Category: Book reviews

Climate Cover-Up

Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming

“This is a story of betrayal, a story of selfishness, greed, and irresponsibility on an epic scale.” That’s how James Hoggan opens his newly published book Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming. Hoggan initially thought there was a fierce  scientific controversy about climate change. Sensibly he did a lot of reading, only to find to his surprise that there was no such controversy. How did the public confusion arise?  There was nothing accidental about it. As a public relations specialist, Hoggan observed with gathering horror a campaign at work.

“To a trained eye the unsavoury public relations tactics and techniques and the strategic media manipulation became obvious. The more I thought about it, the more deeply offended I became.”

DeSmogBlog was born to research the misinformation campaigns and share the information widely. This book pulls together some of that research in an organised narrative. Richard Littlemore has assisted Hoggan in the writing.

Climate scientists are sometimes blamed for not communicating their message clearly enough to the public. If they tried to match the efforts of the denial campaigners as detailed by Hoggan they wouldn’t have any time to do their science. Those who vociferously claim that anthropogenic global warming is still uncertain and doubtful certainly don’t spend time and money on any science. That is not what they are interested in. As far back as 1991 a group of coal-related organisations set out, in their own words, “to reposition global warming as a theory (not fact)” and “supply alternative facts to support the suggestion that global warming will be good.” This was the pattern of the work done in succeeding years by a variety of corporations and industry associations who devoted considerable financial resources to influence the public conversation. They used slogans and messages they had tested for effectiveness but not accuracy.  They hired scientists prepared to say in public things they could not get printed in the peer-reviewed scientific press. They took advantage of mainstream journalists’ interest in featuring contrarian and controversial science stories. They planned “grassroots” groups to give the  impression that they were not an industry-driven lobby. New Zealand’s Climate “Science” Coalition and the International Coalition it helped to found fit this purpose nicely.

Hoggan describes the work of many individuals and organisations who are available for spreading the doctrine of doubt. Conservative think tanks such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) have played a major part in the task in the new millenium. Their donors are well disguised, but in the case of CEI have certainly in the past included ExxonMobil and probably GM and Ford. Their advocacy, such as the infamous TV commercials portraying the benefits of carbon dioxide, obviously involves heavy expenditure.

Lists of scientists reportedly expressing dissent over anthropogenic global warming have become a staple of the denial crusade. Hoggan discusses some of these lists and comments:

“The beauty of this tactic as a method of keeping the debate alive is that none of these ‘scientists’ ever have to conduct any actual research or put their views forward to be tested in the scientific peer-review process. They don’t even have to be experts in a related field. And they certainly don’t have to win the argument. As long as groups of scientists are seen to be disagreeing, the public continues to assume that the science is uncertain.”

Apparent throughout Hoggan’s book is the lack of substance to the denial campaign. According to them, the Mann hockey stick is a “notorious intellectual swindle”. The impression is sedulously fostered that statistical investigation has shown the graph to be false. But Hoggan points out that the ideologists are uncurious about whether Mann’s work has been tested by other scientists or confirmed or falsified by the use of other methods or other proxy data sources. He dryly comments that the reason is that the other climate-reconstruction graphs published since Mann produce enough hockey sticks to outfit a whole team and then some.

A significant movement in the campaign in more recent times has been a change of emphasis from denial that anthropogenic warming is occurring to claims that there is no need to rush into measures to mitigate it. Bjorn Lomborg argues with apparent passion that he also cares about climate change, but that careful economic analysis shows that more pressing problems like AIDS, malnutrition, and the provision of fresh water to people in the developing world are more important matters and unfortunately don’t at this stage leave enough money for climate change mitigation. Frank Maisano specialises in media communication. He supplies thousands of reporters and important people in industry and politics with useful material on energy issues.  Underlying it though is a consistent argument that climate change, though real, is either impossible or too expensive to fix.

In his chapter on the manipulated media Hoggan acknowledges the complexity issue in relation to global warming. Indeed he extends a lot of understanding to reporters and editors.  They are under pressure and the science takes some understanding. The temptation to fall back on balance has been strong. However he notices that increasingly the balance model is being abandoned, and is insistent that it’s past time for people in the media to check their facts and start sharing them ethically and responsibly with the public.

