The Wrong Trousers: Common Ground Between Climate Change Skeptics & Believers

I recently re-watched the Academy Award-winning animated short Wallace & Gromit in The Wrong Trousers. Like other titles produced by the Aardman Animations company, the film is non-stop eye-candy.

My reason for re-visiting it is a 2007 paper authored by a pair of professors from Oxford University and the London School of Economics. Titled The Wrong Trousers: Radically Rethinking Climate Policy, this 47-page document accepts the premise that dangerous global warming has, indeed, commenced and that the planet faces long-term harmful consequences as a result.

Personally, I consider said premise debatable. But that's a separate issue. The professors, Gwyn Prins and Steve Rayner, say they purposely named their paper after the Wallace & Gromit film. In their view, the mechanical trousers that start out as a cool invention but end up kidnapping Wallace, are an apt metaphor for the Kyoto Protocol.

Their main argument: "the Kyoto Protocol has also marched us involuntarily to unintended and unwelcome places."

Their writing is intelligent and eloquent. It's also direct. Kyoto, they say, was always a "fundamentally flawed" instrument that "was doomed from birth." Due to its single-minded focus on reducing emissions, they feel Kyoto made discussing other responses to climate change "taboo." Kyoto has assumed the status of "creed" and "dogma" they say and, as a result, the world has "wasted fifteen years."

Their paper is a fabulous demonstration of the old adage that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. It also reveals that there's plenty of common ground between individuals who believe dangerous global warming is occurring and those who remain unconvinced.

Like Prins and Rayner, many climate skeptics believe our focus should shift to adaptation. Encouraging populations to prepare for the risks associated with droughts, floods, hurricanes and tsunamis is guaranteed to save lives - since such events will continue to be facts of life irrespective of global warming.

Like many skeptics, Prins and Rayner argue that Kyoto's emission-reduction targets were always too low to have had any significant impact on the big picture. Moreover, their paper demonstrates that, while some countries have worked hard to meet their Kyoto obligations, these efforts have been neutralized by other factors.

For example, because the European Union allowed national governments to distribute unlimited carbon emission permits:

"European governments did what governments seeking popular approval always do, namely look after their own national interests. They therefore issued permits to European industry to the value of more than the then estimated total European carbon emission...There were many guilty parties. But the worst culprit was the Italian government, which showered this free subsidy onto Italian industry on a heroic scale (close to the total estimate for all of Europe). The carbon price crashed from over 30 Euros/ton to 20 cents in the spring of 2006."

It's sobering for the authors to admit - and for us to read - that:

"The failure of Kyoto in its own terms is most eloquently attested by the finding that the (working) Montreal Protocol on CFC reductions may have had a larger net physical impact on the greenhouse effect as an incidental consequence, than Kyoto would have had if it had been fully implemented. Perhaps even more startling is that the Bush Administration’s “Methane to markets” programme, launched before the Kyoto Protocol was activated, may have done more to reduce emissions than all of Kyoto."

A meeting is scheduled for this December in Copenhagen. Its purpose is to help establish international policies to replace the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012. In tune with climate skeptics, Prins and Rayner are adamant that more of the same is not the answer.

But here's the problem. More of the same is exactly what's being promoted loudly by activist groups. Greenpeace Canada is running a campaign called KYOTOplus. The petition Canadians are urged to sign targets emissions exclusively. As usual, Greenpeace's language is apocalyptic:

"Global warming is the greatest threat to life on earth...only urgent action can avert uncontrollable, runaway climate change."

According to the US-based Environmental Defense Fund's website, four elements are critical with respect to the Copenhagen meeting: "The first is clarity on how far industrialized countries are willing and able to cut their emissions, and the second is what developing countries are willing and able to do. The third is clarity on what financing will be available to support developing nations, and the fourth is a governance framework for implementing the agreement."

In other words: emissions, emissions, emissions, emissions.

Friends of the Earth International has its own website petition regarding the Copenhagen meeting. It calls on governments of the rich world to do three things:

1. cut emissions by "at least 40%" by 2020
2. refrain from purchasing carbon credits or offsets from the developing world
3. finance clean energy solutions in poorer countries and help such countries cope "with the floods, droughts and famines caused by climate change"

While the final clause in the final point is encouraging, it's clearly an afterthought. The main focus is dramatic emission cuts over an unrealistically short period of time.

