ThinkOrSwim (the Climatechange.ie Blog) | Climate Change, Sustainability and Global Warming. Climatechange.ie

Challenging the infallible economist

Posted on October 15, 2009 by John Gibbons

Colm McCarthy chaired the Special Group on Public Service Numbers and Expenditure Programmes, better known as An Bord Snip Nua. It issued its various prescription for what ails us in July, and much of the national discussion since then has been framed through the McCarthy lens.

McCarthy fancies himself as a straight-talker, and last Friday he excoriated Comhar’s Green New Deal proposals in a newspaper article headlined: “Green plan a recipe for fudge and confusion in economic policy”. Deeper into his piece, McCarthy opines: “The “Green New Deal” package from Comhar is seductive in several dimensions, apart from the catchy moniker. It promises to help the environment and to create jobs, all at no apparent cost. Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Global Warming, Irish Focus, Media, Sustainability | Tagged Arctic, Bord Snip Nua, carbon, climate change, collapse, Colm McCarthy, Convery, emissions, Energy, Sustainability | 6 Comments

Blowing up a political s**t storm

Posted on October 13, 2009 by John Gibbons

Fintan O’Toole is, for my money, the most insightful commentator on Irish life, and has been for years. Like any of the rest of us, he has his hobby horses, and I’ve often been disappointed that he rarely turns his intellect to the rich grounds of the sustainability/climate/environmental catastrophe that’s now unfolding.

On Nama, he’s been superb. Were it not for the intervention of two of Fine Gael’s eminence grises, in the forms of Garrett Fitzgerald and Alan Dukes, I’m pretty sure the anti-Nama arguments, so forcefully articulated by O’Toole, would have prevailed. As it was, while naturally the Greens are getting it in the neck, in fact two ageing FGrs sealed its fate. The Greens pissed O’Toole off on Nama, and, thanks to John Gormley’s gormless travel arrangements, O’Toole has hit them in their ethics, where it really, really hurts. Continue reading →

Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Media, Sceptics | Tagged Daily Mail, Fintan O'Toole, Gormley, Green Party, Kevin Myers, Nama, RTE | 6 Comments

A fair wind for renewable energy sector?

Posted on October 12, 2009 by John Gibbons

The Green Party seems to have snatched an unlikely victory at the weekend – they somehow maneuvered themselves from being pinned between the proverbial rock and a hard place and wriggled free with party unity intact and a hatful of new concessions wrung from their senior government partners. Harry Houdini would have been impressed.

Certainly, Eamon Ryan sounded uber-chipper on RTE radio yesterday morning, including giving Sunday Times editor Frank Fitzgibbon as good as he got in some fairly heated exchanges. Meanwhile, the Sunday Indo yesterday decried the revised programme for government as a cynical deal. Given that newspaper’s deeply cynical campaign to repeal stamp duty at the height of the property bubble, and their even more cynical support for B. Ahern & Friends in the lead-in to the 2007 General Election, this is clearly an area of expertise for them. The opening 2 paras of yesterday’s lead story are worth reproducing: Continue reading →

Posted in Energy, Global Warming, Irish Focus | Tagged Andris Piebalgs, Arklow Bay, car, carbon, CO2, Eamon Ryan, elect, electricity, Energy, fossil fuels, Green Party, interconnector, supply, wind, wind farms | 6 Comments

The Anthropocene draws to a close

Posted on October 8, 2009 by John Gibbons

The term Anthropocene was coined by Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen a decade ago to describe the new ‘Era of Man’, a distinct geological epoch shaped almost entirely by our actions and impacts. “The Anthropocence has yet to be accepted as a geological time period, but if it is, it may turn out to be the shortest – and the last”, wrote Bob Holmes in the current edition of New Scientist in an intriguing article that rolls the clock forward to see how Earth would cope in the era after Man.

Mass extinctions are already well advanced, so much so that scientists have already designated the current era as the Sixth Extiction – since these measures cover close to a billion years, Extinction eras are rare indeed, the last being the event 65 million years ago that did for the dinosaurs and ultimately created the wiggle room for our ancient ancestors, the early mammals, to get a toe-hold. Continue reading →

Posted in Global Warming, Habitat/Species, Media, Sustainability | Tagged Anthropocene, Arctic, climate change, CO2, Crutzen, David McWilliams, emissions, famine, global warming, John Gibbons, methane, New Scientist, permafrost, RTE, species loss, Sustainability | 4 Comments

A good day for Ireland, but where’s Copenhagen?

Posted on October 4, 2009 by John Gibbons

I was in the city centre on Friday night, just as the polls were preparing to close, and happened upon the hugely impressive illuminated Liberty Hall (hard to miss, in fact, and far and away the most dramatic installation the city has seen since poor Lord Nelson got blown off his perch in 1966).

