Global temperature for June signals a slightly colder year
In this newsletter:
1) Science magazine blows the whistle on climate model failure
Graham Lloyd, The Australian, 30 July 2021
2) Global temperature for June signals a slightly colder year
Clive Best, 27 July 2021
3) Met Office’s State of the UK climate report misleads
GWPF Science, 29 July 2021
4) India skips UK climate change meeting
Gaia Fawkes, 29 July 2021
5) Charles Moore: The West’s moralising over climate change will cost India
The Spectator, 31 July 2021
6) Tilak Doshi: Europe’s expensive climate club and its detractors
Forbes, 28 July 2021
Clive Best, 27 July 2021
3) Met Office’s State of the UK climate report misleads
GWPF Science, 29 July 2021
4) India skips UK climate change meeting
Gaia Fawkes, 29 July 2021
5) Charles Moore: The West’s moralising over climate change will cost India
The Spectator, 31 July 2021
6) Tilak Doshi: Europe’s expensive climate club and its detractors
Forbes, 28 July 2021
7) Ben Pile: Are we finally getting cold feet about Net Zero?
Spiked, 28 July 2021
Spiked, 28 July 2021
8) What climate emergency? India is heading for a second consecutive year of record grain production
World Gain News, 22 July 2021
World Gain News, 22 July 2021
9) Andrew Montford: The levelised cost of floating offshore wind
Global Warming Policy Forum, 29 July 2021
Global Warming Policy Forum, 29 July 2021
10) Andrew Montford: Clues to the levelised cost of tidal stream
GWPF Energy, 30 July 2021
GWPF Energy, 30 July 2021
Full details:
1) Science magazine blows the whistle on climate model failure
Graham Lloyd, The Australian, 30 July 2021
Leading climate scientists conceded that models used to estimate how much the world will warm with rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are running too hot.
“It’s become clear over the last year or so that we can’t avoid this,” Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told Science magazine.
The admission is seen as a significant development by scientists who argue that not enough attention has been paid to natural cycles in the earth’s climate.
It puts another question mark over the use of the most extreme scenarios generated by models, RCP8.5, to estimate what could be expected in a warming world.
The concession has been made on the eve of this month’s release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report on the science of climate change.
That report, delayed a year because of Covid-19, is due to be released on August 9 and will outline what can be expected with different levels of warming.
It will play a major role in preparations for the upcoming climate change summit in Glasgow, Scotland, in November.
A Science article published this week said climate scientists faced the alarming reality that “climate models that help them project the future have grown a little too alarmist”.
“Many of the world’s leading models are now projecting warming rates that most scientists, including the model makers themselves, believe are implausibly fast” (sic), the article said.
“In advance of the UN report, scientists have scrambled to understand what went wrong and how to turn the models, which in other respects are more powerful and trustworthy than their predecessors, into useful guidance for policymakers.”
In the past, most models projected a “climate sensitivity” – the warming expected when atmospheric carbon dioxide is doubled over pre-industrial times – of between 2C and 4.5C.
Last year, a landmark paper that used documented factors including ongoing warming trends calculated a likely climate sensitivity of between 2.6C and 3.9C but many of the new models from leading centres showed warming of more than 5C – uncomfortably outside these bounds.
The models were also out of step with records of past climate.
According to Science, the IPCC team will probably use reality – the actual warming of the world over the past few decades – to constrain model projections.
The IPCC report is also likely to present the impacts of different amounts of warming – 2C, 3C, 4C – rather than saying how quickly those impacts will be felt.
Steve Sherwood from the UNSW Climate Change Research Centre said “while it is true some new climate models have surprising climate sensitivities and predict very high future warming, what doesn’t always come through is that most new models have sensitivity values within the range estimated from observations”.
“Those models still predict substantial future weather and climate changes due to carbon dioxide, similar to predictions made by the science community for many years,” Professor Sherwood said.
US climate scientist Judith Curry said the IPCC report would certainly discuss the problem with climate models: “The elephant in the room for the IPCC is they are heavily relying on RCP8.5 emissions scenarios, which are now widely regarded as implausible.”
Michael Asten, an expert reviewer of the IPCC’s AR6 report, said the admission that climate models were running hot was a significant concession.
Full story ($)
Graham Lloyd, The Australian, 30 July 2021
Leading climate scientists conceded that models used to estimate how much the world will warm with rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are running too hot.
“It’s become clear over the last year or so that we can’t avoid this,” Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told Science magazine.
The admission is seen as a significant development by scientists who argue that not enough attention has been paid to natural cycles in the earth’s climate.
It puts another question mark over the use of the most extreme scenarios generated by models, RCP8.5, to estimate what could be expected in a warming world.
The concession has been made on the eve of this month’s release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report on the science of climate change.
That report, delayed a year because of Covid-19, is due to be released on August 9 and will outline what can be expected with different levels of warming.
It will play a major role in preparations for the upcoming climate change summit in Glasgow, Scotland, in November.
A Science article published this week said climate scientists faced the alarming reality that “climate models that help them project the future have grown a little too alarmist”.
“Many of the world’s leading models are now projecting warming rates that most scientists, including the model makers themselves, believe are implausibly fast” (sic), the article said.
“In advance of the UN report, scientists have scrambled to understand what went wrong and how to turn the models, which in other respects are more powerful and trustworthy than their predecessors, into useful guidance for policymakers.”
In the past, most models projected a “climate sensitivity” – the warming expected when atmospheric carbon dioxide is doubled over pre-industrial times – of between 2C and 4.5C.
Last year, a landmark paper that used documented factors including ongoing warming trends calculated a likely climate sensitivity of between 2.6C and 3.9C but many of the new models from leading centres showed warming of more than 5C – uncomfortably outside these bounds.
The models were also out of step with records of past climate.
According to Science, the IPCC team will probably use reality – the actual warming of the world over the past few decades – to constrain model projections.
The IPCC report is also likely to present the impacts of different amounts of warming – 2C, 3C, 4C – rather than saying how quickly those impacts will be felt.
Steve Sherwood from the UNSW Climate Change Research Centre said “while it is true some new climate models have surprising climate sensitivities and predict very high future warming, what doesn’t always come through is that most new models have sensitivity values within the range estimated from observations”.
