Is Justin Rowlatt an Ethical Man?

The BBC's 'Ethical Man' Justin Rowlatt asks on Radio 4 if the environmental movement is bad for the planet. Listen here. Transcript here.

His theme is that green campaigners have political objectives that go above and beyond decarbonising the atmosphere.

He starts with Solitaire Townsend who runs a city PR firm, which specialises in communicating
sustainability.

She comes up with a thought experiment: A Carbon Fairy comes along with a magic wand that can abolish the laws of physics, so that humans could burn CO2 without damaging the atmosphere's greenhouse properties, and then would environmentalists be happy? They vote no, presumably because they have difficulty with the magic, and because of all the other green issues such as resource depletion, species extinction, overpopulation, traffic congestion and 1001 other concerns. Townsend is angered because of their vote, and Rowlatt carries on to substantiate that anger.

He challenges the precautionary principle, because it is against GMOs and nuclear power. Nuclear power is good in Rowlatt's view, because it is low carbon energy. He passes over the other nine drawbacks to nuclear power, namely

1. Electricity Produced by NP is not CO2 free
2. Conventional NP offers an insignificant contribution to world energy needs
3. Fast Breeder technology means uncontrollable nuclear weapons proliferation
4. NP possession now implies Nuclear War later
5. NP is not economic - and is not insured
6. Routine discharges cause cancer
7. Nuclear Power Stations are vulnerable to terrorist attack
8. The waste problem is not solved
9. Nuclear power stations are vulnerable to flooding as sea levels rise
10. NP would suck funding away from the real longterm solutions which are energy efficiency and renewable energy.

The "ethical man" suspects that greens' lack of willingness to embrace nuclear power is based on a prejudice against the high technology. Jonathon Porrit gives the lie direct to this idea, and blames the growth economy, and rightly points to the fact that consumer economy does not make people happy. To which Rowlatt asks why than does the whole world want to migrate to Western lifestyles, cognitively and geographically. "They think it will make them happier".

But is it really fair to say that less individualistic societies care more about the planet? He wheels in John Gummer whos sets up and knocks down the straw man of communism as the only alternative to individualistic capitalism, which is the only economy that can provide the solution to global warming. Only not free market capitalism, because the true cost of carbon has to be created by legislation. Which we can agree with, so it's not all bad. Jonathon agrees too; it is necessary but not sufficient.

JP "I want ...to go further than that and look to a different kind of economy, a different kind of society - one which I believe would be better for far more people than is the case today"

[I have just copied an pasted this in, despite the fact that it says at the beginning of the BBC transcript "Please note that this is BBC copyright and may not be reproduced or copied for any other purpose". I just have to hope no-one reads this]


At this point the "Ethical Man" clambers aboard his hobby horse, getting in on with his "angle".

Journalists always have to have an "angle" on a topic, a point of view, a bias, in the strict sense, and his angle is this: Greens don't really want to save the planet, they just want to force their lifestyle onto us. Knitted muesli sandals &c.

Sounds familiar? I have been meeting that deep thought being put to me by journalists for three decades. Previously it was just to mock us. Now it is our evil intent to force everyone to wear beards.

ROWLATT: A different kind of society? This seems to be getting into a debate about who we are, about the nature of humanity. More like a theological discussion than a practical plan for cutting emissions because moving to a different kind of society implies changing people’s values....

But at root, what you’re trying to do is change individuals which is a very radical project
isn’t it? Changing who we are...the identity campaign that Tom Crompton, a strategist for
the conservation charity WWF UK champions carries a whiff of social engineering about
it – it seems to imply an almost evangelical approach with green missionaries like Tom ...

Here we go. Evangelical and missionaries. A challenge to the sanity or otherwise of the growth economy has stimulated discussion of social engineering, (nasty word that, involving welding and rivets being driven into people), which rapidly morphs into Changing Human Nature.

Time to wheel in a theologian, Martin Palmer, who is a UN advisor on climate change and world religions.

PALMER: In the 70s and 80s the environmental movement believed that if it put the scientific facts –the data – in front of us, we would all wake up and we would reform ourselves and create a utopian, happy world. What then happened is the classic collapse of that utopian hope and you move into stage two and stage two is the apocalyptic. So for example, the world is going to be swamped by floods, struck by fire, destroyed by plague, everything will collapse,
society will fall apart. it’s that use of fear that is the main indicator of this.

In short, because the man in Oxford Street with the End of the World is Nigh sandwich board was mad, humans are incapable of having any serious deleterious effect on the global environment. At least, I think that's what he is trying to say.


PALMER: I hate to say this – but there is a very strong –it’s very small – but there is a very strong green fascism in much of the environmental world. I’ve heard it said at meetings I’ve been at – that climate change is so important - democracy has to be sacrificed.

Why, yes, I've heard this too. From one person, out of all the hundreds of people that I correspond with over these matters. I responded that fascism or dictatorship always ends in conflict and war, and war is not good for the environment.

HULME: Some of the deep green movement would buy into this - that actually climate change is the best opportunity that we have got in order to get our political goal of a more egalitarian, localist, less consumer driven society onto the table. And we’ve seen over 40 or 50 years different tactics I suppose from some of these deep greens, eco-socialists if you like, to drive forward this idea and climate change is the latest and is an opportunity.

So there we have it. Greens are "quite cynical" - using climate change as a tactical device. It’s almost as if climate change is a sort of convenient truth to put through their "hidden agenda".
And the hidden agenda seems to be - wait for it - eco-socialism.

Some, like my beloved interlocutors on the Daily Mail discussion board, would go further than Rowlatt. The hidden agenda is not just eco-socialism, but World Government and 100% taxation. And population reduction, probably through forcible sterilisation without an anaesthetic and death camps, and being forced to eat raw uncooked babies, ripping them apart with their bare teeth. OK, I made that last bit up, and they are never said 100% taxation, just high taxation.

More, they believe also that there is a Great Green Conspiracy that has actually somehow persuaded the world community of climate scientists to falsify all their data, frightening the world into believing that there is a problem with global warming when there isn't.