It's difficult not to sympathize with Prins and Rayner. Like skeptics, they find themselves at odds with activists who remain deaf to reasoned argument and new perspectives. Like skeptics they, too, worry about the consequences should their efforts to change minds fail:

"Both writers of this essay began to be engaged with the issue of climate change in the mid-1980s when the task was to gain any audience at all for the discussion...Today, we find that we are like coachmen on a runaway stage-coach, trying to rein back bolting horses, crying “Whoa! Whoa!” before an accident happens."

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visit NOconsensus.org for more on the global warming debate

On the Cusp

I've been busy, immersed, distracted lately. I've been reading, reading, reading. Books and websites and scientific journals. News stories and blogs and Twitter feeds. My brain is bursting with facts and figures I'm struggling to make sense of.

It has been 14 years since I wrote my first and only book. Until now, I've felt no need to repeat the experience. But I may be on the cusp of changing my mind.

I believe in debate. I believe in questions. I believe anyone who wants anyone else to dramatically change their lives had better have a strong and persuasive argument.

My reading about global warming has left me bewildered, bemused - and alarmed. I've spent the past several weeks educating myself, and what I've learned isn't pretty.

There's a whole side of the global warming discussion that 90% of the mainstream media ignores. This is because editors and journalists are as susceptible to "group think" as anyone else. It's also because reporters are often too rushed or too lazy to read anything more than the press release when a new study claims to have found yet another reason why global warming should scare us out of our wits.

I wish I didn't feel the need to say anything at all about this topic. There are lots of other things I'd rather be thinking about in my spare time. But the current state of affairs is wrong.

Download wallpaper versions of the above image (and see more) on my website:
http://www.TripodGirl.com/2009_2/ferns.php

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Good Girl, Bad Girl

The United Nations can point to many decent, heroic achievements over the years, but its crusade against climate change has now turned scary.

The only people in this world who are not entitled to ask questions are slaves (of their masters) and worshippers (of their prophets, priests and gods). One cannot be considered free if one is prohibited from asking questions - of any sort, but particularly regarding a topic that is rarely absent from the daily news.

Yet according to a spokeswoman for the United Nations, its experts have not only declared the global warming debate to be over before all sides agree that it is, they've also decided that our right to ask questions is a mere triviality. They're in a hurry to save the planet, you see, so they don't have time for silly little things like free speech.

Gro Harlem Brundtland used to be the first female Prime Minister of Norway. Today she's the United Nations' Special Envoy on Climate Change. She reports directly to the UN's Secretary General.

And what does she whisper into that gentleman's ear? We have no way of knowing, but what she says in public speeches to rooms full of people is no secret.

On the 17th of March, just a few weeks ago, Ms. Brundtland addressed the United Nations' Forestry Committee. Her full comments are posted on a UN web site. The third paragraph on page 2 is of particular interest:

"It is irresponsible, reckless and deeply immoral to question the seriousness of the situation we are in," she says.

Pardon me, but I don't accept anyone's word as gospel. I make up my own mind, thanks very much - and I'll ask whatever questions I please, for as long as I please.

When the United Nations starts declaring mere questions irresponsible and immoral, Houston we've got a problem.

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visit NOconsensus.org for more on the global warming debate

Earth Hour Hysteria

Earth Hour 2009 finally pushed me over the edge. Anyone who hasn't been living in a cave knows about global warming and how we should all do our part to avert impending disaster.

I've been skeptical of the hype for some time, but life is short and until now I've felt I had other battles to attend.

But matters have gotten out of hand. Earth Hour started out as an entirely voluntary, highly symbolic expression of environmental concern. In astonishingly short order, however, it has morphed into something approaching a civic duty.

My hydro bill arrived two days after Earth Hour. But printed below my "daily usage" graph is the following:

Participate in Earth Hour by turning off all your lights on March 28 between 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. To learn more, visit www.earthhourcanada.org/

That web address belongs to the World Wildlife Fund. The WWF describes itself as "one of the country's leading conservation organizations, enjoying the active support of more than 150,000 Canadians."

33 million people live in Canada. The WWF is, let's admit it, merely one among hundreds of groups devoted to good causes. So why is my public utility - the Toronto Hydro Electric System - promoting the activities of this particular lobby group?

