India ‘arrogant’ to deny global warming link to melting glaciers

Two years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN agency which evaluates the risk from global warming, warned the glaciers were receding faster than in any other part of the world and could “disappear altogether by 2035 if not sooner”.

Today Ramesh denied any such risk existed: “There is no conclusive scientific evidence to link global warming with what is happening in the Himalayan glaciers.” The minister added although some glaciers are receding they were doing so at a rate that was not “historically alarming”.

However, Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the IPCC, told the Guardian: “We have a very clear idea of what is happening. I don’t know why the minister is supporting this unsubstantiated research. It is an extremely arrogant statement.”

Ramesh said he was prepared to take on “the doomsday scenarios of Al Gore and the IPCC”.

“My concern is that this comes from western scientists … it is high time India makes an investment in understanding what is happening in the Himalayan ecosystem,” he added.

The government report, entitled Himalayan glaciers (pdf), looks at 150 years’ worth of data gathered from the Geological Survey of India from 25 glaciers. It claims to be the first comprehensive study on the region.

Vijay Kumar Raina, the geologist who authored the report, admitted that some “Himalayan glaciers are retreating. But it is nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to suggest as some have said that they will disappear.”

Pachauri dismissed the report saying it was not “peer reviewed” and had few “scientific citations”.

“With the greatest of respect this guy retired years ago and I find it totally baffling that he comes out and throws out everything that has been established years ago.”

In a remarkable finding, the report claims the Gangotri glacier, the main source of the River Ganges, actually receded fastest in 1977 – and is today “practically at a stand still”.

Some scientists have warned that the river beds of the Gangetic Basin – which feed hundreds of millions in northern India – could run dry once glaciers go. However, such concerns are scotched by the report.

According to Raina, the mistake made by “western scientists” is to apply the rate of glacial loss from other parts of the world to the Himalayas. “In the United States the highest glaciers in Alaska are still below the lowest level of Himalayan glaciers. Our 9,500 glaciers are located at very high altitudes. It is completely different system.”

“As long as we have monsoons we will have glaciers. There are many factors to consider when we want to find out how quickly (glaciers melt) … rainfall, debris cover, relief and terrain,” said Raina.

In response Pachauri said that such statements were reminiscent of “climate change deniers and school boy science”.

“I cannot see what the minister’s motives are. We do need more extensive measurement of the Himalayan range but it is clear from satellite pictures what is happening.”

Many environmentalists said they were also unconvinced by the minister’s arguments. Sunita Narain, a member of the Indian prime minister’s climate change council and director of the Centre for Science and Environment, said “the report would create a lot of confusion”.

“The PM’s council has just received a comprehensive report which presents many studies which show clear fragmentation of the glaciers would lead to faster recession. I am not sure what Jairam (Ramesh) is doing.”

Clean coal unviable, says Macfarlane

The Government is putting hundreds of millions of dollars towards championing the commercial use of carbon capture, regarded by many as a key to cutting greenhouse emissions from coal by storing the polluting gases deep below the surface.

The technology was kicked off by the previous government but Mr McFarlane has gone cold on the idea and says there is mounting evidence to back his pessimism.

The leadership of the Government and the Opposition are pulling out all stops to find enough common ground for the Senate to pass Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme later this month.

Both want a deal and to remove the threat of a double dissolution election, but Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce is doing his best to scuttle the bill.

“Last night I launched an online petition,” he said.

“In the first couple of hours I got 1,054 signatures on it. That is incredible. This fight will go down to the wire.”

Mr Macfarlane is no longer sceptical about humans causing global warming but he is now sceptical about carbon capture and storage, something he championed as resources minister in the Howard government.

“The Government’s incentive is just that,” he said as minister.

“It is an aim to bring forward the introduction of this technology into commercial plants as soon as possible.”

Just three years on, he doubts it will ever take off.

“What happened was nothing happened and that is really the problem for Australia,” he said.

“The clean coal option has passed us by. Twenty years to wait before the technology is available. Thirty years before it is commercial. We will need to move on to other options by then.”

‘Technology will solve problem’

The Government is counting on locking up a lot of carbon to help cut Australia’s emissions growth from 2035.

