Is the Metaphor mightier than the Noose? Delingpole and his Detractors

Controversial Telegraph blogger and arch climate skeptic James Delingpole has been up to his old tricks again, but this time he may have gone too far: by NOT calling for the execution of climate scientists.

It started with an article he wrote for The Australian (paywalled) in which he apparently ssays:

The climate alarmist industry has some very tough questions to answer: preferably in the defendant’s dock in a court of law, before a judge wearing a black cap.

This was met by outrage in some quarters, so Delingpole has penned another post in the Telegraph explaining that this is only a metaphor, and that he does not really think that either climate scientists or activists should face the death penalty:

Should Tim Flannery be fed to the crocodiles for the role he has played in the fleecing of the Australian taxpayer and the diversion of scarce resources into pointless projects like all the eyewateringly expensive desalination plants built as a result of his doomy prognostications about water shortages caused by catastrophic anthropogenic global warming?

It ought to go without saying that my answer to all these questions is – *regretful sigh* – no. First, as anyone remotely familiar with the zillion words I write every year on this blog and elsewhere, extreme authoritarianism and capital penalties just aren’t my bag. Second, and perhaps more importantly, it would be counterproductive, ugly, excessive and deeply unsatisfying.

The last thing I would want is for Monbiot, Mann, Flannery, Jones, Hansen and the rest of the Climate rogues’ gallery to be granted the mercy of quick release. Publicly humiliated? Yes please. Having all their crappy books remaindered? Definitely. Dragged away from their taxpayer funded troughs and their cushy sinecures, to be replaced by people who actually know what they’re talking about? For sure. But hanging? Hell no. Hanging is far too good for such ineffable toerags.

Not surprisingly, instead of calming the situation down and reassuring everyone that real, actual execution is not what he had in mind, the response has been… well, rather confused I would say.

Greg Laden writes that this is bad because

Imagine a call for violence and death and so on such as this coming after, rather then before, some nut bag actually kills a climate scientist? Or, to put it in more realistic terms, imagine an analogous (you know what an analogy is, right?) stream of hate speech about, say, how bad Democrats are (by a Rush Limbaugh type character) just AFTER the Gabby Gifford shooting, or a rant from a frenzied fundy on how great it would be to kill abortion providers just AFTER such a doctor is killed, or a rant from some libertarian yahoo about how teachers and schools all suck and shooting a few would be beneficial just AFTER the Sandy Hook Massacre. Think about this and then go read this man’s hate post.

Well, it is all a matter of opinion I guess, what constitutes “hate speech” and what constitutes an impassioned critique laced with provocative metaphors to make a point.

If “hate speech” it is, then this kind of thing definitely exists on both sides of the climate issue, yet Laden’s post was entitled ““It is not my job to learn the science. It is my job to call for the execution of scientists”*- with the asterix leading to a footnote explaining “*Note: The quote in the headline is a paraphrase. It’s a rhetorical device I learned in school.”

But this seems confused and misses the point: Delingpole is bending over backwards (if you will excuse the metaphor) to explain that he is not actually calling for executions. He even labors the point with a whole paragraph to show that he means it in the same way that in the testosterone-charged changing rooms of a rugby team they may say they want to “rape” the opposition, without meaning it literally. So when Laden uses the same rhetorical device he is in fact defending Delingpole’s use of the same, not exposing it.

I tweeted Laden to try to clarify:

.@gregladen @climateprogress Delingpole was provoking a response wh you oblige him with. But Parncutt was serious tallbloke.wordpress.com/2012/12/24/pro…

— Graham Strouts (@Skepteco) April 7, 2013

Laden responds:

@skepteco @climateprogress Your false equivalence is false!At two levels.

— Greg Laden (@gregladen) April 7, 2013

and after several attempts to get him to explain why- during which he repeatedly calls my questions “stupid” without answering, Laden- a prominent scientist- confirms my suspicions- that he takes Delingpole literally:

@skepteco Plz also note that he was sarcastic about trial and execution,saying that this was to good for them. It was bad, stop defending it

— Greg Laden (@gregladen) April 7, 2013

But this “hanging’s too good for ‘em!” is just more of the same kind of rhetoric, pythonesque, – he doesnt really mean it Greg! Seriously! But to Laden, any kind of critique of climate science and the policies it leads to (expensive desalination plants in Australia being the example Delingpole is on about here) is simply “denialism”: the science has spoken, end of story, closed ears, closed minds. And I really left that particular exchange feeling, what Laden is really aggrieved about is that JD’s black cap references are not serious- so he attacks him as if they were anyway.

Meanwhile, I came across another example of Delingpole’s critics being worse than him on Pharyngula, where Chris Clarke has written a post ending with this extraordinary paragraph:

Delingpole should be careful what he pretends he isn’t really wishing for. Life on this planet is likely to get very nasty for a large number of people in the next decades. At some point, as Britain suffers the third or fourth or fifth triple digit summer in as many years, and crops fail and people go hungry and the urban aged drop dead when the power goes out, there may well be calls for a “Climate Nuremberg” — and it’s doubtful that prominent denialist writers who call metaphorically for executing scientists and climate change activists will go unsummoned.

I left this comment:

So if I understand you correctly, when you say “there may well be calls for a “Climate Nuremberg” — and it’s doubtful that prominent denialist writers who call metaphorically for executing scientists and climate change activists will go unsummoned.” you are NOT being metaphorical? so while Delingpole is merely calling for a Climate Nuremberg rhetorically, you are actually serious. The only difference is that you believe Delinpole should be in the dock rather than Mann and co.. And your emotive use of language to summon up visions of a future holocaust caused by “deniers” – as if there is any straightforward agreed policy we can follow to control the weather and make it more favorable to us over the whole globe- is incredibly manipulative: you have no way of knowing that these things will happen rather than, say, an increase of cold weather deaths or simply an increase in poverty and related deaths as a result of following misguided policies to “combat climate change”- eg wind power, biodiesel, biomass or excessive carbon taxes, all of which could obviously have a much more immediate and tangible deleterious affect than climate change may or may not have at some point in the future.

This is because, let me explain since you appear to be new to the debate on climate, that the impact of climate change will depend very largely on the level of wealth and technology people have achieved; and this could be severely limited by the wrong energy policies now. But Im sure your Nuremberg trial will work through all this in a fair and balanced way and pass the correct judgement, just like all courts always do.

I was of course being facetious when saying Clarke was new to the climate debate- he has apparently been at this since 1974.

The thread then has some revealing comments: number 12 for example, “Back up your claim with peer reviewed scientific literature, and you might have a valid point.”- which at least acknowledges the validity of discussion, but why I am the only one who is supposed to come up with peer-reviewed evidence? In the context of a debate governed largely by people shutting down any dissent by use of the charge “denialist” that is actually a big win.

Comment number 23 also makes a start at engaging with the points I had made, but completely misses the point-

What about the people who don’t have that comforting buffer of wealth? Let’s not even talk about the 99% in the rich countries of the world for whom this would still be no picnic – let’s focus on the people who would really suffer in scenario like this; those who already live in the poorer regions of the world, where those government who even care to try to help their citizens lack the resouces to do so today, let alone in the wake of ongoing climate change resulting in mass crop failures and natural disasters.

This is a valid question, but what is fascinating is that the author clearly has never considered these issues- of the costs of mitigation- before. You can almost hear the cogs beginning to turn…

-of course what I am trying to say is, there seems to be something of a conundrum: burning coal has allowed 600million Chinese people come out of abject poverty over the last decade alone, thus making them less vulnerable to any future putative climate change; but clearly contributing rather a lot to global CO2 emissions.

So I wrote a response to this which was- deleted. In the comment I referred to the recent Economist article on climate sensitivity being on “negative watch”- which climate scientists Ed Hawkins has just told me on Twitter was

@skepteco Mostly good article, but issues with description of climate models & relevant research not mentioned. Perhaps ask @smeasterbrook?

— Ed Hawkins (@ed_hawkins) April 11, 2013

- and this interesting article on the proposed increase in use of heavily-subsidised wood to run power stations in order to meet climate targets- another Boondoggle as a result of over-hyped dangers of climate change.

For my troubles Clarke tells me:

There will be no climate denialism or apology therefor in my threads here. Graham Strouts, take your pseudoscience somewhere else.

