On our watch

A disaster is unfolding on our watch.

What is happening? Are the guards asleep on duty? Do they not believe their eyes? Are they afraid to call out? Are they shouting in the wrong language? Are we ignoring those that do call out? Are we confused because the leaders say it's bad, really bad, while doing nothing about it?

All of the above.

Many of us understand the calls, but we can't quite grasp the magnitude and urgency of the situation. We nod our heads and wait for our governments to show leadership. We're waiting to see what our fearless leaders do.

KC Golden urges us to stop waiting,

We need to stand tall – with both feet, whole hearts, and strong, explicit words – on the side of the truth.

KC Golden, Climate Solutions

In a similar vein, Kate Lovelady, Leader of the Ethical Society of St Louis, ruminates on the need to bring our carbon actions in line with our values when she asks what message she conveys when she flies to a conference instead of taking a train.  

Action is by far the most powerful communication.  Michelle Obama's White House vegetable garden replaces a thousand speeches about healthy food and active lifestyles.

So, how do we bring our words and actions in line with the real urgency of the situation?

Climate Solutions draws on this study to suggest that the tactical risks of talking explicitly about climate are overblown. Yes, it can be a “loser” as a “message,” but generally only when we talk like losers – when we internalize and reiterate our opponents’ bad frames. They find that focusing on climate is generally a “winner” when we:

• Invoke a strong sense of human agency and responsibility. We’re causing it. We should fix it.
• Foster engagement and efficacy. Futility is the enemy of responsibility, and it’s rampant in our political culture. But people remain hungry for solutions, and eager to participate. Pollyannish optimism? No. Can-do determination to build a better future? Definitely.
• Embed (don’t bury) climate in the challenge of freeing ourselves from fossil fuel dependence. Almost everyone at least suspects that fossil fuel dependence is a dead end, and feels victimized by the forces that perpetuate it. Climate solutions can free us!

KC Golden again,

• My primary point here is not:  “Talk more about climate because it’s not as bad of a message as you think.” My point is: Talk about climate because we must – because tackling it is a moral imperative, and we’ll never convince anyone of that if we keep dodging and weaving around it.

KC Golden, Climate Solutions

It's happening on OUR watch. We need to meet it head-on, hug the monster, and get on with the job of mobilising all our forces to head off catastrophe.

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New today on the Transformation page (see the tab up there?).

8 June 2012. Amazon deforestation is at a record low. Data from Brazil's National Institute for Space Research shows that 6,418 sq km of Amazon forest was stripped in the 12 months before 31 July 2011 – the smallest area since annual measurements started in 1988. Since the peak deforestation year of 2004, the rates of clearance have fallen by almost 75%. Most (81%) of Brazil's original forest remains – one of the highest levels of any country. Source: The Guardian.

The Great Game – superpower rivalries

The Great Game is the setting for Rudyard Kipling's Kim, where Kim enters the world of superpower espionage along the North West Frontier of India/Pakistan/Afghanistan. It tells the story of a clever boy who gets caught up in the machinations of British and Russian imperial power.

In today's world, the Great Game has played out between countries fighting for control over energy supplies. Oil reserves have made the Middle East a hotbed of conflict, and wars have been fought in Kuwait and Iraq. 

Like Kim, I am playing a role in the Great Game. Kim acted for one of the protagonists, but I have rolled up my sleeves to diffuse the situation.

With my solar PV, I am making fossil fuel reserves less important and not worth fighting over.

In Australia in August 2011, solar PV contributed 2.3% of total electricity production, and capacity continues to increase dramatically. Commenters call this the democratisation of electricity. This occurs when millions of homes and businesses have more control over their power production and consumption.

Democracy is about power, but it also has the moral dimension of fairness and justice. This is true whether it applies to political democracy, information democracy or electricity democracy.

The consumption of energy is no longer just an economic act—this is becoming a conscious act and an act of conscience. This will likely intensify in the coming years.

 Joseph Stanislaw

All our acts are moral acts. When we choose renewable energy over fossil fuels, we make powerful economic and moral statements.

When millions of us bring our actions in line with our moral compass, the world changes without benefit of politicians.

This has me thinking deeply and I'll write more about it tomorrow.


 Via Elisa Wood at RealEnergyWriters.

Angry Birds is a game. Climate change isn't.

Like half the planet, I love Angry Birds. Apart from the intricate challenges of figuring out trajectories and new strategies, the game taps into a brutal and primal delight in the fierce battle for survival. Playing it on the train without the sound effects almost misses the point.

