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A link to one of my articles on the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog elicited a comment that included this:

The so-called ‘market economy’ (a euphemism for monopoly capitalism) is not environmentally sustainable, no matter how much green paint and promises of ‘eliminating poverty’, etc., you apply.

As a very ambivolent anti-capitalist, I found strong sympathy with that statement, and yet I find that I cannot agree. These are my reasons:

1. Capitalism is driven by greed and consumerism. It is an illogical and wasteful system, and one that has huge problems. However, whilst the greed leads to an anti-environmental cycle if left unchecked, it is nevertheless possible to intervene to use the assumptions of capitalism for environmental benefit. An example of this might be the EU emissions trading scheme, which puts a price on emission reduction, and thus generates a trade. Whilst the scheme is not perfect, it is better than hand wringing or sticking our heads in the ground and saying there is no problem (or the problem is intractable).

2. Capitalism is an organic system like any other. It may be a system driven to consume resources, but like any system, if the consumption is too aggressive, then there are negative feedbacks into the system that restrain it. (The problem being that the negative feedbacks perhaps kick in too late to be of any use to the people that are suffering now!)

3. Historically capitalism has been evil, and yet has paradoxically also been a great benefit. The UK invented capitalism with our industrial revolution. It could be argued that Wedgewood invented the idea of planned obsolesence, and modern marketing. In generating a market in patterned chinaware, he essentially began the whole process, even as indutrialisation was changing our landscape.

But here is the oddity – industrialisation created the terrible “labour market” whereby even skilled labourers would be stuck on subsistence wages, and any response to change in the labour market would take a generation to work through – which did not help those with skills no longer valued. But at the same time, the industrialised UK saw population growth – especially in industrialised towns, whilst non industrial countries saw famine and starvation that killed millions.

So unless we have a solution that is better for people than capitalism, we have to paraphrase Churchill et al. and say “Capitalism is the worst of all systems. Except for all the others”.

4. Finally, I am a pragmatist. The way to change the world is in small steps and individual changes.

A comment on another blog raised the question of whether environmentalism and international development are working at cross purposes. The argument is as follows:

In many ways Environmentalism and International Development are conflicting, if not totally incompatible agendas. Which is ironic, given that they tend to both be pushed by the same people, simultaneously.

1. Local food restricts developing countries’ access to world markets – thereby stunting their economic growth;

2. Organic and GM-free foods encourage biodiversity, but can’t possibly produce the yields needed to avert famines in the developing world;

3. So called ‘Fairtrade’ locks third world producers into inefficient, commodity-crop farming when they should be diversifying – thereby ensuring they will never earn more than just-above-poverty wages.

These agenda are both essentially bourgeois. It’s alright for us in the west because we are rich and developed enough to be able to make these food choices without risk, but to enforce them on the developing world is a death sentence – economically, developmentally, and (in many cases) physically.

Sadly, many on the left don’t actually want the third world to develop. They’d rather keep them in a mythical, agrarian ‘golden age’ and have this patronising view of people there as ‘noble savages’ – victims who need to be ‘saved’ from globalisation and the west.

They can’t accept the unpalatable truth that what people in the developing world REALLY want is to be go-getting, middle-class capitalists like the rest of us.

Dizzy Thinks Blog

Now there is much to say here, but I intend to ignore the issue of whether the writer really understands what “the left” wants. (My argument would be that the right/left division is, in any case, essentially bogus).

On the assumption that we can agree that people have concern for the environment and compassion for the poor, and what to see an improvement in the condition of both, how do we answer these claims?

On point 1, does local food production restrict access of developing countries to local markets?

Well on some level there might be some truth in this. If we buy strawberries in february, where do they come from? Are they flown in from Africa?

Clearly that is an environmental disaster. We should eat fruit in season, and not pander to a must-have culture that ramps up the food miles and energy cost of growing foods. But if we do so, then we inhibit the ability of the African farmer to sell his crop on the world market.

But we are not locking the farmer out of the market. Instead, if we live by environmentally sound principles, we ensure that there is no market for strawberries in february. What will teh farmer do? diversify into a crop that he *can* sell. That is just market forces at work.

