Global Ponzi Scheme: We're Taking $7.3 Trillion A Year In Natural Capital From Our Children Without Paying For It

Last week, David Roberts over at Grist flagged a report carried out by the environmental consultant group Trucost, at the behest of The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity over at the United Nations.

The idea behind the report was simple. Tally up all the world's natural capital - land, water, atmosphere, etc. - that doesn't currently have a dollar value attached to it, and figure out the price. But the next step was where it got interesting. Figure how much of that natural capital is being consumed, depleted or degraded without the responsible party paying the cost for that use. The number the study hit on was a staggering $7.3 trillion in 2009 - about 13 percent of global economic output for that year.

This brings up what economists call "negative externalities." That's a technical term for what happens when one actor in the economy has to pay for another actor's mess. In a theoretically perfect market, the price of consuming, degrading or depleting a resource would be paid by the party responsible.

But getting the theory of markets to map onto the real world is difficult. Dumping trash on a neighbor's lawn is technically free, so a lot of us should be doing it more. But because we've built societies in which our neighbor can sue us, or the cops can fine us, we're forced to internalize that cost. Lots of costs can only be internalized through smart institutional design and government policy, rather than by leaving the markets free to do their market thing.

What Trucost found is that when you scale this problem up globally - all the river, air, and land and air pollution that isn't paid for, all the water and land use that isn't paid for, and especially all the carbon emissions dumped into the atmosphere that aren't paid for - the numbers get very big:

Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions: $2.7 trillion. This was by far the biggest single problem, and East Asia and North America were the two biggest culprits. That lines up with an International Monetary Fund study that determined the United States is the world's biggest subsidizer of fossil fuels - with Asia the runner-up - because it's failed to put a price on carbon emissions through a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system. Trucost assumed a social cost to carbon emissions of $106 per metric ton. That's higher than the IMF's assumption of $25 per ton, but well within the overall range of costs studies have found.

Global Water Consumption: $1.9 trillion. Wheat farming was the biggest problem here, followed by rice farming and general water supply, mainly in Asia and North Africa. That's probably largely because developing and poorer countries have fewer institutions or infrastructure for managing water use.

Global Land Use: $1.8 trillion. Cattle ranching in South America came in first here, followed by cattle ranching in South Asia. Besides the usual uses, the effects of logging and fishing were also included. Trucost estimated the value of unused land using metrics laid out in the United Nations' Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.

Global Waste And Land, Air, And Water Pollution: $850 billion. Sulfur dioxides, nitrogen oxides, and particulate emissions were the big culprits for air pollution ($500 billion total) mainly in North America, East Asia, and Western Europe. Land and water pollution ($300 billion total) was actually mostly fertilizers, from North America, Asia, and Europe again. Global waste was the remainder, mostly hazardous materials. Trucost figured out these prices mainly through the costs of clean-up and health effects.

On top of that, the study's next conclusion was equally dramatic: whole sectors of power generation, materials production, farming and ranching across the globe would become entirely unprofitable if they had to pay the true cost of their natural capital use. The top five biggest regional industries the study looked at are in the chart below, and even in the best case their natural capital costs effectively wipe out their revenues:

In fact, of the twenty biggest regional industries the researchers examined around the globe, none of them would be profitable. Much of the global economy, in other words, is a giant Ponzi scheme that is (temporarily) viable only because markets fail to account for the value and use of the natural ecology - on which civilization depends for its crops, water, air, its very livelihood.

But that bill will ultimately be paid in full are - by our children and countless future generations.

The Consequences For The Economy

The purpose of the study was actually quite hard-nosed - to give investors some idea of the risks their investments may face. It's great for a business if someone else pays for their use of natural capital. Until that natural capital suddenly goes away, or the related ecological system collapses. Then the costs are "re-internalized" though droughts, extreme weather, rising seas, and all the attendant damage to infrastructure, to food prices, to cities, to human health and to human lives. One of the benefits of price signals - which is lost when these capital costs aren't accounted for - is that they prevent investors and industrial sectors from getting in over their heads in unsustainable practices.

According to a recent report from the Carbon Tracker Initiative and the London School of Economists, if the world successfully enacts policies to hold global warming under two degrees Celsius, then 60 to 80 percent of coal, oil and gas reserves could be rendered unusable. That would mean a loss of about $6 trillion in investments, which suggests how poorly the global economy is currently accounting for its use of the Earth's natural resources.

The Consequences For The Planet (And For Us)

The other benefit price signals ostensibly provide is that they prevent overconsumption of resources by keeping demand tethered to supply. By not pricing natural capital, we're losing out on that, too.

For a while now, the Global Footprint Network has been working on tallying up the planet's biocapacity, which is the ability of any unit of land - usually measured in global hectares - to produce useful biological materials like crops or drinking water, and to absorb wastes. What they've determined is that global biocapacity per capita is going down, since there's only a limited amount of Earth and the human population is rising. But also, humanity's ecological footprint per capita is going up, due to the all the ways we over-consume or poorly consume our natural capital. And ever since the early 1970s, we've been overshooting:

This isn't just a question of biocapacity's ability to supply human civilization with the resources it needs to function - it's a question of biocapacity's ability to regenerate that capital after it's consumed. The overshoot means that, at this point, it takes 1.5 years for the planet to regenerate the resources we consume in one year. In effect, we're taking money out of the bank faster than the interest payments can restore it. Eventually, we're going to spend biocapacity down past the point of sustainability. Eventually, something's going to give.

What We Can Do About It

In 2011, the public policy shop Demos put out a report exploring how gross domestic product has become a sort of catch-all measure of human welfare, and how inadequate it currently is to that conceptual task. One of the main reasons for that inadequacy was, not surprisingly, the fact that we don't price so many of the benefits human beings derive from natural ecosystems.

