I’m going to sign off for the rest of today.

As an interim conclusion, I think you see some of the trees well, others less so. As far as the wood as a whole is concerned, I’d be far happier when you were able to fully visualise what the Amazon Basin (or southern Africa, or Australia, or your own beloved Mediterranean) will – or let’s just say very possibly might – be like in 2100.

If making air travel cheaper doesn’t increase its uptake, that would (a) be a dramatic break with the observed trends so far, and (b) make it absolutely unique in the whole of human history, as far as I know.

Actually it isn’t. For we don’t know. Jevons said it might, it depends. It might be that lowering flight prices again will lead to more flying. It might be that we fly enough already. I know that I can afford a European flight a month, easily. I also know that I don’t fly each month for I’ve other and to me better things to do with my time.

It was BP big in solar (for many years the world’s largest). Shelçl has just got out of wind.

But so what? What value added does an oil company have in electricity anyway? Neither BP nor Shell have access to houses (like an electricity distributor, or even a phone company). They don’t know all that much about electricity (it’sd only in hte god forsaken parts of thw rold that oil is used to generate it). They know how to drill holes and pump stuff. What in fuck has that to do with solar power?

Just to say “well, they’re energy companies” is meaningless. It’s like saying that because some Scottish Building company lends money on houses they should go into lending on commercial property. Whoops! that did happen and they went bust because it’s a very different business.

“Getting nearer the knuckle, there is a really telling point about your involvement in materials technology to make aircraft lighter. This puts some some self-interest behind a position that looks to see some nudge, but is extremely concerned that it should not be large, and holds fast to that position even when what the science demands is something large. ”

No, sorry. The incremental income from plane technology would be interesting, of course. But vastly outweighed by the income from fuel cells. If one particular flavour of those takes off I’ll be buying planes not renting a seat occasionally.

“but I think everyone knows that emissions from jet travel are going to be unsustainable unless there is transformational rather than this kind of incremental change in the technology.”

I’m certainly not of that view. Imagine that we can only have 20% of current emissions. OK, so which emissions are we going to keep and which spend money to get rid of through low carbon or no carbon technologies? Well, we’re going to keep making those emissions that give us the highest bang for our buck, the most human utility for this now constrained resource.

Now I don’t know here, for I cannot forecast what other people value. But my guess is that we’d all prefer to insulate our houses but keep on flying, drive electric cars but keep on flying, eat less meat but keep on flying.

If we do cut emissions by 805 there’s still room for jet planes in there.

As to possible savings: one technology might lead to a 2% fuel reduction on each flight, another to 10%. A third works on the tradeoff between efficiency and noise (if we’re really worried about CO2 then we’d lift the noise restrictions at airports: lowering noise levels costs fuel) in an engine at takeoff and landing. About another 2% there.

Now please understand, I am not pushing these, these are not my technologies or work. I just supply some of the materials the wonks are playing with which is why I know about them.

“If Copenhagen collapses, will you agitate to dismantle Britain’s unilateral system for making the nudges?”

Certainly not. I have consistently argued for a carbon tax. It’s simple and effective (and is also what Stern argues for). I’ve absolutely no problem with the thought that there are externalities and that we make them internal to market prices through taxes. Further, you’ve got to raise the tax dosh somewhere, might as well be on bad things, not good ones like incomes, work and profits.

However, I would prefer that green taxes were revenue neutral: that we reduce some other tax at the same time. As we used to do with Landfill Tax: we reduce employer’s national insurance payments by the same amount as landfill tax raises.

Let’s look at solar. Obviously I’d like to think you are right. But Shell have just divested out of solar and gone into oil shale big time. What’s that all about?

Getting nearer the knuckle, there is a really telling point about your involvement in materials technology to make aircraft lighter. This puts some some self-interest behind a position that looks to see some nudge, but is extremely concerned that it should not be large, and holds fast to that position even when what the science demands is something large.

