Image Credit : Bankside Press
The big problem with re-tooling for the new Low Carbon world is not so much about changing Energy consumption behaviour, although that plays a part.
It’s not even really Energy supply behaviour, although that is probably more significant.
No, the key to the door to the greener future is investment behaviour.
“The headlines have been harrowing to say the least. “Some experts believe that mankind is on the threshold of a new pattern of adverse global climate for which it is ill-prepared.” one New York Times article declared. It quoted climate researchers who argued that “this climate change poses a threat to the people of the world.” A Newsweek article, citing a National Academy of Sciences report, warned that climate change “would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale.” Worse yet, “climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change or even to allay its effects.” Who in his or her right mind wouldn’t be scared of global warming ? But that’s not what these scientists were talking about. These articles, published in the mid-1970s, were predicting the effects of global cooling…”
And so, in just a few short paragraphs from Chapter 5, in the new Superfreakonomics book from the Freakonomicsts Levitt and Dubner, the authors show they’ve been taken in by a Climate Change sceptic Trojan horse.
Tears Before Bedtime
The UK Government’s latest infommercial on Climate Change is appallingly bad. It has been aired on television for millions of unsuspecting soap opera addicts.
Last year I complained to Roger Harrabin of the BBC by electronic mail regarding what I considered to be an unhelpful headline to an online article concerned with Global Warming. I also criticised the way that part of the article was written, as it had the potential to be misinterpreted.
Some of the people who read this web log who are in personal communication with me will know what happened next, but I’m not going to go over it again at this juncture, suffice it to say that a person or persons unknown reported the electronic mail exchange to a group of people who self-style as “Climate Change sceptics”, after which I found myself curiously infamous, and found it best to lie low for a while.
Even after this furore, why do we continue to see horrible headlines ?
The computer equipment you are at this moment using relies on an effect known as “quantum tunneling”, delivering an energy payload across a seemingly inpenetrable medium.
It is, if you like, a subversion of the apparent macro-scale laws of the universe. Nothing is quite what you think it is.
Sometimes you can learn a snippet of useful information from television. It’s rare, and fleeting, but can have impact.
The other night on terror-vision, I watched the sumptuous Fahrenheit 451, a film made in 1966 by Francois Truffaut, based on the science fiction book by Ray Bradbury. I forget which channel it was on. Who cares ? All television is the same in the end.
***************** College, University of ****************
MSc ******************************* programme
Year : 1 : Course Module : Climate Change
Reading Task : 6th October 2009
Read : Michaels, P.J. (2009) : “Global Warming and Climate Change”.
In : Cato Handbook for Policymakers (ed. D. Boaz, 7th edition). Cato Institute, p. 475-485.
Available from :-
https://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb111/hb111-45.pdf
1) How does he explain the observed periods of warming in the IPCC record?
Michaels states : “human activity has been a contributor since 1975.”
15th October 2009 will be Blog Action Day on Climate Change :-
In the continuing saga of the mainstream Media massaging of the facts, and framing our concerns for us, you may have noticed news about a deadly earthquake in Sumatra and a horror tsunami in Samoa, but you probably won’t have noticed the very active Typhoon season in the Western Pacific.
After our Masters class on the last 600 million years of Earth Climate history, a number of the students all collected together in the student bar.
One of our number pulled out a block of A4 paper on which he had written a number of probing questions.
At the very top of the list : asking how one could justify the “social cost” of Carbon.
I pulled my “remember Montreal” cat out of the bag.
So I’m in the hospital emergency room with a very aged relative with a dodgy ticker, and I’m doing what I can to offer some shred of comfort, stroking head, clasping hand, chatting about this and that.
And I’m looking at the digital monitor, displaying readings from various intensive care technology. And I watch as the arrhythmia, the irregular beating of the heart, clearly shows itself if you stop to look at the display for long enough.
Professor Mimura’s interview 1 of 3 from UNUChannel on Vimeo.
Climate Change costs in Japan are going to be “sensational”, and worse if storms become more violent.
