Author: Bryan Walker

Global Sustainability – A Nobel Cause

Global Sustainability

In late 2007 I kidded myself that I was present at a gathering of Nobel Laureates as I spent some hours watching a website video record of their proceedings. They had assembled with a variety of other distinguished experts for a three-day symposium on global sustainability. I can remember being very impressed, particularly by some of the developments in energy technology which were reported to the gathering, but also more generally by the wide intellectual compass demonstrated by the participants. Climate change and energy generation figured strongly in the symposium. It concluded with a strongly expressed Memorandum which I assumed would by now have been consigned to the archive of such declarations, only to be seen by those with an interest in fossicking through the unheeded warnings of the past. Not yet. The Potsdam Institute, organiser of the symposium, has in the intervening time been gathering essays from the contributors and has now published them in a substantial book Global Sustainability – A Nobel Cause.

It isn’t possible to report on all 33 essays, but I’ll mention a few. Murray Gell-Mann, the discoverer of the building blocks he called quarks, was awarded the Nobel prize for physics in 1969. Now 80 years old he’s still working at the Santa Fe Institute he helped to found. He describes it as a place where it is the rule rather than the exception to have transdisciplinary problems studied by self-organized teams of people originally trained in many different specialties. In the opening essay to this volume he writes of the importance of what he calls a “crude look at the whole”, and of supplementing specialized studies of policy problems with serious attempts to unite them, albeit with an inevitable degree of simplification. He wants to use the term sustainable in an inclusive way, not restricted to environmental, demographic and economic matters, but referring also to political, military, diplomatic, social and institutional or governance issues. He indicates a wide range of interlinked transitions which will be required if the world is to switch to greater sustainability: demographic, to a stable human population; technological, to supply human needs with lower environmental impact; economic, to quality taking the place of quantity (other than for the alleviation of poverty); social, to a society with less inequality; institutional, to better cope with conflict and the management of the biosphere;  informational, to the readier acquisition and dissemination of knowledge and understanding; ideological, to a combination of localised loyalties with a ‘planetary consciousness’.

The section of the volume which carries essays on technological innovation and energy security includes two from Nobel laureates.  Walter Kohn won the 1998 prize for chemistry. He straightforwardly outlines the necessity and practicality of solar and wind energy which he sees overtaking oil and natural gas by 2021.  Alan Heeger who won the 2000 prize for chemistry describes the exciting work on low-cost plastic solar cells in large quantities using ‘photovoltaic inks’ and printing technology to produce flexible plastic sheets of the cells.  The section includes illuminating essays on how new super grids and smart grids can work to enhance the feasibility of renewable energy generation on a large scale. Another essay of interest looks at possible paths to carbon-negative energy systems, focusing on the hydro-thermal carbonisation of biomass which could be done in small dispersed operations on much less than industrial scale.

Throughout the book there is frequent acknowledgement of the necessity of tackling poverty eradication at the same time as climate change. Nitin Desai of India puts it clearly: “The two challenges are now so connected that coping with one requires that we cope also with the other. That is what sustainable development is all about – how poverty eradication and environmental protection can be mutually supportive.”

In a section on a global contract between science and society John Sulston, joint winner of the 2002 Nobel prize for physiology/medicine, argues that the hyper-competitive stance that has been the norm in international relations will be disastrous for the problems now facing us. By sharing and acting upon our knowledge we have the opportunity to mitigate climate change. The great danger is that each of us tends to betray the group by striving for advantages over others, and if we persist on this course we and our planet will suffer dire consequences.

The Memorandum adopted by the symposium gathers up the themes explored by the many contributors. “We are standing at a moment in history when a Great Transformation is needed to respond to the immense threat to our planet. This transformation must begin immediately and is strongly supported by all present at the Potsdam Nobel Laureate Symposium.”  Climate protection ambitions appear to be on a collision course with the predominant growth paradigm that disconnects human welfare from the capacity of the planet to sustain growth. Yet the development needs of the poorer countries must be met. The great transformation is a thorough re-invention of our industrial metabolism. An awesome challenge, the memorandum  acknowledges, but to meet it we now have an incredibly advanced system of knowledge production that can be harnessed, in principle, to co-generate that transformation.

After listing key elements for climate stabilisation and energy security, the memorandum concludes with a plea for a new global contract between science and society, highlighting the need for a multi-national innovation programme that surpasses the national crash programmes of the past such as the Manhattan or Apollo projects. It calls for better global communication about natural or social sustainability crises and for a global initiative on the advancement of sustainability science, education and training. “The best young minds, especially those of women, need to be motivated to engage in interdisciplinary problem-solving, based on ever enhanced disciplinary excellence.”

The trenchant final chapter of the book written by Klaus Töpfer, a former Federal Minister of the Environment under Chancellor Helmut Kohl, places the memorandum in the context of the dramatic economic crisis that began shortly after the symposium.

