Gareth – Page 147

Rage against the machine

Before I begin the onerous task of catching up with the posts left undone by a fortnight of tourism and hospitality (old friends, in NZ), I’d like to draw your attention to a most interesting piece by Naomi (No Logo) Klein in the current Rolling Stone. Titled Climate Rage, it’s a thorough examination of the issue of climate debt — the need to recognise two things in any climate deal: that the developed world got rich by using up and exceeding the atmosphere’s “headroom” for greenhouse gases, and that the ones who suffer first and most severely will be the developing world, who played no part in creating the problem.

“If we are to curb emissions in the next decade, we need a massive mobilization larger than any in history,” [Angelica] Navarro [climate negotiator for Bolivia] declared at the end of her talk. “We need a Marshall Plan for the Earth. This plan must mobilize financing and technology transfer on scales never seen before. It must get technology onto the ground in every country to ensure we reduce emissions while raising people’s quality of life. We have only a decade.”

Klein reviews the calls for climate equity coming from the developing world, and the inadequacy of the responses currently on offer. She highlights the frustration felt:

The developing world has always had plenty of reasons to be pissed off with their northern neighbors, with our tendency to overthrow their governments, invade their countries and pillage their natural resources. But never before has there been an issue so politically inflammatory as the refusal of people living in the rich world to make even small sacrifices to avert a potential climate catastrophe. In Bangladesh, the Maldives, Bolivia, the Arctic, our climate pollution is directly responsible for destroying entire ways of life â€” yet we keep doing it.

If you read nothing else today, read this.

As you sow… (aka the “bugger” moment)

And so it begins: the rest of the world is starting to notice the major disconnect between New Zealand’s much advertised “clean and green” image and the National-led government’s piecemeal demolition of sensible climate policy. In yesterday’s Guardian, one of Britain’s leading quality newspapers, Fred Pearce devotes his “greenwash” column to New Zealand:

…my prize for the most shameless two fingers to the global community goes to New Zealand, a country that sells itself round the world as “clean and green. […] To rub our noses in it, last year New Zealand signed up to the UN’s Climate Neutral Network, a list of nations that are “laying out strategies to become carbon neutral”. But if you read the small print of what New Zealand has actually promised, it is a measly 50% in emissions by 2050 â€“ something even the US can trump.

Pearce fails to draw the distinction between the policies of the last government — which were for carbon neutrality — and the stance of the current government — which has stopped all work on plans for carbon neutrality — but is spot on about the marketing problem NZ now faces:

Check the UNEP website and you will find an excruciating hagiography about a “climate neutral journey to Middle Earth”, in which everything from the local wines to air conditioning and Air New Zealand get the greenwash treatment.

After extolling the country’s green credentials, it asks: “Have you landed in a dreamland?” Well, UNEP’s reporter certainly has. He cheers New Zealand’s “global leadership in tackling climate change”, when the country’s minister in charge of climate negotiations, Tim Groser, has been busy reassuring his compatriots that “we would not try to be ‘leaders’ in climate change.”

This is not just political spin. It is also commercial greenwash. New Zealand trades on its greenness to promote its two big industries: tourism and dairy exports.

And there’s the crunch. Pearce goes on to point to research that suggests tourism would be badly hit by a loss of the clean green image. To make matters worse, environmental tourism is one of the fastest growing sectors of the market. Our agricultural exports also depend on that image — but Tim Groser and the audience of farmers he was addressing seem to have been blissfully unaware of the pit they were digging for themselves.

It takes years to build a good image and establish what marketing people call positive brand attributes, but it can take only a few newspaper articles to damage or destroy it. Tourism NZ’s British campaign just took a major blow. How long before the news spreads, tourist numbers fall and exports are hit? Will our Minister of Tourism rush to defend our brand? And just how are you going to do that, John? It’s your systematic demolition of sensible climate policies that is doing the damage.

[See also: Bernard Hickey this morning.]

