Some of the personalities regularly featured on this blog will be on Australian television this Sunday morning talking with journalist Adam Shand about global warming.
The feature story on the Channel 9 Sunday Program will include comment from Tim Flannery, Robyn Williams, Don Aitkin and myself.
I gather the story could be on anytime from 7.30am - the program runs for a couple of hours.
Update June 28
From the Sunday Program website:
Questioning Science
Reporter: Adam Shand
The theory of anthropogenic, or man-made, global warming has become an unchallengeable fact, a piece of black letter law almost unique in the world of science.
Proponents of the theory say the time for scientific debate is over. It would irresponsible to fund any further research into counter views on the relationship between elevated levels of carbon dioxide and a rise in temperatures since the mid-1970s.
It's regarded as career suicide for scientists to advocate any counter view of the causes of global warming, let alone deny the orthodox consensus view as adopted by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
However, there is a school of thought that our knowledge of climate systems is as yet insufficient to be so conclusive on the causes of global warming.
Today Sunday examines the political consensus building that has portrayed global warming as the most urgent crisis humankind has ever faced.
Skeptics point to the gaps in the knowledge base and the flaws in the measurement of vital climate and weather data upon which the consensus is based.
Social researchers also highlight the dangers of conducting science as a form of religion, divided into believers and deniers.
They warn that as governments prepare to make expensive policy decisions, such as carbon emissions trading schemes, this consensus may not reflect the best science.
http://sunday.ninemsn.com.au/sunday/cover_stories/article_2493.asp
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Tim Curtin claims the Garnaut Daft Report says that without "drastic mitigation there will by 2100 be major declines in GDP across the globe."
Tim Curtin is grossly misrepresenting the Garnaut report. Garnaut says no such thing.
Garnaut actually says: "The global modelling (GIAM) suggests that world GDP is likely to fall by around 7 per cent by 2100, RELATIVE TO A REFERENCE CASE WITH NO CLIMATE CHANGE." (my caps)
In other words, GDP will grow but just not as fast as it would have without climate change.
Example: if world GDP grew by 4.000% per annum for the next 92 years it would be 7% lower than it would have been if it had grown at 4.002% over the same 92 years. Growth one 500th of 1% slower is not a "drastic decline".
Or maybe it is on whatever planet Tim's on.
No-one says GDP will be actually lower in 2100 than it is now.
Tim's point 2 is plainly false as well. Read the report. Section 2.1 for starters.
And I can't resist this: "Garnaut has forgotten, if he ever knew, that the primary purpose of the discount rate is to measure any project’s net benefit against the opportunity cost of the funds used to finance the project"
If he ever knew? Oh, please. Garnaut's discussion of the discount rate is lucid and well-informed, as you'd expect from an economist of his stature.
Section 2.7 of his draft report is a concise statement of the issues involved.
Tim's critisism's of Garnaut's draft report seem to be based on the assumption that no-one reading this blog will bother downloading the report and reading it for themselves to check whether Tim's version of it is correct.
Tim Curtin points out that the Garnaut Daft Report says that without "drastic mitigation there will by 2100 be major declines in GDP across the globe. This is a claim that will never be verifiable by anyone alive today, and it is a claim based on no empirical evidence, for the good reason that there is none."
Which, to quote Thomas Knutson, "recalls the question of Ellsaesser: “Should we trust models or observations?” In reply we note that if we had observations of the future, we obviously would trust them more than models, but unfortunately observations of the future are not available at this time.",
Besides which given Tim's age, it does indeed appear unlikely he will live until 2100 so why this is an indictment of the report is one of those mysteries.
However, it is important to know that the critics of the Stern Report have effectively done a u-turn, .
First reactions to Garnaut Daft Report
Tim Curtin
4 July 2008
1. This Report is serially dishonest. Its deceptions include the claims that without drastic mitigation there will by 2100 be major declines in GDP across the globe. This is a claim that will never be verifiable by anyone alive today, and it is a claim based on no empirical evidence, for the good reason that there is none. After a fairly cool period from 1945 to the mid-1970s, we have since had thirty years of gently rising global temperatures, reaching a peak in 1998, and averaging from 1998 to the present, slightly above the average from 1978 to 1990. The whole period since 1978 has seen the fastest economic growth across almost the whole globe (Sub-Saharan Africa and Japan are partial exceptions) that has ever been recorded. If such growth has been achieved despite the onset of global warming in 1978, what basis is there for the Garnaut prediction of catastrophic declines in world GDP starting now?
