The University of Queensland’s Institute for Social Science Research has surveyed some 300 politicians on their beliefs about climate change. The results have been reported this morning by the ABC.
Rather than repeat the findings here, I’d just like to make the following observations.
Firstly, it is disturbing that over 40 per cent of those surveyed believe that global warming of up to 4 degrees Celsius could be safe. In some jurisdictions this would mean that climate policy is being made by governments which have a majority of members who believe that warming of this magnitude is safe.
Secondly, the study confirms what many on this blog and elsewhere have noted about the role of partisan tribalism in shaping politicians’ attitudes towards climate science and science in general. When was it ever a matter of left-wing principle to be greatly influenced by what scientists say, or a matter of right-wing principle to not be so influenced?
Thirdly, the figures for Green respondents are interesting. It would appear that one of the 41 Green politicians surveyed isn’t convinced that the planet is warming because of human activity. How did they get through the preselection process? The survey also finds that 98 per cent of Greens politicians are greatly influenced by what scientists say. What is interesting about this is that over the last several decades there have emerged a range of critiques of the Western scientific worldview, of the activity of scientists, and of Enlightenment modernity from the milieu of the new social movements, including the environmental and feminist movements. This, of course, is the milieu from which the Greens originated. I can imagine some plausible ways to square the survey findings with the existence amongst Greens of sceptical reserve about aspects of the Enlightenment project, but at this stage I’m not sure which one I think is most plausible. It is nonetheless an interesting finding.
Finally, the partisan politicisation of attitudes on the foundational question of the reality of anthropogenic global warming should serve as a reminder yet again that the kind of consensus that Federal Labor wants before doing anything serious about the problem is not going to come about before it becomes way too late for effective action.
So what happens to the rogue Green? Will he/she get some classes on Enlightenment philosophy?
One of the few things this election both progressives and conservatives agree on is the transparent cynicism of Gillard’s attempt to push this issue to the to hard basket by the excuse of reaching a “deep and lasting” consensus. Most elections are decided by no more than 52-48 margin and governments are happy to claim mandate with that, what more do we need for climate change?
Terry #1, as a party we are committed to the principle of nonviolence, otherwise I would strongly advise the kind of creative use of an organic carrot which, as you might remember, was suggested by a Tribune columnist in the mid-1980s.
I wonder how many % one could attribute to error – ie the person not understanding the question and answering the opposite to what they would have had they understood, missed a not for example. Or too busy to comprehend and answering too quickly.
Otherwise I’m at a loss how a denialist is a Greens rep.
Actually Paul, you may be onto something, but following the general view of our political class, I suggest a carrot and stick approach.
‘… the kind of consensus that Federal Labor wants before doing anything serious about the problem is not going to come about before it becomes way too late for effective action.’
I think that’s kind of the whole idea. It’s Howard’s preferred position – wait for the USA to make the hard decisions, if indeed they are going to be made, then tag along using the ‘no alternative’ excuse. If the USA never makes the hard decisions, it would be pointless for Australia to do anything anyway.
It’s not an entirely irresponsible stance but I would prefer it to be stated openly instead of disguised in citizens’ assembly nonsense.
Quite frankly, the international lead will come from China, not the US or Europe. That was the flaw in the whole Copenhagen process.
An extra large carrot and a big stick..
The mainstream politicians avoid it because it would make their relationship with developers problematic.
Ant Lowenstein’s excellent comments on Julia Irwins retirement blast at Labor as being inward and self censoring as a consequence of the resulting now entrenched internal “culture”, ring true.
The big change over the last twenty years is the growth of a reactionary anti greens culture within in groupist Labor- the rest having left to join the Greens or Dems or become a political or apathetic altogether.
Lest I am called hypocrite, I will agree there is a parallel between the self interest of the politician re enviro and social policy and self interest those of us further down the food change who are sceptical of bigpop, for example.
I blame the obsessive desire of Thatcherism to create a rat race a contributing factor in the New Defensiveness, along with the apparent loss of our autonomy to the dominant neolib species of globalisation.
I see KL was posting simultaneously. He’s pretty right, it becomes a permanent becoming without closure that’s toxic and has us all choking.
At the risk of starting a bunfight, here’s a hypothesis:
The universal acceptance of climate science amongst Green respondants isn’t because they’re stronger believers in science than the major parties, it’s because this particular body of science demands a response which contains things they’d like to do anyway.