How odd. It would surely have been easy enough for the author and legions of commentators on this science blog to prove me wrong- and educate me in the process- by linking to peer-reviewed consensus science. Instead, they prefer censorship, the simple removal of any dissenting views, thus ensuring their blog remains a kowtowing echo-chamber.

Delingpole has maybe gone too far this time in refusing to literally call for death sentences for those who he believes to be corrupt scientists and bureaucrats riding the gravy train of carbon taxes and “renewable energy”, and he has also met with the approbation of some of his skeptical allies.

I dont really know what I think about this- as it was pointed out to me on Twitter, all this outrage about the words of Delingpole when there are indeed real attacks and threats of violence on scientists from other disciplines where the level of rhetoric runs much higher still.

But Delingpole also could be seen to be playing a valuable role, rather like the archetype of the Joker or the Fool, provoking a reaction from those who would claim the higher moral ground but who foolishly allow themselves to be drawn out to show their true colours.

Delinpole has defended himself vigorously, saying that we need to fight back. Maybe we need a Delingpole to hook all the self-righteous climate extremists. Maybe the Metaphor really is more mightier than the sword.

11 Comments

by skepteco on April 11, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in Climate Change

Tagged climate change, James Delingpole, Pharyngula

Posted by skepteco on April 11, 2013

http://skepteco.wordpress.com/2013/04/11/is-the-metaphor-mightier-than-the-noose-delingpole-and-his-detractors/

Earth Hour: We will Never Give up our Energy Slaves

One of the good things about the Peak Oil movement is to highlight just how much work and benefit fossil fuels have actually done for us. It has been calculated for example that a barrel of oil is equivalent to something around 25,000 hours of human-muscle power or manual labour; at 60 barrles of oil consumption per year, the average American has anything then from 60-450 “energy slaves” working around the clock for them, providing lighting, heating, food, transport and entertainment, not to mention health care and art and other cultural exploits.

This reality of modern life was brought home most effectively in a TV show a couple of years ago in which, unbeknownst to the residents, a family house was run for a week literally by a gym full of pedal-powered dynamos- including the “Human Power Shower”:

What is odd then is how this emancipation from drudgery that fossil fuels have given us is often decried as more of a curse than a blessing. Peak oil guru Richard Heinberg for example quotes Nikiforuk’s new book (which I have not read) The Energy of Slaves: Oil and the New Servitude:

The energy in oil effectively replaces human labor; as a result, each North American enjoys the services of roughly 150 “energy slaves.” But, according to Nikiforuk, that means that burning oil makes us slave masters—and slave masters all tend to mimic the same attitudes and behaviors, including contempt, arrogance, and impunity. As power addicts, we become both less sociable and easier to manipulate.

This would seem to be a classic example of retro-romantic thinking- the conviction that things are not perfect now so they must have been much better in the past- thinly disguised as concern about “dependency” on or even “addiction” to oil and technology, which is apparently a much bigger worry than the vaguaries of nature that under “normal” times would cut us down in our prime and steal our children by the sack-full; a kind of miserabalist negative thinking, where nothing good can come of progress, which is sure to end badly, perhaps even worse than if we had not bothered in the first place.

Peak oil of course is all about the problems that will face us if we “run out” of these energy slaves- and is often explained in rhetorical language as if to say, how stupid we humans are! we think we are improving our lives by exploiting these non-renewable resources but it will be all the worse for us in the long run! We should have just stayed in the caves! In fact, however counter-intuitive it may seem, human ingenuity and continuing advances in science and technology mean that we are running into resources rather than running out.

Add in an unhealthy dose of guilt about having it better than many who do not yet benefit from the stupendous gains of the last couple of centuries and you have…

Earth Hour. That is tonight, 8.30-9.30 pm when we are supposed to turn the lights off for an hour in what has become according to Andy Ridley, CEO & Co-Founder of Earth Hour, the world’s largest mass-participation event, with 7000 cities and 152 countries involved around the world.

“We didnt start this to turn the lights off, but to do something much much bigger.” says Ridley at the Earth Hour Global Media Launch last month, but I wonder if he was even dimly aware of the irony in his next sentence:

We wanted this to be about hope, not about fear… the digital revolution has meant that we are undoubtedly the first generation in history that has the power to connect behind a common purpose, the empowerment of communities…

The digital revolution powered by…. the very fossil fuels that are causing global warming and environmental destruction that Earth Hour is supposedly campaigning against.

More than that, as Lomborg points out, turning the lights out for an hour will do nothing to reduce CO2 emissions, and if you light candles instead – or drive any distance to Earth Hour events -you will in fact cause more pollution.

Tom Zeller disagrees: why does Lomborg takes pot-shots at a “relatively benign awareness campaign like Earth Hour?” Precisely because it has indeed grown so large and influential and really does give out the wrong message- that the changes being called for in the name of solving climate change will be benign fun things like going to a fire-juggling event, or that we really should be feeling guilty about deriving better lives from the use of fossil fuels.

So I will not be participating in Earth Hour, or driving to the local event. As someone who lives off-grid on solar pv, turning out the lights would be quite redundant: in this sunless country and in this year of apparently never-ending winter, the solar panels do very little in any case and I will in fact be running a petrol generator to finish writing this and cook my dinner. (Not for much longer- I have applied for a grid connection and will soon be joining 21st century with a secure power supply.)

Instead, we should be celebrating human ingenuity and working together to ensure abundant power and electricity become available for the rest of the planet’s 1.3 billion. The Earth Hour people would do well to mull over the lessons of the peak-oilers as they sit by candle-light tonight, but be careful to draw the opposite conclusions: we will never give up our energy slaves, it is they that banished real slavery, not to mention the slavery of women in the home, and these are gains that we really should not trivialize and that we should ensure above all else are never reversed.

10 Comments

by skepteco on March 23, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in Climate Change, Environmentalism, Peak Oil

Tagged Earth Hour, Heinberg, Lomborg, peak oil

Posted by skepteco on March 23, 2013

http://skepteco.wordpress.com/2013/03/23/earth-hour-we-will-never-give-up-our-energy-slaves/

The Wind Blows Harder where the Sun Don’t Shine

Last week the UCC Environmental Society hosted a public information evening on fracking. Speakers were:

Jeremy Gilbert, BP’s chief petroleum engineer from 1989-2001, and now managing director of Barrelmore Ltd in West Cork;

Dr. Aedin McLoughlin and Liam Breslin of Good Energy Alliance Ireland, (GEAI) a Leitrim-based anti-fracking activist group.

Bernie Connolly from the Cork Environmental Forum chaired the discussion.

Gilbert- who regulars here will remember from his chapter in Peak Oil Personalities gave a very solid technical discussion of fracking based on his 37 years in the oil industry. “Fracking should be welcomed… shale gas is much better than coal.”

He told us that the technology has been around for over 60 years, with 1.1million wells- oil and gas- drilled worldwide. He referred to the chemicals used, saying they include innocuous viscosifiers made from Guar Gum, and others being common under the average kitchen sink.

As regards sealing the wells, we have been successfully cementing oil and gas wells for over 150 years. There are fears of the methane escaping, but apart from the fact that this would lose the companies money of course, Gilbert emphasized that this happens naturally all the time: hydrocarbons are lighter than the water that fills the pore space and so over time migrates upwards- this is how the tar sands of Alberta have been formed over the ages.

In terms of public impact, Gilbert had himself been involved with the development of the Wytch Farm Oil Field, south of Poole Harbor in Dorset. The same techniques have been used there for many years, albeit in less tight formations, but while there was tremendous opposition at the time, by working with the public the company was able to address their concerns- at considerable extra cost to themselves- and Jeremy says that today, 20 years later, the vast majority of residents in the area are unaware of the development, and that it would be hard to even find any sign of it (Wikipaedia states it is mainly hidden in a forest).

He concluded his presentation with a stern reminder: the default is coal.

Dr. McGloughlin spoke next, running through the usual expected catalogue of impacts, and taking issue with Gilbert’s assurances of this being an established technology with proven safety record: water contamination, leaking wells, no acceptable disposal route for produced water, compulsory purchase orders, massive number of truck journeys, visual impact across lovely Leitrim, the need for a moratorium on drilling until a Health Impact Assessment is done. McGloughlin lives in Leitrim herself and made no secret of the fact that this ia a local NIMBY issue, but wants us all to be afraid: the same companies are also looking at coal seam gas with fully half of Ireland being targeted for one or the other.