As long as the African farmer is free to sell any crop into our markets without restriction, there is not a problem.

But there is a problem, because we *do* lock African countries out of our markets. We prevent the market from working for the benefit of these farmers.

The answer is not to eat more strawberries. The answer is to free up the markets.

2. Organic production encourages biodiversity, yes. But it is a fundamental misunderstanding of the organic movement to think that this is the root of the movement (although the misconception is a common one, helped on by many who market organic food).

Organic production is primarily about sustainability. E.F. Schumacher wrote a book “Small is Beautiful” which made the point that fossil fuels are energy *capital*. They are a limited resource, and so good economic principles insist that we only spend the resource in ensuring sustainability.

So the point of organic production is precisely to get to a point where efficient sustainable production of food can indeed meet our needs. It can be done, but will only happen if we move step by step towards the goal.

3. Fairtrade does not lock producers into a crop. It guarantees a fair wage for that crop. Now that may seem artifically high for the crop, because non fair trade coffee can be purchased by companies for a lower price, and it may be that some of those selling at the lower price would do better to diversify.

What will happen? Those who should diversify will. The price of coffee paid to the grower will thus edge up, as demand outstrips supply, and everyone will benefit, without fair trade affecting anyone.

Now if a fair trade grower could earn more by diversifying, then they will also diversify. Indeed, the fair price for their crop will ensure that they have access to more capital to allow for the diversification.

The very idea that paying consumers less than a fair price for their crop will somehow economically benefit them is preposterous.

So this commentator is wrong on all points. Environmentalism is not an enemy of international development.

Indeed, there are some benefits from environmentalism. For instance, the disadvantaged nations of the world will be disproportionately worst hit by the effects of climate change. Efforts to tackle this problem (caused by the richer nations) will aid the third world.

After I wrote my piece in this blog about Dr Timothy Ball’s opinion piece, where he claims that no one is listening to him, even though he was one of Canada’s first climatology PhDs, and a researcher in the field – Dr Ball wrote me a reply in the comments section arguing that the piece was ad hominem.

As I pointed out to him, the piece was in fact evaluating an appeal to authority using the same criteria that I proposed for evaluating such appeals. It is entirely valid to review the expertise of an authority when such an appeal is made.

But Dr Ball made one point which I will deal with a little more fully here:

Elsewhere you (I assume it was you, but no matter because the point is still important) make the argument that there was no consensus on global cooling in the 1970s. First of all, as with global warming today, consensus is not a scientific fact. Second, as an active climatologist during that period I can attest there was a general consensus, but as with warming today there were those who disagreed that the trend would continue.

Now I am sure that these are Tim Ball’s recollections of the time, but as with all things, our recollections will be coloured by anecdotal evidence and specific converstaions we had. Was there ever hype about global cooling? Certainly, as articles in Newsweek and National Geographic demonstrate. Would Dr Ball have been asked about the issues? I presume so.

But was there a scientific consensus on the issue? Certainly not.

How do we know? The same way we know anything about what is happening in science – by reading the scientific literature.

And that is very revealing, because there is very little literature on the subject, and clearly no consensus.

There is a site that has set out to evaluate all papers from the time to examine this. The challenge on the site is to present any paper that predicts an ice age in the 1970s. Thus far there are some 16 links to papers, and no obvious link to global cooling. Indeed, the action of carbon dioxide in warming the climate is a stronger theme in these papers! But if we allowed all 16 papers as candidates – that is a long long way from a scientific consensus.

A good summary of the field is found in:

National Research Council, US Committee for the Global Atmospheric Research Program, Understanding Climatic Change: A Program for Action, National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC, (1975), appendix A.

This paper has been summarised by W M Connolley, who also is gathering the other papers mentioned above. It is quite clear that (a) there was no consensus on global cooling, and (b) that the worldwide scientific consensus of the IPCC is wholly quantified where the above report only spoke of very small risks, without giving any numbers.

