Making use of the fact that I seem to have some free time, I thought I’d try to pull together some of the various articles that have been written about Copenhagen and Anthropogenic Global Warming (as I believe it’s now correct to call it – or is it Anthropogenic climate change today?). As it seems to be terribly relevant to state ones qualifications for having an opinion in the matter (though most of the politicians making the decisions have no science background but they’ll still spend the money) I shall state for the record that I’ve no experience in computer modelling or climatology but I did read physics (and failed the mathematics components hugely). I’ve also not read many of the emails or looked at the data, so I’m probably as well informed as most of the politicians at Copenhagen.
So that all out of the way I should probably also state my current position on the whole climate change thing. Firstly I utterly believe that the climate changes (I’m not currently under a mile or so of ice which is a big hint), also it’s obvious that human activity (as well as natural) activity can influence weather conditions on both a local and global level. The important questions as I see it are:
1) Is the current science sufficiently good to base significant action on?
2) What should that action be?
So onto the quality of the science*, from what’s been revealed from CRU the conclusions they’ve been coming up with have to be considered doubtful at best. As discussed on Devils Kitchen some of the leaked data suggests that the models and data they are using are not documented or well understood. However as they’re producing results similar to other groups then it must all be ok – I hope the problem with this is obvious. I know that academia is very different to the commercial world, but undocumented code of this nature where they’re working out what the data probably is based on what the output produces is not an acceptable basis on what to base decisions that will cost billions of pounds. Even as a student I was expected to use version control and document what I did and where the data came from. Which brings us to another problem, they no longer have the original data, – they just have “corrected” data but don’t seem to know what the corrections where. Again things may have changed since my undergraduate days, but back then throwing away raw data was a big no no. How can they check the “normalisations” they’ve made as more data is acquired if they don’t have the data they started from, and worse don’t seem to know how they got from the raw data to the data they’re now using? I would also note that I’ve not yet seen much by way of a response reported that went along the lines of “no problem we can get the raw data back from here, here and there”, it does look as though this data and the transformations it’s been subjected to are lost to the mists of time.
These are the sort of mistake that would have got my poor undergrad efforts thrown out with a firm admonition to only come back when I have the raw data as well. There is some suggestion from people that have looked at the leaked data in more detail that you’ll get a global warming graph regardless of what data you put in **. The pedant general has a good over view of how the peer review process should normally work and how it seems to be working or rather not working in this case. So it would seem that the science isn’t settled, that we’ve got an awful lot yet to do to determine: if human activity is causing catastrophic climate change, if it’s unprecedneted and if both are the case is CO2 the main culprit. Coverage in the media is increasing but is still mainly from from politicians and people within the green movement labelling anyone with questions climate change deniers or ‘climate saboteurs’ – which doesn’t really lend itself to calm debate.
So I can’t currently trust the science to show that we’re heading head first towards our doom, but following the precautionary principle it may still be a good idea to do something about possible climate change. So the question is what, well reducing energy usage and being more efficient are “no brainers” both actions save money and improve quality of life so they make sense no matter what the climate is doing. But that’s not all that’s being proposed by Copenhagen and the like, we also it seems need the big stick of taxes to save the planet.***
Carbon trading is a currently favoured option, it will make lots of money for the carbon traders, gives governments a new currency to swap amongst themselves and will only work if both the entire world (or at least a majority of it) joins in and if the potential catastrophic climate change is actually due to CO2. Oh and the trading also needs to be genuine which there are already problems with as it’s ripe for carousel fraud. The other option is to tax activities that cause pollution such that you have sufficient funds to repair the damage caused, the green tax escalator on fuel duty being an obvious example. If no amount of cot will repair the damage then obvious the activity should be banned out right. However as explained in the Register the tax on petrol is already way more than the estimated cost of damage and the current cap and trade system is a mish mash of different caps for different systems. If CO2 is the problem then a single cap on CO2 makes sense as it doesn’t really matter what causes it. Also as observed in the same article they’re double dipping, taxing on usage as well as imposing a cap and trade scheme, which does make it look an awful lot like a tax raising and/or social control scam. So given the ineffectiveness of actions being proposed and the questionable nature of the science that suggests we’re heading for catastrophe it would seem to make sense to look at adaptation rather than mitigation, and maybe use all this money we suddenly seem to have spare to address global warming to address simpler problems like: malaria, provision of clean water and universal education – all of which we know how to do and which we also know will definitely save life and improve the quality of life for millions.
update Devils kitchen looks further into the cost of increasing fuel costs to the third world and highlights that the IPCC recommend adaptation for the A1 scenarios of climate change.
The most reasoned thing I’ve seen so far is this which probably represents the position I hold. What’s currently being proposed as a preventative measure for something which may or may not be happening is likely to do far more harm than it’s going to prevent and there are better things we could be spending the money on. But I may well be wrong it’s a complex issue, < ahref="http://captainranty.blogspot.com/2009/12/climateshite.html">Captain Ranty has a slightly stronger view on the matter, and it is worth remembering that 10 years ago we were all scared of a new ice age.
Finally yet Devils Kitchen has also pulled together a lot of stuff about the CRU leak, including a link to an incredible timeline pdf.
update 2 Another good post over on Samizdata covering problems with the models, what could be done to make the science trustworthy and some potential game changers.
(hmm that was all a bit rambling, terribly sorry).
* Yes I am well aware that those are cherry picked quotes
** Yes I do know that that’s a joke article -so’s this
*** Actually the planet doesn’t need saving, it’ll do just fine. Keeping the planet suitable for human life and our current quality of living is a different matter.
