[Oz-envirolink] global warming - George Monbiot's new book

[hugh spencer]

George Monbiot (UK Biologist and Science journalist) new book 'Heat' is
hitting the bookshops next week - a particularly trenchant chapter about
the role (and culprits) of the 'Denial Industry' are in this edited extract
from the book published in the UK Guardian Weekly:


"For years, a network of fake citizens' groups and bogus scientific bodies
has been claiming that science of global warming is inconclusive. They set
back action on climate change by a decade. But who funded them? Exxon's
involvement is well known, but not the strange role of Big Tobacco. In the
first of three extracts from his new book, George Monbiot tells a bizarre
and shocking new story "



http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1875762,00.html?gusrc=r
ss&feed=1

Happy reading

Cheers

Hugh Spencer


more....

>The threat is from those who accept climate change, not those who deny it


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1877286,00.html

If the biosphere is ruined it will be done by people who know that
emissions must be cut - but refuse to alter the way they live

George Monbiot
Thursday September 21, 2006
The Guardian

You have to pinch yourself. Until now the Sun has denounced
environmentalists as "loonies" and "eco beards". Last week it published
"photographic proof that climate change is real". In a page that could have
come straight from a Greenpeace pamphlet, it laid down 10 "rules" for its
readers to follow: "Use public transport when possible; use energy-saving
lightbulbs; turn off electric gadgets at the wall; do not use a tumble
dryer ... "

Two weeks ago the Economist also recanted. In the past it has asserted that
"Mr Bush was right to reject the prohibitively expensive Kyoto pact". It
co-published the Copenhagen Consensus papers, which put climate change at
the bottom of the list of global priorities. Now, in a special issue
devoted to scaring the living daylights out of its readers, it maintains
that "the slice of global output that would have to be spent to control
emissions is probably ... below 1%". It calls for carbon taxes and an
ambitious programme of government spending.

Almost everywhere, climate change denial now looks as stupid and as
unacceptable as Holocaust denial. But I'm not celebrating yet. The danger
is not that we will stop talking about climate change, or recognising that
it presents an existential threat to humankind. The danger is that we will
talk ourselves to kingdom come.

If the biosphere is wrecked, it will not be done by those who couldn't give
a damn about it, as they now belong to a diminishing minority. It will be
destroyed by nice, well-meaning, cosmopolitan people who accept the case
for cutting emissions, but who won't change by one iota the way they live.
I know people who profess to care deeply about global warming, but who
would sooner drink Toilet Duck than get rid of their Agas, patio heaters
and plasma TVs, all of which are staggeringly wasteful. A recent brochure
published by the Co-operative Bank boasts that its "solar tower" in
Manchester "will generate enough electricity every year to make 9 million
cups of tea". On the previous page it urges its customers "to live the
dream and purchase that perfect holiday home ... With low cost flights now
available, jetting off to your home in the sun at the drop of a hat is far
more achievable than you think."

Environmentalism has always been characterised as a middle-class concern;
while this has often been unfair, there is now an undeniable nexus of class
politics and morally superior consumerism. People allow themselves to
believe that their impact on the planet is lower than that of the great
unwashed because they shop at Waitrose rather than Asda, buy Tomme de
Savoie instead of processed cheese slices and take eco-safaris in the
Serengeti instead of package holidays in Torremolinos. In reality, carbon
emissions are closely related to income: the richer you are, the more
likely you are to be wrecking the planet, however much stripped wood and
hand-thrown crockery there is in your kitchen.

It doesn't help that politicians, businesses and even climate-change
campaigners seek to shield us from the brutal truth of just how much has to
change. Last week Friends of the Earth published the report it had
commissioned from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, which
laid out the case for a 90% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050. This
caused astonishment in the media. But other calculations, using the same
sources, show that even this ambitious target is two decades too late. It
becomes rather complicated, but please bear with me, for our future rests
on these numbers.

The Tyndall Centre says that to prevent the earth from warming by more than
two degrees above preindustrial levels, carbon dioxide concentrations in
the atmosphere must be stabilised at 450 parts per million or less (they
currently stand at 380). But this, as its sources show, is plainly
insufficient. The reason is that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not the only
greenhouse gas. The others - such as methane, nitrous oxide and
hydrofluorocarbons - boost its impacts by around 15%. When you add the
concentrations of CO2 and the other greenhouse gases together, you get a
figure known as "CO2 equivalent". But the Tyndall Centre uses "CO2" and
"CO2 equivalent" interchangeably, permitting an embarrassing scientific
mish-mash.

"Concentrations of 450 parts per million CO2 equivalent or lower", it says,
provide a "reasonable to high probability of not exceeding 2C". This is
true, but the report is not calling for a limit of 450 parts of "CO2
equivalent". It is calling for a limit of 450 parts of CO2, which means at
least 500 parts of CO2 equivalent. At this level there is a low to very low
probability of keeping the temperature rise below two degrees. So why on
earth has this reputable scientific institution muddled the figures?

You can find the answer on page 16 of the report. "As with all
client-consultant relationships, boundary conditions were established
within which to conduct the analysis ... Friends of the Earth, in
conjunction with a consortium of NGOs and with increasing cross-party
support from MPs, have been lobbying hard for the introduction of a
'climate change bill' ... [The bill] is founded essentially on a
correlation of 2C with 450 parts per million of CO2."

In other words, Friends of the Earth had already set the target before it
asked its researchers to find out what the target should be. I suspect that
it chose the wrong number because it believed a 90% cut by 2030 would not
be politically acceptable.

This echoes the refusal of Sir David King, the government's chief
scientist, to call for a target of less than 550 parts per million of CO2
in the atmosphere, on the grounds that it would be "politically
unrealistic". The message seems to be that the science can go to hell - we
will tell people what we think they can bear.

So we all deceive ourselves and deceive each other about the change that
needs to take place. The middle classes think they have gone green because
they buy organic cotton pyjamas and handmade soaps with bits of leaf in
them - though they still heat their conservatories and retain their holiday
homes in Croatia. The people who should be confronting them with hard
truths balk at the scale of the challenge. And the politicians won't jump
until the rest of us do.

On Sunday the Liberal Democrats announced that they are making climate
change their top political priority, and on Tuesday they voted to shift
taxation from people to pollution. At first sight it looks bold, but then
you discover that they have scarcely touched the problem. While total tax
receipts in the United Kingdom amount to £350bn a year, they intend to
shift just £8bn - or 2.3%.

So the question which now confronts everyone - politicians, campaign
groups, scientists, readers of the Guardian as well as the Economist and
the Sun - is this: how much reality can you take? Do you really want to
stop climate chaos, or do you just want to feel better about yourself?

· George Monbiot's book Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning is published
by Allen Lane next week. He has also launched a website - turnuptheheat.org
- exposing false environmental claims made by corporations and celebrities
www.monbiot.com