The Scare Campaign Against Recycled Sewage Water Continues

The West Australian newspaper dominates the state's media. It can make or break an issue or a person, regardless of the accuracy or validity of the criticism or cause which it has chosen to champion. On occasion, the paper appears to chose its subjects with sales targets in mind, rather than reasonable justification for its particular slant.

In The West recently, Yasmine Phillips wrote an article warning that recycled water could contain chemicals that posed a risk to human health. It wasn't a big article but, located in a prominent position on page 3 (a right hand page), many people would have seen it. Its provocative headline - Experts warn on recycled water - would then have encouraged most people to read it. Sadly, as shown below, the experts that Ms Phillips was quoting appear to have made a fundamentally incorrect assumption about the way that recycled water would be treated in Western Australia prior to human consumption. My email to Yasmine - see below - received the following unhelpful response:

Hello Bernie,

I appreciate your comments regarding my article.Unfortunately due to space constraints, my article was cut during the editing process.Thank you very much for your explanation.

Kind regards,

Yasmine Phillips

Journalist

Is this a case of The West deliberately scaremongering, knowing that recycled sewage water is one of the highest priority potential sources of future drinking water supplies for Perth? I guess it's a case of "watch this space .... in The West"!

Dear Yasmine,

I read your article in Thursday's West expressing concerns about some of the contaminants in recycled water. Can I ask that you investigate their concerns further because I believe they and you have made an incorrect assumption about what is meant by recycled water.

In fact, there are two general types of recycled water. The first is water that leaves a sewerage treatment plant after what one would consider 'normal' treatment - as applies here in WA - and then is put back into the hydrological cycle, i.e. is discharged to a river or ocean. In this situation, the presence of undesirable and potentially harmful contaminants - in particular endocrine disruptors which your article describes as pharmaceutical products - can be significant and of genuine concern to human health.

However, the second type of recycled water is where water from a sewerage treatment plant is subjected to reserve osmosis (RO) filtration, the same process that is used in WA's seawater desalination plant. In this situation, the filtration plus several other treatments that are applied to the water before it is allowed to be drunk removes all of the contaminants that might be present in the non-RO treated water.

To understand why I am so confident of this statement, can I ask that you consider what happens to water when it is subjected to RO. Under high pressure, the water is squeezed through such a fine filter that the molecules of sodium and chlorine - the common salt that makes seawater salty - cannot pass through the pores. Only the much smaller water molecules can pass through. When you use RO on sewerage water, all the large molecules including the

endocrine disruptors (which are dozens to hundreds of times larger than a water molecule) are left behind with the salt; only water molecules are able to pass through the filter pores.

The Singapore government and the Orange County Water Board in southern California both use RO and between them they provide recycled water to several million people. All other recycled water in the USA and UK is not subjected to RO treatment.

My understanding is that the Water Corporation's proposal to use Perth's sewerage water for drinking purposes includes RO treatment. On this basis, the concerns by your quoted experts are almost totally overcome.

Regards

Bernie Masters

RENEWABLE ENERGY - the article that Crikey chose not to publish.

History repeats itself when we don't learn the lessons of the past. Yes, we have some renewable energy technologies that can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions right now but let's take a reality check.

First, there is nothing that the world can do today that will make any difference to the changes of climate that will occur over the next decade or two. We've been putting out too much CO2 and methane for too many years to be able to make an instant difference. So let's focus on the long term solutions and on what we can do to minimise the impacts of the climate change that will occur no matter what.

Second, some existing technologies are simply not economic to implement. Why waste billions of dollars on high cost or problematic solutions when promising lines of research of new technologies (new PV strips as seen recently on the ABC's Catalyst program) and carbon sequestration (not just clean coal) suggest better and more workable solutions are just a few years away?

Third, the most important and cheapest action that can be taken right now is not the use of renewable energy or clean coal but being more efficient with the energy that we're already producing. It's not an emotionally attractive solutions like some others but it's the one that can be implemented immediately and cheaply. Savings in energy usage of 30% or more are readily available in almost every energy-using situation around the globe at costs that provide a pay-back period of only a few years. Solar hot water systems are one of the best examples, with pay-back periods of 5 to 7 years and an 80% or more reduction in energy required to heat most domestic and commercial situations.