Hoggard’s book is a thoughtful and sustained exposure of  a movement which has done great harm. I read it with close interest and shared his dismay. I recommend it to anyone who wants to understand how denial has had such a charmed run. His presentation is painstaking and reasonable. There’s nothing shrill about it, and his justifiable anger is relatively muted.  He urges his readers not to take him at face value but to do some checking of his material and satisfy themselves that it is reliable. Nevertheless the activity he describes is rightly characterised as betrayal, selfishness, greed and irresponsibility. The people who have launched the highly successful campaign of denial and delay are not attending to the work of a body of outstanding scientists although that work is of utmost import for human life. They have turned what should have been a public policy dialogue driven by science into a theatre for a cynical public relations exercise of the most dishonest kind. Instead of looking at the seriousness of the warnings they have sensed a threat to their business profitability and made that their motivating factor. They have spread a false complacency and the result has been a twenty year delay in addressing an issue of high urgency.

Hoggard thought at first that David Suzuki was a bit over the top when he wondered out loud whether there was a legal way of throwing Canada’s so-called leaders into jail for criminal action (or inaction) in relation to climate change. But then he recognised Suzuki was right, in the sense that it will indeed be a crime if we do not demand of our leaders that they start fixing this problem, beginning today.

“And the punishment will be visited on our children and on their children through a world that is unrecognisable, perhaps uninhabitable.”

Plan B (not from outer space)

Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization

I hadn’t expected to be doing a Hot Topic review of Lester Brown’s book Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, since he writes about a variety of sustainability issues. However the 90 pages or so he devotes to climate change were irresistible for their sensible optimism and I report them here.

The Plan B books have been appearing in updated form since 2003. They are no light undertaking. Intended to influence, they have translators into 22 languages and achieve worldwide circulation. Several thousand individuals purchase five or more copies for distribution to friends, colleagues and opinion leaders. Ted Turner does so on a large scale, distributing copies of each Plan B to heads of state and their key cabinet ministers, the Fortune 500 CEOs, and members of Congress. A film version of Plan B 4.0 is in progress.

Brown is a generalist. His work is to pull together scattered information and communicate it to the public. The results are scary on the reality of the problems and upbeat on the solutions. On climate change he is unflinching. He reports recent studies projecting a sea level rise of up to two metres by the end of the century. Up to a third of all plant and animal species could be lost. The chorus of urgency from the scientific community intensifies by the year. Higher temperatures diminish crop yields, increase the severity of storms, flooding, drought and wildfires, and alter eco-systems everywhere. The effects of melting glaciers on irrigation is a massive threat to food production.

Selecting items like this doesn’t do justice to the overall organisation of the chapter in which he sets out the threat. In 20 pages he presents a valuable summary reminder of what a continuance of anthropogenic global warming will result in for human life. It’s chapter 3 of the book, which by the way is available for free download here on the Earth Policy Institute website. The chapter can be recommended for anyone who wants to know in short compass what it all adds up to and why it matters supremely.

Always positive in the face of threat, Brown sets out his Plan B response. He stands with James Hansen and others on the necessity to reduce CO2 levels to 350 parts per million concentration. Plan B envisages cutting emissions 80 percent by 2020 in order to keep levels from exceeding 400 ppm before starting to reduce them. This will be challenging, “but how can we face the next generation if we do not try?” And it’s feasible.

Two steps are needed. The first is an energy efficiency revolution, the beginnings of which are already under way. The revolution in lighting technology is a good start, and one which many countries are joining (while New Zealand is pulling back by decision of our benighted Minister of Energy). Compact fluorescents (CFLs), using 75 percent less electricity than incandescents are the first step. The light-emitting diode (LED), using up to 85 percent less is the ultimate. Lighting is not a small matter. It currently uses 19 percent of the world share of electricity. This would be cut to 7 percent with a move to CFLs in homes, advanced linear fluorescents in offices, shops and factories, and LEDs in traffic lights.  The lighting efficiency gains would be even greater if LEDs reduce in cost and can be used more widely.

