John Cook's Climate Change Mythbusters 1

In this daily Broad Oak Magazine series, John Cook answers skeptical objections to climate change. We've taken those raised by 1% or more of online critics - 32 quibbles in all - but for the full list please see his site at http://www.skepticalscience.com/.
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What does past climate change tell us about global warming?

What The Science Says:
Natural climate change in the past proves that climate is sensitive to an energy imbalance. If the planet accumulates heat, global temperatures will go up. Currently, CO2 is imposing an energy imbalance due to the enhanced greenhouse effect. Past climate change actually provides evidence for our climate's sensitivity to CO2.

Climate Myth: Climate's changed before
Climate is always changing. We have had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a hundred thousand year cycle for the last 700 thousand years, and there have been previous periods that appear to have been warmer than the present despite CO2 levels being lower than they are now. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. (Richard Lindzen)

If there's one thing that all sides of the climate debate can agree on, it's that climate has changed naturally in the past. Long before industrial times, the planet underwent many warming and cooling periods. This has led some to conclude that if global temperatures changed naturally in the past, long before SUVs and plasma TVs, nature must be the cause of current global warming. This conclusion is the opposite of what the peer-reviewed science has found.

Our climate is governed by the following principle: when you add more heat to our climate, global temperatures rise. Conversely, when the climate loses heat, temperatures fall. Say the planet is in positive energy imbalance. More energy is coming in than radiating back out to space. This is known as radiative forcing, the change in net energy flow at the top of the atmosphere. When the Earth experiences positive radiative forcing, our climate accumulates heat and global temperature rises (not monotonically, of course, internal variability will add noise to the signal).

How much does temperature change for a given radiative forcing? This is determined by the planet's climate sensitivity. The more sensitive our climate, the greater the change in temperature. The most common way of describing climate sensitivity is the change in global temperature if atmospheric CO2 is doubled. What does this mean? The amount of energy absorbed by CO2 can be calculated using line-by-line radiative transfer codes. These results have been experimentally confirmed by satellite and surface measurements. The radiative forcing from a doubling of CO2 is 3.7 Watts per square metre (W/m²) (IPCC AR4 Section 2.3.1).

So when we talk about climate sensitivity to doubled CO2, we're talking about the change in global temperatures from a radiative forcing of 3.7 Wm^-2. This forcing doesn't necessarily have to come from CO2. It can come from any factor that causes an energy imbalance.

How much does it warm if CO2 is doubled? If we lived in a climate with no feedbacks, global temperatures would rise 1.2°C (Lorius 1990). However, our climate has feedbacks, both positive and negative. The strongest positive feedback is water vapour. As temperature rises, so too does the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere. However, water vapour is a greenhouse gas which causes more warming which leads to more water vapour and so on. There are also negative feedbacks - more water vapour causes more clouds which can have both a cooling and warming effect.

What is the net feedback? Climate sensitivity can be calculated from empirical observations. One needs to find a period where we have temperature records and measurements of the various forcings that drove the climate change. Once you have the change in temperature and radiative forcing, climate sensitivity can be calculated. Figure 1 shows a summary of the peer-reviewed studies that have determined climate sensitivity from past periods (Knutti & Hegerl 2008).

Figure 1: Distributions and ranges for climate sensitivity from different lines of evidence. The circle indicates the most likely value. The thick coloured bars indicate likely value (more than 66% probability). The thin coloured bars indicate most likely values (more than 90% probability). Dashed lines indicate no robust constraint on an upper bound. The IPCC likely range (2 to 4.5°C) and most likely value (3°C) are indicated by the vertical grey bar and black line, respectively.

There have been many estimates of climate sensitivity based on the instrumental record (the past 150 years). Several studies used the observed surface and ocean warming over the twentieth century and an estimate of the radiative forcing. A variety of methods have been employed - simple or intermediate-complexity models, statistical models or energy balance calculations. Satellite data for the radiation budget have also been analyzed to infer climate sensitivity.

Some recent analyses used the well-observed forcing and response to major volcanic eruptions during the twentieth century. A few studies examined palaeoclimate reconstructions from the past millennium or the period around 12,000 years ago when the planet came out of a global ice age (Last Glacial Maximum).

