Author: Bryan Walker

The Crime of Ecocide

I was active in Amnesty International at the time when the International Criminal Court was being debated and we lobbied hard for its establishment. In view of all the obstacles it seemed a minor miracle that it finally gained enough member state support to get under way. It is by no means the universally acknowledged authority that it should be, but it is functioning and playing an important role in the modern world. I was therefore interested to see reported on the NZ Herald website the proposal of a visiting lecturer that crimes against nature, or “ecocide”, should be recognised as the fifth crime the court should be given responsibility for, along with genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes of aggression which make up its current areas of jurisdiction.

Polly Higgins is the British environmental lawyer who actively promotes the concept. She is currently on a lecture tour of New Zealand and Australia, where she will be a speaker at the Brisbane Writers’ Festival. Her book Eradicating Ecocide was published last year. As reported in the Herald Higgins argued corporations should have a duty of care, or the same responsibility as individuals to behave in their daily lives – without recklessness or harm. Continue reading “The Crime of Ecocide”

Latest Arctic Sea Ice Report

The latest from the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

The graph above shows daily Arctic sea ice extent as of September 5, 2011, along with daily ice extents for previous low-ice-extent years. Continue reading “Latest Arctic Sea Ice Report”

What Motivates the Scientist Deniers?

There wasn’t room in my review of James Powell’s book The Inquisition of Science to comment on one or two aspects of the book in the detail I’d have liked, and I’ll take up one in particular in this supplementary post. In a chapter titled The Anatomy of Denial he has an interesting short discussion on the motivation of the scientist deniers. The denial campaign depends on having some scientists to whom it can point in confirmation of its arguments, and they have duly been forthcoming, albeit few of them actively engaged in climate science. Powell’s analysis confirms what others have discovered, but he puts it freshly and it’s worth highlighting regularly.

Some of the scientist deniers he sees as simply contrarian by nature, revelling in being different. Every field of science has had its contrarians with provocative ideas. Most of the ideas may be wrong, but even so they can advance the science by stimulating new experiments and new questions. Contrarians may sometimes play a valuable role as devil’s advocate, but they may also simply and repeatedly be wrong. He notes wryly that if Freeman Dyson were to accept global warming no one would pay any attention to him since he would merely be one of tens of thousands contributing to the scientific consensus, almost any one of whom would know as much as he. By denying it, he lands on the cover of the New York Times Magazine and is lauded for intellectual courage. In Powell’s extended discussion of Dyson’s denial in an earlier section of the book he quotes Dyson acknowledging that Hansen, whom he accuses of consistently exaggerating the dangers of global warming, has all the credentials established by his hundreds of published papers. Continue reading “What Motivates the Scientist Deniers?”

The Inquisition of Climate Science

“…in the denial of global warming, we are witnessing the most vicious, and so far most successful, attack on science in history.” Those strong words are from James Lawrence Powell in his recent book The Inquisition of Climate Science. The book chronicles the campaign of denial which has resulted in the widespread failure of public understanding of climate science and the long delay in addressing what is now an urgent and pressing threat to the human future.

Powell, a former geology professor, college president and museum director who also served as a member of the US National Science Board for twelve years, is rightly disturbed at the treatment meted out to climate science. The evidence of global warming has accumulated over the past twenty years until it has become overwhelming. Yet climate scientists have been denounced and ridiculed, their ethics and honesty have been questioned, and Congressional committees have subjected them to Kafkaesque interrogation. A sustained attempt has been made to attempt to neutralise a whole field of science. Science denial is so widespread that “reason itself is threatened”. Continue reading “The Inquisition of Climate Science”

Tar Sands Action Draws to a Finish, But More to Come says McKibben

“Be here on Saturday September 3rd. You don’t need to get arrested. There will be people getting arrested but we’re to also have a big rally and … its going to be a beautiful finish to phase one of this campaign. After that stay tuned…this is a fight we might actually have some chance of winning and so we’ve got to keep the pressure seriously on.”

That’s Bill McKibben in this short street interview. Spare them a thought on Saturday.

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