Energy-efficient appliances are already lowering considerably their electricity requirement. A worldwide set of appliance efficiency standards keyed to the most efficient models on the market would offer as much or more than the 12 percent of world electricity savings from more efficient lighting.

Low energy use buildings are already being built in some countries.  There is enormous potential for reducing energy use in buildings. Even energy retrofits on older inefficient buildings can cut usage by 20-50 percent.  Brown discusses the LEED certification offered by the US Green Building Council in interesting detail. New buildings can easily be designed with half the energy requirements of existing ones.

The overall electrification of transport will mean much greater energy efficiency, especially as the power comes increasingly from renewable sources. New technologies have opened the way for hybrid plug-ins and all-electric cars and all major car makers have plans, as Brown details, to bring them to market. The future of intercity travel lies with high-speed trains, which under Plan B will be powered almost entirely by renewable electricity. Japan has set the standard, but many countries are now participating. Public transport has a significant role to play; shifting public funds from highway construction to public transport would reduce the number of cars needed. (A point lost on our Transport Minister, who shares the Energy Minister’s preference for outdated practice.)

A striking section on metal recycling demonstrates that it requires only a fraction of the energy needed to produce the metals from virgin ore. Design of products so that they can be easily disassembled for reuse or recycling carries economic benefit, as do reusable containers. Waste reduction is central. In summary, there is a vast worldwide potential for cutting carbon emissions by reducing materials use, and beginnings have been made.

There follows an illuminating account of what a smart grid combined with smart meters can add to energy efficiency and how moves in that direction are already under way in various parts of the world. He concludes the chapter (4) by expressing his confidence that the energy-saving measures identified and proposed will more than offset the nearly 30 percent growth in global energy demand projected by the IEA between 2006 and 2020.

The second major step is the shift to renewable energy.

“…this energy transition [to wind, solar and geothermal energy] is moving at a pace and on a scale that we could not have imagined even two years ago. And it is a worldwide phenomenon.”

He instances Texas which is looking to have 53,000 megawatts of wind generating capacity, which will more than satisfy the state’s residential needs and enable it to export electricity, just as it has long exported oil.  Some 70 countries are now using wind power. A Stanford University study concluded that harnessing one fifth of the world’s available wind energy would provide seven times as much electricity as the world currently uses. Plan B involves a crash programme to develop 3000 gigawatts (3 million megawatts) of wind generating capacity by 2020, enough to satisfy 40 percent of world electricity needs. That’s 1.5 million 2-megawatt wind turbines over the period. Intimidating? Compare it with 70 million cars per year.

Solar energy is the second source undergoing dramatic expansion. Photovoltaic installations are increasing rapidly, by 45 percent annually, and production costs are falling fast. Solar thermal electricity, which uses reflectors to concentrate sunlight on a closed vessel containing water or some other liquid, is on the move, with big plans mooted for the southwest US and Algeria and the Indian Desert. Solar water heating, now seen in many countries, is another obvious benefit.

There is more. Geothermal energy in a variety of forms is a barely tapped source, with very large  potential.  Hydro power from the movement of tides and waves is starting to be developed. Biomass offers a small but worthwhile contribution. Brown doesn’t rule out nuclear, but thinks it is expensive by comparison and unlikely to reach a level of new development which would do much more than replace current aging plants.  Carbon capture and storage doesn’t figure, at least at this stage, for reasons of expense and lack of investor interest.

The chapter (5) is full of facts and figures to support his sense that movement on renewable energy is strongly under way and that the resource is more than adequate to our need to cut emissions by 80 percent by 2020. It won’t just happen. Strategic government intervention is needed to put a price on carbon, to offer appropriate assistance to desirable developments, sometimes to mandate changes. He frequently turns to the analogy of wartime mobilisation. But he clearly looks to the vigour of enterprise and innovation in business and industry to see the job through. Indeed there is a strong sense of that vigour already present and poised like a wave ready to be caught. If we do catch it it will take us safely to shore.

[Dexys Midnight Runners]

What’s the worst that could happen?