“Those models still predict substantial future weather and climate changes due to carbon dioxide, similar to predictions made by the science community for many years,” Professor Sherwood said.
US climate scientist Judith Curry said the IPCC report would certainly discuss the problem with climate models: “The elephant in the room for the IPCC is they are heavily relying on RCP8.5 emissions scenarios, which are now widely regarded as implausible.”
Michael Asten, an expert reviewer of the IPCC’s AR6 report, said the admission that climate models were running hot was a significant concession.
Full story ($)
*** See also the GWPF's extensive papers and publications on flawed and overheated climate modelling.
2) Global temperature for June signals a slightly colder year
Clive Best, 27 July 2021
After the first 6 months 2021 looks set to be the coldest year since 2014.
The annual global average temperature calculated so far is 0.64C relative to a baseline 1961-1990. The June monthly temperature has remained unchanged since May (0.69C), although there are differences in the spatial distributions.
2) Global temperature for June signals a slightly colder year
Clive Best, 27 July 2021
After the first 6 months 2021 looks set to be the coldest year since 2014.
The annual global average temperature calculated so far is 0.64C relative to a baseline 1961-1990. The June monthly temperature has remained unchanged since May (0.69C), although there are differences in the spatial distributions.
Annual global temperatures (2021 – first 6 months)
The monthly temperatures show an insignificant change relative to the May value keeping the annual average essentially the same as well.
The monthly temperatures show an insignificant change relative to the May value keeping the annual average essentially the same as well.
Monthly temperatures. May and June 2021 are essentially the same.
There are however changes in the spatial heat distribution since May, but a strong La Nina effect remains in place.
Full post
3) Met Office’s State of the UK climate report misleads
GWPF Science, 29 July 2021
Dr David Whitehouse, GWPF Science Editor
According to the UK Met Office and repeated by the BBC, The Financial Times and The Independent and others the UK is already undergoing disruptive climate change with increased rainfall, sunshine and temperatures.
The year 2020 was the third warmest, fifth wettest and eight sunniest on record according to the latest UK State of the Climate report. It adds that no other year is in the top 10 on all three criteria.Let’s look a little more closely at that claim.
The data can be found here.
The top ten years for sunshine in the UK are, in order, 2003, 1995, 2018, 1989, 1955, 1959, 1949, 2020, 1929 and 1921. Note that five of these years are before 1950 and only three this century with the sunniest year being 17 years ago and the years 1949,1955, and 1959 being sunnier than 2020.
Conclusion, on this metric alone 2020 is nothing unusual.
The top ten years for average temperature in the UK are, in order, 2014, 2003, 2006, 2020, 2011, 2007, 2018, 1921, 1949 and 1959. Note three years are before 1960 and only three are in the past decade. Note also that six years, 2003, 2018, 2020, 1959, 1949 and 1921 appear on both lists, half of them before 1960.
Conclusion, on this metric we live in the warmest two decades of the Met Office instrumental record which seems to have plateaued.
The top ten UK rainfall years are, in order, 1872, 1903, 2000, 1877, 2020, 2012, 1954, 1998, 2008, 2014. Note two are in the 19th century, three are before 1905, four are before 1955, five are in this century and three are in the past decade at 5th, 6th and 10th place. Only 2020 and 2014 are in the temperature and rainfall top ten, but 2003, 2018, 1959, 1949, 2020 and 1921 are in the temperature and sunniest top ten list.
The only year on all three lists is 2020 which is probably statistically unimportant.
That the past five years on the rainfall list can occupy between the 5th and the 108th place on the list shows what year on year fluctuations can take place. Other years this century not previously mentioned can be found 2002 (11th), 2015 (14th), 2004 (25th), 2009 (26th), 2007 (35th), 2006 (43rd) and 2011 (45th).
Conclusion regarding rainfall, very variable, 2020 nothing unusual.
Also the table in the Met Office’s Press Release detailing 2020 “climate extremes” is as big a non sequitur as one could find in climate science. What happens in one year is not climate.
Feedback: david.whitehouse@thegwpf.com
See also GWPF report Britain's weather in 2019: More of the same again
4) India skips UK climate change meeting
Gaia Fawkes, 29 July 2021
This week, India failed to appear at Alok Sharma’s two-day conference intended to outline plans for the upcoming COP26 summit.
It follows an earlier meeting of the G20, in which they also refused to commit to the agreed language of net-zero emissions. India was the only country out of 51 invitees not to attend Sharma’s conference…
Having refused to appear in-person on the grounds that they’d already made their position clear at the G20 meeting, they then blamed “various technical issues” for failing to take part virtually. Guido doesn’t buy it: India is the third-biggest emitter in the world, and have long resisted pressure to phase out fossil fuels. 75% of India’s energy supply comes from coal, and even generous projections suggest it’ll still be around 50% by 2030.
Skipping the COP26 meeting was a deliberate snub. Net-zero targets are beyond pointless if India (and China) aren’t playing ball. It makes Allegra’s ‘don’t wash dishes before putting them in the dishwasher’ plan look even more ridiculous…
Full post & comments
5) Charles Moore: The West’s moralising over climate change will cost India
The Spectator, 31 July 2021
On Tuesday, I chaired a session at Policy Exchange addressed by Tony Abbott, the eloquent former prime minister of Australia, now an adviser to the British Board of Trade. Although he acknowledged severe recent difficulties, he declared himself optimistic that free-trading democracies, such as his country and ours, can combine to strengthen rules-based, transparent trade (i.e. the sort of trade China dislikes) across the world. I truly hope he is right.
One problem, though, which we barely touched on, is climate change. In the West, this is considered the great global challenge of our time. In developing countries, however, it is often seen as the West’s way of denying them the advantages which made us rich. This week, India did not show up for the 51-country meeting in London to prepare for COP26 in Glasgow, a deliberate snub.
India is the world’s third-largest emitter of carbon dioxide, but also the second-largest in population. Its emissions per head rank only 134th in the world. I hope that, on this subject, what we used to call the Third World prevails. Alok Sharma, the COP26 President, describes his conference as the ‘last chance’ to prevent a global temperature rise of 1.5°C over pre-industrial levels. How can he possibly know that? What India can possibly know, however, is the appalling economic disadvantage it will suffer if forced to decarbonise at the rate prescribed by western moralists.
