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Researchers Scramble to Create CO2-Busting Technologies
Paul Solman, NewsHour – PBS (U.S.)
PAUL SOLMAN, NewsHour Economics Correspondent: Global warming. Almost all climatologists agree it’s a clear and future danger. Wallace Broecker, a geochemist at Columbia University, has been blaming his fellow humans for over 30 years.
WALLACE BROECKER, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory: The way we’re going now, we’re not being responsible. We’re saying, “We want energy as cheap as we can get it, damn the future.”
…PAUL SOLMAN: Now, Wally Broecker could be wrong, but given the costs if he’s right, let’s suspend skepticism for the next 10 minutes or so and consider the origin of the greenhouse gases that may be warming the globe and what we might do about them.
…PAUL SOLMAN: In the end, then, economics, which has created global warming, could conceivably save us from it. A comforting thought, anyway, when the next glacier melts down right before our eyes
(8 June 2006)
More from PBS at The Global Warming Debate.
I’m unimpressed with NewsHour’s coverage of the global warming “debate”. Far better coverage is to be had from the BBC and some of the commercial networks like ABC.
Reporter Solman describes Wallace Broecker, who voices the consensus view that global warming is human-caused, as “blaming his fellow humans”. Apparently Solman is a climate change skeptic himself (“let’s suspend skepticism for the next 10 minutes”).
The coverage of research to mitigate global warming is non-analytical, with a conclusion that verges on self-parody:
In the end, then, economics, which has created global warming, could conceivably save us from it. A comforting thought, anyway, when the next glacier melts down right before our eyes
-BA
Climate warming may outrun adaptability
U. of Oregon geneticists – Large animals’ behavior patterns may not change quickly enough
Richard L. Hill, Portland Oregonian
German birds that once only flew south to Spain for the winter now go to more northern Britain. Yukon red squirrels breed 18 days earlier to cope with an earlier spring. And pitcher-plant mosquito larvae are delaying their winter dormant phase.
These are among the genetic changes scientists have seen in animals in the past five years — dramatic shifts by species to adjust to a warmer world. And many species, a new report by Oregon scientists argues, face a grim future if they can’t adapt quickly to keep pace with global warming.
William Bradshaw and Christina Holzapfel, evolutionary geneticists at the University of Oregon, say although some species may adjust quickly to their changing environment, many animals — especially large ones such as polar bears — could have a tougher time.
In a commentary article in today’s issue of the journal Science, the husband-and-wife research team say that altered seasons drive the genetic changes in animal populations — not hotter summer temperatures as is usually assumed.
(9 June 2006)
The last refuge: “nukes” vs “sandals”
Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times
We have trashed the planet we call home. But what can we do to prevent billions frying to death, while an elite is forced to build homes in the Arctic basin? Even among environmentalists, there is precious little consensus. Bryan Appleyard reports on the bitter battles being fought to save the Earth
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…Answers to this question [what to do about global warming] fall on either side of a deep conceptual divide that shows few signs of being bridged. The divide is deep because it lies between two conflicting views of how humans should relate to nature. On one side is the conventional green lobby – people like Sir Jonathon Porritt and Zac Goldsmith – that believes in weaving ourselves more deeply into the natural world through the use of sustainable energy sources like wind, waves and biofuels. Let us call them the Sandals. On the other side are deep, less conventional greens like Jesse Ausubel in America and Lovelock in Britain, who believe that we should, in Ausubel’s words, “decouple our goods from demands on planetary resources”. For the latter, nuclear power and carbon-scrubbed natural gas, combined with low-energy transport and urban systems and a massive shrinkage in agriculture, are the only answer. We should not tie ourselves more tightly into nature, we should liberate it from our destructive powers. Large parts of the Earth should be returned to the embrace of Gaia. Let us call these greens the Nukes.