What can we conclude from this? We have a number of independent studies covering a range of periods, studying different aspects of climate and employing various methods of analysis. They all yield a broadly consistent range of climate sensitivity with a most likely value of 3°C for a doubling of CO2.

The combined evidence indicates that the net feedback to radiative forcing is significantly positive. There is no credible line of evidence that yields very high or very low climate sensitivity as a best estimate.

CO2 has caused an accumulation of heat in our climate. The radiative forcing from CO2 is known with high understanding and confirmed by empirical observations. The climate response to this heat build-up is determined by climate sensitivity.

Ironically, when skeptics cite past climate change, they're in fact invoking evidence for strong climate sensitivity and net positive feedback. Higher climate sensitivity means a larger climate response to CO2 forcing. Past climate change actually provides evidence that humans can affect climate now.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Removal of Royal veto and a fishy smell from Fowey

There is worried comment doing the rounds of the internet as people have had their attention drawn to the wording of the proposed House of Lords Bill 15:

“A BILL TO Amend the Sovereign Grant Act 2011; to amend the succession to the title of the Duke of Cornwall; to re-distribute the Duchy of Cornwall’s estate; and to remove the requirement for a Parliament to obtain Queen’s or Prince’s consent to consideration of bills passing through Parliament.”[1]

The last part would remove Royal veto over a Bill’s progress rather than Royal Assent, but it looks like a further power grab by Parliament of the kind that Albert Burgess outlined in his lucid historical conspectus this morning[2].

It’s quite an assault on the Prince of Wales. Who’s behind it, and why?

The Bill is sponsored by Lord Berkeley, a hereditary Baron who was returned to the Lords as a Life Peer after the House was reformed under New Labour. He was a Labour Whip and spokesperson for Transport prior to the 1997 General Election.[3]

He is well-qualified to speak on transportation. Here are some of his offices mentioned in the House of Lords’ interests:

Chairman, Rail Freight Group
Board Member, European Rail Freight Association
President, Aviation Environment Federation
President, United Kingdom Marine Pilots Association
President, Road Danger Reduction Forum
Vice President, Cycling Touring Club

Road, rail, air, sea… quite a list. The marine interest goes a little bit further:

Trustee, Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML) (sustainability of the marine ecosystem)

and…

Harbour Commissioner, Fowey Harbour Authority, Cornwall

That last is interesting. Lord Berkeley lives in Polruan (see note 3), near the mouth of the river Fowey. He will not be far from various interests of the Prince of Wales, who as Duke of Cornwall

“owns freehold about three-fifths of the Cornish foreshore and the 'fundus', or bed, of navigable rivers and has right of wreck on all ships wrecked on Cornish shores, including those afloat offshore.”[4]



Land and shore holdings of the Duchy of Cornwall

This land ownership also used to include Fowey Harbour, but “the Harbour Commissioners own the fundus and foreshore purchasing from the Duchy of Cornwall in 1933.”[5]

So Fowey is not directly beholden to the Prince and it would seem that there is little opportunity for a direct conflict of interests. 

But the maritime angle has a little more to it than that. In 2011, Lord Berkeley launched another Bill, the Marine Navigation Bill[6], which aimed to make or amend provisions for pilots, lighthouses and harbour authorities. This Bill would have affected the Prince’s interests and so James Whittle, Clerk to the Lords, wrote to Lord Berkeley on 6 September 2011[7] to alert him to the need to approach Clarence House for the Prince’s consent. The Bill never made it.

In the Spring of 2013, the noble Lord called for a “radical overhaul” of the Duchy and said “he wanted to see all money generated by the estate go towards Cornish people and not the heir to the throne,”[8] so setting the common man against the Crown in a manner reminiscent of what Albert Burgess has told us of Asquith’s tour round Britain. It’s been some time since a socialist was so keen to see the people have control over their own money.

Could it be that there is a short-sighted and destructive element of personal pique in this new, constitutionally significant initiative?

