tactical move by the developing world, who are making their presence strongly felt in Copenhagen. “They will not be treated as pawns in a giant game of global chess”, said one spokesperson.

Other countries are reacting angrily to this development. “There is so much yet to do and now we are spending our time pleading with these nations to come to the table”, said Australian Senator Wong, who is working on securing the return of the walk out countries.

A new proposal is floating as a result of informal discussions held on Sunday. There is a suggestion that there be a "twin track" approach, whereby countries with existing targets under the Kyoto Protocol (all developed nations except the US) stay under that umbrella, with the US and major developing economies making their carbon pledges under a new protocol. This may appease the G77 and bring them back to the table.

It is expected that negotiations will begin again later today or early tomorrow.

The Science of Climate Change

The science of climate change is, as we know, complex. There are many different disciplines involved in understanding both the physics and geography of climate change as well as its impacts on people, the environment, oceans, plants and animals. No one can claim to know everything there is to know about climate and its impact.

What we are dealing with is a range of probabilities – different scenarios for the future. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), for example, has developed a range of different scenarios for the future of the climate which in turn take into account a variety of “inputs” (data) and assumptions (models and theories) about how climate works. The IPCC does not offer predictions about the future – it has never done so. It offers some different models. Also, the IPCC, by mandate, is primarily concerned with understanding the role of man-made CO2 in the atmosphere and its impact on the climate. When it was established, the IPCC was given this mandate: to assess: “the scientific, technical and socioeconomic information relevant for the understanding of the risk of human-induced climate change” – by mandate it has a given theory of climate change.

Science is a complex enterprise in itself. It is dynamic. Scientists develop ideas which they explore and test until their ideas are robust enough to form a theory. Other scientists are attracted to one theory over other competing theories – there are always competing theories – until there is a “generally accepted view” that the science of a given aspect of our universe is understood, within the limits of currently available knowledge. But as we learn more and understand more, then formerly established theories or ideas change. It takes one compelling study with independently verified data for a currently held view to unravel. While it may take time for the former theory to decline and the new theory to emerge as the new dominant view, this is how progress occurs in science.

For example, though the precise causes of multiple sclerosis are not known, it has been generally accepted until recently that it is an autoimmune disease whereby the body attacks its own cells or tissues. In the case of MS, the target of the attack is myelin - the protective sheath surrounding the nerves in both the brain and the spinal cord. These nerves become scarred and it's this damage which interrupts the normal transmission of the central nervous system, so producing the symptoms of the disease. Some 2.5 million people worldwide have been diagnosed with MS.

In November 2009, however, a cardiologist has shifted the thinking about the disease in a radical way. Observing, from ultrasounds and MRI analysis, that all the MS patients he saw had veins that were finding it difficult to evacuate blood from the brain, leaving iron deposits in the brain, he suggested that simple surgical procedures could remedy this position and ease the symptoms of MS, if not provide the basis of a new understanding of the aetiology of MS. Dr. Paolo Zamboni, Director of the Centre for Vascular Diseases at the University of Ferrara (Italy), uses angioplasty on the veins to remove blockages and accelerate the rate at which blood circulates in the body, most especially as it is evacuated from the brain. Doing so has had major consequences for the patients he has treated. This is not to say that Professor Zamboni is right and the “consensus” is wrong, only that there is now a new framework which requires exploration since it offers both a seemingly effective treatment for some patients and a new and very different explanation of the disease.

The idea that man is the primary cause of climate change through the extensive emission of CO2 into the atmosphere is a theory of climate change - one among several. No reputable scientist disputes that climate change is occurring. The so-called sceptics differ with others as to the causes of climate change, arguing that other factors – water vapour, the sun, ocean current, el Ninio to name some – are also to be understood as factors. There are several reasons why understanding the underlying causes of climate change is important. The first is that we need a deep understanding of the dynamics of climate change so as to increase our understanding of climate: the science of climatology, which is in its infancy, needs a robust and evidence based understanding of climate dynamics. The second is more about public policy – if the current dominant theory is correct and CO2 is the primary cause of climate change, then we can act to reduce CO2 emissions and “de-carbonize” our economies. The problem is that doing so changes our economies in fundamental ways and requires massive investments and multilateral political action globally – both difficult to achieve. There is a third reason why this debate between man made vs other explanations is important, which is to inform our understand of the link between science and public policy.

Roger Pielke Snr., a well established scientist who has worked extensively on the climate change file, has suggested that there are basically three core hypothesis at play in the scientific community engaged in work on climate science. These are:

The Total Sceptic Position: Human influence on climate variability and change is of minimal importance, and natural causes dominate climate variations and changes on all time scales. In coming decades, the human influence will continue to be minimal.

The Emerging Position: Although the natural causes of climate variations and changes are undoubtedly important, the human influences are significant and involve a diverse range of first- order climate forcings, including, but not limited to, the human input of carbon dioxide (C02). Most, if not all, of these human influences on regional and global climate will continue to be of concern during the coming decades.

The IPCC Position: Although the natural causes of climate variations and changes are undoubtedly important, the human influences are significant and are dominated by the emissions into the atmosphere of greenhouse gases, the most important of which is C02. The adverse impact of these gases on regional and global climate constitutes the primary climate issue for the coming decades.

The claim by many is that the “science is settled”, by which they mean it is settled around the IPCC position. This claim is based on all sorts of evidence, some of it very scant. Foe example, it is claimed that 4,000 scientists agreed with the IPCC fourth assessment report released in 2007. This is a fabrication. Some 4,000 people, around 2,580 scientists, were asked to contribute or review materials for the assessment. Not all agreed with the assessment – in fact, one quarter of reviewers made negative comments about the sections they reviewed. We do not in fact know how many scientists agree with the IPCC assessment – the question was never actually asked.

The reality is that most of the peer reviewed scientific literature favours the emerging position over the IPCC position. It is also the case that very little of the literature favours the sceptic position (though it is worth noting that some does and it comes from respected figures in physics and climatology).

Scientific analysis therefore needs to take into account and give more serious consideration to the other factors that have a bearing on climate change. These include the role of oceans as “sinks” for CO2, the role of ocean currents, naturally occurring events (earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanic eruptions), the sun and sun spots, other green house gasses (especially water vapour), the tilt of the earth and so on. All are know to have some impact.

By focusing on CO2 and the IPCC theory, the public policy is based then on what is known as the precautionary principle. While most scientists recognize that the sources of climate change are complex but that CO2 is an influencing factor, the public policy we are asked to adopt is that it is a sufficiently significant factor for us to act to reduce its impact on what are perceived as negative risks from climate change (there are benefits of climate change also to be considered).

Thomas Friedman, writing in the New York Times, captures this issue succinctly. He observes:

What we don’t know, because the climate system is so complex, is what other factors might over time compensate for that man-driven warming, or how rapidly temperatures might rise, melt more ice and raise sea levels. It’s all a game of odds. We’ve never been here before. We just know two things: one, the CO2 we put into the atmosphere stays there for many years, so it is “irreversible” in real-time (barring some feat of geo-engineering); and two, that CO2 buildup has the potential to unleash “catastrophic” warming.

When I see a problem that has even a 1 percent probability of occurring and is “irreversible” and potentially “catastrophic,” I buy insurance. That is what taking climate change seriously is all about.

He is not suggesting that the science is settled, only that the two dominant hypothesis about climate change both have CO2 as a significant factor. Friedman goes on, however, with this:

If we prepare for climate change by building a clean-power economy, but climate change turns out to be a hoax, what would be the result? Well, during a transition period, we would have higher energy prices. But gradually we would be driving battery-powered electric cars and powering more and more of our homes and factories with wind, solar, nuclear and second-generation biofuels. We would be much less dependent on oil dictators who have drawn a bull’s-eye on our backs; our trade deficit would improve; the dollar would strengthen; and the air we breathe would be cleaner. In short, as a country, we would be stronger, more innovative and more energy independent.