When national democratic parliaments refuse to act in order to secure the ecological conditions of existence for citizens then it is clearly a crisis of legitimacy for democracy.
Attempts to weasel out of taking responsibility at a national level on the grounds that unilateral action might disadvantage the national economy is equally a crisis of legitimacy unless national political leaders offer something akin to the following: we won’t act now because unilateral action will disadvantage the national interest. However, we will plan for the vastly altered ecological conditions of the future that will flow from current inaction. The plan is for ecological survival through an extended crisis and post-crisis maintenance of democracy.
Current policy offering from Lib/Lab: we don’t know what to do. The powerful and wealthy won’t agree to act on behalf of all citizens because that would require significant changes to production and consumption and their economic and political advantage is deeply invested in maintenance of the status quo. If we even talk about the scale of the necessary change they get the shits, run massive advertising campaigns against us and sack parliamentary leaders.
We don’t know what to do. Let’s pretend it isn’t true. Please. Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) now stands for Mutually Assisted Delusion (MAD).
Ken Lovell wrote:
We didn’t wait for the US when we opened our markets, we shouldn’t wait now and show some leadership on the issue. We won’t while the mining industry controls the political process.
Robert #10:
As an hypothesis (and now I’m wearing my political scientist hat rather than my Green partisan hat) it’s worth considering. Phrased a different way it could also be worth considering in relation to the Coalition politicians and their beliefs.
Worse, from your point of view: what if he was open about it, and the local branch picked him/her anyway? Which has precedence, Norto, Englightenment values or local grassroots democracy?
[errata] what if he/she was open about it
Indeed, Paul. My hypothesis is largely inspired by the meltdown climate change causes among libertarians.
@10: Is their desire for those particular ‘things they’d like to do’ not stoked by their trusting the science in the first place?
Good questions, Liam, and perhaps not as hypothetical as some might think. One of the issues which a growing political party has to engage with is how to reconcile a democratic and pluralistic internal regime with the maintenance of agreement on sufficient core principles to retain cohesion. It’s an issue that some overseas Greens parties haven’t always handled well.
Is the glass 1/41 part empty or 40/41 full?
How empty/full is it compared to the other glasses?
Robert @ 10, I think you’re spot on. (I’m a Green, btw.)
Most of our members accept the science on climate change, but reject it on nuclear power and GM crops. (I’m dubious about the benefits of both as it happens, but for rather different reasons to those of most other Greens.)
I’m sure that the percentage of Greens listening to the scientists is higher when the question is climate change than it would be on some other topics. Still, I do find it encouraging.
One of the major challenges the Greens will have to face is how we will deal with questions where the science contradicts, rather than supports, the prejudices of some members. Like David I think there are good reasons for being concerned about GE, but I do recognise that many Greens are opposed for very bad reasons, and there may come a time where our views are irreconcilable. I hope that the habit of listening to scientists on global warming will rub off on other matters.
I also find it astonishing, and terrifying, that so many Liberals were willing to admit they don’t listen to scientists. I thought they would claim to, on the basis that Plimer was a scientist once and Monkton says he is.
The bizarre element in all of this is the ambivalent attitude towards science despite. It is passing strange that people who wouldn’t hesitate to utilise applied science (antibiotics) are inclined to view climate science as a matter of conscience. The PM is making an almighty cockup of this with her repeated assertions, as per her statement at last night’s battle of Rooty Hill, that she “believes”:
akn wrote:
I blame the “teach the controversy” technique perfected by tobacco companies and used by anti-evolutionists amongst others.
Although prevalent on the right, the anti-science has infected the left too (anti-vaxxers plus Roberts examples). Tribalism perhaps as a driver (legitimate anti-corporatism feeds into the wack job anti-vaxxers for example).
Robert, I think your hypothesis is spot on.
Robert @10 and Paul N
You’re right about the logic of the Greens policy response and science, but there is a finer point to make. It’s how the science-policy relationship is framed according to the so-called information gap model, where it is assumed that the rational actor will change their behaviour if presented with information that shows their current behaviour is leading to negative outcomes.
The majority of natural scientists assume this is how the science-policy relationship works and this framing is deeply embedded in the IPCC reports (it’s not the only framing, but all are largely implicit, and thus communicate an inconsistent message – more transparency about multiple framings of risk would be better). In this frame, the logic of acting to preserve the global environment, held to also sustain our human systems and livelihoods in response to the science feeding into the acceptance of risk is pretty straight-forward.