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[1] http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/lbill/2013-2014/0015/lbill_2013-20140015_en_2.htm

[2] http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/the-british-government-has-committed.html

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Gueterbock,_18th_Baron_Berkeley

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duchy_of_Cornwall#Legal_status_and_additional_rights 

[5] http://www.foweyharbour.co.uk/assets/file/pdfs/Downloads/aerial%20views%20of%20estuary.pdf

[6] http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2010-11/marinenavigationhl.html

[7] http://www.theguardian.com/uk/interactive/2011/oct/30/letter-marine-navigation-bill

[8] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-22012547

 

 

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

John Cook: Antarctic sea ice increasing because of global warming

The following post is republished with the kind permission of the author, John Cook. Please see the original for the useful comments on it, at http://www.skepticalscience.com/increasing-Antarctic-Southern-sea-ice-intermediate.htm
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Why is southern sea ice increasing?

Link to this page

The skeptic argument...

Southern sea ice is increasing
'Antarctic sea ice set a new record in October 2007, as photographs distributed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed penguins and other cold-weather creatures able to stand farther north on Southern Hemisphere sea ice than has ever been recorded. The news of expanding Antarctic sea ice stole headlines from global warming alarmists who asserted Arctic sea ice had reached its lowest extent since 1979.' (James Taylor)

What the science says...

Select a level...	Basic		Intermediate
Antarctic sea ice has been growing over the last few decades but it certainly is not due to cooling - the Southern Ocean has shown warming over same period. Increasing southern sea ice is due to a combination of complex phenomena including cyclonic winds around Antarctica and changes in ocean circulation.

The most common misconception regarding Antarctic sea ice is that sea ice is increasing because it's cooling around Antarctica. The reality is the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica has shown strong warming over the same period that sea ice has been increasing. Globally from 1955 to 1995, oceans have been warming at 0.1°C per decade. In contrast, the Southern Ocean (specifically the region where Antarctic sea ice forms) has been warming at 0.17°C per decade. Not only is the Southern Ocean warming, it's warming faster than the global trend. This warming trend is apparent in satellite measurements of temperature trends over Antarctica:


Figure 2: Antarctic surface temperatures as observed by satellites between 1981 and 2007.

Similar trends are found when combining temperature data measured from ships and buoys. The following figure from Increasing Antarctic Sea Ice under Warming Atmospheric and Oceanic Conditions (Zhang 2007) displays trends over the ice-covered Southern Ocean - this is the region where Antarctic sea ice forms.


Figure 3: Linear trend (1979–2004) of surface air temperature over the ice-covered areas of the Southern Ocean (Zhang 2007).

We see strong warming over most of the ice-covered Southern Ocean although there is also some cooling. What is the average trend over the whole region? The overall surface temperature trend over the ice-covered regions of the Southern Ocean shows a warming trend:


Figure 4: Annual mean surface air temperature averaged over the ice-covered areas of the Southern Ocean. Straight line is trend line (Zhang 2007).

Oceanographic data also find that the waters in the Southern Ocean are warming. The waters of the Southern Ocean's Antarctic Circumpolar Current have warmed more rapidly than the global ocean as a whole. From 1960 to 2000, water temperature increased by 0.068°C per decade at depths between 300 and 1000 metres. This warming trend has increased to 0.098°C per decade since the 1980s (Boning 2008).
If the Southern Ocean is warming, why is sea ice increasing? There are several contributing factors. One is the drop in ozone levels over Antarctica. The hole in the ozone layer above the South Pole has caused cooling in the stratosphere (Gillet 2003). A side-effect is a strengthening of the cyclonic winds that circle the Antarctic continent (Thompson 2002). The wind pushes sea ice around, creating areas of open water known as polynyas. More polynyas leads to increased sea ice production (Turner 2009).

Another contributor is changes in ocean circulation. The Southern Ocean consists of a layer of cold water near the surface and a layer of warmer water below. Water from the warmer layer rises up to the surface, melting sea ice. However, as air temperatures warm, the amount of rain and snowfall also increases. This freshens the surface waters, leading to a surface layer less dense than the saltier, warmer water below. The layers become more stratified and mix less. Less heat is transported upwards from the deeper, warmer layer. Hence less sea ice is melted (Zhang 2007).
Antarctic sea ice is complex and counter-intuitive. Despite warming waters, complicated factors unique to the Antarctic region have combined to increase sea ice production. The simplistic interpretation that it's caused by cooling is false.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

"The British Government has committed treason."

