To be honest, there isn't a single day I don't think about it. It's almost like I'm obsessed. Going to work, I think about it. Sitting at work, I find myself thinking about it. Planning vacations necessarily brings up thoughts about it. And sitting at home in the evening, reading makes me think about it as well.

When I first learned that we would have a baby soon, I couldn't help but think about it, and it suddenly takes on a whole new relevance. In 50 years' time, when my children ask me about this critical time, ask me why I didn't do more than I'm doing, I won't have an answer for them. I could find excuses, say it wasn't up to me, or I did all I could, but it won't help the fact that I have to explain to them what Spring felt like. That, when I was a child, we could see the leaves turn before the first snow fell. That there were two seasons - almost half a year - when the temperatures were bearable.
I read about it, maybe too much, because most reading about it makes me depressed. The news isn't very good. People aren't getting off their asses and changing their habits. Mostly, we all pretend nothing is going on. Snow in October, we suck it up and get in the car on our way to the traffic jam and then work. Turn up the heating. The bill will come later.

But then, there are shimmers of hope as well. Like going to a meeting of environmental groups, seeing other like-minded people, and seeing the light in their eyes when you tell them about Earthships, about another life possible. Seeing people who spent all of their spare time creating eco villages, lobbying politicians. Listening to podcasts about environmental issues talking about what the new guy in the White House is doing for the environment. Trying to undo 8 years of disastrous legislation, make the ocean an ecosystem again, attempt to convince people that this is important, dammit. And suddenly, the Chinese talk about cuts. And the Japanese. India is talking renewables. Not enough, mind you, but this is lightyears from what the situation was like only a year ago. Enough for hope, anyways.

Enough hope to keep me going. Enough to make me think that maybe, 50 years from now, I don't have to defend my generation and find excuses why we didn't do more.

To be honest, there isn't a single day I don't think about Climate Change.

www.blogactionday.org

Tags: Blog Action Day 2009

As part of Friends of the Earth's Day of Action, the Edinburgh local group is staging a publicity stunt at Edinburgh airport. Information on the stunt is available here:

Why?

As climate change becomes a more pressing issue every day, the UK government is still doing little in the way of effective action to reduce our emissions. Through pressure from groups such as Friends of the Earth, the government has now introduced a climate change bill, due to be debated in the House of Commons later this year. Unfortunately, the bill is lacking in a few issues. Most importantly, the current version of the bill does not include international aviation and shipping in its greenhouse gas reductions. We want to get the message that Gordon Brown is ignoring international aviation into the media, with a concerted publicity effort.

Where?

Edinburgh airport. Meet at the bus stop in front of the main terminal.

When?

April 5, 2008. Meet at 10:30, stunt at 11am.

Sometimes, a picture is worth a thousand words. And this was exactly the case in a campaign meeting, organised by Friends of the Earth Scotland last Saturday. I'd heard of the Tyndall Centre's report on aviation (which I mentioned before here), but haven't come across this picture before:

This is powerful stuff. The black (blue) line represents where our annual Co2e-emissions have to be under a Contraction and Convergence scenario, in order to achieve the UK's planned (?) cut of 60% (80%) by 2050. The red lines represent the Co2 emissions (with various radiative forcing effects calculated in) under current growth scenarios. As we can see, the government plans to have UK's economy completely zero-carbon by 2050. I'm not sure how they plan on doing this, but I'm sure Richard Branson has a masterplan.

Sometimes you come across something that just seems to be too good to be true. Here's one of those things:

A while ago, Virgin posted a poll on their website, asking their customers (and other visitors of their site), to show their support for an expansion of Heathrow. After all, even if Richard Branson has flowers coming out of all orifices with his great, world-saving biofuel planes, who could oppose something that will increase business, even if it ends up wrecking the environment.

Well, the results didn't quite come out the way they expected:

For some reason (I wonder why), the poll has disappeared from their website, and I have a feeling that Virgin won't stick to their idea to "send the results of this survey to the Department of Transport as part of its consultation"...

From Plane Stupid.

This morning on the radio:

According to a recent survey, Scots are skeptical about climate change. In a survey, over 50% of people questioned said that they didn't think conserving energy would save the planet.

I would have certainly been one of the "over 50%" you disagreed with that statement. What sort of nonsense question is that? Will my using energy-saving lightbulbs save the planet? Does the planet need saving? No and no. It's not the planet that needs saving, it's our own asses. And turning off the lights in empty rooms alone isn't going to do much either, it needs far more than that.

If anything, this survey tells us more about the people who designed it than about Scottish attitudes to climate change. It saddens me that the only coverage climate change gets in mainstream media is through these kinds of useless surveys or other half-baked information.

And when the host then comments the above news item with "no wonder Scots aren't worried about climate change - it's freezing!", I feel like throwing the radio out the window...

A few months back, I heard about Shai Agassi, an entrepeneur in California who is raising millions of dollars for a Project to create the infrastructure for electric cars to become a real alternative to fossil-fuel-powered models. The plan is to invest in "power stations", where cars can simply sway their empty batteries for charged ones - just like with a petrol station.

