Posts Tagged ‘Anthropocene’

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Climate and conversation

May 22, 2019

These are a few suggestions based on reading and occasional interaction…
This is not a research article.

Lets begin with the don’ts.

Don’t talk about climate change.
If people do not “believe” in climate change, you are not going to persuade them otherwise.
Groups are already polarised on this issue, and it brings up lots of reasons not to talk to each other, suspicions and so on. It becomes a matter of identity and allegiance. You need to go beyond this.

Don’t go on about the evidence.
They have rejected the evidence, and you personally are probably not a climate researcher.
Both of you are taking the evidence to a large extent based on authority.
They believe a different authority, or think they are “independent thinkers”.

Some psycho-social research shows that counter-evidence to what people already believe, is rarely compelling and sets up resistance especially when its tied in with identity politics (which seems to be the case on both sides).

Another obvious point: Talking about people or telling people they are ignorant, stupid or easily conned is harmful to communication. That they already call you similar things does not excuse this. Only do it, if you want to waste your time.

If you are a politician speaking to a wide audience, then its different. You have to clearly say what you will do and why its not harmful.
You need to lower fear and scare. And climate change is scary (even if you deny it, the you are probably scared of what those other people might do to stop it).

For example Bill Shorten, Australian Labor Party leader, could have said, and as far as I can tell did not say:

“The Adani mine will not bring jobs. In court, talking about the big mine, Adani promised less then 1,500 job *years* of work for people in the mine or as a result of the mine. This is not very many, especially given the project is supposed to last 25 to 30 years. There are 750 two year jobs for example. We will actively compensate for and exceed these few jobs in Central Queensland, with useful projects (names a few).
“The Adani mine, being open cut, is likely to pollute the Great Artesian Basin and that could damage water supplies and agriculture down large parts of east coast Australia. We cannot risk that loss of jobs, food security and prosperity. If water safety cannot be guaranteed, or we find the CSIRO were pressured to give a particular result, the mine will not go ahead. We will also not support Adani being given unlimited rights to water, this is suicidal given current climatic conditions
“We want to encourage electric cars, not force people to buy them. As usual the Government is lying.”

This still will not get your message through the Murdoch Empire. They will lie about you whatever you do, but keep on trying – people don’t have to depend on them.

What can you do?

First off.

Talk and building connection is more important than persuasion.

You might even learn something if you are not trying to persuade people. They may still try and score points off you, but just keep talking, making some kind of connection. They may even say things you can agree with, and that can build bonds.

You don’t have to agree with people on everything to like them, or talk to them. This idea is quite radical in itself in our society 🙂 It is also a lot easier to say, than to do. Our society does not encourage discussion, it encourages telling people each other where they are wrong (This is a “think about doing what i say, not what i do” post 🙂

Face to face is probably better.
You can talk in groups, many people find it easier, but it can also open old fractures, so get ready to damp that down. That people turned up, means they are interested in talking.

Sense of Place Nearly everyone has some kind of tie to a place they love, means a lot to them, or is their home. What is it about that place? What do they do there? Is it the same as it was? If not, how has it changed. How could it be protected?

Again, the point is to explore relation to place. It is not about cause or blame, unless the others introduce that.

People who may deny climate change can talk about lengthening drought, changes in wildlife, the decline in bird species, the difficulties with water, the greater amounts of fertiliser they have to use, the increase in dirt (particulate pollution?). What other changes affect their lives? Are you both gardeners? – that can lead to ecological connection, although it does not have to. All these are important, but they won’t talk if they feel you are trying to manipulate them or sell them something. So don’t. People’s experience of place and change is interesting in itself – its actually vital.

There is no ecological thinking without an awareness of the environment – and awareness of environment leads to new questions and thinking.

Talk about your own experiences apolitically – give back. What might you share?
If you live in a country area, you probably know the place they are talking about, and can probably relate to them.

What remedies might they have tried? If nothing, then fine, but it is likely they have tried something; like cleanups, changing the water flows, rotating crops, tree planting, opening a wind farm, having an Airbnb to raise cash, moving to a different place etc. How did it work? How do they find the bank, or government (or other) services? What have they heard about, but is really not practical?

There is lots of stuff to talk about. Perhaps they are as depressed/distressed as you, but about other things.

In ecology everything is connected. Surprising things happen. Maybe they got in a rainmaker and it worked. Maybe turtles appeared out of nowhere. It’s good to relate to a special place and notice changes.

