Part of the reason I have been "offline" is that we went on a family holiday to the USA for just under a month. It was an interesting trip on a number of fronts (not the least running into the serial texter Shane Warne on the flight from LA to Vegas) but it was good to spend most of the time in the Big Apple and get a feel for the American "zeitgeist". 4 things were clearly apparent:
- The economy is still well and truly in the toilet, the west coast in particular
- Tiger Woods is a very naughty boy
- As far as a lot of Americans are concerned, events in the rest of the world to them are about as relevant as what is happening on Jupiter (not that that is a news flash)
- Barack Obama's honeymoon is well and truly over, to the point where that bastion of quality journalism, the New York Post, was practically calling for his lynching
You have to feel a bit for Obama. Taking over as he did from the Idiot Son, and with the country in a dreadful economic mess, it's hard to think of any recent political leader assuming office with greater expectation on them. Despite what seem to be well-meaning attempts to reform health care, boost the economy and address climate change, all he seems to have done is disappoint the liberals, who don't think he has gone far enough, and infuriate the conservatives, who think that public health care and conserving the environment are insidious Socialist conspiracies.
The sight of a frustrated Obama being shut out of Premier Wen's suite in Copenhagen while trying to salvage something out of the farcical climate change talks pretty much summed up his year. It was also a stark reminder of the impotence of politicians in bringing about real change in the world, which given the weight of expectation on him, probably explains why Obama is about as popular as a fart in an elevator right now. For me, episodes like Copenhagen just reinforce my view that any great advances that are going to improve the lot of humankind are best left to those qualified to deliver them - scientists. Which leads, finally, to my point.
I have to say the whole direction of the climate change debate confuses me greatly. Unlike halfwits such as Nick Minchin and Tony Abbott, I am prepared to accept the consensus view of 97% of the world's scientific community that the planet is getting hotter. The fact that 6 of the last 10 summers have been the hottest on record clearly support this view, and if Minchin bothered to go back to his native Adelaide this summer where the mercury has rarely dipped below 40 degrees, he might just change his mind. I also accept that human activity is probably contributing to the changes and that humankind therefore should do something to address it, in much the same way that we stopped putting ozone-depleting fluorocarbons in fridges years ago.
What I find difficult to swallow, however, is the indignant moralising of environmentalists and some world leaders that the ONLY way to address the problem is to repent for our past sins and stop putting carbon into the atmosphere. The fact that the whole thrust of the Copenhagen talks and Kyoto before that were confined solely to the politically expedient method of cutting greenhouse emissions rather than considering other solutions just highlights how the wrong people have hijacked the debate. In order to fix this problem, we need clever scientific solutions, not drawn-out and potentially counterproductive talks.
For centuries, science has managed to come up with remarkably simple solutions to problems that seemed insurmountable at the time and which confounded the politicians of the day. When New York was overrun by horse dung in the late 19th century, some clever people came up with the motor car as an alternative means of transport (which ironically was seen at the time as a fabulous outcome for the environment). Putting fluoride in water, as opposed to fridges, has provided a massive benefit in terms of preventative dental care while putting cheap filters on power station exhaust stacks fixed the problem of acid rain. In the field of economics, Keynes and his theories, which seem blindingly obvious today, had a major role in ending the Great Depression.
Similarly, a team of scientists in Seattle have come up with a solution for dealing with global warming which is both remarkable in its simplicity and the cost to implement. Recognising that following major volcanic eruptions, the Earth goes through a period of a cooler than usual climate, the team determined that this was caused by the volcano belching sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere, or layer of atmosphere immediately above the troposphere. While sulphur dioxide is also a by-product of man-made industrial processes, the gas generated is not emitted with enough force to shoot it into the stratosphere and it remains in the lower atmosphere, where it has no cooling effect.
What the team proposed was building some form of "hose", which could either be a stand alone structure or be attached to major power plants which, instead of leaving the gas in the troposphere where it would be just another pollutant, would pump it into the stratosphere, thereby simulating a volcanic eruption and have a beneficial cooling effect. Rough costings for building such a structure would run into millions (as opposed to the billions proposed by the Stern report measures) and start having an immediate effect (as opposed to the Stern report measures which will take decades before having a meaningful effect).
This is just one of a number of remarkably simple ideas currently being considered by the scientific community which could, if implemented properly, bring about a quick and easy solution to the issue of climate change. However, it is hard to see something like a sulphur dioxide pump being considered seriously by the world's politicians or environmental evangelists. Using more pollutants to fix our pollution problem? It would not be politically correct at all. Far better to have massive talk-fests every 4 years and try and persuade China and India that they shouldn't have the free ride to industrialisation that the western world had. Good luck with that.
Unfortunately, world governments are set on going ever so slowly down the carbon reduction route, the targets for which are inadequate for us to stop some of the worst effects of climate change. While this might be frustrating, it is hardly surprising as governments are not wired for finding quick, simple and cheap solutions to problems; nor are they likely to do something that may be remarkably effective if it is likely to be unpopular. Inevitably the fix for most of society's problems comes from people like scientists and economists, whose thought processes aren't constrained by political correctness, media scrutiny or the need to be re-elected in 3 years time.
If the government really wants to get serious on climate change, when the next global climate change gab-fest comes around, Kevin Rudd should just give it a miss and donate the saved airfares and accommodation costs to the CSIRO. They're 1000 times more qualified than him to save our wretched souls.
