Why Climate Skeptics Are Wrong

Scientific American - Michael Shermer

Izhar Cohen

At some point in the history of all scientific theories, only a minority of scientists—or even just one—supported them, before evidence accumulated to the point of general acceptance. The Copernican model, germ theory, the vaccination principle, evolutionary theory, plate tectonics and the big bang theory were all once heretical ideas that became consensus science. How did this happen?
An answer may be found in what 19th-century philosopher of science William Whewell called a "consilience of inductions." For a theory to be accepted, Whewell argued, it must be based on more than one induction—or a single generalization drawn from specific facts. It must have multiple inductions that converge on one another, independently but in conjunction. "Accordingly the cases in which inductions from classes of facts altogether different have thus jumped together," he wrote in his 1840 book The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, "belong only to the best established theories which the history of science contains." Call it a "convergence of evidence."
Consensus science is a phrase often heard today in conjunction with anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Is there a consensus on AGW? There is. The tens of thousands of scientists who belong to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Medical Association, the American Meteorological Society, the American Physical Society, the Geological Society of America, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and, most notably, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change all concur that AGW is in fact real. Why?
It is not because of the sheer number of scientists. After all, science is not conducted by poll. As Albert Einstein said in response to a 1931 book skeptical of relativity theory entitled 100 Authors against Einstein, "Why 100? If I were wrong, one would have been enough." The answer is that there is a convergence of evidence from multiple lines of inquiry—pollen, tree rings, ice cores, corals, glacial and polar ice-cap melt, sea-level rise, ecological shifts, carbon dioxide increases, the unprecedented rate of temperature increase—that all converge to a singular conclusion. AGW doubters point to the occasional anomaly in a particular data set, as if one incongruity gainsays all the other lines of evidence. But that is not how consilience science works. For AGW skeptics to overturn the consensus, they would need to find flaws with all the lines of supportive evidence and show a consistent convergence of evidence toward a different theory that explains the data. (Creationists have the same problem overturning evolutionary theory.) This they have not done.
A 2013 study published in Environmental Research Letters by Australian researchers John Cook, Dana Nuccitelli and their colleagues examined 11,944 climate paper abstracts published from 1991 to 2011. Of those papers that stated a position on AGW, about 97 percent concluded that climate change is real and caused by humans. What about the remaining 3 percent or so of studies? What if they're right? In a 2015 paper published in Theoretical and Applied Climatology, Rasmus Benestad of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, Nuccitelli and their colleagues examined the 3 percent and found "a number of methodological flaws and a pattern of common mistakes." That is, instead of the 3 percent of papers converging to a better explanation than that provided by the 97 percent, they failed to converge to anything.
"There is no cohesive, consistent alternative theory to human-caused global warming," Nuccitelli concluded in an August 25, 2015, commentary in the Guardian. "Some blame global warming on the sun, others on orbital cycles of other planets, others on ocean cycles, and so on. There is a 97% expert consensus on a cohesive theory that's overwhelmingly supported by the scientific evidence, but the 2–3% of papers that reject that consensus are all over the map, even contradicting each other. The one thing they seem to have in common is methodological flaws like cherry picking, curve fitting, ignoring inconvenient data, and disregarding known physics." For example, one skeptical paper attributed climate change to lunar or solar cycles, but to make these models work for the 4,000-year period that the authors considered, they had to throw out 6,000 years' worth of earlier data.
Such practices are deceptive and fail to further climate science when exposed by skeptical scrutiny, an integral element to the scientific process.

Links

• Record Levels of CO2 Herald the Future of Climate Change
• World's First Global Deal to Combat Climate Change Adopted in Paris
• Accelerated Innovation Is the Ultimate Solution to Climate Change
• Paris Climate Talks Headed toward Global Deal, but Is It Enough?

Time For Hunt To Stop The Clock On Abbot Point As Documents Reveal Qld Govt’s Secret Plan For Coal Tug Harbour On Reef

350.org

(BRISBANE) – 350.org Australia is outraged that the Queensland Government has hidden plans to build a taxpayer-funded tug boat harbour at Abbot Point for companies like mining giant Adani to ship coal through the Great Barrier Reef.
The revelations were brought to light via a Right to Information request submitted by the North Queensland Conservation Council (NQCC).
The documents confirm that both the QLD Department of State Development (DSD) and the Palaszczuk government are aware of the plans, yet failed to include the information in the Abbot Point coal port Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) submitted to Environment Minister Greg Hunt.

