Who are these intrepid sailors in their home-made boat?
They certainly have good team spirit. You can hear snatches of their team song.
Our little boat is flimsy, the
rush of waters strong,
The mighty River Science carries
us along.
They like to think of themsevles as scientists, though they don't collect data. Instead, they spend their time picking over the details of other people's science. Without serious skills in maths or any of the science disciplines, at best they are "backyard tinkerers".
They tend to hang out together in online forums and blogs where they sing songs of mutual solidarity, bound together by opposition to mainstream science.
But we’re not going
lightly, we know that they are wrong.
Paddle harder boys and join me in our song.
They are the the oddball world of climate change denial, fighting a rearguard action against the massive flow of evidence for anthropogenic global warming (AGW). They put a brave face on their efforts to save the world from mainstream science.
Bailing with a thimble, Paddling with a toothpick Our minds and hearts are nimble Their Science makes us sick.
Perhaps it was nausea that caused one of the sailors aboard the little boat Denial to fall overboard this week. After their own-goal with the Unabomber billboard, the Heartland Institute announced that they don't have the funding to continue running their deniala-palooza conferences.
We would laugh at the little boat Denial, paddling against the mighty flow of River Science, if they were harmless. The trouble is, there are a few of them bumping around in the river, spreading lies and confusion. Some are paddling to the tune of "It's not happening" while others are paddling to various different beats like "It's happening but it won't affect us" or "Go slow, we just don't know".
They're going around in circles, but they've managed to create doubt and apprehension about the transition to a low carbon future.
It helps if we recognise that their 'toothpick and thimble' approach to science is fairly useless. This may discourage others from getting aboard the little boat Denial.
We know that the cost of doing nothing will be enormous in money, goods, homes and lives. So we are prepared to pay to avoid catastrophe. Of course, we don't want to pay more than we have to, and we don't want to pay more than the other guy. So everyone is busy with their calculators and measuring rods making sure we pay as little as possible, making this transition look like a slow bicycle race.
The situation is ripe for vested interests to say, "Hey! Those guys are getting too much money. It's not fair."
This happened recently with respect to Chinese solar panels exported to the U.S. The U.S. Department of Commerce decided that the manufacturers had an unfair advantage due to big subsidies from the Chinese government. To level things up, they slapped a tariff on them.
Fossil fuel industry supporters often complain that governments are giving too many subsidies to renewable energy projects. Industry associations and lobbyists are counting on their fingers and toes to tally all the subsidies, big and little, for renewables.
The very reputable International Energy Agency (IEA) found that countries worldwide paid $66 billion in subsidies to encourage the development and deployment of renewable energy in 2010.
That sounds like a lot, but it is just a speck compared with the $409 billion that governments paid to subsidise fossil fuel in the same year, according to the IEA.
Fatih Birol, exceptional economist with the IEA says,
Energy markets can be thought of as suffering from appendicitis due to
fossil fuel subsidies. They need to be removed for a healthy energy
economy. Energy is significantly underpriced in many parts
of the world, leading to wasteful consumption, price volatility and
fuel smuggling. It's also undermining the competitiveness of
renewables.
Australia doesn't get a mention in this very excellent Guardian article about fossil fuel subsidies, but I note that after floating the idea of reducing the $2 billion diesel rebate, the Australian government caved in to industry lobbying and it didn't get a mention in the recent budget.
When fossil fuel interests criticise the subsidies given to renewable energy, they need to look at the log in their own eyes before complaining about the speck in other people's eyes.
You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will
see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.
In Britain, many commercial premises are let on leases that require the tenant to pay for routine property maintenance. This is called a "full repairing lease".
Margaret Thatcher used this analogy several times.
I remember saying in my Royal Society speech that we had a full
repairing lease on this Earth. With the work done by the
Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, we can now say that we have
the Surveyor's Report and it shows that there are faults and that the
repair work needs to start without delay. The problems do not lie in the
future—they are here and now—and it is our children and grandchildren,
who are already growing up, who will be affected.
As Margaret Thatcher pointed out, we don't own the earth, we are tenants who are responsible for its upkeep.