Full post
6) Tilak Doshi: Europe’s expensive climate club and its detractors
Forbes, 28 July 2021
The Western policy elites, convinced by climate models that purportedly predict dire climate conditions decades into the future, seem to be facing the constraints of democracy in their own backyards.
The EU published a whole raft of additional climate policies on July 14th with its long-awaited “Fit for 55” package to make Europe carbon neutral by 2050. It included its most contentious plank – the carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM).
On July 19th, US Democrat legislators introduced a similar bill to tax imported goods for their carbon content sourced from countries that lack strict environmental policies. Details on the US proposal are scant, with one leading newspaper article stating that the US would “require companies that want to sell steel, iron, and other goods to the United States to pay a price for every ton of carbon dioxide that is emitted during their manufacturing processes. If countries can’t or won’t do that, the United States could impose its own price.” It would seem that the Nordhaus climate club has become the policy vehicle of choice for advocates of the “climate emergency” on both sides of the Atlantic.
Why The Climate Club
On the face of it, the climate club’s logic is straightforward enough. It is to replace the earlier flawed architectures of the Kyoto Protocol (1997) and the Paris Agreement (2015) which were voluntary international agreements to reduce carbon emissions. To mitigate the problem of ‘free riders’ that inevitably emerge with such agreements, the climate club would establish an incentive structure that penalized nations that did not play by the rules.
The EU and the US want to impose trade tariffs to bring the cost of carbon-dioxide emissions caused by the manufacture of an imported good into alignment with what a domestic producer would pay to produce the same good. European and American companies are less competitive because they have to pay for their emissions while foreign companies that export to them don’t. Thus rules to reduce emissions will encourage companies in the West to “offshore” their production to developing countries which have less onerous restrictions on emissions, a process known as “carbon leakage”. Brussels and Washington, it is claimed, merely intend to “level the playing field”. Of course the question arises, whose playing field?
The European Commission will initially apply the CBAM to imports from energy intensive sectors including iron and steel, aluminium, cement, fertilisers and electricity, coming into force from January 2026. An analysis by a bank found that Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, India and China will be amongst the most impacted by the CBAM. The complexity of the Brussels-concocted plan ensures that exporters to the EU will have their work cut out for them.
Exporting firms will have to document detailed carbon audits on their emissions which would include calculating the percentage of emissions that are already covered by carbon taxes elsewhere (domestic and for imports which go into manufacturing the exports). If these complex and expensive analyses are beyond the compliance capabilities of firms, especially for small and medium-sized businesses, the EC will unilaterally establish carbon tariffs on the basis of the dirtiest 10% of European producers of the same good.
The Climate Club’s Detractors
On July 26th, China opened its first defensive salvo against the EU’s plan to impose the world's first carbon border tax, stating that it intruded climate issues into international trading norms, broke WTO rules and undermined prospects for economic growth. Earlier in April when it became apparent that both the EU and the US Biden administration were considering extra-territorial and unilateral policies to enforce upon the world their own predilections to “fight climate change”, India also adopted a position similar to China’s. It issued a joint statement with the BASIC bloc — Brazil, South Africa, India and China — calling CBAM “discriminatory“ and expressing its “ grave concern”.
Detractors of the climate club – a club which threatens to be both exclusive and punitive for non-members — point out that carbon border taxes are contrary to the UN climate body’s Article 4. This refers to “Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities”, an established feature of climate change negotiations since the UN’s first Rio Earth Summit in 1992.
Last week, at the G20 on climate change and energy, India cited this long-standing equitable principle in countering the “net zero by 2050” target backed by the EU, US, the UN climate body and other rich country-dominated multilateral agencies such as the IEA, the World Bank and the IMF. India’s environment minister Bhupender Yadav said that “…given the legitimate need of developing countries to grow, we urge G20 countries to commit to bring down per capita emissions to global average by 2030”.
While the global average is 6.5 tons per capita of CO2-equivalent, India emits just below 2 tons while the US emits 17.6 tons and Germany 10.4 tons. India asserted that as the rich countries have already “consumed” most of the available “carbon space” in the atmospheric sink since the Industrial Revolution, the “net zero by 2050” target is inadequate.
The detractors are not limited to developing countries. Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison called the proposed carbon tariff plan “trade protection by another name”. Russia, like China, sees the CBAM as running foul of WTO rules and had already made clear its views a year ago when the EU was mooting its Green Deal plans which included carbon tariffs.
Problems With The Climate Club
Apart from the UN climate body’s Article 4, there are areas in which the proposed carbon tariffs may conflict with WTO trading rules. They may be found to contravene the WTO’s rule of non‐discrimination, a mainstay of international trading norms which requires that any advantage granted to the imported products of one WTO member must be accorded immediately and unconditionally to like products originating from all other WTO members.
Carbon tariffs could also be inconsistent with the WTO’s ‘national treatment rule’, another foundation stone of modern international trade under the WTO regime which requires that imported products be given “no less favourable” treatment than that given to like domestic products. If European producers continue to receive free emissions allowances (as they do now under the EU’s Emission Trading System), then the EU will be found in violation of the “national treatment” rule.
It would seem that the putative rich-country climate club members are headed for an impasse with the rest of the world in the rules of international trade that have broadly prevailed since the Second World War. On the one hand, we have somewhat less that 20% of the world’s population represented by policy elites that are convinced that the “science is settled” and a “climate crisis” is upon us.
On the other, we have the vast majority of the world’s population – over 6 billion — newly emerged from wretched poverty in recent decades or desperately trying to. For those beginning to enjoy — or at least having a fighting chance to taste — the fruits of economic growth and technological progress across Asia, Africa and Latin America, their worries are less to do with concerns of the carbon footprint of economic growth as much as ensuring that economic growth will re-emerge after the devastation brought on by the Covid pandemic lockdowns.
