Adam Smith Institute

Global warming is allegedly coming faster than even the most alarmist campaigners expected. They have once again had a field day in bashing America, for its insistence that big emerging polluters should come on board the bus to mitigate climate change. This is a classical example of Alexis de Tocqueville's law: once the dynamics of an insurgency have been unleashed it is unlikely to be settled by compromise even if the reigning powers want to — instead they spoil it with escalating demands.

In any case, there is probably no need for all this fuss about short–term emission cuts. Just allow the market to do the job.

There is now evidence that the US approach, with prizes for the invention of low carbon technology, is actually working. Recently the Bush Administration announced that U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide fell by 1.8 percent with all greenhouse emissions down 1.5 percent from 2005 to 2006 even though the economy grew by 2.9 percent.

This reduction was accomplished through prizes and greater use of lower carbon energy sources. We know that most EU countries are failing to achieve their Kyoto commitments and yet even those who do manage to meet their Kyoto-set targets tend to do so for reasons other than climate change mitigation politics such as the breakdown of socialist economies.

The EU hasn't yet released figures for 2006. But from 2000 to 2005, the U.S outperformed Western Europe. Carbon emissions were up 3.8 percent in the so-called EU-15 during those years, versus 2.5 percent in the U.S.

Newcastle's Professor Ian Fells was our guest at a Power Lunch here yesterday. As an engineer and energy expert, he's flabbergasted at this week's announcement from the government that every home in Britain will be fed by wind energy by 2020, thanks to a new 25-gigawatt wave of offshore wind turbines. Fells points out that most government announcements on energy since around 2000 have been - well, confused, to put it politely.

Quite so. The chance of the UK reaching their targets of 20 percent renewable energy by 2020, or a 60 percent cut in CO2 by 2050 are roughly zero. Presently we have about 1500 wind turbines generating just 1 percent of our electricity. You will need a lot of new turbines to increase that significantly. And when you do build them, remember that you will also have to strengthen parts of the national grid to cope. And planing authorities don't much like the idea of lots of new pylons crossing the landscape.

When it comes to offshore wind power, the costs are largely unknown, and the kit needed to build on that scale doesn't exist. The trouble with wind power is that quite often, the wind isn't blowing; and when it is, it isn't blowing hard enough to make turbines work at peak efficiency. So you need more turbines than you think to generate the power you need. Fells reckons it means erecting ten turbines a day to meet the government targets, and he can't see how that is feasible. After all, they are each bigger than the London Eye, and that took years to build.

Turbines are great for pumping water in Australia, or charging your batteries in Antarctica. But as a power source for an industrialized country that is completely dependent on electricity – the computers, the waterworks, the tills, the rail signals and just about everything else goes off when the power fails – it's hardly something we can rely on. So why are we making such grand commitments? Well, politicians want to seem green. And with nine different energy ministers in the last decade, it's probably that none of them really understand the costings and engineering. So they throw £1bn of our money each year on renewables that wouldn't exist without that largesse. We should concentrate on security of supply (and new nuclear capacity is probably the cheapest way of doing that) - then the rest will follow.

I have to admit that things like this make me laugh like a drain :

It has become the home improvement of choice for the environmentally aware, but erecting a wind turbine on the side of your house could create more carbon dioxide than it actually saves, a study into their performance will reveal today.

The point is though that the amount of electricity generated, and thus the emissions "saved", is too small. It doesn't make up for the emissions involved in the manufacture of the machinery in the first place. Thus, outside places like Wick (I knew the place had to be good for something), having such a windmill increases, rather than reduces, total emissions.  Clearly not what we want to happen at all.

Now of course, given that David Cameron is the only man in the Kingdom known to actually have one, the total effect isn't all that large.  However, there's a deeper point at issue here. If we're going to try to save emissions by using this or that technology, then we've got to make sure that we actually do the cost benefit analysis. For example, we are repeatedly told that nuclear has, over the whole fuel cycle, CO 2 emissions: something which is absolutely true. What does not follow is that we shouldn't use nuclear to reduce emissions. For such emissions are lower than those from coal and gas (as should be obvious). More than that though, they're actually about the same as those from onshore wind power, and less than half those from solar PV. To say that we shouldn't use nuclear because of such emissions is also to say that we shouldn't use the other two for the same reason: not quite what those drawing our attention to the CO2 and nuclear issue really want us to conclude.

I really do love this piece in The Guardian about solar power. Almost all of it is an interesting overview of where the science is now and thus where the technology will be in a decade or so. It's all very encouraging indeed: the scientists seem confident that they'll be able to get generation costs from solar down to around and about the same as that from fossil fuels.

Something which will, of course, make a lot of the worries about climate change go away. Of course, this being The Guardian there's the note of doom as well:

But waiting around for the science to become technology isn't an option, says Martyn Williams, senior parliamentary campaigner at Friends of the Earth. "We are aware of moves to find new ways to generate electricity from solar power. We have to move faster than that because every tonne of carbon we pump out is adding to the problem."

But what really fascinates me about all of this is that if you go back and read Bjorn Lomborg's Skeptical Environmentalist again, his argument about climate change rested upon the following. Somewhere in the 2030-2040 time span, solar power will become cheaper than generation using fossil fuels. At that point we'll all naturally switch: and none of the models used by the IPCC acknowledge this fact (well, prediction perhaps). So all of the predictions of future emissions are too high (again, possibly).

