Imagine a World Without Free Knowledge

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And if one green bottle should accidentally fall…

Yikes! I’m starting to feel a bit psychic. Yesterday, I was chatting with some people knowledgeable about the real status of the world economy, and that of the EU in particular, who seem to recognise that things are not as bright as our glorious Jersey leaders make out.  Amongst other things, and this is the Twilight zone moment, I said I couldn’t see any way that the slow-motion dominoes of the EU zone wouldn’t start to topple within the next few days. An expectation just based on my own personal model of the universe which, so far, seems more accurate than those of professional forecasters (at least those who are paid to tell those with their mitts on the levers of power that the glass is still half full!).

On tonight’s late news we have France and Austria, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Malta, Slovakia, Slovenia and Cyprus downgraded by S&P – Portugal is now at junk status. Greece now looks certain to default, probably in March. S&P put 14 euro zone states on negative outlook for a possible further downgrade, including France, Austria, and still triple-A rated Finland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg (source: REUTERS).

I think we will be relatively OK in Jersey for a while because we are sufficiently “outside” the EU but I don’t see any way that a wounded and staggering Europe will not be forced to crack down on the insufficiently governed nature of international finance (I don’t mean political government here, more the engineering government - click for Wiki article - of negative feedback that stops events getting out of hand in machines). At the very least, some variant on the Tobin tax (Robin Hood tax) looks likely. This would eventually impact on the City of London and thenceforth Jersey. Hedge funds and investment banking generally would shrink (understatement like this is so cool, no?). The dollar premium might even come back – this was a system, abandoned by Britain around 1979, which  prevented the easy and fast movement of capital from country to country.

The focus of attention is now off the USA, and there have been a few misleadingly promising statistics published recently there on jobs etc, but the underlying reality is still catastrophic. Like Wile E. Coyote running off a cliff, gravity seems suspended until the unfortunate coyote looks down. The world has gone further and further over the edge with each successive bailout and quantitative easing etc. You cannae change the laws of physics, Jim! Try to ignore what some vandal has done to the original looney tunes soundtrack in this clip.

Peter Rhodes - the sequel

I got a prompt response from my email to Peter Rhodes – see the previous post – Peter Rhodes column in the JEP.

Here it is in its entirety:

“Thank you for bringing this to my attention

PR”

If one was naive, one might imagine that this was a thank-you-I-now-realise-I-was-wrong message. Others might see a brush off.

Peter Rhodes, according to one of his email addresses (p.rhodes@expressandstar.co.uk) appears to actually have a connection with the Express and Star newspapers which is not too surprising as they have a bit of a history of publishing wildly misleading “sceptical” climate science articles, frequently using massively debunked denialist rhetoric in those articles to push the newspaper’s political line. I used to like the Express when I was growing up – it was our family newspaper – now I don’t.

Peter Rhodes column in the JEP

Peter Rhodes writes a column published in the JEP. The  persona we see is that of a grizzled old cynical hack who has seen everything, got the T- shirt and is sceptical of it. He is a borderline climate change denialist as he sometimes writes scoffing about  the dangers. He eventually got on my nerves so I just fired off this response to his latest assault on the clever men of science - who actually know what they are talking about.

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Dear Mr. Rhodes,

                       My attention has been drawn to one of your JEP columns, published on Thursday 29th December.

You wrote:

"Over the yule period, some parts of the United Kingdom were 30° C warmer than they were this time last year. Tell me again. Why exactly will an average rise of 2° C be a global catastrophe?"

Well, with a nod to Ronald Searle, as any fule kno, averages can be deceptive. Indeed, they are often used to deceive. Perhaps a reductio ad absurdum would illustrate this?

For example, the average annual temperature in the South of England is around 11 degees C. Imagine though if one day there was an extreme solar flare which pushed the temperature up for one day only to 100 C - boiling point. Hot enough to cook eggs on the pavement, and everything else, everywhere in Britain, including us.

The change in average temperature for the year? 0.24 degrees C. 11 deg C -> 11.24 deg C. By your "logic" nothing bad could have happened and there would be nothing to worry about.

The average rise of 2 degrees C by 2050 is a globally averaged figure. It does not mean that winters will be 2 deg warmer than normal, similarly summers won't just be a bit warmer either. It will not be smooth gentle and consistent. The 2 degrees C figure actually relates to the increase in temperature that satellites would see for the whole Earth, if it was measured from sufficient distance to iron out all the variations over the surface.

