Tim Worstall » climate change

That the Ganges and Indus will run dry thing

Tim Worstall — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 07:05:09 +0000

Because, you know, the glaciers and snow melt will all be gone?

The world’s greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows.

The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that around 50bn tonnes of meltwater were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall.

Oh.

Now, as you all know, I’m generally on board with the idea that climate change is a) happening and b) something we ought to do something about. That something being a minor change in our taxation system, apply a revenue neutral Pigou Tax to emissions and cut taxes on something else.

Whether or not climate change is happening this is probably (OK, weaker than that, I could make the case that it is possibly) economy enhancing anyway. Reducing some of the very bad taxes we have (say on capital or corporates) and replacing them with less bad taxes (said carbon tax) could be beneficial all in and of itself.

A carbon tax is after all a consumption tax and consumption taxes have lower deadweight costs that capital or corporate taxes.

I would want the Nordhaus version though: low now and rising over the years so that we are working with the technological and capital cycles, not attempting to short circuit them.

The one area where I do stray from the narrow path of the media consensus (which isn’t, as we know, quite the same as the scientific consensus) is that I don’t see climate change as being something immediately catastrophic. It’s a decades or centuries long problem and it’s thus one we’ve got decades at least to try to deal with.

As this story about the Himalayas tells us: it was the IPCC wihch hilariously allowed a prediction that all that snow and ice would be gone by 2035 into a report, wasn’t it?

Which leads me to about as sceptoical a position as I am comfortable with. I’m perfetly happy with the basic science of climate change. I’m not entirely certain that the IPCC reflects it properly. And I’m absolutely certain that the economic ideas that are proposed to deal with it, what governments are actually doing, are wrong.

Tee hee

Tim Worstall — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 07:41:43 +0000

Chris Huhne has become the first Cabinet minister in living memory to be charged with a serious criminal offence after the fall-out from his acrimonious divorce left him facing court, a potential jail sentence and the end of his political career.

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke.

So, is the next bloke at DECC going to reverse all of his idiot policies? That’s what we really want to know.

The start is to reverse that “legally binding” reduction in CO2 by 80%. The second is to dismantle the whole foolish subsidy system, the third to impose a serious and correct level carbon tax. At which point the job is done.

Idiot fuckwit

Tim Worstall — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:59:03 +0000

A good price for EU carbon allowances on the trading market is required in order to boost investment in the low carbon economy.

No. Just no.

For investment in the low carbon economy is not in fact something we want. Sure, we want the result of a low carbon economy (OK, well, let’s stick within the confines of the current policy argument at least), but we don’t want investment in it. We’d much prefer to get a low carbon economy with absolutely no investment at all. Heck, even get paid to be creating it as with, say, eliminating fossil fuel subsidies.

It could be true that we need to invest in a low carbon economy but if it is that’s a cost to us of getting to our goal, a low carbon economy.

And the low price of carbon credits is not telling us that we’re not going to get a low carbon economy. It’s telling us that it’s going to be heap to get one.

For we’ve already limited emissions through the cap….and of course, Our Lords and Masters could not possibly have made a mistake on the level of said cap. So, having already capped emissions then price of the permits is telling us how expensive it is to meet that cap.

Or, if the price is low, that we don’t need to invest very much because we’re already meeting the cap without much investment.

These twats are getting confused about prices: yes, sure, they’re incentives. But they are also information: here, the information being that we don’t need to invest lots to meet the cap.

Mark Lynas really gets me in The Guardian

Tim Worstall — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 07:44:20 +0000

Booker’s misunderstandings, like his commentary in general, are not original – in this case they come second-hand from the former Ukip press officer-turned-blogger Tim Worstall, whose complaint on the Adam Smith Institute blog is entitled “Perhaps Decc would like to do their sums again“.

Worstall’s problem is that he “can’t find the price assumptions they make” about the future costs of fossil fuels. He laments: “I’m afraid I can’t find it, just can’t find it at all.” He therefore conspiracy theorises that “the calculation isn’t presented to us” because “we might find that renewables aren’t really an option that anyone would go for.”

Whoops. Worstall’s conspiracy evaporates when one discovers that he has simply not clicked on the correct link on the Decc website.