Yes, we have to install more renewable energy facilities into Australia as suggested by Crikey's correspondent Sophie Black (March 13, 2007). But she wants our taxpayer dollars to be provided in large amounts to do this - Mandatory Renewable Energy Targets or MRETs for example - yet she criticises the federal government for wanting to use public funds to make coal more environmentally friendly.

As for BP who claim to be greener than green these days and leading the charge to more renewable energy production, I'll believe their 'holier than thou' statements when they stop selling the product that is the primary cause of our global warming problems: liquid fossil fuels.

The bottom line is that ALL governments must consider ALL options carefully, assist in the funding of ALL technologies that offer promise - picking winners is poor public policy - and inform the public what ALL the options are. At present, no political party or lobby group has put forward a credible and comprehensive package which addresses all the issues, including the need to mitigate the next 20 or more years of climate changes which are unavoidable.

MOVING BEYOND KYOTO

This is the third article by Jeffrey Sachs that I've copied from Scientific American and published on this blog site. For an American, he seems to make an enormous amount of sense. Maybe the next US president will listen to him more.

To seriously address the issue of global climate change, policymakers need to establish a framework that extends through the end of the century.

By JEFFREY D. SACHS

Late in 2006, several events moved the U.S. and other countries closer to serious global negotiations to control greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It is therefore timely to ask what a meaningful global agreement would entail. A solid starting point is the 1992 U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, the international treaty that binds countries to act on the problem and under which specific measures, such as the Kyoto Protocol, are adopted. The signatories to the Framework Convention, including the U.S. and almost all other countries, declared the objective to be the "stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level which would prevent dangerous anthropogenic [man-made] interference with the climate system." The Kyoto Protocol, adopted in 1997, did not implement this idea very well: it took a short-term view of a long-term objective and as a result lost clarity, credibility and support along the way. The key now is to move beyond it.

The Kyoto Protocol calls on the high-income countries and the post-communist nations of eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union to reduce their GHG emissions as of 2012 by around 6 percent compared with the 1990 level. This commitment is far better than nothing (a fair description of the Bush administration's non-policy), but it has two major flaws. First, it leaves out the developing countries, which soon will emit more than half of the world's GHGs. Without the active participation of China, India and other developing countries, stabilization of emissions is simply impossible. Second, the Kyoto Protocol takes the long-term objective of stabilization of GHG concentrations and transforms it into a short-term target on emissions reductions, with no clear link between the two. The main actions for stabilization will have to be long-term changes in technology, which exceed the 2012 horizon of the Kyoto Protocol.

This time around, it is better to start with a long-term view. "Dangerous anthropogenic interference" will most likely kick in when carbon concentrations in the atmosphere are at 450 to 550 parts per million (ppm). The world's current trajectory of energy use, deforestation and industrial growth could easily take us to twice that range by the end of the century. The Stern Review, an excellent new report by the U.K. Treasury, makes clear that the consequences could be catastrophic: melting of ice sheets, with a huge rise of ocean levels; massive crop failures; increased transmission of diseases; and potentially calamitous effects on ecosystem services.

The world should therefore agree to stabilize GHG concentrations in the 450 to 550 range (my esteemed colleague Jim Hansen urges the lower end of the range, others the higher end). A mid-century goal, perhaps 50 ppm lower, would provide a 40-year target consistent with the end-century target. As new scientific evidence arises, the goals would be periodically adjusted. With the two long-term anchors set, the world's governments could then agree on strategies for reaching them. These strategies would include market incentives to reduce emissions; greatly expanded research on sustainable energy use, land use and industrial development; and technology transfers from rich to poor countries.

The Stern Review makes clear that the costs of such control will be far lower than the costs of inaction. Low-cost, high-benefit efforts look promising in at least three major areas: improved energy efficiency, energy technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and sustainable land use. Smart technologies can probably keep the long-term annual costs of GHG stabilization at below 1 percent of global GDP. Rich countries can help poor countries to adopt the needed technologies.