Below is some footage I recorded with my trusty iPhone video:

By 10.30pm on Friday, the bush telegraph was rattling furiously with news from Fine Gael’s exit poll indicating a thumping 2:1 Yes vote. And by the 11am news bulletins on Saturday, it was clear that Lisbon was done and dusted. Continue reading →

Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Media | Tagged carbon, climate change, CO2, collapse, Comhar, Convery, Gormley, Irish Independent, Lisbon, Media, RTE, Sustainability | 4 Comments

Comhar’s Green New Deal makes sense

Posted on October 1, 2009 by John Gibbons

At 11am today in the Irish Academy in Dublin’s Dawson Street, Comhar, the sustainable development council formally launches its Green New Deal for Ireland. It’s a genuinely impressive document, as I’ve outlined in the Irish Times today, with much to offer.

Sources tell me the Comhar document will inform much of the ‘green’ component of the review of the Programme for Government currently underway. If so, it should prove an extremely tempting carrot for unhappy Green Party members contemplating pulling the plug on participation in this administration ahead of that party’s special conference on Saturday 10th next. Continue reading →

Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Sustainability | Tagged climate change, CO2, Comhar, Convery, emissions, Energy, environment, Green New Deal, pollution, Sustainability, sustainable | 2 Comments

Hot air, melting ice, ticking clock

Posted on September 28, 2009 by John Gibbons

Hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting Declan Ganley of Libertas until yesterday. Well, Declan is of course a stickler for accuracy, so perhaps ‘encountering’ would be a more accurate term. The brief encounter occurred around noon yesterday, as I was entering the Newstalk studio. Ganley, Prionsias de Rossa and Richard Boyd Barrett were just finishing up what had been a heated discussion on Lisbon when the air began to turn blue with expletives.

Presenter Karen Coleman thought two of her guests, Ganley and de Rossa were actually going to trade blows. Here’s how Karen describes what ensued as the interview ended: Continue reading →

Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Media, Sustainability | Tagged Arctic, climate, CO2, Coleman, Ganley, Greenland, IPCC, Karen Coleman, Lisbon, Nature, Newstalk, sea-levels, warming | 3 Comments

In the frame for Lisbon

Posted on September 24, 2009 by John Gibbons

Am usually happiest to operate from the safety and relative anonymity of this side of the keyboards, but decided to face the music, so to speak, and contribute to a press briefing held in the dramatic setting of the upper deck of Trinity Point, a brand new low-energy building opposite TCD in Nassau Street.

An odd experience, all told, for someone quite used to being on the other side of the microphones. A planned doubling of the plastic bag tax (from 22-44 cent) seemed to be uppermost on the minds of the substantial turnout of journalists for the event. Minister Gormley described Lisbon as a “no brainer” for anyone serious about climate change, a point picked up on by Duncan Stewart, who stressed the extraordinary urgency of this issue.

Would I do it again? As Voltaire famously mused, on being invited back after attending his first orgy: “Once a philosopher; twice a pervert.”

Posted in Global Warming, Habitat/Species, Irish Focus, Media, Sustainability | 3 Comments

It has to be Yes to Lisbon

Posted on September 23, 2009 by John Gibbons

On June 11th, 2008, the day before what we now call Lisbon 1, my Irish Times piece was headed: “If you care about climate change, vote Yes to Lisbon”. There are those who’d say I got my answer. I’m not so sure. If there had been a third option on the ballot, called ‘Don’t know/haven’t a clue’, it would have won by a landslide.

Declan Ganley and his cohorts ran a slick negative campaign that clearly tore the limp ‘Yes’ effort to shreds, successfully converting the Don’t Knows to No Thanks. This time round, there seems to be a far broader coalition out batting for Yes. This week it was joined by, among others, Brian O’Driscoll, Dennis Hickey and Kilkenny wonder-coach Brian Cody. Continue reading →

Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Media, Nuclear, Sustainability | Tagged climate change, CO2, deBurca, Duncan Stewart, electricity, environment, Gormley, Lisbon, referendum | 1 Comment

Where have all the fish gone? (we ate them)

Posted on September 22, 2009 by John Gibbons

The world’s oceans are in deep, deep trouble. Industrialised fishing, in full swing since around 1950, has in essence waged a war against the marine ecosystem. And the bad news is: we’re winning. Species extinctions, population crashes and vast disruption to marine food chains are all the direct consequences of overfishing.

And that’s before you factor in ocean acidification, pollution and dramatic changes in ocean surface temperatures arising from global warming. All in all, the prognosis is grim. Nor is there some ready fix. “The recovery from the changes we’re making will probably take a million years”, according to Achim Steiner, director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Steiner’s comments assume of course that we stop what we’re doing right now, in order to give the marine ecosystem some chance of recovery. Continue reading →

Posted in Biodiversity, Global Warming, Habitat/Species, Media, Sustainability | Tagged Achim Steiner, collapse, extinction, fishing, global warming, marine, maritime, oceans, overfishing, population, sharks, species loss, Sustainability, UN, UNEP | Leave a comment

Which part of ‘conserve’ don’t conservatives get?