Albert Burgess makes the case that in 1972, the British Government committed treason and sedition when it took Britain into the EEC. Our continued membership, he says, is against the British people's Constitutional freedoms and rights. His website is here: http://www.acasefortreason.org.uk/
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Loyalty vs. Treason

What bench marks do we have to help us decide between Loyalty and Treason? What is it to be loyal to one’s country or to betray one’s country?

 

In the United Kingdom we have a Parliamentary democracy headed by the King or Queen.

How does Parliament work?

Parliament is made up of three things:

• The House of Commons in which our elected representatives sit;
• The House of Lords in which the Lords Spiritual (the Bishops) and the Lords Temporal (the Barons) sit;
• The King or Queen, who sits in the House of Lords, being the top Baron in the Kingdom.

It has become convention since 1420 for the House of Commons to start legislation, which then goes to the House of Lords, who vet the legislation, accept it, reject it or send it back to the House of Commons with recommendations for how it should be amended. If it passes through both Houses it is then put before the King for the Royal assent. If and only if it gets the assent from the King can it become law.

The King is born of the Common Law: he is part hereditary, part elected. The King has advisors who were originally the important men in the Kingdom; these developed into the Saxon Witan and the Witan into a Parliament as we now know it. This is how it should work.

The different types of law

The oldest is the common law, which started out as a set of rules to allow people to live together in harmony.

Then there is constitutional law. This in large measure is a confirmation of the rules of the common law by the King and by a charter. Such constitutional laws are the Charter of Liberties 1100, Magna Carta 1215, the Petition of Right 1628, and the 1689 Bill of Rights.

Finally, there is statute law. There is a great deal of misunderstanding of statute law. Parliament itself was born of the common law and the common law gave Parliament the right to clarify the common law and as society developed and the common law was unable to supply a remedy, to make law by statute to provide a new remedy. Statute law is real law, but only as long as the statute complies with the spirit of the common law, which can be very basically described as “do no harm”.

What are loyalty and treason?

Loyalty to the King and the Kingdom is a duty imposed on us all in exchange for the protection afforded to us by the King.

Treason is a breach of our duty of loyalty to the King or the Kingdom.

It is important to understand these things if we are going to understand what follows.

The growth of the power of the Commons

Since 1420 when the House of Commons demanded and got the right to initiate all legislation, the Commons has been on a power grab.

In 1609 the Commons wrote to the House of Lords describing themselves as the Knights, Burgess's and Barons, of the High Court of Parliament. The House of Lords replied saying that under no circumstances world they accept the Commons as Barons of Parliament and without the Lords they were no court at all.

In 1667 the Commons told the Lords they could not amend a money bill. A ten-year row ensued but in 1677 the Lords agreed not to amend money bills. This had far-reaching and unforeseen consequences, consequences which have had devastating effects on the Kingdom.

In 1909 the government of Asquith put forward a budget which promised the common man a pension. The House of Lords looked at this and believing they could not amend a money bill, and realising the extra tax needed to fund this pension was more than the common man could afford on top of the taxes they already paid, they rejected the budget.

Asquith told the Lords he was putting a bill forward to prevent the Lords from rejecting a bill. The Lords said they would reject it, but Asquith said he would put 500 new lords into the Upper House and they would vote for its abolition. The Lords caved in.

The bill was put before King Edward VII who rejected it on the grounds that it removed a protection from his subjects and it was unconstitutional. The King ordered Asquith to go to the country.

Asquith and his ministers went around the country telling everyone those horrible Lords would not let the working man have a pension. The Lords felt it was beneath them to out their side. Asquith was re-elected and the 1911 Parliament was passed into law, King Edward saying when he opened Parliament that the only reason he was putting this forward was because his ministers told him he must.

This was the end of Parliament as a democratic body. It placed the House of Commons in the position of being able to do anything it wanted to without any restraint.

The removal of legal safeguards against foreign power

As a result the House of Commons were able to repeal laws like the 1351 Statute of Provisors, which prevented the disposal of English assets to a foreign owner, and the 1351 Act of Praemunire, which forbade the importation of any foreign law into England or for any of his Bishops to excommunicate any of his subjects on the orders of the Pope, or for any of his subjects to be drawn out of England to be tried in foreign courts. These two major laws were designed to protect the Kingdom.

