As far as winters go, Edinburgh’s this year has so far been rather mild.  The mercury has fallen below zero in the city only a handful of times, and even then just at night.  The gas company should be getting less of my hard-earned dosh than may have otherwise been the case (price-rises excepted, of course).  Global warming? Bring it on and hand me the sun-cream! Turn this pasty Northerner into an olive-skinned Mediterranean type.

However, if I were with our friends across the pond, perhaps I might see things a bit differently – at least at the moment.  As I sit here writing at the end of January 2014, yet another cold snap and snowstorm are hitting the East Coast of the US.  And this is after even Hell froze over (well, Hell, Michigan anyway) in the midst of the Artic Vortex that gripped North America over Christmas and New Years.  Global warming? What global warming?  Thank heavens for cheap shale gas to keep the frostbite away by turning the heating up without busting the bank.  Drill, baby, drill!  Or has this year merely been a typical winter that seems cold relative to recent, mild ones? Our memories are sometimes rather short…..

Those in many parts of Africa and Asia may have yet a different perspective on this global warming business.  Failing monsoons, droughts, floods, rising sea levels.  While this may be “weather”, the longer-term climate patterns are changing, becoming less reliable and more extreme.  People living (or trying to live…) in these regions are likely to feel the effects of changing weather patterns much more profoundly that I am, sitting here on a hill in Edinburgh (which may become beachfront if Antarctic ice-sheets melt – the irony, living on a tropical island in a world destroyed).  These countries and regions are less able to adapt to and/or combat these changes – the simply don’t have the same level of resources as, for example, the EU does.  To paraphrase: It’s the climate, stupid!

Whilst I’m certainly no historian, I ask you: where we might be today if we had not discovered the uses of wood, charcoal and coal to create heat, and through heat create work, and through work initiate the Industrial Revolution?   And we still use a heap of coal today for generating energy (in addition to other fossil fuels).  I might also argue that the Industrial Revolution continues – it’s merely moved South and East.  If it weren’t for the abundance such energy-rich compounds, what would our life be like today? Would it be better or worse?  I don’t have an answer to such a philosophical question.  Hmm, where can I get my hands on Dr. Who’s Tardis to pose that to Aristotle?

What does seem to be evident, however, is that change won’t happen overnight – likely not this decade or even the next.  According to an article in Scientific American the major global energy transitions (from wood to coal to oil) have each taken between 50 to 60 years. Developed economies are “locked-in” to certain technologies and infrastructure that are tried and tested. These economies are also (still) the largest portion of the global economy.  In a mad-dash catch-up exercise to narrow the wealth gap between the Developed and Emerging worlds, Western dominance over the global economy is beginning to ebb away.  In terms of GDP, China is now the world’s second-largest economy, Brazil is 7^th and India is 10^th; but their growth has largely been fuelled by fossil fuels, coal in particular.  Unless an unexpected technological advancement occurs that changes the economics of non-fossil fuel energy generation (not to mention storage), worms may have feasted upon my remains (or at least be eyeing up this old bag-of-bones in anticipation) before renewable energy reaches a meaningful share.  So, what do we do about it?

The “Responsible Investing” movement – such as the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investing, to which the University of Edinburgh is only the second higher education institute to be a signatory – has gathered pace over recent years.  But who wouldn’t invest responsibly? Or put another way, how should we define responsible? And then how do we implement that definition?

For some, such as Bill McKibben and http://350.org/, “responsible” is about divesting from fossil fuels, on environmental as well as financial grounds.  McKibben’s article in Rolling Stone of a couple of years ago, and that of “Unburnable Carbon” from the Carbon Tracker Initiative, remain thought-provoking reading.

But is divestment today, or even within the next five years, “responsible” if the transition to world where renewable energy finally provides the majority of energy generation is indeed 50-60 years away?  Is the opportunity cost of not having a voice that company management may listen to or not participating in the earnings fossil fuel companies will generate for the foreseeable future an acceptable risk for our pension funds (state, personal and/or corporate), universities’ endowment funds or charity and foundation funds?  The unintended as well as intended consequences of actions must be weighed up before action is taken – if such consequences are desirable, go for it!

Finally, I pose a question wrapped in hope.  With the immense annual revenues they generate from you and I consuming their product (in one form or another), could fossil-fuel companies actually become an engine of change?  Is a culture shift from “Big Oil” that knows only about drilling to “Big Energy” that knows how to develop viable, non-finite alternatives possible?

A pipedream perhaps – but without dreams, and the fortitude to try to turn dreams into reality, we will live in a much poorer place.

Stephen Porter is a tree-hugger come investor.  He worked in the institutional investment management industry for nearly 20 at some of the leading global firms, engaging with the senior leaders of asset owners such as sovereign wealth funds, public pension funds and charitable foundations to create custom solutions to meet their specific requirements.  To atone for such “sins”, in 2012 Stephen embarked upon a rather different path – enrolling in Edinburgh’s MSc in Carbon Management.  Stephen has also begun part-time PhD studies at the University of Edinburgh’s School of GeoScience, exploring the links between climate change mitigation and losses across the food supply chain.  Helping to fund his further student excesses, Stephen joined with two Edinburgh PGT peers to found a (currently) small sustainability consultancy. Oh, and he’s also a husband and a father to three boys under eight – so please excuse the grey hair!