Demos suggested several ongoing projects as models for correcting that failure: There's the aforementioned Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which attempts to put a quantifiable economic value on the ability of ecosystems to provide food, crops, fresh water, raw materials, air quality, protection against erosion, protection against storms, climate maintenance, and cultural benefits. Based off the Assessment's work, China instituted a system of ecosystem payments to make sure incentives to conserve natural resources compete equally with incentives to consume them. The World Bank has also set up a project of six to ten countries that's building ecosystem benefits into national accounting practices.

The United States has actually been working on Integrated Environmental and Economic Accounting (IEEA), which was proposed by the United Nations in 1999. It constructs assessments of ecosystem values that's directly compatible with methods already in place for national accounting. The hope is the IEEA will result in environmental policies that better weigh the value of ecosystems versus the traditional economy, and will help federal agencies better manage resources. Several governments - including Switzerland, Wales, and the United Arab Emirates - are also using the ecological footprint measure as a guide in their own management practices.

Finally, the report from the Carbon Tracker Initiative and the London School of Economists suggests that capital markets start accounting for climate change, and that regulators require companies to report the carbon emissions built into their current fossil fuel reserves - precisely the sort of price signaling that isn't currently being done.

In short, the problem is real, and enormous. America is deeply implicated, but there are already concrete models out there to start accounting for our use of the natural world on the level of both policy and economics. Can we get to work already?

Related Post:

• Global Ponzi Scheme Revisited: How Climate Inaction Betrays Our Children And Future Generations

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/04/23/1905421/global-ponzi-schem

Rush Limbaugh Touts 13-Year-Old Who 'Proved' Global Warming Is A Hoax

On his radio show this week, Rush Limbaugh was excited to find a 13-year-old caller who discovered "lots of evidence" that global warming is a hoax. 13-year-old Alex from Wilmington, Indiana said evidence he discovered at his local library made it "really easy" to disprove the science.

Limbaugh was so impressed - and genuinely shocked - that climate denier books exist at the library, he offered the kid an iPad. Here is an excerpt of the exchange:

RUSH: You mean...? Hold it just second. Alex, you're at the health food store, and it's cold out there. It's March. You're there in March, it's cold, and two people in there are surprised that it's cold because it's global warming outside?

CALLER: Exactly.

RUSH: And they still concluded, "Well, we're still in global warming"?

CALLER: Yes.

RUSH: But they were shocked. This is hilarious. You know, Alex, there are none so blind as those who will not see, and that's what you're running up against. Where did you find this evidence? How hard was it for you to research?

CALLER: It wasn't that hard to learn it. There is pretty much a lot of evidence that you can find. I personally just went to the local library and looked up books. That's what I did.

RUSH: You went to the library?

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: You didn't use a computer?

CALLER: No, I didn't. Well, yeah, my mom got me one article from the computer. Yeah.

RUSH: Wow. I'm surprised you find evidence of this at the library. That's heartening. Why did you want to do this? What made you doubt the people who believe that there's global warming?

CALLER: Well, over the radio we listen to different things. I've heard lots of evidence that man-made global warming is a hoax. And since I'm doing speeches, I thought it was a very interesting topic. I want to learn more about this. I guess I just always doubted that. There's so much evidence that global warming is not man-made.

It is little surprise that Alex stumbled onto climate denier talking points, since nearly all climate denier books have ties to conservative think tanks. Internal documents obtained by ThinkProgress last year revealed that the right-wing, Koch-funded think tank Heartland Institute developed a curriculum teaching children that climate science is a controversial matter. On the other hand, a mere 24 peer-reviewed articles reject global warming, compared to a staggering 13,926 scientific articles that substantiate it.

If Limbaugh thinks a 13-year-old is where to find the truth about climate science, perhaps he can next invite a 12-year-old to discuss evolution.

Yet many top Republicans in the Senate and House subscribe to the same view. The climate zombie caucus has a wide net of Republicans, including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), former ranking member of the Senate Environment Committee James Inhofe (R-OK), House Science Chair Lamar Smith (R-TX), and House Science subcommittee chair Chris Stewart (R-UT), and many others.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/04/05/1826671/limbaugh-climate-s

Denier Déjà Vu: Conspiracy Theories In The Blogosphere In Response To Research On Conspiracy Theories

The results of {the study "NASA faked the moon landing - Therefore (Climate) Science is a Hoax"} implied that conspiratorial thinking is linked to climate denial, and hence might emerge in turn to defend climate denial against cognitive analysis - and that's what happened, as we document in "Recursive Fury."

by John Cook and Stephan Lewandowsky via Skeptical Science

Our paper Recursive fury: conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation has been published. The paper analyzed the public discourse in response to an earlier article by Lewandowsky, Oberauer, and Gignac (LOG12 for short from here on), which has led to some discussion on this blog earlier.

Refreshingly, the journal Frontiers makes all papers available for free with no paywall. Another unique feature of this journal is that readers can post comments directly beneath the abstract. Unfortunately this has led to the posting of a number of misrepresentations of the paper.

In this post, I'll be addressing some of these misconceptions (but being careful to practise what I preach, will adopt the principles of the Debunking Handbook when I debunk the misconceptions). So here are some key facts about the Recursive Fury paper:

Conspiracy theorists are those who display the characteristics of conspiracy ideation

Yep, just stating the obvious, right? Recursive Fury establishes, from the peer-reviewed literature, the traits of conspiracist ideation, which is the technical term for a cognitive style commonly known as "conspiratorial thinking". Our paper featured 6 criteria for conspiratorial thinking:

1. Nefarious Intent: Assuming that the presumed conspirators have nefarious intentions. For example, if person X assumes that blogger Y colluded with the New York Times to publish a paper damaging to X, then X presumes nefarious intent on the part of Y.
2. Persecuted Victim: Self-identifying as the victim of an organised persecution.
3. Nihilistic Skepticism: Refusing to believe anything that doesn't fit into the conspiracy theory. Note that "conspiracy theory" here is a fairly broad term and need not involve a global conspiracy (e.g., that NASA faked the moon landing) but can refer to small-scale events and hypotheses.
4. Nothing occurs by Accident: Weaving any small random event into the conspiracy narrative.
5. Something Must be Wrong: Switching liberally between different, even contradictory conspiracy theories that have in common only the presumption that there is something wrong in the official account by the alleged conspirators. Thus, people may simultaneously believe that Princess Diana faked her own death and that she was assassinated by MI5.
6. Self-Sealing reasoning: Interpreting any evidence against the conspiracy as evidence for the conspiracy. For example, when climate scientists are exonerated of any wrong-doing 9 times over by different investigations, this is reinterpreted to imply that the climate-change conspiracy involves not just the world's climate scientists but also the investigating bodies and associated governments.

