The Denials Continue

Tim Gamble, on his so-called Sustainable Future blog has just published snippets of articles or blog posts that comment on the recent hacked e-mails incident. What has become increasingly more usual is Tim's uneven-handed approach. Here is a comment I made to that article, though, as yet, it has not been approved:

I'm not sure why this particular set of comments was put up here but there are some very odd beliefs.

Shikha Dalmia's thinks the email theft was from the Hadley Centre when it was from a department at the University of East Anglia. An early report did, erroneously, give the Hadley Centre, and maybe that simply stuck in Shikha's mind. It's a shame Shikha didn't attempt to check the story.

Neal Boortz claims that "much of the information they've been fed about a warming world has been manufactured and faked". This is pure fantasy. He gives no detail about what he has surmised from one email from one climate science group that gives cause for concern but actually resulted in no false data.

I find it remarkable, Tim, that you have hardened your line considerably as a climate change denier, from merely appearing to have some doubt about the severity. Otherwise, why not print comments about the other side of the story? About how 3 of the 4 emails (out of about a thousand) had quite reasonable explanations and about how only 1 gave rise to some concern and at least 2 inquiries but which, so far, do not show that the science is wrong.

So, in a area where it is very difficult to find a peer reviewed scientific report that counters the IPCC assessment (though others suggest the situation is likely worse than those projections), you choose to continue promoting the idea that climate change is a big scam and absolutely nothing to worry about. For someone who supposedly supports sustainable approaches, I find this remarkable.

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Climategate?

From what I've read on the matter, it looks like only about 4 or 5 emails out of nearly a thousand got the denial lobby all worked up. Of these, only one appeared to give genuine cause for concern (the others having, at least for now, plausible explanations). That one was about a request to delete emails. It looks like, as it turns out, the request was not actioned (as the existence of the email will attest) and other potential dubious actions turned out to cause no information to be hidden (like the apparent attempt to keep a couple of papers out of the IPCC report, which weren't left out).

So, all in all, it's looking like a storm in a teacup (though the outcomes of those inquiries could alter than interim conclusion), except for there being a case for Chris Jones to resign.

It's unfortunate that even some who claim not to deny AGW have jumped on board to claim this might show that the climate science isn't settled.

Resource Scarcity - The Acquisition Strategy

Sometimes, a strategy of acquisition is touted as a means to deal with resource scarcity. This might be rebuilding resources on earth or acquiring them elsewhere.

Insofar as climate change is a manifestation of resource scarcity (due to de-forestation restricting the carbon sinks) re-forestation can help. Growing your own food can also help replenish soils (if it is done in a permacultural way). But acquisition is not a permanent strategy, since we live on a finite planet. The only way acquisiton makes sense, as a long term strategy, is if resources are imported from other worlds. Since we don't know for certain whether that will ever be possible, then acquisition should not be a primary strategy for sustainability. If sustainability cannot be achieved by living within the resource budget of the earth, then it may never be achieved. I hope it can be achieved and that should be the primary strategy. Indeed, since there is no way of knowing whether an acquisition strategy can be successful (long term), I would suggest that such a strategy be put on the back burner until we find that living within the resource budget of the planet is just not possible. If it is, then we can use that stable base to examine other strategies, knowing that we always have a fallback position.

Global cooling?

There is no trend that shows cooling since 1998. In fact, the NASA dataset that includes the Arctic, shows 2005 as the warmest year. See realclimate.org for more info on this.

Recent Climate Studies

Although Tim links to RealClimate he has shown a great reticence to accepting that the problem may be very serious. In his July post, he highlights a study that suggests the IPCC estimates on sea level rise, in their TAR 4 report, are about right. Those estimates suggested quite modest increases in sea level, even in worst case scenarios. However, I pointed Tim at another study that wasn't quite so conservative (though it still wasn't predicting the catastrophic levels that some climate analysts had suggested). Unfortunately, Tim chose to ignore my comment and so his post is the only recent one on the subject (on his site), with no counter balance.

Well, there have been two more recent studies, one from the UN itself, that update the situation on climate and the attendant sea level risks. They are far more hard hitting than Tim would feel comfortable with, so don't expect to see any reference to them soon.

Here is an article that references the UN's Climate Change Science Compendium 2009, which updates the science in the IPCC report.

The other study is by the UK's Hadley Centre, covered in this New Scientist article. It suggests that the 2 degree centigrade limit that the world's governments seemed to be paying lip service to is already a lost cause and 4 degrees is very possible well before the end of the century, even if current policies are implemented. Attendant sea level rises will be much larger than the ones posited in the article that Tim posted.

It's interesting that Tim also includes a link to a climate skeptic, economist and political scientist, Bjorn Lomborg. Perhaps this is an attempt to be even handed but I think that would be a generous explanation, given Tim's propensity to censoring comments (or ridiculing comments) that don't fit with his desires for the future. Real Climate is certainly not a Lomborg supporter so readers of Tim's blog should consider whether they should go with the opinions of climate scientists or with the opinions of an economist, when deciding their positions on climate change. Check out the first few pages of a new book, Climate Cover-Up, for some comments on Lomborg's position.