Resources Minister Martin Ferguson has been travelling the world, promoting Mr Rudd’s brainchild – the $100 million a year Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute.

The Minister still thinks the technology will work if there is a carbon price to drive investment.

“I actually think we are going to see a breakthrough on carbon capture and storage,” he said.

“I think technology created the problem and technology will solve the problem in terms of reducing CO2 emissions. All the renewable options, including an initial growth in gas, we are gas rich.

“So we don’t have all the eggs in one basket.”

The two men see eye-to-eye on a lot of things. Mr Ferguson is a nuclear energy enthusiast but the Government has ruled it out. The Minister now argues Australia does not need to go down that path.

“Our Government is focused on examination of all clean-energy options,” he said.

“It does not include nuclear. Perhaps Ian Macfarlane has actually now come clean about the Coalition policy for the next election. Perhaps he needs to say yes or no to that question today.”

“In the short-to-medium term, obviously we will use gas,” Mr Macfarlane said.

“We could burn gas at the same emissions as clean coal but half the price, because gas is so clean. But in the longer term Australia will, like all our other economic partners, need to consider nuclear.”

Tags: business-economics-and-finance, industry, oil-and-gas, climate-change, government-and-politics, federal-government, coal, emissions-trading, australia

9 November, 2009

China’s ‘carbon intensity commitment means nothing

China’s ‘carbon intensity’ commitment means nothing

Molly Scott Cato

15th October, 2009

There’s been plenty of excitement over China and India’s pledges to reduce the ‘carbon intensity’ of their economies. But without absolute limits, this is just business as usual

As we get closer to the climate-change negotiations in Copenhagen in December you can expect to hear a great deal more about carbon intensity. At the pre-meeting in New York in September, President Hu Jintao of China committed his nation to ‘continue its unremitting endeavours in boosting energy efficiency and by 2020, we should try to achieve a significant cut of carbon dioxide emissions per unit of gross domestic product’.

The flurry of excitement that greeted this announcement was not shared by ecologists or green economists. All Hu was really promising was that China’s massive industrial production would be achieved with relatively less production of CO2, thus increasing ‘carbon intensity’ rather than reducing carbon emissions. This carbon intensity will be calculated as a ratio of emissions to GDP output (a notoriously unhelpful measure of economic activity), and is only relative to the inefficient nature of China’s current production. So all that has really been promised is an attempt to move towards more ‘renewable’ energy sources, which include nuclear power.

How likely are we to achieve the sorts of improvements in carbon intensity that will allow us to maintain current consumption standards while making the CO2 cuts the planet needs? Adam Barnes has calculated that, taking population growth into account, merely to keep emissions stable the carbon intensity of our productive systems must fall by 66 per cent.

If we build in the need for even a modest 60 per cent cut in emissions, and extrapolate from our current trajectories to assume a population increase of 50 per cent and a doubling of per capita GDP then we are looking at the need for emissions per unit of GDP to fall by 86.8 per cent over the next 40 years.

Even if we could achieve a fraction of this greater efficiency, what would we get for our energy? While we persist in measuring economic output in monetary terms the incentive for other economies is to follow the UK-US route and rely on ‘invisible’ earnings that do not require fossil fuel burning to create value — international insurance and banking services for example. So China’s commitment could boil down to nothing more than a threat to compete with Britain for the diminishing world demand for such services.

What this means is that both sides of the ratio that generates the measure of carbon efficiency are flawed. On the one hand we have the relative reduction which really means an absolute increase — some kind of Faustian pact with a planet which, as the climate campers blazoned across their banners, doesn’t do bailouts. On the other hand we have a measure of economic value – GDP – that has nothing to do with what we, as humans, value and only respects the accountant’s yardstick of financial return.

What we need is a genuine indicator of the carbon efficiency of an economy — let’s call it a Responsible Carbon Index. It should take into account the emissions already embedded in the goods we consume but that are produced overseas; it should be measured in terms of absolute carbon emissions rather than relative ones; and it should relate to something we actually value, like human well-being, or species diversity, or some combination of such measures. A single-number index is always good — it works for the journalists — and once we have this in place environmental campaigners could use it to browbeat their national politicians to try to outperform Burkina-Faso or Laos on climate responsibility, rather than competing with China or the US on some arcane monetary measure of the production of pointless and destructive stuff.