But notice that science is not suggesting these actions, only that CO2 is a factor and that action to reduce CO2 may (a fifty-fifty chance if the reductions are severe enough) have an impact on the climate. Science is the back-cloth to public policy, not the driver. Climatologists have nothing to say about the extent of “reparations needed by developing nations to compensate them for slower growth and decarbonising the growth they do have – that is a political and economic question.

Economics is a science, requiring artistic license. The economic analysis of alternative energy sources, biofuels and clean energy regimes is an important feature of our understanding of adaptability to climate change. But psychology is also important – another science – in helping us understand why individuals do or do not act to decarbonise their own life styles and that of their communities (a sociological question). The leveraging of these sciences in furthering our understanding of adaptive processes has yet to take place – they have not had the benefit of the $9 billion global annual R&D expenditure on climate change. It is time they got a larger slice of the pie.

If the emerging hypothesis is also better understood, more of our effort needs to go into understanding the dynamic relation between all of the variables associated with climate change, not just a select few. The climate models on which many of the IPCC scenarios are based are in their early stages of maturation. It is time for new energy and a broader base of scientists to be engaged in developing them further.

Very few areas of science are ever settled – so called “closed” areas of science – almost all areas of science are open to debate, conjecture, new analysis. The secret to good science is transparency, quality analysis (including excellent statistical techniques, sometime lacking in the climate science – e.g. the “hockey stick” of Michael Mann), openness to debate and challenge and a respect between scientists. The recent Climategate emails suggest that these principles of good science have not always been the benchmark used by those who should know better. But we should not let Climategate distract from the task of understanding what is happening, why and for this to help us better understand what we can do.

Reboot Alberta: Education - A Charter

Education is critical to the future of Alberta. Rethinking how we provide learning and support and what it is that our learners do is essential if Alberta is to build a strong, responsible and sustainable economy which competes effectively with other jurisdictions.

It is time for leading Albertans – business, communities, educators, politicians and thought leaders – to share a commitment to a vigorous, affordable, accessible education system K-PhD which enables each Albertan to find their talent, develop it and become effective and creative members of organizations, communities and society. Its time to reboot education.

Our two Ministers for Learning – our 25th Minister of Education, Dave Hancock (K-12) and our 12th Minister for Advanced Education, Doug Horner (the post secondary system) - and their colleagues understand something has to change. A new School Act is in preparation and significant and substantive changes are in progress within the K-12 Ministry. Of all areas of the Alberta government, Education will see the most major changes in 2010.

But what will these changes focus on? What will be their underlying purpose? For Reboot Alberta, they should focus on making the system nimble, locally responsive, reliant on professional support from teachers and other professionals and focused on learning rather than teaching.

In fact, as part of the Reboot Alberta process, the following Charter for 21st Century Education is suggested as something every Albertan should be asked to sign up to. The Charter should inform all changes being made to K-12 and our thinking about how to make more accessible and affordable the post-secondary system in Alberta. What follows is the proposed charter, taken without apology from the one developed by The Royal Society of Arts in the UK and adapted for the Alberta context.


The Charter

It is the primary purpose of education to awaken a love of learning in all people, and give them the ability and desire to carry on learning throughout life.

We need to recognise that education has many aims

Education must nurture creativity and capacity for independent and critical thought.

Learners should leave formal education equipped with the confidence, aptitude and skills they need for life, community, social and environmental responsibility and for work.

Education should help learners to understand how to be healthy, happy and to develop and maintain their own emotional, physical and mental well-being.

Every young person has the right to develop to their full potential

Ability comes in many forms and learners need to be supported to enjoy success no matter where their talents lie – education is not just for and about “academics”.

The educational success of learners should not depend on their background or post-code. Schools, communities and families must work together to close gaps in attainment.

The curriculum in schools and colleges should balance abstract and practical knowledge so that every learner can access high quality knowledge and skills as well as vocational opportunities.

Education should engage the learner with exciting, relevant content and opportunities for learning through experience and by doing.

Education and learning should embrace, leverage and be enhanced by appropriate technologies.

Education and learning takes place outside of schools, colleges and learning – we need to facilitate, enable and recognize learning from a variety of different settings.

Education must be a partnership

Learners have a valuable role to play in contributing to the design of their own learning, and in shaping the way their learning environment operates.

The education of Albertans should be a partnership of schools, parents and the wider community in a local area.

Schools, colleges and universities should be inclusive, creative communities which build tolerance, respect and empathy in young people.

We must trust our schools and education professionals

Every teacher should be a creative professional involved in the design of curricula and learning environments, and should be supported and developed to fulfil that role.

Every place of learning should be different and innovative and we must find ways of holding them to account for their performance that reward rather than stifle this creativity.

As part of our thinking about Reboot Alberta, we should refine this charter and then secure as many signatures as possible from all those who have a commitment to learning.

You will notice that the charter does not address the normal “challenge points” in the K-12 system – class size, funding, governance structures – but instead works at the level of principles. This is deliberate. When the new School Act is published, it needs to be assessed against these principles and amendments suggested to make sure it meets the needs of Alberta as a dynamic place. When the post-secondary system is being reformed or financed, we need to use the framework of the charter to assess the veracity of the proposals. In short, lets start with principles and then work to action.

And these principles are challenging. Lets take three of them as examples. First, the idea that “every teacher should be a creative professional involved in the design of curricula and learning environments, and should be supported and developed to fulfil that role” requires a radical rethink of the nature of the Provincial curriculum, the balance between a curriculum framework and the creativity of professional teachers to develop appropriate learning for the young people in their learning community. Its not business as usual.

Let’s look at another principle: “every place of learning should be different and innovative and we must find ways of holding them to account for their performance that reward rather than stifle this creativity”. This too is a big change. Some three hundred people work in the Alberta Government to manage accountability and performance assessment. Every students is assessed on Provincial Achievement Tests (PAT’s) on a periodic basis and schools are expected to file development plans to show what action they intend to take to improve their performance. Some have argued that the PAT’s distract from learning and sap the system of creativity, energy and money – three hundred people is a lot. Imagine, then, if the Province sample tested at appropriate key stages rather than tested everyone; if the each school determined what, in addition to core skills, they wished to be held accountable for; if individual teachers were to use peer review and best practices as a basis for their evaluation. It would be a very different system.

Finally, let us look at just one more of these charter principles: “education and learning takes place outside of schools, colleges and learning – we need to facilitate, enable and recognize learning from a variety of different settings”. Imagine a high school student who is learning how to fly an aeroplane – some 2,000 of them are doing just that right now. The skills involved are significant – navigational and map reading, technical and engineering, mathematical, health and safety, communication skills – one could go on. There are also many other examples of work-based learning or learning in the community that could be recognized for credit, either by schools, colleges or universities. It’s time to rethink what “counts” for credit and to tear down artificial barriers to recognizing real learning.

The Charter, then, is a radical and innovative framework for our future. Suggest changes by the time Reboot Alberta meets again, and then we will ask Albertans to sign up in large numbers.

Tough Week Ahead at Copenhagen

As the second week of the climate summit in Copenhagen begins, three major issues are on the table. The first is a surprise.

Most of the analysts and several of the lead negotiators looking at the agenda had assumed that the Kyoto Protocol, which the US and China did not sign up to, was dead and that the task at Copenhagen was to develop a replacement multi-lateral legally binding treaty. Not so. Kyoto does not end in 2012, as many had suggested. Rather, the first phase of the protocol expires and the task at Copenhagen, at least as far as the developing nations understood, was to develop an agreement to extend Kyoto and indicate the phase 2 emissions targets and the related supports for achieving these targets. Kyoto is alive and well. The draft agreement, circulated on Friday of last week, indicates that the five year agreement under negotiations is an extension of Kyoto.

This angers China, Canada the US and some other developed countries who wanted out of the Kyoto obligations. They had proposed a completely new agreement with fewer strings attached than exist in the Kyoto protocol. The developing nations, as represented by the G77, were having none of it. It seems that they are getting their way, despite continued opposition from some key players.

