Climate Denial Crock of the Week: Climate Deniers Love The '70's! - The Remix

Peter Sinclair is a wizard with video production and hates to see a good job left undone if it can be even better. So he has ventured back into the vault of a previous Climate Crock and updated it. I'm sure we'll see more like this.  Anyway, he's good at getting to the issues at hand and explaining just where the 'denier' arguments go astray.

Peter Sinclair:
"Everyone has a favorite decade, and for Climate deniers, that decade has got to be, the 70s.
Yes, the decade of disco, kung fu, and watergate

Because in the 70's, Deniers will tell you, All climate scientists believed an ice age was coming. Those crazy climate scientists! Why can't they make up their minds?

But is that really true?
Maybe a little historical perspective is in order.
This remix is re-edited, includes better sound, and new film clips. Definitely a Christmas must-see for Uncle Dittohead and Aunt Teabag!"

http://smartenergyshow.com/node/67
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T4UF_...
http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/152...
http://climateprogress.org/2008/11/16...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Glob...

These links work best if pasted into browsers:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/art...,9171,890597,00.html
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/art...,9171,937403,00.html

EPA Releases First-Ever Baseline Study Of U.S. Lakes - They're Wet.

In a time when we're looking more closely at our aging and degrading national infrastructure, the EPA has released its National Lakes Assessment describing the health and quality of our critical water sources. The National Rivers and Streams Assessment should be completed by 2011.  It's well enough we want to build more reservoirs, we also need to be certain to maintain the reservoirs we currently do have.

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WASHINGTON - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today released its most comprehensive study of the nation’s lakes to date. The draft study, which rated the condition of 56 percent of the lakes in the United States as good and the remainder as fair or poor, marked the first time EPA and its partners used a nationally consistent approach to survey the ecological and water quality of lakes. A total of 1,028 lakes were randomly sampled during 2007 by states, tribes and EPA.

“This survey serves as a first step in evaluating the success of efforts to protect, preserve, and restore the quality of our nation’s lakes,” said Peter Silva, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Water. “Future surveys will be able to track changes in lake water quality over time and advance our understanding of important regional and national patterns in lake water quality.”


The National Lakes Assessment reveals that the remaining lakes are in fair or poor condition. Degraded lakeshore habitat, rated “poor” in 36 percent of lakes, was the most significant of the problems assessed. Removal of trees and shrubs and construction of docks, marinas, homes and other structures along shorelines all contribute to degraded lakeshore habitat.

Nitrogen and phosphorous are found at high levels in 20 percent of lakes. Excess levels of these nutrients contribute to algae blooms, weed growth, reduced water clarity, and other lake problems. EPA is very concerned about the adverse impacts of nutrients on aquatic life, drinking water and recreation. The agency will continue to work with states to address water quality issues through effective nutrient management.

The survey included a comparison to a subset of lakes with wastewater impacts that were sampled in the 1970s. It finds that 75 percent show either improvements or no change in phosphorus levels. This suggests that the nation’s investments in wastewater treatment and other pollution control activities are working despite population increases across the country.

The results of this study describe the target population of the nation’s lakes as a whole and are not applicable to a particular lake.

Sampling for the National Rivers and Streams Assessment is underway, and results from this two-year study are expected to be available in 2011.

The draft study: http://www.epa.gov/lakessurvey

Climate Change: "Those" e-mails and science censorship

Potholer54 continues his reasoned and direct discussion on 'those' hacked e-mails from the Climate Research Unit in Norwich. If you haven't found this series of videos on climate change, I encourage you to start from the beginning and gain a solid perspective on the science and the debate that has been going on for all these years before you go off on calling it all a 'hoax.'  It's well worth the time to understand something before you speak to it.

You can find the whole series in the Dallas Trees Support Pages under 'Potholer54 CLIMATE CHANGE'.  You should also check out Potholer54's YouTube Subscription Page for more good material.

