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A major side-effect of the recent and ongoing information explosion is super-specialisation. For example, these days a shoulder problem’s best treated by an orthopaedic surgeon whose practice is confined to shoulder problems. At least not yet – to my knowledge at least – does any shoulder surgeon specialise in either the right or left shoulder. Because of the information explosion, it’s impossible for a non specialist in any field to keep up-to-date in that field. And so regarding the existence and severity of global warming and climate change, though I read books written for the general public, I rely on the consensus of specialist climate scientists. Their consensus is that global warming and climate change do exist, they’re man-made, and they’re severe – indeed at the high end of the severity range. One of my medical axioms is that nobody’s illness or injury improves in a straight line. Rather there are ups and down with a (moving average) trend line of improvement. Which I think explains the latest junk science espoused by Senator Fielding, and shown on this graph whose time scale dates only from 1995. Al Gore didn’t meet with him [1] – properly I think, because Mr Gore was on a hiding to nothing. You can’t hold a rational discussion with an ignoramus. Meanwhile Mole Creek’s has its wettest July in 25 years, and in Liawenee – Tasmania’s coldest place – July’s been colder than usual [2]. I’ll bet Senator Fielding’s drooling over these statistics.
I respect Tim Flannery as a scientist. As I do James Lovelock (pictured). In Flannery’s review of Lovelock’s latest book The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning, in the June issue of The Monthly, he carefully establishes Lovelock’s credentials as ‘one of the world’s most respected scientists’. Thus Flannery takes Lovelock’s predictions seriously. So do I. So should everyone. Flannery’s review starts by warning us Lovelock’s book ‘…has an important message. In a few years, or a few decades at most, abrupt changes in Earth’s climate will begin, which will end up killing almost all of us and cause the extinction of almost all life on Earth’. ‘Important’ is an understatement! Lovelock says major climate change is inevitable. In his model, between 400 and 500 ppm of CO2, suddenly a small increase in heat or CO2 causes a sudden temperature rise – of a prodigious 9°C. The current atmospheric CO2 concentration’s 390 ppm. And adding the warming capacity of the other greenhouse gases to CO2’s, expressed as CO2 equivalent (i.e. CO2e) we’re now at 430 ppm CO2e – well into Lovelock’s danger zone. So Senator Fielding’s recalcitrance [1, 2] borders on negligence. And ditto the coal industry’s, so I understand the reason for this threat which politicians indignantly call ‘eco-terrorism’. Unless those same politicians take Lovelock’s predictions seriously – which they show no sign of doing – it is they who are eco-terrorists.
Wikipedia calls H L Mencken, among other things, an acerbic critic of American life and culture who rather than dismiss democracy with open contempt, responded to it with a sense of amusement. Thus his quotes: ‘Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage’ and ‘Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance’. In the October 2004 Federal Election, in Victoria the right wing Family First Party polled 56,376 primary votes equating to 0.13 of a Senate quota. A deal done between Labor and several other groups to protect its third candidate backfired badly. Family First harvested preferences from groups including the Progressive Alliance, Christian Democrats, Aged and Disability Pensioners Party, Non-Custodial Parents Party, One Nation, Liberals for Forests, Australian Democrats, and DLP. And so Family First’s Steven Fielding (pictured) became a senator. After returning from a US climate change conference, last Monday Fielding said increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere might not be causing global warming; rather, solar flares could be linked to temperature change. Maybe he’s talking about this. Fielding’s apparently ignoring the consensus of the world’s climate scientists. Climate deniers have had their day. It’s a shame Fielding will be a senator until 2011. And it’s shame Mencken died in 1956. Because he would have had a field day with Fielding.
A major side-effect of the recent and ongoing information explosion is super-specialisation. For example, these days a shoulder problem’s best treated by an orthopaedic surgeon whose practice is confined to shoulder problems. At least not yet – to my knowledge at least – does any shoulder surgeon specialise in either the right or left shoulder. Because of the information explosion, it’s impossible for a non specialist in any field to keep up-to-date in that field. And so regarding the existence and severity of global warming and climate change, though I read books written for the general public, I rely on the consensus of specialist climate scientists. Their consensus is that global warming and climate change do exist, they’re man-made, and they’re severe – indeed at the high end of the severity range. One of my medical axioms is that nobody’s illness or injury improves in a straight line. Rather there are ups and down with a (moving average) trend line of improvement. Which I think explains the latest junk science espoused by Senator Fielding, and shown on this graph whose time scale dates only from 1995. Al Gore didn’t meet with him [1] – properly I think, because Mr Gore was on a hiding to nothing. You can’t hold a rational discussion with an ignoramus. Meanwhile Mole Creek’s has its wettest July in 25 years, and in Liawenee – Tasmania’s coldest place – July’s been colder than usual [2]. I’ll bet Senator Fielding’s drooling over these statistics.