The most recent issue of NOW, a free Toronto entertainment weekly, has a full-page ad inside its front cover promoting a free Earth Hour music concert. The ad was paid for, apparently, by the WWF and the City of Toronto. "Switch off & sign up at EarthHourCanada.org" it reads.

Given the enormous media coverage, why would additional government funds be spent on the promotion of such activities? The Toronto Star, Canada's largest newspaper, didn't write an article or two, it published an Earth Hour section.

At the top of the online version there's an ad for, you guessed it, the WWF. The page contains prominent links to dozens of stories published by The Star during the weeks leading up to Earth Hour. Then there's an additional 17 articles by columnists and guest writers ranging from Margaret Atwood (novelist) to Robert Bateman (painter) to Archbishop Desmond Tutu (Nobel laureate).

The headlines on these articles leave no room for doubt or debate. They refer to the "moral aspect of climate change," the "apocalypse" of urban sprawl, and warn that we have mere hours to "prevent climate disaster."

One guest essay, titled "On a Leap of Faith," bears this as its subtitle:

If we stop flying and shipping, take bicycles to work and slash electricity use, would we sidestep the predicted environmental catastrophe? We don't know...But it would be immoral not to try.

I'm very sorry, but all of this amounts to hysteria. It really is time that sensible people started speaking up and pushing back.

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The Economist Hits an Iceberg

The Economist is an intellectually rigorous, well-written weekly. It's like Time magazine but 10 times meatier. Rather than viewing North America as the center of the universe, its focus is global. Its analysis of current events is characterized by historical perspective, political insight, and sober common sense.

Of all the magazines and newspapers out there, The Economist is what I read most religiously - and trust most implicitly.

So I'm feeling a bit distressed. In a recent editorial, titled "A Sea of Troubles," the magazine declared:

"Greenland's ice is on track to melt completely, which will eventually raise the sea level by about 7 metres (23 ft). Even by the end of this century, the level may well have risen by 80 cm, perhaps by much more."

There's a line in The Fellowship of the Ring movie in which Gandalf asks his former mentor "Tell me, friend, when did [you] exchange reason for madness?" Emotionally-speaking, that approximates my reaction to the above.

Let's begin with the second claim – that, by the time the new century gets born 91 years from now, sea levels may have risen by 80 cm (about 2.5 feet) due to the melting of Greenland's ice.

Making predictions about anything nine decades hence is tricky – because the speed of technological innovation keeps increasing. We're likely to experience more change in the first 25 years of this century than in the entire past century.

And let's be clear: the past century was no slouch. In 1940 you needed another human being to help you place a phone call. Telephone company employees moved cables from one slot to another to connect the wires over which conversations took place.


Today, my pocket-sized wireless wonder not only allows me to call vast tracts of the planet without the intervention of a single soul, it connects me to that great communications grid known as the Internet.

Neither the telephone operators, nor the folks who spoke into one part of their telephones while holding the second part to their ear, could have foreseen anything like the Internet. It was beyond their ability to imagine 70 years ago.

Our understanding of environmental issues and our ability to address them will not remain static over the next 90 years. New discoveries await us – discoveries that have the potential to change the environmental landscape as profoundly as telecommunications has already changed.

So let's return to The Economist's first statement: "Greenland's ice is on track to melt completely, which will eventually raise the sea level by about seven metres (23 ft)."

Where do these ideas come from? They can be traced back to an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report which projected that, if the melting of Greenland's ice were to be "sustained for millennia," the sea level would rise 23 feet.

You can look up millennia here. It's the plural of millennium – 1,000 years.

So when The Economist says Greenland's ice "is on track to melt completely" it means we're going to be in trouble thousands of years from now. But since our own environmental practices have advanced well beyond those of Ancient Rome, how likely is it that humanity won't have learned a thing or two in the interim?

Let's put this another way:

If someone recorded the fluctuations of a particular company's stock over the course of an hour, extrapolated from that data, and then insisted they could accurately predict the stock's value five years from now - would we take them seriously?

I'm not saying we shouldn't care about the environment. But the news magazine I value for its sound judgment now seems to fall short when it reports on this topic. This isn't the first time I've felt I was being served alarmist hooey rather than solid analysis.

And that's a shame. Because now I won't be paying much mind to the 16-page special section on the supposedly dire state of the world's oceans.

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visit NOconsensus.org for more on the global warming debate