Letter Battle

My local newspaper recently published an opinion piece by a climate change denier.  It goes against my better judgement to bother with such people but I couldn't let such a load of rubbish stand.  What follows is the article, followed by the subsequent exchange (all letters were published under the author's actual name, but I have changed them in my blog):

INITIAL ARTICLE

CO 2 is not about to kill us . . .

Saturday, December 29, 2012

by Denier

(Some other dude) presents a doom and gloom scenario for the future of our planet and blames it all on the use of oil and coal, resulting in increased CO 2 in the atmosphere, causing runaway rampant warming from which we will all perish. This is the constant thread in his writings and is obviously something he fervently believes. It is his right to hold such beliefs.
The scientific study of climate change requires one to follow the evidence and keep a close watch on facts before coming to conclusions. The IPCC mandate is only to find human causes for climate change and to ignore all other possible causes.
Over the period 1980-1999, other planets and moons in our solar system experienced increases in atmospheric temperature along with our planet — showing outside factors were responsible. Humans are not guilty.
There are also many studies showing large climate variations which have no link to CO 2 levels in the atmosphere. A graphic example of this is the Ordovician-Silurian ice age, around 420-450 million years ago, with CO 2 levels as high as 7000 parts per million. According to Mr Hughes this was impossible, the earth should have been burned to a cinder.
Studies of the past 10,000 years consistently show most of this time temperatures were considerably higher than currently being experienced. The Holocene Optimum, around 5000-8000 years ago, was up to 10 degrees C higher than now in the polar regions. The earth bloomed. Forests spread over land which cannot support them now, including the Sahara. Ironically, during this time CO 2 levels were decreasing. According to the IPCC theory, temperatures should have cooled. They didn’t.
A new study based on Michael Mann’s data from 1500-2000AD shows a temperature increase of only 0.05 degC. Therefore no warming over 500 years — just temperature variation, starting with the Medieval warm period through the little ice age and back to warmer times.
The UK Met Office in conjunction with the Climate Research Unit of East Anglia state; “no warming for 16 years”. This is confirmed in the IPCC 5th assessment report, ch10, where they admit zero temperature increase since 1998. So we have two sources of static temperature from organisations which promote human-caused warming. It must be so.
Mr (other dude) should read the chapter on water in Ian Plimer’s book Heaven and Earth, where he explains that fears of the oceans becoming toxic from CO 2 are misguided. The oceans contain much more CO 2 than the atmosphere does.
The claim that the nine or ten hottest years were in this century cannot be true as temperatures have decreased since 2003. There have also been several el nino weather patterns this century, which affect temperature.
Climate scientists rely on data from only 1500 weather stations to plot their models. In 1970, 15,000 weather stations were used. The culling began in 1990, with an imediate jump in temperature. Virtually all are in urban areas.
A study in Mexico city revealed an urban heat island effect of 5.6 degC per century. An American scientific organisation found an urban heat island effect of up to 11 degC in some cities.So in a way Mr (other dude) is right, human activity has caused global warming. In the cities anyway, where concrete and asphalt absorb solar heat during the day and release it at night. Cities also produce heat of their own. This is where the temperature increase comes from.
When NASA claimed the hottest decade was in this century, they were forced to re-evaluate the data with the result that the 1930s became the hottest decade over the last 100 years.


MY RESPONSE:

Staggering level of dishonesty

Wednesday, January 02, 2013

Re: CO 2 is not about to kill us . . . Dec 29 column.

I find it frustrating that a climate change denier like Mr Denier would be given a headline on the opinion page of your newspaper.
Mr Denier’s article shows a staggering level of intellectual dishonesty and a complete misunderstanding of both the process and results of science.
He asserts as fact the completely unproven hypothesis of warming on other planets, completely disregards the timescale over which warming occurred during the Holocene Optimum, misquotes the results of a report which will not be officially released until September 2013 (and badly misinterprets the results of a leaked version of a draft report) and claims the UK Met Office stated there had been “no warming for the past 16 years” (they most certainly did not, although a British newspaper claimed they had in an article which has been comprehensively debunked).
To your newspaper’s credit, you attempted to provide “balance” by including a letter from an atmospheric scientist; however, in this case there is no balance to be had.
The scientific evidence overwhelmingly points to global warming caused by the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by human activity.
Publishing a column containing so many inaccuracies and falsehoods gives unwarranted credibility to climate change deniers. This slows the progress of the changes humanity must make to prevent the enormous impacts on our planet of unchecked global warming.

BACK TO HIM AGAIN...

