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Britain’s ‘energy policy’ – carried out by Tories, made by UKIP? Updated for 2026

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The coalition government’s muddled approach to renewable energy is beginning to undermine climate change mitigation and technological innovation say industry leaders.

It’s also starting to hurt the viability of both UK businesses driving the development of alternatives to fossil fuels and of hard-pressed English farmers.

Panic over the rise of UKIP and policy u-turns aimed at placating the most ferociously conservative of Tory constituents are playing a role in the disarray.

This is combined with ministers looking for easy popularity points and a willingness to make blanket statements presented as facts, despite a complete lack of evidence.

This jostling for profile and power – both within the Tory ranks and as a response to voters switching party allegiance – is playing into the hands of Lord Lawson and Owen Paterson‘s anti-renewables crusade.

Since leaving his position as environment secretary, Paterson has called for the Climate Change Act to be dismantled and spoke at the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).

In a Pickle – 17 of 19 wind farms shot down

RenewableUK‘s Rob Norris said: “The likes of Pickles and Paterson are using the vital issue of renewables to raise their own profiles and promote themselves within their own fiefdoms.

“Ministers are making statements espousing emotive, populist viewpoints that are based on no evidence whatsoever but rather on prejudice and a fetish for technologies such as nuclear and shale.”

Ministers – from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) and the Department for Energy, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) – responsible for local and rural economies as well as the environment are not only actively working against these interests but are doing so with scant regard for economic or scientific fact.

DCLG’s secretary of state, Eric Pickles, for example, has now weighed in on 50 onshore windfarm applications, rejecting 17 of the 19 decided on so far.

This has led Ed Davey – the Lib Dem actually in charge of energy and climate change – to claim: “Mr Pickles doesn’t seem worried about climate or energy bills. Pickles, who claims to be a champion of localism, has been calling in every onshore wind planning application he can, interfering with the independent Planning Inspectorate process [and] over-riding decisions of elected councillors.

“Pickles is in danger of bringing the planning system into disrepute, of abusing ministerial power and so preventing Britain getting the green power revolution it needs.”

New Defra head Liz Truss has also announced changes to the Common Agricultural Policy aimed at thwarting solar farm developments as she “does not want to see the productive potential of English farmland is wasted and blighted by solar farms”.

Shortly after, however, it was shown in the Commons she had no evidence to suggest this is happening.

Amber Rudd, another Tory at DECC under Davey and in charge of solar, climate science and innovation, has also waded in saying: “Solar farms are not particularly welcome because we believe that solar should be on the roofs of buildings and homes, not in the beautiful green countryside. We are proud to stand on that record.”

Investment at risk

Not only do these ministers have real power to undermine the increase in renewable generation they’re tasked with supporting but their actions risk choking off investment, sinking start-ups and depriving the very farmers whose votes they’re after of much needed income.

“Pickles running riot has resulted in a pathetic amount of consents, chilling the blood of investors, who are likely to go elsewhere with their money, driving up cost and putting innovation at risk when we need to be encouraging developers and taking the technologies forward”, said Norris.

“UKIP has banged on about three ‘big issues’ – the EU, immigration and bizarrely onshore wind – which they say represent everything that’s wrong with modern Britain. Pickles is using his position to intervene as often as possible in an attempt to recapture lost ground.

“He now wants to take away the right of local government altogether to approve wind developments, a development that would be sinister as well as against his professed policy of localism.”

Climate-skeptic Owen Paterson a future Tory leader?

The rightwards drift of the Tory party is illustrated by the celebrity status of the sacked environment secretary Owen Paterson on the right-wing think tank circuit – notably the ‘free market’ Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and Lord Lawson’s Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), which is fanatically opposed to renewable energy, most of all on-shore wind.

After a recent IEA ‘political economy supper‘ Paterson dodged questions on whether he’s organising a challenge to the Conservative Party leadership in the run-up to next May’s general election, answering only “it’s a private dinner, you better ask the organisers.”

Bankrolled by Big Oil and Big Tobacco, the IEA helped Thatcher’s rise to power. More recently, DeSmog UK revealed in September that Neil Record, IEA trustee and Lord Vinson, ‘Life Vice-President’ of the IEA are both funders of the GWPF.

Paterson, who gave the keynote speech at the GWPF last month arrived at the event with the head of his newly launched conservative think tank UK2020. Among its goals, UK2020 seeks to free Britain from climate change regulations and targets.

While Paterson mentioned UK2020 “several times” at the IEA event according to dinner guest Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, MP for the Cotswolds, the event was not connected to the new think tank, and the 20-30 male dinner guests mostly talked public policy.

“We didn’t talk much about climate, it was really free market stuff”, he explained. “It was a discussion about how we win the ideas of the centre-right of British politics … How are we going to promote those [free market ideas] and be able to make sure the electorate actually votes for a centre-right government?”

UKIP brothers under the skin

In addition to IEA staff, those in attendance included former conservative MP and current UKIP deputy chairman, Neil Hamilton, Alistair Hide of British American Tobacco, Allan Rankine of BP and Edgar Miller, a Texan-born venture capitalist and GWPF funder.

Several MPs were also there such as Julian Smith, MP for Skipton and Ripon, as well Lord Glentoran and academics Jeremy Jennings, head of department and professor of political theory at Kings College London and David Myddelton, professor at Cranfield School of Management.

