“The climate change bottom line”

Article I had published in the Weekender, 24 October:

THERE’s a widespread and significant misconception about the likely effects of strong action to cut or “mitigate” greenhouse gas emissions: that it will hurt economies.

The chair at a recent climate debate in Cape Town summed up popular perception and prejudice when he said that those calling for a switch to a low-carbon economy are asking for a “huge sacrifice”.

It’s a twofold misconception. First , the damage to gross domestic product (GDP) is usually exaggerated, particularly in the US by conservative opponents of the proposed, and rather modest, Waxman-Markey climate bill.

350 on Signal Hill, Cape Town

The 350 event on Signal Hill was a brilliant and most encouraging morning. Originally planned for the top of Table Mountain, mist forced us to relocate to the “rump of the lion”, and all of the roughly 250 people who’d gathered at the lower cableway walked for an hour or so to get to the parking on Signal Hill. The mist persisted – and so did the people. We rehearsed at 10am, but it still did not clear. The parking lot began to fill up, and we moved to a nearby grassy hillside – but still the mist did not clear. So people began to chant, “We want sun! We want sun! We want sun!” And by some synchronicity, the planet finally cooperated, the last wisps of vapour blew away, and a small helicopter rose at last from the Waterfront to swoop around and photograph us. After nearly two hours of waiting, I don’t believe a soul had given up and left early. Human beings really can be as amazing and wonderful as we can be selfish and shortsighted.

All photos but the aerial shot are mine. From the 350.org page on Flickr: “Climate Action Partnership volunteers form up on Signal Hill in Cape Town to make up the number 350, signifying 350 parts per million (PPM) CO2 in the atmosphere, 350 PPM being the maximum safe limit of CO2 concentration. WE ARE CURRENTLY AT 390 PPM!”

Richard Goldstone – Justice in Gaza – NYTimes.com

Richard Goldstone writes in the New York Times, about his experience investigating the Israeli assault on Gaza:

I believe deeply in the rule of law and the laws of war, and the principle that in armed conflict civilians should to the greatest extent possible be protected from harm.

In the fighting in Gaza, all sides flouted that fundamental principle. Many civilians unnecessarily died and even more were seriously hurt. In Israel, three civilians were killed and hundreds wounded by rockets from Gaza fired by Hamas and other groups. Two Palestinian girls also lost their lives when these rockets misfired.

In Gaza, hundreds of civilians died. They died from disproportionate attacks on legitimate military targets and from attacks on hospitals and other civilian structures. They died from precision weapons like missiles from aerial drones as well as from heavy artillery. Repeatedly, the Israel Defense Forces failed to adequately distinguish between combatants and civilians, as the laws of war strictly require.

Israel is correct that identifying combatants in a heavily populated area is difficult, and that Hamas fighters at times mixed and mingled with civilians. But that reality did not lift Israel’s obligation to take all feasible measures to minimize harm to civilians.

His commission’s report can be downloaded here.

What you always wanted to know about nitrous oxide

If you want to see the latest figures for the state of our atmosphere, the Global Monitoring Division of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System Research Laboratory is a good place to start. They consolidate data from a huge global network of monitoring stations.

Select your greenhouse gas (carbon dioxide – CO2, methane – CH4, nitrous oxide – N2O) and watch the graphs climb. We’re perhaps used to seeing graphs for carbon dioxide, so for the sake of a little variety in your gloomy global warming news, here’s a graph for increases in nitrous oxide.

Otherwise known as “laughing gas” or “happy gas”, nitrous oxide is somewhat less amusing in increasing concentrations in large swaths of atmosphere. Over a hundred year period, it is 298 times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2. At the moment, it apparently accounts for 6% of the human-related warming effect. It’s released by industrial activity, burning coal for example. Also released by tropical soils and from the oceans, human activity has till recently been thought to account for 30% of what’s now in the atmosphere. But it appears releases from nitrogen-based fertilisers may have been greatly underestimated. Overall, atmospheric levels have increased 15% since 1750. It’s also an ozone-depleting gas – in fact, it’s now the key ozone depleting gas.

Arms deals, gambling, Saddam Hussein – and Apple

I started to wonder the other day just why Macs are so much more expensive in South Africa than elsewhere.