It is time, therefore, to aim for a sensible long-term framework in which all countries will participate. The economics are right. The U.S. Congress is set to back such a course. The White House will as well, soon after 2008 and, with some luck, even before.

Jeffrey D. Sachs is director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.

Scientific American, February 2007

Bjorn Lomborg on global warming costs: The Skeptical Environmentalist is skeptical about the Stern Report

In 1998, Bjorn Lomborg wrote "The Skeptical Environmentalist". The book was a statistical critique of many of the leading indices used to measure the state of the planet's environmental health.

Lomborg concluded that, overall, the world was in pretty good shape, with many of the claims made by environmentalists wrong and excessively alarmist. My reading of the book showed that, with a couple of exceptions (greenhouse gas emissions, salinisation in countries like Australia and wild fisheries), Lomborg was indeed on the mark.

He later called together a group of economists and other global non-environmental specialists and asked them this: how would you spend a limited amount of money so that it benefited the maximum number of people? The answer again outraged environmentists: ignore biodiversity and some of the 'trendy' issues. Instead, provide clean water and childhood education to developing countries if you really want to benefit billions of the world's most underpriviledged.

Now Lomborg has written a review of the Stern report which recently predicted global economic collapse if we don't solve the world's greenhouse gas emission problems in the next few decades. Read on......


BJORN LOMBORG: STERN SCARE BLUNTED BY THE FIGURES
On the dodgy economic modelling behind the latest warming beat-up
November 6, 2006
The AUSTRALIAN

THE report on climate change by Nicholas Stern and the British Government has sparked publicity and scary headlines across the world. Much attention has been devoted to Stern's core argument that the price of inaction would be extraordinary and the cost of action modest.

Unfortunately, this claim falls apart when one reads the 700-page tome. Despite using many good references, the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change is selective and its conclusion flawed. Its fear-mongering arguments have been sensationalised, which is ultimately only likely to make the world worse off.

The review correctly points out that climate change is a real problem and that it is caused by human greenhouse-gas emissions. Little else is right, however, and the report seems hastily put together, with many sloppy errors. As an example, the cost of hurricanes in the US is said to be both 0.13 per cent of US gross domestic product and 10 times that figure.

The review is also one-sided, focusing almost exclusively on carbon-emission cuts as the solution to the problem of climate change. Stern sees increasing hurricane damage in the US as a powerful argument for carbon controls. However, hurricane damage is increasing predominantly because there are more people with more goods to be damaged, settling in more risky habitats. Even if global warming does significantly increase the power of hurricanes, it is estimated that 95 per cent to 98 per cent of the increased damage will be due to demographics. The review acknowledges that simple initiatives such as bracing and securing roof trusses and walls can cheaply reduce damage by more than 80 per cent; yet its policy recommendations on expensive carbon reductions promise to cut the damage by 1 per cent to 2per cent at best. That is a bad deal.

Stern is also selective, often seeming to cherry-pick statistics to fit an argument. This is demonstrated most clearly in the review's examination of the social damage costs of CO2, essentially the environmental cost of emitting each extra tonne of CO2. The most well-recognised climate economist in the world is probably Yale University's William Nordhaus, whose "approach is perhaps closest in spirit to ours", according to the Stern review. Nordhaus finds that the social cost of CO2 is $2.50 per tonne. Stern, however, uses a figure of $85 per tonne. Picking a rate even higher than the official British estimates - which have been criticised for being over the top - speaks volumes.

Stern tells us that the cost of flooding in Britain will quadruple to 0.4 per cent from 0.1 per cent of GDP because of climate change. However, we are not told that these alarming figures only hold true if one assumes that Britain will take no additional measures, essentially doing absolutely nothing and allowing itself to get flooded, perhaps time and again. In contrast, the British Government's assumptions take into account a modest increase in flood prevention, finding that the cost will decline sharply to 0.04 per cent of GDP, in spite of climate change. Why does Stern not share that information?