The true danger of global warming is in the increased variation and severity of temperature swings outside normally expected levels. Take a look at this recent article

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Summary-of-Hansen-Nov-2011.html to see the horrendous probabilities, then remember also that the 2 degrees figure you quote does not stop in 2050 but will continue to increase for centuries, although not at the same rate - unless the methane clathrate "gun" is "fired", in which case it's sayonara civilisation and also to most species on Earth. Worth gambling with? Is there a dangerous bullet in the climate gun or a blank? Do you feel lucky, punk?

The IPCC indicate that during the 21st century the global surface temperature is likely to rise a further 1.1 to 2.9 °C (2 to 5.2 °F) for their lowest emissions scenario and 2.4 to 6.4 °C (4.3 to 11.5 °F) for their highest, so the figure of 2 degrees you quote, and that, for the sake of the argument, I have used, is a gross simplification of the full risks we face.

Before you print any more "sceptical" climate related stuff, please reflect that we only have one Earth, that we are experimenting with the gaseous composition of its atmosphere in an unprecedented way and that we are unable to do "test tube" science to establish beyond all doubt what the outcome will be. The only test tube big enough is the Earth, unfortunately we are stuck in that test tube so we can't escape any consequences and we can't go back in time to try another path. Real life is not like a video game. We can only try to predict what might happen based on the best available knowledge and risk assessment and take action to avoid it. Predicting risks and avoiding them is actually one of the better uses of intelligence. Cheap scoffing is probably the opposite.

Nick Palmer

Media spokesman for J-CAN - Jersey Climate Action Network

Member of Planning and Environment's J.E.F. - Jersey Environment Forum

On the side of the Planet - and the people - because they're worth it

Blogspot - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer
http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com

I’ve looked at Aurorae from both sides now – stunning video

Similar to my previous post – Home - but very much more spectacular, is this video which is a time lapse sequences of photographs taken by the crew of expeditions 28 & 29 onboard the International Space Station from August to October, 2011. The video is HD, refurbished, smoothed, retimed, denoised, deflickered, cut, etc. The editor, Mike Konig tried to keep the looks of the material as original as possible, avoided adjusting the colors and the like, since, in his opinion, the original footage itself already has an almost surreal and aesthetic visual nature. Most notable is the auroral activity - both Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis. Lots of lightning storms feature too.

Snippets from the Interwebs 9

Insulate insulate insulate! It cuts down energy use but most types (foam, fibreglass wool, Rockwool etc) take a fair amount of (usually) fossil fuelled energy to create. Why not grow your own? Of course, in days gone by, people used such as bracken to keep their hovels warmer but bio-insulation is relatively rare these days. Sheep’s wool is excellent and is increasingly used and produced for this purpose – click on this link for “The Woolly Shepherd” - but is not particularly cheap.

Step forward Greensulate from Ecovative design. This wonder stuff is an insulation/packaging material that is made from a fungus mycelium grown on agricultural crop waste, such as rice husks. Its “R-Value” is comparable with fibreglass.

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Why you should look pityingly at anyone who recommends economic growth as the solution to our problems… 

There is an old story about the inventor of chess. As the story goes, when chess was presented to a great king, the king offered the inventor any reward that he wanted. The inventor asked that a single grain of rice be placed on the first square of the chessboard. Then two grains on the second square, four grains on the third, and so on. Doubling each time.

The king, baffled by such a small price for a wonderful game, immediately agreed, and ordered the treasurer to pay the agreed upon sum. A week later, the inventor went before the king and asked why he had not received his reward. The king, outraged that the treasurer had disobeyed him, immediately summoned him and demanded to know why the inventor had not been paid. The treasurer explained that the sum could not be paid – by the time you got even halfway through the chessboard, the amount of grain required was more than the entire kingdom possessed.

The king took in this information and thought for a while. Then he did the only rational thing a king could do in those circumstances. He had the inventor killed, as an object lesson in the perils of trying to outwit the king.

For the most part, this fable is used as a lesson in the power of exponential growth. From the one grain of rice on the first square of the chessboard, the amount increases to the point that by the time you get to square 64, there are over 18 quintillion grains of rice on the board. In mathematics, it’s a demonstration of extreme growth.

Eventually, you run out of rice. Or land. Or water. Or any resource.

Retold story adapted from  The Seduction of the Exponential Curve from Forbes.com

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An exciting idea to fend off mosquitoes. It also works on flies and wasps too. It uses a “wall” of infrared light to keep the little bloodsuckers out. Szabolcs Marka, an associate professor of physics at Columbia University, is developing a novel way to protect people from the vectors: a virtual mosquito net with infrared light vibrating at wavelengths that irritate the insects’ nervous systems.