The battle between the birds and pigs fits one of the great archetypes of human experience. The birds face a life-or-death challenge to save future generations by reclaiming the eggs stolen by the pigs. It tells the same survival story as Homer's Odyssey,  the Mahabharata, and the legends of King Arthur.

In the past year, climate change advocates have become less like ivory tower academics and more like Angry Birds. More than anyone else, they know that the battle for minds over climate change is a battle for the future of human society. 

After decades of political shilly-shallying, climate change advocates are getting impatient and angry. They're dropping the political niceties and calling it like they see it.

James Hansen wrote recently in the New York Times,

Global warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.”

If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.

KC Golden takes him to task for the sporting metaphor "game over" and  comments on the seriousness of climate disruption as the great survival story of the generation, and possibly of the species.

It’s no game, and it is never over.  Whatever you do now to improve the situation is crap I don’t have to shovel later.  So quit crying in your beer and DO STUFF.

Get in the game Dadddyyy, ’cause when it’s “over” for you, it’s on for me.

Hansen and Golden are not disagreeing with each other. They're both getting angry and calling it like it is.

Nothing but relentless, dogged and unforgiving persistence will get us through this one. The kind of persistence the Angry Birds show. The kind of persistence parodied in this Israeli comic skit.

Are you up for it? Check out my 'Take Action' page and practice some dogged persistence!





Image source: Cakes by Becky.

Not my grandmother's weather

Grandma Blanche

When my Grandma Blanche was 70 years old, she came to visit me in North Queensland. She lived all her life in the coal mining villages and towns of Country Durham in the north of England. She was entirely used to the grey skies and bleak streetscapes of mining villages pictured in films like Billy Elliot and Brassed Off.

Spennymoor

You can probably tell from her piled-up blonde hair and magenta lace dress that Grandma Blanche was not your usual storybook grandma. She had an appetite for life.

As you'd expect for somone who was a teenager in England in WWI, Grandma found North Queensland wonderfully strange and exotic. 

Ingham is in the tropics at latitude 18 S which is about the same distance from the equator as Jamaica. It sits in the fertile Herbert River valley where sugar cane is the main crop. We showed her around the local sights – the cane fields, the river and the cemetery, famous for its elaborate Italian family graves.

Ingham cemetery

My friend Ann and I took her along with us when the young men from the Sugar Mill invited us to a Champagne and Chicken Breakfast.  (It *was* the 1970s!).  After making merry on champagne and chicken and being very rude about one young man's brand new Holden Monaro, we drove home through the strange green light thrown by towering tropical storm clouds.

Just as we got home, large splats of rain started to pelt down, as big as eggs. We ran for the house – laughing, wet and a bit tipsy.

Then the heavens opened in a mighty downpour. Thunder crashed overhead and lightning zagged everywhere. We were glad to be indoors, safe from the deafening sound-and-light show. Grandma was a bit quiet.

Like most tropical thunderstorms, this one soon passed and sunlight sparkled on a wet world.

Then Grandma asked questions, and we realised that in all her seventy years she had never seen anything like it. We tried to get our heads around the different world she lived in. A world without thunder storms. She knew the quiet mystery of English snowstorms but she only knew of thunder storms from books and movies.

I think of my grandmother when I read scientists' predictions for future climate.

If we were to ... continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now. That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk.

James Hansen, NYT

Just as I had to work to get my head around the idea that someone could live their whole life without experiencing thunderstorms, so I also have to work to envision the inevitable climate change future. It's not a theory, it is a direct consequence of burning fossil fuels.

The coal mines of Country Durham fueled the Industrial Revolution. My Grandma lived opposite the first-ever passenger railway station. My ancestors dug that coal and worked on the world's first railroads.

Durham's coal mines are closed now because the coal has been used up. We are staring at a situation where working coalmines all over the world will need to close in order to reduce carbon emissions.

It is 25 years since Grandma Blanche died, and already world weather is not the weather she grew up with. If we don't reduce carbon emissions, Grandma Blanche's descendents in County Durham won't have to travel half-way around the world to experience tropical thunderstorms. They'll get them at home, and the tropics will be uninhabitable.

As James Hansen says,

The cost of acting goes far higher the longer we wait — we can’t wait any longer to avoid the worst and be judged immoral by coming generations.

Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose!

Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose! That's the rallying call for the Dillon Panthers.

Last night we watched the much awarded Friday Night Lights on DVD. We're up to Season 3.

Landry dumped his cute little blonde girlfriend to take up with Tyra again. On again, off again, what will happen next?

