So Is Climate Change a Hoax?

The Copenhagen Summit was a costly affair and it is now over - no real deal has been ratified and the outcome was inconclusive. But was the whole shebang really necessary? Is Climate Change not a man-made phenomenon?

I have tackled this subject before and what strikes me is its immense complexity and its simplicity. The complexity revolves around the evidence to prove that Climate Change is actually occurring and, if so, how it is linked to human intervention. The simplicity is to argue that in all this earth's several billion year history there has been no other species like man to inhabit it who can cause nuclear explosions, pump noxious gases into the air, chemicals into rivers and oceans and consume vast tracts of natural resources and convert them into materials and energy. Man's existence has only been concentrated into a very small part of recent history - as Carl Sagan famously put in his series 'Cosmos', if the history of the earth were expressed as a 365 day calendar then man first turned up after midday on 31 December; we are that new to the earth. Even more so, it has only been in the last couple of hundred years that man has started to become industrial and that has accelerated at an enormous rate as we consume ever greater amounts of natural resources.

It really is fairly obvious that our occupation on earth must have had some effect - it isn't that cerebral.

But there is a frightening issue underpinning the panic surrounding Climate Change. It is more likely that we will exhaust our bank of natural resources before we change the world's climate enough to kill off future generations - and that may well curtail their life expectancy anyway. Hubris around the subject is stoked up by people like Christopher Booker who fancies himself as a bit of a scientist - he claims the whole issue of Climate Change is bullshit.

He may know a thing or too about that. Famously, he declared, without any fundamental qualification or simple research, that white asbestos was identical in chemical make up as talcum powder and therefore as dangerous. True, white asbestos is the least virulent of the three types of asbestos, but it can still cause such terrible diseases as mesothelioma. As my father died of that disease due to working in an asbestos-laden environment, I find Booker's assertion as disgraceful. Anyone who has access to the internet, let alone a chemistry book, will tell you that talc and white asbestos are by no means identical, although the base formula may look similar to the untrained eye. Booker has also claimed in the past that breathing in the smoke of others does not cause cancer and that there is no proof that BSE causes vCJD in humans. You would think that he is the world's leading scientist rather than a Telegraph journalist and founder of Private Eye.

But there is the rub. Everyone who wants to bash the Climate Change argument just says that the issue is hokum because the evidence is forged - claiming that in fact the earth's temperature is actually going down, the Antarctic is getting colder and that CO2 levels are not the issue as they have no correlation to temperature levels. The new Freakonomics book argues that water vapour is more of a greenhouse gas than CO2 despite evidence that Venus has no such vapour but plenty of CO2 which actually keeps its temperature cooler than it should be because of its insulating capability.

I must admit that I sit somewhat on the fence as to the evidence - it is not conclusive other than the fact that we are enduring particularly high CO2 levels now and the seasons are definitely changing; you can see that clearly in when migrating birds re-appear or when flowers blossom.

Is this down to man? It may not be, but I tell you what, we are the smoking gun.

Shopping At Iceland

As the financial implosion occurred around us, Gordon Brown manfully rallied around saving worthless banks and helping savers. As he battled to put fingers in the dyke, so to speak, another calamity came from Iceland.

As Iceland melted under its own financial follies, it was found that not only had many UK savers, who had been lured by excellent online savings rates at Icelandic banks, but also many UK Local Authorities had several £billion between them in accounts which were rapidly tending to zero. Brown, warrior-like, thrust an accusatory finger at them demanded the money back or he would sue. Iceland waved a frozen two fingers at him and asked with what shall they pay?

The country was on its knees, virtually bankrupt.

In fact, ministers in Iceland reckoned they could name just 6 individuals who had caused the financial disaster via vaulting ambition, one of whom, a Director at Kaupthing, is under investigation for fraud. Icelandic companies owned many UK High Street shops including Iceland itself and so the knock on effect could be huge. If only we could have named our individuals beyond Gordon Brown himself. The savers in Icelandic banks would have to wait a long while to get any of their money back.