The media is full of talk of cuts this autumn, but please excuse me if I fail to get excited until I hear about the sorts of cuts that will give half of the humans alive on the planet today a chance of seeing out their natural span of life.

9 November, 2009

Don’t we all? Or intend to, anyway? Give us an eco-renovation, but not yet. That’s religion for you, isn’t it? We stray, occasionally, particularly where the smellier food waste is concerned. Even St Tim, one notices, does not disclose what part, if any, the car plays in his “low carbon lifestyle”. Or specify how cold it has to be before he turns on the central heating. Indeed, following his court victory , the great martyr admitted that, just five years ago, he walked in darkness. “I flew abroad on holiday and for work, drove fast cars and had no knowledge of or concern about carbon emissions.”

Not unlike St Paul, Tim then went on a journey and had an epiphany. After a 6,000-mile jaunt to New Zealand in a 50-year-old Morris Oxford, the young quantity surveyor asked himself: “How could I continue to live in a way that would increase the already dangerous high levels of CO_²?” Not going on any more 6,000 mile car journeys was just the first step on his road to an exemplary, low carbon lifestyle in which, he reveals, he does not eat much meat.

Following his conversion, St Tim went to work for Grainger plc, which describes itself as “the UK’s largest listed residential landlord”. On the face of it, this seems about as sensible a scheme as a campaigning feminist taking a job in a lap-dancing club. Was the epiphany of the gradual variety or was it more of a missionary thing? One recalls that St Paul was specifically instructed, during his conversion, to go and preach to the contemporary of Grainger plc: the Gentiles. Writing about his court victory, St Tim said: “I hope that in practice it will encourage people who share my beliefs to speak up about climate change in their workplace and seek practical measures to cut emissions.”

In practice, it seems likely that his achievement in getting climate change classified with the supernatural will do more planetary damage even than a 6,000-mile trip in a 50-year-old Morris Oxford. Some wonder if St Tim has not been possessed by the spirit of Christopher Monckton. For short of the collective apostasy of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, it is hard to imagine a more rewarding episode for sceptics who have always said that environmentalism is a matter of faith, not facts. For them, the most effective way of discrediting the movement is to depict it as an alliance of gullible consumers and doomy, secular preachers, who rant about sin, self-scourging and the apocalypse because they can’t produce any evidence. Disparaging analogies with religion, implying that it has no science worth challenging, have followed the movement almost since it began, finding their most elegant expression in a well-known speech made by the late Michael Crichton. “Environmentalism is the religion of choice for urban atheists,” he said in 2003. “Increasingly it seems facts aren’t necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief.”

Too many environmentalists have helped make his point. Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, was so liberal with panic that the same Michael Burton, in a court case funded by sceptics, found nine “inaccuracies” that, he said, made it unacceptably “partisan”. For instance, in attributing the melting snow on Kilimanjaro to anthropogenic climate change, Gore went against the scientific consensus (David Miliband has made the same mistake). One wonders if this experience contributed to Justice Burton’s suggestion in the Nicholson case, that environmentalism is as much a viewpoint as a rational respƒonse to physical evidence.

As for Nicholson, he could have been designed to embody the common objection that the green movement is populated by affluent, I’m Not a Plastic Bag-carrying caricatures, who think it meritorious to advertise their eco-friendly tat or Cameronesque affectations. Does his “we don’t eat much meat” generally inspire admiration? Or unworthy thoughts along the lines of Orwell’s, when he raged against the middle-class cranks who, he argued, were putting working people off socialism? “If only the sandals and the pistachio-coloured shirts could be put in a pile and burnt,” he wrote in The Road to Wigan Pier, “and every vegetarian, teetotaller, and creeping Jesus sent home to Welwyn Garden City to do his yoga exercises quietly!”

By chance, Orwell identifies at least three of the possible types who, following Burton’s ruling, may take the opportunity to make a nuisance of themselves under the pretext of the Employment Equality (Religion and Belief) 2003 Regulations. Lawyers are already crowing over the procession of vegetarians, humanists, feminists and – why not? – climate change sceptics, who are expected to find that their deeply held beliefs have been callously disrespected.