And Smash got dumped from TMU, just a couple of episodes after all the drama about whether he would get attractive offers and whether he'd make wise choices. On again, off again, where will he end up now?

We don't know, we just follow along from episode to episode. But somebody does know. Somebody has a pretty fair idea about the overall story arc.

The writer, producer and actors have a general idea about the long narrative arc for the series and for its characters. Actor Jon Hamm knows that Mad Men is intended to run for another three seasons and knows how it will end. Of course, he's not saying.

In life, we go along day by day, episode by episode, writing the script as we go along.

Weather happens day by day too, and we get the impression that we can't know what lies ahead, other than assuming more of the same.

But that's not quite true. Climate scientists who study the long term patterns (the larger story arc) have a pretty fair idea of what is coming in the longer term. They can read the signs.

They are saying things like,

Oceans are now 30% more acidic than before the Industrial Revolution. The last time the oceans were as acidic as this was 65 million years ago. The acidity caused mass extinctions at the bottom of the food chain and the dinosaurs died out.  

 Tim McClanahan

The last time carbon dioxide levels were apparently as high as they are today — and were sustained at those levels — global temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit higher than they are today, the sea level was approximately 75 to 120 feet higher than today, there was no permanent sea ice cap in the Arctic and very little ice on Antarctica and Greenland.

 Aradhna Tripati

Given their insider knowledge, and the future they are staring at, it is little wonder that climate scientists are taking a more active role in communicating the facts to policy makers and the general public.

We need our policy makers to have clear eyes – they need to look unflinchingly at the best scientific evidence. 

They need to have full hearts – passion and commitment.

Then, indeed, we can't lose. 

Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose! Go Panthers!

Who to believe? Grandma or NASA?

I grew up in Queensland, the tropical State in Australia's north east. Apart from sugar cane, macadamia nuts, mangos and pawpaw, Queensland is famous for its distinctive houses, called Queenslanders. These timber houses emerged in the 1800s, influenced by the bungalows that were common in India (one of the world's oldest civilisations).

Quite a number of British Raj types chose to retire to Australia rather than go back to damp and dreary Britain, and they brought this tropical housing style with them. Here, it was interpreted in a uniquely Queensland way so that the more elaborate examples have fancy painted lattice or iron lacework.

The houses I grew up in had the four distinctive features of the typical Queenslander:

• Wide verandahs for shade and sheltered outdoor living spaces
• Lifted off the ground to allow cool breezes to circulate
• Timber construction which allows the building to cool at night
• High pitched metal roofs – the metal was reflective and cooled quickly at night

I remember lying in bed at night listening to the house creak and crack as it adjusted to cooler nightime temperatures. It was a friendly sound. And, oh! the secret adventures we had in the cool dark spaces under the house. Here's a poem about my sister's house.

Queenslanders were built from the 1800s through to the 1920s when Californian bungalows influenced the classic Queenslander. The climate-friendly features still prevailed.

After WWII, houses got wonderfully modern and all four climate-friendly features were ditched. Brick replaced timber, verandahs and window awnings were old-fashioned, houses were built on concrete slabs, and roofs became fashionably coloured. Increasingly, air-conditioning replaced ceiling fans.

All this came flooding back to me when I saw this Climate Progress article about an initiative in New York to paint roofs white.

A NASA survey of New York City’s rooftops last July showed that dark, heat-absorbing rooftops were up to 42 degrees F hotter than white rooftops. And that difference in heat can make a big difference in on-site energy use; painting a roof white can reduce air conditioning demand as much as 20 percent.

I slapped my head and stomped around the house for a few minutes, muttering,

We're going to hell in a handbasket! What have we come to that we need the Big-Bertha-gun-scientists at NASA to tell us to paint our roofs white?

It's not rocket science. It's common sense.

In Grandma's day, we listened to the traditional wisdom of our elders and made some sensible decisions. Now we get rocket scientists to tell us what to do (and then a whole bunch of people diss it anyway).

After I calmed down a bit, I took heart from a recent resurgence of the vernacular Queenslander house style. Lots of builders now offer Queenslander designs. You can even buy kit homes (exported world wide).

Here in New South Wales we don't build Queenslanders, but 12 years ago the State government implemented BASIX (Building Sustainability Index) to require all new dwellings and renovations to have climate-friendly features like insulation, window shades, and, yes, pale roofs. Roofing manufacturers now specify how their products comply with BASIX colour classifications.

NASA was not involved. All it took was dedication and commitment from a bunch of bureaucrats in the Department of Planning. Go bureaucrats! Grandma is proud of you!