But that's the Daily Mail readers for you.
Back now to the Ethical Man. He has his angle on the situation, has been given the opportunity to bend the ear of the Radio 4 listening public for 30 minutes, and there is no right of reply. He can interview deep thinkers like Porrit and Simms, who have given their lives to the study of these matters, and can take one paragraph of what they say and suggest to us that they have a hidden eco-socialist agenda.



There's only one word for it :

SNAFU.

Rowlatt poses the question "Are Environmentalists bad for the Planet?"
The answer he suggests is "Yes"
This blog poses the question "Is Justin Rowlatt really deserve to call himself the Ethical Man?"
The answer I suggest is, "Whatever. Do we, like, care?"
Another question: "Does Justin Rowlatt have a hidden agenda?"
Answer: "Maybe. Maybe not".
Another question: "Is there a grain of truth in what he is saying?"
Answer: "Yes. But this blog is long enough already, so I will come back to the question of whether Green is a religion in a later blog".

Any Questions? is getting a bit questionable

Went to Any Questions? in Cheddar last night.

Bit boring.

The only interesting discussion was about the ban on Islam4UK and possibly on juries.
the other questions were Google in China, election debate by 3 main party leaders, school lunch-boxes, and who do you least want to be marooned in a car with?

I put in 3 questions:
Should the UN effort in Haiti go beyond physical reconstruction of buildings to include reforestation and creation of a just society and equitable economy?
Should the UN set up a Rapid Reaction force of experts using military logistic skills to deal with disasters?
Should drug policy be determined by science or morality?

The politicians, Ben Bradshaw and Chris Grayling were pretty bland, and the most interesting were Louise Doughty, writer, and Peter Hennessy, historian. The Dimbleby was a bit testy and interrupty, possibly because he had a bad shoulder and looked as if he was on analgesics.

Islam4UK discussion made me wonder about my support for the ban. Why do they not just try morons like Choudry under existing laws on hate speech.

Both QT and Any Questions are becoming less and less interesting and more and more bland for some reason.

AGW skeptics Dec 9 UN letter - rebuttal

To debate with climate change deniers is like fighting a Hydra - cut off one head, and the same point pops up somewhere else in the media.

We need a battlefield where we can meet and defeat them face to face.
They have now presented us with such a battlefield.

On December 9th the "Climate Realist" website carries a letter to Ban Ki Moon, with a challenge to us, and the usual list of signatories.

They will have given this letter their best shot, presenting their full and definitive case, so we should make an effort to rebut all their points fully, and put it out to the media.

Below, their text is in italic, and my response in normal font.

Specifically, [they] challenge supporters of the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused climate change to demonstrate that:

"1 Variations in global climate in the last hundred years are significantly outside the natural range experienced in previous centuries;

2 Humanity’s emissions of carbon dioxide and other ‘greenhouse gases’ (GHG) are having a dangerous impact on global climate;
The only explanation of current abnormal temperatures is the input of man-made CO2.

3 Computer-based models can meaningfully replicate the impact of all of the natural factors that may significantly influence climate;
See here

4 Sea levels are rising dangerously at a rate that has accelerated with increasing human GHG emissions, thereby threatening small islands and coastal communities;

Acknowledgements to Robert Rohdes, Global Warming Art

5 The incidence of malaria is increasing due to recent climate changes;
This is a red herring. Although malaria incidence is predicted to rise with global temperature, malaria incidence figures are tied in with the medical effort to identify and treat the disease, the success of treatment, the speed at which infected mosquitoes can colonise new areas, the success of swamp eradication measures and other factors. Deniers now accept that climate change is happening; they must therefore accept that the prevalence of malaria-risk areas will increase.

6 Human society and natural ecosystems cannot adapt to foreseeable climate change as they have done in the past;
In the past, humans had to migrate away from excessive heat or cold. The same thing is going to happen in the future if climate change continues, but we also have the knowledge and power now (a) to stop making climate change worse by decarbonising, (b) to reduce levels by sequestration, and (c) to put in adaptive measures. Deniers want to skip (a) and (b). This is a very dangerous omission, for which the most plausible explanation is that it is politically driven, since decarbonisation will hit the oil companies who finance many deniers.

7 Worldwide glacier retreat, and sea ice melting in Polar Regions , is unusual and related to increases in human GHG emissions;

Glaciers are indeed in retreat. This is consistent with observed temperature rises, and we have shown above that temperature rises can only be explained by increases in human GHG emissions.

8 Polar bears and other Arctic and Antarctic wildlife are unable to adapt to anticipated local climate change effects, independent of the causes of those changes;
See here.
9 Hurricanes, other tropical cyclones and associated extreme weather events are increasing in severity and frequency;
Now this is interesting. The topic is still under debate, but indications are that there is a relationship between hurricanes intensity and temperature.

10 Data recorded by ground-based stations are a reliable indicator of surface temperature trends.
Difficult to know what they are driving at here, which is a bit poor, since they are communicating with the UN Secretary General. There are quite a few temperature monitoring stations to consider. Go here, scroll down to the thing that looks like a map of the world.

Their final shot is this:
It is not the responsibility of ‘climate realist’ scientists to prove that dangerous human-caused climate change is not happening. Rather, it is those who propose that it is, and promote the allocation of massive investments to solve the supposed ‘problem’, who have the obligation to convincingly demonstrate that recent climate change is not of mostly natural origin and, if we do nothing, catastrophic change will ensue. To date, this they have utterly failed to do so".

On this last point they are wrong, since the projected damages from climate change are so serious that there is a clear onus on the business as usual lobby, if their case is scientific, to present their case in a way that is capable of refutation.

They are simply being intellectually lazy here.

So this is a response to the best that the denial movement can offer, put together in a couple of hours by a scientifically - trained Green party member.

I hope that the community of climate scientists will issue an authoritative and definitive rebuttal that can be a standard reference point for media commentators on the ongoing debate, so that we can focus on this one document, as representing the deniers' very best effort, so that all this foot dragging nonsense can be left in the past.

Is Climate Change Man-Made?

The global warming "skeptics" now accept that climate change is happening, but deny that it has a significant man-made component.

Here is the evidence that there is such a component:

1 CO2 has increased from 280 to 380 parts per million since the Industrial Revolution began clearing forests and burning fossil carbon. About half of our releases have been reabsorbed by forests and oceans. The other half is still in the air.

