Global warming is happening right now

December 2004 saw the partial collapse of support for the United Nations’ Kyoto Protocol at the Buenos Aires Conference of the Parties. Only limited and informal talks were agreed on for the future. As environmental groups objected to the “obstructionism” of the US attempts to kill off the Protocol altogether, Alan Oxley, well known Free Trade advocate and opponent of the Protocol gleefully reported, “The United States, China, India and the rest of the developing countries have taken over the UN climate process and sidelined the Kyoto Protocol”. More, “… the Howard government is now in the international mainstream of climate change policy”. And, “The science used to justify the Treaty has been steadily unwinding”.

In fact, European countries are enlarging their carbon trading, science reveals increasing evidence of warming, and Britain’s Tony Blair is committed to progressing solutions to warming described as “in the long term, the single most important issue facing the global community” and to involving the US in finding solutions. Saudi Arabia will endorse the Protocol even though it will lose billions of dollars as a result of emission reductions by industrialised countries. Meanwhile, the US Administration has removed or watered down protection for the environment, promoted high energy use and ignored inefficiencies. Australia is simply following along after the US wherever it goes. Lobby groups are everywhere.

At the January 2005 UN Conference on natural disasters in Kobe, Japan, the US together with Australia and Canada, vigorously opposed reference to the term “climate change” in the ten year action plan.

The issues of warming and the Protocol are bound up with science, economics and politics. The first makes argument inevitable, the second generates confusion and the third, politics, renders agreement highly unlikely, particularly with the presently fractured attitude to the United Nations. Much of the attack is directed at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its three groups - about 1,500 scientists in all - examining data, modelling and advising governments.

The Day after To-morrow vs The State of Fear

Oxley tells us “pro-Kyoto groups” in Buenos Aires used stills from the movie The Day after Tomorrow to illustrate presentations. That is not relevant to either the IPCC or the Kyoto Protocol. He also says business groups (“gleefully”) distributed flyers for the book State of Fear by techno-thriller writer and filmmaker Michael Crichton.

Crichton is hardly an expert. He makes false claims about scientific models and data, appears unaware of the way that observed data are used to evaluate climate models, particularly regional climate information and predictions, confuses weather and climate and seems unaware of the working of the IPCC.

Crichton claims scientists’ support for global warming is simply consensus science. This is merely an invoking of a big bogeyman. Scientists are people. They can conform to group think (preparedness to go along with a commonly held view) and accept statements by people acknowledged as authorities. Just like politicians, company directors and committees of almost any kind. Except they are more argumentative and have a decision model - the scientific method - which requires testable propositions. It is claimed by detractors that the trends in global temperature represented by the “hockey stick curve” is supported as consensus. In fact the curve has substantial independent verification.

If Crichton’s book was used as Oxley claims then we can only feel frustrated that bad science is used to counter radical environmental politics.

Oxley and Lavoisier

Oxley is associated with the Lavoisier Group of Melbourne, founded in 2000, that has mounted consistent attacks on the Protocol. Similar groups exist in the US and Britain. Lavoisier argues that climate change proposals are based on inexact science and are too expensive for Australia. Some of the Lavoisier material invokes the solar sunspot cycle as causing warming and asserts, “since we can do nothing about that, attention should be devoted to other environmental issues which we can affect”.

This resembles the claims of Danish “sceptical environmentalist” Bjorn Lomborg. University of Queensland economist John Quiggin in October 2003 pointed out that Lomborg’s estimate of the costs of Kyoto were higher than most others’ due partly to his assertion that carbon trading was “infeasible” because it would involve transfer of billions of dollars from rich to poor countries. And that he ignores the many economists who estimate the costs of warming being much higher than does Yale economist, William Nordhaus, who favours taxes rather than trading. Earlier, Quiggin wrote that the membership of the Lavoisier group seemed prepared to rely on wishful thinking “whenever it suits their turn”.

Lavoisier promotes various groups claiming to highlight junk science and includes the conservative Washington-based Cato Institute and Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). Material on the Lavoisier site - a press conference by Russian presidential economic advisor Illarionov, even claims that the Protocol amounts to war against Russia.

Lavoisier is chaired by former Finance Minister Peter Walsh and supported by, among others, Hugh Morgan, now President of the Business Council of Australia; both consider environmentalism a threat to capitalism and Australia’s living standards.

The US and the environment

Under Bush the US has rejected every multilateral treaty and agreement that does not strictly benefit its own global business interests and or agree with its ideological beliefs. These range from nuclear disarmament to small arms control, from population control to human rights. And if existing treaties get in the way they are ignored unless they suit the US, (for example consider the convention intended to protect cultural material in times of war). The unrelenting stand on Kyoto is a part of this.

In 2001 Bush decided Congress would not be asked to ratify the Protocol in effect removing the US from Kyoto. US Vice President Al Gore signed it in 1997. The Senate made clear that US economic interests would be considered and that developing as well as developed nations were to be bound and voted to unanimously not support it. Governments of European countries and of many others including Australia protested the action.

The US position is driven exclusively by sections of the business community that have Bush’s ear. (Recall the direct involvement of Enron in US Government energy policy in the first Bush term.) Alleged damage to the economy is constantly highlighted. Scientific evidence is consistently claimed to be inconclusive. Further research is called for. (The Senate has allocated funds for it.) The huge and inefficient energy use and dependence on oil has fuelled past recessions. Despite the Administration’s stance, business, individual US states and federal agencies are taking action to reduce energy use and promote efficiencies. And even a report for the Pentagon claims very significant climate change as do other recent books.

