Christchurch readers might like to know that I’m talking at the local Skeptics in the pub meet up next Tuesday evening (23 March) — working title is Sceptics, skeptics and septics™. Should be a lively evening… 
Meet at The Twisted Hop from 5-30pm, talk begins at 6pm, probably over the road at CPIT before returning to the pub. Keep an eye on the Skeptics MeetUp page for final details.
[™ as coined by Stoat, headline by David Byrne.]
This column was published in the Waikato Times on March 16.
The media has paid disproportionate attention to an error in the monumental 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In a chapter surveying the possible future impacts of climate change on the Asian region the report included a prediction that the Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035. The glaciers will certainly melt if we continue on our current course, but not as soon as that. This was a mistake which the IPCC has acknowledged and regretted. Not too bad in a volume of 3000 pages, but a mistake that shouldn’t have occurred and wouldn’t have if procedures had been properly applied.
Since then there have been regular media “revelations” claiming other errors as well. For all the fanfare with which they have been produced these have so far turned out to hinge on little more than minor technicalities. They cause much excitement in the denialist community, but they amount to nothing of consequence.
Overstatement is what the IPCC is being accused of. But the reality is that its report is generally conservative and cautious and in one very important matter likely to have understated a real danger ahead. That is sea level rise.
The IPCC does predict sea level rise in the century ahead, somewhere between 18 and 58 centimetres, depending on how high the level of greenhouse gases is allowed to climb. It sounds reassuringly manageable. But this predicted rise comes only from a combination of thermal expansion of the oceans because of warmer temperatures, and the continued slow melting of glacier ice. It assumes there will be no increase in the rate at which melting has occurred in the great ice sheets of Greenland and the Antarctic.
Time has passed, and it is now widely accepted in scientific circles that there is reason to expect a significant acceleration in the rate at which the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets lose mass to the sea. The dynamics of ice movement are beginning to be better understood, and they are not reassuring. Those massive ice sheets are seemingly not as impervious as once thought and their melting not necessarily a slow predictable linear process. Disintegration may be a more accurate word than melting.
If the IPCC predictions are too cautious, what level of rise is now being considered likely in this century? One metre say some. Others say that’s still not allowing sufficiently for the acceleration likely to build, and recommend planning for a two metre rise. James Hansen of NASA is prepared to consider five metres as a real possibility, though he doesn’t offer that as a prediction..
Of all the predicted impacts of climate change, sea level rise is the one that I find most unnerving. Its effects on human populations are distressing to contemplate. The deltaic nations such as Egypt, Vietnam, Bangladesh and Myanmar will be badly hit. Some atoll nations will disappear. Countries with large low-lying coastal plains, such as the US, China and Brazil will be faced with tremendous disruption. Some great cities will be severely threatened, including Miami, New York, Tokyo and Amsterdam. It won’t be all that straightforward in New Zealand for that matter – a one metre sea level rise would put Tamaki Drive under water for example.
And it’s not the kind of damage that can be undone. How could we get water to return to the ice sheets? That’s why it is so important that we stop it happening in the first place. Any suggestion that a minor error in the IPCC report has somehow put the urgency of that task into question is out of touch with reality.
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It is likely that this is the last in the series of columns I have been invited to write for the Waikato Times over the past couple of years. The columns are directed to the general public, not Hot Topic readers, but they may have been useful here in indicating what can be written in public forums. It’s well worth anyone’s effort to get the message across in newspapers. I often wish there were more scientists writing in that medium, though I know it can be difficult to secure a space for opinion pieces. There are always the letters to the editor, which journalists tell me are popular with readers. The company there can sometimes be embarrassing, but if you’re willing to take that risk a clear statement on climate change will receive wide attention. It has been quite depressing to see in our local paper far more letters (often muddled) from contrarians than from those who take climate change seriously.
Australia’s CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology have released a State of the Climate report [PDF], a succinct six page effort designed to provide the Aussie public with an overview of how their climate has been changing, and how it is expected to change in the future. Headlines (from the media release):
- Highly variable rainfall across the country, with substantial increases in rainfall in northern and central parts of Australia, as well as significant decreases across much of southern and eastern Australia.
- Rapidly rising sea levels from 1993 to 2009, with levels around Australia rising, between 1.5cm and 3cm per decade in Australia’s south and east and between 7cm and 9cm in the country’s north
- About half of the observed reduction in winter rainfall in south-west Western Australia can be explained by higher greenhouse gas levels.
