Climate Shenanegans and Does What Scientists Say Matter?
January 29, 2010 by Doug Kennedy
“What blooming weather: so much for global warming!” is a cry I have heard more than once as we suffer a cold winter.
Of course, weather and climate are different – we experience weather every day, and a year is a long time. Climate applies over tens, or hundreds of years and describes the general, overall situation. We find it difficult to see this perspective when battling through the snow of January 2010 or sweltering in the heat of June 1976. One degree centigrade is nothing within the variation of weather, whereas if a climate changes by a degree it is significant.
If the entire global average temperature goes up by one degree, it is a major change, and this is what is happening.
Climate scientists around the world have persuaded politicians that global warming is happenin. For some of those politicians, it is a disaster that is happening now as their countries are in danger of inundation from the sea already; most accept that global warming is caused by human activities but are having some difficulty in doing anything about it, but there are some who have not accepted it or who choose to ignore it as an issue. The overall status is that scientists think it is happening and have warned humanity that it needs to be dealt with.
A large minority of the UK and US populations do not accept that humans cause global warming, and recent revelations of wrong information in high level publications and nefarious emails among climate academics have given great impetus to the sceptics. There are few sceptics among the scientific community, but their voice tends to be magnified through the media by political and business interests, so these mistakes will have a resonance far beyond what is merited.
An interesting comparison the case of Dr Wakefield and his anti-MMR vaccine campaign. I heard yesterday that the General Medical Council roundly condemned him and his actions which caused thousands of mothers to withdraw their children from vaccination. The result has been increased levels of measles and mumps, which have killed and damaged children. I feel strongly about this as my sister’s immune system was permenantly damaged by measles in the 50s, before vaccines were available. Every study and enquiry into the matter has concluded the Wakefield was wrong, and it transpires that he had a conflict of interest anyway, but that hasn’t stopped the press and some people in vociforously promoting his cause. And this in spite of the damage the diseases are doing children today.
So my conclusion is that we believe what we choose to believe, and scientists can experiment till the sky falls in, but even if all of their conclusions point the same way, the public at large won’t necessarily accept them. We also tend to pick out the parts that suit our individual points of view, such snippets are often wielded like a large debating club, even if they are inaccurate, flawed or plain wrong.
BUT, we must accept that we have been warned that global warming is a threat that puts civilization and millions or billions of lives at risk within the coming century. If we just continue as normal and do nothing to alleviate the risk, how will future generations look upon us? If the outcome is disastrous, then our generation will be cursed and despised. If things don’t turn out so badly, then we will still have used up the great bulk of all of the oil and gas resources of the world in two generations, and be leaving a planet strewn with trash and pollution.
As a friend said to me the other day, ‘Perhaps I just don’t care that much.’
Global Warming is not the problem….
January 7, 2010 by Doug Kennedy
Too many people: an idyll changes to nightmare.
December 12, 2009 by Doug Kennedy
We visited the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford yesterday to see what it is like having been substantially rebuilt over past few years. It is now a modern and fascinating museum inside it’s lovely old Cotswold stone shell and well worth a visit. Entry is free too!
We focused on the modern and nineteenth century paintings on the 3rd floor on this occasion, which include a couple of rooms of Pre-Raphaelite works. One is a panoramic view from a hill over Jerusalem painted at the end of the 19th century, and it made me stop and think. The walled city of Jerusalem sits on it’s hill top surrounded only by countryside where sheep graze and olive groves quietly stand. Peace radiates from the painting and you want to join the painter and contemplate the history, significance and beauty of the scene laid out as it had been for thousands of years.
I pondered, with some horror, what it must look like now: the dreadful Isreali concrete wall, the settlements on stolen land, roads, fences, factories, cars, rubbish, building sites. An all the hidden tragedies of people being evicted from houses they have owned and occupied for generations because Israelis want to settle East Jerusalem and make it all their own, the poverty, the overcrowding and hatred, the guns and the politics.
It struck me strongly that all this ugliness results from the explosion in population and is as parable for the World. We have gained, many of us, prosperity, less manual labour, fast travel and better health but at a huge cost. As that cost begins to amount to destruction of the environment that we live in, humans must stop and work out what they actually want.