Over the last weeks, this project has gotten a lot of media attention, most prominently with Israel buying into the idea to create an oil-independent country.

Here is their submission to the "what can you do to make the world a better place?" World Economic Forum's Davos challenge. In today's complex world, if an idea is simple enough so a child can understand it, it has a chance of getting popular support. If a child can explain it, all the better.

We need more simple ideas like this with people like Shai Agassi to see them through.

Cheap airlines are ever-expanding their range of destinations, while dropping their prices. This has, over the last years, led to a massive growth in the aviation sector, and is the reason for the much-debated proposed Heathrow expansion. While aviation is currently only responsible for 11% of the UK's climate impact, if the current growth is left unchecked, it could by 2050 be responsible for all of the UK's emissions - meaning that the rest of the economy has to be decarbonised.

Still, people who are usually quite environmentally conscious insist on their right to fly. We fly for weekends to Amsterdam, for stag dos in Munich, or go an visit our relatives 4 times a year instead of once. Read More...

So far, most predictions about climate change have assumed slow changes, giving us time to reduce our emissions before catastrophe strikes. In his book, "The Last Generation," Fred Pearce argues that nature doesn't do slow changes.

As he puts it, the Earth's climate is an angry drunk - unpredictable and always ready to strike out at random. And we're poking the drunk with sticks. Not a good idea. Read More...

It's been an interesting week. First, Brown makes a speech saying that "Within four decades each pound of GDP needs to produce just one-sixth to one-twelfth of the CO2 equivalent that it does today." and calling for tough cuts in CO2 emissions. A few days later, Ruth Kelly destroys all hope for a stop to the expansion of Heathrow airport, applying the typical "if I don't fly, the plane still takes off" mentality on a massive scale. This is a real problem: the people who have the power to make real changes aren't willing to do anything but talk. Read More...

After I found out about Scottish and Southern's greenwash tactics, I decided to ditch our electricity contract with them and go for a company that actually gets all of its electricity from genuine renewables - small-scale hydro, wind, and solar. When I cancelled my contract with them, they didn't ask me why (though I was prepared to tell them, should they have asked).

Today I received a letter, telling me how sorry they are to see me go. The letter just shows me that I made the right decision. Get this:
Scottish Hydro Electric ask me for the reasons why I left. Is it the price of electricity? They want to know how much the new supplier charges, so they can adjust their pricing scheme to be more competitive. Well, that wasn't why I switched.

The next section is for people who look beyond the price."Are you looking for more than a good price?" It starts as follows:

FREE AirMiles with energyplus AirMiles - you'll receive 250 miles in the first year without paying any more than our standard energy prices.

Great! That's exactly why I switched to a company that prides itself of being oh so green. So I can then get my flights cheaper! Yes!
A bit further down, it's all good though:

Fight climate change with power2 - we're the UK's largest generator of renewable electricity so it makes sense that we lead the way in providing an energy product which helps to fight global warming.

Ah, now I feel better about the airmiles. They even promise to plant 6 trees for me every year.

A perfect example of a company wanting to play both ways: attract environmentally conscious customers like me, while not scaring away from the "regular" customer base who like their long-distance flights. Exactly the type of hypocrisy the "green movement" produces en masse.

Well, you lost me as a customer. And I'm certainly not coming back.

Ok, it might be slightly geeky, but the guy's a science teacher. And it might sound like an argument given in a science classroom to schoolkids, but at least it's clear, free of the typical jargon that tends to surround the subject:



If you have 10 Minutes, watch it. It's worth the time.

I went to an interesting lecture yesterday, by Chris Goodall, author of Carbon Commentary, which I subscribe to via RSS (and which has some interesting, quite critical, comments about "green" products on it, e.g. domestic CHP).

Chris' lecture was about the gap between what people say and their actions, in respect to Climate Change. He started off with putting the UK into an international context, and, lo and behold, the UK ranked as one of the countries with the lowest interest in environmental issues (far below China, by the way!) and had the lowest confidence in that we can do anything to prevent climate change (again, far below China, which might have something to do with China's trust in their government). Actually, the statistics for China have to be taken with a grain of salt, as, according to Chris, there appears to be some confusion that smog counts as climate change in China. But this is actually material for a whole separate bit of research on where China really stands on the issue of climate change. It seems that they're not as apathetic as is generally believed, whereas the UK is just in a terrible state, as usual 1 hour and 200 years behind the rest of Europe.

The interesting statistic that came out of his talk is that climate change awareness (and willingness to act on it) is not in any way related to income or education. Across all income groups and education backgrounds, you get the same general makeup of awareness, with a large group (about 40%) saying that they care about climate change, but haven't made any (substantial) changes to their behaviour (i.e. flying less). This is interesting, as it goes against the "green is luxury" stereotype employed by a lot of critics of personal action on climate change.