Iceland looked inwardly for salvation. At least it could feed itself if it came to it. Then some bright spark came up with an idea. We have seen before small islands trying to capture specific markets - in Mauritius, for example, there are many high fashion factories for companies like Ralph Lauren, while in the Channel Islands they tried to use VAT loopholes to attract music download business having already attracted CD and DVD distribution. Sooner or later such opportunities dissipate as the world moves on or the HMRC closes the loophole. But Iceland has an ace card.

Today, Iceland produces all its own energy. It is limitless and freely available, all they pay for is harnessing. While Britain scrabbles around laying vast cables between here and Norway to get cheaper electricity, Iceland has plenty for itself and much more. By tapping into the vast heat reserves below its surface, Iceland has access to vast amounts of the most renewable energy of all - the centre of the earth. And it has another unique, lots of cool water surrounding it. This unique combination has opened a credible business opportunity that has powerful selling points. It has already started to build specialist, state of the art premises to house vast server farms. As data grows exponentially, Iceland's unique combination of hot and cold means it can both power the servers cheaply with no impact on the CO2 levels and cool them again as it takes almost the same energy to cool them as power them under normal circumstances.

Banks and companies like Google, who alone is rumoured to have over a million servers worldwide, are already expressing interest and vast fibre cables are being laid to handle the incredible bandwidths required to transport the data to and from the island. Iceland's location means it may not ideal for the kinds of speeds required for certain companies, but for the plain old internet, it is more than acceptable.

As Britain fire-sells puny assets in an attempt to make ends meet that looks like people begging to the homeless, Iceland has a future which is exciting and potentially unique. Of course, there are issues about housing so much IT real estate in one place - it is the terrorist's dream - but if all these can be overcome, Iceland will have an amazing future that makes our pathetic efforts look as they are. We spent all our money to save a few rich people - Iceland is using all its resources to tap into something that can make it rich and powerful.

Icelandic bankers may not be getting fat bonuses this year, but they can at least go home thinking of a future that is worth investing in. Our boys will be rich again this year as they convert rubbish, toxic debt into £billions of profit right in front of our eyes and so just delaying the obvious and the inevitable.

Guess who stands the best chance of a sustainable future?

Panic Over - Freaky Pair Prove Climate Change Is Hokum

I breath a long sigh of relief. Climate Change, Global Warming, polar ice cap melting, Florida Flooding are all 'Inconvenient Lies'. The world is fine.

Well, not exactly. The new book by the Freakonomics authors, Levitt and Dubner, take a new look at climate change and basically their cerebral cell pool contributed by at least a room fool of highly qualified nerds has found that all science evidence to date is oversimplified, flawed and uses approximately the same thing to yield the same results. Yes, there is a higher level of CO2 in our atmosphere today and, yes, the temperature has risen but the two things are not related. The key greenhouse gas on earth is is fact water vapour. So our quest to vilify CO2 as a gas and limit all those who create it and push it into the atmosphere is wholly wrong and we should all be publicly raspberried at for doing so. Kyoto, schmoto.

It will come as good news to a few friends of mine who are very happy in their knowledge that Al Gore and his loony crew have a warped agenda to make $billions out of Climate Change and it is huge corporations who are behind the sinister plots. The green lobby are just former bra-burners and US airfield protesters - they are career activists just hopping on causes like the rest of us would change jobs, it's just what they do.

The Freaky Boys have now proven (evidence to be supplied) that CO2 levels when mammals were created were 1000 parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere and now they are at a mere 380 ppm, while the world actually is saying beyond 450 ppm it would be best to vacate the planet and the last one out switch off the lights. No only that but their own analysis of ice cores at the Poles have revealed something that all other scientists have missed and that is that CO2 levels have historically risen AFTER the temperature of the earth has risen.

What the small team of clever people who are Intellectual Ventures (IV), a kind of real-life Scooby Doo team of guys who go around debunking ghost theories and similar, say is that because Climate Change scientists are so primitive in their modelling, they basically all use tiny variations on the same theme and therefore come up with the same results. Their own super-modelling actually looks at the complex array of natural phenomena to work out the real situation. Here, they encounter a problem. Because the required computer power is so very large, it will be some 30 years before they will have enough of it to produce the answer. Would it not be very Douglas Adams-esque if the answer popped out after all that time was simply 42 - oops, that was the meaning of life, maybe 43 then. Worse still would be - 'They were right, you have 10 seconds to live.'