Potholer54: 'Are climatologists censoring scientific journals and silencing alternative hypotheses on climate change? This is the second part of my look at the hacked/stolen e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit in the UK. I welcome intelligent opinions in the forum, but please refrain from posting the same inane comment a dozen times. Debates in science aren't settled by those who argue the longest or the loudest, but by the accuracy of facts and the consistency of hypotheses with the facts.'

Population to be over 9 Billion by 2045. Are you laughing yet?

The U.S. Census Bureau released today new information on projections for global population growth rates. According to their report, China's population is projected to peak at slightly less than 1.4 Billion people in 2026, earlier and at a lower level than previously projected. India, with a current growth rate of 1.4 percent, is expected to overtake China in population in 2025. The projections indicate that the population of China will begin to decline by 2026. Don't fret about that.

The big monster of this report is the continuing increase (although slowing increase) of the global population that will continue to demand greater amounts of resources which will become ever more scarce and expensive - in money and in life. Currently, the world has nearly 6.8 billion people. By the year 2050, the projected population is expected to exceed 9 billion people who will have an ever-growing thirst for global resources that will be much harder to come by.  Based on the number of people bickering at each other, I suspect they'll be even more irritable. Even excluding the growing complications of global warming, the challenges of coping with these crises of harder to reach, and declining, fossil energies, water demands, food deficiencies, and other global limitations, will task the social and political infrastructures and national securities.  All of this is leading up to the year 2050 - a year that is potentially even in my lifetime. Again, we're not talking about the end of the century.  Your kids are in for one hell of a ride.

Prince Charles spoke today at the opening ceremony of the ministerial part of the Copenhagen Conference, where he boldly declared "the survival of the species" was in peril. Of course, he was talking about climate change. "The future of mankind can be assured only if we rediscover ways in which to live as a part of nature, not apart from her. .... The grim reality is that our planet has reached a point of crisis and we have only seven years before we lose the levers of control."  He may be right, or he may be off a bit. I personally don't know if we have a lever left to pull. But, in fact, the natural resource depletion facing the future of this human civilization go well above and beyond climate change and touch on how an ever-growing population of humans on this earth can continue to over-consume its resources with an ever-growing insatiable desire.  Combined with climate change, it's a shitter.

As a group, we humans are not too bright. It's clear to me that the Conference, and much more so, the shmucks who keep dwelling on Climategate, are limiting their scope in addressing our global crises. However, the prince gave me some hope.  He said, "reducing poverty, increasing food production, combating terrorism, and sustaining economic development are all vital priorities, but it is increasingly clear how rapid climate change will make them even more difficult to address."  Those petty little problems are just a trifle of what is looming on our horizon. Of course, it could be that we can only tackle one crisis at a time. It's time for us to address climate change whether you're going to accept the reality of it or not.  It's not like there really is much choice. Hmmm.

Well, then again, maybe failure is an option. In fact, I'd be surprised if it isn't the only one that is realistic. I already said we're not all that bright.  We're willing to sacrifice our children's future for our own privileges. I'm waiting for the climate skeptics to throw the graphic of the slowing world population growth rate into an argument that the population increase is a figment of our imagination and a liberal conspiracy. Where's that damn hockey stick?  Climate Depot says "The Whole World Is Laughing."  I think that says more about the horrific nature of the nimrods working to preserve the status quo of our devouring economy and industry than anything else I've heard. We can no longer afford their laughter. But I think too many of us are laughing along with them.

U.S. Census Bureau International Data Base

'Drilling Is Important, But Protecting The Water Supply Is Paramount.'

"Colorado Towns Take Extra Measures To Protect Their Water From Gas Drilling.", Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica - December 15, 2009.

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In 2005 the U.S. Bureau of Land Management offered up thousands of acres of federal land in Colorado to drilling. Because the land was in the heart of an area that supplies drinking water to 55,000 people in the western part of the state, the plan drew stong opposition from local communities.