The news about temperature isn’t good either. All of the continent has warmed over the last 50 years, but some regions have warmed at up to 0.4ºC per decade during that time (see the dark red blobs on the map above) and have seen warming of 1.5 — 2ºC. By 2030 the average temperature is expected to have increased by a further 0.6 — 1.5ºC, and decreases in rainfall will continue in the south, south-east and southwest. The graphics are particularly good — and very telling.
I’m not aware of any similar recent overview for New Zealand, and with the usual suspects doing their level best to promote uncertainty and inaction at the moment, it would be helpful if the local climate science community could cooperate on producing such a clear statement of current evidence and future change. NIWA’s last set of projections for NZ were released in 2008, and are summarised on this informative but rather dense web page. I had a go at bringing the details to a wider public, via articles in NZ Geographic (not my knees, by the way) and Good magazine, but apart from press coverage when the projections were launched, there’s not been much since. I doubt many people will seek out Climate Change Effects and Impacts Assessment: A Guidance Manual for Local Government in New Zealand, 2nd Edition (Ministry for the Environment 2008) for an easy introduction to the subject…
One sometimes wonders how the scientists most reviled by the denial industry are bearing up under the onslaught. Michael Mann is one of them, so I was interested to listen to him being interviewed by Chris Mooney on a recent Point of Inquiry podcast. Here is a summary of some of Mann’s responses (not an accurate transcript, though mostly in his words):
On the science:
The bottom line is the basic physics and chemistry of the greenhouse effect. Observation that the globe is warming and that the warming is unusual in the long term context fits what the basic physics and chemistry says. After decades of work by thousands of scientists round the world pursuing every lead – thinking of all the possible different explanations of the phenomena they observe – there is literally no evidence that calls into question the basic radiative properties of greenhouse gases. You increase greenhouse gas concentrations, you will warm the atmosphere. Questioning that basic reality is almost like questioning the spherical nature of the Earth.
What scientists actually spend time debating and pursuing are issues like feedbacks – the processes that might amplify or diminish that warming. There are open questions relating to such matters as clouds, El Ninos, hurricanes, and so on, which are being actively pursued. But on the basic issue – the scientific community moved on from that question decades ago.
On the strategy of attacks on the science:
The critiques almost never actually discredit a line of evidence or a basic conclusion. They take some small technical part of an analysis, try to manufacture a controversy about that to essentially discredit the work by finding some small potential flaw with one part of an analysis.
On the hockey stick:
There are more than a dozen reconstructions; every one of them comes to the same conclusion as our decade-old work that the recent warming is anomalous in at least 1000 years. Our attackers never want to look at the big picture, never want to look at whether they have any impact on the bottom-line conclusions, because they know that they don’t.
Even if they had been successful in taking down the hockey stick, which they haven’t been, it still wouldn’t amount to undermining the central case for the science.
On concealing data:
All of our data was available in the public domain and any claim to the contrary was dishonest. The question of making codes public is different and is not considered required as general practice. However I and my collaborators have made a decision to put every scrap of code as well as every scrap of data in public domain at the time we publish a paper. We’ve gone beyond what the standards of the community are.
On Phil Jones request to delete emails:
It was an email he wrote in the heat of the moment. He was under attack. Keep in mind this guy received something like 40 freedom of information demands over a weekend. He was being harassed intentionally and the freedom of information demands that were being made were for materials that CRU legally could not even distribute. These were frivolous demands. Under that sort of harassment people sometimes say foolish things – we certainly didn’t delete any emails and I don’t think he did himself
On the “trick”:
This is a good example of how those working to make mischief can take a term that they probably fully know is perfectly innocent in scientific lingo, but exploiting the fact that it sounds very different to a non-technical person. It shows the disingenuousness of those leading the attack. They intentionally misrepresent words and phrases cherry-picked from thousands of emails in a cynical attempt to distort the scientists’ views and cast aspersions on a scientific discipline.
On fighting back:
The idea that scientists under siege should unilaterally disarm, give in to the sometimes criminal attacks of the anti-science forces looking to discredit them and their science, not stick up for their science and their colleagues, not fight back against these criminal efforts to misrepresent them and to impugn their integrity – it would be terribly misplaced if scientists were not to do all they can to fight back
On the difficulties:
Our detractors are extremely well funded, extremely well organised, they have had an attack infrastructure for decades. They developed it during the tobacco wars, they honed it further in other efforts to attack science that industry or other special interests find inconvenient. So they have a very well honed, well funded, organised machine that they are bringing to bear in their attack now against climate science. It’s like a marine in a battle with a cub scout when it comes to the scientists defending themselves. We don’t have the resources, the experience: we haven’t been trained, we’re not public relations experts, lawyers, lobbyists, we’re scientists. It’s a classic example of asymmetric warfare.