[Hat tip: Sam Tobin]

10:10 on its way to NZ

The 10:10 emissions reduction campaign launched in the UK earlier this year is likely to arrive in New Zealand soon — perhaps before the end of the year. Speaking on Chris Laidlaw’s RNZ Sunday Morning show [mp3], organiser Daniel Vockins confirmed that discussions were underway with interested parties(*) in NZ, and promised that if 1,000 New Zealanders signed up at 1010global.org, they’d launch before Christmas. 10:10 is the brainchild of Age Of Stupid producer Franny Armstrong. Individuals and companies make personal commitments to reduce their carbon emissions by 10% in 2010 — giving them something practical to do while the world haggles over longer term and larger targets for cuts. In the NZ context, a 10:10 campaign is expected to work well alongside existing efforts such as Greenpeace’s 40 by 20 Sign On campaign, and 350.org’s longer range commitment, but will send a very direct message to a government seemingly locked in to unambitious targets. If John Key won’t go to Copenhagen, will he sign up to 10:10? Britain’s Conservative leader David Cameron and his entire front bench already have.

(*) Including me…

…Some fish, some barrel

I’m afraid he’s at it again. Wishart, that is. It seems he can’t stop himself from reading Hot Topic and then posting his reactions. In his latest excursion, he reads a comment of mine, and then feels the need to once again demonstrate the depth of his understanding. He begins thus:

Can you believe the chutzpah? The thing that gets me about climate Chicken Littles is the way they repeat bogus claims ad nauseum as if trueâ€¦ this comment from Gareth Renowden at Hot Topic tonight illustrates ignorance on this point:

“In deep time, there have been periods when CO₂ has been higher than now (how much higher is a matter of study), but lots of CO₂ is inevitably associated with a warmer planet.”

Invariably?? The blue line is temperature, the black line is CO2:

And he whips out the chart you see above (click on the thumbnail to be taken to the source). It features (without credit to source) on page 34 of Air Con. He continues:

I defy anyone, including Renowden, to find a pattern in the historical record that proves CO₂ is “invariably” associated with a warmer planet. It will be especially hard for him as the ice cores all show CO2 rise lags temperature increase by several hundred years, not precedes it.

I didn’t have to try very hard to defy Wishart, because the “pattern” is well-established in the literature:

Continue reading “…Some fish, some barrel”

Stairway from Heaven

I popped into my local Paper Plus at the end of last week, and noted that were a few copies of Ian Plimer’s Heaven + Earth stacked up in the pre-Christmas display. Described by the NZ publisher (Ian Wishart’s Howling At The Moon imprint) as “the world’s #1 climate change book”, it makes a good companion for Air Con on any crank’s Christmas wish list. Unlike Air Con, however, Plimer’s book has been extensively reviewed in Australia and elsewhere, and so — as a public service — here are a few extracts that may help members of the reality-based community to decide whether to buy a copy…

Professor Michael Ashley, in The Australian:

It is not “merely” atmospheric scientists that would have to be wrong for Plimer to be right. It would require a rewriting of biology, geology, physics, oceanography, astronomy and statistics. Plimer’s book deserves to languish on the shelves along with similar pseudo-science such as the writings of Immanuel Velikovsky and Erich von Daniken.

Professor Barry Brooke, at Brave New Climate:

Ian’s stated view of climate science is that a vast number of extremely well respected scientists and a whole range of specialist disciplines have fallen prey to delusional self interest and become nothing more than unthinking ideologues. Plausible to conspiracy theorists, perhaps, but hardly a sane world view — and insulting to all those genuinely committed to real science.

Professor Kurt Lambeck, president of the Australian Academy of Science, on ABC’s Ockham’s Razor:

If this had been written by an honours student, I would have failed it with the comment: You have obviously trawled through a lot of material but the critical analysis is missing. Supporting arguments and unsupported arguments in the literature are not distinguished or properly referenced, and you have left the impression that you have not developed an understanding of the processes involved. Rewrite!

Professor David Karoly, on ABC’s Science Show:

Given the errors, the non-science, and the nonsense in this book, it should be classified as science fiction in any library that wastes its funds buying it. The book can then be placed on the shelves alongside Michael Crichton’s State of Fear, another science fiction book about climate change with many footnotes. The only difference is that there are fewer scientific errors in State of Fear.

Bob Ward in the Times (London):

It is easy to see why this book has attracted attention, particularly from right-wing commentators who have long believed that man-made climate change is a conspiracy theory. But this book is so full of errors that readers who believe its content could be seriously misled about the causes and consequences of climate change.

Tim Lambert at Deltoid has much, much more. Plus: you can download a 46 page document prepared by Professor Ian Enting detailing all of Plimer’s errors and misrepresentations.

No surprises, then, if I reveal that it won’t be on my Christmas list…

[The 2:40 version]