The concerns they raised -- that the disruption and chemicals used in drilling might ruin their water -- foreshadowed similar concerns that have since rippled across the country as drilling operations expand from Wyoming to New York. And their solution may be a lesson that ripples to those communities as well.

The communities -- the city of Grand Junction and the neighboring town of Palisades -- began by making their concerns clear: drilling is important, but protecting the water supply is paramount.

"Our feeling all along was that you shouldn't drill in our watershed. It's the last resort," said Tim Sarmo, the town manager for Palisade, who, together with the city of Grand Junction, fought the development. "Shouldn't someone say these are areas of higher priority, greater vulnerability?"

Their concerns focused on the chemicals pumped underground by drillers in hydraulic fracturing and then disposed of in the area's dozens of open waste pits -- fears echoed in upstate New York, where the Marcellus Shale underlies the watershed supplying New York City's nine million residents, and in other parts of the country where gas is being drilled.

At first, Grand Junction and Palisades tried to buy the mineral rights themselves. In early 2006 they bid more than $300 an acre at auction -- eight times what gas companies were typically paying for mineral leases in that part of the state at the time -- but were outbid by Genesis Gas and Oil.

Then they tried a different tack: If drilling had to go forward, they wanted to define the terms, making sure the safest techniques would be usedto protect the quality of their water. In this case, they wanted measures more stringent than what state regulations required.

With BLM officials arbitrating -- the agency made a goodwill agreement a condition of the leasing and permitting process -- the municipalities and Genesis Gas and Oil spent the next two years negotiating a compromise that could now stand as a model for towns across the country.

The result is a 60-page Watershed Plan (PDF) that dictates that Genesis will only use "green" hydraulic fracturing fluids, will reveal the chemical makeup of those fluids and will inject a tracer along with those fluids so any alleged contamination in the area can be quickly linked to its source.

Though the agreement has yet to be tested -- Genesis has not yet applied for permits to drill in the area -- local representatives found that there was more opportunity for them to steer oversight of drilling, and reach beyond what state regulations require, than they had thought.

Genesis Oil and Gas did not respond to requests for comment.

"There wasn't a lot of resistance," said Greg Trainor, the Grand Junction utilities director who sought the concessions from Genesis and says they put him at ease with the drilling. "It may not be a legally binding agreement, but it's a political agreement. It's a very good template."

Write to Abrahm Lustgarten at Abrahm.Lustgarten@propublica.org.

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"Damning New Evidence Raises Concerns About Threats To New York's Water From Gas Drilling.", Byard Duncan, AlterNet, December 15, 2009.

Sharon Astyk: 'Evillist Corporation Ever Gives Even More Reasons To Grow Your Own'

There's an AP investigative report into Monsanto that suggests that the winner of the highly competetive "Evillest Corporation Ever" award has decided to raise the bar on evil further, trying to bring virtually all seed companies together under its own axis of evil.

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"We now believe that Monsanto has control over as much as 90 percent of (seed genetics). This level of control is almost unbelievable,' said Neil Harl, agricultural economist at Iowa State University who has studied the seed industry for decades. "The upshot of that is that it's tightening Monsanto's control, and makes it possible for them to increase their prices long term. And we've seen this happening the last five years, and the end is not in sight."

At issue is how much power one company can have over seeds, the foundation of the world's food supply. Without stiff competition, Monsanto could raise its seed prices at will, which in turn could raise the cost of everything from animal feed to wheat bread and cookies.

The price of seeds is already rising. Monsanto increased some corn seed prices last year by 25 percent, with an additional 7 percent hike planned for corn seeds in 2010. Monsanto brand soybean seeds climbed 28 percent last year and will be flat or up 6 percent in 2010, said company spokeswoman Kelli Powers."