Daniel Johnson, founding editor of Standpoint, and Sir John Craven, a director of Reuters and former director of Deutsche Bank, were also there. Christopher Chope, conservative MP for Christchurch said: “I think most of us are singing off of the same hymn sheet as one might say.”

Lord Howard Flight, deputy chair of the Conservative party and member of the IEA’s advisory board, described the evening’s conversation as “fundamentally [about] why the economic model that Russia and China used to employ was such a disaster and caused so much starving and death and why by contrast the model which the West has followed has been successful.”

None of which explains their enthusiasm at throwing vast public subsidies at nuclear power, fracking and other fossil fuel developments – in far larger volumes than ever granted to renewable energy generators.

 

 

This article was originally published on DeSmog UK. It also contains additional reporting from DeSmog UK.

 




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Obama ‘shirtfronts’ Abbott: protect Barrier Reef from climate change Updated for 2026

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US president Barack Obama has given Australia a sharp prod on climate change, saying he wanted his future grandchildren to be able to enjoy the Great Barrier Reef.

Obama, addressing an enthusiastic audience including mostly young people at the University of Queensland, also wryly referred to the “healthy debate” that had taken place in Australia on the climate issue.

“Here in the Asia-Pacific nobody has more at stake when it comes to thinking about and then acting on climate change”, he said.

“Here a climate that increases in temperature will mean more extreme and frequent storms, more flooding, rising seas that submerge Pacific islands. Here in Australia it means longer droughts, more wildfires. The incredible natural glory of the Great Barrier Reef is threatened.”

Obama said that worldwide, the past summer was the hottest on record. “No nation is immune, and every nation has the responsibility to do its part.”

He said one of the things that the US and Australia had in common was that they produced a lot of carbon. Partly this was the legacy of wide open spaces and the frontier mentality and an incredible abundance of resources. “So historically we have not been the most energy efficient of nations – which means we’ve got to step up”, he said.

In the US, carbon pollution was near its lowest levels in almost two decades, and under his climate action plan “we intend to do more.”

If China can do it, Australia must too!

In Beijing, Obama announced new post-2020 goals as part of a deal with China which set out a timetable for peaking its emissions.

Obama said the reason the China commitment was so important was because if China, with its large population, had the same per capita emissions as advanced economies like the US or Australia the planet wouldn’t stand a chance.

“So them setting up a target sends a powerful message to the world that all countries – whether you are a developed country, a developing country or somewhere in between – you’ve got to be able to overcome old divides, look squarely at the science and reach a strong global climate agreement next year.

“And if China and the United States can agree on this, then the world can agree on this – we can get this done and it is necessary for us to get it done.”

Obama said he had not had time to go to the Great Barrier Reef but “I want to come back, and I want my daughters to be able to come back, and I want them to be able to bring their daughters or sons to visit. And I want that there 50 years from now.”

‘I promise greater American engagement’

Obama announced the US would contribute US$3 billion to the Green Climate Fund to help developing nations deal with climate change.

Obama said in a message directed particularly to the young people in the audience that combating climate change could not be the work of government alone. Citizens, especially the next generation, had to keep raising their voices. “You deserve to live your lives in a world that is cleaner, that is healthier, that is sustainable. But that’s not going to happen unless you are heard.”

He said it was in the nature of the world that “those of us who start getting grey hair are a little set in our ways. We make investments and companies start depending on certain energy sources, and change is uncomfortable and difficult.

“And that’s why it is so important for the next generation to be able to step in and say … it doesn’t have to be this way. We have the power to imagine a new future in a way that some of the older folk don’t always have.”

Obama reaffirmed the commitment he made when visiting Australia three years ago to deepen America’s commitment to the Asia-Pacific region. He said that when he became president, leaders and people across this region were expressing their desire for greater American engagement.

“So as president, I decided that given the importance of this region to American security, American prosperity, the United States would rebalance our foreign policy and play a larger and lasting role in this region.

“That’s exactly what we’ve done. Today, our alliances, including with Australia, are stronger than they’ve ever been. American exports to this region have reached record levels. We’ve deepened our cooperation with emerging powers and regional organisations.”

The US had an “ironclad” commitment to the sovereignty, independence and the security of every ally “and will expand co-operation between allies, because we believe we are stronger when we stand together”.

He said the US would continue to modernise its defence posture across the region, and continue broadening its co-operation with emerging powers and emerging economies.

 

 

Michelle Grattan is Professorial Fellow at University of Canberra. She does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The Conversation

 




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Obama ‘shirtfronts’ Abbott: protect Barrier Reef from climate change Updated for 2026

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US president Barack Obama has given Australia a sharp prod on climate change, saying he wanted his future grandchildren to be able to enjoy the Great Barrier Reef.

Obama, addressing an enthusiastic audience including mostly young people at the University of Queensland, also wryly referred to the “healthy debate” that had taken place in Australia on the climate issue.

“Here in the Asia-Pacific nobody has more at stake when it comes to thinking about and then acting on climate change”, he said.

“Here a climate that increases in temperature will mean more extreme and frequent storms, more flooding, rising seas that submerge Pacific islands. Here in Australia it means longer droughts, more wildfires. The incredible natural glory of the Great Barrier Reef is threatened.”

Obama said that worldwide, the past summer was the hottest on record. “No nation is immune, and every nation has the responsibility to do its part.”