Democracy Prevails
But there is a final twist. The Western policy elites, convinced by climate models that purportedly predict dire climate conditions decades into the future, seem to be facing the constraints of democracy in their own backyards. After Switzerland dropped its negotiations with the EU, the country rejected a climate-protection law in a referendum last month. The referendum rejected all three parts of the law in separate votes: on CO2, on pesticides, and on drinking water. Two days ago, UK’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson, facing an increasing backlash from constituents over soaring heating costs with his plans to ban gas boilers in British homes in favour of expensive new-fangled heat pumps, delayed his government’s plans by 5 years to 2040.
For Europe, the greatest lesson of mass politics against climate change polices supported by metropolitan elites was the gilet jaune protests that was triggered by fuel taxes. As one acute observer put it, “The French love a good riot, but the political backlash to the French government’s plans to increase carbon taxes on fuel could be a harbinger of what’s to come in countries committed to the global warming crusade”.
It is no surprise then that a senior economist at Deutsche Bank, one of Europe’s largest banks, warned that for the EU’s Green Deal to succeed, “a certain degree of eco-dictatorship will be necessary”. The climate club’s detractors have the tide of history on their side.
There are however changes in the spatial heat distribution since May, but a strong La Nina effect remains in place.
Full post
3) Met Office’s State of the UK climate report misleads
GWPF Science, 29 July 2021
Dr David Whitehouse, GWPF Science Editor
According to the UK Met Office and repeated by the BBC, The Financial Times and The Independent and others the UK is already undergoing disruptive climate change with increased rainfall, sunshine and temperatures.
The year 2020 was the third warmest, fifth wettest and eight sunniest on record according to the latest UK State of the Climate report. It adds that no other year is in the top 10 on all three criteria.Let’s look a little more closely at that claim.
The data can be found here.
The top ten years for sunshine in the UK are, in order, 2003, 1995, 2018, 1989, 1955, 1959, 1949, 2020, 1929 and 1921. Note that five of these years are before 1950 and only three this century with the sunniest year being 17 years ago and the years 1949,1955, and 1959 being sunnier than 2020.
Conclusion, on this metric alone 2020 is nothing unusual.
The top ten years for average temperature in the UK are, in order, 2014, 2003, 2006, 2020, 2011, 2007, 2018, 1921, 1949 and 1959. Note three years are before 1960 and only three are in the past decade. Note also that six years, 2003, 2018, 2020, 1959, 1949 and 1921 appear on both lists, half of them before 1960.
Conclusion, on this metric we live in the warmest two decades of the Met Office instrumental record which seems to have plateaued.
The top ten UK rainfall years are, in order, 1872, 1903, 2000, 1877, 2020, 2012, 1954, 1998, 2008, 2014. Note two are in the 19th century, three are before 1905, four are before 1955, five are in this century and three are in the past decade at 5th, 6th and 10th place. Only 2020 and 2014 are in the temperature and rainfall top ten, but 2003, 2018, 1959, 1949, 2020 and 1921 are in the temperature and sunniest top ten list.
The only year on all three lists is 2020 which is probably statistically unimportant.
That the past five years on the rainfall list can occupy between the 5th and the 108th place on the list shows what year on year fluctuations can take place. Other years this century not previously mentioned can be found 2002 (11th), 2015 (14th), 2004 (25th), 2009 (26th), 2007 (35th), 2006 (43rd) and 2011 (45th).
Conclusion regarding rainfall, very variable, 2020 nothing unusual.
Also the table in the Met Office’s Press Release detailing 2020 “climate extremes” is as big a non sequitur as one could find in climate science. What happens in one year is not climate.
Feedback: david.whitehouse@thegwpf.com
See also GWPF report Britain's weather in 2019: More of the same again
4) India skips UK climate change meeting
Gaia Fawkes, 29 July 2021
This week, India failed to appear at Alok Sharma’s two-day conference intended to outline plans for the upcoming COP26 summit.
It follows an earlier meeting of the G20, in which they also refused to commit to the agreed language of net-zero emissions. India was the only country out of 51 invitees not to attend Sharma’s conference…
Having refused to appear in-person on the grounds that they’d already made their position clear at the G20 meeting, they then blamed “various technical issues” for failing to take part virtually. Guido doesn’t buy it: India is the third-biggest emitter in the world, and have long resisted pressure to phase out fossil fuels. 75% of India’s energy supply comes from coal, and even generous projections suggest it’ll still be around 50% by 2030.
Skipping the COP26 meeting was a deliberate snub. Net-zero targets are beyond pointless if India (and China) aren’t playing ball. It makes Allegra’s ‘don’t wash dishes before putting them in the dishwasher’ plan look even more ridiculous…
Full post & comments
5) Charles Moore: The West’s moralising over climate change will cost India
The Spectator, 31 July 2021
On Tuesday, I chaired a session at Policy Exchange addressed by Tony Abbott, the eloquent former prime minister of Australia, now an adviser to the British Board of Trade. Although he acknowledged severe recent difficulties, he declared himself optimistic that free-trading democracies, such as his country and ours, can combine to strengthen rules-based, transparent trade (i.e. the sort of trade China dislikes) across the world. I truly hope he is right.
One problem, though, which we barely touched on, is climate change. In the West, this is considered the great global challenge of our time. In developing countries, however, it is often seen as the West’s way of denying them the advantages which made us rich. This week, India did not show up for the 51-country meeting in London to prepare for COP26 in Glasgow, a deliberate snub.
India is the world’s third-largest emitter of carbon dioxide, but also the second-largest in population. Its emissions per head rank only 134th in the world. I hope that, on this subject, what we used to call the Third World prevails. Alok Sharma, the COP26 President, describes his conference as the ‘last chance’ to prevent a global temperature rise of 1.5°C over pre-industrial levels. How can he possibly know that? What India can possibly know, however, is the appalling economic disadvantage it will suffer if forced to decarbonise at the rate prescribed by western moralists.
Full post
6) Tilak Doshi: Europe’s expensive climate club and its detractors
Forbes, 28 July 2021
The Western policy elites, convinced by climate models that purportedly predict dire climate conditions decades into the future, seem to be facing the constraints of democracy in their own backyards.
