Overland editor Jeff Sparrow has a great piece in Crikey today, reflecting on the significance of Christopher Monckton’s tour of Australia. If you’re not signed up, I’d strongly urge you to take out a trial subscription to read the whole thing.
Sparrow examines how the ground for a populist upsurge of climate change denialism among “the old, the white and the angry” was well prepared by the Howard era culture wars.
Once upon a time, the Liberal Party, an organisation temperamentally suited, after all, to hierarchy, accorded an almost royal deference to Big Science. Menzies presided over an Australia that wondered at atom splittings and Sputnik launchings, and not in the sceptical sense of that word but with genuine awe, with the mysteries expounded by clipboard-carrying oracles understood as evidencing the remarkable advances of the modern age.
Under Howard, however, the party embraced a populist anti-elitism, in which the instincts of ordinary folk always trumped the hoity-toity pronouncements of over-educated know-it-alls. Throughout the culture wars, the high falutin’ elitists in their inner-city apartments, those whining postmodernists confounding the common sense of you and me and the bloke next door, were a perennial punching bag for the Liberals and their mouthpieces.
The climate debate thus arrived with an oppositional script already well-prepared: on the one hand, the fancy-dancing, silver-tongued scientists and ideologues, with their incomprehensible graphs and statistical charts; on the other, the hard-working traditional Australians forced to feel bad about SUVs and air travel by self-righteous scolds.
Slapping down some scientific poindexter became, then, a reflexive defence of values associated with the ’50s, even as it manifested an attitude to the research establishment that Menzies would have found incomprehensible.
He’s also spot on in honing in on the fact that rational argument is incapable of shifting the views of denialists (much as the apparatus of knowledge has to be mimicked with graphs and charts); a mindset driven by affect, emotion and ressentiment, a perceived assault on a way of living and anti-rationalism is by definition immune to persuasion. After all, the frame of ‘the people v. the elites’ rules out the canons of evidence based debate by definition – if you can do that, then you’re one of the dreaded over-educated, latte-sipping tribe.
It is necessary to continue to argue within the rationalist, scientific paradigm, but it’s also vital to recognise that we are talking about two very distinct and opposed modes of being in the world and that the twain will rarely meet. The disjunction between magical thinking and scientific reasoning reinscribes itself because those who are trained in the latter are very often unaware that it is a rare and highly learned skill. The very practice of learning to think rationally naturalises it; and disguises the fact that it is an artifice constructed by human endeavour rather than ‘human nature’. This, then, circles around to the recreation of a feeling of social distance from those who don’t live in the worldview of science.
And that’s what causes a lot of the communicative failures that occur again and again, when incommensurable discourses clash. In fact, respect for science is grounded in status distinctions, as well as concomitant knowledge differentiation, and the erosion of the acceptance of authority pervasive throughout the lifeworld of late modernity erodes the naturalisation of such distinctions, and allows them to be politicised as a cultural war between elites and the folk(s). When you’re at war, dialogue has died.
At the more mundane level of electoral politics, though, all is not lost, because the two opposed constellations of forces are both small minorities within the populace as a whole. (Those who claim to speak “for the people” are also an elite social formation, of sorts.)
Sparrow, again:
Abbott thus faces a ticklish dilemma. On the one hand, the deniers bring a passion that an Opposition sorely needs. On the other hand, the climate sceptics teeter on the verge of overt hostility to the very establishment that the Liberal Party needs to win over. Populists, after all, despise and mistrust not only greenies and EU commissars but Big Media and Big Business.
The Liberal Party, well, not so much.
John Howard managed — most of the time — to present himself simultaneously as a populist and a man of the establishment. Perhaps Abbott can do the same. But it doesn’t seem likely, at least partly because the rhetorical tenor of the sceptics has grown so shrill.
NB: Related post.
Surely the key to the ‘cultural politics’ of anti-science is to work out what people are afraid of? In politics, once you know what people fear, you control them. Howard understood this in 2001 (Boat People!) and 2004 (Interest Rates!).
What are the magical thinkers afraid of? Is it:
Greenies!
Scientists!
The Future!
Bills!
Crime!
Hybrids!
Taxes!
Solar Panels!
Commies who are now Greenies!
New World Order!
World Government!
…
???
Fear is all Tony Abbott’s got, and he’s got a few months to figure it out. I’d say time is agin ‘ ‘im.
I think Monckton is actually doing everyone a favor except the old, white, angry people you are referring to, who are probably unchangeable anyway. What he’s doing is exposing many of the anti-science people for what they really are — people that are willing to believe in essentially anything, including a raving loony. This would allow anyone with even a hint of rationality to work out that the judgment of those people is simply so poor that they are not worth listening to on any matter. In this respect, if you don’t know much about the climate or climate physics (and I imagine many people don’t), it’s very hard to evaluate reasonable science from deliberate misinformation, so you are obliged to rely on expert opinion. Alternatively, it is very easy to distinguish between someone who believes that climate change is a global communist conspiracy and reality, and thus very easy to work out the type of person willing to believe and parrot anything. In this respect, I think he is important for electoral politics, because he is basically helping identify some of those less able to evaluate information well in our parliament. My bet is that he actually causes the Libs to lose votes because of this, even though his cheer squad is so loud.
Great piece, and I broadly agree with the analysis of the ‘anti-elitisim’ phenomenon.
However, as ive argued before – the denialists will lose on this new ‘popular’ ground as well. In a sense, the rise of popular belief in AGW has never (unforutantely) been ‘about the science’ as much as we might hope. Its been about ordinary people’s gut feelings that something was wrong, and had changed, and might get worse, all voer the globe – gut feelings all then reinforced by scientific consensus.
Thats why we mustnt get spooked by Monckton’s travelling sideshow. They are losing on their preferred ground as well.
What HAS happened is that the political failure of Copenhagen (which has not changed the science one iota) has given them tempororay sucour, and taken the wind out of a few sails. But it wll blow again.
Frabjkly, people’s views on these questions have much more to do with whether they’ve just been through a hell of a summer or not. Not whether some goggle-eyed freak gets 250 pre-existing coverts to denialism to show up for a dodgy powerpoint show.
@2 and 3 – yep, agree with that!
The retreat of the right from reason back to a convenient embrace of folk wisdom allied with a resentful distrust of liberal cosmopolitan elites is not just an Australian phenonemon. Witness what has become of the US Republican Party, which is now shell of its former self inhabited by a wildly irrational far right .
We are seeing in Australia an aping of the Fox News phenonemon, a fear-induced response to rapid social, poltical, technological, demographic and environmental change exploited by an array of conservative forces with different agendas.
So here we see various groups within the Coalition – the agents of the resource industry, the rusted-on advocates of rural socialism, the nativist opponents of immigration, the prosletyisers of religious fundamentalism and ’50s morality, the frightened monarchists and Anglophiles – all feeding off fear of change and distrust of “experts”.
Funnily enough, nowhere in this mix (or least nowhere prominent) are any advocates of Howard’s neo-liberal economic agenda. If anything, the Coalition has moved back to the statist, protectionist and interventionist paternalism of Menzies.
Yet, Turnbull, the would-be moderniser of the Liberal Party, lost the leadership ballot by just a single vote, which makes one think why the moderate, liberal and reasoned end of the Liberal Party has so quickly gone to water and surrendered to the party’s far-right.
The irony for me is the when it comes to post modernism the Lib’s under Howard were the masters.
The odd thing is that ‘anti-elitism’ is being led by a hereditary peer, who then goes on about a possible loss of democracy while still using his title. But I suppose given the even odder views about the royal family, this is likely to be overlooked.
Manulevu @7, Now that was a very good observation, Manu!
Apparently screwy principles.
Since when was peerage “democratic”? Furthermore, isn’t it elitist, using a peerage at every opportunity to give oneself “gravitas”?
Perhaps “big fish” in little ponds would tend to fear being part of a much bigger pond, where their bigness would be accordingly diminished?
Thanks Mark that is a very interesting take on the matter. I’ve watched in amazement as Lord Monty Python has been trotted around the place and presented as a credible critic of both science and what appears to be a genuine developing mass movement for significant change.
I’d agree with Lefty E’s comment above that most people who accept the reality of AGW haven’t engaged deeply with the science and that “Its been about ordinary people’s gut feelings that something was wrong…”. The point here is that there has been a critique of capitalism/industrialism building since the Romantic’s rejection of industrialism. It underwent a major change up the US and elsewhere in the 1960’s (Charles Reich’s “Greening America” and Carsons’ “Silent Spring” and so on) and has been gaining momentum ever since. This momentum has been fed by a sense that all of the factors contributing to the global assault on nature would inevitably create some form or another of a crisis but no-one knew exactly what. Well, the what appears to be AGW. People know that there is no such thing as a free lunch.
This increasing concern has not been fed merely by critical thinking and reading. It reflects ecological and human experiential reality. That is our trump card. The assault on nature is real as is the increaingly accurate ecological accounting of the cost of our modes of living.
Consequently it appears to be the case that we are witnessing the self destruction of a range of social forces who are hanging themselves out to dry in an extremely public way. If Lord Bereft is the best they can do, along with Jonesy and other associated snakes, then we need to hold our nerve and keep our powder dry. The massive quasi-totalitarian media assault that Murdoch has launched in the US and that his agents in Australia have also been running will not be sustainable without evidence and what evidence they dig up or concoct up will not fit with the observable realities of daily living on which many people base their judgements.
Exit the lunar right perhaps?
5#Mr Denmore
“why the moderate, liberal and reasoned end of the Liberal Party has so quickly gone to water and surrendered to the party’s far-right”.
Perhaps it has to do with the fact that the Libs are cash strapped and some of their resource connected big donors are economically sympathetic to the ideas that Monckton et al peddle…visualise tables being thumped etc – pretty unnerving for your aerage Lib MP in marginal seat
Anthony Nolan @9: “It reflects ecological and human experiential reality. That is our trump card.”
We could all hope that you are right, and the tidal wave of evidence eventually swamps the small backwash ripples of “counter-evidence”.
Unfortunately, there is a problem with leaving the outcome to “human experiential reality”:
“The scientists have measured a large subsea earthquake – expected tsunami coming!”
“Bah, I’m waiting til I can see it with my own eyes, before I take any action”
I’m worried. I barely survived the Howard years. Stop and think about how he managed to change our world in 11 years. The destruction of multi-culturalism, the reversal of Indigenous land rights (remember those?), a reasonably fair and equitable social security system ( remember that term?), reasonable funding for public schools, health , education, Very little middle class welfare. And so on.
