Roskill Memorial Lecture - Climate Change
I attended the 12th Roskill Memorial Lecture last night. It is in memory of my Grandfather, Stephen W. Roskill the naval war historian.
Lord May had some things to say that were completely new to me… in no particular order…
1. The language of global warming communiques from the G7 and G8 has changed over the years. interestingly, the USA did sign the 1995 statement which said words to the effect
‘human-related global warming and climate change [is acknowledged] as a serious problem.
They also acknowledged that scientific uncertainty should be ‘no excuse
to postpone actions’
2. Pacala & Socolow wrote a powerful paper proposing using existing technologies to mitigate (sequester) carbon and prevent global CO2 rising above the presumed critical level of double the pre-industrial revolution atmospheric Carbon count. They propose 15 technologies (wedges) and if 7 are activated they claim we can stabilise atmospheric carbon. Pacala is interviewed by The Climate Group and here’s their original paper in Science Magazine August 2004.
3. The Stern Report on Economic Impact of Climate Change the
economic estimate of the impact is less precise than the physical
realities. i.e. is economic growth
needed? GDP in 2050 could be 5-7% lower
than today if no health or pollution
changes happen.
The cost of holding the
rise in CO2 to less than double the pre-industrial revolution level is about 1%
of global GDP. Is this a price we can afford?
4. Impediments to change
i – Denial. The effects of our actions today will not be seen for 100 + years. It takes 2-300 years for sea temperatures to reach equilibrium with the average air temperature. So I won’t act if you don’t act.
ii. To act effectively everybody must act together in equitable proportions. This is the hardest to define and therefore achieve.
5. Means of effecting change
i. Human beings must adapt to change and mitigate our impact to reduce consumption. We can also sequester carbon from burning fossil fuels i.e. rather than allowing CO2 to be released – extract the carbon.
ii. We must grow alternative energy sources. We burn one million years worth of fossilised carbon deposits each year.
6. A side-bar on fundamentalism.
Looking back at history making sense of the world has been a strong force for stability in the past e.g. draconian gods, rules, monotheistic gods. The hierarchy and respect for authority has the effect that dogma trumps objective (scientific) evidence. Why did ancient peoples believe a volcano erupting meant the gods were angry (because their leaders told them so). Stable, co-operative situations were a good thing for society in the past. But the scientific enlightenment started to question this world view and to bring new objective measures to the fore such that we now have individual liberty and consider this to be the modern world view. Mankind is not good at adapting to rapid change. We have created these modern, individualistic ways of viewing the world and there have been unintended consequences…. One of these has been a revival (under the stress of modern changes to lifestyles) of older modes of belief that built our society in the past. For example, fundamentalism is an older mode – not based on individually achieved scientific analysis but on leaders’ dogma. The rise in fundamentalism (both Islam and Christianity) is not relevant to modern theology of either religion. The Literal truths lose the compassion of mature religious beliefs. But in a time of rapid change, literal truths are attractive to those threatened by change.