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Even if Monsanto weren't evil, no company should be allowed to control 90% of the seed supply for any staple foods, ever, under any circumstances. Even if we ignore Monsanto's long persecution of farmers, its disregard for human welfare and its history of malfeasance, we're left with a big problem. Not only could they raise prices, but they could dangerously reduce genetic diversity - and given what happened when Monsanto took over Seminis, eliminating thousands of open pollinated varieties from the seed trade, this is not an unreasonable concern. We know that without sufficient diversity, we are enormously vulnerable to disease and pest loss of food.

Their monopoly can drive farmers out of business and raise food prices. The only solution is anti-trust legislation at the government level, and a real effort to cut out or reduce Monsanto seed's monopoly on staple food crops. That means those of us who can are obligated to seek out and source corn and soybeans from farmers who don't use Monsanto GMOs, and to avoid buying processed food that contains them. We need to support farmers who want to make a shift to other varieties so that they can - sign up for Community Supported Grain programs, and ask local producers to grow non-Monsanto seed. Consider growing a small plot of staple foods in your garden from non-Monsanto sources.

We need to stop supporting Monsanto commercially in the garden seed trade - yes, this is a small portion of their business, but there's no reason to subsidize them. Instead, seek out seed companies that eschew Monsanto/Seminis varieties including Fedco Seeds www.fedcoseeds.com, Baker Creek Heirlooms www.rareseeds.com, Seeds of Change www.seedsofchange.com, Seed Savers Exchange www.seedsavers,org and many others. It can be hard to give up favorite varieties - but the price is too high.

The simple truth is that seed as a commons is disappearing. The culture that for all of human history made seeds something to spread and share is disappearing. But we don't need to allow it to go. Seeds are powerful. Get some good ones, save them and plant them.

Sharon

This was originally published at Casaubon's Book. Thanks, Sharon.

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UPDATE: The Angry Mermaid Award: Monsanto wins award for worst corporate climate lobbyist in Copenhagen.  Bloomberg.  In case you were wondering.

Suburban Hum (November 17, 2009):  'Monsanto: the most evil corporation on earth.' - Gordon Wagner

Where's The Best Tap Water In The U.S.? Arlington, Texas

On Saturday, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) released the results of their three-year investigation of municipal water supplies across the U.S. The results come out quite well for folks in the Dallas metro area - especially in Jerry Town.

According to their study, the city of Arlington, TX has the best tap water in the country for cities with a population over 250,000 people, with Fort Worth running a close third. Dallas came in at #12.

The bad news about the study was that since 2004, testing by water utilities across the country has shown up 316 pollutants in the tap water you drink. More than half of the chemicals detected are not subject to health and safety regulations and are legal at any amount.  So I guess 'good' is relative and it's probably just as well you don't know what you're drinking. By reading the report, you wouldn't know what it is anyway. Do you think you could recognize dibromochloromethane, haloacetic acids, or understand beta particle activity?  I didn't think so. That's why scientists are trained to know these things.

You can read all about your city (if it's on the list) at the EWG site.

"Since 2004, testing by water utilities has found 316 pollutants in the tap water Americans drink, according to an Environmental Working Group (EWG) drinking water quality analysis of almost 20 million records obtained from state water officials.

More than half of the chemicals detected are not subject to health or safety regulations and can legally be present in any amount. The federal government does have health guidelines for others, but 49 of these contaminants have been found in one place or another at levels above those guidelines, polluting the tap water for 53.6 million Americans. The government has not set a single new drinking water standard since 2001.

Water utilities spend 19 times more on water treatment chemicals every year than the federal government invests in protecting lakes and rivers from pollution in the first place.

Based on these data, EWG believes the federal government has a responsibility to do a national assessment of drinking water quality. It should establish new safety standards, set priorities for pollution prevention projects, and tell consumers about the full range of pollutants in their water.

Because it has not, EWG launched a 3-year project to create the largest drinking water quality database in existence. This user-friendly, interactive resource covers 48,000 communities in 45 states and the District of Columbia."