We have every reason to be the crazies expressing an angry desire for going back to the past. The folks attending Monkton’s rave are actually in the ascendancy – Rudd certainly listens to them: intervention, welfare quarantining , no gay marriage, detention centres, stifling republican debate, dissembling on human rights, crappy ETS. They have nothing to be cranky about, we do. And I have no doubt that Abbott and Jocye could easily win back govt – look at the US debacle right now with the return of the GOP. Just because they are crazy doesn’t mean they aren’t trouble. Big time.
10 @ Fascinated, you’re certainly right that the big mining polluters will be lapping up Monckton’s nonsense for purely selfish reasons and that the Liberals will be doing their masters’ bidding, but the resource sector is not the beginning and end of the business lobby.
My sense is many in business (including some longer-term thinkers in mining) are aghast at the Coalition’s devolution away from sound, reasoned and liberal economic and social policy towards this insane, head-in-sand anti-globalist paranoia. The thought of Barnaby Joyce in the finance portfolio will have chief executives (especially those in non-resource based export industries) lying awake at night.
The coalition is tacking this populist tack because they can’t differentiate themselves on industrial relations anymore. And that’s the same reason that business won’t automatically back the Libs. With Malcolm, they had a real shot. Without him, there only hope is corralling the loony vote.
By turning their backs on science, the Libs are trashing whatever decent legacy they had left.
Some readers here may know that I have lately joined battle on behalf of AGW at Catallaxy, only to be accused more than once of being a clandestine LP operative, despite the fact I comment here rarely, and even then often in disagreement. Having said that, I have to say:
a. I think the Howard anti-elitism/culture war analysis was always a bit overblown, and to an extent, some of the stuff that was being reacted against by Liberal supporters (like me) actually deserved attack at the time. Remember that postmodernism was more of a nuisance back then than it is now, and Labor’s overly precious attitudes to many issues had been entrenched for many years of Hawke/Keating government and deserved a shake up.
But I can see that the Overland article analysis makes some sense in explaining the way many AGW skeptics just rely on a “gut reaction” and show little sign of considering the scientific responses to the common skeptic arguments. It’s like a sentiment that had a purpose at the time has outlived its usefulness, and now mistakenly thinks it has found a worthwhile target.
b. Mark: I gotta say, that paragraph starting “And that’s what causes a lot …etc” is a really crook example of English expression. You don’t have to write like it’s for your PhD all the time, do you?
Sorry, the Crikey article I meant..
Conrad, I am afraid that you are wrong. Afraid in tbe sense that I would like to believe this but can’t.
To win the war, deniers (like Antivaxxers, like Chiropractors, like “intelligent designers”) just need volume and repetition. If they get this then they can create “debate” where there is no real debate about the facts. The content doesn’t really matter, it is permission to say that “there are two sides to the story and I believe ”
A busy Mum who gets upset when she hears her kid’s future is in danger and wants to get on with watching Home and Away is going to be quick to vote for the “no problem” school. Particularly if her husband may have to sell the Jet-Ski and Pajero. To do this she needs a “debate” to rationalize what she wants to believe. She is a decent person who would walk through fire for her kids but can not judge between good and bad science.
A few guys on TV who are standing next to that Nice Mr. Abbott give her the free pass to go back to sleep.
This means that Poindexters need to grow a pair and get out there and start ripping some new bum holes. Not to create noise (which is counter productive) but to try to shame the commentariat into not giving these clowns the airspace to win by default.
BTW Mark, I think the bloody whiney postmodernists are part of the problem. If everything is a “point of view” why can’t I have mine ?
I agree angela. For me the Howard era shows what an incredibly conservative society Australia really is. A lot of Rudd’s success seems to have resulted from his strategy of not differentiating himself too much from that conservatism – just removing its nastier edges.
elise @11: I wouldn’t disagree with you. However, the tidal wave of evidence will also be real, sensuous evidence as well as scientific data. While there are many AGW sceptics in the bush I’ve never met any in the SES or the volunteer bush fire brigades. Watch as much of Lord Mumblebum as you can because it is just amazingly cheering to see.
I am endlessly amused by the fear and loathing from AGW true believers when ever anyone puts their heads above the parapets and says that they doubt any aspect of the liturgy.
A while ago I began to realise that essentially the science just does not matter as much as the politics. Essentially AGW orthodoxy claims that to “save the planet” we have to drastically reduce carbon emissions, Given the nature of humanity and our propensity to argue an squabble of the most insignificant things just how on earth do any of you true believers actually thing that this can be achieved at a global level?
It is just not going to happen So all or the argy bargy about the science begins to look like arguments about angels dancing on the head of a pin.
The voters out there are waking up to this salient fact.Which is what makes The coalition policy so much more saleable to the electorate because everything that they propose will have a clear effect and it also has benefits to the nation even if (shock horror) the sceptics are actually right.
And here’s an example of an angry old white denalist we prepared earlier.
Iain
Your sneer at the science as liturgy is surely ironic, given that this predigested pap you’ve uttered is very much the agnotological liturgy.
The candour is admirable, but you need not have bothered as your attitude is transparent. The agnotologists are waging culture war with this issue as their cause celebre.
It may well be that your lot cause enough trouble to ruin in particular the life chances of people in the latter half of this century, but we mean to make this particular piece of psychopathology as unlikely as possible.
Your post changes not a thing about that.
I think you are broadly right when you talk of a clash of discourses, although I’d say it’s more of a Tower of Babel situation. I think it is akin to Dawkins statement that that religion is incomprehensible within the discourse of science. The climate change denial and age phenomenon intersects the anti-elites/anti-science discourse however. Plimer is the prime example, highly trained, has privileged access to knowledge and is old. He’s not an retired accountant from Terry Hills who’s secretary of the bowls club and who thinks Bega is an exotic holiday location.
Tony Abbott has a long track record of ignoring or twisting scientific evidence to suit his own political agenda. As health minister he paid lip service to the importance of evidence based medicine, but in practice he ignored the evidence or distorted it when it came to making decisions on matters such as the (non)approval of PET scanners, RU486 and the value of an an abortion counselling service. And yet one of his favourite tricks was to accuse his critics (The Lancet) of ignoring the evidence and acting out of political prejudice.
“I am endlessly amused by…”
See this is your problem I.Hall. You’re too easily amused, which is a characteristic of immaturity – as is the inability to face reality.
So you keep on believing that it’s all a hoax and let the grown-ups get on with it.
Its alright Ian nurse will be along soon.
Agree with Angela.
Australia rewards accountants and stock market speculators better than science and technology which has improved our standard of living
“BTW Mark, I think the bloody whiney postmodernists are part of the problem. If everything is a “point of view” why can’t I have mine ?”
The whole “postmodernists” thing is just way overblown by the rightwingers. It’s an architectural style and a branch of literary criticism FFS.
Well, as others have noted, its modern scientific method that has allowed crotchety old white blokes to live long enough to become denialists.
Watch those statins, they’re from the same people who brought you TEH WORLD GUVAMINT!
I think Mr Rudd doesn’t want to scare the horses on any issue.
I think Iain Hall is pretty close to the mark – far from being the one who’s unable to face reality, most of the commentators here are living in fantasy if they think the world is going to get its act together to halt climate change
The focus on Monckton and the so called ‘denialists’ (with all its echoes of david Irving) misses the point completely. Monckton is a clown and a sideshow – anyone who takes him seriously is probably also a clown and a sideshow.
The science is in – the climate is changing – we’re going to have to deal with it.
The reason that Abbott and the Liberals are gaining traction is not because of a rise in ‘denialism’ but because of a rise in pragmatic, realistic fatalism. Copenhagen was a farce – as it was always going to be. Global action was never going to be delivered through that forum. Rudd and Wong were trying to sell the Australian public an impossible dream. Unfortunately for them, Australians have now realised that there is absolutely no-sense in us crushing our economy under an ETS if it has no hope of making one jot of difference to climate change.
We now need to take a no-regrets approach reducing CO2. That’s what Abbott is trying to sell – we’ll try to cut C02 – but delivered through carrots rather than sticks.
I think it’s kind of weird that denialists use words like religion, faith, liturgy, etc as pejoratives as though they can paint science as some kind of sky fairy worship. It suggests to me that they are projecting their own insecurities.
Andrew – While I agree that concerted Global action on climate change was never a real possibility, I find your assessment of Abott’s policy lacking in its ignorance of Abbot’s ‘cynical pragmatism’. Blind freddy can see that his ‘policy’ is a sop to the public to counter the reality that he has no principles position on climate change at all. And, of course, he learned this sort of cynical pragmatic politics at the feet of the master cynic – Howard.
Andrew:
“The science is in – the climate is changing – we’re going to have to deal with it.”
There are no environmentalists anywhere who would disagree with this statement. Amelioration of the causes of AGW would therefore be a good idea merely in order to contain the damge, I suggest. So what do you propose as practical expressions of “realistic fatalism” and your “no regrets” approach? How would you go about setting objectives for amelioration?
Moreover, no regrets for whom? The poor of the world? Our kids who will inherit a very objectively degraded and threatening environment? Or no regrets for those capable and willing to continue to guzzle more than their share of the earth’s bounty? Which is it?
Ignore Mr Hall, Fran. He’s a troll, and not a particularly bright one.
@Andrew
“The science is in – the climate is changing – we’re going to have to deal with it.”
I believe there is considerable evidence to support this assertion however:
“crushing our economy under an ETS”
Could you provide the supporting evidence for this claim? Otherwise I’d say you were talking rather loudly out of your arse which is not going to help the first problem you identified.
“the old, the white, and the angry”
What an odious formulation. You should be ashamed for lending it your approval.
Seriously, now: if that isn’t pure thuggishness, then frankly I don’t know what could be.
I’d advise you to take a bit of time to meditate on the thing. You’re very intelligent, you surely know better than that.
Yeah, Abbott’s position is fundamentally dishonest. But he pretends to hold it because a clear majority of Australians support action on climate change.
The only people living in a dream world are those who think this issue is going away as a result of the recent political failure at Copenhagen.
See you in Mexico 2010.
Japerz, it was shorthand. We all knew who was meant.
It’s an accurate description of Lord Monckton’s audience, as far as I can tell.
I’m not convinced the Republican War On Science narrative applies to conservatism in this country. Bourgeois politics here are still largely predicated on the self-preservation of rational bourgeios values, the craziness of the post-WASP American Right electoral coalition hasn’t been taken that much to heart IMO. Those families with children in the GPS system are already vulnerable to pumping out little class traitors who might vote Labor (or, gasp, Green!) the Libs can’t afford to get too anti-intellectual, not in a responsible parliamentary democracy where almost everyone votes.