Climate does change . . . ‘but not because of carbon dioxide’

Friday, January 04, 2013

(I am) called a climate change denier (Jan 2 letter). What high praise, and from an obviously educated person too. Unfortunately that conclusion is incorrect as I have never claimed the climate does not change, only that CO 2 is not causing said changes.
The IPCC, on the other hand, did claim such a thing when it trumpeted Michael Mann’s hockey stick graph claiming 1000 years of static temperatures culminating in a sudden upsurge during the late 20th century, of about 0.4 degrees C — which coincided with an increase in CO 2 .
According to them the Medieval warm period and the little Ice Age did not exist. Who then is the denier?
The data released by the UK Met Office, which originates from East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, show static and declining temperatures since the late nineties.
This is confirmed by data from the National Climatic data centre in the USA.
The Goddard Institute for Space Studies data shows slight warming for the period. However, this data set contains estimated Arctic temperatures based on temperature readings from outside the polar region. That’s right, guesses.
The data shows no warming. My information is correct.
As to the Holocene, scientific data clearly shows multiple warm periods going back around 10,000 years of which the Holocene Optimum was the warmest. Temperatures were much higher than now. The current warm period is the coldest of them all.
Many scientists say the planet is simply recovering from the coldest period in the last 10,000 years.
I am sure those who are now suffering in the harshest winter for the last 70-100 years will be pleased to know that in fact it is warmer than it should be.
Incidentally, as of December 24, 2012 over 600 people have died from cold across Eastern Europe and Russia; 15 dead in the USA from extreme cold. The Northern Hemisphere is in the grip of the worst winter in decades, with temperatures up to 10 degrees C. below normal. No mention in the press though. Why not? If people had died of heat stroke we would have heard about it. One wonders. 

MY RESPONSE:

Regurgitating internet bilge

Friday, January 04, 2013

 

One has to roll one’s eyes at Mr Denier’s desperate scramble to shoehorn evidence into his own predetermined conclusions.
The first several paragraphs, above, are simply incorrect. Mr Denier needs to be a bit more careful with his research before regurgitating the bilge he finds on internet blogs.
The final “well if the planet is warming, how come it’s so cold over there?” paragraph is such gibberish that it barely dignifies a response, other than to point out that extremes in weather, both hot and cold, are exactly what the science of global warming predicts.
The overwhelming scientific consensus is that the Earth is warming and this is caused by release of greenhouse gases by human activity.
Who to believe? I’m with the climatologists who have dedicated their lives to studying the impact of emissions on climate using robust scientific methodology and reasoning, rather than Mr Denier who clearly hasn’t even bothered to check his facts or sources.

And The Bad News Is...

For some time I have thought that global warming represents a distraction from a greater threat: the looming energy crunch and the possibility our society will be unable to adapt to a world without plentiful cheap energy.  I now realise that I am wrong.  Both dangers are real and present, but global warming is the greater of the two.

There is little doubt that the laws of supply and demand will drive energy prices up.  The depletion of the oil fields in the Middle East with their easy flowing, high quality crude means that oil companies now must drill deeper, in the most extreme environments to get at oil of a much meaner quality.  The technical difficulties involved and the decreased fraction of energy extracted (since energy is consumed getting at and refining oil.  The harder it is to get and the worse the quality of the oil, the more energy gets used in the extraction process.) means oil prices will steadily rise.   But drill they do.  And the oil keeps coming and we keep burning it.   Other fossil fuels also continue to be extracted including less conventional sources including shale gas and the bituminous sands of Canada (in an act of environmental devastation which is barely comprehensible).  We may have to pay more, but it doesn’t look like we’re going to let up on fossil fuels anytime soon. 

With fossil fuel comes CO2.  Lots and lots of CO2 (I still remember the surprise when I explained to a group of senior managers at my company that the calculations they had dismissed as incorrect were right: you DO get roughly 2.75 tonnes of CO2 for every tonne of jet fuel you burn).  We keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere like it’s an open sewer.  And CO2 causes global warming.  Despite what talkback radio would have you believe and despite the media’s idiotic insistence on presenting both sides of the “argument” when there really isn’t one, the science is unequivocal: global warming is real and it’s happening right now.

The more I look into the consequences of global warming, the more frightening it gets.  As it stands, if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, we’d still be in for a roughly 2 degree rise in the average global temperature.  The alarming thing is anything much higher than this must be avoided at almost any cost.  If we keep emitting to the point where the average temperature rises by, say, 4 degrees the consequences for the planet and civilisation would be utterly devastating.  But 4 degrees doesn’t sound too bad, right?  Well, the key word here is AVERAGE.  Studies show the temperature rise in the Arctic would almost certainly be several times higher than the average, greatly shrinking both the sea ice and the ice caps in Greenland causing sea levels to rise.  Even more frightening is that temperature rises in this range will trigger a number of positive feedback loops such as the release of methane, a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2, trapped within the ice. 