That could well happen :-
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/09/090925-supertyphoons-japan-global-warming.html
“Supertyphoons to Strike Japan Due to Global Warming : Julian Ryall in Tokyo, Japan : for National Geographic News : September 25, 2009 : Increasingly powerful “supertyphoons” will strike Japan if global warming continues to affect weather patterns in the western Pacific Ocean, scientists say. Supercomputer simulations show there will be more typhoons with winds of 179 miles (288 kilometers) per hour—considered an F3 on the five-level Fujita Scale—by 2074…”
A report into the waterless conditions in the South Eastern United States of America concludes that Climate Change is not the predominant factor.
Phew ! We can all breathe a sigh of relief !
After a week of parry and counter-riposte, it is time to shout “en garde” to the editors at the Daily Telegraph newspaper.
In a peaceful way. Without swords.
After my careers in engineering and information technology, I went back to university today, to train for my third career, in sustainable development.
Like most of the other people enrolling on the course, I want a green job, and I’m prepared to study for it.
The only future for the economy is in clean energy and saved energy, Renewables and Conservation, and I want to be in there, doing something productive and practical.
In answer to one of my many raging, almost apoplectic, detractors, I have written this.
Since I believe that sceptics can be people, too, I’m going to respond to you, even though I think you’re being unfactual, and I feel you’re being unreasonable.
Some of the science that needs to be presented is the psychology of denial.
People who deny the science of Global Warming do so because they don’t want their life, wealth and freedom to be interfered with.
They feel they deserve liberty. But anybody who lives in any kind of community, especially in an urban environment, is not free at all, and never can be.
The floodgates of change may well open in the United States of America. It appears that power companies can be brought to court for the public nuisance of Global Warming…
https://www.thepoptort.com/2009/09/yowsa-major-environmental-ruling-in-greenhouse-gas-case.html
“September 30, 2009 : Yowsa! Major Environmental Ruling in Greenhouse Gas Case!”
“Corporate polluters have been getting hauled into court for many years for lotsa reasons, one being that their dirty activities are a “public nuisance”…”
“Well now, thanks to a landmark New York federal court ruling, this “public nuisance” theory has been applied in a major global warming case brought by eight states, New York City and environmental groups.”
“In a nutshell, the court panel (which consisted of two Republican appointees) found that the nation’s largest coal-burning utilities could be held accountable for global warming.”
The British Climate Change Minister Ed Miliband has admitted at the Labour Party Conference that there are low commitment levels to dealing with the causes of Global Warming :-
When I was asked to review a chunk of the 2008 Climate Safety report from the Public Interest Research Centre, I was less than positive about the social movement building outlined in the recommendations for “mobilisation” of the public (see below).
Tim Holmes, one of the people involved in the Climate Safety report, has started a new web log critiquing the very same issues :-
https://convenientlies.wordpress.com
https://convenientlies.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/greenwashing-government/
Image Credit : Climate Change News
There are a couple of compilations of facts out this week that are a mix of the good, the bald and the beautiful.
Note to any journalists reading : if you don’t understand the significance of any of the following facts, don’t hesitate to ask.
The “Big Dry” continues in Australia. News this week confirms that the Murray River is in dire straits and that Adelaide may soon be without drinking water as a result :-
https://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/28/adelaide-water-drought
“Adelaide latest victim of global water shortages : Australia’s fifth-largest city could be reliant on bottled water as early as next week as overuse and drought stretch the Murray river to its limit…”
Image Credit : Hans Joachim Schellnhuber
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/news/latest/four-degrees.html
The word that no one dares mention, for fear of tripping over their own tongues : paleoclimatology, the study of Earth’s Climate history, on the long scale.
The presentations from the 4 Degrees conference are being uploaded to the Internet website :-
My attention has been turned, once more, to the writing of James Delingpole this week.
This article, in my view, contains a number of pieces of misleading information, which in my view should be re-framed into their proper context by the author.
Dr Richard Betts of the British Meteorological Office speaking at the 4 Degrees (and beyond) conference in Oxford this week :-
https://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/4degrees/programme.php
“It’s important to stress it’s not a doomsday scenario, we do have time to stop it happening if we cut greenhouse gas emissions soon.”
Some of the potential problems from a four degree average rise in global temperature are being outlined to the conference.
There are spectacular regional warming issues, most notably for the Arctic region.
The Copenhagen Agenda is unwieldy and littered with areas of dispute :-
https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2009/awglca7/eng/inf02.pdf
https://unfccc.int/documentation/documents/advanced_search/items/3594.php?rec=j&priref=600005444#beg