The EU published a whole raft of additional climate policies on July 14th with its long-awaited “Fit for 55” package to make Europe carbon neutral by 2050. It included its most contentious plank – the carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM).
On July 19th, US Democrat legislators introduced a similar bill to tax imported goods for their carbon content sourced from countries that lack strict environmental policies. Details on the US proposal are scant, with one leading newspaper article stating that the US would “require companies that want to sell steel, iron, and other goods to the United States to pay a price for every ton of carbon dioxide that is emitted during their manufacturing processes. If countries can’t or won’t do that, the United States could impose its own price.” It would seem that the Nordhaus climate club has become the policy vehicle of choice for advocates of the “climate emergency” on both sides of the Atlantic.
Why The Climate Club
On the face of it, the climate club’s logic is straightforward enough. It is to replace the earlier flawed architectures of the Kyoto Protocol (1997) and the Paris Agreement (2015) which were voluntary international agreements to reduce carbon emissions. To mitigate the problem of ‘free riders’ that inevitably emerge with such agreements, the climate club would establish an incentive structure that penalized nations that did not play by the rules.
The EU and the US want to impose trade tariffs to bring the cost of carbon-dioxide emissions caused by the manufacture of an imported good into alignment with what a domestic producer would pay to produce the same good. European and American companies are less competitive because they have to pay for their emissions while foreign companies that export to them don’t. Thus rules to reduce emissions will encourage companies in the West to “offshore” their production to developing countries which have less onerous restrictions on emissions, a process known as “carbon leakage”. Brussels and Washington, it is claimed, merely intend to “level the playing field”. Of course the question arises, whose playing field?
The European Commission will initially apply the CBAM to imports from energy intensive sectors including iron and steel, aluminium, cement, fertilisers and electricity, coming into force from January 2026. An analysis by a bank found that Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, India and China will be amongst the most impacted by the CBAM. The complexity of the Brussels-concocted plan ensures that exporters to the EU will have their work cut out for them.
Exporting firms will have to document detailed carbon audits on their emissions which would include calculating the percentage of emissions that are already covered by carbon taxes elsewhere (domestic and for imports which go into manufacturing the exports). If these complex and expensive analyses are beyond the compliance capabilities of firms, especially for small and medium-sized businesses, the EC will unilaterally establish carbon tariffs on the basis of the dirtiest 10% of European producers of the same good.
The Climate Club’s Detractors
On July 26th, China opened its first defensive salvo against the EU’s plan to impose the world's first carbon border tax, stating that it intruded climate issues into international trading norms, broke WTO rules and undermined prospects for economic growth. Earlier in April when it became apparent that both the EU and the US Biden administration were considering extra-territorial and unilateral policies to enforce upon the world their own predilections to “fight climate change”, India also adopted a position similar to China’s. It issued a joint statement with the BASIC bloc — Brazil, South Africa, India and China — calling CBAM “discriminatory“ and expressing its “ grave concern”.
Detractors of the climate club – a club which threatens to be both exclusive and punitive for non-members — point out that carbon border taxes are contrary to the UN climate body’s Article 4. This refers to “Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities”, an established feature of climate change negotiations since the UN’s first Rio Earth Summit in 1992.
Last week, at the G20 on climate change and energy, India cited this long-standing equitable principle in countering the “net zero by 2050” target backed by the EU, US, the UN climate body and other rich country-dominated multilateral agencies such as the IEA, the World Bank and the IMF. India’s environment minister Bhupender Yadav said that “…given the legitimate need of developing countries to grow, we urge G20 countries to commit to bring down per capita emissions to global average by 2030”.
While the global average is 6.5 tons per capita of CO2-equivalent, India emits just below 2 tons while the US emits 17.6 tons and Germany 10.4 tons. India asserted that as the rich countries have already “consumed” most of the available “carbon space” in the atmospheric sink since the Industrial Revolution, the “net zero by 2050” target is inadequate.
The detractors are not limited to developing countries. Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison called the proposed carbon tariff plan “trade protection by another name”. Russia, like China, sees the CBAM as running foul of WTO rules and had already made clear its views a year ago when the EU was mooting its Green Deal plans which included carbon tariffs.
Problems With The Climate Club
Apart from the UN climate body’s Article 4, there are areas in which the proposed carbon tariffs may conflict with WTO trading rules. They may be found to contravene the WTO’s rule of non‐discrimination, a mainstay of international trading norms which requires that any advantage granted to the imported products of one WTO member must be accorded immediately and unconditionally to like products originating from all other WTO members.
Carbon tariffs could also be inconsistent with the WTO’s ‘national treatment rule’, another foundation stone of modern international trade under the WTO regime which requires that imported products be given “no less favourable” treatment than that given to like domestic products. If European producers continue to receive free emissions allowances (as they do now under the EU’s Emission Trading System), then the EU will be found in violation of the “national treatment” rule.
It would seem that the putative rich-country climate club members are headed for an impasse with the rest of the world in the rules of international trade that have broadly prevailed since the Second World War. On the one hand, we have somewhat less that 20% of the world’s population represented by policy elites that are convinced that the “science is settled” and a “climate crisis” is upon us.
On the other, we have the vast majority of the world’s population – over 6 billion — newly emerged from wretched poverty in recent decades or desperately trying to. For those beginning to enjoy — or at least having a fighting chance to taste — the fruits of economic growth and technological progress across Asia, Africa and Latin America, their worries are less to do with concerns of the carbon footprint of economic growth as much as ensuring that economic growth will re-emerge after the devastation brought on by the Covid pandemic lockdowns.
Democracy Prevails
But there is a final twist. The Western policy elites, convinced by climate models that purportedly predict dire climate conditions decades into the future, seem to be facing the constraints of democracy in their own backyards. After Switzerland dropped its negotiations with the EU, the country rejected a climate-protection law in a referendum last month. The referendum rejected all three parts of the law in separate votes: on CO2, on pesticides, and on drinking water. Two days ago, UK’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson, facing an increasing backlash from constituents over soaring heating costs with his plans to ban gas boilers in British homes in favour of expensive new-fangled heat pumps, delayed his government’s plans by 5 years to 2040.