The global population has more than doubled in my lifetime (I’m 60) and we are trashing the planet – mass extinctions of whole species, vast destruction of forests, tons of trash floating in the oceans, coral reefs dying, and global warming. In a couple of generations we are also using up all the earth’s resources, oil gas and coal in particular, and what right do we have to do this? Future generations are going to inherit our nuclear and other waste but little of use.
And do we like a World with too many people? Do we like being in crowded places, competing for food, water and space? Do we welcome people into our land from places where there are not sufficient of these resources? Aren’t we all constantly trying to create ‘our own space’ and ‘get away from it all’? Are we happier or less happy with a higher popuplation? For the great majority, the answers are No, No, No, Yes and less happy.
We can’t return to the 19th century painter’s idyll of Jerusalem, but unless we are prepared to accept that the sort of conflict and competition for space and destruction that is going on there will be repeated thousands of times in bigger and bigger theatres around the World; unless we want our children and their children to live in a nightmare World, we need to start working out how to bring the global human population down.
If we don’t start work on this now, then chaos will result, either caused by humans or by the environment, or both.
I heard a business man say the other day that he knew about risk management, and that the risks of global chaos were too high to ignore: we need to act.
Climate Change Or A Pop Star? No Contest
October 18, 2009 by Doug Kennedy
The BBC 10pm news on Saturday evening had a brief item on a climate change protest at Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire where the headline was that a policeman was injured and fences were pulled down. The film showed a policemen falling, or being felled, by the protesters and the commentary stated these facts. There were no interviews with protagonists nor journalists and no reasons or background were given.
The following item concerned the funeral of Stephen Gately of the band Boyzone which was attended by many stars and celebrities: it was a great deal longer, and did include background and interviews.
I did my grumpy-old-man bit and said that I’d write to the BBC to complain about the imbalance and their priorities.
This morning, I picked up my Observer newspaper (left-of-centre liberal broadsheet) to find the funeral in the centre of the front page and also taking up the entirey of page 3. Was this because the Observer is in financial trouble and needs circulation more than it needs to retain it’s reputation as a serious newspaper? I suggest that it was.
Stephen’s untimely death was a human tragedy (not a national tragedy as stated on the BBC I suggest) and touched many peoples’ hearts and in particular his family, friends, colleagues and fans. It also attracted A-list celebrities which would attract a crowd anywhere. The getting-together of folk in this way is heart-warming.
Climate change protests are NOT heart-warming, and the fact that a thousand nutters were willing to cause mayhem at some powerstation in Nottinghamshire was not going to have anything like the appeal of the funeral. But climate change is a turn-off anyway.
In attempting to get a campaign going locally I feel increasingly isolated and like the protesters: I may (or may not) be right, but I’m a bit of a pain in the arse and lack the pizzazz of a funeral.
The UK Express Is Heading For The Buffers
October 9, 2009 by Doug Kennedy
(Note: An item in the 6pm news today tells how the UK energy regulator is warning of energy shortages and huge price hikes in the coming years. This blog was written this morning BEFORE the announcement – nice timing!)
Renewable energy is very much in the public eye these days and the UK has an enormous looming energy problem owing to years of vacillation on policy, and complacency because the UK had it’s own oil and gas (now largely depleted). All the money from these resources has been spent and virtually none was invested in energy for the future. Now our nuclear power stations are mostly going out of commission and we didn’t develop the nuclear technology that we invented to create an exportable UK-based nuclear industry. In the meantime, the take-up of renewable energy has been pathetic owing to lack of investment and direction at government level, and a very damaging application of the planning laws that has prevented many wind farm and solar developments from being started. The government is talking about turning this situation around in the Energy Transition white paper, but nothing in that is even close to implementation and there is no sense of urgency, although that situation might change after the Copenhagen summit.
In the news today we are told that the UK needs to invest billions of pounds in developing energy infrastructure or we will be almost entirely dependent upon imported gas, which puts us in a terribly weak position and vulnerable to the vagaries of other countries, such as Russia. We have seen this coming for many years but we now have a huge national debt and it is difficult enough to work out how to repay the debt we have, let alone investing further billions in new projects.