Many of us didn’t believe it would come to this – the scientific case for the reality of human-caused climate change has been clear now for several years, though there is much we have still to learn. Many of us thought, perhaps somewhat naively that in the end science would carry the day, that the strength of the scientific consensus would be enough. I wasn’t so sure. But what we all underestimated was the degree, the depth of dishonesty, the dirtiness, and cynicism to which the climate change denial movement would be willing to stoop to advance their agenda.
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A stout defence from Michael Mann. What he wasn’t asked and doesn’t say is how high the stakes are. But anyone who has taken the trouble to understand the basic science knows they are very high indeed. The attack on climate science is an attack on all humanity. Not one for which the perpetrators are likely to be called to account, and perhaps it won’t really matter that they’re not. What matters more is that they call off the campaign, though one suspects that even if they wanted to, the forces they have loosed have so committed themselves that they will not heed any call to come to heel. Meanwhile those of us who are not climate scientists but can see the danger we are in must offer strong support to the science and opposition to the insidious campaign of denial.
The crank web is all atwitter with the news that Bob Carter’s been censored by Australia’s public broadcaster, the ABC. But an exclusive Hot Topic investigation reveals that the supposed “censorship” looks a lot more like prudent quality control. Carter’s submission plagiarises his own writings, misquotes and misrepresents James Hansen, and joins the recent baseless attacks on the NZ temperature record.
When the ABC’s Unleashed site turned down Carter’s offering — supposedly a reply or counterbalance to their recent five part series on climate denial by Clive Hamilton — it was quickly picked up by his frequent publisher, Aussie website QuadrantOnline. Titled Lysenkoism and James Hansen – Is Hansenism more dangerous than Lysenkoism?, it’s a crude attack on Hansen, currently visiting Australia. But it’s not only crude, it’s unoriginal.
Carter opens his ABC/Quadrant piece with an account of Hansen’s 1988 testimony to Congress:
On June 23, 1988, a young and previously unknown NASA computer modeller, James Hansen, appeared before a United States Congressional hearing on climate change. On that occasion, Dr. Hansen used a graph to convince his listeners that late 20th century warming was taking place at an accelerated rate, which, it being a scorching summer’s day in Washington, a glance out of the window appeared to confirm.
But back in 2005, in a talk to the Melbourne Rotary Club titled Global Warming Hysteria and the Deadly Disease of Hansenism (and in a paper available on his web site since), he had this to say about Hansen’s testimony:
Why Hansenism? Because James Hansen was the NASA-employed scientist who started the climate alarmism hare running on June 23, 1988, when he appeared before a United States Congressional hearing on climate change. On that occasion, Dr Hansen used a misleading graph to convince his listeners that [words cut here] warming was taking place at an accelerated rate (which, it being a scorching summer’s day in Washington, a glance out of the window appeared to confirm). [My emboldening of identical words.]
Strikingly similar, I think you’ll agree. The next two paragraphs share strong similarities with his 2005 paper, although he attributes a quote from Hansen somewhat differently: Here’s the Quadrant/ABC piece:
Fifteen years later, in the Scientific American in March, 2004, Hansen came to write that “Emphasis on extreme scenarios may have been appropriate at one time, when the public and decision-makers were relatively unaware of the global warming issue. Now, however, the need is for demonstrably objective climate forcing scenarios consistent with what is realistic”.
This conversion to honesty came too late, however, for in the intervening years thousands of other climate scientists had meanwhile climbed onto the Hansenist funding gravy-train.
Once again, here’s Carter’s original version:
Much later (20032), Hansen came to write “Emphasis on extreme scenarios may have been appropriate at one time, when the public and decision-makers were relatively unaware of the global warming issue. Now, however, the need is for demonstrably objective climate …. scenarios consistent with what is realistic”. But this astonishing conversion to honesty came too late, for in the intervening years thousands of other climate scientists had meanwhile climbed onto the Hansenist funding gravy-train.