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A panel of expert judges has chosen Pure Power’s Mobile Solar Power System as one of its Top 10 Green Building Products of 2011. Building sites often have mobile power supplies which are usually noisy diesel generators. Here’s a solar photovoltaic power supply on a trailer to stop all that nonsense. The S48T can supply 72 kilowatts (or about 20 domestic houses worth) because it has battery storage on board too. Amongst other uses, they are being used on location for movie filming e.g. Inception

They also supply a bio-diesel hybrid version for continuity of supply on less sunny days

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So much for “trickle down” economics

A recent UN Report - Human Development Report  - says developing countries will see reverse economic growth by 2050 -  it delineates the global challenges of sustainability and equity. It points out that although (conventionally measured) living standards in most countries have been rising, from now on if environmental deterioration and social inequalities continue to intensify, the least developed nations will show a downward growth by 2050.

adapted from triplepundit.com

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Floods account for more than half of global disasters, affecting more people than any other type of disaster. The menace of flooding is well known to the estimated 65,000 people living in Budalangi, an area in western Kenya near the Uganda border that is inundated by floods every few years. Mudimbia, a village in Budalangi, will be the site of a disaster relief demonstration conducted by Oregon-based Hydration Technology Innovations (HTI) in collaboration with the Kenyan Water for Health Organization

The project will focus on using the HydroPack™, a paper-thin 4-inch by 6-inch pouch filled with electrolytes and nutrients that on contact with water, any old dirty water, swells up over an 8-to-12 hour period to create a flavoured, healthy drink.

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Taken from Triplepundit.com

Honey is supposed to be one of the purest natural foods there is. However, a recent report by Food Safety News blacklisted several US brands of honey for being “ultra-filtered.” Ultra-filtration is a process that removes pollen and therefore, traceability from honey. This technique is also a tacit way for Chinese manufacturers to sell their honey in the US, as there have been strict import tariffs on Chinese honey since 2001 for contamination with antibiotics and heavy metals.

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Conventional farmers can sometimes sneer at organic agriculture. The facts are against them though.

Taken from The StarPhoenix

“The results are in from a 30-year side-by-side trial of conventional and organic farming methods at Pennsylvania's Rodale Institute. Contrary to conventional wisdom, organic farming outperformed conventional farming in every measure.

There are about 1,500 organic farmers in Saskatchewan, at last count. They eschew the synthetic fertilizers and toxic sprays that are the mainstay of conventional farms. Study after study indicates the conventional thinking on farming - that we have to tolerate toxic chemicals because organic farming can't feed the world - is wrong.

In fact, studies like the Rodale trials (www.rodaleinstitute.org/fst30years) show that after a three-year transition period, organic yields equalled conventional yields. What is more, the study showed organic crops were more resilient. Organic corn yields were 31 per cent higher than conventional in years of drought”

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On Monday the 14th November United Airlines Flight 1403 made history when it flew because it was the first biofuel powered flight either in the US or the world depending on which news source one reads.The Boeing 737-800 burned a “green jet fuel” derived partially from genetically modified algae that feed on plant waste and produce oil created by Solazyme corporation.

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Photovoltaic cells have been steadily falling in price due to to innovation and economies of scale in manufacturing. Here’s yet another innovation that promise not only cheaper manufacturing using less energy but also more efficient cells that make more electricity. A game-changing Optical Cavity Furnace developed by the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory uses optics to heat and purify solar cells at unmatched precision while sharply boosting the cells' efficiency.

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Bill Gates backs a Tobin Tax! This tax is designed to slow down the insane pace of international financial speculation and such weapons of economic destruction as CDOs, deravatives etc  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15565479 . The EU are considering introducing it too

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Taken from Inhabitat.com

If just one percent of the Saharan Desert were covered in concentrating solar panels, like those in the picture, it would create enough energy to power the entire world. The Desertec Initiative announced, two years ago, its intentions to harness the power of the sun in the Sahara Desert. Now, the project is moving forward, with plans for the first construction to break ground in 2012. The 500-megawatt concentrated solar power plant (CSP) will cost a cool $2.8 billion and harness the power of the sun from the desert of Morocco. Desertec is a projected half-trillion dollar solar project that will occupy parts of the Sahara, the Middle East, and Europe. The potential for the project is great — if completed, it could produce enough electricity to meet 15-20 percent of Europe’s energy demand by 2050 while providing power to the Middle East and Northern Africa as well.

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Brooklyn Grange Farm is though to be the largest rooftop farm in the world. Their one-acre (40,000 square foot) commercial organic farm on a rooftop in Queens, New York is made up of roughly 1.2 million lbs of soil and over 20,000 linear feet of green roofing material. They grow vegetables in the city and sell them to local people and businesses. The goal is to improve access to very good food, to connect city people more closely to farms and food production, and to make urban farming a viable enterprise and livelihood.

