I saw this a week ago, and totally forgot to post it on gimme-five.  According to a new study, solar activity is not responsible for climate change.  Solar activity driving global climate was one of the central claims of many anthropogenic climate change skeptics, so this is big news.

A new scientific study concludes that changes in the Sun’s output cannot be causing modern-day climate change.

It shows that for the last 20 years, the Sun’s output has declined, yet temperatures on Earth have risen.

It also shows that modern temperatures are not determined by the Sun’s effect on cosmic rays, as has been claimed.

Writing in the Royal Society’s journal Proceedings A, the researchers say cosmic rays may have affected climate in the past, but not the present.

Basically, it looks like the scientists measured solar output compared to Earth temperatures, in the same way that the authors of the film: ”The Great Global Warming Swindle” did.  I haven’t seen TGGWS, but the authors of this study allege they show solar output and temperature on a graph all the way through 1980, where they are highly correlated.  However, this study shows after 1980, solar activity and global temperatures diverge.  The implication is beyond 1980, humans are having such a large effect on global climate that it overshadows (pun intended) the sun’s effect.

I wish I could read the actual study rather than a BBC summary of it.  The summary seems convincing, but there could always be flaws.  What do gimme-five’s readers think?

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My cousin once told me that heavy societal debate on climate change could actually be somewhat harmful, because it diverts attention from other important environmental problems.  Popular Science Magazine addressed five important environmental problems that can cause serious harm that are not related to climate change.  They are:

1. Desertification of Land.  More and more land is turning to desert because topsoil anchoring plants are being destroyed, costing the world $42 billion per year in lost food, livable land, etcetera.  Popsci projects it would cost $2.4 billion per year to combat desertification.
2. Excessive Nitrogen.  Nitrogen accelerates algae growth, which can dramatically harm ecosystems and poisons humans when it gets into our food and water supply.  60% of “fixed nitrogen” comes from fertilizers.  [Note that corn production uses nitrogen fertilizer.  Yet another reason corn-based ethanol is a poor solution to the transportation problem.]
3. Water Problems.  1 billion people on earth do not have adequate drinking water, and that number is increasing steadily as old water infrastructure falls apart in developed countries and pollution makes water undrinkable in developed and developing countries.
4. Arctic Haze.  Pollution around the arctic is accelerating its warming and melting the arctic ice.
5. Coral reefs dying off.  Coral reefs are essential for many marine ecosystems, however, they are dying off for many reasons, including overfishing and pollution.

So basically, there are other convincing reasons, besides climate change, to act environmentally responsibly.

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Question of the day, week, month, and year: why do liberals tend to be more convinced than conservatives about the threat of climate change, even though both sides have the same evidence available to them?

According to a January 2007 poll by the Pew Research Center, 77% of those polled believed that the earth was getting warmer.  However, only 54% of conservative Republicans believed this, compared to 92% of liberal Democrats.  More importantly, only 20% of conservative Republicans believed climate change is primarily caused by human activity, compared to 71% of liberal Democrats.

Does it just so happen that people on a certain side of the political spectrum evaluate facts in the same manner as those with similar political beliefs?  I don’t buy this.  If both sides have access to identical facts, yet there is statistically significant evidence that being on a certain side of the political spectrum causes one to believe a particular thing, something else has to be going on.

I believe that many people assume the answer to the climate change question before they even look at the evidence.  The average liberal looks at the evidence after affirming in his own mind that climate change is a real threat.  At the same time, the average conservative has already cemented in her mind that climate change is a falsehood when she first begins to examine climate change evidence.

This is consistent with the idea of political teams.  People like to root for a political ideology much like they root for a sports team.  In addition, people tend to enjoy having beliefs affirmed rather than challenged.  The “hard-core” conservatives watch Fox News, while ”hard-core” liberals read the New York Times.  This way, they can have their beliefs affirmed by their political teammates.  If a “hard-core” conservative believes climate change is a truth, but watches Fox News where it is treated as a falsehood, he faces a bit of stress while watching TV because his beliefs are being challenged.  It’s just easier to believe what your political teammates believe.

In addition, oftentimes conservatives and liberals have friends and families that share the same political beliefs.  It’s a lot easier to have a conversation with someone when you agree (although often boring).  A person who is mostly liberal and has a liberal family will tend to just be an “all-out” liberal and take on all the beliefs of the left (as will the family), so all will agree at the dinner table at night.

Of course there are exceptions to all of the ideas I have mentioned above.  These are assertions with little proof besides everyday observation and the Pew Research Center.  But I do believe that the fact that so many issues are polarized is detrimental to our making a reasoned decision on the issues.

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Al Gore wrote an Op-Ed yesterday in the New York Times that is worth reading.  In it he acknowledges that Kyoto will never be ratified in the US, so a new international treaty must be ratified.

To this end, we should demand that the United States join an international treaty within the next two years that cuts global warming pollution by 90 percent in developed countries and by more than half worldwide in time for the next generation to inherit a healthy Earth.

This treaty would mark a new effort. I am proud of my role during the Clinton administration in negotiating the Kyoto protocol. But I believe that the protocol has been so demonized in the United States that it probably cannot be ratified here…

What might the treaty entail?  It’s not a big surprise:

A new treaty will still have differentiated commitments, of course; countries will be asked to meet different requirements based upon their historical share or contribution to the problem and their relative ability to carry the burden of change. This precedent is well established in international law, and there is no other way to do it.

There are some who will try to pervert this precedent and use xenophobia or nativist arguments to say that every country should be held to the same standard. But should countries with one-fifth our gross domestic product — countries that contributed almost nothing in the past to the creation of this crisis — really carry the same load as the United States? Are we so scared of this challenge that we cannot lead?

Anyways, it’s not a groundbreaking piece, but worth reading.

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The Senate just voted to increase CAFE standards in a new energy bill. I guess doing this is better than nothing for reducing oil use, but there is a much better option available: a tax on gasoline.

Raising the CAFE standards creates some problems. Raising the standards is expensive, the standards are full of loopholes, and the penalty for violating the standards is virtually nothing for big automakers (Andrew Kleit, “CAFE Changes, by the Numbers,” Regulation 2002: 32-5.). On the plus side, the new CAFE standards would no longer create differing standards for cars and “light trucks” (i.e. SUVS).

A better “free market” solution would be to simply estimate the external cost of consuming a gallon of gasoline and tax gasoline by that amount so that gasoline can be purchased and sold efficiently. For example, gasoline should not be priced at merely the total cost of production plus a small tax. It should be priced at the entire cost of production, plus the cost of pollution, congestion, geopolitical instability, and any other costs that its consumption creates.

If gasoline’s price is equal to its true cost, then we can mitigate the market failure situation we are in where people over consume gasoline. That is not efficient. Furthermore, we would not need to engage in any heavy-handed CAFE regulation that will cost a lot more to society than a gas tax in the long run due to administrative fees, lost consumer surplus through lost consumer choice, lost producer surplus due to following arbitrary mileage standards and other such factors.

If people have to pay for the costs they impose on everyone else from driving, fuel economy of vehicles will come up naturally, as miles driven by individuals will fall, and in general gasoline consumption will drop.

I’ve got more to say about this energy bill later.

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