Penn State engaged in man-caused 'climate ethics' discussions with Communist Chinese which is unfortunate on several levels

Is it 'ethical' for someone who campaigns against fossil fuels to take funding from someone who made his money in a fossil fuel company now owned by Schlumberger? The Communist Chinese must have had a laugh about being taken seriously on 'climate ethics.'

11/21/11, "Chinese University Hosts First Conference in China on Climate Change Ethics," RockBlogs, Penn State, Climate Ethics, Ethical Analysis of Climate Science and Policy, Donald A. Brown

"Nanjing University of Science Information and Technology in collaboration with the Rock Ethics Institute at Penn State University organized the first conference on climate change ethics in China that was held on October 29 and 30 in Nanjing. This conference examined the ethical dimensions of climate change as well as other economic, legal, and policy issues entailed by climate change policy-making. Papers presented included nine papers on climate change ethics, eight papers on climate change policy and law, and eight papers on social and economic issues entailed by climate change.

This conference was particularly notable because both Chinese and non-Chinese participants appeared to agree that climate change must be understood to be essentially an ethical matter that can only be solved through reliance on some common global values. To this writer's knowledge, this was the first conference in China that expressly explored the ethical views of Chinese and Western ethicists about climate change.

The papers presented at the conference included the following:

A. Climate Change Ethics And Philosophy

1. The Practical Significance of Understanding Climate Change As An Ethical Problem (Donald A. Brown, Penn State University)
2. The Border Between Climate Change And Libertarianism (Jun Chen, Hubei University)
3. Thoughts On Climate Change And The Conflict Of National Interest (Gang Guo, Institute of Climate Change and Public Policy-Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology)
4. Review On The Climate Change Ethics (Jun Shi, Institute of Climate Change and Public Policy-Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology)
5. Philosophical Review On Climate Change (Fan Chen & Guozhang Liu, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology)
6. Analysis On The Root Of Climate Crisis Through Biological Marxism (Feng Xu, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology)
7. Possibilities Of Global Cooperation On Climate-the Dilemma Of Nation-State Theory And World Theory (Fangxing Ye, Hehai University)
8. Climate Justice And Climate Ethics (Rongnan Zhang, Department of Philosophy-East China Normal University)
9. Climate Change: Ethical Dimension On Sustainable Development (Siwei Dai, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology)

B. Section Two: Climate Change Policy And Law

1. Discussion, Debate, And Democratic Negotiation: The Choice Of Tools In Global Climate Change Policy Making (Xiangrong Su, Institute of Climate Change and Public Policy-Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology)
2. Adaptation To Climate Change Impacts: Challenges To China's Environmental Law And Changing Directions (Xiangbai He, Law School-Western Sydney University)
3. Response And Choice To The Climate Legislation And Regulation Under Multiple Pursuits Of Benefits (Xiaodan Song & Zhangjun Pang, Institute of Climate Change and Public Policy-Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology)
4. Research On Regulation Of Atmospheric Property Under Climate Change (Shibin Wu, Institute of Climate Change and Public Policy-Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology)
5. Study On The Legislation Of Human-impact Climate Change (Zhi Qiao, Institute of Climate Change and Public Policy-Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology)
6. The Inspiration of "Others Theory" Of Ethics On Contemporary Public Policy (Xi Wang, China mMeteorology Bureau)
7. A Brief Analysis On The Cooperation On Climate Study Across Taiwan Straits In The Last 60 Years (Suhua Yong & Xiangping Liu, Institute of Climate Change and Public Policy-Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology)
8. Research On The NGOs' Influence In Coping With Climate Change (Meili Tang, Huijuan Shi, & Fengjiang Cheng, Institute of Climate Change and Public Policy-Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology)