Climate Denial Crock of the Week: Climate Crock Sacks Hack Attack, Part 2

In Part 1, Peter Sinclair began to outlay the lack of substance of the hacked East Anglia e-mails that have been creating such a stir.  Mr. Sinclair continues in Part 2 by addressing the 'threats' and accusations and how they've been debunked and tossed out as trash through review.  This video also demonstrates how 'flat-earthers' like Senator Inhofe, with a microphone and a stage, can be dangerous to the public interest.  Well, at least the Senator's friends in Saudi Arabia believe him.

All of these topics are presented daily in the 'E-NEWS MUST READ' segment in the sidebar on Dallas Trees.

Greenman: 13 years of emails, and this is the best they can do?
More of the REAL story behind the non-story.
reference these links:
http://www.sgr.org.uk/climate/StormyT...
http://coast.gkss.de/G/Mitarbeiter/st...
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?a...
http://www.lcv.org/newsroom/press-rel...
http://web.archive.org/web/2007070302...
http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~wsoon/100...
http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles...
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/05/sci...
http://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/...
http://climateprogress.org/2009/12/07...

Envisioning The Future After Copenhagen: Four Views

Where do we go from here?  Many who don't believe (or refuse to believe) that our dramatic fortune, glory and prosperity is changing would just as soon allow us to carry on as if everything will just work itself out (because it always does and the market will bear it out), that their retirements (not yours, of course) will remain sound, and a warmer world just means more quality days at the beach. Others see that we need immediate and draconian changes now (even perhaps by revolution) to not merely preserve our world for ourselves (built on more sustainable technologies ran on sustainable energies) but the world for the many generations yet to be born on this world. There are so many perspectives from which to view our problems. Some are realistic and are addressed to seek solutions, while others are just hiding the head in the sand.  The latter is easier to do if you're weak.

The delegates in Copenhagen, and many of the people who are waiting around the world who seek answers for the future, are following our ever-continuing system that tends to lean me toward skepticism that anything will change.  As much as I would like to see a positive result come from Copenhagen, I am not sold that the answers will come from this great gathering of nations. I would love for them to prove me wrong. However, I view the world, and especially climate change, as a much more complex and laboring matter than offsets and trades of pollution rights will allow.   Furthermore, I feel that too many are not really understanding the question. So how do you give correct answers if you're misreading the definitions and believing the wrong standards and instructions? I deal with this on a daily basis in the small context of city ordinance. You can't really design a proper landscape to conform to municipal demands if you are reading the landscape ordinance of another city or just following an idea you dreamed up.  Yeah, it may look right and sound right, but it just isnt' there. We're not talking about changing light bulbs. It's about changing the ways we live our lives and the ethical standards upon which we will stand.

I am not certain that any agreement from this body will give us the direction we need.  The 'Danish Text' leak (a preliminary draft agreement that would place more power with rich nations, sideline the U.N., and abandon the Kyoto Protocol) has caused considerable disruption among developing nations that was born out of distrust and a morbid recognition that perhaps the answers for many nations to resolve something even as universally threatening as a global climate crisis is still far beyond us.  Hopefully the delegates will see this as only the 'sketch idea' as the promoting groups are trying to sell it.  I see it as more of the same.

I present four separate articles with points of view on different perspectives and policies for 'the future' from some distinguished writers on climate and energy issues. I don't present these to promote any actual position, but merely to help us keep open our minds to the consequences of our policies and decisions and to remember that we need to think clearly about what is really at stake.  You don't have to agree with all, or any, of them, but everyone has points to make. I present in text only portions of their essays. I encourage you to read their full material.