Isotope studies and tree analyses confirm that plant derived carbon in the air has increased- which points back to ourselves, since we burn plants, both ancient and modern.

So we have definitely put carbon that was taken out of the air in the Carboniferous Period 360 million years ago back into the air.

My back of an envelope calculations suggest that each year we release into the atmosphere carbon that took about 60,000 years to take out. Peak Oil sites web gives a figure closer to an annual release of carbon that took between 250,000 - 1.5 million years to form. Their figure is probably nearer the truth

So there is no reasonable doubt whatsoever that we are responsible for the increase in carbon dioxide.

2 It is an observed fact that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas (GHG).
(Watch an experiment)

3 The "greenhouse effect" is necessary to keep the planet in a mode that sustains human life at the population levels of 6 billion.

We rely on being in the Goldilocks temperature band - not too hot, not too cold. We must be absolutely sure that we are not disturbing this equilibrium.

4 Calculations of "Radiative Forcing" for the various inputs into the planet show that the CO2 (and other GHGs) that we emit are the only explanation for the recent observed warming of the planet.

If we take greenhouse gases out of the equation, and rely on the other variables - core heat, clouds, water vapour, aerosols, volcanoes and solar variation - we cannot explain the recent changes in global temperature.

Click to enlarge.The red line is temperature observations, grey line is the model. Top left shows natural forcings, top right CO2 forcings, and below, the best match, with natural and CO2 combined.





5 All reasonable persons who look at the data with an open mind are convinced by the case that the climate scientists have put.

We observe temperature increases, GHG (greenhouse gas) increases are the only way we can explain the temperature differences, we produced the extra GHG, the consequences of continuing to do so are extremely serious, therefore we must decarbonise the economy.

6 The losers from decarbonisation - oil and mining multinationals, and free market ideologues - have fought a rearguard action, and have challenged the scientists on every point. Each and every one of their challenges have been met.

Some will never be convinced, because they are free market fundamentalists, and feel threatened by the guided market and cooperative economic measure that are necessary as a response to global warming. This idealism is the driver for the ceaseless, importunate criticism, and the current drive attacks in East Anglia and New Zealand. And possibly illegal activity in Canada.

This opposition has held up the decarbonisation for nearly two decades, but thankfully the world's leaders are now taking the first steps towards decarbonisation.

Another clear summary here.

Climate change FAQs.

East Anglia CRU results are reliable and reproducible

Acknowlegements to NOAA. This link also gives an important explanation for the graph.
Click on the figures to see in their entirety.


OK. The Climate Research Unit (CRU) at East Anglia University has taken a pasting recently.

In previous blogs here Phil Jones' "trick to hide the decline" has been shown to have no relevance to the scientific data, only to the appearance of a graph on the front of a report,
and Kevin Trenberth's expression of frustration ("travesty") was all about an abstruse problem with data from the outer atmosphere.

Those are the most serious verbal statements. The next challenge is the CRU computer codes, which have to do immensely complex calculations to allow for altitude and other variables on each collecting station. The CRU codes appear to be sub-prime.

The sceptics are therefore working to undermine the credibility of CRU work, which underpins the "uptick" - sharp increase in modern temperatures - seen on this most important graph here.

Given that they have undermined the credibility of CRU - until such time as an inquiry has examined the effects of the poor coding - we need independent confirmation that their results are reliable.


Three copies of the raw data on temperature records are kept, one by the National Meteorological Services, one by NOAA, and one by NASA.

The NOAA graph is shown above, with CRU for comparison.

We can see that there is no substantive difference.
Therefore, there is no reason to doubt the credibility of the most important graph - the temperature record of the planet, which is most clearly "spiking a fever" as we doctors call it.

Source: Copenhagen Diagnosis document.

So there we have it. Despite a burglary, a hack, and a coordingated attack, the Business As Usual lobby have failed to discredit the key point of climate science - global temperatures are rising at a rate and to a level that is unprecedented in the last 2000 years.

There is only one rational, reasonable political response - for all the world except the tiny coterie of free market fundamentalist "skeptics" to call for, agitate for, and pray for a clear, legally binding agreement in Copenhagen.

New Zealand Climategate bomb blows up in skeptics' faces

Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet, in New Zealand, another climate science row is boiling up.

The New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, (NZSC), a skeptic group, have published a paper on 25th November which claims that NIWA scientists massaged the figures to produce a warming effect on their temperature trends. Their graphs do show as flatter, although there is a suggestion of an upward trend from 1970 onwards, and it is a pity that they did not apply a trend line.

The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) responds that the adjustments were made to the data because the instruments had been moved to a higher location. This is standard procedure, since it is cooler at higher altitudes.

NIWA quote: NIWA climate scientists have previously explained to members of the Coalition why such corrections must be made. NIWA’s Chief Climate Scientist, Dr David Wratt, says he’s very disappointed that the Coalition continue to ignore such advice and therefore to present misleading analyses.

The skeptics have had access to the data, and have been in discussion for 2 years, but have published now, at a time convenient to the skeptics.

NIWA gives one site elevation instance.

NZSC claim the altitude reasoning does not always work.

However, NIWA shows it clearly does in one of the areas in question.

NIWA also say that their results are confirmed by independent data:

A paper published in 1995 identified an upward trend of about 0.7°C from 1900 to 1993 in night time minimum air temperatures measured from ships over the ocean surrounding New Zealand. That trend is similar to the trend from the seven-station land network over the same period. Also, sea surface temperatures measured from the same ships warmed by 0.6°C in that period.

That sites that were not shifted show the same trend:
Dr Jim Salinger has identified from the NIWA climate archive a set of 11 stations with long records where there have been no significant site changes. When the annual temperatures from all of these sites are averaged to form a temperature series for New Zealand, the best-fit linear trend is a warming of 1°C from 1931 to 2008. We will be placing more information about this on the web later this week.

To round it off, the sceptics have put out a press release containing a direct lie:

So far, neither Dr Salinger nor NIWA has revealed why they did this,” said Mr Treadgold

So, while we wait for full exact data on the sites which were moved, it looks as if the so-called "sceptics" have lied, dissembled, and indulged in timing, hoping for maximum effect in the news at the time of Copenhagen.

It remains to be seen whether the sceptics end up hoist on their own petard.