The point is this is a long process requiring patience. Its about building relationships, building communities, that have been (I suspect) deliberately broken, largely by pro-fossil fuel organisations and political opportunism. Be prepared for things to go wrong. In some cases people have a lot invested in preventing conversations. You just start again, maybe with different people.

It is not about winning. We either get through this together or not at all, and we can all learn.

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Pollution and Extraction

May 10, 2019

Climate Change is not our main problem. Climate change is symptomatic of two other major problems:

1) Pollution and
2) Extraction

1) Let us define ‘waste’ as the byproducts of production and consumption that can be ‘re-cycled’ or processed by either the economic system or ecological system.

‘Pollution’ is then defined as the byproducts of production and consumption that cannot be ‘recyled’ or processed by the economic or ecological systems.

Sometimes, what would normally be waste can be produced in quantities which exceed the capacity of the ecology or economy to reprocess and it becomes pollution, as has happened with CO2 emissions. It is theoretically possible that pollution could likewise become waste, but I’m not sure this has ever happened easily or well. It is often hard to make reprocessing pollution profitable or even cheap (financially or energetically).

The changes to geological markers which define the Anthropocene are largely down to pollution. Climate change is mostly generated by pollution from excess greenhouse gas emissions made from energy production.

2) Extraction is the process of extracting food, minerals, materials, fuels etc. from the earth’s ecologies.

Extraction can likewise be of two types.

‘Tame extraction’ which allows the ecological system to repair itself after the extraction occurs. This takes time.
‘Excessive extraction’ which damages the ecological system, either through straightforward destruction, or through not allowing the ecology the time to regenerate.

The more ecologies are damaged the less they can process and recycle waste, therefore excessive extraction increases the chance that waste will become pollution.

For example, the amount of carbon dioxide we can produce safely goes down as we increase deforestation and poisoning of the oceans. Instead of being absorbed, as it should be, CO2 increases and traps in heat, changing the climate. This is compounded by massive increases in the amounts of CO2 and other Greenhouse gases being emitted, largely through burning fossil fuels (or dead forests), but emissions from warming seas and tundras are also starting to accelerate, and the weather becomes more tumultuous and unstable.

Politics of pollution and extraction

Pollution has both an economics and a politics. Pollution is emitted because it is cheaper to emit it than to restrain it, or to reprocess it. Pollution increases profit. We might say a key technique of capitalism is to freeload costs onto taxpayers or those who cannot resist. This is why pro-corporate politicians, such as President Trump, often boast about how they are reducing green tape and making it easier to pollute and poison people. So any political or economic system with people in power who consider reprocessing pollution too expensive, too diminishing of corporate (or other) profit, or as inhibiting some other beneficial project, will increase pollution, and that will have consequences; in some cases that will include direct harm to people. One, not yet recognized problem for polluters, is that some forms of pollution cannot be confined; they affect everyone detrimentally.

The politics of excessive extraction is similar. It is cheaper and more profitable (in the short term) to destroy ecologies than it is to preserve them. This is especially the case if the companies involved do not have a local base. They can then move elsewhere leaving a trail of destruction behind them. A good example of this is coal mining in Australia. Anyone who travels to the Hunter Valley can observe this, if they are careful, as the destruction is often hidden by high green mounds alongside the roads. We also have massive over-fishing in the world’s oceans because it is cheaper to take huge amounts of fish than to fish selectively. This is helping to causing a complete destruction of ocean ecological cycles, which is furthered by plastic, oil and other pollution. Small fisher peoples cannot compete and they end up having to change their lives and buy the fish they used to catch or starve. It is no longer true that if you teach a person to fish you feed them for a lifetime.

The politics of pollution and the politics of extraction mean there is a tendency to put the pollution and the destruction from excessive extraction onto relatively powerless people. Powerful people, by definition, often have the ability to push poison and mess away from themselves, and the wealth to import food from places that have not yet been destroyed. It is almost always the poor, or those living in relatively remote places that suffer poisoning, or destruction of their land and surroundings. However, the effects of destruction cannot always be confined (it spreads) and as poor and remote areas get destroyed, the destruction is likely to move into more prosperous areas. For example, with the NSW government’s determination to poison residents, and destroy their homes, with the Westconnex highway and tunnel system so a toll company can tax travel forever. Pollution may also have a psycho-political component as putting it on others indicates dominance over those others, and is a literal way of making a mark on the world – hence the apparent joy some people appear to take in polluting.