I have an investment interest in a UK company called PV Crystalox Solar. This is the largest UK business working in renewable energy producing photo-electric cells which are widely exported. The shares have suffered this year as the market for their product has greatly reduced at a time when the World drastically needs these technologies to be used. Interestingly, one problem for PVhas been that the Spanish government were providing grants for people to erect solar panels and sell electricity back to the national grid, but the take-up was so huge that they have put a cap on it, stopping further applications for the moment.
The UK government is still talking about doing the same thing but haven’t yet, probably because they are afraid that they’ll loose tax revenue (in VAT and company tax from energy companies) if they do. Some investment in the electricity market and grid is also required, but there are huge benefits for people in installing solar and other power generation in their homes and for the country in setting up wide-spread micro-generation, especially for energy security and cost in the coming years. There are also, obviously, substantial environmental benefits.
So we seem to have a situation where people are interested in taking up renewable energy technologies, the UK government desparately needs to solve the energy problem and The Earth systems that support us need us to stop pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. However, nothing substantial is happening in the UK and renewable energy companies are having a tough time keeping their businesses going when they should be thriving.
It feels like being a passenger in a train in which the driver is having an argument with the guard and is not at the controls as the train progresses inexorably towards the buffers.
Environment? What Environment?
October 7, 2009 by Doug Kennedy
Last night I went to a local Transition meeting: Transition is a network of local groups seeking to improve their communities environmental performance and awareness. It is a grass-roots movement that seeks to build momentum based on community interest and involvement and I am trying to do just that in my village. There were five people at a meeting that was intended to attract a crowd of locals and it was all quite depressing. The same is true of my village project: some people express an interest, even a strong interest, but when it comes to putting time and effort into building a real project, you get a lot of apologies and few turning up. And those that do turn up are often different at each meeting.
In my Sunday newspaper was a big article about the oceans turning to acid – right now, not some time in the future. If this goes on happening (and CO2 levels which cause it are increasing rapidly), then vast amounts of extra CO2 will be emitted by the oceans instead of absorbing it as carboniferous shells are dissolved. The other result will be that the marine foodchains will be completely disrupted.
This is just another huge impending disaster story to add to those we here on the news and read and those we don’t hear about.
My point is, that there is a huge disconnect between the environmental reality and humanity’s behaviour. Before the industrial revolution, and in more primitive cultures to this day, humans were forced to take account of the environment in order to survive. Many cultures placed the environment first in every decision that could affect it because that was how the society could assure it’s continuity. Where this didn’t happen, the result could be like Easter Island, where an advanced civilization simply died out.
It seems that we are unwilling to accept that we still are an integral part of our environment and that we cannot control it and we cannot over-burden it. Many people I speak to, including the young who are going to live through the coming decades, are fatalistic, taking the view that they will enjoy today and hope that tomorrow is OK. If it’s not going to be OK, then there will be a level of suffering that will make today’s troubles look like a holiday.
For people like me who are trying to do something about it, it is like pushing a large boulder up a slippery slope: challenging, if not discouraging and of questionnable value. It becomes increasingly evident that unless the mainstream does start to get involved, then leaving it to a rump of environmentalists is going to achieve little (see previous blog ‘Death To The Environmentalist’.)
One environment, one humanity, one survival.
Canute The Optimist?
September 28, 2009 by Doug Kennedy
I’m not sure that King Canute was being an optimist when he commanded the tide not to rise and dampen his feet: in fact, he was being a pessimist and proving to his people that he was not infallible, and that the tide would not obey his command. He has become legendary because of that bit of wisdom.
We could do with that wisdom today: to know the limits our power and when to exercise our optimism.
We complain about immigration, and our legislators bulldoze half-empty refugee camps; but the tide of migration from south to north, from poor to rich grows rapidly. Now the systems in Greece, Italy and Spain are under strain, and a wall between the USA and Mexico won’t stop the tide.
Why? Do people who live in nice warm countries really want to live in cold damp, overcrowded, foreign lands such as England? Probably not: the reasons are conflict, bad governance and lack of work and food: circumstances that make it impossible for people to better themselves.