“More than ever before, the relationship between economic development and stability, and the integrity of the ecosystems in our world are becoming evident. This global economic crisis is a declaration of bankruptcy of the ‘short-term world’…It is also a declaration of bankruptcy by a society that subsidizes its ‘wealth’ by externalizing the main part of the costs linked to production and consumption, imposing them on coming generations, on human beings living far away, and on nature’s capital.”

Against this background he hails the Potsdam Memorandum as an historical document of continuing significance, focused on the dramatically destabilized economic and ecological world of today. “It not only describes the problems and formulates the challenges; this memorandum also suggests the solutions. The utmost must be done to apply these recommendations to day-to-day decisions in this crisis-stricken world.”

Note: The book is available for free download.

Denialism’s allies: nasty work in Australia

 Climate change denialism has plugged into some very sick strains in society according to  the behaviour described by Clive Hamilton in the first of a series of articles in the debate forum on the ABC website.  He describes how Australia’s most distinguished climate scientists have been subjected to a torrent of  aggressive, abusive and at times threatening emails each time they enter the public debate through a newspaper article or radio interview.  “Apart from the volume and viciousness of the emails, the campaign has two features – it is mostly anonymous and it appears to be orchestrated.”  I recommend reading his article to get a full picture of the attacks, though prepare yourself to be shocked by the blind hatred and anger expressed in the crudest of language. It’s cyber-bullying of a very nasty kind, apparently intended to intimidate  the targets, who also include some journalists, and to make them reluctant to participate further in the climate change debate. Last month I reported James Hansen writing in a recent essayof vicious personal messages being sent to principal scientists almost daily – he didn’t elaborate, but it’s apparently not a peculiarly Australian phenomenon.

 

In a second article Hamilton looks at who is doing the orchestrating.  “Without access to ISP logs, it is difficult to trace the emails to a source. However, it is clear that hard-line denialists congregate electronically at a number of internet nodes where they engage in mutual reinforcement of their opinions and stoke the rage that lies behind them.”  On such websites a frenzy of outlandish conspiracy theories and vilification of individuals often follows posts which make highly personal attacks on individuals who speak in favour of mainstream science and measures to combat global warming.  Hamilton doesn’t suggest that the sites he goes on to mention are responsible for organising the cyber-bullying attacks on scientists and others, but they provide the material which is tailor-made for the kind of psyche which is all too ready to pour out hatred and anger. He posits: “Climate denialism has been absorbed by an older and wider political movement, sometimes called right-wing populism.” The movement is driven by feelings of angry grievance. “Those who identify with it see themselves as anti-liberal, anti-elitist and anti-intellectual.” He considers that the energy of this wider populist movement has fed into climate change denialism, because it recognises familiar enemies in mainstream scientists and in people socially concerned by the prospect of global warming.

In his third article in the series, published today, Hamilton discusses the role of think tanks funded by oil money in the effort to discredit climate science and stop action on climate change. He refers to the carefully planned strategy developed in the mid-1990s,  commissioning “independent” experts to “make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate”, citing Jim Hoggan’s  book Climate Cover-Up (reviewed here on Hot Topic). Various Australian think tanks are surveyed which have served as “conduits for the stream of anti-science pouring out of their kindred organisations in the United States. They have also been instrumental in publicising and promoting the work of Australian sceptics such as Ian Plimer and Bob Carter.”  They need funding, but in the end their motives are political rather than commercial.

A hatred of environmentalism is what Hamilton sees as uniting the various arms of the denialist war on climate science. “Environmentalism is variously seen to be the enemy of individual freedom, an ideology of smug elites, an attack on capitalism and consumerism, and the vanguard of world government.”

In conclusion he appeals to conservative leaders who accept the science to speak out loudly and clearly about the need to take action. It is in their hands to break down the belief that global warming is somehow a left-wing cause.

There are two more articles to come from Hamilton in what will be a five-part series, but I’ll leave it to readers to follow him further if they wish.  The burden of his concern is pretty clear from what he has already written and I thought it worth communicating now.  Incidentally Hamilton’s latest book Requiem for a Species is due for publication in a couple of months and I expect to review it here.

Methane rise continues

More cautionary news on rising methane levels is reported in yesterday’s Independent. Two leading experts on CH4in the atmosphere, Euan Nisbet and Ed Dlugokencky, were due to reveal at a conference that, after a decade of near-zero growth, “globally averaged atmospheric methane increased by [approximately] 7ppb (parts per billion) per year during 2007 and 2008.” They consider it likely that 2009 will have shown the same rising trend, since the figures for the first half of the year showed a 7 ppb rise on the 2008 level.