We then went on to identify responses to LOG12 that exhibited these criteria. Our analysis was entirely based on whether or not public statements conformed to the criteria just listed-we made no comment on the merit of any criticism (except in cases where speculations were plain wrong).

A common misrepresentation of Recursive Fury is articulated by one commenter who says "conspiratorial ideation is defined in such a way that any criticism of LOG12, whether true or false, comes under that heading." Actually, our criteria for conspiracist ideation come from a number of peer-reviewed examinations of conspiratorial thinking and have nothing to do with the substance of any criticism of LOG12. Our objective in Recursive Fury was to demonstrate that some of those criteria arguably applied to the public discourse surrounding LOG12. It does not follow that any criticism of LOG12 involves conspiratorial thinking. Of course not. But if some (not all) critics of a paper on the role of conspiratorial thinking in science denial engage in, well, conspiratorial thinking in response, that's of scholarly interest.

The criteria for conspiracist ideation are applicable without regard to a statement's truth or falsity. Recursive Fury is not about defending LOG12. On the contrary, this latest paper puts on the scholarly record many criticisms of LOG12 that had previously been limited to blogs, and it did so without evaluating or rebutting the substance of those criticisms. Some defence!

A few critics have complained that we didn't include their methodological critiques of LOG12. Such critiques do not fit the conspiracist criteria, which is why they weren't included. Those critics are welcome to submit rejoinders or comments on LOG12 to the journal in question.

A range of different conspiracy theories are posted in Recursive Fury

Recursive Fury reports and analyzes a number of conspiracy theories regarding LOG12. These range from "global climate activist operation" to "ringleader for conspiratorial activities by the green climate bloggers," to Stephan Lewandowsky receiving millions of dollars to run The Conversation.

Some folk are able to overlook these many documented instances and insist that "There is no 'conspiracy' Mr. Lewandowsky - no matter how many times you try to manufacture one." Recursive Fury documents a whole spectrum of conspiracy theories. As you get further into the paper, the conspiracy theories become broader and more extreme until you get to my personal favourite - maths professor Kevin Judd being the grand poobah of the "global climate activist operation" at the University of Western Australia. Somehow, those who insist "there are no conspiracies" manage to skip over entire sections of the paper.

It appears that "conspiracy denial" may be another phenomenon associated with climatedenial. One blogger cannot see that his claim that climate scientists "colluded with government officials to avoid the law" is conspiratorial. Similarly, another blogger thinks accusing the University of Western Australia of being "a base for this global climateactivism operation" is not a conspiratorial hypothesis because he didn't use the word "conspiracy".

The Supplementary Material is "raw data"

As well as the Recursive Fury paper, we also published Supplementary Material containing excerpts from blog posts and some comments relevant to the various observed recursive theories. In the paper, we characterise this as "raw data" - all the comments that we encountered that are relevant to the different theories. In contrast, the "processed data" are the excerpted quotes featured in the final paper, where we match the various recursive theories to the conspiracist criteria outlined above.

One misrepresentation of Recursive Fury is that we accuse Professor Richard Betts of the Met Office of being a conspiracy theorist because one of his quotes appears in our raw data. This inclusion of a relevant comment in the raw data of a Supplementary Material document was reported in hyperventilating fashion by one blogger as aspectacular carcrash. However, there is no mention of Professor Betts in our final paper and we are certainly not claiming that he is a conspiracy theorist. To claim otherwise is to ignore what we say about the online supplement in the paper itself. The presence of the comment in the supplementary material just attests to the thoroughness of our daily Google search.

Nevertheless, I can see how this misunderstanding arose. The Supplementary Material features the heading "Excerpt Espousing Conspiracy Theory" referring to the excerpted quotes that we pasted into the spreadsheet. In hindsight, the heading should have been "Excerpt relevant to a recursive theory", because the criterion for inclusion was simply whether or not they referred to one of the hypotheses. The analysis of conspiracist ideation occurred after that, and involved the criteria mentioned at the outset.

In this context, it is important to point out that one reason we made the raw data available is for other scholars to be able to cast an alternative interpretative light on the public discourse relating to LOG12. As we note explicitly in the abstract, it is possible that alternative scholarly interpretations can be put forward, and the peer-reviewed literature is the appropriate forum for such analysis.

LOG12 is in press

The original "Moon Landing" paper (referred to as LOG12) is still in press and due to be published soon. The fact that there was a long delay between acceptance and publication is one of the quirks of the peer-review publication process. Sometimes a paper can move from acceptance to publication with surprising speed (as was the case with Recursive Fury). Sometimes it can take months.

However, this random timing has been over-interpreted by many parties, consistent with the "Nothing occurs by Accident" criteria. For example, one commenter argues that"LOG12 was fundemenatlly [sic] flawed from the start, and throughout. It offered no valuable insight or understanding as a result. It is clear to any rational outside observer it had one purpose - to be used to promote the authors advocacy of catastrophicanthropogenic global warming - and to demean and denigrate those who do not believe as he does. The fact this paper has never been published, as Lewandowsky's repeatedly claims, confirms this finding." It will be interesting to see whether this commenter resists the "Something Must Be Wrong" urge when LOG12 is published or continue to assert that the research is "a fraud".

Conclusion

Hindsight is always 20:20 but perhaps we should have anticipated the response to LOG12. The results of LOG12 implied that conspiratorial thinking is linked to climatedenial, and hence might emerge in turn to defend climate denial against cognitive analysis - and that's what happened, as we document in Recursive Fury.