So, we go through the links that Mark proides us with and we get to here:

Source data

Forecasts of fossil fuel prices:

Oil Price cost data

Coal Price cost data

Gas Price cost data

Explanation of our working assumption:

2050 working assumption oil price 2010-2050

2050 working assumption Coal Price 2010-2050

2050 working assumption Gas Price 2010-2050

You will note that that last is not in fact a link. They do not explain their assumptions about the future price of gas. The thing we’re intrested in, of course, as we want to know what they think of shale gas.

I think I win that one, no|?

Jobs are a cost not a …..

Tim Worstall — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 08:10:24 +0000

But Dr Gordon Edge, Director of policy at the lobby group RenewableUK, said much of the information was gathered from “anti-wind farm cranks”.

He explained that modern gas plants are not required to provide back-up for wind. Instead, wind is “integrated” into the existing system to act as a fuel saver, enabling the UK harness a free electricity source from the weather when it’s available. Some additional investment is required, but Dr Edge said “credible analysis” makes clear it will cost less for consumers than relying on fossil fuels, that are rising in price all the time.

“It is surprising that a think tank such as Civitas has published a report based on the work of anti-wind cranks, repeating the same discredited assertions. The UK’s energy policy over the next ten years will play a critical part in our economic success – offshore wind in particular has the potential to revitalise our manufacturing sector, with the promise of over 70,000 jobs,” he said. “This report, based on outdated and inaccurate information, does nothing to advance the debate.”

That’s how we know it’s expensive, see?

Because you’re “creating ” lots of jobs and jobs are a cost of a project, not a benefit.

Anyone know anything about catalysts?

Tim Worstall — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 09:24:18 +0000

This is probably one of those questions so stupid that those who know what they’re talking about will laugh.

However. CH4. Methane.

I know that it’s possible to strip the C out using a catalyst. However, I have a feeling that it comes out as CO or CO2.

Which, if you were trying to generate energy isn’t so bad, if you get CO you can burn that to get CO2 in a nicely exothermic reaction. And you’ve H2 to burn, run through a fuel cell, whatever.

However, if you were trying to get rid of the CO2, not create it, you’d much rather you got C, say as soot.

So, the question is, is there any way of stripping, reformulating, the CH4 into C plus H2s? So that you’ve solid C which can then be disposed of?

So, wind farms kill more people than nuclear plants

Tim Worstall — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 09:04:11 +0000

The figures – released by RenewableUK, the industry’s trade body – include four deaths and a further 300 injuries to workers.

That’s just in the UK and just in the past 5 years you understand.

And when you calculate it by deaths by amount of energy produced it gets worse.

The death rate for wind is three to four times that of nuclear, that of solar 10 tmes.

Why do the greenies want to kill people?

Dear God Mr Lean

Tim Worstall — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 09:35:22 +0000

They have gone virtually unnoticed amid all the bombast, bargaining and breaking news of the past two weeks of top-level climate negotiations. But tucked away in an obscure corner of the giant conference site in the middle of Durban are two South African women, surrounded by a pile of brightly coloured bags, who promise to do more to fight poverty, save lives and combat climate change than all the suited bureaucrats, and their political masters, have done in their deliberations.

These women – one white, one black – have come up with a simple, traditionally-based technique that could dramatically cut the amount of fuel used to cook food, save desperately poor people a sizeable slice of their income, slash pollution, improve health and employ many thousands who have no jobs.

Quite excellent, yes, a modern interpretation of the haybox. Reduces costs, air pollution and CO2 emissions. Wonderful to hit that trifecta and yes, it’s two biddies actually doing something that have more effect than all the politicians put together.

Super.

The in the same damn article we get the following:

An annual assessment by the pressure group Germanwatch – which analyses performance in 13 areas – puts Britain only just behind the traditionally eco Sweden (though it ranks them only four and five, keeping the first three places blank “as no country is doing enough to prevent dangerous climate change”). We perform the best of the world’s top 10 carbon dioxide emitters.

Her Majesty’s Government scored high for the Climate Change Act and its decision, this summer, to cut emissions to half of 1990 levels by 2027 – and for the leading position it has taken in international negotiations. The judges say Britain would have beaten Sweden had it not been for recent anti-green pronouncements by the Chancellor.

That may have been its last chance. For the judges are predicting that Denmark will now soar to the top after announcing that it will cut emissions by 40 per cent from 1990 levels by 2020, and produce all its power and heat from renewable sources by 2035.