The climate change issue was mentioned, highly ironic since the US shale revolution has already lead to significant CO2 reductions there through substituting coal with gas.

Instead, Good Energy Alliance Ireland advocates renewables: wind, solar, tidal, hydro: anything but fracking. McGloughlin made a couple of eye-brow-raising claims on this: firstly that that Leitrim is already self-sufficient in energy from renewable sources, presumably mainly wind- which seems unbelievable (renewables always need some back-up, usually gas) and with no mention being made of the burgeoning anti-wind movement that is growing up in Ireland as elsewhere. She also talked solar up to the point of claiming that the technology has improved so much that “you dont even need sun anymore” for it to work- truly fantastic!

Some good questions from the floor put pressure on McGloughlin and Breslin to say what assurances would they accept that fracking would be done safely? It all comes down to trust in the authorities: but then, do we trust the wind companies? we do of course trust regulatory authorities in many other areas of our lives, because we have to, and despite sometimes failing,on the whole they do a good job it would seem. A geography student was concerned about getting a job (imagine!);

Gilbert repeated very strongly that if so many other countries are apparently happy to go ahead, and if we are otherwise unconcerned about where our gas comes from, why can it not be done safely in Ireland? Breslin repeated something like, if it can be done safely, why is he getting so many reports about people’s dogs getting asthma from living near frack sites- Jeremy Gilbert objected that this is an industry he has spent nearly 40 years of his working life around- “and he looks healthy!” called a voice from the back of the room: into his 70s and cutting a powerful figure of about 6ft 6, he certainly does.

Overall, good fun but the anti-frackers came out looking pretty out of touch with the informed audience- “we need jobs! we need energy!”- and frankly clueless next to a seasoned industry man.

The whole issue is very topical across the water as well of course and just the night before there had been an equally entertaining live debate on fracking between Josh “Flaming faucet” Fox of Gasland fame and Ted Nordhaus of the Breakthrough Institute, hosted by Salon.

Fox is also living in the heart of fracking country surrounded by thousands of shale gas wells. I have no doubt that this must be disruptive- but while the two participants traded studies on just how much methane leakage there actually is (Nordhaus adamant that the clear scientific consensus is very much on the low side) the key issue came down once again to: what do we use instead?

Josh, please tell me how your going to fix the intermittence problem with renewables. Or tell me you are pro-nuclear. If not then anti-gas = pro-coal.

Perhaps giving McGloughlin her cue for the “solar without sun” comment in Cork the next night, Fox comes up with a gem:

Well, it is true that the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow. But based on physical laws of nature, the wind is blowing harder when the sun isn’t shining. By bundling renewable resources we can solve the problem.

Nice try, but no there is no such physical law unfortunately, nor do we currently have large-scale compressed-air storage technology which he then goes on to talk about as an “alternative”, which would not be relevant anyway in terms of replacing gas for electricity.

In response to my surprised tweet about this, @pdiff1 offered an explanation:

@skepteco Maybe he was trying to say the wind blows harder where the sun don’t shine

— Pdiff (@pdiff1) March 4, 2013

That pretty much says it all. Fox never did come back to answer his position on nuclear; but anti-fracking activists share in common with the anti-nuclear movement (often one and the same of course) a complete lack of understanding of the fundamental limitations of diffuse renewables. Once that is exposed, as both Fox and McGloughlin showed themselves only too happy to do for us, the rest of their position is revealed as just hot air.

5 Comments

by skepteco on March 13, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in Fracking, Nuclear, Renewable Energy

Tagged Breakthrough Institute, Gasland, Josh Fox, shale gas, Ted Nordhaus, UCC Environmental Society

Posted by skepteco on March 13, 2013

http://skepteco.wordpress.com/2013/03/13/the-wind-blows-harder-where-the-sun-dont-shine/

Who is the Most anti-Science of Them All?

A fascinating debate was recently aired by the Canadian public affairs program The Agenda With Steve Paikin featuring Michael Shermer, Chris Mooney and Mark Lynas.

The topic under discussion was whether the charge of being “anti-science” was just as valid for the Left as for the Right.

Shermer, a libertarian skeptic thinks yes- there is Liberal War on Science; Mooney, author of The Republican Brain, disagrees. In a strongly entitled piece for Mother Jones There is no such Thing as a Liberal War on Science he argues that although liberals and the Left certainly reject science on specific topics such as vaccines and GMOs, these positions have been marginalised by the mainstream Left/Liberal political establishment, while on the Right, “Republicans today are majority creationist (58 percent, according to Gallup) and majority climate denier.”

As Lynas says, the political spectrum is not clearly divided along these lines in Europe; the alignment of the US Republican Party with creationist religion does not really have a parallel here, so while there are some similarities, this discussion is no doubt colored by my Euro-centric bias.

Mooney goes on to say

polls alone don’t tell enough of the story. Evolution denial and climate denial on the right are much more politically problematic—because conservatives, not liberals, are going around trying to force these wrongheaded views on children in schools. Oh, and by the way: By denying global warming, they also jeopardize the planet and the well-being of humanity. In my view, not all wrong beliefs are equally harmful—rather, wrong beliefs are harmful in proportion to their bad consequences.

There is a couple of things wrong with this position I think, as Mooney fails to distinguish between very different kinds of scientific issues, and their policy implications.

Firstly, the issue of conservatives trying to force “anti-science” views on schoolchildren made me think immediately of an instance of this from the Left: Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth was incorporated into the school curriculum in the UK, leading to a court action by a concerned parent. The judge upheld the complaint that the film contained many scientific inaccuracies, including that

The film said a sea-level rise of up to 20ft would be caused by melting of either west Antarctica or Greenland in the near future; the judge ruled that this was “distinctly alarmist”

I am not suggesting that this is directly comparable to teaching creationism or denying evolution; on the other hand, it seems inescapable that this is indeed an example of politics masquerading as science, and as such its placing in schools in this way is highly questionable. There is no scientific debate about evolution vs Intelligent Design, but to pretend that everything about man-made global warming is “settled science” – including what to do about it (Gore’s film implies that changing your lightbulbs might be an appropriate response to ensuring Manhattan is not inundated with sea water) is itself political.

(Ironically, Shermer used to question climate science himself, and cites An Inconvenient Truth as one of the influences that made him change his mind.)

Secondly, Mooney does not really address Shermer’s point that Republicans only reject science on these specific topics because they conflict with specific beliefs they have. While Creationism is a core belief of many right-wing Christians, and climate change skepticism a reaction to what they see as a ruse to impose more government regulation on every aspect of their lives, they do not take an “anti-science” position per se.

On the Left however, despite scientists and academics being overwhelmingly liberal themselves as both Mooney and Shermer agree, there tends to be an underlying current of suspicion of science in and of itself. The liberal mind wants purity of nature and purity of their bodies, and is prone to suffer excruciatingly from the naturalistic fallacy; they are more likely to be anti-technology which they distrust as leading to yet more environmental destruction and an aspect of increased corporate control- even when being introduced for humanitarian reasons as with Golden Rice.

This callousness of progressive activists towards the poor who really need access to better technology also calls into question Mooney’s claim that they are motivated emotionally by sticking up for the underdog and fighting against injustice: all too often, the main priority seems to be just to kick “science” or “technology” or “corporations” where it hurts, and to hell with the poor (who, let’s face it, are much happier anyway just being poor).

Mooney points to research showing that the trust in science has declined precipitously in recent years- but I am just wondering whether this itself can be partly explained by the clear liberal bias amongst scientists and scientific institutions- particularly when they are seen, rightly or wrongly, to promote left-wing policy responses to complex scientific issues like climate change. Of course, this is often translated into a suspicion of the basic science of CO2 as a greenhouse gas, but there is no reason for the Right (or anyone) to have particular position on this but for the implications of left-wing policies being promoted as to remedy the situation: as I say, questioning CO2 as a greenhouse gas is not a core belief in and of itself for the religious right in the same way creationism is- it is purely a reaction to the policies of the Left.