Climate Crisis: Choosing Policies For A New Future   by Andrew McKillop (Financial Sense Editorials)

"....This can use a business application of systems thinking: the "marginal" concept used in business planning, which starts with a comparison of risks and probabilities for each action, at and for a certain time, and with various degrees of investment spending or intensity of action. If we take actions to reduce greenhouse gases, but find later on that human GW was actually insignificant or less than we feared, our net loss would be the cost of these actions, as well as hypothetical alternate uses for the same resources through the same period.
 We however have another and much more certain driver for transiting away from fossil fuels and developing alternate and renewable sources and systems: Peak Oil, qnd the sure and certain depletion of the easiest and largest reserves and sources of oil, coal and gas. As with population control to limit the demographic crisis, this is another politically incorrect, carefully avoided driver for alternate energy, but in no ways prevents it from being real. Large spending to force energy transition away from fossil fuels and other resource conserving features of "the green economy" will also generate the benefit of earlier substitution of non-renewable resources in the economy, causing a situation very similar to that when coal started substituting wood as a major industrial heat source, or petroleum oil started substituting whale oil for street lighting.

If we take no action, the laisser faire path, there will inevitably be higher future monetary costs, and lost options, for correcting or mitigating the higher level of accumulated damage to our planet. Running out of oil will no longer be a theoretical graph curve, but a reality. Comparing the consequences of these two extreme alternatives (no action versus massive action) it is very apparent that the most basic lever for change - depletion of fossil fuels and need for alternate energy - will become more critical and costs will rise radically, if we do not soon act to replace non-renewable fossil fuels. This will probably be joined by action to cap and then reduce world total commercial energy utilization, preceded by this option becoming politically correct and able to be discussed. Not taking action, now, only pushes forward the date when we, or our descendents will have to take action. Calculating the 'opportunity cost' of different policy sets or ensembles will tend to show  we have plenty to gain with little to lose by taking action now."

The UN's Future Scenarios For Climate Are Pure Fantasy  by Kjell Aleklett (Energy Bulletin)

"In the year 2000, the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published 40 different future scenarios in which emissions from oil, natural gas and coal were specified. In the past 9 years these scenarios have been the guiding star for the world’s climate researchers. The IPCC has described why these researchers should follow them. The scenarios “are built as descriptions of possible, rather than preferred, developments. They represent pertinent, plausible, alternative futures”. Despite the fact that emissions from fossil fuels vary widely between the scenarios, the IPCC regarded all the scenarios as equally likely.

Among these scenarios exist the future horror stories that people such as Al Gore has warned us about. These go by the name of “Business As Usual”. Climate calculations that are based on these emission levels give an average temperature increase of 3.5 °C above 1990 levels by 2100. Some of these scenarios exceed +6 °C.

Globally, human activity generates greenhouse gasses and emissions increase at the same rate as the population increases. Today, 57% of greenhouse gasses come from fossil fuel. The big issue in Copenhagen is future emissions from these fossil fuels. I have a different view of the situation than the IPCC and my view is based on scientific publications from the Global Energy Systems research group at Uppsala University, Sweden. We can now show that almost all of the IPCC emissions scenarios are improbable and that those scenarios described as “Business as Usual” as completely unrealistic. (Ten publications relevant to this article can be accessed from the home page of Global Energy Systems, www.fysast.uu.se/ges)

In May 2007 the Debate column of Dagens Nyheter [Sweden’s most widely read broadsheet newspaper] published my article on climate titled, “Severe climate change unlikely before we run out of fossil fuel”. An article with the title, “The Peak of the Oil Age” has recently been published in the scientific journal Energy Policy. From the research reported in that paper we can now state that there will be insufficient oil in future since production will decline. Therefore, emissions from use of oil will decline by at least 10% by 2030. This reduction will be even greater if the global economy is negatively affected.

The climate change negotiators main question should therefore be, “How will we use coal in the future?”.

.... Our conclusion is that the assumptions of coal use that the IPCC recommended that climate researchers refer to in calculating their future horror scenarios are completely unrealistic. The question is why at all these gigantic volumes of carbon dioxide emission are to be found among the possible scenarios. The IPCC bears a great responsibility for the fact that thousands of climate researchers around the world have dedicated years of research to calculating temperature increases for scenarios that are completely unrealistic. The consequence is that very large research resources have been wasted to little benefit for us all.