Tricksters – adapted for survival

Charles Darwin wrote that,

It is not the strongest nor the most intelligent of the species that survive, it is the one most adaptable to change.

Many oral traditions have stories about those most adaptable characters – tricksters. American Indian cultures have Coyote, a trickster character characterized by paradox, duality, cleverness, shape-shifting, duplicity, and a knack for survival. Islamic cultures have the wise fool, Mulla Nasreddin.

Tricksters teach essential truths and survival skills using an array of indirect methods.

Canadian artist Franke James gives reign to her inner trickster to produce delightful visual essays that advocate for action to address climate change. Here are some of her images.

Are humans up to the job? Can we adapt to the changing climate in time? Or are we stuck in a Businss as Usual framework?

Perhaps we can take heart from news that Toyota Prius was the the world’s third best-selling car line in the first quarter of 2012. A sign of adaptation?

Take a minute to soak in the wonderfully creative visual essays of Franke James. And commune with your inner trickster to find ways that you can adapt.

Image Credit: All images are the work of Franke James.

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair

Picture us in our separate towers, or bubbles, or bunkers, facing off against those with different views. The longer we stay in our tower, the more isolated we become and the less we are able to communicate with people outside our tower.

Unfortunately, we're not likely to get broad support for the rapid decarbonisation of the economy if we stay in our towers throwing missiles at those with other views. 
 
When climate scientists come out of their towers and communicate widely, or invite contrarians into their domain, Leo Hickman calls them Rapunzel scientists. He notes that Professor Richard Betts, a climate scientist who is head of the climate impacts research team at the Met Office Hadley Centre, has reached out to communicate with contrarians.

The climate debate has been so acrimonious at times that I'm sure Richard Betts feels like Kofi Annan in a meeting with Syria's Assad. Kofi Annan knows that if diplomacy is to be effective, Rapunzel has to reach out to the witch and be nice to her.

Of course, something is required from the witch as well. If she waltzes in and trashes the place, it's not very constructive. The trouble is – being unconstructive is an effective strategy for some vested interests. 

Industries with big investments in fossil fuels don't want economies to decarbonise. They prefer that society is divided into separate camps that are busy arguing, persuading, negotiating.

In the same way, it seems to suit Assad to host yet another visit from Kofi Annan, to prolong negotiations, agree to a cease fire, and then to carry on killing his citizens. Why does Kofi Annan keep doing it? Because until someone intervenes with firepower, diplomacy is the only game in town.

With climate change, the different towers will continue to play out their game until the evidence before our eyes causes contrarian towers to crumble. A good section of the Heartland Institute tower crumbled away this month. No Rapunzels were involved, just a stealth attack and a Unabomber own goal.

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One of the most compelling pieces of evidence of damage caused by CO2 emissions is the acidification of the ocean.   

A recent report from EPOCA (European Project on Ocean Acidification) observes that ocean acidification is as high as it has been in 800,000 years. This is because the oceans have absorbed 30% of the CO2 humans have pumped into the atmosphere over the past 150 years.

In absorbing those emissions, the oceans have buffered humanity from the worst effects of a warming planet. This protection has come at a price as oceans become increasingly hostile for many of the little creatures at the bottom of the marine food web. In more acidic oceans critters relying on calcium carbonate for a home  – from corals to mollusks to the sea snail – have a harder time manufacturing their shells.

If snails, corals and mollusks collapse, entire ecosystems threaten to literally crumble away. Coral reefs support about 25% of all marine life, while sea snails account for more than 45% of the diet of fish like pink salmon.

Here's a 6-minute video that shows how all marine life depends on the pH value of oceans. Who'd have thought that oysters are not just for eating?

Boom and bust the natural way

History is littered with examples of animal populations that expanded when new resources were found. Farmers know about the good seasons that result in mouse plagues.

It is typical for populations to boom during good years and then collapse suddenly in bad years, or when they overrun the resource base. It's the natural boom and bust cycle.

Human populations have boomed and busted throughout history, and resource depletion has been an important factor. Jared Diamond's book Collapse examines the boom and bust effect in eight historic and four contemporary societies.

It is clear that human population has been booming over the past 200 years, as illustrated in this graph based on UN 2010 projections.

The resource that has underpinned this population boom is the energy from coal, oil and gas which has allowed billions of people to be fed, and to live lives of unimaginable wealth.  This wealth has brought immense riches to the top 1% and also health, education, comfort and civil society for general populations.

