An article on Radio 4 yesterday addressed the fact raised by Nigel Lawson for his new 'sceptic' book - see below- that how come the world's average temperature has not increased since 1998? The argument was that if we use 20 years of rising temperatures to make a case for warming then surely ten years of no increase puts the hypothesis in severe doubt.
They interviewed the ex-BBC Science Editor (I think) who is also now in the sceptic camp. The scientist brought into the give the 'global warming' view said that this was just an analogy that was too be expected in such a complicated system and that there is much other evidence e.g. melting glacier to support the case.
In the end they made a bet, for £100, that there would be a year of significantly higher temperatures before 2011. We shall see.
Wednesday 30 April 2008
Cap and Trade - It's the Way
I went to two talks over the past week on carbon trading.
The first was in London hosted by E-Factor with the Key Note speaker was Peter Fusaro of Global-Change a New York based energy consultancy and hedge fund advisor. He was championing the cause of freeing up the markets to address climate change with governments first establishing a regulatory framework for carbon trading with challenging limits on carbon emissions, which can be ratcheted down over time, and a stringent monitoring and enforcement function.
This would provide a secure environment in which companies would be keen to invest in the application of current and development of new technologies to achieve rapid carbon reduction. I tend to agree with him. Appeals to individual conscience to reduce carbon emissions will only work with a small proportion of the populace, not because they are not moral, but they are busy just trying to manage their own lives and their families. Energy saving will comes further down their priority list and will reach he top only when it is too late for the climate and then they may well not know what to do.
By using the price mechanism through cap and trade you get industry involved, which will bring huge investment and then the consequent price signal will mean that people have to take notice.
The EU Emissions Trading System may have stumbled in its first faced but these are just set up issues and can be addressed in the next round which started this year. Mr F says that the US will set up their own scheme within 18 months to 2 years once the new administration is settled in. Bringing the US on board in the war on climate change is essential if anything meaningful is to be achieved. The Regulation and market combination is the most powerful mechanism we have to change things. We may wish we can appeal to people's better nature but we do not have the time and when it comes to the crunch it likely does not work.
The other presentation was in Cambridge by Ben Castle from the RSA. It was about Personal Tradable Carbon Allowances. While the project and discussion was quite illuminating in the issues involved and this may eventually be a useful way of ensuring worldwide equity on carbon emissions (e.g. one tonne each, it would be too complicated to establish and for individuals to manage their allowance. Far better to start with company cap and trade and perhaps move to individuals if this ever proves necessary.
My conclusion is that I will firmly put my foot in the cap and trade camp while working for local initiatives and national policy change to reduce carbon emissions and improve quality of life.
The first was in London hosted by E-Factor with the Key Note speaker was Peter Fusaro of Global-Change a New York based energy consultancy and hedge fund advisor. He was championing the cause of freeing up the markets to address climate change with governments first establishing a regulatory framework for carbon trading with challenging limits on carbon emissions, which can be ratcheted down over time, and a stringent monitoring and enforcement function.
This would provide a secure environment in which companies would be keen to invest in the application of current and development of new technologies to achieve rapid carbon reduction. I tend to agree with him. Appeals to individual conscience to reduce carbon emissions will only work with a small proportion of the populace, not because they are not moral, but they are busy just trying to manage their own lives and their families. Energy saving will comes further down their priority list and will reach he top only when it is too late for the climate and then they may well not know what to do.
By using the price mechanism through cap and trade you get industry involved, which will bring huge investment and then the consequent price signal will mean that people have to take notice.
The EU Emissions Trading System may have stumbled in its first faced but these are just set up issues and can be addressed in the next round which started this year. Mr F says that the US will set up their own scheme within 18 months to 2 years once the new administration is settled in. Bringing the US on board in the war on climate change is essential if anything meaningful is to be achieved. The Regulation and market combination is the most powerful mechanism we have to change things. We may wish we can appeal to people's better nature but we do not have the time and when it comes to the crunch it likely does not work.