That fossil fuel reserves are insufficient to support the IPCC’s horror scenarios may alleviate somewhat our concerns about future climate. On the other hand, we must be even more concerned about future resource shortages. The shortage of oil can, for example, place even greater pressure on the rainforests through increased production of biodiesel from palm oil. The fact that the fossil fuel energy required until 2100 for the “Business as Usual” scenarios does not exist means that the world’s growing population needs a global crisis package to create new energy solutions. We must now – and with immediate effect - change the global energy system."

Kjell Aleklett

Professor of Physics, Global Energy Systems at Uppsala University

Roger A. Pielke, Sr.'s Position On Climate Change   by Roger Pielke, Sr. (Climate Science)

“Thus the plans being made in Copenhagen will necessarily be inadequate to address the diversity of the climate issues that society and the environment face in the coming decades.  What are needed is a multiple pronged approach to address the different types of natural and human climate forcings as articulated in one of my son’s posts (see) where he wrote

“As the community begins to realize these significant, multi-faceted and hideous complexities, it would not be a surprise to learn that a policy framework design 20 years ago is now somewhat out of step with current scientific understandings. The upshot is that as presently designed, international climate policy is both too complex and too simplistic. It is too simplistic because it is built upon a set of scientific perspectives on climate change that are increasingly seen as outdated and appropriate only for dealing with a narrow set of very important human influences — long-lived greenhouse gases. It is too complex because in trying to deal with added complexity it has become unwieldy and clearly impractical from the standpoint of not just implementation but the politics of even reaching an agreement about implementation.

Climate policy can be improved by reconstructing climate policy from the bottom up. This process should begin by recognizing that no single policy instrument will ever deal with “climate change” (human caused or otherwise). An approach to climate policy that is decentralized and more focused in its elements will be better able to adjust as science evolves (and it will continue to evolve, to be sure) and allows for progress to be made incrementally along a set of parallel paths. The all-or-nothing approach to climate policy that dominates the present agenda is incapable of keeping pace with evolving scientific understandings as they relate to policy implementation, and from a pragmatic perspective, pretty much guarantees the “nothing” outcome.”

For further discussion of my views on this issue, please see, for example,  RA Pielke Sr. Position Statements and Summary Of Roger A. Pielke Sr’s View Of Climate Science.

The Human Ecology of Collapse, Part 1   by John Michael Greer  (The Archdruid Report)
The old legend of the Holy Grail has a plot twist that’s oddly relevant to the predicament of industrial civilization. A knight who went searching for the Grail, so the story has it, if he was brave and pure, would sooner or later reach an isolated castle in the midst of the desolate Waste Land. There the Grail could be found and the Waste Land made green again, but only if the knight asked the right question. Failing that, he would wake the next morning in a deserted castle, which would vanish behind him as soon as he left, and it might take years of searching to find the castle again.

As we approach the twilight of the age of cheap energy, we’re arguably in a similar situation. It seems to me that a great deal of the confusion that grips the peak oil scene, and even more of the blind commitment to catastrophically misguided policies that reigns outside peak-aware circles, comes from a failure to ask the right questions. A great many people aware of the limits to fossil fuels, for example, have assumed that the question that needs answering is how to sustain a modern industrial society on alternative energy.

Ask that, though, and you’re back in the Waste Land, because any answer you give to that question is wrong. The question that has to be asked is whether a modern industrial society can exist at all without vast and rising inputs of essentially free energy, of the sort only available on this planet from fossil fuels, and the answer is no. Once that’s grasped, other useful questions come to mind – for example, how much of the useful legacy of the last three centuries can be saved, and how – but until you get past the wrong question, you’re stuck chasing the mirage of a replacement for oil that didn’t take a hundred million years or so to come into being.