Right now, we are at the point of overrunning the resource base. The biggest whammy is that fossil fuel supplies cannot keep up with demand as shown by rising prices. Can't argue with that. There's a limited supply of the stuff.

This graph shows that oil prices have risen when spare capacity has fallen.

The next chart shows that natural gas prices are rising in Europe and Japan, though US prices are held down by a current production boom and a warm winter.

Natural gas prices in the United States, Europe, and Japan, based on World Bank Commodity Price Data

Even coal, the most abundant fossil fuel, is rising in price.

Not only are coal, oil and gas supplies unable to keep up with increasing demand, but we know that we can't keep using even the reserves that we have, due to the damage they cause through the greenhouse gases they emit. As the damage from climate change becomes ever more apparent, countries will act to cut carbon emissions. Fossil fuel reserves are looking more and more like stranded assets.

The Dinosaur Economy, based on fossil fuels, will end. It will be followed by a new Clean Energy economy. If we manage to build a bridge between the old and the new, we have a chance to avoid the ghastly impacts of the Bust part of the cycle. 

If we don't build that bridge, we'll fall into a chasm where we have very limited energy resources for a period of time. In that chasm, all the horrors of the Bust cycle will be unleashed – starvation, displacement and war as people fight for limited food, water and shelter. Walls will go up between the haves and the have-nots. Populations will collapse and those that are left will adjust to the new, lower resource base.

That's the natural Boom and Bust cycle.

If we do manage to build a bridge, or ramp or something, across to the other side, we can minimise the inevitable disruption. We can adjust to the new resource base as we go along. It's already happening as countries move to replace fossil fuel with renewables.

If we avoid the Boom and Bust cycle, we won't be a plague upon the earth, instead we'll be more like responsible custodians. They're much more lovable than a plague.

Shelling peas builds resilience

When we see the scale of the climate change disaster unfolding before us, the slow responses to it, and the obstacles in the path, it can feel overwhelming.

That is the time to call a friend, or join a community group. To add to the words of Joan Baez (h/t ClimateBites):

Action is the antidote to despair (and the foundation of change).

When my grandmother called us to help fold laundry or shell peas, she'd say "Many hands make light work." She didn't know it, but she was teaching us resilience.

We need to do it ourselves, but we don't have to do it alone.

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Visit my Take Action page for suggestions about things you can do in your everyday life to reduce your personal carbon emissions and to leverage systemic change. It includes links to community groups where like-minds work together to bring about the change we want to see.

Bailing with a thimble

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.

Subsidies – specks or logs?

We have set out on this long journey towards a low carbon future.

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.

Matthew 7.3

A life tenancy with a full repairing lease

To let with a full repairing lease

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.

These are Margaret Thatcher's words when opening the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in 1990.   

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.

Audrey walks her dogs in Paris

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.

Audrey in Rome with her dog called Famous. 1961.

H/T Hager video: Climate Bites

Trapped in a bubble

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'.

There's also a pro-AGW bubble that posts evidence, debunks fallacies and corrects errors. This bubble has quite a number of practising climate scientists, along with science communicators, news media, business interests, enthusiasts and various interest groups.

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. 

Mother nature does not negotiate

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.

Professor Paul Raupach, Atmospheric Scientist

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.

Here is his inspiring 10-minute TED talk. 



Check out his book, The Great Disruption.

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: A dead end

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.

This Bloomberg article (10 May 2012) says,

On the way to a renewable energy future, a funny thing has happened: Big Oil has become the biggest investor in the race to create green fuels. 

Houses on flimsy foundations

Lobby groups that deny the planet is warming have built their structures in vulnerable locations. Their positions are being eroded by every new piece of evidence.

As their foundations wash away, their time runs out and they become unsteady and more strident. Witness the recent own-goal by the Heartland Institute with its offensive Unabomber billboard. The billboard marked a dramtic shift to the extreme right. It lasted less than 24 hours, but it washed away a sizeable chunk of Heartland's foundations – 11 sponsors worth more than $800,000, board members, all the staff in their Washington DC office, several speakers at a forthcoming conference and a number of notable experts.

If we are patient, we can wait for the evidence of rising temperatures, rising sea levels and ocean acidification to wash away more of these noxious pests. This is the expensive option. Economists warn that the longer we leave it to reduce greenhouse emissions, the more expensive it will be to make the necessary reductions and to cope with the damage.

So, any time you get a chance to chip away at their flimsy foundations, go ahead and do it. You'll be speeding up the inevitable and doing everyone a favour.

