The Ethics of Nation Building

I am genuinely surprised that the global financial system has failed before ecological systems. The perverse resilience that has kept fiscal flows generating profits has been hard to identify and almost impossible to criticise. The mantra of deregulation and 'freedom' has spewed from fiscal fundamentalists all over the world ... no where more enthusiastically than in Australia.

But now, with astonishing rapidity, the whole thing has collapsed and looks like suffering even more pain before the patient can be stabilised. Even the former free market fundamentalists are rushing for life support and a helping hand (bank loans from governments) as they too go into the meltdown.

I am not surprised at the international cash stimulus that is being hurled at the fire storm but worry that it will simply add further to the fuel. Throwing money at a failed economic system is as futile as fighting a monster fire with a garden hose. But even if we succeed ... what do we achieve?

Let's assume that depression and recession are averted for the moment, all that happens next is that we return to the non-sustainable economic path we were on before the sub-prime smoke started. All the combustible material, all the "fuel" simply builds again ready for the next conflagration and some crazy arsonist is just itching to drop a match and watch the glow.

It is time for alternatives to handouts (Labour) and tax cuts (Liberals) as they both fail to tackle the root causes of the problem.

As many commentators have pointed out, the current fiscal failure is a failure of values and ethics but I worry that such moral failure is now being perpetuated in the so-called solutions to the crisis.

The tax cut pathway panders to relictual greed and selfishness while the handouts stink of political self-interest and the perceived need for a quick fix to ease the pain of recession before the next election. And so in Australia, a nation of only 22 million people ... we have an instant $42 billion to spend as if there was no tomorrow. Everybody can have a $1000 ... everybody is being promised something for the "good of the nation".

Is it possible for us to see right now that spending billions on non-essential services such as school halls in a system that is already one of the best funded, most equipped and serviced education systems in the world is ethically bankrupt? Our children will not thank us for new school halls if all they are useful for is temporary shelter from the storms that will come.

Similarly, spending huge amounts of money on roof insulation in the name of saving us from climate and economic chaos is simply pulling the wool over our eyes. Perhaps roof insulation will insulate us from climate change for a short while, but it will burn along with our houses if we do not directly address the real causes of our problems with global warming. Solar hot water is a good thing to spend money on but the subsidies proposed are not sufficient to drive a massive change to the way we currently heat water by burning coal.

To achieve foundational sustainability our nation needs safe, renewable energy, a secure, potable water supply and a clean, secure food supply that is sustainably produced. Without energy, water and food ... and the real jobs that go with them, we are sub-prime and likely to fail.

To build a sustainable nation we need to urgently invest in clean, renewable energy, the technologies that use such energy and the raw materials needed to build them. Its a no-brainer ... we can generate sustainable jobs in a sustainable economy.

In order to kick start such a sustainable economy, how about:

• photovoltaic panels on every roof top in Australia with every citizen contributing to the electricity grid and collecting their surplus energy in cash.
• Solar hot water systems on every roof in Australia with energy conserving hot water for all who need it.
• Rainwater tanks attached to almost every down pipe in Australia with every house and business self-sufficient in water

Then there is food ... massive re-employment as we move from agribusiness-driven rural unemployment to organic and other types of sustainable agriculture. Plus, clean and healthy food ... what a bonus!

All of the above is predicated on:

" using, conserving and enhancing the community's resources so that ecological processes, on which life depends, are maintained, and the total quality of life, now and in the future, can be increased"

(Australian Government ESD Policy 1992)

Let us reject the unimaginative and unethical path and take another look at how to spend what little money is left in a depleted bank. Even The Greens seem to have folded and given up on the tough job of telling Australians that the party is over ... its time to reject unsustainable growth in favour of improving the quality of our lives. Citizens must reject politics as usual in the face of this compelling need to change. We must give direction to our politicians and demand of them that we now move quickly towards economic, ecological and climatic sustainability and stability.

Fellow Australians, the ethical thing to do is reject tax cuts and short-term handouts for non-foundational projects of all types (cash in hand, roof insulation, school halls) and demand that an elected government govern in the interests of all, that is, for long-term sustainability. If we have big money to spare, then let us build on secure foundations ... a sane and sustainable society ... one that our children will be happy to inherit.

Shallow Thinking

Poor journalism has become a cover for hatred of environmentalists

The lead editorial of The Weekend Australian December 13-14 2008 takes my prize for the most illogical and inane editorial of 2008. Some failed hack has written a piece that attempts to revive the anti-Marxist debates of the 1960s and 70s and apply them to environmental and climate change policy in the year 2008.

Rather than carefully examine what is happening in the contemporary real world of personal, social and political responses to the enormous environmental and climatic changes that are taking place, the editorial retreats into a cold war rhetoric that should not be left unchallenged.

In the 60s and 70s many scholars of the legacy of Marx critically evaluated the idea that only a form of false consciousness prevented the proletariat from realising its historical mission to overthrow Capitalism. According to the theory, the working class had become diverted by increasing wealth and consumer goodies that prevented them from seeing their true destiny. Good scholarship showed that rather than false consciousness, false theory within the legacy of Marx was at the core of the explanation of why the working class was not revolting against its oppressors, the greedy Capitalists. The idea that iron laws of history (historicism) were working their way out towards an inevitable collapse of Capitalism and the classless society was debunked not only by good scholarship, but also by the terror of totalitarianism in the former Soviet Union and Maoist China. If terror and dictatorship were needed to create a socialist, classless society, then clearly Marx was mistaken.

However, rather than leaving this debate in the 1970s where it belongs, the author of the editorial regurgitates it into the present context of climate change policy. Lets carefully examine the way this is undertaken.

December 13, 2008

Article from: The Australian (editorial is in red)

Environmentalism has become a cover for class hatred

THE on-again, off-again relationship between the progressives and the proletariat has hit a rough patch, this time over saving the planet. The moral middle class has barely forgiven the outer-suburban battlers for propping up John Howard's conservative regime for more than a decade. Now, in what seems to be another infuriating act of false consciousness, the McMansion-dwelling classes appear reluctant to embrace the deep-green agenda on climate change.

For those not in the know, “progressives” in this article means anybody whose politics is vaguely left-leaning. You are likely to be left-leaning if you do not believe that free market Capitalism is the superior way to allocate resources and benefits and burdens in society. If you have a commitment to the common good, social safety nets for the unfortunate and the need for planning and regulation of essential public services such as ‘the market’, hospitals, transport and education, then you are probably “progressive”.

The “proletariat” or working class is not defined in the editorial but presumably, they are the “true believers”, those who still adhere to the idea that revolution is destiny and that the revolution is just around the corner. Traditionally, they opposed the Bourgeoise or the ruling class, those who owned capital. Despite being a critically endangered conceptual species in the contemporary world, the editorial seems to need the proletarian presence to make the whole story line work.

The “moral middle class” (another term for progressives) are introduced as the natural opponents of the proletariat or “outer-suburban battlers”. It is claimed that these battlers not only supported John Howard and his Conservative rule for a decade, they now refuse to take on board the progressive green agenda.

We are told that the green agenda is both “environmentalism” and “deep-green”. Environmentalism is a term that is used by serious academics of green politics to describe a reform movement designed to bring the excesses of rampant economic growth and development into line with a broad stewardship ethic. Environmentalism represents a shift from gross environmental despotism to good management or environmental stewardship. This is a position many leading global corporations have taken into their corporate philosophy in the last 3 decades.

Deep Green positions are more radical than environmentalism in that rather than reform, they proposed radical transformation of society to one that exists within biophysical reality and the limits to growth. Such limits are material flows (eg Peak Oil) and the ability of waste sinks to assimilate our wastes (eg the atmosphere and CO2). Deep ecological positions also advocate values that are life affirming (life is intrinsically valuable), biocentric (the variety of life has value) and egalitarian (all life is of equal value). These values are diametrically opposed to the anthropocentric or human values implied in stewardship.

While the progressives might have an environmentalist stance on climate change, they are unlikely to embrace deep green positions. If they are, then some evidence would be needed to support such a claim.

The rift widened this week when Paul Howes, the Australian Workers Union national secretary, argued persuasively in The Australian against emission restrictions that would drive trade-exposed, energy-intensive industries overseas. "My members and their wives, husbands and children are getting pretty tired of being told their jobs are dirty and polluting, particularly by bankers relentlessly pocketing their money and frittering away superannuation," he wrote.