The fact remains that GHGs are the only possible explanation for recent warming.

Climate change skepticism, science, logic and ideology

AGW skeptics assert that human greenhouse gases have no effect on global climate.

If it is a faith-based assertion, there is nothing that will change their mind.

If on the other hand, they view it as a factual assertion, then it it is a statement in the scientific arena, and must therefore be capable of being refuted.

They agree that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, that is, that it traps infra red radiation, since this is a physical fact.

They agree that concentrations have risen since the Industrial Revolution, since that is an observed fact.

They accept that global temperatures are rising, since they often say that "climate change is happening, it happens all the time, due to natural variation".

So their case is that although CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and is rising, it makes no contribution to the rise in temperature. Or maybe they mean it makes a negligible contribution.

But the climate models say that it is making a significant contribution.
So they reject the use of climate models out of hand, rather than agreeing that they are, like all machines, a useful but imperfect instrument.

It is impossible accurately to study a complex system as the atmosphere without models.

Therefore there is nothing that will convince them that they are wrong.

Therefore their case is not a scientific case, because science must always be falsifiable.

What this leads to is that just as they accuse us of having an ideological agenda, so also do they have an ideological agenda.

It goes like this:

"I believe in individualism. My prime responsibility is to Me as No 1, also my family if I so choose. I will look after my own interests in my own way, and Government should get out of my face and my backyard. There is no such thing as society. I am not responsible for what happens to others, if bad things happen to them, that is there look out. Sh*t happens.


Individualism demands free market fundamentalism. Individualism means that corporations, which are individual persons in law, must not be subject to any regulation, because the Invisible Hand of the Market will produce the best of all possible worlds.


If global warming were true, it would be necessary for representatives of the people to intervene in the market to make carbon pay for the damage it does.


I reject any intervention in the market.
Therefore I reject the idea man-made global warming.
Nothing will induce me to change my mind on this point, because I am an individualist".

Is it all down to Sunspots?

Source of graph

Skeptics ask whether global warming is due to changes in solar activity. The sun does fluctuate in its output on an 11-year cycle, which are shown above as sunspots. This variation does affect the weather patterns that we see, but the influence of solar variation is only 1/8th as strong as the influence of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

Sometimes the sun is active for a longer period, and I personally expect that the Maunder Maximum of sunspot activity will be shown to account for at least some of the Mediaeval Warm Period.

Nobody claims that computerised climate models are perfect, but as the science progresses, they will become increasingly accurate. There are at least six variables that affect the earth's temperature. We can only modify one of them - our greenhouse gases. This we have got to do, and Copenhagen is the place to do it.

Climate Denial in Two

Source
This is image is an original work by Robert A. Rohde created from publicly available data.

There are seemingly an infinite number of questions put out by the AGW deniers, but there are two major themes:

1) Using a detail to try to invalidate a whole picture. Argue from a particular to the general.

For instance, the hacked emails show that scientist are human, with the usual human emotions and failings. Surprise.

But what should impress us is that despite the intense scrutiny of the emails by the skeptics, no-one has made a case that invalidates the whole body of climate work. Even if Price and Trenberth's work were taken out of the corpus of climate studies, there are still more than enough studies to confirm that we have a serious man-made global warming problem.

This is well illustrated by the composite graph of long term temperature studies. After Mann's work was criticised (and this is what science is all about, criticism of the evidence), the approach has been reproduced nine times, as shown in the graph above.

The result is a lousy hockey stick for sure, since hockey sticks made of cooked spaghetti lack the structural integrity to deek, let alone deliver a slap shot, but it does very convincing picture of a world that is clearly undergoing warming in recent history.

Convincing, that is, except to those whose ideology prevents them from accepting the necessary policy changes that arise from the science.

Which leads us to the second theme:

2) The Conspiracy Theory.

The US shock jocks are coming right out with it: The Great Global Warming Conspiracy, which runs like this: Gore, Soros and a few others (including, in some versions, George W Bush), in collaboration with unnamed socialists and greenies, have paid scientists to manipulate the data in order to generate a false picture of global warming so that they can achieve World Government.

'Nuff said.

Peter Hitchens displays his ignorance

Peter Hitchens in the Mail today plugs Chritopher Brooker's new book on global warming denial.
In the course of his article, he makes three statements:

Hitchens: Recent studies show that most polar bear populations are rising.

Fact: Arctic ice is definitely retreating. Arctic ice is the polar bears' habitat. Loss of habitat will force them to migrate and adapt.
A WWF report says: Satisfactory monitoring information has been delivered for fourteen of the twenty populations of polar bears in recent years (see Table 1, page 12). Of these, ten are showing stable population numbers, two seem to be increasing, and two are decreasing.

Hitchens: The world was warmer than it is now in the early Middle Ages.

This is not true.

This figure was prepared by Robert A. Rohde from publicly available data. Source

Hitchens: The most important greenhouse gas by far is not CO2 but water vapour, which is not influenced by human activity at all.

While it is true that water vapour has a stronger effect than CO2, since its effect increases with temperatures, and since temperatures are influenced by fossil fuel CO2, human activity does have an effect on water vapour.

Global Warming science in a nutshell

Arising from the global warming discussion over on the Daily Mail website, since people do not have a clear idea of the science of global warming, I have written up a short (2 page) summary of the science on my website here.

Can't put it here as images on blogspot need to be at the top, not in the text. Unless anyone knows better? (Weggis has now updated me - thanks Weggis).

Here's a useful summary of the argument between the skeptics and the scientists.

Wake Up! We the people must choose President of Europe

First the good news.

Tony Blair, First President of the European Council, is not going to happen. Phew.

Now the bad news, and I personally apologise about this because I should have noticed this 2 years ago and done something about it but didn't.

I'm talking about the Lisbon treaty, and the President of Europe thing.

The thing is, the first President is to be appointed by the European Council.

Appointed.

Twenty seven (27) people who happen to be national leaders will choose who is to be the First President.

The First President is not going to be elected by us, the people.
We don't have a say in the matter.
They don't even have the grace to give us a single candidate election, as, say, in Zimbabwe.

We the people of Europe get no Carter-Rucking say in the Carter-Rucking election.

Even our elected representative in the European Parliament doesn't get a say in the matter.