Carter’s use of this quote is intended to show that Hansen had been dishonest. What else can a “conversion to honesty” be taken to mean? But the dishonesty is entirely Carter’s, and the many other climate deniers (Patrick Michaels prominent among them) who have ripped Hansen’s words from their context. Firstly, the quote is not accurate, the relevant sentences as published are:
Emphasis on extreme scenarios may have been appropriate at one time, when the public and decision-makers were relatively unaware of the global warming issue, and energy sources such as “synfuels,” shale oil and tar sands were receiving strong consideration. Now, however, the need is for demonstrably objective climate forcing scenarios consistent with what is realistic under current conditions. Scenarios that accurately fit recent and near-future observations have the best chance of bringing all of the important players into the discussion, and they also are what is needed for the purpose of providing policy-makers the most effective and efficient options to stop global warming. [Missing words emboldened]
Secondly, as in so many things, context is all important. Hansen is discussing the details of the forcing scenarios put together by the IPCC for use in climate model runs. The standard scenarios assume no actions to reduce emissions. Hansen is arguing that to be useful for policy makers, scenarios that include emissions reductions need to be developed, to provide an idea of what might happen if action were taken. No change of mind, no admission of dishonesty — just a call for policy-relevant emissions trajectories and forcing scenarios. Misquotation and misrepresentation in the same breath — nice one, Bob. [Interesting too to note that the AR5 modelling will be based on new, more realistic scenarios that will include emissions reductions]
Let’s move on to the next par in the Bob’s samizdat article:
Currently, global warming alarmism is fuelled by an estimated worldwide expenditure on related research and greenhouse bureaucracy of more than US$10 billion annually. Scientists and bureaucrats being only too human, the power of such sums of money to corrupt not only the politics of greenhouse, but even the scientific process itself, should not be underestimated.
That’s a lot of money. What did he tell the Rotarians five years ago?
Currently, global warming alarmism is fuelled by an estimated worldwide expenditure on related research and greenhouse bureaucracy of US$3-4 billion annually. Scientists and bureaucrats being only too human, the power of such sums of money to corrupt not only the politics of greenhouse, but even the scientific process itself, must not be underestimated.
Crikey Moses, that’s some climate inflation! Not a Hansenist gravy train, but a Carterist scary ghost train.
The sections on “Lysenkoism” in the two pieces are also more or less identical, but in the more recent article, Bob moves on to deliver his wisdom on the state of climate science and policy advice in Australia, and can’t resist a dig at the NZ temperature record:
And, across the Tasman, NIWAgate is developing apace, as the N.Z. National Institute of Water & Atmosphere battles to provide a parliamentary accounting for its historic temperature archive, which may yet prove to include the “dog ate my homework” excuse for the apparent absence of some records.
Bob’s clearly channelling Treadgold and Wishart, and just as clearly out of touch (or perhaps that should be unwilling to be in touch) with reality.
So what are the basic tenets of Carterist science, as revealed by the writings of the great communicator himself? Bob describes them perfectly in his Rotary Club talk:
HansenistCarterist climate hysteria is driven by relentless, ideological, pseudo-scientific drivel, most of which issues fromgreenright wing political activists and their supporters, and is then promulgated by compliant media commentators who are innocent of knowledge of true scientific method. Opportunistically, and sadly, some scientists, too, contribute to theHansenistCarterist alarmism.
Quite right Bob. I share your sorrow, if not your shame.
“The response to the [email] vandals is to bury them with the data and experience of a century of scholarly research and analysis. The information that is important in making the decisions as to how to manage our world is unequivocal and must be advanced, not as questions at the edge of scientific knowledge where scientist like to dwell, but as the facts that they are, facts as immutable as the law of gravity. The climatic disruption is not a theory open to a belief system any more than the solar system is a theory, or gravity, or the oceanic tides, or evolution.”
Strong words from a scientist, but I felt an involuntary cheer as I read them on Joe Romm’s Climate Progress. They are from Dr. George Woodwell in an email to Romm. Woodwell is the founder, Director Emeritus, and Senior Scientist at the Woods Hole Research Centre.
Romm had invited comment from him in response to a Washington Times report of an email exchange between several scientists from the National Academy of Sciences discussing the need to fight back against the attempts by sceptics to portray the UEA emails and the IPCC error as ground for doubting the science of climate change.
“This is not the time to wring our hands over the challenges to hyper-scientific objectivity, the purity of scholars, and to tie ourselves in knots with apologies for alleged errors of trifling import.”
