Well…well…well!

A hacker got into the email server of a climate research institute which had discussions of various scientists who worked on the IPCC and climate change issues. The email seems to contain material which suggests that the scientists have worked together to prove things which the data is not showing.

We need to wait and see how much of this is true.

However, the revelations if true are quite damning. For more – Telegraph, Andrew Bolt, Climate Audit.

Reading through this I found this article which talks about the famous hockey stick graph in Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. The data shows something totally different.

Goldman: Solar power is the other rapidly developing industry in China as China now accounts for about 1/3 of solar power production capacity globally. The speaker refuted the view that PV cell production is an energy-ineffective process as he pointed out that the energy breakeven time is about 2 years for PV cells energy used to produce PV cells equals the energy generated by the PV cells but the normal lifetime is around 20 years. He also believes that solar energy could become commercially viable in the foreseeable future as the energy generating cost has been reduced from Rmb4 to Rmb1.1 per kWh over the past few years and is getting close to the Rmb0.3-0.4/kWh level of coal-fire power plants.

via China Pushing Solar Like Never Before.

The Australian has a story today about a study with the headline

“Developing nations outstrip rich on greenhouse gases”

When you go into the details the numbers are different.

Developing countries of the world; where 5.7 billion people live emit 54% of the world emissions; and the developed world where 1 billion people live emit about 46% of the world emissions. From 1990, the developing countries have been growing faster than developed countries. This is true for two reasons – one, more population and two, higher economic growth.

The author of the study has this to say too,

• The study said that the increase in emissions from developing countries was in part due to their manufacture of goods for export to rich countries.
• Professor Le Quere said that emissions per person remained much higher in rich countries
• Professor Le Quere said that the study did not take account of historic responsibility for greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. She said that developing countries were responsible for only 20 per cent of cumulative emissions since 1751.
• “Emissions in rich countries have only stabilised because they have reached a certain stage of development which other countries have yet to attain.”

The last part is the critical. They have stabilised at a very high per capita per person because of a certain stage of development and developing countries with their higher population are responsible for only 20% of the world emissions from 1751.

If carbon emissions need to be cut then the developed nations responsible for 80% of the emissions from 1751 need to do it first. Only if headlines told the real story.

I love infographics. The ability to understand information in a visual form is much higher and the ideas stay with you longer.

Freakonomics suggests this site on Africa which provides some good infographics.

South Korea has suggested that it will reduce its emissions by 30% by 2020.  Now, what does this mean?30% of what?

The answer is 30% of the expected emissions in 2020 if business as usual. That is quite a different kind of target. The European Union has a target of 20% reduction by 2020 of 1990 levels. Quite different from Korea’s. In fact, the South Korean target equates to 4% reduction from 2005 levels.

I think that this is a more realistic target. I was expecting some solutions on how they would do it but looks like this was not a well thought out target as the government will set up a task force to understand the effect of this. It has committed to funding but that is it.

Some excerpts from various news articles:

• South Korea will limit the burden on manufacturers and reduce emissions by “non industries” such as transportation and building to keep carbon dioxide output below the level it may rise to by 2020 in the absence of preventive measures.
• The government will form a task force comprising bureaucrats, industry officials and experts to study possible curbs on industries and households, according to the statement.
• South Korea’s green investment plans are already among the most ambitious in Asia, with the government saying earlier this year it would pump 107 trillion won ($92.88 billion) into environment-related industries over the next five years.
• The 30 percent reduction isn’t absolute, the Ministry of Knowledge Economy said in a separate statement. Future economic growth and oil prices may change the target, the ministry said, without giving an estimate.
• President Lee Myung-bak said in the statement that while emissions reduction would present “short-term burdens” it would also bring “broader national gains.”
• “Through the aggressive greenhouse gas reduction, South Korea will be ready for industrialized countries’ carbon trade tariffs, raise energy security and acquire market share first in rapidly growing green sectors.”

Some anti-genetic engineering activists “talk of defending the ‘intrinsic integrity’ of crop-plant genomes,” writes Stewart Brand in his new book, Whole Earth Discipline. “What integrity? Crop plants have no integrity of their own…. Botanist Klaus Ammann points out that good old wheat, fashioned through good old breeding, has modifications that include ‘the addition of chromosome fragments, the integration of entire foreign genomes, and radiation-induced mutations.’” Next to this orgy of gene swapping, biotechnology offers a precision that makes genetically engineered food look downright tame.

On the mitigation front, they are creating grains that require less water and that utilize nitrogen more efficiently—a boon for the atmosphere, the oceans, and farmers’ bottom lines. And on the adaptation front, they are developing drought-resistant maize varieties for sub-Saharan Africa, rice that can tolerate flooding in Southeast Asia, and rice that can grow in China’s increasingly salty soils.

Next month, when experts from across the globe convene in Rome for the annual World Food Summit, … how to diminish the number of hungry people in the world, which according to the FAO, rose to an alarming 1.02 billion this year. A vital part of their conversation will be to what extent biotechnology can—or should—play a role in these efforts.

For the rest of us “foodies,” now is the time for some deep soul-searching, to decide whether we will allow ideology to win out over evidence, particularly when the goals of biotech are increasingly aligned with many of the values the organic community allegedly holds dear.

From SEED magazine

The goal of any emissions trading scheme is to reduce carbon emissions. The idea is to provide a price on carbon which currently does not have a price so as to create a value for carbon. To achieve this; the government is creating a market out of thin air. It is restricting the use of carbon by limiting its supply. The users of carbon will then need to think and act innovatively to cut down their use of carbon or pay for the use of carbon. The cost of carbon will depend on the supply and demand of carbon on any particular day. There are far more intricacies that I do not understand but basically this is it.