Heh, nanny statism in action (everybody wins a prize just for showing up!)
The dreamer in me is glad Tone wants to swaddle us all in cotton wool.
I’ll have my automatic prize in the shape of (uncosted) Fairtrade Mung Beans, thank you, Professor Nanny Abbott.
“it’s an accurate description…”
No it isn’t. Even if (not that I monitor such things) the chap’s audience consisted entirely of old angry Caucasians (and even if so, why would it matter?), then, well, the accurate account would be that his audience was full of elderly agitated Caucasian individuals — viz., not *the* old, *the* white, and *the* angry.
(To say nothing of the further ramifications of such usage.)
And they say leftists pride themselves on their taste for nuance.
C’mon, Mark, everybody knows that Monckton has a big young hipster audience.
For instance, Tim Blair is a Monckton fan, and he’s met John Malkovich, who has a name that sounds a lot like Milla Jovovich.
Climate change denial=/=the new sexy.
“And they say leftists pride themselves on their taste for nuance.”
Who says? If you guys on the right can do it so can those on the left (when the mood takes them, it’s called slumming it, for you guys it’s a personality trait.)
“if you guys on the right…”
??? Who’s he talking to?
Just b/c I disagree with leftists doesn’t put me on any “right” that I can recognize.
@42 – I’ve had a beer with Tim Blair in my time. But I didn’t see Milla Jovovich!
Anthony Nolan – the point is that there is no ‘amelioration’ that Australia can do that will make any difference at all to climate change without a coordinated global response. So the ‘no regrets’ is most definitely for us in Australia today – not the global poor, or tomorrows generation. How on earth is it going to help the global poor if we start paying more for energy in Australia today?
If the globe reacts – great, let’s follow along, but it is ludicrous and ‘delusional’ for us to act in isolation.
patrickb – maybe ‘crush’ was too strong a word (like the loss of Himalayan glaciers is maybe too strong an effect of AGW?
) – but isn’t the whole point of an ETS to increase the cost of energy so that we use less of it? Why would I want to do that if there’s no benefit (if no global response)?
Staying on point (and thread) – the reason the Libs are gaining traction is not because of idiots like Monckton getting an audience (he’s not – and you’d do well not to get distrcted by him) – but becuase the inevitable failure at Copenhagen means that we need to save our ETS dollars for adaption rather than amelioration.
Frankly – I think our last hope is if the US and Chinese come to some kind of bilateral agreement on what to do about AGW – it won’t be solved by an ineffectual body like the UN.
However, I was once in the same room as Maggie Cheung. But it was more of a film than a climate change denialist event. No mention made of world government conspiracies, or wacky assertions about HIV/AIDS either. And no LaRouchites propagandising outside.
@44 – ‘lefties’ rather than ‘leftists’, please; much more nuanced.
“doesn’t put me on any “right” that I can recognize”
Hey, maybe you’ve got cognitive issues?
“but isn’t the whole point of an ETS to increase the cost of energy so that we use less of it?”
Is this going to crush the economy? Would you say that the rise in oil prices constitutes a rise in the cost of energy? Has the economy been crushed, or even slightly bent? Do you actually have a plausible story?
@49 – which raises a good question, Patrickb, given that power has increased in price at a rate higher than the CPI for some years now, if I’m not mistaken.
The old, the white and the angry. It’s a dog whistle, j_p_z.
Seems it works.
By the way I saw the TV footage of the mtg – and a lot of them were indeed old and white. They didn’t look very angry however. More just excited to have a night out for a change.
(Caucasian? We don’t use that type of language here!)
Yes, I think Sparrow was being a tad provocative. Which appears, as you say, wbb, to have worked. And that phrase, I dare say, has a different cultural resonance in the USA.
patrickb,
Let’s keep it simple –
Do you believe that we should put the price of energy up in Australia regardless of what the rest of world does?
If so – do you think it will help ameliorate the effects of climate change?
If it doesn’t help with climate change – why would we do it?
#48: “much more nuanced”
Yeah but I can’t help noticing that you’ve studiously ignored mine @ #41.
Would that be a tacit admission of… nuance?
Andrew – At base Abbot and those of his ilk dont accept there is a problem so they are basically living in an alternative reality. Based on past performance I, for one, wouldnt expect much action on climate change once his ‘pseudo-policy’ has served the purpose and he wins office – laissez faire market forces will rule okay as usual.
@54 – I don’t particularly want to get drawn into this, j_p_z, since it’s at best tangential to the post.
I’ve seen Monckton several times on TV in the last few days, but why doesn’t the media also mention the fact that Monckton was accompanied on his tour by our very own Ian Plimer? So what if Plimer was exposed on the ABC as a scientific fraud?
Yes, putting up the price of coal generated electricity will reduce global warming, Andrew@53. Just like it will do in every other country that does the same.
Australia is about the 16th highest CO2 polluter. There are 185 countries with less reason to act than us on your reasoning.
The world will act on CO2 pollution. We will be better off staying near the front of that curve. You shouldn’t believe the nonsense that we are getting right out in front on this however. We are nowhere near.
Adamite – I think you’re still missing the point. For clarity – There is nothing we in Australia can do to ameliorate climate change if the US and China don’t do anything. Given that inescapable fact – anything we do in Australia needs to be done carefully. The ETS is hard to sell as a ‘careful’ response. Abbott is playing the politics astutely. Rudd/Wong misread the tealeaves on Copenhagen. The turn-around is nothing to do with denialism – the vast majority realise climate change is a (global) problem. We just don’t want to go down the ETS path and its ‘great big new tax’ if it won’t solve the problem
Mark — well after this one I’ll leave it be, since I don’t wish to derail your thread; but my argument is that it’s not in fact tangential, but rather that the various species of thuggishness (NB, not ‘provocative’; thuggish) which we have seen revolving around the issue are indeed rather germane.
But that’ll be it from me on the topic. Oops, here’s me bus. Cheers.
@60 – I’ll leave it be now, too, j_p_z, but I do want to place on record the fact that I think “thuggishness” is hyperbolic and not sustained by any interpretation of Sparrow’s formulation that makes any sense to me as a reader of his article.
If the US and China and India and Europe and Russia and Japan don’t act on Carbon pollution then we are stuffed. Having an ETS will be the least of our worries.
If the world does act on Global Warming then having the CPRS up and running will help us adjust to the new playing field.
And as a big rich polluter, for Australia to be able to go to the next COP with a reduction scheme in place, it will be a big help in sidelining the cynicism of the developing countries. Australia can contribute to setting the right conditions for the US and China being able to make an accord.
Denmark, for eg, plays a big role as an example to people in Australia. Australia can do the same for others. Setting examples amongst the “like-minded” helps allay US domestic concerns.
The world needs examples, and precedents and runs on the board. Australia can do all that. Or maybe not, if Andrew’s his narrow view prevails.
wbb @62 – good comments….. there is a lot of merit in what you say…..
Iain said something like the following on several occasions:
Cutting CO2 is a no regrets measure. Not only is it certain in the long run to make a difference to the speed and magnitude with which the results of climate change materialises, but the measures we would need to take pay us off locally here in the short to medium term, in cleaner air, cleaner water, more sustainable cities, less energy cost volatility, a slower rate of energy resource depletion, improved balance of trade etc …
Nonsense. Abbott has repudiated an approach that the last coalition government took to the electorate via Shergold’s report. Abbott has grabbed for a fascinator, to borrow Barnaby’s metaphor. He doesn’t care that it won’t cut CO2 in practice because he doesn’t believe that pollution-as-usual is wrong for the people he cares about. It’s vapid and disingenuous populist politics in the service of the elite.
There is simply no basis for thinking the amounts he says he is committing will be of even passing interest to anyone weighing whether to cut emissions or not. And since 60% of his cuts are in soil carbon and he has sworn no agricultural land will be touched, the possibility that any significant part can be covered this way, even assuming the costings would cover it.
I seriously doubt Abbott will be Coalition leader in August, and I find it utterly implausible that the Coalition could win an election on this platform. Nobody but the rusted on conservative nutbags will be promoting this policy with a straight face.
Perhaps the most amusing thing about Abbott’s approach is its explicit repudiation of market mechanisms on the basis that people don’t trust them, reject personal responsibility and prefer the government to hand out cash to people reluctant to abandon malfeasant conduct.
Were I Rudd, I’d be taking that to the bank for the election.
It will be interesting to see what model the US adopts when it legislates for the 17% cut on 2005 levels by 2020. That may impact greatly on the debate here.
Incidentally, EU has committed to 20% cuts on 1990 levels by 2020 (and in the EU emission levels were higher then than today).
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/02/01/2806762.htm?site=news
Where do people get this idea that the rest of the world isn’t acting? And that we’d be “going alone”? Or that Australia is at *any* risk of going “out front”?
Dont know if anyone actually cares in the MSM, but neither statement is in fact true. Sure they aren’t acting quickly enough, etc, but how did this debate get so bleached of actual international comparative reporting?
Lefty E,
You can blame the delusionists Rudd & Wong for that…. they talked up Copenhagen as the global response (must have an ETS to take there etc) – so when it so spectacularly failed, the msm interpreted that as ‘no global response’.
Andrew@63 – are you sure you don’t want to retract that comment? I think being nice is against the commenting rules. (shucks – now I ‘ll have to withdraw that crack about “narrow”)
Some hints in this article, Lefty E, on the way the legislation in the US Senate is shaping up (being authored, incidentally, by Lieberman and the South Carolina Republican Lindsay Graham as well as John Kerry):
http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2010/02/03/03climatewire-obama-says-senate-may-drop-cap-and-trade-pas-21189.html
I think the answer to that is that the media framed last year’s negotiations purely in terms of domestic politics (ie Rudd wants Copenhagen to succeed, Liberals don’t) and actually reporting what is happening doesn’t fit neatly into their preferred “narratives”. I saw bugger all, for instance, in the Australian press about the commitments made in January internationally.
You’re quite right that it’s simply untrue to say that nothing is happening internationally.
China will not agree to external independent verification of diddly squat.
India is committed to dragging itself into the developed world.
The US will not get any sort of effective climate change legislation through in the next 2 years at least, if ever.
Why wont the ALP face up to the reality?
Indeed, LE. It first really got going when Gore came out and kicked off this thing as a mainstream issue. John Howard repeated, ad nauseam, the line that China was going to negate anything we could do here. If he said it once he said it a hundred times. A couple of years later he had a policy of his own – but the damage was done.