Here is the reality, which Woodwell expresses with a freshness of perception:
“The fact is that we, humans, have changed the composition of the atmosphere with respect to heat-trapping gases enough to start the progression of global climate, not into a new steady state, but into an open-ended warming that is pulling the environment out from under this civilization. If one wonders where that process leads, one need not look far around the world to find dysfunctional landscapes. Have a quick look at New Orleans, the Gulf Coast, or Haiti before the earthquake. All have fallen far below any point where internal resources can be used to restore a nation with a functional political system, a vital economy, and a functional environment.”
Scientists need to come out fighting:
“The scientific community has done brilliantly with the IPCC, by nature a conservative apparatus. It is time now, thirty years after the problem was recognized as threatening this civilization, for the scientific community to come forth with clear instructions, relentlessly repeated and amplified, as to how to restore a functional habitat for humanity. It can be done, but the scientific community has a big responsibility not now widely recognized or accepted.”
Woodwell has had plenty of time to consider these matters. Over twenty years ago, in 1988, he testified to a Senate committee under the title Rapid Global Warming: Worse With Neglect. The matters he raised then have continued to be prominent in the science in the intervening years, and the early warning he sounded has stood the test of time. (The full text of his testimony is included on the Climate Progress post.)
James Hansen also gave his famous Congressional testimony that year, and continues today to bring his scientific concern about climate change to the attention of political leaders. He is a splendid exemplar of Woodwell’s urging that the scientific community “come forth with clear instructions, relentlessly repeated and amplified”.
There is much advice circulating these days about how to get the message across successfully to the public. Some of it suggests that the scientists should retreat to their domain of research and leave it to others to work on public opinion. That won’t work. If the scientists are not constantly and publicly reiterating the seriousness of their findings it’s likely that the issue will continue to be treated with far less urgency than it requires. It’s not always easy for scientists to take public roles, but they need to do it more than ever as the campaigns of disinformation reach the peaks of activity we have seen in recent months. Bravo Woodwell and others like him.
Is it worth spending a whole book dissecting the writing of Bjørn Lomborg, the “skeptical environmentalist”? Certainly not in terms of the quality of Lomborg’s argument, which simply doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. But Lomborg’s writing has been permitted to exercise a widespread and harmful influence. For that reason Howard Friel’s painstaking book The Lomborg Deception: Setting the Record Straight About Global Warming represents time well and usefully spent.
Friel identifies two strains in Lomborg’s work: his “theorem”, that though global warming is happening and is human-induced it is far from a catastrophe; his “corollary” that there is therefore little need to incur the costs of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions to the extent urged by concerned experts. Friel concentrates on Lomborg’s two books The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World (2001) and Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming (2007). The first book covered a range of environmental concerns presented as an exaggerated “litany” of bad news generated by environmentalists. The second focused exclusively on climate change.
Friel spends most of his space on a detailed examination of Cool It. Lomborg has no hesitation in claiming that scientists exaggerate the effects of global warming, and has a large number of end notes supposedly backing his claims with reference to the sources of his evidence. By examining those supporting notes and citations in considerable detail Friel exposes the flimsiness of Lomborg’s claims. They are grounded, to say the least, in bad data. Indeed if Friel’s tracking of the referencing is accurate they are hardly grounded at all.
Take Lomborg’s claim that there will be only 12 inches of sea level rise this century. Of this he attributes 9 inches to thermal expansion. He references the 9 inches to Figure 10.6.1 in Working Group 1 (WG1) of the 2007 IPCC assessment report (AR4). No such figure can be found, says Friel. But assume Lomborg meant Section 10.6.1. It contains three projections (using three SRES scenarios) of thermal expansion. They range between 4 and 15 inches. Lomborg apparently chooses a rough median and presents it as an unwarrantably precise estimate.
The remaining 3 inches of Lomborg’s 12 inch rise come from melting glaciers and ice caps. Here he references Figure 10.6.3 in WG1 of AR4. Again there is no such figure, and he probably meant Section 10.6.3 titled Glaciers and Ice Caps; nowhere in it or its subsections can Friel find any substantiation of the 3 inches claim. Lomborg then referenced a claim that Greenland is expected to contribute 1.4 inches by itself to, we assume, Section 10.6.4. With its subsections it spans five pages, which do not report any 1.4 inch expectation from Greenland. Lomborg’s further claim that Antarctica will be accumulating ice as a result of increased precipitation and consequently contribute a 2-inch reduction in sea level rise is also referenced to Section 10.6.4 which offers no such report.
