Protecting Life on the Blue Marble

Sometimes we need a little perspective to get our priorities straight. As Bill McKibben points out in "The Great Carbon Bubble: Why the Fossil Fuel Industry Fights So Hard," we experienced the greatest weather extremes in recorded history in 2011, 14 weather disasters in the U.S. alone. And yet we have an entire political party in denial that there are any large-scale dynamics at work in the global weather system that potentially threaten our survival.

Why is the fossil fuel working so hard to spread denial about climate change? As in many things in life, follow the money.

Part of it’s simple enough: the giant energy companies are making so much money right now that they can’t stop gorging themselves. ExxonMobil, year after year, pulls in more money than any company in history. Chevron’s not far behind. Everyone in the business is swimming in money.

Still, they could theoretically invest all that cash in new clean technology or research and development for the same. As it happens, though, they’ve got a deeper problem, one that’s become clear only in the last few years. Put briefly: their value is largely based on fossil-fuel reserves that won’t be burned if we ever take global warming seriously.

The billions of dollars in profits earned by Chevron and ExxonMobil will build a lot of mansions for their highly paid executives. But, what's the point of a mansion if you don't have a habitable planet to build it on?

Attack of the Deniers

A few snowstorms bring out the climate change deniers in force, proudly displaying their ignorance in mistaking meterological events with long-term climate trends. The winter of 2009/2010 has given them an unexpected windfall of events to use as ammunition in their misinformation campaigns, which appear to be working: more and more Americans no longer believe climate change is a matter of importance.

A TomDispatch article by Bill McKibben, one of the first writers to sound the global warming alarm as scientific studies came to light, examines the phenomenon of the denier movement and considers their tactics and motivation.

The fact that the media gives the skeptics high-profile coverage is one reason behind the diminishing belief in climate change, despite overwhelming and growing body of scientific evidence.

The climate deniers come with a few built-in advantages. Thanks to Exxon Mobil and others with a vested interest in debunking climate-change research, their “think tanks” have plenty of money, none of which gets wasted doing actual research to disprove climate change. It’s also useful for a movement to have its own TV network, Fox, though even more crucial to the denial movement are a few rightwing British tabloids which validate each new “scandal” and put it into media play.

That these guys are geniuses at working the media was proved this February when even the New York Times ran a front page story, “Skeptics Find Fault With U.N. Climate Panel,” which recycled most of the accusations of the past few months. What made it such a glorious testament to their success was the chief source cited by the Times: one Christopher Monckton, or Lord Monckton as he prefers to be called since he is some kind of British viscount. He is also identified as a “former advisor to Margaret Thatcher,” and he did write a piece for the American Spectator during her term as prime minister offering his prescriptions for “the only way to stop AIDS”:

"...screen the entire population regularly and… quarantine all carriers of the disease for life. Every member of the population should be blood-tested every month... all those found to be infected with the virus, even if only as carriers, should be isolated compulsorily, immediately, and permanently.”

He speaks with equal gusto and good sense on matters climatic -- and now from above the fold in the paper of record.

While the fossil-fuel companies fight furiously to dispute climate science, McKibben notes that the Chinese are already taking advantage of American inaction.

Right now, China is gearing up to dominate the green energy market. They’re making the investments that mean future windmills and solar panels, even ones installed in this country, will be likely to arrive from factories in Chenzhou, not Chicago.

McKibben's upcoming book is Eaarth: Making a Life on as Tough New Planet.

Drought and Nuclear Power

The prospect of water wars and extended drought as a side effect of global warming places the nuclear power industry in an increasingly untenable position. As nuclear power proponents try to cast the moribund technology as a carbon-free power source to lead us out of the global warming crisis, real-world concerns cast a different light on nuclear futures.

As reported by The Associated Press and reposted on CommonDreams.org, droughts across the Southeast United States could force serious power reductions or plant shutdowns this coming year. The rivers and lakes that supply the cooling water essential to plant operation are at extremely low levels.

Already, there has been one brief, drought-related shutdown, at a reactor in Alabama over the summer.

“Water is the nuclear industry’s Achilles’ heel,” said Jim Warren, executive director of N.C. Waste Awareness and Reduction Network, an environmental group critical of nuclear power. “You need a lot of water to operate nuclear plants.” He added: “This is becoming a crisis.”

