CLIMATE CHANGE ISSUES: A DISSENTING VOICE

(The text which follows formed the basis for a brief presentation to a conference held on 22 April 2009 at the Said Business School, Oxford University. The subject of the conference was 'Beyond Kyoto – Green Innovation and Enterprise in the 21st Century'.)
Governments across the world are mishandling climate change issues. The content, the orientation, and in particular the basis and rationale of current policies to curb emissions of (so-called) 'greenhouse gases', are all open to serious question.     

Developing farm-specific marginal abatement cost curves: Cost-effective greenhouse gas mitigation opportunities in sheep farming systems

Growing demand for agricultural produce, coupled with ambitious targets for greenhouse gas emissions reduction present the scientific, policy and agricultural sectors with a substantial mitigation challenge. Identification and implementation of suitable mitigation measures is driven by both the measures’ effectiveness and cost of implementation. Marginal abatement cost curves (MACCs) provide a simple graphical representation of the abatement potential and cost-effectiveness of mitigation measures to aid policy decision-making. Accounting for heterogeneity in farm conditions and subsequent abatement potentials in mitigation policy is problematic, and may be aided by the development of tailored MACCs. Robust MACC development is currently lacking for mitigation measures appropriate to sheep systems. This study constructed farm-specific MACCs for a lowland, upland and hill sheep farm in the UK. The stand-alone mitigation potential of six measures was modelled, against real farm baselines, according to assumed impacts on emissions and productivity. The MACCs revealed the potential for negative cost emissions’ abatement in the sheep industry. Improving ewe nutrition to increase lamb survival offered considerable abatement potential at a negative cost to the farmers across all farms while, lambing as yearlings offered negative cost abatement potential on lowland and upland farms. The results broadly advocate maximising lamb output from existing inputs on all farm categories, and highlight the importance of productivity and efficiency as influential drivers of emissions abatement in the sector. The abatement potentials and marginal costs of other measures (e.g. reducing mineral fertiliser use and selecting pasture plants bred to minimise dietary nitrogen losses) varied between farms, and this heterogeneity was more frequently attributable to differences in individual farm management than land classification. This has important implications for the high level policy sector as no two farms are likely to benefit from a generic one size fits all approach to mitigation. The construction of further case-study farm MACCs under varying farm conditions is required to define the biophysical and management conditions that each measure is most suited to, generating a more tailored set of sector-specific mitigation parameters.     

Modeling Energy and Development: An Evaluation of Models and Concepts

Most global energy models are developed by institutes from developed countries, focusing primarily on issues that are important in industrialized countries. Evaluation of the results for Asia of the IPCC/SRES models shows that broad concepts of energy and development, the energy ladder and the environmental Kuznets curve, can be observed in the results of the models. However, improvements can be made in modeling the issues that underlie these concepts, like traditional fuels, electrification, economic structural change, income distribution, and informal economies. Given the rapidly growing importance of energy trajectories of developing countries for global sustainability, the challenge for the future is to develop energy models that include all these aspects of energy and development.     

基于碳排放角度的服务业内部结构优化研究——以吉林省为例

绿色服务业的发展方兴未艾,并在经济发展中扮演着日益重要的功能角色,基于碳排放角度研究服务业的优化问题,有利于正确判断和把握服务业发展政策。运用IPCC法测算了2004—2010年吉林省各服务行业的平均碳排放量,得出交通运输、仓储和邮政业,批发、零售业、住宿和餐饮业等传统行业属于碳排放量高的服务行业;再运用灰色关联法分析各服务行业的碳排放影响,发现交通运输、仓储和邮政业,租赁和商务服务业对服务业碳排放的影响较大;卫生、社会保障和社会福利业,水利、环境和公共设施管理业对服务业碳排放影响较小。得出碳排放量与碳排放影响之间存在差异的结论。     

PRIVATISING CLIMATE POLICY

Existing 'climate change' policy instruments should be withdrawn. Climate science cannot provide the knowledge that is needed to justify them. Anthropogenic global warming is a putative interpersonal conflict rather than market failure. Where property rights need protecting, tort litigation on the basis of strict liability is appropriate. By providing a public arena for the competitive testing of scientific hypotheses, such litigation would also promote the advancement of climate science.     

气候变化对社会经济影响的风险评估研究评述

除一般意义上风险所具有的不确定性和危害性等特点之外,气候变化风险还具有复杂性、内在价值性及难以完全量化、动态性和客观性等特点。当前,国内外对于气候变化的经济社会风险评估研究主要包括对风险概率的建模与评估、指标体系的风险建模与评估、情景模拟的动态风险建模与评估方法以及气候变化风险的社会经济评估图标体系。由于气候变化风险的社会经济影响存在跨期性、不确定性,仍有很多未知的研究领域,如定量化、图谱化以及与自然影响评估的区分与方法合作等,未来研究仍有很多空间。     

全球气候变化问题应对研究

全球气候变化问题成为全球变化研究的热点和难点,全球气候变化领域的国际谈判成为各国政治、科技、经济、环境与外交的综合较量平台。     

CURRENT GLOBAL WARMING ALARMISM AND THE MONT PELERIN SOCIETY'S LONG‐TERM AGENDA1

In a speech to the Mont Pelerin Society, the President of the Czech Republic argued that environmentalism, and climate alarmism in particular, is a vehicle for advocating, drafting and implementing large‐scale government intervention and an unprecedented suppression of human freedom.     

黄河流域经济发展和碳排放的脱钩关系分析

运用IPCC测算法测算2005—2019年黄河流域9省区的碳排放量，并运用Tapio脱钩模型分析经济发展与碳排放的脱钩关系。结果表明：2005—2019年，黄河流域的碳排放在总体呈上升趋势；以2012年为节点，在此年前的碳排放增速较快，此后的碳排放增速减缓；整个黄河流域的碳排放量巨大，并且不同省区的碳排放量具有明显的差异性。总的来说，黄河流域经济发展与碳排放之间的脱钩关系主要以弱脱钩状态为主，尽管存在短期波动的状况，但长期趋势保持不变。