The problems we face increase because pollution and destruction go hand in hand. They reinforce each other, or feedback into each other, making the situation worse. They further reinforce and are reinforced by relations of power. Governments want to encourage business, economic growth and development and, in current terms, that means pollution and excessive extraction. There is little corrective available, unless governments can be recaptured by the people being damaged, and regulations imposed on the amount of pollution that can be emitted and the amount of destruction that will be tolerated. This in itself generates a problem in an age of international neoliberal capital. Capital will likely move to them areas of lowest regulation and highest permissible destruction, because this is more profitable, leaving the area without the investment. The oceans are a particular problem as it is easy to escape observation of destruction and pollution at sea, and there is confusion over who controls what is done.

So while local regulation is important, it is also important to have international regulation, and then international competition for capital and investment can get in the way.

Unfortunately, neoliberal governments tend to believe that the State exists to protect and encourage corporate business and wealth, and regulations are only worthwhile when they prevent opposition to business, or protect established business, and hence the idea that business should be regulated for the general good, or for self-protection is anathema, and hard to achieve. People also tend to think that more consumption is good, and this supports destruction by business.

This implies nothing will change without a general change in philosophy, as well as encouragement and support for those who are resisting pollution and excessive extraction in their local areas.

To reiterate, climate change is, itself, not the problem. The problem is that we are destroying and overloading our ecologies through pollution and excessive extraction, and this is occurring for political and economic reasons; often to reinforce the power and wealth of the corporate elites. Climate change is just a very destructive symptom of these processes, which makes everything worse.

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Will “Nature” adapt to climate change?

March 31, 2019

“Nature” is facing massive ecological disruptions through pollution, poisoning, disruption of chemical cycles, deforestation, over-fishing, intensive agriculture, massive fires, and so on, as well as through climate change.

Nature will adapt. It will change; nature always changes. Vast numbers of creatures are already going extinct or are extinct, or are moving to new places, so the evidence for massive change, happening now, is pretty high.

However, humans probably cannot kill off the entire biosphere. Even with nuclear war, some of the planet and its life will remain. We can change Nature, perhaps impoverish nature (for a long while) but probably will not exterminate it.

More narrowly a more useful focus is whether, with all these changes in ecology, human life will be able to continue and progress the way that it is already doing.

The answer is probably not. Massive weather fluctuations, storms, floods, droughts, water shortages, food shortages, sea level rises, etc. will make huge challenges for human societies. We humans will probably not adapt quickly enough to maintain large scale civilisations. We probably won’t die out as a species, but that is a matter of hope – plenty of individuals will die early if we don’t adapt.

Partly, this failure to adapt will occur, if it occurs, because powerful and wealthy people do not like change as it threatens both their power and wealth.

Those elites benefit from, and have largely initiated, the politics and economics that are causing the problems, so it is hard for them to face the uncertainty of complete change. They can (and do) spend heaps of money convincing people that nothing is happening, that we play no role in what is happening, that there is nothing we can do, or that things will get better.

They may well think that they can survive, and it is just us ordinary folk that will suffer. Some forms of capitalism encourage the idea that it’s every ‘man’ for themselves, so it is possible.

Consequently, we cannot passively rely on economic or political elites to adapt societies for us. We have to participate in, and agitate for, the adaptation ourselves. And that involves admitting the possibility of change, and facing the fear, grief and other forms of distress together with others, as things pass away, and organizing with others to do something constructive. Even small changes in your personal life are a start towards this. Small changes mount up.

We may not have enough time. But if we give up, and let the uninterested elites triumph, then we will not have enough time.

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Sea level rise and Climate change

March 31, 2019

We all know the threat that coastal cities will likely be inundated by rising seas. Indeed in some parts of Australia, Local Councils are apparently declaring that some low lying residential areas are to be abandoned. Residents are, I’m told, even being forbidden from raising their houses higher or otherwise attempting to protect them. This is, in my opinion, crazy. It seems to be a way of trying to pretend that we should not act, or that everything will be ok.

Other people point out that certain cities, such as New Orleans, or even countries such as Holland, are already beneath sea level, and its all ok. Of course in New Orleans this was one reason why Katrina was so disastrous. However, when things, like being beneath sea level are normal, and have been normal for a long time, they can be generally be dealt with, no question. Levee and dyke walls already exist and perhaps it will be feasible to expand them to cope with the extra pressure of more water.

