the now-now show

Marcus Brigstocke returns to The Now Show (19 mins in) to explain to those (who prefer to think otherwise) that just because it's been snowing in Britain, it doesn't mean that global temperatures haven't been rising elsewhere. more ...

dumbing down

Kenneth Brower profiles the great physicist, Freeman Dyson (left), 'perhaps our most prominent global-warming skeptic'.

The question that phrases itself now, in the minds of many, is: how could someone as smart as Freeman Dyson be so dumb?

Brower surveys a number of theories from 'contrariness' and 'he doesn't really mean it' to 'educated fool' and 'old age'. The answer, Brower concludes, lies in Dyson's unshakeable faith in the technological fix.

The notion that science will save us is the chimera that allows the present generation to consume all the resources it wants, as if no generations will follow.

(H-t. AL) more ...

the little-me-against-the-world meme

The enduring ‘heretic’ meme – the plucky iconoclastic individual whose ideas are being repressed by the establishment – is never very far below the surface in almost all high-impact scientific profiles.

Gavin Schmidt on science, narrative and heresy more ...

those were the days

“The process is a simple one. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has the effect of a pane of glass in a greenhouse".

The American senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, in 1969, a year after he joined Richard Nixon's White House staff. (New Yorker) more ...

you can't call them environmentalists

"Planetarians", "decarbonists", "sustainablists", "transitionalists", "green patriots" ... David Roberts at Grist wants a new name to describe a significant group of people who support clean energy and action on climate change, but don't want to be called environmentalists.

As he sees it,

there are plenty of people who understand climate change and support clean energy but do not share the rest of the ideological and sociocultural commitments that define environmentalism as historically understood in the U.S.

He's come up with another term: "climate hawks".

(See the seven pages of comments that follow.)

[Crosspost] more ...

not right, and not conservative

Bill McKibben on why climate-change contrarians are profoundly anti-conservative. more ...

the labels don't fit

In her new blog Climate Etc., the American climatologist Judith Curry says she's through with labels. They don't help. In the last four months she's been called them all. So out with warmist, lukewarmist, sceptic, confusionist and denier. more ...

how thatcher went green

In Radio 4's Uncertain Climate we learn how Sir Crispin Tickell explained climate change to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on a flight back from Paris to London.

Tickell had been at the same school, Westminster, with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson.

(Lawson, a doubter then as now, thought Tickell's exposition on climate change was just "Crispin being Crispin".) more ...

big smear, small apology

The Sunday Telegraph eventually apologises for lies about the IPCC chairman, Dr Pachauri.

Starting Monday morning on Radio 4, Roger Harrabin asks whether the arguments surrounding climate change can ever be won.

Pic: Ronald Reagan, or The Man Who Stripped the Solar Panels from the White House. (The links between climate change disinformation and the tobacco industry are detailed here and here.)

more ...

the gift that keeps taking

The New Yorker profile of the billionaire Koch brothers who bankroll climate denial is a must-read.

Among many interesting aspects in Jane Mayer's article is the role that major arts institutions play as grateful recipients of their considerable largesse. The Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History has the David H. Koch Hall of Human Origins which shows how humans evolve by adapting to climate change:

An interactive game in the exhibit suggests that humans will continue to adapt to climate change in the future. People may build “underground cities,” developing “short, compact bodies” or “curved spines,” so that “moving around in tight spaces will be no problem.”

(Koch Industries has been named one of the top ten air polluters in the US.)

Joe Romm writes that the New Yorker profile is:

doubly devastating because the New Yorker remains one of the few major magazines that still fact checks line by line. more ...

tween verbs

MIL says the post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel The Hunger Games is "The Road for the tween set":

The operative verbs here are not “shop” and “text” but “maim” and “run”, and also “stab”, “gore” and “filter pond water with iodine droplets”.

More on The Road and post-apocalyptic narratives. more ...

cossacks on the champs-elysées

Even when people know about climate change, and trust the science, it still doesn't change their behaviour. This might be termed, as Earthquakes in London suggests - with its Cabaret-style setting - the 'Weimer effect'. (See recent comment from webcowgirl.)

There's no shortage of other examples of fiddling while Rome burns. In The Seven Ages of Paris, Alistair Horne writes about Paris in the early years of the 19th century as a city distracted by new galleries, buildings, promenades, theatre and opera.

Even the loss of the Grand Armée in the retreat from Moscow in 1812 hardly disturbed the rhythm of life in the capital. Only the actual appearance of Cossacks on the Champs-Elysées in 1814 could do that. more ...

guess who?

The pivotal character in Mike Bartlett's Earthquakes in London, which opened tonight at the National Theatre, has:

no interest in recycling, insulating his home or getting "a bag for life". He works in a shed, from where he studies a planet which can only sustain one billion people. He says the planet is going to get rid of the other five billion. more ...

open fridges

One of Helen Simpson's new stories, that appears in her climate-change collection In-Flight Entertainment, imagines a diarist in 2040 looking back with wistful memories of life in the age of fossil fuels. The things that are missing from 2040 (according to this review) include:

condoms, iTunes, Google, hot water, open fridges full of tiger prawns and fillet steak. more ...

is climate change a zombie concept?