- John Cook and Stephan Lewandowsky, reprinted with permission from Skeptical Science

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/03/26/1778421/denier-deja-vu-con

Climate Science Denier Leads House Science Subcommittee

The House Science, Space and Technology Committee has named a climate science denier congressman as the new chairman of the subcommittee responsible for climate change issues. With Rep. Chris Stewart (R-UT) as subcommittee chair, House Science has no shortage of climate deniers making science their prime target.

Stewart uses familiar Republican tactics to argue against cutting our greenhouse gas pollution: He told Mother Jones he is unconvinced anthropogenic global warming is "based upon sound science" - despite 97 percent of climate scientists saying otherwise - "before we make any long-lasting policy decisions that could negatively affect our economy."

Stewart also told The Salt Lake Tribune:

"I'm not as convinced as a lot of people are that man-made climate change is the threat they think it is. I think it is probably not as immediate as some people do." [...]

"What is the real threat? What are the economic impacts of those threats? And what are the economic impacts of those remedies?" he asked, explaining his approach. "Some of the remedies are more expensive to our economy than the threat may turn out to be."

For more context of Stewart's views, just look at where he is directing the subcommittee's attention. At a hearing Wednesday, Stewart knocked the EPA's extensive review of rules that protect the air and lamented that industry-funded research play too small a role at the agency. Not surprisingly, oil and gas was a top player in funding Stewart's election to Congress.

Weeks ago, House Science attempted to hold a hearing stacked with climate deniers as witnesses (only to be foiled by bad weather that same day).

Back in Stewart's home state, The Salt Lake Tribune has urged Utah leaders to take the opposite action. In a strong editorial, the paper pointed fingers at lawmakers for their ignorance, "blind or willful," that has "transformed climate change into a political issue rather than the global threat it clearly is proving to be."

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/03/20/1748771/climate-science-de

House GOP Rejects Calls For Climate Hearings - But Democrats Will Keep Pressing

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA)

Between President Obama's surprisingly hawkish second inaugural address, and the confirmation of John Kerry as Secretary of State, moves to combat climate change may be afoot in Washington.

That momentum extends to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, where ranking minority member Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and his fellow Democrats have been pushing to move hearings on climate change onto the group's agenda for this congressional session. Unfortunately, Republicans still control the House and thus the committee, and have already shot down Democrats' efforts twice, according to a report in The Hill.

On Wednesday the Committee, along party lines, voted down Democratic amendments to its formal oversight plan for the 113th Congress....

One defeated amendment, from Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), would have required hearings on the role of climate change in drought, heat waves, wildfires, reduced crop yields and other effects....

A second defeated amendment, by Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), called for hearings on climate-related coastal threats including sea-level rise, more frequent and intense storms, and ocean acidification. Both proposals called for witnesses including National Academy of Sciences members.

The good news is that Waxman intends to keep pressing, in order to get the GOP on record refusing to investigate an issue that is rapidly moving to the forefront of the American public's concern:

More votes - with a similar outcome - are expected when the meeting to approve the oversight plan resumes next week.

Waxman is offering a third amendment calling for a hearing on recent reports that warn, "the window for action to prevent irreversible harm from climate change is closing rapidly."

The need for American lawmakers to come to grips with the reality of climate change and global warming is pressing. In January, the Federal Advisory Committee released its draft of the third National Climate Assessment, and its prognostications were grim: If the United States remains on its current emissions path, most of the country will see a rise of 9 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit over the coming century, with ever-worsening extreme weather, heat waves, deluges and droughts as the result.

Encouragingly, there are signs President Obama will call for new policy pushes in next week's State of the Union address. Even without new laws from Congress, the executive branch has numerous regulatory tools with which it can combat climate change, including having the Environmental Protection Agency move to curb carbon emissions from both new and existing power plants. Nor are Waxman and other Democrats sitting idle - they've announced the formation of a new Bicameral Climate Change Task Force, "dedicated to focusing Congressional and public attention on climate change and developing effective policy responses."

As for where the Republicans are at, the House Science and Technology Committee is set to hold a hearing that appears destined to degenerate into a forum for climate denialism. The committee's new chair, Rep. Lamar Smith's (R-TX), has criticized "the idea of human-made global warming, railed against the media as "lap dogs" for not devoting enough airtime to climate deniers, and taken $500,000 from the oil and gas industries over his political career.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/02/07/1557491/gop-rejects-climat

NASA Retirees Who Have No Climate Expertise Try To Debunk NASA Scientists Who Do

by Dana Nuccitelli, via Skeptical Science

In April of 2012, 49 former NASA employees sent a letter to the current NASA administrator requesting that he effectively muzzle the climate scientists at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). None of those former NASA employees have conducted any climate science research, but based on their own lack of understanding of the subject, they objected to the conclusions drawn by the climate experts at NASA GISS. This letter drew media attention because folks who have worked at NASA are well-respected (and rightly so), but there was really no substance to it, or any particular reason to lend it credence. Astronauts and engineers are not climate experts.

Now in January of 2013, a group of 20 "Apollo era NASA retirees" has put together a rudimentary climate "report" and issued a press release declaring that they have decided human-caused global warming is not "settled" and is nothing to worry about. This time around they have not listed the 20 individuals who contributed to this project, but have simply described the group as being:

"...comprised of renowned space scientists with formal educational and decades career involvement in engineering, physics, chemistry, astrophysics, geophysics, geology and meteorology. Many of these scientists have Ph.Ds."

The project seems to be headed by H. Leighton Steward, a 77-year-old former oil and gas executive. The press release also links the NASA group to his website, "co2isgreen", which also has an extensive history of receiving fossil fuel industry funding.

This story can be summed up very simply: a group of retired NASA scientists with no climate science research experience listened to a few climate scientists and a few fossil fuel-funded contrarian scientists, read a few climate blogs, asked a few relatively simple questions, decided that those questions cannot be answered (though we will answer them in this post), put together a very rudimentary report, and now expect people to listen to them because they used to work at NASA. It's purely an appeal to authority, except that the participants have no authority or expertise in climate science.