They're just going to appoint el Presidente.
Well, C-R that for a game of soldiers. I'm off to join the call for a democratic Europe*.

(Again, I'm sorry, I should have noticed, and complained before, but there are just so many other things going on. I did propose years ago that the Greens should propose that the people of Europe should be invited to vote on the principles of the Constitution, broken down into vote-sized chunks. International Committee asked me to put it to a Norwegian MEP, and there the matter died).

Let's face it, it is easy to go to sleep, faced with the detail of EU politics. It has lulled us all to sleep. But now it is time to WAKE UP!! to the democratic deficit, a kind of political black hole that that is forming like a tiny, voracious worm in the heart of the rose.

We must stop this now.
In a democracy, the will of the people is the ultimate authority. It is right, just and natural that we should choose the leader.

We must demand our democratic right to be the ones to elect the President of the European Council.

Right?


*Handbrake Tendency: "But there are reasons not have a popular election. It would bring a Presidential style rather than a Parliamentary style to the EU".
RL: So how come the Parliament has no say in the appointment of el Primo Presidente then? Eh?

Handbrake Tendency: "But we might end up with someone like Bliar or Bush. Or Burlesquone.
RL: That is a good argument for saying that there should be no elections at all. Yes, people can be fooled by the media into electing a Bush, but nothing is without risk, and also you cant fool all the people all of the time. Praise democracy, and pass the ballot box.

Death Blow Climate Change Denial

This is a very cool video of a brief seminar which delivers the silver bullet death blow to the pretensions of climate change denialists like Clive James, Melanie Phillips and Richard Littlejohn - not by detailed science, but by looking at the Cost Benefit analysis of taking action or not taking action on decarbonisation of Earth's atmosphere.

His argument can be summarised thusly:

In the end, this is not an academic debate, because we and our children are part of the experiment.

The consensus among scientists (yes, with a few exceptions, as is always the case in science) is that we should decarbonise our economy as a matter of urgency.

Let's take a bookie's eye view of the matter.

Say we decarbonise our economy, and it turns out (unlikely as that may be) that Man-Made Global Warming (MMGW/AGW) view is wrong? Well, we will have created hundreds of thousands of jobs in insulation and renewable energy manufacturing and taken thousands out of fuel poverty. Not bad, but that's not all. We will also have reduced the shock of Peak Oil and Peak Gas, and reduced the acidification of the oceans. And addressed our energy security problems. And increased prosperity in hot countries through solar technology and afforestation. Not bad, not bad at all.

Say on the other hand, we go the way of the denialists/skeptics, and it turns out, as per all reasonable expectations, that they are wrong? We will have problems with energy security, Peak Oil, Peak Gas, acidified oceans, acid rain, fuel poverty, unemployment, poverty, civil unrest and finally, massive, catastrophic climate disruption from droughts, floods, crop failures, disease, and war. With massive migration caused by environmental collapse. Not good.

Any sensible punters would put their money on decarbonising the global economy.

His name is WonderingMind42, or Greg, aged 40, father of two and ex-hang glider pilot, (hey bro, happy landings) and he has a sequel video here, which addresses hard-core skepticks (denialists). He changes the question from "are humans causing harm at a planetary level?" to "What is the wisest thing to do?"

History may record greg and his viral video as the Man that Saved the Planet.

Five Global Warming / Climate Change sceptic/denial Myths

FIVE CLIMATE CHANGE DENIAL MYTHS


Unlike scientists, a considerable number of journalists, conservative politicians, and ordinary people are unconvinced about the reality of man-made global warming.

Here are the five main myths put about by these climate change deniers:

1. “The science of climate change is not well established”.
The opposite is true. While 60% of ordinary people think there is some doubt about the science, there is consensus among climate scientists that man-made global warming is a very serious threat indeed.


2. "There is a downward trend in world temperatures in the last 10 years". This is true, but over the last 100 years, there is a definite and serious rise of global temperature over the last century. Take a look at the graph at the top of this piece.

It is important to take the widest possible view, rather than taking a short-term, partial view.There are regular fluctuations with an average 15.5 year cycle, and this last 10 year fall is consistent with this cycle. The recent fall is associated with the La Nina event in the Pacific, which brings more cold water to the surface. The Goddard Institute of Space studies say that the eight warmest years in the GISS record have all occurred since 1998, and the 14 warmest years in the record have all occurred since 1990.

3. "The Arctic is freezing again". This refers to a record growth of the ice in December 2007, but this is in the context of a record shrinking of the ice in the years previously, which has led to the opening up of the fabled North West Passage for the first time. The area of re-frozen ice was still less than the average for the last 25 years, and the rapid growth was due to the simple fact that it had room to grow. Ice depth measurement data shows that the Arctic sea ice is melting as a whole.

4. "Antarctic snow is getting thicker". Antarctica is melting at the edges, with huge cracks appearing in the old ice shelf. A pattern of warmer seas at the edge of Antarctica and colder trends at the South Pole itself . The warmer seas have produced more cloud and snowfall, leading to colder temperatures at the south pole.

Again we see how AGW deniers seize on one fact, and ignore the broad picture. The global climate is a highly complex system, and the changes we are producing will be highly unpredictable. We cannot deduce much from any one single piece of data; we need to view the system as a whole.

5. "Climate Change is happening, but it is down to a natural variation in the output of the sun". The Royal Society, which represents the best in British scientists, says “While there is evidence of a link between solar activity and some of the warming in the early 20th Century, measurements from satellites show that there has been very little change in underlying solar activity in the last 30 years there is even evidence of a detectable decline and so this cannot account for the recent rises we have seen in global temperatures”.



Denial is an ego defence mechanism which psychiatrists and psychologists have recongnised for a century; it is defined as the refusal to acknowledge the existence or severity of unpleasant external realities or internal thoughts and feelings . It is understandable, given the seriousness of what is happening. Deeply convinced denialists sometimes go further and say “ManMade Global Warming is a due to a conspiracy between the Greens, the world scientific community and the Powers that Be”. Many denialists do actually cling to this absurd conspiracy theory, despite the fact that they have not a shred of credible evidence for it.