Section Three: Economic And Social Management In Climate Change

1. Climate Change And Ecocities In China: Challenges And Opportunities To Building A Sustainable And Equitable Society (Erich W.Schienke)
2. Efficiency And Reduction In China: Carbon Tax Or Sectoral Cap And Trade? (Rongxiang Cao, Central Bureau of Translation)
3. Energy Saving In China: Tax, Control On Total Amount In Each Department, Or Trade? (Rongxiang Cao, Central Bureau of Translation)
4. Democratic Governance: Probe On The Democratic Mode In Coping With Climate Change (Zhijiang Li, Institute of Climate Change and Public Policy-Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology)
5. Change Of The "Leadership" Of Global Environmental Control: Case Study In Canada (Laihui Xie, Central Bureau of Translation)
6. Path Selection Of China's Ecological Regulation Construction Through Ecological Civilization (Fen Sun & Jie Cao, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology)
7. Climate Change, Eco-system, And A Sustainable Developing Society (Zhangguo Liu, Institute of Climate Change and Public Policy-Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology)
8. Research On The Factors That Drive Low Carbonization On China's Traditional Manufacturing (Decai Tang & Changshun Li, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology)
9. Discussion On The Practical necessity And Basic Ideas On China's Ecological Regulation (Fen Sun & Jie Cao, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology)
10. Analysis Of The Influence Of REDD On Slowing Down China's Climate Change Process (Jichuan Sheng, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology)"

------------------------

3/21/11, "$10 million gift endows dean's chair, ethics institute director," Penn State Live

"In recognition of strong innovative leadership in Penn State's College of the Liberal Arts and the Rock Ethics Institute (REI), Doug and Julie Rock of The Woodlands, Texas, have made two gifts totaling $10 million in honor of the current dean of the College, Susan Welch, and the current and founding REI director, Nancy Tuana. The first $5 million gift will create an endowed dean’s chair in the college and a second $5 million gift supports an endowed directorship in the Institute, which was created by the Rocks with an earlier $5 million gift a decade ago.

Doug is a 1968 psychology graduate of Penn State. For more than 20 years, he served as president, chief executive officer, and chairman of Smith International, a global provider of oil and natural gas exploration and development products and services, which is now part of Schlumberger Limited. Julie is a graduate of Stephen F. Austin State University and a former human resources and management training manager at Smith International."...

via comment to WUWT, see at end of post under 'update', 6/1/2011, "Climate craziness of the week: “ethics requires” linking tornadoes to climate change," Anthony Watts, Watts up with That, references Mr. Brown from Penn State

-----------------------------

11/8/11, "China Threatens Massive Venting of Super Greenhouse Gases in Attempt to Extort Billions as UNFCCC Meeting Approaches," Marketwatch.com

"China has failed to use any of the windfall revenues from the sale of HFC-23 credits to address emissions of HFC-23 at Chinese plants not covered by the (UN) CDM."

-----------------------------

Much more on Communist China and 'climate ethics' from Yale 360 even:

• 12/13/10, "‘Perverse’ CO2 Payments Send Flood of Money to China," by Mark Schapiro, Yale Environment 360

"To offset their own carbon emissions, European companies have been wildly overpaying China to incinerate a powerful greenhouse gas known as hfc 23. And in a bizarre twist, those payments have spurred the manufacture of a harmful refrigerant

• that is being smuggled into the U.S.
  
• and used illegally.

European legislators in Brussels have discovered that the strategy they devised to combat climate change is helping subsidize the economy of their, and America’s, major global competitor — China.

European companies have been overpaying Chinese companies more than 70 times the cost to eliminate a potent greenhouse gas — triflouromethane, or hfc 23, a byproduct of manufacturing a refrigerant that has been banned in developed countries and is being phased out in developing ones.

In order to offset their own greenhouse gases, companies and utilities in Europe

• that are subject to the emission limits of the Kyoto Protocol have been

paying vastly inflated prices to Chinese companies to destroy hfc 23, and in the process have been providing the Chinese government with hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue to compete against Europe’s own “green” industries. European concern about this practice was a

• major source of contention during last week’s climate negotiations in Cancun, as the UN
  
• attempted to defend the integrity of the
  
• multi-billion dollar global carbon offset market.

And in an odd twist, the incentives offered through the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) also appear to be stimulating production of an ozone-depleting refrigerant gas that has been landing in the U.S. black market.