What's the Worst That Could Happen?: Cutting Through the Hubbub Over Global Warming

Greg Craven has been a YouTube phenomenon. Seven million people have viewed his short climate change video posted in 2007, The Most Terrifying Video You’ll Ever See. It was followed up with a number of others. Now he’s produced a lively and engaging book What’s The Worst That Could Happen?  A Rational Response to the Climate Change Debate which may not reach quite as many people, but certainly deserves a wide readership.

Craven is a high school science teacher in Oregon. He is open about the deep alarm he feels about climate change. But he’s not a climate scientist. He doesn’t set out to convince  readers of the reality of global warming. Instead he offers what he calls some thinking tools, not for working out whether climate change is true or not, but for working out whether we should be taking action or not. The decision grid “allows you to stop focusing on who’s right and instead ask, what’s the wisest thing to do, given the risks and consequences?“ Risk management, he calls it. The grid is a simple 2×2 affair, which compares and considers the consequences of action or inaction if global warming turns out to be either true or false. He’s aware that when he talks about a debate between “warmers” and “sceptics” he’s describing popular perception, not what goes on in climate science circles, but popular perception is what he is concerned to address.

The book was honed in the classroom. He found there’s no better way to refine a thought than to toss it out in front of a roomful of critical teenagers. The writing is crisp, quirky, often humorous, never ponderous. An active reader is presupposed, with pages set aside for participatory jottings. It’s hard to avoid engagement. Yet there’s an unmistakable drive and underlying seriousness to the vigorous text.

Craven offers useful observations about how science works, as a preliminary to embarking on the decision quest. Some examples: science is about pursuing the truth, but it never claims to actually get there. Its statements are usually very conservative. The presence of differing views doesn’t mean that something is controversial. Peer-reviewed papers are the basic currency of science. Science often runs counter to common sense, which would still have us thinking the sun goes round the earth.

The next preliminary step is to examine the ways our brains work (defectively). Confirmation bias is the main problem for us to be alert to, and he provides many suggestions as to how to manage that. Another feature important in the global warming debate is that the human brain’s alarm system has been conditioned over time to respond to threats that are immediate and visible.

Then it’s on to a tool he developed himself, the credibility spectrum. This is a ranking of sources by such factors as expertise, bias, track record, authority within the scientific community, reputation. Readers are invited to make up their own spectrum, but Craven shares his, which puts statements from professional societies at the top, along with statements from organizations that contradict their normal bias. Next down are government reports. In the middle come university research programmes, appropriately sourced petitions, think tanks and advocacy organisations. Down then to individual professionals, book writers, and finally individual lay people.  He chooses and identifies sources for each of those categories from both sides, warmers and sceptics.

There follows an excellent 30-page summary of what it is that the warmers are saying we should be concerned about and the doomsday they see ahead if we carry on as we are. The point of this chapter is simply to establish that their concern is not unreasonable and warrants at least the amount of attention needed to decide whether we should do anything about it or not. But the striking clarity of his account gives the chapter an importance well beyond that limited intention.

He then returns to his own credibility spectrum, warmers to the left, sceptics to the right, and explains why it could only lead him to the conclusion it did:

“When I look at the stunningly strident statements from all those calm professional sources at the top left, and I think, What are the chances they’re all out to lunch? and then I add my observations that the predictions have only been getting more dire and more immediate as time goes on, it scares the willies out of me. So I vote for slamming on the brakes. Hard. I can recover from any hot coffee that I spill on my lap.  But I can’t put myself and my car back together again if I drive confidently off a cliff, kids in the back.”

After that he sends his readers off with step by step instructions to build their own credibility spectrum and use the decision grid to produce their own conclusion.

For those readers who come to the same conclusion as he does, the appendix offers a strong recommendation. Craven stands with Hansen, because he has the best track record for predictions which mainstream science eventually catches up with. 350 ppm has to be the target for CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. This will require an effort similar to that which the US put into World War II when massive government action accomplished the seemingly impossible in an amazingly short passage of time. In perhaps the greatest economic mobilisation in the history of the world people invested an average of 25 percent of household income in War Bonds. And far from dooming the economy the collected effort of the citizenry brought the US out of the Great Depression and produced the world’s strongest economy.