The editorial uses material from AWU secretary, Paul Howes as evidence to support its claim that the battlers in the McMansions (the new proletariat) are actively opposing the progressive deep green agenda on emissions restrictions (what ever that is) on climate change. Howes, however, targets greedy bankers, not progressive environmentalists as the ‘enemy’ (I have yet to come across a deep green banker). Despite the argument from Howes, there are many in the trade union movement who see climate change as a direct threat to their future job security and a future threat to their children and grandchildren. The views of one trade unionist does not make for a sound argument in rejecting the need for emissions restrictions.

For the tertiary-educated greens, it felt like a knife in the back. Didn't the bourgeoisie stand shoulder to shoulder with the workers to defeat Mr Howard's extreme workplace laws? And this is how they are rewarded! Class treachery of the highest order.

The implication now is that tertiary education is a likely cause of this mess. The suppressed premise is that academics in universities are all socialists and deep greens and that their graduates, progressive tertiary educated greens, are likely to see the workers as traitors to the glorious cause of the failure of global capitalism and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The progressives (now the equivalent of the Bourgeoisie) supported the workers on reform of Work Choices, but they are now being denied support from the workers over green issues such as emissions restrictions.

The claim that concern about job security in the energy intensive sector represents “class treachery” to the green progressives is interesting, but totally unsubstantiated. Again, there are many in the trade union movement who talk about a just transition to more sustainable forms of production and are willing to see transformation from an energy intensive scenario to one that is based on renewable energy and carbon neutrality.

It is easy being green in the leafy inner city, where public transport is available, the tofu co-op is around the corner and the local cafe serves a decent fair-trade soy cappuccino. It is much harder in the outer suburbs, where two cars are a necessity, not a choice. Much of what passes for green commentary is a thinly disguised attack on the suburbs and the people who choose to live there. Flat-screen televisions, V8 utes and lawns that must be mown and watered are evidence of their environmental depravity.

The paragraph above stereotypes inner city people who are green as having it easy. By contrast people in the outer burbs find it impossible to be anything other than environmentally despotic. Inner city greens then see the outer despots as depraved. Thus a new class war is set up between the inner pro-greens (cappuccino set) and the outer anti-greens (Flat-screen watchers) ... the modern equivalent of the old war between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Nice plot for a modern rock opera, however, it is not serious journalism, nor should it be taken seriously.

Every now and then a proxy-war breaks out, the latest being a proposal to bring V8 Supercar racing to Sydney's Olympic Park at Homebush, a suburb that lies on the geographical fault-line between environmentally conscious inner-western enclaves and the western suburbs. The arguments about trees, noise and air pollution will be familiar to Melburnians who followed the debate about Formula One Grand Prix racing at Albert Park and the environmental subtext is the same: shouldn't Lewis Hamilton drive a Prius?

As evidence for the claim that a new class and culture war is being created by the progressives, the plot is thickened with an argument that the V8 supercar event proposed for Homebush in Sydney highlights the great green divide between the inner and the outer burbs. The idea that Lewis Hamilton or Garth Tander should drive a Hybrid is supposed to represent the values implicit in the progressive “environmental subtext” while all outer suburban folk are anti-green V8 ute driving revheads is just plain absurd. Loss of trees, excessive noise and air pollution are all serious issues for all those affected by them ... it does The Australian no service to trivialise them.

Kevin Rudd is acutely aware of the mood in the suburbs, where voters would take a dim view of any government that pushed deep-green policies at the expense of jobs or prosperity. We confidently predict, therefore, that the emissions targets the Government will announce on Monday will not be deep enough to mollify the tree-hugging Left. Once again, the green movement has positioned itself at the extremity of debate, a long way from the pragmatic centre ground defined by popular sentiment and occupied by both major parties. But that, we suspect, is where the moral minority feels at home, recycling the bathwater and looking smugly down their noses at the rest of us.

The editorial claims to know the “mood in the suburbs” and that the mood is a pragmatic one far removed from the views of the “tree-hugging Left”, deep greens. This position, supposedly co-extensive with “the green movement”, is characterised as being extreme and out of touch with “popular sentiment”.

However, it is the author of the editorial who seems to be totally out of touch with basic ideological positions in the C21. To be Left is still to embrace (albeit in a socialist form) the super-ideology of industrialism with its attendant commitment to constant economic growth and technological progress (eg China). To be deep green is to reject that super ideology for a ‘limits to growth’ and eco-technology position. To be a tree-hugger is to conserve or preserve something (possibly a tree or trees) that are deemed to be valuable for some reason. To be a part of the green movement is to occupy some part of the environmental spectrum from light green (shallow) to dark green (deep). To mash up all these positions into a crude editorial blender is to embrace ignorance and perpetuate falsehoods. Not a good move for Australia’s only national newspaper, one that presumably can afford to pay professional journalists to write their editorials.

As for the last couple of lines, the real motivation of the editorial is finally revealed. Reference is now made to the “moral minority” (as opposed to the moral majority?) that recycles its bathwater and negatively evaluates all other people and positions. People who are concerned about green issues such as climate change, water recycling and pollution are portrayed as smug and out of touch with political reality.

However, worldwide, it is clear that far from being a minority position occupied by extremists, environmentalism (especially in its stewardship form) has been universally embraced as vital for a sustainable future in both ecological and economic senses.

Extreme green positions have been advocated by a small minority of theorists but their influence remains marginal at best. However, given delay on addressing the causes of climate change (greenhouse gas emissions) and a runaway greenhouse disaster scenario a serious possibility, extreme green positions are likely to become more mainstream as people of good will realise that only rapid and deep cuts to our greenhouse gases will stop disaster unfolding.

Where this editor appears to feel at home is with a role that invents false conflict (wedging) with the hope that such conflict will prevent consolidated and cooperative action to implement carbon reduction targets that will make a difference to the problems we face. Recycling stale cold war rhetoric is a lot worse than recycling bathwater. The motivation for such ‘bad faith’ can only be extreme scepticism or denialism in the cause of inaction on the whole climate change issue.

The Australian and its owners should be ashamed that journalism has now been reduced to slack use of slogans and the portrayal of complex social and climatic reality via crude stereotyping that says more about the values of the author than those he/she is trying to portray. It is time that The Australian ditched such ignorant extremism ... even Rupert Murdoch (in 2007) has publically uttered a position that is far more mainstream:

“Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats. We may not agree on the extent, but we certainly can't afford the risk of inaction.”

Climate Chaos and Sustainability Ethics

The scientific evidence for climate change is now overwhelming. Almost every day we hear news of yet another study that documents the actual changes to our formerly predictable long-term weather patterns and biophysical processes. We all now see and read about the economic, health and psychological impacts of the changes happening to our climes and ecosystems.

There are places on earth where climate change is happening so rapidly that people have new words to describe the shock of change in what was once a reasonably reliable and predictable context. The Inuit of the Arctic have applied a word, uggianaqtuq, which has connotations of a “friend acting strangely” or unpredictable behaviour to the way climate change is impacting on culture[i]. Our world is beginning to act in strange ways but what is even stranger is that in the face of such change, we are not acting quickly enough to counter the prospect of catastrophic risk to all future activity in our economies and our cultures.

You might have thought that the ethics of actually changing the global climate would have been on the top of the agenda in all of the recent talkfests on long-term climate change policy. After all, what is at stake with increasing greenhouse gas emissions and global warming is the future environmental security of all beings on the planet and in particular, the ability of humans to cope with massive and largely negative changes to every aspect of their lives.

In a world operating under complex and unstable conditions, adaptation to the impending changes will be largely futile because all current forms of planning are based on data and predictions linked to the past. However, in the brave new world, there will be many surprise events in the emergence of complex non-linear complex systems acting under new factors driving their evolution. Such system unpredictability will render useless many of the institutions and methodologies created to manage risk in our economic systems. The institution of insurance, for example, will be one of the first to fail as actuarial analysis will not be able to cope with emergent non-linear systems in the form of an array of hugely damaging unnatural events. In a world characterised by chaos, all that was friendly and familiar will be uggianaqtuq to us.

