Tuesday, June 13, 2017

How green WAS my valley!

We are all "green." We love nature. We will do all we can to save it from being ravaged by mankind. But there is a problem. As Einstein remarked Raffiniert ist der Herr Gott, aber boshaft ist er nicht,” roughly translated as "The Good Lord may be subtle, but He is not malicious."
This should be a warning that you must at all costs avoid being what I call a "galloping green." There is no point in plunging ahead when you think you have spotted a problem. Just remember, there is always a simple, straightforward solution to virtually every problem, and that solution is invariably wrong. You have to think before you act. Gut feeling for nature could do damage, not solve the problem!
There is a wonderful example in the latest Nature journal, http://www.nature.com/news/gridlock-over-italy-s-olive-tree-deaths-starts-to-ease-1.19939. Down in Puglia, the heel of the boot which is Italy, some olive trees started dying.  The plant pathologists identified a foreign bacterium, Xylella fastidiosa, as the culprit. They recommended uprooting the infected trees and everything within 100m of it.
But the local green movement was against this.  They "knew" all about diseases of olive trees, and were not going to allow 1 000 year old specimens to be uprooted. They chained themselves to the infected trees to prevent them being taken down; they went to court to stop the "massacre." They convinced the Puglian judge that the problem was fungal, not bacterial, and that they were expert in handling olive trees attacked by fungi.  The judge believed them.
And so the problem has spread through the whole of Puglia, some 200 000ha of olive groves, and is moving steadily north.  It has taken six months, but the judgement has been reversed - probably not too late to save the rest of Italy's crop. 
But Puglia is doomed, dead trees everywhere.  And the bacterium seems to have spread - to coastal Spain, across the Adriatic to Greece. All because the tree huggers thought they had the answer. Sometimes one thinks green is the colour beloved by the Devil himself!

The pseudo-disaster of dropping the Paris Accord

There has been an outcry over the American decision to renege on the Paris Accord.  Indeed, one professor went so far as to describe it as a “deeply immoral reprehensible act.”
Yet no-one who read President Trump’s speech can have been left in any doubt that there were sound economic reasons behind his decision. “Compliance with the terms of the Paris Accord and the onerous energy restrictions it has placed on the United States could cost America as much as 2.7 million lost jobs by 2025 according to the National Economic Research Associates.  This includes 440,000 fewer manufacturing jobs. . .”  “the Paris Accord … includes yet another scheme to redistribute wealth out of the United States through the so-called Green Climate Fund — nice name — which calls for developed countries to send $100 billion to developing countries all on top of America’s existing and massive foreign aid payments.”
When you realize that  China is America’s greatest trading rival as well as being a ‘developing country’, you can understand the American reluctance to send it aid.  
The good Professor even suggested America could not “opt out of the laws of physics.” Again, it is clear that he is ignoring large sections of what President Trump actually said. “Even if the Paris Agreement were implemented in full, with total compliance from all nations, it is estimated it would only produce a two-tenths of one degree Celsius reduction in global temperature by the year 2100.  Tiny, tiny amount.  In fact, 14 days of carbon emissions from China alone would wipe out the gains from … America's expected reductions in the year 2030, after we have had to spend billions and billions of dollars, lost jobs, closed factories, and suffered much higher energy costs for our businesses and for our homes.”
The people who are ignoring the laws of physics are those on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  They are interpreting the laws of physics in such a way as to attempt to convince us that climate catastrophe is just round the corner.  It clearly isn’t.
None of their longer-term predictions have come true. The Arctic ice didn’t disappear in 2010. The greenhouse gases have shot up in this millennium, but the thermometer has barely budged.  The actual records of rainfall show no significant global trends, and there is a statistically insignificant drop in the number and violence of cyclones.  Yes, it’s got warmer – which mean that fewer old people die in winter.  Yes, there is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, so plant life is flourishing and the planet, seen from space, is measurably greener.
Our Professor claims “The effects of climate change will hit … poorer communities … more than the rich.”  What he overlooks is that the Paris Accord in effect asks nations to avoid fossil fuels, even though for many they are the cheapest and most effective primary sources of energy. China is building some 200GW of new coal-fired power stations; India is building nearly 600GW; Africa has 120GW planned; and Pakistan, which has long relied on hydropower, is building 60GW. Even Germany, practically the home of renewable energy, has recently built 10GW of coal-fired power. For comparison, South Africa’s total capacity is about 45GW.
Yes, renewable energy is now on a cost parity with many other sources of energy; but renewable energy makes up only a tiny fraction (<2%)of the world’s energy supply and is already proving more difficult to distribute than the dispatchable sources. So it is the Paris Accord that will impact poorer societies, not climate change – particularly as the Green Climate Fund appears a dead duck.