Effects of Global Warming!

From the [i]Financial Times[/i], courtesy of Mish's econo-blog:

[url=http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2012/02/battle-over-eu-airline-tax-risks-carbon.html]Battle Over EU Airline Tax Risks "Carbon Trade War"; US Congressman Equates Tax to " Barbary Pirates for Safe Passage"; Insanity of Cap-and-Trade Revisited[/url]
[quote]An alliance of countries opposed to a carbon tax on airlines is threatening to tear up trade deals with the European Union and impose new taxes on EU carriers, in a sign the world’s first carbon trade war is edging closer.

A meeting has been called for next week by the 26 countries that have been fighting to stop Brussels’ charging airlines flying in or out of the EU for their carbon emissions.

China has already told its carriers to ignore the EU legislation which took effect from January 1 and US legislators are attempting to push a similar measure through Congress.[/quote]
Just to clarify: I do think it`s critical to curb global carbon emissions; I also think cap-and-trade is a highly dubious way of achieving that goal. (Not the principle in itself; rather it's more the co-option of C&T by the likes of the big Wall Street fraudhouses that I find telling.)

The co-leading of the above anti-C-tax coalition by the U.S. seems strikingly at odds with the Obama administration's laudable push to finally get back on track with respect to raising fuel economy standards for the US road-vehicle fleet. (One of the few areas I find them to actually have kept their loud promises of "change" with respect to their disastrous-on-all-fronts predecessor administration.)

Here's a detailed analysis of the scientific flaw in something that anti-AGW folks are fond of citing, and the response to recent attempts to get it corrected.

Now, it may be that the flaw originated as simply an arithmetic mistake, or a misreading of one data value, rather than any deliberate fraud. Any reputable climatologist would have no trouble acknowledging and correcting such a mistake. But then the anti-AGWers made several other changes that distort what the original chart portrayed.

The Heartland Institute, which recently republished the flawed chart, thus perpetuating both the original mistake and distortions and the incorrect conclusion drawn from it, refuses to correct the flaws and refuses to allow a qualified scientist (this article's author) to speak about the flaws at one of their conferences this month.

This article is notable as a prime analysis of how a typical scientifically-flawed anti-AGW argument originated and how anti-AGWers refuse clear and repeated requests by scientists to correct it.

"Dear Heartland, Stop using Arthur Robinson's Trick to Hide the Incline"

[URL]http://www.skepticalscience.com/Sargasso-Sea-Not-Representative-of-Global-Temperature.html[/URL]

(In this case, a set of partial quotes cannot do justice to the quality of the article, so what I quote is just to give a flavor of the article. Please read the whole thing at the SkS site.)

[quote=Mark Boslough]Climate change is debated in letters to the editor of hometown newspapers all over the world. In the Las Cruces, New Mexico, Sun-News, one reader recently cited "a 1996 paper by Kiegwin (sic) in Science which showed that, despite the present having a CO2 concentration of 388 PPM, the present temperature is cooler than the average of the last 3,000 years, and that it was considerably warmer than today during the Medieval Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period, and the Holocene climate Optimum.” A few months later another reader asserted that “Keigwin, Science, 1996, shows present temperatures aren’t much different from the 3,000 year mean.”

Did the Keigwin paper really say that? And how is it that two non-scientists from a mid-sized New Mexico city would be so confident that a scientific paper published a decade-and-a-half earlier supports their belief that the world was warmer during Medieval times?

First, let’s review Keigwin (1996). ...

. . .

The misuse appears to have started in the late 1990s, when Arthur P. Robinson of the Oregon Institute for Science and Medicine (OISM) started the so-called “Oregon Petition” to collect signatures of people opposed to the Kyoto Protocol. With his son Zachary and two associates from the conservative George C. Marshall pressure group (Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon), he self-published a paper called “Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide” designed to look like a peer-reviewed article from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (US). It was mailed out with the petition to many thousands of engineers, dentists, veterinarians, and even some scientists. In January, 1998 it appeared in a periodical published by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), a political advocacy organization with a stated mission to “fight socialized medicine and to fight the government takeover of medicine.” The executive director of AAPS is also member of Robinson’s OISM. In it was their Figure 2, a modified version of Keigwin’s K4B.

