Trouble at CAT (Period properties of the future)

[biffvernon]

Right now CAT is in a very serious situation and we need your help.

The Wales Institute for Sustainable Education (WISE) is CAT's most important project to date. Hundreds of thousands of people will benefit from the courses, conferences, education and events that will happen in WISE, and millions more will benefit from the practical solutions developed and taught within its walls.

However, WISE now finds itself in a precarious position.

Originally a £5million project, the building costs for WISE have risen because of a legal dispute between CAT and the main contractor, Frank Galliers Ltd. Last month, in the High Court, CAT was awarded over £500,000 in costs. However, Galliers have since gone into liquidation and we are unlikely to see a penny of the money owed to us.

This has left CAT in an incredibly difficult position. We need to raise £530,000 over the next few weeks to complete the WISE project. Please could you help us at this critical time?

You can find the full story and donate here.
http://www2.cat.org.uk/wise/wiseappeal/

Thank you in anticipation.

Tanya Hawkes
Director of CAT Funding and Development
t: 01654 704951
e: tanya.hawkes@cat.org.uk
w: www.cat.org.uk

 

[Penners]

Very happy to donate. CAT is extremely important.

 

[Schoolmarm]

Just done a small donation.

 

[Flyfisher]

It seems unlikely that Prof. James Lovelock will be making any donations:

while renewable energy technology may make good business sense, it is not based on good practical engineering

Trying to save the planet is a lot of nonsense

enjoy life while you can

Full story at http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8594000/8594561.stm

 

[Horace]

Goodness me.

How could the BBC give air time to a man who can only be described as a "troll" scientist? Somebody, please, brief against him. Who is he anyway?

Flyfisher, how could you promulgate such incendiary views?

Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think....

 

[Pford75]

He added that the recent events surrounding the topic had left his thoughts about climate change “sceptics” thawing.

“What I like about sceptics is that in good science you need critics that make you think: 'Crumbs, have I made a mistake here?' If you don't have that continuously, you really are up the creek,” he said.

“The good sceptics have done a good service, but some of the mad ones I think have not done anyone any favours.

“You need sceptics, especially when the science gets very big and monolithic.”

 

[biffvernon]

Who is he anyway?

A complex person (aren't we all?).

Invented several useful gadgets including the electron capture detector. While working for NASA he thought up a smart way of understanding the interaction of biosphere and atmosphere. I think he is probably right to be pessimistic about future climate change and but wrong in his suggestions as to what to do about it.

Having done some smart things during his long life does not mean that everything he says is smart.

 

[biffvernon]

but some of the mad ones I think have not done anyone any favours.

If the cap fits...

 

[Flyfisher]

Having done some smart things during his long life does not mean that everything he says is smart.

Fair point, but one that applies to anyone, so rather pointless really. It's also just avoiding the issue; better, surely, to state why you think he's wrong?

 

[Flyfisher]

Who is he anyway?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock

http://www.jameslovelock.org/page2.html

http://www.ecolo.org/lovelock/Nuclear_lifeline_en.pdf

 

[Pford75]

It's also just avoiding the issue

This has become par for the course with much of the debate on this subject. Despite the continued personal attacks, I repeat that I see myself as a 'sceptic', someone interested in hearing both sides of the debate and someone deeply uncomfortable with what Lovelock calls 'fudging the data'.

When I see quotes like these...I worry that the debate is not as honest as it should be:-

"We need to get some broad based support,
to capture the public's imagination...
So we have to offer up scary scenarios,
make simplified, dramatic statements
and make little mention of any doubts...
Each of us has to decide what the right balance
is between being effective and being honest."
- Prof. Stephen Schneider,
Stanford Professor of Climatology,
lead author of many IPCC reports

"I believe it is appropriate to have an 'over-representation' of the facts
on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience."
- Al Gore,
Climate Change activist

"It doesn't matter what is true,
it only matters what people believe is true."
- Paul Watson,
co-founder of Greenpeace

 

[Flyfisher]

Interesting quotes.

The first one bothers me the most because scientists should stick to the facts and not get involved in such 'spin'.

The second one is understandable because such 'spin' is expected from activists and politicians.

As for the third one, perhaps surprisingly, I find myself in agreement. Any body attempting to make people behave in a certain way must convince them somehow, regardless of the actual facts. But that's a matter of politics, not science, and the underlying motivation should always be questioned.

 

[Pford75]

I think what bothers me about the first quote is the suggestion that 'honesty' and 'effectiveness' are diametrically opposed. In other words, the belief that one cannot be both honest and effective. Whilst this might be true in the short term, I believe that 'honesty' in the broadest sense is the only truly effective long term strategy.

A see your point on the second quote...but this man is not just a politician/activist...he was given the Nobel prize for crying out loud. 'Spin' is just another word for 'deception'.