Edward Heath, the EEC, treason and sedition

It was the removal of these two ancient laws which allowed Edward Heath to put through his 1972 European Communities Act. When Edward Heath signed the Treaty of Rome he surrendered our fishing grounds, a very valuable English asset to the EEC; and on that day we imported more law than we had made for ourselves in the previous 700 years: some 2,000 extra laws in one day.

Edward Heath had a duty of Loyalty to Her Majesty and he had taken the oath of a Privy Councillor in which he swore to uphold and defend all Her Majesty's Rights, Privileges, Pre-eminences, and Prerogatives. When he put through the 1972 EEC Act he knew he was surrendering this Kingdom to foreign rule, entirely contrary to the oaths he had taken. Edward Heath had committed high treason against Her Majesty, contrary to the 1351 Treason Act, and high treason against the people of England and the English Constitution. 

Every European treaty since has surrendered more powers to govern to a foreign power. Joining the European Union has been an act of high treason against the Queen and people of this United Kingdom by those in government.  

By doing this Edward Heath had imagined the death of Her Majesty as a Sovereign Queen, which is high treason contrary to the 1351 Treason Act. He had also subverted the English Constitution, the major crime of Sedition at Common Law and at this level of sedition and act of high treason against the English Constitution and Her Majesty’s subjects.

 

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy.

Increasing sea ice is an effect of global warming?

That David Rose Daily Mail piece on increased Arctic ice may prove the opposite of what he claims. Far from demonstrating global cooling, it may be a side-effect of warming, plus deterioration of the ozone layer.

This article from Australia in 2011 (I'm asking for permission to reproduce in full) argues a causal chain, which I understand as follows:

1. The hole in the ozone layer above the South Pole is cooling the stratosphere
2. An effect of this local temperature change is to let air drop down and push out, strengthening the winds that circle the Antarctic
3. The boosted cyclonic winds push sea ice around and create gaps within the sheet, where the water is less turbulent and so freezes more easily
4. Meanwhile, the warmer air causes more rain and snow to fall on the sea*
5. This (less salty) precipitation is less dense than the warm saltwater rising from lower layers of the sea, so it sits on top and keeps the surface cooler than it otherwise would be
6. The lower, warmer water is largely trapped in its own layer, so less of it rises to melt sea ice

*I don't know whether this is because warmer air carries more water vapour and so has more to dump when it meets a front of colder air; or for some other reason.

I've asked the writer if the same thing could be happening in the Arctic.

Also, if the sea is warmer, then presumably there will be more evaporation and so more to fall on the central ice cap of the North Pole and the landmass of the Antarctic, potentially increasing the thickness of the ice at each place.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Fukushima: an even bigger danger to come?

Via Zero Hedge, Saturday’s article from George Washington’s Blog[1] recaps the disaster so far – Tepco having no idea how to solve the problem, no-one sure of the state or exact position of the reactor cores, continuing massive leakage of radioactive water that will be taken to California by ocean currents.

But then it caps that with a scarier scenario: if the spent-fuel pools leak enough water and air reaches the stored fuel assemblies, there could be an uncontrollable fire, releasing far more radiation into the atmosphere than happened at Chernobyl – Fukushima was using about 9 times more fuel than the Russian operation[2]

In Mid-August, RT.com reported[3] the operation to remove spent fuel from under the No. 4 reactor; a minor earthquake or dropping a fuel assembly could also trigger a nuclear fire.

Last March, Robert Alvarez of the IPS in Washington gave a presentation[4] explaining the difficulties and dangers of Fukushima – including terrorism. He pointed out that US regulations allow for much larger spent-fuel pools, and that these are rapidly approaching capacity, so a plan for additional (and preferably dry) storage is urgently needed.

The technology is still in its infancy, despite the twisted assurance of some UK nuclear shill years ago who claimed that the industry had 100,000 (or was it a million?) years’ experience, as though 50 yearling babies could be credited with the knowledge of a 50-year-old adult. Yet the implications of shutdown and cleanup are very far-reaching: the half-life of Uranium 238 is 4.5 billion years, longer than the distance between us and the first monocellular life on Earth (see Slide 11 for other examples).