The danger with meddling with things with a small amount of knowledge and trying to be jacks of all trades because you believe you are smarter than everyone is that it creates an air of hubris. I am not entirely convinced by the evidence of the Green Lobby, but I know one thing. There has never been an organism in the earth's history that has been capable of creating such a large scale, unnatural effect on the ecosystem that is the planet. We have to understand, whether it is by 'good stewardship' as the Freaky Boys would ask, or by practical tackling of the way we live, we need to make changes in order to sustain the planet long term for life - the rock will exist long after humans are extinct, that much is certain. It is a chilling fact about nature but the longest surviving species tend to be the most simple.

The book no doubt will be a great success and a good read. I just think 20 or so guys in a room with plenty of brain power nit-picking over documents written by guys who have spent their life gathering evidence and meticulously recording it all, does not mean they are right. Scientists have proven many times that they are wrong but the manifestations of scientific work and the revolution of industry has allowed such individuals as those in IV to become free-thinking people who are taken ultra-seriously. It comes as no surprise that many of them are ex-corporate boys who have made so much money they no longer have to work. Some of them have a claim to fame for sophisticated weaponry - well, they would ate greenists, wouldn't they? Scientists are rarely millionaires, they do it because they are driven by the pursuit of knowledge and discovery.

IV and the Freaky Boys are in the pursuit of applying their own smartness, not honed on the drab experiments of career scientists, but in the 'Thought Rooms' of progress that a is a glorified meeting room with copious donuts, Starbucks coffee and cooky playthings. After all, real science is for wimps and has-beens.

The Great Debate that is whether man is affecting the Earth so much that we will cut off our own life support system is likely to never really occur. Too many people think they know the answers already and many just don't want to know. However, perhaps like the financial disaster that just occurred, we learn nothing in hindsight that helps us for the future. The problem we have about Climate Change is that if and when the disaster predicted occurs, hindsight will be of no use anyway as there will be no future.

I just hope that books like this make sure the debate is had and not just end it because we don't have enough computer power. After all, in the same book the clever people advocate that suicide bombers should get life insurance.

Make up your own mind if this is a serious debate.

Is Smoking Good For The Economy?

I read a vitriolic attack by Duncan Bannatyne last week on taxes and it is pretty clear where his opinions lie on smoking. Frankly, I think most people would agree with him - smoking appears to be on the increase again.

In a bizarre situation in the Hubei Province in China, Local Government officials have been ordered to smoke in order to boost the local economy. The edict has ordered them to collectively smoke around 250,000 packets. There are also fines if the officials do not meet their targets or are caught smoking rival brands manufactured in other provinces.

Even local schools have been issued with a quota for teachers. It puts a new spin on kids smoking - they might actually get forced to go behind the bike sheds and have a puff. Of course, this flies in the face of national anti-smoking policies as directed from Beijing but this is aimed at boosting local tax revenues.

There is even a 'special task force' to enforce the quotas and one teacher was put on an 'official warning' when rival brand butts were found in an ashtray.

Capitalism And Other Agendas

While this is one of the most odd scenarios you can imagine, it is not so stupid as it looks. Capitalism and its pursuit will, in tough times, almost certainly mean sacrifice of more progressive values like Green Policy, Carbon Emissions and the search for alternative energy.

Even we practice it. While we loaded up the budget with £500m for a new wind power project, we are supporting the car industry with a £2.3bn bail out. While we put more money into energy efficient homes, we put 2p on the duty for fuel. While we spend on large overt advertising for giving up smoking, we add some extra duty on cigarettes and alcohol - we actually want the extra revenue, not to stop smoking or drinking.

In fact, of the tax revenues raised from alcohol and tobacco, a large proportion helps balance the bill for treating people on the NHS. One could argue the jobs created by smoking in the tobacco industry and the NHS are good for the country just as we rush to save the car industries with bail outs and scrappage when we know the cars contribute to the CO2 emissions in the atmosphere.