Like old buildings, the Earth doesn't negotiate about the work that needs doing. If the roof leaks, you fix it or take the consequences.
Margaret Thatcher's words are very similar to the American Indian proverb.
Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children.
Peter Sinclair allowed Margaret Thatcher to do the talking in this video (10 mins) that critiques the Heartland Institute's "Murderers, tyrands and madmen" billboard and shows that Heartland has positioned itself at the extreme right. No wonder their sponsors are leaving them in droves.
True conservatives aren't looking for a free ride. They understand responsibility and full repairing leases.
When Audrey walks her dogs, she follows an elegantly economical route to the park, pausing only to admire and be admired. But not Tozer and Chic. They're erratic and energetic, sniffing to the left, sniffing to the right, circling trees, running ahead or
pulling back.
Tozer and Chic are Temperature Change and they are all over the place. Up one day and down the next. Without Audrey (Climate Change) they would get nowhere and we'd be seeing the same weather patterns our grandmothers saw.
However, Audrey is making sure they get to the park. The trouble is – the park is a wasteland of drought, extreme weather, rising sea
levels and ocean acidification.
Check out this neat animation of a dog and his owner. It illustrates the difference
between variance (i.e. weather) vs. trend (i.e. climate). It shows that there are hot years and cold years, but climate change is driving the graph upwards with more record highs than ever before.
Source: Video from Siffer, Teddy TV. Animator: Ole Christoffer Hager
And check out this 2-minute gem where Richard Alley graphs temperature change for different periods of his life. It shows the same upward trend. It's getting hotter.
And finally, I need to apologise to Audrey for making her the villain of this piece. To redeem myself, I invite you to enjoy some eye candy of the delightful Audrey Hepburn and her beloved dogs, none of which was called Tozer or Chic as far as I know.
Sometimes I feel like I'm living in a bubble. Actually, we all live in our own custom-made bubbles that are shaped by our life experience and our education.
The world in my bubble is different from the world in your bubble. The TV show Madmen makes good dramatic use of this.
In an early episode, Betty comes home with her drycleaning. After a few minutes, the kids come running out of the bedroom playing at being spacemen. Sally has the thin plastic dry-cleaning bag over her head and body. Betty gets mad, as any mother would at this shocking sight. She chides Sally,
If the clothes from that dry-cleaning bag are on the floor of my closet, you're going to be a very sorry, young lady.
How times have changed! Betty is oblivious to our concerns about suffocation, and we're blind to her focus on well-pressed clothing.
When it comes to climate change and the transition to a low carbon economy, there are some very strong bubbles built largely on the capacity of the internet to foster colonies of like-minds.
There's a whole anti-AGW blogosphere bubble promoting the notion that climate science is not settled and 'do nothing' is the best course of action. There are virtually no practising climate scientists in this bubble, though there are related professionals like weathermen and engineers along with lots of backyard 'thinkers'.
Meanwhile, the usual practice of science continues through peer reviewed papers in academic journals.
How do we speak to each other across these bubbles? As a first step, we need to spend more time hanging out with people who live in different bubbles from ours. Natually, this is not as comfortable as hanging out with like minds. You have to make an effort and be prepared for some abrasion.
We can also make efforts to see the world from someone else's point of view. Why does Betty Draper ignore the suffocation risk when Sally puts the plastic bag over her head?
To see the world from someone else's point of view we need to listen with respect, as Katharine Hayhoe says,
If we approach this issue with mutual respect, with a desire for
identifying what we most have in common rather than where we differ, and
if we are prepared to listen and have two-way communication, rather
than just coming in there to instruct, then we can make some progress.
Without these efforts, we remain trapped in our bubble, our echo chamber. That makes us lousy communicators. More like Betty Draper than Katharine Hayhoe.
I didn't realise how much I try to negotiate my way through life until I had a baby. Babies do not negotiate. You feed them, or they cry. You walk them, or they cry. You keep them warm, or they cry.
My garden is like that too. If I don't water it, the plants die.
