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The vanishingly small proportion of peer reviewed research rejecting AGW

23rd June 2013

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John Cook, lead author of Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature, 2013, Environmental Research Letters, 8 (2)

While the climate science community has been quite resolute in its stance that global warming has been accentuated by human activity in the post-industrial era – the so-called Anthropocene – one could be forgiven for thinking that the jury is still out the way this subject (anthropogenic global warming or AGW) is presented in the popular media.

The notion that there is some controversy over human-induced climate change flies in the face of the received wisdom, with over 97% of climate scientists endorsing the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.

Climate Resilience

21st February 2013

This is the slide deck I presented at the Asia Pacific Centre for Social Enterprise (APCSE), Griffith University, Open Lecture Series this week.

The Earth is Full

2nd April 2012

This TED talk is a useful summary of Paul Gilding’s book, The Great DIsruption. Listening to the first half of his presentation, one could be forgiven for thinking that Gilding has thrown in the towel, based on his projected level of doom and gloom. This is not entirely the case. Yes, things do look grim, but Gilding is not nearly as pessimistic as James Lovelock or Clive Hamilton. The book goes into great detail as why he (and his collaborator Jorgen Randers) believe there is a future for humanity with their One Degree War Plan.

Irene is good news for GDP

30th August 2011

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77IdKFqXbUY&list=FLqVEcYXalJ6vy86WdtV2WaQ&index=1&feature=plpp]
As the clean up after Hurricane Irene commences, not too many people will realise that this is actually ‘good for the economy’ — at least in terms of GDP growth. The problem is that all expenditure on goods and services — even if it is cleaning up after a ‘natural’ disaster (sic) — ends up on the plus side of the ledger. Continuing with this logic, it actually makes sense to urge BP to have more oil spills, and to encourage crime because we spend more on burglar alarms. Robert F. Kennedy was making this same point more than four decades ago and yet GDP remains the primary macroeconomic variable shaping government policies around the world (with the notable exception of Bhutan!)

The biggest irony of all, is that even Simon Kuznets, (the man who invented GDP) in his very first report to the US Congress in 1934 went on record as saying: “… the welfare of a nation can, therefore, scarcely be inferred from a measure of national income”, and then again in 1962: “Distinctions must be kept in mind between quantity and quality of growth, between costs and returns, and between the short and long run. Goals for more growth should specify more growth of what and for what.”

I don’t think Professor Kuznets would have argued in favour of extreme weather events as a means of growing GDP somehow.

Singaporeans need three planets

14th October 2010

Image source: UNEP
The WWF released its latest Living Planet Report yesterday, and I went along in person to the Botany Centre in the beautiful Botanic Gardens here in Singapore to get it from from the Chair of the Board of WWF himself, Dr Christopher Hails.

The launch of the Report was billed as an important precursor to the next gathering of the UN Convention of Biological Diversity scheduled to be held in Nagoya, Japan later this month and I had assumed, therefore, that there would be a focus on biodiversity loss. Instead Dr Hails gave a broad and far ranging presentation that described the general health of the planet (or lack thereof). He certainly did not disappoint and the audience (all of whom, it’s fair to say, could be counted as converts) was more numerous than I expected and certainly well-informed.

One surprise for me was that, for the first time, I was presented with data on the ecological footprint for Singapore. For some reason, Singapore has always been missing from any international league table of ecological footprints. Less surprising, given the passion for consumption in this country, was the world ranking of 21st, each person requiring 5.34 biologically productive hectares to fuel this consumption and dispose of the associated waste. Putting it another way, if everyone in the world lived like Singaporeans, we would need three planets.

Breaking the Singaporean ecological footprint down, carbon emissions is the biggest offender. This came as a surprise to some members of the audience, but Jurong does house one of the top three largest oil refining centres in the world. Then there is the aircon! If the owners of some of the buildings in Singapore turned the thermostat down a notch, maybe a Singaporean lifestyle would only require two planets.

Americans’ Concerns About Climate Change Continue to Drop

14th March 2010

Image source: sas-origin.onstreammedia.com

With the election of Barack Obama, I was confident that, at long last, there would be a change for the better in US policy on the environment. Indeed, compared to the Bush administration, there has been a significant change in policy stance but it seems, however, that rather than change public perceptions about the dangers of climate change, the zeitgeist is moving in the opposite direction. Gallup poll results published last week show a worrying trend, and a sign, perhaps, that the power of vested interests are not to be under-estimated. The bad publicity over the so-called climategate fiasco has clearly added wind to the sails of the climate change skeptics, even though this affair was a major beat up (the facts not getting in the way of a good story). Nevertheless, it might be time for the Obama administration to crank up its environmental education machine a notch or two. It can’t rely solely on Bill Maher.

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It’s meat and drink

11th July 2009

Image source: sundancechannel.com

An article in the New York Times last week drew attention to two instances of local governments looking to reduce their ecological footprints in recent weeks. First of all, the Belgian city of Ghent has declared that Thursdays will be a “meatless day” on the grounds that eating vegetarian meals will improve health and reduce the impact of raising livestock on the environment. In Australia, meanwhile, the NSW town of Bundanoon voted to ban bottled water this week to reduce carbon dioxide emissions associated with bottling and transporting the water.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXceWLZq8OQ]

China takes no.1 spot

17th June 2008

Image source: gnn.tv

It’s official. There was speculation that China would pass the US as the world’s number 1 emitter of greenhouse gases some time last year, but now the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency has confirmed this is, indeed, the case — in absolute terms at least. Per capita, the US still leads the way; the average American being responsible for 19.4 tons, followed by Russia at 11.8 tons, Western Europe at 8.6 tons, China at 5.1 tons and India at 1.8 tons per person. The worrying thing is that the average Chinese aspires to an American lifestyle.

Time for tech fixes

31st May 2008

Image source: guardian.co.uk

Having grown increasingly pessimistic of late that our political leaders have the capacity to bring about change sufficiently quickly to avoid ecological catastrophe, I’m now of the view that scientific interventions constitute our best hope. The question is: will it be too little, too late. The latest breakthrough (reported in today’s Guardian) is the plan by a physicist at Columbia University to build and demonstrate a prototype within two years that can economically capture a tonne of CO2 a day from the air. This is about the same per passenger as a flight from London to New York. We’ll need a few billion of these to stop us going beyond 450ppm and the initial cost is GBP100,000 per unit!

What to do about China?

21st June 2007

Image source: bbc.co.uk

On BBC news today (RealPlayer required), there was a pretty scarey piece on the latest environment news to come out of China. Last week, a master plan was unveiled that spoke of China’s aim to bring about a 20% improvement in energy efficiency by 2010. This week it has been revealed that now TWO coal-fired power stations are being commissioned each week. It is inevitable that China will overtake the US as the world’s leading polluter soon (if it hasn’t already), but what can be done to halt environmental catastrophe? As The Guardian reports today, the Chinese are still way behind the US on an emissions per person basis, but what if all the Chinese live like Americans? How many more power stations would need to be built? The prognosis is not good and it seems the Chinese central government is unable to control the regions as they forge ahead disregarding national policies and directives. Even if there were some compliance, data collection techniques are so poor, quantitative restrictions on emissions are meaningless. The answer, it seems, is intervention by western governments to assist with technology transfer that might help to wean China off high-polluting coal powered energy (even if it is using coal in a more efficient manner).

Tag: carbon emissions