But nowhere is the imbalance clearer than in Stern's central argument about the costs and benefits of action on climate change. The review tells us that we should make significant cuts in carbon emissions to stabilise the concentration of atmospheric CO2 at 550 parts per million. Yet such a stark recommendation is not matched by an explicit explanation of what this would mean in terms of temperature.

The UN climate panel estimates that stabilising at 550ppm would mean an increase in temperature of about 2.3C by the year 2100. This might be several degrees below what would otherwise happen, but it might also be higher. Nordhaus estimates that the stabilisation policy would reduce the rise from 2.53C to 2.42C. One can understand the reluctance of the Stern review to advertise such a puny effect.

Most economists were surprised by Stern's large economic estimates of damage from global warming. Nordhaus's model, for example, anticipates 3per cent will be wiped off global GDP if nothing is done over the coming century, taking into account the risk for catastrophes. The Stern review purports to show that the cost is "larger than many earlier studies suggested".

On the face of it, Stern accepts Nordhaus's figure: even including risks of catastrophe and non-market costs, he agrees that an increase of 4C will cost about 3 per cent of GDP. But he assumes that we will continue to pump out carbon far into the 22nd century, a rather unlikely scenario given the falling cost of alternative fuels, and especially if some of his predictions become clear to us towards the end of this century. Thus he estimates that the higher temperatures of 8C in the 2180s will be very damaging, costing 11per cent to 14 per cent of GDP.

The Stern review then analyses what the cost would be if everyone in the present and the future paid equally. Suddenly the cost estimate is not 0 per cent now and 3 per cent in 2100, but 11per cent of GDP right now and forever. If this seems like a trick, it is certainly underscored by the fact that the Stern review picks an extremely low discount rate, which makes the cost look much more ominous now.

But even 11 per cent is not the last word. Stern suggests that there is a risk that the cost of global warming will be higher than the top end of the UN climate panel's estimates, inventing, in effect, a worst-case scenario even worse than any others on the table. Therefore, the estimated damage to GDP jumps to 15 per cent from 11 per cent. Moreover, Stern admonishes that poor people count for less in the economic calculus, so he then inflates 15 per cent to 20 per cent.

This figure, 20 per cent, was the number that rocketed across the world, although it is simply a much-massaged reworking of the standard 3per cent of GDP cost in 2100, a figure accepted among most economists to be a reasonable estimate.

Likewise, Stern readjusts the cost of dealing with climate change. The UN found that the cost of 550ppm stabilisation would be somewhere from 0.2per cent to 3.2 per cent of GDP today; he reports that costs could lie between minus 4 per cent and 15 per cent of GDP. The minus 4 per cent is based on the suggestion that cutting carbon emissions could make us richer because revenue recycling could address inefficiencies in taxation; but the alleged inefficiencies, if correct, should be addressed no matter what the policies about climate change.

The reason Stern nevertheless finds a very low cost estimate is because he only considers models with so-called induced technological change. These models are known to reduce costs by about two percentage points because carbon cuts lead to an increase in research and development, which again makes further cuts cheaper. Thus, Stern concludes that the costs are on average 1 per cent of GDP, and in the summary claims that this is a maximum cost.

The Stern review's cornerstone argument for immediate and strong action is based on the suggestion that doing nothing about climate change costs 20 per cent of GDP now, and doing something only costs 1 per cent. However, this argument hinges on three very problematic assumptions.

First, it assumes that if we act, we will not still have to pay. But this is not so: Stern tells us that his solution is "already associated with significant risks". Second, it requires the cost of action to be as cheap as he tells us, and on this front his numbers are at best overly optimistic. Third, and most significantly, it requires the cost of doing nothing to be a realistic assumption, but the 20 per cent of GDP figure is inflated by an unrealistically pessimistic vision of the 22nd century, and by an extreme and unrealistically low discount rate. According to the background numbers in Stern's report, climate change will cost us 0 per cent now and 3 per cent of GDP in 2100, a much more informative number than the 20 per cent now and forever.

