Climate change and idiots
The sun is shining, little fluffy white clouds cross the sky gently gambolling like happy lambs, trees sway gently in a light summer breeze, the smells of summer rise from the meadows, the sound of leather on willow from the village green is the only unnatural sound in an otherwise natural landscape.
Actually that’s not true at all, I’m on a train heading into London, it’s pissing down outside, and it’s proper cold rain; the weather forecaster has predicted that it’ll all get better later (heard that before) as the rain heads out to the north sea even though it feels like the north sea is landing on us. Still the rivers are extremely low, in Northamptonshire anyway, and this is the first decent rain we have had in some time. Everybody say’s we need it, or the garden needs it (mines already mostly dead) and they’re right, we do.
But already this morning I have heard people make comments like “What about global warming?”, or “it’s been a crap summer, I thought the weather was supposed to get better”
The first thing is STOP TALKING ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING! yes, the overall global temperature will rise (it will, even the most sceptical climate nay sayer will agree with that) but weather is an essentially chaotic system and it is extremely difficult, if not impossible to estimate the effects of a global rise of even 1 or 2 degrees on a small area in a long term forecast.
So is the planet in trouble? no not really, the planet is a big ball of molten rock with an iron core that is hurtling through space, and whatever happens on the surface short of hitting another planet the planet will survive. So life must be in trouble then? Again probably not, life has proven to be pretty resilient, there have been several near extinction events on the planet and the important word there is NEAR, life in one form or another has survived and whatever we do it almost certainly will again. So we must be in trouble? Harder to answer this one but I guess the answer is maybe (it’s definitely not yes) Man is one of the few animals that can change their environment to enable them to survive and is certainly the best at it, but it’s probably fairly reasonable to suggest that in a global climate catastrophe our numbers would be severely limited, remember though every single person on the planet has been traced back to a single mother and a single father (I think they are a couple of thousand years apart so I’m not sure how that works…)
So what it is it we are worried about, everything I have said above is that climate change is survivable, but so is cancer and I don’t want that either!
Climate change is a great way to describe what’s happening, it just doesn’t have the punch of “Global Warming”. The climate is changing that is beyond doubt, the figures are out there on the web for all to see and question, and they stand up pretty well to questioning. I recently watched a BBC Panorama documentary about climate change and the presenter asked all of the scientists involved in either side of the debate three questions:
1) Is the climate changing
2) Is this caused by Green house gases
3) Is the increase caused by Man
They were given for possible answers: Certainly, Most Likely, Least Likely, Definitely not.
Not one of them gave either of the last two possible answers, and the vast majority said Certainly, or at the very worst, somewhere between certainly and most likely. Not one of them! even the most ardent climate change sceptic wasn’t sceptical at all. They all accepted it was happening (or had happened), that it was caused by greenhouse gases (Carbon dioxide, methane, etc…) and that Man had caused a large increase in green house gases since the start of the industrial revolution. The only argument for these scientists (at least as far as the documentary explained) was how we stop (or at this stage, reduce) climate change. Which sounds like a reasonable debate to me, certainly not the schism in the scientific community that certain daily publications and other media sources would have us believe.
So what can we do about it? it’s not a question, if some models are correct, we have a lot of time to answer and of course that’s where the arguments start, or not really, essentially we need to stop burning fossil fuels and find a sustainable alternative. The arguments seem to boil down to should we act independently or should we wait for (and therefore join in) everyone else.
During the 80’s I was very pro unilateral disarmament (still am in fact) I strongly believe that we should lead the way, set an example, and in the case of nuclear weapons our meagre arsenal only serves to make us a target – it is our alliance with America that is the real deterrent. I also believe this is true of greenhouse gas reduction.
Waiting for everyone else is really a stalling tactic by people (and I include everyone, government and citizen alike) to stick with the status quo for as long as possible. Internationally agreed targets tend to be to little to late. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that if we wait for the international community to agree then it will definitely be too late (it may already be anyway).
So if Britain acts alone what impact will that have? well firstly we need to recognise that much of our current reduction in our green house gas emissions is down to the fact that we have exported our manufacturing processes to other countries, often developing countries who use less efficient manufacturing techniques and therefore actually create more emissions. so the numbers that we should judge ourselves by are the emissions we create PLUS the emissions of that we import in terms of goods and services from other countries. This means in reality that the argument that acting alone won’t have much effect globally is moot, if we insist, for example, that all manufactured goods outside of our borders must meet strict carbon targets the factories that make them will also, probably, use the same techniques to manufacture goods for there other global customers. If they don’t and these are goods we can’t do without, we start making them again internally, using highly efficient (at least from a greenhouse gas point of view) techniques and export the goods to other countries that are also “climate change” aware, which if nothing else would improve the balance of payments.
To do this we would have to invest heavily in our engineers and scientists, which will also be good for the country for us to become once again a centre for invention and wealth creation.
In fact acting alone has very few downsides; it will be expensive without doubt, and at a time of economic uncertainty it’s probably very unpopular to spend money on something that because of Media spin people see as at least as “just a theory” and unlikely to affect them. But investment in the right places will give use the intellectual property rights to many of the technologies that will see us through, and will improve the economy. It’s probably a controversial point, but the Depression in the 30’s required a world war to get the economies of the world balanced, maybe Climate change is our world war?
The title of this piece was Climate Change and Idiots, and I guess your wondering where the idiots are? look around you, anyone who is complacent about climate change or who doesn’t think that it’s something they can do something about could be described, reasonably I think, as an idiot.
