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UNFCCCC talks go nowhere - Colour Me Amazed

Well, gosh, I am such a Nostradamus. Just last week I said to someone "these climate talks in China are going to achieve nothing." It was a brave prediction, that few could have dared to make. And so it is with grim satisfaction that I read on the BBC website that

UN climate talks in China have ended without a major breakthrough and with angry words about the US from Beijing.

At the talks in Tianjin, China blamed the US for failing to meet its responsibilities to cut emissions and for trying to overturn UN principles.

The US accused China of refusing to have its voluntary energy savings verified internationally.

Make this shit up. I defy you to.

Reasons we are in Denial

From a 2006 spoof newspaper I did.

12 reasons why we are still in denial
MANCHESTER- A special investigation by this newspaper has revealed that Climate Change has been systematically under-estimated and under-reported. While no single villain is to blame, our reporters have identified several important factors.

Science is 'small c' conservative. Scientists are trained not to speculate beyond what the current empirical evidence will support. To do so, to go 'out on a limb', is to risk a career shelf-stacking at Asda.

Our ignorance is outstanding. The planet is fantastically complex, with all sorts of unknown influences, feedback loops etc. Assumptions that filled yesterday's text books are regularly over-turned. The new scientific and conceptual tools (Complex Systems etc.) at our disposal are absurdly new (40 years and less).

Prediction is difficult, especially about the future.

Some scientists still talking about how things will pan out in other fields 40 to 50 years hence, making it seem as if Climate Change is just one problem among many.

Our brains are limited. In most of our lives we encounter gradual change. We age one year at a time. Our wages (if we're lucky) creep up slowly. We are not regularly exposed to exponential changes, ‘phase shifts’ and the like. Without getting all evolutionary psychologist on your ass, we never needed to develop the mental tools for our current dilemma of positive feedback loops.

Our cultural selection pressures have always favoured optimists. Most folk flee from bad news. Never underestimate our amazing capacity to distract ourselves the latest baubles and trinkets, an upcoming holiday, coming and going in the Big Brother house.

We have a creeping expectation that God will rescue us, since we are obviously the most important thing in the Universe.

Profit-driven media systems exist to make money, not to inform. They need to establish a happy mood for people to read the adverts. The Pending Ecological Debacle doesn't really put the reader/viewer in the chucklezone.

Decisions on what and how to present science stories are largely made by arts graduates. They have been taught to get 'balance', meaning that until about two years ago, any old oil-company stooge could get equal airtime with a proper climatologist. Funnily, when doing stories on the Holocaust or the link between smoking and cancer, they don't ask David Irving or the Tobacco Growers' Association for a comment...

TV news stories have to be short, simple and have some good pictures. (Basically, what Herman and Chomsky refer to as “concision”)

We are coping with the legacy of ferocious and largely-successful ‘denial’ campaigns by capitalist interests in the 1990s (Global Climate Coalition is the prime example). This has left otherwise educated and bright people thinking that there is still doubt about climate change.

The general public is largely innumerate and woefully scientifically illiterate.

However, not all the scare stories are true: newspapers need to sell copies, so are attracted to the alarmist “we are all going to die next year” story, instead of the less controversial “we and most of the species on this rather pretty rock, are all going to die within the next 50 years”

People need to educate themselves about the basic science. Two really good places to start are Kate Evans “Funny Weather” and then www.realclimate.org. on which real climatologists speak to each other in something approaching English.

Scientists Wrong About Climate Change- It's Actually Far Far Worse

Back in the day (i.e. 2006), when it looked like we folks around Climate Camp would be smart enough to actually make the network of NVDA really happen, there was a post-Drax meeting in Manchester. Where it all went wrong. But enough of that...

I produced a spoof newspaper, called "Socialist Lurker" and the lead story was, with a picture of a polar bear and a thought bubble that said "great, I can forget about the swimming lessons", "SCIENTISTS ADMIT CLIMATE CHANGE REPORTS WRONG:
It's actually far far worse."

For reasons to do with me posting a youtube video about Apocalyptic Language, I am now posting it...