Apparently Climate Change is all China’s problem. And the rest of us just need to suck it up.
Go on, admit it Razor. You’d never heard that the EU had committed to 20% cuts by 2020 a week ago.
Thats an economy slightly larger than the US.
Our media has a serious problem. Its hopeless on this issue.
@53
Well given that you didn’t aswer my question I guess I’ll have to answer it for you. No the economy wasn’t crushed or even dented. And remember that’s a real answer to a real question, not a speculative one to a hypothetical so it much more likely to win an argument.
Now to you other hypothetical question, viz:
“Do you believe that we should put the price of energy up in Australia regardless of what the rest of world does?”
I’d have to ask the obvious, is that what we are planning to do and if so can you let us see you copies of the plan? And I presume that you realise that the “price of energy” varies according to geo-political concerns and the type of energy source you’re talking about (inter alia). As far as I know there isn’t a generic source of energy that has a world wide benchmark price. You’re not writing for Sen Joyce are you?
Andrew, of all the flaws on your argument, the largest is probably the claim that Abbott’s strategy involves only “no regrets” options. As the table on implicit cost of abatement in the policy document clearly shows, each of the options, whether that storing carbon in the soil, or trees, or subsidising solar panels, or paying generators that reduce their emissions, has an implicit cost in terms of cost per tonne of CO2 abated. Very few of the policies in the package could be classified as adaptation policies, they are nearly all abatement policies. They also need to be funded out of general tax revenue. They all have an opportunity and hence an economic costs.
Abbott is attempting (though DCC estimates suggest it won’t happen) to meet the same 5% target as Labor is. The important question is how to achieve that reduction most efficiently. On that score, a carbon tax or an ETS is almost certainly more efficient than the coalition’s policy.
So, if you really believe there is no point in Australia undertaking any abatement before the rest of the world, you should be just as critical of Abbott’s policy as Rudd’s. Both would be pointless in your scenario. The “great new tax” is just a red herring.
This has probably been mentioned on other threads, but power generators are unimpressed with Abbott’s magic potion because it is a short term fix only. They need to plan in terms of 40-50 years and surprisingly perhaps said that for them to do this they need a price on carbon.
In terms of international commitments, the ABC gave it a run on Monday. Frank Jotzo would be a hard marker, but he gave first prize to China against BAU.
But Erwin Jackson from the Climate Institute says the targets we have don’t add up to enough. He reckons they’ll give us 3.5C of warming, so there’s still a gulf between science and policy.
Here’s the same item written up nicely for ABC Online news.
“This has probably been mentioned on other threads, but power generators are unimpressed with Abbott’s magic potion because it is a short term fix only.”
This is a no brainer. The profitibility of investment in new generation capacity will depend crucially on future carbon prices and the mix of other incentives aimed at the energy sector. While generators cannot be given complete certainty, they do need to know what the rules of the game are likely to be and be given enough information to attach probabilities to various carbon price scenarios.
The coalition’s policy is a recipe for underinvestment in new energy capacity.
Yes, I linked to that on online ABC article above Brian – haven’t seen anything else about it, even on ABC TV.
Fran Barlow #21
No Farn i sneer at the AGW true believers who focus so hard on the theoretical minutiae but ignore the political rality that the cure they advocate just won’t get up.
You actually surprised me with a word that i have never heard off (emboldened above) but upon finding out what it means I think that you are entirely wrong My aim here is to point out that your focus and the focus of other believers in AGW entirely misplaced to suggest that anything about the science matters if you can not get your cure to happen politically. Doing so may demonstrate the purity of your belief but it won’t do anything to change the climate.
Adrian #24
You could not find a more level headed or mature individual than Moi and my amusement has nothing to do with AGW being a hoax, it is all about the wilful blindness of you AGW true believers to the global political reality.
David Allen #31
It is not science that I want to paint as anything it is those who think that as long as they have the science on their side that they will prevail. I am sceptical about many of the claims about AGW but even if you and your fellow believers are 110% right it means squat if you can’t get your cure up at the global level that you all claim is necessary. Take a lead from Warming believers like Bjorn Lomborg who suggests that we had better adapt rather than waste effort and money in futile attempts to ameliorate climate change.
Finally a very big Hat tip to Andrew for speaking such good sense and here is an example of the effect of a higher concentration of CO2 in the air that is actually good.
Cheers Comrades
Childish. And it’s this sort of attitude that’s going to lead to the denialists having the majority view come next election. Iain is in this case easily representative of the silent majority.
As for the jibe about rooms full of old rich angry white men…yes. Those who have the vote and the power to influence voting and who are the drivers of industry in this country.
So let’s just keep mocking fellow lefties! It worked taking Sir Joh down! And John Howard! And bringing us the Republic. Because being arrogant and dismissive and elitist protects us from strawman arguements that we are arrogant and dismissive and elitist.
Iain
Your persistent resort to terminology suggesting that the science is a matter of faith (liturgy, true believers) do not permit you to claim that you don’t dispute the science. You are now seeking an intellectual figleaf so that you can run mutually exclusive propositions. You want the metaphoric equivalent of a permit for Darlinghurst Rd and “the Wall” at the same time, but you can’t be in two places with two sets of clients at the same time.
If you want to dally with Lomborg you can’t be in bed with Plimer at the same time.
Nobody who accepts the science suggests that anthropogenic climate change will produce pernicious effects over every ecosystem. It’s certainly possible that some will be unaffected or even improve. It is the balance that concerns us, especially when human societies are established on the basis of ecosystems existing for the entire holocene era and when human bopulation is headed towards 9 billion. Throwing a wild card into that creates utterly unknowable problems on an unknwoable scale on timelines too fast for us to adapt without major damage.
As the the politics of the matter, it is certainly clear that there are enough humans who are driven by enough angst, anomie, ennui, avarice and whimsy to do enough damage to policy to ensure a series of roiling disasters. Marginalising the impact of this subversive political conduct is a challenge for all of us who wish to secure human welfare. Given how little margin for error we have, I very much accept that we may fail, but the arguments for doing everything feasible to minimise the future damage are utterly compelling, at least for anyone who thinks the lives of humans one will probably never meet are worth protecting.
Ian, when you have people like Hans Joachim Schellnhuber of Potsdam telling you (and Angela Merkel) that BAU may see enough food being grown to feed only a billion people by 2100 and you understand the implications of a metre or so of sea level rise (it could well be more) you should realise that adaptation rather than mitigation is just not an option.
It is the responsibility of policy makers, our elected representatives, to do the right thing, not scientists and others who appreciate what they are saying. To change the message to one that policy makers want to hear and is convenient to the electoral cycle as they see it is reprehensible.
LO @ 77, when I said “surprisingly” I was being ironic. Abbott and Co have been rubbishing the notion of 2050 targets. This is either stupidity, or, more likely, political cynicism in the extreme.
Ok tssk, you go on engaging with people who are blindly impervous to logic, scientific evidence, the reality of what is happening to the climate, and the future of our planet, and see where it gets you.
These people are beneath contempt as far as I’m concerned, and part of the problem with ‘the left’ is that we waste time and energy engaging with these fools, under the mistaken belief that they represent a sizeable minority, or that they will respond to our attempts at persuuasion. Neither is true and to seriosly engage with them is to give the credence and credibility that they don’t deserve.
There is a desperate need for some sort of grass roots action on climate change, for those who call themselves lefties to actually do something. Engaging with hard core denialists on an internet blog might make you feel better but all it means is that they have achieved their ends by diverting what could have been a worthwhile discussion.
Sorry about the typos.
adrian, you are right. Outta here for now.
“Iain is in this case easily representative of the silent majority.”
No he’s not. He actually represents a nothing at all, he’s simply trolling.
The majority of people, according to opinion polls, are in agreement with the proposition that the climate is being adversely affected by human activity. There is majority support for some form of mitigation of these detrimental effects. The denialists have amplified a slight waning in this support in an attempt to create the impression that there is a silent majority in support of their position. This is pure propaganda.
There is a consistent pattern in denialist speak in which people who accept majority scientific opinion regarding AGW are described as “believers” which thereby positions the denialists as “non-believers”. This is the language of faith. By using it the denialists seek to incoporate those who base their judgements on rational, scientifically validated facts into their world view in which facts only exist in so far as one “believes” in them.
Accepting the truth of scientifically validated facts, however, is not a matter of subjective choice. The idea that irrational subjective beliefs like creationism or AGW scepticism deserve “equal time” in the media or equal consideration simply because there are people who “believe” them is in fact the most dangerous attack on modernity that I’ve yet seen. Those who hold that they have a right to air their views and influence or even determine public policy on the basis of their subjective beliefs are effectively pre-moderns and therefore the deepest enemies of modern western civilisation.
Belief in God? Keep it to yourself in a modern, secular democratic society. Belief in creationism? Prove it. Belief that humans have not caused GW? Prove it by producing a plausible counter hypothesis to AGW.
Dear oh dear. Run out of ideas, the denialists/skeptics/whateverthey’recallingthemselvesthismonth. So Lord Plankton has come to feed on the local bacteria. There’s an idea for a game hmm…
If you’re not part of the solution, you’re just part of the problem. Climate change is a massive opportunity for many sectors, energy not least. Except it won’t happen here, because apparently the angry white stupid men are running the Australian business world, so it will happen elsewhere and they can charge us what they like for it, in some cases they already are. Do you really think the big energy and transport corporations are sitting on their hands waiting for the all-clear from you? Idiots. Enjoy your black-armband view of climate change; I’ve nothing but contempt for those who sit on their arses expecting the world to do the changing because it’s “too hard”.
Dont worry about denialists folks – the vast majority of Australians believe in AGW, and want something done about it. Thats clear from the 2009 Lowy survey (even though the poll noted a drop 10% drop in priority, and the media spin was on that, the big numbers were plain).
What we need to worry about it building change from those popular convictions.
And sorry Tssk, but I dont think pandering to ignorance is a good strategy. In any case, most people believe the science becuase they feel something is wrong with the climate. Not becuase they are inclined to listen to boffins.
Your ’silent majority’ has been polled loads of times – they’;re concenred about gloabl warming. denialism is a fringe pursuit. Well-funded, sure, but a wholly unrepresentative elite.
Bloody elitist denialism!
I don’t know. I can see amongst my friends the denialists gaining traction. Part of it is human nature, the way we are wired. we get worried about future crisis for a short time and when it doesn’t happen, or happens slowly, people get bored and wander off.
