Light at the end of the tunnel?
Memorandum
Nairobi #13
Will Alexander
Wednesday 22 November 2006
Cynics have observed that the light at the end of the tunnel may be that of an oncoming express train. Is this what happened at Nairobi?
The conference ended on Friday. It is now Wednesday morning. Only one of the three Sunday newspapers that I read had an article on Nairobi. It was the usual green protest. It was tucked away in the bottom corner of a page devoted to the revised version of the Seven Wonders of the World.
There has been no official communiqué yet. Nor has there been a press release from the South African contingent. From the international media reports it seems that the world order is in danger of being turned upside down. But first the good news.
South Africa’s position
This is the first and only reference to South Africa’s position that I have seen so far.
Halldor Thorgeirsson, deputy executive secretary of the UNFCCC, mentioned that a South African delegate had made interesting observation. The South African turned the usual formulation of "what can we do to pursue development under the constraints imposed by climate change" on its head to "what can we do to address climate change under the constraints of the need for development and poverty eradication?"
Hooray! The DEAT has got it right at last.
South Africa has reversed the priority recommended in the Stern Review. I am sure that other African nations feel the same way. But poverty goes hand in hand with the occurrence of natural disasters. See my United Nations report Risk and Society – an African Perspective.
The Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEAT) has neither the staff nor expertise in these fields. To make matters worse, those of us who do have the knowledge on poverty reduction measures and adaptation to natural climatic extremes, have been labelled as fringe scientists. So where will the DEAT go from here?
Their decisions will be interesting. The Department will have to produce some face-saving press release.
The international scene
I firmly believe that the falsely based climate alarmism has led the world on a path that could easily lead to economic and social disorder, if good sense does not prevail. For example:
More than 180 nations at the U.N. climate conference agreed Friday on the next steps toward negotiating deeper future cuts in global-warming gases, after conceding to China that developing nations won't be pressed immediately to reduce emissions......
[My emphasis.]
This is exactly what the EU and UK desperately tried to avoid. Now consider their position. The UK is already in the process of introducing onerous green taxes aimed at reducing energy demand and thereby GGEs. There is strong pressure from environmental interest groups not to go ahead with the expansion of Heathrow airport in order to discourage the rapid world-wide increase in air traffic. The EU counties including France and Italy have proposed introducing punitive taxes on imports from countries that do not adopt GGE reduction measures. The Democrats in the USA may consider following the same route.
Now consider the situation in Africa.
Poverty eradication is a massive problem. Just how massive was made clear by the vice president for sustainable development at the World Bank, Katherine Sierra, when she pointed out in speech to the delegates that developing countries need annual investment for electricity supply of $165 billion through 2010 and afterwards investment needs would increase at 3 percent per year. The real heartbreaker came when she noted that the current energy supply investments planned for Africa "will increase poor people's access to energy in Sub-Saharan Africa from 23 percent today to 47 percent by 2030." In other words, half the people in Sub-Saharan Africa still won't have access to modern energy supplies in 25 years! Half! Frankly, it's hard to imagine that climate change projected for the next five decades can wreak as much havoc on the lives of poor Africans as the lack of modern energy supplies does today. International bureaucrats also myopically worry that as climate worsens, that a lot of overseas development aid will have to be channelled away from development into disaster relief. How about growing economies so that poor people like Sharon Looremeta in impoverished countries don't need development aid because they have created their own resources which would enable them to bounce back from whatever disasters assault them? Now that would be some interesting rethinking.
What will happen if the African countries do not agree to implement GGE reduction measures that will delay their development even further? Will they also be penalised?
Now take it one step further. In the week before Nairobi, China entertained the African heads of state in Beijing. Financial help was offered and agreements were signed. If Europe starts putting the screws on Africa, the African countries will not meekly submit. They will turn to the east.
Will the EU countries ever consider punitive trade measures against the countries of the East and Far East that refuse to come on board? Why is it that nobody seems to realise that the days of imperialism, colonialism and military occupation are long past. The application of force will no longer succeed. It is no longer a simple case of Lee Metford rifles versus Zulu assegais.
Enough philosophising. Here are some extracts from news reports distributed by CCNet during the past few days. They illustrate the dangerous situation that is now developing.
Tourists fly home
You come here to look at some climate impacts and some poor people suffering, and then climb on your airplanes and head home.
--Sharon Looremeta, Practical Action
Interpretation. Nairobi has failed to achieve its objectives.
