The Cancún Climate Summit 2010 has just opened and I think I can predict the outcome. After the failure of the Copenhagen conference, there is a lot of pressure to produce a formula for combating climate change. The problem is that the majority of the World does not want an imposed solution.
There are a number of barriers to agreeing a solution; the most important is that once doubt has been expressed over whether climate change is man-made or not, nobody is going to accept a solution based on that uncertain premise. Is climate change natural or man-made? As long as the discussion is polarised between two unrealistic propositions, any progress in the argument is impossible. Climate Change is both natural and man-made.
The real discussion should be whether changes in energy sources and energy use can have any effect on the changing climate. Any proposal has to accept that in World terms there is a majority who are simply not prepared to limit their economic progress for what they see as an unproved principle. The science has shown what is happening, but the following derived policies remain unproved. The developed world continues to press ahead with their economic progress, based on oil and other fossil fuels, and the underdeveloped nations are demanding their fair share of that progress.
There is an worrying problem with this situation which is that the developed nations are at present using up the majority of the World's resources. The peasant economies are no longer prepared to support the developed economies. It has been estimated that we would need three or more planets to provide for a universal higher level of development.
Any plan to slow Global Climate Change has many barriers to overcome first. Fundamental religion is one. While around 50% of the American population and a large proportion of the world's population believe that the Earth is only a few thousand years old since the Creation, no Climate Change argument can make sense. How can these many individuals be expected to lower their standard of living to "save the Planet"? Many have a belief the God will provide for their future, quietly forgetting the wrath of the Almighty expressed on those who offended in the past.
We are in a roughly 120,000 year transition period between ice ages. After many climate variations the upturn in average temperature and carbon dioxide levels began about 17,000 years ago as shown by the analysis of Antarctic ice cores. A similar graph is shown in the reports of the International Panel on Climate Change. These IPCC reports are well sourced and scientifically presented, but it is the policies derived from them which are open to question. It is important to make this distinction between scientific research and the subsequent political demands. A major source of confusion is that these policies are based on rising temperatures over only 7000 years, not the whole cyclic pattern which reveals the longer term natural cycle.
To make the Climate Change science palatable, it has been over-simplified, equating human fossil carbon emissions with an average Global temperature rise. If you put these partial graphs together, there is a close correlation over 7000 years, but a coincidence is not a proof of a cause and effect. Indeed you could conclude that a temerature rise is causing the increase in atmospheric carbon. Both graphs are approximately exponential and thus look the same shape. The reality is that average Global temperatures have been rising for 17,000 years, but there has been a marked upturn over the last few hundred years from human activity. The situation is much worse that the proposed solutions would suggest.
The solution sought in Cancun is a global reduction in the rise of carbon emissions in percentages of current use, or based on 1990 levels, or another stated time. Here a global lack of expertise in mathematics does not help. What is being discussed is a drop in the rate of rise of emissions, which is still a rise. However this is obfuscated by the political language used. We are not being asked to reduce our emissions, but to slow their rate of rise. To reduce our emissions, we would need to reduce our rate of fossil fuel extractions, but that is not on the agenda.
The IPCC has produced guidelines based on the assumption that the Globe can cope with continued emissions, but there is nothing in the science that confirms this. The IPCC advice is based on an average Global temperature rise being limited to 2deg C which has to assume that the oceans can absorb a continuing stream of carbon dioxide without creating a new problem. Oceanographers can confirm this absorption, but they are getting increasingly agitated over the acidification of the oceans which is very measurable and the effect of this on marine life cycles could be disastrous.
It is dangerous to base our climate policies on these shaky propositions. The IPCC political recommendations are not backed by the IPCC scientific reports but are drawn up to be a maximum of what is felt acceptable to conferences like Cancun.
Even the proposed limited action will be unacceptable to both the developed and the underdeveloped nations. The best that can be expected from Cancun is a fudge, and plenty of fudges are available. Good fudges are "excess emissions", "reduction in carbon intensity" and "relative to year yyyy". These disguise increases in emissions as reductions to the mathematically illiterate, which is unfortunately the majority.