So what really happened in the 1970s? Essentially there was some cooling from the post war period into the 1970s as per the graph on the right.

No consensus was ever reached on the cause of the cooling, because at this time there was also a great deal of concern about acid rain. Consequently sulpher dioxide emissions were reduced through a series of international treaties and technological change. The result was that sulpher dioxide rapidly declined as an atmospheric aerosol. This had been very effectively masking the effects of carbon dioxide since the the second world war, and as sulpher dioxide emissions were reduced the temperatures started to rapidly climb.

This is all well known, and there has even been a half baked suggestion that we deliberately pump sulpher based aerosols into the atmosphere to keep global temperatures down!

What of the coverage in the popular press?

Well anyone who knows anything about science will be aware that the popular press love to latch on to preliminary studies – particularly when they are controversial, and make a big thing of them. The journalists do not quantify uncertainty in their reporting, and the result is a bit of hysteria, followed by ignorance of later refutations.

An example of this is seen, for instance, in breast feeding studies, where breast feeding has been linked to high IQ in the popular press. What the press do not mention is that earlier studies were contradictory, because they failed to factor in factors such that higher IQ mothers were more likely to breast feed. Even now that the science is settling, and it seems that there is a link between IQ and breast feeding, no-one actually mentions that whilst the effect is observable scientifically, we are not talking about an improvement that anyone would actually notice.

So don’t rely on the press for science reporting.

And in interests of balance, I will mention a recent article in “The Independent” which was predicting the possibility of extinction of life on earth at the upper end of the warming estimates from the IPCC. That was just as poor reporting as any I have seen on global warming science.

A comment on this blog points to three articles, all making the same points about there being a medieval warm period. The one below is typical:

Vikings raised crops and cattle in Greenland 1000 years ago, while Britons grew grapes in England

I have already answered the point about Greenland in an earlier post. However, I did not mention this bit about grapes being grown in Britain.

I just wanted to confirm that my parent’s house, built in 1900, has a grape vine growing on the south wall. It is by no means impossible to grow grapes in Britain (and not just because Britain is now warmer than it was in the medieval warm period. This vine has been there for a very long time. I do not know if it was planted when the house was built, but it must have been there for at least 50 years).

I received a long comment in this blog this week that included something I see from time to time by those who want to believe that climate change is not man made:

1300AD — when exploring vikings named ‘Greenland’ Greenland, they did so for a reason: they cultivated the land for two centuries — before they couldn’t grow any more (it wasn’t human greenhouse gas that interrupted their cultivation LOL

Firstly, let’s get the facts straight. The Vikings colonised Greenland towards the end of the 10th centure (c. 982). They remained there for over 400 years, but their settlements were abandoned by the 15th century (after c. 1430 AD, but it is unclear exactly when the colony was abandoned).

Now the argument that is made is that the name of the country – “Greenland” and the fact that people lived there implies that at this time (during the so called “medieval warm period”) the global temperature must have been much warmer than it is now.

But this argument is made in ignorance of a few key facts. Firstly, people live in much the same locations of Greenland now as the two Viking settlements. These areas are indeed very green even today. Look at this google map of the area of the Western settlement. The eastern settlement area is here. Notice the strong green colour in all the valleys! Whilst travel to the settlements and trade with them would have become very hard in the Little Ice Age, it is not as if they were overwhelmed by the Greenland ice sheet!

Indeed the average temperature in Greenland now is higher than it would have been in the medieval warm period[1].

But there are other misconceptions in this argument. Greenland was settled by Erik the Red, who was expelled from Iceland. It is a very likely theory that the naming of the land as “Greenland” was a bit of 10th century marketing hype to encourage others to settle there.

Another point is that “grn” is an indo-european word meaning something akin to a nugget, and at the root of hundreds of words in a multiplicity of languages. Words including “ground”, “corn”, “grain” and so on. Some early maps actually refer to Greenland as Groundland (the Old Norse equivalent at least), and it may be that the country was not named for the colour green at all.

Finally, the medieval warm period was primarily a Northern European phenomenon, and not one found worldwide.

