In case there is any doubt left in the world, the last two days of rain have finally washed away the last vestiges of support for the rather silly idea that mankind’s addiction to carbon based energy is somehow heating up the planet.
What’s that you say? Two days of rain doesn’t make for a cooling planet? What about the IPCC predictions of global warming of at least 2 degrees this century? Well if that news was alarming then surely the responsible governments (notably China and the US) would actually do something, I mean it sounds drastic, rising sea levels, increasingly disastrous droughts and storms, melting glaciers, rising cases of tropical diseases…
I hear you. But as we know, courtesy of the little inside disclosure job done on the East Anglia Climate Unit, the climate scientists are just cooking the books to ensure the continuation of lucrative government research funding. Makes sense doesn’t it? I mean everyone’s on the take so who can blame the scientists for fudging things occasionally. So there you go, the science is bunkum, its just some sort of intellectual conspiracy designed to baffle the poor people and con governments into handing over money to keep scientists in work…
Really I didn’t expect a socialist world government to take over post Copenhagen despite the assertions of Planet Janet. Aside from questions over the science, or rather the assertion that what we do know is sufficient to accurately predict the future which is in itself a claim deserving of some scrutiny, I think that things will change anyway but not necessarily because of collective action on AGW. The reason I suspect has more to do with the complexity of the modern world and its utter dependence at root level on carbon based energy.
Brian Davey at Open Democracy writes a refreshing argument about the world post Copenhagen. He argues that overarching policy instruments fail not because of their intent, but instead, they fail because of their complexity. A global agreement at Copenhagen would have been a plan too complex to succeed even if the political will existed. A more likely constraint on carbon emissions is simply supply, that is, the easy and cheap availability of oil and gas. As these reserves diminish we will naturally release less carbon into the atmosphere which, while it sounds attractive in terms of AGW, also implies that less convenient energy will be available for general consumption.
The argument about carbon based energy supplies is far less controversial than the science of AGW. Known reserves plus possible new discoveries only give us a limited timeframe. Then there are recovery costs. Simply put it is completely certain that the world will run out of oil,gas and coal before long and it is just a matter of when. A gradual decline in cheap energy, or it’s corollary, a continued climb in the price of convenient energy will do more to undermine the “business as usual” scenario than any convoluted government carbon pollution reduction scheme.
I suspect certain sectors of the economy are awake to this potential and are busy lobbying government to get financial subsidies to offset their expected cost increases under the guise of doing something about carbon pollution. No such luck for the average punter who is increasingly caught between higher energy costs and fewer lifestyle options. Fortunately their is some hope and it is nicely espoused by Brian who writes
there are no magic bullets for this situation. The assumption of governments is that there are large scale solutions for large scale problems but this is not so. The problems have to be solved one house, one street, one neighbourhood, one farm, one forest, one region at a time.
This solution is already taking shape. In Canberra we have a wonderfully inspiring little organisation called SEE-Change who are helping people adapt to a low energy sustainable future and I’m sure other similar organisations exist, because realistically, they are our best chance. It is time, post Copenhagen, to stop expecting someone else to clean up our mess and start preparing for what will happen the best we can. Surely that’s a better thing to believe in than any doom and gloom scenario.
Posted 8 months, 1 week ago at 7:14 pm. Add a comment
Around 12.48pm Oz eastern time someone really thought Malcolm’s days as opposition leader were over. SBSnews tweeted the joy around that time but soon after Malcolm narrowly defeated the shadows in his own party his Wikipedia page reverted to its former glory. A contrite and conciliatory Mr Turnbull will now have the clearly divided support of his partyroom hacks who will be busy making plans while all parroting their support for the leader. Best soap opera in town…
In other news the authors of the Copenhagen Diagnosis 2009 today released a report that predicts
global mean warming could reach as high as 7 degrees Celsius by 2100.
and
global sea-level rise may exceed 1 meter by 2100, with a rise of up to 2 meters considered an upper limit by this time.
Fiddling while Rome burns….
Posted 9 months, 1 week ago at 1:42 pm. Add a comment
The options don’t look that promising do they. Carbon emissions and notional budgets mean diddly squat when it comes to the really serious business of making money despite the fact that the planet clearly headed for disaster. The first order of business (sorry bad pun) is what replaces the 40 or so GW’s of coal fired electricity generators because that’s really the showstopper right there. Electricity might notionally only add a few percent to our so-called GDP but can anyone seriously imagine what life would be like without reliable electricity?