I am not defending the misrepresentation of science by any side in this- merely pointing out that Mooney is misreading the context and mis-diagnosing the underlying causes.

What about Mooney’s contention that “wrong beliefs are harmful in proportion to their bad consequences”? He claims that opposing the “science” of climate change will lead to a “global disaster that we are going to regret for all time- so how could it be bigger than that?” This seems to be an ideologically loaded statement that is a far remove from the “consensus science” on global warming, which can only give us different scenarios of how much warming based on different emissions trajectories, none of which there is any great certainty about as Mooney is implying. He seems to have slipped seamlessly from the science of CO2 as a warming gas and that humans are contributing to warming, to just the kind of alarmist rhetoric that Gore was guilty of.

The fact is, we don’t know what to do about global warming, or at least the solutions offered seem themselves to be split down political lines: on the one hand, more government regulation and the creation of powerful supra-national organisations which can usurp national governments’ ability to determine their own energy policy;
on the other hand, the potential for technological innovation to move much faster at reducing emissions than treaties have been able to, as we are seeing with the failure of Kyoto and the success of shale gas in the US.

A good example of this is the Keystone XL pipeline which has been a figure-head for “climate action” recently, but which has no real bearing on climate change regardless of whether you “deny” or “accept” the consensus scientific position.

This is what happens constantly in the climate debate which renders such discussions about who the the most anti-science fairly redundant: the science quickly merges into questionable policies or activist causes; question the policy, you become a “science denier”.

So it seems to me highly questionable- and certainly not scientific- for Mooney to suggest that “science denial” to the extent that it does exists on the Right can really be blamed for putative future global catastrophe; claiming certainty that the science is wrong for political reasons is of course damaging, but in this case we simply don’t know precisely what the correct course of action will be and we have to weigh it up against other considerations including the obvious need to keep the lights on and warm our homes.

It is possible then that thwarting certain liberal policies on climate could actually turn out to be the best thing to do- even if for entirely the wrong reasons.

Compared with the damage already done by opposing GE crops the damage done by questioning climate science, even in an extreme way, seems speculative at best, and in fact entirely unknown.

As Shermer points out, the left doesn’t seem to care what the actual solutions to global warming are anyway- which is why a strong contingent of the grassroots at least (whatever about Obama’s stance) is fundamentally opposed to both fracking and nuclear: they just want to impose “more government”, or, as I would prefer to say, they just want their solutions.

I have often argued, and still do, that the Left’s apparent pro-science stance on climate change is really just opportunistic, since they are so anti-science on some of the obvious and most promising solutions.

Mooney is correct that the Left and the Right are promiscuous with the science in different ways- but he just seems to be scoring political points in claiming the Left is worse- a rather obvious trap to fall into when claiming to understand the psychology of the opposition, but not your own.

15 Comments

by skepteco on March 6, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in Climate Change, Genetic Engineering, Politics

Tagged Chris Mooney, climate change, Genetic engineering, Golden Rice, Mark Lynas, Michael Shermer, shale gas

Posted by skepteco on March 6, 2013

http://skepteco.wordpress.com/2013/03/06/who-is-the-most-anti-science-of-them-all/

Will the Genes Escape?

Patrick Whitefield has entered the discussion on genetic engineering over at the Small Farm Future blog.
Patrick is the UK’s leading permaculture teacher and author of The Earth Care Manual.

Patrick makes two main points: that he thinks there is evidence that GE can be as dangerous as some now-banned chemicals; and that with GE “The big difference is that once they’re released into the biosphere it’s not always possible to withdraw genes.”

“To me” he says, “this is the clinching argument. No amount of short term trials can tell us how gm will behave in the biosphere in the long term. We’re just taking a punt on it all turning out OK.”

Here is my reply:

“The big difference is that once they’re released into the biosphere it’s not always possible to withdraw genes.” I dont see why this is the “clinching argument” – surely also debatable at least?
There is no reason to think the risks of genes escaping and causing problems are a greater threat from GMOs than from other breeding methods, eg mutagenesis, of which there are thousands of varieties and these are accepted under organic standards. Even crop rotation has been known to put selection pressure on pests.

http://reason.com/archives/2013/02/22/the-top-five-lies-about-biotech-crops/2

The whole 10,000 year-old project of farming has already changed the environment so much in ways that can never be undone, with or without GMOs. Nor does it seem reasonable to compare genetic engineering with dangerous chemicals, implying that they are all spawned of the same mindset- lets call it “Scientism” – and therefore must be equally bad. In fact, there is plenty of evidence that GE crops have reduced the use of pesticides, and allowed the substitution of dangerous chemicals with much more benign ones.

GE is a biological approach, in line with permaculture principles, and something Rachel Carson would have approved of, in line with organic principles of avoiding chemicals. Chemicals have also been unfairly demonized but this is much more understandable because as you say some were very dangerous – and have rightly been banned. I think we have to have some trust in the regulatory process- the anti-GE movement depends on a suspicion of science and flagrant scare-mongering.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2012/08/12/would-rachel-carson-embrace-frankenfoods-this-scientist-believes-yes/

GE is just another way of making new varieties and likely safer than more scatter-gun approaches including traditional breeding. It also has a lot of advantages over other methods and solves problems they cannot- eg with the Rainbow Papya. http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/feb06/aaas.gonsalves.papaya.sd.html

Also, Patrick your attitude does not explain the blanket opposition to all GE crops including potatoes which could save many fungicide sprayings each year and has negligible chance of “escaping” into the wild, a risk that is negligible for other crops as well.

http://www.biofortified.org/2010/11/the-likelihood-of-pollen-from-ge-cotton-causing-harm-to-the-environment-is-about-as-likely-as-a-poodle-escaping-into-the-wild/

The issue of escaping genes ironically is something that could have been addressed with Gene Use Restriction Technology (GURT) aka Terminator- too bad Monsanto were compelled under activist pressure to shelve it. But since we so have GE crops being grown over a larger area each year, would you prefer Patrick to see it resurrected?

http://skepteco.wordpress.com/2012/09/02/the-truth-about-the-terminator/

There is overwhelming scientific consensus that these risks are no greater for GE than other methods, most likely less; I dont like the analogy with climate science but I still think you have to explain why you dont accept the science on this.

6 Comments

by skepteco on February 27, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in Environmentalism, Genetic Engineering, Permaculture

Tagged Food and Farming, Genetic engineering, Patrick Whitefield, permaculture

Posted by skepteco on February 27, 2013

http://skepteco.wordpress.com/2013/02/27/will-the-genes-escape/

Golden Rice and the abuse of Science

After a fruitless discussion with Paul Kingsnorth last week on my post Rape of the Earth the venerable Deep Ecologist, anti-humanist and anarcho-primitivist author went into meltdown this morning, firing off ten irate tweets at me – and then blocking me.
I cannot embed them as I am blocked, so I have copied some of them here:

@Skepteco Obviously I won’t be reading your latest stream of drivel. But I’ve come to some conclusions about your politics.

@Skepteco Your refusal to engage, your dishonesty and your deliberate manipulation of facts give the lie to your claim to be a ‘pragmatist.’

@Skepteco I think you’re actually a nihilist. You’ve nothing to offer but self-righteous bile and intolerance.

@Skepteco In that respect, you’re a fascist too – you want to eliminate everyone who doesn’t conform to your narrow worldview.

@Skepteco Of course, fascism is a sign of insecurity. I wonder what you’re running from?

@Skepteco But whatever it is, it’s not my business. Good luck with your campaign to liquidate the deviants. I’m off to write a novel.

In the comments on my post Kingsnorth takes me to task for my “silly ‘science versus ideology’ confection” :

this is one of the weirdest and most sinister aspects of the neo-green approach. It begins by (rightly) criticising green pseudo-science but very quickly segues into a claim that the ONLY valid approach to green issues is a scientific one. This effectively excludes morality, ethics, epistemology, culture and politics from the debate – conveniently for you, because those things are complex, value-laden and often subjective. There are no numbers attached to them. But they are the stuff of life.

At the same time though he quotes his own “proper” scientists, not to contradict any specific scientific issue but to claim authority for the argument that what I am presenting as “science” is really ideology.

In this he shares a lot of common ground with Chris Smaje who I took to task on Lynas’ Oxford speech on GMOs.