He said one of the things that the US and Australia had in common was that they produced a lot of carbon. Partly this was the legacy of wide open spaces and the frontier mentality and an incredible abundance of resources. “So historically we have not been the most energy efficient of nations – which means we’ve got to step up”, he said.

In the US, carbon pollution was near its lowest levels in almost two decades, and under his climate action plan “we intend to do more.”

If China can do it, Australia must too!

In Beijing, Obama announced new post-2020 goals as part of a deal with China which set out a timetable for peaking its emissions.

Obama said the reason the China commitment was so important was because if China, with its large population, had the same per capita emissions as advanced economies like the US or Australia the planet wouldn’t stand a chance.

“So them setting up a target sends a powerful message to the world that all countries – whether you are a developed country, a developing country or somewhere in between – you’ve got to be able to overcome old divides, look squarely at the science and reach a strong global climate agreement next year.

“And if China and the United States can agree on this, then the world can agree on this – we can get this done and it is necessary for us to get it done.”

Obama said he had not had time to go to the Great Barrier Reef but “I want to come back, and I want my daughters to be able to come back, and I want them to be able to bring their daughters or sons to visit. And I want that there 50 years from now.”

‘I promise greater American engagement’

Obama announced the US would contribute US$3 billion to the Green Climate Fund to help developing nations deal with climate change.

Obama said in a message directed particularly to the young people in the audience that combating climate change could not be the work of government alone. Citizens, especially the next generation, had to keep raising their voices. “You deserve to live your lives in a world that is cleaner, that is healthier, that is sustainable. But that’s not going to happen unless you are heard.”

He said it was in the nature of the world that “those of us who start getting grey hair are a little set in our ways. We make investments and companies start depending on certain energy sources, and change is uncomfortable and difficult.

“And that’s why it is so important for the next generation to be able to step in and say … it doesn’t have to be this way. We have the power to imagine a new future in a way that some of the older folk don’t always have.”

Obama reaffirmed the commitment he made when visiting Australia three years ago to deepen America’s commitment to the Asia-Pacific region. He said that when he became president, leaders and people across this region were expressing their desire for greater American engagement.

“So as president, I decided that given the importance of this region to American security, American prosperity, the United States would rebalance our foreign policy and play a larger and lasting role in this region.

“That’s exactly what we’ve done. Today, our alliances, including with Australia, are stronger than they’ve ever been. American exports to this region have reached record levels. We’ve deepened our cooperation with emerging powers and regional organisations.”

The US had an “ironclad” commitment to the sovereignty, independence and the security of every ally “and will expand co-operation between allies, because we believe we are stronger when we stand together”.

He said the US would continue to modernise its defence posture across the region, and continue broadening its co-operation with emerging powers and emerging economies.

 

 

Michelle Grattan is Professorial Fellow at University of Canberra. She does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The Conversation

 




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We shall defend our island – if the cost-benefit analysis stacks up Updated for 2026

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England’s flood defenses aren’t getting nearly the funding they need to respond to climate change: particularly if you live in a poorer area.

Faced with the threat of invasion in 1940, Winston Churchill defiantly declared: “We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be”.

Today, faced with the threat of climate change, our leaders are pathetically pusillanimous. “We shall defend our island”, they croak, “if the cost-benefit analysis stacks up.”

The crumbling state of our defences was recently laid bare by the National Audit Office (NAO), in a new report on the state of England’s flood preparedness.

“Current spending is insufficient”, it states, “to meet many of the maintenance needs the [Environment] Agency has identified” for its flood defence assets. “This will increase the danger of asset conditions degrading, so increasing flood risk.”

All this, the NAO warns, at a time when climate change is increasing flood risk. The result is that the Environment Agency will have to let maintenance of some flood defences ‘lapse’ – or put less euphemistically, ‘collapse’. The government’s auditors conclude, tersely, that “the achievement of value for money in the long term remains subject to significant uncertainty”.

Atrocious neglect

Their verdict is a damning indictment of government neglect. It comes after Ministers quietly admitted that flood defence repairs from last winter have fallen behind schedule; and after insurers wrote to the Chancellor demanding he plug the £500m shortfall in flood defence investment needed to keep pace with climate change.

Yet the case for climate action shouldn’t have to come down to such a cold, calculating totting up of ledgers. The moral case for protecting people from rising seas and worsening floods is overwhelming.

Climate change is not something that has been caused by the people most affected by it. This is most patently true globally, when the world’s poorest in sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia are set to suffer the brunt of climate change. But it is also true of how climate change will hit the British Isles.

A recent analysis by Oxfam showed that the most deprived English neighbourhoods have been three times more vulnerable to flooding than the most well-off in the past quarter-century.

The low-lying east coast of England, for example, is especially vulnerable to rising sea levels and storm surges, as witnessed last December when the worst tidal surge in six decades struck settlements from Essex to the Humber.

It is also an economically deprived part of the country, a coastline dotted with declining seaside towns often forgotten about by Westminster: the flood-prone town of Jaywick near Clacton, for instance, is the poorest ward in the country.

These communities bear scant responsibility for the pollution driving climate change – but they are in the front line of its impacts.

Flood defence money follows the money, not the need

All this is lost in the cold budgetary calculations of Whitehall. The Treasury enforces a system of payments for flood defences that places weight on the economic value of the properties being protected. Richer, urban areas inevitably attract more cash; poorer and smaller settlements get less.