Kellie Payne reports on the Tipping Point event, held earlier this month, where Mike Hulme suggested climate change was a zombie concept:

as a metaphor it has done its work. As a concept, it connects a large swathe of issues combined through the scientific narrative and perhaps there are other ways to make progress.

Much less the as-billed scientific update, the Tipping Point event held on Wednesday 13th April at Kings College, London was a philosophical exploration of the status of our current conceptualisation of climate change.

Hosted by Tipping Point, the arts organisation that seeks to build bridges between artists and climate scientists, the afternoon featured Mike Hulme, UEA climate scientist and author of Why We Disagree About Climate Change, climate change adaptation specialist Emma Tompkins and Greenpeace’s Senior Climate Advisor Charlie Kronick . In attendance were past Tipping Point conference attendees, a mix of artists, academics and a few scientists.

Hulme is a veteran climate scientist whose career has included serving as the founder-director of the Tyndall centre and contributing scientist to UK climate change scenarios and reports for the IPCC. However, writing his recent book led Hulme to take a more philosophical perspective: his interest being more in the positioning of our larger conceptualisations of climate change and interrogating different epistemological constructions of climate change. Moving beyond the merely scientific understanding of climate change, he investigates how climate change is understood in disciplines varying from economics, ethics, politics and humanities. In particular, he argues that climate change is a value laden concept that reflects our views of the world, nature, the economy and ethical frameworks.

Hulme’s presentation was largely an explanation of the four myths he explores in his book: lamenting Eden which draws on a sense of nostalgia, presaging apocalypse based on a sense of fear, constructing Babel (hubris) and celebrating jubilee which builds upon our sense of justice. In essence, what Hulme argues is that every individual brings their own agenda, applying the challenge of climate change to their own problems, that is, climate change is the raw material that is used to work on our individual projects. Hulme suggested we ask ourselves whether stabilising the climate was indeed our ultimate goal or whether stabilising climate was instead a means to an end, and we were using climate change to achieve our other goals.

Emma Tomkins on the other hand bases her work on a belief that climate change is happening and asserts that the government is leading the way on adaptation. Based at Leeds and the Government’s Department for International Development, Tomkins outlined types of adaptation currently being implemented including risk management policies and attempts to build resilience. When Tomkins asked the audience how many were currently taking adaptive measures, it became clear that the line between what constitutes mitigation activities and adaption is often blurred in the minds of many. The government makes a clear distinction between mitigation measures (limiting ones emissions) and adaption (preparing for the impacts of climate change). For instance when asked about what types of adaptation individuals were taking, some audience members mentioned the work of the Transition Town movements, but from the government perspective Transition Town activities would constitute mitigation measures as their main focus is reducing emissions.

Tomkins conducted an exercise to see how we as an audience would allocate adaptation funds, whether we would base our decisions on: equitable distribution of resources, reward mitigators, help those facing the most exposure, help the most vulnerable, or offer developmental assistance. At the moment, current government policy (Adaptation Policy Framework) is based on risk mapping and awareness and therefore has its focus on those who face the most exposure to risk. Tomkins stressed the need to be aware that in any adaptation policy there are a number of decisions to be made about the type of losses we are willing to take and warned that there is a potential to make serious mistakes unless we seriously consider the issues.

Charlie Kronick weighed in with the activist viewpoint, reminding the audience that in the past adaptation wasn’t even considered because to do so would be to accept defeat. Further, he didn’t see the need to separate out adaptation and mitigation as he sees them as one and the same. For Charlie, climate change isn’t about science, or art, but about power politics, ‘the deal makers and takers’ and inequality is a major driver.

Hulme agreed that it’s about politics and our ambitions about what type of society we want to inherit. Hulme suggested that perhaps climate change was indeed a zombie concept, and as a metaphor it has done its work. As a concept, it connects a large swathe of issues combined through the scientific narrative and perhaps there are other ways to make progress.

Kellie Payne is a PhD student in the Geography department at the Open University researching culture and climate change more ...

artist's impression

The Guardian suggests the character of Stella Polkinghorne, the celebrated female artist in Ian McEwan's new novel Solar, is based on Rachel Whiteread. more ...

expecting

James Lovelock tells the Today programme that you can't expect to put a trillion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere without 'something nasty happening'. more ...

hippy dippy

The Independent says Ian McEwan portrays the characters in the Cape Farewell section of his novel Solar as a 'motley crew of hippy-dippy ice sculptors and conceptual choreographers'. more ...

the get-out clause

Ian McEwan explains why Solar, his novel about climate change, is a comedy.

The thing that would have killed the book for me, I’m sure, is if I’d taken up any sort of moral position. I needed a get-out clause. And the get-out clause is, this is an investigation of human nature, with some of the latitude thrown in by comedy. more ...

solar panned

The Economist dismisses Ian McEwan's new novel Solar (published next week), which features a Nobel-winning scientist who travels to the North Pole:

the plot is barely credible and the scientific setting hard to recognise. more ...