“Thus,” writes Friel, “Lomborg referenced only these IPCC figures to itemize his assertion of a one-foot sea-level rise, even though none of these sources can be found in the IPCC assessment report.”
Friel finds similar loose sourcing to most of Lomborg’s claims. Polar bears are not threatened. Climate change will reduce human mortality due to an offsetting reduction in cold-related deaths. Extreme weather events will be much fewer than predicted by environmentalists. The WHO exaggerates excess fatalities due to global warming. Food concerns related to global warming are vastly overplayed – “we will be able to feed the world ever better”. $4 billion annually will be enough to bring water and sanitation to those in the world who lack these essential services.
Friel offers frequent useful statements of the scientific consensus on many of these issues against which Lomborg sets himself as an authority empowered in some extraordinary way to see the exaggeration of which he asserts a large scientific community is guilty.
The role of the IPCC, as set out in 1988 by the UN Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organisation, emphasises scientific objectivity, policy neutrality, balanced geographic representation, and consensus. By the time its reports are issued, Friel comments, one might conclude that its product would embody a scientifically sound consensus middle ground among its 2,500 contributors and reviewers. He marvels that Cool It, which reflects none of these characteristics and which throughout asserts unsubstantiated claims that are completely at odds with the IPCC consensus can yet be described as representing “the practical middle” (Wall Street Journal) or “the pragmatic center” (New York Times). Lomborg has successfully competed with the IPCC in the US. Friel provides a telling analogy: “…the favourable coverage of Lomborg and his books are to global warming what the triple-A ratings for mortgage-backed securities were to the US financial system – misguided seals of approval with catastrophic consequences.” More catastrophic, he notes, in the case of climate change than in the case of financial systems which can presumably be repaired. His verdict on the part played by publishers and journalists: “Lomborg’s success largely reflects an ability of elite publishing houses and news organizations to contruct an alternative but counterfeit network of knowledge about an issue of the highest public importance.”
In the light of his thorough scrutiny of Lomborg’s claimed sources Friel considers it legitimate to maintain that Lomborg’s books are an assault on science, as Scientific American did when it convened a forum of distinguished scientists to write a rebuttal to The Skeptical Environmentalist in 2001. Friel reports this and other authoritative responses to Lomborg’s earlier book in some detail. He also asks whether the success of Lomborg’s books in a cultural sense is a manifestation of a broader “assault on reason”, described by Al Gore in his book of that title as a systematic breakdown of rational consideration of the major challenges facing the US and the world.
There’s probably little reason to expect that a book like Friel’s will put a dent in the popularity Lomborg commands. Denial is rampant at present. And the book is not a light read. However it has elicited a lengthy response from Lomborg himself, to which Friel has replied on his publisher’s website. He comments there that his previous experience in the hermeneutics of deception mostly dealt with books and texts that sought to justify war. “Lomborg’s books are no worse then those, but they are no better. Perhaps twenty or fifty years from now, if and when the fuller impacts of man-made global warming are more apparent, people might argue that they were worse. This is because at least wars usually end whereas global warming past a certain point probably won’t.” Which is all the more reason to persist with trying to focus public attention on the real science and expose the falsity of confident deniers and delayers. And good reason to welcome what Howard Friel’s book has contributed to that exposure.
Dennis Meadows was one of the authors of the influential 1972 book The Limits To Growth. In this short video, recorded in Davos at the World Economic Forum last year, he discusses the problems we face in living within our planetary means. Worth ten minutes out of anyone’s day…
[Hat tip to Resilience Science/The Oil Drum (the latter with transcript)]
Science historian Naomi Oreskes, well known for her work on consensus in science (and climate science in particular) has a new book, Merchants of Doubt, due out in a couple of months. Helpfully sub-titled How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, it digs deep into the historical roots of the campaign to create doubt abut the need for action on a host of environmental issues. The video above is of a talk she gave at Brown University recently, outlining the material in the book. If you’re interested in the roots of the campaign against action on climate, this is an excellent overview. We’ll have a review of the book soon after it’s available.
[Hat tip to Deltoid and Resilience Science]
Fifth contribution to the Imagining 2020 series of essays comes from Phillip Mills, executive director of Les Mills International, who describes his vision for a low carbon future based on ‘clean technology’. Phillip, with a group of leading members of the NZ business community, has been urging the NZ government to work on cleantech/greentech initiatives. He received a World Class New Zealand Award for New Thinking in 2009 and was Ernst & Young New Zealand Entrepreneur of the Year in 2004.