Praise for a ranking that is based on the postures of politicians rather than actually doing anything about air pollution, CO2 emissions or reducing costs. Come along now, it’s one or the other. Either politicians prancing upon a stage is important or not, people actually doing something is important or not.

It’s quite easy to parse this

Tim Worstall — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 07:38:45 +0000

Chris Huhne: Britain should lead the world in cutting carbon emissions
Chris Huhne has called for Britain to lead the world in cutting carbon emissions, setting himself on a collision course with George Osborne, the Chancellor.

This is to allow Chris Huhne to walk tall among the environmentalists. To accept, nay demand, their praise and applause after he comes out of jail for perverting the course of justice.

Damn the costs to the rest of us, damn whether a 20% or30% cut in anything at all is needed, damn whether it even happens or not.

By demanding it, regardless of the cost (and for a certain type of greenie, the higher the cost the better), Huhne has guaranteed himself speaking fees and adulation to the end of his days.

Public choice economics, it explains so much about the world.

Note the bait and switch

Tim Worstall — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 09:27:37 +0000

Climate change report:

In the last
decade wind and other renewables have grown
to the point that they now provide nearly a tenth
of UK generating capacity. With nuclear power
generating 16% of total UK electricity, a quarter of
electricity generation is now low carbon.

There’s a difference between generating capacity and generation isn’t there children?

Casuistry from these ghastly little shits.

Bugger the lot of it, them, their plans and their micro-management.

Could we please just have a carbon tax at the Stern estimate of the social cost of carbon and let us all sort if out from there?

Fucking idiots

Tim Worstall — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 09:22:10 +0000

Cameron and Clegg on climate change:

This plan shows that moving to a low carbon
economy is practical, achievable and desirable. It will
require investment in new ways of generating
energy, not a sacrifice in living standards.

Investing in low carbon stuff means that we don’t invest in something else which means that we have a decline in our living standards by whatever else it is that we don’t invest in.

Resources are limited you twats.

Hewy, it might even be true that we need to make these investments, that we have to make sure that we don’t boil Gaia. But you’re still fucking idiots for trying to foist this particular lie on us.

World on track for nearly 11-degree temperature rise

Tim Worstall — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 12:04:39 +0000

Umm, really?

The chief economist for the International Energy Agency said Monday that current global energy consumption levels put the Earth on a trajectory to warm by 6 degrees Celsius (10.8 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels by 2100, an outcome he called “a catastrophe for all of us.”Fatih Birol spoke as as delegates from nearly 200 countries convened the opening day of annual U.N. climate talks in Durban, South Africa.

Sirsly?

He’s assuming 840 ppm CO2 is he?

Anyone care to explain where this prediction is coming from?

This does not mean what you think it means

Tim Worstall — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 10:57:15 +0000

But Jochen Flasbarth, president of the Environmental Protection Agency in Germany, who advises the German government, said: “We are not missionaries, and every country will have to find its own way in energy policy, but it is obvious that nuclear plants are too inflexible and cannot sufficiently respond to variations in wind or solar generation, only gas [power stations] do.”

This is used as an argument to not build nuclear but to build instead wind and solar backed up by gas.

But total emissions would be much lower if one built nuclear, did not have the gas back up and completely forgot about the wind and solar.

For, leaving aside that back up thing, nuclear emissions are around and about, total lifecycle, the same as wind and some one third of solar.

The low carbon option is thus nuclear.

I just wouldn’t use this logic myself

Tim Worstall — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 10:11:27 +0000

Some more of the emails stolen from the Climate Research Centre in 2009 have been released. This time they are accompanied by a readme with out-of-context quotes that asserts the purpose of the release is information transparency, but that’s an obvious lie, since they’ve sat on them for two years and released them just before Durban conference. The timing suggests that the people behind the theft and release have a financial interest in preventing mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions.

Release of information just before a conference means people have a financial interest in the outcome of that conference?

Well, blow me!

So every Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Christian Aid, Action Aid, Debby Doane’s World Development Movement and the entire alphabet soup of TJN, TUC, RHT etc, we can simply reject any and every one of their reports that come out just before a conference because they are obviously being released with the intention of swaying the outcome of said conference because they’ve a financial interest in said outcome?

Well, if you say so Tim.