Still, I think a great many people are beginning to realize that whatever results come out of Copenhagen, a meaningful response to the increasing instability of global climate will not be among them. James Hansen, among the most prestigious of global warming scientists, has announced to the media that he hopes the Copenhagen talks fail, because none of the options being taken to the talks would have any useful result; we’d be better off, he argues, to start over again from scratch. He’s right about the first point, it seems to me, and wrong about the second, because if we start again from scratch, care to guess where we’ll end up? Right back where we are now, face to face with the yawning gap between those things that are politically possible and those things that would actually deal with the crisis at hand.

Those people who are not in positions of power, and thus don’t have to face the consequences of political decisions, commonly insist that politicians can or should simply leap across chasms of this sort to deliver the goods to their constituents. Copenhagen offers a useful lesson on why such rhetoric is wasted breath. Suppose, for the sake of discussion, that Obama agreed to cut US carbon emissions far enough to make a real impact on global climate change. Would those cuts happen? No, because Congress would have to agree to implement them, and Congress – even though it is controlled by a Democratic majority – has so far been unable to pass even the most ineffectual legislation on the subject.



.....Beneath all the yelling, though, are a set of brutal facts nobody is willing to address. Whether or not the current round of climate instability is entirely the product of anthropogenic CO2 emissions is actually not that important, because it’s even more stupid to dump greenhouse gases into a naturally unstable climate system than it would be to dump them into a stable one. Over the long run, the only level of carbon pollution that is actually sustainable is zero net emissions, and getting there any time soon would require something not far from the dismantling of industrial society and its replacement with something much less affluent. Now of course we would have to do this anyway, since the world’s fossil fuel supplies are depleting fast enough that production limits will begin to bite hard in the years and decades ahead, but this simply sharpens the point at issue.

Even if it turns out to be possible to power something like an industrial society on renewable resources, the huge energy, labor, and materials costs needed to develop renewable energy and replace most of the infrastructure of today’s society with new systems geared to new energy sources will have to be paid out of existing supplies; thus everything else would have to be cut to the bone, or beyond. Exactly how big the price tag would be is anybody’s guess just now, but it’s probably not far from the mark to suggest that the population of the industrial world would have to accept a Third World standard of living, and the population of the Third World would have to give up aspirations for a better life for the foreseeable future, for such a gargantuan project to have any chance of working.

I encourage those who think this latter is a politically viable option to try to convince their spouses and friends to take such steps voluntarily. Any politician rash enough to propose such a project would be well advised to kiss his or her next election goodbye. Any president who even took a step in that direction – well, I doubt many people have forgotten what happened to Jimmy Carter. For that matter, I’m sure there must be climate change zealots who have given up their McMansions, sold their cars, and now live in one-room apartments in rat-infested tenements with six other activists so all their spare money can go to building a renewable economy, but I don’t happen to know any who have done so, while I long ago lost track of the number of global warming bumper stickers I’ve seen on the rear ends of SUVs.

Nobody, but nobody, is willing to deal with the harsh reality of what a carbon-neutral society would have to be like. This is what makes the blame game so popular, and it also provides the impetus behind meaningless gestures of the sort that are on the table at Copenhagen. It’s a common piece of rhetoric these days to say that “failure is not an option,” but this sort of feckless thoughtstopper misses the point as totally as any human utterance possibly could. Failure is always an option; when trying to prevent it will lead to highly unpleasant personal consequences, without actually having the least chance of preventing it, a strong case can be made that the most viable option for anyone in a leadership position is to enjoy the party while it lasts, and hope you can duck the blame when it all comes crashing down.

Those who have their doubts about anthropogenic climate change can apply the identical logic to the industrial world’s sustained nonresponse to the peaking of world oil production, or to any of half a dozen other global crises that result from the collision between an economy geared to infinite growth and the relentless limits of a finite planet. In each case, the immediate costs of doing something about the issue are so high, and so unendurable, that very few people in positions of influence are willing to stick their necks out, and those who do so can count on being shortened by a head by others who are more than willing to cash in on their folly.