The second issue is very significant. Coming into Copenhagen, the G8, G20 and the Commonwealth had all been working on the assumption that the target for emissions reduction was to stabilise the average global temperature to a rise of 20C by the end of the century. Scientific advice has been that there is a fifty-fifty chance of doing this if global C02 emissions are cut by 20% by 2020 and 50% by 2050, using 1990 as a base year. This means that such emissions would need to be cut by developing nations at a much higher level – 30% by 2020 and 80% by 2050 on 1990 baseline. However, the G77 and the small island states have rejected the 20C target in favour of a 1.50C target, which may save many of the small islands from “drowning” as sea levels rise and would also reduce the negative impact of warming on many developing countries. This 0.50C difference is very significant, and challenges the developed world to cut emission even further and faster. By some calculations, CO2 in the developed world would need to be cut by 40-50% by 2020 and by 90% by 2050 to make the 1.50C possible. It’s a tough call. Right now, commitments on the table represent an 18% cut by 2020 and a 35% cut by 2050.

The third issue is money. The European Union has offered US$7.4 billion over three years ($2.5 billion annually) as part of the Copenhagen effort to find $10 billion a year to 2012 to support social and economic adjustments in the developing world. Both of these figures have been treated with contempt by the G77 and the small island states who are looking for a figure of between $500 billion and $1000 billion annually. The language of the rejection is important. The G77 have cast themselves as “victims” and are seeking reparations for the damage done to their nations by the developing world. Prior to Copenhagen, such language was an undercurrent – the dominant talk was of economic and development assistance. Now the language has changed and C02 is the new form of colonial oppression which needs to be recognized and the people compensated. This will be a very difficult issue to resolve.

In the midst of these very difficult, and at times tense, negotiations, world leaders will begin to arrive expecting to sign a treaty their negotiation teams have worked for several months to secure. They may get some kind of agreement, but it will not be the agreement many thought they were coming to sign just a few weeks ago.

The ideal agreement would require developing nations to cut emissions by 40% by 2020 and 90% by 2050, offer a fund of $100 billion a year to the developing world and agree on a global mechanism for monitoring compliance and sanctions for failure to achieve emission targets or to pay the agreed funds into the developing nations adjustment fund. It would also establish agreed mechanisms for offsets and carbon trading and a process for developing the next five year agreement by 2017. None of this looks possible as we reach the half way point of the summit. But, as Harold Wilson, the former Prime Minister of Britain was fond of observing, a week is a long time in politics. Watch this space.

Drawing a Blank at Copenhagen

Despite a lot of hot air and boiling tempers, little has happened so far at Copenhagen that would suggest that a concrete, binding multilateral climate change agreement will emerge from this summit. Jim Prentice, Canada’s Environment Minister, is right to downplay expectation and Obama is considering his options as to whether or not he will now attend - odds are that he will.

A draft agreement issued by the organizers of the summit leaves blank all of the key items – emissions targets, new funding for developing nations, governance mechanisms and the permissible trading in offsets and CO2 licensing. What it does do is to tie any new agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, something China, the US and India were seeking to avoid.

The big kafuffle today has been, as it has been all along, about money. The European Union has offered to pay €7.2bn Euros (UK£6.5bn; US$10.6bn) over the next three years to help developing nations adapt to climate change. Agreement to make this offer came after a hard fought battle within the twenty seven nations of the EU, with many Eastern European countries being reluctant to pay into this fund. Consequently, some of the funds required to meet this new obligation will come from existing development activities – not new funding at all.

This offer for “fast track funds” to 2012, when the current provisions of Phase 1 of the Kyoto Protocol expire, are seen as insulting by the G77 poorest nations and the island states, who are seeking between $500 billion and $1 trillion a year for adaptation and reparations. Lumumba Stanislaus-Kaw Di-Aping, representing the G77 bloc of developing nations and China at the Copenhagen talks, described the EU pledges as "insignificant". "I believe [the funds] are not only insignificant, they actually breed even more distrust on the intentions of European leaders on climate change," he said, repeating the statement he made when the Danish proposal was leaked earlier in the week.

Meanwhile, work goes on trying to find consensus on the tough emissions targets which the developed world has to achieve by 2020. The science would suggest that the target should be a forty percent reduction in C02 emissions from a 1990 base by 2020 and that this would represent the minimum cut to provide a fifty-fity chance of holding temperature rises to 20C by the end of the century. So far, the aggregate value of the offers made by developed nations amount to around 18% on 1990 levels. What is more, many propose to use offsets and trading to achieve these targets – mechanisms which don’t actually reduce emissions, but give the appearance of doing so.

This is a real challenge for both developing countries and environmentalists. Buying permits from countries which have “spare” emissions certificates does not reduce emissions in the country buying those certificates. It does, however, transfer wealth. For example, one reason the Russians signed on to Kyoto was to secure a raft of emissions certificates. When its economy declined, emissions declined but Russia continued to trade certificates to secure revenue. No emissions reductions were achieved by any measure other than recession, but all parties could claim that they were doing their bit for the environment. The draft agreement now circulating maintains these Enron like book-keeping fictions.

What is clear, after the first week of dialogue, drama and dissent is that this summit is not about the environment. It is about money and power. The argument about emissions targets is about money – how can economic growth and development be sustained while at the same time providing the appearance of doing the right thing by the environment? Beneath this formulation of the problem are questions of money. How do we help the developing world accelerate economic growth and at the same time adapt to the impact of climate change? Their answer: money. How do we manage these multi-lateral arrangements to transfer vast amounts of money? The answer here is governance, which in turn involves money and power. What is really beneath the difficulties in reaching agreement here is money and power.

For the first time in a conference of the parties, the authentic and shrill and heartfelt voice of the less developed nations and the island states has been heard very clearly around the world. They see both an opportunity to secure sustainable investment and at the same time fear the consequences of climate change. However real or imagines these fears are, they are making sure that the world knows what they see to be at stake. By forcing the issue of reparations and by refusing to be brow-beaten by the developed nations, they are taking a stand which may make agreement more difficult, but may also make an agreement more realistic.

If there is to be an agreement in the next five to six days, the developed world is going to have to bite the bullet and commit to very significant emissions – doubling the offer on the table – and at least ten times more in funding than has been offered to date. Don’t hold your breath.

Cap and Fraud

A central proposal at the Copenhagen summit is that the world needs a market for CO2 and that this market should be a primary mechanism for lowering emissions. The so called “cap and trade” system works the same way as the trade in stocks. National governments provide permits to organizations to emit C02 within certain limits. Ideally, the organizations buy these permits at an agreed price. The volume of permits issued reflects the amount of carbon that country will emit in a particular time period. If a company or organization emits less than the volume they are permitted, then they can trade their “spare” permits to those who know they will emit more than their permitted limit. As the number of permits declines over time, reflecting the desire of governments to meet their emissions targets, then the value of the “spare” permits rises, thus placing a high price on CO2. Once the price gets to a certain point, organizations will find ways of lowering emissions rather than buying an expensive “spare” permit on the open market. That is the theory.

Its not worked yet. The European Union has had cap and trade in some form or other since 2005. Initially, many permits were issues gratis to organizations so that the scheme could be “kick-started”, something Obama has been forced to do in his legislation now before the Senate. Only two EU countries can be seen to have lowered emissions as a result of the cap and trade system – the UK and Germany – and emissions overall in the EU have risen since cap and trade began.

Now it is clear that there are other problems. A press release from the European police force Europol states that a fraud afflicting the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme operated over the past 18 months, has resulted in the loss of approximately €5 billion euros ($7.7 billion) from several national tax accounts. It is estimated that, in some countries, up to 90% of the whole market volume was caused by fraudulent activities. This comes on top of arrests earlier this year of a number of individuals charges with fraud over wind-farm subsidies. It looks like organized crime is now a major beneficiary of climate change mitigation policy.

