Paris, Climate Change and The Real Challenges

The Paris Climate Change Talks are  already beginning to sound problematic. Here’s why:

1.     We cannot stop climate change. The very idea that we know enough about a complex, eco-system process in an open system and that we can stop natural + man made processes is just silly. What we may be able to do is have some modest impact on the rate at which warming occurs in some parts of the world – but the impact of pledges made so far are very modest – less than 0.05C by 2100.  Warming will continue, but at a slower rate than most alarmist suggest, since the models they are using are running very hot (they predict more warming than either has occurred or is likely to occur).

2.     There is a big difference between what activist want and what Governments will do on the CO2 file. In particular, the idea that the CO2 targets will be legally binding is a non-starter for China, US and India.  What is likely to be binding is a process for looking at what is happening – e.g. Kyoto “Light”. Activists also want an absolute commitment to emissions cuts that will keep the planet from warming less than 2C by 2100, which requires much more substantial cuts than are on the table. Some activists, especially those from island states threatened by sea level rise, wants the target to be 1.5C, which requires a 60-70% cut in CO2 emissions by 2030-2040. Not going to happen.

3.     Misinformation rules. There is a lot of “guff” spoken about renewables. For the foreseeable future (e.g. until at least 2040) fossil fuels (especially natural gas) will dominate energy and transport systems.  We will go from 82% of energy from fossil sources now to 75% by 2040 and 70% in 2050. Renewables have a long way to go before they become viable as the dominant source of energy. Also, not all renewables are good. Burning wood kills people through indoor pollution (4.3 million people a year die from such pollution). There is also misinformation about where the science of climate change is – there is not universal agreement about the way in which climate works and not universal agreement on the extent to which human generated CO2 “causes” climate variability. Much yet to understand about the science.

4.     Money is key. One key issue, lingering from Copenhagen, is the size and distribution of the funds given by rich nations (like Canada) to those “experiencing the impact of climate change” or those “damaged by climate change”. This fund is expected to be $100 billion each year from 2020. Currently, despite pledges, it is unlikely to meet this target.  Until we work out what this fund is, how it will be replenished and what nations can use it for, there will be anger and conflict in Paris. Money is also key to transitioning economies from high fossil fuel use to medium fossil fuel use (which is what is being pledged). We are already seeing this as an issue in Alberta – the costs of both converting energy systems from coal to natural gas / renewables and the compensation for coal producers, coal fired power plant owners and coal communities is not trivial.

5.     Looking as if we are doing good and doing the right thing are two different things. Groupthink requires all players to “fit it” and use the rhetoric and make commitments which are aligned with the norms of the group. This is what Paris is about. This is not the same as doing the right thing. Doing the right thing would require us to stop focusing on CO2 emissions and $100 billion but pay more attention to rethinking energy systems completely, investing in innovation and getting back to science as science as opposed to science as advocacy.  Bill Gates and his co-tech investment partners, announced today, are more aligned with doing the right thing than with looking as if you are doing good. They plan to put considerable funds into clean energy innovation and emerging technologies – a better bet than just cutting emissions.

6.     Its not the planet we are trying to save, it’s ourselves. The planet will be fine. It has been around longer than us and will be around well after us – ask the Sharks and crocodiles, both of which have been around longer than our species. What really is at stake is our ability to adapt to changing conditions and our use of the planets scarce resources. The real problem is human behaviour, our current preoccupation with wealth and goods and our lifestyles. Cutting emissions sounds like someone else’s work. Changing eating and living behaviours is all of our work. The COP process (Paris is the 21^st such meeting) is not addressing the issue of what it means to be a citizen and a contributing member of a sustainable society in this and the next century. This is the issue. CO2 is a side-show.

So, we have many days of verbal haranguing to go before Paris ends in a compromise which satisfies some, but not all and will likely leave the activists angry – this is what usually happens. Whether we get to the real issues – how do we want to live together on a planet as is with 10 billion others – is not being discussed.

Bah Humbug! Extreme Weather and Paris COP21

In Paris in a few days time you will start to hear a lot about extreme weather and climate change. The rhetoric will be explicit: humans are the cause of more and more hurricanes, droughts, floods and pestilence.

Yet the UN’s own climate assessment organization – the International Panel on Climate Change – concluded that this was not the case. In 2012 and again in 2014 special reports from the IPCC on this exact issue concluded that the real problem was economic development. That is, more and more people and businesses are located in areas known to be prone to flooding, cyclones, hurricanes and drought. While the damage from extreme weather events are real – ask any farmer or house owner impacted by one such event. The idea that we can blame all of mankind rather than city and town planners and the individuals themselves seems alluring.