Capitalism has the habit of trashing many progressive ideas. People will always find good arguments not to change. Just the other day over a beer, a friend said that there was new evidence to show climate change was a myth and that we are more likely to have a massive eruption of a volcano which will blot out the sky than the damage we are doing as humans. So the message was carry on driving, flying, switching on lights as there is no point in stopping a good thing.

When times get tough, logic goes out of the window. The fancy words from Darling and Mandelson on building a new 'greener' economy is just waffle, as in the same breath they support industries which cause the problems.

The Future Is Here

Some would argue we are beyond the point of actually helping the planet and that is terrible thought as a legacy of this generation. But when you think about it, it's true and there are good reasons to think it. We are fighting more wars around the world with more lethal weapons than ever, we are emitting more CO2 into the atmosphere than ever, we are consuming the world's resources at a higher rate than ever before and we still fight wars over owning resources that may kill future generations as we consume them.

Yet, having realised we have a problem, we do not let up. In fact, we moan and wriggle about the cost of alternative energy research and pay less into it than on current energy research and marketing, while we pay $5 trillion in an instance to save banks.

The future of the world is in our hands but we live for the here and now. Just as you might leave a place tidy after you have used it, the world needs to be on a better course after this generation dies. However, our priorities are nowhere near where they should be.

The madcap and stupid edicts by the Hubei Province officials are exactly the logic we all use. Our future generations may pay a far heavier price than our tax bills for their future because of it. They may not be able to live.

Climate Change - Real or Another Scientific Example of Hokum?

If you should Google 'Climate Change' long before you find the faddy sites from 'greenists' you will find information from the FT, the UK Government, Scottish Government, the Met Office, the Royal Society and Chevron. All bristling with compelling evidence that the earth's climate has changed due to human intervention.

In a discussion over dinner, a friend of mine asserted that this is just hokum presented by the green lobby based on misrepresentation of the very facts used to argue the case for Climate Change.

I must admit that I am personally concerned about whether such 'greenist' evidence is exaggerated after watching parts of Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth' which frankly scared the pants off me, but I am also a pragmatist.

Common Sense - My Opinion

The earth has existed for billions of years and in that time there have been many incredible cycles as the earth and then life has evolved and in that long expanse of time there have been periods when the earth has alternated between very cold and very warm, full of noxious gas and even had its poles reversed. That's what we might describe as the phenomenon known as Nature at work. As the late Carl Sagan explained in his excellent series, 'The Cosmos', if the entire history of the planet were expressed as a calendar of a single year, humans appeared at approximately the last hour of the 31st of December. We are THAT new to this earth.

In that short human history compared to the rest of earth's age, humans have subjected the planet to a whole host of things from pollution to nuclear weapon explosions to World Wars to ozone depletion and lots more all of which have never occurred before in the cycles of the earth. Yet all of that has occurred in an amazingly short period of the earth's history and as we consume the vast resources left to us by that history we present ourselves with the conundrum about the earth's future.

The crux of the matter is that common sense says that human intervention has changed the planet because most of what we have done has never occurred before. But the 'Denyer' viewpoint would say that over a long period the earth has cycles anyway and our trivial existence will have no real effect.

'Denyers' see the issue as a question of lifestyle - much like smoking, choosing what cars they drive or wanting a free world to live in - because capitalism, and therefore the perceived progression of humans, does not square with some of the outcomes of believing that we have to do something about emissions and the like. Legacy is not their concern.

The 'Greenists' would assert the question of Climate Change, while rapidly upon us, is actually about legacy. If we do not do anything about the world we live in today, it will be future generations who will be affected by our laissez faire indecision. We will leave them a depleted and uninhabitable planet, and in their eyes, every minute we delay doing something about it could cost future generations years of life expectancy.

This is something I am very much bought into. Our responsibility as humans today is to make sure we leave a planet capable of sustaining human life for as long as possible in the future. Sticking our heads in the sand about Climate Change today will curtail the lives of our future generations, possibly even our next generation.

It's as fundamental as wanting your child to have a good chance, possibly any chance, in life.