Answering the NASA Retirees' Questions

Most of the group's report is devoted to summarizing some basic aspects of climate science, such as the greenhouse effect. At the end it lists seven "conclusions", most of which are questions they claim "are still to be resolved", but in reality are generally simple to answer.

1) How really well known is the global temperature of the earth over the past century?

Quite really well known. The accuracy of the surface temperature record has been confirmed by many different studies using a variety of different approaches, including by natural thermometers and satellites. There is very little difference between the results of different groups analyzing the surface temperature data (Figure 1).

Figure 1: The four main global surface temperature measurement datasets.

Ocean measurements also show an immense amount of heat accumulation in the world's oceans, well outside the margin of error (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Time series for the World Ocean of ocean heat content (1022 J) for the 0-2000m (red) and 700-2000m (black) layers based on running pentadal (five-year) analyses. Reference period is 1955-2006. Each pentadal estimate is plotted at the midpoint of the 5-year period. The vertical bars represent +/- 2 times the standard error of the mean (S.E.) about the pentadal estimate for the 0-2000m estimates and the grey-shaded area represent +/- 2*S.E. about the pentadal estimate for the 700-2000m estimates. The blue bar chart at the bottom represents the percentage of one-degree squares (globally) that have at least four pentadal one-degree square anomaly values used in their computation at 700m depth. Blue line is the same as for the bar chart but for 2000m depth.

2) How important to the factors that determine the surface temperature of the earth are the human related increases of CO2?

Human greenhouse gas emissions are the dominant cause of global warming. The science is entirely settled on this question, which simply boils down to physics. Long-term global warming is caused by a global energy imbalance. Human greenhouse gas emissions are responsible for by far the largest such energy imbalance over the past century. The graph below (Figure 3), is taken from Tett et al. 2000 (T00, dark blue), Meehl et al. 2004 (M04, red), Stone et al. 2007 (S07, light green), Lean and Rind 2008 (LR08, purple), Huber and Knutti 2011 (HK11, light blue), Gillett et al. 2012 (G12, orange), and Wigley and Santer 2012 (WS12, dark green).

Figure 3: Net human and natural percent contributions to the observed global surface warming over the past 50-65 years.

3) What exactly are the true feedback effects and how do they vary?

There are a number of different climate feedbacks which amplify or dampen global warming. The NASA document accurately summarizes their net effect.

"The net effect, which includes feedbacks) on the temperature anomaly from the IPCC (AR4) was ... 2.0 - 4.5 K"

By itself, a doubling of atmospheric CO2 will cause an energy imbalance sufficient to ultimately warm global surface temperatures about 1.2°C. Through a variety of different types of studies, climate scientists have concluded that the net effect of the various temperature feedbacks will amplify that warming to somewhere in the range of 2 to 4.5°C in response to doubled CO2.

4) Since the 1988 Hansen paper and presentation to Congress, through the IPCC 2000 and subsequent projections of the global temperature anomaly, the models have consistently over-projected the actual measured temperature anomalies in the subsequent years.

This statement, derived from a blog post, is simply incorrect. As we at Skeptical Science have shown several times, the IPCC temperature projections have been exceptionally accurate (Figure 4).

Figure 4: IPCC temperature projections (red, pink, orange, green) and contrarian projections (blue and purple) vs. observed surface temperature changes (average of NASA GISS, NOAA NCDC, and HadCRUT4; black and red) for 1990 through 2012.

Conclusion 4 in the document also incorrectly states that "the IPCC projections are intended to represent the worst-case scenario." The IPCC projections are based on a wide variety of human greenhouse gas emissions scenarios, not simply a single worst-case scenario. Given that many climate variables are changing faster than the IPCC anticipated, it would make for a pretty terrible worst case scenario.

5) What accounts for some of the observed differences between the steady increase in CO2 concentrations over the last century and the more erratic changes in estimated global temperature anomaly?

Cooling from human aerosol emissions offset warming from human greenhouse gas emissions in the mid-20th century, and on top of that there is natural internal variability in the climate system, as Kevin C's video illustrates.

6) What are the relative effects of natural climate oscillations such as the El Nino Southern Oscillation, (ENSO), the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), and the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO) on the earth's temperature trends? Are they compensating for the radiative forcing of CO2 (and other GHG) increases?

These are some of the contributors to the short-term natural internal variability mentioned in the answer to the last question. No, natural variability is not 'compensating' for the radiative forcing (global energy imbalance) caused by greenhouse gases. Recent research by Sedláček & Knutti (2012) found that warming caused by internal variability creates a very patchy pattern, whereas we observe a very smooth pattern of warming, consistent with an external forcing like an increased greenhouse effect. However, the ocean cycles mentioned in this question have caused a short-term dampening of global surface warming over the past decade or so.

7) Why is it assumed that, aside from the more obvious impacts of significant sea level rise on existing infrastructure, that the net effect of more CO2 is negative? After all, CO2 is often added to commercial greenhouses to promote plant growth.

This is not an assumption, it is the result of a wide body of scientific research. More CO2 means more global warming, which means more climate change, which means more extreme weather, like more heat waves and droughts, which does not bode well for plant growth or for most other life on the planet. Species are already going extinct at a relatively rapid rate. And on top of climate change, there's the damage CO2 causes via ocean acidification, global warming's evil twin.

These are not difficult questions, in fact we have answered them all here on Skeptical Science.

Risk Management - Uncertainty is not Your Friend

After failing to do more than the most rudimentary climate research, the NASA retirees wrongly conclude that uncertainty can be used to justify inaction.

"Despite claims of consensus and other appeals to authority, no one knows these answers. Once politics is removed, the evidence so far (2011) is that the actual net effect is low or uncertain (considering multiple known and potential feedbacks). As such, aggressive and extraordinarily far-reaching steps by governments to reduce production of CO2 is not warranted."

