Climate Change: False choices and false dichotomies

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future.

And time future contained in time past.

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future.

And time future contained in time past.

T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), Four Quartets, Burnt Norton.

It’s rather humorous to me that after facing the 20th Century and firmly whipping totalitarianism, its ugly head seems to have re-emerged with the issue of Climate Change.

Throughout this globe’s history it has been scientifically verified that our global temperatures have been on a cyclical path up and down, varying according to specific conditions as output by the physical environment of the time. This can be labeled an early form of “climate change”.

The past and the future have always been of interest to me, especially when there are competing and often contradictory views regarding which story of the earth is correct.

These competing views usually boil down to those that have faith in an Intelligent Designer who created the earth and those that believe that the earth evolved and produced humanity and everything else from the primordial sludge bucket.

As a child I can recall many happy school holidays watching cartoons like the World War II era Bugs Bunny franchise that often made quite eloquent jokes about the Neanderthal Man and his goofy relationship within his own society and his surrounding environment.

It is this goofy relationship that I wish to explore and challenge in discussing Climate Change.

I aspire to do so within the context of false choice’s and false dichotomies. I intend to lay out the arguments for and against the systemic issue of climate change and conclude by arguing that both arguments can be said to be deeply flawed and that increased Government Intervention is blocking  the opportunity for private contract and free markets to resolve the issue on the Capitalist stage.

As an introduction, my first question must be to ask simply “Why all the hub-bub about Global Warming and Climate?”

The core of this issue in my view can be traced all the way back to 10 years before I was born in the 1970’s. The United States and indeed the world experienced its first big oil shock.

The precarious nature of fossil fuels within the popular mind had not been fully exposed until this time.

The Green movement were mobilized and pugnaciously espoused all kinds of magic solutions that would redress the issue of energy consumption and begin to reduce overall consumption so that the impact of shortfalls would be abated.

It is here that we find the Genesis of what I would describe as a “religiosity” in relation to climate change that has permeated both sides of the debate ever since.

It seems that we as humans have committed a grievous sin in being voracious consumers of finite energy resources.

So great are the heights of our sinfulness that according to the extreme climate believers, we are now on the cusp of what Al Gore pointedly describes as “a tipping point” where quite possibly there is no return trip.

Again I can see that a pointed secular message has been wrapped up in the garb of climate religiosity. “Repent Climate sinners, be saved and pay your penance for you intransigence!”

I can hear the skeptics squeal “You aren’t a real free-marketeer, your a climate believer!” One of those tofu tossing, latte swilling, Green voting, Gore loving, electric car driving, culturally elite twats!” Sorry to spoil the fun, but I’m not.

I’m a capitalist. I believe in the market, no matter what. I recognize that capitalism isn’t perfect and in many ways has prevented me from entering the marketplace because of my own meagre position.

However I do still believe passionately that the market is and will be the driver of progress, despite not having a specific vested interest.

The truth remains that market based capitalism is the best alternative for resolving the climate issue.

Private property rights, individual private contract and the broader free market are at the heart of what I believe the future will be regarding Global Warming and Climate Change.

This includes, private unlisted companies and even listed public companies. They will create and provide the back-bone for driving the next two decades of economic growth and green infrastructure regardless of specific interest groups and even governmental interference in addressing systemic change issues.

The problem is the debate currently doesn’t have any proportional balance in relation to climate belief vs. climate skepticism.

You’re either on one side or another. I would strongly argue that I fall into an as yet unformed third category. I’m hence going to coin my own third category.

My category is described as the “Climate Third Way”. My Climate Third Way is not oriented towards the traditional Third way socialist view of politics and economics as espoused by Clinton, Blair and renewed recently by the likes of Obama and Gillard.

Rather the Climate Third way that I envisage is a rationally based, individualist cause that believes that environmentalism is important but not in an extreme way that would prevent the corporate free market from operating to produce market based products and services that are trade oriented across the world to the benefit of the globe both economically and environmentally.

This is the future, not an arcane debate about whether the extremist environmental movement is comparable to Nazi Germany or whether the employment fallout that results from new industries taking shape will destroy national identity and the parochial old world view therein.

The market despite its current woes will find its way back, and future history will record the Climate Change belief vs. denial debate as a false choice inside a false dichotomy that will expose the entrenched political and economic interest of both sides. After all scepticism is healthy.

I’ve recently read two major works on the issue. Both are major proponents on opposite sides of the equation. One is entitled Climate Change: Turning up the Heat by A. Barrie Pittock and published by the taxpayer subsided CSIRO Publishing.

On the opposite side lays Professor Ian Plimer’s work entitled “Heaven+Earth Global Warming: The Missing Science, Published by Connor Court Publishing.

Both of these works challenged me to think more critically in relation to both the political bias, prejudice and vested interest that lay at the heart of the issue of climate change.