In such a world, genuine chaos will make ethical responses to change virtually impossible. The war of all against all will be fought, as Lovelock (The Revenge of Gaia) has predicted, on the barren rocks of Antarctica ... the last habitable place on earth. The ethical dilemma of big investment in mitigation of greenhouse gases Vs adaptation to negative change is easily resolved. Adaptation is relentless since with continually rising greenhouse gases, we will all have to cope with ever more chaotic and dangerous changes to the parameters of life. The end game of this scenario is too ugly to contemplate any further. With mitigation to 'safe' levels of CO2e, we live happily ever after.

In general, the ethical issues associated with climate chaos are quite clear and can be easily understood within the principles of sustainability developed over the last 20 years in the international community. A key ethical issue is equity or the distribution of benefits and burdens of climate change.

The intra-generational equity issues associated with climate change are highlighted by the fact that some human communities have already had their lives directly and negatively affected by rising sea levels and melting glaciers. In the Pacific, low lying, inhabited islands are being inundated by the sea, leading to the world’s first climate chaos refugees. As suggested above, in the Arctic, melting permafrost and glacier retreat have already made life difficult for the Inuit people as they can no longer rely on a foundation of solid ice for safe travel, secure buildings and for sources of traditional food such as seals. The people of Himalayan countries such as Bhutan have already experienced catastrophic floods from glacial lakes that form, then burst under the rising flow of glacial melt water. These floods destroy in-stream hydro-electric power generation and the lights go out in Bhutan.

If we add the increasing frequency of extreme weather events such as hurricanes, cyclones, tornados, wild fires and droughts on humans, then another layer of huge climate chaos impacts is being imposed on current generations. Climate change is already increasing disease incidence and causing excess death rates due to, for example, heat stress in human populations worldwide. Extreme heat is also affecting the mental health of people in many parts of the tropical and sub-tropical world.

The impacts of warming on biodiversity can be considered under the umbrella of interspecies equity. In both the Arctic and the Antarctic, impacts on biodiversity have now been documented with sea ice melt causing Polar Bear habitat to shrink and more snow causing negative impacts on Caribou and Moose. The world over, there is mounting evidence that as warming occurs, biodiversity or the variety of life, is rapidly being displaced and is disappearing. The disappearance of many frog species has now been partially linked to warming and many other species including the Mountain Pygmy Possum of Australia are under threat as they run out of suitable habitat. Both wild and domesticated animals suffer from heat stress and mass death due to this cause occurred in January 2006 in the intensive poultry industry in Eastern Australia.

Although the concept of inter-generational equity might seem abstract to some, to deliver into the hands of future children and grandchildren a world that will be in major and prolonged crisis is not a difficult ethical issue to contemplate. It is simply unacceptable to sit on our seats of power, board or conference tables and deliberately do nothing or too little to give children the experience of a beautiful, secure and predictable future world. After all, a major reason why most humans work so hard and burn so much energy is … to give our children a better world to live in.

The potential impacts of climate chaos that we are imposing on future generations of humans are so great that one would have thought that leaders of all countries would have them at the very top of their agendas. But no, the prospect of escalating warming delivering epidemics of infectious diseases, catastrophic failure of agricultural systems, failure of fresh water supplies, massive coastal damage due to storm and tidal inundation and other unpredictable changes as a result of climate chaos has not yet bothered them. They are much more willing to act decisively on the fiscal rather than the arctic meltdown even though the impact of climate chaos on the global economy will dwarf the credit crisis.

The level of scientific knowledge we have about climate chaos issues has reached the point for urgent and extensive action. Right now, we have firm scientific evidence that global warming has been escalating since the industrial revolution, that it is linked to historically unprecedented increases in the levels of carbon dioxide and other human produced gases in the atmosphere, that the sea level is rising at twice the rate of the previous one hundred and fifty years and that it is the human industrial activity, mainly the burning of fossil fuels that is responsible for all of the above.

Even if hard evidence of the effects of climate chaos was not available to us, the application of another foundation of sustainability ethics, the precautionary principle, or the idea that we ought to minimise risk or possible harm to current and future generations before actual scientific proof of harm is before us, should be on top of political and policy agendas. Failure to even consider the precautionary principle marks the current generation of political leaders as willing to operate in an ethical vacuum.

Many politicians, commentators and business leaders have continued to make Faustian bargains with the fate of the earth in an effort to secure the impossibility of infinite economic growth in a finite world. The tragedy of climate chaos represents a failure to seek long overdue reconciliation with the limits of planet earth and it is to be hoped that the purveyors of the infinite growth hubris will realise the critical importance of a sustainability ethic that recognises the global dimension of our impacts long before they realise that the time to respond to the climate crisis was yesterday.

[i] IOL, Effects of climate change seen in the Arctic,
http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=31&art_id=qw1144790291815B224
(accessed 11/09/2006)

Twin Crises: both Big Ethics Failures

A Tale of Two Crises (Version of Feature Article published in The Herald Thursday 3rd October 2008)

It is interesting to examine the responses, in Australia and in the USA, to the fiscal and climate crises. The fiscal crisis gets urgent attention and with breathtaking speed there appear billions of dollars to save the financial system from meltdown.

The USA, home of private enterprise, nationalises huge financial institutions, taxpayers money is placed at the disposal of money lenders so that the wheels of Capitalism can keep turning. Many argue that each day of delay of a big bailout could bring the system into another global depression. Even in Australia, the Rudd Government has an instant spare $4 billion to help out the liquidity crisis in non-bank home lending markets.

Yet when it comes to the climate crisis we don’t have instant access to funds to save the planet from a global warming meltdown. We also seem to have plenty of time to consider our options despite the pleas from climate scientists about the urgency of the problem. The Garnaut Report has taken over a year to consider the implications of the changing climate.

However, the two crises are inter-related; the credit-driven fiscal crisis is at the heart of the climate crisis. The mass consumption of the USA and other countries such as Australia is driving the climate crisis. The Hunter Valley, with its coal exports to China and India, is a source of the energy that converts coal into the DVD players and cars that we import. The three Cs; credit, consumers and climate are intimately connected.

Indeed, a cynic might argue that the current crisis and the slow-down in consumer spending that will inevitably follow is finally “the recession we had to have”. Only this time the banana republics come out on top because at least you can eat bananas; you cannot eat coal, oil and sub-prime money. The huge reduction in carbon emissions that follow from a global depression just might, the cynic could argue, be the break our climate and environment so desperately needs.

In Australia we remain ‘concerned’ about the climate but the Rudd government is reluctant to move quickly to commit Australia to world-leading action. In the name of ‘economic responsibility’ we are by told by Climate Minister Penny Wong and business leaders that even the Garnaut Report’s suggestion that we commit to a greenhouse gas pollution ceiling of 450 parts per million (ppm) achieved with a 25% reduction by 2020 is “unrealistic”. Yet many leading climate scientists tell us that this target still has a real risk of delivering devastating climate change and huge damage to our economy. To be really safe, we need to be well under that target.

The mechanism offered to achieve reductions in the amount of greenhouse gases being emitted is a cap and trade, market-driven carbon trading system. However, as we have painfully seen with the fiscal failure, it is dangerous to have foundational elements of our economy in unregulated private hands. Market failure leads to total system failure and we cannot afford to have such a failure with our climate.

In addition there are the huge risks involved with the Rudd government’s strong support for carbon capture and storage. With the technology in development mode for at least another decade we already know that it will be energy and capital intensive and that it does not solve the climate crisis … it merely displaces it underground. Again, a huge burden is placed into the hands of future generations who will have to manage the risk of carbon dioxide leakage into the indefinite future.

The Garnaut Report provides us with an excellent summary of our predicament and Garnaut has focussed our attention on what is politically acceptable. This puts pressure on leadership to face up to the nature of the risks involved. Risk assessment is substantially an ethical issue as those who will suffer the worst consequences of us getting it all wrong are the poor, the young and the yet unborn.

So far, the stance of our State and Federal leaders has been ethically bankrupt. The leadership of NSW, addicted to royalties and multipliers, has sold out its values to the fossil fuel market. With a reckless lack of concern about the future they have approved massive expansion of the coal industry in the Hunter.

Kevin Rudd and the federal leadership promised much on climate change but have also delivered little. As was evident in the visit of the cabinet to the Hunter this week, they too are addicted to coal. The constant refrain from national leadership was protection of the coal industry and carbon trading, capture and storage. As with the discredited Howard government, the chorus is all about ‘clean coal’ and adjusting and adapting to climate change ‘reality’.