If not nuclear, what? Perhaps, since there is growing doubt about CO2’s contribution to global warming, we should reconsider coal. Maybe Arthur Scargill’s repeated point about the UK's reserves of deep-mined coal was apt, after all. Can they be recovered now?

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[1] http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/09/the-real-fukushima-danger.html

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Fukushima_and_Chernobyl_nuclear_accidents

[3] http://rt.com/news/fukushima-fuel-cleanup-operation-522/

[4] http://www.totalwebcasting.com/tamdata/Documents/hcf/20130312-1/Reducing%20the%20risks%20of%20spent%20fuel%20storage.pdf

 

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

EXCLUSIVE: David Rose believes in global warming

David Rose's latest spread in the Mail on Sunday (print edition) begins with a sub-heading revealing the UN IPCC's "astonishing new admission" that, as the inch-high type of the two-page-straddling main headline says, "global warming is HALF what we said."

You know when someone shouts so loudly that you can't hear them? For although his ongoing series on climate change features a provocative thematic label:

- it's not a confidence trick, simply overstatement by a committee who don't appear to understand that science is founded on the rock of uncertainty: the more it's willing to be doubted and tested, the more likely it is to be as nearly right as it can be.

The presentation of the Mail articles - for which sub-editors may have more responsibility than Rose himself - is similarly overdone, and asking to be tripped up by its own brashness. For example, crowing that global warming (of what part or element, exactly?) is only half what was predicted appears to admit an inconvenient truth, i.e. that the globe is indeed warming.

In a highly contentious area like this, there is a duty to consider style as well as content. Rose's piece, when the cross-header shrieking subsides, is more nuanced, showing that the whole issue is far more complex than just a series of forecasts about CO2 and temperature readings.

Mind you, he hasn't helped himself by jumping gleefully on the increase in Arctic ice cover as though to say, "Ha ha! Proved you wrong!" Firstly, there are also places where ice is melting, and secondly, anyone with the slightest knowledge of statistics knows that citing a single instance is no proof or disproof of anything. You have to try to find a trend.

There is a famous example in Bortkiewicz' book "Das Gesetz der kleinen Zahlen" (1898), where he studied the frequency with which Prussian cavalrymen were kicked to death by horses ("all of them", Allied soldiers would doubtless have wished 20 years later). On average it was 0.61 per year, which obviously didn't happen that way (unless the man's legs were left alive).

 

von Bortkiewicz's cavalry example (visually reordered)

One blizzard doth not an ice age make. There are many factors affecting world climate, and that's a vast subject. Even the Met Office's supercomputer can't get today's weather right every time, let alone next week's.

However, it is a scientific fact that CO2 lets through solar radiation but reflects back ground-emitted re-radiation; the way this works is clearly explicable. Similarly, water vapour from aircraft contrails - Brits may remember (coincidence or not?) the clear days we had in 2010 as air traffic was suspended when we had a dust cloud from Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull (pronounced "Jones", I understand) volcano.

Okay, there's room for debate on whether humans are largely responsible for CO2 increases; and about how other systems (e.g. vegetation) respond to any such increase; and about all the other things that cool or warm the sea and air. But there's too much yelling on both sides of the debate, and sensational contrarian reporting is not a proper corrective to over-excited AGW campaigners.

There's money being made on both sides, by lobbyists and manufacturers of cars and windmills, solar panel-makers and supermarkets flying beans in from Kenya; and by global carbon trading that seems to favour Chinese industry and American capital. As ever in war, truth has been the first casualty, and we need a more balanced contribution from the Fourth Estate and news media owners.


All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Money vs. reality

I've just listened to James Howard Kunstler's latest podcast[1], an interview with "ecological economist" Eric Zencey, whose book “The Other Road To Serfdom”[2] came out late last year. I give below a loose summation and interpretation of what I saw as the main points.

Zencey gives a good definition of sustainability: a system that doesn’t undermine the preconditions of its existence. (I recall a TV programme about farming in Norfolk, where thanks to centuries of intensive arable agriculture and other erosion factors the soil level had dropped so much that an old farm house had to have extra steps added, to let the occupants get up to its front door.)