Failure of scientific alarmism
The researchers found [Greenland's] warmest year on record to be 1941, while the 1930s and 1940s are the warmest decades on record. This represents very bad news for climate change alarmists, since the warmest period was NOT the last quarter of the 20th century. In fact, the last two decades of the 20th century (1981-1990 and 1991-2000) were colder across the study area than any of the previous six decades, dating back to the 1900s and 1910s. When examining the instrumental records of the stations it is apparent that no net warming has occurred since the warm period of the 1930s and 1940s
--World Climate Report, 17 November 2006
THE 2006 HURRICANE SEASON
Climate Audit, 19 November 2006
HYPERLINK "http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=919" http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=919
By Steve McIntyre
And let there be no doubt - 2006 was a "bad" year for hurricane alarmists. I've collated all the storm track data to date. Storm and hurricane days are each off 30%; cat 3+ days by 50% and cat 4+ days by 54%. Hurricane days were at their lowest levels since 1989 and storm days at their lowest levels since Dvorak measurements were introduced in the Pacific in 1987.
Interpretation. Scientific alarmism is bringing about its own downfall.
Punitive tariffs
While the Green wing of the Democratic Party may be all in favour of imposing limits on carbon dioxide, the Party's union supporters, who work industry, transport and power generation, will be reluctant to go along. The Democrats, just like President Bush, will have to argue that emissions limits must be imposed on developing countries, especially China, India, and Brazil, because otherwise those countries would be able to out-compete American industry and workers. If those countries refuse to go along, the Democrats may end up joining with the Europeans who are calling for punitive tariffs on goods imported from countries that don't restrict their carbon dioxide emissions.
--Ronald Bailey, Reason Online, 17 November 2006
Countries that refuse to join international efforts to cut greenhouse emissions - such as the US and China - should face a European carbon tax on their imports, Dominique de Villepin, the French prime minister, proposed on Monday. The controversial proposal is likely to heighten suspicions that Europeans are using environmental arguments to justify protectionist restrictions on trade. It would require full European Union support to become reality.
Mr de Villepin's plan is intended to put pressure on China, Brazil and India at this week's climate change talks in Nairobi, where countries are meeting to discuss a post-Kyoto framework. Emerging economies, whose carbon emissions are rising rapidly with the growth of manufacturing exports, are under pressure to commit to cuts in greenhouse gases once the Kyoto Protocol runs out in 2012.
"The next round of protectionism from Europe is likely to be based on some spurious argument like food miles," Helen Clark, New Zealand's prime minister, said last month. The country's farmers are indignant at suggestions their produce could be subjected to taxes reflecting the distance it is transported to its end market.
-- Delphine Strauss in Paris, November 13 2006
Interpretation. This approach provides an excuse for the affluent countries to impose protective tariffs in order to protect their own industries. It can rebound and may easily result in the demise of the World Trade Organisation.
Trade wars
I believe that there is a very real possibility that climate alarmism could lead the world into globally damaging trade wars. Consider the following.
For me, this raises the fear that imposing carbon dioxide emissions limits without somehow including all the big emitters could unravel all the painful progress the world has made toward freer trade among nations. Dismantling the World Trade Organization would destroy vast amounts of wealth and end up impoverishing the world's poorest people even more than any projected climate change. For example, a 2002 Institute for International Economics study found that just reducing current trade barriers could add $600 billion to global GDP and raise incomes in the world's poorest countries by an average of 20 percent. Much more would be at stake if the countries started erecting new trade barriers. The IIE's figure compares very nicely with the $450 billion dollars (1 percent of global GDP) that Britain's recently released Stern Review calculated would be needed to be spent annually to cut the emissions of greenhouse gases to an acceptable level.
Reason Online, 17 November 2006
HYPERLINK "http://www.reason.com/news/show/116805.html" http://www.reason.com/news/show/116805.html
What now?
The EU and UK accepted the ‘consensus’ views of climate change scientists without question despite the absence of scientific proof. They accepted the need for the application of the ‘precautionary principle’ that needs no proof. Even now, 18 years after the establishment of the IPCC there is still no believable evidence of the catastrophic climatic events that will lead the world on the path to destruction within the next 10 years. If there is no evidence of these events occurring during the past 18 years why should we believe that they will occur during the next 10 years? There are obvious shortcomings in the basic theory. These shortcomings are now being exposed one-by-one by conscientious scientists.