The current situation mirrors the crisis that occurred in Europe during the heat wave in 2006. Countries dependent on nuclear power often had to reduce power or shut down as the temperatures soared. Buying electricity from other sources in this type of situation is very expensive.

During Europe’s brutal 2006 heat wave, French, Spanish and German utilities were forced to shut down some of their nuclear plants and reduce power at others because of low water levels - some for as much as a week.

If a prolonged shutdown like that were to happen in the Southeast, utilities in the region might have to buy electricity on the wholesale market, and the high costs could be passed on to customers.

“Currently, nuclear power costs between $5 to $7 to produce a megawatt hour,” said Daniele Seitz, an energy analyst with New York-based Dahlman Rose & Co. “It would cost 10 times that amount that if you had to buy replacement power - especially during the summer.”

There are many other reasons why nuclear power doesn't make sense (safety concerns, waste disposal, scarcity of uranium ore, cost overruns, terrorist threats), but sometimes the issue is basic and inescapable: without abundant water, nuclear power plants can't operate.

Global Warming and World Instability

While dwindling numbers of deniers continue to minimize the threats of global warming, a group of United States military leaders, including retired four-star General Anthony Zinni, have released a report on the potential impact of climate change on our nation's security. This piece was produced by the Real News.

Addressing the Climate Skeptics

The British refer to them as "sceptics" rather than "skeptics", but regardless of their geographic location their sceptical arguments tend to fall into predictible groups, as noted in this BBC News special report, which is prefaced as follows:

What are some of the reasons why "climate sceptics" dispute the evidence that human activities such as industrial emissions of greenhouse gases and deforestation are bringing potentially dangerous changes to the Earth's climate?
As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) finalises its landmark report for 2007, we look at 10 of the arguments most often made against the IPCC consensus, and some of the counter-arguments made by scientists who agree with the IPCC.

In an accompanying piece, BBC environmental correspondent Richard Black queried the 61 "accredited experts in climate and related scientific disciplines" (as they described themselves) who wrote an open letter to Canada's newly elected prime minister, Stephen Harper. The letter essentially implored that the government revisit the current climate change plans and rethink the approach.

Of the respondents, Black summarized their positions in these terms:

So to the results. Ten out of the 14 agreed that the Earth's surface temperature had risen over the last 50 years; three said it had not, with one equivocal response.

Nine agreed that atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide had risen over the last century, with two saying decidedly that levels had not risen. Eight said that human factors were principally driving the rise.

Twelve of the fourteen agreed that in principle, rising greenhouse gas concentrations should increase temperatures.

But eight cited the Sun as the principal factor behind the observed temperature increase.

And nine said the "urban heat island" effect - where progressive urbanisation around weather stations has increased the amount of heat generated locally - had affected the record of historical temperatures.

Eleven believed rising greenhouse gas concentrations would not result in "dangerous" climate change, and 12 said it would be unwise for the global community to restrain production of carbon dioxide and the other relevant gases, with several suggesting that such restraint would bring economic disruption.

Black goes further into the nature of the responses and if you're interested in the varying rationales that climate skeptics employ, this piece is engaging and revealing.

One of the contributors to the Real Climate site (a group of scientists who blog about climate change issues--their tagline: Climate science from climate scientists), NASA climate modeler Gavin A. Schmidt, worked with Black to consolidate the contrarian arguments presented in the article, which he found weak and disappointing on the whole:

Alongside each of these talking points, is a counter-point from the mainstream (full disclosure, I helped Richard edit some of those). In truth though, I was a little disappointed at how lame their 'top 10′ arguments were. In order, they are: false, a cherry pick, a red herring, false, false, false, a red herring, a red herring, false and a strawman. They even used the 'grapes grew in medieval England' meme that you'd think they'd have abandoned already given that more grapes are grown in England now than ever before (see here). Another commonplace untruth is the claim that water vapour is '98% of the greenhouse effect' - it's just not.

So why do the contrarians still use arguments that are blatantly false? I think the most obvious reason is that they are simply not interested (as a whole) in providing a coherent counter story. If science has one overriding principle, it is that you should adjust your thinking in the light of new information and discoveries - the contrarians continued use of old, tired and discredited arguments demonstrates their divorce from the scientific process more clearly than any densely argued rebuttal.

If the few climate skeptics that remain hope to have any influence in governmental or societal changes in the decades ahead, they're going to have to marshall some better arguments--arguments that can't be so easily refuted.