• Investigations by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and US Customs and Border Protection have led to the conviction of several smugglers who have illegally imported the ozone-depleting refrigerant, hcfc 22, into the U.S. for sale to trucking companies, supermarkets, automotive supply shops, and other large-scale users of refrigerant gases.

The illegal refrigerant is significantly cheaper than non-ozone-depleting refrigerants permitted in the U.S., a price discrepancy triggered partially by the large overpayments to Chinese firms that have led to an ample supply of hcfc 22 on the international black market.

That black market completes a global circuit unique to the era of climate change: From China’s industrial zones, the credits for the greenhouse gases — bought and sold as commodities on the global carbon markets — flow to European companies that need them to continue polluting at home, while the underlying ozone-depleting gas responsible for creating those credits flows to American companies seeking discounted refrigerants.

• “It’s perverse,” says Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy, a Dutch member of the European Parliament. “You have companies which make a lot of money by making more of this gas, and then getting paid to destroy it.”

Two European nonprofits, the Germany-based CDM Watch and the London-based Environmental Investigations Agency, kicked off the controversy when they asserted last summer that European companies were paying dramatically inflated prices for the emissions credits. Companies purchase the credits for about

• $15 a ton,

while the actual cost for incinerating the gas in China or India is around

• 20 cents a ton.

More than a billion dollars, the nonprofit groups concluded, have thus far been spent on the credits. Two members of the European Parliament have demanded an inquiry by the European Commission into the

• “gross misuse of European consumers’ money” in the UN-administered offset system.

“European consumers are paying a billion euros to buy something worth less than 100 million euros,” says Theodoros Skylakakis, a Greek member of the European Parliament, who, along with Gerbrandy,

• demanded that the commission begin tightening the rules governing the hfc 23 offsets in the European Trading System. “Some people are getting extremely rich because of a loophole in our Clean Development Mechanism,” says Gerbrandy.

Hfc 23 is, per pound, 11,000 times more potent than CO2 as a contributor to global warming. The

• European Union has adopted a carbon emissions trading scheme, and more than half of the 474 million tons of emission credits now utilized to offset companies’ emissions are involved in

paying firms in China and elsewhere to destroy hfc 23. Major utilities in Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, Italy, and Japan rely heavily on these emissions offsets, as do a number of U.S. companies operating in Europe, including Chevron and Conoco Philips. Major U.S. financial houses, such as

• Goldman Sachs, Citibank, and JP Morgan Chase have significant holdings in the credits linked to the gas.

The greenhouse gas is a byproduct of the manufacture of the refrigerant gas. And the offset credits paid to Chinese and Indian companies to eliminate the former, according to CDM Watch, have actually stimulated increased production of the latter — the ozone-depleting refrigerant hcfc 22, which is itself a potent greenhouse gas. CDM Watch has compiled records showing that companies in China and India have significantly increased production of hcfc 22 in order to receive funds to incinerate the byproduct gas, hfc 23. Some basic math suggests why: According to the Environmental Investigations Agency,

• the price for a ton of hcfc 22 fluctuates from $1,000 to $2,000, while that same ton can generate about
  
• $5,000 to $6,000 in hfc 23 Clean Development Mechanism credits.

The United Nations Environment Programme reports that from 2004 to 2009, production of the ozone-depleting hcfc 22 refrigerant gas grew from 15 million to 28 million tons,

• paralleling the evolution of the offset program intended to eliminate its byproduct, hfc 23.

But Hcfc 22 itself is actually the replacement gas for the ozone-destroying chlorofluorocarbons that have

• largely been eliminated under the 1989 Montreal Protocol,

a treaty signed by 196 countries to reduce depletion of atmospheric ozone. Hcfc 22 is already illegal in Europe, and is sold in the U.S. only in small quantities strictly licensed by the EPA. Developing countries have until 2030 to phase out hcfc 22 completely.

• Some of the rapidly increasing production of hcfc 22 is being used in developing countries, where a growing middle class can afford for the first time to purchase products using refrigerants, such as air conditioners. But the illegal refrigerant is increasingly showing up in the U.S. black market.