Take "carbon intensity". This is carbon emissions relative to economic growth and thus energy use, in other words a net rise. A cut of one or two percent per year can sound impressive if stated as a 20:20 cut for instance, but in reality if you multiply this by the economic growth rate which is comparable to the energy use, it comes out as a large net increase in carbon emissions. A developing country with a 6% annual growth rate like India or China comes out over 10 years as a 70% rise and over 20 years represents a rise of 320%.
The only way to reduce real carbon emissions from fossil fuels is to reduce the use of fossil fuels and there are no proposals on the table in Cancun to do this. You would soon recognise any move to reduce fossil fuel extraction by the reactions from the fossil fuel suppliers, but I hear no screaming. Any such demand would be political suicide.
It is very useful for activists to focus all our attention on carbon and carbon emissions. There is an industry based on supposed "carbon reduction" sometimes bordering on a religion which I call "Greensmug". A true Greensmug believer will change their lightbulbs and insist that others do likewise and simply ignore what we have done over centuries of urban living to the Earth's surface. Glaring examples are deforestation, agriculture and overfishing, topped of by emitting 1,000,000,000,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels so far and there's another 1,000,000,000,000 tonnes due to go up in the next 50 years. We have made wholesale changes to our Planet while accepting these as normal. To reverse these changes it is only logical to reverse this process, not to add to it.
Humans have also reproduced very successfully to a position where we cannot even now support all of 7 billion people adequately. What is worse is that the Earth cannot supply the resources to give an acceptable level of support to all of these 7 billion. It's not the Planet that needs saving it's us. Where do we start? I suggest that we have unwittingly geoengineered ourselves into this position and we can only geoengineer our way out of it. For good or ill, we are now in charge of our Planet whether we like it or not.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Friday, April 2, 2010
Solar Panel Subsidy
The UK feed-in tariffs
On the brink of a UK General Election, the Government has launched a scheme to pay new installers of photovoltaic solar panels a large subsidy for the electricity they generate. Going one step further than just buying this electricity, they are also paying householders a large subsidy for using their own solar electricity.
George Monbiot is a dedicated environmentalist who writes a weekly column in the UK Guardian newspaper. In March he wrote an article calling the recently announced solar panel subsidies a "rip-off". True to form the greensmugs started yelling, accusing him of "green treachery". This illustrates a theme of this blog which is pointing out that there are more than two opinions between saying either that everything "green" should be compulsory or that man-made Climate Change is rubbish.
What Monbiot was pointing out in his Guardian piece "Are we really going to let ourselves be duped into this solar panel rip-off? " is that fat subsidies which did little to reduce the UK's continued carbon releases were not cost effective. This article is a good read and will not give any solace to Climate Change deniers - very much the reverse. Unperturbed by the greensmug storm, he followed this with a blog article "There is no 'green treachery' in questioning this solar panel rip-off" in which he is equally unapologetic.
One theme I will be expanding in this blog is the unwillingness or inability of any Government to implement any real reductions in carbon emissions. Monbiot writes on this as well in: "If fossil fuel reserves rise carbon should be left where it belongs: in the ground" The way I would read this is that we will know that something effective is being done about limiting Global carbon emissions when the coal, oil and gas prices slump through lack of demand. Estimate for yourself when this is likely to happen.
Another recent news release is immediately relevant to this is:
"Barack Obama reverses campaign promise and approves offshore drilling" which is President Obama's reversal of his previous environmental policy. The reasons for both these reverses is similar, namely reducing dependance on imported energy. It seems to inconceivable that importing of energy could be reduced by reducing the demand for energy.
I've been wading through some IPCC documents for this blog and it's like reading treacle. Apart from their use of science and the way they draw conclusions, which some people have held to be controversial, the IPCC expresses an unexplained faith that something effective will be done to reduce total Global annual emissions in time to slow Climate Change. What goes against this conclusion is the use of targets rather than real action to make reductions.
The "solar panel rip-off" is an exercise in meeting targets rather than replacing fossil fuel energy. Targets are laced with weasel words to look good and regarded as positive action but are rarely a guarantee of energy replacement. I have much more to write on this topic, but the current UK Government situation, apart from the governing party hoping to continue in power after the looming General Election is that EU targets are not going to be met and penalties against the UK may be on the way.