So an argument made on the existence of the Viking settlement, and the naming of the country as Greenland, is a very tenuous argument against global warming.

*Notes*

1. Crowley TJ, Lowery TS (2000) How Warm Was the Medieval Warm Period? AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment: Vol. 29, No. 1 pp. 51–54

In Nigel Calder’s piece in the Times he says:

The best measurements of global air temperatures come from American weather satellites, and they show wobbles but no overall change since 1999.

A case of selective use of the evidence. There is excellent data from a variety of sources. I have chosen two developed by scientists in conjunction with the Hadley Centre of the UK Met Office. These measure land and sea temperatures at multiple sites around the world. The datasets can be downloaded here and are described on that site and in the papers referenced below.

I then plotted these data sets, and it is quite clear that there is no loss of the warming trend since 1999. (Click the thumbnail to see the full sized graph). All I can think that Calder is referring to is the spike in 1998 (I have drawn a line to indicate this), making that year the hottest on record.

But such spikes are not a surprise. In any such dataset there will be outlyers – but what is quite clear is that there has been a strong warming trend, particularly over the last few decades. Compare this graph to my graph in my post earlier today, and you can see that there is also no correlation between the warming trend over these decades and cosmic rays.

So Calder is wrong to say that the warming trend has topped out, and he is wrong to attribute the warming to cosmic rays. He is also wrong to suggest that no-one would publish Svensmark’s paper – it is published in the august proceedings of the Royal Society. He is wrong to say that scientists who oppose global warming are locked out of the process – science thrives on people trying to prove other scientists wrong.

Calder is wrong on just about every point.

References (for the data sets used in this graph)

• Brohan, P., J.J. Kennedy, I. Haris, S.F.B. Tett and P.D. Jones, 2006: Uncertainty
  estimates in regional and global observed temperature changes: a new dataset from
  1850.
  J. Geophysical Research 111, D12106,
  doi:10.1029/2005JD006548
  – Available as PDF

• Jones, P.D., New, M., Parker, D.E., Martin, S. and Rigor, I.G., 1999: Surface air
  temperature and its variations over the last 150 years.
  Reviews of Geophysics 37, 173-199.

• Rayner, N.A., P. Brohan, D.E. Parker, C.K. Folland, J.J. Kennedy, M. Vanicek, T.
  Ansell and S.F.B. Tett, 2006: Improved analyses of changes and uncertainties in
  marine temperature measured in situ since the mid-nineteenth century: the HadSST2
  dataset.
  J. Climate, 19, 446-469.

• Rayner, N.A., Parker, D.E., Horton, E.B., Folland, C.K., Alexander, L.V, Rowell, D.P., Kent, E.C. and Kaplan, A., 2003:
  Globally complete analyses of sea surface temperature, sea ice and night marine air temperature, 1871-2000.
  J. Geophysical Research 108, 4407,
  doi:10.1029/2002JD002670

Finally – this graph is used to demonstrate that the warming trend in global mean temperatures still continues. Any reliance on this representation of the data beyond this is discouraged. I have deliberately used the variance data simply to demonstrate the trends. I have chosen two data sets to demonstrate that I am not being deliberately selective of data that supports my point of view.

There is an article being widely touted by those who don’t want to believe the current consensus for man made climate change in our world. The article is written by Nigel Calder, the ex editor of New Scientist magazine – a popular science magazine giving a round up of current science news.

There are many things that could be said about the article, but it makes one important point. Calder says that the sun has become increasingly active over the 20th century, but the activity has levelled off, and that this corresponds with a levelling off of global warming noted since 1999.

He also points to a paper by Henrik Svensmark, published in the proceedings of the Royal Society, demonstrating the role of cosmic rays in the formation of rain clouds. Calder’s summary of the issue is:

[Svensmark] saw from compilations of weather satellite data that cloudiness varies according to how many atomic particles are coming in from exploded stars. More cosmic rays, more clouds. The sun’s magnetic field bats away many of the cosmic rays, and its intensification during the 20th century meant fewer cosmic rays, fewer clouds, and a warmer world.