Like Kingsnorth, Smaje’s main gripe is with “scientism”: an ideological stance that presumes Science and its High Priests the Scientists to have complete ownership of the Truth, ruling over the ignorant minions to further the Cause of Progress and Technology.

Smaje now has a new post out in which he says of Lynas

his talk had very little to do with actual science, and a lot to do with invoking the word “science” as a kind of religious incantation to justify his views….

I was prompted to post on Lynas’s talk because of how blatantly rhetorical his appeal to the concept of “science” was. But as a social scientist like Lynas, I don’t have the biological background always to be able to sort the scientific wheat from the chaff in everything I read about GM. One might think that there should be public institutions employing disinterested scientists to do this on behalf of laymen like me. But that would turn scientists into priests (ironically something of a problem in contemporary society, as demonstrated in Lynas’s lecture) – and many of the questions about GM are not scientific ones anyway.

Is this true? Well, certainly Lynas makes “discovering science” the core reason for his conversion; but there is no doubt what he is talking about:

I’d assumed that GM benefited only the big companies. It turned out that billions of dollars of benefits were accruing to farmers needing fewer inputs.

I’d assumed that Terminator Technology was robbing farmers of the right to save seed. It turned out that hybrids did that long ago, and that Terminator never happened.

I’d assumed that no-one wanted GM. Actually what happened was that Bt cotton was pirated into India and roundup ready soya into Brazil because farmers were so eager to use them.

I’d assumed that GM was dangerous. It turned out that it was safer and more precise than conventional breeding using mutagenesis for example; GM just moves a couple of genes, whereas conventional breeding mucks about with the entire genome in a trial and error way.

But what about mixing genes between unrelated species? The fish and the tomato? Turns out viruses do that all the time, as do plants and insects and even us – it’s called gene flow.

But this was still only the beginning. So in my third book The God Species I junked all the environmentalist orthodoxy at the outset and tried to look at the bigger picture on a planetary scale.

All these issues are testable hypotheses; they are what “science” with a small “s” is really good at: and they are all issues where it is easy to find examples of where activists abuse the evidence, use junk studies etc.. This is all well known and par for the course.

“Science” with a big “S” on the other hand is what Smaje and Kingsnorth are complaining about- a slavish following of Science as dogma, or obeisance to the authority of scientific establishments even when the issue is more one of policy than verifiable evidence; and along with this, a religious faith in the benefits of Progress that Science is supposed to deliver.

It is important to clarify which is which because they can often get mixed up. But in terms of ideology, the converse is also true- a suspicion of both science and Science- which comes from mixing them up- and a conviction that the kind of solutions offered by science is not the right one can also be ideological.

Take the case of Golden Rice. In his Oxford talk, Lynas slates Greenpeace for their latest scare-mongering campaign over the children who they claimed were “human guinea-pigs” – despite no harm came to them in trials to test the effectiveness of the vitamin-D enhancement. Greenpeace have been opposed to Golden Rice since at least 2001. As Norm Benson points out, Dr. Ingo Potrykus said to Greenpeace in that year, “If you plan to destroy test fields to prevent responsible testing and development of Golden Rice for humanitarian purposes, you will be accused of contributing to a crime against humanity. Your actions will be carefully registered and you will, hopefully, have the opportunity to defend your illegal and immoral actions in front of an international court.”

Smaje argues that Golden Rice has not been tested in the field, it is not cost-effective, there are better alternatives, no-one can be sure that the traits will remain stable over time- in other words, he takes the Greenpeace story hook line and sinker. But he refuses to condemn them for their tactics in China because:

I won’t be posting anything that singles out Greenpeace for criticism because if I were to draw up an indictment sheet of organisations that are culpable for inflicting global misery Greenpeace would still come pretty low down on my list.

So why is he singling Lynas out for criticism rather than the IMF or the WTO himself? Instead, he gives Greenpeace a free pass on their manipulative tactics, and claims that “on the question of moral repugnance my feeling is that you’re using the emotive issue of children’s deaths to spin your own particular line on GM”- even though it is clearly Greenpeace who played on the emotive issue of children being used as guinea-pigs- and there really is evidence and good reason to believe that delaying and withholding this technology has cost lives.

Meanwhile, according to Jon Entine

While Golden Rice was developed over ten years at the miniscule total cost of $2.6 million, in an extraordinary public-private partnership using funds donated by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Swiss Federation, the National Science Foundation, and the European Union, Greenpeace International alone annually spends about $270 million annually, and upwards of $7 million each year specifically dedicated to burying Golden Rice and any other food or crop developed using biotechnology.

So much for “cost-benefit”- the people screaming loudest about this pouring vast sums and energy into trying to bury Golden Rice. The campaigners and the activists and the petition-signers who support them are not achieving the amelioration of VAD by other means; in fact the only reason it is even an issue is because it is GMO. If there was rice fortification by some other breeding method no-one would be paying a blind bit of notice. This is about one thing and one thing only: banning or hindering GMOs for political reasons.

(Lynas interviewed Professor Federoff on his blog recently who had this to say on the matter: “The simple answer to this is that the continued GM activism against “golden rice,” especially the recent efforts to discredit the trials that were being carried in China, is a humanitarian abomination.”)

All Smaje’s arguments amounts to is a distrust of science and an appeal to the Precautionary Principle. We cannot know for absolute certain how effective Golden Rice will be so let’s put all our energy into stopping it. The ideology comes first; if it is found to be “cost-efficient” something else will be found wrong.

So this is not really about countering the High Priests of Science- both Kingsnorth and Smaje both invoke their own High Priests, just as homeopaths are fond of decrying science as “just another way of knowing” and then popping out their own cherry-picked bogus study themselves.

What is really interesting is that this mistrust of scientific institutions is shared by another group who my protagonists on the Golden Rice issue would probably prefer not to feel aligned with: climate skeptics.

One of the main objections to the way climate science is translated into policy is that it is done to serve a political and ideological agenda, including of course massively increasing the power and funding of those scientific institutions. This is why I think it is a mistake for Lynas to equate climate skepticism with anti-GMO activism. While Smaje and Kingsnorth confuse Science with science on GMOs, most climate skeptics do not take issue with CO2 as a greenhouse gas, or that warming has been happening, but with the policies that are proposed to deal with the issue, often backed by incorrigible scare-mongering of exactly the same end-of-the-word kind that Greenpeace and other anti-GMO groups indulge in.

Smaje and others like him are suspicious of the scientific bodies who they feel promote GMOs for political reasons, while they would have lot in common with those who call for radical responses to climate change because it suits the same agenda: roll back industrial society, scale back on technological fixes which are only going to make things worse: that is why nuclear is so often opposed as well, despite being an obvious low-carbon alternative to fossil fuels.

Climate change is the penance we get for hurting Gaia and living beyond our means.

The easiest and also the most prominent target for this kind of concern about how far some scientific institutions have lost the run of themselves in over-stepping the boundary between good verifiable science and Science pressed into the service of an ideology has got to be Paul Ehrlich, particularly with his recent adoption as a Fellow of the Royal Society. In fact, when reading through Kingsnorth’s bleak and anti-humanistic dirges he reminds me of noone more than Ehrlich. In other words, the charge of Scientism and fears of unaccountable Scientific institutions gaining too much power and influence is much more applicable to the ideology Kingsnorth would support- the ideology in fact that has made him- than what he fights against.

Kingsnorth was keen to equate me with Delingpole- “I’d suggest you contact the commissioning editor of Telegraph Blogs in the UK. They’d snap you up there and you could foam away in great company – James Delingpole, Brendan O’Neill, Norman Tebbitt – and with a far higher readership.” (anyone from the Telegraph reading this?!)- and accused me of getting my history from “Right-wing Think tanks”- when I was actually referring to Staudenmaier of the Institute for Social Ecology, if anything a Left-wing “Think-tank”. (Lynas also got mixed up when reviewing Delingpole’s book as I pointed out this time last year.)

Yet he and Delingpole have more in common than either of them might be comfortable with. Here is Kingsnorth on windfarms:

I notice that the greenies are now changing their tune on wind farms. Where before the bat-chomping eco crucifixes were spun as a vital part of “energy security”, they are now being repositioned as a kind of carbon-friendly bolt-on which is nice to have around and generally acts as an occasional substitute for fossil fuel when conditions are right.