. . .

Robinson and coauthors made several changes in representation and labeling. First they inverted the axes so time runs from left to right, but they were unaware that when paleoclimate data are plotted “years before present” means “years before 1950” so their data is shifted by about 50 years. Second, they removed the data from hydrographic station “S” which showed that recent temperatures are above the long-term average. Third, they neglected to label it as being a record for the Sargasso Sea. Fourth, they called it a global temperature in the text, saying, “For the past 300 years, global temperatures have been gradually recovering. As shown in figure 2, they are still a little below the average for the past 3,000 years.”

This paper became the basis for statements in two influential Wall Street Journal opinion pieces. ...

. . .[/quote]

Thanks for posting links to the complete article, Cheesehead. This is the same Art Robinson who is currently running for Congress in Oregon's 4th district, so this information is politically relevant. Robinson seems to have a penchant for using his sons as surrogates, as his son Matthew re-registered as a Democrat to run against Peter DeFazio, hoping to cause some fallout, but since DeFazio won, 90% to 10%, it didn't seem to have caused DeFazio any serious problems. But Robinson is having no problems raising money!

I thought this was interesting:

[url]http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/05/25/3265614/coastal-nc-counties-fighting-sea.html[/url]

Getting OT about the politics-science interface
 

[QUOTE=philmoore;301345]I thought this was interesting:

[URL]http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/05/25/3265614/coastal-nc-counties-fighting-sea.html[/URL][/QUOTE]Since the 1970s at least, think-tank-funding billionaire conservatives have worked to undermine trust of science among other conservatives (whose buttons they know how to effectively push) by portraying all business-as-usual-bucking science as political.

I recently saw an article (or maybe heard on radio) about how conservatives and liberals agreed on most environmental science issues a few decades ago but now diverge. I'll post in another thread if I can find it again.

From the article:
[quote]... Insurance rates could go up, it says.

. . .[/quote]Fortunately, some, at least, of the insurance industry has been waking up and acknowledging the likely long-term effects of AGW recently. Their customers may pay attention when that is communicated via insurance rates.

Again, I recently read some article about that, and will post in another thread if I can find it.

[i]Rolling Stone[/i] has a piece with a typically modest (not!) headline:

[url=www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719]Global Warming's Terrifying New Math[/url]: [i]Three simple numbers that add up to global catastrophe - and that make clear who the real enemy is[/i]

Interesting that the article features "an easy and powerful bit of arithmetical analysis first published by financial analysts in the U.K.", because the same geopolitical dynamic caused and pervades the ongoing global debt crisis as is at work in the political paralysis on climate change, namely, human selfishness, short-term thinking and capacity to self-delude.

And note that while it's easy to blame politicians, why do we keep electing those same "idiots"? Because the root of the paralysis is at the individual level - the fact that we all "want to do the right thing" but that probably 99% of people aren't willing to do so if it requires them to make real sacrifices. The same selfish "my tribe against yours ... me and my brother against our tribe ... me against my brother" quality that allowed evolving humankind to survive a very uncertain millions of years and become the dominant species on the planet is now proving our undoing. Classic case of "a dynamic which does not scale well".

And just as with the debt crisis, we have the same useless kinds of language and "position papers"
[quote]The accord did contain one important number, however. In Paragraph 1, it formally recognized "the scientific view that the increase in global temperature should be below two degrees Celsius."[/quote]
"EMU member state budget deficits should be below three percent of GDP." Sound familiar?

[url=www.nytimes.com/2012/08/09/world/asia/incentive-to-slow-climate-change-drives-output-of-harmful-gases.html?_r=1&ref=world]Carbon Credits Gone Awry Raise Output of Harmful Gas[/url]: [i]Manufacturers have ramped up production of a common air-conditioning coolant, counting on a windfall for destroying a byproduct under a United Nations program.[/i]
[quote]RANJIT NAGAR, India — When the United Nations wanted to help slow climate change, it established what seemed a sensible system.

Industrial gases were rated based on their power to warm the atmosphere. The more dangerous the gas, the more that manufacturers in developing nations would be compensated as they reduced their emissions.