It's true for the whole biosphere. We live by nature's rules, she doesn't live by ours. The notion of 'conquering nature' is as ridiculous as an earth-centred solar system.
We have learnt to give up the idea that the sun goes around the earth, but we haven't given up the notion that our relationship with the earth is negotiable. We imagine we can 'conquer' nature with impunity. We act as though the earth's resources are endless.
Our economies are based on the false notion that we will never come to the end of the earth's resources. Our economies depend on growth. When they stagnate or shink a bit, people get unhappy and governments fall.
Right now, we're at a critical point in history where we are hitting some limits. One is the limit of oil production. World oil production plateaued around 2005 but demand keeps growing and this is sending prices up. By 2014, production is expected to fall short of demand. (Note: see update at end of this piece.)
The other is the limit on the amount of greenhouse gases we can pump into the atmosphere. Scientists say that 450ppm of CO2-e gases in the atmosphere will give us a 50% chance of keeping average global temperature increase down to 2C. Others argue that 450ppm is dangerously high.
Right now, we're at 396 ppm and increasing by almost 2 ppm each year. That gives us about 25 years to shrink our emissions to zero.
Paul Gilding describes our situation as one of unavoidable crisis where a long series of major economic shocks will gradually bring our consumption of resources into balance with the limited supply.
Just as a baby will cry when it is hungry, so these economic
shocks signal that something is wrong. Each time we address one of the shocks, we get a clearer picture of another way we are out of step with nature.
For Gilding, the global financial crisis of 2008, the Arab Spring of 2011, and now the Greek debt
crisis are evidence that we are in the midst of a system that is
breaking down. He warns that we need to give up the idea that these are glitches that can be overcome. We need to start the transition to a different system.
We need to recognise that we can't negotiate with nature.
Unlike human law, the laws of nature can be read, but not redrafted.
There's no borrowing from Nature without repayment. Greece has been negotiating with its banks and they have written off billions of dollars of debt, and still people are rioting in the streets because they don't want to pay.
Nature doesn't care if we riot. Riots are pointless tantrums. We will have to repay our debts to Nature in full. We will have to live with the full extent of the damage our actions have caused.
Paul Gilding describes these as apocalyptic times. He questions our childish wish to negotiate with Nature and asks:
What do we want to be when we grow up – when humans grow past adolescence? We'll be growing up in war. It's a war for civilisation itself.
UPDATE: 30 July 2012. A report by by Harvard University’s Belfer Centre for Science and International Affairs concludes that oil supply capacity is growing worldwide and might outpace consumption, potentially leading to a glut of
overproduction and a dip in oil prices. The report also notes that at prices of $US70/barrel major new oil reserves (like shale oil) have become economic and this is what has added to capacity. In effect, this puts a floor under the price of oil. If oversupply causes prices to drop below $70 a barrel, the more expensive wells will be mothballed till prices rise again.
As many have noted, 'peak oil' is best understood as a pointer to the limits on cheap oil. Oil supply won't suddenly fall of a cliff, instead it will be squeezed by ever-increasing prices as the easy to reach reserves are exhausted and only the more expensive supplies are left.
Those advocating for urgent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions hoped that high oil prices would drive the uptake of renewables. Many will be disappointed to read this report and its suggestion that instead of rapid price increases, the price of oil is likely to move around the $70-90 mark for the next decade. Source: ClimateSpectator.
Fossil fuel dependence is a dead end, though you'd never know it the way the mining industry carries on.
Mining lobbyists like to scare politicians and the public, but global statistics for trends in new power generation show a dramatic decline for fossil fuels. Maybe the miners are stridently fighting a rear guard action?
According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance and the International Energy
Agency, investment in renewables for power production rose from $50bn in 2004 to $260b in
2011. Over the same time investment in fossil fuel power production fell
from $250b to $40b. It looks like this.
This gives a clear picture of the road to the future. Personally, I find it very heartening to see that the world is moving towards renewables at a rapid rate. It's exactly what economists say we ought to do.
Climate Spectator (14 May 2012)has more detail: King Carbon.