For Europe, the greatest lesson of mass politics against climate change polices supported by metropolitan elites was the gilet jaune protests that was triggered by fuel taxes. As one acute observer put it, “The French love a good riot, but the political backlash to the French government’s plans to increase carbon taxes on fuel could be a harbinger of what’s to come in countries committed to the global warming crusade”.
It is no surprise then that a senior economist at Deutsche Bank, one of Europe’s largest banks, warned that for the EU’s Green Deal to succeed, “a certain degree of eco-dictatorship will be necessary”. The climate club’s detractors have the tide of history on their side.
7) Ben Pile: Are we finally getting cold feet about Net Zero?
Spiked, 28 July 2021
The government’s green agenda is a disaster waiting to happen.
There are press reports of growing tension between the UK treasury and the government over its Net Zero agenda.
According to the Mail on Sunday, chancellor Rishi Sunak ‘baulked’ at the estimated cost of £1.4 trillion.
The Sun then claimed the government was considering postponing a central plank of the Net Zero strategy: the ban on the sale of new gas-fired domestic boilers, which may be pushed back from 2035 to 2040.
This shows once again how the green agenda has been hastily advanced by lobbyists, academics and politicians, who have few realistic ideas as to how to achieve any of it – technically, economically or politically.
The main problem is that the policy cart has been put well before the technology horse. Over and over again, green ambitions far outstrip an achievable reality.
So, MPs overwhelmingly supported the Climate Change Act (CCA) in 2008, which committed the UK to an 80 per cent cut in carbon emissions by 2050. And in 2019, the CCA’s target was upgraded to ‘Net Zero’.
Politicians find it easy to set targets. But finding a technology that can meet those targets, and replace the hot-water and heating system in the vast majority of nearly 28million homes, is proving much more difficult.
Thirteen years have passed since the CCA, but MPs and ministers are only now being challenged on how Net Zero targets will be met, and at what cost. This is an extraordinary failure of government which reaches back well into the New Labour years.
The £1.4 trillion estimated cost of Net Zero, which made the chancellor baulk, was produced by the Office of Budgetary Responsibility (OBR) earlier this month. But even the OBR’s calculation may be a significant underestimate.
According to analysis by the Global Warming Policy Forum, the cost to the consumer of decarbonising housing alone will be £1.8 trillion – a figure which includes electricity bills rising in excess of £2,000 per year. Decarbonising cars will cost consumers a further £726 billion.
Broader analysis from the GWPF suggests that the cost of Net Zero will be in excess of £3 trillion – that’s equivalent to £107,000 per home, and increasing.
Climate-policy wonks, eco-lobbyists and green activists will no doubt dispute these estimates, coming as they do from GWPF, a think-tank that sits outside of the green blob. But the fact remains that no government since the CCA was passed has been able to explain to the public how much Net Zero is going to cost, and how this cost is to be met. Attempts to ask the government or public bodies to provide costings of the policy agenda are met with silence.
Worse still, public debate about the costs and consequences of climate policy has been all but forbidden in Westminster, academia and across the media.
Of course, greens promise that the technology is there, and that costs will not prove prohibitive. They point, for instance, to the falling cost of building offshore wind farms. But there is good reason to be suspicious of such promises. As a report in The Times noted recently, falling prices during periods of high-wind speed would make offshore wind uneconomic. As a result, offshore wind ‘would fail without subsidies’.
Either way, we will find out for sure in just a few short years how much those promises of a green Net Zero future were worth. By then, millions of homeowners may well be lumbered with the consequences, as they face bills that could range between £10,000 and £100,000 each. And this is the problem. Climate-change policy will impact the vast majority of Britons, hitting them very hard in the pocket and damaging their living standards, much more than any plausible degree of climate change will.
Moving the boiler-ban date from 2035 to 2040, or putting the brakes on the worst excesses of the green agenda, may well kick the can down the road. But we need to question the whole agenda and how it puts the political ambition of carbon neutrality before technological capacity – and before democracy.
By 2040 – a third of a century since the CCA – we may be no closer to an affordable alternative to natural gas than we are today. That’s because green political priorities steer research-and-development programmes and distort the market for innovative products.
For example, it took a UK government until last year to find just £215million for research into small modular nuclear reactors. At the same time, payments to wind-farm operators and wealthy landowners amount to many billions of pounds a year, and look set to continue well into the 2030s – an extraordinary transfer of wealth to the very richest people, in exchange for unreliable energy.
A government that promises billions to renewable-energy companies, while depriving the nuclear industry of much needed R&D funding, is not serious about meeting the UK’s energy needs. Politicians may well be starting to baulk at the cost of Net Zero. But they need to do more than that. They need to start subjecting Net Zero to proper scrutiny.
Ben Pile blogs at Climate Resistance.
Spiked, 28 July 2021
The government’s green agenda is a disaster waiting to happen.
There are press reports of growing tension between the UK treasury and the government over its Net Zero agenda.
According to the Mail on Sunday, chancellor Rishi Sunak ‘baulked’ at the estimated cost of £1.4 trillion.
The Sun then claimed the government was considering postponing a central plank of the Net Zero strategy: the ban on the sale of new gas-fired domestic boilers, which may be pushed back from 2035 to 2040.
This shows once again how the green agenda has been hastily advanced by lobbyists, academics and politicians, who have few realistic ideas as to how to achieve any of it – technically, economically or politically.
The main problem is that the policy cart has been put well before the technology horse. Over and over again, green ambitions far outstrip an achievable reality.
So, MPs overwhelmingly supported the Climate Change Act (CCA) in 2008, which committed the UK to an 80 per cent cut in carbon emissions by 2050. And in 2019, the CCA’s target was upgraded to ‘Net Zero’.
Politicians find it easy to set targets. But finding a technology that can meet those targets, and replace the hot-water and heating system in the vast majority of nearly 28million homes, is proving much more difficult.
Thirteen years have passed since the CCA, but MPs and ministers are only now being challenged on how Net Zero targets will be met, and at what cost. This is an extraordinary failure of government which reaches back well into the New Labour years.
The £1.4 trillion estimated cost of Net Zero, which made the chancellor baulk, was produced by the Office of Budgetary Responsibility (OBR) earlier this month. But even the OBR’s calculation may be a significant underestimate.
