Another IPCC Report - Better Late than Never - Well No

Today Facebook presented me with two related items.


 gave me

IPCC report: climate change felt 'on all continents and across the oceans'

Leaked text of blockbuster report says changes in climate have already caused impacts on natural and human systems

and


gave me

One Guy With A Marker Just Made The Global Warming Debate Completely Obsolete

so what do I think.

From the Guardian I learn that the second of three IPCC reports means we have to wait for a third. The first said - "Hey folks, we have a problem". The second says - "Hey folks, bad stuff is going to happen if you do nothing". But we have to wait for the third for - "Hey folks, this is what you do".

Upworthy's guy with a marker argues that we do something, basically using the precautionary principle, but his worse case scenario does not include runaway global warming turning our planet into a second Venus.

Like nearly everything I come across in the media, both items run around waving their metaphorical hands in the air, screaming for someone to do something. No one is suggesting a solution.

I still say that to fix this global problem, we either ration fossil fuel globally, or do global geoengineering. I suspect that politically we are incapable of fossil fuel rationing, and so the Chinese will end up geoengineering the planet to meet their needs. Probably with a very large sunshade at the L1 Lagrange point in space.

Floods - Can We, and Should We Fix Them?

Steph McWilliam (UKIP) is a fellow councillor who has asked for my thoughts on a Spectator article by Christopher Booker "Revealed: how green ideology turned a deluge into a flood". This article blames the flooding of the Somerset Levels on the Environment Agency, stopping dredging for idealogical reasons after Baroness Young, from the RSPB and Natural England, took over as chief executive in 2002; although the article says the decline started in 1996. The EU is also blamed for regulations on silt.

Well here are some of my thoughts; a bit rambling at times, a bit technical at others, and with lots of links to better information that I'll try to summarise. Accurate good science tends to be omitted from the headlines, so is difficult to find in the media, but it is out there, and I hope I've found some good links.

More than forty years ago, as a child living in Portishead I spent many enjoyable hours angling in the rhynes of the Gordano valley in North Somerset, so I had an early interest in reclaimed land and drainage. My history teacher said that the Gordano valley had been reclaimed from the sea by the Romans. All I knew was that it wasn't unusual for Portishead High Street to get flooded, up at the end near the docks.

As far as dredging to stop flooding the Somerset Levels goes, there is a clue in the name; they are level, flat and difficult to drain, so will always flood. Expert hydrologists hopefully know more than me about this, and they don't think dredging is the answer. See Expert Reaction to Somerset Flooding. I really like the idea of creating a Bridgewater Lagoon, to generate green energy and increase the gradient of the flow. The BBC also have "How do you stop flooding" with some nice diagrams. Of course the key need, of reducing this extreme rainfall, the major cause of flooding, can only be addressed by fixing climate change, which requires a global solution. Until then, not much can be done for the Levels, and certainly not for this winter's vast quantity of rain.

The Thames flooding differs from the Somerset Levels in that the Thames has better control over who gets flooded. When I lived in Reading 25 years ago it was well known that different stretches were being selected to hold flood water, to protect downstream towns.

As far as the EU and silt from dredging, I know nothing, but the internet found a paper on the impact of european union environmental law on dredging. A quick scan finds "EU law does not deal specifically with dredged material, nor is there any intent to do so". As long as it's not polluted, I don't see why freshwater dredged material can't be spread on fields or used to raise banks.

As a long-term member and supporter of the RSPB, I've also taken an interest in their projects on the Somerset levels, such as The Great Crane Project and RSPB: Ham Wall. It looks like the cranes are finding it difficult right now, while Ham Wall isn't fairing too badly on their side of the Polden Ridge. So there is variety of impact from flooding even within the Levels. From the RSPB, Martin Harper's blog has a number of important points. I would emphasise the importance of the long-term plans (or the lack of them) and planning for the whole catchment area. Increased vegetation on the uplands, reintroducing beavers and other measures can slow the inflow of water, but that only works for one-off heavy rainfall events.

This winter has been one storm after another, although here in the hills of Cornwall the rain seems to have blown rapidly over to Somerset, so this winter I didn't get the flooding that soaked my kitchen just before Christmas 2012. So that's two wet winters in a row. Does that mean it will be as wet next winter, and every winter from now on? Of course not. Next winter could easily be the driest since records began, and I wouldn't be at all surprised, or it could be even wetter. With Global Warming, a warmer atmosphere picks up more water from the oceans, giving heavier rainfall, but a warmer atmosphere is also more chaotic, giving greater extremes of weather.

As a member of the Green Party I see that it is said we are calling for the prime minister to sack cabinet ministers who deny man-made climate change. If only he would. These deniers of the obvious are as out-of-date as flat-earthers. This Biff Vernon blog explores the statistical significance of extreme events, and this Guardian article looks at how the old party politicians have ignored the long-term problem of climate change.