The Chancellor’s latest wheeze is to oblige local businesses to chip in to the cost of flood defences whilst he cuts the public sector contributions. Make businesses pay by all means, but this will only exacerbate the inequality of flood protection: poorer communities with fewer businesses will simply not get defences.

Tellingly, the only part of the country where there is a legal duty to build flood defences is – yes, you guessed it – central London. Protect the metropolis; the rest can swim.

Alarmingly, the communities whose flood defences have been left to crumble may not even know the risks they are being exposed to. The report by the NAO states that the Environment Agency “has not communicated to communities the local effect on future flood risk from the de-prioritisation of maintenance in some areas.”

If true, this is genuinely shocking. But it wouldn’t be a great surprise if the communities being quietly neglected were more deprived and far from London.

When last winter’s floods struck, David Cameron was generous in his rhetoric, declaring that “money was no object” in helping people recover from the disaster.

Such apparent largesse meant little, however, coming after years of cuts to the flood defence budget – cuts that have clearly affected the state of our country’s defences and left them in a more fragile state.

Needed now – a £500 million investment

The Coalition needs to invest £500m to keep pace with climate change; the cost of last winter’s floods has already run to at least £1bn. To take a cost-benefit approach, it would have been better to invest in maintenance earlier, rather than have to pay out much more to mop up the mess later.

Yet even if the numbers did not stack up so clearly, there would be an overwhelming moral case to protect the whole country from climate change.

The more fossil fuels we burn, the more it will flood; the more we neglect our defences and force households to fend for themselves, the more the poorest will suffer.

We must prevent climate change getting any worse, and we must protect society from its impacts – the whole of society – not just those parts of it the Treasury deem most economically useful.

 

 

Guy Shrubsole is climate campaigner at Friends of the Earth. Previously he worked for the Public Interest Research Centre and the Department of the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs.

This article was published by Open Democracy under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 licence.

Creative Commons License

 

 




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US-China climate deal: at last the big players are talking the right language Updated for 2026

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Some great news at last, as China and the US announce a secretly negotiated deal to reduce their carbon emissions.

After years of seeming to get nowhere at all it looks like we have the beginnings of meaningful commitments.

If the rest of the world can fall in line with the combined targets of China, the US and EU, and if between us all we can enforce them, we would actually have progress. Not success, but for the first time we would have better-than-nothing global progress on climate change.

But just before we all relax, lets get things into perspective. Global emissions have been on a mathematically predictable exponential trajectory for at least 160 years.

The CO2 power law – doubling time 39 years

Cumulative CO2 emissions (broadly speaking that’s what determines the temperature change) continue to double every 39 years (see graph, right). Nothing that anyone has done to date has succeeded in making even the faintest detectable change in that.

To be blunt, our species has so far not demonstrated any ability whatsoever to influence global emissions growth through deliberate action on climate change. Savings in one place have simply popped up elsewhere.

And if we stay on our age-old trajectory we will shoot through the likely threshold of two degrees in the mid-2040s.

By that I mean that by about 2045 we will pass the point at which we will probably experience more than a 2°C rise even if no-one anywhere in the world ever again set fire to any coal, oil or gas.

And, roughly speaking, 39 years after that we will crash through the 4°C threshold which humans would be very likely to find extremely unpleasant.

Of course we don’t really know all that much about what level of temperature change will cause us what level of suffering and death. We don’t understand the climate discontinuities that we might trigger, and we don’t know how good we will be at adapting to change and we don’t know how good we will be at preserving world order if things get tough.

The mainstream consensus is that 2°C entails significant risk of something nasty happening while 4°C is probably very nasty indeed. No one knows for sure.

Coming off the curve

What we need is a global constraint on greenhouse gases. And it needs to be rapid enough to keep temperatures as close to 2°C rise as possible. This much, thankfully, seems to be uncontested these days among people who talk any sense on climate change.

So how far do the latest US and China pledges take us? If (and it’s still a big ‘if’) the world falls quickly in line with the US (27% cuts by 2025), China (peak by 2030 – by which time their emissions could be enormous) and EU (40% cut by 2030) announcements we will come off the exponential curve but still fly through the 2℃ threshold and well beyond.

Coming off the curve would be a huge achievement but not nearly enough.

So when I say we might actually stand a chance of getting somewhere, I don’t mean that things are looking rosy. But I do mean this gives me real hope, as big players are talking the right language at last.

All we need now is more of the same – and to make sure the words turn into enforced action. That will be enormously challenging but it is radically more hopeful position than the situation we have been in in which sticky plasters have been proposed, no amount of which could help.

What we need from here

  1. We need the rest of the world to come into the fold with similar commitments, so we get a leak-proof deal on leaving fuel in the ground. Any countries that don’t participate will probably end up growing their emissions to undo efforts made elsewhere, because that is how the system dynamics work to negate piecemeal actions.
  2. Binding targets need tightening up for everyone, beyond what is currently on the table, to take us a lot closer to topping out at 2°C.
  3. The deal needs enforcing. This is going to be tough, remember that the exponential global emissions curve has proved incredibly resilient to date.
  4. All the greenhouse gases need to be properly included in the plan.
  5. We need to head off a global dash for biofuels which will undoubtedly be at the expense of feeding the world’s poorest if left to market forces. Some smart and robust agreements are going to be needed on land use for biofuels.

While all this is being put in place we can start investing in the technologies we will urgently need – redirecting the money we have been channelling into fossil fuel research and development.