Let us be clear. This is what the IPCC has said:

• “Overall, the most robust global changes in climate extremes are seen in measures of daily temperature, including to some extent, heat waves. Precipitation extremes also appear to be increasing, but there is large spatial variability"
• "There is limited evidence of changes in extremes associated with other climate variables since the mid-20th century”
• “Current datasets indicate no significant observed trends in global tropical cyclone frequency over the past century … No robust trends in annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes counts have been identified over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin”
• “In summary, there continues to be a lack of evidence and thus low confidence regarding the sign of trend in the magnitude and/or frequency of floods on a global scale”
• “In summary, there is low confidence in observed trends in small-scale severe weather phenomena such as hail and thunderstorms because of historical data inhomogeneities and inadequacies in monitoring systems”
• “In summary, the current assessment concludes that there is not enough evidence at present to suggest more than low confidence in a global-scale observed trend in drought or dryness (lack of rainfall) since the middle of the 20th century due to lack of direct observations, geographical inconsistencies in the trends, and dependencies of inferred trends on the index choice. Based on updated studies, AR4 conclusions regarding global increasing trends in drought since the 1970s were probably overstated. However, it is likely that the frequency and intensity of drought has increased in the Mediterranean and West Africa and decreased in central North America and north-west Australia since 1950”.
• “In summary, confidence in large scale changes in the intensity of extreme extratropical cyclones since 1900 is low”

and so it goes on.

Human “caused” climate change is not responsible for the observable increased in claimed losses due to extreme weather events, as far as we currently understand.

And that’s the key. We currently understand a little but not enough about climate to be confident about the analysis and predictions for the future. Given that the climate models in use today are running very hot when compared to actual evidence (models are not evidence), then we should be more than cautious about our understanding of climate and predicting future climates to 2100.

So when we here the certainties in Paris, question them. When we hear that climate change will cause more and more damage, challenge the speakers on the basis of the evidence from the body established to determine whether or not man-made climate change (as opposed to natural systems) are the cause of such events – and point out that this body doesn't think so.

A More Resilient Alberta

Since January 2014, we can observe some major changes in Alberta: 

• 50,000+ job losses
• 17 oil and gas projects worth $50 billion mothballed or cancelled
• A change of government at the Provincial and Federal level
• A new focus on climate change and environmental responsibility 

Which has lead our Premier to really focus on strengthening key industries and diversifying the economy.

Things don't look good. We need $60 - $65 dollar oil to stabilize (not grow) the oil and gas sector, clear access to markets through pipelines which in turn require us to act on climate change and environmental responsibility and new rules for direct foreign capital investment to enable strengthened investment in oil, gas, agriculture and forestry. We also need a sales tax to strengthen the long-term revenue base for Government services and a strong renewed focus on effective and efficient management of public services.

But what about diversification or, more accurately, broadening the economic base. Alberta needs to recognize five things:

1. Most Alberta firms (95%) are small firms with less than ten employees. This makes diversification difficult – supporting these firms produces small gains in employment and GDP growth.
2. We have strong agriculture, forestry, ICT, health, education and design / creative industry sectors that should be better understood as engines of economic growth and harbingers of spin-off’s and spill-overs.
3. The biggest single asset we have is land. Alberta needs to see increasing the value secured from land use (especially Crown land) as a primary economic development strategy. New approaches to eco-system services using market-based instruments could see significant growth of land reclamation, land services and agribusiness.
4. Innovation depends as much on creativity, design and imagination as it does on science, technology, engineering, maths and problem solving: problem finding starts the innovation process. Our schools, colleges and universities need to ensure that every graduate has the critical thinking, problem finding and design skills to become innovators and change agents in their workplaces and community.
5. Community resilience is as important to our future as building successful firms. The closure of coal mining in Grande Cache with the loss of a total of 470 jobs in a town with a population of 4,319 (2011 census) shows us what global economic change and shifts in core commodity prices can do for a community. Strengthening resilience and the adaptive capacity of towns and regions is a key task for government, non-government organizations and firms.

Governments play a key role in innovation. Just look at your smartphone. There is not a  component of that phone (touch screen, GPS, internet access, SIRI) that was not funded by Government. Investments in science, design, learning and technology are key to our future products and services. Adding funds to university, college and school budgets which our Government has done and which it looks like the Federal government will do makes sense.

But we can not be all things to all people: focusing is better than letting a thousand blossoms bloom. We need to focus a great deal of our energy on three to five big bets that will build jurisdictional advantage. As Churchill said, “we have run out of money, so now we have to use our brains!”.