According to analysis by the Global Warming Policy Forum, the cost to the consumer of decarbonising housing alone will be £1.8 trillion – a figure which includes electricity bills rising in excess of £2,000 per year. Decarbonising cars will cost consumers a further £726 billion.
Broader analysis from the GWPF suggests that the cost of Net Zero will be in excess of £3 trillion – that’s equivalent to £107,000 per home, and increasing.
Climate-policy wonks, eco-lobbyists and green activists will no doubt dispute these estimates, coming as they do from GWPF, a think-tank that sits outside of the green blob. But the fact remains that no government since the CCA was passed has been able to explain to the public how much Net Zero is going to cost, and how this cost is to be met. Attempts to ask the government or public bodies to provide costings of the policy agenda are met with silence.
Worse still, public debate about the costs and consequences of climate policy has been all but forbidden in Westminster, academia and across the media.
Of course, greens promise that the technology is there, and that costs will not prove prohibitive. They point, for instance, to the falling cost of building offshore wind farms. But there is good reason to be suspicious of such promises. As a report in The Times noted recently, falling prices during periods of high-wind speed would make offshore wind uneconomic. As a result, offshore wind ‘would fail without subsidies’.
Either way, we will find out for sure in just a few short years how much those promises of a green Net Zero future were worth. By then, millions of homeowners may well be lumbered with the consequences, as they face bills that could range between £10,000 and £100,000 each. And this is the problem. Climate-change policy will impact the vast majority of Britons, hitting them very hard in the pocket and damaging their living standards, much more than any plausible degree of climate change will.
Moving the boiler-ban date from 2035 to 2040, or putting the brakes on the worst excesses of the green agenda, may well kick the can down the road. But we need to question the whole agenda and how it puts the political ambition of carbon neutrality before technological capacity – and before democracy.
By 2040 – a third of a century since the CCA – we may be no closer to an affordable alternative to natural gas than we are today. That’s because green political priorities steer research-and-development programmes and distort the market for innovative products.
For example, it took a UK government until last year to find just £215million for research into small modular nuclear reactors. At the same time, payments to wind-farm operators and wealthy landowners amount to many billions of pounds a year, and look set to continue well into the 2030s – an extraordinary transfer of wealth to the very richest people, in exchange for unreliable energy.
A government that promises billions to renewable-energy companies, while depriving the nuclear industry of much needed R&D funding, is not serious about meeting the UK’s energy needs. Politicians may well be starting to baulk at the cost of Net Zero. But they need to do more than that. They need to start subjecting Net Zero to proper scrutiny.
Ben Pile blogs at Climate Resistance.
8) What climate emergency? India is heading for a second consecutive year of record grain production
World Gain News, 22 July 2021
NEW DELHI, INDIA — India is expected to produce a record 305.4 million tonnes of grain in 2020-21, an increase of 8 million tonnes from last year’s record harvest, according to a report from the Foreign Agricultural Service of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).
World Gain News, 22 July 2021
NEW DELHI, INDIA — India is expected to produce a record 305.4 million tonnes of grain in 2020-21, an increase of 8 million tonnes from last year’s record harvest, according to a report from the Foreign Agricultural Service of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Higher production is being driven by record production of rice, wheat, corn and pulses.
For 2021-22, rice production at 121 million tonnes is not expected to change, despite concerns about the prolonged lull in the monsoon’s rains.
Full story
For 2021-22, rice production at 121 million tonnes is not expected to change, despite concerns about the prolonged lull in the monsoon’s rains.
Full story
9) Andrew Montford: The levelised cost of floating offshore wind
Global Warming Policy Forum, 29 July 2021
We present what may be the first estimate of the levelised cost of floating offshore wind.
Last year, I wrote a blog post setting out the financial situation of Hywind, the UK’s first commercial floating offshore windfarm, and indeed the first in the world. It was an ugly tale, with a hugely lossmaking operation kept in the black only by a vast transfer of subsidies. However, Hywind has recently published its second set of financial results since it became fully operational, and so we can now start to get a handle on its operational performance and underlying costs, and publish what I believe is the first estimate of the levelised cost of floating offshore wind.
Situated off Peterhead, in what appears to be something of a sweet spot for wind, it is unsurprising that Hywind’s performance is rather better than your typical offshore wind farm. Renewables advocates are keen to point out that its capacity factor (the electricity generated as a percentage of the theoretical maximum) has reached 57%. However, in 2020/2021, that fell back to just 51%, which is only a few points ahead of recent fixed offshore wind farms.
Meanwhile its costs are extraordinarily high. We already knew that its capital cost, at £8.9m/MW. was around three times the that of fixed offshore wind. But its opex costs are also much higher than might be expected. As a rule of thumb, fixed offshore wind opex starts at around £100,000/MW per year, and then rises from there as the turbines age. However, Hywind seems to have started out from a much higher base – its opex costs have averaged over £200,000/MW per year since it became operational.
With only marginally better operational performance than fixed offshore, and costs that are several times higher, there is no hope that Hywind’s overall levelised cost will be anything other than disastrously expensive. I estimate the LCOE figure as £224/MWh, a value that is unchanged since last year, suggesting that the value is reasonably robust. This is approximately double that of fixed offshore wind, and perhaps five to six times what we would expect for electricity from gas turbines. (As always when comparing wind and gas, we should note that the comparison is misleading, since wind should carry a considerable extra cost burden because of its intermittency, which is expensive to correct).
There can therefore be little doubt that Hywind is a failure. Kincardine, the UK’s second floating offshore windfarm, looks as though it will be more expensive still. It seems beyond doubt that floating offshore wind is a financial disaster.
Unsurprisingly, the government is ploughing ahead with it regardless.
LCOE assumptions
WACC: 5%
Lifespan: 20 years
Output deterioration: 2.1% per annum
Opex increase: 5.7% per annum
The calculations can be seen in the spreadsheet below
Global Warming Policy Forum, 29 July 2021
We present what may be the first estimate of the levelised cost of floating offshore wind.