When you look at scientific issues that the Greens are opposed to, such as transgenic manipulation, the science is not denied (they believe it’s is all too possible), it is opposed on the basis of risk. It is similar to nuclear power (though that may be changing). Where science is rejected by environmentalists, it’s more a blanket arm wavey new age thing or the natural fallacy referred to by Ute Man
However, the conservative right do not accept the science and debate risk, they downplay/twist the science (Lomborg) or deny it wholesale in order to negate the risk. The work of Dan Kahan and colleagues in the US on the cultural and risk study, shows that this tendency is not unique to climate change. The balance does tip the other way for “conservative” scientific issues, but the public debate from the Greens and more broadly the left is clearly about the risk, not the science. If a Libertarian announces they accept the science of climate change, the pack turns on their own ferociously. Blood and fur.
Social scientists know that the information gap model of science-policy only works in limited situations and is restrictd to specific groups/individuals whose perceptions lend them to be “rational” actors in those circumstances. The trust of knowledge sustained from the Enlightenment to the technocratic successes of modernism that allowed science to be handed down from on high has now evaporated (a good thing). Scientists need to communicate their expertise using socially negotiated methods such as salience, transparency and reliability. They also need to be careful about their own social constructions of risk and the “appropriate” policy (and open if they enter into that part of the debate).
The climate change debate should be about the perception of what is at risk, and statements of value defining that (including the risks of taking action), not the science.
When political views begin to define how the physical world works, we’re in trouble.
I also want to comment on the citizen’s forum and consensus, Julia-style. While the experience from citizen’s forums on climate change overseas shows acceptance of the need to act, the loss of bipartisanship that went with Turnbull has nothing to do with consensus. And no forum will get it back. The loss of bipartisanship was political and seems to have been due to Andrew Robb, deeply opposed to climate science, swinging sentiment from Turnbull to Abbott.
It can only be regained if the electorate clearly shows that the mandate to govern is based on meaningful policy. Hard to show in current circumstances.
Liam asked:
Were I a member of a branch of the Greens that proposed an AGW delusional as its rep I’d express my local grassroots democracy by first going to the SDC to complain and secondly by campaigning publicly against the person being elected, seeking other branch members to support me.
If you’re going to have party policies, it is evident that it must stand for something. It is drawing support on the basis of its public statements. Everyone must be able to assume all of its candidates support its policies.
David Irving @ 20, most Greens reject the USE of nuclear and GE , not the SCIENCE.
Robert @ 10, having said that, what examples can you give of Greens rejecting science for ideology?
I keep thinking about Clinton’s now famous quote, “It’s the economy, stoopid!” It seems to me, that this was a turning point for social democrats (from which the likes of New-Labour, etc. sprung)– out of a traditional political preoccupation with employment, as a means of insuring a good life for the working class (through organised labor movements), the concept morphed into a preoccupation with the economy. Maybe it was unavoidable, to the extent that, by their very nature, service based economies, whose focus is mainly on supplying services to individuals cannot be organised. Unfortunately, this played into the hands of big finance as the ability to extract a decent wage from any service is based on the value of the service to do that and be profitable. It seems to me that this system cannot be sustainable without creating a lot of debt. Even with the help of globalisation and importing cheap goods from overseas countries.
In fact, research into happiness indicates that after a degree of wealth is attained more wealth doesn’t make people happy. We don’t need an economic system based on growth– we need an economic system based on sustainability and we need to invest in such an economic system. Urgently. A market based approach to reducing Co_2 output is well and good, but predicated on the ability of such a market to be profitable I’m a bit suspicious of how this can work. IMO, we need to develop a new measure for value not measured by profit.
Only tangentially related to the top, but something to be aware of when weighing up options related to climate change and social-justice politics:
RSA Animate – “First as Tragedy, Then as Farce”
The hairshirt green image is largely a myth. Most greens are green because of the science. Not many choose to live without the benefits of modern science. The science drives the environmentalism. And greens choose not to ignore or deny the inconvenient truths.
The issue with nuclear power and GM are risk versus benefit – perhaps greens have a greater understanding of the limits of humanity in managing the risks in the face of opportunities to make profit. Climate change has made many reconsider the value of nuclear vs the risk. For GM the only substantial benefits we’ve seen are to the IP owners and a large part of the risk (or cost) is the economic control granted to those GM proprietors.