But at the root, what is driving people to go through horrendous, life-threatening hardship, deserting all that is familiar, is over-population: the more people there are, the more competition there is for resources. The general result is poverty, starvation, environmental destruction (eg chop trees down around Manilla and the city floods) and conflict at local, regional and national levels. And as each person on this Earth adds to the environmental burden, especially whilst our behaviour is so out of control and we pay so little heed to what is sustainable, the drives to migrate are only increasing.
The tide is coming in and, whilst there is the pressure of growing population behind it, we are as powerless to stop south-north migration and the conflict that will result as old King Canute was to stop the sea. But there are two differences: the first is that, unlike Canute, we are glad-eyed optimists who seem to believe that things will sort themselves out, or some technology will come along to do it for us; and second that Canute could do nothing about the sea and the moon, whereas humanity could tackle the problem of exploding population.
The Optimum Population Trust is a UK think tank that is trying to find some answers. www.optimumpopulation.org
Zero Carbon Is Possible and Low Carbon Can Be Easy. Just do it!
September 23, 2009 by Doug Kennedy
Today I logged my weekly meter readings into www.zapcarbon.com and it says that I’m currently producing zero carbon through my domestic energy consumption!
We are living our lives completely normally and by taking some quite simple and inexpensive measures, there is no doubt that, at Vulcan House, we have a low footprint. The question that bugs me is, why don’t most people do the same?
What is the reality and how has it been achieved?
The reality is that we are not currently using the central heating so only burn gas for cooking and water, which on a weekly basis is not adding up to much CO2 output at all. Once the heating is turned on, we will be consuming much more gas so our energy conservation measures will come into play – insulation, draft exclusion, getting the timing and levels of the heating right. We actually want to buy a wood-burning stove, which will reduce gas consumption further as burning wood is recycling CO2 into the atmosphere that has been produced recently, rather than releasing it from ancient carbon stored in coal, oil or gas.
We currently use about 7.5 Kilowatt-hours of energy per day, which is very low compared to most 2 person x 3 bedroom households. This is achieved through using low energy light bulbs, especially where lights are on a lot, and simply not wasting electricity. However, in addition, we procure our energy from Good Energy. This is a UK energy supplier that sources all of it’s electricity from renewable generators (wind, hydro mostly) and they have calculated that the underlying carbon produced through their entire purchase is 32 tonnes per year. They then is off-set this through supporting Converging World, which works the same way as compensating for your air flights. So the actual carbon cost of my electricity is extremely low. The overall financial cost looks to be not very much higher than Scottish Power, which was our previous, relatively carbon -intensive, supplier.
This does not mean that we will start to waste electricity, because I like low bills – I can use the money elsewhere; but also there is only so much renewable electricity to go around at this point – it is precious. However, all in all, it does make me feel much better about the power we do use.
Apart from domestic energy, it is still work in progress and our lives are far from being carbon neutral. We flew to France on holiday this year and there are always decisions to be made that affect our overall footprint. However I feel that the change we have made to VulcanHouse energy use in the past 3 years is a major achievement that could be copied by many people without sacrificing their lifestyles.
If you want to know more, do email me at dgkennedy@alloverde.com
Your Carbon Footprint – You Can Act!
September 20, 2009 by Doug Kennedy
This is the full content of a Green Tips article in our local Cuddington news sheet.
Not all energy companies are the same….
Electricity is supplied to you through the National Grid. It is generated by coal, gas, nuclear or even oil-fired power stations, and also from hydro-electric and wind turbine installations. Up to 70 percent of the energy stored in the original fuel is lost in generation and transit, which is a terrible waste, but with a national grid system running wires through the air, this can’t be helped.
When you use electricity, you are not personally emitting carbon dioxide, so it seems clean. However, a great deal will have been emitted if the electricity was generated by coal, gas or oil-fired power stations and this has to be calculated into your personal footprint.
Nuclear generation is NOT a renewable source but the carbon dioxide output is relatively low, although we are leaving a terrible legacy of waste for future generations.