This newspaper, after an investigation spanning two years, can today announce a startling pattern hidden in reports and research about climate change and carbon dioxide emissions. This pattern, invisible to the naked eye, has far-reaching implications, shaking the belief system of our civilisation to its core. Those who know the pattern can be identified by their tight-lipped semi-smile that might also be a stoical grimace. For this reason, the pattern is known as 'Da Carbon Code'.

The pattern has the following elements:

Journalists report that a group of scientists have reported their surprising/unusual/worrying/bowel-loosening information. This roughly corresponds to coverage of the same report in the Telegraph, the Times, the Guardian and the Independent respectively.

This information is in the form of direct evidence/findings/report/a computer model.

The journalist has found the report in a reputable journal, such as Science, Nature or, occasionally, something more specialist. Alternatively, the story comes from a press release from a body such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(1), the Royal Society, Hadley Centre or the like.

The report states that glacier melt(2)/ocean acidity(3)/ocean warming(4)/rainforest die-off(5)/methane hydrate release(6) etc(7). is happening quicker than expected.

At very least,it is happening twice as fast as had expected, but may even be happening faster than had previously been thought possible.(8)

The problem is caused by carbon dioxide emissions, and is likely to accelerate and also contribute to other environmental and social problems.

The pattern then continues with the journalist contacting a 'relevant authority' (either governmental or corporate) for a statement. The minister/PR flunky(9) looks shiftily at his- or more rarely her- feet and then out the window, before giving a ritual incantation of awareness and concern. He/she finally whines something like “Yes we are building more airports, but we're going to put low-energy light bulbs in all the departure lounges. And kittens are nice.”

By way of summing up the journalist will make the observation that 'tough choices' lie ahead, and that the 'political will' may not be present to meet them. In the deluxe version, they may mention that Kyoto, due to expire in 2012, was never much cop(10) anyhow.

Though this 'Da Carbon Code' has had little noticeable impact on the desires, assumptions and actions of the general public in the West, some among our Lords and Masters, the scientific community and the more alert environmentalists are starting to shit bricks. One campaigner was quoted as saying “It is probably too late to do anything actually worth the effort, but we should at least have a pop at the problem, for our own self-respect, if not for our kids. If we don't get Contraction and Convergence(12) adopted and implemented very soon indeed, it's definitely all over bar the shouting, wailing and gnashing of teeth.”