The fundamental shortcoming is the refusal of climate change scientists to acknowledge that the multiyear variations in global climate are the consequence of synchronous variations in solar activity. Once that is acknowledged, the whole edifice of human-caused climate change collapses. Together with a UK colleague we will fire the first shots across the bows of the climate alarmism before the end of the year. A group of us will follow up with a full-scale onslaught early next year.
My crystal ball
This is the future as I see it.
Kyoto is on its deathbed. There is no way that the major GGE emitting countries, including China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Australia and the USA will be persuaded to join Kyoto or any successor arrangement that commits them to specified reductions in the years ahead.
The IPCC has been in existence for 18 years. More money and more research effort have been spent on climate change than any other research topic. Yet this research has not produced any statistically believable evidence of the predicted disastrous consequences. These include floods, droughts, spread of diseases, desertification, and the destruction of habitat and species.
Claims that there is a scientific consensus on climate change are demonstrably false. [See the Monckton vs. Gore debate in my next email.]
Climate alarmists foolishly used the media to propagate their views. In the UK, France, Italy and the USA political parties saw this as an opportunity to further their own political interests. Politicians are now in control.
Political parties in the UK, acting under pressure from environmental groups, are now committed to drastic self-flagellation action. Steps are being taken to reduce energy demand, increase green taxes, and limit the rapidly growing air transport that will soon become a major GGE emitter.
These actions must inevitably result in increases in the costs of products intended for export, where they will have to compete with the cheaper products from the major developing countries that have refused to abide by Kyoto.
In the lead-up to Nairobi the UK and the EU took desperate measures, notably the Stern Review and a plea by the UN Secretary General Kofi Anan, in an attempt to persuade the USA, Australia and the major developing countries to take costly action that would even the playing fields.
They failed.
This morning (Wednesday) there was a news item on the radio that South Africa had signed joint trade agreements with India and Brazil, two of the major developing countries that refused to be bound by the Kyoto Protocol.
What action will the UK, EU and the Kyoto signatories take in the knowledge that their efforts have failed? To make matters worse, their threats have had the opposite effect. They have already driven trading nations to look elsewhere for their imports. The UK and EU are now stranded in the middle of the climate change tunnel with the Orient Express bearing down on them.
They will be forced to consider possible escape routes. An attractive option would be to inform their constituents that they were misled by climate alarmists and the green organisations that were feathering their own nests with the taxpayers’ money.
My crystal ball becomes a little murky at this point. When I close my eyes I have a vision of all those climate alarmists and green environmentalists leaving Cape Town on the SA Agulhas. They are bound for Marion Island where the climatologists in the group have been commissioned to study the retreating glacier. The environmentalists have been commissioned to study the mating habits of the jackass penguins. They have a printing press on board so that they can publish their findings in peer-reviewed literature.
Regards
Will
*************
Memorandum
Nairobi #14
Collision course?
Will Alexander
Thursday 23 November 2006
In my Nairobi #13 memo that I distributed yesterday, I warned that falsely based climate alarmism has led the world on a path that could easily lead to economic and social disorder. I fear that this may well happen. The gaps between the developed and highly industrialised nations of Europe, the major developing eastern countries, and the struggling countries of Africa and elsewhere are widening, not closing.
It is difficult to see any harmonious solution to these differences in the years ahead.
The following excerpt is from CCNet of 22 November.
PARIS, Nov 21 (Reuters) - The European Commission must take a tougher approach to limiting the emission of gases like carbon dioxide blamed for climate change, Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Union executive, said on Tuesday.
"We have to resolutely attack the problem of climate change," Barroso wrote in France's La Tribune newspaper. "That means the Commission must adopt a firm, more restrictive position on the next phase of national greenhouse gas control plans covering the period 2008-12 to make sure these fully meet the commitments we made at Kyoto."
Compare this approach with South Africa’s position described below. South Africa has abandoned any thought of imposing restrictive GGE control measures. It has clearly although not explicitly joined the major developing countries in their refusal to adopt economically and socially restrictive GGE control measures despite all the pressures exerted on them by the affluent EU nations, the UN agencies, and the green organisations at Nairobi.
The headline of the four-column article in yesterday’s Star was Positive talks on global warming or more hot air? The article started off with the quote from Nairobi stating that the purpose of the Nairobi Conference was to solve: One of the most serious threats humanity may ever face. It concluded:
Yet despite the positive spin which often characterises the conclusion of big UN conferences, there appears to be little evidence of any dramatic breakthrough at the international level to reverse the pace of the well-documented threat.