You have to just try and do your own thing to contribute.
For instance, almost everyone in our block of units bought themsleves a plasma or an air con or both over summer. And in the following month we’ve lost power several times.
And noone will make the connection that our fuses keep blowing because we’re drawing in more power than the system was designed for.
No one will listen to reason. No one wants to cut back on their power use. And no one wants to shell out for a new fuse box.
And so we’re not buying an aircon or a big TV. We’re doing our bit by conserving as much power as humanly possible. It’s all you can do.
Adrian “Engaging with hard core denialists on an internet blog might make you feel better but all it means is that they have achieved their ends by diverting what could have been a worthwhile discussion”
Lefty E “Dont worry about denialists folks – the vast majority of Australians believe in AGW, and want something done about it.”
Absolutely. The problem is – that anyone who sticks their head up and questions any aspect the preferred ‘Green’ response to AGW immediately gets labelled a denialist and potshots are taken. Anyone who, say, questions whether an ETS is a good idea immediately gets put into a bucket with Monckton and gets labelled with perjorative labels like ‘denialist’. It’s difficult to have a ‘worthwhile discussion’ if all you are doing is calling people names!
Now without wanting to be too inflammatory – its analagous to the political debate in general in Australia. Along the political spectrum we have the left (Greens), centre-left (ALP), centre-right (Libs) and right (One Nation, Family First). As a semi-regular visitor to this site – my observation is that most commentors probably vote Green and have a lot of trouble distinguishing any of the views that are to the right of their own. They all get lumped together as ‘right wing wing nuts’ (or some such term).
It’s not a problem that exclusive to this site. It’s likewise very difficult to have a civilised discussion on sites like Tim Blair’s because any dissenting view from the site orthodoxy gets you labelled a latte lefty.
Frankly – maybe that’s the major limitation with blogs. They just don’t really lend themselves to constructive discussion – rather just as a forum for like-minded folk to reinforce their already strongly held views.
Iaian Halal is a narcissisistic contrararian trroll.
I can see the problem Andrew and conced you’ve a point. Nonetheless I cannot agree with your statement “centre-right (Libs) and right (One Nation, Family First)”. The Libs are now the legitimate right and those to their right are the “woof-woof” (does somersaults on command) right.
Andrew said:
Speaking as someone who does that here regularly, I don’t agree. I favour resort to nuclear power, which is a very long way from what one might call the green consensus. While I’ve copped some flak for that (“nukedupe” comes to mind) nobody has called me a denialist, because I’ve been an unambiguous proponent of the mainstream science.
There are a range of points of view here on how to approach mitigation, from those who favour a more regulatory approach, such as John D, those preferring carbon taxes to those favouring an ETS-based system. There is a range of opinions on how to deal with agriculture.
Clearly, some do that sort of thing here and on most blogs, but it is dangerous to generalise. Certainly, one does not here such things from the admin here and nor, in my experience, from most posters.
Fran Barlow#81
No Fran I make a point of mocking those who are crying out in alarm about Climate change I am not saying that I don’t depute the science because clearly a great deal of it open tp substantial debate but as I have said before the actual science becomes rather moot if the prescription can’t be filled.So ask you if you really believe that your prescription can be made to happen If you are honest you just have to answer in the negative. And once you accept that you can’t actually get the cure up you have to accept that another way has to found to address the problem.
I don’t bat for the other team Fran But you are wrong to think that this debate is of necessity a dichotomy Lomborg is a believer in AGW but even as a sceptic I can respect the good sense of his argument and I have cited him at my own blog on several times
So you chide me about using religious imagery in my rhetoric and then you offer an argument that would be entirely at home at a church revival meeting ! Look Fran I respect your passion on the topic but if there are two choices to save teh planet , the first which is ethically pure but bound to fail and the second less pure but achievable which are you going to support?
# 82 Brian
What is reprehensible Brian is to make empty gestures or to create mechanisms to address a problem that just won’t work especially if the money and effort could be better spent on measures that will actually do some good
# 83 adrian
Like it or not we live in a democracy and that means that you actually have to do the work and convince those who don’t self identify as lefties that what you advocate is a good thing. This is why lefties like your self don’t like the sort of policies recently announced by Tony Abbott on addressing climate change. He as proposed measures that can have benefits to the environment even if you are totally wrong about AGW. If you are right the measures will do at least as much to reduce or mitigate CO2 as the CPRS over the next decade and it has the added advantage of not enriching a whole cohort of commodity traders and spivs in the process. I just don’t get why so many lefties think that any kind of ETS is every going to work or how they can be so wilfully blind to the folly of creating another way for white collar crooks to rip off the people.
.
wbb @62, I think there is something more than just “setting an example” and “being at the front of the curve”, in terms of reducing the carbon footprint.
It has to do with energy efficiency, in terms of GDP/unit of energy use. As the cost of energy goes up, those countries which are more energy efficient would gain on the less efficient ones.
Australia is a long way from the head of the list, in terms of energy efficiency, even leaving aside the fact that our energy is about the dirtiest (not just CO2 emissions, but other undesirables). It’s a rather sloppy arrangement we have created, when you think about it.
We are nowhere near the “front of the curve”, on many aspects of energy usage. There is a long way to go, before we need concern ourselves with whether we should be leading the pack.
Iain Hall @95 said:
That’s simply wrong. No part of the basic science (i.e. that temperatures have been rising since 1850, that the temperature rise is what one would expect from rising atmospheric CO2, that the CO2 is rising in a way that correlates with the anomaly, and that the CO2 rises are anthropogenic in character) has been called into question. The modelling of future impacts and projections, especially on localised climate is more debatable on scale and speed, but even here, the long term trend is clear.
That’s a big “if”, and part of resolving that “if” is modelling our options and confronting people with the consequences of their choices. It’s not clear that the prescription can’t be filled, and so long as that remains the case we are compelled to try and fill it, because the alternative is too horrible to contemplate.
I think it can be met, or at the very least, it is not yet clear that we will fail. If I get to that point, I will have a different view about the mix of responses. I will probably favour at least some geoengineering along with longer term measures aimed at reversing accumulation and adaptation.
Don’t speak theoretically. Propose something less “ethically pure” (I’m not clear what that means in this context) that is “achievable” (i.e which meets the test of adequacy) and try me out. You were clearly implying support for pollution-as-usual.
This is simple minded populism, which on almost any other issue, conservatives would oppose. You don’t oppose a stock market or a banking system or a system of generational property transfer or IP. Your lot think these all to be pillars of our world, and indeed, in your complaints against carbon charging declare that you want to protect the property holding system. I doubt more than a handful of the populace could summarise the key features of the money system or futures and bond trading or explain who SIVs or CDOs work. How many could, in 1999 explain the potential impact of the overturn of the 1933 Glass-Steagall provisions in the US? Very few.
So your appeal to what is explicable to hoi polloi is unconvincing and disingenuous.
Fran
I take as a starting point that I do not dispute the raw data(when it is not being hidden or withheld), but beyond that you run into the very large problem of just what that data means, and that is a meal that we could feast endlessly on with many people offering vastly different interpretations of precisely the same data.There is still a vast problem in the attribution of the perceived warming trend to rises in Co2. We simply don’t have a data set that has sufficient detail over a sufficiently long period of time to be as definitive about cause and effect as so many Warministas would have you believe.
China, India and the third world simply won’t buy it Fran no matter how many people in the west that are convinced it just won’t happen for them. And it looks like the USA won’t buy into a Cap and trade system either. Carbon emissions just can’t be capped in any globally meaningful way in the current world . So lets accept that as a given.
Not sure that I know precisely what you mean by “reversing accumulation” but I have grave doubts that some of the more geo-engineering solutions will actually work. To my mind the question that you should be asking is just how credible are some of the doomsday scenarios that have been very much over sold by the alarmists (huge sea level rises suggested by some one here is a good example)
Believe it or not I am a practical environmentalist at heart, I am all for energy efficiency and treading lightly on the earth and I think that building a better future has to include both. I am all for doing things that will make our agriculture better by promoting a better top soil, making smarter choices about our water supply is another way that we can improve it. things like desalination are just mad when we get so much rain that can be collected and stored in individual water tanks. As others have suggested lets focus on making alternative energy cheaper and more efficient rather than making other energy more expensive so that “green energy” becomes competitive. We can do all of these things without a stupid ETS and produce finite benefits to our environment.
You need to step away from the idea that just because someone does not accept the AGW orthodoxy that they have to be a raging money obsessed capitalist, I have just never though very much at all about some of the argy bargy of the stock markets and when it comes to any kind of derivatives I think that much of it is just chicanery and mad speculation that is worse than any other form of gambling.
Iaian said:
Yes we do. We have ample, putting aside the reference to warmenistas. But I’m simply not going to allow the topic to be hijacked into revisiting the science. That was settled a long time ago.
More to the point, we have no basis at all for thinking that inaction will not have disastrous and irreversible consequences, and so we are bound to do everything we reasonably can to foreclose that possibility.
On the contrary, the push for steep cuits was loudest from the developing world, and China and India will be doing a lot more than we are doing on this matter.
Biosequestration …
Current evidence is that the midpoint IPCC projections from 2004 may prove conservative … Yet even if they don’t, SST and galcail decomposition are such lagging indicators, that we really can’t afford to gamble. 60% of the world’s population lives within 80km of the sea. All of our ports are at sea level. Moving them and their supporting infrastructure would be very costly. Coastal inundation and its knock on effects would be devastating even if sea level rises were no more than 1 metre by 2100. What do you think would happen to that fragile 1960 agreement between Pakistan and India over the division of the rivers with their glacial meltwater if those galciers continue to decompose and/or release water when it is not useful for cropping? Do you think India and Pakistan will play nice?
This is specious. Dirty energy is cheap because it treats as a free asset, the right to dump its effluent into the biosphere from which we humans draw our other system services. It’s the same in principle as saying that a hotel that can pump its sewage into a river used by people downstream can operate more cheaply than one that retains stewardship over its waste. Putting a sutiable value on this service is essential to avoid market distortion — in effect a public subsidy to engage in pernicious conduct. It is fair to say that the current dirty industry model amounts to a right to sequester toxic effluent (such as mercury, lead, SO2, ozone, PM and radioactive isotopes in the living tissue of flora and fauna (including that of humans) within the footprint and to alter the climate to the detriment of all in the process. Why should that be free or even cheap?
If you really want people to tread lightly upon the earth you had better levy a cost that makes them think twice about treading heavily. Once we do that, everything that does that less will be able to compete on a a fairer playing field.