Global Warming is a fact, we must face up to it and act first to stop it getting worse, and second to make it better. By acting together at every level, internationally, nationally, in business, work and at the personal level, we can succeed. It is going to be challenging, but the act of addressing global warming will provide good employment to millions, and will also stimulate the economy out of recession.

Go here for evidence that AGW is happening now.
Here for more detail on skeptics.
Here for Nancy Orestes' evidence on scientific consensus. (.pdf)

What shall we do for the Downward Market?

The debate on Green Party economics list continues.

Someone has proposed a statement including this line:

"The way our financial system operates has caused environmental as well as economic catastrophe".

One member has doubts about this, and wants it nuanced.

We must surely all agree that our economic system is causing an environmental catastrophe.
Since the financial system lies at the heart of the economic system, I cannot see how any Green thinker can be unsure about this.

More doubts
"Ruling out all injections of liquidity is a bit sweeping. That is how the BoE (like all other central banks) performs its fundamental job of lender of last resort, and we have no policy to end that. Ending it in this way would make the banking system a lot more unstable than it is, which presumably we want to avoid".

RL: Central banks are indeed the lenders of last resort. This is not to say that the BoE is a soft touch. Any lender has to decide whether the would-be borrower they see standing before them is a good risk. The banksters have made bad decisions, and are in a mess of their own making, with billions of bad debts on their books. They want us, the taxpayers, to simply take these bad debts off them, so that they can carry on as before, albeit with possibly a bit more regulation, grudgingly accepted. The green Party has a list of regulations that we are considering. Govt so far has merely suspended short selling for a few months.

There are two options:

Option 1
To go along with the request (when they come up with it) of the unregulated money markets to buy the toxic "assets" (= unpayable debts) (which is in essence a free subsidy to a system that never gives out free subsidies: if it gives out money, it lends out exclusively at compound interest).

There are many questions about this request, centered on
Moral Hazard,
Natural Justice,
Opportunity Costs, (money better spent in the real economy, applying the Right to Rent (GP policy) and GND.
Probability of corrupt and/or sophisticated diversion of the monies into banksters' pockets, and undue pressure being brought by lobbyists*
Quantification of these toxic assets. Nobody knows how much is actually there, given the obscurity of the hedge funds &c that have been playing around with these debts.

The only argument in favour of a Tarp-type intervention (which Congress is voting on as we speak) is the Gun To The Head argument: "Give us the money or the economy gets it."

Some in the Green Party appear to be buying into this argument.


The counter argument to the GunToTheHead is this : "Is a Tarp-type bailout guaranteed to save the patient, or is it an expensive medicine that will delay the demise of the free market in money for a period of time, maybe weeks, maybe months?"

I have not heard any pundit giving a percentage chance of the bail-out's prospect of success. Which suggests that either no-one has any idea, or that they will not be good.

So I propose that we reject the idea of a bail out for the financial markets, and that instead we draw up

Option 2

a plan
* to buy up (nationalise) viable banks piecemeal, as they call for help. (Non-viable banks will have to fail: "He that lives by the free market must die by the free market")
* to use the money on the Green Party's Right to Rent policy, which will itself address the Toxic Asset problem
* to use the money on the GND.

This is a momentous decision. It means letting the financial markets swing from a rope of their own making, which will certainly bring on and intensify the present recession. But it gives us the opportunity to create a Green economy out of the ashes of the old economy, which is irrational, eco-cidal, growthist, war-mongering and divergent.

People may say that this is all theory, that we do not have a snowball's chance of influencing these great decisions. Not so. Pace the Guardian piece of yesterday, listing about 8 reasons why the City is not going to require a Paulson style bailout, the issue may well come to the UK, especially if Congress votes yes to the bailout a second time, and if it seems temporarily successful, the City may pick its time to start crying for a fix.

Thrice armed is he whose cause is just,
but nine time he who gets his blow in fust.

Weather Report: Consistent with Global Warming

Ok, I'm going to be the first to say it: This shockingly cloudy and wet British August is consistent with Anthropogenic (man made) Global Warming Theory (AGW).

Note that I do not say "Is due to GW" nor "Proves Global Warming theory is true". Both those statement would be unsustainable.

Causality is always problematic, especially in empiricist Britain, where the philosopher David Hume concluded that causality is only a regularity of our perceptions, so real, common sense causality cannot be verified. He is supposed to have said "I cannot know that my tossing a stone across the room might not extinguish the sun. So I am not saying August is due to AGW.

Likewise, since "proof" is something that happens in geometry and mathematics, not in science. Popper shows that the best status that a scientific theory can attain is not-yet-disproven. Kuhn goes further, saying that proof happens when a matter is consensual in the scientific community. AGW sure is proven in this sense, but Kuhn is a hostage of fortune to Derrida and his undisciplined hordes. (I have picked up a habit of source-dropping from certain members of the green economics community. It is time saving fun for the writer, but apologies to any readers who find it a pain). So "August proves global warming" is out.

But August is consistent with AGW. "Consistent with" is the phrase used by medical witnesses as in "The injuries were consistent with being struck with a blunt instrument". Science is a matter of recognising a pattern, proposing n explanation, then trying to find data that invalidates the pattern. AGW has been recognised. A sound body of evidence is consistent with the proposal that it is happening right now.

The problem lies with the psychological ego-defence mechanism of denial. Up to now I have just dismissed these as time-wasters. I now realise that we have to take them on, because they are hugely influential with the newspaper reading public.

Debating debt and money

Debate on the green economics list continues. A member asks whether green monetary reformers object to lending per se.

What we object to primarily is the perpetual growth in throughput of materials in our so-called "economy", (better termed a wastonomy or a dyseconomy), because it is
(a) destroying the ecosphere on which we depend for survival in the future and
(b) depends on the thesis that perpetual expansion into a finite space is possible, which is a logical absurdity and
(c) the levels of debt built up under the present system are unsustainable and unethical. Debt is a power relationship.

No, we are not against lending per se, but we want it brought back under some kind of prudent control, (a consensus on this point has emerged out of the latest round of debate on the green economics list), to end the kind of vacuum economy that we now have. In particular, we object to the privatisation and monopolisation of debt by the private banks, and wish to see the community itself benefit from the ability to provide money that the banks have arrogated to themselves.