In 2008, cap and trade mechanisms world-wide involved the movement of some $127 billion and, if the Copenhagen summit agrees to a world-wide cap and trade market, this sum could rise to $700 billion by 2017 and to $1 trillion by 2020, according to Goldman Sachs. There could also be a thriving derivates market operating in CO2.


Some countries, including Britain, are also looking at personal carbon limits which could then be traded. Using a carbon credit card, individuals could use their credits to buy gasoline or other goods deemed to be the carbon zone – energy for example. If they needed to “top up their carbon credit card” they would either have to arrange a transfer from someone else or purchase carbon offsets to top up their card. When first discussed two years ago, this idea was the subject of much derision. Now its a serious conversation.

Market mechanisms or CO2 emissions reduction are a centrepiece of the agreement under discussion at Copenhagen. Let us hope they are involving Europol and Interpol in this important discussion.

More Tensions in Copenhagen

On the third day of the Copenhagen Summit, one small nation walked out and the coalition of developed nations appears fractured. The challenge: securing a commitment to a legally binding international agreement on emissions reduction as a continuation of Kyoto.

The “spin” most developed nations have placed on Kyoto is that it expires in 2012. In fact it does not. What ends in 2012 is the first phase of the Kyoto protocol. The intention has always been to agree to a second phase with tougher targets, legally binding under international law.

The leaked Danish document, now widely circulated, proposed a very different strategy. In addition to ending Kyoto, national governments would each set their own targets which, when aggregated, would lead to a 30% reduction in C02 emissions by 2020 and an 80% reduction by the developed world by 2050. But the mechanisms are national, not multilateral.

The suggestion that Kyoto be abandoned as the framework for the Copenhagen agreement has left developing nations and small islands fuming. Tuvalu, a small island who claims it is the most vulnerable island in the world to sea level rise, walked out. Other nations have also indicated their displeasure with the draft agreement, developed by a small group of developed nations. For the first time in a series of conferences of the parties – Copenhagen is the fifteenth of these conferences – the small island states and developing nations are asserting themselves publicly and are making firm and clear demands.

China, India and South Africa have all now indicated that they are unwilling to sign on to an internationally binding agreement which sets a challenging target – 350 parts per million of C02 in the atmosphere. They wish to retain their national flexibility to balance growth with emissions reduction. While other targets are expressed as absolute reductions on 1990 C02 levels, China and India are discussing intensity targets – linking the emissions to the growth of the GDP. While many appear to welcome China and India’s move, when Alberta based its strategy on intensity targets it was widely condemned. It is now clear that many in Copenhagen think that the offers made by the US, China, India and South Africa are insufficient and that tougher demands should be made of them.

Linked to the concern over the Kyoto protocol being abandoned are growing concerns over money. The developed nations are said to be offering $10 billion annually for the period 2010 to 2012 and a larger amount after this, possibly up to $100 billion annually. The developing nations see this as insulting. They are seeking between $500 billion and $1 trillion annually to spur growth and facilitate technological change aimed at lowering emissions as growth occurs. They also want to make sure that these funds are new funds - additional to other funds associated with the UN Millennium Development Goals. They are also resisting the idea that these funds should have conditions attached – something suggested in the leaked Danish proposal, made available yesterday.

These kinds of tensions and difficulties are not new or unusual at this stage of a long negotiation. There are many hours of back room working sessions and trade off’s yet to take place at this summit. But what the first three days have revealed are the real difficulties of securing a binding agreement which is legally enforceable. Tensions between rich and poor nations has underdetermined all of the conferences of the parties to date, but real fission between developed countries unusual in such a public event.

Al Gore, in a CNN interview today, made clear that the expectation should be that a political agreement will be reached at Copenhagen and the real binding emissions and money agreement will follow a year from now. If he is right, and he did invent the internet and is a Nobel Prize winner, then this will greatly disappoint most of the delegates who arrived at the summit, which they dubbed Hopenhagen. It will also infuriate the smaller developing nations. We can expect more tension, trouble and debate over the next few days as back room deals start to take shape.

Trouble At Mill

(This post is dedicated to my friend and colleague David Oldroyd in Poland)

In Bradford in Yorkshire there is a saying “trouble at mill”, which harks back to the days when woolen mills were everywhere and were the major employer. When someone indicated that there “were trouble at mill”, significant disruption occurred and various communities suffered. If the Copenhagen summit can be seen as a policy mill, then there was certainly “trouble at mill” today.

A document, intended to be seen by a select few, was leaked and has caused a storm. No one can accuse the Russian secret service of this leak, as has been alleged over the leaked Climategate emails, this leak came from one or more delegates to the summit. The document is called the Danish text, and is a secret draft agreement worked on by a group of individuals known as "the circle of commitment" –understood to include the UK, US and Denmark – and was not intended for public release. It is now widely available on the internet (go here for a copy).

The document seeks to elevate the role of the G20 and the developed nations in setting climate change policy and sideline the United Nations in any future climate change negotiations. Less developed countries are also seeing the document as lowering the emissions reduction burden on developed countries while increasing it on developing economies, which they interpret as a new form of CO2 colonialism.

When the document is reviewed in its entirety it does seek to change some of the fundamental principles that secured the Kyoto accord. The first is that the developed world, which is responsible for much of the historic CO2 production, should commit through a binding treaty significantly emissions reductions and provide substantial funding to support developing nations as reparation for climate change impacts. Developing nations, in contrast, would seek to manage their emissions while adapting using the funds made available. The new proposal abandons this principle and links emissions to a variety of factors for all nations, including developing nations. Access to funds for developing nations would be conditional on them achieving certain treaty obligated goals.

The draft hands effective control of climate change mitigation funds, intended to be $10 billion in the period 2010 to 2015, to the World Bank and not the United Nations. Developing countries have been demanding $100 billion in 2011 and annually thereafter. The World Bank would release funds on certain, yet to be finalized, conditions. A suggested condition is that poor countries could not emit more than 1.44 tonnes of carbon per person by 2050, while rich countries will be permitted to emit 2.67 tonnes.

The document also creates a new category of developing country – “the most vulnerable” who may be eligible for priority access to the funds and may be given additional supports through bilateral and multilateral agreements.

What is upsetting the developing countries most, apart from the specific issues, is the way in which this document was developed. A small group of countries, with Denmark as the facilitator, has been working outside of the United Nations process to create a base agreement which the world leaders could sign next week when they begin to arrive. The intention was to quietly harness support “behind the scenes” so that momentum for the agreement built and it would become a “sign or we have nothing” choice. It is the process as well as the content that has angered many delegates.

What is angering the environmentalists present at the summit is that the document implies both very modest emission targets – too small to keep temperature rises to below the 20c threshold that the developed world has agreed to (the developing world wants a 1.50C target) as well as providing for too much flexibility for variations of plans for developed nations, too much control by the World Bank and a sidelining of the concerns of the small islands and developing nations. Reports are that many delegates are “seething” over what they see as skulduggery behind the scenes.

“Trouble at mill” indeed.

The EPA Steps Up in the US on Climate Change

In the United States, legislation seeking to reduce CO2 emissions is stuck in the Senate. The Bill is not scheduled for debate until mid 2010 and may be overshadowed by other issues, most notably health care and the economy. But President Obama has another string to his bow with respect to climate change: The Clean Air Act.

Under the Act, evidence that pollution can be damaging to human health and or the environment requires the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to act to reduce the pollution and minimize environmental damage. In August 2009 the EPA signalled its intention to recognize CO2 as a pollutant, as required by a legal decision in the Supreme Court establishing C02 as a pollutant, and it issued a consultation notice inviting comment. Yesterday, December 7th – the first day of the Copenhagen summit on climate change – the EPA reaffirmed its intention to regulate CO2 in the US and indicated that it had finalized an endangerment finding – recognizing that CO2 is an endangered to health and the environment. Obama now has the basis for regulatory action without having the need of a new Bill in Congress. The regulations are likely to face legal challenges, especially given Climategate which gives rise to questions about the evidence on which the EPA’s endangerment finding is based. The Competitive Enterprise Institute has already announced that we will file suit in federal court to overturn the endangerment finding on the grounds that the EPA has ignored major scientific issues, including but not limited to those raised recently in the Climategate scandal.