This definitely fits in with the stories I hear from my girlfriend's colleagues: even though well-educated engineers, most of them seem happy to "talk the talk" (i.e. come to sustainability group meetings), but not "walk the walk" (take the train to London for the Christmas night out rather than the plane, turn off their monitors). It also fits in with personal experience: I'm an academic in an academic department, surrounded by very intelligent people, but certainly don't get the feeling that anyone cares about climate change. Or maybe we're just too quiet? Maybe there is a quiet majority, deeply concerned about environmental issues and climate change, hiding (as mathematicians like to) in their offices?

If there is and you're reading this, come by my office. Let's make some noise!

P.S. More on consumer segmentation can be found on Chris' blog.

A while ago, I was complaining about a Mr. Dimmock complaining about the decision to show Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth to secondary school children. He brought the case to hight court.

And he lost. At least for the most part. The judge ruled that "An Inconvenient Truth" could be shown, but only if accompanied by corrections. The decision was that the file basically got it right, but exaggerated in parts.

Again, I haven't seen the film, so I can't judge whether it does exaggerate. He probably does, but it's to drive the point home. If exaggeration is what it takes to wake people up, then so be it. Though it probably isn't necessary to exaggerate.

The judge (who is a climate scientist as well, I assume?)

[...]accepted that melting of the ice would release this amount of water - "but only after, and over, millennia."

I'm not entirely sure where he got that information from, but probably the IPCC report. According to this, the report has its predictions for the timescale of the ice melt wrong, as it assumes linear response of the arctic ice to temperature changes. Well, according to the paper, Gore's version wasn't so far off:

Climate forcing of this century under BAU would dwarf natural forcings of the past million years, indeed it would probably exceed climate forcing of the middle Pliocene, when the planet was not more than 2–38C warmer and sea level 25±10 m higher[...]In combination with warming of the nearby ocean and atmosphere, the increased surface melt would bring into play multiple positive feedbacks leading to eventual nonlinear ice sheet disintegration, as discussed by Hansen (2005). It is difficult to predict time of collapse in such a nonlinear problem, but we find no evidence of millennial lags between forcing and ice sheet response in palaeoclimate data. An ice sheet response time of centuries seems probable, and we cannot rule out large changes on decadal time-scales once wide-scale surface melt is underway. With GHGs continuing to increase, the planetary energy imbalance provides ample energy to melt ice corresponding to several metres of sea level per century ( Hansen et al. 2005b).

So maybe, just maybe, Al Gore doesn't have it all wrong. Maybe they should include a list of corrections with the list of corrections for the film?

As a scientist, I'm all for intelligent debate and scepticism about just about anything. In maths, we are told not to believe anything unless we can prove it, and it's good that way. Scepticism is what makes science work. Only when a scientific work has been through the tough peer-reviewing process and had a number of fellow scientist take the arguments apart to attempt to find a flaw, can we trust the result.

There are certain things that have been through plenty of peer-reviewing to be accepted as fact. For example, that smoking increases the risk of lung cancer. This is something smokers don't like to hear or admit to themselves (I certainly didn't when I smoked), but it's pretty dead certain and the link had been established quite a while ago. According to Wikipedia, the British Medical Journal published a comprehensive Meta-Analysis showing the link between passive smoke and cancer in 1997, yet it took us 10 years to get a consensus on the topic. One might wonder why. A Meta-Analysis is not exactly a hotly disputed article, the results in there have been exposed to all sorts of peer-reviewing and scrutiny. Yet, public opinion lagged 10 years behind.

The answer - or part of the answer - is actually quite obvious. If you're a big tobacco company (Philip Morris, for example) and you see a study like this, you don't like it. Yet, you can't really publish a peer-reviewed article proving the opposite, because that won't be possible. So the best thing you can do is create confusion. Confuse people (and people are easily confused) and they will start doubting just about anything, including scientific consensus. This is exactly what Philip Morris did: they established a nonprofit organisation, TASSC or "The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition" (what a lovely name) set out to confuse people about the facts. Executive director of this group was Steve Milloy, who has a great website, www.junkscience.com, trying to "protect" people from "scaremongering" and pushing out a lot of the articles meant to confuse people.

Why am I going on about this? Certainly, very few people will attempt to argue against the scientific consensus that smoking and cancer are somehow related, so eventually, science won. Unfortunately, our friends at the TASSC are at it again, this time with Global Warming. This initially sounded a bit too much like conspiracy theory to me, but it makes perfect sense. There is a lot of vested interest in NOT doing anything about global warming (can you say petrol company), so there is a lot of money out there to fund projects such as www.junkscience.com to confuse people. And while the oil companies go green on the outside, they can't become part of the solution, as they are the problem. Thus, they need to attempt to preserve the status quo. Stick their head in the sand. And make sure plenty of other people stick their heads in the sand along with them. The best way to do that is to confuse people - by labelling peer-reviewed articles as "junk science" and their own "results" as "real science".

With smoking, science won in the end. After 10 years. The problem is, we don't have 10 years. We are already late with our policies to reduce emissions. We need to act. NOW. We need to be smarter than the vested corporate interest expressed at www.junkscience.com, look through the crap they push on us. There is no more time for discussion. It's time for action.