But even without Nicholson, this dismal outcome was predictable once the Labour government had chosen to enhance the place of religious faith in public life, instead of making a stand for secularism. Once it had encouraged religious people to believe that workplaces should take account of their myriad spiritualities, it had, in spirit of fairness, to extend a similar right to cause mischief to people who strongly believe in non-religious stuff.

The difficulty with a belief such as environmentalism, Burton said, is testing the “genuineness” with which it is held. So, probably, the more extreme the protestations, the better the chance of a pay-out. That’s something for future green martyrs to bear in mind. Haven’t we all heard voices telling us to buy local produce where possible? Aren’t you hearing one, right now, saying that, for green believers, Earth Day is right up there with Christmas and Easter?

In fact, one wonders if it would not have been more prescient of Professor David Nutt, after being sacked by Alan Johnson, to say that his beliefs on the decriminalisation of drugs were dictated by an undeviating adherence to the shamanistic practices of Carlos Castaneda and thus privileged, like all similar codswallop, by the 2003 act. The counter-argument that he should, in that case, have found a job somewhere more congenial is, as we know, far too rational to be worth entertaining.

Is Rudd the worst kind of climate sceptic

Unless, of course, that leader is also a sceptic – of a sort.

There has been a lot of discussion recently about the different kinds of climate change sceptics in our debate. The PM joined the fray in his Lowy Institute speech, defining three kinds of sceptics as follows:

The opponents of action on climate change fall into one of three categories.

First, the climate science deniers.

Second, those that pay lip service to the science and the need to act on climate change but oppose every practicable mechanism being proposed to bring about that action.

Third, those in each country that believe their country should wait for others to act first.”

As far as it goes, that is quite a useful analysis. But it leaves out the fourth, and, in my opinion, by far the most dangerous category of sceptic: those who profess to take the science seriously, seek to hold the moral and scientific high ground, and then utterly fail to take the kind of action the science requires.

Those who claim to care but do too little are far more worthy of scorn and derision than those who profess not to care at all.

Let me put forward a scenario to help us decide who is most culpable.

A child swimming at a surf beach starts waving frantically from out in the waves. Corey Bernardi says “he’s not drowning, he’s just waving.” Nikki Williams says “oh, the poor dear, but I really couldn’t do anything to help, it’s just beyond my stength.” Mitch Hooke says “he might be drowning, I’m not 100% sure, but we’d be far better placed to wait for the lifesavers to get here and deal with it.” That’s Kevin’s three categories. But what does Kevin himself say?

Kevin says “this is a crisis on a grand scale. Look at all these people milling around on the beach and cravenly refusing to do anything. We have a moral obligation to act.” He starts wading in. Everyone else breathes a sigh of relief because they think Kevin’s got it under control. But Kevin never gets anywhere near the child, as he only wades in 5% of the way. The child drowns.

The fourth group of sceptics are by far the most dangerous because, through their protestations, by continually talking about how serious the issue is, they convince a great many people that the issue is under control. I believe, for example, that recent polling results by Lowy and others, which show an apparent reduction in levels of popular concern about climate change, are due in large part to the Rudd approach. Certainly, the growing chorus of scepticism helps, but far more insidious is the feeling that it is under control, that it is being taken care of. That is the power of greenwash, which corporations (”Beyond Petroleum”, anyone?) have long understood.

The core of this problem is that Rudd presents “two stark choices – action or inaction”. That is the point he made in his speech on Friday, and it’s his main rallying cry for the CPRS.

But “action or inaction” is the kind of false dichotomy that can only be supported by the shallow, spin-over-substance brigade that is so powerful in this highly political, incredibly policy-cautious government. For those of us who are actually concerned about outcomes, about delivering something meaningful – in this case a safe climate for us and for all those who come after us – the choice is very different.

The truly stark choice is “do we do what needs to be done, or do we fail?” Will we pull out all stops and do everything we can to protect the climate, or will we deny, faff around, equivocate or, worst of all, dissemble until it’s too late?

Mr Rudd attacks sceptics as gambling with our future.

Do you feel lucky?

Author: admin

India ‘arrogant’ to deny global warming link to melting glaciers