If the electricity was generated by renewable sources, such as wind, solar or hydro, then this will have a much smaller effect on your personal carbon output and your overall environmental footprint will be lower. The electricity market makes it possible for you to buy electricity that is up to 100% renewably generated.
The electricity in the grid comes from all sources, but the companies responsible for your supply source their power from particular installations, and the mix varies widely.
Scottish Power, EDF Energy and nPower for instance use a lot of coal and gas generated electricity producing between 500 to 700 grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour. This means that when you pay your bill, you are supporting these types of generation.
On the other hand, Good energy, Green Energy and Ecotricity source their power mostly from renewable installations, producing between 100 and 300 grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour. There are also 100% green tariffs available from some other smaller providers.
Renewable suppliers do not necessarily cost much more than the dirty ones, although the industry doesn’t always make it easy for you to work out as they charge differently. However you can make quite a difference to your carbon footprint by choosing a low-carbon energy supplier.
In summary, to SAVE MONEY, don’t waste energy in your home and do make use of the resources available (locally to me, a leaflet from the energy savings trust and AVDC was recently put through your door).
To reduce your carbon footprint further, choose an energy supplier that buys electricity from renewable sources.
Have a look at http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk or www.zapcarbon.com
Environmentalists Do Climate Camps, The Mainstream Takes A Flight
September 1, 2009 by Doug Kennedy
Many of us in the UK will remember Swampy, the environment activist who blocked construction of the A30 dual carriageway to Exeter for several days in the 90s by living in a tunnel he and his friends had dug in the path of the bull-dozers. Swampy is, apparently, still joining protests and living the message through having a very low environmental footprint, however the A30 was completed along with the rest of the road building programme and his bravery seems to have little impact upon the need for action on the environment. Like the Greenham Common camp, his actions raised public awareness because they brought a damaging operation to public notice, but changed little.
This weekend, there is a Climate Camp at Blackheath in Southeast London. Those attending will mostly know each other and, like Swampy and the Greenham Ladies, be regarded by the middle-class mainstream as eccentric losers and bludgers who have no hope of changing anything.
My personal view is that they are unlikely to achieve much in terms of altering public perceptions, and change will only come about when the mainstream of society get on board. But they are to be admired where they live according to their message of living a life with a low environmental footprint.
However they stand against the flood as it seems that the entire human world has been seduced by the Western model of exploiting natural resources for financial gain and economic growth, and our respectable middle-classes lead the way. People are admired and respected for being rich, especially when they are self-made or have become powerful within a corporation. Indeed Western-style free enterprise societies have created a sort of Nirvana, or refound Eden (see Reinventing Eden by Carolyn Merchant) for the better-off. People get what they want when they want it, can go anywhere they want in the World and consume without a thought. In fact for many, consumption is an end in itself, proving their wealth and position, and attesting to man’s dominion over the natural world.
We know that the environmental footprint of the average American or European is many times that of a citizen of India or China, and dozens of times that of the average African and it seems that we Westerners are intent on keeping hold of every bit of what we have. We also know that the billions of people in rapidly developing countries aspire to have what we in the West have, and that populations are growing.
The logic is inescapable: we can’t go on like this, and something has to change. This, of course, is exactly what Swampy and his environmentalist friends have been arguing for many years, but in spite of being right, they are still on the outside. Why?
In The Observer this weekend, Peter Beaumont offers some insight which fits in nicely with my Death To The Environmentalist blog (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/30/peter-beaumont-climate-camp-protesters ) suggesting that the problem is “not a lack of conviction….: it stems, rather, from an obsession with its own structures and its relationship with the media and police… (and) from a preoccupation with measuring its achievements in terms of protests it has undertaken rather than a series of achievable goals that those outside the camp movement can easily identify with.”
The UK Government along with several in Europe are at last saying that we must deal with climate change and are ramping up environmental protection, not in response to the countless demos, camps, meetings and action by environmentalists, but to the realities facing us. These realities must be accepted by the middle-class, environmentalist-hating mainstream as they are the ones who will be asked to change their lifestyles in ways that they perceive to be negative. They also have the biggest environmental footprints and could have the biggest impact on our country’s emissions.
Environmentalists know how to do it, the mainstream needs to do it, a common purpose and direction are missing.