The solar panel subsidy schemes on the Continent have not been the success that was predicted and are being reduced. In contrast the UK scheme is being launched as a new idea with a chance of a high uptake predicted. Personally I have noted that solar panel manufacturers are predicting something like a 50% reduction in cost in the next few years so I shall be waiting till then to take advantage of an even bigger rip-off.
What this solar panel scheme is hoped to do is to go a good way towards meeting the EU demands without causing a rise in UK taxes. This is because the solar panel subsidy is not regarded as a subsidy or paid for by a tax because it is paid for by a charge on every electricity consumer. Pardon me for thinking that this is a classic fudge every bit as effective as a lie.
On the brink of a UK General Election, the Government has launched a scheme to pay new installers of photovoltaic solar panels a large subsidy for the electricity they generate. Going one step further than just buying this electricity, they are also paying householders a large subsidy for using their own solar electricity.
George Monbiot is a dedicated environmentalist who writes a weekly column in the UK Guardian newspaper. In March he wrote an article calling the recently announced solar panel subsidies a "rip-off". True to form the greensmugs started yelling, accusing him of "green treachery". This illustrates a theme of this blog which is pointing out that there are more than two opinions between saying either that everything "green" should be compulsory or that man-made Climate Change is rubbish.
What Monbiot was pointing out in his Guardian piece "Are we really going to let ourselves be duped into this solar panel rip-off? " is that fat subsidies which did little to reduce the UK's continued carbon releases were not cost effective. This article is a good read and will not give any solace to Climate Change deniers - very much the reverse. Unperturbed by the greensmug storm, he followed this with a blog article "There is no 'green treachery' in questioning this solar panel rip-off" in which he is equally unapologetic.
One theme I will be expanding in this blog is the unwillingness or inability of any Government to implement any real reductions in carbon emissions. Monbiot writes on this as well in: "If fossil fuel reserves rise carbon should be left where it belongs: in the ground" The way I would read this is that we will know that something effective is being done about limiting Global carbon emissions when the coal, oil and gas prices slump through lack of demand. Estimate for yourself when this is likely to happen.
Another recent news release is immediately relevant to this is:
"Barack Obama reverses campaign promise and approves offshore drilling" which is President Obama's reversal of his previous environmental policy. The reasons for both these reverses is similar, namely reducing dependance on imported energy. It seems to inconceivable that importing of energy could be reduced by reducing the demand for energy.
I've been wading through some IPCC documents for this blog and it's like reading treacle. Apart from their use of science and the way they draw conclusions, which some people have held to be controversial, the IPCC expresses an unexplained faith that something effective will be done to reduce total Global annual emissions in time to slow Climate Change. What goes against this conclusion is the use of targets rather than real action to make reductions.
The "solar panel rip-off" is an exercise in meeting targets rather than replacing fossil fuel energy. Targets are laced with weasel words to look good and regarded as positive action but are rarely a guarantee of energy replacement. I have much more to write on this topic, but the current UK Government situation, apart from the governing party hoping to continue in power after the looming General Election is that EU targets are not going to be met and penalties against the UK may be on the way.
The solar panel subsidy schemes on the Continent have not been the success that was predicted and are being reduced. In contrast the UK scheme is being launched as a new idea with a chance of a high uptake predicted. Personally I have noted that solar panel manufacturers are predicting something like a 50% reduction in cost in the next few years so I shall be waiting till then to take advantage of an even bigger rip-off.
What this solar panel scheme is hoped to do is to go a good way towards meeting the EU demands without causing a rise in UK taxes. This is because the solar panel subsidy is not regarded as a subsidy or paid for by a tax because it is paid for by a charge on every electricity consumer. Pardon me for thinking that this is a classic fudge every bit as effective as a lie.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Science
Science and Scientists
Before I get on to more serious matters, I thought I'd have some fun with Science. Science can be more esoteric than religion, but it is not a faith and ultimately seeks proofs. A faith cannot be proved, by definition, otherwise it then would become a science.
If you hear a scientific explanation which sounds nonsense it is probably nonsense, or at least the explanation is nonsense. This particularly applies to Relativity theory and much of modern Physics. However, you don't need to understand something to be able to form equations around it and make good use of it. An example of this is the Quantum Theory, without which we would not be surrounded by electronics like mobile phones, iPods, satnavs and the computer s systems that this is transmitted on. Try getting someone to explain how these devices really work in understandable language.