The Bush Administration is certainly one of the most dangerous in respect of the natural environment, for example under new Environmental Protection Agency plans, millions of Americans will face an increased threat from bacteria, viruses and parasites in their water: sewer operators are to be allowed to dump inadequately treated sewage into the nation's waterways. Relaxation of laws and closer relations with industry have significantly worsened the outlook. The Endangered Species Act is being reshaped to sharply limit the impact of a 30-year-old law to protect the most vulnerable plants and animals. The “Healthy Forests Initiative” and “Clear Skies” policy betray their name.

And there is alleged misuse of science. Early 2004 the Union of Concerned Scientists said, “When scientific knowledge has been found to be in conflict with its political goals, the administration has often manipulated the process through which science enters into its decisions”.

Oxley’s article takes the same line as does Reason science correspondent Ronald Bailey in his December 2004 article "The Kyoto Protocol is Dead" . Bailey was a Fellow at CEI in Washington 12 years ago. His article attracted numerous responses from the pro- Republican, anti-Clinton, anti-Green constituency: one termed the Protocol “the United Nations of environmentalism”. Last September The Observer revealed that White House officials had help from CEI in undermining government scientists' research into climate change. Research warning that the impact of global warming is serious was edited or removed: Scientists producing work seen as accepting too readily that pollution is an issue, were attacked. CEI was instrumental in having Bush reverse his campaign pledge to reduce carbon emissions and recently (reported in The Independent on January 17, 2005) CEI’s Myron Ebell said on BBC Radio 4 that Britain’s Chief Scientific Adviser Sir David King “is an alarmist with ridiculous views who knows nothing about climate change".

Australia and the Howard Government

The Howard Government has followed blindly along on the US’s coat tails. This isn’t confined to the abhorrent stand on Australian citizens classified as “enemy combatants” or the rush to embrace a Free Trade Agreement. It even extends to agreeing to jointly sponsor a resolution in the UN General Assembly proposing a worldwide ban on therapeutic cloning (TC). According to Professor Irv Weissman of Stanford University, TC would allow diseases to be studied in ways never possible before. But ideology and fundamentalism - of the same kind that has been used to oppose abortion and prohibit funding of population programs in other countries - will allow hundreds of thousands of people to die who would otherwise have lived.

When the Protocol was signed in 1997 then Australian Minister for the Environment, Senator Robert Hill, described it as “a landmark agreement for the global environment [and the occasion was] the first time that the international community has agreed on specific and substantive measures to combat climate change”. Four years later Hill claimed the Kyoto accord could not succeed without United States support, and suggested using it as a framework to negotiate a new treaty.

At the close of the Buenos Aires conference Australia’s Minister for the Environment, Senator Ian Campbell  disagreed with the US stance against future greenhouse gas targets and its claim that economic growth and technology innovations will be the only answer to reducing heat-trapping emissions. “The difference between the US and Australia is that we are prepared to engage in a new agreement [post Kyoto] as long as it is comprehensive … But a new agreement will have to include the US and the developing world.”

Australia’s energy policy, launched amid great fanfare in June 2004, removes some costs on business and households, provides some monies for new technologies and requires reports on assessment of energy efficiency opportunities. Australia’s reserves of gas and other fuels are specifically highlighted. There is to be reliance on carbon sequestration, as in the US position, but little support for renewables. New ACF President Ian Lowe pointed out that, contrary to the Statement, renewable technologies are increasingly being used in the US and Europe.

Conclusions

We cannot escape two conclusions about global climate change. First, very large numbers of scientists do consider that warming has occurred in the last few decades, that it is global in extent and rapid, is likely to continue and is due mainly to human activity. Attempts to show that locally there were warmer periods 100 or 500 years ago somewhere or other are not evidence that recent warming has not occurred. Propositions that other factors such as sunspot activity can explain global warming have been traversed in the last 10 years and discounted. The “sceptics' theory that climate feedbacks will eliminate any CO2 warming effect has not been substantiated by either observations or modelling.”

Second, scientific argument over data and its meaning is not “unravelling of scientific opinion” but science in action. Yes there are economic and scientific questions about the Protocol, whether it will work when large numbers of countries are not a party to it, how much the enforceable targets will significantly reduce greenhouse gases and the costs.

There is argument about IPCC’s estimates of rates of movement towards development equity by poorer nations and whether market exchange rates (as used by the IPCC) or purchasing power parities (as advocated by former Australian Government Statistician Ian Castles and former OECD research director David Henderson) should be used in the calculations. However, Quiggin reviewed this argument in August last year pointing out that it did not have the significance claimed for it. More important are issues of urban planning and energy efficiency.

Despite clear calm statements by people like Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s former Chief John W Zillman, others such as Bob Carter can selectively report controversies and suggest validities where they don’t exist as well as advance silly propositions like setting up “audit panels to check on the soundness of scientific advice".

Last, Oxley misrepresents the position of developing countries and those in the European Union. The former are more diverse than China and India and, despite Buenos Aires, more EU countries are signing up to reduce emissions and trade credits. Oxley’s consistent argument is that cheap energy is good business and anything that affects that is bad. It could surprise Oxley to learn that in the view of Lord Browne, Group Chief Executive of BP, Kyoto 1997 can be compared with the 1946 meetings which have led to tariff reductions and, in the mid 1990s, the WTO. Kyoto is hardly dead.

Oxley’s article is propaganda. That a political position should be taken up whilst consensus behaviour by some scientists is attacked and that scientific predictions should be sidelined whilst rational economics (after all a basis for the rejection of Kyoto and for the pursuit of Free Trade) is embraced is nothing if not bizarre. The outcome of the Buenos Aires meetings are not an occasion for celebration of John Howard’s or George Bush’s wisdom or of the change in the global climate change agenda. It instead requires us to demand that political leadership not add failure to take action on this issue to the failures to take up the challenges of poverty relief, education, population control and disease.