To sum up, the announcement is very encouraging. There may still be a long way to go yet and we all need to push hard for next year’s Paris talks to put it all in place – but it is starting to look as if it might actually be worth the effort.

 

 

Mike Berners-Lee is a Visiting Researcher at Lancaster University, and the founding director of Small World Consulting which helps organisations understand and respond to the climate change agenda.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The Conversation

 




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US-China climate deal raises hopes of agreement in 2015 Updated for 2026

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An agreement reached in Beijing between US President Barack Obama and China’s President Xi has set a goal for the US to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 26%-28% by 2025, relative to 2005 levels.

The two countries also agreed on a target to ensure that the temperature rise from man-made climate change should be limited to 2 degrees C.

China’s commitment lacked specific targets: rather the country, currently the world’s biggest emitter, promised that its emissions would peak in or before 2030. It’s the first such commitment that China has ever made.

As the two countries together produce about 45% of the world’s CO2, agreement between them on climate and their future emissions trajectories has long been considered essential to reaching a meaningful agreement at the 2015 UN climate summit in Paris, to reduce emissions beyond 2020.

“We agreed to make sure that international climate change negotiations will reach an agreement in Paris”, Mr X told reporters.

This is what manifestly failed to take place in Copenhagen in 2009 – with the result that the meeting was an abject failure.

‘Historic’ agreement

Mr Obama described the agreement as “historic”, and promised US support for China’s efforts to “slow, peak and then reverse the course of China’s carbon emissions.”

But he faces a political battle at home with the climate change denying Republican party holding firm majorities in both houses of congress.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell complained of “this unrealistic plan, that the president would dump on his successor, would ensure higher utility rates and far fewer jobs.”

However the deal was welcomed by the increasingly influential 350.org, whose Executive Director May Boeve took it as “a sign that President Obama is taking his climate legacy seriously and is willing to stand up to big polluters.”

She added that it should also come as a warning to fossil fuel companies and investors to stop sinking money in ‘unburnable’ carbon, and “strengthens the case for fossil fuel divestment.”

“The US and China reaffirming their commitment to limiting global warming to 2°C should send shockwaves through the financial markets, because the only way to meet that target is by leaving 80% of fossil fuel reserves underground.

“The industry’s business plan is simply incompatible with the pathways laid out today. It’s time to get out of fossil fuels and invest in climate solutions.”

US pledge ‘a drop in the ocean’, says FoE

Dipti Bhatnagar of Friends of the Earth International welcomed China’s commitment. “China is taking the fight against climate change ever more seriously and intends to peak its emissions in next 15 years”, he said.

“We urge China and all nations to urgently switch from emissions-causing dirty energy to community-based renewable energy.” But the US pledges were “just a drop in the ocean”, he insisted. “These figures are very far from being the sea of change we urgently need from the US government.”

His colleague Sara Shaw, FOEI’s Climate Justice and Energy coordinator, added:

“The cuts pledged by President Obama are nowhere near what the US needs to cut if it was serious about preventing runaway climate change. These US voluntary pledges are not legally binding and are not based on science or equity.”

“Industrialised nations, and first of all the world’s largest historical polluter, the US, must urgently make the deepest emission cuts and provide the bulk of the money if countries are to share fairly the responsibility of preventing catastrophic climate change.

“Disgracefully, today’s announcement ignores the fact that developing countries urgently need finance and technology to transform their energy systems and adapt to climate change.”

 




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IPCC must speak out – we are creating a hell for future generations Updated for 2026

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The headline statements of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s new Synthesis Report – unequivocal climate change, almost certainly driven largely by humans, and an urgent need to cut emissions – won’t come as any surprise to people who paid attention to the three larger reports the IPCC has released over the past 14 months.

But reading the full synthesis report, as opposed to the shorter Summary for Policymakers (SPM), shows that while the facts haven’t changed, the IPCC has subtly altered its approach to how it presents this information.

Instead of dealing largely in forecasts and responses, as in previous syntheses, it now frames the climate problem squarely in terms of risk management.

Not everything of importance in the full synthesis report made it into the SPM. The language in the SPM is also weaker, particularly about the nature of irreversible risks and about threats to food security. The full report contains valuable pointers for managing climate risks and the benefits of acting, so should be preferred for decision-making purposes.

The report is also great for debunking some of the persistent myths about climate change, both scientific and economic. But, unfortunately given the urgent need for new economic policy to cut carbon, it’s stronger on the former than the latter.

Combating climate myths

The report is useful in addressing some of the misinformation flying around in political commentary and the popular press. These include the following:

Myth 1: climate action is a barrier to development, especially for the poor.

The report says:

“Risks … are generally greater for disadvantaged people and communities in countries at all levels of development. Limiting the effects of climate change is necessary to achieve sustainable development and equity, including poverty eradication.

“Substantial emissions reductions over the next few decades can reduce climate risks in the 21st century and beyond, increase prospects for effective adaptation, reduce the costs and challenges of mitigation in the longer term, and contribute to climate-resilient pathways for sustainable development.”

Myth 2: The planet hasn’t warmed since 1998.

The report says:

“Ocean warming dominates the increase in energy stored in the climate system, accounting for more than 90% of the energy accumulated between 1971 and 2010 (high confidence), with only about 1% stored in the atmosphere. It is virtually certain that the upper ocean (0−700 m) warmed from 1971 to 2010.