I’d say it’s clear that you have not thought about very much of anything at all, and I am moved to wonder why you think your maundering and moralising on these matters is worth presenting as considered inference. If you really can’t be bothered paying attention to your setting, then why is your opinion relevant?
Fran Barlow @97 and Iain Hall @98, I hate to sound contrary, but you guys both seem to have sensible points to make. You seem to be talking past each other, but there are valid points on both sides.
If we take the balance of probability, the scientists are giving us a conservative outcome, rather than the most extreme case. The actual data seems to regularly EXCEED their predictions. Similar balance of probability is that they have thrashed out the possible alternative interpretations, at some length.
The balance of probability is that there is no conspiracy of mass cooperation amongst all scientific disciplines, to produce convergent conclusions that climate change is occuring at a rapid rate. There is no global conspiracy, except possibly amongst those that are pointing the fingers at scientists. One finger points outwards, and the other three point backwards at the accusers.
Scientific research is more like a mass of bees trying to gather data, and arguing with each other about how to arrange it into conclusions. Poking at holes in different interpretations is par for the course, and not a sign of problems in the system. When the different conclusions start to converge, they have usually undergone a fairly rigorous testing of assumptions. As such, I think Fran has a sounder case than Iain on the urgency of AGW.
Regrettably, Copenhagen went as the pessimists amongst us suspected it would. The inevitable conclusion is that we need to proceed as if global accord will not be achieved, except in the most dire circumstances. As such, I think Iain has a sound case about acting as if it will be a “tragedy of the commons” outcome.
It is not going to be cheap, despite what Monckton and his loony mates are saying. We can see the costs mounting already.
Perhaps the citizens of the world won’t act collectively on “reversing accumulations” until there is no other choice? Not holding my breath on this…
Fran
Well I don’t think that it is settled at all so lets just agree to disagree on the details of the science shall we? I have said that it is a moot point anyway.
But i am not talking about “inaction” I am talking about making sure that what we do is actually going to have a real effect rather than it being pointless symbolism.
What pray tell is your source for this incredible claim? There is no credible evidence that China or India are doing anything more than lip service to the AGW orthodoxy. If you are being realistic you would realise that they can see a competitive advantage in encouraging the developed nations to burden their economies with more expensive energy when they themselves have open slather
Hmm citing the IPCC? given the hits that its credibility has taken of late are you sure that it is the best that you can come up with?
There is no credible evidence at all that the sea level will rise by that much in the next 90 years and it seems that the latest measurements show that sea level has not risen at all in the last few years, But even if it does humanity is more than capable of adapting why the Dutch have for centuries lived below sea level through the building of dykes and pumping out the sea water. approaching each challenge as it may arise is a much better course of action than making futile efforts to control the climate. We can succeed with adaptation just as the Dutch have but reducing emissions enough to matter seems impossible to me.
You do understand that the Co2 that we emit does not just stay in the atmosphere don’t you? It is absorbed by plants and becomes part of the biosphere the faster growing trees that I linked to earlier makes it clear that you have to stop equating it to thing like mercury or even sewerage.
If you want to encourage the use of “green energy” sources then in the first instance you have to make them a great deal more efficient than they currently are. You have to solve the problems of how to smooth out the supply when the energy source is intermittent like wind power, or only available at the time of day when we least need it (solar power). Lets concentrate some research on fixing the problems with the engineering of this stuff.
But more pressing is the cost differential between each watt of green energy and say coal fired electricity. You are essentially arguing that conventional energy should be more expensive to make the less efficient and less reliable alternatives more attractive. I am just suggesting that a better approach it to attack the price differential form the other end. There is another benefit from my approach and that is to make everyone’s standard of living better purely because they won’t be burdened by the higher overall energy costs of your methodology
So you must be an all stick and no carrot sort of person. Try to think a little laterally about the problem, and the problem is that at present alternate energy sources are much more expensive, less efficient , and less reliable
On the contrary I have spent a great deal of time thinking about domestic energy efficiency, I have dabbled with solar power, building and engineering in general as for my setting I don’t know what you mean, I sit here looking out at the gum trees and I know how precious they are, and it is the perfect setting to think about the world we both live in.
Else#100
Fran has passion and good intentions on her side but I think that road paving is the last thing we need to do at this point in time.
Fran: whew. well said.
Elise: the gloomy possibilities are numerous for how we respond now and into the future. One of our political tasks is to identify what handicaps us. By which I mean we need to identify those structural, discursive, subjective and other institutional processes and practises that prevent effective action.
One of these, in my view, is the tendency for numerous social organisations to adopt forms of practise that reproduce the sort of intertia characteristic of state bureaucracy. One of the core practises of modern, rational bureaucracy (and it is rational compared to the Royal court bureaucracies that preceeded modernity) is accounting. Accounting (of things, objects, data) is then tabulated and arrayed but not necessarily with a view to doing anything except rearranging the display from time to time. Or adding new things.
The danger is that global warming may beciome captive to endless administration. It may reproduce the practise of numerous state national parks services, for example, which often keep an immaculate bureaucratic record of ecological decline rather but then are incacpable of turning that information into activity. Superb records of species and habitat loss. Of course they have a use (base line records) and so on. But the general tendency is to administer and record decline and loss.
We humans can do anything with rational administration. We can set it to mad ends: the Holacaust, refugee detention, hell, in the USA there are health insurance companies whose purpose is to ensure that their clients do not get the services they thought they paid for and need.
Short: the ecological issues are highlighting faults and failures of current democratic potential in Australia. There are numerous fronts on this. Arne Naess (sp?) called preserving a habitable planet worth living on “the longest front”.
Iain Hall @101, I’ve no idea what you mean about “road paving”. Agree about carrots rather than sticks, as a better motivational tool. This is old Theory X versus Theory Y territory.
The other undiscussed item is people’s desire to participate in something worthwhile, which industrial psychologists have recently shown is a stronger and more effective motivational approach. People work harder on things they believe in. This item may yet be the sleeper.
Iain, you seem to be behind the curve a bit on the climate data, and also on the potential for complementary technologies to get the most out of renewable power. Have you seen some of the earlier blog header pieces on LP, which give excellent references and summaries on the current state of play? Have you checked the actual internet sites for NASA and NSIDC, for example?
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Iain …
I will make one further observation in relation to your cost comparison between renewables and fossil fuels. Not only do fossil fuels have the cost advantage of ree dumping, but renewables have the disadvantage of needing to harvest all of their useable energy on the fly. This is why they tend to pollute less. They have no fuel to dispose of. It’s also why they are more costly per unit of energy than fossil fuels.
Using fossil fuels is like raiding the piggy bank with all of its stores of sunlight. Using renewables is like working for a living. It’s honest work but you will be less rich
Re #101
Iain,
Evidently you don’t understand that, if you’re going to patronise your opponents in an argument, you need to have all your facts absolutely spot on.
It’s true that atmospheric CO2 is absorbed by plants however the capacity of plants to absorb atmospheric CO2 is limited by a number of factors, such as their metabolism rates. The problem of anthropogenic global warming arises because human activities such as burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests have shoved the system into a disequilibrium where atmospheric CO2 concentrations rise over time.
This point is so basic that it’s a source of vicarious embarrassment that I have to point it out to you.
Elise
I agree with you on the powerful psychological motivation factor with glaobal warming. The big problem for Abbot is that there is no conviction behind his slipshod proposal. Interestingly, when asked what action he recommended, Monkcton’s response was that we should all wait for 10 years to see if the ‘wild scientific predictions’ on global warming were realised.
Elise #103
I’m making a refer3ence to the old adage about the road to hell being paved with good intentions
Fran #104
Do you realise how many solar panels you need to meet the needs of a modest family? and how much energy storage that would require?
Gummo #105
Actually there is some evidence that increased concentrations of Co2 leads to faster plant growth which so I don’t think that you can assume that the absorption of Co2 by the biosphere is at some fixed constant(it varies greatly according to the season anyway), that we can easily overwhelm with our emissions. I do however agree that the rape of our forests is something that we should address even if the AGW crowd are wrong.
Adamite @106: “…Monkcton’s response was that we should all wait for 10 years…”
He is no deep thinker, with a response like that.
Not good risk management, and a lousy research method. Good researchers don’t think that way. Even good business execs don’t sit around waiting for the future to come to them. Maybe it is a weakness of an accountancy style of mathematics?
Good scientists are “leading indicators”, whereas Monckton is a “lagging indicator”.
Only fools and 70 year olds would take him seriously – if they wait 10 years, they are dead anyway. Maybe that’s why he gets a warm welcome from the old fossil department?
Iain Hall @107: “Do you realise how many solar panels you need to meet the needs of a modest family? and how much energy storage that would require?”
I can answer that for you Iain, from personal experience:
12 solar panels (215 W SunPower panels) to be electricity neutral for a 4 br home, including judicious use of 3 reverse cycle airconditioners.
Grid connect, so you don’t need battery backup. If you do, then buy one of the new BlueGen 2 kW gas fuel cell units, which run on reticulated gas. The overall effect is a much smaller carbon footprint, either way.
Speaking of the road to hell, paved with good intentions, are you sure that it isn’t your good self on that road?
Iain I normally refrain from indulging your delight at being the centre of attention but I can’t resist asking whether you are seriously claiming the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere has remained unchanged in recent years because all the extra CO2 is, like, eaten by plants? Because if that is your contention, I share Gummo’s embarrassment on your behalf.
Iain @ 107
Still embarrassed on your behalf. Here’s why.
Oh dear – I guess it has to be asked – at what level in ppm of CO2, Iain, will deserts across the globe, such as the Sahara or Simpson, blossom as rainforests (well rainforests missing the rain part of course) – just roughly
Ken Lovell #110
No that is not what I am claiming at all. but the increase in plant growth has been noted and measured in several places as the link that I posted in comment #79 shows. Everyone delights in attention Ken but you are only noticing my contribution here because I am one of the few who are willing to offer an opinion to the group think that is all pervasive here on this issue.
Gummo #111
Interesting link. But it does show that the experiments do sho an increase in plant growth with the rise in Co2, which is what you were seeking to suggest does not happen. Thanks for that
David #112
Obviously for any desert to bloom into green life the resource that is most needed is more water before Co2.
That should be :
I am one of the few who are willing to offer an opinion contrary to the group think that is all pervasive here on this issue.
Geez, got enough tickets on yourself, mate? That “service” you so magnanimously provide ain’t as valuable as you would like to think.