The more we destroy of the Hunter Valley, the Gloucester Valley and further, fertile places like the Liverpool Plains, the less productive we become. Exploitation of non-renewable resources using non-renewable energy is delivering a fiscal bonanza, but at what real cost? The real reality is, we lose forever productive land, regional ecosystems are polluted, health is compromised and we import climate change in the form of severe drought and heat to our own part of the world.

The Garnaut Report has given us an opportunity to carefully evaluate our options for the future. Great leadership now involves making ethical judgements based on the escalating risks as explained by science. So far, our leaders seem unable to comprehend the severity of the risks and the speed at which they must be addressed.

Reply to My Anonymous Critics

Anonymous Blogger Comment 1

"Environmental philosopher?

Oh for petes sakes what next?

Isn't this a bit premature this blog? When the global warming racket is
science-fraud without any evidence in its favour?

A real philosopher would have made sure he had evidence for the racket
first."

My Reply:

The expression of mild annoyance seems to betray a lack of balance. Who is Pete anyway?

I hope the new Blog is timely so that the ethics and values tied in with global warming and climate change can be discussed openly with a high level analysis. I encourage more people to enter the debate and discuss the important ethical and values issues raised by global warming and climate change. Given that global warming has already negatively affected people and non-human animals, such a discussion is an important complement to understanding the science and the biophysical impacts.

Without any evidence, a claim is made that global warming is a racket. I would like to see the evidence presented to support such a claim. The idea that global warming is a product of “science-fraud” is also interesting. The accusation of fraud is a serious matter and should not be taken lightly. It impugns the motivation and character of science and scientists. Evidence for “fraud” must be very carefully presented before such a claim can be taken seriously.

Again, there is a suggestion that I am not “real”. I thought that only extreme post-modern relativists had problems with reality. I was obviously wrong, climate change sceptics and denialists seem to have serious doubts about objective reality as well.

I am supposed to have “evidence for the racket” yet I am not the one claiming there is a racket. Anonymous is making this claim and I am not going to do his/her work for them.

I am prepared to put my name and public face to the ethics and climate change debate. I am also prepared to defend my claims and put arguments for my position(s). It would be nice if others did the same.


Anonymous Blogger Comment 2

"A real philospher would be expected to piss or get off the pot.

Do you have any evidence for more-than-neglible CO2-warming or not?"

My Reply:

It is hard to know what anonymous is getting at here. I am a real philosopher in that I exist and have a PhD in philosophy. I suspect the comment about the pot is trying to take the piss out of me?

The question about evidence is interesting in that it raised the issue of what counts as evidence? I take my evidence of global warming from the IPCC and other research institutes populated by qualified climate scientists. They all present evidence of long-term global warming that is available for all to see.

The next issue is … is the warming negligible? Again, experts say that a one degree rise in global average temperature over the last century puts in train quite serious changes to the conditions of life on earth. With the Arctic sea ice melt, glacier retreat, changes in weather patterns and biodiversity impacts already under way with such a temperature rise, I call that significant. If the temperature rises any further, even greater changes to the conditions of life are likely to occur.

Indeed with a rise much beyond 2 degrees Celsius, irreversible changes are possible and they could destroy the foundations on which humans have built their agriculture and economies.

While I do not have evidence for a runaway greenhouse effect right now, I am sufficiently worried about potentially irreversible and hugely negative changes to our earth that I take the time to reply to anonymous people who argue by attacking the person and, in the process, ignore sources of information that are freely available to them.

Brendan O'Neill and Hate

From The Australian, September 19 2008

Snow-roots campaign a form of green self-hate

Brendan O'Neill September 19, 2008

Article (in Blue)

At first it seemed like a joke. Unsolicited forumemails informed me I could buy badges (or buttons, as Americans call them) with the slogan Polar Bears for Obama. Then I heard there was a T-shirt, available from the CafePress online store for $26.99, that said Polar Bears for Obama-Biden beneath a picture of a sad-looking polar bear cub. You can also buy shopping bags, bumper stickers and mugs that celebrate the polar bear-Obama love-in. There is a website called PolarBears ForObama.com, which describes itself as a snow-roots campaign against Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, who is a big meanie.

Comment: You can buy all sorts of rubbish that use Polar Bears as mottos. Have a look at Bundy ads in Australia for a start.

Good one, I thought. Sometimes elections need to be shaken up with a bit of quirkiness, and if it can be snow-coated, animal-related quirkiness, that's all the better. Only now I'm not so sure it was a joke after all. The polar bear issue - or what we may call, for want of a better and less insane phrase, the polar bear vote - has become big news. Serious newspapers have published articles titled "Love polar bears, loathe Sarah Palin". MSNBC analysed the differences between Palin and her boss, John McCain, on the polar bear issue. Palin is referred to as a polar bear hater, and at an anti-Republican rally in Alaska last week one protester wore a polar bear suit and wielded a sign saying: Polar Bear Moms Say No to Palin.

Comment: I put this down to the nuttiness of US politics and media

No doubt some will put this down to the nuttiness of US politics. In fact, it reveals more about the nuttiness of the politics of climate change. The politicisation of the polar bear in the US presidential campaign is hinged on Palin's opposition to the listing of polar bears as a threatened species. In May this year, Palin, as Governor of Alaska, said she would sue the federal Government for labelling polar bears as officially threatened. She argued that giving special protection to polar bear habitats would cripple oil and gas development off Alaska's northern and northwestern coasts. She also said there was not enough evidence to support the listing of polar bears. On this basis, she is known as a polar bear hater and campaigners are claiming that if polar bears had the vote they would definitely support Obama because, as one baby polar bear says, "My daddy says Sarah Palin doesn't like us."

Comment: Why shouldn't polar bears be part of the political landscape? If polar bear habitat and oil and gas leases are co-extensive, then it is reasonable to examine the impact of such development on polar bears. This is especially the case if polar bears are a threatened species. Sarah Palin is not an expert on polar bears and would need to listen to experts about the status of this animal and its habitat. In May of 2008 the US Fish and Wildlife Service listed the polar bear as a threatened species: http://alaska.fws.gov/fisheries/mmm/polarbear/issues.htm

They state:

Final Rule Listing the Polar Bear as a Threatened Species Under the Endangered Species ActOn May 15, 2008, the Service published a Final Rule in the Federal Register listing the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). This listing is based on the best available science, which shows that loss of sea ice threatens and will likely continue to threaten polar bear habitat. This loss of habitat puts polar bears at risk of becoming endangered in the foreseeable future, the standard established by the ESA for designating a threatened species. The Service also published on May 15, 2008, an Interim Final Rule for the polar bear under Section 4(d) of the ESA.

For Sarah Palin to claim that she knows more about polar bears than the best available science is complete hubris. It is no wonder that some people, perhaps some of them Obama supporters, think that Palin does not like polar bears or at least sees oil and gas as more important than biodiversity.

Call me a polar bear hater (actually, some people already have), but it just so happens that Palin has a point. There is not exactly a groundswell of evidence that polar bears are going extinct. In fact, experts claim global polar bear numbers have increased during the past 40 years.

In 2001, the World Conservation Union found that of 20 polar bear populations, one or possibly two were in decline, while more than half were stable and two sub-populations were increasing. Its more recent study in 2006 found a somewhat less rosy picture, but it wasn't that bad: of 19 polar bear populations, five were declining, five were stable and two were increasing (there wasn't enough data to judge the fortunes of the remaining seven populations). The global population has increased from about 5000 in the 1960s to 25,000 today.

Comment: In western Hudson Bay, Canada, where recent studies of polar bear numbers have been undertaken by qualified scientists, they found that the population has reduced by 22% from 1194 to 935 between 1987 and 2004. Another population in Alaska that has been studied also show reduced numbers and lower adult weights and increased cub mortality. Populations that have increased in number (only two have been reported) are in areas where numbers are recovering from hunting pressure and where protection is now being provided. The US F & W state:

The IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group reclassified the polar bear as a vulnerable species on the IUCN's Red List of Endangered Species at their most recent meeting (Seattle, 2005). They reported that of the 19 subpopulations of polar bears, five are declining, five are stable, two are increasing, and seven have insufficient data on which to base a decision.