Footnotes to “Climate Reports Wrong”
1. The IPCC’s next report is due out in February 2007. It is likely to make for light, enjoyable bed-time reading. Not.
2. Check out the British Antarctic Survey www.antarctica.ac.uk See also footnote 8
3. The Natural Environment Research Council has a brilliant quarterly magazine called Planet Earth. The summer 2006 issue has a terrifying story on “Ocean Acidification: The Other Carbon Dioxide Problem” It’s available on-line, via http://www.nerc.ac.uk/publications/planetearth/
4. Jim Hansen, from NASA, is not a muppet. That was Jim Henson. Hanson's the guy with a cameo in Al Bore's Inconvenient Truth, fighting the good fight on Capitol Hill. 18 months ago NASA confirmed the oceans are heating up. http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/earth_energy.html
5. The Indie jealously guards its archive, but those criminals at climate ark have posted a story from 23 July http://www.climateark.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=58635. Realclimate.org has a pretty good rebuttal, that you should read before you start disasturbating too much…
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/08/amazonian-drought/
6. The amusing thing about Siberia and Alaska melting will be that the quantities of methane will make any carbon dioxide reduction schemes that the simian bipeds come up with utterly utterly irrelevant. At that point, will they all just shrug their shoulders and say ‘burn baby burn’?
There was an article and letters in Nature in September 2006 about this, but the following article is also good. It’s from ‘Seed’, an American magazine aimed at arty scientists and arty types who seek scientifically literacy. A bit technophiliac, but you can’t have everything... http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/09/post_3.php
7. Et cetera indeed! Royal Society report “Impact of climate change on crops worse than previously thought (Liebig’s law stands, it seems)
http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/news.asp?id=3084
The Gulf Stream switching off, from those cheerful chaps at NERC again
http://www.nerc.ac.uk/research/issues/climatechange/rapid.asp
(One is reminded of William Broecker- "We're poking the climate system by adding greenhouse gases" like carbon dioxide, the Columbia University scientist said in a July 22 Summer Sessions lecture. "Will poking this angry beast cause it to lash out?" )
Soil becoming a carbon source rather than a carbon sink.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,12374,1324379,00.html
I could go on all night…
8. Elizabeth Kolbert wrote a three part piece on Climate Change for The New Yorker, now a book “Field Notes from a Catastrophe”
Almost wherever you looked, temperatures in the Arctic were rising, and at a rate that surprised even those who had expected to find clear signs of climate change. Robert Corell, an American oceanographer and a former assistant director at the National Science Foundation, co-ordinated the study. In his opening remarks, he ran through its findings — shrinking sea ice, receding glaciers, thawing permafrost — and summed them up as follows: “The Arctic climate is warming rapidly now, with an emphasis on now.” Particularly alarming, Corell said, were the most recent data from Greenland, which showed the ice sheet melting much faster “than we thought possible even a decade ago."
9. For public relations and greenwash, check out www.prwatch.org and the book Global Spin by Sharon Beder.
And read this quote from the wonderful Donald Westlake’s wonderful ‘Humans’;
The fact was, Anglo Dutch had learned from Exxon's experience with the Valdez. Never keep your information officer around long enough to establish any kind of personal rapport with the media; that way indiscretions and uncomfortable leakage lie. Every two weeks, whip into the slot another trim slim thirty-four-year-old, bland and smooth and bright, male or female (makes no difference), who will give the company line a nearly human face; but before that face becomes completely human get it out of there, and start with a new one....
10. Jokes that have to be explained are bad enough, but footnoted ones?! COP= Conference of the Parties is the name of the 6 monthly meetings of the UNFCCC. At COP-3, in 1997, the Kyoto Protocol was signed.
11. The idea that the mass media in the west is systematically skewed to support capitalist interests is unthinkable to those who benefit from it with fat jobs and fat heads.
www.medialens.org does an excellent job in tracking and challenging this invisible power. Specifically on climate change, see http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060131_welcome_to_mars.php
12.We must contract our carbon dioxide emissions and also gap in per capita emissions between rich and poor. C and C offers science-based targets, which we have ignored and will ignore until it is Too Late. If it isn’t already. www.gci.org.uk or else news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4994296.stm

Some cartoons to leaven the mood

Haven't done this for a while...

We will jam our fingers in our ears till they touch...

"The more serious the problem of climate change becomes, the more revolutionary the change needed to address it—the more we can expect powerful economic and social interests to deny the seriousness of the problem: playing up scientific uncertainties that always exist, and casting doubt on climate science itself. The object of such a response is to manipulate public opinion so as to sow confusion and arrest any attempt to alter business as usual."

Monthly Review May 2010

Overwhelmed by overwhelming overwhelmingness

Another banality that occurred to me this morning: Few of us like to feel overwhelmed and at the mercy of forces we don't understand/can't control. And as children, that's mostly what we endure- we are told when to go to bed, what to where, what to eat. [See Stephen Jay Gould on why kids are fascinated by big lumbering brainless dinosaurs] Becoming an adult, you get to “choose” these things yourself (though often the choices you make are within the narrow bounds set by advertisers, but the crucial thing- for my rhetorical purpose- is that you feel free.)

And you get to stay an adult, with luck, until advanced old age crumbles that independence away from you and you get patronised by some NHS stooge a third of your age.

But look, here comes climate change. A huge force, arbitrary and beyond control and bargaining with that will take away so many of the 'free choices' - air travel, bling - that we deploy to tell ourselves and each other that we are now adults. [It's bad enough if for those willing to concede that some social problems need collective solutions. For staunch 'individualists' who hates the messiness of mass society, then it must be doubly hell.]
And so, like a teenager with a parent lecturing us, we turn up the volume on our iPod and say (to ourselves) “yeah, whatever.”

19th out of 19

So, this little gem from the FT of Jan 18...

