Writing – Page 42 – a sibilant intake of breath

Rapier’s insights into blogging

Over on his energy blog, Robert Rapier has written a summary of what he has learned, blogging about energy issues. The points seem pretty broadly applicable to those writing about technical and politically contentious topics. For those thinking of giving serious blogging a whirl, a couple of his points seem especially pertinent and well matched to my own experience. In particular, you won’t be able to predict which posts are popular and produce discussion, and which will not. Also, you shouldn’t expect to make any significant amount of money, and you should expect to be plagued by spambots trying to do so.

At its worst, blogging on substantive issues just produces a discordant echo chamber of people yelling at one another, continuing to use discredited arguments, and generally not advancing the state of discourse. That being said, I do think blogs have a lot of societal and pedagogic value. By forcing the author and commenters to defend their views in the face of criticism, they provide a valuable mechanism for sharpening thinking. Here’s hoping that helps to address the world’s grave problems, over the long term.

Cold: Adventures in the World’s Frozen Places

Bill Streever’s book takes a meandering and often macabre journey through various facts and stories about the world’s chilled regions: discussing everything from ground squirrel hibernation to the fatalities that resulted from the Schoolchildren’s Blizzard of 1888. While it contains a lot of highly interesting information, the book’s non-linear structure is distracting and contributes to its repetitiveness. Had Streever stuck to a conventional structure with chapters focused on different topics, the result would probably have been better.

Streever is at his best when discussing the human suffering brought on by cold, and the ingenious ways by which animals have learned to survive in it. The story of the Arctic caterpillars that freeze solid every winter, and take ten years to eat enough to undergo metamorphosis, is a poignant one. So too are Streever’s excellent descriptions of snow and feathers as insulating materials, as well as frostbite and hypothermia as unwanted consequences of extreme cold. The book has an entertaining habit of pointing out odd coincidences. For instance, readers will discover what a certain volcanic eruption has to do with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Mormonism, and the invention of the bicycle.

Cold gives a fairly cursory treatment of climate change: mentioning it fairly often, but not getting into great detail. Streever takes it as a given that human greenhouse gas emissions will forever and substantially alter the world’s frozen places, and does not devote any time or attention to the kind of actions humanity could take if it wished to preserve the polar ice caps, glaciers, etc. The author acknowledges how his own jet-setting lifestyle is contributing to the destruction of the places that interest him so, but never takes time to really contemplate alternative behaviour for himself or humanity as a whole.

All told, Cold is well worth the couple of hours it takes to read. While some judicious editing would have been welcome, Streever’s book does manage to convey an appropriate sense of both curiosity and visceral dread about the importance that cold has played in our warming world.

Spoofing Canada on climate

Earlier today, pranksters impersonating Environment Canada issued a phony press release which contained new targets for greenhouse gas mitigation in Canada. While Canada’s actual targets are 20% below 2006 levels by 2020 (equivalent to about 3% below 1990 levels) and 60-70% below 2006 levels by 2050, the press release included the much more ambitious figures of 40% below 1990 levels by 2020 and over 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. The release also made reference to a major transfer of funds to the developing world, as compensation for past harm and to encourage both mitigation and adaptation actions.

Compared to Canada’s real targets, the phony tougher targets are much more in line with an emissions pathway set up to reduce the risk of more than 2°C of warming. The stunt also draws attention to how Canada isn’t really negotiating in Copenhagen. We came in with a pair of targets that we say we will reach, regardless of what anyone else does, though we also frequently say that we won’t do anything until the US acts. Indeed, our environment minister was saying less than a month ago that Canada won’t take meaningful action for years. It should also be recalled that the government once promised that their intensity-based approach would lead to emissions peaking by 2012. Nobody mentions that pledge anymore.

The identities of those behind the stunt remain unknown. Hopefully, it will draw attention to Canada’s evasion and lack of ambition, prompting a genuine change of targets and approach soon.

Copenhagen global editorial

Along with 56 other newspapers in 20 languages, The Guardian recently printed a front page editorial about the Copenhagen climate change conference. Apparently, the tactic of having many papers print it simultaneously has not been used previously. It seems fitting that this happen on an issue of such universal importance.

The editorial highlights the risks associated with climate change, and the inadequacy of actions taken so far. It also includes a brief response to the CRU emails issue:

The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger rise of 3-4C — the smallest increase we can prudently expect to follow inaction — would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea. The controversy over emails by British researchers that suggest they tried to suppress inconvenient data has muddied the waters but failed to dent the mass of evidence on which these predictions are based.

They acknowledge that a comprehensive deal is unlikely in Copenhagen, but propose that one be adopted in next year’s June meeting in Bonn.

The whole piece is worth reading.

What’s the Worst That Could Happen?

Written by a high school science teacher, Greg Craven’s What’s the Worst That Could Happen? A Rational Response to the Climate Change Debate is a worthwhile and unusual addition to the catalogue of books on climate change. Craven’s chosen task is not to determine whether climate scientists are right in their projections of what human activity is and will do to the climate; rather, he is trying to prepare readers to make the best choice, given the uncertainty that will always exist.