Personal action to reduce our carbon footprint is fine, but it won’t get us to where we need to be. Only government action can do that. We need a collective determination, and the most significant contribution the individual can make is to spread the word, activate the interconnected web of communication that permeates our society.  Go viral. “Focus on burning the number 350 into the collective consciousness.” Over to the reader.

This is a most welcome book. It has proved astonishingly difficult for the findings of climate science to be communicated to the public. In part this is due to the success of the organised denialist campaign, in part to the cautious language of science itself, in part to the difficulty of comprehending how our apparently secure world can possibly be under the threat of such an enormous peril. Craven doesn’t try to fill the comprehension gap with information –- though what information he does provide along the way is mainstream and persuasive –- but invites his readers to give serious scientists the attention and respect their work demands. And he tries to do it not by telling, but by showing how they can get to the position where they find their own realisation that the science must be heeded.

Down to the Wire

Down to the Wire Confronting Climate Collapse

“My subject is hope of the millennial kind.” So writes David Orr in his new book Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse. The challenges ahead are more difficult than the public is led to believe and than most leadership apparently understands.  There is a long emergency for us to get through -– E.O.Wilson’s “bottleneck” –- and the hope that he discerns is at a farther horizon.

Which doesn’t mean that action can be delayed. Orr, professor of environmental studies and politics at Oberlin College, is himself a strong proponent of action. He was part of the team who over a period of two years prepared recommendations for climate change action in the first 100 days of President Obama’s administration in a plan describing over 300 actions the president could take and including a legal analysis of the executive authority at his disposal. He describes this book as a companion of sorts to that project.

However, much in the book focuses on the longer haul and includes the wider environmental degradation of which climate change is the most important part.  One striking chapter describes his shocked viewing of the devastation wrought by coal-mining in the Appalachian mountains. It’s a sickening picture: “…mountaintop removal is destroying one of the most diverse and beautiful ecosystems in the world, rendering it uninhabitable forever.” It’s not surprising that this chapter includes a plug for what Spanish philosopher Unamuno called “the tragic sense of life”, a sober philosophy which among other things is free from the delusion that humans should be about “the effecting of all things possible” or that science should “put nature on the rack and torture secrets out of her”.

Sustainability will need to be built on something deeper than the application of more technology and smarter economics.  They may only compound our tribulations. He considers that the effort to secure a decent human future will need awareness of the connections that bind us to each other, to all life, and to all life to come. What is given must be passed on.  Every culture that approaches sustainability grasps the truth that nothing can be held or possessed. Substantial sections of the book explore such ideas thoughtfully and in highly readable prose. Philosophy, ethics, and to some extent religion underlie the diagnoses and prescriptions proposed.

What constitutes the long emergency? Orr’s book focuses on the U.S. but has high relevance for the rest of us. He names five converging challenges.  First, climate change driven by the combustion of fossil fuels and land management changes. Second, nasty surprises caused by the breakdown of ecosystems and the ecological services they provide. Third, peak oil and the failure to move to energy efficiency and renewable energy sources. Fourth, exorbitant military expenditure which buys little safety or security. Fifth, the necessity to reform an economy built on excess, debt, and dishonest bookkeeping. He notes that to these can be added continued population growth, emerging diseases amplified by warming temperatures, and the arcane complexities of global economic and financial interdependence.

The implications for the U.S. are becoming clear.  The top priority is to reduce U.S. CO2 emissions by 90% by 2050 and lead the global effort to hold the temperature rise to no more than 2 degrees. Energy efficiency measures and a strong move to renewable sources are the pathway to this.  A second implication is that governments must learn to handle an economy in which quantitative growth will slow and eventually stop. Orr frequently refers to the work of ecological economists such as Herman Daly.  A limited growth economy will require more attention to the challenge of distributing wealth fairly. He points to two further implications which may  startle American readers: preparing measures to relocate internally displaced people as the effects of warming and sea level rise begin to bite; and preparing, even in the US “to deal with the ancient scourge of famine.” All these measures point to the need for a coalition to change US politics, economy, and manner of living to fit bio-physical realities.

It is not surprising that Orr advocates transformational leadership. That is, leadership which will prepare the public to understand the scale and duration of climate destabilisation and to grasp that it is a challenge to the US system of politics and governance; leadership which will help people understand the connections between energy choices and ecological consequences; leadership which will be honest in the vision of the future and lay the foundation for authentic hope.  His indictment of the leadership of the Bush-Cheney administration, which did none of those things, is succinct, comprehensive and damning.