The new generation of Tory MPs due to take power after the election does not share David Cameron's professed commitment to tackling climate change, a survey being published this week suggests.

"Reducing Britain's carbon footprint" was rated as the lowest priority, out of 19 policies, by 144 Conservative candidates responding to the survey of the 240 most winnable Tory target seats. Rating each policy on a scale of one to five, where five was the most important to them personally, the candidates gave the climate change issue an average rating of 2.8, significantly below "more help for marriage" (3.6 rating) and "protecting the English countryside" (3.57 rating).

They rated "cutting red tape" as second only to tackling the budget deficit in terms of priorities, suggesting resistance to environmental regulation.

Where to begin? How stupid do we have to get, before it all goes tits up? Can we nominate the entire fracking species for an Arrhenius Award (like a Darwin Award, only for climate stupidity).

Oh, and those wonderful tables at the back of the rigorous Copenhagen Accord? The ones with the January 31st deadline. Yeah, well, screw that!

The Boiler Scrappage Scheme: a tale of bureaucratic hell

In my bimbling innocence, I have been sucked into a bizarre parallel world of quangoese cockups that could drive a woman to... oooh believe that the state is incompetent and corrupt...
Gordon B announced with much fanfare a couple of weeks ago a boiler scrappage scheme, like the car scheme, which would replace G rated boilers with A rated ones, allegedly reducing CO2 emissions by the same amount as taking 45,000 cars off the road, and - the buzzword of the moment, create British jobs! Woohoo! What can go wrong, one asks.
The answer, of course, is that one can give the job of administering this scheme to the Energy Savings Trust, a clunking bureaucracy which isn't apparently up to anything more complex than sending out a few leaflets about changing your lightbulbs. It certainly managed to screw up the solar incentive scheme a few years back. Trying to make contact with this organisation is like dealing with some little organisation with three staff and a doggie on a string - you'd never guess its budget runs into tens of millions and it gets to second dozens of staff from government departments.
The sorry saga so far is that on the 6th January, my very on-the-ball boiler installer rang my at about nine o'clock at night to tell me to apply for the scheme. I went to the EST site next morning and, as per the instructions, emailed boilerscrappage@est.org.uk with a 'registration of interest' which included the make of boiler being replaced, the new one etc. I heard nothing back. So on about the 12th or 13th I rang up to chase this. The very nice, if somewhat woolly and confused-sounding woman on the phone told me they'd been 'snowed under' with interest (although I managed to get through straight away on the phone - obviously a good thing but not necessarily a sign of stretched capacity). She informed me that 'Steve' (not the name she said) would get back to my email - which rather (and worryingly) implied that a single bloke was actually dealing with this landslide of email interest.
Needless to say, by Saturday 16th I've heard nothing back. I tried ringing the national number, only to find that it's only staffed Monday-Friday 9-5. So how are people in work supposed to access a) the boiler scheme and b) the wealth of energy efficiency information the EST claims to be able to bestow? Not through the online forms on the site, that's for certain. I clicked through the same series of links I'd followed on the 7th, only to find that the instructions page has changed, and there is now a link to an application form for the scrappage scheme. Wahey! I thought. Yes, there is a question as to why everyone who sent in an expression of interest couldn't have been auto-emailed to tell them that this form was now up, but never mind. Now I can just apply...
Can I buggery. I fill in the form, not one but three times. Each time it all seems to go fine, I fill in the requisite fields - some of them dropdown menus, some typed fields. I tick the necessary disclaimer boxes. I press 'submit.' And then every single field on the form sprouts a kind of burgundy-purple message saying 'Please provide some information for the above field it is a required field,' or similar. It's not my browser - I fill in online forms all the bloody time.
So, I think, I'll at least let them know their form isn't working, and maybe I'll get something back telling me when it is. Or some such vain hope. So I go to the EST's standard contact form and write a little message to this effect. I also have to fill in a bunch of fields with my name, address, phone number etc, including one of those ones where you fill in your postcode and it finds your address for you. This works successfully. But when I press 'submit' - it all goes tits up again. Despite the form identifying my postcode enough to find my address, it's refusing to admit it is actually a postcode for the purposes of submitting the form. Great.
My last salvo is to try and email my message to the generic email addresses, which appear on various EST leaflets, ads etc, mail@ and info@. Neither of these are working either. There are completely unfunded organisations campaigning for the preservation of species no-one's ever heard of with more efficient communications than this over-funded shower. Withholding tax because irresponsible governments will just spend it on nasty nuclear weapons is a fab idea. But withholding it because their quangos are completely unable to perform basic tasks feels like an even better notion at this time...