Some problems here stem from the nature of the cities themselves. Some cities are built on relatively porous rock, or even on sand (think of the Queensland Gold Coast) and, in that case, waters may flow under levy walls, and rise up to sea level. New sea walls are also likely to have to extend either for large distances inland or along the coast and change the coastal ecology and erosion patterns – although those will also be changed by climate change. Relatively close to the surface water tables could also be contaminated. It is complicated.

Other people can argue that the current rate of sea level rise is so slow that we have nothing to worry about at all. For example we can quote the Royal society, the “best estimates of the global-average rise over the last two decades centred on 3.2 mm per year (0.12 inches per year).” At this rate it would take over 600 years to get a rise of 2 metres. We could probably deal with this quite easily.

However, there are lots of problems with accurate prediction of such things as sea level rise.

The first is that the rate of rise is not going to be linear. The more land ice melts, the less radiation reflected into space and the more land ice will melt. The more greenhouse gases we keep emitting then the faster the melting will happen, and if we reach the tipping points at which methane starts rising from the deep ocean and the tundras, then it could start happening very rapidly.

People keep talking as if climate change and its problems expressed a nice gentle and smooth process, but it is not going to be that way. It is turbulent and chaotic. The climate system is what is known as “complex”, and turbulent change, once it is thrown out of equilibrium, is its nature. It will be hard to deal with, once things really start shifting, and they could shift rapidly.

That is why we need to act now while the situation is not too bad. That is why we keep being told that we have to reach greenhouse gas targets by 2030, and that it is better to come in even lower. If we don’t reach those targets then the probability of great turbulence is very high.

Anyone who tells you there is nothing to worry about, is assuming that they can predict a nice transition or control that transition. This position is extremely unlikely.

It is best to agitate for action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reduce the possibility of chaos, now.

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The difficulties of being climate aware: Social and Psychological

March 4, 2019

Official climate action is way too slow. Despite Rightist allegations that governments are pro-climate change because they could use it to increase their power and suppress dissent, on the whole governments seem extremely reluctant to do anything about climate change or ecological destruction. We can see them threaten scientists or others who talk out, remove useful information from official websites, appoint industry figures to investigate climate change or to lead departments of environment, attempt to destroy data, support coal mining and construction of coal power, change regulations constantly so as to make renewable ventures more difficult, make it easier to do more land clearing and emit more pollution and so on. There are few governments in the world who don’t exhibit at least some of these policies.

Why does this happen? For two main reasons.

  • 1) Dealing with climate change is difficult both practically and psychologically, and
  • 2) [a related factor] Dealing with climate change disadvantages quite a number of established powerful people who would have to stop making money from actions which lead to climate change. Change is threatening, as other people might displace them, or they might lose out on their current positions. Imagining change is psychologically disorienting for many people.

    • Those people who are interested in doing something about climate change, may need to remember that an extremely powerful and wealthy group of elites oppose them. Activists are the underdog, and this can be a hard position to accept.

    Corporations and Governments have (for about the last 100 years or so) been tied in with a model of profit and development which depends on fossil fuel consumption, the massive dumping of pollution on less powerful people (where possible) together with the destruction of natural resources, through mining, deforestation, housing development, industrial farming, modes of warfare, and so on.

    It should be hardly necessary to add that while this process has helped lift millions of people out of poverty, it has also forcibly dispossessed millions of people from relative self-sufficiency into wage labour and dependece, and stopped people from living a roughly sustainable life style. It has also produced truly massive inequalities of wealth. And massive inequalities of wealth lead to massive inequalities of power, confidence and apparent ability to act.

    Those wealthy people and organisations who get wealthy from producing climate change and ecological destruction as side-effects of their wealth generation, can buy governments all over the world. They are marked as wise and successful people by their wealth, they have access to governments, they can provide well-paying jobs for people who help them and so on.

    In most countries they own and control the media, and hence they either attack ideas of climate change, threaten climate scientists, provide money for ‘skeptical’ research, or at the best pretend that the science is undecided and hire opinion writers to scare people about climate science, the economic consequences of change, or the abuse and exile you will suffer if you oppose them. This occurs irrespectively of whether the media is supposed to be ‘left’ or ‘righteous’, as it is still largely owned by corporate people. This wealthy group also supports think-tanks which make money by providing arguments in favour of their aims.

    Government people often give more credence to endlessly repeated ‘information’ they read and hear, than they do to real research, and if governments were to act then they might lose media and donor support, so they could lose government. Governments (particularly in ‘developing countries’) also fear that if they did not maintain ecological destruction then it would be difficult to increase living standards for their people, and thus they would be replaced by governments who might be even worse. Investors might go on strike and take their money elsewhere. There is no obvious way forward – renewables may not work as well as fossil fuels.