My experience is that environmentalists would like to believe everything is ok but know that this would be denial.
If we’re not being accused of wanting everyone to live in poverty its being hypocrites for driving cars etc. Realistically the latter would be closer to the truth.
Well, Robert did say he’d propose his hypothesis at the risk of disagreement so here goes.
I don’t accept the argument in total that all of the watermelon types associated with or supporting the Greens are mobilising the scienc merely as rational justification for “things they’d like to do anyway”. The history of environmentalism shows that environmental considerations have always been studded with anti-industrial and from time to time anti-capitalist thinking. William Morris, for example, was a vehement andt-capitalist and anti-industrialist as well as being what EP Thompson described as a native British socialist. In regard to the latter claim what Thompson meant was that Morris’s socialism prefigured Marx and was founded on aesthetic and equalitarian principles that had deep roots within British culture. Thompson in fact mourned the disappearance of Morris’s native socialism under the weight of inherited Marxist dogma.
This case serves merely to highlight that a rejection of capitalism and the specific form that industrialism adopted under capitalism was driven in part, and a substantial part at that, by an abhorrence of the “dark satanic mills” that infested and polluted the British landscape.
Short: rejection of capitalism and social re-ordering along ecologically sustainable grounds does not necessarily originate in left wing (Marxisant) critique. Many people, including me, made the journey to critical left thinking from an initial point of nature conservation. In my case the beginning was the campaign to stop the sand mining of Myall Lakes (NSW). Along the way we discovered nativist anti-capitalist thinking among members of the environment movement including, but not limited to, Judith Wright and members of the Jindyworobak poets and others.
So, some perhaps, but not all environmentalists who locate the problem within the nexus of the specific form of capitalist industrialism, may be using the science of global warming to advance left agendas. Others have been around too long to accept that proposition at face value.
This is very true. There is so much pressure at the moment to simply turn your back on so-called green issues because they get in the way of people’s lifestyles.
Well, look over this list:
-bees
-bats
-amphibians
-tassy devils
-fishing
And these are some of the big issues– not to mention the lesser regional issues like Myall Lakes, NEFA, etc.
Oops, bats link above is broken:
bats
Yes Joe, quite right. In reality climate change is the new kid on the block and is merely the culmination of multiple assaults on the integrity of local and ultimately global ecosystems launched by heedlessly irresponsible industrial production in both capitalist countries and the old Soviet bloc.
Hmm good point about the soviet bloc. There’s a kind of cargo cult mentality to some of the ‘stronger believers in science’ where we will live in some Gernsback Continuum where science will magically solve everything and we’ll reach our manifest destiny. It’s a fantasy of human supremacy over our environment. Soviet ideology perhaps replaced religion with science, progress through technology and human achievement.
Greens probably have a more pragmatic view of science (many are practitioners of science themeselves)
paul of albury, I think it’s a bit unfair to load up the soviets with what is, essentially, the definition of modernism:
^^ Not having a good day with xhtml tags. Doh!
Support for “organic” agriculture is another example, in my view.
There is no a priori reason to suppose that a practice that fits in the arbitrary label “organic” is any more or less sustainable than other farming practices.
Running a heavy plough through fragile soils is organic, no-till farming with the aid of herbicides isn’t.
That’s not to say that most organic farmers do overuse their ploughs, but it does illustrate the silly arbitrary nature of the dividing line, preventing innovations that can ultimately make agriculture much more sustainable, not least by taking more land out of production.
And, yes, promoting organic agriculture is official Greens policy.
A critically informed attitude to the reasons for Soviet ecological disasters is essential in order to defend against the attack of those who simply label greens as watermelons. Marshall Berman, for instance, argued convincingly that Marx was a keen advocate of the modenising process. Why wouldn’t he be given the historical conditions of per-modernity? But then, he didn’t have the advantage of hindsight on the dangers of modernist hubris. No-one can afford to ignore the hydro engineering folly that destroyed Lake Baikal, for example.
Salient Green, as far as the science of nuclear power goes, the science that I would argue that greens reject on the topic is the epidemiological evidence of its (minimal) health impacts.
Not particularly wanting to rehash the argument, merely characterise it.