Some people do not think that the economy about to collapse. But I take it that they do accept the general view that America is about to enter a recession? If they do, but view it as a short and transient dip, that is your judgment, but my judgment is that the enormous extent of world debt, together with rising energy prices and the impact of global warming, may cause a major global depression, and the Green Parties of the world should lay down contingency plans for this event.

Rebuttal to John Gray's attack on the Greens in the Observer

John Gray, a political philosopher, writes in the Observer (20.1.2008) with an attack on the Green Movement.

He begins with a breathtaking assertion to the effect that Bush and the Greens have pretty much the same agenda. It would be ironic, he concludes, if “greens were to end up as much a threat to the environment as George W Bush”. He arrives at this remarkable conclusion on the basis that Bush and the Greens agree that it is our addiction to fossil fuels that is harming the planet.

The least that we could expect from a philosopher is that he would avoid logical fallacies, but in this case he is committing the fallacy of guilt by association.

He supports his association in the following line: “The aim should not be to master nature or turn it into a mere resource for humans to exploit, as Bush and the greens, in their different ways, end up doing”. There is no attempt on his part to provide evidence that the greens regard nature as a mere resource. Nature is indeed our resource for water, food and energy, but we have always fought to use the resources provided in a sustainable way, often to our political disadvantage.

The essay unwinds into an attack on the Green movement, in a series of breathtakingly unsubstantiated statements “…[the greens] are …resisting the most fundamental fact about the environmental crisis, which is that it cannot be resolved without a major reduction in our impact on the Earth”. Reducing our impact is exactly what green political philosophy is, and always has been, about.

“Green activists, free-market economists and religious fundamentalists may not seem to have much in common, but they are all agreed there can be no such thing as overpopulation, or at any rate, nothing that can't be solved by better distribution, faster growth or a change in human values.

This is not true. I was present at the Green Party Conference in the 1990s when we debated population in terms of the undeniable ecological limit of carrying capacity. I remember the thrashing the party got from the media for daring to suggest that the UK’s carrying capacity is already exeeded. I do not recall any political philosopher by the name of John Gray getting up to defend us. The Green Party still has policy regarding population limitation, based on understanding and education rather than coercion.

He attacks the solutions offered by environmentalists: “Unsightly and inefficient wind farms will not enable us to give up fossil fuels”. Here the philosopher is using the “straw man” fallacy – putting forward a misrepresentation of our position, which he proceeds to abuse. Greens are not offering wind as the sole solution. The basis of our argument is that the solar energy reaching the surface of the earth is something like 250,000 times greater than our total energy usage. The known technologies on offer are energy conservation, energy efficiency, wind, wave, tide, solar thermal, solar electric, solar concentration, and biomass (not to be confused with biofuels). Despite the best efforts of the British Government to sideline these technologies, they are available now, ready for deployment, and the fact remains that they represent energy revenue, as opposed to fossil fuels and uranium, which represent a finite energy capital.

Gray admits that “organic methods of food production can have significant benefits in terms of animal welfare and reducing fuel costs, but it does nothing to stop the devastation of wilderness that goes with expanding farming to feed a swelling human population”. Well, no. And burying oral contraceptive pills in the ground is not a good way of growing crops either, John. Organic farming is for growing food sustainably, not about limiting the population. Again, Gray is using the Straw Man fallacy, which leads him on to say “So conventional green nostrums are not all that different from Bush's business-as-usual policies”.

“Contrary to the greens, there is not the remotest prospect that the world will renounce the use of fossil fuels”. Well, as a matter of fact, they will if renewable energy becomes cheaper than fossil fuels. Demand on oil is about to outstrip supply, and the world economy is probably about to crash into the bargain, both factors that will tend to reduce fossil fuel use. There is certainly a titanic struggle about to take place over the issue of fossil fuel use, and Bush’s global warming denialism has been a part of that struggle.

Gray resorts to ad hominem arguments when he says that “a sustained capacity for realistic thinking, … is not the strong point of the environmental movement “ and worse, when he accuses us of being of unsound mind: “…demonising nuclear power is conventional green thinking at its delusional worst. In that use of the “appeal to ridicule” fallacy, he by-passes a mass of detailed arguments over the economy, safety, and limitations of nuclear power. He betrays his ignorance of these arguments by saying “Ask any competent energy economist and you will discover that no expansion of renewables can satisfy the demand for energy that is being generated in China and India”. So if in fact you are an energy economist that has spent long months putting together feasibility studies for renewables in India, you are ipso facto incompetent. Nice one John.

Of nuclear power, he says “Nuclear energy has well-known problems of security and waste disposal and it is nothing like a universal panacea. That is no reason for turning our back on nuclear, which is already virtually emission-free. Here he shows his ignorance of the calculation that the fossil fuels used in creating nuclear power stations and refining the uranium for use mean that Nuclear has CO2 emissions roughly 1/3^rd as high as gas, and lower grade uranium will need more energy to refine it than it will yield in use.

Finally, Gray implies that greens are against intelligent use of technology. This is not true: the renewable energy modalities that we advocate are all intelligent use of technology. We are rightly against facile techno-fixes which offer “jam-tomorrow” type solutions of the kind Gray offers when he supposes that genetically modified food has a part to play in feeding the world. The evidence for this is so scant that the drive to market GM foods is based on unscientific assessments based on the doctrine of substantial equivalence, which blanks out the detailed biochemistry of GM foods. Remarkably he tries to create a distinction between GM and “industrial-style agriculture, whose destructive impact is all too clear”, when no such distinction exists.

In conclusion the political philosopher John Gray has issued a farrago of fallacious arguments and unsubstantiated assertions trying to identify the Green movement with the aims of the Bush administration. It is to be hoped that the Observer will allow equal space for his rebuttal.

Contraction and Convergence Makes Poverty History

Over on openDemocracy (see link to the right) Steve is worried that tackling climate change will give developed countries an advantage over poor countries.

With Contraction and Convergence, the opposite of Steve's account is true.

With C&C, a target for a safe level of global CO2 is set, countries are allocated CO2 on a per capita basis, and trading of the quota is allowed. The US will have to buy CO2 quotas from poor African countries, so there is an intrinsic tendency to economic convergence in the system.