Again with the ‘group think’ strawman. In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a wide variety of ideas and viewpoints about how and what to do about climate change. Nuclear? Clean coal? Solar? Wind? Tidal? Geo-engineering? World government? Taxes? ETS? Adapt? Mitigate? Prevent? There are proponents and antagonists of all these strategies right here on LP. The fact that you can’t perceive the variety is your problem, not ours.
Back on topic: To Mark’s musings about the ‘cultural politics of anti-science’, I guess that politicians can get plenty of mileage by flattering the intellectual vanity of contrarians, who like to think they’re doing something important with all the smoke the blow and the noise they make.
Mercurius
I have no trouble acknowledging that there is a range of opinions here but the majority of them clearly fall into the range that can broadly defined as the AGW orthodoxy. and as such to suggest that this represents a type of groupthink is neither a ’strawman” nor a false judgement.
But back onto the topic I found Dennis Shanahan’s piece in today’s Oz most interesting and relevant to this discussion
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/cool-reception-on-climate-costs-triggers-broadside-on-tony-abbotts-efforts/story-e6frg6nf-1225827296128
Thanks everyone for perfectly illustrating the point I made way back at #83.
Gravity is groupthink!
Adrian point taken but until this grass roots action commences the whole thing is just a political game of words, don’t you think? And I don’t see how a bunch of commenters here furiously agreeing with each other does much to promote grass roots action. The chances of anything adequately constructive being done by governments disappeared years ago, in which point I suppose I agree with Iain Hall, although I don’t share his smugly imbecilic happiness with the situation.
For maybe decades to come Australia will pay the price for the Howard Dark Ages. Dumbing down the debate never helps anything but rodents.
Ken
what amuses me is not the condition of the world’s environment but rather the smug naivety of the AGW true believers about the politics of the issue.
So if you now concede that I am right about the politics are you now going to focus on adaptation rather than mitigation when you consider how to “solve” the problem?
“smug naivety”
Earnest naivety maybe – it is probably naive to think that people would put their ideological differences, personal greed, nationalism and preference for doing nothing wherever possible to one side to try to solve a difficult global problem together.
However, ’smug’ belongs to the deniers – aptly encapsulated in your “what amuses me” attitude. AGW is something for idiots who care about anything but themselves to worry about – you can snicker away at their failures without a care in the world.
Strikes me as a lazy attitude, and one largely responsible for getting us to this point.
Some things become widely accepted (aka ‘groupthink’) because they’re correct, Iain.
Like, smoking causes cancer and other illnesses, certain vaccinations can prevent certain illnesses etc.
I think you’d agree that boldly opposing “groupthink” on these scores there would actually make you a flaming great dill. Not that we’d care. Go be a dill.
Call me crazy, but I tend to think the pilot should fly the plane when it comes to climate science, rather than, I dunno, some opinionated drongo in the backseat full of talk but totally lacking in aeronautical training.
Given that Im sure you’re not so stupid as to oppose “groupthink” on say, not pissing on electricity wires from a rail bridge, how do you distinguish between good and the bad examples of “groupthink”?
The ones that may have political implications you don’t like are bad?
Or is it just the ones you cant understand?
“The ones that may have political implications you don’t like are bad?
Or is it just the ones you cant understand?”
A little of both in Iain’s case, clearly. I anticipate a response, however, which wilfully misses your point, fails to answer your question, is riddled with basic errors of spelling, grammar and fact, and which moans pre-emptively about having those errors pointed out.
Iain@107 asked:
I do. They need solar panels capable of harvesting about 20Kwh per day and and storage to keep it but I’m not sure why you are asking me this.
I’m not all that enthusiastic about solar panels, except perhaps, for water heating.
Drongoes are naturals at flying and don’t need training … (sorry, couldn’t resist)
More seriously though, if the “drongo” starts talking about how impssoble it is to model dynamic non-linear systems and note that this plane could not have been designed to do what it seems to be doing, there should be a chorus of snickering.
Pissing on electric wires from railway bridges is perfectly safe as long as you keep the urine stream intermittent – its the continuous stream that gets you electrocuted.
Kids, don’t try this at home, especially if there are any police hanging around. You might get arrested for indecent behaviour.
Iain – please ignore the previous warning.
#122 FDB
Ernest or smug it makes no difference if what they think is the cure can not be made to happen
I have said to others FDB, that I respect the passion of many believers but even you seem to be conceding that they may be fighting a noble but futile battle. I am not pointing this out with the desire to do anything more that save my fellows from expending a great deal of hope and effort upon a futile cause.
What is truly lazy is to deny the global political reality when it is the the insurmountable obstacle to the”cure ” advocated by those who believe in AGW
Lefty E #123
Hmm I think that you are being rather factitious here.
This sounds like a massive appeal to authority to me, and everyone knows that an appeal to authority is a poor justification for any case. But if we were in that mythical plane and it was heading for a whopping great mountain I would say that anyone in the passenger compartment would be an idiot not to point out the fact of their impending doom, no matter how sure that the pilot may be that he can get the plane to fly through solid rock.
What I am essentially suggesting is that if you can’t get you plane over a particular mountain then you had better try to find a way around it.
Fran #125
I tend to agree with you here the beauty of solar water heating is that it works and the energy savings are most worthwhile even if AGW is bunk. which is whay the colaitrion policy to encourage it jas merit.
Last bit escaped proof reading and should read:
which is why the coalition policy to encourage it has merit.
Enough. Please. Enough. I’ve only got one life.
Iain @128 said:
Shorter … an ad populum appeal trums appeal to authority. Ironic.
Appeal to authority is not a fallacy per se. It can be misleading in its significance.
This rather strikes at your earlier view. If the pilot is determined to try to fly through solid rock it would not be an improvement to overpower the pilot and replace him with someone else unless that someone else could devise and/or implement a better plan. You’d be an idiot to open your mouth unless you thought this better plan was a possibility. How ould a bunch of people panicking help?
You don’t think such a plan is a possibility and yet here you are opening your mouth.
Fran
No if you are heading towards certain death through inaction then you literally have nothing to lose by either trying to convince the pilot to change course or to wrest the controls from him. Now do you?
I am not talking about panicking at all BTW.
If the gesture is futile you have nothing to gain. Indeed, if you can ring someone from the aircraft, it might be better to do so. “Honey, the pilot has gone mad. He wants to fly the plane into a rockface. Tell the kids I loved them.”
After you opened your mouth, there would be panic, and even if you were right, your last moments could be even worse.
Now that
InaneIain Hall has successfully derailed the thread, he can scuttle back to the underside of a bridge somewhere. The whole discussion is now tl;dr.Sounds like a win/win scenario to me DI(nr): the inane one has demonstrated (to his own satisfaction) his superior knowledge and understanding of global warming and (to every one else’s satisfaction) his complete ignorance and stupidity. Time to cash in and call it a day.
Yes, probably best if we just let these costs rise over time, rather than spend a penny to save a pound. After all, we’ve got the economy to think about. Or something.
And as everyone knows, taking out insurance is totally irrational, since you might not ever suffer loss – so why pay a premium upfront? That’s totally for losers. Ask any homeowner.
I’m gonna have to refer that to Iain Hall. He’s my go to man on serious economics and shit.
I have but one prayer to God, Wbb: “O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.”
And it was granted.
Just on sea level rise, Iain, currently it’s about 3mm pa. That would give you 30cm over the next century. But the interesting bit is that it is now at twice the rate it averaged over the 20th century. Stefan Rahmstorf worked out that if you follow the linear trend you’ll likely get 0.5 to 1.4m by 2100. The problem is, though, that the major ice sheets are showing signs of going non-linear.
Remember that with a 30cm rise a once in a 100-year storm surge event becomes a once in 3 years.
My point is, as ever, that it’s adaptation rather than mitigation is simply not an option.
Ian Hall’s point is that if there is a breakdown in communication between science and politics then we should dimply accept it.
I understand that the idea of a 2C increase over pre-industrial as some kind of a guard rail to prevent dangerous AGW originated in Germany in the 1990s. My memory is that Angela Merkel had it officially accepted by the EU early in 2007. One of the few outcomes of Copenhagen was that it was finally accepted officially by the Conference of Parties of the UNFCCC.
Back in 2006 George Monbiot found that the UK Chief Scientist, Sir David King, was recommending stabilisation at 550ppm not because it was justified by the science but rather because he thought no-one would take him seriously if he told the truth.
Stern basically followed suit.
When Malte Meinshausen and others worked out the probabilities on this they found that 450ppm gave us about a 50:50 chance of staying within 2C. At the same time science is showing that danger lies this side of 2C.
When the worthies met in Bali in December 2007 James Hansen was holding a briefing at the American Geophysical Union meeting suggesting that we should stabilise at 350ppm in the first instance. He’d worked out from the paleoclimate record that an ice-free world is likely at 425ppm plus or minus 75.
We know now that the last time CO2 was at present levels for a considerable period of time we had sea levels of plus 25 metres, plus or minus 5.
My attitude is that we have to keep telling policy makers what the science is saying. In some countries, like The Maldives and Tuvalu, they seem to listen for some strange reason. Other countries, like Germany for instance, seem to be making some progress.
James Hansen reckons he’s happier doing science, but he has grandchildren and he doesn’t want them to say, “What did opa do when he knew the dangers?”
But Iaian is right in saying we have to think about adaptation also. Last I heard the Dutch were planning against a sea level rise of 1.1 metres. They are pretty smart people but planning on the midpoint of where the linear trend will get you isn’t what I’d do in terms of risk management. And they had Rahmstorf on the committee that cooked up that little plan.
Maybe they figured that the world might take mitigation seriously. But if the world doesn’t then mitigation is going to be awfully expensive. Sooner or later this will sink in.
Fran #133
Frankly I would rather go down fighting than to die with meek acquiescence.
Insurance is fine but often it is better to just bank the premium that you might pay and over a relatively short period of time you can accumulate more than you are ever likely to claim on the policy.
Brian #139
I live on a mountain that is 400m above sea level Brian so if the sea level rises the result for me is that beach becomes closer! Jokes aside if the sea is going to rise there is nothing that anyone can do to stop it. That is the point I am making here rather than put huge amounts of effort into futile attempts at mitigation that will fail politically put the efforts into adaptation strategies that can actually work.
#140
Thanks for that concession Brian, surely when one path towards the future is impossible then you have to seek a path that is possible?
Iain Hall makes frequent reference to the ‘AGW orthodoxy’.