But where the United Nations envisioned environmental reform, some manufacturers of gases used in air-conditioning and refrigeration saw a lucrative business opportunity.

They quickly figured out that they could earn one carbon credit by eliminating one ton of carbon dioxide, but could earn more than 11,000 credits by simply destroying a ton of an obscure waste gas normally released in the manufacturing of a widely used coolant gas. That is because that byproduct has a huge global warming effect. The credits could be sold on international markets, earning tens of millions of dollars a year.

That incentive has driven plants in the developing world not only to increase production of the coolant gas but also to keep it high — a huge problem because the coolant itself contributes to global warming and depletes the ozone later. That coolant gas is being phased out under a global treaty, but the effort has been a struggle.

So since 2005 the 19 plants receiving the waste gas payments — 5 of which are here in India— have profited handsomely from an unlikely business: churning out more harmful coolant gas so they can be paid to destroy its waste byproduct. The high output keeps the prices of the coolant gas irresistibly low — discouraging air-conditioning companies from switching to less-damaging alternative gases. That means, critics say, that United Nations subsidies intended to improve the environment are instead creating their own damage.[/quote]
Another in a long list of government (in this case, trans-governmental entity) subsidies having unintended (but predictably so, to anyone who realizes the subtlety that "humans are involved") consequences. Corn ethanol, anyone? "Liquidity provider" per-trade subsidies in stock exchanges?

The German news daily [i]Die Welt[/i] features a counterintuitive result regarding the effects of home insulation on energy consumption, namely that - especially in the context of classic European massive-wall home construction - insulation can significantly raise heating costs, because it destroys homes' ability to passively absorb solar warmth during daytime and retransmit it to the interior of the home later. Feed the link to Google translate for a full-article translation:

[url=www.welt.de/finanzen/immobilien/article109699115/Waermedaemmung-kann-Heizkosten-in-die-Hoehe-treiben.html]Insulation can drive up heating costs[/url]: [i]Several studies show a higher energy consumption for insulated homes. The results are especially critical because the federal government wants to tighten the energy saving regulations further.[/i]

It seems like what is really need is a "home cozy" - let the massive insulation-less walls of the home absorb solar radiation during daytime, then externally blanket the whole thing at night. :)

[QUOTE].....especially in the context of classic European massive-wall home construction - insulation can significantly raise heating costs, because it destroys homes' ability to passively absorb solar warmth during daytime and retransmit it to the interior of the home later.[/QUOTE]

My father was born on the border of Texas and Mexico. He told of his grandmother's adobe house, which he said had four foot thick walls. The house was reasonably cool during the 38+ C days which occur through much of the year in that arid area, but also comfortable during the much cooler nights.

Hurricane Sandy - I find the media avoidance of 'hurricane' simply due to the fact that it had lost that official status at the time of landfall silly, especially since said media replaced it with idiot-isms like "superstorm" - has the opiners at the NYT busily opining away:

[url=www.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/opinion/kristof-will-climate-get-some-respect-now.html?ref=opinion]Will Climate Get Some Respect Now?[/url]
[quote]President Obama and Mitt Romney seemed determined not to discuss climate change in this campaign. So thanks to Hurricane Sandy for forcing the issue: Isn’t it time to talk not only about weather, but also about climate?

It’s true, of course, that no single storm or drought can be attributed to climate change. Atlantic hurricanes in the Northeast go way back, as the catastrophic “snow hurricane” of 1804 attests. But many scientists believe that rising carbon emissions could make extreme weather — like Sandy — more likely.

“You can’t say any one single event is reflective of climate change,” William Solecki, the co-chairman of the New York City Panel on Climate Change, told me. “But it’s illustrative of the conditions and events and scenarios that we expect with climate change.” [/quote]
Perhaps, but especially in the New York City area I suggest first discussing the much-more-tractable issues such as "why do even wealthy cities like New York continue to allow - and even encourage - the placing of vital transportation, electrical and communications infrastructure below sea level, guaranteeing that it will be flooded in a rare but inevitable event like a once-in-a-century-style hurricane?"