However, the Rudd government is clearly incapable of managing to pass legislation that does not pander to special interest groups. Also, it has shown that politics is more important than economics.

The Australian ETS called the CPRS has put a cap on carbon price of $10 a ton till 2012. By doing this; the CPRS is not creating a market at all, it is creating a centrally planned market economy for carbon. On top of this the government decides which industries are part of the CPRS and which are not; which industries get free carbon credits and how much. In addition, it is allowing overseas carbon credits to be bought in Australia to the tune of 100%. What this means is that carbon reduced in other countries as part of their ETS can be bought by Australian companies and they do not have to innovate to reduce their carbon output.

By putting a cap on the price, by providing free credits as it seems fit, by excluding some industries and providing access to foreign carbon credits the government is acting as a central planner and distorting the idea of a carbon market. Centrally planned economies do not work. A distorted market will not provide the benefits of a free market and in this case it will not lead to reduction in carbon emissions. What else will happen is hard to fathom?

And this is the problem with public policy. It is not always clear what will happen when we distort the market.

With a low carbon price the energy companies may not have enough incentive to innovate? Or they can easily buy from overseas credits and continue business as usual. Foreign competitors who are selling their carbon credits to Australia can become more competitive in than Australian companies.

On the other hand, an Australian ETS implemented before the US or other major countries in the world leaves a small country like Australia in a position where it may be disadvantaged by the policies of the bigger and more powerful countries. This will have an adverse effect on the Australian economy.

So coming back to my original question, the Australian ETS does not seem to be in the direction of achieving its basic goal of reducing carbon emissions but it will surely be creating additional effects that are hard to understand right now and can be detrimental to the country.

As a Buddhist saying goes, “First, do no harm”. That should be the goal of public policy. However, the Australian ETS may be doing harm first. This is dangerous.

Time Labor was brought to book | – suhit’s posterous

Given this week’s decision to maintain regulatory protection for Australian publishers from imported books, these politicians may find themselves paying up to 30 per cent more than readers in other countries, but then that’s the price of an economic policy that panders to vocal special interest groups at the expense of the wider community.

The decision – and Cabinet was reportedly deeply divided on the issue – means Australian publishers will retain a 30 day exclusivity period within which, if they decide to publish a specific title, they will not be subject to competition from often cheaper overseas imports.

This is nothing short of a special tax on books, and would appear to fly in the face of the pro-education rhetoric in which the Government so likes to cloak itself. Furthermore, the decision totally rejected recommendations from the Productivity Commission and also knocked back a compromise proposal from Competition Minister Craig Emerson.
[...]

In terms of books, if a title isn’t available here because an Australian publisher hasn’t picked it up or it’s far cheaper overseas, then in the digital age there’s always the likes of Amazon – which doesn’t pay Australian taxes or employ Australian workers. The imported books fiasco is a stark illustration of the fact that when it comes to continuing the process of reforming and modernising the Australian economy that began with the Hawke and Keating governments, and continued through the Howard years, the Rudd Government has to date been found sadly wanting.

via news.com.au

This is most ridiculous. In terms of losses, consumers in Australia will spend about $200 million per year because of this decision. These kinds of decisions by the Rudd government makes you wonder how they can manage the carbon reduction scheme. Their ability to pander to vocal interest groups is scary.

Update: An interesting history of the law in question which was enacted by the Britishers to help British publishers.

Superlatives have attached themselves to Jobs since he was a young man. Now that he’s 54, merely listing his achievements is sufficient explanation of why he’s Fortune’s CEO of the Decade (though the superlatives continue).

In the past 10 years alone he has radically and lucratively reordered three markets — music, movies, and mobile telephones — and his impact on his original industry, computing, has only grown.Remaking any one business is a career-defining achievement; four is unheard-of. Think about that for a moment. Henry Ford altered the course of the nascent auto industry. PanAm’s Juan Trippe invented the global airline. Conrad Hilton internationalized American hospitality.

In all instances, and many more like them, these entrepreneurs turned captains of industry defined a single market that had previously not been dominated by anyone. The industries that Jobs has turned topsy-turvy already existed when he focused on them.

[...]

The financial results have been nothing short of astounding — for Apple and for Jobs. The company was worth about $5 billion in 2000, just before Jobs unleashed Apple’s groundbreaking “digital lifestyle” strategy, understood at the time by few critics. Today, at about $170 billion, Apple is slightly more valuable than Google.

via The decade of Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple – Nov. 5, 2009.

The collapsing US dollar is playing havoc with ETS projections. Governments that had been hoping to make extra revenue by selling carbon permits will now lose money, which means less cash available for subsidies to the developing countries.

That was exposed by this week’s Mid Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook from the Australian Treasury.

In the past six months the Rudd government’s CPRS has gone from being a net contributor to revenue to a big cost – mainly because of the rising Australian dollar.

The CPRS was a $208 million benefit to the budget; now it’s a $1.2 billion cost over the forward estimates (to 2012-13). Over 10 years the net cost is now $2.5 billion.

In 2013-14, according to Treasury’s new forecasts, revenue from the sale of permits will total $12.1 billion and the cost of assistance measures will be $13.7 billion – a $1.6 billion budget hole.

The MYEFO says: “While world carbon prices have remained stable, the appreciation of the Australian dollar has resulted in the A$ carbon price estimate for 2012-13 falling from A$29 per tonne in the 2009-10 Budget to A$26 per tonne. A lower A$ carbon price assumption directly lowers the amount of revenue that is expected to be collected from the sale of CPRS permits.”

via Carbon trading in the dollar doldrums – Alan Kohler – News – Business Spectator.