Now as you might recall, Lomborg got a lot of stick for this argument, and it does look like he was wrong. Too pessimistic that is, not too optimistic, for that magic price moment looks like it might appear before 2020.

While there are an awful lot of people who say they like solar power, I have a feeling that if this comes to pass there'll be a few at least who won't be happy. Cheap renewable power will allow the whole capitalist/consumerist juggernaut to carry on which isn't the point at all for some people.

As we know, Gordon Brown has announced that we're all about to be free from the great plastic bag tyranny. No longer will great gobbets of oil be used to manufacture them, emissions will fall and we'll all be ushered onwards to the Gaian Nirvana.

Except, at least if Dominic Lawson is correct here, that's not what will actually happen : 

The only problem with that is that plastic bags, though undeniably irritating when left lying around, are essentially the by-product, rather than the cause, of fossil fuel generation. Approximately 98 per cent of every barrel of oil, once refined, is consumed as petrol or diesel. If the remaining two per cent of naphtha was not used for packaging, it would almost certainly be flared off – which is pure waste.

Ah, so we're going to get the emissions anyway, without the convenience of the plastic bags, plus we'll get the emissions from whatever we all use instead: paper or perhaps sturdier reusable cotton or something. This really doesn't sound like something that's going to be beneficial to the environment, however well it might play to certain sections of the voting public.

I'm reminded of the phrase "Don't just do something, stand there!" For whenever people in government do have these bright ideas about what do about climate change, as with bio-fuels , they manage to make the problem worse, act entirely counter-productively.

When I was in Edinburgh last week, I went to have a look at the Scottish Parliament building. I had seen pictures of it, of course, but wanted to reserve judgement until I had viewed it myself. The question is, how well spent was the British taxpayer's £414.4 million (the original budget estimate was £10-40 million)?

In my opinion, not well at all. The Scottish Parliament is without doubt one of the most monstrous buildings I've seen – and I tend to like modern architecture. It may be pleasant on the inside, but the exterior looks like a misshapen concrete block with bits of bamboo randomly stuck on it. I'm told the design was based on up-turned ships, which explains a lot and is, perhaps, symbolic.

Anyway, the Scottish Parliament building got me thinking about town planning. One of the arguments commonly made in favour of our restrictive planning system is that without it, there would be a free for all, with ugly, poorly designed buildings popping up all over the place. But the Scottish Parliament wasn't just approved by government, it was built for government. And it's hideous.

Look at the rest of Edinburgh. New Town, a wonderful example of Georgian architecture at its best, was a privately planned development (street layout aside), just like the equally picturesque Bath. Developers made the buildings attractive because they wanted people to buy them. Compare that with the council estates that surround Edinburgh (and other great Northern cities). Built by the state after development rights were nationalised in 1947, little regard was given to the people who would be living in them, and they have been regretted ever since.

It's time we finally returned planning and development to the free market. There can be little doubt it does a better job than the state.

One little point that all too few seem to appreciate. In Gordon Brown's speech on how we're going to make ourselves poorer reduce carbon emissions he let drop this little comment :

There would be "hard choices and tough decisions" but he said a new low carbon economy could bring thousands of jobs.

That's how we know that it's going to make us poorer of course. Now it still might be a wise idea, might not be as well, but my point is rather that everyone seems to insist that "creating jobs" via such schemes is a good idea. It isn't. It is most certainly not a benefit of such schemes, it is a cost. 

For of course if all those busy little workers were not installing tofu machines to light the yurt growing communes, they'd be off doing something else, curing AIDS, planting turnips or hanging politicians, all things which would arguably increase human happiness more. We are therefore poorer by those things which they will not be doing.

This is a blog post, so I'm not going to try and work out whether what they're going to do in their new green jobs increases human happiness more or less than the alternatives they would do without the government intervention: I just want to insist that we should regard this creation of jobs as something to put on the costs side of our analysis, not the benefits.

On the train this weekend, I was sitting accross the aisle from a lady reading George Monbiot's new book.

Every few minutes, she put the book down and loudly pontificated on global warming. We should all stop flying, of course, and carbon emissions should be set at a world level (!) with everyone given the same individual ration (never mind the economics or enforceability of that one...).

I was sorely tempted to point out the error of her ways, when her husband stepped in and did the job for me. Eager to get on with reading his own book, he said: "You know darling, there would be a lot less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere if people would just shut up!"

Quite.

Most brazen of all, Gore claims that sea levels could rise by 20ft “in the near future” – vividly illustrated in the film with a simulation of Manhattan disappearing beneath the waves. In fact, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), yesterday named as co-recipient of the peace prize with Mr Gore, believes that sea levels will rise by less than 18in over the next 100 years, and that it would take several millennia for sea levels to rise by 20ft.

It also helps explain why Al and Tipper Gore recently bought a luxury condo at San Francisco's St. Regis towe r at Third and Mission streets.

If one considers "implicit" endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45 percent. However, while only 32 papers (6 percent) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48 percent) are neutral, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no "consensus".

As the data seems to suggest, the matter is far from being settled in the scientific arena. A repeat of the survey is planned for 2007.