Today's widespread polar bear concern is shot through with myth and misinformation. One of the nine scientific errors found in Al Gore's horror film An Inconvenient Truth, following a case brought in the British High Court last year, concerned his claims about polar bears. Gore claimed a scientific study had discovered that polar bears were drowning because they had to swim long distances to find ice. Yet the only scientific study Gore's team could provide as evidence was one showing that four polar bears had recently been found drowned because of a storm. According to Bjorn Lomborg, the sceptical environmentalist, the international tale about polar bears suffering at the hands of ruthless mankind springs from this single sighting of four dead bears the day after an abrupt windstorm.

Comment: Concern about polar bears is based on solid empirical evidence. Al Gore is not a polar bear expert so cannot be used to as a reference on their status. If the story of drowned bears is ambiguous then Gore should acknowledge this. The use of Lomborg to justify any empirical claim about the status and fate of polar bears is likely to be risky. He knows less about polar bears than Gore. See:http://healthearth.blogspot.com/search/label/polar%20bears

It may be true that as a result of hunting and human intervention around the North Pole, polar bears will suffer. But the politics of the polar bear is not a scientific, fact-driven phenomenon: it is a morality tale. It is an anthropomorphic story every bit as daft as Bambi in which the polar bear has become a symbolic victim of man's wanton destruction of the planet.

Comment: If global warming is removing the sea ice habitat of polar bears then it is reasonable to see them as a symbol of what is happening to the world under climate change. An iconic animal in a part of the world that is warming faster than any where else is threatened by the loss of its habitat. Bambi was part of Disneyland, polar bears are part of the high Arctic.

The polar bear has become the poster boy of the green lobby. It featured heavily in An Inconvenient Truth. Leonardo DiCaprio posed with one on the front cover of a special green issue of Vanity Fair. The bear he posed with - Knut from Berlin Zoo - is having his life story turned into a blockbuster movie, with Suri Cruise (daughter of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes) reportedly lined up to provide his voice.

Comment: If celebrities wish to publicise the polar bear and its status as threatened then so be it. If celebrities wish to be green advocates and make money out of it then so be it ... in a free society its a free market!

Leaflets inviting people to join green movements now come with photos of stranded (or allegedly stranded) polar bears. So do adverts for low-energy light bulbs.

Comment: In Australia we use a polar bear to promote a popular brand of rum. Is O'Neill suggesting that our beloved Bundy bear should be banned?

It was not scientific fact that elevated the polar bear to this privileged status of Bambi-style victimhood; it was the human self-loathing of the environmentalist moment.We are expected to believe that our most simple everyday activities, from what light bulbs we use to how many cups of tea we drink, are directly and terribly affecting polar bears thousands of kilometres away. So now you find serious green commentators saying things such as: The idea that turning on your kettle helps to drown polar bears has never really sunk in with many people. Yes, there's a reason for that: because when I turn on my kettle it has absolutely no effect whatsoever on any polar bear anywhere in the world. And that is a fact.

Comment: The claim is made that "human self loathing" is the ultimate cause of the current status of the polar bear and that everyday activities are the cause of its decline. O'Neill tries to make fun of the idea that the power that he uses from his kettle has no effect on any polar bear any where in the world. As at the time of writing this response, there are 6,724,531,388 people on planet earth. O'Neill is so egocentric that has has forgotten that there are a lot people turning kettles on all over the world. And that is a fact.

On the basis of some twisted or at least questionable facts, and conveniently cropped, heart-rending photos, the polar bear has come to represent human guilt and self-doubt. In the past, we Catholics were told not to misbehave because God would be displeased. It was said that if we wasted our food, then a little black baby would die. Today we are told that if we don't watch our energy use, trim our carbon footprint, follow Gore and make regular donations to various green groups, then polar bears will die. The great white bear of the north has taken the place of God in the clouds as the barometer of human behaviour and morality.

Comment: The only religious thinking present on this topic is O'Neill's refusal to examine the facts about polar bears, global warming and their loss of habitat. As a result, he is in much the same position as those in fundamentalist religions who deny the evidence for the evolution of species and the age of the earth.

The political promotion of this animal represents the denigration of human desire, the subordination of the human will to the animalistic fearmongering of environmentalism.
In a more profound sense, then, the politics of the polar bear represents the disavowal of human interests, which come to be seen as grubby, greedy and destructive.

Comment: It is reasonable for people to see the potential loss of Arctic sea ice and hence, the polar bear as symbolic of much that is going wrong with the human-nature relationship. It is not misanthropic to be concerned about the foundation of all life on earth, life that supports human social and economic existence.

The intervention of the polar bear even into the US election is striking. That many Democratic Party supporters and radical activists are claiming to act on behalf of the polar bear, even dressing up as bears for anti-Palin protests, shows the extent to which environmentalism threatens to empty politics of its human, self-interested, democratic component. Some people are not representing themselves in the election but are speaking for the cute (eh?), voiceless polar bear. Polar Bears for Obama does not spring from the typically dumb Disneyfication of US politics but from the misanthropic, people-less politics of being green.

Brendan O'Neill is editor of online magazine Spiked.

Comment: O'Neill has revealed himself to devoid of empathy to life forms other than humans. If people wish to raise the ethical issue of interspecies equity at the same time as raising issues of intra and inter-generational equity in the context of an election campaign, then this is an extension of democracy, not a contraction.

What is truly misanthropic is the position so clearly put by O'Neill that all that matters on this earth is human self interest and that human interests have no connection to the rest of life on earth. People who are green have understood that humanity lives on a foundation provided by the richness and productivity of nature. It is plants (greens) and their ability to convert sunlight into usable energy that inspires people to become environmentalists.

Only people who truly hate humanity could allow the deliberate destruction of the earth's ability to support life (including human life) via global warming and climate change. Only a person devoid of any form of empathy could fail to see the polar bear as a symbol of what is currently going wrong.

Glenn Albrecht 19 Sept 2008

Anti Marohasy

We need to take a good hard look at the type of ‘facts’ Jennifer Marohasy (JM) presents before signing on to her view of the world.

Also, take a good hard look at the above photo supporting the article. It shows a river with many dead trees (river red gums?) on its edges. The caption says “Catastrophe averted: Salinity levels in the Murray have halved, but you won’t hear that from global warming zealots”. Is Marohasy/The Australian actually suggesting that the landscape in the photograph shows a system in recovery? It looks more like a catastrophe to me.

Case of the warm and fuzzy: Jennifer Marohasy August 23, 2008
(Jennifer Marohasy is a senior fellow with the Institute of Public Affairs)
The Article: See http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24224964-11949,00.html

Article Text (in Blue)

When Nicholas Stern released his influential British government report on the economics of climate change in October 2006, it said that the east coast of Australia had suffered declining rainfall. In the same year, the Howard government pledged an additional $500 million to stop the trend of rising salinity in the Murray River.

Comment: Stern is an economist, not a climate scientist. No climate scientist has made the claim that a decline in East Coast rainfall is causally linked to salinity levels in the Murray River. Most scientists accept that salinity levels are connected to land clearing and poor land management. The purpose of the implication is to confuse the reader about causal connections and suggest that getting facts wrong in one domain is equivalent to getting facts wrong in another.

Three claims have been repeated so often they are accepted as fact: global temperatures are rising, we have less rainfall and so water is becoming scarce, and salinity in the Murray River is rising.

Comment: All three issues need to be examined very carefully to establish the facts. Claims about global rising temperatures have nothing necessarily to do with claims about less rainfall in Eastern Australia and rising salinity in the Murray Darling Basin

Of course there is the old adage: lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics. But we can keep it simple and just consider data from observations of the real world and from the most reputable institution since records began for the particular issue in which we are interested. It is important to not confuse real-world data (also known as observational data) with output from computer models because computer models generate scenarios that may or may not come true.

Comment: A reasonable point, but models are partly constructed by using data from past observations and projections based on them into future scenarios. It is not either/or. Let’s look at both the real world data she chooses to present and the models and see how they fit ... good or bad.

Observational data on rainfall for the entire east coast of Australia is available from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology with yearly averages for all the sites back to 1900.
But, contrary to the Stern report, this chart does not show declining rainfall; rather, it indicates that rainfall was very low in the early 1900s, that there were some very wet years in the late '50s and early '70s, and overall the trend is one of a slight increase in rainfall during the past 107 years.