References

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/polar-vortex-chill-fails-to-make-history/

http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v310/n1/full/scientificamerican0114-52.html

http://www.carbontracker.org/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2011/07/Unburnable-Carbon-Full-rev2.pdf)

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719

http://www.docs.sasg.ed.ac.uk/GaSP/Governance/SociallyResponsibleInvestment.pdf

In this blog, Dr. Richard Milne argues that one of the key battle grounds in climate science will be fought with the world’s media.  He makes the case that the battle will be lost or won by the ways in which we learn to communicate accurate science to the general public and the media – and in doing so, influence public opinion.

Dr. Richard Milne

This week, national newspapers and the BBC have all reported back from a press conference called to discuss the supposed “stall” in global warming.  Most have reported the science fairly accurately (even the Daily Mail, which doesn’t have a good track record here).  However, in many cases the viewpoints of climate “skeptics” have been presented and not challenged.  That is a dangerous oversight.

Let’s be clear: climate “skeptics” do not have a leg to stand on.  Back in the 1980s and early 1990s, gaps in our understanding of climate change made climate skepticism a legitimate position, and such skepticism helped drive scientists to close the gaps, leading to a robust mountain of evidence confirming that CO₂ from humans is warming the planet.  Perhaps the last genuine skeptic was Richard Muller, who led the massive BEST project, which reanalysed climate data from scratch, and came up with exactly the same conclusions as the IPCC.  We are left with a small band of maverick scientists, most of them not trained in climate science, who refuse to accept man-made climate change no matter what evidence is thrown at them.  Such mavericks exist outside of every major scientific consensus, but in other fields they languish in obscurity unless they find evidence to prove themselves right.  Not so climate “skeptics”: right wing media and politicians are lining up to shove them into the public eye.  For example, right-wing politician Nigel Lawson set up the GWPF to publicly oppose action to tackle climate change, but only one of its 24 academic advisors has training in climate science.

In reality, every single argument put forth by the “skeptics” falls apart if treated with genuine skepticism. This is the premise of the excellent website “scepticalscience.com“, which is a great place to go if you hear an argument against man-made global warming that you don’t know how to refute.  A true skeptic, when faced with two competing hypotheses, will subject each one to equally rigorous scrutiny, much like Jeremy Paxman interviewing two politicians of different parties.  However, climate “skeptics” invariably accept without question any argument that appears to refute man-made climate change, while rejecting automatically any that supports it.  That is not skepticism, it is denial.

Discussing the “stall” in global warming, none of the journalists gave enough emphasis to the key point: that ocean temperatures have climbed steadily, and in uninterrupted fashion, even as temperatures on land wobble up and down a bit.  Perhaps scientists haven’t emphasised this enough.  Conversely, both the BBC and the Independent (usually the most accurate newspaper on climate change) mention the views of “skeptics” without challenging them.  The Independent states in one place that “Skeptics claim that this shows there is not a strong link between the two, whereas climate scientists insist that rising carbon dioxide concentrations are largely responsible for the rise in global temperatures.” That is like saying “some believe 2+2=4, but others think 2+2=5”.  Imagine hearing that from a Maths teacher, without subsequently explaining why 2 + 2 is certainly 4.  The BBC article states that “climate sceptics have for years pointed out that the world is not warming as rapidly as once forecast,”  and ends with  “many people will take a lot of convincing.” All three quotes serve to legitimise climate “skepticism”, whether they intend it or not.  They will be seized upon by those determined to believe that there isn’t a problem: as noted above, they’ll ignore the rest of the article, and take away the message that even the BBC isn’t convinced that the climate scientists are right.  Were there not a co-ordinated campaign to avoid action on carbon emissions, all this might not matter.  But there is, so it does.

Climate “skepticism” has gradually transformed from legitimate scientific doubt into the most well-funded and co-ordinated propaganda campaign that the world has ever seen.  Fox News is constantly telling viewers that climate change is either natural, or a hoax. The Koch brothers plough enormous sums into funding climate denial at all levels, while right-wing organisations like the CATO foundation pay expert misinformers like Patrick Michaels to tell the public they can keep burning fossil fuels.   In America and Australia, the main opposition parties are controlled by climate deniers, indicating that a large section of the electorate either reject climate science or do not view rejection of it as a reason to vote against someone.  Even in Britain, climate “lukewarmist” Peter Lilley is on the commons energy committee, and the climate-denying UKIP is gaining political ground.   These people have real influence.

If your national football team needs to beat Brazil 7-0 to progress to the knock-out stages, one is tempted to smile and say, well there’s still a chance then, isn’t there?  This is the great triumph of climate “skeptics”.  Even if wise people don’t believe them, they have planted in our heads the possibility that climate scientists might be wrong, and that we can carry on regardless.  Although the BBC article makes clear elsewhere that warming is fully expected to continue, it leaves the door open for this delusional hope that climate change might just go away if we do nothing.  It is therefore feeding the agenda of the “skeptics”.

It is surprising to me that journalists can grasp the basics of climate science, but not public opinion, which you’d think they should be experts in.  If human civilisation is to carry on in a recognisable form into the next century, we need to act now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  That will only happen if public opinion is strongly behind measures to cut emissions, and accepting of short-term costs to these.  This in return is reliant on public opinion catching up with what scientists already know: climate change is real, dangerous and most certainly down to us.  To this end, “skeptical” voices need to be challenged wherever they pop up, and the last thing we need is confused journalists helping them out. Credit is due, therefore, to the Guardian, who pitched their article on the topic just right.