How many people here have a science background? Say at the level of an Honours degree in Chem or Biol? Not so much engineers or comp sci, but more trad style experimental scientists.
Robert Merkel @37,
the problem is that we don’t know what side-effects are caused by herbicides/pesticides. They could be, for example, causing or at least a factor in the extinction of bees or bats. The extra efficiency that is gained by their use wrt. minimising the land needed to grow food may be causing damage elsewhere. This needs to be carefully examined (by independent bodies) and this is only possible by using scientific methods.
Once again, we need to be clear about what science isn’t. Science isn’t an ideology.
I think to people for whom science is indistinguishable from magic, it’s easy to replace unthinking faith in god with unthinking faith in science. And having explicitly rejected god the russians had a gap in their consciousness to fill. Not to say we haven’t caught up.
Science should be orthogonal to religion, but to many it’s not. And science is not a matter of faith alone.
And ironically I think most greens accept the science because of a greater understanding of the limits of science whereas denialists reject the science based on a faith in some cargo cult thinking based on economics, science and destiny. In their view, science is all powerful when it helps us and uncertain when it doesn’t, it’s kind of benevolent towards humanity.
Or perhaps the so called sceptics are just suckers for appeals to authority from their high priests.
Joe,
That (“Support for “organic” agriculture is another example, in my view”) is just Robert teasing.
I wonder if not a few Greens are against vaccinating babies.
I reckon you’d find more anti vaccination people in family first, Russell
I’ve no science degree but a major and long standing engagement with the philosophy and history of science. So far almost all contributions are correct in one way or another. Perhaps it might be best to acknoweldge the uses to which science has and can be put. Wile it is based on objective knowldge it is not beyond either getting caught up in dominant tropes of the times or being used for ideological purposes. I have in mind here the work of feminist philsopher Donna Harroway who showed that science, not scientists, can be gendered. That is, the actual practice of science can embody gendered assumptions that go on to have determinate influences on research conclusions.
The USSR did adopt science as a rationalist belief system. Marxism/Leninism held itself to be “the science of history” (gawd help us) by which means it aspired to be and promoted itself as an objective, positivist form of history. It tried to borrow the cloak of the natural sciences.
Paul @44
On what basis ?
@45 – It depends on what’s meant by “Marxism-Leninism”, akn.
In a way, the ossified version of Soviet Marxism was Stalin’s creation. If we take determinism as an index of the supposed scientism of Marxism, then Lenin wasn’t really one.
We also need to see the term “science” in its nineteenth century German context when assessing Marx’ work. German language scholarship and writing didn’t really distinguish between natural sciences and social sciences in the same way as English speaking scholarship does. Science = knowledge.
Where Marx stood, or would have stood, on the big controversies over epistemology and methodology is an interesting question. For me, it’s the social democratic revisionists such as Bernstein and the British Fabians who really made a fetish of science as a marker of modernity and progress.
I’ve got no evidence Baraholka, but the people I’ve heard argue against it have come from a more religious perspective or perhaps a grand conspiracy (like the global warming one
).
I only said more than in the greens… Have you reason to believe more greens are against it? Perhaps we’re trading stereotypes, green hippies vs religious conspiracy theorists.
@40 – it’s a good question, gregh. We have three PhDs writing here – Mark in sociology, Paul in political science, and Robert in computer science (I think!). My academic background is sociology and fine arts. That’s just the people participating on this thread, but I think (might be wrong) that Robert is the only LP blogger with a scientific training. dk.au’s doctoral work is in sociology of science, I think.
paul @ 39 – I think you can get hold of vaccination rates by area – need to do some correlation against voting data
The place I’ve heard most commonly mentioned with low vaccination rates, which resulted in a whooping cough outbreak is Nimbin – something like 1 in 3 not vaccinated? But that might just have been bias on the reporting.
Paul,
I attend a Pentecostal Church, the members of which churches, as you know, form the backbone of the Family First vote.
I only know one person in our congregation of several hundred who has been reluctant to vaccinate her children and that was on the basis of the risk to the child i.e. the 1 in 100,000 or whatever chance of a severe adverse reaction to vaccination including the supposed (rumoured ?) correlation to Autism.
There are indeed some Penties who think that AGM is a fraud cooked up to give impetus to a One World Government and hence inaugurate the reign of the AntiChrist. Again I personally only know one person who has expressed that view, but if I surveyed the congregation I reckon I could find more. What percentage it would be I could only guess, but I would say less than 5%
Most anti-AGW Penties occupy the same headspace as secular anti-AGW persons i.e. they are Lib/Nat voters.