And here is Delingpole:

The prospect of raping some of our last wild places in order to provide 6% of our energy – profiting large corporations in the process – is not something that anyone daring to call themselves an environmentalist should be supporting. Even if you believe that tackling climate change is such a vital issue that it should override all else, projects like this remain a drop in the ocean in any case, their negative impacts far outweighed by their benefits.

They sound so similar I think it would be entirely forgivable to get them mixed up

3 Comments

by skepteco on February 24, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in Climate Change, Environmentalism, Genetic Engineering, Renewable Energy

Tagged climate change, Food and Farming, Genetic engineering, Kingsnorth, Mark Lynas

Posted by skepteco on February 24, 2013

http://skepteco.wordpress.com/2013/02/24/kingsnorths-meltdown/

Botkin and the Balance of Nature

Book Review
The Moon in the Nautilus Shell: Discordant Harmonies Revisited
Daniel B. Botkin
OUP 2012

Daniel B. Botkin is currently Professor Emeritus, Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara. The author of numerous books on environmental science and policy and energy, his latest- the first I have read by him- is a return to themes about humans and our relationship to nature first explored in an earlier book Discordant Harmonies (1990).

Bringing the measured tone of a life-long scientist who has thought deeply about how we are changing nature and how nature changes, Botkins’ central thesis is that conservation policies are failing because we have failed to understand how strongly deeply felt mythologies about nature, which we often mistake for science, still influence and underpin them.

Botkin draws on more than 40 years experience in ecology bringing an extensive scope to his book, covering a wide range of environmental and conservation issues in the context of a much bigger picture of our understanding of nature, science, ecology,and environmentalism and how they are shaped by mythology.

I had previously come across Botkin in this episode of Adam Curtis’ series All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace.

This fascinating documentary actually covers very well many of the ideas Botkin discusses, weaving together the emergence of ecology as a science in the 60s as being based largely on cybernetics and the burgeoning study of systems theory, and the influence these ideas had on the environmental movement. Thus, the early scientific study of nature- which was itself shaped by emerging technology of machines with which to study nature- embedded within it the powerful metaphor of nature as machine.

Curtis explains that in the computer age these ideas have lead to a dominant ideology that we cannot really change things for the better ourselves, but that we can replace the traditional oppressive hierarchies of the past with self-regulating systems beyond our control. In the introduction to the film he says

But in an age disillusioned with politics, the self-regulating ecosystem has become the model for utopian ideas of human ‘self-organizing networks’ – dreams of new ways of organising societies without leaders, as in the Facebook and Twitter revolutions, and in global visions of connectivity like the Gaia theory.

Botkin’s begins his story about our mythologies about nature much earlier, from the time of classical Greece philosophy which saw nature is a “Great Chain of Being”. Nature was seen as constant, in an ideal state and unchanging, with

a place for every creature, and every creature in its place; in modern parlance, that every creature and every species has its place (that is, its role and its location—its habitat) in the harmonious workings of nature and is well adapted to that habitat, and to that role, which ecologists call today a species’ niche.

This view of nature, Botkin argues, has been retained down through history, taking many different forms in theology and philosophy, and slipping almost seamlessly into the machine metaphor of the modern scientific era.

Botkin himself began his career as an ecologist in the 1960s with these traditional views firmly embedded in his mind, and as he explains in an early chapter concerning Isle Royal, a large forested island 15 miles off the shore of Lake Superior. Botkin had gone there to study moose populations in the implicit belief that there was some kind of self-regulation of vegetation, herbivore and predator populations that would always revert in time to a natural balance: Read the full post »

15 Comments

by skepteco on February 17, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in Climate Change, Conservation, Eco-Pragmatism, Ecology

Tagged climate change, daniel b botkin, Ecology

Posted by skepteco on February 17, 2013

http://skepteco.wordpress.com/2013/02/17/botkin-and-the-balance-of-nature/

The Backlash Cuts Both Ways: Monbiot, Mann, McKibben deal with their Critics

Interesting post on Transition Culture How Tough is your Skin? discusses what do grassroots community and activist groups do when they encounter vigorous opposition to their campaigns.

Hopkins attended the Independence Day conference in Frome last November:

Groups had come together from across the UK to share their experiences of trying to stop unwanted development, new supermarkets, the cloning of their high streets and so on. There was much useful sharing of ideas, inspiration and experiences, but what surprised me was that virtually everyone reported experiencing a backlash from a local group claiming to represent the community’s ‘silent majority.’ In some cases it had been relatively civil, for others it had been a ghastly experience. So how best to cope with such attacks?

Hopkins then goes on to discuss responses he got when raising this issue with various other activists, a mixture of local food and anti-supermarket campaigners along with well-known names such as George Monbiot, Bill McKibben and Michael Mann.

(Mann’s presence in this list, as a climate scientist alongside political activists like McKibben is sure to raise some eyebrows.)

Of the latter, the more common issue seems to be email attacks and random abuse from anyone -

“It’s constant” says Monbiot, “There’s scarcely a morning when I haven’t received something unpleasant by email. Most of the time I just mark it as spam and I don’t need to see anything by that person again. Some of them are very threatening, but I figure that most of them probably live in the Mid West and don’t possess passports, so I don’t feel scared about it. None of it frightens me”.

But the real issue is backlash from within your community, from people who feel you are not representing them or acting in their interests. “When you are putting in a huge number of volunteer hours to try and make your community a better place it really makes you wonder why you bother” was the view of Philip Revell of Sustaining Dunbar.; and Rob begins the post with reference to his own recent experiences of being under persistent public criticism for his work with Transition Towns Totnes.

The most interesting comment comes from another member of Sustaining Dunbar, who asked to meet with their most vocal critic, a fisherman opposing a planned hydro-scheme. “That was possibly the single most helpful meeting I had in terms of learning about the concerns and history of the river and the background of a previous hydropower development that the fishermen felt had had a detrimental effect on the river. It also enabled me to immediately to explain to him why this development is inherently very different to that past one, and to show him that I was taking on board that I did think he had genuine concerns”.”

The whole point of taking an activist stance of course is that it requires a certain missionary zeal, a confidence one is on the righteous path regardless of the criticisms, the need to grow a “thick skin” to tough it out and keep going.

Naturally I condemn abuse and anonymous attacks on people for their ideas. I think bullying of any kind is abhorrent and unacceptable. But being an activist means sticking your head above the parapet and so you can expect to get shot at to some extent.

(In extreme cases literally- or bombed, as happened to physicists in Mexico recently.)

Taking a strong stance on a matter of public interest, especially if it on a single-issue, black-and-white issue of Ban the dam or build the dam” will inevitably lead to some eggs being broken. Every action meets a reaction as they say, and so it is indeed crucial to talk to our fishermen and be willing to accept they may be right. Nothing is sure to get up people’s noses more than people who are arrogant or self-righteous in their certainty of the worthiness of their cause.

And I think this is what is missing from some of the stories on this discussion, because as I read through them and the accounts of the kind of attacks these activists have to deal with, I could not help but think, this is exactly the kind of thing that scientists working on genetic engineering, or nuclear power have to put up with as well.

Specifically what came to mind was the scientists at the Rothamsted Research Institute who had to contend with activists Take Back the Flour last year who came with the intention of destroying field trials of genetically engineered wheat.

The scientists were not of course “activists” taking their own, unelected action on a particular interest, but public servants doing their job.

And I was wondering how many of the eco-warriors at Rothamsted were inspired by the likes of Vandana Shiva, one of the world’s most prominent and influential anti-GE campaigners, who is being feted by Rob’s own activist group Transition Towns Totnes later this month.

Not only that but it turns out that one of the speakers at the Independence Day was Chris Smaje, whose mistaken views on genetic engineering was the subject of my last post. Much of what he had to say seem likely to have been influenced, and are certainly aligned with the lies and misinformation about the technology that Shiva uses to promote her paternalistic philosophy of keeping the poor poor: a Brahmin in Shudra clothing.