This is the same basic message he popularized in a series of viral videos, the first and last of which are especially worth watching:

I do have one slight quibble with both. Craven’s decision grid suggests that we will eventually be able to look back and know if we made the right choice. I don’t think that’s true. If we take aggressive action and stop climate change, we may never know with certainty just how bad it would have been if we had ignored it. No matter how sophisticated they become, simulations can never give us total certainty, and we don’t have another planet with which to run an experiment. Similarly, if we take no action and climate change proves catastrophic, we will never know for sure what level of action would have been sufficient to stop it – or whether doing so was still possible at any particular point in time.

Craven’s approach is based around heuristics: examining the ways in which people make decisions, taking into consideration pitfalls like confirmation bias, and then developing an approach to make an intelligent choice. In this case, it involves developing a way to roughly rank the credibility of sources, look at who is saying what, and complete a decision grid that shows the consequences of climate change either being or not being a major problem and humanity either taking or not taking major action. His own conclusion is that taking action unnecessarily isn’t likely to be exceptionally economically damaging, and can be considered a prudent course for ensuring that the worst does not happen.

On the question of why action has not yet been taken, Craven focuses primarily on human psychology. We respond to threats that are immediate, visible, and have a hostile agent behind them. Since climate change is none of these things, it doesn’t trigger strong responses in us. Cognitive factors also help explain why people are so confused about the state of climate science, though individual failings in information assessment are accompanied by the failure of the media to pass along good information effectively.

Craven concludes that raising political will is the key action that needs to be taken, and that cutting individual emissions is of very secondary importance. Like many others, he draws on the analogy of WWII to show what the United States is capable of achieving when it has the determination.

Some readers may find the book’s informal style and fill-in-the-blanks exercises a bit annoying, or feel that they trivialize the issues at hand. That being said, Craven has produced a very accessible book that recasts the climate change debate in a valuable new way: evaluating what choice to make, under uncertainty, rather than trying to determine authoritatively who is right. For those wishing to grapple with the practical question of what ought to be done about climate change, this book is well worth reading.

Climate Cover-Up

James Hoggan’s Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming is a valuable exposé of the efforts that have been made by self-interested actors to prevent political action on climate change, by manipulating the public debate and confusing people about the strength of the science. Written by a Canadian public relations professional, and written with a focus on actors and events in Canada, Hoggan’s book examines how the media has been involved in the debate, how companies have worked to create false grassroots campaigns (‘astroturfing’), the role played by think tanks, the use of lawsuits to intimidate and silence critics, the ‘echo chamber’ effect wherein false claims are endlessly repeated by sympathetic sources, and more. Hoggan makes a convincing case that status quo actors – particularly petrochemical firms – have been working for decades to keep the public confused, and keep legislators inactive.

Hoggan provides both logical and documentary evidence to back up his claims – pointing out things like how most of the scientists that actively deny the consensus view of climate change are being funded as advocates, not as scientists:

The Intermountain Rural Electric Association isn’t paying Pat Michaels to go back into his lab and do research helping the world to a better understanding of how human activities are affecting the climate. The coal-fired utility owners are paying him to “stand up against the alarmists and bring a balance to the discussion.”

Hoggan provides many specific examples of malfeasance, and argues that the public relations personal directing the campaign against action on climate change are often indifferent to whether the claims they are making are true or false. They are tested for how well they affect public opinion, not how well they represent the reality of the situation.

Hoggan does sometimes present information in a misleading way. For instance, he compares the risk of climate change with the risk of car and house insurance, and says that: “in both cases the risk of disaster is significantly less than the greater than 90 percent certainty that scientists ascribe to the climate crisis.” He is referring to how the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report concluded that: “Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations.” and defined ‘very likely’ as cases where “expert judgment and statistical analysis of a body of evidence” support an assessed probability of over 90%. The IPCC was saying that there is a scientific consensus that there is a 90% chance that the unequivocal warming that has been observed has anthropogenic causes, not that the “risk of disaster” is 90%. The question of how serious the consequences of warming will be is distinct from the question of what is causing warming. Another odd error is one sentence written as though the consulting company McKinsey was a person: “When McKinsey talks about a carbon revolution, he strikes the right tone.”

That said, Climate Cover-Up succeeds in its key purpose: revealing that not everyone is engaging in the climate debate in an honest or ethical manner. The scientific consensus that climate change is real and risky is exceedingly strong, and yet the public and policy-makers have been very effectively confused and encouraged to delay action. By revealing the extent to which the debate has been manipulated, Hoggan’s book will hopefully contribute to the eventual improvement of public understanding of climate change, and the development of a will to act sufficiently strong to sort out the problem before the worst potential consequences become inevitable. Hoggan also continues that effort through DeSmogBlog – a site he created to provide ongoing updates on climate change misinformation campaigns.

[Update: 13 October 2010] Another good book on the same topic is Naomi Oreskes’ Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming.