This conclusion illustrates a risk management failure which is very common amongst climate contrarians. It's no different than saying "I don't think that I'll be in a car accident, so I won't purchase auto insurance." The average American has a 30 percent chance of being involved in a serious automobile accident in his or her lifetime, and the odds of very dangerous and damaging climate change are even higher if we continue on a business-as-usual path - in fact that is the most likely scenario.

Climate contrarians like these NASA retirees essentially believe that the best case scenario will occur, that the net climate feedback and sensitivity will be near the low end of the possible range, and that we will be able to cope with future climate change. That is a possibility, but the best case scenario is only one possible outcome, and thus represents a very low overall probability of occurring. And when we fail to prepare for or prevent the worst case scenario, or even the most probable scenario, bad things happen.

Appealing to Authority Requires Actually Having Authority

Ultimately the NASA Apollo-era retirees expect the public to defer to their opinions on climate change, despite the fact that they have failed to do more than the most basic climate research and do not understand the most fundamental aspects of risk management (which is rather strange, since Apollo 13 was a good lesson in preparing for the worst case scenario).

In reality many of the questions they believe nobody has answered are actually settled science. We know humans are causing global warming, we know there is also natural variability in the climate system, and we know the climate consequences will be bad if we continue on our present course. Just how bad is an open question, which depends in large part on how quickly we reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. However, these NASA retirees are asking us to delay action in the hopes that the best case scenario will occur. This is a total risk management failure, because if they are wrong and the best case does not come to fruition, we will face some nasty consequences, and there will be very little that we can do about it.

As with the last NASA retiree letter, there is no reason why we should pay heed to this document, and very good reasons why we should reject its conclusions. We are again left wishing that these retirees would leave the climate science to the real climate experts at NASA, who are some of the best in the world.

- Dana Nuccitelli, reprinted with permission from Skeptical Science

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/01/28/1504191/nasa-retirees-who-

House Science Chair's First Action Is To Hold A Climate Change Denier Hearing

Coming off of the hottest year in U.S. history and 333 months of higher-than-average global temperatures, Rep. Lamar Smith's (R-TX) first move as the new chair of the House Science and Technology Committee includes a hearing on climate science, according to Dallas News.

For Smith, who criticized "the idea of human-made global warming," the hearing will be an opportunity to give a platform to the committee's climate zombies:

I believe climate change is due to a combination of factors, including natural cycles, sun spots, and human activity. But scientists still don't know for certain how much each of these factors contributes to the overall climate change that the Earth is experiencing. It is the role of the Science Committee to create a forum for discussion so Congress and the American people can hear from experts and draw reasoned conclusions. During this process, we should focus on the facts rather than on a partisan agenda.

Smith has blasted the media as "lap dogs" for not devoting enough airtime to climate deniers and implored networks to not "hide the facts." Unsurprisingly, he has taken $500,000 from oil and gas over his political career and $10,000 from Koch industries last year.

GOP members of the committee "keep science at farthest arm's length" with its long list of climate deniers. "All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell," House Science Subcommittee Chair Paul Broun (R-GA) said. But the list also includes former Chair Ralph Hall (R-TX), Vice Chairman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), and subcommittee chairs Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) and Larry Bucshon (R-IN).

If climate-denying Republicans want the facts and not "a partisan agenda," they can just read the new draft National Climate Assessment, which dives into the consequences of a hotter, drier, disaster-prone climate.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/01/18/1440001/house-science-chai

Australian Press Council Criticizes Climate Denier Columnists For 'Highly Offensive' Comments

Libertarian columist James Delingpole

by Graham Readfearn, via DeSmogBlog

It's the new must-have accessory for any self-respecting climate science denialist commentator in Australian newspapers - their very own "Australian Press Council" adjudication showing exactly how they stuffed up the facts and misled their readers on their stories.

Whether they like it or not, serial climate science misinformers James Delingpole and Andrew Bolt are the latest News Ltd contributors to have their online articles furnished with freshly-added hyperlinks to APC judgements finding against them.

Earlier this week, the APC found that Mr Delingpole's article "Wind Farm Scam A Huge Cover-Up", published in the Rupert Murdoch-owned The Australian back in May, had misled readers on several points.

Presumably to the shock of the UK-based columnist on The Daily Telegraph, it turns out that it's not OK to write that the wind farm business is "bloody well near a pedophile ring. They're f . . king our families and knowingly doing so," as Delingpole did when quoting an anonymous sheep farmer. As the press council said in its judgement:

... the report of the anonymous remarks concerning paedophilia, a very serious and odious crime, were highly offensive. The Council's principles relate, of course, to whether something is acceptable journalistic practice, not whether it is unlawful. They are breached where, as in this case, the level of offensiveness is so high that it outweighs the very strong public interest in freedom of speech. It was fully justifiable in the public interest to convey the intensity of feeling by some opponents of wind farms but that goal did not require quoting the reference to paedophilia.

Neither was it OK for Delingpole to write that law firm Slater & Gordon had sought to place "rigorous gagging orders" on landholders without offering any actual evidence and when the firm in question denied it.

Second, [the council] has concluded that the claim that a law firm sought gagging orders has been publicly denied by the firm and, in the absence of any supporting evidence, constitutes a breach of the Council's principles concerning misrepresentation. The newspaper's prompt publication of the law firm's denials prevented aggravation of the breach but did not absolve it.

... Besides professional embarrassment and the requirement to publish the press council's adjudication, The Australian is free to carry on regardless, as it has been doing for several years in misrepresenting climate science.

Perhaps predictably then, rather than politely decline any further contributions from a writer adjudged to have been too offensive (a bar which you have to jump very highly to get over) and to have misled readers, The Australian has instead published another offensive rant from the same writer.

Writing again in The Australian, Delingpole says of the press council's judgement: "I stand by every word of the piece - especially the bit about pedophiles. I would concede that the analogy may be somewhat offensive to the pedophile community."