For the first time in human history we use devices which no one person or even a team of persons could make. Or even repair - when they go wrong we have to chuck them. I once visited an Amazonian tribe who were puzzled by our paper and pens and asked how they were made. We couldn't explain how, but nowadays these guys have the toys and we call this progress. Ask who is more likely to be still alive after the Climate Flip.
I studied Relativity 60 years ago and am a bit rusty on the equations, but I still think I know what a quantum is. When it comes to the Large Hadron Collider, I know what large is (27 kilometers), what a hadron is (bit of an atom) and I've collided a few times in my car. What the LHC is looking for is a boson, a "fundamental particle". That is a bit of a problem as they know that they will not see or even detect a boson, but the best they can hope for is to detect where a boson has been. That knowledge is worth €2.6 bn, and I'm not being sarcastic.
Science is run by scientists who are frail human beings like the rest of us. the have their pet theories and foibles and need to earn money. We shouldn't get annoyed with them for being partisan about their pet ideas because science itself is ultra-critical with its participants, always demanding proofs and verifications and taking nothing for granted.
The problems arise when scientists are asked for advice by non-scientists or even politicians. They have got to come up with something a classics graduate can understand, someone who despised science when a student and someone who never got to grips with mathematics. You will find highly eminent lawyers, authors, philosophers, politicians, with strings of letters after their names who have no better understanding of mathematics or science than the average man in the street, which is not much. What amazes me is that these highly intelligent people are not ashamed of this lack of knowledge and are indeed proud of it because they can call upon someone else to take care of all that boring stuff. The danger is that they will believe what a scientist says without a proper scientific scrutiny.
Now imagine the plight of a group of scientists brought together to "save the World" - the International Panel on Climate Change or IPCC. They are tasked with producing a Global weather forecast for the next 100 plus years, when the biggest computers in the World can only do a fair job with 5 days. Worse still they have to produce a mathematical formula which can be understood by the Arts and Classics graduates who run our countries with no personal abilities in mathematics.
Bully for those scientists who put up their hands saying "I can do it", but think about those who refused the invitation and why. The climatologists who took up the challenge knew what they were in for, and came up with a stupidly simple formula equating slightly lowered but continuing carbon dioxide releases with a stabilised average temperature, which is a massive oversimplification to the extent that it is totally misleading.
I will return to this theme again and again in this blog. The formula given to our legislators is too simple to work but still too unacceptable to most voters to apply.
You can't really blame the scientists, even though they know the huge global complexities involved, and about the 110 year climate cycle revealed by Antarctic ice core samples, because they have to produce a simple solution which is both applicable and acceptable to try to combat the Global problem.
Not only is there no simple solution, and anything simple enough to be understood by a legislator is going to be unsuccessful, but they have failed to find any formula that the Rio, Kyoto or Copenhagen Conferences and all the other talks in between can stomach.
Read the scientists who are out of this loop and are free from the constraints applied to the IPCC. My postulation is that we have triggered the next 110 year climate event many centuries early by inconsiderate geoengineering. Tinkering with one factor - carbon dioxide - is distracting us from planning some serious restorative geoengineering starting now.
One of the foremost thinkers of the 20th Century who is still fortunately alive today is James Lovelock. Don't be put off by his Gaia Theory as it is many times more sensible and understandable than anything the IPCC have put out. We must learn to be custodians of our biosphere, not its exploiters. Beg or borrow his book: "The Vanishing Face of Gaia."
Before I get on to more serious matters, I thought I'd have some fun with Science. Science can be more esoteric than religion, but it is not a faith and ultimately seeks proofs. A faith cannot be proved, by definition, otherwise it then would become a science.
If you hear a scientific explanation which sounds nonsense it is probably nonsense, or at least the explanation is nonsense. This particularly applies to Relativity theory and much of modern Physics. However, you don't need to understand something to be able to form equations around it and make good use of it. An example of this is the Quantum Theory, without which we would not be surrounded by electronics like mobile phones, iPods, satnavs and the computer s systems that this is transmitted on. Try getting someone to explain how these devices really work in understandable language.