Sustainable Future - Peak Oil

I'm an occasional reader of the small blog called "Sustainable Future". However, the owner of the blog appears to ignore comments by me. Consequently, any discussion on that blog is fairly muted. I may post comments here that I make about other blog articles, from time to time, regardless of whether they have been accepted or not.

The owner of the Sustainable Future blog has an avowed aim to see science provide the technologies to enable sustainability. I think this clouds his judgement somewhat, rendering him unable, at the moment, to contemplate any kind of society that doesn't involve what he might see as technological progress. This kind of preconception of how one wants the world to look can close the mind to any other outcome, however more probable that outcome might be. It also makes one, perhaps unconsciously, cherry pick data and stories in order to continue convincing oneself that the desired outcome is not only possible, but likely.

[I should point out that I agree with much that is written on the Sustainable Future blog.]

However, this was meant to be a post of two recent comments I made to an article on the Sustainable Future blog about Peak Oil, which was mostly fine.

I don't have a record of the first comment but it was primarily to point out that the peak of conventional oil production, in terms of yearly production, was in 2005, so that may already be clearly in the past. Conventional oil is the easiest to obtain, usually on shore or in shallow waters, with little need for complex technologies to produce it. Conventional oil has the highest net yield, when the energy needed to produce it is taken into account. Most other oil production is of lower net value but is increasingly what we need to rely on. IEA (International Energy Agency) estimates of all liquids now include biofuels, which relies on an oil based infrastructure to obtain. It's a kind of double counting of production (the oil needed to produce the biofuels is counted, along with the biofuels), though offset, of course, by higher consumption. In this light, it is quite plausible that the oil energy peak has already occurred (in 2008) but is being masked by a severe recession.

The other post is reproduced here:

The peak oil story is illustrative of the finite nature of our world. I think the message to take away from peak oil is that we rely on finite resources at our peril. Oil consumption is actually an example of using a renewable resource beyond its renewal rate, as it's renewal rate is tiny. We also consume non-renewable resources, of course. Consuming any resource beyond its renewal rate, or in a way that damages our habitat, is unsustainable. As some resources become scarce, some substitution can occur but, at some point, we have, will, or are using the best resource for the job, or the resource that can be produced at the right rates for our consumption. After that, substitution becomes a game of diminishing returns.

There's a train of thought that says oil prices will never reach the levels that this article suggests. The spike in oil prices could well have been a factor in the recession being experienced by much of the world. It seems likely that a prolonged period of very high oil prices could trigger another recession. So a recovery will increase demand and production will eventually find it hard, or impossible, to keep up, causing prices to rise (and possibly shortages) triggering another downturn where prices fall again as demand decreases.

As has been pointed out, predictions of how the future will go, after peak, vary widely. It seems likely, then, that some will get pretty close to accuracy. My take, though, is that peak is just a sign of a deeper malaise, where the economy, exemplified by our consumptive lifestyles, is perceived as a superset of the earth and that any problem can be solved by clever humans.

I had no "preconceived notions" about the flaws in human cultures but Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn, is a very powerful statement of how we've got it so wrong. I used to be a child of capitalism, but no longer.

Homesteading is useful. I don't know if it will be enough, though. No one does.

What is Sustainability?

Just to be clear, I think I need to define sustainability. Fortunately, Richard Heinberg has pretty much nailed it with his collecting together definitions from a number of sources and distilling them into five axioms. They can be accessed from this link:

http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/articles/851

However, a summary is, I think, useful. To be sustainable, a society needs to consume resources only at or below the renewal rates for those resources. Clearly, consumption of a resource beyond its renewal rate will eventually result in depletion of that resource or, at best, an inability to maintain the rate of consumption. A corollary to that is that consumption of resources must not adversely affect that societies ability to sustain itself; in other words, our behaviour must not damage our habitat.

Of course, it may be possible to override the sustainability axioms for short periods of time, but only with a view to becoming sustainable. For example, if the society recognizes that, over the long term, any finite resource consumption must end, and plans for that, then short term use of finite resources, consumed with some sustainable target in mind, then the society may remain sustainable, since unsustainable consumption is not intended to continue. There are many other discussions that can be had about the details of the axioms but I think they are very good general guidelines.

The implications of the axioms are sometimes difficult to accept but they include zero ecnomic growth and zero population growth (or an active plan for zero growth in both areas). Economic growth must, over the long term, result in increased consumption, even if short term efficiency drives have some success. Indeed, a society that even consumes non-renewable resources, at all (never mind increasing), cannot be sustained in that behaviour. Again there are discussions to be had about some resources but there is no escaping the general rule.

It can be seen that a sustainable society cannot be anything like societies that the develop world has, or that the developing world aspires to. This is a difficult notion to grasp.

Lastly, it must also be stated that, as far as consumption of resources is concerned, societies could attempt to go it alone, in terms of sustainability. However, global cooperation is probably needed to ensure that our habitat is not adversely damaged by unsustainable societies.