And what of News Ltd blogger and columnist Andrew Bolt? Back in February (yes, the wheels of the APC turn slowly) Bolt wrote in a story headlined "Time That Climate Alarmists Fessed Up" that the UK's Met Office had issued data showing there had been no global warming for 15 years.

Bolt had failed to check back with the Met Office, which had two days earlier issued a statement saying such a conclusion was "entirely misleading". The APC adjudication, delivered earlier this month, said

The Met Office description should have been mentioned in Mr Bolt's print article and blog of 1 February, even if he then rebutted it as unconvincing. It was not sufficient in these circumstances to assert ignorance of the response or to rely on the reader's previous posting to inform other readers about it.

The press council also concluded that statements made by Bolt about sea and ice conditions "were likely to be interpreted by many readers as indicating that the longer-term trends had ceased or were reversing" and that he "should have acknowledged explicitly that all of the three changes in question were comparatively short-term and were statistically compatible with continuance of the long-term trends in the opposite direction".

While judgements such as these are welcome, the APC did stop short of finding against the writers with regard to other elements of the complaints.

For example, the APC decided it was acceptable for Delingpole to claim categorically that wind farms were causing people to fall ill, despite several scientific reviews finding no evidence for such links.

In a curious conclusion to the complaint against Andrew Bolt, the press council said ambiguously that its "adjudication neither endorses nor rejects any particular theories or predictions about global warming".

"[The council] observes that on issues of such major importance the community is best served by frank disclosure and discussion," it said.

One has to ask then, how the council aims to judge the merits of "frank disclosure" if it isn't able to accept that decades of peer-reviewed research on climate change has found the community isn't "best served" by ignoring the causes of climate change?

Graham Readfearn is an independent journalist based in Queensland, Australia, with 15 years experience as a reporter and writer on newspapers, magazines, radio and online. This piece was originally published at DeSmogBlog and was reprinted with permission.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/12/27/1375021/australian-press-c

House Committee Leaders Deny Climate Change While Extreme Weather Devastates Their States

by Jackie Weidman and Whitney Allen

On November 27th, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) announced new and returning House committee chairmen (and yes, they are all men). Some of these congressmen will run committees with jurisdiction over federal climate, energy, and environmental programs. This includes funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Clean Air Act, balancing the use of our public lands between energy production and recreation, and determining the infrastructure needs of a nation that now faces unpredictable extreme weather threats linked to climate change.

The vast majority of these chairmen voted for legislation that would dismantle EPA's ability to limit industrial carbon pollution, and for retention of special tax breaks for the oil and gas industry. Oil and gas, coal, and electric utility companies have cozied up to many of these chairmen, giving them roughly $3.8 million in campaign contributions over the course of their careers.

Meanwhile, many climate-related extreme weather events have severely afflicted Americans over the past two years, including in their home states. Record-breaking drought and heat waves, severe floods, and heavy storms wreaked havoc for the families living in the chairmens' backyards. Scientists predict that these weather events will become more frequent and/or severe if the industrial carbon pollution responsible for climate change remains unchecked.

Let's take a look at some of the Republicans who will oversee federal climate, energy, and environmental programs over the next two years, as well as their campaign contributions from the industries responsible for most climate pollution:

Rep. Sam Graves (Missouri) - Small Business Committee

In a May 2010 op-ed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Rep. Graves claimed that limiting carbon pollution is "out of touch with the people who keep this country running." Yet, the farmers, ranchers, and small business owners he refers to in his column dealt with crippling drought conditions this summer across Missouri and the Great Plains, a disaster that Midwestern scientists say "is consistent with an observed warmer climate."

In addition to drought, Graves' home state was also afflicted by other extreme weather events in 2011, including a Missouri River flood that inundated homes and businesses. All of Missouri's counties were declared disaster areas from the three main extreme weather events hitting the state, including the Joplin tornado disaster.

Graves has received $150,000 in campaign contributions from electric utilities throughout his career.

Rep. Frank Lucas (Oklahoma) - Agriculture Committee

In his first term as committee chair, Rep. Lucas voted to prevent the Department of Agriculture from helping farmers adapt to a changing climate that will include more droughts, heat waves, and heavy storms. Meanwhile, his home state of Oklahoma suffered from 8 extreme weather events that each caused at least $1 billion in total damages each.

Two of these events include the crippling heat and drought conditions that have overwhelmed his home state in both 2011 and 2012. This year's drought recently expanded, and as of November 20^th 44 percent of winter wheat crops and 80 percent of the pastures in Oklahoma are experiencing poor to very poor conditions. All of the counties in Lucas's state were declared disaster areas due to the drought. The average household in Oklahoma earns 17 percent below the national median income. The Oklahomans afflicted by the drought and other extreme weather events have less income to recover and rebuild from these episodes.

Lucas took $467,325 in oil and gas contributions and $145,992 from electric utilities over the course of his career.

Rep. Mike McCaul (Texas) - Homeland Security

Texas experienced 10 extreme weather events with $1 billion plus in damages each in 2011-12. Every single Texas county was in a declared disaster area, and it received more federal disaster aid than any other state since 2009.

In his new position, Rep. McCaul will oversee FEMA, including its disaster relief and recovery efforts, which should be comforting to Texans. But Rep. McCaul voted to approve the 2013 House Budget Plan that would have handicapped the government's ability to respond to disasters, something he openly criticized when it affected his district. McCaul asserts, "It shouldn't have taken that long," for FEMA to respond to wildfires that spread through Texas in 2011. He has not acknowledged that he would support government efforts to cut back the program even further.

Rep. McCaul received $300,000 in oil and gas contributions throughout his career.

Rep. Hal Rogers (Kentucky) - Appropriations Committee

Rep. Rogers' committee is hostile to disaster relief and recovery. It voted to slash FEMA's budget by $87 million (2011) and $182 million (2012). Budget cuts restrict FEMA's ability to provide disaster relief, food and shelter, and flood management assistance for state and local governments. Roger's home state of Kentucky suffered from four separate tornado and severe storm events in 2011-12 with at least $1 billion in damages each. Half of Kentucky's counties were in declared disaster areas from the four events, and households in these counties earn, on average, 19 percent below the U.S. median household income.