Myself, I wouldn’t actually try to use that particular piece of logic. Oh, sure, it might actually be correct, but I think you’ll find your fellow campaigners would be a little unhappy with the implications of it.

Sorry, they’re still barking mad

Tim Worstall — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 09:33:27 +0000

Wednesday’s report also found that the amount of investment needed to exploit gas reserves – about £32bn – would be enough to build 2,300 offshore wind turbines, which would produce enough renewable energy to meet government targets. Shale gas exploration also supports fewer jobs than renewable energy generation – hundreds of thousands of jobs could be created in offshore wind, solar power and other green energy, but drilling shale gas wells requires minimal manpower.

Yes, the idiots are still saying that using the labour of hundreds of thousands of people to do a task is better than using the labour of a few thousand to perform the same task.

Yes, this is still gross stupidity. We want to achieve our aims, whatever those aims are, with the least amount of human labour possible. Partly because this frees up labour that can go and do other things, making us all richer in the process: we get two things to share not just the one. Partly because we all rather like our leisure, that work life balance, and if we go about doing things in the most labour intensive method possible then we’ve got less of that desirable leisure.

Ian B will be along in a moment to tell us all that this is just the Methodism, the Calvinism possibly, of the British Left shining through. Work is a good thing in and of itself.

But of course after such a display of stupidity we move to pure howling fucking lunacy:

Tony Bosworth, energy campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: “If ministers give shale gas the green light it could wreck UK climate targets and keep us all in hock to soaring energy bills. The only solution to our broken power system is to develop the nation’s home-grown clean energy supplies and cut energy waste. David Cameron must free us from the shackles of the big energy companies keeping us hooked on dirty fossil fuels – and support clean British energy providers instead.”

Tony lad, if you can show us a renewables system that is cheaper than using fossil fuels then believe me, we’re all ears. But there isn’t one, this is our fucking problem you dingbat foetid dingo’s kidney. Even when we add the social cost of carbon emissions renewables are still multiples of the price of fossil derived energy.

Switching to a more expensive energy provision system in order to avoid the expense of the cheaper energy provision system is known, in the technical jargon, as “howling fucking lunacy”.

How cruel but oh, how true

Tim Worstall — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 08:35:23 +0000

Green MP Caroline Lucas may instinctively defend the interests of people rich enough to put solar panels on their roofs against those of the lowly consumers who have to pay to subsidise them, but the Treasury is, quite rightly, reducing the feed-in tariff for solar panels.

Nonsense on climate change again

Tim Worstall — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 08:26:23 +0000

Major storms could submerge New York City in next decade

Sea-level rise due to climate change could cripple the city in Irene-like storm scenarios, new climate report claims

My word, gosh, that’s terrible. How will this happen?

The report, commisioned by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, said the effects of sea level rise and changing weather patterns would be felt as early as the next decade.

By the mid-2020s, sea level rise around Manhattan and Long Island could be up to 10 inches, assuming the rapid melting of polar sea ice continues. By 2050, sea-rise could reach 2.5ft and more than 4.5ft by 2080 under the same conditions.

The actual report doesn’t say anything so drivellingly stupid of course. For the melting of “sea ice” won’t change sea levels by any amount whatsoever. ‘Coz sea ice is that ice which floats on the water.

So an F for The Guardian on that little point.

What the report does do however is take the IPCC models (fine, good, people should) and then add another one. What happens if West Antarctica and Greenland both suddenly melt?

Well, yes, I suppose, so, what would happen? Except everyone except the most fantastically alarmist of buffoons has this pencilled in for 2500 AD, not 2050 or 2025.

I think I’ll file this report in the “don’t bother with” bin.

Yes, Naomi Klein is an idiot

Tim Worstall — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 11:35:15 +0000

The abundance of scientific research showing we have pushed nature beyond its limits does not just demand green products and market-based solutions; it demands a new civilizational paradigm, one grounded not in dominance over nature but in respect for natural cycles of renewal—and acutely sensitive to natural limits, including the limits of human intelligence.

………..

In addition to reversing the thirty-year privatization trend, a serious response to the climate threat involves recovering an art that has been relentlessly vilified during these decades of market fundamentalism: planning. Lots and lots of planning.

Sigh.

So we’ve got to acknowledge that we’re all entirely dim in the face of Gaia: then use our intelligence to plan what we’ve got to do about it.