Over the past year, in an effort dubbed Operation Catch-22, federal investigations have led to several convictions of people smuggling hcfc 22 into the U.S. In one instance, Alex Garrido, president of an import-export firm called Kroy Corporation, was arrested after an Operation Catch-22 team caught him on surveillance tape receiving, storing, and preparing to sell illegal shipments of hcfc 22 from China. Garrido pled guilty and was sentenced in February to two-and-a-half years in prison. In another instance, the St. Louis-based Marcone Company, a wholesale supplier for hardware stores and large construction projects, was accused of violating the Clean Air Act for attempting to sell more than 220,000 pounds of the illegal refrigerant.

Thomas Land, who works in the EPA’s Office of International Negotiations — and who is involved in coordinating diplomatic and enforcement efforts for the Montreal Protocol — says that the UN-administered subsidies to eliminate hfc 23 have led to an oversupply of hcfc 22. And the increasing supply has led to a decreasing price. “Because production is subsidized, the prices are artificially low,” Land says.

This has made the illicit gas far more financially attractive to large-scale users of refrigerants in the United States

• than the more expensive, non-ozone-depleting refrigerants.

In this way, the European offset payments are setting the Kyoto and Montreal Protocols — the two seminal environmental treaties of our time — on a collision course.

• China, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, is at the center of the brewing controversy.

China is host to two-thirds of the 474 million tons of emission reductions that the UN says have resulted from the sale of offsets, according to a team of researchers at Dartmouth College’s Climate Justice Research Project, who have been studying the global offset markets.

• Overall, 60 cents of every dollar spent on the global carbon markets goes to China;

and 50 of that 60 cents goes to eliminating hfc’s. Of the 19 refrigerant factories receiving credits through the Clean Development Mechanism, 11 are in China, which accounts for 80 percent of the hfc credits. (Another five hfc projects are in India, and one each is in South Korea, Mexico, and Argentina.)

• European companies and countries have channeled more than a billion dollars into Chinese projects aimed at eliminating hfc’s.

In response to the huge windfall of profits under the scheme, the Chinese government has imposed a

• 65-percent tax on all corporate profits from emissions reductions schemes.

Over the last five years, the tax revenues have amounted to at least $650 million.

The money is channeled into an arm of the Chinese Ministry of Finance called the CDM Fund.

Though the funds are generated via the Clean Development Mechanism,

• the government has no obligation to report how they are being used.

As of October, according to the fund’s website, it appears that none of the money had yet been spent. When, and if, those hundreds of millions of dollars are spent, a significant portion is earmarked for the further development of China’s renewable energy industries, including wind and solar power — technologies in which China is already beginning to dominate world markets.

• “We are providing unacceptable subsidies to Chinese industries that are already close to dominating the global market in renewable energy technologies,” says the European Parliament’s Gerbrandy. In other words, to Europe’s — and America’s — competitors.

In the last week of November, CDM Watch and the Environmental Investigations Agency presented their critique to the executive board of the UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change. The central question, according to Eva Filzmoser, program director of CDM Watch, is

• whether the hfc credits, vital to the functioning of the cap-and-trade system borne of the Kyoto Protocol,

• actually deliver the emission reductions being paid for.

“The gap between the price for the credits and the actual costs for incinerating the gas,” she says,

• “means we have a huge amount of money not being spent on actually reducing emissions.”

The claim puts the UN in a quandary. It has no power to rescind past credits, even those whose integrity is called seriously into question.

• Reassessing the validity of credits that account for at least half of the capital now churning into the offsets could set off a chain reaction, challenging the structure and integrity of the global carbon markets.

The International Emissions Trading Agency, representing the world’s carbon traders, has

• expressed opposition to the changes, stating that the decision be based on “sound environmental and economic analyses of the consequences.”

On Nov. 25, the European Commission proposed that the European Trading System (ETS) no longer accept hfc credits starting in 2013.

• That proposal awaits approval by the European Parliament and the EU’s Council of Ministers.

If approved, it would put the UN in another quandary: How to assess the real value of the bulk of certified emission reductions already on the market, and how to move forward when the ETS —

• the world’s biggest market by far for emission credits — will be refusing to accept them in three years?