The Evidence

A quick bit of research shows there are around 12 assertions by Climate Change opponents and the Royal Society has put together a team who looked at these and using evidence from sources such as the IPCC and the United States National Academy of Sciences, they answered these questions so I summarise their findings - forgive me if trivialise some of their learned research:

• The IPCC is too politicised so does not reflect the uncertainty of scientific opinion

In 2001, the Bush Administration commissioned the United States National Academy of Sciences to assess the IPCC's assertions. The answer was, “The IPCC’s conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue.”

That from the guys who did not sign the Kyoto Protocol.

• Many scientists do not think Climate Change is a problem and have even signed petitions

It's true there are plenty of scientists who dispute some of the evidence either in part or wholly. However, in the journal Science in 2004, Oreskes published the results of a survey of 928 papers on climate change published in peer-reviewed journals between 1993 and 2003. She found that three-quarters of the papers either explicitly or implicitly accepted the view expressed in the IPCC 2001 report that human activities have had a major impact on climate change in the last 50 years, and none rejected it.

Many of the opposing views are those from scientists funded by the US oil industry who even use the very same evidence to assert that action on Climate Change will have the opposite effect and actually bring about changes faster than doing nothing.

To illustrate this illogical thinking, I saw Top Gear the other night where Clarkson showed that the new nickel batteries in the Toyota Primus car cost more to the environment to make than the good they bring about. That's a fair comment. In the same program he also showed that a Primus driven flat out for 10 laps consumed more fuel per gallon than a BMW M3 driven at the same speed. He's right.

But he misses the point - driving BMW M3s or not having the Primus is not an acceptable alternative. Finding a Primus that is less cost on the environment is. Poo-pooing research and progress has been the stable argument of Denyers for years and has stifled the alternatives to the status quo.

• There is little evidence to show that the earth is warming - in fact parts are cooler and some parts of Europe were much warmer previously

The IPCC concluded that global warming is not uniform although evidence shows that the earth has warmed on average by o.6 of a degree centigrade in the 20th century and even pinpointed the 90s as the warmest decade since records began in 1861 and 1998 was in fact the warmest year on record.

There is a problem with this evidence, and I sympathise with the opponents. Over the billions of years of earth history, we have only measured temperature since 1861 - what if every period of a similar length showed a cycle of heating and cooling? And what of these areas that don't rise in temperature? Many argue that urbanisation causes 'heat islands' and for this reason the South Seas and Antarctica have not changed much in temperature.

Certainly, this evidence is not convincing on its own.

• The earth may be getting hotter but this has nothing to do with greenhouse gases such as CO2 - it's the sun's variations

About half the sun's radiation which reaches our atmosphere gets to the surface. Some of this radiation is absorbed and some of it is radiated back into the atmosphere which is then absorbed by 'greenhouse' gases such as CO2, methane and water vapour which helps keep the earth around 20 degrees centigrade warmer than it otherwise would be, this is known as the 'greenhouse effect' and it's what keeps us alive.

Increases in the concentration of greenhouse gases has caused a greater effect. CO2 strongly absorbs infra-red radiation, I know that much from my chemistry and the concentration of CO2 has increased from 280 parts per million before 1750 to 368 parts per million in the period up to 2000, a 31% rise. This is a level in CO2 in the atmosphere which has not been exceeded in the last 420,000 years of the earth's history. Doubters point out that the increase in CO2 is in fact due to Climate Change not caused by it. Funny that it has only risen that sharply since 1750, the dawn of the mechanised world.

The IPCC acknowledge that solar radiation and decreased volcanic activity played a part in the early 20th century, but the latter half was all ours.

• There is no accurate method of predicting temperature change in the future

Good - let's ignore it then and carry on emitting freely. I find that argument in the heartland of all doubters. However, if you just go back and think about the levels of concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and look at the correlation between average earth temperature rise and the rise on CO2 levels, there would be some cause for concern at least.

