EXCLUSIVE: The election of Donald Trump as President of the United States is a “real and imminent threat” to the fight against climate change, and “completely upends every single element” of the Paris Agreement, making it almost impossible to deliver, the MEP leading EU carbon market reform has warned.
Trump, elected today (9 November), has called climate change a hoax, saying it was “fictional”, and “created by the Chinese”.
The president-elect has threatened to pull the US out of the UN deal to cap global warming at no more than two degrees above pre-industrial levels with an aspirational 1.5 degree target. Today, EU Climate Commissioner Miguel Arias Cañete wrote to Trump, stressing the need for continued EU-US cooperation.
Ian Duncan is the Conservative member of the European Parliament leading the reform of the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS), the world’s largest scheme for trading emissions allowances.
Reforming the ETS is a major part of the EU strategy to cut emissions in line with the bloc’s climate commitments.
World governments are this week meeting in Marrakech, Morocco for the COP22 climate conference, which aims to thrash out the practical implication of the landmark pact to cap global warming.
“It completely upends every single element of the Paris Accord and almost certainly makes it impossible to deliver,” Duncan said.
Who will listen to US Secretary of State John Kerry in Marrakech now?, he asked. US officials in Morocco are “speaking for nobody but themselves and for an outgoing administration.”
China and the US, the world’s two biggest emitters, ratified the Agreement at the same time, giving impetus to the push that brought the deal into force on 4 November, much earlier than expected.
US AND CHINA RATIFY PARIS CLIMATE PACT, LEAVING EU BEHIND
The United States has joined China to formally ratify the Paris agreement to curb climate-warming emissions, the world’s two biggest economies said on Saturday, which could help put the pact into force before the end of the year.
“The extraordinary thing about Paris was that it came together in the way it did. The 1.5 degree ambition was an incredible thing to see,” Duncan said, One year on and the US participation is now in jeopardy.
“You can’t have the EU alone addressing climate change and nobody else doing it. Your industries will suffer immediately.”
Duncan, who represents Scotland, added, “The ramifications for climate change are a real and immediate threat.”
Dark mood in European Parliament
Duncan spent this morning at a meeting of MEPs from the other major European political parties. They discussed compromised amendments on the ETS bill but there was “no doubt that everyone recognised what Trump’s victory means.”
“A dark mood is the best description,” Duncan said of the meeting. “If we look behind our shoulders and no longer see allies to our left and right, then how far ahead of the pack can we go?”
Duncan, who has argued for climate change to be excluded from any Brexit negotiations, predicted that EU unity on climate action could splinter.
Paris is based on the global pain and cost of climate action being shared, he said. Greater costs being borne by the EU as a result of US recalcitrance could sap political will.
“Carbon trading is one of the best ways to fight climate change and it can be one of the most cost effective, Duncan said.
“If a significant part of the globe has chosen not to accept the Paris accord and its thresholds and targets then it is an issue for some MS who will view their competitiveness in a different way.”
Rust belt and climate denial
One of the major planks in Trump’s victory was his triumph in the Rust Belt, an area dominated by polluting industry and where he said old industries were from yesterday but also for tomorrow.
“I don’t see how you can retreat from that and say global warming is real. That’s a 180-degree volte face,” said Duncan.
“Trump’s views are beyond the established understanding of any of the big questions. It may well be he reflects and moderates but I haven’t seen any reflection or moderation in his approach this far.”
Trump’s victory was welcomed by some MEPs. Roger Helmer, of UKIP, does not believe in climate change.
He tweeted, “Paris is dead, as is COP22.”
There was a post on TWTW that did some follow up on the paper published on Tropical Hot Spot model failures that had a commenter that challenged the ramp step regression that he thought was used. The author has responded, correcting the commenter’s errors, in an email titled Errors, shown below.
ERRORS (in comment not in the paper)
Jim Wallace:
First, I never used the words “ramp step regression” in my discussions with you or in the paper; where did that come from? As the report clearly states, the first step in the analysis is called Time Series Decomposition which was used to determine which functional form best represents the underlying trend in the data. That might or might not be a Ramp Step. Moreover , unlike what you stated, it frequently was not a Ramp Step. See pages 22 & 23, which include the following:
“Section VIII. Tropical Upper Troposphere Balloon Data
The analysis results are shown first for Tropical Upper Troposphere Balloon (1959-2015) data in Figures VIII 1-4 below. In this analysis, for each temperature time series, the first step was to determine via “time series decomposition” the “best fit trend line” among standard functional forms such as Linear, Ramp Step, Step, Multiple Step, etc. The selected trend lines were best of those tested in the sense that they had the maximum R Bar Squared value.----”
And, second to my knowledge, there were no errors in any of the graphs - only 2 mislabeled Figure numbers and one Table number - all three of which were missed by our 7 reviewers and 3 authors! It was easy because the 2 Figures and one Table were right below the text which so stated.