UN officials declared that they would study the matter, while also issuing another 20 million tons worth of credits for an hfc project, to be used by a consortium of European utilities.

The controversy over hfc’s came to a head at the climate negotiations in Cancun last week. Last Tuesday,

• Chen Huan, deputy director of China’s CDM Fund, the recipient of the hfc tax revenues, denounced the attempts to reduce the use of hfc credits as “irresponsible,” and attacked the calculations on which they are based as “implausible” and lacking in documentation.

He threatened that Chinese industries would vent hfc gases without government controls if the subsidy program was discontinued, telling Point Carbon News — a market monitoring and news service —

• that efforts to stop the credits are “not acceptable for China because
  
• it deviates from the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities.”

The Environmental Investigations Agency and CDM Watch responded by

• accusing the Chinese of holding the climate “hostage” and saying

that the funds already generated through the hfc tax revenues “would be enough to fund the actual cost of HFC-23 destruction

• in China for at least 50 years,

well beyond the date when HCFCs will be phased out by the Montreal Protocol.”

Meanwhile, money continues to pour into the Chinese CDM Fund, and Operation Catch-22 enforcement agents continue to lay traps for the

• new generation of ozone gas smugglers. "

===================

'Science' does not exist for man-caused climate change or man caused global warming. Data was thrown away in the 1980's inadvertently. Phil Jones wasn't working there at the time. No calculations can be checked. This came out via FOIA, has been admitted by the climate scientists as described the UK Times article below and in an email following. (The UK Times is now subscription so if one wants to check the 11/29/2009 article below I copied from their site some time ago when it was free, one would have to subscribe).

11/29/09, "Climate change data dumped," TimesOnline UK, by Jonathan Leake

"Scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.

• It means that other academics are not able to check basic calculations said to show a long-term rise in temperature over the past 150 years. The UEA’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) was

forced to reveal the loss following requests for the data under Freedom of Information legislation. The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape —

• were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.

The admission follows the leaking of a thousand private emails sent and received by Professor Phil Jones, the CRU’s director. In them he discusses thwarting climate sceptics seeking access to such data. In a statement on its website, the CRU said:

• “We do not hold the original raw data but only the value-added (quality controlled and homogenised) data.”

The CRU is the world’s leading centre for reconstructing past
climate and temperatures.

• Climate change sceptics have long been keen to examine exactly how its data were compiled.

That is now impossible. Roger Pielke, professor of environmental studies at Colorado University, discovered data had been lost when he asked for original records.

• “The CRU is basically saying, ‘Trust us’.

• So much for settling questions and resolving debates with science,” he said.

Jones was not in charge of the CRU when the data were thrown away in the 1980s, a time when climate change was seen as a less pressing issue.

• The lost material was used to build the databases that have been his life’s work, showing how the world has warmed by 0.8C over the past 157 years. He and his colleagues say this temperature rise is “unequivocally” linked to greenhouse gas emissions generated by humans.

Their findings are one of the main pieces of evidence used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which says global warming is a threat to humanity."

----------
Bonus ClimateGate email: a Nobel prize winning "scientist" says he wants to "beat the crap" out of someone for daring to state that loss of historic data undermines integrity of global warming claims (obviously). The angry "scientist" had the view that Phil Jones had "changed the way the world thinks." (Not the job of a scientist, though it can keep the money flowing from hapless taxpayers).

• 10/9/09, From ClimateGate East Anglia emails,
• "From: Ben Santer

• To: P.Jones

Subject: Re: CEI formal petition to derail EPA GHG endangerment finding with charge that destruction of CRU raw data undermines integrity of global temperature record. Dear Phil,

• ...I'm really sorry that you have to go through all this stuff, Phil. Next time I see Pat Michaels at a scientific meeting, I'll be tempted

• to beat the crap out of him. Very tempted. I'll help you to deal with Michaels and the CEI in any way that I can.

• The only reason these guys are going after you is because your work is of crucial importance -

it changed the way the world thinks about human effects
on climate."...



.