    So you will find power and bought-information working against any progress towards not destroying our current ecology and eventually our civilisation.

    It almost goes without saying that realizing the world you depend upon is being destroyed, and that powerful people support that destruction or, at best turn away from it, is deeply depressing. It is also isolating as most people follow the lead established and find it difficult to talk about climate change, or will dismiss it as a ‘downer’; and it does hit people by reminding them of ends and mortality. Global ecological destruction is too upsetting for many people to face.

    Acting requires people to change their lives, and to admit that their children and grandchildren are endangered by ordinary life; you too are partially responsible for climate change, through how you live, what you buy, and what you consume. It is hard to keep psychologically functional and live with the realization that you face almost overwhelming power and overwhelming routine. Changing one’s life is threatening for both powerful and ordinary people. Climate change and its consequences may even satisfy any unconscious desires you have for self destruction.

    To some extent, continuing with climate change depends on you giving up, and accepting some other group’s superior power over your life and fate, and that too is hard to face.

    But, despite the overwhelming odds and difficulties, you have to continue to fight anyway, in whatever way you can. It is helpful to remember that many local communities are working together, sometimes rather anarchically, outside the system, or breaking the regulations, in order to do something. There are likely to be people in your local area interested in practical action, who are not blinded by the wealthy and powerful, and who just get on with things. They may be prepared to talk and express their feelings and recognize the difficulties even while they act. They act even if all seems dark, just as people have done when facing invasion or tyranny – and acting is a tonic providing you recognize the darkness within and do not suppress it or let yourself be taken over by it.

    See if you can find such groups and join in. If you don’t like a particular group, there will probably be some other groups you can link together with. It may be useful to engage in therapy, providing the therapist does not encourage you to isolate yourself from action, or the problem. It may be useful to learn how to work with your dreams as they reveal information, symbolically, that you may otherwise be unaware of. There is no reason why action cannot lead to a happier more contented self, once you realise the traps. The current state of affairs leads to a despondent, or suppressive, self. Moving to oppose, or get out of the system, may help you in every way possible.

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    Three Objections to Jancovici

    March 1, 2019

    Final post, in this series, on Jancovici. I’ll try and move on to more detailed theorists of energy, entropy and economics soon. Here are some responses to people’s objections to his positions.

    Objection 1) Jancovici ignores technological development and invention which means that energy can be used with greater effect, or that old ways of doing things can be superseded. For example, nowadays you do not need a car to transport a message, you can use email. Similarly, Energy usage for any activity is not necessarily constant.
    This possibility implies economies may be able to increase growth without more energy consumption.

    Answer: Technological development does not always occur because we need it. We cannot depend on hope or imagined tech, or imagine that the hoped for technology will be deployable in the limited time frames available to us. If such tech arises then good, but we cannot assume it will arise.

    Furthermore, the Jevons effect (the idea that the more energy can be produced cheaply the more will be used), seems demonstrated. There seems to be no evidence that energy efficiency is commonly used in capitalism to reduce energy consumption. Can anyone give an illustration of where more energy could be produced and was not used to produce more of the same, or diverted into producing other goods?

    Inventions like the internet may not have reduced energy usage. Not only is massive energy required to power the internet and store data, but internet shopping has massively boosted transport of packages to individual locations and probably increased transport energy demands.

    Progress does not always imply the end of all limits. If we could use oil ten times as efficiently as we do now, we will still eventually run out of oil, and it is (perhaps even more) unlikely that we will stop using oil before it runs out.

    Technological development may drive a demand for energy, and hence for ‘dirty’ and destructive energy production. It is also the case that dubious financial processes can support, otherwise uneconomic fuel collecting for periods of time, to reinforce the old system. This appears to be the case with fracking, shale oil, tar sands and so on, which seem to be given energy by debt and hope.

    This latter point also implies we may also need to look at ‘lock-in’ and ‘path dependence’ as part of our problem, not just because history can limit our options, but because old technology and its organisation frequently supports relations of power, wealth and communication which actively oppose any transformation. Transformation is not simply a matter of people automatically doing what is best for their survival, but of political struggle for the right to survive and change those relations of power, wealth and communication, while dealing with the unintended consequences of established actions and supposedly transformative actions.