The two positions are mutually incompatible dearie.

If we’re dim then we’ve got to go the route of try it, suck it and see: a market based process. If we’re all gargantually intelligent with perfect knowledge then we can plan. But we can’t plan if we’re dim and ill informed, can we?

It gets worse, of course:

Another bonus: this type of farming is much more labor intensive than industrial agriculture, which means that farming can once again be a substantial source of employment.

Yes, she’s cheering the idea that we reintroduce peasantry as a valid career choice. Somehow it’s never those with columns in The Nation who have to be bent over double in the fields though, is it?

In an economy organized to respect natural limits, the use of energy-intensive long-haul transport would need to be rationed—reserved for those cases where goods cannot be produced locally or where local production is more carbon-intensive. (For example, growing food in greenhouses in cold parts of the United States is often more energy-intensive than growing it in the South and shipping it by light rail.)

Yes love. We know how to do this too. Stick a tax on carbon emissions and let the market sort it out.

The way out is to embrace a managed transition to another economic paradigm, using all the tools of planning discussed above. Growth would be reserved for parts of the world still pulling themselves out of poverty. Meanwhile, in the industrialized world, those sectors that are not governed by the drive for increased yearly profit (the public sector, co-ops, local businesses, nonprofits) would expand their share of overall economic activity, as would those sectors with minimal ecological impacts (such as the caregiving professions). A great many jobs could be created this way. But the role of the corporate sector, with its structural demand for increased sales and profits, would have to contract.

That’s just lovely, isn’t it? “Growth would be reserved”. Anyone got any idea at all of how that could be achieved in anything even slightly resembling a society that has any freedom or liberty left in it at all?

And of course she’s grossly, stupidly, wrong in her description of what is the cure for climate change. What we actually need is a globalised market based economy with a carbon tax.

And that’s all we need.

Petrol tax

Tim Worstall — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 08:26:27 +0000

We are told that all this tax has to be levied for a reason: to account for the impact of cars’ greenhouse gas emissions, now and in the future, and to pay for the construction and maintenance of our roads. But the numbers don’t stack up. In 2009-10, we spent £9.9 billion on the road network, and the emissions were deemed to have cost £3.5 billion. In short, more than £18 billion of that £31.5 billion in taxes – the equivalent of £293 per person – is profit for the Treasury.

Well, quite. As I pointed out when the Stern Review came out, the implication of the social cost of emissions is that fuel duty should be cut by 12 p a litre.

Which is one of the nice things about “green taxation”. It points us to an optimal level of tax, one that may well be lower than the one we’re already paying.

Sorry, I don’t understand this

Tim Worstall — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 07:43:58 +0000

If the world is to stay below 2C of warming, which scientists regard as the limit of safety, then emissions must be held to no more than 450 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; the level is currently around 390ppm.

We see this point being made all the time. But I’m not actually convinced that it’s the scientists saying it.

The point is that how much the temperature rises depends upon the value of climate sensitivity.

That is, how much does the temperature go up with a doubling of CO2? Pre-industrial levels were, can’t remember, 260 ppm? 280 ppm?

So, 520 ppm or 560 ppm is a doubling.

And climate sensitivity is estimated to be somewhere from 1.5-4.5 oC I think? With 3 oC being the most likely value (William, help out here).

And here’s the bit I don’t understand. That 2 0C “limit of safety”: that’s usually taken to mean, is often used by campaigners to mean that, passing that means we get “runaway climate change”. The feedbacks all swing into action and thus once we’ve passed the point it all just gets catastrophically worse.

But the whole point about this climate sensitivity number is that it’s already including all of these feedbacks. That’s why it’s so imprecise, because we don’t actually know how all the feedbacks interact. Whatever the number is, say it’s 3 oC, then that’s how far the temperature goes then stops: because that’s how all of the various feedbacks interact and play out from a 520 ppm CO2 level. Over quite some period of time too: not a few years, not even a few decades.

So I don’t understand the 2 oC point.

OK, rather, I do understand it if it is being used to mean that that’s the sort of limit before changes that we really won’t like very much. But I don’t understand it as it’s often used, as some trigger point after which we get a cascade of ever more horrible things. Because our climate sensitivity number is already including the totality of the feedbacks.

Anyone care to straighten me out on this?