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Starbucks concerned world coffee supply is threatened by climate change

From triplepundit.com and the Guardian

Coffee supplies are being reduced by higher temperatures, long droughts and intense rainfall, plus more resilient pests and plant diseases, according to the UCS, “all of which are associated with climate change.” Coffee varieties are adapted to certain climate zones so a temperature increase of just a half of a degree can have a big affect and cause lower crop yields.

Coffee is not the only food product affected by climate change. A recent International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (known by the Spanish acronym, CIAT) study predicted a one-degree Celsius temperature increase by 2030 and 2.3 degrees Celsius by 2050 in the Ivory Coast and Ghana, which would make it too hot to grow chocolate. Both countries supply more than half of the world’s cocoa.

Tea is also being affected by climate change, according to a CIAT report released in May. Climate change will cause increases in average temperatures and rainfall which will cause many Kenyan farmers at lower elevations to abandon growing tea.

Ministerial tango!

I just sent the new States House members the following email (subject line: Responsibility) ahead of the elections for Chief Minister and the subsequent selection of new Ministers for the various Departments.  I am expecting that too many narrow viewpoints will lead to a less than ideal outcome. Those who get elected here too often have, or rapidly develop, a kind of defensive armour that prevents them from seeing much outside their preconceptions.

Dear States Member,

I am writing to you ahead of the vote for Ministers. If you need to know why you should give any attention to my words, I have included some of my credentials at the end of this email.

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Soon the house elects a new Chief Minister and, subsequently, Ministers for the various Departments. It is surely crucial that the House selects knowledgeable Ministers who are fully aware of the situation that Jersey and the world faces - only then can plans and policies have a hope of being appropriate.

Ahead of us we have environmental and economic challenges the likes of which the world has never seen before and Jersey cannot isolate itself from its responsibilities for planning to meet these. Our finance industry is dependent upon the international economy continuing to grow, which current events suggest is highly unlikely in the near to mid term, possibly ever again. Counter-intuitively, attempting to restore conventional growth, particularly in the developed nations, should be seen by the new Ministers as a very high risk strategy, if they are fully aware of the consequences. Jersey also has a much higher environmental responsibility per capita to get things right, owing to our very high global impact (because of our wealthy consumer society).

Ominously, neither of the two current candidates for Chief Minister appeared to clearly understand the question that I asked at the St Lawrence senatorial Hustings about the urgent need to adopt new ways of measuring economic success. If we continue to rely on the two dimensional conventional remedies of classical economics, which have been partially successful in the past, then we will inevitably fail to deal with the big, unprecedented challenges we face. We have now reached the point where any further conventional global “growth” is arguably uneconomic growth because the marginal long term costs of conventional growth are now outweighing the marginal benefits.

Apart from the Chief Minister, the three Ministers it is most critical for the House to get right are those of Treasury, Economic Development and Planning and Environment. It is so crucial that it might be better to elect no-one to these posts rather than the wrong ones.

When you vote, make sure to elect Ministers who explicitly acknowledge the full scope of the challenges we are up against and who express at least a willingness to investigate the new non-classical disciplines in economics that offer hope of engineering a sustainable civilisation. To do anything else is fundamentally irresponsible, both to the electorate that put you in your place and to the other seven billion inhabitants of this increasingly crowded world.

If you still think that merely tinkering with the constitution, how the States operates and restoring growth-as-we-knew-it is in any way a valid responsible strategy, then you will be of no use for solving the real, serious problems - indeed, you will be part of the problem.

The time ahead is crucial to everybody’s futures. Naïve, ill advised glass-half-full thinking, that looks to the policy successes of the past and imagines that all we need is more of the same, should not sway your votes.

Sincerely

Nick Palmer

• I sit on Planning and Environment's J.E.F. - Jersey Environment Forum - one of the two environmental think tanks set up by Freddy Cohen

• I am a committee member for, and media spokesman of, J-CAN - Jersey Climate Action Network

• I write an internationally respected sustainability blog - Sustainability and stuff according to Nick Palmer - http://nickpalmer.blogspot.com that takes a light hearted but serious view of the dilemmas we face

• I helped with research for, and contributed ideas and text to, the significant climate change book "What's the Worst That Could Happen"

• I am expert at puncturing the tidal waves of politically motivated climate change denial propaganda. Some of my arguments are regularly used in the top scientific climate science blogs, to which I also contribute

• I have a grounding in the newer, deeper forms of economic thought, such as Daly's ecological economics, to which I allude in the text above, which show how the free market can be tuned to deliver both sustainability, economic development (not growth), prosperity at the same time living within our environmental means and renewing that which has been deteriorated. All this with little regulation necessary. This form of economics is as close to "the answer" as is available