“The globally averaged combined land and ocean surface temperature data as calculated by a linear trend, show a warming of 0.85C over the period 1880 to 2012. In addition to robust multi-decadal warming, the globally averaged surface temperature exhibits substantial decadal and interannual variability.

“As one example, the rate of warming over the past 15 years (1998-2012; 0.05C per decade), which begins with a strong El Niño, is smaller than the rate calculated since 1951 (1951-2012; 0.12C per decade).”

Myth 3: Coal will be the fuel of the future.

The report says:

“There are multiple mitigation pathways that are likely to limit warming to below 2C relative to pre-industrial levels. These pathways would require substantial emissions reductions over the next few decades and near zero emissions of CO2 and other long-lived greenhouse gases by the end of the century.””

IPCC should make a stronger economic case for climate action

The one major omission from this report (which, to be fair, is also poorly represented in the research literature) is how the economic case for taking action can be better addressed.

The report contains an incomplete and flawed cost-benefit structure. Cost-benefit analysis is the standard method for assessing whether a policy is merited. It is used for short-term decision making but is totally unsuited to decisions over century-long time scales.

The lack of clear cost-benefit outcomes in this and previous reports has been used as a deny-and-delay tactic for the past two decades. This argument is nothing more than a red herring, and it’s getting very smelly.

The report pretty much admits the shortcomings of cost-benefit analysis, in the following two sentences:

“Methods of valuation from economic, social and ethical analysis are available to assist decision making. But they cannot identify a single best balance between mitigation, adaptation and residual climate impacts.”

Yet the report is perfectly clear on the physical risks to global-scale systems and the potential for total disruption of regional, national and international economies. It states:

“Without additional mitigation efforts beyond those in place today, and even with adaptation, warming by the end of the 21st century will lead to high to very high risk of severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts globally.”

and:

“Climate change exacerbates other threats to social and natural systems, placing additional burdens particularly on the poor.”

What about the dystopian future we are creating?

There is no existing economic model that can assess the full costs of either of these outcomes adequately. When costing mitigation to keep likely warming below 2C, the report suggests an annual reduction of consumption growth by 0.04-0.14% over the century. This is against a backdrop of consumption growth of between 1.6% and 3% per year.

It’s ridiculous to suggest that severe, widespread, and irreversible climate impacts would cost us less than this. Much more likely is that these growth rates of 1.6% to 3%, if they were achievable and sustainable at all, would be severely disrupted by a changing climate.

The report could certainly afford to address this point more forcefully. It says:

“Effective decision making to limit climate change and its effects can be informed by a wide range of analytical approaches for evaluating expected risks and benefits, recognizing the importance of governance, ethical dimensions, equity, value judgments, economic assessments and diverse perceptions and responses to risk and uncertainty.”

But acting on climate is ultimately an ethical, not an economic, consideration. Insufficient policy action is a declaration of self-interest, condemning our children, grandchildren and the planetary system that supports them, to a dystopian future. That’s what the report should say.

 

 

Roger Jones is a Professorial Research Fellow at Victoria University. He was also a coordinating lead author in the Fifth Assessment Report and received a travel grant from the former Department of Climate Change to take part.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The Conversation

 




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Effective climate agreement will remain elusive Updated for 2026

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An effective treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will probably remain elusive, according to a new research study, because the steps likely to win political agreement would be ineffective, while those that could produce results would be politically unfeasible.

In fact, the Norwegian researchers conclude, the world is actually further away from an effective climate agreement today than it was 15 years ago, when the Kyoto Protocol was adopted.

The research is the work of a team from the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research – Oslo (Cicero) and Statistics Norway, the country’s Central Bureau of Statistics.

The key elements of an effective agreement

The key question the researchers asked was what conditions could achieve an international agreement that would substantially reduce global climate emissions, in view of the extremely slow progress in the UN negotiations. They concluded that there is little basis for optimism.

Professor Jon Hovi, of the University of Oslo and Cicero, headed the project. He says there are three essentials for a robust agreement:

  • It must include all key countries – in other words, all the major emitters.
  • It must require each member country to make substantial emissions cuts.
  • Member countries must actually comply with their commitments.

While emissions cuts benefit all countries, he says, each country must bear the full costs of cutting its own emissions. So each is sorely tempted to act as a ‘free rider’ – to enjoy the gains from other countries’ cuts while ignoring its own obligations.

“Cutting emissions is expensive, and powerful interests in every country proffer arguments as to why that particular country should be exempted”, Professor Hovi explains. “This inclines the authorities of all countries to take decisions that make them free riders.”

The researchers identified five types of free rider. Some countries – the US, for example – never ratified the Kyoto Protocol. Others, such as Canada, ratified it but later withdrew.

Developing countries ratified the Protocol, but it did not require them to make any cuts. The countries of Eastern Europe also ratified Kyoto, but it cost them nothing as their transition from a centrally-planned economy to a market economy meant their economies could not afford to cause significant emissions anyway.

Finally, the team says, some of the countries that accepted relatively deep commitments under Kyoto may have failed to live up to it. The final compliance figures are not yet available.

Payment in advance against failure

“We must eliminate free riding”, Professor Hovi says. “Each and every country must be certain that the other countries are also doing their part. It’s the only viable option.”

He thinks any country avoiding its treaty commitments must face consequences: “Free riding must be met with concrete sanctions. The question is what type of enforcement could conceivably work and, if such a system exists, would it be politically possible to implement it.”