The other thing that we need to consider is adapting to climate change. In the same way that Steph and I, although poles apart politically, successfully work together on parish business, different interests need to strike a balance. The Spectator article is having a go at green (with a small g) environmentalists for a blinkered ideology, but all the sources that I've found want a sustainable mix that satisfies as many interests as possible.

The Burning Question - Unstoppable Global Warming

I've just read The Burning Question by Mike Berners-Lee and Duncan Clark.

In a very readable way this book gives a balanced picture of the current physical, economic and geopolitical facts about our addiction to fossil fuels, and why we can't kick the habit. It does not go over the old debate about how human activity has caused the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide, global warming and climate change. It, quite rightly in my opinion, takes that as a given, and looks at where we are heading, and what we can do to change course.

As Caroline Lucas points out in her book review, when it comes to replacing fossil fuels, nuclear power is not ruled out. In fact my reading is that if fossil fuel use is reduced to sustainable levels, we will need every energy source we can find. Nuclear power in some of the new forms could even burn up plutonium, putting it truly beyond use in nuclear weapons.

I learned a few interesting things from this book. I had noticed how in spite of all the carbon targets, we don't seem to be making a dent in our increasing use of fossil fuels. Here they explain clearly how, without a world wide scheme, individual efforts to emit less carbon through efficiency can actually produce more fossil fuel use - squeezing a balloon that bulges elsewhere. Also they make it clear that fossil fuels must be controlled at source, which confirms my thoughts that controlling carbon emissions as we do now is futile - we just export the emissions.

I also learned about the Kaya Identity, an equation relating emissions to population, affluence, energy intensity and carbon intensity. In light of this equation I was disappointed when I saw my old idea for carbon cap and trade, with a quota based on population by country, did not include reducing quota by the population index, as well as over time. Without the population index, there is a perverse incentive to increase population.

The book repeatedly talks about tipping points and catastrophic climate change, but omits to give examples of just how bad the models look. It does give figures for sea level rises, but omits scenarios like; melting Greenland ice stopping the Gulf Stream, the Amazon basin turning to savannah, and other horrors I've heard predicted. Maybe those horrors are so controversial, they could discredit the book, which leans over backwards to be balanced.

I like the way the book divides our possible future actions into a Plan A: (Burn less fossil fuel) and Plan B: (Long shot geoengineering). Although I suppose that global warming is in itself a form of accidental geoengineering. Part of the debate about The Anthropocene age we humans have caused.

When it comes to geoengineering from space, the only example given is orbiting reflective particles as a sun screen. A more controllable scheme would be a sun shade balanced at the L1 Lagrange point between us and the sun. If we think of sustainability in terms of billions of years, something like this will be needed anyway as the sun gets hotter. So why not start building it now?

My Starting Point

The natural world was perfectly balanced until human greed dragged us all to the cliff edge of destruction. That pessimistically sums up where I think we are but needs expanding, and also needs a bit of optimism about how we get back in balance.

Evolution created a natural world with a vibrant ecology that maximised biodiversity and biomass, (i.e. maximum interest and maximum quantity). I think the book 'Deep Simplicity' by John Gribbin first showed me how this is inevitable for any complex system, such as our ecology. He refers to James Lovelock and the Gaia concept, and along with 'The Selfish Gene' by Richard Dawkins, these formed the foundation of my understanding of how our ecology works to keep things in balance. This balance is not static, but a balance of predator and prey, complex interactions and of genetic diversity moving into competing ecological niches. We humans were part of this ecology.

A feature of this ecological balance is that as the genetic competition hots up over millions of years, there is a boom and bust cycle. Sometimes the bust is triggered by events like a giant meteorite impact, but it seems that the frantic genetic escalation just inevitably crashes once a peak of genetic complexity is reached. Maybe that's what's happening now, with the current mass extinctions caused by human activity. That is if you think of us as just being part of the natural world.

This boom and bust process seems to be a fundamental part of all complex natural systems. Look at everything from the rise and fall of empires, through the life cycle of stars, to the phases of the economic cycle, so beloved by Gordon Brown.

In order to feed our greed, this industrialised economy is consuming resources at an unsustainable rate. In fact the economy also needs our greed for new 'disposable' commodities, which creates economic growth based on credit. This growth is not sustainable, so we get boom and bust, while resources are used up, never to be replaced.

Clearly world resources need to be managed sustainably. I think this has to mean some sort of rationing, and the fairest and easiest system has got to involve quotas based on population.

We humans bring something new to the world. We have the intelligence to predict the consequences of our collective actions. The question is, do we have the collective wisdom to avoid the catastrophic ecological crash we seem to be heading for?

Ten years ago I would have estimated a less than 10% chance of avoiding catastrophe in the next 100 years, but there seems to be a new mood about, an awareness, a gut feeling that people need to change. So now I rate our chances at better than 20% and have joined the Green Party to try and improve those odds even further.