    Having said that, it appears that renewables are improving in terms of reliability, lifetime, cost and storage costs. This is helpful, but it does not mean it will be enough, or that powerful people and countries will not fight to expand fossil fuel consumption for their, or these companies’, apparent profit, as China, Japan and Australia appear to be doing. There is also a temptation, especially in capitalism, to take cheap renewables which are made without regard to the energy, pollution and waste expended in their manufacture and transport – and thus give the appearance of transformation while keeping up, or even increasing, the pressures for collapse.

    If energy availability does affect what we can do, then changing energy availability, without a concerted effort to change social desires and organisations, will lead to protest and discontent.

    Objection 2) GDP may not decrease because of lack of energy, but energy usage may decrease because of decline in GDP (as with the financial crisis). When economic activity declines then energy usage will decline.

    Answer: It may well be true that a decline in GDP through a financial crisis, or lack of resources etc will depress energy consumption. We know CO2 emissions declined after 2008. But the argument is not that energy availability is the only factor involved in economic activity or GDP, but that Energy availability is a significant economic factor, and should be studied and made part of our models.

    One significant point of Jancovici’s argument is that you cannot ignore the effect of limited resources, and that some vital resources can get used up. I also argue that entropy, waste and pollution and its distribution should be part of the models, as these affect (and possibly drive) economic activity and social health.

    Everything that is produced, or every service which exists, requires energy for its creation and performance. Without available energy there is no life, no culture, and no human exchange or economics.

    Some relationship exists between economic activity and energy availability. It is, therefore, not completely without point to suggest the connection should be admitted, and we should explore how to model it.

    Objection 3) It is the contradictions of capitalism that are destroying the world.

    Answer: Energy consumption is destroying the planetary ecology because it involves burning fossil fuels, and energy consumption is a direct driver of economic growth and that too is destroying the planet through extraction, destruction and production of pollution (which can be thought of as entropic). This is the case, in many kinds of political and economic systems. This commonality does not mean that capitalism, especially neoliberal capitalism, is not a significant problem. However, we cannot just assume that if capitalism collapses then all the problems will collapse with it.

    Capitalism may intensify the problem, because the only value it recognizes is profit. If it is profitable to pollute and destroy, then it will be done, without it necessarily being an unintended effect. In this situation, attempts to constrain destruction will almost certainly be seen as destructive attempts to constrain liberty.

    To recap:

    1. We cannot assume technological innovation will allow us to generate more energy with less pollution, through some unknown or imagined technology – we have to work with what we have got.
    2. Jancovici thinks we should consider nuclear, other people think it is safer and cheaper to go without that. These are both arguments which don’t hypothesise technologies which are untried or uninvented, and so the argument is worth having.
    3. The effects of energy availability need to be explored, and factored into our economic models.
    4. The effects of entropy, destruction and pollution also need to be explored and factored into our economic models.
    5. Once we have carried out the above steps we can then examine how we need to modify or overthrow capitalism, realising that any attempts at reform will be resisted by extremely wealthy and powerful people and organisations. That the change may be necessary for survival does not mean it will arise.
    6. It seems unlikely that we can extend current western models of prosperity and daily life to the rest of the world without catastrophic consequences.

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    More on Population and River flow

    February 22, 2019

    I have a somewhat cynical tendency to think that blaming population is a way that Western people (of a largely Protestant heritage) like dealing with climate change because it absolves them. Population growth is not happening because of ‘us’, it has happening because of people in India, China (now the one child policy is gone) and because of Muslims and Catholics who breed uncontrollably. This could be seen as an example of social category theory in action: it is an outgroup that is the problem, not us.

    It probably does need to be said population could become a problem. 100 billion people is probably too many for any kind of civilization to survive and it probably would alter nature irreparably however we lived or died. We need to deal with population, but it is not our primary problem at the moment. It just intensifies the problem – we would still be in a mess if population growth stopped immediately.

    A bigger issue is the question of how much in the way of resources people consume. The Murray Darling’s water was largely consumed by business, and these businesses were draining the water not because of population, but because of the demands that business always grow and because government values business over the environment (and everything else, we might add). Water could have been held back, but as we know through an article in the SMH yesterday, more water was allocated to business despite knowledge of the likely pressures faced by the river and its marginal safety. There was no consideration for the environment at all.

    We have this reinforced by the official Coalition sponsored report which surprisingly mentions the forbidden term ‘climate change’ to explain the problem. [“The fish death events in the lower Darling were preceded and affected by exceptional climatic conditions, unparalleled in the observed climate record“. and “The recent extreme weather events in the northern Basin have been amplified by climate change.”] However, it hardly mentions irrigation usage at all. It also does not mention the facts that these irrigation businesses appear to have stolen water and engaged in fraud to get more water. Business as a explanatory cause is even more forbidden to the Right than ‘climate change’.