Worryingly, apart from the fisherman story, the other respondents did not seem to be over-endowed with the humility to consider they may be wrong, or at least not always unequivocally right in their missions: according to Monbiot, getting this kind of negative reaction is ” a measure of success, and if you’re not getting that response, if you’re not receiving hate mail, you’re simply not doing your job” while Hopkins veers into psychobabble by asking

It might also be worth reflecting on the different ways people react to challenging times and what they perceive as threats. In the current economic/climate/energy/social context, many people have perhaps, on some level, given up. Might it be that on one level, hostile reactions are being triggered in those who have decided there’s no point in acting by those who suggest that there still is very much a point to it?

This sounds like something out of Deep Ecology- we already know what is wrong with the world, Gaia is hurting and we are all hurting too- those who don’t agree are just expressing their anger and frustration at you by mistake.

The more opposition you get, the more right you must be. Rationalising away opposition and criticism in this way has much in common with religions and cults who must ring-fence themselves from admitting criticism could be valid: those who disagree are “deniers”.

Another difficulty with movements like Transition and Independence Day is that they pertain to bring together under one grand ideological umbrella a huge range of different issues and causes, claiming them all for their own: there is a world of difference really between calling for global action on climate change and trying to stop a supermarket in your town, and they will attract a lot of very different supporters who might not agree at all on other issues. Localisation as an economic philosophy might not be the best or only way to address something as complex as climate change for example- in fact it might be a disaster which people might rightly want to argue with.

As Linus Blomqvist, the director of the Breakthrough Institute’s Conservation and Development program comments here:

The idea that small-scale farming is the best solution for food security is very dangerous – it really is the total opposite. If everyone just grows their own food, then any local disruption will be catastrophic for those involved.

Transition also promote local wind farms, and Hopkins has written

Personally, I don’t feel that anyone has any right to object to this scheme unless they also feel that they would be able to sit down with a family from, say, Bangladesh, and tell them that their upset about a minor wind scheme in South Devon outweighs that family’s right to a future. I don’t feel that is justifiable in any sense.

Is it really any wonder he is receiving some local backlash? Maybe he should keep toughening up that ol’ skin.

2 Comments

by skepteco on February 13, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in Climate Change, Environmentalism, Genetic Engineering, Transition Towns

Tagged Bill McKibben, climate change, Genetic engineering, Michael Mann, Rob Hopkins, transition towns, Vandana Shiva

Posted by skepteco on February 13, 2013

http://skepteco.wordpress.com/2013/02/13/the-backlash-cuts-both-ways-monbiot-mann-mckibben-deal-with-their-critics/

In defence of Mark Lynas: Five Green Herrings and the Amish

Permaculture teacher and author Patrick Whitefield has just limked on Twitter to a blog by Chris Smaje in response to the widely discussed talk by Mark Lynas on genetic engineering.

Entitled Five Reasons Why Mark Lynas Is Wrong About GM Technology it is really five green herrings of the sort we have seen continually by GE detractors.

His first is that Lynas makes a false comparison between the “science” for climate change (AGW) and genetic engineering. Greens accept the science on the former but not the latter says Lynas, which Smaje challenges as a false comparison.

I agree that there is a false parallel here, but not for the reasons that Smaje gives. Greens don’t accept the “science of climate change” any more than they accept the science regarding the safety on GE: what they do generally is point to the agreed science that CO2 is having a warming effect, and translate this into the same pseudo-religious rhetoric that they use to discuss GE: humans are Bad, technology is not to be trusted, we are hurting Gaia and the Sky Gods will unleash retribution in the form of storms and famines.

Smaje is at least half-way correct on this issue- Science can show that AGW is real (although how much warming is actually anthropogenic is not so clear..) but “What it hasn’t shown – and what it can’t show – is what, if anything, we should do about it…” – exactly the point that climate skeptics have been making for years.

Smaje goes on to say “By contrast, nobody has ever questioned that GM is a viable, implementable technology – the question is whether we should in fact implement it, on which “the science” is equally as impotent in its ability to answer as in the case of climate change.”

This is not quite true. The anti-GE movement does indeed routinely make the argument that the actual implementation of the technology has been a complete failure. Smaje himself goes onto reference Vandemeer and the IAASTD report as examples of scientists who question the efficacy of GE.

Nonetheless, Smaje’s point is a valid one: science is good at testing specific hypotheses, such as the relative safety of a new technology, or temperature trends, but policy is not an issue for science alone. The inconsistency amongst the Greens is more that while scientists are used as authorities with regard to policy on climate change all the time, and we are told we should follow specific (or all-to-often unspecific) policy actions to deal with climate change because the science is settled, on the issue of genetic engineering- as also with nuclear power- scientist’s policy recommendations are ignored, because they are assumed to be industry shills directly or indirectly, and not to be trusted.

This is evident in Smaje’s later comment that “I accept that some people genuinely think GM does solve problems – though I suspect biotechnologists are heavily overrepresented in this particular category “- of course, biotech scientists have vested interests, in perpetuating their careers and finding and justifying their existence! Just like climate scientists, no? I mean, funny how most scientists warning about the dangers of climate change are, you know- *climate scientists* isn’t it? Even more odd, many of the most vocal proponents of small-scale organic farming are… small scale organic farmers!

Smaje accepts that GE is probably safe but links to a fine Green Herring on an activist site to sow the seed of doubt that “maybe we shouldn’t be too hasty”.

The “OMFG Viral Genes!!” story is just the latest anti-GMO meme to be doing the rounds. It is complete bunk, and the failure of Smaje to recognise this does rather bring into question his scientific understanding of the issue.

He also links to other Green Herrings, such as the super-weeds issue: but weed resistance is not an issue only of GE, and have been with us since the 1970s at least. As with so many objections to GE, the arguments apply to farming in general, including often organic farming, not just GE. Read the full post »

50 Comments

by skepteco on February 10, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in Environmentalism, Food and Farming, Genetic Engineering, Organics

Tagged Food and Farming, Genetic engineering, Mark Lynas, Patrick Whitefield, potato blight, Soil Association

Posted by skepteco on February 10, 2013

http://skepteco.wordpress.com/2013/02/10/in-defence-of-mark-lynas-5-green-herrings-and-the-amish/

Green for Me Talk for UCC Enviro Soc

I had an enjoyable evening at the Green for Me event at UCC Environmental Society on Tuesday where I gave a talk along with Dan Boyle of the Green Party and well-known biologist and TV/radio presenter Eanna ni Lamhna as part of their Green Week.

The theme given us for our talks was “My Reasons for Being Green.”

Eanna spoke first, but I had already got into a discussion with her about population as soon as she came into the lecture hall, pointing out that birth rates are declining everywhere, and hurriedly added in a few graphs to prove my point; her own graph was I felt somewhat misleading in that it showed only the dramatic population expansion of the past hundred years, without any context or explanation that this phase finished some 20 years ago.

Update: As Patrick Hayes writes here in response to David Attenborough’s recent Malthusian remarks, even sub-Saharan Africa has seen a massive drop in birthrates:

But as Slate has observed, it’s not just the most developed nations: ‘From 1960 to 2009, Mexico’s fertility rate tumbled from 7.3 live births per woman to 2.4, India’s dropped from six to 2.5, and Brazil’s fell from 6.15 to 1.9. Even in sub-Saharan Africa, where the average birthrate remains a relatively blistering 4.66, fertility is projected to fall below replacement level by the 2070s.’

All of which is bad news for Attenborough and his Malthusian ilk, as it reveals that what lurks behind their doom-mongering is prejudice rather than fact. That becomes increasingly evident when you hear headline-generating comments, such as those Attenborough made recently to the Radio Times: ‘We keep putting on programmes about famine in Ethiopia; that’s what’s happening. Too many people there. They can’t support themselves – and it’s not an inhuman thing to say. It’s the case.’

Too many people in Ethiopia? This is a country which, according to the World Bank, has a mere 83 people per square kilometre. This is the same as Serbia, and there aren’t mass starvations there. At 196 people per square kilometre, Switzerland has a far higher population density than Ethopia, but people aren’t starving there. Nor in Japan, where there are 350 people per square kilometre, or the Netherlands, which has 493 people per square kilometre.

She then went on to talk about climate change and supported the issues around this with two more rather misleading slides, one of polar bears and one of deserts. Polar bears are of course the poster child of climate change and have been used to very good propaganda effects since before Al Gore; but the reality seems very different- many polar bear populations are increasing, they seem remarkably adaptable to declining sea ice.
A much greater threat to bears in the Arctic than global warming is hunting.