They are properly cautious about the rises and comment that they may just be a couple of years of high growth which may drop back to what it was.  But they stress the importance of understanding the causes of the rises, because of the potential for increased CH4 emissions from strong positive climate feedbacks in the Arctic where there are unstable stores of carbon in permafrost. Permafrost melt carries the potential for methane release.

If there is a feedback mechanism at work it’s bad news as the Independent makes clear in terms that its readers can understand:

“Many climate scientists think that frozen Arctic tundra… is a ticking time bomb in terms of global warming, because it holds vast amounts of methane, an immensely potent greenhouse gas. Over thousands of years the methane has accumulated under the ground at northern latitudes all around the world, and has effectively been taken out of circulation by the permafrost acting as an impermeable lid. But as the permafrost begins to melt in rising temperatures, the lid may open – with potentially catastrophic results”.

This is not alarmism on the part of the Independent. The scientists involved in reporting the rises are careful and restrained in their statements.  We may hope that the increases turn out not to be significant in terms of feedbacks under way.  But it is a sober reminder of how quickly things may change if natural feedbacks kick in and amplify the warming already caused by our human activity.  See Gareth’s earlier post on methane hydrates in the Arctic.

Incidentally, it was good to see a newspaper competently and thoroughly reporting climate change science news.  It can happen, and when it does it’s a different world from the ignorant and careless journalism that has been so apparent recently in relation to the UEA emails and the IPCC report.  Rationality and proportion marked an excellent piece of science reporting.

The Listener joins the attack

“…serious and growing questions over the standards and credibility of the international body whose job it is to determine the scientific truths about climate change.” 

The Listener is not going to be left out.  Ruth Laugesen writes in the current issue that “probes by a variety of international media have uncovered a smattering of poorly based and even shonky assertions” in the IPCC reports.  By the time she comes to list them later in her article they have become “potential inaccuracies”. The list is familiar enough.  First is the Himalayan glacier melt rate, which has been acknowledged by the IPCC as a regrettable error.  Of the other four, two track back to Jonathan Leake at the Sunday Times – dubbed Amazongate and Africagate – and both have been shown up as lacking any substance by Tim Lambert here and here. Another refers to the mistaken statement that 55% of the Netherlands is below sea level when the correct figure is 26%, yet Laugesen acknowledges that this relied on a figure supplied by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. The remaining item concerns the reliability of data from weather stations in East China used in a research paper by Phil Jones and others published in Nature in 1990. Jones has reasonably responded to the accusation of fraud here.

 

Against the massive and impressive IPCC reports these are all matters of negligible substance, as anyone who has cast an eye over the reports would immediately recognise.  Only one of them reveals a clear failure to observe the processes and standards expected of the IPCC authors.  It is absurd to suggest that they add up to serious and growing questions.  All they add up to is a demonstration of how savagely determined climate change deniers are to cast doubts on climate science by whatever means they can find.  Is it too much to ask that a staff writer for the Listener treat her “international media” with more caution?  Journalists around the world seem to be engaged in an operation where you simply pass on something you have read about climate science in another publication without feeling the need to check on its initial reliability.  The more this happpens the more the story becomes entrenched. And the longer the public is left thinking there may be some deep uncertainty about human-caused climate change. The abdication of intellectual responsibility is alarming.

And it’s not only journalists who are letting the public down. Depressingly, and I wish I could add surprisingly, Climate Change Minister Nick Smith when questioned by Laugesen has chosen not to deny the notion that the IPCC report is untrustworthy.  “It does raise questions – if those parts of the report have mistakes in them, what about the rest of the report?…The reality is that governments respond to the mood of the public. And the fact that there are errors in the IPCC report is of concern.”

He says that the errors will be one reason for the government being “a bit more cautious” on climate change policy.  How much more cautious can the government get without giving up on the issue altogether?  If Smith is taking his lead from the mood of the public he should not be occupying the post of Climate Change Minister.  He has access to expert scientific advice.  He should be telling the public how serious the situation is, not letting their mood be determined by superficial journalism.

He even has the nerve to advise the 16 NZ scientists involved in the IPCC process that “it is better to pursue quality than quantity.”

Thankfully Laugesen includes comments from NIWA’s chief climate scientist, David Wratt, NZ’s representative on the 31-member IPCC governing bureau.  He introduces a note of sanity into the article. One hopes the Listener readership is sophisticated enough to see with whom the truth lies, but journalists certainly aren’t making it easy.

Economist says climate science deserves praise

A forthright article from economist Jeffrey Sachs in today’s Guardian acknowledges that recent harsh attacks on the science of climate change have disconcerted the global public.

But the fact is that the critics, few in number but aggressive in their attacks, are deploying tactics that they have honed for more than 25 years. They greatly exaggerate scientific disagreements in order to stop action on climate change, with special interests like Exxon Mobil footing the bill.  The free-market idealogues of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page provide a platform.

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