General attitudes to AGW in my congregation and I would speculate in the Pentecostal movement as a whole mirror general community attitudes in that they are split along the same demographics. i.e. The younger you are, the more likely you are to be progressive on AGW.
In terms of what Greens think about vaccination I was offering no opinion. I was just curious as to why you had picked Family First voters as anti-vaccinators.
@49 I often see people writing about science and wonder how many are themselves scientists. Not of course that only scientists can understand ‘Science’ as a social construct but science itself does require quite a bit of work for a rich understanding. (no different to sociology/philosophy/etc etc)
Most scientists I know/have known would vote Greens
@52 – I think the question also goes to the whole issue of authority and knowledge, gregh.
That is to say, none of the pollies (nor many of us) are capable of easily understanding or assessing climate science.
But, just as there’s a hypothesis that partisan affiliation may correlate with acceptance of climate science, there may also be one that advanced training in the social sciences might predispose one to such an acceptance – for two reasons:
(1) Familiarity with the protocols of method, and of inference and deductive and inductive reasoning;
(2) An appreciation that natural science and social science share much in terms of rigour.
There may also be another set of issues around the more sociological issue of status, too.
And I suspect lots more!
Apologies for sledging you Baraholka. Thanks for the insider view. It’s reassuring to hear that FF’s base mirrors general community attitudes – I guess I’ve judged them on Fielding. My understanding is that as churches go, the pentecostals have a younger demographic – does this mean a majority would be progressive on AGW?
For what it’s worth, I have a PhD in software engineering and work as a researcher and educator in the topic.
Defining whether that makes me “a scientist” or not is an interesting question.
Being a software engineer does not make you a scientist, any more than being a civil engineer or for that matter a medical doctor makes you a scientist.
However, I’m not a practitioner, I’m a researcher.
The investigative tools I use in my field include pure mathematics, empirical quantitative studies, and recently I’ve started using methods from the social sciences.
So I am a bit of a mathematician (I’ve published papers with mathematical proofs in them), scientist, and latterly a social scientist (though I suspect Mark would cringe at the primitiveness of our work so far).
I am neither a climate scientist nor a biologist. However, I do understand two key things better than a non-scientist would: the process of how material winds its way from being some bright grad student’s idea to appearing in textbooks, and how statistical inference works.
Joe@41, I agree, in general.
But “organic” agriculture has no such scientific process. It draws a dividing line and says “artificial” and assumes that they are bad practices, and “natural” (again, running a plough, dumping rock phosphate, or for that matter raising wheat or cattle in Australia is “natural?”) is OK.
Which is akin to saying that because ricin is a castor bean extract, it must be safe, whereas (say) aspartame must be dangerous.
Gregh @40, that’s a very interesting question which I have often pondered, and the lack of much response to it speaks volumes.
Your “most scientists I know/have known would vote Greens” is even more interesting. I have a PhD in chemistry, and mix with a few scientists. None of us would vote Green in a pink fit. As others have pointed out, in many areas other than climate change Green policy is demonstrably anti-science, and even in regard to climate change there are considerable suspicions it is more or less accidentally pro-science because the science aligns with Green ideology.
I am not claiming any superior intellectual abilities for scientists, but science does nonetheless require a certain discipline in thinking and evidence-gathering (which is certainly not universally apparent in climate science, incidentally, but that is another subject), and it is often irritating on threads about scientific issues to run into much pontificating from those who haven’t a clue about the scientific method and should stick to their knitting.
As for “natural science and social science share much in terms of rigour”, that, I’m sorry, is just risible.
thanks for the replies, I guess I should give my background (maybe I did elsewhere before?) – my PhD is in cognitive neuroscience but for tangled family reasons I’m no longer practicing in that field.
re organic – it can get really silly sometimes, as the term is a little overloaded to keep using for me, but I am more of a mind with #29 – if considered as a package of attitudes to production then ‘organic’ can be interesting.
re climate consensus. It was probably reported on LP before but gallup reported recently
“The percentage of Australians who are aware of climate change and say it results from human activities fell from 52% in June 2008 to 44% in March 2010, while the number attributing it to natural causes increased 10 percentage points.”