    This has nothing to do with population – it has to do with an ideology that says business, and short term profit, must come first.

    However, if we are going to blame population then how many people do we have to kill to solve the issue? 2 billion? 3 Billion? Reduction cannot happen naturally fast enough.

    We as a population in Australia consume and destroy far, far more (massively more) than an equivalent population of people in India. Again this points to the fact that degree and style of consumption of resources by a population is the problem, not the population by itself. If the Average person in Australia or the US consumes 20 or more times what the average person does in China should we wipe out Australians or Chinese? It would clearly be more economic and easier to wipe out Australians and people in the US. Is that such an attractive proposition?

    However, if we could solve the Murray-Darling crisis by penalising or regulating a few inappropriate businesses who use way too much water, wouldn’t that be easier and better? If businesses cannot work with the Murray Darling flowing, then they should not be there.

    Clearly if we think that people in India or China have to consume as much as we have done, or as much as our businesses do, then there will be a problem in the future. Perhaps a solution is that we should consume and destroy less, rather than they consume and destroy more? But, in any case, lets not distract ourselves with future problems when we have problems which are being generated now, and can be fixed now through being aware of what they are.

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    Population and Rivers

    February 15, 2019

    The other day, Dick Smith (a retired Australian businessman), launched an advertisement asking “why don’t you link the Murray Darling crisis to record population growth?”

    Now it is true that infinite population growth is not sustainable in any situation, so population growth is a problem. However it is not what has caused the Murray Darling issue NOW. Current population figures do not necessitate pumping the river dry for cotton, or for other large scale agri-businesses. Partly because the cotton and food is largely grown for export: we don’t even process the cotton into goods for sale overseas. It is pretty much independent of the current population size in Australia.

    Talking of population is, in this case, an avoidance of the real ‘elephant in the room’ – business – and the idea that business must always grow. If business must always grow then, in the current situation, it will always attempt to consume more water, more raw materials, and extract as much as it can from the land. This is irrespective of population growth. And these actions become particularly bad when the government thinks its main priority is increase the profit of big business, and to increase the consumption or extraction of limited natural resources by such businesses (to keep them going). And that thinking and action is well documented. The Right in particular govern for business profit alone.

    Population growth may add to the pressures, but it does so in an environment which makes development, and high profit for some, more important than water conservation or conservation of land for food production and wildlife.

    This is the ideology of neoliberalism. Profit and growth of profit is the only thing that counts.

    Maybe we do need to slow population growth, but don’t pretend that will solve problems generated by business and compliant government.

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    IPCC, complexity and climate

    February 8, 2019

    There seems to be a meme going around that the IPCC disproved climate change in one sentence and removed that sentence from reports. The sentence is:

    “The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future exact climate states is not possible.”

    The sentence is found in the “Climate Change 2001: Synthesis Report” edited by Robert T. Watson and the ‘Core Writing Team’, Published by Cambridge University Press, and recently available on the IPCC website.
    here https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/05/SYR_TAR_full_report.pdf

    (The IPCC website is being reorganized and hence stuff can be difficult to find – google does not appear to have caught up yet)

    It is in the Technical Summary Section, p.58. or page 215 of the full report
    According to Archive.org the text version of this was available between at least August 4 2009 until at least November 4 2018.

    There is no particular evidence that they hid this sentence.

    The sentence is included on a section entitled “Advancing Understanding” and is about further research into uncertainties. It is prefixed by the requirement that we need to “Explore more fully the probabilistic character of future climate states by developing multiple ensembles of model calculations.” I’d add that, it seems nowadays more generally realized that we cannot understand ecological, climate and social systems without an understanding of complexity theory.

    By my understandings of complex systems, this apparently unsuppressed sentence is entirely true: we cannot predict exact weather, or climate states, within any accuracy in the relatively distant future for a particular date or year. That is the nature of complex systems. However that does not mean we cannot predict trends, or that any result at all is possible.

    The sentence is not embarrassing, or disproving of climate science, it is, however, easily misunderstood.

    People do not understand the limits on chaos and complexity. Because we cannot predict exactly what will happen does not mean that anything can happen, or that any predictable event has equal probability, which is what ‘deniers’ seem to argue.