Of course, being a maverick free-thinker himself, there is no ‘orthodoxy’ to which he subscribes…
But Hall’s position is nothing more or less than unreconstructed conservative orthodoxy. Since there is no political solution to
slavery,women’s liberation,workers’ rights,colonial occupation,Indigenous civil rights,Indigenous land rights,corporal punishment,queer rightsthird-world debt forgiveness,lead in petrol,CFC manufacture, AGW, let’s just tweak the status quo and go back to sleep.But never fear – history shows us that we can always rely on conservatives to come up with the right solution – 25 years after everybody else.
And rejecting appeals to authority, Hall offers instead solipsism (emph. added)…
Of course, the world of ideas is suffused with orthodoxies. There is the vaccination orthodoxy, the 9/11 orthodoxy, the Moon Landing orthodoxy, the Holocaust orthodoxy, the evolution orthodoxy, and the round-world orthodoxy.
Aren’t we fortunate the blogosphere has no shortage of brave mavericks, who stand so tirelessly ready to free us of our ‘orthodoxies’? Wake up, people!
Not a concession, Iain. Anyone with half a brain knows we have to do both. The point I am making is that the scenarios facing us are so serious that adaptation is impossible. This map of the Netherlands illustrates the problem. It’s not the worst situation in the world by a long way.
In 2008 they estimated that adaptation would cost them $1.5 billion each year. I don’t know what went on in the decision making process, but it could be that 2 metres was simply beyond them and would have signalled to the people that a fair slab of the country might have to be abandoned.
What is emerging is that we’ll have to go negative on net emissions to turn around some of the worst effects. We can’t simply throw up our hands and say it is impossible.
I think there is a critical path technically and politically that can succeed, with a bit of luck. Difficult, but not impossible. Better to try than to rely on adaptation strategies alone that can’t work.
Well, if China can aim for 45% reduction in intensity, even as they expand – whats wrong with us? Are they more technologically advanced than us now? Are they superior?
Maybe they’ve done us a favour by not playing ball – start a ‘cooling war’ with the West over technological advance in these areas.*
Oh, and the Spanish have invented solar base load, in case anyone’s interested.
Can be done, is being done, we just lack political will, not the ability to do it.
* Just trying to put this in terms the right wind mind might be able to understand. always try metaphors of war – on drugs, on terror, on global warming, Chinese might beat us etc.
So Iain, is it fair to describe your position n the war on warming as “I surrender”?
“WE shall fight them on the beaches – unless its costs money
and in the villages, and the towns – but only if everyone else does.”
Inspiring stuff, climate “realists”, adapationists, or whatever you are.
Coal-eating surrender monkeys all.
Fortunately, the average punter is made of sterner stuff.
Iain Hall @141 Said:
A review of your contribution here on this topic strongly suggests the contrary.
Again, you want to work incompatible clients at incompatible locations.
That at least is consistent.
Lefty E @ 144, the Chinese are indeed trying to beat us and everyone else. Back in 2007 part of Angela Merkel’s argument was that Germany intended to have first mover advantage and make money out of climate change. Obama talked about the US having technological leadership, and chucked a lot of stimulus money in that direction.
The Chinese are no doubt serious about climate change, but also serious about gaining technological leadership in renewable energy and creating a low emissions economy. Their game at Copenhagen was, I think, to retain maximum internal flexibility and freedom in how they pursued their aims. Other parts include maintaining the pressure for the West to shoulder the burden for the biggest cuts initially, for the West to pay for whatever the developing world needs to do, and technology transfer.
What Abbott is concerned with is getting through the next election.
I agree Brian, and argued so recently at my blog. I really do think China’s behaviour at Copenhagen was designed to scotch the industrial competition in green tech.
China had a perfectly good ‘Kyoto’ hand to play (developed world bears cuts) which *everyone* (bar the US) supported too. They didnt play it. Instead they went further and scotched a binding agreement for everyone.
Why? Because they were happy to retard their competitors’ R&D invesmtents in this area – and knew they had “useful fools” on side among the western centre-right parties, who’d leap at the chance to fail to innovate.
Western Conservatives currently think China did them a favour at Copenhangen: they will catch up that we actually got spanked in about 10 years time when China is selling us this stuff. How we did we get cursed with such dupes?
Well said, I think, LE.
LE@148: “in about 10 years time when China is selling us this stuff” … Umm, lefty, it’ll be sooner than that.
The magic smoke inside just about all green/smart technologies is some ‘rare earth’ element. Over the last 2 decades China has managed a deliberate and most effective race to the bottom strategy such that, untroubled by environmental and worker conditions niceties, they have put the world’s other rare earth producers out of business. China now has 97% of the worlds production.
Last October China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology draft ‘Rare Earths Industry Development Plan 2009-2015′ proposed a total ban on overseas shipments of rare earth metals, including terbium, dysprosium, yttrium, thulium and lutetium. No prizes for guessing what that’s meant to do. Jiang Zemin was pretty clear in 1999 that the idea was “to improve the development and applications of rare earth, and change the resource advantage into economic superiority”. Bottom line-
For a glimpse of the geopolitical nasty lurking behind the smart and renewable energy technology green door, start with
Inside China’s secret toxic unobtainium mine
Precious metals that could save the planet
Those are quotes from p. 83 and p. 74 of Hansen’s Storms of My Grandchildren
(At this point I’d expect the routine ad hominem attack on Hansen.)
Check out the state of play in ice sheet disintegration from this site.
This post from Andrew Glikson also makes interesting reading.
Mecurious #142
So you know how to get the whole world to fill your prescription for the climate then do you?
because that is the stumbling block that you and your pals just can’t get past and the thing that you least want to admit.
Brian #143
If just for the sake of argument we accept that you are right about where the the climate is heading , then it becomes a question of how much effort that we expend on each side of the mitigation/ adaptation equation then doesn’t it?
Now as I understand the AGW liturgy we are told that even if we get the most ambitious cuts to co2 emissions up the inertia in the system would still have massive effects so even if you could get your cuts up a great deal of effort would have to be spent on adaptation anyway.
My question is what proportion of our ( as humanity) effort do we spend on each because as I see it so far from the Warministas are 100% focused on mitigation efforts and uninterested in even thinking about any way to adapt to the change that they insist is coming.
Lefty E #144 &145
I think that your view of the China’s is too coloured by an assumption that they believe the green mantra about climate change where as I would suggest that they are more concerned with making money and their long-standing cultural affinity to gambling suggests that they may very well be quite happy to take a punt on the AGW thing being, as someone else has said “a load of crap”
I am a most practical man and when it comes to solving problems I don’t even think along the lines of having to do so in the most impossible way that can be imagined . The point is that a wise general choses his battles and does not sent all of his best troops naked into the machine gun crossfire. Better to have those same troops building levee banks if the seas rise or developing new places for agriculture if our current ones become untenable.
Be a stern as you like but it won’t solve the problem no matter how noble your efforts may seem to the true believers.
Brian #151
Hansen is one of the reasons that AGW has lost a great credibility of late Brian do you have a more credible citation, like some one who does not have an axe to grind or a vested interest in the AGW industry?
Iain, I don’t speak for others, but clearly we have to do more of both mitigation and adaptation, especially helping the most exposed developing countries to strengthen their defences and become more ‘disaster-ready’.
I expected a remark like that about Hansen. Early in his book he says that the natural discourse of scientists is to equivocate where there is doubt whereas “contrarians” as he calls them use the language of lawyers, say whatever it takes to win a point. He tells of the time he shared a spot with Richard Lindzen at a meeting of The Climate Task Force chaired by Dick Cheney. Hansen reckons he got done over because he argued like a scientist, whereas his opponent…
Hansen’s science is sound and you ignore his opinions at your peril.
Why don’t you spend a bit of time around at Climate Code Red and read what David Spratt has to say, including his lecture from 2008? He’s not a climate scientist, but has as good an appreciation as anyone what is required for a safe climate. He might shift your complacency.
That’s about as far as I’m going on this one. It’s all played out.
Racist troll @ 152 (emph. added):
Trolling earns you ridicule.
Racist trolling earns you permanent moderation. Bye-eeeee!
Mercurious @ 1 Change! The Earth has huge change in climate unless co2 is reduced in the atmosphere. Torys can’t cope with this proposition. They go ostrich just as this fellow Iain Hall does. No amount of reasoned debate will pull his head out of the sand. His view of China tells us so.
Creationism is the other example, Quadrant is full of rants against Darwin.
Exactly, Mercurius, @ 154. I was about to quote just that passage and to comment not only about its racism but the all pervading ignorance about China and its contribution to scientific knowledge. The oft used and convenient tag of “developing country” suggests an emerging culture which blinds most of us to the vast, complex and astonishing history of a people who were using paper and printing while Europe was in the Dark Ages.
The pace at which the sleeping giant is emerging from its seeming torpor during colonial and less recent communist rule is astounding but not perhaps miraculous when seen against the backdrop of its millennia of cultured civilisation which contributed so much to our own so-called advanced science and technology in the west.
Fears of Sino-imperalist ambition may or may not be well founded. Frankly from the little I know of Chinese history compared with that of the west I would think our hopes for the planet would be be better trusted to them.
Fran @125: “Fran #104 … Do you realise how many solar panels you need to meet the needs of a modest family? …I do. They need solar panels capable of harvesting about 20Kwh per day…”
Fran, 20 kWh/day is not a “MODEST” family, that is an extravagant family.
A modest family uses more like 12 kWh/day or less.
Elise said:
Doubtless any household that used only 12 kWh per day would be more modest than one using 20kWh per day, but I read the claim as typical rather than parsimonious.
Fran @159, what is “parsimonious” about 3 reverse-cycle airconditioners, a “swampy” ducted evaporative cooler, and the usual appliances like microwave, large double fridge, deep freeze, towel heaters, electric oven, cappocino machine, clothes dryer, etc, etc?
12 kWh/day is perfectly feasible for a 4 br house, if you just do an 80/20 analysis of where your biggest consumption is, and make the necessary changes.
This household doesn’t go for the hairshirt concept, but 80/20 problem analysis can save heaps without suffering a 3rd world living standard. You’ll never never know, if you never never try it…
Cripes we come in 8.7 a day for a 3 bedroom house. And that was before the new low energy appliances recommended by the green loan audit.
I havwe no idea how much electricity I use (and I probably wouldn’t own up if I did), but I share the house with a young person, which means life is a constant round of turning off lights and appliances in empty rooms …
Yer, I do that fun job as well, David.
Be game and have a look on your electricity bill. You might find a reward there for patience expended.
I bought a little device that measures individual shower water usage. A bit of an eye opener on that score, as well, for us and the teenager, in particular.