Business is already reacting to the prospect of new, tough regulation with negative comments. U.S. Chamber of Commerce President, Thomas Donohue said in a statement, "the devil will be in the details” and he cautioned that care was needed to ensure “we don't stifle our economic recovery".

The news, however, played well in Copenhagen. The EPA decision was seen as a strong indication of President Obama’s commitment to reducing emissions, with or without the support of the Senate.

Under the EPA regulations Obama’s team could require the labelling of all products showing their carbon footprint, introduce emissions controls and penalties – a carbon tax – and regulate production processes so as to reduce the amount of pollutants involved in the process. What the EPA is not able to do is to create a carbon trading scheme, which would require new regulations.

Using regulation rather than new legislation makes it difficult for Canada to copy the US, which is the basis of Canada’s environment policy. Just how policy harmonization will now occur, especially when each Province has their own legislation, will be interesting to observe. No clues were offered in the announcement yesterday as to just what the EPA intends to actually do. Speculation in the media, however, is rife with one newspaper suggesting that all new construction and all furnaces and energy generation systems would need to be permitted. One even went as far as to suggest that breathing may well be taxed.

Robert Gibbs, President Obama’s media spokesman, acknowledged the development but suggested that Obama continues to seek legislative powers to regulate CO2and develop a market for carbon. Obama sees such as mechanism as a major device for lowering emissions, despite the fact that it has singularly failed to do so after several years of use in the European Union, where emissions have increased by 13% since cap and trade was introduced.

The obvious observation is that this is another stumbling development of the US’s journey to a climate change policy. The endangerment finding is a backstop pending legislation, but is a development that could regulate CO2 emissions if the courts continue to support the endangerment finding. The EPA regulatory regime is not, however, a substitute for a comprehensive approach to climate change, which is what Obama is committed to. So far he has committed to a three per cent reduction on 1990 emissions by 2020 – some twenty seven percent below the suggested target for the US by the scientific advisors Obama appointed. He has committed to introducing a cap and trade system and border tariffs on good imported to the US which do not meet the carbon emission standards set by congress, still to be defined. He needs legislation to turn these commitments into action and that legislation is bogged down in the Senate, with both republicans and democrats fighting against it. The EPA decision should be seen as a signal that Obama will do whatever it takes to get some legislation on the books in 2010.

Small Islands Challenge the Consensus at Copenhagen

The Conference of the Parties, of COP as it is known, is now in session in Copenhagen. Already, signs of discord are emerging in this fifteenth COP since climate negotiations began.

The head of the Grenadan delegation, Dessima Williams, said the Association of Small Island States (AOSIS) would "consider their options" if a legally-binding deal did not materialise here”. They are referring to the fact that the forty three countries which comprise the AOSIS would find it difficult to sign an agreement that did not commit to firm action to keep the rise in global temperatures to or below 1.50C by the end of the century. Their argument is simple – any global temperature above this is a death knell for many of the AOSIS states. They would simply sink as water levels rise or becoming unsustainable due to the impact warming would have on their economies.

AOSIS is not alone in making this demand. They are supported by the Group of Least Developed Countries (LDCs) – a total of some 80 countries – in demanding that global temperature increases be kept as far below 1.5°C as possible to limit the anticipated devastating effects of climate change on the world's most vulnerable countries, including some large African states.

None of the developed or developing nations are really talking about the 1.5°C temperature, since their commitments are to no more than a 20C rise by 2100. While the difference of 0.50C may seem small to many of us, but to many of the people on the islands who see themselves as vulnerable, such as the Maldives or Taveuni, the difference is very significant. In most Pacific islands, the people, agricultural land, tourist resorts and infrastructure (including roads and airports) are concentrated in the coastal zones, and are thus especially vulnerable to any rise in sea level. Some suggest that sea levels could rise by some six to eight feet over the next fifty years. Other scientists, include many who have taken detailed measurements around these islands over many years, dispute this and point to the fact that there has been no significant sea level rise around the Maldives for thirty years.

For most developed countries, the challenge of climate change is one of adjustment. For small islands, it is one of survival. With these countries demanding that tougher standard be applied than has hitherto been on the table, it is not a great start to a very complex negotiation process.

Copenhagen will Miss the Mark

At the G8 and G20 meetings this year, world leaders agreed that it was critical that the mean global temperature not be allowed to increase above 2C from a baseline of pre-industrial temperature levels. To achieve this, massive cuts in CO2 emissions are required, since this, according to some scientist, is the probable major cause of global warming.

To ensure that this happens, CO2 emissions will need to peak at or around 2015 or 2016 – just a few years away. After that, the emissions reductions being committed to by nations around the world have then to show a four per cent annual decline each year until the target reduction of ninety percent on 1990 levels has been achieved by 2050 or sooner. Even with this, there is only a 50-50 chance that the temperature would stabilize at the higher 2C level, according to the Hadley Centre. This strategy – known as decarbonising our economies – is very challenging. The argument is that the consequences of not achieving these emissions reductions on this time table are even more challenging and chilling.

Now two of the worlds leading climate change scientists – James Hanson of NASA’s Goddard Centre in New York and Professor Kevin Anderson, Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Manchester – are both suggesting that the targets under discussion at Copenhagen and the mechanisms for achieving them will not be enough.

Most of the targets under discussion place emphasis on large cuts after 2020 but modest cuts up to 2020. The targets offered are based on a reading of the political reality that decarbonizing an economy is a massive political challenge. Canada and the US, who have now harmonized their CO2 emissions reduction strategies, are offering just a 3% cut on 1990 levels. China, which opens a new coal fired power plant every other day, is also offering modest reductions.

The Hanson-Anderson argument is that we must be aggressive to achieve the planned CO2 peak by 2015 or 2016, otherwise all of the models offered by scientists and economists will lead to higher temperatures than planned. The proposals under discussion at Copenhagen would suggest a peaking of CO2 levels in 2030 or later, far too late to stop the rise in temperature to the 2C. While some countries are now pushing for this temperature rise to be targeted at 1.5C, since even 2C has massive consequences, especially for the small islands, no one has a decarbonization plan to match this lower temperature target.

Hansen has suggested that the implications of this analysis are clear. The target should be a very high reduction of CO2 by 2020 and a completion of the project – ninety to ninety five percent reductions – by 2030. Only then could we shift the odds in favour of achieving the 2C stabilization the world has committed to.

Both Anderson and Hansen understand that the achievement of steeper reductions in CO2 emissions at a more rapid rate is politically difficult, if not impossible. It requires a sudden and massive shift of resources away from oil, coal and other carbon burning energy sources and into renewable energy as well as a change in the worlds system of transportation. Air transport, the car and other means of petroleum based travel would become taxed at such a level as to make such travel a rare rather than a regular event. Energy costs would rise massively, dislocating economies and causing energy poverty. Politicians would find trying to sell massive pain now so that children not yet born could be the beneficiaries a difficult, to say the least, proposition to sell. But they are offering a scientific analysis of the situation, based on computer models, not a political prescription.

The consequence of their analysis, however, is that Copenhagen may produce a framework agreement with the full details to be worked on during the coming year, but that this agreement may not be sufficient to ensure that the effects of climate change are managed such that some of the more dire consequences are alleviated, if not avoided completely. Hansen has said that he hopes Copenhagen fails, since he does not see it as offering anything like the solution needed. Anderson, who is less polemic than Hansen, suggests that the “wealthy nations need to peak emissions by around 2012, achieve at least a sixty per cent reduction in emissions from energy by 2020, and fully decarbonize their energy systems by 2030 at the latest”. He understands that this is beyond anything on the table at Copenhagen.

If these two scientists, highly regarded as leading climatologists, are right then whatever happens at Copenhagen will be a helpful development, but insufficient to achieve the intended target of holding the world’s rise in temperature to just 20C above pre-industrial levels. The summit moves the world along the right road, but not at all fast enough to avoid a collision between economic development and the dire consequences of climate change.