In other words, given reasonable inputs, most cost-benefit models show that dramatic and early carbon reductions cost more than the good they do. Stern's attempt to challenge that understanding is based on a chain of unlikely assumptions.

Moreover, there is a fourth key problem in Stern's argument that has received very little attention. It seems naive to believe that the world's 192 nations can flawlessly implement Stern's multi-trillion-dollar, century-long policy proposal. Will nobody try to avoid its obligations? Why would China and India participate? And even if China got on board, would it be able to implement the policies?

In 2002, China decided to cut sulphur dioxide emissions by 10 per cent; they are now 27 per cent higher despite SO2 being nationally a much bigger health and environmental problem than climate change.

We all want a better world. But we must not let ourselves be swept up in making a bad investment simply because we have been scared by sensationalist headlines.

Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist (Cambridge, 2001), teaches at the Copenhagen Business School and is director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center. This is extracted from The Wall Street Journal.

So what if Australia produces more greenhouse gases per capita than any other country?

Many critics of Australia's response (or lack thereof) to its greenhouse gas emission complain that we've got the highest emissions per capita of any country on earth. Well, so what?

The reality is that Australia, for some commodities, is the world's leading supplier. Aluminium metal is the most obvious, but there are others, including titanium dioxide pigment and semi-processed nickel matte from Kambalda.

But what would global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions be like if, instead of Australia doing this processing with modern plants using the world's best technologies, China and India were operating their own plants? My guess is that these countries would be using old plants with old technology and, for electricity production, they'd be using some of the dirtiest coal produced anywhere on the planet. Sure, Australia's GHG emissions would be lower, but overall global emissions would be far higher.

The debate has been won by those who accept the reality of human-caused global warming. So now we should focus on how the world - not just Australia - can lower GHG emissions. If we had a genuinely global agreement (not this silly Kyoto agreement which is, was and for ever will be ineffective) with a global carbon tax and a global carbon emission trading scheme, then those countries that produced aluminium metal with the lowest GHG emissions per tonne of finished product would probably have the cheapest sale prices and hence would have a major market advantage over other producers (all other things being equal). This could mean that Australia continues to produce the world's cleanest aluminium or it could be China or the USA or whoever. Who cares, so long as the world lowers its total GHG emissions. For iron and steel production, the cleanest may be Germany or Japan or, using new clean technology, it could be China.

The fact that Australia produces more GHG per capita is an absolutely irrelevant statistic. If we accept that the world will continue to consume aluminium and titanium dioxide and nickel, etc, we should demand an international agreement be negotiated that will result in the cleanest production technologies being used right around the world.

What Tim Colebatch from the Age with his recent newspaper article or Al Gore with his recent campaign event (sorry, I'm referring to his movie!) are really trying to do is make Australians feel guilty because we have some of the the cleanest commodity production processes and operations in the world. As Abraham Lincoln was (wrongly) attributed as saying, "you don't strengthen the weak by weakening the strong". Similarly, you don't close down the world's best and cleanest producers of globally-traded commodities in order to allow some of the world's dirtiest processing countries to produce even more greenhouse gases.

Climate Change is going to happen: prepare for it!

Climate change is inevitable, and policies to help societies adapt to a warmer future are badly needed.

That is the message from the President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA), Frances Cairncross, at the BA annual festival.

She will tell delegates that even maximal deployment of the best technology cannot stop climate change.

She will also say that improving scientific literacy would raise public understanding of environmental issues.

"An innumerate population is less likely to devise good solutions to climate change and a host of other environmental problems than one at home with mathematical and scientific concepts," she will say in her address to the festival, held this year at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.

'Ineffectual' Kyoto
Ms Cairncross, who is also chair of Britain's Economic and Social Research Council, believes that attempts to reduce emissions through the UN's Kyoto Protocol will not work.

We've got to realise we're going to live in a warmer world

"[Climate change] is undoubtedly going to happen on the basis of all we know at the moment," she told BBC News.

"One of the most thorough reports was done by the International Energy Agency in the summer, and that suggested that even if we threw at climate change all we had at the moment, even if we put it all in place, we would still see a rise in the concentration of emissions.