Plants which suddenly find themselves trapped in environments beyond the temperature ranges they can survive in will die (trees can’t run), releasing huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.  As the sea becomes more acidic from absorbing atmospheric CO2 (a significant fraction of CO2 released into the atmosphere is absorbed by the sea), the mechanism by which this CO2 is absorbed will slow down.  A large fraction of the world’s species will become extinct as their natural habitats alter at rates millions of times faster than the rate they are able to adapt.  Large regions of the planet will become virtually uninhabitable to humans due to the heat, drought, sea level rises and increasingly savage weather patterns (including, in all likelihood, Australia and southern Europe to give two alarming examples).  Modern civilisation will struggle to cope and large scale conflict, as well as starvation, is a distinct possibility.

I bet a lot of you are thinking: “come on, that view is a bit extreme!  Surely it’s not that bad?!”.  For arguments sake, let’s just say that the scenario I’ve outlined is only 10% possible.  Would you put a gun to your children’s head knowing it was 10% likely to go off, because for many millions of today’s children the result is likely to be the same.  The reality is the science tells us that the chances of my scenario are much more probable than 10%.  Evidently the time for radical action is now. 

Change is frightening, especially when for many of us the cruel reality is that change will mean the end of our present day careers and the complete alteration of the lives we have become comfortable with (since I work in aviation, I am almost certainly included in this number), but change we must or within our life times we will witness the beginning of the complete alteration of our planetary conditions and the beginning of the end of modern civilisation.  The stakes are that high. 

It frustrates me no end that most NZers shrug and say “Well, we can’t do anything about it, we are so small and our impact on the world negligible.  Besides, our contribution to global emissions is tiny anyway”.  To the last point, I would say: our contributions to emissions are only small because we lack weight of numbers.  If every citizen of the world polluted like an average NZer, the planet would be in big trouble.  To the first point I would say: bullshit!  NZ has never let its small size be an issue when it’s something relatively easy.  We boast about how we punch above our weight on the sporting field and we can, and should, punch above our weight in leading the world in transitioning to a low emission economy.  In the short term it will be expensive and hard, in the long term it will be worthwhile both environmentally and economically.  In many ways, it is our best chance of success in a rapidly changing world.  In many other ways, by not doing it we doom our children.

Welcome to Planet Key

I've never been a fan of John Key.  Sure, I lean pretty far towards the left so I find his politics pretty objectionable, I can't stand his constant butchering of the English language and I still cringe with embarrassment when I think of his appearance on Letterman, but those are not the only reasons.  I've always found it disconcerting how Mr Key invariably phrases sentences so to avoid any responsibility for their content.  Just count the number of sentences beginning with "On the advice I’ve had..." or similar.  It's a lot.  The Banks/Dotcom/GCSB saga has taken things to a new level.

In the Banks-Dotcom spat, Key seems to be adopting a "see-no-evil" approach with his refusal to read documentation that may require him to think about sanctioning Banks.  This is pretty cynical given his "holier-than-thou" approach as an opposition MP and during National's first term.  I suppose it's understandable though given Key's primary objective: to preserve his coalition and hang onto power at any cost.

The latest Dotcom scandal involving the GCSB really takes the cake though.  Despite providing the only democratically elected oversight to the GCSB, Key seems to think that he didn't know the agency was illegally spying on Dotcom absolves him of all responsibility.  Something is badly wrong here - either Key DID know and is lying, or Key has been woefully negligent and incompetent in his duties as prime-minister.  You can't have it neither way.

I think part of Key's charm is his casual attitude to the pretty serious business of running a country, at least as far as Joe Public is concerned.  The contrast with Helen Clarke's iron fist approach couldn't be sharper, and Key has rode the resultant popularity wave for a number of years.  Unfortunately for NZ, having someone tell us everything is going to be OK and not to worry about things isn't going to stop NZ's decline towards becoming an economic basket case.  Nor will his casual approach or total reluctance to accept any sort of responsibility for the decisions he makes or the actions of his ministers. Key has always tried to take the line of least resistance when setting policy to ensure his all-important personal popularity will stay intact.  I can only hope that NZ voters are smart enough to see through the ruse, but given the idiotic response of most NZers once Maori got involved over the proposed asset sales, I don't hold out much hope.