Last year, I wrote a blog post setting out the financial situation of Hywind, the UK’s first commercial floating offshore windfarm, and indeed the first in the world. It was an ugly tale, with a hugely lossmaking operation kept in the black only by a vast transfer of subsidies. However, Hywind has recently published its second set of financial results since it became fully operational, and so we can now start to get a handle on its operational performance and underlying costs, and publish what I believe is the first estimate of the levelised cost of floating offshore wind.
Situated off Peterhead, in what appears to be something of a sweet spot for wind, it is unsurprising that Hywind’s performance is rather better than your typical offshore wind farm. Renewables advocates are keen to point out that its capacity factor (the electricity generated as a percentage of the theoretical maximum) has reached 57%. However, in 2020/2021, that fell back to just 51%, which is only a few points ahead of recent fixed offshore wind farms.
Meanwhile its costs are extraordinarily high. We already knew that its capital cost, at £8.9m/MW. was around three times the that of fixed offshore wind. But its opex costs are also much higher than might be expected. As a rule of thumb, fixed offshore wind opex starts at around £100,000/MW per year, and then rises from there as the turbines age. However, Hywind seems to have started out from a much higher base – its opex costs have averaged over £200,000/MW per year since it became operational.
With only marginally better operational performance than fixed offshore, and costs that are several times higher, there is no hope that Hywind’s overall levelised cost will be anything other than disastrously expensive. I estimate the LCOE figure as £224/MWh, a value that is unchanged since last year, suggesting that the value is reasonably robust. This is approximately double that of fixed offshore wind, and perhaps five to six times what we would expect for electricity from gas turbines. (As always when comparing wind and gas, we should note that the comparison is misleading, since wind should carry a considerable extra cost burden because of its intermittency, which is expensive to correct).
There can therefore be little doubt that Hywind is a failure. Kincardine, the UK’s second floating offshore windfarm, looks as though it will be more expensive still. It seems beyond doubt that floating offshore wind is a financial disaster.
Unsurprisingly, the government is ploughing ahead with it regardless.
LCOE assumptions
WACC: 5%
Lifespan: 20 years
Output deterioration: 2.1% per annum
Opex increase: 5.7% per annum
The calculations can be seen in the spreadsheet below
10) Andrew Montford: Clues to the levelised cost of tidal stream
GWPF Energy, 30 July 2021
Another white elephant
Yesterday, I set out the levelised cost of floating offshore wind turbines. In this article, I will look at what we know about the levelised cost of tidal stream energy, and show that it is probably even higher. This was prompted by a report in yesterday’s Times, puffing up the 2-MW Orbital Marine Power tidal stream plant, which is now supplying the grid from a site off the coast of Orkney.
Fortunately, the plant has been set up in its own company, so we can see the most recent financial accounts. These show that by the end of last year, Orbital had spent £7.8 million on construction. This is not the final bill – there is another six months of spending to come, but we can treat this figure as the bottom of the plausible range. £7.8 million is £3.9 million per megawatt, which makes it somewhat more expensive in those terms than offshore wind.
However, it appears that a megawatt of tidal stream capacity delivers even less electricity than the same amount of offshore wind. According to Orbital’s submission to a Parliamentary inquiry, they are expecting to generate around 30% of the theoretical maximum. The equivalent “load factor” for a new offshore windfarm is in the high 40s.
It’s not clear if 30% is an average for the plant’s 15-year lifetime, but if we assume optimistically that it is, then Orbital will need to earn over £180/MWh, just to cover its capital costs. That compares very badly to gas turbines, which would generally need only around £40 to cover all costs.
We’ll have to wait to see what Orbital’s actual operating costs are, but it’s hard to be optimistic when you have high-tech machinery installed in corrosive salt water. I would be surprised if it was less than £70/MWh. And that supposition is confirmed by that Parliamentary submission, in which Orbital say they are seeking a guaranteed income of £250/MWh.
It’s obvious from these figures that tidal stream is wildly uneconomic and that the Orbital plant is, like the Hywind floating windfarm, a white elephant – the source of unearned rents for its investors and management.
LCOE assumptions
My assumptions are all optimistic – grossly so.
WACC: 4.2%
Output deterioration: 0%
Lifespan: 15 years
GWPF Energy, 30 July 2021
Another white elephant
Yesterday, I set out the levelised cost of floating offshore wind turbines. In this article, I will look at what we know about the levelised cost of tidal stream energy, and show that it is probably even higher. This was prompted by a report in yesterday’s Times, puffing up the 2-MW Orbital Marine Power tidal stream plant, which is now supplying the grid from a site off the coast of Orkney.
Fortunately, the plant has been set up in its own company, so we can see the most recent financial accounts. These show that by the end of last year, Orbital had spent £7.8 million on construction. This is not the final bill – there is another six months of spending to come, but we can treat this figure as the bottom of the plausible range. £7.8 million is £3.9 million per megawatt, which makes it somewhat more expensive in those terms than offshore wind.
However, it appears that a megawatt of tidal stream capacity delivers even less electricity than the same amount of offshore wind. According to Orbital’s submission to a Parliamentary inquiry, they are expecting to generate around 30% of the theoretical maximum. The equivalent “load factor” for a new offshore windfarm is in the high 40s.
It’s not clear if 30% is an average for the plant’s 15-year lifetime, but if we assume optimistically that it is, then Orbital will need to earn over £180/MWh, just to cover its capital costs. That compares very badly to gas turbines, which would generally need only around £40 to cover all costs.
We’ll have to wait to see what Orbital’s actual operating costs are, but it’s hard to be optimistic when you have high-tech machinery installed in corrosive salt water. I would be surprised if it was less than £70/MWh. And that supposition is confirmed by that Parliamentary submission, in which Orbital say they are seeking a guaranteed income of £250/MWh.
It’s obvious from these figures that tidal stream is wildly uneconomic and that the Orbital plant is, like the Hywind floating windfarm, a white elephant – the source of unearned rents for its investors and management.
LCOE assumptions
My assumptions are all optimistic – grossly so.
WACC: 4.2%
Output deterioration: 0%
Lifespan: 15 years
The London-based Global Warming Policy Forum is a world leading think tank on global warming policy issues. The GWPF newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.thegwpf.com.
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