As I write, an entry-level white MacBook is advertised in the US at $999, or R7,300. They’re more expensive in the UK, for example, R8,700. No doubt tariffs and taxes play a role here. But if I want to buy the same MacBook here in Cape Town, though, I must pay … R12,000. No less than 64% higher

SA maize production down 30% by 2030?

Okay, I hadn’t previously looked very closely at the 12 tightly packed graphs on page 23 of the Copenhagen Synthesis Report, indicating anticipated changes in food production across the world.

But now that I have — that pink bar indicating the likely range of decline for maize production in Southern Africa is one of the most conspicuous. (Another is in East Africa, where they are likely to see a 30% INCREASE in barley yields. But that dramatic shift is indicated as being less important for hunger.)

The colours, by the way, indicate the importance of the change for hunger, with pink indicating greater importance.

In other words, according to the latest science, we in Southern Africa can expect a 30% decline in maize yields over the next 20 years. And wheat – down 15%. Seen that in any headlines?

Shell and BP still funding climate change denial

Though oil companies BP and Shell both acknowledge the reality of climate change, both continue to support industry associations that are lobbying against climate change legislation:

“BP maintains its membership of the API through paying substantial fees based on the large size of BP’s business. It is our concern that these fees are used by the API to undermine US government action on climate change and that BP’s membership of the API contradicts its position on the issue,” writes John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, in a letter to Tony Hayward, the BP boss.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/aug/19/oil-firms-warned-over-us-lobbying

It is difficult to say how much climate change denialism is funded by US industry, but amazingly, the long-term campaign against it seems to have begun as much with the tobacco industry

“Fired up by cleaner coal”

That’s the Weekender’s headline for an article I wrote a couple of weeks ago on underground coal gasification. (My headline was “Old energy’s last gasp?”)

ESKOM is very comfortable with generating power from coal, but like many of the world’s utilities, the parastatal is under ever- increasing pressure to use less coal and reduce its enormous contribution to global warming.
One of Eskom’s latest efforts to make coal cleaner is a pilot project for underground coal gasification (UCG) adjacent to the gigantic Majuba power station near Volksrust in Mpumalanga.
The idea behind UCG is that instead of first mining coal, processing it, then burning it to produce heat and electricity, you set it alight underground to produce a stream of gas that can be burned to produce electricity.

The Weekender’s website carries the full article, which as it has been edited is a little less sceptical than the version I filed. My concern is that Eskom will use successful UCG as yet another strategy to postpone serious investments in renewables.

Snow Leopard not a train smash

Update: 18 October: Okay, I’ve now actually installed Snow Leopard, and it most definitely is not a train smash; I have a much faster, leaner, machine in front of me. One on which I can select a single column in a pdf (funny how much the “small things” count). The Finder, especially as it emerges from the Dock is a dramatic improvement. Oh, and something I’ve not seen noted anywhere else: Help, which has been a lumbering dysfunctional disgrace through several versions of the OS, has finally been tuned up and responds quickly and smoothly to what’s asked of it.

Problems noted so far: A disappearing cursor in Word. Corrupted iCal calendars, duplicated events and birthdays. And an unwanted “feature” in Mail: notes turning up in the Inbox. (Go into Mail Preferences, and de-select “Show notes in Inbox”, in the Mailbox behaviours section of ALL your Accounts, to get rid of this.)

Harry Patch, Slam Marshall and the death of humanity

I was rather astonished recently when I read the Guardian’s notice of the death of Harry Patch, the last surviving British veteran of the First World War.

Astonished, because it contained this memorable – and very moving – disclosure about how he had lived and fought:

He was in the trenches at Ypres between June and September 1917, where he and his gang of five machine gunners made a pact not to kill an enemy soldier if they could help it: they would aim for the legs.

The same report quoted the chief of staff of the British Army, Richard Dannatt, saying: “… we give thanks for his life … for upholding the same values and freedom that we continue to cherish and fight for today.” I cannot held wondering whether Dannatt would really approve of contemporary soldiers undertaking pacts not to kill the enemy. Frankly, I doubt it very much.

Harry’s pact reminded me of an article I read in the New Yorker a few years ago, about the effects of the Iraq war on its veterans. That article, The Price of Valor, by Dan Baum (July 12, 2004), described an extraordinary and appalling turn in modern military history: the point at which a modern army realised that humanity is no asset in combat, and set out to kill it in its troops.