Just to put this in some perspective, the failed Solar Power plant at Mildura which was going to showcase solar power to the world was expected to produce 154 MW of electricity for a startup cost of some $420 Million.
But, if we assume that the solar model could scale presumably it would have to do so on a distributed basis which would mean we would have to build about 266 Mildura style solar plants to replace the coal power stations we currently have which at $420 million each would be around $111 Billion which isn’t really that scary when you consider our GDP for 2008 was almost ten times that.
That’s do-able! I mean if you take the problem of carbon pollution seriously and the attendant risks of catastrophic climate change then what’s the problem? So ten percent of all our economic activity (ie money based transactions) gets diverted into developing a sustainable carbon friendly nuclear free power source. It’s not even as though we would have to pay for it all in one year and then there are bound to be smart grid savings and economies of scale that come into the equation. Really it doesn’t seem that hard.
Maybe I should send Kev a little note…dear Kev, get off your phat white arse and actually do something. Here’s an idea….
Canberra isn’t usually the place for big public protests and yesterday’s 350.org rally was fairly typical of the Canberra protest scene. A good number of the usual suspects rocked up in their Subarus although the biking student collective were also out in force. It was a fine day, the grass is always green on Capital Hill and the trees provided a nice bit of shade for a collection of speakers who addressed the crowd on the necessity of a global agreement around carbon at 350ppm.
The evidence presented wasn’t news. A climate palaeontologist from the ANU summarised some of the worse predictions for the near future, the melting ice, the flooding, the droughts, the shift in climatic zones. A Getup rep talked about green jobs, there was an amusing little routine involving crowd participation before Rod Quantock amused us with his account of Steve Fielding, Wilson Tuckey and Andrew Bolt, an unholy trio of climate change denialists. He also alerted the crowd to this little gem hiding on the internet.
Yes, its true, climate change due to human activity isn’t just a 21st century idea. It would be nice to think the elected political representatives will grasp the small window of opportunity to affect some relatively peaceful but necessarily radical changes that might see a greener cleaner world emerge, one that might devote its awesome manufacturing and engineering talents to replace the vast array of wasteful carbon emitters currently in existence, one that might take seriously the idea of reforesting the planet but, the reality seems to be business as usual.
Which brings us to the logical conclusion, one that others have already foreseen and a more likely contributor to the security state that is gradually taking hold in western democracies. The mainstream media, the political elites and big business have far too much invested in the status quo. Their game is FUD, fear, uncertainty and doubt. Stick with them and somehow everything will be ok. Politicians making promises in public, TV ads showing how concerned the coal industry is, the mainstream media always seeking to “balance” the picture. But what is the picture?
Here’s what I know. I’m fifty this year. I have been fortunate to live most of my life in one geographic location. I can remember a different climate to the one we are currently experiencing, the rain fell differently, the hot weather wasn’t as extreme and it was colder for longer, there were more trees and less cars. But it is more than the measurable quantities, it’s a perception that the weather patterns have shifted. I also know that science works and the available science seems to give me a broader explanation for these local phenomena. And then there is the way the world works, what is said and what is done and the disconnect that underpins our consumer mentality. Apparently we do “need” a new plasma high definition TV, we do “need” Fox TV, we do “need” Windows 7, we do “need” to eat at McDonalds, we do “need” someone else to clean up our mess…
It seems what we really need is some honesty about where this is all going. Let those who claim this is all ok reveal their stake in the status quo. The noisy voice of vested interest needs to be shouted down. Like Rod, it seems to me inevitable that the only answer is direct action. It might be the only thing that prevents a global catastrophe.
So its official (again), it’s the DROUGHT! In fact the worst drought in recorded history according to Penny. If it would just rain everything would be hunky dory again for the rice growers and the cotton farmers and the guys who just like to slosh the murrumbidge, the darling or the murray around in an endless maze of open ditches. Meanwhile overseas interests continue to snap up our environmental assets with the news that Singapore-based agribusiness corporation Olam International has purchased the rights to 40,000 megalitres of water in the system. Penny’s not getting that water back anytime soon.
The whole idea seems founded on two conflicting notions. On the one hand we have this seemingly untouchable notion that property owners can privatise their own local water assets with dams and on the other hand they can convert public water in the river systems and underground into economic assets via farming. The upshot of this bizarre situation is that everyone can pass the buck on responsibility for the state of the rivers and no one is even thinking about the underground water table, which as they say is pretty much out of sight and out of mind.