A BAD WEEK FOR CLIMATE CHANGE ALARMISTS

It has been a bad week for those who believe we are at a tipping point for the future of the planet and that urgent action is needed so that we can stop climate change.

The Australian Senate voted down a Bill which would have created a cap and trade system for Australia, based on tough emissions standards. Senators, both challenging the science of man-made global warming and rejecting cap and trade as a way of lowering CO2 emissions, voted the bill down for a second time. The Government of Australia may now force the issue through a snap climate change election or make changes to the Bill and try again. It needs to be careful – most Australians, despite droughts and severe water problems, are sceptical about the governments’ plans.

In Britain, the head of the Climate Change Research Unit at the University of East Anglia stepped aside as an independent inquiry began into the hacked emails and documents – the so-called Climategate scandal. Professor Phil Jones, who claims that there is nothing in the materials so far leaked that suggests a conspiracy or fraud, will continue his research until the inquiry is completed.

Scotland Yard announced a major police inquiry into the behaviour of the University of East Anglia team associated with Climategate. Concerned that the team may have breached the laws of Britain in their attempt to get around the freedom of information requests they received, the police are conducting a thorough inquiry independent of that begun by the University of East Anglia.

One of the frequent emailers in Climategate, Professor Michael Mann, is also under investigation. Penn State University, where Mann works, has decided that there is sufficient concern over scientific practices revealed in the emails and documents to require investigation. They too are especially concerned that there may have been an attempt to do an end run around the law with respect to freedom of information requests. Professor Mann was the author of the famous hockey stick graph which purported to show sudden and massive increases in global temperature directly linked to CO2 emissions – a graph which has subsequently been widely discredited.

Senator Inhofe, the leading sceptic in Congress, has demanded that there be a Senate review and questioning with respect to Climategate. Already, members of Obama’s science team have been questioned. His primary concern, in addition to a concern over freedom of information, is whether there is compelling evidence that a small clique of scientists have manipulated the process of peer review and acted as gatekeepers to keep other theories, models and data which challenge man-made global warming theory out of the public domain. He is also concerned about evidence of data “rigging”.

Rajendra K. Pachauri, the engineer chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a statement on the Climategate scandal which has made matters worse. At the heart of his statement is his assertion that “the I.P.C.C. as a body follows impartial, open and objective assessment of every aspect of climate change carried out with complete transparency” – a statement flatly contradicted by many accounts of the IPCC’s work and by the contents of the hacked emails themselves. Several IPCC scientists are now openly suggesting that the work of the IPCC is over and that it is time to move on.

Finally, and it is only Thursday, James Hanson of NASA, the world’s leading climate change scientist, has made clear in an interview with the UK’s The Guardian newspaper, that he hopes Copenhagen will fail. He sees the focus on targets and the trade off between the developed and developing nations over reparations (the $100 billion annual transfer of funds from the developed world to the developing world) as missing the point. He wants each country to commit to a 90% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050, end coal fired energy and use a variety of carbon tax mechanisms to halt the growth of CO2 emissions. He also wants to end oil sands production in Alberta and sees cap and trade as a way of creating a massive financial industry but one that has no real impact on emissions.

Not a good week for the “warmist” camp, who also managed to loose a debate held in Canada – Lord Lawson and Bjorn Lomberg easily defeated George Monbiot and Elizabeth May by using rational argument, scientific evidence and clear thinking – none of which appeared from the warmist side.

The Copenhagen Summit is just six days away. The warmists are now in full anxiety over the event and its possible outcome. It looks like sceptics are winning more than a debate in Canada or in the Senate house in Australia. We will see some interesting manoeuvring over the next fifteen days, not all of it civil. With fifteen thousand delegates and some twenty to thirty thousand activists assembling in Copenhagen, we can expect some drama and a lot of headaches.

Canada's Health Care System - The Fifty Percent Club

A Fraser Institute Report, published in November, has alarming implications for several Provinces in Canada, most especially Ontario and New Brunswick.

In 2014, Ontario and New Brunswick’s health care system will consume half of the Provincial revenues of these two jurisdictions. By 2034, an additional four of the ten Provinces in Canada will be in the same position – Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, Manitoba and Quebec will join Ontario and New Brunswick as “fifty percenters”.

The implications of reaching this position are complex. Attempts to reduce health care costs, to pass costs onto consumers or to privatize services are met with angry responses from a public used to its “free” health care. Attempts to use stealth to cut costs - reducing the supply of physicians and nurses, allowing hospital infrastructure to deteriorate, delisting services (e.g. chiropractic) and refusing to cover new medical technologies or license the use of new drugs or procedures – create longer waiting lists and also cause public anger. As a result, no jurisdiction is seriously looking at reinventing our health care system – something that has to happen if it is to be affordable and accessible.

The alternatives are also equally unattractive politically. So as to pay for health care, there will be a need to increase taxation significantly. This at the same time that energy prices will be rapidly increasing as carbon taxes and climate change mitigation starts to bite and inflation follows the recession. Increasing health care premiums – something Alberta just abolished, to its cost – and guaranteeing that these funds will go directly to front line health care services may be a route some wish to follow, but at a political cost.

If taxes are not increased, the other option will be start to reduce or close other services so that the money expended on them can be transferred to health. Cutting cultural and social programs, closing a few Universities and Colleges, accelerating the closure of rural schools are all options that need to be on the table, but it is difficult to imagine any of these being acceptable.

Roger Martin, long time Dean at the Rottman School of Business at the University of Toronto, observes that health care spending is largely about consuming wealth now (though he recognizes that some health spending is focused on ensuring people can work, such as preventive health care and medical rehabilitation) but investment in education is largely about building capacities for future prosperity. By not dealing with the challenge of health care spending and sacrificing education to pay for health, which is what has been occurring, we are reducing our future prosperity so as to permit current consumption.

In the absence of the political courage to say that the health care funding system emperor “has no clothes”, it will take an independent and respected voice to encourage the public to do so. This voice is urgently needed. The time to deal with health care in a fundamental way is now. The Fraser Institute analysis is a starting point for this conversation – what we need is leadership to ensure that the conversation actually gets somewhere.

Controlling the Science of Climate Change

One of the outcomes of the hacked emails and documents is that we know more now about how a small group of scientific gatekeepers have acted to ensure that there appears to be a “consensus” in science about both the nature of global warming and its causes.

Dr. Phil Jones, the director of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in Britain has been funded at $22.6 million in research grants for the work of the unit since 1990. This is a considerable sum, coming mainly from Government agencies and companies with an interest in green technology, as well as from the United Nations. Just as the claim that money influences the voices of skeptics, so too does it influence the voices of scientists on the “warmist” side of the debate.

Jones is a close associate of Dr. Michael Mann, a professor at the University of Virginnia and the originator of the climate change “hockey stick” graph which appeared in an IPCC report but was later discredited on statistical grounds. Michael Mann is a central figure amongst the group of scientists who support the theory that CO2 is the primary cause of warming and warming is the primary dynamic of climate change. He is connected directly to forty three other scientists who take this view and with whom he has co-authored papers. A social network analysis of this group suggests more gatekeepers. Michael Mann, Phil Jones, and five other key scientists (Rutherford, Osborn, Briffa, Bradley and Hughes) form a clique, each interacting with all of the others in the circle of forty three. This clique dominated the peer review process and journal submission process for a prolonged period.

Which is why, when we read in one of the emails the reaction of this clique to the decision of one journal to publish a skeptical paper in March 2003, the process of peer review becomes an interesting issue. Dr. Mann noted in a March 2003 email, after the journal "Climate Research" published a paper not to Mr. Mann's liking, that "this was the danger of always criticizing the skeptics for not publishing in the 'peer-reviewed literature'. Obviously, they found a solution to that—take over a journal!" Dr. Mann went on to suggest that the journal itself be blackballed:
"Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board."