Moira Williams, 350.org Australia’s community campaigner, issued the following statement in response:
“Just days after a global climate deal was reached in Paris, we discover that the Queensland Government has been making secret plans to help expand coal exports here in Australia. We deserve to know what deals are being made behind closed doors to benefit the fossil fuel industry and why the interests of polluters are being put ahead of the Australian people.
“These explosive revelations demonstrate the Queensland Government’s total disregard for due process and lack of concern for the Reef and the climate, both of which will be seriously damaged by the coal port expansion at Abbot Point.
“It’s incredibly concerning that Premier Palaszczuk has chosen to hide these damaging plans from both the Federal Government and Queenslanders. What’s worse is that they are using taxpayer money to fund it. It begs the question – what else are they hiding?”
“The clock must be stopped on the decision to approve Adani’s Abbot Point project. With the deadline that decides the fate of this project just days away, Minister Hunt should do what the Australian public has been demanding for years and reject this reckless proposal once and for all,” concluded Williams.
Polling conducted by Essential Research and commissioned by 350.org Australia has found that two thirds of Australians believe coal mining should be phased because it causes global warming and damages the Great Barrier Reef.

Future For Coal Is More Uncertain Than Economists Would Have You Believe

Fairfax - Ross Gittins

Shocking air pollution is the major reason China is striving to cut its coal use. Photo: Kevin Frayer

With the success of the Paris agreement on climate change, it's clear Australia will have to lift its game if we're not to be seen as global bludgers. But with an early return to carbon pricing an embarrassment for the Coalition, what other approaches should we consider?
Take the campaign for a global moratorium on the construction of new coal mines. Is it just a misguided idea dreamt up by idealistic greenies who don't understand economics?
Jon Stanford, of Insight Economics, thinks so. He's a former senior econocrat and an avowed supporter of action to reduce carbon emissions. But in a long post on John Menadue's blog, Pearls and Irritations, he argues strongly against a moratorium.
He readily acknowledges that substantial "social costs" or "negative externalities" – such as the emission of climate-changing greenhouse gases – are imposed on the community by the use of coal.
"There is little doubt that the combustion of coal to produce electricity has made the greatest contribution to increasing carbon concentrations in the atmosphere," he says.
But the most economically efficient way to deal with climate change is to tax all carbon emissions by means of a carbon tax or an equivalent emissions trading scheme.
"Banning new coal mines would reflect an arbitrary approach to reducing emissions. On what basis should various fuels be permitted or banned? Why is coal to be singled out but other fuel with significant emissions such as oil and gas are not?"
So his first objection to a moratorium is that it seeks to reduce climate change in a way that doesn't minimise the resulting loss of efficiency in the allocation of resources.
His second objection is more practical: it wouldn't work, anyway. He says that, according to the International Energy Agency's latest World Energy Outlook, global demand for electricity will increase by 70 per cent between 2013 and 2040.
The agency's middle projection, based on the commitments to counter climate change that countries took to in the run up to the Paris conference, sees coal's share of global power generation still at 30 per cent in 2040 (compared with 41 per cent in 2013), meaning growth of nearly 25 per cent in absolute terms.
Stanford says that "while the Australia coal industry is a very efficient it does not dominate the global market and could not be said to possess any significant market power".
Australia's coal reserves amount to less than 9 per cent of global reserves. As a producer of steaming (thermal) coal, we rank a distant sixth behind China, the US, India, Indonesia and South Africa, not far ahead of Russia and Kazakhstan.
These other countries are unlikely to agree to a global moratorium on new mines so, were Australia to impose a moratorium on itself, the investment in new mines displaced from Australia would merely take place in other countries. Malcolm Turnbull has used the same argument.

Illustration: Glen Le Lievre.

Sorry, but I'm not convinced. It's true that a global carbon price would be a more economically efficient solution than an arbitrary moratorium on new coal mines.
But with the problem worsening as each year passes, we don't have the luxury of waiting until a "first-best" solution can be agreed upon. In an emergency, second-best solutions are better than inaction.
As for the practicalities of a unilateral Australian moratorium, the facts are more complex than Stanford implies. The International Energy Agency's figure of a 70 per cent increase in global demand for electricity is an assumption, not an estimate.
All 25-year projections are just projections, and likely to be wrong, often because they're overtaken by events. The agency's projections don't take sufficient account of the fall in China's coal consumption over the past 18 months.
Projections that don't allow for further technological advances and price falls in renewables and energy storage, nor for countries to step up their efforts to reduce warming, over the next 25 years, are particularly unreliable.
Stanford's figures for global coal reserves and even global coal consumption aren't relevant. That's because not all coal is the same. Some is high quality – in terms of its ability to generate more electricity – some is low. Some can be extracted quite cheaply, some would be very expensive.
Coal is a low value commodity that's expensive to transport over long distances. This means a high proportion of coal deposits and domestic coal consumption is irrelevant in assessing Australia's market power and the likely effects of a unilateral moratorium.
What determines the world price is seaborne exports of thermal coal. A Reserve Bank analysis shows Indonesia's low-quality coal has 41 per cent of world exports, while we come second with 18 per cent.
Australia is a high quality, low-cost producer, which makes us a more powerful market player than the raw figures suggest.
World prices of steaming coal have fallen a long way since their peak in 2011, in response to a huge increase in supply (mainly by Indonesia and Australia) and flat world demand.
If our 52 proposals to build new coal mines or expand existing ones went ahead, this would eventually double our exports. Do you really think that would have no effect on the world price?
If it caused the world price to be lower than otherwise, this would hurt our existing coal mines, their lenders and their employees. It would also hurt existing and prospective renewable energy projects.
And it would cause the price to be even less reflective of the high social costs caused by carbon emissions, the adverse effect on miners' health and air pollution around coal-fired power stations (the latter a big part of China's reasons for turning against coal).
With the world coal price relatively low, it's not at all clear other, higher-cost producers would happily step in to take our place. If they could, why aren't they doing it already?
The future for coal is a lot more uncertain and less rosy than Stanford implies.