He and his colleagues recommend financial deposits, administered by an international secretariat. At ratification, each country would deposit a significant amount of money, and continue to do so annually until the agreed emissions reductions start. The total amount deposited by each country should match the cost of its commitments.

At the end of the reduction period, those countries that had met their cuts targets would receive a full refund of their deposit, plus interest. Those that had failed to do so would forfeit part or all of it.

Practical problems

But Professor Hovi concedes that not only would there be several practical problems with such a scheme, but there is little chance that it would be adopted anyway, because strict enforcement of an agreement is not politically feasible.

The researchers say that some countries – such as the US – support international systems of enforcement that can safeguard compliance with an agreement.

“At the same time, other key countries have stated a clear opposition to potent enforcement measures – either as a matter of principle or because they know that they will risk punishment”, Professor Hovi says.

“For example, China opposes mechanisms that entail international intervention in domestic affairs as a matter of principle. China is not even prepared to accept international monitoring of its own emissions.

“The UN principle of full consensus allows countries opposed to enforcement measures to prevail by using their veto right during negotiations.”

Governments will try to revive hopes that agreement can be reached on an effective climate treaty when the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meets in Paris late in 2015.

 

 

Alex Kirby writes for Climate News Network.

 




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Climate deniers lost for words: 2014 set for hottest year on record Updated for 2026

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Climate deniers have been left red-faced as the world basks in some of the hottest temperatures in living memory, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicting that 2014 could break all records.

Lord Lawson, who resigned as chancellor in the 1980s after overheating the British economy, has led the siren chorus of climate change denial – claiming that a recent plateau in global earth surface temperatures is proof that the threat of global warming has been wildly exaggerated. 

The deniers have either ignored or attacked the latest research, which shows that the heat created by increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been absorbed into the oceans and that surface temperatures are likely to begin rising again.

England has enjoyed balmy evenings with golden sunsets lighting up parks and gardens where trees have retained their amber and green leaves. But this wonderful Mediterranean warmth should also be understood as a chilling warning. 

January to September were the warmest first nine months of a year recorded since the invention of the thermometer. This week, NASA scientists announced that September was the hottest of its kind in 135 years.

This is despite the fact that 2014 was not an El Nino year: a natural weather event that takes place every few years and boosts global average temperatures.

‘The contrarians were wrong’

Only a significant drop in temperatures in November and December, which is unlikely but not impossible, would result in the average measured temperature this year falling short of the record set in 2010. 

DeSmogUK approached the outspoken Dr Benny Peiser, director of a leading climate sceptic group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), founded by Lawson. 

But when asked what the record temperatures experienced meant for climate scepticism he simply refused to comment. When asked if this report undermines the GWPF’s claims that climate change had stopped, he replied by saying “No comment”. 

Peiser has not previously been coy about making statements to the media based on the temperature of a given day.

During Christmas one year he told The Times newspaper: “The predictions come in thick and fast, but we take them all with a pinch of salt. We look out of the window and it’s very cold, it does not seem to be warming.”

Climate deniers also created a media storm last year when England was hit by freezing temperatures and deluged by snow when a cold front usually found across Siberia swept the country.

Only weeks ago former environment secretary Owen Paterson claimed that “the forecast effects of climate change have been consistently and widely exaggerated thus far“ – going on to call for the effective repeal of the UK’s Climate Change Act.

The warmest annual average temperature since 1880

Dr John Abraham, an expert in climate change, said of the soaring temperatures: “This year was not supposed to be hot, at least according to those who think climate change had stopped. But the real facts tell us a different story, the Earth is still warming, the ‘pause’ never really was, and once again … The contrarians were wrong.” 

NOAA climate scientist Jessica Blunden said in an interview with AP news agency that it was “pretty likely” that 2014 will be the warmest year on record.

Blunden explained that “persistent record warmth in the global ocean” was “strengthening the chances of the year’s final three months resembling the first nine.”

The report shows that from January through to September all months retained record warm temperatures with an average of 58.72 degrees. That’s 0.68°C above the 20th century average of 14.1°C, according to NOAA scientists. 

These records tie 2014 with 1998 and 2010 for the warmest first nine months on record. The United Nations has pointed out that 13 out of the 14 hottest years recorded have taken place since the turn of the 21st century. 

In a statement, NOAA said: “If the surface temperature remains elevated at the same level for the remainder of the year, then 2014 will set a new record for the warmest annual average temperature since records began in 1880.”

The laws of physics are non-negotiable

A more daunting prospect was recently announced by the UN’s World Meteorological Association (WMA) last month, stating an 80% chance that an El Nino was actually still expected to happen at the end of the year.

Jeff Masters, meteorology director for the private firm Weather Underground, said when talking to the Daily Mail that if an El Nino did happen then: “Next year could well bring Earth’s hottest year on record, accompanied by unprecedented regional heat waves and droughts.”

Explaining further, the WMA said: “Carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for many hundreds of years and in the ocean for even longer. Past, present and future CO2 emissions will have a cumulative impact on both global warming and ocean acidification. The laws of physics are non-negotiable.”

Climate change deniers are, of course, welcome to take silent refuge in the late October shadows into which they have uncharacteristically retreated. I’m surely not alone in hoping they stay there for a good long time to come.

 

 

This article was originally published by DeSmogUK.

 




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Climate ‘uncertainty’ is no excuse for climate inaction Updated for 2026

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Former environment minister Owen Paterson has called for the UK to scrap its climate change targets.