Orr doesn’t buy the idea that the public can handle only happy news. The public should be treated as intelligent adults who are capable of understanding the truth and acting creatively and courageously in the face of necessity. Wise transformational leadership will summon the people with all of their flaws to a level of extraordinary achievement appropriate to an extraordinarily dangerous time. Lincoln, Roosevelt and Churchill figure in his discussions.

The grounds for hope are not strong right now but he’s prepared to discern them a century or more ahead. The immediate steps are clear: preserve soil and forests, save species, use less, deploy solar technologies; on the political side, “throw the rascals out”, demand accountability, elect leaders with courage and intelligence to lead in the right direction. Might we still avert catastrophe?  In a sea of wishful thinking, evasion and half measures it’s not easy to be confident. In an extended passage he discusses what in us might enhance our long-term prospects. After looking at our limitations, at the risk of sounding naïve he lists examples of not uncommon traits of character, like sociability and kindness, which will serve us, as also will our affinity for life – what E.O. Wilson calls “biophilia”.  If public awareness of the crisis really is dawning, as he hopes, much will depend on how we make four fundamental changes:  the improvement of societal resilience by reshaping the way we provision ourselves with food, energy, water, and economic support; a shift in education methods so that learning is relative to the biosphere and ecological awareness; the recalibration of governance to the way the world works as a physical system; finally, and perhaps oddly to some readers, a revolution in kindness and generosity of spirit that allows us to gracefully forgive and be forgiven. It is worth noting here that Orr is very committed to the Gandhian principle of non-violence.

Although Orr has many excursions into reflections on what makes us human and how we fit into the web of life there is no mistaking the urgency of his practical advocacy.  He knows the times are critical. Throughout the book he displays full and detailed awareness of the danger in which we already stand.  But climate change, he says, is not so much a problem to be fixed but rather a steadily worsening condition with which we must contend for a long time to come.  Improved technology may buy us time, but what we most need is a more durable and decent civilisation.

The Weather Makers

The Weather Makers: The History and Future Impact of Climate Change

When I set out to establish my understanding of the science of climate change Tim Flannery’s The Weather Makers: The History and Future Impact of Climate Change was the next book I read after Elizabeth Kolbert’s Field Notes. Kolbert provides a most valuable introduction, but Flannery immerses the reader in the full range of the science and the political reaction to it.  Few stones are left unturned.  He is a gifted communicator with an instinct for clarity.  Science pervades the book, but always explained in terms that the lay person can follow and placed in narratives high in reader interest.

A lot has happened in climate science since the book was published in 2005.  How does it stand up four years later?  I started my rereading for this review with that question in mind. But not for long. It was soon apparent that Flannery’s material remains relevant and illuminating. Partly because he understood the direction in which the science was moving and often anticipates what was to come. The West Antarctic ice sheet, for example, is pointed to as perhaps vulnerable, and the possibility of more rapid sea level rise than anticipated is canvassed. The Fourth Assessment Report of the IPCC hadn’t yet appeared when he was writing, but he warns that the modus operandi of the IPCC almost guarantees reports confined to the lowest common denominator.

Flannery is an Australian environmentalist, and a very prominent one, having been named Australian of the Year in 2007. His scientific work has been in the fields of mammalogy and paeontology, not climate. Ecology has been a prominent concern for some years, as readers of his earlier book The Future Eaters will recall. He writes that for years he resisted the impulse to devote research time to climate change, being busy with other things and preferring to wait and see. But by 2001 he realised he had to learn more and by 2004 his interest had turned to anxiety.  The great changes under way in the atmosphere, still something many were unaware of, presaged serious problems ahead. The issue, he came to see, would dwarf all the other issues combined.

He takes a broadly Gaian approach because it sees everything on earth as being intimately connected to everything else and because he considers reductionist world views have brought the present state of climate change upon us. Thus armed he leads the reader through the range of “Gaia’s tools” which bear on climate change, the “great aerial ocean”, the carbon cycle, the Milankovich cycles, abrupt climate changes, and many more. On the power and seduction of coal he remarks: “the past is a truly capacious land, whose stored riches are fabulous when compared with the meagre daily ration of solar radiation we receive.”