Posted on September 18, 2009 by John Gibbons

Let’s hear it for Connie Hedegaard. Connie who? She’s the Danish minister for climate and energy and, crucially, will host the UN-sponsored global climate treaty negotiations in Copenhagen this December.

That puts her in the hottest of hot seats in the next couple of months. Hedegaard is not, by all accounts, your average liberal leftie green. “I never understood why environment should be a left-wing issue”, she says in today’s International Herald Tribune. “In my view, there is nothing as core to conservative beliefs – that what you inherit you should pass on to the next generation”. Continue reading →

Posted in Biodiversity, Energy, Global Warming, Sustainability | Tagged carbon, climate, climate change, Energy, environment, John Gibbons, pollution, species loss, Sustainability | 2 Comments

North East Passage open for business

Posted on September 16, 2009 by John Gibbons

The fabled North West Passage, allowing shipping from Asia to Europe to navigate via the Arctic Ocean, is now routinely used. This passage cost the lives of many earlier expeditions. Times have changed, and a century of relentless global warming has loosened the Arctic’s icy grip.

But the North East Passage? In the last week the first ever commercial shipping have conquered this once impregnable divide. The pace of destruction of the Arctic ice mass is accellerating. This September has seen the third smallest Arctic ice mass ever recorded. The other two years? 2007 and 2008.

Regional climatic circumstances meant early 2009 was unusually cold, yet the late summer melt was almost as bad as it’s ever been. The top of our world may be entirely ice-free within the next few years. One estimate calculates this will have the same albedo-altering effect on global warming as 70% of all the fossil fuels burned in the last two centuries.

Should we be worried? Hell yes. Instead, the US, Canada, Russia and Denmark are licking their chops in anticipation of soon having unfettered access to billions of tons of oil deposits beneath what is now sea ice. It’s a mad, mad world.

Posted in Global Warming, Habitat/Species, Sceptics, Sustainability | Tagged albedo, Arctic, climate change, Greenland, ice, iceberg, melting, Oil | 6 Comments

Where will you be when the lights go out?

Posted on September 13, 2009 by John Gibbons

Prices in Ireland have, mercifully, started to ease back from the highs of a year or two ago, yet some things remain extraordinarily cheap. The two things that contribute probably more than anything else to our overall well-being, comfort, security and physical health are electricity and safe drinking water on tap. Yet, the former is dirt cheap and the latter, for most people, doesn’t cost a red cent, no matter how much you use, or whether you leave the taps on 24 hours a day. Continue reading →

Posted in Energy, Global Warming, Nuclear, Sustainability | Tagged carbon, climate change, electricity, emissions, extinction, famine, global warming, John Gibbons, MacKay, nuclear, Sustainability | 1 Comment

Unicef’s change (for good?) of heart

Posted on September 2, 2009 by John Gibbons

Following last week’s piece, I was more than surprised that neither Tesco nor Unicef Ireland issued any response whatever on the day of publication (Thursday). It wasn’t until the Friday afternoon that Tesco submitted a letter to the Irish Times saying that all had been resolved, etc. Silence from Unicef.

Having tried several times earlier in the week to get hold of either the executive director or the press officer for Unicef Ireland, I went with the statement on their site, dated July 24th, 2009, which gave both barrels to Tesco for it being ravaged by a corporation heartlessly trying to “capitalise on one of our campaigns and subsequently damage an income stream which several of our programmes for children are dependant on”. Continue reading →

Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus | Tagged charity, Everylittlehelps.ie, John Gibbons, multiple, supermarket, Tesco, Unicef, website | 4 Comments

Tesco changes its tune on Unicef

Posted on August 29, 2009 by John Gibbons

Great to see a happy resolution to the bitter two-month long dispute between Tesco and Unicef over the slogan ‘Change for Good’. Below is the wording of a letter in Today’s Irish Times from Tesco’s marketing director, Kenny Jacobs:

“I refer to the Opinion article by John Gibbons (August 27th). It is unfortunate that Mr Gibbons did not contact Tesco on the matter. An agreement has been reached between Tesco Ireland and Unicef Ireland whereby Tesco will no longer use the term “Change for Good” after September 11th, 2009. Tesco will support Unicef Ireland with an in-store fundraising opportunity in the coming months and continue to support Unicef Ireland’s ongoing campaign with Pampers to eliminate maternal and neo-natal tetanus. Continue reading →

Posted in Global Warming, Irish Focus, Sustainability | Tagged clone town, competition, Everylittlehelps, hubris, monopoly, Multiples, Tesco | 6 Comments