For the first time in human history we use devices which no one person or even a team of persons could make. Or even repair - when they go wrong we have to chuck them. I once visited an Amazonian tribe who were puzzled by our paper and pens and asked how they were made. We couldn't explain how, but nowadays these guys have the toys and we call this progress. Ask who is more likely to be still alive after the Climate Flip.
I studied Relativity 60 years ago and am a bit rusty on the equations, but I still think I know what a quantum is. When it comes to the Large Hadron Collider, I know what large is (27 kilometers), what a hadron is (bit of an atom) and I've collided a few times in my car. What the LHC is looking for is a boson, a "fundamental particle". That is a bit of a problem as they know that they will not see or even detect a boson, but the best they can hope for is to detect where a boson has been. That knowledge is worth €2.6 bn, and I'm not being sarcastic.
Science is run by scientists who are frail human beings like the rest of us. the have their pet theories and foibles and need to earn money. We shouldn't get annoyed with them for being partisan about their pet ideas because science itself is ultra-critical with its participants, always demanding proofs and verifications and taking nothing for granted.
The problems arise when scientists are asked for advice by non-scientists or even politicians. They have got to come up with something a classics graduate can understand, someone who despised science when a student and someone who never got to grips with mathematics. You will find highly eminent lawyers, authors, philosophers, politicians, with strings of letters after their names who have no better understanding of mathematics or science than the average man in the street, which is not much. What amazes me is that these highly intelligent people are not ashamed of this lack of knowledge and are indeed proud of it because they can call upon someone else to take care of all that boring stuff. The danger is that they will believe what a scientist says without a proper scientific scrutiny.
Now imagine the plight of a group of scientists brought together to "save the World" - the International Panel on Climate Change or IPCC. They are tasked with producing a Global weather forecast for the next 100 plus years, when the biggest computers in the World can only do a fair job with 5 days. Worse still they have to produce a mathematical formula which can be understood by the Arts and Classics graduates who run our countries with no personal abilities in mathematics.
Bully for those scientists who put up their hands saying "I can do it", but think about those who refused the invitation and why. The climatologists who took up the challenge knew what they were in for, and came up with a stupidly simple formula equating slightly lowered but continuing carbon dioxide releases with a stabilised average temperature, which is a massive oversimplification to the extent that it is totally misleading.
I will return to this theme again and again in this blog. The formula given to our legislators is too simple to work but still too unacceptable to most voters to apply.
You can't really blame the scientists, even though they know the huge global complexities involved, and about the 110 year climate cycle revealed by Antarctic ice core samples, because they have to produce a simple solution which is both applicable and acceptable to try to combat the Global problem.
Not only is there no simple solution, and anything simple enough to be understood by a legislator is going to be unsuccessful, but they have failed to find any formula that the Rio, Kyoto or Copenhagen Conferences and all the other talks in between can stomach.
Read the scientists who are out of this loop and are free from the constraints applied to the IPCC. My postulation is that we have triggered the next 110 year climate event many centuries early by inconsiderate geoengineering. Tinkering with one factor - carbon dioxide - is distracting us from planning some serious restorative geoengineering starting now.
One of the foremost thinkers of the 20th Century who is still fortunately alive today is James Lovelock. Don't be put off by his Gaia Theory as it is many times more sensible and understandable than anything the IPCC have put out. We must learn to be custodians of our biosphere, not its exploiters. Beg or borrow his book: "The Vanishing Face of Gaia."
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Introduction
I've been preparing this blog for some time and have got a lot of ideas coming about Climate Change. I've decided to publish, before I'm ready, by the hullabaloo in the UK news over an email leak raising a lot of questions concerning how climatologists have come to their conclusions.
It seems someone has leaked University of East Anglia Climate Scientists' emails which may suggest that they have angled their presentations to fit a "politically acceptable" view. The official enquiry into this will not report until after the Copenhagen Climate Change conference and the controversy is bound to have an affect on those proceedings and give great support to Climate Change deniers.
This blog is not going to give any comfort to deniers, but for some time many people have had misgivings about the prediction of the International Committee for Climate Change {IPCC}. This states that if we continue to emit carbon into the atmosphere, but at a slightly reduced rate, the average Global temperature will rise by 2 deg C and then stabilise.