DEAT minister’s press statement
In yesterday’s Business Day there is a five-column article by the DEAT minister. There is not a single mention of South Africa agreeing to impose GGE restrictions. The emphasis has now moved to adaptation and mitigation measures.
According to DEAT minister, South Africa now has five clear objectives.
taking real action on adaptation;
kick-starting the clean development mechanism in Africa;
introducing new thinking on technology transfer;
maintaining and enhancing the real political momentum towards a strengthened and more effective global climate regime after 2012; and
expanding the creative space on options to enhance climate action by all parties.
This policy of adaptation to the consequences should they arise, is directly opposite to that of the EU which is to restrict GGEs in the forlorn hope that this will avert the as yet unproven consequences.
If South Africa and the UN wish to finance climate variability adaptation measures that favour the poor and disadvantaged people of this continent, then all conscientious citizens of this country will give these efforts their full support – even if the action is based on all the wrong reasons.
Good news for civil engineers
We still have to see how South African climate alarmists respond to this change of direction but I am sure that the civil engineering profession would be more than willing to participate in these adaptation actions. These are some attractive options.
A more chilling report from the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organisation was released in November 5 on the eve of the Nairobi climate indaba. This report predicts that 30% of Africa’s coastal infrastructure faces severe threats from rising sea levels… Parts of Lagos and the Egyptian city of Alexandria could disappear under the sea if the level of the Atlantic rose by a metre. The report also lists Cape Town, Maputo and Dar es Salaam as coastal cities that are at risk from rising sea levels.
The DEAT minister’s press release also contained some good news for civil engineers.
Climate change impacts could indicate greater and more rapid sea-level rise than previously projected: more frequent coastal storms, threatening the lives and livelihoods of coastal communities; substantial reduction in surface water resources; accelerated desertification in sensitive arid zones; and greater threats to health, biodiversity and agricultural production. Many actions to safeguard our citizens against these threats will also have benefits in the face of climate variability that affects people’s lives now.
[My joyful emphasis. The Minister’s report then continued:]
Against this background, we are encouraged by the following concrete outcomes in Nairobi.
Taking real action on adaptation. Nairobi was a real turning point in placing adaptation on top of the climate agenda….
Consider some of the lucrative civil engineering contracts required to adapt to these changes. Raising the whole waterfront area in Cape Town; raising thousands of bridges to keep them above the rising flood levels; increasing the capacities of hundreds of storage dams to mitigate the threats to our water supplies; constructing countless groynes to protect all our famous beaches from Muizenberg to Richards Bay. The list is never ending.
Sadly, I have a feeling that by the time that serious planning starts the globe will start cooling and the world will appreciate that this whole climate change scare was no more than a gigantic hoax aided and abetted by Al Gore, the Stern Review, the IPCC and the Royal Society.
IPCC
It is difficult to see how the IPCC can survive the series of assaults from all quarters on the falsely claimed scientific consensus on the postulated consequences of anthropogenic global warming.
Its Fourth Assessment Report is due to be published in February. The whole climate change issue has been kidnapped by politicians and mangled by economists. Science is no longer relevant. Civil engineers will be called in to clear the wreckage.
Monckton vs. Gore
HYPERLINK "http://ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/20061121_gore.pdf" http://ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/20061121_gore.pdf
I received the following article by Viscount Monckton dated 19 November from the UK via New Zealand. The author encouraged its general distribution. The article contains the information that the Royal Society so desperately tried to suppress. Please read it and you will see why. The article is somewhat technical in places but should be generally understandable.
The House of Lords is the only high level authoritative body in the UK that has expressed concerns regarding the whole climate change issue. Viscount Monckton was one of the leading figures.
The UK government in a strange move, appointed Al Gore as an adviser on the climate change issue. He responded to two earlier articles by Monckton in the Sunday Telegraph.
The following is Viscount Monckton’s reply. Note how Monckton discredits current climate change science piece-by-piece. Note also the widespread support that he received for his articles.
Wrap up
This memo is an appropriate end to the Nairobi series of memos. Other memos may follow depending on the circumstances. This leaves me free to continue the preparation of a joint paper on the synchronous linkages between activity in the solar system and African climate, together with several colleagues. We have a lot to tell.
Regards
Will
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Nairobi #13 22 November 2006