• What is it that we can do with our oil and gas technology to dramatically change the cost structure of the oil and gas industry?
• How can we leverage our expertise in ICT and big data to build new opportunities?
• What can we do with our investments is nanotechnology, genomics, ICT and design to focus our energies on new developments in areas like environmental management and monitoring, diagnostics or new value added products and services?
• How can we leverage the strengths and expertise of our health care professionals to both improve the performance and lower the costs of health care and create new products and services?
• How can we take our world-leading geomatics technologies and geological analysis technologies and create next-generation uses for these?
• How can we reimagine SAGD technologies as water treatment technologies and export these to areas of the world that need them?
• How can we leverage our skills in online and distance learning to create new approaches to skills development that we can export to the world?

It is time to really push some creative thinking about broadening our economic base, strengthening our core industries and becoming really focused on creating resilient and focused communities.

Paris in the Winter..

It is an interesting fact that the models used to predict climate in 2100 are running very hot.

That is, they do not do well when compared to either observed measurements from land based instruments or satellites collecting temperature data. Compared to the actual temperature rises since 1980, the average of 32 top climate models (the so-called CIMP5) overestimates these rises by 71-159%. A new Nature Climate Change study shows that the prevailing climate models produced estimates that overshot the temperature rise of the last 15 years by more than 300%. Given that temperature rises are very minute (we are talking 100^th of a degree centigrade), these error ranges are significant. Don't get this wrong – the climate is changing. It is just that our models for anticipating these changes are not at all working well. The graph below shows the difference between model predictions, surface temperature measures and satellite measures. It is pretty dramatic.

This is important, since it is these models which give rise to at least some of the policy and adaptive concerns which will be the focus of COP21 in Paris in just a few days time.

To make matters worse, there is little agreements between the surface temperature measures taken from weather stations around the globe and adjusted in largely appropriate (but sometimes problematic) ways and the measures taken by satellite. That is, if we take the satellite data as the most accurate then the difference between the models and the actual data is substantial – 159%.

Then there is the elephant in the room problem. There has been very little (if any) rise in THE rate of global surface temperature warming in the last 19 years, despite substantial increases in levels of C02. Several studies show that the slowdown could be caused by a natural cycle in the Atlantic or Pacific that caused temperatures to rise more in the 1980’s and 1990’s but that has slowed or stopped global warming now. Even the UK Met Office accepts that this is the case. Global warming is real, but it has probably been exaggerated in the past by the poorly designed climate models.

Then there are other complications with the general theory of climate change on which COP21 policy analysts base their case:

1. The Antarctic ice expanse is growing not shrinking, according to NASA. Research, published in the Journal of Glaciology, found Antarctica gained 112 billion tons of ice per year from 1992 to 2001 and 82 billion tons of ice per year from 2003 and 2008. Eastern Antarctica gained 200 billion tons of ice per year from 1992 to 2008, according to the NASA study, outweighing ice losses from western Antarctica totalling 65 billion tons per year. This means the south pole is actually contributing to sea level declines, not sea level rises. A similar observation could be also be made about the Arctic – sea ice extent this year still has 2000 km3 more ice than the 2012 record breaking year.
2. We all are aware that sea level rises threaten small island states, such as Kirabati. But the situation is actually quite complex. Whie some of the islands are threatened, many are actually stable or growing. In a variety of studies some 80% of the “threatened” islands have either stayed the same or grown. Professor Paul Kench of Auckland University, who has studied these islands, makes clear that “the physical foundation of these countries will still be there in 100 years, so they perhaps do not need to flee their country”.
3. Sea level rises are occurring, but not as we may think. Like all aspects of climate, there are various regional variations – in some places the seas are rising quickly, in other places they are falling. Simple explanations do not work without taking into account a complex array of factors. For example, sea level along the west coast of the United States has actually fallen over the past 20 years because long-term natural cycles; yet in other parts of the world, seas have risen by 9” since 1992.

So the science is still unfolding. No serious scientists doubts that climate change is happening. But equally, few take the simple human caused climate change (more C02 = hotter climate) less seriously. Rather than being such a simple problem, climate scientists see understanding the science of climate change as a wicked problem.

So when we listen to those attending the Paris summit, including our Prime Minister Trudeau, we should be reminded that the basis of their deliberations and decisions is an emerging science which is still very problematic.

Richard Tol, an economist and statistician, is the Professor of the Economics of Climate Change at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam and he is ranked among the “top 50 most-cited climate scholars”. He has well over 200 publications in academic journals and is a lead author for the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  He thinks little of COP21 and the Paris process. In a recent speech he said that “the UN climate summit will “ultimately proven to be a futile effort” and achieve nothing more than “sending people to Paris for no apparent reason other than to keep these people well-travelled”.

We seem to have created a problematic process built on a theory which is still in development and not looking too healthy. Lets hope Tol is wrong. But you have to wonder..