Obviously a technology that saves airlines’ fuel bills at the margin is going to fly, so to speak, but I think everyone knows that emissions from jet travel are going to be unsustainable unless there is transformational rather than this kind of incremental change in the technology. Some data on the fuel saving from the technology would be interesting (and for the Rolls Royce fuel cells too, although I’m not clear here if you are talking about aero engines).

I don’t decry what you are doing, and I don’t rejoice that air travel will probably need to be severely constrained; I like jetting about as much as anyone else. But if that’s what it’s going to need, then that’s what we must do. I hope you’ll agree with that, despite your personal stake to the contrary.

PS What about my Copenhagen question?

Very much so. Which is why I prefer the Nordhaus approach to the Stern one. Nordhaus is essentially saying that, look, we’re going to replace all these things over the next 30-50 years in the normal capital and technological cycle. So, as we do so, let’s make sure that they get replaced with top notch low carbon technology.

We do this not by whacking on huge great carbon taxes now. We do this by stating that we’re going to whack on great huge carbon taxes *in the future*. Thus no one ends up paying the taxes because by the time they come into play we’ve replaced the whole generating structure with that new low carbon stuff. And everyone will use low carbon stuff for the new factories because ithey know they’ll get hit with huge taxes if they don’t.

It’s precisely *because* the sector is so huge that we don’t want to go around insisting that everyone close every coal fired station yesterday….although sadly that’s what the EU seems to be insisting. Shutting these things down before we’ve finished using them is another way of making us poorer.

“Have you ever heard of “Jevons Paradox”?”

Yes.

Well, nooooo, not really. Certainly we would want to maintain the nudge we’ve already given but that’s not the same as saying that the nudge needs to be converted to a shove.

Allow me to offer just one data point here. Rolls Royce (the turbines people, not the cars) has been working for years on using SOFC fuel cells in combination with gas turbines. You get to raise the usuable energy output for any given fuel input by doing so. The largest cost is in the technology development. Once that’s done then the marginal costs of adding a unti to each new turbine are small. The nudge was needed to degin the tech, not to deploy it. OK, that nudge has been given, the tech is nearly done in development. They don’t need higher than now carbon taxes to deploy.

Or another project: making aircraft lighter. Without going into the boring tech side of it changing alloys on a jet is a 10 year process. It started 9 years ago. The nudge has been given: no further nudge is required.

Or solar cells and increasing performance. Unlike the two above projects I’m not even vaguely involved: but I am watching from the sidelines of the weird metals business. They are getting more and more efficient and no, we don’t need more shoves. We’re just one more technolotgical cycle away from them actually being economic when competing (at the point of consumption) with coal derived electricty. The nudege has been done, billions went into design and research. Hoorah! ^But that’s the point. Billions have already gone into this. Now we’re getting the results (BTW, do not listen to Jeremey Legget on this. He is an installer, not a manufacturer of cells. He keeps arguing for more subsidiy to keep his teams crawling over roofs….but dresses it as if it is subsidy for the basic research.)

But we have also set in motion a whole series of processes to wean us off them. Anything and everything from new nuclear in the UK through the sort of projects I’m very peripherally involved with (the next generation of fuel cells, making lighter aircraft, making jet engines more efficient etc).

Two more questions for Tim:

1. Are you fully aware of the almost inconceivable scale of our current fossil fuel use, the tremendous amount of energy that represents, and the difficulty of replacing that energy (especially in a convenient high-density form) from other sources?
2. Have you ever heard of “Jevons Paradox”?

But most of those technologies won’t make it to the mass market without continued intervention to make coal and oil shale more expensive. Nuclear as a case in point.

You have said you think the main risk from Copenhagen is bringing in a system which makes that intervention too heavy (which seems to me incredible), and you keep avoiding answering my second Copenhagen question, which is making me nervous.

If Copenhagen collapses or is nugatory, will you rejoice?
If Copenhagen collapses, will you agitate to dismantle Britain’s unilateral system for making the nudges?