The other presentation was in Cambridge by Ben Castle from the RSA. It was about Personal Tradable Carbon Allowances. While the project and discussion was quite illuminating in the issues involved and this may eventually be a useful way of ensuring worldwide equity on carbon emissions (e.g. one tonne each, it would be too complicated to establish and for individuals to manage their allowance. Far better to start with company cap and trade and perhaps move to individuals if this ever proves necessary.
My conclusion is that I will firmly put my foot in the cap and trade camp while working for local initiatives and national policy change to reduce carbon emissions and improve quality of life.
Tread lightly: Stop buying farmed flowers
The following is taken from an article in the Guardian today:
"As with food, a greater distance from the country of origin to the UK does not necessarily equate to a higher carbon footprint for cut flowers. A study conducted by Cranfield University found that 12,000 rose stems grown in Kenya incurred a carbon footprint of 2,200kg CO2, while the equivalent supply from Holland generated 35,000kg CO2.
That's almost
0.2kg per Kenyan rose
3kg per Dutch one
"As with food, a greater distance from the country of origin to the UK does not necessarily equate to a higher carbon footprint for cut flowers. A study conducted by Cranfield University found that 12,000 rose stems grown in Kenya incurred a carbon footprint of 2,200kg CO2, while the equivalent supply from Holland generated 35,000kg CO2.
That's almost
0.2kg per Kenyan rose
3kg per Dutch one
A better option, therefore, is to adopt the same approach to flowers as to food, and aim to buy locally produced, seasonal varieties as much as possible. The website Online Florists has a list of what's in season. You can order seasonal bouquets of flowers that have been grown outdoors from Isles of Scilly Flowers and Scent from the Islands.
If you have the space, the best idea is to grow flowers yourself. Daffodils and tulips are a good bet for spring in the UK, sunflowers, sweet peas and rudbeckias offer bright summer colours, while heathers, ivy and holly can be used for winter decorations. Wiggly Wigglers sell almost 100 types of wildflowers and traditional flowers for planting in British gardens."
Tuesday 22 April 2008
Tuesday 8 April 2008
Science Guy
To give him his due credit, the person involved in the discussion with Nigel Lawson on Newsnight was Chris Rapley
Nigel Lawson (ex-Chancellor) Fuzzy Thinking
Yesterday was not a good day for climate change news. After the Dr James Hansen of NASA indicated that even the current EU emission reduction targets are not nearly aggressive enough to stave off devastating climate change (maybe more on this later) we had the ex UK Chancellor, Nigel Lawson promoting his book in the Financial Times in which he claims that we are all "foolishly over reacting to climate change"
His main points are that:
1. While human activity does contribute to climate change it is not the only or the most important factor - he says that natural variation is more significant
2. The Earth did warm up in the last half of the the last century but there has been no significant warming in this century - true
3. That the economic costs of slowing change (in terms of investment and reduced economic development) far outweigh the projected costs of adapting to change and the IPCC projections of the impact of climate change on world GDP (reduced by 1-5%).
4. That by attempting to make change the EU will put itself at an economic disadvantage to the fast developing countries which he says will not agree to switching to a low carbon economy.
So his message is stop this folly of trying to halt climate change and just get on with finding technology and other ways to help us adapt.
Oh boy, not only is this view profoundly defeatist but it will likely be taken up by all the deniers as evidence that we should do nothing to try to stop things getting worse.
Luckily I then saw the discussion on BBC Newsnight last night between Jeremy Paxman, Nigel Lawson and the head of the Science Museum who was previously head of the British Antarctic Survey. The Science guy had little time for Lawson's arguments and petty well rubbished them since he argued that Lawson was just cherry picking on the science. He agreed that there had been no further warming this century but that can be expected with a complicated natural system like the Earth when you can get little apparent change and then dramatic effects. We cannot therefore be complacent.