I've travelled widely and to every continent except Antarctica. From all I have seen and read and heard and walked over, I can see that carbon is both a cause and an effect of Climate Change. Atmospheric Carbon traps heat and trapped heat melts ice and melted ice releases atmospheric carbon. This is a "vicious circle" or, mathematically, "positive feedback" which is a highly unstable situation. The degree of instability is indicated by the "time constant" of change, which is rapidly shortening. Expect more in future blogs.
How does an individual challenge such an august body as the IPCC? In particular, how do I question their consensus opinion?
I had a scientific education and have been taught the "Scientific Method" first stated by Sir Isaac Newton no less. Science can rarely prove anything beyond any doubt and when it does, that proof is still open to question. Thus Einstein was able to pop his head over the parapet and say that Isaac Newton, no less, was wrong, or at least inaccurate. Newton's Laws of Motion work well on a terrestrial scale, but on a astronomical scale they need to be modified according to Einstein's Theory of Relativity.
Newton first described gravity and was able to state equations to measure it, but he had no clue as to what it was or what caused it. Einstein had some groundbreaking ideas involving relative time and space, but science is still arguing.
The other recent boost I've had to conquering my temerity in questioning the IPCC conclusions is from reading James Lovelock's book 'The Vanishing Face of Gaia'. Now I'm no rocket scientist, but James Lovelock was, and he was, and still is, one of of my generation's foremost thinkers. Everybody ignore him at your peril. Don't be put off by his championing the Gaia Theory. He asks if I would be reading this book if it was called "The Vanishing Face of Earth System Science" Lovelock's genius is in making difficult science very readable. Read it.
What's wrong with the IPCC? Not their science or their expertise. But remember that they are self-selected as being prepared to narrow down an extremely complex mix of various sciences to a formula which a politician can understand. Hence the idea of "Two degrees to save the Planet".
Not only do climate scientists know that this simplistic formula, based on the IPCC Third Report in 2001, is deeply flawed. The Fourth Report in 2007 corrects this and the changes that have come to be worse than predicted in the intervening years, but they can't change their tune at this stage. Their Chairman, the very eminent scientist Dr Rajendrs Patchauri was on the BBC World Service last night being optimistic in the face of overwhelming odds against a solution to "Save the Planet".
I sympathise with the good Doctor - how can he, a week before the Copenhagen Conference cast doubts on its effectiveness which would effectively wreck it before it begins? The Conference is already wrecked by America and Australia, and that's just the start of the alphabet.
Here's an easy prediction: Copenhagen will issue a conclusion that will save everyone's faces, and pretend that a solution is in hand when the precise opposite is true. There is no way that anyone who depends on votes for his or her livelihood will introduce the drastic cuts in fossil energy use or cuts in living standard that would be needed to slow Climate Change.
I'll repeat that: "Slow Climate Change". That's what we are being asked to do. Nobody in their right minds can believe that we can or would agree to reversing Climate Change.
We have accelerated a 110,000 year climate cycle and now simply do not have the means to stop this happening. Forget the fatuous argument whether this is man-made or natural - it is both. I'm going to write about the "time constant" of change which is accelerating. I'm also going to write about the nature of an exponential expansion which, from Moore's Law of computers to our population explosion, simply cannot continue for ever.
It's all about Carbon, isn't it? Yes, that's what many people believe, but "believe" is a religious word and the Carbon Religion seems to have taken hold. Science measures, calculates, predicts, but while individual scientists have their own beliefs, science itself doesn't.
What does the Great God Carbon offer to its faithful? I would suggest something like Noah and his flood. If I was sitting on a cloud watching humans making such a mess of life below and committing megadeaths on each other, I'd be inclined to start over.
Gaia is not a god, but a remarkable biological system which made continued life possible, not as smooth progression but by leaps and troughs. When a type of life, such as the dinosaurs ,expanded exponentially till they reached their sustainable limit, they disappeared. Can you think of a life form which is currently expanding exponentially beyond the Earth's capacity to sustain it?
It seems someone has leaked University of East Anglia Climate Scientists' emails which may suggest that they have angled their presentations to fit a "politically acceptable" view. The official enquiry into this will not report until after the Copenhagen Climate Change conference and the controversy is bound to have an affect on those proceedings and give great support to Climate Change deniers.