Ah, no, sorry, but this isn’t true. We are currently using fossil fuels, yes. But we have also set in motion a whole series of processes to wean us off them. Anything and everything from new nuclear in the UK through the sort of projects I’m very peripherally involved with (the next generation of fuel cells, making lighter aircraft, making jet engines more efficient etc).

Globalised capitalism, if to be fair given the right nudge, is the only thing that is actually going to create and deploy the non fossil technologies. And a shit load has happened in the past 10-15 years on this front (no, really, this is as I say a field that I vaguely work in (in more detail, I supply some of he materials that make some of them work).).

It’s just that having been nudged it does take time for products to be developed and then deployed.

To say “current levels of emissions are terrible therefore we’re all doomed” isn’t correct. What we actually want to know is what are emissions going to be given the nudges we’ve already given? And on that the IPCC is silent, for they don’t consider any scenarios with mitigation at all.

The A1 family of scenarios (which you call globalised capitalism) contains scenarios that include both the lowest and the highest level of emissions in 2100.
From a base of 8.5 gigatonnes carbon equivalent in 2000, the various A1T scenarios give us a range for 2100 of 5-9 GtC/yr, whereas the various A1F1 scenarios give us 26-35 GtC/yr. The difference is emphasis or otherwise on fossil fuels. (To be pedantic, we should note that emissions in the “central” scenario for B1 – which we might call LibCon’s dream green, cuddly world – is below that of A1T.)

At the moment, with the current amount of intervention, globalised capitalism is giving us an emphasis on fossil fuels (even in our country, where allegedly it is overtaxed). So, at present, globalised capitalism is giving us a disaster.

But you are a supporter of intervention, so you know that giving the free market what it says it wants is disastrous. Just to remove all doubt on that matter, may I pose for the third time my question: “A collapsed or nugatory Copenhagen deal is highly likely. Do you think that will be a good or bad thing?”

“The summary of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, for example, indicates a rise by 2100 in the range of 1.1 to 6.4°C, depending on various factors. ”

OK, which family provides that lower estimate? Yes, A1, the globalised capitalism one. OK, so, that’s the first step then. We go gung ho for global capitalism. That reduces risk according to the IPCC.

Then we add mitigation: please do note that no IPCC esimates include any form of mitigation at all. So, we add a carbon tax (or cap and trade, I would prefer the former) and we’re done.

The argument “what would the world be like if it were 6 oC warmer” isn’t all that useful if we already know how to stop it becoming 6 oC warmer. ( iam of course skimming over many complexities.)

But the basic point still stands: Assuming that the IPCC is correct then we really ought to be doing what the IPCC says is the best thing to be doing. Which is, first, accept the globalisation is part of the solution.

Tim. Do so. As we are being nice to each other at the moment, I won’t say “and don’t comment any more about risk until you have”. However, unless I see a convincing refutation of its core message (not of its language, or of detail), it will shape my view of the attitude we should take to the risk question. Obviously I recognise that popular science books are no substitute for official reports, there must be stuff out there (presumably in the index of Six Degrees) so I may come back and recommend something in a form more to your taste.

However, Six Degrees rightly points out that there is a dearth of information on the implications of the global warming forecasts – governments & scientists not wanting to frighten the horses being blamed. It is an interesting question to wonder whether Brown, Obama, Hu Jintao et al are getting official reports which we don’t see that spell out what the future may hold in the same way that Six Degrees does for us.

PS Just found this good, firm but fair review of the book http://www.opendemocracy.net/arts/mark_lynas_4470.jsp

Not read it, sorry.

Apologies, peace

I’m sure they’ll be out there. Not right now, but I’ll have a look into it.

Thanks for answering my questions 1 & 2. I’ve not got the full meaning of your answer to 2. I also agree that a collapsed or nugatory Copenhagen deal is highly likely. My question is, do you think that will be a good or bad thing, ie will you be rejoicing? My position is that it will be a bad thing, but we have no choice to keep on having another go.

You also need an authoritative description of the expected effect of the forecast climate change on the environment in the various parts of the world. Something that draws out what the IPCC’s forecasts will mean on the ground.