This article was originally posted here.

Who are you?

This from Al Gore in Copenhagen. Who are you?

Who are we?

If at some future date, the next generation faces the prospect of living in a world with steadily deteriorating prospects and no chance to reclaim the glories of this beautiful earth that we have enjoyed — if they look back at Copenhagen and ask, “Why didn’t you act? Why did you let this process fall into paralysis, and neither succeed or fail but become a symbol of futility? What were the arguments were again? You didn’t realize that we were at stake?”

If their conclusion was that the generation of human beings alive in the first years of the 21st century gathered together in Copenhagen with the leaders of virtually every nation in the world and instead of forthrightly addressing a mortal threat to the future of civilization, instead decided that the arguments were more important than the solution, that the compromises were just too difficult and allowed the process to fall into paralysis, thus condemning them to a life completely unlike what they deserve, they would be justified in asking of us:

“Who are you?

Didn’t you care?

Did you not feel any connection to us?”

The real source of the passion and the feelings that I have for this issue is a simple conviction: I don’t believe that’s who we are. I believe we are capable of rising to this occasion in spite of the difficulties. I believe that we are capable of resolving the remaining issues to the point where we can meet in Mexico City this July, in the aftermath of a successful action by the United States Senate in April, and conclude a binding international treaty that begins the process and builds our confidence and leads us to make bolder commitments and cuts in global warming pollution and provides the supports that are necessary until, like the Montreal Protocol process, we get to the point where we actually solve this crisis.

We can do it, we must do it, and as I have said many times, I believe political will is a renewable resource. Thank you very much.

Gort and Klaatu's Climate Slamdown!!!

Big conference. Big strip.

The post-Copenhagen world?

Sigh. Just putting the latest MCFly (issue 29. Oh god, what a rod for my own back/enablement of my martyr complex).

And on the stepper last night read a rather fun (in a "we are so toast" kind of way) piece by Alex Evans and David Steven, of the grandly named Centre on International Co-operation.

It's about the post-Copenhagen world, and it's catchily titled "An Institutional Architecture for Climate Change." It was commissioned by the Department for International Development.

So, the authors do that "scenario" thing that we have Per whatsit and Vince Cable to blame for. You know, they come up with three different ways things could go over the next 20 years or so, then spice it up with some glib "humour" about Chelsea Clinton becoming prez and so forth.

Their three scenarios are - (drumroll please)

"In Age of Climatocracy, early success in negotiations nonetheless fails to lead to a sustainable deal.

"In Multilateral Zombie, an early breakdown in international co-operation is followed by the eventual emergence of a new order based on a patchwork of bottom up solutions.

"Finally, in Operating System, a long-term deal proves sufficiently robust to deliver results, based on an ambitious effort to integrate all aspects of international reform, and an approach based on agreeing shared principles and a long-term route map rather than just incremental initiatives. "

In all of these I think they ignore what some of the smarter climate scientists are trying to say. Susan Solomon and the "it's later than you think" line, Stephen Schneider and the "unpleasant surprises", Wally Broecker and the Climate Beast thing. You see, Evans and Steven live in the dumb-bell world, and either won't or can't think about it all going horribly tits up in uncontrollable ways. I'm reminded of what some Daniel Finkelstein wrote recently in the Times about Robert McNamara upon the old fraud's death
"The first less is this: that men of action want to act. They are paid to act, they are brought into government to act. From his very first visit to Vietnam, McNamara could have learnt- if he wanted to- how difficult things were. But he was an executive type and he wasn't about to tell the boss that he couldn't get the job done. So doubt was excluded. The facts were altered to suit the theory."