Linedancers avoid false balance

Responsible journalists try to present a range of views on a topic. Called 'balance', this has become accepted practice in mainstream media.

And a good thing too. Without balanced reporting, we would get only single-sided world views. Unfortunately, the principle of balance comes unstuck when lobbyists and extremists dominate the field of available commenters. We have seen anti-vaccination campaigners offering alternate views on vaccination, and we often see deniers offering alternate views on climate change.

This might not matter if the alternate view was clearly labelled 'unsubstantiated personal opinion' or 'industry spokesperson', but that is not usually the case. Most alternative views are presented as having some credibility.

Programs like I can change your mind on Australia's ABC that give equal time to climate change contrarians are accused of false balance because they give unrealistic prominence to discredited views. America's PBS Newshour attracted the same criticism after allowing the extreme right lobby group Heartland to give its point of view in a report.

The phenomenon of media "Balance as Bias" has been thoroughly documented by Max & Jules Boykoff, and others.

So, how should the media address topics like vaccination and climate change where there is, in effect, no credible and informed alternative to the basic science?

Nicole Hashem found a way in this Sydney Morning Herald article, Climate sceptics and sympathisers put heat on Flannery. For the climate contrarian view, she quoted a linedance teacher as saying,

I try not to believe [in climate change] because I don't like to believe the worst.

That works for me. Climate change contrarians who engage in denialism rather than good faith scepticism have as much credibility on the subject as linedancers.

Apollo and Neptune are growing tomatoes

As societies turn away from fossil fuels towards renewables will the dark carbon gods of coal and oil give way to mankind's original gods of sun, wind and water? Will we see a shift in cultural practice?

Already, we see beauty in solar installations like Gemasolar, near Seville in Spain, where the layout of the mirror array is guided by the patterns of seeds in sunflower heads.

And wind generators are entering beauty contests.

New technology can be very techie, but as I have discussed, renewables are very lovable.

What's not to love in this new farming system that uses solar power to desalinate water and produce greenhouse crops in the desert. Sundrop Farms have developed the technology that uses trough mirrors to heat oil that boils sea water to run turbines to generate electricity. It also desalinates the water. The electricity, heat and water are used in greenhouses to grow vegetables. In 2010-2011 Sundrop trialed the high-tech system in the desert near Port Augusta. The trials went very well and in 2012 they will expand  to have 8 hectares under greenhouses.

You can take a site visit –



The cool language of technology needs to meet the life-affirming language of love.  Surely the capacity to grow nourishing food in the desert is nothing short of miraculous?

Where is our sense of wonder? Apollo and Neptune have joined forces to grow tomatoes in the desert of South Australia.

On safari - watch out for rhinos!

There I was, on safari in Tanzania. Matt was driving, and we were barrelling down the road at full speed. Matt was a good driver and managed to swerve around most of the holes and washouts. Occasionally, we hit one with a mighty thump. Then we would slow down and recover a bit before Matt's foot went down on the accelerator again.

We were making good time when Matt's phone rang. He asked me to answer it.

It was Matt's safari business partner, Jeff. He warned me that a small herd of rhinoceros has been reported on the road outside the next village. Apparently, they'd settled in to enjoy a dust bath and were taking their time.

I thanked him and passed the news on to Matt. "Sure, OK," he responded as he continued at full speed.

After a while, I began to wonder when he would slow down.

Then I began to fidget. Finally I asked him.

"Oh, don't worry," he replied, "Jeff's a bit of an alarmist. We've never seen rhinos taking dust baths on this road before. And there's not much chance that one will walk out just as we come along. We'll be OK."

"But," I asked, "he said somone had seen them. What if he's right?"

Matt pushed that thought away, "People say all kinds of things. I don't see any rhinos. It'll be alright. And if we do happen to come across any, I'm sure I can handle it."

On we went, watching the shadows lengthen and the sky soften with shades of coral and lavender.

Suddenly, we rounded a corner and there they were. Black hulking monsters filling the dusty road.

Matt braked hard and swerved to avoid a head on collision with them. The truck rolled. The rhinos lumbered to their feet and two of them charged us in the overturned truck while the others trotted off into the bush.

The truck was a write-off, though the villagers found it useful for spare parts. Matt was dead and I spent months in hospital.

Next time somebody shrugs off warnings about rhinos in the road, I'm going to tell them where to get off.

__________ o O o ___________

This is an allegory for climate change. When powerful people ignore the warnings of competent scientists, they endanger the safety of all of us. I'm going to tell them where to get off.

__________ o O o ___________