So bears polar bears are probably an eye-catching but bad example of the effects of climate change- so far at least. Similarly, desertification also is more complex than just laying it at the feet of CO2 emissions- de-forestsation from human activity being another obvious cause, with underlying poverty often being the problem.

Eanna then wnet onto talk about renewable energy- “we have very little renewable energy- and yet the wind blows all the time!” Yes, it’s a no-brainer: humans, especially Irish humans in a country that has been hailed as the Saudi Arabia of wind- choose to use Polar-Bear murdering fossil fuels when they could just switch to clean wind.

Unfortunately, one of the major draw-backs with wind is that it does not in fact blow all the time even in Ireland, as anyone who has lived off-grid with wind-power as I have done in the past will tell you: plenty of calm still “soft” days Ireland where you get effectively no power from wind, no matter how many turbines you might have.

Even a super-grid covering the whole of Europe would not solve the problem- there is really quite dramatic indetermittency issues Europe-wide as well. For this reason, wind can never on its own replace fossil fuels or nuclear, and as another graph of Eanna’s showed quite well, renewables currently only supply a tiny percentage of energy- for well-understood reasons that are more to do with the laws of physics and cost than anything else.

More controversially, Eanna then went onto discuss waste, asking why dont we have have incinerators- a local hot-potato. “You can’t even mention them- they are considered as bad as GMOs!” The last time I had seen Eanna was at the potato day last year in Skibbereen, where she had had done an admirable job of myth-busting about the GE potato trials that started last year.

She then commented that at the protest meetings on incinerators she had been to, at the break about a third of the protestors went out to smoke!

Eanna finished her entertaining talk by admonishing us to eat only food that is in season and plant trees to help combat climate change.

I was up next, and began by staking out my credentials as a back-to-the-lander. While preparing the presentation I had in fact dug up photos of a commune I had lived in in the 1980s on the Welsh borders.

This is a photo of the Earthworm Housing Co-op from 1990, possibly when I was still actually living there.Brings back memories- many of which make me cringe!

I then discussed my involvement with the Peak Oil movement, and how my views had changed as time went on and the expected collapse failed to materialise, and the new energy story became one of the Golden Age of Gas.

I then used Stewart Brand’s Four Environmental Heresies to frame my new perspective on “Being Green.”

-population growth stablising and the world is not over-populated;
-cities are green
-nukes are green
-genetic engineering is green

I then gave a brief explanation of the Environmental Transition- the idea that environmentalism is a product of wealth and industrial growth rather than a reaction to it, and told the story from Shellenberger and Nordhaus’ book Breakthrough about the fires on the Cuyahoga River:

In June 22nd 1969 Time Magazine showed this photo of burning oil on Cuyahoga River with the caption
“The Price of Optimism” and it became emblematic of start of the US Environmental Movement.

The problem was, the photo was not from the 1969 fire, which has burned out in half-an-hour before the Time photographer could get there- but from an earlier and much more severe fire from 1952. In fact, there had been fires on the Cuyahoga river for a hundred years, some of them burning for days and causing loss of life: but the society had not yet reached a level of wealth and development- which would support universities with Environmental Societies- until much later. Poor people are not generally environmentalists- they have more expressing concerns, but once society has a critical mass of relatively affluent educated people with time on their hands, then industry is compelled to clean up its act.

I concluded my presentation with a quotation from Daniel Botkin’s book The Moon in the Nautilus Shell.:

Our perspective, ironically in this scientific age, depends on ancient myths and deeply buried beliefs. To gain a new view, one necessary to deal with global environmental problems, we must break free of old assumptions and myths about nature and ourselves while building on the scientific and technical advances of the past.

Dan Boyle followed me and began by expressing surprise to find himself having to defend the broad thrust of the environmental movement from the past few decades. He began by emphasising his agreement that Luddism is false, and that greens depend upon science and technology;

but seemed to struggle to hide some exasperation at my reference to Lomborg: “It is NOT the case that you burn your hydrocarbons and then clean up afterwards”- rather missing the point about the environmental transition, because of course that is precisely what the greens have been doing, otherwise we would never have embarked on industrialisation in the first place: the greens would have stopped us!

Dan’s main points seemed to be a bunch of Green Herrings: the supposed rallying cries of “bigger faster more” are the problem; untrield technology is dangerous and we should proceed with greater caution;
while his reference to dangers of the “chemical soup” used in frakking, and from “cross-contamination” from genetic engineering belie his claim to environmentalism being underpinned by science. Not to mention his suggestion that we can have “smaller and more efficient” wind turbines- surely not? To become more efficient, wind turbines can only do one thing: get bigger, due to well-understood laws of physics concerning wind-speed increasing to the square of the altitude/height and rotor span’s ability to collect the diffuse wind energy from a given space.

In the discussion and questions afterwards I was challenged quite strongly on nuclear waste issues, and general “Pandora’s Box” concerns about whether naughty humans should really be trusted with technology.

Dan Boyle made the very good point that at a meeting he had attended recently in the midlands concerning the proposed giant wind farm there, anti-wind activists used the same rhetoric and alarmism used by the anti-nuclear lobby, even including the threat of radiation- from wind turbines!

A popular theme seemed to be that rather than constantly striving for more energy sources, we should just use less. “Let’s turn out the lights then!” I said looking up to the ceiling at the dozens of lights that were probably consuming more energy that evening than I would at home in a year. My personal experience of living off the grid was apparently not persuasive however, and when I pointed out that there are still a couple of billion people without electricity at all in the world, I was told, “They can just use the Gravity Light!”

“Would you use one?”

“Well, it would be great for an outdoor light or something.”

Indeed it would, and for those without electric lights of any kind, this remarkable invention will surely be a wonderful boon. But for those who think that we can or will do anything other than make cosmetic changes in our energy usage, that “powerdown” can in some way substitute for cheap reliable electricity supply, should contemplate what life might be like if one or two gravity lights is all you ever have as a light supply, for the rest of your lives, ie without development.

Several people came up to me afterwards and thanked me for a thought-provoking perspective, while others took a more conventional green- perspective, concerned more about a presumed loss of contact with Nature, the virtues of the simple life and the insanity of endless growth rather than addressing the concerns of the poor. “We are all too greedy in this country!” proclaimed Eanna at one point.

But as Colin McInnes shows in this award-winning essay, growth is not just a matter of extraction and consumption, but is also about complexity:

While innovation-driven growth has delivered immense improvements to the human condition, it is also the means through which human needs can be gradually decoupled from the environment. Growth emerges from productivity, doing more with less. For example, new additive manufacturing technologies, so-called ‘3D printers’, look set partly to replace the wasteful subtractive manufacturing of machine tools. In contrast, in coming down from our oil high, as advocated by {Richard} Heinberg, we could regress to using whale oil for lighting, as was the case prior to commercial oil production. But this hardly constitutes progress, economic or environmental….

The real worry of Heinberg’s vision of a post-growth world is his straight-faced assertion that ‘there should be [an] increasing requirement for local production and manual labour’. This chilling claim is more Year Zero than zero growth. A return to carbohydrate-fuelled manual labour may be appealing to Heinberg and others as a means of powering down our lives and reconnecting with the land. But he shouldn’t expect a long queue of volunteers.

Maybe not- but he could well expect a long line of green ideologues who have forgotten that their green ideas are only possible because of the benefits brought by the very techno-industrialism that they campaign against.

6 Comments

by skepteco on February 7, 2013 • Permalink

Posted in Climate Change, Eco-Pragmatism, Environmentalism, Fracking, Genetic Engineering, Nuclear, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy, Technology

Tagged climate change, Daniel Botkin, Genetic engineering, Heinberg, Lomborg, peak oil, potato blight, shale gas

Posted by skepteco on February 7, 2013

http://skepteco.wordpress.com/2013/02/07/green-for-me-talk-for-ucc-enviro-soc/

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SkeptEco

Is the Metaphor mightier than the Noose? Delingpole and his Detractors

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The Wind Blows Harder where the Sun Don’t Shine

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Green for Me Talk for UCC Enviro Soc

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