Rogers has received over $830,000 in campaign contributions from fossil fuel industries throughout his career.

Rep. Paul Ryan (Wisconsin) - Budget Committee

Over the past two years, Rep. Ryan voted more than a dozen times to block Environmental Protection Agency public health rules, including pollution reduction measures that would limit carbon pollution from power plants. While serving as Budget Committee Chairman, Rep. Ryan authored a budget that would have hurt FEMA's ability to help state and local governments repair or replace damaged infrastructure after a major disaster.

Although his budget does not mention FEMA by name, the plan would have cut discretionary federal funds to FEMA and other agencies. The reductions in the FEMA budget would have shifted a significant portion of disaster response and recovery costs to states and cities. Rep. Ryan's home state of Wisconsin experienced three billion-dollar in damages weather events in 2011-12. Nearly two-thirds of its counties were in declared disaster areas.

Ryan received $263,600 in campaign contributions from oil and gas companies throughout his Congressional career.

Rep. Lamar Smith (Texas) - Science, Space and Technology

As Climate Progress recently reported, Rep. Smith is the new chair of the Science Committee. Yet he does not accept the overwhelming scientific consensus on man-made climate change. In fact, Rep. Smith has repeatedly attacked the media for reporting on the mountains of scientific evidence confirming this fact. Smith claims that they are "determined to advance the idea of human-made global warming."

While Rep. Smith seeks to assert that climate change is just an "idea," his state has continued to suffer from the impacts of climate related extreme weather. Texas has experienced more billion-dollar in damages weather events than any other U.S. state in the past two years. The 2011-12 droughts decimated Texas crops, threatened the state's water supply, and severely harmed its cattle industry. Ironically, while pollution-fueled climate change helped cause severe economic losses in his state, Rep. Smith assured Americans that "oil and natural gas fuel our economy and sustain our way of life."

Rep. Smith is heavily supported by the oil and gas industry. It is his second largest contributor, shelling out half of a million dollars on his campaigns over the course of Rep. Smith's career.

Rep. Fred Upton (Michigan) - Energy and Commerce Committee

The Energy and Commerce Committee oversees many aspects of energy production and industrial pollution. Rep. Upton will head it up again. He has repeatedly said that he does not believe climate change is man-made, even though he used accept this scientific fact. Upton became a fierce critic of the EPA's authority to limit industrial carbon pollution. In fact, he authored the "Energy Tax Prevention Act" (H.R. 910) to amend the Clean Air Act by repealing the scientific "endangerment finding" by EPA that greenhouse gases endanger human health. This bill would have permanently prevented EPA from limiting climate change pollution.

Upton, claimed that "this legislation will remove the biggest regulatory threat to the American economy," without any independent analysis to demonstrate this claim. Months after working to get the bill through the House, multiple severe weather events hit Michigan in July 2011, causing $1 billion in damages.

Rep. Upton received $1.2 million- more than any other House committee chair - over the course of his career from the electric utility and oil and gas industries.

Jackie Weidman is a Special Assistant for Energy Policy at the Center for American Progress; Whitney Allen is an intern on the energy team at the Center for American Progress.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/climateprogress/lCrX/~3/BPtw-l7vESc/story01.htm

http://thinkprogress.org.feedsportal.com/c/34726/f/638933/s/2625593b/l/0Lthinkprogress0Borg0Cclimate0C20A120C110C30A0C12639210Chouse0Ecommittee0Eleaders0Edeny0Eclimate0Echange0Ewhile0Eextreme0Eweather0Edevastates0Etheir0Estates0C/story01.htm

Rep. Lamar Smith, Who Criticized 'The Idea Of Human-Made Global Warming,' Set To Chair House Science Panel

Climate advocates celebrated after winning nearly every Congressional race they targeted during the national elections, including four of the "Flat Earth Five" climate deniers in the House of Representatives. But with the balance of power essentially the same in Washington, many rightly worried that little would change moving into the 113th Congress.

Case in point: yesterday's nomination of Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) to chair the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology - a body with jurisdiction over many laboratories, NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the National Weather Service.

Smith is a climate skeptic who has taken to the House floor to rant against scientists and journalists "determined to advance the idea of human-made global warming." Here's Smith in a 2009 speech after scientists' emails were hacked from a server at the University of East Anglia:

"We now know that prominent scientists were so determined to advance the idea of human-made global warming that they worked together to hide contradictory temperature data. But for two weeks, none of the networks gave the scandal any coverage on their evening news programs. And when they finally did cover it, their reporting was largely slanted in favor of global warming alarmists. The networks have shown a steady pattern of bias on climate change. During a six-month period, four out of five network news reports failed to acknowledge any dissenting opinions about global warming, according to a Business and Media Institute study. The networks should tell Americans the truth, rather than hide the facts.

In fact, independent reviews found that climate scientists neither hid nor tampered with data.

Compared to the outgoing chair of the committee - Texas Republican Ralph Hall - Smith has been a bit more "moderate" in his skepticism of climate change. Last year, Hall said he doesn't "think we can control what God controls" and explained that he wasn't concerned about global warming because he's "really more fearful of freezing," even though "I don't have any science to prove that."

Smith acknowledges on his website that the climate is changing; however, he does not mention the overwhelming consensus within the scientific community that humans are responsible.

Over his political career, Smith has received $500,000 from oil and gas. And just last year, he received $10,000 from Koch industries.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/climateprogress/lCrX/~3/YG7jN0urC1o/story01.htm

http://thinkprogress.org.feedsportal.com/c/34726/f/638933/s/260e70fa/l/0Lthinkprogress0Borg0Cclimate0C20A120C110C280C12487510Crep0Elamar0Esmith0Ewho0Ecriticized0Ethe0Eidea0Eof0Ehuman0Emade0Eglobal0Ewarming0Eset0Eto0Ebe0Echair0Eof0Ehouse0Escience0Epanel0C/story01.htm