The transition to a low carbon future is something most economies are grappling with, and if they’re not, they should be. There’s much talk about what this might look like and whether it will require cataclysmic change. From where I sit the short answer is no. And that’s because my vision for a low carbon future is based on switching the dialogue from costs to opportunities. The opportunities are those inherent in the clean technology boom and they are huge.
While most New Zealanders agree we need to lift our economic game and get growth ticking at a faster rate, we are currently busting our guts to raise productivity under what’s become a tired, outdated economic structure.
Consider the following:
It’s time for an entirely new economic engine to power us towards a brighter future within a low-carbon economy.
It’s time for an entirely new economic engine to power us towards a brighter future within a low-carbon economy. This requires a shift in our focus to what’s called ‘clean technology’ – developing and commercialising innovative, green technologies in the areas of clean energy, clean transportation, clean industry, clean agriculture and the environment.
This isn’t just another short-lived, green fad for those with a penchant for tree-hugging. The ‘green wave’ may be slow rolling at present but will, over the next decade, gather force for an economic boom on a scale to rival the information age and the industrial revolution. Certainly, this is an area where New Zealand needs to be ahead of the pack.
A number of New Zealand business leaders have teamed together to cast a vision for a clean economy. We believe we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to transform New Zealand’s economy by gaining early-mover status in the emergent, clean technology market. This year, we have sent a book by Australian economist Ben McNeil: The Clean Industrial Revolution to all Members of Parliament, detailing the compelling economic argument for our case.
In summary, putting focus on the emergent, clean-tech market presents a compelling opportunity for New Zealand to:
A clean, low-carbon economy is highly efficient and fiercely competitive. It holds the promise of prosperity for all New Zealanders by inspiring new jobs and retraining, higher-value exports and a stronger eco-brand to attract overseas tourists and consumers.
The nay-sayers talk about the cost of developing and implementing clean technologies. But the fact is the opportunities far outweigh the costs.
The nay-sayers talk about the cost of developing and implementing clean technologies. But the fact is the opportunities far outweigh the costs. Denmark, with a similar population to New Zealand, decided to champion wind energy and now supplies more than half the world’s wind turbines, The Danes have added tens of thousands of high value jobs to their economy, reduced their carbon intensity by a third in ten years, dramatically reduced their exposure to imported energy costs and created a new export business the size of Fonterra – earning $15 billion a year in exports alone.
Germany and Sweden, also early movers in green-tech, have had similar results and the rest of the world is beginning to wake up. In the US, President Barack Obama has promised significant investment to move to an alternative energy economy. Indeed, American businesses are investing heavily in the development and use of clean technologies as the basis of the country’s next wave of wealth generation.
Countries and companies who are investing in clean technologies also reduce expenditure on raw materials and energy, achieve greater efficiency and less waste at a huge rate of return on their investments.
To “do a Denmark” and really win this game as a nation, New Zealand needs to identify our greatest opportunities – clean agriculture and various renewable energy sources are obvious candidates – then pin our ears back and go for them.
We’re already blessed with huge natural advantages in this area. And we can be encouraged that hundreds of Kiwi companies already recognise this and are quietly leading the way. They include start-up companies such as Lanzatech – making ethanol from flue gases; to Air New Zealand – recognised as the world’s greenest airline. Todd Energy is investing in tidal power generation in the Kaipara and our biggest exporter, Fonterra, outlined its benefits from climate change, energy and sustainability strategies at the World Environment Day symposium in June.
We need the same visionary leadership that led to the creation of our hydro dams and state forests in the 1930s
Local supporters of the clean-tech revolution now number more than 100 senior business leaders and we’re working hard to urge the Government to set up a joint government and business investigative committee to identify the best opportunities and the most efficient ways to capitalise on them through a “clean tech’ strategy for New Zealand. We need the same visionary leadership that led to the creation of our hydro dams and state forests in the 1930s; the Vogel Government’s development of telegraph, national railways and shipping links and the introduction of refrigerated shipping that opened our farming industry to the world.
Rather than playing catch-up with Australia, let’s surpass our trans-Tasman cousins with a strong, clean economy that enables us to live our values and is viable over the long-term. I’d welcome discussion on this important issue.
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