Weekend Reading
Prep for THB Australia Week and the Latest on the DOE CWG
I just touched down in Australia, where I am speaking at a conference early next week. Greeting me at the airport were headlines in every newspaper focused on reports just released by the Australian government on climate science, policy, and economics. In addition, this weekend sees the semi-finals of the NRL.
I really feel like the red carpet has been rolled out for me!
Next week will be Australia week here at THB. In preparation, I suggest some advance readings. Below, I also bring you up-to-date on the continuing drama associated with the DOE Climate Working Group report, and, my, there is a lot of drama.
THB Australia Week Preparation
Next week, I’ve got two big posts planned — One will draw upon my conference lecture next week and will discuss several reports just released by the Australian government.
Among them is the Australian government’s National Climate Risk Assessment and also the CSIRO report, Modelling Sectoral Technology and Emissions Pathways to 2035 and Net Zero Emissions - Final Report. These reports have both been released in the past few days and have been top of the news here, as you can see below.
In addition to the two reports linked above, I recommend the following readings as background for my posts next week..
First, how the reports are viewed by Australia’s political parties:
Labor: “An ambitious but achievable target - sending the right investment signal, responding to the science and delivered with a practical plan.”
Coalition: “The Coalition strongly rejects Labor’s economy-wrecking 2035 emissions reduction target, a fantasy that rests on flawed assumptions and cannot be believed.”
Greens: “Anything less than net zero emissions by 2035 would lock Australia into exceeding 2 degrees of warming.”
Second, some past posts here at THB and a longer article will get you up to speed on some key background:
How Climate Scenarios Lost Touch With Reality (with Justin Ritchie, in IST, Summer 2021)
A second post coming next week will bring up-to-date an analysis of Australia’s climate policies I conducted fifteen years ago.
Over the past decades I’ve been fortunate to have many close colleagues in Australia and have had frequent opportunities to visit this fantastic country. Back in the day, I spent a period looking closely at Australian climate politics and wrote a paper evaluating Australia’s 2009 proposed emissions targets.
That paper concluded:
In proposing to do that which has never been done, Australia is joining the United Kingdom and Japan (and others, including the European Union and United States) with aggressive emissions reductions targets and timetables that appear to be fanciful at best. . .
The political challenges thus far facing passage of emissions reduction legislation in Australia, and its almost certain destiny to fail to achieve emissions reduction targets of the magnitude described here, should serve as an important lesson to climate policy makers around the world.
Fiftenn years on, how does my analysis stand up? What might it tell us about the just-released emissions reduction targets? Stay tuned . . .
Read the paper here:
Pielke Jr, R. A. (2011). An evaluation of the targets and timetables of proposed Australian emissions reduction policies. Environmental Science & Policy, 14:20-27.
Happy reading! Meantime … Go Sharks!
Drama Continues in the Aftermath of the DOE CWG Report
The shockwaves continue following the released of the Department of Energy’s report of its now-disbanded Climate Working Group (CWG). Here is a quick run down:
CWG participant Judith Curry is now under investigation by the ranking member of the House Science Committee. Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) has sent a letter to Dr. Curry requesting a formal interview to discuss her role on the CWG. The House Science Committee has jurisdiction over research in DOE and Rep. Lofgren could easily target her investigative authority on the agency, rather than on a private citizen. As someone who was once investigated by a member of Congress, I view this as nothing more than intimidation and punishment of a perceived political opponent — Something that seems to be going around these days. I object to this sort of abuse of power by Republicans and by Democrats.
The U.S. National Academy of Sciences released its response to the DOE CWG report — Effects of Human-Caused Greenhouse Gas Emissions on U.S. Climate, Health, and Welfare. Here are some interesting details:
The report has some interesting quotes:
“Much of the understanding of climate change that was uncertain or tentative in 2009 is now resolved" — If understandings of climate change are now certain and resolved, then research funding can be dramaticallly reduced, right? I jest (a bit). Of course there remain huge uncertainties in climate science. To suggest otherwise is simply laughable. As I have long argued, scientific uncertainties are a reality and are not a basis for inaction on policy, as we make decisions every day in the face of unceratinties and ignorance. The key question of course is not: Should we act? — But instead, given uncertainties, how might we act?
“The committee concludes that the evidence for current and future harm to human health and welfare created by human-caused GHGs is beyond scientific dispute” — Under the Clean Air Act, experts advise and the EPA administrator makes a judgment of endangerment based on that advice. Here the NAS is seeking to place itself not in an advisory role but in a political role that determines how the EPA administrator must exercise their judgment. Even the 2009 Technical Document informing the EPA administrator did not go that far. The NAS should not be a cheerleader or a political advocate, which brings us to . . .
According to an analysis by ChatGPT there are exactly zero — none, nil, niente — common references between the NAS report and the DOE CWG. Remarkable! Far from being a response to the DOE CWG report, the NAS report is simply a description of an alternate universe. Scientific assessment cannot succeed — substantively or legitimately — by carefully constructing reviews of science that avoid inconvenient peer-reviewed science that does not neatly fit a narrative. That goes of course for both the DOE and NAS. This is a huge problem in climate science assessment.
I also asked ChatGPT who was cited the most in each report, and you can see the results below. I suspect that some part of the freak out over the DOE CWG report was to distract people from our research on scenarios and extremes — which now has been ignored by Carbon Brief, the AP, Dessler/Kopp, and now the NAS.
A judge in Massachusetts denied the request by the Union of Concerned Scientists and Environmental Defense Funds that a preliminary injunction be applied to the DOE CWG report (basically granting all of their demands prior to a hearing of the suit). That means that the DOE CWG report can remain as is for now. However, the judge did rule that the DOE CWG is a FACA committee, meaning that the DOE will almost certainly have to comply with FACA requirements, notably the release of certain information about the committee and it deliberations. UCS/EDF appear to have walked back their demands that the DOE CWG and its authors be censored.
There is a need for climate science assessment to be rethought, as it has become deeply partisan and politicized, and as a result dysfunctional. More on this here at THB in the coming weeks . . .
If you missed our panel discussion earlier this week at AEI of the EPA Endangerment Finding and the DOE CWG, you can see it at the link below. I thought the presentations by the lawyers, including a chief counsel of the EPA under Trump 1, are particularly insightful. I learned a lot.
Thanks for reading, have a great weekend!
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NAS document was never intended for reading. Its length ensured that no one in media would. The announcement of the report was their true focus.
Having grown up in Australia and having many friends and relatives there I have great concerns on what damage they will do to an economy that has long struggled to maintain an industrial base.
Elites in government are more focused on grandstanding on the world stage than critically assessing the harm to their citizens of the path they are taking.
Roger, I note the authors most cited by the NAS "critique" are heavy on attribution research. Do you sense a movement to legitimize the event-attribution schemes to hang multi-million dollar liabilities on the fossil fuel companies each time the creek rises or the wind blows the washing off the clothes line?