Also discouraging is Labour's almost complete inability to articulate a response to the situation.  I thought they might catch onto something when Key so flippantly described "Planet Key", showing just where he seems to think NZers priorities lie and how out of touch with the country's problems he really is, but they utterly failed to capitalise.  What we are left with is a government, led by a man who has just demonstrated he is devoid of integrity, which is selling out NZ's future to stay in power today and an opposition who are unable to come up with ideas which are compellingly different.

Everyone's Fault But Mine

One of my favourite Homer Simpson quotes of all times is, after having done something foolish, he whines "this is everyone's fault but mine".  The bad news is that it's also most NZers favourite phrase.  Everything is someone else's fault, someone else is to blame, my woes are the result of someone else's actions.

Who is getting most of the blame at the moment?  Yep, it's Maori again.

Recently, and foolishly, I got involved in a "debate" on facebook concerning the "treaty gravy train".  Apparently "in years to come our crippled country will look back scratching our heads wondering why we didn't stop such an obvious and ongoing blight on our economy".   Eh?!

The view that Maori treaty claims are a crippling and overwhelming burden on the poor old taxpayer is a common one, but how does is stand up to some facts?  I decided to point some out: so far TOTAL treaty claims have cost the taxpayer around about $NZ1 billion.  Sound like a lot?  Well it's about 4 weeks worth of the health budget.  So far a total of 5.5 DAYS of your tax revenue has been paid out in treaty claims.  Hell, you want to talk about obvious and ongoing blights which will cripple the NZ economy?  Well, NZ Super Costs about $9 billion per year ("I paid tax my whole life.  I'm ENTITLED to it".  Grrrr....).  You can bet a fair proportion of those rattling their sabres about the "treaty gravy train" are pocketing NZ Super to pay for this years trip to the Gold Coast.  And how about the bail out of South Canterbury Finance investors by the foolish Retail Deposit Guarantee Scheme which enables investors to make ridiculous investments at almost no risk?  You can bet there weren't too many maori on that particular gravy train.

Let's look at the biggest treaty settlement to Ngai Tahu.  The tribe settled on $170 million which was chump change compared to the $20 billion in assets which were independently assessed to have been ILLEGALLY  taken from them (and, let's be clear: an agreement doesn't cease to be binding just because it becomes inconvenient for one of the signatories).  Ngai Tahu Holdings now, as best as I can tell, contributes about $100 million in tax each year.  Crickey, did we give them enough?!  Even if Ngai Tahu had received all of the $1 billion in settlements so far, a 10% annual return on investment would be stunning not to mention the near 60% return the "poor, overburdened" NZ taxpayer is getting.

No one in the facebook debate took too kindly to being presented with such inconvenient facts.  I was told "you've made your point, now back off", another of other "points" which totally ignore facts were made and shortly later I received an abusive and threatening (and anonymous) e-mail for my troubles.  I should have known better: another key attribute of your average NZer is that he/she is at least somewhat anti-science, anti-fact and prefers to make arguments based on emotion and feeling.

If this country does indeed become a "crippled" cot case, and I'm not confident that it won't, then it won't be the fault of maori.  It won't be the fault of beneficiaries.  It won't be the fault of immigrants.  It'll be the fault of you and me, white NZ.  It'll be the fault of a group of people who have developed a whiny entitlement culture  (after all, you hear the call for "compensation" for something or other as frequently from pakeha as from maori).  It'll be the fault of a generation who did nothing to develop NZ's economy or industry, instead preferring to rob the subsequent generations of their wealth via property investment.  It'll be the fault of a people who elected "leaders" based on a popularity contest rather than a vision.  It'll be the fault of our deeply ingrained environmental hypocrisy (how often have you seen "No fracking" or "No deep sea drilling" bumper stickers of SUVs lately?).  

Rant complete.

Anarchy as Carter Exits Cup

WELLINGTON (2 October 2011) - There has been widespread rioting and looting in New Zealand following an injury to rugby player Daniel Carter putting him out of the Rugby World Cup.  Following the announcement that the influential number ten was injured at training on Saturday, the country descended immediately into an orgy of destruction with all but seventeeen of the four million members of the population out on the streets venting their anger and disgust on any animate or inanimate object in their path. 

The largest city, Auckland, now resembles Dresden after World War 2 and the provincial cities of Napier, New Plymouth, Nelson and Invercargill have already been reclaimed by the sea.  The only city with apparently no ill effects is Palmerston North which was already such a dump that no amount of rioting has any noticeable effect. 