Also, with the transfer of solar technology to developing countries, they will become energy rich, and Somalia may find itself exporting hydrogen to Europe. Given help with water conservation and management, green economics can really help to make poverty history.

Nuclear Deterrence and Logic

This one belies the claim to brevity, but my excuse is that it is an essay on nuclear deterrence.

I see that Mikhail Gorbachev is dismayed at Bliar's decision to update Trident.

Nukes are such an emotive topic. This essay is an exercise in cool logic. Try it.

Nuclear Deterrence and Logic

In principle, if the consequences of the failure of a system would be infinitely destructive to a civilisation, it is reasonable for that civilisation to use that system if and only if the probability of its failure are zero.

Does the possession of nuclear weapons by a number of states in the international community constitute a system, that is, a group of interrelated parts forming a whole?

It is certain that they are interrelated; the possession of these weapons by one state is indeed the driver for a second state to obtain its own weapons, forming a chain reaction of nuclear weapons proliferation which the NPT seeks, with surprising success, to restrain. They also form a system in the sense of classical Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) deterrence, whereby opposed states are restrained from using their weapons in warfare because of the threat of retaliation by its opponent.

So nuclear weapons do form a group of interrelated parts. Do they form a whole? In classical deterrence, the answer given by supporters of deterrence theory was a categorical affirmative. For them, the balance of nuclear forces between West and East created a state of peace for fifty years. A more neutral point of view would agree that the existence of nuclear weapons does indeed raise the threshold for declaring war. So all parties can agree that the outcome of collective nuclear weapons possession is an inhibition of declaration of war, a relative state of world peace, which is the single product of the many parts, and therefore nuclear weapons possession on the part of many nations is a system.

Next, can the system fail? Nuclear deterrence is a complex arrangement of electronic sensors embedded in a command and control network composed of humans working to hard protocols that are interwoven with pattern judgements and valuations which are affected by the emotional state of the individuals and groups that make the judgements. The groups themselves, particularly the supreme decision making groups, are isolated from the common body of humanity, and are known to be susceptible to a condition known as group think – defined as A mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members' strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.[i] Moreover, the interplay of decision makers is now far more complex than in the days of the cold war, with players coming on to the field who might not view the destruction of the prevailing world civilisation as a thing to be avoided at all costs, and other players already on the scene who believe that nuclear weapons could be used tactically without risking a strategic exchange.

In short, it is entirely reasonable to judge that the probability of failure of the nuclear deterrence system is greater than zero. [ii]

Would the breakdown of the nuclear deterrence be infinitely destructive? This is point that must be settled by a value judgement. First, would it be possible to get away with a limited exchange, or would one nuclear detonation inevitably escalate into an all out global nuclear war?

It is impossible to give a definitive answer to that question, but the safest assumption to make is that if one weapon is detonated, they will all be fired. The reason for this lies in the doctrine of first strike, which aims to destroy the opponent’s weapons before they can be fired. Once it is known that an opponent has detonated a nuclear weapon, the pressure will be on for supreme commanders to fire all their nuclear weapons before they lose them to a first strike. In view of this, although we cannot say that any exchange would inevitably lead to a first strike, it would be the height of folly for anyone to assume that they could use weapons in a limited tactical strike and believe that matters would then be allowed to rest by the opposition. Unfortunately this is the prevailing nuclear doctrine of the United States of America. They consider that nuclear weapons could be used tactically, as an extension of a conventional military campaign. In doing so, they may trigger an all-out nuclear war.

Would an all out strategic nuclear exchange be infinitely destructive? There are estimated to be at least 27,000 nuclear weapons in the world held by at least eight countries, 96 percent of them in the possession of the United States and Russia. [iii]

The effects of all-out nuclear war were well studied in the 1980s. Physically, the most interesting possible effect is the so-called Nuclear Winter, where atmospheric soot cuts off sunlight for a period of weeks or months.[iv] When the sunlight returns, the effects of city and forest fires will have been to increase the atmospheric CO2 load, thus exacerbating global warming. Species loss will increase, secondary to habitat loss. Of these, the loss of bees will be most important, since cessation of their pollination services will lead to failure of such crops as survivors may try to plant. Ironically, rats and cockroaches are resistant to radiation, and so will flourish, given the plentiful quantities of human and animal carrion available.

To say the least, economic growth after a nuclear war would be unlikely. In fact a global economic recession or even a depression is almost inevitable, and to be replaced by a survival economy based around obtaining water, food, warmth and shelter for the group. Life will be short, and cancers plentiful, but health services would be rudimentary, and analgesics in short supply. Gangsterism will flourish, and self interest is likely to become the norm.

In summary, it is entirely reasonable to expect that an all out nuclear exchange would lead to the end of western civilisation. It would therefore be infinitely destructive.

In terms of the model set out at the beginning, the consequences of the failure of a nuclear deterrence system would indeed be infinitely destructive to our civilisation, the probability of its failure is greater than zero, and therefore it is illogical for our civilisation to use that system.

Since the syllogism contains a value judgement, and there will inevitably be others who take a different view. However, they are compelled to argue either that the deterrence system is perfectly safe, which is manifestly not the case, or that a tactical weapon would not lead to an all-out nuclear war, which is clearly not provable, or that an all-out nuclear war would not destroy civilisation, which is clearly unreasonable.

In the circumstances, however, because of the uncertainties involved, it is safer to take a precautionary view. The great majority of humanity view the possibility of all out nuclear war with a great deal of distaste. They should be helped to understand that the nuclear deterrence system is not infallible, and that these weapons are quite capable of being used in anger. This should then motivate them to exercise their democratic right and duty to remove from political office anyone who believes that it is reasonable for any state to possess nuclear weapons.

Dr Richard Lawson

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[i] Janis, Irving L. Victims of Groupthink. Boston. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1972, page 9.

[ii] Lachlan Forrow and others, "Accidental Nuclear War --A Post Cold War Assessment," NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE Vol. 338, No. 18 (April 30, 1998), pgs. 1326-1331

[iii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons (4 June 2007)

[iv] Nuclear winter: Physics and physical mechanisms," R. P. Turco, O. B. Toon, T. P. Ackerman, J. B. Pollack and C. Sagan, Ann. Rev. Earth and Planet. Sci., 19, 383-422 (1991).