Currently the Sandals and the Nukes clash most obviously over nuclear power versus sustainable power sources. With Blair’s recent endorsement of nuclear, the Nukes seem to be winning. Meanwhile, George Bush’s acceptance of America’s addiction to oil and the realisation of the strategic weakness of depending on Middle Eastern oil are turning even the most hardened neocons into born-again greens. Billions of dollars of investment are now waiting to be plunged into the most promising technologies. It is still too early to say what they will be. The Americans are naturally Nukish, favouring high-technology solutions; the Europeans tend to be Sandalish, favouring sustainables. In the long term, this conceptual divide will have to be bridged – perhaps, as some economists have suggested, through a combined approach using the best ideas from both sides.
(X June 2006)
A very strange column: a combination of absurdities and interesting insights. Appleyard invents a new type of Green out of whole cloth, “the Nukes” – ever heard of them? Have you ever heard of the bitter conflict between them and “the Sandals”? This conflict simply has no basis in reality. The “Nukes” position apparently comes from several chapters in James Lovelock’s last book and the techno-optimist ideas of Jesse Ausubel (sample: The Liberation of the Environment -PDF). I’m left shaking my head – the column reminds me of a science fiction plot from Philip K. Dick. -BA
If Blair can’t save the world for us, then business will
Simon Caulkin, The Observer
The world’s gone upside down. …last week 14 of the UK’s corporate great and good, including establishment firms such as Shell, Tesco, B&Q and Standard Chartered Bank, trooped along to Downing Street to lobby the government for tougher targets on greenhouse gases. Something wrong, surely. Shouldn’t it be the government that’s the guardian of the greater good, while business resists any limitation on its ability to make profits?
…Environmental products are a different market [than semiconductors]. Customers won’t buy them if it’s cheaper to offload their environmental costs onto society as pollution. There are no rewards for good behaviour. The 14 companies that went to No 10 last week were asking for government to correct this market failure with sticks and carrots: strengthening the EU’s existing emissions trading scheme, making building regulations stricter and cutting business rates for energy-efficient buildings.
James Smith, the chairman of Shell UK, said: ‘We need EU governments to set clear targets to 2025 so that our businesses can have the confidence to make long-term investments in reducing emissions.’ They want the government to create a larger, more vibrant market.
Breaking with other lobby groups, they argue that such regulation will not damage the economy – in fact the reverse. This is because they understand how powerfully the market ecology works. They have confidence in the power of competitive innovation to lower costs (which curiously the lobby groups always deny), and they know that creative regulation can generate very large individual markets. The environment is now a £25bn business. But not least because the UK has dithered so long over regulation, we are not among the world leaders in this growing and possibly planet-saving industry. Danish and German companies lead in wind turbines; the US and Japan are ahead in solar.
When in the name of ‘the free market’ lobby groups campaign against society-friendly regulation and governments back off from taking tough decisions, both are denying their proper roles and acting against their own
(11 June 2006)
A libertarian and a scientist went out for a drive…
Original: “I think I despise anti-environmentalists as much as I do anti-evolutionists”
P.Z. Myers, Pharyngula
…It’s a peculiar pathology that thinks environmentalism is an evil plot, that planning is communism/socialism, and that Jesus was a good capitalist. It is particularly irksome to try and deal with people who are so far gone that they deny science warning them of environmental dangers and impending problems.
How irksome? Imagine that a scientist and one of these deranged libertarian right-wing anti-environmentalist science deniers go out for a drive one day…
LIBERTARIAN: Isn’t this wonderful? I have a desire to drive, and sufficient surplus income to purchase a vehicle, and the market and technology provide me with one. Praise Jesus! Praise Adam Smith!
SCIENTIST: Uh, yeah, OK…but you know, the way you’re driving is neither safe nor economical. Could you maybe slow down a little?
LIB: I decide what is economical; I can afford the gas. As for safety, I have insurance, and the little whatchamacallit meter in front of me goes all the way up to 140. I haven’t exceeded the limit yet.
SCI: What you can do and what is safe and reasonable to do are two different things. If you want to experience natural selection first hand, that would be OK with me, except for the fact that we’re both in the same car.
By the way, that’s a lake a couple of miles ahead, and you’re headed straight for it.
LIB: Lake? We haven’t encountered any lakes in our travels so far. We don’t have to worry about lakes. History is our guide, and it clearly says, “no lakes”.
(10 June 2006)
HT to Mobjectivist.
Author PZ Myers is “a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.”