Sheep molestations trebled over night, well up from the baseline level of 120,000 cases per hour; while several unfortunate individuals have been pressganged into All Blacks service including 23 year old Colin Slade, a man with no previous rugby experience.  Overnight former All Blacks first-five, Stephen Donald, declared himself "King of the Caliphate of Hamilton" and has begun rounding up and summarily executing any dissenters to his potentially disastrous plan to be reinstated to the team.

All Blacks coach Graham Henry, who will be executed under New Zealand law if he fails to secure the world championship title on his second attempt, commented "Oh woe is me, woe is me.  We're doomed, absolutely f**ked" when asked what New Zealand's chances were.  He was last seen carrying a large suitcase and attempting to board a Vietnamese cargo ship.

Primeminister and world's-most-photographed man, John Key, who previously stated his country will declare war on any nation who win a tighthead against the All Black scrum, has now indicated that New Zealand will cede sovereignty and beome the seventh state of Australia should the William Webb-Ellis cup not be secured.  "If Australia doesn't want us, we're also prepared to fall under the protection of Fiji or to become a kabupaten of Indonesia" said the normally inanely smiling Key, looking very worried indeed. 

Homage to Dan

hom·age/ˈ(h)ämij/Noun

1. Special honor or respect shown publicly.

2. Formal public acknowledgment of feudal allegiance

Dan's a guy a went through ATC college with.  He's more than 10 years younger than me (and thus hasn't wasted decade of his life not earning money being an ATC) and I sat by him in all our ATC theory classes.  Pretty soon I'd managed to convince him that I was a weird and perverted freak (it wasn't hard, I just acted normally). 

One day Dan ate fish 'n chips for every meal.  Another day he ate a whole roast chicken for lunch.

This is a homage to Dan, which probably only amuses me, but it's my blog so I can do whatever I like.


EXHIBIT ONE: Dan likes Beiber (or someone hacks his facebook account: respect!)

 I'll add to this blog as I collate more evidence.

More on Impending Doom

A while back I wrote a couple of articles on energy, with a particular emphasis on transportation, so it’s probably time for me to follow up on those.  The question remains: what will the world look like when fossil fuels become prohibitively expensive if no alternative is found?  I’ve had a lot of feedback contesting the central thesis of my previous articles which was it is highly unlikely that there is any foreseeable alternative which can replace the system cheap oil allows us to operate.  Like hydrogen, I think the viability of biofuel/solar electric etc economics will fade with continued system analysis (with biofuel the first to die, methinks).  Don’t get me wrong, biofuels/electrics etc almost certainly will play a part in the future world, but they cannot replace the current oil-based system.  I still think I’m right and the correspondents I mentioned are wrong, so we’ve agreed to wait ten years and see what happens!

So, if I am right, is it just going to cost more to drop the kids at school in 2020?  Well, no… the end of cheap oil threatens the entire global economic system.  Conventional economics determines that unless we have continuous economic growth things are very grim indeed.  For this to occur more people have to consume more (of something) and since the industrial revolution this buy more/breed more has continued pretty much unchecked.  A lot of this growth has been on the back of cheap supplies of energy which is used in producing/growing goods and moving them around.  Oil allows economic growth, but it also can retard it as well.  As the economy heats up more oil is consumed and the price rises and this price rise eventually chokes off the economic growth.  Oil then falls in price (but never to the original level you might have noticed) and the economy picks up again.  And so proceed ad infinitum. 

As oil continues to rise in price, eventually we’ll need to take a serious look at the doctrine of continuous economic growth because it is, by definition, unsustainable (I hate to use that word because it is thrown around cheaply a lot these days, mainly by marketers trying to get you to consume something.   Nothing is really sustainable - entropy gets added every time for every thing).  We need to adjust the system we live in to make our resources last longer and as long as economic growth is the bottom line, I can’t see that happening.

In the future you’ll definitely travel around less (no more long weekends in Sydney) and you’ll live more locally.  Much of what you consume (especially food) will be produced more locally also.  There will be less of a marketing drive (no pun intended) to get you to buy the latest gadget which only makes you want the next gadget more.  There is no reason to fear this future, in fact I think it could be quite pleasant. 

There is an alternative which my father favours: he calls it the elephant in the green house.  It goes like this: we live in a green house with an elephant which feeds relentlessly on the diminishing vegetation therein.  The elephant eats, and shits, and the shit just keeps on piling up in the greenhouse.  There is nothing we can do to control the elephant.  Our own efforts to preserve the vegetation by not eating as much ourselves make a small difference, but not much.  The elephant's ringpiece continues to produce copious quantities of foul muck.  I’ll get flayed for this, but perhaps we should just gorge ourselves and hope we get fat enough to be floating relatively highly on the sea of shit when the elephant eventually drowns…