I do agree with you entirely on the third point - what people believe is true and what they are willing to actually do as a result is important. There is however a worrying alternative to 'convincing' people as you put it. In the Lovelock interview, he suggests that a 'suspension of democracy' would be a good way of handling things. Sounds rather like facism to me

 

[Gareth Hughes]

It would be interesting to know the sources the "lay" sceptics use.

Not directly related to climate change, but here's how "popular" science journalism works:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28T_YrDNit0

Where climate change is concerned, the scientifically responsible thing to do would be to conduct large scale experiments. However, there is only one Earth, so the choice is to conduct the "alarmists'" experiment, or the "sceptics" one.

Given that the worst case scenario for the former is a reduced standard of living for some in the West, while the worst case scenario for the latter is an uninhabitable planet, the responsible course would be to do the less damaging experiment.

Even if the sceptics are right, it can't make sense to carry on regardless, since fossil fuels (and our lifestyles dependent on them) are not inexhaustible, unless you just wish to pass on that problem, with increasing severity, to future generations.

 

[biffvernon]

But the deniers (we are all skeptics) are wrong and it doesn't matter how many times Pford75 and others like him say different.

The basic physics of greenhouse gasses is so well understood, the result of repeatable experiments and confirmed by real world observation, that it is utterly pointless to debate the essential matter.

Of course there is a great deal of doubt about just how global warming will affect the rate of sea level rise, desertification, hurricane frequency, biodiversity and any number of other phenomena that real scientists are busy working on.

Lovelock has been one of the people who have raised the danger of global warming in the public eye. And he is right so to do. Where I think he is wrong, as I said before, is in his suggestions for what to do, much of which seems to involve doing nothing except enjoy what time we have left and don't worry about becoming an ancestor. This is not a matter of science but of ethics and morality and that is where I find Lovelock profoundly at fault. For example, he alerts us to the effect of our pollution but says he wants to take a ride in Richard Branson's spaceship - probably the most polluting single act that a person can take.

 

[Flyfisher]

But none of this is anything to do with denial is it? Lovelock isn't a denier and, for the record, neither am I. I don't even think it's and issue of scepticism. The real issue is what do we do about end of fossil fuels.

The "green" approach seems to be to wind back the clock and live with pre-industrial energy levels (OK, boosted a bit with various 'alternative' technologies). I think this is completely futile and wishful thinking. We simply will not be able to support the global population with such a strategy, which is what Lovelock is pointing out. Of course, it's a politically unacceptable view so he is largely being ignored, mainly because he can't be 'rubbished'.

We're a technological species now and only technology will save us. Governments cannot possibly countenance any way forward that does not sustain the existing and projected global population at our existing, or better, standard of living. It would be unthinkable to pursue a policy that would result in the death of millions (billions?) of people. That's why more nuclear power stations will be built, regardless of green objections, to buy us the time to figure out even better energy systems to help wean us off fossil fuels. There's no looking back and the phrase "sh1t or bust" comes to mind. It might not work, of course, but I can't see any acceptable alternative.

 

[JoceAndChris]

This is not a matter of science but of ethics and morality and that is where I find Lovelock profoundly at fault. For example, he alerts us to the effect of our pollution but says he wants to take a ride in Richard Branson's spaceship - probably the most polluting single act that a person can take.

But most people don't live in a very "ethical" way, if you count acting selfishly as unethical. Why is it any more unethical to declare you'd like a ride in Richard Branson's spaceship than to live in a lovely period property when some people haven't got homes at all? Or the thousands of other unethical things we do every week? Who here would be prepared to cut their grocery bill in half and send the surplus to the starving? No-one I bet. We are born into a very unethical system and there's not a lot we can do about it!

I just CAN'T understand how we can focus our complete energies on helping the people of the future when we so clearly don't care very much about the people of now.

I know some kind souls on here give to charity (I never do, I tend to think the world's overpopulated and people had better die off a bit), but most people are focused on themselves most of the time, which after all is the survival instinct and will never change.

 

[biffvernon]

Why is it any more unethical to declare you'd like a ride in Richard Branson's spaceship than to live in a lovely period property

The point is that a space ship ride is probably the most energy intensive activity known to man. So if energy wasting is the problem, this one is top of the league!

 

[JoceAndChris]

OK, fair point, but the real problem is not energy wasting but that people are not altruistic enough to put themselves out (beyond the odd token gesture of reusing bags or recycling bottles).

 

[biffvernon]

Indeed. Or as Ian McEwan, whose latest novel, Sloaris, is about climate, puts it in a piece in this week's New Scientist,

Climate change is difficult because it's not in our nature to perform favours for people that aren't born yet.

Which puts folk like us, who care for old buildings that they might remain to become older, the sort of folk who might just have it in our natures to perform favours for people that aren't born yet.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627541.000-ian-mcewan-mr-sunshine.html