U.S. Foot-Dragging Fuels Global Warming
Elizabeth Kolbert, LA Times via Common Dreams
By the time we get proof of climate change, it will be too late to reverse course.
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On June 12, 1992, President George H.W. Bush, appearing at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, signed the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. The convention set the goal of averting “dangerous” human interference with the climate system. After adding his name to it, the president called on world leaders to join him “in translating the words spoken here into concrete action.” When he subsequently submitted the treaty to the Senate, it was ratified by unanimous consent.
Tomorrow it will be 14 years since Bush père signed the Framework Convention, and the U.S. remains committed, in theory at least, to avoiding dangerous climate change. Unfortunately, it’s hard to square this commitment with what has actually happened in the meantime.
Since 1992, American emissions of carbon dioxide — the chief cause of climate change — have continued to rise more or less at the same rate they were rising previously. Meanwhile, even as the Japanese and the Europeans have pledged to cut their carbon dioxide production, President George W. Bush has blocked all attempts to impose emissions limits in the U.S. In fact, the administration has gone so far as to oppose the efforts of those states, such as California, that are trying to reduce emissions on their own.
To the extent that the administration has offered any explanation for this contradiction — promising to avert dangerous climate change on the one hand, blocking attempts to curb emissions on the other — it’s to assert that the uncertainties about climate change make action premature. Thanks to the nature of global warming, this ostensibly cautious approach actually amounts to the worst sort of recklessness.
The climate system is highly inertial; it takes several decades for changes already set in motion to become apparent. Scientists probably won’t be able to determine just what level of greenhouse gases will trigger, say, the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet until that level has been exceeded. But as anyone who has ever tried to push a stalled car can attest, systems that are hard to get moving also tend to be hard to stop.
Elizabeth Kolbert, a staff writer for the New Yorker since 1999, is the author of “Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature and Climate Change,” published earlier this year by Bloomsbury.
(10 June 2006)
Companies and climate change
Can business be cool?
The Economist (UK) via MarxMail
Why a growing number of firms are taking global warming seriously
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RUPERT MURDOCH is no green activist. But in Pebble Beach later this summer, the annual gathering of executives of Mr Murdoch’s News Corporation-which last year led to a dramatic shift in the media conglomerate’s attitude to the internet-will be addressed by several leading environmentalists, including a vice-president turned climate-change movie star. Last month BSkyB, a British satellite-television company chaired by Mr Murdoch and run by his son, James, declared itself “carbon-neutral”, having taken various steps to cut or offset its discharges of carbon into the atmosphere.
The army of corporate greens is growing fast. Late last year HSBC became the first big bank to announce that it was carbon-neutral, joining other financial institutions, including Swiss Re, a reinsurer, and Goldman Sachs, an investment bank, in waging war on climate-warming gases (of which carbon dioxide is the main culprit). Last year General Electric (GE), an industrial powerhouse, launched its “Ecomagination” strategy, aiming to cut its output of greenhouse gases and to invest heavily in clean (ie, carbon-free) technologies. In October Wal-Mart announced a series of environmental schemes, including doubling the fuel-efficiency of its fleet of vehicles within a decade. Tesco and Sainsbury, two of Britain’s biggest retailers, are competing fiercely to be the greenest. And on June 7th some leading British bosses lobbied Tony Blair for a more ambitious policy on climate change, even if that involves harsher regulation.
The greening of business is by no means universal, however/
(8 June 2006)
MG writes:
… a good summary in the latest Economist of why corporations have increasingly turned their attention to the environment. The report cites (a) the rising cost and insecurity of conventional oil and gas supplies which “may be the main reason many firms have recently become interested in alternative energy sources” (b) opportunities to profit by investing in new technologies aimed at consumers and industry, and by reducing their own consumption now and in anticipation of trading advantages as carbons emission markets become more widespread; (c) the need to at least appear appear environmentally sensitive, especially major polluters like BP who are more vulnerable to public opinion (“greenwash”); and (d) the impulse to get in on the ground floor to shape policy and influence the composition of regulatory agencies who will administer stricter legislative controls which the corporations regard as inevitable (“regulatory capture”).