"[So] although we've got to continue taking steps to slow it down, we've also got to realise we're going to live in a warmer world."

The British government, she will say, should develop and implement policies for adaptation now, although the main issues lie in the developing world.

She will urge countries to consider measures such as developing new crops, constructing flood defences, and banning building close to sea level.

Lower Fertility: A Wise Investment for Developing Countries

The following article appeared in the September 2006 issue of Scientific American. It encourages developing countries to take four steps to reduce population growth: promote child survival; promote girls' education; promote the availability of contraception and family planning; and increased farm productivity. Surely the fundamentalist Christians who are so influential in determining US foreign policy can't object to these laudible goals.

**********************************************************************************

Lower Fertility: A Wise Investment

Plans that encourage voluntary, steep reductions in the fertility rates of poor nations pay dividends in sustainability for everyone. By JEFFREY D. SACHS

The world faces looming ecological threats from the incredible stresses that global economic activity places on our major ecosystems. True, rapid population growth is not the main driver today of these threats. Pride of place goes to the high and rising rates of resource use per person rather than to the rise in the sheer number of people. Even if the total population were to stabilize at today's level of 6.5 billion, the pressures of rising per capita resource use would continue to mount.

With the rich countries living at roughly $30,000 per person and the world's average income at around $10,000 per person, simply having the poor catch up with the income levels of the rich would triple global economic throughput, with all the attendant environmental consequences.

Yet the continued rapid population growth in many poor countries will markedly exacerbate the environmental stresses. Under current demographic trends, the United Nations forecasts a rise in the population to around nine billion as of 2050, another 2.5 billion people. They will arrive in the poor regions bur aspire to the income and consumption levels of the rest of the world. If the economic aspirations of the newly added population are fulfilled, the environmental pressures will be mind-boggling. If those aspirations are not fulfilled, the political pressures will be similarly mind-boggling.

For the poor countries, the benefits of lowering fertility are apparent. High fertility rates arc leading to extreme local environmental pressures—water stress, land degradation, over-hunting and over-fishing, falling farm sizes, deforestation and other habitat destruction—thereby worsening the grave economic challenges these lands face. High fertility also represents a disaster for the added children themselves, who suffer from profound under-investments in education, health and nutrition and are thus far more likely to grow up impoverished. In short, a move to lower fertility rates will mean healthier children, much faster growth in living standards and reduced environmental stressors.

Reducing fertility rates in the poorest countries would also be among the smartest investments that the rich countries could make for their own future well-being. Fifty percent of the projected population increase by 2050 will fall within Africa and the Middle East, the planet's most politically and socially unstable regions. That development could well mean another generation of underemployed and frustrated young men, more violence because of joblessness and resource scarcity, more pressures for international migration, and more ideological battles with Europe and the U.S. The global ecological toll could be just as disastrous, because rapid population growth would be taking place in many of the world's "biodiversity hot spots."

Disappointingly, the Bush administration has turned its back on fertility control in poor countries—despite overwhelming evidence that fast, voluntary and highly beneficial transitions to low fertility rates are possible. Such transitions can be promoted through a sensible four-part strategy.

First, promote child survival. When parents have the expectation that their children will survive, they choose to have fewer children.

Second, promote girls' education and gender equality. Girls in school marry later, and empowered young women enter the labor force and choose to have fewer children.

Third, promote the availability of contraception and family planning, especially for the poor who cannot afford such services on their own.

Fourth, raise productivity on the farm. Income-earning mothers rear fewer children.

These four steps can reduce fertility rates quickly and dramatically from, say, five or more children per fertile woman to three or fewer within 10 to 15 years, as has occurred in Iran, Tunisia and Algeria. Many African leaders are waking up to this imperative, realizing that their nations cannot surmount their deep economic woes with populations that double every generation. If we in the rich countries would rise to help with this vital task, we would find eager local partners.

An expanded version of this essay is available online at www.sciam.com/ontheweb

Jeffrey D. Sachs is director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and of the U.N. Millennium Project.