He says that money is not always a good measure of what is going on, or what is beneficial, in an economy. Money is an abstraction, like a mathematical model, and reality is the energy and matter of the Earth, which we transform to suit ourselves. When fiat money is essentially infinite, but the world is finite, there is the potential for dangerous modelling distortions that will lead to seriously incorrect choices. Zencey like the idea of increasing bank reserve requirements until we get “100% money” (but I fear that might cause a depression that would result in a backlash that casts off all restraint).

GDP is flawed: it measures what he calls the “general commotion of money”, but it has no column for debits.  (This reminds me of a presentation I heard at the BAAS[3] in Birmingham in 1977, where an economist noted that eating more sweets and going more often to the dentist both raised GDP. ) Real growth, in the sense of more net benefit to us, is not the same as increased activity. So he calls for the adoption of an alternative yardstick, the Genuine Progress Indicator.[4]

Zencey suggests that instead of the classical –theory  tripartite division of economy into land, labour and capital, we should consider four classes of resource or capital: the built infrastructure, plus natural, social and cultural capital. (I emailed Mr Kunstler last month to say that the prospects for the US are still good, since the ratio of population to arable land is higher than anywhere else except Russia. He agreed, but said in effect that US culture has degraded and the infrastructure has seriously weakened, so that Americans are not the same people they were in 1943.)

Our current rate of consumption of “natural capital” is several planets’ worth; we will, he says, eventually get a sustainable system, it’s just a question of what kind, and so our task is to give future generations as many options as possible. The world is not infinite, and our current agricultural system “turns oil into people”. When the oil runs out (and like many other commentators he scorns the “100 years of shale” story) we’re back to the natural resources of 1800 (when the world fed maybe a billion humans) plus whatever modern technology we can employ to make best use of them. Perhaps a sustainable human population of 2 or 3 billion?

Current economic measures generally don’t  factor-in ecological degradation, but Zencey notes that the Failed States Index[5] includes an element for demographic pressure on resources. (And not just local-demographic, I’d say, if we think about what’s happened in the Middle East.) One of his chapters is provocatively entitled “Got terrorism? Blame economists”.

But he agrees with Kunstler that the young, much-maligned Millennial generation are hopeful, care, are passionate to use their knowledge to engage with the challenges we’re leaving them.

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[1] http://kunstler.com/podcast/kunstlercast-246/

[2] http://www.upne.com/1584659617.html

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Science_Association

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genuine_progress_indicator

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failed_States_Index

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Stop the play and save your life

Stop reading Liz Jones' diary!

For those who don't know, Liz Jones is a fashion columnist with a weekly confessional page at the back of the colour supplement of the UK's Mail on Sunday. Her life is the emotional equivalent of one of those slow-motion gorefest sequences in a Sam Peckinpah Western.

The dirty secret is that she wants it that way.

It'll go on as long as you are suckered into watching. You are part of it; you are complicit. Though your face is hidden in the dark beyond the footlights, the performance is for you. “You! Hypocrite lecteur! – mon semblable, - mon frère!” said T.S. Eliot in The Waste Land, inviting you to share his nervous breakdown.

There's a parody of Eliot's drama-queen gloom somewhere in Richard Adams' rabbit-saga Watership Down, where one of the bunnies takes on the manner of a prophet and foresees inevitable disaster - I can't track it down quickly but it's there, I promise you. Adams' book started (like some other great children's stories) as a series of adventures told to his children as he drove his car, and, sane and sensible man that he is (he lives yet, praise the Lord), he wanted to give them a positive outlook and so mocked the wrong-headed negativity of the doomster. Similarly, H.G. Wells' Mr Polly discovers:

"... when a man has once broken through the paper walls of everyday circumstance, those unsubstantial walls that hold so many of us securely prisoned from the cradle to the grave, he has made a discovery. If the world does not please you - you can change it."

To break through the paper walls, the first thing you have to change is you. Easy to say, so hard to do. But until you start using your egg tooth to peck at your shell, it doesn't matter what's going on outside, for the inside will always be the same.

One reason it's so difficult is that what you think of as your essential self is a pattern that's wrapped around your innermost consciousness, and even though it may keep on driving you towards unhappy results, you're afraid to get rid of it because it kids you that to lose part of your identity is to die. So it redirects you to externalities - once I'm rich/thin/famous it'll all be OK. And off you and I go into displacement activities, acquiring skills, knowledge, possessions, money, status etc; and somehow it's never enough. Because however wonderful the car, if the person behind the wheel is self-destructive he's going to wrap it round a tree.