• Scientists mislead us by pointing out extreme weather as indicative of Climate Change

Of course, you cannot put down the extreme weather conditions like Bocastle or New Orleans to to the rise in CO2 emissions alone - the earth is far more complex than that. Vast eruptions like Mount St Helena may just as well have been more of a cause. However, if you are happy that's the only answer, fine. Just remember that the IPCC say that there is now a 66-90% likelihood of an increase in volatile weather systems like El Nino due to the rise in concentration of greenhouse gases like CO2.

• There is conflicting evidence that polar ice caps are melting, heck, they're even getting thick in Antarctica

The Arctic ice cap thinned by 40% in the last few decades and by 15% since the 1950s - you can measure that for yourself. The Antarctica has not experienced the same. No worries then. It's just that if the Greenland ice sheet continues to melt at the same rate then a further 7m will be added to sea level. I'm ok, I live inland and on a high point. Those on the coast, kiss your backsides goodbye.

• There is little evidence that sea level has risen due to Global Warming

Sea level has risen on average between 0.1 and 0.2 cm per year during the 20th century, that's about 15cm then overall. I don't suppose the water flows off the corners of the earth when ice melts so expect it to continue. There are other factors which change our apparent sea level such as isostatic rebound but that's more to be with land shape than water level.

• Even if Climate Change is occurring it won't be dangerous

Keep your head in the sand and you'll be okay. If temperature continues to rise at the same rate and unevenly, then common sense, not science, says we are in for some rough weather. Many believe that methane (CH4) has far more of an effect in the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas and that's pretty much down to the output of all those cow farts etc. The problem is that CH4 is short lived in the atmosphere whereas CO2 has a prolonged life. Besides, there has not been a corresponding rise in CH4 concentrations over the period of measurement to explain the temperature rise only CO2 - so perhaps those little CH4 molecules have changed their fundamental properties and started absorbing far more radiation. We chemists, if I may call myself one, would argue that nature says that cannot happen.

• What evidence is there to show higher temperatures are bad for you?

Maybe Newcastle will no longer sell coal but nice claret - is that so bad? Well that's fine so long as the poor Southerners covered in water have the wherewith all to pay for it. As much good as it may bring, there would be corresponding consequences - again it's just common sense to realise that sunbathing at the North Pole is probably not good.

• There are too many uncertainties to make Climate Change believable

Again I can sympathise - the world is an uncertain place and we would sure like to believe that these nasty things cannot happen. Temperature itself is a man-made phenomenon and is simply the approximate indication of the energy given off through the friction of molecules moving about - it averages it out in a form we can understand. But down below are those molecules are moving and colliding and as they heat up they move faster and collide more. We know these tiny things can have incredible effects when summed up and this is the problem. The faster we make them move the more uncertain it gets.

What most agree upon is that it is better to not make them go much faster than they need to.

• The Kyoto Protocol is a waste of time as the US will not ratify it

I don't have to read the evidence here. Like Clarkson's Primus - if attempting to make something more effective at controlling emissions is itself contributing more to the problem (allegedly) then it's no point in trying. It argues that we just sit here and do nothing - that option is for cissies.

It's Not Our Future - It's Their Future

And we are back to square one. What will be, will be - Nature itself is more a cause of Climate Control than man and so we should do nothing. By the same argument, then what are we doing trying to fight the elements like cold, heat, disease, famine and what indeed are we inventing things for if not to better ourselves and survive and thrive as a species if indeed there is no point as Nature will win?

It's the argument that is applied with equal measure to the Third World - it's beyond our personal control so we leave it. Only when it threatens the onslaught of capitalism, democracy and freedom do we actually allow our Governments to do anything. For years 'Greens' have been ridiculed as faddists and using science wrongly, causing more disasters in trying to dispose of toxic wastes in Fjords than the open sea as a for instance.

Well, the capitalist world and corporations have a nasty track record of putting the pursuit of their own goals, well-being and wealth ahead of the general welfare of the world and others. If left to their own devices they would carry on regardless.

The future is ahead and we will be long dead by the time the consequences of our current actions and inactions have taken full effect. So we can either bury it or think, 'Is that what I want for my children or their children's children?'

For all of you who believe that you would die for your children, think only of this - are you prepared to let them die for you? Because that is a very likely outcome of your denial of this issue today.