Finally, again to my knowledge, only one person had a problem with charts and Joe responded to him by email as well the 22 people that were copied on his original email. There was nothing wrong with the chart. The commenter did not understand the time series decomposition analysis that was carried out. Furthermore, I seem to recall telling you about this situation.
As an important aside, you stated the following:
“For purposes of government regulations, it is not what the science demonstrates, but what the courts believe. And the courts believed the EPA.”
As I have indicated to you before, EPA won the Endangerment Finding case before the D.C. circuit because our side allowed itself to be in an “Our Paper Vs Their Paper” situation in which case, as a matter of (CAA) law, EPA is deemed the expert and wins - period. That did not have to happen. An empirical evidence based attack on each of EPA’s 3 Lines of Evidence was not made by the plaintiffs.
Ken, in my view, your comments regarding our paper were highly misleading. You might find interesting Alan Carlin’s comments (below)) on our paper. At his request we are adding his name to our list of reviewers.
--------
The Importance and Unique Aspects of the New Wallace et al. Report
Alan Carlin
Although the very new Wallace et al. report focuses on a new approach to showing the critical absence of a tropical hot spot, which indeed has an important inference of invalidity for USEPA’s principal “line of evidence” in their GHG Endangerment Finding, the report has even more interesting findings about other aspects of climate science. The absence of the tropical hot spot has been discussed for several years, and been ignored by climate alarmists despite the implication of this new finding that CAGW is invalid scientifically. I discussed some of these more interesting findings last week. The report provides considerable support to several of the new hypotheses highlighted here.
The importance of this new study is that the authors very carefully specified multiple simultaneous functional relationships between the most important climate science variables including the critical (in terms of alarmist science) possible dual relationships between CO2 and global temperatures and then allowed the available data to determine the importance of each variable. The report ends by asking why alarmists have apparently never used this approach to determine or assess their “science. Most of their “science” is based on alleged relationships between the variables based on their interpretations of physical science and particularly various computer models of their creation using these interpretations (despite the inherent inability of such models to accurately portray future climate due to the chaotic nature of climate).
The Wallace et al. 2016 study represents a new and interesting approach to climate science research which should yield very interesting and much more valid results since the weight given to each likely variable is determined by available evidence rather than the guesses of carefully selected “experts” and incorporated into their largely arbitrary computer models. As Wallace et al. 2011 said:
The simplest model that can characterize the relationship between atmospheric CO2 concentration levels and temperature levels must contain at least two simultaneous equations, one for each of these two state variables. Therefore, the climate system must be analyzed using simultaneous equation estimation techniques. Otherwise the parameter estimates of any structural equations will be both biased and inconsistent, which implies they are useless for policy analysis purposes. The existence of a robust atmospheric CO2 equation has been amply demonstrated, thus guaranteeing that ANY modeling system designed to forecast temperature must include at least two equations.
The much more appropriate simultaneous equation approach used in the Wallace et al. 2016 report is notable by its apparent absence (to my knowledge) in alarmist climate science despite the contribution it could and must make if climate science is ever to have any validity.
New Report Definitively Shows UN CAGW Hypothesis and IPCC Reports Invalid and Thus CPP and Paris Treaty Total Wastes
Alan Carlin
As discussed in my book, Environmentalism Gone Mad, two of the reasonable inferences from the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) hypothesis (the scientific basis for the world climate scare pushed by the United Nations and the Obama Administration) are that atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels should affect global temperatures, and that the resulting heat generated should be observable by a hot spot about 10 km over the tropics. In fact, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UNIPCC) argues that both should exist and the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) uses the hot spot as one of its three “lines of evidence” for justifying its Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Endangerment Finding (EF).
The EF, in turn, is used by EPA to justify all its climate regulations, including its ultra-expensive so-called “Clean Power Plan” (CPP} requiring that many coal plants be replaced with wind and solar-generated electric power at huge expense to ratepayers in terms of outlays and reductions in reliability as well as to taxpayers for government subsidies. The 2016 Democratic Party Platform last July now carries this approach to a new extreme by advocating that all use of fossil fuels be ended by 2050, which is highly unlikely to even be achievable at any cost.
Climate skeptic scientists have long questioned whether the effects of relatively minor (compared to other CO2 sources and sinks) human-caused emissions of CO2 have more than a minor effect on global temperatures and some have even questioned whether the UN and USEPA have even gotten the causation backwards (i.e., because on balance global temperatures affect atmospheric CO2 levels). A very interesting new study shows that their skepticism has been more than justified. By using sophisticated econometric/statistical methods on 13 different climate databases for the years 1959 to 2015 where available, the study concludes that the changes in CO2 have no measurable net effects on global temperatures but that global temperatures affect CO2 levels. The real advance in the new study is that it assumes that global temperatures may affect atmospheric CO2 levels in addition to assuming that CO2 may affect global temperatures (as assumed by UNIPCC and USEPA). This introduces complexity to the analysis but is a crucial improvement over most earlier studies.