In a speech to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, he cited “considerable uncertainty” over the impact of carbon emissions on global warming – a line that was displayed prominently in coverage by the Telegraph and the Daily Mail.

Paterson is far from alone: climate change debate has been suffused with appeals to ‘uncertainty’ to delay policy action. Who hasn’t heard politicians or media personalities use uncertainty associated with some aspects of climate change to claim that the science is ‘not settled‘?

Over in the US, this sort of thinking pops up quite often in the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal. Its most recent article, by Professor Judith Curry, concludes that the ostensibly slowed rate of recent warming gives us “more time to find ways to decarbonise the economy affordably.”

What we do know – inspite of ‘uncertainty’

At first glance, avoiding interference with the global economy may seem advisable when there is uncertainty about the future rate of warming or the severity of its consequences.

But delaying action because the facts are presumed to be unreliable reflects a misunderstanding of the science of uncertainty.

Simply because a crucial parameter such as the climate system’s sensitivity to greenhouse gas emissions is expressed as a range – for example, that under some emissions scenarios we will experience 2.6°C to 4.8ºC of global warming or 0.3 to 1.7 m of sea level rise by 2100 – does not mean that the underlying science is poorly understood. We are very confident that temperatures and sea levels will rise by a considerable amount.

Perhaps more importantly, just because some aspects of climate change are difficult to predict (will your county experience more intense floods in a warmer world, or will the floods occur down the road?) does not negate our wider understanding of the climate.

We can’t yet predict the floods of the future but we do know that precipitation will be more intense because more water will be stored in the atmosphere on a warmer planet.

This idea of uncertainty might be embedded deeply within science but is no one’s friend and it should be minimised to the greatest extent possible. It is an impetus to mitigative action rather than a reason for complacency.

Uncertainty means more risk – not less

There are three key aspects of scientific uncertainty surrounding climate change projections that exacerbate rather than ameliorate the risks to our future.

First, uncertainty has an asymmetrical effect on many climatic quantities. For example, a quantity known as Earth system sensitivity, which tells us how much the planet warms for each doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, has been estimated to be between 1.5°C to 4.5ºC.

However, it is highly unlikely, given the well-established understanding of how carbon dioxide absorbs long-wave radiation, that this value can be below 1ºC. There is a possibility, however, that sensitivity could be higher than 4.5ºC.

For fundamental mathematical reasons, the uncertainty favours greater, rather than smaller, climate impacts than a simple range suggests.

Uncertainty also makes adaptation harder

Second, the uncertainty in our projections makes adaptation to climate change more expensive and challenging. Suppose we need to build flood defences for a coastal English town.

If we could forecast a 1m sea level rise by 2100 without any uncertainty, the town could confidently build flood barriers 1m higher than they are today. However, although sea levels are most likely to rise by about 1m, we’re really looking at a range between 0.3m and 1.7m.

Therefore, flood defences must be at least 1.7m higher than today – 70cm higher than they could be in the absence of uncertainty. And as uncertainty increases, so does the required height of flood defences for non-negotiable mathematical reasons.

And the problem doesn’t end there, as there is further uncertainty in forecasts of rainfall occurrence, intensity and storm surges. This could ultimately mandate a 2 to 3m-high flood defence to stay on the safe side, even if the most likely prediction is for only a 1m sea-level rise.

Even then, as most uncertainty ranges are for 95% confidence, there is a 5% chance that those walls would still be too low. Maybe a town is willing to accept a 5% chance of a breach, but a nuclear power station cannot to take such risks.

Systemic uncertainties may be hiding the gravest of risks

Finally, some global warming consequences are associated with deep, so-called systemic uncertainty. For example, the combined impact on coral reefs of warmer oceans, more acidic waters and coastal run-off that becomes more silt-choked from more intense rainfalls is very difficult to predict.

But we do know, from decades of study of complex systems, that those deep uncertainties may camouflage particularly grave risks. This is particularly concerning given that more than 2.6 billion people depend on the oceans as their primary source of protein.

Similarly, warming of Arctic permafrost could promote the growth of CO2-sequestering plants, the release of warming-accelerating methane, or both.

Warm worlds with very high levels of carbon dioxide did exist in the very distant past and these earlier worlds provide some insight into the response of the Earth system; however, we are accelerating into this new world at a rate that is unprecedented in Earth history, creating additional layers of complexity and uncertainty.

Uncertainty is not the same as ignorance

Increasingly, arguments against climate mitigation are phrased as “I accept that humans are increasing CO2 levels and that this will cause some warming but climate is so complicated we cannot understand what the impacts of that warming will be.”

This argument is incorrect – uncertainty does not imply ignorance. Indeed, whatever we don’t know mandates caution. No parent would argue:

“I accept that if my child kicks lions, this will irritate them, but a range of factors will dictate how the lions respond; therefore I will not stop my child from kicking lions.”

The deeper the uncertainty, the more greenhouse gas emissions should be perceived as a wild and poorly understood gamble.

By extension, the only unequivocal tool for minimising climate change uncertainty is to decrease our greenhouse gas emissions.

 

 

Richard Pancost is Professor of Biogeochemistry, Director of the Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol. He receives funding from the NERC, the EU and the Leverhulme Trust.

Stephan Lewandowsky is Chair of Cognitive Psychology at the University of Bristol. He receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the World University Network, and the Royal Society.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The Conversation

 




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