No wonder childhood is so important. "You belong, you are loved, you're going to be just fine": that's what we need to hear. First train up the driver.

Eliot's French quotation is from Baudelaire, whose decadent poem makes Boredom the chief devil. But from what I've seen in life, and in what I do as a teacher of "special needs" children, that's not the driver. It's anger: anger at being cheated emotionally, leading to a lifelong desire for self-justification and revenge. It's a Ring Cycle, though in real life the ring is forged not because love was renounced but because it was withheld. The pattern is set, and unless it's broken it will lead not just to slow-burning personal tragedy but to Götterdämmerung.

Which is where we, the audience, come in. I once took part in an amateur dramatic production which, owing to publicity failings, got just two people on the auditorium seats. When they left at the interval, the show stopped (I was for carrying on, out of sheer stubbornness). Every actor knows that even if the public doesn't clap or cheer, they're participating; it's a dialogue with their energies. "Waves of love", the old variety performer would say as he got his applause, giving it back with outspread arms. So we're partly responsible for the performance.

Which is the central insight of Eric Berne's book "Games People Play" (may it never go out of print). You don't have to get into Transactional Analysis and the Child/Adult/Parent diagrams that echo Freud's Id, Ego and Superego. Man is greater than anything than comes out of him, goes the ancient Chinese saying, and such is our wish not to be imprisoned that if there was a perfect answer to anything I'd be looking for a second option.

The main observation in Berne - the thing you can take away with you and apply elsewhere - is that we write scripts. These have a part for the author, but parts for others, too, and the writer tries to recruit actors for the drama. The "play" itself has an agenda, like feelgood or downer films: the conclusion is that the principal is right, attractive etc. But he or she must be seen as such by others, without any essential change in the star of the show (because change is death). And so the play is good for an indefinite number of performances, like The Mousetrap, so long as the audience keeps the secret.

All the plays have at their core the principle that inner change must not be allowed to happen. The useless offerings pile up at the altar as, one after another, the bit players come in and perform their parts, some of them ending themslves discomfited, wounded. Over the past few months we've read how Jones has taken up with an old musician she call the RS (Rock Star) and once she's got him to declare his love and admit his vulnerabilities, she's rejecting him in various ways, including taking up with another person she had a crush on when she was young. It's compelling reading, but the reason why that is so for us - for me - is worrying.

Berne says, spot the script and ruin the punchline. Don't act Part B to Part A. Break the pattern. It needs to be more than that, of course. That will save you, the secondary actor, from an emotional mugging, but the scriptwriter still needs what we all need and should have had from the start: unqualified love.

Not love flavoured with pity - Jones wrote some time ago about having no cash and was highly embarrassed when loads of readers sent in bits of money from their own much more constrained budgets. Not love based on shared weaknesses, or common elements of unfortunate past life histories. That's why it's so hard to be a therapist - so many traps to fall into.

The hope is that if you don't play along, you make little breaks in the shell that the occupant can widen and climb through. The children that I see come to us very anxious, angry, disruptive and full of defiance and resentment. We try (and don't always succeed, because we're human) not to react to them as other people have before; to accept them while addressing their toxic behaviour patterns; and gradually, most calm down a bit and begin to respond. It doesn't happen all in one go, and there are backward as well as forward steps; but you can't give up. Essentially, though we have to follow the godawful National Curriculum and its bureaucratic assessment and recording procedures, this isn't about education in the academic sense; it's about an opportunity to heal.

And no, I'm not saint or angel. It's damn tiring and I'm not sure how much more of it I can do. Remember that as in psychology, many working in special needs education came to it as catchers in the rye who first needed saving themselves. You have to be careful not to work off your own neuroses onto others - and who is completely free?

We can't directly help Liz Jones. The audience is not a personal friend. But we can perpetuate her difficulties, by rewarding this weekly display. I choose not to be complicit any longer; I still get the paper, but I'm not reading the column. I hope someone throws her a lifebuoy, and that she chooses to reach out for it.

Same for you, same for me. Go save your life.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy.