Suspend democracy to tackle emissions – Lovelock

Posted on April 4, 2010 by James Nix

From the Guardian:

In his first major interview since the climate-change emails scandal, James Lovelock says he is disgusted by the actions of some scientists, applauds ‘good’ climate sceptics, and warns that global warming could even lead to war

Leo Hickman
guardian.co.uk, Monday 29 March 2010

As you travel along the drive to James Lovelock’s house, located in a remote, wooded valley on the Cornwall-Devon border, you pass a sign by a gated cattle grid. “Experimental station,” it reads. “Site of a new natural habitat. Please do not trespass or disturb.”

Thirty years ago, Lovelock planted 20,000 trees to create the much more biodiverse habitat around his home. But you suspect that, had this fiercely independent scientist and globally respected environmental thinker been around 3.8 billion years ago when life first erupted on this planet, he would have organised a similar notice to be placed somewhere prominent. Continue reading →

Posted in Global Warming, Sustainability | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Low future price for carbon puts us on the wrong route

Posted on March 30, 2010 by James Nix

Transport investment is particularly expensive. And two points are emerging in Ireland. First, some facilities are significantly overcapacity. Second, there isn’t enough capacity in areas set to grow as the price of carbon emissions rise: the failure to adequately price carbon emissions links both.

During 2009 freight by road and rail each fell by 12 per cent while car traffic on national routes declined somewhere in the region of 2 – 4 per cent, with final figures awaited from the National Roads Authority.

Viewed against the road plans formulated between 2002 and 2008, which rested on the continuation of year-on-year growth, these falls are significant.

For the fourth river crossing under the Shannon at Limerick, due to open later this year, the National Roads Authority envisaged traffic growth in excess of 10 per cent during 2010. Under the public private partnership contract used on this project, the taxpayer, through the NRA, will need to make additional payments to the tunnel operator if traffic passing under the Shannon falls short of projected levels. A similar arrangement is in place on the M3, also due for completion shortly. Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Global Warming, Irish Focus | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Decreasing carbon emissions without affecting the quality of life

Posted on March 9, 2010 by Paddy Morris

There are a couple of simple ideas, which if implemented could make deep and long term cuts in our carbon emissions, while maintaining (or even increasing) the quality of life for all.

In no particular order, they are:

1. Immediately Implement a 4 day week (with obvious exceptions for emergency services etc.)

In 2008 Utah,spurred on initially by high gas prices and later by impacts from the global fiscal crisis, decided to do just this. One of the most conservative states in the US (approx. 60% of the population are Mormons) implemented one of the most radical solutions to the problems it faced – a mandatory 4 day week for 80% of state employees. Hours were changed from a 9-5 5 day week to an 8-6 4 day week.The results have been startling. Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Energy, Global Warming, Sustainability | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Doing our best versus doing what’s required

Posted on March 3, 2010 by John Gibbons

Yesterday afternoon, I was one of a panel of four from the ‘environmental’ field who met under the ageis of Common Purpose with a group of around 25-30 senior figures from the world of business, finance, the semi-state sector and beyond. The topic of the closed session was “exploring the ability of environmental leaders to effect change by inspiring others”.

The meeting is covered by the Charter House Rules (i.e. what’s said in the room stays in the room) but it was a useful opportunity to shoot the breeze with a spectrum of people well beyond the types who might usually find themselves discussing environment, energy and sustainability issues in Dublin on a Tuesday afternoon. On the positive side, there was a good deal less scepticism/hostility to climate science than has been portrayed in our media in recent weeks. Continue reading →

Posted in Energy, Global Warming, Sceptics, Sustainability | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

Attack on climate science has its OJ Simpson moment

Posted on February 27, 2010 by John Gibbons

Bill McKibben has been at the forefront of efforts to alert the public to the dangers of climate change for more than two decades. Today he fronts 350.org, a website dedicated to setting a global CO2 ceiling of 350ppm. Below, he turns his considerable talents to an in-depth analysis of the concerted attack on science, specifically climate science, in recent months, a campaign which has, he writes, been “enormously clever, and enormously effective”.

__________________________________________________

Twenty-one years ago, in 1989, I wrote what many have called the first book for a general audience on global warming. One of the more interesting reviews came from the Wall Street Journal.  It was a mixed and judicious appraisal. “The subject,” the reviewer said, “is important, the notion is arresting, and Mr. McKibben argues convincingly.”  And that was not an outlier: around the same time, the first president Bush announced that he planned to “fight the greenhouse effect with the White House effect.” Continue reading →

Posted in Global Warming, Media, Sceptics | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Ireland’s looming bird crisis

Posted on February 24, 2010 by Coilin MacLochlainn

Back in 2002, the parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity set a target of halting biodiversity loss by 2010.

It is now 2010, the declared UN Year of Biodiversity, and although some endangered species have been saved, notably within the EU, in general species of flora and fauna are being pushed into extinction at a faster rate.

There was really little hope of halting species loss in such a short time, even though the idea had its genesis as far back as 1992, at the Earth Summit in Rio, though it didn’t get legs until the turn of the millennium.

But whatever hope there was then is now fast receding as climate change becomes the newest and most formidable driver of declines and extinctions. Continue reading →

Posted in Biodiversity, Global Warming, Habitat/Species, Irish Focus, Sustainability | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Permafrost retreats further north

Posted on February 23, 2010 by James Nix

Buried in the ‘Weather Eye’ page of our paper of record again…

Climate change forcing frozen soil retreat

Mon, Feb 22, 2010

THE PERMANENTLY frozen ground known as permafrost is retreating northward in the area around Canada’s James Bay, a sign of a decades-long regional warming trend, a climate scientist has said.

When permafrost melts, it can liberate the powerful greenhouse gas methane that is locked in the frozen soil.

The amount of methane contained in permafrost around James Bay is slight compared to the vast stores of the chemical found in ancient, deep permafrost in the Yukon, Alaska and Siberia.

The southern edge of permafrost in the James Bay area has moved about 130km (80 miles) north of where it was 50 years ago, Serge Payette of Laval University in Quebec City said in a telephone interview. Continue reading →

Posted in Global Warming | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Now there’s an App to zap the sceptics

Posted on February 17, 2010 by Paddy Morris

The always useful site Skeptical Science, with its handy list of the most common arguments used by climate change sceptics and detailed rebuttals of them, is now available as an iPhone app.

So next time a discussion occurs and one of the old reliable arguments like ‘it’s the sun’ is trotted out, this app will give you the information needed to rebut the argument, and also allow you to report the arguments used, so skepticalscience.com can maintain an up-to-date list of the most common arguments being used by sceptics.

The highly regarded site is operated as a pro bono public information service by Australian physicist, John Cook.

The handy iPhone widget is available for free from the App Store or  www.skepticalscience.com.

Posted in Global Warming, Media, Sceptics | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Do you believe in miracles?

Posted on February 15, 2010 by John Gibbons

Bill Gates is for many the Dr Evil of the corporate world. His Microsoft behemoth has had a stranglehold on the world’s personal computer market for the last two decades, and wrung hundreds of billions out of users in the process. All of which makes Mr Gates ridiculously rich.

So rich in fact that his Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is now possibly the world’s largest private charity. It recently pledged a staggering $10 billion to help develop and deliver vaccines for children in the so-called developing world. However, Mr Gates may have had something of an epiphany recently, in terms of his understanding of where the real threats lie. Continue reading →

Posted in Energy, Global Warming, Nuclear, Sustainability | Tagged , , , , , | 7 Comments

Copenhagen & beyond: where now for the EU?

Posted on January 27, 2010 by Joseph Curtin

The EU was marginalized amid the realpolitik which dominated at Copenhagen. As a consequence the Copenhagen Accord neither conceptually nor substantively reflected the EU’s negotiating position.

In a recent policy brief (available here) I argue that this failure must lead to a reevaluation of its modus operandi at international negotiations. This is particularly true if Europe wishes to match its rhetoric of leadership on climate protection with real influence.

The extent of the EU’s failure an be gauged from both the extent to which the Copenhagen Accord fell short of the Danish Text which was leaked at the start of the talks, and by the reaction of EU leaders to the Accord. Continue reading →

Posted in Global Warming, Sustainability | 3 Comments

Pachauri should go?

Posted on January 25, 2010 by James Nix

Claims that Himalayan glaciers would have melted by 2035, and that there would be a rise in hurricanes, typhoons and other extreme weather events were never properly peer reviewed before inclusion in the IPCC’s reports.

So-called ‘grey’ literature was used in contravention of the IPPC’s own rules. While the claims are not central, they were high-profile. Agencies linked to IPCC chair Pachauri obtained funding using these claims. Yesterday Charles Clover (author of ‘The End of The Line‘, an investigation into overfishing) called on Pachauri to go (see below). Today there are more reports of monies obtained on foot of wrong material. Continue reading →

Posted in Global Warming | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

OMG, what if the deniers are actually right?

Posted on January 19, 2010 by John Gibbons

Fat chance, of course, that the climate change deniers/liars from the assorted propaganda factories will, in the end, miraculously turn out to know more about climate science than, well, all of climate science. But hey, when we’re told that natural disasters like flooding can “boost the economy” (wow, lucky old Haiti, then?) we have to admit that anything is, in theory at least, possible.

In that spirit, here’s a cartoon of the nightmare scenario that might unfold should the whole thing turn out to be, speak it softly, a big ol’ h-o-a-x…..

big hoax cartoon

Posted in Global Warming, Media, Sceptics, Sustainability | Tagged , , | 5 Comments

Reporting our changing world

Posted on January 16, 2010 by James Nix

I nearly missed the report below. In yesterday’s the Irish Times the near one-third rise in arctic methane emissions wasn’t reported in world news; rather it was on the bulletin page, a fine page – no quibbles here – but a page dominated by weather forecasting, the crossword, chess and cartoons, and, simply put, not the world news pages. Could a 31 per cent in methane emissions in the arctic between 2003 and 2007 be world news?

It’s not the first time. I did a quick check back, just honing in on late 2008, and found some similar instances. Continue reading →

Posted in Global Warming | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Plimer vs Monbiot

Posted on January 13, 2010 by James Nix

From the website of Australian TV network ABC. Click here to view the debate.

Transcript

TONY JONES, PRESENTER: Here is some background notes to tonight’s debate. When Professor Ian Plimer’s outright denial of man-made global warming was championed in the UK Spectator magazine earlier this year after the publication of his book Heaven and Earth in Britain, the magazine’s editor promoted the idea of a great public debate in London between Professor Plimer and the Guardian’s George Monbiot. Monbiot is a renowned champion of climate science. In the end, George Monbiot’s key condition for the debate, that Professor Plimer first answer in writing a series of questions about claims in his book was not met, the debate was cancelled. And tonight, with no preconditions, George Monbiot joins us in Copenhagen and Ian Plimer is here in our Sydney studio.

Thanks to both of you for being there. Continue reading →

Posted in Global Warming, Media, Sceptics | Tagged , , , , , , | 15 Comments

Repeat after me: Weather is NOT climate!

Posted on January 7, 2010 by John Gibbons

Oh dear, here we go again. An editorial in the Irish Times yesterday was headlined ‘Global cooling’. It began: “So much for all of that guff about global warming! Are world leaders having the wrong debate? We are experiencing the most prolonged period of icy weather in 40 years and feeling every bit of it”.

In fact, what the above piece illustrates is the hazards of conducting climate science by looking out the window. The good ol’ Daily Express took it a degree or three further yesterday in its screeching front page headline: ‘SNOW CHAOS – And they still claim it’s global warming’.

I could spend another thousand words trying Online Pokies to unpick this silliness, or instead hand over to the excellent Peter Sinclair, who runs an intriguing YouTube channel called ‘Climate Denial Crock of the Week’. The clip below is from Feb 2009, but it perfectly illustrates the recurring problem that as soon as the temperatures plummet, the deniers start banging loudly on their tin drums, and many folks in the media who really ought to know better, just take a peek out through the net curtains, see the snow and experience an almost instantaneous 50-point drop in their IQs.

Over to you, Peter…

An archive of Peter Sinclair’s excellent series can be accessed by clicking here.

Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Media, Sceptics | Tagged , , , , , , | 17 Comments