The boundaries of reasonable climate change debate

In his well-argued book Why We Disagree About Climate Change, Mike Hulme does a good job of establishing the boundaries of the legitimate debate about climate change and what we ought to do about it:

Many of the disagreements that we observe are not really disputes about the evidence upon which our scientific knowledge of climate change is founded. We don’t disagree about the physical theory of absorption of greenhouse gases demonstrated by John Tyndall, about the thermometer readings first collected from around the world by Guy Callendar, or about the possibility of non-linear instabilities in the oceans articulated by Wally Broecker. We disagree about science because we have different understandings of the relationship of scientific evidence to other things: to what we may regard as ultimate ‘truth,’ to the ways in which we relate uncertainty to risk, and to what people believe to be the legitimate role of knowledge in policy making.

That’s as good a concise summary as I’ve seen. If the people you are debating accept that temperatures are rising, that greenhouse gasses cause warming, and the the climate system may react to human emissions in deeply disagreeable ways, you are within the realm where reasonable discussions can occur. By contrast, if your partners in discussion assert that climate is not changing, greenhouse gasses have nothing to do with it, and that any change will surely be benevolent and gradual… well… here be dragons.

Long-lived nuclear waste warnings

In addition to the engineering problems involved in storing radioactive wastes from power plants and weapons programs, there is the additional difficulty of marking the storage sites as dangerous, in a manner that will be comprehensible throughout the period in which the wastes will be a hazard. In 1991, a report considered this question: “Expert Judgment on Markers To Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion Into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.”

As reported in Slate:

“The report’s proposed solution is a layered message—one that conveys not only that the site is dangerous but that there’s a legitimate (nonsuperstitious) reason to think so. It should also emphasize that there’s no buried treasure, just toxic trash. Here’s how the authors phrase the essential talking points: “[T]his place is not a place of honor … no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here.” Finally, the marker system should communicate that the danger—an emanation of energy—is unleashed only if you disturb the place physically, so it’s best left uninhabited.”

They estimate that a system of redundant warning markers for an American nuclear waste dump would cost about $68 million.

The whole issue is a potent demonstration of the challenges contemporary technologies create, when it comes to our moral relationship with future generations. Just as they will be the ones who live with the climate change we produce, they will also have legacies like topsoil erosion and the accumulation of toxic and radioactive wastes to contend with.

Strategy for denier commenters

I am happy to say that traffic to this site has been steadily increasing. Visits are up 138% from last year, and October was our best month ever. Increasingly, a sibilant intake of breath is well ranked by search engines.

One problematic element that accompanies popularity is that I attract ever-more climate change deniers and delayers (those who accept that it is real, but think we should take no action). Ordinarily, I am happy to debate with people and try to provide quality information. That being said, it can take up a lot of time to try to refute those who repeat faulty arguments over and over. These people call themselves ‘skeptics,’ but I think they are mis-applying the term. I have yet to encounter one that is willing to back away from even thoroughly discredited positions. Instead, they just move on to another misleading argument.

The question, then, is how to deal with these commentors without losing all scope for socializing and personal projects. Some of the options:

Briefly assert that their position is incorrect and point to a resource that says why. Ignore further attempts at rebuttal.
Point all such commentors towards pre-existing posts and conversations, without offering specific responses.
Adopt the Zero Carbon Canada approach: “ATTN climate change denier trolls: you are cooking our kids and will be deleted.”
Continue to provide detailed, personalized responses as much as possible.

(1) and (2) are appealing because they reduce the extent to which one person seeking to spread disinformation can waste my time. That said, leaving comments unaddressed could lead readers to believe that the points made therein are valid. (3) is appealing because it would prevent bad information from appearing online, though it is obviously a form of censorship. (4) is the ideal world solution, though I do need to wonder whether refuting deniers and delayers in blog comments is really the best use of my time, even if all I am taking into consideration is whether I am acting effectively on climate change.

Which option do readers think is most suitable? Are there other options I ought to consider?

Edgy campaign from the Young Greens

The Young Greens of Canada recently launched a new website emblazoned with the slogan “[Y]our parents f*cked up the planet – [I]t’s time to do something about it. [L]ive green, vote green.” Obviously, it is intended to provoke controversy, and it is arguably a tactical mistake. That being said, it is certainly factually true. The ancestors of those now alive helped to expand the fossil-fuel-driven society that is the fundamental cause of climate change. Most of them did so in ignorance of what the consequences would be, but that is no longer a legitimate possibility for those now alive. Faulty arguments from deniers aside, we all now know that climate change is real, dangerous, and caused by us. We have to stop. That being said, it would be more correct to say “our parents” or “all our parents” and to mention that, so far, we are all doing the same thing.

We certainly need a diversity in media campaigns to address climate change and, even if some people object to this one, I think there is some cause for raising the issue of responsibility. We need to move from a mindset where we pat ourselves on the back for walking to the grocery store or using a compact fluorescent light to one where we recognize the harm our emissions will cause to other people and take major steps to reduce them (while also demanding change in the economic and political structures within which we live).

Canada’s political system forces the Greens to engage from the outside. Whether you think this communication strategy will alienate more than it educates or not, that is clearly what the Young Greens are trying to accomplish here.