In other words, keep dissent out of the respected journals. When that fails, redefine what constitutes a respected journal to exclude any that publish inconvenient views.

It goes further, In 2005, Michael Mann said that there was a “fundamental problem w/ GRL now,” referring to the journal Geophysical Research Letters published by the American Geophysical Union (AGU), because “they have published far too many deeply flawed contrarian papers in the past year or so” and “it is probably best to do an end run around GRL now where possible.” Another prominent scientist, Tom Wigley, responded that “we could go through official AGU channels to get him [the editor of GRL] ousted”. A few months later, the editor of GRL having left his post, Mann comments, “The GRL leak may have been plugged up now w/ new editorial leadership there”.

The most recent target of the cliques ire has been Weather, a journal of the Royal Meteorological Society (RMS). Dr. Phil Jones commented in March 2009, “I’m having a dispute with the new editor of Weather. I’ve complained about him to the RMS Chief Exec. If I don’t get him to back down, I won’t be sending any more papers to any RMS journals and I’ll be resigning from the RMS”. Threats from a prominent scientist so as to control what a scientific journal publishes.

Phil Jones, in a separate email to Michael Mann, also discusses skeptical or hesitant reports submitted to the IPCC as part of its fourth assessment – Jones was responsible for one of the chapters of the scientific documents. This is what he says:

“I can’t see either of these papers being in the next I.P.C.C. report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

Yet the Dr. Pachauri, head of the IPCC, has issued a statement which says:

“There is, no possibility of exclusion of any contrarian views, if they have been published in established journals or other publications which are peer reviewed.”


This means there is a catch-22 problem. A small group of scientists, using a clique and threats, seek to control the papers published in key journals. Having done so, this same clique plays a prominent role in authoring these papers. They then review them for the IPCC and claim that there is a consensus, despite a large volume of peer reviewed papers that take a very different view of the evidence and offer competing theories of climate change.

Climategate will certainly be a topic in Copenhagen, but the tramlines for policy were set before the hackers got to work. While the debate rages in the blogosphere over the implications of the hacked emails and documents, the politicians are so committed to a policy framework that they will not depart from the script, whatever the science reveals. Even revelations that the computer models on which so many of the policies about to discussed are based are riddled with problems will not dampen the ardour of politicians who have to be seen to lead the Copenhagen parade.

Stephen Harper, Climate Change and Copenhagen

Stephen Harper is right. Rhetoric is one thing, action is another.

As the Commonwealth wrapped up its meetings this week-end, Harper reiterated Canada’s commitment to emissions reduction of 20% on 2006 levels by 2020 – a position close to that taken by Obama in the hope that he can persuade the US Congress to support him. Canada is also seeking emission cuts of between 60-70% on 2006 levels by 2050.

Harpers key point, however, was not about targets but about clear and concrete action plans to make emissions reduction happen. Noting that the Chretien liberals had made major commitments to emissions reduction and then done nothing to make translate these targets into action, Harper gave emphasis for a need for technology development to make possible the dramatic reduction of CO2 emissions envisaged. A focus on targets without looking in a systematic and thorough way at the action plan to achieve them is, in Harper’s terms, “folly”.

India is likely to say something similar in this last week before the Copenhagen summit begins on December 9th. Following Obama’s lead, India is likely to link emissions targets to growth and use a different metric to state its emission reduction targets. Some Indian media is reporting that Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh will offer cuts of between 20 to 25 percent, but this is unconfirmed by indian officials. China recently announced that premier Wen Jiabao will go to Copenhagen summit and that they will reduce emissions per unit of gross domestic product in 2020 by 40 to 45 percent from 2005 levels.

But the rhetoric continues and is becoming more shrill as Copenhagen approaches. George Monbiot, the respected journalist and environmental campaigner who writes for The Guardian, has focused attention on the oil sands. In a column in The Globe and Mail (November 30th) he sees the extraction the oil sands mining as one of the most damaging activities on the planet and is calling for a halt to production. Seeing Canada as an agreement “wrecker” in the talks leading up to Copenhagen, he ties Canada’s weak record on emissions reduction and climate change negotiations to the commitment to oil sands development. Without a clear strategy for green oil, he suggests, the oil sands will torpedo any climate change strategy for Canada.

Copenhagen will be a major event. Some fifteen thousand delegates will be attending and over twenty thousand environmental activists and campaigners will also be there. Over sixty five of the world’s leaders, including Stephen Harper, Barrack Obama and Gordon Brown, will be in attendance.

Momentum is growing for the summit to produce more than a political agreement – firm emission targets and an agreed technology transfer policy and a social adjustment fund for developing countries will provide the focus for the negotiations. While many counties may make commitments, many will also need to ratify these commitments with their own legislatures. This may prove difficult, especially for Obama. Resistance is growing to climate change policies as the economic costs, especially in terms of energy pricing, becomes clear.

In this last week before the summit, we can expect more dire news about the state of the planet and the impact climate change will have. But the science behind this news is increasingly being questioned, following the hacking of emails at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. Many see these as exposing a conspiracy to manipulate science so as to pursue a change agenda, focusing on a new global government and a redistribution of wealth. Others defend the scientists involved, suggesting that the emails and documents involved in Climategate tell a very different story. The fall out, however, may impact the ability of world leaders, especially in the US, Australia and Britain, to “sell” any treaty agreement.

It will be an interesting week. Harper emerges from the Commonwealth meeting as a voice of reason. No wonder he is derided.

The US and the Copenhagen Summit

With the Copenhagen climate change summit just fourteen days away, the United States is moving towards making an offer to commit to reduce emissions. Britain’s Observer newspaper reports that their US climate change envoy, Todd Stern, is said to be floating the idea that the US would offer to cut emissions by between 14-20% by 2020, compared with 2005 levels – a level much lower than that offered by the European Union.

The challenge for the United States is that the Senate has delayed dealing with the climate change legislation proposed by the House of Representatives. The Senate has delayed consideration of the climate change legislation until May or June of 2010. Concerns over the legislation, especially the provisions for a cap on carbon and the development of a carbon market and the impact this will have on the economy, affect both republicans and democrats, both parties are now seeking a major rethink of the approach. Also of concern is the idea that the US should lead on the statement of emissions targets so that others can follow – a strategy that puts the US economy at risk, according to several Senators. Any proposal made at Copenhagen is subject to subsequent legislation. It is a high risk strategy.

Climate lobby groups, like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, are growingly frustrated with the US position in general and President Obama in particular. Pointing to increasingly alarmist studies that suggest that the planet is warming faster than previously predicted and that the Antarctic and Arctic ice is melting, they see Copenhagen as a “last chance” to save the planet. A failure to reach a binding agreement, even if there is an agreement to reach such a binding treaty against a specific time-table, is seen by such groups as a repudiation of years of work leading to the Copenhagen summit.

They are also concerned that the US administration is willing to settle for a watered down arrangements. Not only does the administration appear to be willing to settle for moving the goalpost for emission reducing from 1990 to 2005, thus minimizing the impact of any new ”carbon budget”, but they are also willing to accept a level of CO2 in the atmosphere much higher than scientists recommend. The US administration is using a CO2 figure of 450 parts per million as the atmospheric limit it is working towards (we are already at 390), while the scientific community is strongly urging governments to work towards a reduction to 350 parts per million.

The Obama administration is worried that a tough treaty at Copenhagen would suffer the same fate as the Kyoto treaty did in the Senate – it will not pass. The administration point to the changing position of Senator John McCain who fought an election with a commitment to climate change legislation, which is now backing away from. His shift of attitude reflects the political reality the administration have to deal with. The politics of Arizona, where cap and trade could have a significant negative impact on jobs are thought to be behind McCain’s lack of support for climate change legislation. Arizona already has a high rate of unemployment and he appears to have calculated that the climate change bill now before the Senate would make things worse.

McCain also observes that Obama is giving little weight to the climate change agenda, focusing on it when abroad, but not when at home. Health care and the economy are seen as more critical issues. Gone is the idea that five million new jobs can be created by focusing on green technology. Indeed, rather than position the legislation in terms of “stopping climate change”, Obama now casts it in terms of clean energy and energy security – a major shift in his position from that he took just a year ago.