The men of thinking (and they're damn good at it, btw. Check out their Global Dashboard) want to think, and to plot out continuities. But we are facing such radical uncertainty that... Actually, maybe I am being unfair to these guys; I guess nobody pays you to throw your hands up in the air and say "fucked if I know" for 50 pages.

Good points are made throughout. Here's a small selection that resonated with me as I stepped away on the stepper:
"This demonstrates a crucial point: action taken on climate change today is fundamentally influenced by expectations of what will happen in the future. By extension, the primary task for climate institutions is to shape expectations about future policy responses over the very long time periods associated with climate change. " (p16)

and

"Today’s institutions are structured in such a way that assumes that:

The likely impact of climate change will be considerably less than predicted by the IPCC. Emissions are climbing at a rate that makes more rigorous stabilization levels difficult, or impossible, to achieve.

The cost of reducing emissions far exceeds the benefits, while there is little need to insure against catastrophic impacts. Countries, firms and individuals behave as if they believe that they cannot afford the transition to low carbon development.

Short-term economic imperatives outweigh longer-term interests, including both economic and – especially – non-economic ones. While there is growing appreciation of the damage we are doing to future generations, there is not sufficient commitment to overcome the obstacles to collective action.

The needs of the poor should be given less weight than those of the rich. The poor, both acros and within countries, will suffer far more from climate change."
(page 17)

And there's ammo to sling at Ed Miliband next he uses the "we're 18% below 1990 levels" line on UK GHG emissions. Maybe (just maybe) we are on our production, but not on our consumption, not if you count the "embedded carbon":

"Dieter Helm finds that on a crude calculation, the UK’s consumption of greenhouse gases increased 19% between 1990 and 2003, even though production declined 12.5% – in line with the UK’s Kyoto target.
Other research suggests that only around half of China’s rapid emissions growth is due to increased domestic consumption; the rest are exported.
In effect, rich countries have exported ‘dirty industries’ to emerging economies, who then hav to bear the cost of investing in technologies for reducing their emissions."
(page 21)

And a good point on the UNFCCC negotiations:

"In climate change, this problem is compounded by the fact that agreements are negotiated by environment ministers who generally have low status within their governments, and whose position becomes increasingly exposed as the potential impact grows of any deal on economies. One understandable response is to increase centralisation, both within national governments (as heads of state take increasing responsibility for international issues), and at a global level (where there is a trend towards escalating hard issues to fora such as the G8 and, more recently, the G20).
However, the problem with centralisation is that it comes with very limited capacity. At national level, heads’ offices have small staffs that usually have to focus on the urgent rather than the essential. At international level, the limited ‘bandwidth’ of the network of sherpas that prepares the G8 agenda means that summit outcomes more often tend towards headline-friendly ‘initiatives’ instead of comprehensive plans to manage global risks. " (page 23)

and the final bit I'll cut and paste (promise) is one dear to my heart, namely, the complete lack of work done on "softening up" people for the meaning of a 'successful' Copenhagen deal:

"Public engagement is therefore paramount. At present, to a surprising (and alarming) extent, international climate policymakers act as though what takes place in the climate ‘bubble’ is the key determinant of success.

"But in fact, recent experience underlines the extent to which publics matter in foreign policy. The European Constitution and its successor, the Lisbon Treaty, were both examples of agreements where policy elites successfully reached a bargain, but then found it bluntly rejected during the ratification phase by publics who had been largely excluded from earlier deliberations. Many other international institutions struggle with public apathy or antipathy towards them.

"Accordingly, it will be essential for policymakers to engage early in the process with non-state constituencies – not only to gauge what public opinion is likely to bear, but also to build a broader sense of buy-in in order to prevent catastrophic public-driven ‘wild cards’ from defeating agreements late in the process. Yet it is astonishing how little governments and international agencies are actually doing to prepare publics for the prospect of a far-reaching global deal on climate change – particularly given that such a deal will, after all, be designed to catalyse a massive change in public behaviour. " (page 39

In summary- read this essay, it is worth it. Just don't take comfort from the scenarios....