New Research Findings Support Earlier Research by Skeptics
This conclusion is exactly what Dr. Murry Salby has independently concluded in recent years. Unfortunately, his conclusions resulted in the loss of his professorship at Macquarie University in Australia in 2013 and the confiscation of his research notes by climate alarmists at the University. As a result, his research has not been published to date in journal format as far as I know. The absence of any measurable effect of CO2 on global temperatures and the resulting missing hot spot invalidates the CAGW hypothesis in terms of the Scientific Method, and thus the EPA EF as well as the basis for the UN IPCC physical science reports and thus the scientific basis for the Paris Treaty of 2015 as well as the USEPA CPP. Alarmist scientists have tried to argue that the hot spot is actually present, but have failed to make a convincing case.
The new research report is consistent with the findings of Environmentalism Gone Mad that CAGW is invalid because reasonable inferences from it are not supported by comparisons with real world data (as required by the scientific method), but goes beyond it by providing still another, and a more sophisticated, basis for rejecting the UNIPCC/USEPA CAGW hypothesis.
The new econometric/statistical report shows that that the minor increases in global temperatures can be entirely explained by natural factors. By subtracting temperature changes due to the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) the report shows that there is no role for human emissions of CO2 as a cause of global warming.
The Role of ENSO in Determining Global Temperatures
It has long been evident even to a casual observer that global temperatures vary with ENSO since these temperatures consistently increase when El Nino conditions prevail and fall when La Nina conditions prevail. The alarmists have generally tried to ignore this reality, but in the last year or two even they have finally begun to recognize the role of ENSO in global temperatures and eagerly awaited the expected increase in global temperatures (the so-called highest recorded temperatures resulting from the 2016 El Nino) in order try to justify their now invalidated CAGW hypothesis.
Atmospheric CO2 levels, on the other hand, have been increasing fairly steadily and bear no obvious similarity to global temperatures. Previous skeptic studies have simply looked for the hot spot and not found it. But the new study shows that the current warming can be fully explained by including ENSO variations in the analysis and that while changes in CO2 levels must be considered in the analysis, it turned out that they can safely be ignored, which is even more than most skeptics have long argued.
The authors believe that ENSO is a natural phenomenon and I agree. There is no basis I know of for arguing that the gradual and fairly steady increases in atmospheric CO2 levels would bring about the ENSO fluctuations in the vast Central Pacific Ocean. ENSO has been observed over long periods and predated humans. The authors believe that ENSO appears to be influenced by changes in solar activity, so such oscillations are highly unlikely to be human influenced. Thus there is no basis to blame human activities for global temperature changes as the alarmists claim. And there is thus no basis for claiming that humans must reduce their CO2 emissions in order to avoid CAGW at the cost of hundreds of trillions of dollars, much less reliable energy supplies, and significantly lower economic growth by using wind and solar energy.
In the words of the new report:
These analysis results would appear to leave very, very little doubt that EPA’s claim of a Tropical Hot Spot [THS], caused by rising atmospheric CO2 levels, simply does not exist in the real world. Also critically important, even on an all-other-things-equal basis, this analysis failed to find that the steadily rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations have had a statistically significant impact on any of the 13 temperature time series analyzed.
Thus, the analysis results invalidate each of the Three Lines of Evidence in its CO2 Endangerment Finding. Once EPA’s THS assumption is invalidated, it is obvious why the climate models they claim can be relied upon, are also invalid. And, these results clearly demonstrate - 13 times in fact - that once just the ENSO impacts on temperature data are accounted for, there is no “record setting” warming to be concerned about. In fact, there is no ENSO-Adjusted Warming at all. These natural ENSO impacts involve both changes in solar activity and the 1977 Pacific Shift.
Moreover, on an all-other-things-equal basis, there is no statistically valid proof that past increases in Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations have caused the officially reported rising, even claimed record setting temperatures. To validate their claim will require mathematically credible, publicly available, simultaneous equation parameter estimation work. Where is it?
So it is time to pursue other ways to improve the environment and not waste further time and resources on the scientifically invalid CAGW hypothesis. It is a failed hypothesis, nothing more. (Although it is true that conventional pollutants may be reduced by decreasing coal use, there are much cheaper ways to control such pollutants than reducing coal use if and when there should be a need for further such controls.) Accordingly, there is now definitive evidence that the Paris Treaty and actions taken in response to it will serve no useful purpose and should be abandoned.