I doubt non-Greens politicians are any more scientifically literate than the average punter – perhaps even less so given their dominant interests are social (manipulation).
I agree with #4 about a probable error in the Green figures.
And I’ll be handing out Greens how-to-vote cards in Brisbane come election day
Robert,you really do go off half cocked about the Greens sometimes. The ‘promote organic agriculture’ was at the very end of a long, long list of other measures with the whole idea being about sustainability.
There is plenty of science behind the promotion of Organic Agriculture. I use Integrated Pest Management to control several species of insects, the whole concept being developed by science.
I have another insect trapping system which uses scientifically developed pheremones and a fruit extract developed using mass spectrometry.
Science has discovered the very problems caused by the use of artificial chemicals which Organics seeks to avoid. There are increasing numbers of people with allergies to various chemicals who rely on organic food to lead a pain free life.
Soil science is essential for successful organic farming as you don’t “dump” rock phosphate on alkaline soils without thought to the level of humic acids present to release the P. All crops require a specific balance of nutrients which require the use of science in analysing fertilisers, soils and leaves. I could go on but I must go out and do some unscientific work on my scientifically cloned and bred apricot trees.
While I certainly prefer the idea of eating food with minimal resort to pesticides and like the idea (from an environmental POV) of minimal fossil-based fertiliser, I am not entirely sure that “organic” means anything definite anyway. In the US, the term has been so badly misused in food marketing that one might as well ignore it.
I would also regard the Greens concern with the health aspects of GM as not evidence-based. Certainly, there are legitimate concerns over the commercial and equity implications of GM crops, and in some places some GM crops may not be a good fit, but it seems to me a stretch to blanket oppose all GM crops anywhere.
Finally, it’s hard to reconcile the notion of being driven by science with some claims made by supporters of the Greens concerning the epidemiological implications of resort to nuclear power. Again here the position seems to be to cherrypick what data there is to make the case against nuclear power.
On the question of AGW, it’s simply handy that the science is on the side the Greens are on. I am hopeful though that this long period of being on the side of scientific rigour will effect a similar approach to other matters of policy.
Not all questions demand science for an answer, but where science is germane, one should take it seriously.
I spend much of spring taking antihistamines because of chemical allergies. The only difference is that the chemicals are those contained in plant pollen.
Kim, there is ample evidence within the history of Lysenkoism to show that the the Stalinist leadership promoted Lysenko’s Lamackism as a science and science in generaal as the solution to the starvation that followed collectivisation.
I also think it beyond doubt that Marx saw himself as a scientist along the lines of the natural sciences as the following passage from Engel’s eulogy to him makes clear:
Fran, that’s what summarising policies gets you. We need first something that everyone can agree on that is also hard to misreport. So blanket bans are in, nuanced positions are out.
If I was confident that the media would report past the first paragraph I would fight a harder to get nuanced policies. As it is, it’s easier to accept a blanket ban as greens policy than to get tangled up in why GE wind-pollinated crops are bad regardless of proven harmful effects, but GE potatoes with proven harmful effects are probably ok (let’s accept that paper just for the sake of argument). Linking that to our US-inspired IP laws is even harder to do. We’ve had the nuclear power debate, and I am still firmly in the fusion-only camp.
The real issue with any kind of party politics is that what it takes to get policies into a party, plus what it takes to be in the party, is more than most scientifically inclined people can stomach. At a personal level, my experience is that my efforts are often counter-productive due to my all-to-obvious difficulties in dealing with fools.
Paul,
Most younger Penties are progressive on AGW. I find Fielding an embarrassment and not just on AGW.
Moz
I see no harm for the Greens in looking at policies on a case by case basis. One could take a view about GM crops that was crop and market specific. Similarly on nuclear power, one could look at spoecific proposals in specific places and weigh the marginal utility of the proposal.
Fran, I’ve just had no luck getting those things up to the national level. Generally they’re too contentious to get very far. There’s a lot of potential for embarrassment if we get it wrong, and that adds to the reluctance to make exceptions.
There’s also the problem that neither GM nor nuclear offer clear advantages for Australia over the alternatives, they only offer slightly differebnt tradeoffs from the usual.
I mean, is it better to make Victoria a little more radioactive or a little less scenic? That’s the nukes vs windfarms argument in a nutshell, except that you’re making it to people who like looking at wind farms.