Whatever the US does will make or break the Copenhagen summit. The US position appears confused, unfocused and marginal. This could well end up being a description of the outcome of these global talks unless the US moves quickly to clarify its position.

Climategate - Hacked Emails and Documents

One of the most respected centres for measuring the earths temperature and modelling global warming is the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in England. Some time last week files belonging to the Centre were hacked by a person unknown and distributed widely on the internet.

Those sceptical about man made global warming theory and the scientific basis for this theory immediately claimed that the emails and documents made available suggest that the Centre has been “fixing” the temperature record so as to support warming theory - adjusting data to fit a model and using statistical devices to minimize inconvenient truths, such as the fact that the earth has been cooling for some time, according to the Hadley Centre.


The hacker, acting illegally, “broke” into the CRU computer and downloaded 1079 emails and over three thousand documents, all of which are now made available on line. They show the systematic attempts by Professor Phil Jones, Keith Briffa, his assistant, Michael E. Mann of the University of Virginia, Malcolm Hughes at the University of Arizona and others to manipulate observational data and to support the “hockey stick” model developed by Michael Mann. They also show that the network of scientists involved in the IPCC fourth assessment report went to extraordinary lengths to stop the publication of any information or data which did not support the man-made global warming theory. At one point, Kevin Trenberth observes that they “can't account for the lack of recent warming and that it is a travesty that they can't”.


Also revealed is the fact that, when asked to release their data so as to permit analysis by independent scientists under a freedom of information request, Phil Jones, Michael Mann and others conspired to delete emails and related files so as to prevent disclosure – an act illegal under the freedom of information legislation in Britain. It is a normal practice in science for the original data used to base a theory or claim is available to others for analysis. All of those involved in these exchanges see this as a threat to “their” science. These scientists, it is alleged, appear willing to break the law to hide their data.


As embarrassing as the e-mails are, some of the documents are thought to be more embarrassing. They include a five-page PDF document titled The Rules of the Game, that appears to be a primer for propagating the man made global warming message to the average subject/resident of the United Kingdom. A summary of the email exchanges and their implications can be found at Bishop Hill.

The Centre has confirmed that the documents and emails circulating on the world wide web appear genuine, but has yet to verify that all of the documents and emails are legitimate and that they have not been "tampered with" in any way. The police have been informed and an internal inquiry is underway.

Sceptics are claiming that these emails and documents show a pattern of behaviour that amounts to a conspiracy to manipulate evidence and control the process of peer review such that the appearance of scientific consensus could be maintained. They point to specific emails and documents which support this conspiracy theory. Calling this “Climategate”, sceptics are suggesting that this is another nail in the coffin of the man made global warming theorists. The blogosphere is full of accusations and claims and suggestions of impropriety.

On the other side of the conversation, some commentators note that some of the emails are over a decade old (though others are as recent as November 12th 2009) and refer to methods of working not uncommon in climate science at the time – adding estimated data for missing observations and adjusting unusual observations with more normative ones. In fact, such practices continue today.

As Gavin Schmidt, who writes for Real Climate observe, having reviewed the selection of emails most widely posted on the web:

“There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords”.

He also observes that, in the free exchange of ideas and comments over email, Professor Phil Jones stated that “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes paper in Nature on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. While “trick” has been interpreted as “cheat”, it is in fact a smart data manipulation to make the presentation of the data easier to follow.

This all seeks to make the emails more innocent than they in fact are. While it is true that we all are generally more “robust” and “direct” and politically incorrect in emails and conversations amongst friends and close colleagues, some of the emails cannot easily be dismissed. For example Phil Jones writes about two papers, “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Xxx and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is”. While poor scientific papers should not be included, if this were the issue, the IPCC peer review process is what it is.

This story will rumble on, especially in the blogosphere. Mainstream media are treating it quietly as an incidence of hacking which is delighting the sceptics but is not to be taken too seriously. Professor Phil Jones must, however, be concerned that his reputation could well be damaged by the way some of these emails are being read. Most specifically, his refusal to let original data be subject to critical and independent review may come back to haunt him. It is worth noting, however, that no data has been destroyed.

Conspiracy, no. Close working relationships between authors who share a common understanding of a phenomenon, yes. Dislike for those who disagree and challenge them, yes. The end of the man made global warming theory? Definitely not. A blip on the road to Copenhagen.

Copenhagen for Dummies

The key negotiations at Copenhagen will focus on some very strategic responses to the perceived threat of climate change.

The first is to reduce carbon emissions. The idea is that there is a global carbon budget and that countries, aiming to secure a reduction from 390 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million, must agree to CO2 reductions of 20-30% on 1990 levels by 2020 and 75-80% by 2050 so as to meet the global carbon budget. What the summit was meant to achieve were binding multilateral agreements on the size of these CO2 reductions.

The second is to agree to limit the warming of the earth to no more than 2 degrees C by 2099. In the last century, the earth warmed 0.6 degrees but the anxiety is that the planet could warm faster if greenhouse gasses are not constrained and deforestation continues. CO2 reductions, reforestation and a switch to green energy and green technologies are seen as vital to constraining the warming trend.

The third is to create a fund to support developing countries in their adaptation to CO2 reduction. The EU has suggested that this fund needs to be at least $100 billion each year for the foreseeable future. Others are suggesting that this fund is too modest and propose a figure closer to $1 trillion. The negotiations will be especially difficult on this matter.

The fourth is to agree to transfer technologies and expertise freely around the world to accelerate the adoption of clean energy and sustainable technologies globally. While some of the funds targeted for developing countries may be used for this purpose, it is also a matter of easing access to patents and intellectual property.

The final component of the agreement is the establishment of an international governing body – what some are calling a global government agency – to monitor compliance and intervene where necessary directly so as to secure the Copenhagen objectives. While there are real issues of sovereignty here, the framework of the IMF and the World Bank are used as models for this new organization.

These are the five building blocks of the Copenhagen conversation, now due in just two weeks. There appears to be a variety of efforts to broker more than a political pledge at the summit. Several world leaders, including Gordon Brown the British Prime Minister, plan to be there. The EU is particularly anxious to secure a binding agreement, having made strong commitments to CO2 reductions and have strong concerns about the energy security of the twenty seven nations.

Several factors will make reaching an agreement difficult. The first is that the US is far from being able to make firm commitments, the Senate having failed to pass a climate change bill. Any offer on emissions or a development fund by the US will be conditional. The second factor is a strong disagreement between the developed nations and the developing nations about the economic impact of CO2 reductions on economic growth and the need for these economies to develop so as to lift more people out of poverty. There has been no movement on these differences for several months and it is likely to lead to a failure to agree on CO2 emissions reduction targets.

The third factor is the issue of sovereignty and the role of the multilateral agency in monitoring and enforcing the treaty to be agreed in Copenhagen. This will be a delicate issue and sensitive, especially for the US and several major economies. However, there are successful multilateral agencies with powers of intervention which can be used as models. The US Senate will watch this aspect of the negotiations especially carefully, especially given that the republican party has already been sensitized to this issue by a variety of right wing commentators.

The fourth factor is the role of the sceptics. They have been very effective in casting doubt on the validity of computer projections, on showing that the earth has been cooling since 1998 (a fact accepted by the Hadley Centre, a leading climate change science unit attached to the UK’s Meteorological Office) and on breaking down the idea that there is a scientific consensus, which there clearly is not. They have had a powerful influence on public opinion, especially in the US and Australia, which in turn affects that political context of these negotiations.

During the last month strong attempts have been made to downplay Copenhagen, but in the last five days a more optimistic note is being presented. Some kind of deal, albeit not the deal the climate change scientists and advocacy groups say is needed, could still be possible. Much will depend on the US and China and how the tension between the developed economies and the developing economies is resolved. Whatever happens, it will be a difficult negotiation.