    It is, for example, if you will pardon the political implications, possible, but exceedingly improbable that President Trump will stop making things up, and everyone will agree that he is constantly telling the truth – at least I cannot predict the exact circumstances under which this would happen, and when it will happen. It is not an impossible event, but it is highly improbable based on the trends. Similarly, because I do not know where an ant will be on a moated table top in exactly quarter of an hour (assuming I have not placed some kind of sticky substance on the table on one spot etc.), does not mean it will start flying, or that it will talk to me. It is, likewise, extremely improbable that despite lack of certainty, and assuming weather stays stable, that it will snow in Sydney Australia in January or February.

    The point is that the inability to predict an exact climate or weather state, does not mean we cannot make informed predictions based on the trends, provided we correct for further information as it arises.

    The trends so far suggest, and seem confirmed by observation, that sea ice and land ice is thinning near the poles. Likewise glaciers seem to have been getting smaller over the last 30 years. There is no indication that these trends are reversing, and some that they are speeding up. The rate of disappearance appeared to slow down for a while, but it continued and never reversed. This in all probability means that sea levels will increase – it may mean water shortages in some places that depend on glaciation for water supply.

    It is possible that as the gulf stream shuts down, some parts of Northern Europe (especially the UK) will freeze up and ice will accumulate there. But this probably will not help that much, and is no evidence that climate change is not happening or not going to have disruptive effects.

    Similarly, if the average temperature keeps increasing elsewhere then weather patterns will be disrupted. Disruptions of the standard patterns of complex systems are nearly always fierce as the system ‘seeks’ a new equilibrium. This is especially so, if the pressures towards change continue or increase (ie if we keep emitting greenhouse gasses). It is a good prediction that we can expect more extreme weather (which is what we seem to be observing). We cannot pinpoint exactly when and where that weather will happen, but it would be foolish to pretend that this pattern is extremely unlikely to happen anywhere, or that it will discontinue in the near future. We can also expect it to become increasingly difficult to get insurance, or to find the money to rebuild cities wrecked by these storms.

    Likewise increased heat in places which are already difficult for agriculture or prolonged human labour, will probably mean that these areas become increasingly uninhabitable and production will be lowered. If people try to air condition fields with fossil fuel power (or something), that will in the long term increase pressures. This trend probably means population movements as people try to move somewhere more habitable with better food supplies. That probably means national boundary defense issues will increase. Again there is nothing, at present, to suggest that these currently existing trends will not continue.

    To encapsulate: While we cannot predict exact events, the trends are clear. If we keep emitting greenhouse gasses then the global average temperature will continue to rise. What we consider normal climate/weather will end. Sea levels will rise. Extreme weather events will become more frequent as the climate system destabilizes – the cost of repairing devastated cities may become prohibitive because there are so many crises happening simultaneously. Agricultural systems are highly likely to break down. People movement will intensify as people can no longer live in the areas they have lived recently. This may mean increased armed conflict, which is one reason why the Pentagon would be interested in climate change.

    This does not mean that people should not struggle to change the trends and therefore change the likely course of climate disruption, but those actions are likely to have unintended consequences (which are almost inevitable in complex systems), and we need to be aware of this.

    However there is almost no sign of such action happening, as people would rather pretend the unlikely is equally probable to the disastrous.

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    How to tell if climate crisis is unlikely

    January 13, 2019

    I’m sometimes asked what would convince me that global warming was not getting worse and that we did not need to do anything. This is easy. There are straight-forward observations and trends which, if present, would indicate we are not heading for climate disaster.

  • Average global temperatures returning to mid 20th Century levels or below.
  • The increase in temperature to reverse so that most of the hottest record years were not in the last 20 or so years.
  • Ocean temperatures to decline, rather than apparently warm faster than predicted.
  • Glaciers to start re-appearing on mountains
  • Ice shelfs to start thickening and stay thickened.

    • It would also be nice if we saw:

  • Fish populations start rising, with tropical fish moving back to the tropics.
  • A decline in pollution and deforestation (because if they don’t decline then you will have other problems).
  • Measurements of CO2 concentration declining back to mid 20th Century levels, rather than increasing, because the theory highly suggests that too much CO2 will increase temperatures and acidify the oceans leading to massive die-off.
  • A solution to the loss of phosphorus problem.
  • The halt of increasing numbers of species going extinct – as that is not a sign of a healthy ecology. (Really climate change is just one symptom of massive ecological destruction and we need a healthy ecology to prosper.)
  • Some common sense from denialists, and those who wish to increase pollution.

    • But I’m not holding my breath for any of these events.

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