Mark Lynas’s book “Six degrees” tries to do precisely that. Do you reject that book as a useful source? I am unaware of any demolition job on it, though I don’t doubt one has been attempted – any pointers?

No, I’m not an economist. An interested amateur only. I keep saying this but it is true, I have no advanced degrees nor do I work (nor haver I ever) as an economist. I am not even attempting to argue from authority.

“You use the Stern Report to justify your claim that we are “overpricing risk”, in others words, that the British taxation system is currently overtaxing carbon.”

Yes, because by the Stern Report’s own standards, we are.

“A valid lesson from that recent balls up is that blind faith in free markets risks (or inevitably leads to) systemic crash. ”

Umm, wait a moment here. I am absolutely not proposing some blind faith in free markets here. I’m agreeing that there is something (carbon emissions) which is not currently priced into the prices that people are paying in markets. Thus we need to intervene in these markets so as to make sure that they are. This is *the opposite* of a blind faith in free markets. It is the statement that I agree that sometimes markets fail and when they do we need to do something about it.

1) “and overconstrains economic growth and the net sum of human happiness,”

Yes. Because, and I keep trying to point out that this is not my opinion, this is what the economists who have studied this keep saying, they’re going to clamp down too hard and too fast upon emissions. We will end up paying more in reduced human happiness for the climate change that does not happen than the reduction in human happiness that the climate change would cause.

2) Neither. At this point I think collapse is inevitable.

3) A decent study by economists, using real world data, that the position is wrong.

Tim, I think if you looked carefully you would find you are foam-flecked free marketeer. But you are without question an economist looking at this from a particular perspective common among economists of being entirely divorced from full or careful consideration of the natural environment.

You use the Stern Report to justify your claim that we are “overpricing risk”, in others words, that the British taxation system is currently overtaxing carbon.

I use the evidence of the climate predictions to say that our present course sees a complete disaster – the Amazon basin a hot desert, for Christ’s sake! – and therefore think, in the parlance, that we are underpricing risk. You acknowledge by contrast that you have no idea what environmental changes will result from the climate change forecast.

I know I have previously refuted any real analogy with the financial crash, but with respect to that, who was right about risk being over or underpriced on that occasion?

A valid lesson from that recent balls up is that blind faith in free markets risks (or inevitably leads to) systemic crash.

You do sometimes answer questions which are bugging me about your position, for which I am grateful. Here are a couple for you.

1) Do you think the risk is greater that from Copenhagen etc will emerge a system which effectively “overprices risk” and overconstrains economic growth and the net sum of human happiness, or that Copenhagen will be ineffective in reaching an agreement that does enough to curb emissions?

2) Will you be rejoicing when Copenhagen collapses or reaches an agreement that is nugatory?

3) What would it take for you to acknowledge that your present position that risk is being overpriced needs to be amended?

Your assertions are just that. Assertions.

I would hesitate to argue with an expert on any subject whatsoever. On the grounds that they probably know a lot more about it than I do.

The attempts by people like you to support or deny a scientific consensus are pathetic.

negating the need for the pseudo religious “deniers vs believers”

Unless you have a PhD in climatology and an enormous amount of peer reviewed literature, why should anyone take you seriously?

It is becoming obvious ,is it not, that god botherers would like to take us down to their frame of reference?

Ignorance.

It’s the very basis of economics. Human utility is all those things that go up to make the good life. Everything from fine food on the table, a glorious Georgian mansion to live in to the pleasure in a grandkiddies smile and the knowledge that the polar bears are still doing just fine.

It is, of course, somewhat difficult to measure so we tend to look at how people themselves value what’s on offer. That is, rather than trying to work out a “value” for polar bears, we look at what value humans put on polar bears. And grandkid’s smiles and all the rest.

It’s a very much wider description of what makes the good life than simple mechanics like GDP and the rest.