How has life on Earth already been affected by the warming so far experienced? Among the many phenomena Flannery describes are the observed poleward movement of species, changes in the food chain in Antarctica, the effects of warming for Arctic wildlife and the tundra, the bleaching of coral reefs, the extinction of the golden toad of Costa Rica, changes in rainfall in America’s west and Australia’s south, extreme weather events and rising sea level. “So swift have been the changes in ice plain science, and so great is the inertia of the oceanic juggernaut, that climate scientists are now debating whether humans have already tripped the switch that will create an ice-free Earth.”

He considers many predictions for the future. Global circulation models are described along with the possible range of temperature rise in response to CO2 levels. He outlines the catastrophic effects temperature rise will have on biodiversity in the tropical rainforests of north-eastern Queensland. “The impending destruction of Australia’s wet tropics rainforest is a biological disaster on the horizon, and the generation held responsible will be cursed by those who come after.”  On extinctions worldwide he concludes that at least one in five living things on the planet is committed to extinction by existing levels of greenhouse gases; business-as-usual would likely result in three of five not being with us by the end of the century.  Even deep-sea fishes are under threat of warming. He examines three of the possible main tipping points, the collapse of the Gulf Stream, the collapse of the Amazon rainforests, and methane release from the sea floor and sees rainforest collapse as the most threatening this century. Half a century of business-as-usual would make inevitable the collapse of civilisation due to climate change.

The rest of the book addresses human responses to the challenge, both political and technological. He draws some encouragement from the way CFCs were phased out in response to the threat of ozone depletion, but acknowledges the deep intransigence displayed by some industries and their political allies where climate change is concerned. Adequate technological solutions to the problem are available. Contraction and convergence is the democratic, transparent and simple form of international agreement that could be the way forward after Kyoto.

Rereading The Weather Makers is a reminder of how solidly established the basic science of climate change has been for some years now. A reminder, too, that the effects of the CO2 already in the atmosphere are still working their way slowly through the system. And a reminder of how accessible all this information has been to the lay public, carrying with it the concomitant sad reminder that many in public life who are perfectly capable of understanding the science have excused themselves the responsibility.

Australia is fortunate to have Flannery as a prominent citizen. He hasn’t stopped with his book. He continues to pursue the issue of climate change in the public arena. When the book was written there was still a feeling that though consequences were building they were still some distance off. If that provided any comfort it doesn’t any more. The Arctic sea ice melting alone has put paid to that. These days Flannery’s message is “now or never”. (I hope to review his book of that title when it is published in coming months.)  In this October 2008 interview you can hear him explain the urgency that is now upon us and discuss the actions that must be taken. The compass and intellectual depth of his thinking is very apparent in his conversation with Robert Manne. May he carry weight at the political levels where crucial decisions must now be made.

Afterword:

For the sake of completeness I will mention here that the third book of the trio which formed my introduction to the science of climate change was James Lovelock’s Revenge of Gaia. I won’t be reviewing it on Hot Topic as I have since reviewed his later book The Vanishing Face of Gaia here.  But in the earlier book Lovelock seemed to me to leave open hopeful possibilities of which we hear much less from him these days. I’ll repeat here the final paragraph of a short review I did for the Waikato Times back then:

The book is compelling reading, packed with intelligent insights, written in elegant and clear prose. Despair and hope jostle each other disconcertingly through its pages and Lovelock doesn’t declare for either. His prime concern is to warn us of the seriousness of the danger we have put ourselves in, though the reader may take some solace from the fact that he is also prepared to entertain possible ways of lessening the perils if only we will accept that the earth is not ours to do with as we will.

It is interesting that the figure of Lovelock often hovers in Flannery’s book and in the interview linked to above. Flannery is less pessimistic than Lovelock, but he acknowledges the wisdom of the older man’s sense of the inter-relatedness of things, and concedes that if things haven’t yet got as bad as Lovelock thinks, they aren’t too far off if we don’t soon change our ways.