2. Garnaut does not attempt to justify Australia embarking on emission reductions via the ETS as early as 2010 when it is already broadly fulfilling its Kyoto target of keeping total emissions to 108 percent of the 1990 level.
3. The Draft report’s Chapter 4 reproduces the false analysis of Garnaut, Howes, and Jotzo (2008) in emphasizing the more rapid growth of fossil fuel CO2 emissions since 2005 than previously projected by Stern (2007) and IPCC (2007). This assessment produces the misleading conclusion that “we have less time than previously understood to stem the growth of global emissions, if we are to avoid high risks of dangerous climate change” (p.13).
4. However, although the Draft Report correctly notes in the introduction to its Chapter 3 (p.47) that “stabilization of carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere requires the rate of greenhouse emissions to fall to the rate of natural sequestration”, it never states what that rate is, namely 55 percent on average since 1958, nor that then emissions need only be reduced 45 per cent at most, not the 60 per cent that is the Australian government’s arbitrary target. Indeed, the Garnaut Report is deceptive in failing to report that despite the more rapid growth of emissions this century than last, the rate of increase in the atmospheric concentration of CO2 has NOT increased at all – it was in fact lower in both 2006 (0.47%) and 2007 (0.55%) than in 2005 (0.68%). The inconvenient truth that condemns the Garnaut Report is its failure to admit that the global biosphere continues to absorb around 55 percent of total emissions and that therefore absorptions grow at much the same rate as emissions.
5. The very sketchy outline of the Emission Trading Scheme in the Draft Report does at least reveal what may well be the main motivation of the Government, the ALP, and the Greens, that it is the “rich” (those with household income of $100,000 and above) who will have to pay for climate change mitigation. All firms will seek to pass on the costs of their emission permits by raising their selling prices. The “poor”, those on less than $100,000 p.a., will receive at least a third of annual total receipts of the sale of emission permits by the Garnaut Bank. These may well amount to $16 billion initially, although declining over time in line with the target for emission reductions, so poor households can expect to receive around $5 billion a year from 2010 with small declines thereafter. Assuming that 80 per cent of households have income of less than $100,000 (the government’s usual means test cut-off), then around 5 million households will qualify for payouts of $3,000 each, comfortably enough to cover their total annual spending on electricity, and with enough left over for higher petrol costs, say $1000 a year if petrol rises from $1.70 a litre to $2 because of the emissions charge passed on by Caltex et al. This means that over 5 million Australian households will have no reason at all to reduce their consumption of carbon intensive fuels like electricity and petrol/diesel. No wonder the Rudd government is so pleased about the ETS, it buys votes the same way Mugabe uses international food aid to reward loyal supporters.
6. Garnaut then goes on to discuss the problem of choice of discount rates for assessing such costs and benefits when as ever the costs are upfront and the benefits if any only accrue down the track, perhaps not for 100 years. But like Stern and almost all economists engaged in climate change policy (Richard Tol 2007 is a shining exception), Garnaut has forgotten, if he ever knew, that the primary purpose of the discount rate is to measure any project’s net benefit against the opportunity cost of the funds used to finance the project. It is absurd for an economist of Garnaut’s standing to argue that since at a real discount rate of 4 per cent, a dollar in 50 years’ time is worth just 13 cents today (or just 36 cents at the real rate on US Treasuries of 2 per cent). Therefore he argues (43-44) we should not use such market rates, since to do so would mean we “are comfortable about living for [our] moment” instead of that of future generations. That is the language of the politician that Garnaut has become.
7. Real economists know about opportunity cost, and the cost of mitigating emissions that Garnaut’s ETS will impose on Australia’s enterprises will impact on their profits and on their financing capability for their future investments. None of his modeling ever confronts this feature of an ETS. The benchmark discount rate for most industrial and other enterprises listed on the stock exchange is usually around 15 percent nominal, or about 11 per cent in real terms. For example, at the sort of price mentioned by Garnaut of $40 per tonne of carbon dioxide, a firm like Caltex would have to outlay $1.4 billion annually to obtain its initial permits for the total emissions from its production and on-sold petrol and diesel (Caltex Submission to Garnaut Emissions Trading Discussion Paper, April 2008). Of course in practice Caltex would eventually recover its permit costs by raising the ex-refinery price of its products, but the large up-front cash flow effects would not be trivial.
