Beyond Kyoto and Bali

Just at the start of the Bali conference the BBC interviewed the chief scientific advisor to the white house on climate change. What he said was depressing, as it didn’t bode well for the climate change conference in Bali. What he said was that until the science can say at what level CO2 in the atmosphere was dangerous the US would not be doing anything that might damage the US economy.

When in Bali, Al Gore the former US Vice President, stood up and told the conference that he was ashamed of America. The attitude of the George W Bush government on climate change is shameful, shameful but honest. As the largest polluter the American government should be accepting that the American people need to stop the profligate waste of energy. But it’s only via this gorging of the energy resources that the US Economy makes its money.

The Stand off between the US and Europe created the illusion that Europe was being the good guy. Though the reality is that Europe has failed to meet its Kyoto targets just as much as any other country.

In Britain there is a lot of rhetoric but very little real action. Some action has been taken, promoting wind power, but very little else. We could have banned High Energy light bulbs, but this was consigned to the future.

Even in Europe action on climate change is always to be taken tomorrow and never today.

The problem is that we have thus far failed to see a real global event occur. While localised events are happening and acknowledged as being the result of Climate Change, until something dramatic happens the vast majority of people will not change their behaviour. For example all the protestors and lobbyist that went to Bali would have flown in, adding to CO2 pollution so that they could protest about CO2 pollution.

Personally I think the conference should have been held at the North Pole in summer, and they should not have been allowed back until an agreement on deep cuts was reached, or until the sea ice melted.

Bali and Kyoto before it have focused on the wrong problem. While CO2 is the measured green house gas, and a handy short hand for climate change, pollutants like nitrous oxide and water vapour are even more effective as greenhouse gasses. The whole Kyoto process is based upon the idea of continuing to pollute but slightly less. Its like telling an Alcoholic with impending liver failure that if you cut back on drinking everything will be all right.

There was a time when it looked as if we were going to run out of oil, but technology and new oil finds have extended the amount of available oil well into this century. Add to that the amount of coal globally and we have enough fossil fuel to last us about three hundred years. But if we burnt all that fossil fuel we would change the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere from the current four hundred parts per million to two thousand parts per million.

The seas would be dead as they would be to acid to support life beyond specialised bacteria, temperatures would be twenty to thirty degrees hotter, and mass extinctions will have occurred including Homo sapiens.

The IPCC recognises in its last report that feedback systems are probably in place in our climate but it will not be until we see them happening will we know for sure. The obvious one is the melting of the Sea Ice in the Artic. That is leading to the loss of the Greenland Ice sheet. The rise in seawater will then impact on the Western Antarctic Ice shelf causing this to break up adding to the rising sea levels, as well as affecting the flow of the Amazon River and flooding large areas of the rain forest, possibly killing off the planets lungs. The impacts of all these events would change the Monsoons in Africa and India, causing a severe drought.

In Europe we are already seeing the effect of a changing climate upon our food supplies. The rise in the price of wheat, while helping beleaguered farmers, is a direct result of poorer yields. This is not just a minor blip, but has been occurring for the last few years. In Europe the EU has sold all its stored wheat, as there has not been sufficient production in the past couple of years. This is not just happening in Europe but in America and Russia too.

All this means that climate change is already having an effect upon food supplies. So far all that most people will have noticed is an increase the price of food. In coming years we will see this effect exacerbated. Eventually there will be shortages of foods, especially for the poor.

We are facing stark choices, we cannot continue to burn fossil fuels and expect to have a planet fit to live on.

What is needed is leadership from and by America on climate change. What George W, or more realistically who ever replaces him, needs to announce the equivalent of the space race for tackling climate change. This must not just be for the benefit of the US but for the whole of humanity. Further this needs to involve all the countries and peoples of the planet. That way the US will no longer be seen as an arrogant imperialistic state it has become, but as part of the solution in helping to heal the planet.

A Judge provides legal ruling on science!

Back in 1977, I read a book that was a scientific critique of the then Common Market and European Food and Farming Policy. It explained the reasons why following the Second World War we in Europe needed to greatly expand food production and how we got ourselves on to an economic tread mill. Unfortunately, the vested interests still remain in force and are increasingly damaging our environment.

However, it was one tiny part of this book that highlighted a practice that alarmed me and because of this practice, I became a vegetarian. The two authors talked about the way that cattle were being feed the remains of dead sheep to boost protein in the cattle feeds. They quite rightly argued that the dead sheep used for this would not be anywhere near the prime stock, but the diseased animals that could not lawfully go into the human food chain. As an example they chose the disease Scrapeie, as this was at the time the most common killer of sheep. They argued that using these diseased carcasses to feed cattle was a really bad idea, as we had no way on knowing what the consequences would be for human health.

It was this head in the sand attitude of we will deal with that problem latter that made me decide to become vegetarian, as I didn’t know what the providence was of any of the meat I was eating. Therefore I was not surprised when a new disease emerged, that was Mad Cow disease or to give it its true name, Bovine Spongiform Encoplepathy BSE.

What was even more alarming was that when this practice of feeding cattle dead diseased sheep was introduced, regulations were drawn up to try and prevent disease transfer or transmission. Thus, governments knew there was a serious risk but still allowed it to happen. The problem was that it was seen as an economic solution to keeping food cheep and disposing of fallen livestock.