Another way of putting it is that maximising human utility is similar to trying to maximise human happiness. Given the limits that we face (the planet, the Laws of Thermodynamics, the current level of technology, the amount of human labour around, everything) how can the world best be organised to produce the maximum amount of near popping with joy at what a glorious world this is?

That is our goal, the maximising of human utility.

And we might think that, for example, actions that lead to 1 billion people being fed properly are worth losing 50% of the polar bears. Or we might not think that worth it. But in getting to that maximal utility state that’s (OK, it’s an absurd trade off but used as an explanation) the sort of trade off we do have to make.

“I’d have thought that there were economic benefits as well as deficits in a low carbon economy?”

Sure, there are costs and benefits to everything. That’s what we all try to work out: what are those costs and what are those benefits? Then tot them up and see what we should be doing. A highly imperfect science, of course, but the best we’ve got available.

“I understand the arguement. I just don’t think we should be gaming on our future.”

I’m afraid that this version of the universe doesn’t allow us not to game or gamble with the future. We have limited resources. So we must indeed make choices. Any and every choice has the opportunity to be the wrong one. We just have to do our best.

To give you an example of the sorts of things that do get included in these calculations. The Stern Review includes in its calculations (no, seriously, it does) the possibility that we all get wiped out by an asteroid and thus all our concerns about climate change and human utility and the rest are entirely moot.

“You are arguing that a bet on your beliefs is something we should all back.”

No, I’m not. What I’m actually doing is going and reading a huge amount of what people much much brighter than I am have worked out about what it is that we should do, given our starting point. I am then regurgitating it. Please understand me here. I am not passing on anything from some vast right wing conspiracy. Nor the delusions of some foam flecked free marketer. These are the facts and the arguments at the very heart of the entire debate over what we do about climate change. They are the motivating factors behind Kyoto, the IPCC, the Stern Review, Copenhagen, the EUTS, cap and trade, carbon taxes: all of it.

Absolutely all I am doing is pointing out where all of this factual and real stuff diverges from what we’re being told by the more excitable Greenies.

For example, globalisation is good for climate change: that’s what the IPCC says, that’s what all the science says. But it ain’t what Caroline Lucas or George Monbiot say, is it?

Nobody has a monopoly on AGW, even righteous politicians on the left. The IPCC scientists did not speak with one voice, and their reports were produced to suit political ambition and necessarily a compromise based on limited data sets, many of which have changed in the interim. AGW may be as a result of human activity, but it is well within a range that may be a natural phenomenon – irrespective it would be sensible to adopt technological mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, reduction of pollution, recycling and other “Green policies” – where it makes sense, what does not make sense is the suspect evangelical adoption of a Green Shock Doctrine, this is a stand that can only alienate.

A debate, without recrimination and allegations of bias (one way or t’other) on the implementation of the obvious ‘sensible’ Green policies would go a long way to negating the need for the pseudo religious “deniers vs believers” entrenched warfare, an argument that will only delay appropriate modernisation.

At least you have a sense of humour!

Whilst economics can indeed describe a total human catastrophe, it is perhaps not the best tool for avoiding it.

What is this ‘utility’ arguement that you rely on so much?

I’d have thought that there were economic benefits as well as deficits in a low carbon economy? You, personally, would appear to benefit if that is the case. Is that not, a sort of economic arguement?

The classic answer to this (and the one that everyone gives, although there are different assumptions about the technological cycle and so on) is that we should limit emissions up to and only up to the point where the benefits from doing so outweigh the losses from doing so.

I understand the arguement. I just don’t think we should be gaming on our future.

If something is avoidable, like me crashing my car into yours perhaps, then it seems obvious that avoidance of that consequence is my best bet. It also seems to be quite good for you too. It is what everyone does, every day.

My point is that you are gaming the arguement. You are arguing that a bet on your beliefs is something we should all back. I am arguing the opposite. That we shouldn’t be gambling at all. I am saying it has nothing whatsoever to do with economics, it is to do with human survival.

My view is also that they are mispricing risk. I think they’re overpricing it. As, indeed, the Stern Review tells us that they are.