8. Garnaut’s discounting like Stern’s at less than 2 per cent, which is far below the actual cost of funds to a firm like Caltex, makes such cash flow effects really seem trivial against the supposed benefits to Caltex in 100 years’ time from avoided climate change. But invested now at its test discount rate of 15 percent, the initial forgone earnings from its ETS payments are $210 million per annum for 30 years (the likely life of a refinery) on its first year permits, and the same sum again every year for thirty years on its next year’s permits. By 2040 Caltex would be forgoing net income of $6.4 BILLION a year, for no discernible benefit from avoided climate change. This calculation explains why the Garnaut Report studiously avoids such an exercise.
9. Like Garnaut, I am freely able to make predictions for 2100 knowing I will suffer no redress if I am proved wrong. My prediction is that by 2100 the Garnaut Report will assuredly take it place alongside Malthus (1799) and the Club of Rome (1972) for being spectacularly wrong with all its and their fanciful predictions including the latter’s that there would be total resources depletion by 2000 and concomitant global famine. For there is no likelihood either that the drastic global emission reductions sought by Garnaut will be achieved, or that there will be any of his predicted adverse effects from the absence of such reductions on economic growth.
1. EMISSIONS IN THE PLATINUM AGE:
THE IMPLICATIONS OF RAPID DEVELOPMENT FOR CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION
Ross Garnaut, Stephen Howes, Frank Jotzo and Peter Sheehan, April 2008
I will check out Nordhaus etc, thanks
I do agree scepticism is good, but I would think it is nearly common sense to understand that there will be environmental consequenses to massive scale pollution, don't you?
I am definitely no 'greeny' but to argue that because there is not definitve proof of exactly what changes will occur that no action should be taken. We will find out soon enough i beleive.
Andrew,
Sorry to disappoint you, but your faith in the Stern Review is misplaced. The hint might lie in the fact that fully half the costs he uses to justify very costly action now occur after 2800.
How does he do it? Easy, using techniques used long ago by the HEC in Tasmania. First, escalate costs over very long periods of time at 2% real. The HEC did it with coal costs, but at least carried it forward only 60 years. Stern does it with the real costs of extreme weather events over hundreds of years. As the leading authority on this question, Roger Pielke Jr, has shown this is a highly speculative and unlikely assumption (and certainly not supported by historical evidence of damage during past warming, which has been steady in real terms).
Then, he discounts future streams of costs and benefits an extremely low rate - not easy to determine, but thought by some to be as low as 0.1%. To put that in perspective, most economists would recommend a social rate of discount of 2-5%. Nordhaus uses a lower rate because of the long-term nature of the problem: 3%. In addition to Nordhaus, similar critiques in the peer-reviewed literature came from Sir Partha Dasgupta, Richard Tol, David Henderson, etc. Dasgupta pointed out that the rate of tme preference used means that the UK should be saving about 97% of current income for the future, whereas it saves about 16%.
Stern produced a report for Brown to justify higher taxes and has been rewarded with a peerage. His report is very poorly regarded by economists; it is adored by those who like its message but have not subjected it to critical scrutiny.
If you want good economic analysis, try Nordhaus - distinguished Yale economist with (unlike Stern) a long track record on the economics of climate change. Garnaut is equally new to the area (though a very good economist); Warwick McKibbin is the leading Australian expert (with an international reputation).
"I have only been drawn to this site after watching one of the poorest examples of journalism I have seen in a long time on the Sunday show last weekend."
Yeah, but it's scepticism, and any scepticism is good.
I have only been drawn to this site after watching one of the poorest examples of journalism I have seen in a long time on the Sunday show last weekend. Yes, consensus does make it difficult for a small minority to make a case against the large majority of opinion. There is however the inconvenient existence of large numbers of independent bodies around the world with extensive research to back their claims. Has anyone reading this site ever read any form of scientific evidence at all regarding global warming? – Let alone the Stern Review which clearly outlines the economic advantages of acting on climate change now rather than when it is too late? I only dread the response this post will receive, but considering you are all here just to reaffirm your existing opinions of what is obviously a bit hard for you to believe I will not get too upset. I would find it interesting though if it could be explained to me wether we humans were around when CO2 levels were as high as Jennifer explained in the interview. And please, please, please develop some form of open mind to others opinions, rather than burning as many pollutants as you can until you find the irrefutable proof you need.