That was a bad idea and if people had known of it I suspect that people would not have wanted it to occur. When I tried to talk about it then, I was told I was talking rubbish, well I was told I was talking out of the wrong orifice, or other less polite comments.

The same attitude was there then if I ever spoke of Climate Change. Here though the reaction was very different, as within peoples living memory they could remember colder winters, more snow, but had the attitude that it must be a good thing as we would have better weather.

It has taken a long time to even get Climate Change on the agenda, but even now the economic vested interests are not so much keeping their heads in the sand, but using their economic muscle to try and stifle education of the facts and consequences of Climate Change. Here in the UK, we have just had the ridiculous situation of a Judge in a law court, making a ruling about the validity of scientific evidence.

To update those that don’t know, the documentary film the Inconvenient Truth, is to be shown to all schools in England and Wales, to educate the coming generations of the effects and impacts of Climate Change. However, one individual, backed by money from mining companies, oil companies etc decided that this was political indoctrination and took the government to court to try and stop the film being shown.

While it has now been decided the film can be shown, the judge also states that the film has nine errors. However it is the judge who is factually wrong.

U.K. Judge Rules Gore's Climate Film Has 9 Errors [Washington Post]

But he also said Gore makes nine statements in the film that are not supported by current mainstream scientific consensus. Teachers, Burton concluded, could show the film but must alert students to what the judge called errors.

The judge said that, for instance, Gore's script implies that Greenland or West Antarctica might melt in the near future; creating a sea level rise of up to 20 feet that would cause devastation from San Francisco to the Netherlands to Bangladesh. The judge called this "distinctly alarmist" and said the consensus view is that, if indeed Greenland melted, it would release this amount of water, "but only after, and over, millennia."

Burton also said Gore contends that inhabitants of low-lying Pacific atolls have had to evacuate to New Zealand because of global warming. "But there is no such evidence of any such evacuation," the judge said.

Another error, according to the judge, is that Gore says, "A new scientific study shows that for the first time they are finding polar bears that have actually drowned swimming long distances up to 60 miles to find ice." Burton said that perhaps in the future polar bears will drown "by regression of pack-ice" but that the only study found on drowned polar bears attributed four deaths to a storm.

The most recent data from the artic about the sea ice shows that the rate of loss of the sea ice is accelerating. Once below a critical mass the warmer sea temperatures will encourage and speed the melting of the Greenland Ice shelf. Even the most conservative scientific predictions say that this will happen in a century not millennia, as the judge asserts. This is not alarmist, as the Greenland Ice sheet is already starting to melt and we already have 30 centimetres of sea level rise as a result of Climate Change.

Also the assertion that judge made that loss of sea ice and the loss of Polar bears was in error is plain stupid and ill informed. If we destroy any habitat, the flora and fauna that is specially adapted to that habitat will be lost too.

From my perspective it was like the Judge trying to make ruling that the laws of gravity have no place in his court.

At least the coming generations will at least know who to blame for the mess that we have left our home planet in.

The timing of this hearing was apposite as it came in the same week that Al Gore has been awarded, with the UN IPCC, the Nobel Peace Prize.

Fighting Climate Change is actually far more important than any war, or other political or economic considerations. In a friends on line Journal, after posting a link from Al Gores Web site, she asks when Al Gore calls for the US Government to enact legislation to cut greenhouse gases by 90 percent what does he know that we don’t? The answer, and my answer is nothing new, it is just that he can see what the science is telling us.

Just as BSE could have been prevented if we had not done stupid things for economic reasons, then Climate Change and the destruction of our home would not have occurred if we had not been driven by greed.

The next five years are critical, this will be the last generation that will have material wealth, as once the seas do rise we will be forced to live in harmony with the land that remains.

The Truth is Inconvenient

As I haven’t seen the Al Gore film the inconvenient truth, I cannot say if the film is party political or not. But Climate Change is political, if only because so many people are trying to keep their heads in the sand over it. I am glad that British school children will be getting the chance to see this film, as hopefully it will help capture the hearts and minds of the coming generation.

Even today the news that the old energy inefficient incandescent light bulbs are to be phased out is bitter news as it will not be until 2012 this happens. When it could have happened by the end of this year. That will mean at least twenty-five extra tonnes of CO2 will be released into our biosphere before the ban occurs. It’s all far too little, lets hope that it’s not too late.

After all the important line in the IPCC report that everyone seems to have missed says; “If Climate Change is not reversed, we will face temperature increases that will make life on this planet unsustainable”

I shouldn’t need to translate that but that means WE BECOME EXTINCT.

Already this year there is less sea ice in the Artic, and even conservative predictions are saying it will disappear by 2030, that’s only twenty-three years away. And once we have lost a critical mass of that sea ice, we then have thermal induction and convection from the sea, accelerating the rise in air temperatures. In reality if we lose the Sea Ice we lose the fight and the domination of Homo sapiens ends.

Therefore I hope this misguided parent looses his legal challenge to the film being shown to our children so that even if we fail to act, they will.


The original story on the BBC Web Site