Era Of Strong Coal Demand Growth Is 'Over', IEA Declares

Fairfax - Angela Macdonald-Smith

Global coal demand has stalled in the face of "tremendous pressures" from the Chinese downturn and the drive for energy efficiency, the International Energy Agency says.

The IEA has dramatically downgraded forecasts for coal demand. Photo: Andrew Quilty

The International Energy Agency's findings that global coal demand has stalled in the face of "tremendous pressures" from a downturn in use in China and action on climate change have reignited calls from environmentalists for Australia to prepare for a future without the fuel.
In its annual outlook for coal, the closely-watched IEA slashed its five-year forecast for coal demand growth by more than 500 million tonnes, and admitted what several environmental organisation have been claiming, that coal use in China may have peaked two years ago.

The Paris talks were the first admission that the age of fossil fuels is coming to an end and this report is another nail in coal's coffin. Shani Tager, Greenpeace Australia

The era of strong coal demand growth is "over", IEA executive director Fatih Birol said. China, the growth-engine of world energy and coal demand for the last decade, was entering a "new era" where demand would be flat at best over the next five years.
While the IEA still forecasts growing Australian thermal coal exports, it cast serious doubt for the first time on the proposed Galilee Basin projects in Queensland, including the highly-controversial Carmichael mine owned by India's Adani Group, and projects owned by GVK-Hancock and Waratah Coal.
It is not likely the Galilee projects "will be operational in 2020, if ever," the agency said.
Worldwide coal consumption dropped in 2014 for the first time this century, the IEA said, sliding by 0.9 per cent to 7.92 billion tonnes, including a more pronounced 2.2 per cent dip in the OECD region. That stands in sharp contrast to the average growth of 4.2 per cent a year in the past decade.

China is the main reason
"The coal industry is facing huge pressures, and the main reason is China – but it is not the only reason," Dr Birol said, pointing to worldwide environmental policies including last weekend's historic climate agreement in Paris.
The IEA still forecasts global coal use will rise over the next five years, but at a marginal rate of just 0.8 per cent a year. The additional 275 million tonnes of demand would take consumption to 5.81 billion tonnes by 2020.
The weaker forecasts are set to resonate across the industry, given the IEA numbers are regularly cited by mining companies and governments as evidence of the continuing importance of coal in the energy mix.
It comes as coal miners struggle with multi-year lows in both thermal and coking coal prices that have forced the cancellation and deferral of projects and cost thousands of jobs in eastern Australia alone.
In China, coal use dropped 2.9 per cent last year though the country still accounted for half of global demand. Consumption in 2020 is expected to be similar to levels of 2013, and could be much lower.
The new vision for Chinese demand caused the IEA to model a separate "Chinese peak case scenario", in which energy-intensive industries slow further. In that case, Chinese demand drops by 203 million tonnes by 2030, wiping out any growth in demand on a worldwide basis.
But Minerals Council of Australia chief executive Brendan Pearson said the new forecast does not translate to a reduction in Chinese demand for high quality coal imports, including from Australia.
"China's coal use overall may flatten out, but demand for high-quality coal for HELE [high efficiency, low emissions] plants is likely to grow," Mr Pearson said.
He noted that some 420 gigawatts of new HELE coal generators are planned or under construction in China, with 60GW of capacity ordered in the first nine months of 2015 alone.

Age of fossil fuels "ending"
But Greenpeace called on Australia not to ignore the warnings on coal use.
"The Paris talks were the first admission that the age of fossil fuels is coming to an end and this report is another nail in coal's coffin," Greenpeace Australia Pacific climate campaigner Shani Tager said.
The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, which releases anti-fossil fuel research, said arguments around HELE plants and carbon capture and storage "lack substance".
Dr Birol lamented the "terribly slow" process in carbon capture and storage, which he said was "bad news for the environment, but is much worse news for the coal industry".
One of the few market bright spots is south-east Asia, where demand is seen growing at 7.8 per cent a year, ahead of Indian consumption growth put at 4.1 per cent.
Global coal production also fell for the first time this century in 2014, despite output increases of 7 per cent in Australia and 9.6 per cent in India.