The problem with Penny Wong’s approach is that she seems to think that all the farmers and other interested parties dependent on water in the Murray Darling basin are prepared to share in the pain that comes from a forced restructure of our inland water regime when its perfectly obvious that local self interests will exploit inconsistent state and federal policies while doing whatever they can to protect their own water supplies. Its easy to preach a mantra of share and share alike when something is in plentiful supply but when the chips are down it doesn’t take long for the situation to revert to everyone for themselves.
Ms Wong probably grasps the situation as well as anyone which might explain why she is now reduced to blaming the whole thing on the rain, which isn’t falling.
A worldwide effort to stamp out polio and malaria is very commendable, if somewhat unlikely but this has to make you wonder what really goes on inside the head of the man who won the IT lottery.
Now by itself this seems like a bit of a wacky story unless you think there might be more to this than meets the eye. If you have a look at the TimesOnline you will also see this uplifting little story about the likelyhood of success in Copenhagen on the small matter of carbon emissions. So here’s a radical little idea for you. As seems pretty bloody obvious, the chances of any first world government making a substantial pledge to cut greenhouse gases in line with IPCC projections is remote, it might happen but it probably wont. The reason it wont happen is economics.
No, its not the economics of climate change, the cost of doing something versus the costs that might arise from of doing nothing, rather it is that governments are not (by and large) in a position to dictate to vested economic interests. In fact governments are pretty much captive to the economy and economies are pretty much chained to carbon. This bond is based on two rather central carbon products, oil and coal, our economies are pretty much unthinkable without them.
In a theoretical situation, one that many greens believe is possible, we might be able to devote vast amounts of money to alternative technologies that reduce our consumption of carbon but that would undermine the profitability of many very rich and powerful vested interests. The little saga of the proposed Australian carbon reduction scheme and its extreme generosity to the coal powered electricity generators is just one example. Its this question of profit that I believe is also driving the current renaissance in thinking on the subject of nuclear power. The established players in the nuke industry would love to see dozens of new reactors get built, imagine their profits!
Another problem often cited is the possibility that unwelcome structural adjustment to our high carbon economies will usher in a radical reduction in living standards as well as wholesale unemployment. In other words, the cost of carbon reduction is directly carried by the less economically privileged. Another unpalatable idea for government, although possible not as hard to implement as a direct tax on the wealthy to pay for a conversion to green economy. So what are the options?
Option 1 looks like the odds on favourite, stick your head in the sand, let the climate change denialists continue to muddy the waters and wait to see what really happens while hoping like hell that the scientists are wrong.
Option 2 might get a run, where some symbolic gestures are made that look like we are trying but nothing substantive happens. The climate change denialists continue their campaign, we might build a few more “pilot” alternative power plants, nuclear will definitely get a green light and it will be business as usual all round.
Option 3. Now option 3 occurred to me after reading about Bill. Let’s assume that Global Warming is just an economic problem and forget about all the other species on the planet as well as any silly philosophical issues such as our god given right to plunder the earth and turn everything into a financial asset. Let’s also assume that Global Warming is real, after all what’s the point of having an empirical evidence based science if its not? So taking our cue from Bill what about a bit of Geo-engineering?
The beauty of geo-engineering is it addresses the problem, Global Warming, but we can still keep driving our cars and using our coal fired electricity and it doesn’t costs anywhere near as much as those annoyingly expensive renewable ideas the greens are so keen on. It might even be a profitable line of business for an enterprising start-up. Can you imagine the sales pitch? Wall Street would probably have a meltdown if someone floated a company that claimed it was going to cool the planet by a degree or two.
Of course the science is a bit risky but isn’t that what capitalism is all about?
Posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago at 10:11 am. Add a comment
Hmm, do I detect a right wing revival? What is it about this little quote (amongst others) that has tweaked my neocon alert?
President Obama’s plan to give a live video speech to the nation’s schoolchildren Sept. 8 may be a technological first, but the White House is borrowing an old-school tactic from radical environmentalists who have been using the public schools to brainwash children for decades.
Canberra isn’t usually the place for big public protests and yesterday’s 350.org rally was fairly typical of the Canberra protest scene. A good number of the usual suspects rocked up in their Subarus although the biking student collective were also out in force. It was a fine day, the grass is always green on Capital Hill and the trees provided a nice bit of shade for a collection of speakers who addressed the crowd on the necessity of a global agreement around carbon at 350ppm.