Comment: JM claims that the trend is slightly increasing from 1900 – 2007. Given that 1900 was within the time of the Federation Drought, then the graph is likely to be biased by this low rainfall starting point. However, if we look at the trend from 1970 – 2007, shown in the diagram below produced by the same ‘reputable institution’ the picture is very different. It is abundantly clear that in this period the rainfall trend has declined significantly in Eastern Australia, particularly in most of eastern QLD, Southern NSW, Victoria and Northern Tasmania. Of course, JM would not wish to include the real- world data shown in this diagram in her article.

Stern got it wrong, perhaps because he was confusing output from computer models with the real-world data. There are a lot of computer models that foretell dire environmental catastrophe that may not eventuate.

Comment: Stern might have been badly advised but if his advice was that in the last 40 years the east coast of Australia has had significantly declining rainfall, then the advice was correct. This is especially so if the focus is on the southern half of NSW and Victoria. Declining rainfall in eastern Australia is consistent with some climate science models (CSIRO) of the impacts of climate change for eastern Australia. Computer models are used for all sorts of purposes, however, if they predict “dire environmental catastrophe” the people behind the model are usually trying to warn us to avoid such a catastrophe.

Rainfall data for the Murray-Darling Basin is also available from the Bureau of Meteorology. The overall trend is one of increasing rainfall since 1900. The past few years show below-average rainfall for the region and indeed there has been drought. The low river inflows have been exacerbated by more groundwater pumping, more plantation forestry, including in the upper Murrumbidgee, and more salt interception schemes along the Murray River.

Comment: As with rainfall for eastern Australia generally, the story from 1970 to the present on the MDB is one of major decline in rainfall, prolonged drought periods and record high temperatures.

Salt interception schemes evaporate water to trap the salt. In the '80s, computer models predicted that Adelaide's drinking water soon would be too salty to drink because of declining water quality and rising salinity levels in the Murray River. Measurements of salinity are recorded from many different sites along the Murray River, including at Morgan, which is immediately upstream from the offshoots from Adelaide's drinking water. The data from Morgan enables us to get an idea of how salt levels are trending in the real world, as opposed to computer-generated scenarios.

Concerns with salinity have resulted in levels being tested from the '30s. Salinity levels rose dramatically during the '70s and peaked at Morgan in 1982, which was a drought year. Then the Murray-Darling Basin Commission implemented a catchment-wide drainage management plan and started building salt interception schemes, and since then salinity levels have more than halved.

Comment: All this is likely to be quite correct. Some good environmental management solved a potentially serious problem. However, salinity levels are rising in parts of the catchment, particularly in the southern part. In addition, in times of very low flow, it is generally agreed that salinity levels in the Murray decline. None of this is, however, relevant to long-term climate change. It is also possible that the salinity problem has been displaced from surface water to ground water. Research is under way to find out what has happened to salinity levels in MDB ground water. Salinity levels in the total MDB are not the same issue as salinity levels in the Murray River as measured at one point (Morgan) in South Australia. Salinity is a red, salty herring in the climate change and global warming debate.

Measuring global temperatures is much more contentious than measuring salinity or rainfall. Issues include how to combine the data from all the weather stations across the globe and the data is usually presented as a temperature anomaly rather than, for example, just a global average. A temperature anomaly is derived from the average temperature for a specific but arbitrarily defined period and usually emphasises the extent to which temperatures have increased. The Bureau of Meteorology relies on the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in conjunction with the Hadley Centre of the British Met Office for its information on global temperatures. This information is available on the internet going back as far as 1850 and shows the deviation from the period 1961 to 1990.

But when global temperatures are presented just as a simple average with a vertical axis that spans the range of temperatures experienced in a place such as Ipswich (west of Brisbane) during a single year, the global rise in average temperatures is not that obvious because the mean temperature since 1850 has increased by less than 1C.

Comment: The reason for presenting data in terms of anomalies is given by Hansen:

Anomalies and Absolute Temperatures

Our analysis concerns only temperature anomalies, not absolute temperature. Temperature anomalies are computed relative to the base period 1951-1980. The reason to work with anomalies, rather than absolute temperature, is that absolute temperature varies markedly in short distances, while monthly or annual temperature anomalies are representative of a much larger region. Indeed, we have shown (Hansen and Lebedeff, 1987) that temperature anomalies are strongly correlated out to distances of the order of 1000 km. For a more detailed discussion, see The Elusive Absolute Surface Air Temperature.

Further, according to the CRU:
29 April 2008

The recent fall in global temperatures has led to increasing speculation that global warming is a thing of the past.
Despite this fall, a look at global average temperatures reveals a different picture. It shows large variability in our climate year-on-year – warmer some years, cooler in others - but what is very clear is an underlying rise over the longer term, almost certainly caused by man-made emissions of greenhouse gases.
There are a number of natural factors contributing to this interannual variability, the single most important being the El Niño Southern Oscillation or ENSO.
The global climate is currently being influenced by the cold phase of this oscillation, known as La Niña (see Expert speaks on La Niña). The current La Niña began to develop in early 2007, having a significant cooling effect on the global average temperature. Despite this, 2007 was one of the ten warmest years since global records began in 1850 with a temperature some 0.4 °C above average. Indeed, the years 2001-2007 recorded an average of 0.44 °C above the 1961-90 average, which is 0.21 °C warmer than corresponding values for the years 1991-2000
Another way of looking at the warming trend is that 1999 was a similar year to 2007 as far as the cooling effects of La Niña are concerned. The global temperature in 1999 was 0.26 °C above the 1961-90 average, whereas 2007 was 0.37 °C above this average - 0.11 °C warmer than 1999.

In addition, while a rise in temperature of less than one degree over the last one hundred years might seem insignificant to a lay person, climate scientists have pointed out that the greater part of this warming has been in the last 50 years and that the overall upward trend is of great concern. Again, the Hadley Centre says:

Global average temperatures have risen by nearly 0.8 °C since the late 19th century, and risen at about 0.2 °C per decade over the past 25 years.
Warming in the last 50 years is unprecedented in, at least, 1,300 years, and the 10 warmest years have all occurred since 1995.
This does not mean that next year will necessarily be warmer than last year, but the long-term trend is for rising temperatures.

The graph provided by JM, Global temperature anomaly (1850-2008), clearly shows a warming trend, particularly from the mid C20 onwards.

The data from the CRU is generally accepted as accurate by those who subscribe to the idea that carbon dioxide is driving dangerous man-made global warming. In contrast, many sceptics of man-made global warming argue that the only reliable measure of global temperatures is from satellites.

Comment: The overwhelming majority of climate scientists agree that carbon dioxide is driving anthropogenic global warming. The implication that acceptance of data accuracy is tied to particular views on the causes of climate change is invalid. Climate scientists generally agree that sea temperature, surface temperature and satellite data are all important. Sea temperature is particularly important because the ocean is a heat sink. In the US, the Goddard Centre uses air and ocean data from weather stations, ships and satellites to depict temperature trends. Their graph shows “2007 was warmer than 2006, continuing the strong warming trend of the past 30 years”. See: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2007/

It seems that JM picks only data sets that might support her particular view about global warming and climate change. The argument that satellite data supports a trend of global cooling over the last decade is at best controversial.

Ross McKitrick from Canada's University of Guelph argues that 50 per cent of global warming measured by land-based thermometers in the US since 1980 is due to local influences of man-made structures, also known as the urban heat island effect. There also have been issues with the additions and losses of weather stations; for example, many weather stations were lost in places such as Siberia with the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

Thermometer temperature data has been collected in the polar regions only since the '40s and calculating the mean temperature at the poles is still difficult.

Comment: Ross McKitrick is an economist, not a climate scientist. It is well documented that he has connections to Exxon-Mobil funded think tanks such as the Fraser Institute in Vancouver and the George C Marshall Institute in the US. This does not invalidate his position, but it should make us cautious about it. There is a considerable body of material extremely critical of McKitrick and the methodological foundations of his work. The impact of the heat island effect has been debunked by numerous studies. See: http://www.skepticalscience.com/urban-heat-island-effect.htm

James Hansen, from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has explained the general difficulty of measuring surface temperatures.
"Even at the same location, the temperature near the ground may be very different from the temperature 5 feet (1.52m) above the ground and different again from 10 feet or 50 feet above the ground," he says. "Particularly in the presence of vegetation (say in a rainforest), the temperature above the vegetation may be very different from the temperature below the top of the vegetation.
"A reasonable suggestion might be to use the average temperature of the first 50 feet of air either above ground or above the top of the vegetation. To measure SAT (surface air temperature) we have to agree on what it is and, as far as I know, no such standard has been suggested or generally adopted."