Brilliant denial/acceptance post on "Climate Progress"

I've used the "5 stages of grief" by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross a few times, and fellow PED author Marc Roberts' has done some great cartoons on the subject too.


So it was with great interest that I read Joe Romm's latest blog post -

Anti-science conservatives are stuck in denial, but for climate science activists the reverse is true.

The first three quarters of the post are about the various words you can use to describe so-called "skeptics", most of whose minds are made up, and are impervious to any reasoned or factual discussion. It's good stuff. But that on its own wouldn't have me urging you (yes, you, one single follower) to read the whole piece. No, it's when Romm continues that the fun starts -

THE FIVE STAGES IN REVERSE

And now let me end with what I promised — the five stages of grief in reverse.

Climate science activists begin with accepting the science. What else can one do? Science is the reason so many of us survived childbirth and childhood, science has fed the world, science is the reason computers and the blogosphere exist at all. And yes, science gave us our fossil-fueled wealth. I’m a scientist by training, but I just don’t see anyone can pick and choose what science you’re going to believe and what not. The scientific method may not be always be perfect in single studies — since it is used by imperfect humans — but it is the best thing we have for objectively determining what has happened, what is happening, and what will happen. It is testable and self-correcting, unlike all other approaches.

Really, you should read the whole thing, which ends with this-

Finally, you end up in a kind of denial. It just becomes impossible to believe that the human race is going to be so stupid. Indeed, my rational side finds it hard to believe that we’re going to avoid catastrophic global warming, as any regular CP reader knows. But my heart, in denial, is certain that we will — see “How the world can (and will) stabilize at 350 to 450 ppm: The full global warming solution (updated).” The great New Yorker write Elizabeth Kolbert perhaps best summed up this form of denial. Her three-part series, “The Climate of Man,” which became the terrific book, Field Notes from a Catastrophe, famously ends:

It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.

It is impossible to believe. I myself can’t believe it.

Bent As A Nine Bob Note?

At last, a climate related link to the dismal tale of graft that has engulfed the two-faced pocket-liners that we entrust with our collective well being. Apparently they're a sorry shower of bent bastards. Imagine my surprise.

The circle is broken, etc...

On The Rebound

Researchers suggest that our self indulgence might diminish our cleverness, as we consume more of what we save in a "rebound effect".
What price water and food when there's no water and food.

Elsewhere, Russia reserves the right to wage its own wars for oil; the planet becomes increasingly unbalanced; marine wildernesses go the way of all fish.

Some fine urban pollution materials here, at Urban Emissions.info

Active Listening

Burnout is bad for the environment.

There are ups and there are downs, and then more ups and more downs. Keeping a level head is tricky. Maybe we should spend more time in the garden.

"To get credit for preserving the ocean or avoiding deforestation is like getting credit for not beating your wife," Tony Haymet, director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California, (climate feedback)

Con-Fusion?

Whilst the usual oodles and squillions change hands across the boardroom tables, the actual hardware upon which we are apparently doomed to depend turns out to be a bit shit.

It seems we only stop shitting in the kitchen when we're constipated

The part of the brain that finds cars irresistible seems to be missing in my case, so I'm probably embarrassingly late with this. The Honda hybrid is called the Insight. Oh how we laughed.

Bad Dream Time

Global warming is bad for your health - particularly if you're an aboriginal Australian, a Pacific Islander or a polar bear

The British police drum up a bit more business for themselves

Infernal Combustion

Frank is feeling a little better today. Thanks for asking.

While the UK entrenches itself up to its neck in car culture, the scientific world debates whether it is best to starve us all and destroy our biodiversity in the name of biofuel or bio-electricity - whichever gives most miles per acre.
Those on two wheels had better watch their backs.

So many choices, so little accurate information.

What price action?

China and Italy invest heavily in renewables

Elephants in da house

I didn't have room for the elephant.

We're going through the housekeeping like there's no tomorrow, borrowing ourselves into the middle of next week, whilst the tabloids bark nonsense. Oh well, what's the worst that can happen?

Some interesting background to the swine flu pandemic, from Craig Mackintosh