The problem with Calder’s thesis does not lie in Svensmark’s work, but in the fact that he has selected perfectly good science to bolster a claim that is not supported by the evidence.

The Climax station in Colorado has been measuring cosmic rays reaching the earth since 1953 (before the rapid warming of the last three decades or so). I have created a graph from the Climax Station data, and included it here. Click on the thumbnail to see the full sized version.

Notice that whilst there is a (well known) ten year cycle to these data, there is emphatically not any trend here. It is not the case that the sun’s magnetic field has been intensifying (until 1999) and thus batting away more cosmic rays. These data show that, whilst Svensmark’s thesis is excellent science, and furthers our understanding of cloud formation, it says *absolutely* *nothing* about the climate change we have been experiencing over recent decades.

Nigel Calder does us a disservice, by confusing the data in this way. (Indeed, the levelling off since 1999 he mentions is also wrong I think. I will see if I can get hold of some data).

Over on the MInTheGap blog, there is a post which links to this article about how global warming is nothing to worry about.

I wrote a couple of replies on the MInTheGap blog which you can take a look at, but to summarise, I noted that the article was largely an appeal to authority. The writer – one Timothy F Ball – claims:

I was one of the first Canadian Ph.Ds. in Climatology and I have an extensive background in climatology, especially the reconstruction of past climates and the impact of climate change on human history and the human condition

I am not sure what evidence he has for being one of the first doctors in Climatology in Canada. I suspect there may be some hair splitting going on there, as there were many Canadians prior to this who researched climate.

As to his extensive background in climatology, I cannot find much evidence for this – but he is right to draw attention to the fact that reconstruction of past climates is his area of expertise. His thesis from the University of London was:

“Climate Change in Central Canada, A Preliminary Analysis of Weather Information from the Hudson’s Bay Company Forts at York Factory and Churchill Factory, 1714-1850.”

I couldn’t immediately find any published papers by him on climate, so a web search revealed these titles that someone else turned up after an exhaustive search of web of science and worldcat:

1. “Historical Evidence and Climatic Implications of a Shift in the Boreal Forest Tundra Transition in Central Canada” Climatic Change 1986

2. “Instrumental Temperature Records at two Sites in Central Canada, 1768 TO 1910″ Climatic Change 1984

3. “The migration of Geese as an indicator of climate change in the southern Hudson-Bay region between 1715 and 1851,” Climatic Change 5, 85-93 (1983).

4. “Climate of 2 locations of the southwestern corner of Hudson-Bay -AD 1720-1729.” International Journal of Climatology 14, 1151-1168 (1994).

So Dr Ball’s expertise lie in understanding how Canadian climate has changed between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This, of course, ties in with the little ice age which followed the medieval warm period, and is an interesting period because of the anomalous conditions in Europe (and the Hudson Bay area) at this time. But in his piece quoted above, Ball gives the impression that the little ice age was a world wide phenomenon. he wrote:

The world has warmed since 1680, the nadir of a cool period called the Little Ice Age (LIA)

Notice that all Dr Ball’s research is over 12 years old. Increasingly we have come to understand that the little ice age was a localised phenomenon. Some have suggested this was because of melt water from retreat of the Greenland ice sheet in the medieval warm period causing a failure of the North atlantic drift to warm Europe (because the melt water had lower salinity, causing the cold water to sink and drive the North Atlantic drift down).

Whatever the reason though, recent research is clear that the little ice age was not a global phenomenon, but a localised one. See for instance:

“Climate Change 2001: Working Group I: The Scientific Basis 2.3.3 Was there a “Little Ice Age” and a “Medieval Warm Period”?”. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (2002)

Now this is the sum of Dr Ball’s research. Despite his great claims to be a leading climatologist, he has published just 4 peer reviewed papers on the subject – all on Canadian climate change prior to the industrial period.

To put that in context, a researcher in the UK who does not produce at least four peer reviewed papers over three years would not be even entered in the research assessment exercise as a current researcher.