Now to lay out the argument.(Pittock 2005: 107-184) argues reasons for concern, examples of concern, difficulties relating to aggregate impacts and mitigation strategies as below:

Reasons for concern

·     Risks to unique and threatened systems

·     Risks from extreme climate events

·     Distribution of Impacts

·     Aggregate Impacts

·     Risks from future large-scale discontinuities

·     Breakdown in oceanic circulation as a result of climatic variation and connection to sea-level rise from melting ice sheets

Scenario 1: Oceanic conveyor circulation slowing within next two decades

Scenario 2: Oceanic conveyor circulation slows 100 years from now

Examples of Reasons

·     Changes in natural productivity and biodiversity, with an increased rate of extinctions

·     Decreases in cereal crop yields in most tropical and sub-tropical countries, and in temperate countries for large warmings

·     Increased water shortages in many water-scarce regions

·     Adverse economic effects in many developing countries for even small warmings, and for developed countries for larger warmings

·     Tens of millions of people on small islands and low-lying coastal areas at severe risk of flooding from sea-level rise and storm surges

·     Increased threats to human health

·     Increase in inequities between poor and richer countries

·     Increased risk of abrupt and irreversible climate changes

Difficulties relating to aggregate Impacts

·     Choosing appropriate measures of impacts, since many costs such as loss of species or lives cannot be put objectively in monetary terms

·     The need to overcome knowledge gaps and uncertainties to provide a complete picture, for instance in the understanding of the effects of changes in extreme events.

·     Forecasting changes in exposure to climate change, which is affected by economic growth and population change

·     Anticipating adaptation given its dependence on wealth and technology

·     Problems in aggregating across different countries with different standards of living and

·     Allowing for the passage of time in monetary costing (the so-called ‘discount rate’ or value of future consumption relative to today’s value).

A key factor will be the ability to mitigate the climatic changes. Technological innovation will be vital to the achievement of mitigation aims.

Critical to this mitigation strategy will be our ability to make:

·     Use of carbon dioxide in enhanced oil recovery

·     Use of carbon dioxide in enhanced coal-bed methane recovery

·     depleted oil and gas reservoirs

·     deep un-minable coal beds

·     large cavities or voids, and

The problem that arises is that there are predictable problems in trying to model, predict and anticipate changes in climate pattern that are not scientifically consistent with the range of scientific knowledge and understanding in existence. For all of his flaws the Donald Rumsfeld flair for verb-age seems to fit nicely into the climate change belief vs. skepticism debate.

“As we know, there are known known’s. There are things we know we know.

We also know there are known unknowns.

That is to say we know there are some things that we do not know.

But there are also unknown unknowns, the one’s we don’t know we don’t know”.

Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defense, news briefing 12 Febuary 2002.

Three other apt quotations cited in the Pittock work are also worth noting:

“Climate Change is a major concern in relation to the minerals sector and sustainable development.

It is, potentially, one of the greatest of all threats to the environment, to biodiversity and ultimately to our quality of life”

Facing the Future, Report of the Mining Minerals and Sustainable Development Australia Project, 2002.

“Human induced climate change is one of the major challenges confronting the world this century. The potential for climate change is real and addressing it will require changes to the way the world produces and uses energy”.

John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia, National Press Club, 15 June 2004.

I have to admit that, until recently, I was somewhat wary of the (global) warming debate. I believe it is now our responsibility to take the lead on this issue.  Rupert Murdoch.

If a former world leader, a billionaire Media magnate and a Leading Mineral research project in Australia believe that climate change is a high priority, why hasn’t a more rational free-market alternative in terms of creating a private market based solution already been created?

Sir Richard Branson the billionaire British Entrepreneur has taken first steps down this road by investing large sums in fuel research and other climate oriented projects aimed at figuring out how to resolve climate change related issues within the context of private enterprise and free-market values.

We need more leadership like this that ignores the belief vs. skepticism debate and actually goes out and achieves outcomes that can create market based value!

(Pittock 2005:9-185)goes onto assert throughout his work that “Anthropogenic, or human-caused increases in carbon dioxide, come mainly from the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal, oil and natural gas. The concentration of carbon dioxide before major land-clearing and industrialization in the eighteenth century was about 265 parts per million (ppm)”.

Further to this the IPCC has calculated that “that by the year 2100, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations would range in total anywhere from 490 to 1260 ppm”.

“Such concentrations are 75 to 350% higher than the pre-industrial estimate of 280ppm in 1750. Carbon dioxide concentrations in 2005 are already … 378ppm, or 35% above the pre-industrial value. These projected concentrations of carbon dioxide led to estimates that by 2100 average global surface temperatures are likely to be between 1.4 and 5.8~C warmer than in the IPCC baseline year of 1990″.

To address the issue within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

Article 2 states the UNFCCC’s objective as:

…the stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.

Such a level should be achieved within a time frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened, and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner”.

It is noteworthy that the UNFCCC does not contain binding commitments on emissions level reductions, but rather sets out broader objectives that do not require specific commitments but communicate desired outcomes and directions for climate change policy.

It is also noteworthy to add that the Kyoto protocol adopted in 1997 was the first International agreement to begin the real process of moving towards a lower emissions future. With modest reductions targets set in train.

An “ongoing Australian study by the Resources Futures program of CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems” concluded that:

     Australia’s social, economic and physical systems are linked over very long time scales

     Short term decisions have long term consequences, and

     There is inbuilt inertia in our institutional systems, requiring time for change to take effect

Whilst I’ve spoken to believers and deniers in writing this piece, one thing remains vitally clear. Don’t believe the hype and stay focused on real action that harnesses real free market value for real free market solutions.

Felonius Punk writes from Brisbane, Australia and whilst sceptical about climate science, he wouldn’t turn down the opportunity to use science and technology to reduce c02 emissions as long as it was privately funded by private equity and the labor of green voters.