Moz asked:
I am going to choose my words here very very carefully, because we have done this debate extensively here, and I don’t intend to thread-hijack, so I simply stipulate my prior positive commentary on NPP … *
That said …
It is clear that windfarms are not a sustainable solution. No volume of wind that one could conceivably build and connect can retire a single FF plant, and since it is the existing problem that we are dealing with (rather than future growth) we need technology that can do what coal does for the grid at the scale that coal does it. Geothermal might work that way. So might waste biomass. Perhaps we can do algae plants. Gas gets us part of the way but like two fingered typing, it only goes so far.
What people like looking at is moot. I quite like looking at wind turbines, but I’d like a natural panorama even more.
* having nuclear plants instead of coal plants would make Victoria quite a bit less radioactive since the main source of uncontrolled release of radioactive materials in Victoria comes from coal plants.
There’s no problem if we could actually have the vision to produce a combination of wind turbine and solar power stations as have been built in Spain and other Eurpoean countries.
As the The Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan claims:
“The plan would generate 325 terawatt hours of electricity a year, meeting the nation’s entire power demands in the year 2020, if a comprehensive energy efficiency plan is also factored in. Any shortfalls could be made up by biomass energy generation, using a portion of the stubble from the nation’s wheatfields.”
Nuclear is fast becoming the outdated option, if it were ever an option at all.
@62 – It’s probably a bit off topic, akn, but I don’t take Engels’ word for it!
Following up on the Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan:
http://beyondzeroemissions.org/node/299
The report, by Beyond Zero Emissions, found a 100 per cent renewable plan by 2020 would cost $37 billion a year, in public and private money – or 3 per cent of Gross Domestic Product.
Denmark are talking about taking 50% of their power from wind by 2025. Beyond Zero Emissions is talking about 40% wind for Australia by 2020.
About 80,000 jobs would be created through the plan.
Patrick Hearps, Technical Director of Beyond Zero Emissions, also has this to say about so-called “transition gas”:
http://beyondzeroemissions.org/media/radio/beyond-zero-talks-patrick-hearps-about-zero-carbon-australia-2020-100416
salient green @ 28 (and others), a lot of Greens (and as my Branch secretary I know a fair few of them) think of GE organisms as frankenfoods, and aren’t interested in having a non-ideological discussion of nuclear power. That’s what I mean about rejecting the science. I’m sorry if I didn’t make that clear.
On consideration I’ve concluded that there actually is an existing strong consensus on climate change and it is between the majority of Liberal and Labor parliamentarians who all agree “we don’t know what to do”, “its too hard”, “make it go away”, “nooooo” and “I want my mummy”.
In the psychology of grief reaction and formation the first of the five stages is denial. This is deep denial. Not wilful, malicious or self serving but terrified denial. We are witnessing FEAR.
First law of physics – energy in = energy out.
Therefore we cannot retain heat – climate change is a hoax.
That big ball of light up in the sky is the most influential thing capable of any climate or weather changing on this planet and taxing it or us wont help.
Eeeek im a denier – quick burn me at the stake..
Damn – it’s too early for popcorn!
That’s the worst argument against global warming I’ve ever seen. Even Bob Katter would think it’s rubbish. Every time he boils a billie, he get water to trap and retain heat long enough to enjoy a good cuppa.
We cannot retain heat? Utter fail.
DaOoSG – “first law of physics”? Not first law of thermodynamics (and badly garbled even if thermodynamics is what Steve meant)?
Methinks me smells a Poe.
If it was a case of energy in, energy out the global temperature would be 30C lower. SF is arguing against the greenhouse effect entirely.
AS Down and Out says, worst argument evah!
A tiny tiny tiny piece of completely incorrect knowledge is a dangerous thing, Steve Frankes.
Now, brave Galileo – consider the consequences of your paradigm-changing thesis. Everything in the universe is at exactly the same temperature, because nothing can retain heat for any length of time? If you think really really hard about it, you should be able to see this is false, but if not I’m sure you could devise an experiment to test it.
Here’s my suggestion. Take a normal household thermometer. Use it to measure the temperature of something warm, and then of something cold. Are they at the same temperature?
@72 adrian
I urge you to look at the CO2 emissions per capita from several European countries here:
Per Capita CO2 Emissions
The lower group are nuclear or nuclear+hydro, the upper group contain some of the pinups for wind and/or renewables. It is very far from obvious that there are “no problems”.