This blog is not going to give any comfort to deniers, but for some time many people have had misgivings about the prediction of the International Committee for Climate Change {IPCC}. This states that if we continue to emit carbon into the atmosphere, but at a slightly reduced rate, the average Global temperature will rise by 2 deg C and then stabilise.
I've travelled widely and to every continent except Antarctica. From all I have seen and read and heard and walked over, I can see that carbon is both a cause and an effect of Climate Change. Atmospheric Carbon traps heat and trapped heat melts ice and melted ice releases atmospheric carbon. This is a "vicious circle" or, mathematically, "positive feedback" which is a highly unstable situation. The degree of instability is indicated by the "time constant" of change, which is rapidly shortening. Expect more in future blogs.
How does an individual challenge such an august body as the IPCC? In particular, how do I question their consensus opinion?
I had a scientific education and have been taught the "Scientific Method" first stated by Sir Isaac Newton no less. Science can rarely prove anything beyond any doubt and when it does, that proof is still open to question. Thus Einstein was able to pop his head over the parapet and say that Isaac Newton, no less, was wrong, or at least inaccurate. Newton's Laws of Motion work well on a terrestrial scale, but on a astronomical scale they need to be modified according to Einstein's Theory of Relativity.
Newton first described gravity and was able to state equations to measure it, but he had no clue as to what it was or what caused it. Einstein had some groundbreaking ideas involving relative time and space, but science is still arguing.
The other recent boost I've had to conquering my temerity in questioning the IPCC conclusions is from reading James Lovelock's book 'The Vanishing Face of Gaia'. Now I'm no rocket scientist, but James Lovelock was, and he was, and still is, one of of my generation's foremost thinkers. Everybody ignore him at your peril. Don't be put off by his championing the Gaia Theory. He asks if I would be reading this book if it was called "The Vanishing Face of Earth System Science" Lovelock's genius is in making difficult science very readable. Read it.
What's wrong with the IPCC? Not their science or their expertise. But remember that they are self-selected as being prepared to narrow down an extremely complex mix of various sciences to a formula which a politician can understand. Hence the idea of "Two degrees to save the Planet".
Not only do climate scientists know that this simplistic formula, based on the IPCC Third Report in 2001, is deeply flawed. The Fourth Report in 2007 corrects this and the changes that have come to be worse than predicted in the intervening years, but they can't change their tune at this stage. Their Chairman, the very eminent scientist Dr Rajendrs Patchauri was on the BBC World Service last night being optimistic in the face of overwhelming odds against a solution to "Save the Planet".
I sympathise with the good Doctor - how can he, a week before the Copenhagen Conference cast doubts on its effectiveness which would effectively wreck it before it begins? The Conference is already wrecked by America and Australia, and that's just the start of the alphabet.
Here's an easy prediction: Copenhagen will issue a conclusion that will save everyone's faces, and pretend that a solution is in hand when the precise opposite is true. There is no way that anyone who depends on votes for his or her livelihood will introduce the drastic cuts in fossil energy use or cuts in living standard that would be needed to slow Climate Change.
I'll repeat that: "Slow Climate Change". That's what we are being asked to do. Nobody in their right minds can believe that we can or would agree to reversing Climate Change.
We have accelerated a 110,000 year climate cycle and now simply do not have the means to stop this happening. Forget the fatuous argument whether this is man-made or natural - it is both. I'm going to write about the "time constant" of change which is accelerating. I'm also going to write about the nature of an exponential expansion which, from Moore's Law of computers to our population explosion, simply cannot continue for ever.
It's all about Carbon, isn't it? Yes, that's what many people believe, but "believe" is a religious word and the Carbon Religion seems to have taken hold. Science measures, calculates, predicts, but while individual scientists have their own beliefs, science itself doesn't.
What does the Great God Carbon offer to its faithful? I would suggest something like Noah and his flood. If I was sitting on a cloud watching humans making such a mess of life below and committing megadeaths on each other, I'd be inclined to start over.
Gaia is not a god, but a remarkable biological system which made continued life possible, not as smooth progression but by leaps and troughs. When a type of life, such as the dinosaurs ,expanded exponentially till they reached their sustainable limit, they disappeared. Can you think of a life form which is currently expanding exponentially beyond the Earth's capacity to sustain it?
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