And a day of madness - by Richard... Tuesday, December 08, 2009

And a day of madness - by Richard... Tuesday, December 08, 2009

The day the US EPA declared a life-giving gas a pollutant. I did not think it was possible for mankind to be that stupid.

CLIMATEGATE THREAD

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In the grip of madness - by Richard...

"Despite the e-mail controversy," says Time Magazine, "momentum on climate change action is still building."

Environmentalists are feeling increasingly hopeful that the Copenhagen summit could produce concrete action on emissions cuts, with U.S. President Barack Obama changing his schedule to arrive on the final day of negotiations. "The clock has ticked down to zero," said the UN's climate chief Yvo de Boer on the first day of the talks. "After two years of negotiation, the time has come to deliver." There's nothing invented about that urgency.

Putting a Union Jack on it, The Daily Mail reported: "'Climategate' dominates Copenhagen talks as Government's top scientist accuses hackers of sabotage." It was a British scientist, of course.

UK climate change secretary Ed Miliband admitted that the e-mail row had been detrimental to the battle to convince people that global warming is a real threat and says there is "a long way to go" to persuade the public. But he branded critics who argue the problem is not caused by humans "profoundly irresponsible", insisting that view flies in the face of scientific opinion.

"The overwhelming consensus of scientists across the world is that climate change is real and is man-made and is happening," he said. "Convincing the public is difficult because the threat is not one that can be seen or felt, he added. "It's not an army massing on our borders and people are focused on other things in their lives."

But then we got to the meat of the issue: "There are also people who want to cast doubt on the science therefore it's not surprising that some people are not convinced. Therefore, we have to redouble our efforts, the scientific community has to redouble its efforts to persuade people," he declared.

Gordon Brown, meanwhile, is pushing European leaders to commit to deeper cuts in carbon emissions in an attempt to seal a global deal. He hopes the EU will agree to cut its output of "greenhouse gases" by 30 percent on 1990 levels by 2020 – a cut 10 percentage points deeper than Europe is currently offering.

We are in the grip of madness.

CLIMATEGATE THREAD

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A fuss about artwork - by Richard... Monday, December 07, 2009

Andrew Watson, Royal Society Research Professor at the University of East Anglia – he of "arsehole" fame, has been given a guest slot in The Times to defend his beloved CRUddites.

"Climate change e-mails have been quoted totally out of context," his piece is headlined, with the strap ironically stating: "If this was a conspiracy, it wasn't a very successful one." It is ironic, of course, because the piece itself is part of the ongoing conspiracy – one in which the MSM seem to be happy to contribute.

Despite (or because of) his performance on Newsnight, Watson likes to describe himself and his CRUds as "We non-media-savvy scientists at the University of East Anglia". But he then demonstrates his grasp of the media by offering The Times a naked lie, which the paper happily imbibes.

The "hackers" he thus claims, have "picked choice phrases out of context ... And context is all: without it, these statements look awful." With the context, of course, they look even worse – but not by the time Watson has weaved his skein of lies.

Phil Jones and his "trick" to "hide the decline" is, therefore, perfectly innocuous. All Phil is doing is "talking about a line on a graph for the cover of a World Meteorological Organisation report, published in 2000." There! You see! What could be more harmless than that. He was working on a bit of graphic art, you silly people.

The fact that this "artwork" was to be used in the 2001 IPPC report, of course, is neither here nor there.

But never mind boys and girls. Climate sceptics would have us believe that the CRU data is invalid, and that the 20th-century warming is a construct entirely in the minds of a few scientists ... and all because of an e-mail about a bit of artwork.

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Leaked! - by Richard...

Small Dead Animals has a masterful analysis of why "Climategate" had to be a leak rather than a hacker. The analysis is set out here. There is no value in my summarising it. The arguments should be savoured as a whole.

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Double your money! - by Richard...

The EU's emission trading scheme (ETS) may have been the deciding factor in the closure of the Corus Redcar steel-making plant – reported last week , giving the company a windfall bonus of up to £1.2 billion from the plant closure – on top of other savings.

Earlier this year, Corus – part of the Tata Group Europe - disclosed that its UK steel inventory was "close to exhaustion" and analysts are expecting improved earnings from second-half trading as production is increased to meet a rebound in demand.

Mothballing the efficient Redcar plant (with no expectations of its re-opening) thus fails to make obvious commercial sense, especially as Tata bought the plant only in 2007 as part of its strategy to give it better access to European (including UK markets).

However, revealed by The Times today (although the information has been available since June is an illustration of how valuable an alternative product - "carbon allowances" is to the group.

The paper's story focuses on the rival ArcelorMittal group, pointing out that it has accumulated 20.8 million surplus allowances (EUAs) given to it free by the EU. With the carbon price at over £13, they are worth about £270 million. But, with additional surplus allowances up to 2012 and an increased carbon price – expected to rise to £30 - the company could have gained assets worth around £1 billion.

While this applies to ArcelorMittal, of the three big benefactors of the scheme, the second is Corus. It has accumulated a surplus 7.5 of million EUAs (The German ThyssenKrupp steel group is third with 5.6 million). For Corus, the current value of its windfall is £100 million and, with an increased carbon price and its additional allowances, the asset value of its holdings could amount to £400 million.

To make up for accumulated and expected losses, though, the company says it is has identified £600 million "in savings and cash benefits" from its UK operation through to next March.

With redundancy and decommissions costs, very little of that can actually come from the process of closing down the Redcar plant. But, with a capacity of 3,000,000 tons of steel, closure of the plant will deliver further "savings" over 6 million tons of carbon dioxide, worth an additional £80 million per annum at current rates but around £200 million at expected market levels.

This, even for a company the size of Tara steel, is a considerable windfall, over and above the money it will already make from the EU scheme. But, with a little manipulation, the company can still double its money. By "offshoring" production to India and bringing emissions down – from over twice the EU level - to the level currently produced by the Redcar plant, it stands to make another £200 million per annum from the UN's Clean Development Mechanism.

Thus we see Indian plants being paid up to £30 a ton for each ton of carbon dixoide "saved" by building new plant, while the company which owns them also gets gets paid £30 for each ton of carbon dioxide not produced in its Redcar plant. That gives it an estimated £400 million a year from the closure of the Redcar plant up to 2012 – potentially up to £1.2 billion. And that is over and above benefitting from cheaper production costs on the sub-continent.

The decision to close Redcar – alone of the European plants to go - must also have been influenced by other factors. For instance, as well as the €20 million EU and government grant to its Dutch operation, the company points out that, in the Netherlands, "it has started to benefit from a government short-time work scheme under which a proportion of employees' salaries is paid by the state in return for in-house training during those periods in which they have no work."

No such similar scheme exists in the UK which would have further weighted the balance against Redcar. Add the £1.2 billion windfall and the company could hardly have made any other choice. The ultimate irony, of course, is that the net "carbon" saving is nil.

Nevertheless, all is not lost. In May last year, the local paper was parading the "green" credentials of the plant. The company's 3,000-acre site at Redcar, it said, was "also home to wild flowers and wildlife and the land borders a site of special scientific interest."

It looks as if Redcar is about to gain a whole lot more wild flowers and wildlife.

(Pic: courtesy Flickr – stuiek)