He disagrees with a global consensus on climate change, but he does not carry out research on the subject. He has not published *any* research on the subject for well over a decade. We would do well not to be taken in by such people.

When confronted with the issue of diminishing reserves of oil and our car dependent culture that consumes more and more of these reserves, I often here the retort:

>Electric fuelcell operated vehicles, in my opinion, are the answer.

Wrong.

A fuel cell vehicle is powered by hydrogen gas, which is turned into
water as a byproduct of the process. It is nice and clean on a local
level, but think for a minute: where are the hydrogen mines?

We obtain hydrogen in a copule of ways. We can use hydrocarbon fuels and catalytic cracking – but then we are still using fossil fuels. The other method is through a form of electrolysis of water. This
splits the hydrogen from the oxygen in the water, which can then be
used in a fuel cell (the same process is used to create rocket fuel,
where both hydrogen and oxygen are gathered).

But the law of conservation of energy says this: if you turn water
into hydrogen and then back into water, then at maximum efficiency,
the energy used to create the hydrogen is equal to the energy you gain
from that hydrogen later.

Fuel cells are not 100% efficient, but even if they were, they would
be nothing but batteries. They store the input of energy for later
use.

Electrolysis requires electrical energy, but wher does that energy
come from? Well some of it can come from renewable sources, some of it
from nuclear power, but most of it comes from burning fossil fuels,
and certainly if our requirement increases significantly then we will be forced to
meet those requirements by burning more fossil fuels.

Okay, so we can burn coal and gas as well as oil, but we are still
back where we started – using capital reserves of energy as if they
were income.

Fuel cells are not the answer – they are merely an enabling
technology.

So fuel tax is too high? We should campaign to see big reductions in this tax? How long do we think fuel will last us anyway?

At the time of the last fuel crisis, someone suggested to me that we could run vehicles on a limitless supply of ethanol, and we need not worry about the fact that fuel production is already almost at its peak, and ready to start tailing off.

This kind of argument fails to consider just how much fuel we are all using. Here is an excerpt to my answer to that writer.

again, Brazil has been doing this [producing ethanol for motor vehicles] quite successfully for many years

Successful in what sense? despite the ideal conditions for ethanol production, government subsidy is still required to make ethanol production cost effective.

Because ethanol has a calorific value about half that of petrol, it is necessary to mix the ethanol with petrol in order to avoid the need for huge fuel tanks. Currently I understand that Brazilian fuel is between 22% and 24% ethanol.

Various vehicles do run on pure ethanol, but these are generally vehicles such as city taxis, where the shorter range is less of a problem.

In Brazil the sugar cane region is known as the Zona da Mata – a huge swathe of land that has all but replaced the Mata Atlantica tropical forest. To grow sufficient sugar to run all those vehicles, the forest has been destroyed.

In any case, ethanol in Brazil is produced from sugar cane. I believe that Eucalyptus is often used as biomass. To give some idea of the amount of sugar cane alone that is required to produce ethanol, consider these figures:

It is estimated that the net energy yield of ethanol produced from sugar is 30GJ/ha each year. Diesel fuel has a calorific value of about 35 KJ/L at 15 degrees Celsius, so assuming this is 10% more than petrol, we find that the net yield of energy is equivalent to approximately 1000 litres of petrol equivalent per hectare per year.

Now I know that the average petrol station distributes about 2 million litres of fuel per year (see this site ), so we require about 2,000 hectares of land (capable of growing sugar) for each petrol station. (I am not sure what total UK usage of petrol/diesel is, but would be interested in using those figures in this context, if anyone has them).

At current levels of usage (which are growing all the time), we don’t have a hope of servicing our needs through ethanol production.

Brazil manages it because they have a climate in which they can grow sugar cane, and huge tracts of forest that they can cut down to place the sugar plantations. Even so, they still rely heavily on petrochemicals to balance their fuel budget.

In theory alcohols are sustainable fuels, but in practice we do not have the land area to grow sufficient quantities for our needs.

What can we do? Are we all doomed? or is there really a sensible way to reduce fuel consumption in a way that will not destroy our economies?