Comment: Hansen immediately continues in the quoted section to explain the use of SAT:

Q. If the reported SATs are not the true SATs, why are they still useful?A. The reported temperature is truly meaningful only to a person who happens to visit the weather station at the precise moment when the reported temperature is measured, in other words, to nobody. However, in addition to the SAT the reports usually also mention whether the current temperature is unusually high or unusually low, how much it differs from the normal temperature, and that information (the anomaly) is meaningful for the whole region. Also, if we hear a temperature (say 70F), we instinctively translate it into hot or cold, but our translation key depends on the season and region, the same temperature may be 'hot' in winter and 'cold' in July, since by 'hot' we always mean 'hotter than normal', i.e. we all translate absolute temperatures automatically into anomalies whether we are aware of it or not. See: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/abs_temp.html

Given these difficulties, an alternative is to use temperature data from satellites. Since 1979, orbiting satellites have measured temperature in a completely different way from the traditional method of using thermometers.
The satellites measure microwave radiation and the research focus has been on getting a broadly representative measure of lower atmosphere temperature.
The satellite data is available only since 1979, but it does give a good overview of how global temperatures have been trending during the past 30 years. Global temperatures peaked in 1998, associated with an El Nino warming event, then dropped quite dramatically before stabilising for a few years and dropping again recently. The satellite data on global temperatures indicates we presently have a global cooling, not a global warming, trend.

Comment: In 2006 in the USA, a National Research Council panel report concluded:

The report states that the 20-year period monitored by satellite-mounted microwave sounding units was too short to indicate long-term climate behaviour. Wallace says that if earlier tropospheric temperature data from balloons are taken into account, and the record is examined over 30 or 40 years, the discrepancy between the surface and the troposphere disappears. (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v403/n6767/full/403233a0.html)

Since 2004, publications have argued that the troposphere is warming at a rate predicted by climate models. From Nature 2004:

For years, climate researchers have struggled with an apparent discrepancy in the data on global warming: temperatures in the lower atmosphere have been rising far slower than models predict, given how fast the Earth's surface is heating.
The discrepancy has been central to the arguments of sceptics about global warming. But according to a study in this issue of Nature1 it can be explained by interactions between the troposphere - the first 11 km of the atmosphere - and the stratosphere above it.
In the study, a team from the University of Washington at Seattle and the Air Resources Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), based in Maryland, analysed microwave emissions from the atmosphere. The emissions were recorded between 1979 and 2001 by NOAA's polar orbiting satellites. The data can be used to deduce temperatures in different layers of the atmosphere. And the study finds that stratospheric cooling, a known effect of greenhouse gases, appears to account for discrepancies between temperature trends on the ground and in the troposphere.[My emphasis]
The team, led by Qiang Fu, an atmospheric researcher at the University of Washington, subtracted the impact of such cooling from data on the stratosphere and performed a statistical analysis, which found temperature trends consistent with observed warming on the surface and the predictions of climate models.
The finding is "a stunningly elegant and accurate method of clarifying global trends", says Kevin Trenberth, head of the climate analysis section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder,Colorado.
See: http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/index.cfm?id=4660&method=full#b1

The claim that recent trends show a marked cooling are also contradicted by data that combines global land and ocean temperatures. From the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (USA):

The combined average global land and ocean surface temperatures for June 2008 ranked eighth warmest for June since worldwide records began in 1880, according to an analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. Also, globally it was the ninth warmest January – June period on record.

Global Highlights
· The combined global land and ocean surface temperature for June 2008 was 60.8 degrees F, which is 0.9 degrees F above the 20th century mean of 59.9 degrees F.
· Separately, the global land surface temperature was 57.2 degrees F, which is 1.3 degrees F above the 20th century mean of 55.9 degrees F.
· The global ocean surface temperature was 62.2 degrees F, which is 0.7 degrees F above the 20th century mean of 61.5 degrees F.
· For the January – June period, the combined global land and ocean surface temperature was 57.1 degrees F, which is 0.8 degrees F about the 20th century mean of 56.3 degrees F.

Also, from NOAA:

Global Temperatures

For 2007, the global land and ocean surface temperature was the fifth warmest on record. Separately, the global land surface temperature was warmest on record while the global ocean temperature was 9th warmest since records began in 1880. Some of the largest and most widespread warm anomalies occurred from eastern Europe to central Asia.
Including 2007, seven of the eight warmest years on record have occurred since 2001 and the 10 warmest years have all occurred since 1995. The global average surface temperature has risen between 0.6°C and 0.7°C since the start of the twentieth century, and the rate of increase since 1976 has been approximately three times faster than the century-scale trend.
The greatest warming has taken place in high latitude regions of the Northern Hemisphere. Anomalous warmth in 2007 contributed to the lowest Arctic sea ice extent since satellite records began in 1979, surpassing the previous record low set in 2005 by a remarkable 23 percent. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, this is part of a continuing trend in end-of-summer Arctic sea ice extent reductions of approximately 10 percent per decade since 1979.

The joint authors of the ‘satellite data reveals cooling trend’ hypothesis, Dr Roy Spencer and John Christy, conceded in 2005 that their research was flawed. In a NY Times article in 2005 it is stated that:

The scientists who developed the original troposphere temperature records from satellite data, John R. Christy and Roy W. Spencer of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, conceded yesterday that they had made a mistake but said that their revised calculations still produced a warming rate too small to be a concern.
"Our view hasn't changed," Dr. Christy said. "We still have this modest warming."
See: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/12/science/earth/12climate.long.html?ex=1281499200&en=2588a631b8c5cc5d&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

Dr Roy Spencer is a well known CC sceptic and the source of the graph that JM uses in The Australian. His views should be treated with great caution. Below are his connections to right wing think tanks in the USA, all substantially funded by fossil fuel interests:

Spencer and the Heartland Institute
Spencer is listed as an author for the Heartland Institute, a US think tank that has received $561,500 from ExxonMobil since 1998.
The Heartland Institute has also received funding from Big Tobacco over the years and continues to make the claim that "anti-smoking advocates" are exaggerating the health threats of smoking.
Spencer and the George C. Marshall Institute
Spencer is listed as an "Expert" with the George C. Marshall Institute, a US think tank that has received $630,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.
Spencer and Tech Central Station
Listed as an author for Tech Central Station daily (TCS), an organization that until recently was owned and operated by a Republican lobby firm called DCI Group.
See: http://www.desmogblog.com/node/1397

Finally, there are acknowledged problems with satellite data and as with other forms of measurement and modelling it is wise not to found an argument about global warming solely on them.

An "Executive Summary" by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, co-authored by John Christy of UAH concludes:

"Previously reported discrepancies between the amount of warming near the surface and higher in the atmosphere have been used to challenge the reliability of climate models and the reality of human induced global warming. This significant discrepancy no longer exists because errors in the satellite and radiosonde [weather balloon] data have been identified and corrected. While these data are consistent with the results from climate models at the global scale, discrepancies in the tropics remain to be resolved.This difference between models and observations may arise from errors that are common to all models, from errors in the observational data sets, or from a combination of these factors. The second explanation is favored, but the issue is still open."
See: http://www.skepticalscience.com/satellite-measurements-warming-troposphere.htm

Many scientists, environmental activists and politicians have staked their reputations on the idea that global temperatures are going to keep steadily rising, so it is not surprising that they are ignoring the past few years of data from the satellites. But the stakes are very high.

Comment: Many people, including climate scientists and environmental activists, are paying close attention to all temperature data, including satellite data. Most wish that temperatures would show a trend downwards because they do not wish to see a runaway greenhouse event and climate chaos. By ignoring the overwhelming body of all types of evidence about long-term warming trends, the close fit between such data and models, JM seems to have a vested interest in perpetuating falsehoods about the world cooling.