The Science guy also argued that we cannot just wait to see what happens and try to fix it, as it could well be too late. It did make me question the IPCC figures on the projected effect of climate change on World GDP. A reduction of 1-5% seems widely optimistic. If sea levels rise by many metres and we lose the world's main financial and trade centres then the disruption would be far greater than this.
In the end Lawson's arguments seemed pretty thin. His point about whether we can get global agreement that all the main economies should do something is very relevant but that cannot mean that we should stop trying. It seems to be our only hope.
His main points are that:
1. While human activity does contribute to climate change it is not the only or the most important factor - he says that natural variation is more significant
2. The Earth did warm up in the last half of the the last century but there has been no significant warming in this century - true
3. That the economic costs of slowing change (in terms of investment and reduced economic development) far outweigh the projected costs of adapting to change and the IPCC projections of the impact of climate change on world GDP (reduced by 1-5%).
4. That by attempting to make change the EU will put itself at an economic disadvantage to the fast developing countries which he says will not agree to switching to a low carbon economy.
So his message is stop this folly of trying to halt climate change and just get on with finding technology and other ways to help us adapt.
Oh boy, not only is this view profoundly defeatist but it will likely be taken up by all the deniers as evidence that we should do nothing to try to stop things getting worse.
Luckily I then saw the discussion on BBC Newsnight last night between Jeremy Paxman, Nigel Lawson and the head of the Science Museum who was previously head of the British Antarctic Survey. The Science guy had little time for Lawson's arguments and petty well rubbished them since he argued that Lawson was just cherry picking on the science. He agreed that there had been no further warming this century but that can be expected with a complicated natural system like the Earth when you can get little apparent change and then dramatic effects. We cannot therefore be complacent.
The Science guy also argued that we cannot just wait to see what happens and try to fix it, as it could well be too late. It did make me question the IPCC figures on the projected effect of climate change on World GDP. A reduction of 1-5% seems widely optimistic. If sea levels rise by many metres and we lose the world's main financial and trade centres then the disruption would be far greater than this.
In the end Lawson's arguments seemed pretty thin. His point about whether we can get global agreement that all the main economies should do something is very relevant but that cannot mean that we should stop trying. It seems to be our only hope.
Grants for Renewables
The just relaunched Low Carbon Building grants from BERR, the Government Department, seem like a big disappointment. I was hoping to be able to install a solar heating panel on my roof.
The department website (http://www.lowcarbonbuildings.org.uk/micro/solartherm/) says that this should cost between £3,200 and £4,500 and you would qualify for a grant of £400 or 30% of the cost whichever was the lower. They also say that this would save you around 30% of your hot water heating costs.
The maths do not look attractive. If half of my current £600 per year heating costs are for hot water that means we would save £100 per year through the solar panels. That says it would take around 35 years to pay off the cost of the panels and the grant makes little difference to this return.
OK there are good moral reasons for installing the panels to cut carbon emissions (the BERR site says an average of 330kg per household per year) and the price of energy if likely to go up. But t if the financial arguments are so weak then few people will want to make the improvement and government grants are doing nothing to change their minds.
What a shame.
The department website (http://www.lowcarbonbuildings.org.uk/micro/solartherm/) says that this should cost between £3,200 and £4,500 and you would qualify for a grant of £400 or 30% of the cost whichever was the lower. They also say that this would save you around 30% of your hot water heating costs.
The maths do not look attractive. If half of my current £600 per year heating costs are for hot water that means we would save £100 per year through the solar panels. That says it would take around 35 years to pay off the cost of the panels and the grant makes little difference to this return.
OK there are good moral reasons for installing the panels to cut carbon emissions (the BERR site says an average of 330kg per household per year) and the price of energy if likely to go up. But t if the financial arguments are so weak then few people will want to make the improvement and government grants are doing nothing to change their minds.
What a shame.
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