The Australian Government is planning to introduce an emissions trading scheme, also described as a carbon pollution reduction scheme, on the basis that that carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels is contributing to dangerous global warming.
Many people assume that such a drastic action is premised on good evidence establishing a proven causal link between anthropogenic carbon dioxide and global warming.
But it is not, instead relying on computer models, claims of a scientific consensus and the belief that global temperatures continue to creep higher and higher. Many false claims are made about the state of our environment on an almost daily basis but, because most Australians are illiterate when it comes to science and maths, they are mostly just accepted.

Comment: Yes there is evidence … but is it good? JM answers, “But it is not”. She states that there is no good evidence. JM claims that computer models, scientific consensus and a “belief” that global temperatures continue to rise are not good evidence. Her argument goes that many Australians just accept this so-called evidence because they “are illiterate when it comes to science”.

It is an act of extreme hubris to claim that one person (JM) knows better than a consensus of the rest of climate scientists and meteorologists about how to understand and model the global climate and the Australian meteorological history. Climate science accepts that global temperatures do not show a continuous “creep higher and higher”. They agree that although big picture climate factors such as El Nino and La Nina play critically important roles and generate peaks and troughs in the global temperature over time, the overall trend is higher.

It is true that false claims are made about the state of the environment. It is also true that many true claims are made about the state of the environment. The claim that “most” Australians are illiterate with respect to the science and data on the environment is insulting to most Australians.

The issue of scientific illiteracy must surely apply to JM as she systematically ignores the weight of scientific evidence about global warming in the international peer reviewed scientific literature.

Most Australians rely on television and newspapers for information about environmental issues. If this reporting incorporated some charts, in the same way business reporting does as a matter of course, then there might be at least some quality control.

Comment: The compilation of charts, even in business, relies on quality data. Given the unanticipated global fiscal meltdown under the sub-prime fiasco, we might wonder if business graphs in the last 10 years have provided us with well compiled information (data). Presumably, the economists and business data crunchers were ‘sub-prime’ in their information gathering and dissemination? Charts might reflect the interests that compile them, irrespective of the domain. Selective use of historical rainfall data, presented in a graph to establish misleading claims about rainfall trends in Australia, is a classic example of sub-prime environmental education.

But, ultimately, good policy is going to require that a much larger percentage of Australians having a higher level of scientific literacy.
The alternative is important policy continuing to be decided on hearsay rather than evidence because you just can't trust the environmental advocates. Indeed, they may care more about the environment than the truth.

Comment: Increasing levels of scientific literacy in the Australian community is a good thing. There is no evidence to support the claim that good policy in Australia is made on the basis of hearsay. There is no evidence to support the assertion that environmental advocates operate only on the basis of hearsay rather than evidence. Such a claim seems to be based on hearsay. People who argue the case for potable water, clean air and fertile soil are environmental advocates, but why should we feel that they cannot be trusted? The ‘truth’ and the ‘environment’ can logically occupy the same space and people of good will can care about both.
JM wants us to believe her, and to agree that environmental advocates will deceive us (not tell the truth) in order to care for the environment. Advocates of all sorts may lie to promote their causes and climate change sceptics are quite capable of lying in order to protect the interests of those who pay for their activities.

MANY people want to save the environment, but few people are confident of interpreting a chart or graph of scientific information on, say, water quality or global temperatures. So, when it comes to environmental issues most Australians just believe what the experts say. After all, people who care about the environment are the good guys, caring and trustworthy.

Comment: Yes it is difficult to compile accurate graphs and give expert interpretation of them. Experts are often useful in these tasks. JM presumably is claiming to be an expert in the compilation and interpretation of graphs.

The implication that people who care about the environment are the experts and that they are good, caring and trustworthy … is meant to be ironic. JM wants us to think that although she is an expert, she is not part of a conspiracy to deceive and lie to the rest of us illiterate people. Only environmentalists and people who “care about the environment” do that.

It hardly needs to be pointed out that many so-called experts are non-caring and not trustworthy. Many experts produce data without being environmentalists or any other kind of ‘ist’. Meteorologists, for example, produce expert data on weather without being normally considered ‘environmentalists’.

JM is attempting to confuse readers by putting ‘experts’, ‘environmentalists’ and ‘caring’ together for the purposes of subjecting the nexus to criticism. No such nexus necessarily exists. Despite this, there are many scientific experts who are good people, are concerned about the environment and who are happy to be called environmentalists.

Furthermore, when it comes to issues such as global warming, we are told there is a consensus, that most scientists agree about most things and this should make us feel even more secure believing what they tell us about the sorry state of planet Earth. But who should check what the experts are saying about environmental issues, and at what point? When it comes to business issues, whether interest rates or commodity prices, we are shown charts, hard data, and people who are interested in the business issues would expect no less.

Comment: JM’s implication is that if environmental experts were subject to the same discipline as business experts, then we would get better information about the environment. Note the point made above about so-called business experts and their graphs in the context of market failure. Her implied view that the business model of information gathering and analysis is superior to the scientific model needs a great deal more argument before it would be even remotely convincing. Without such detailed argumentation and evidence, it appears to be based on hearsay from biased sources.

Environmental issues are very much like business issues: they are about numbers and trends. For example, business analysts are interested in whether the price of oil is going up or coming down and Al Gore tells us that global temperatures are going up. But if your next stock investment depended on what Gore was telling you the business market was doing, wouldn't you also seek information from other sources to be sure?

Comments: Environmental issues are about much more than numbers and trends as per business. The biophysical environment is the foundation for all productive capacity on earth, including human economic activity. Businesses can fail and nothing much happens except the loss of large amounts of money, but if the biophysical foundations of life fail, then we lose the ability to sustain ourselves.

Al Gore is an ex-politician and a published author on environmental matters. He is not an expert on climate change but relies for his information on climate data, the IPCC and other scientific bodies that research the climate and produce the expert data. The scientific community tells Gore and the rest of the world that the world is on a trend of rising global temperature.

If your next environmental decision depended on what Jennifer Marohasy was telling you the environment was doing, wouldn’t you seek information from other sources to be sure?”

Overall Assessment

The article, in Australia’s only national newspaper, reveals much about the motivation of Jennifer Marohasy. At first glance, one could be forgiven for thinking that her ‘line’ is a form of religious faith or zealotry erected as a defence against all the evidence to the contrary. Like flat earthers and the Church at the time of Copernicus and Galileo in the face of evidence of a heliocentric solar system and imperfect heavenly spheres, a closed system of belief is created where all counter-evidence is reinterpreted as proof of the truth of her own position. Data is then manipulated to defend the indefensible. Graphs are produced to show misleading and erroneous ‘trends’ and advocacy misrepresented as science.

However, like the many climate change sceptics she relies on for her data and graphs, JM is intimately associated with a privately funded think tank. She is an employee of the Institute for Public Affairs, a think tank funded by commercial enterprise. As such, she is expected to provide value for money and deliver messages that are supportive of the corporate interests. She is not a dispassionate or disinterested commentator on global warming and climate change; she is an advocate for the interests of those who fund the IPA. It should come as no surprise that the major bodies funding the work of JM include BHP-Billiton, the Western Mining Corporation, Monsanto, Clough Engineering, News Limited (publisher of the Australian Newspaper), Caltex, Esso, Shell, Gunns and companies in the electricity generation industry (http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Institute_of_Public_Affairs ).

The evidence for the long-term warming of the planet is now overwhelming and that JM has resorted to the use of distraction with irrelevant issues such as salinity, over-reliance on dodgy satellite data and short term changes in recent weather patterns (not trends in long-term climate) in order to make her case is revealing.

The argument that Australia should not implement a greenhouse gas reduction scheme because of a lack of evidence has empirical and ethical faults. I hope the scientific community can further take her to task on the lack of scientific credibility of her case.

On the ethical front, the hypocrisy of arguing that Australians are scientifically illiterate and easily manipulated by vested interests and then, in a calculated manner, contributing to that illiteracy and deliberately manipulating them with poor data, misleading graphs and confusing argumentation is unforgivable.

The issue of global warming and climate change is far too important to leave to paid representatives of a particular set of vested interests in Australia or elsewhere. If, because of the ‘work’ of sceptics such as JM, individuals, businesses and governments delay action to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and halt global warming, then these people must be held especially responsible for the hugely negative changes that are now taking place to the foundations of all life, agriculture and economies.

We must resist the anti-global warming zealots and corporate lackeys and put our trust in those who, without vested interest, are telling us that we must act now to avoid a very nasty future.


Glenn Albrecht 07/09/2008