OFF: UK's premier green awareness festival under threat from police and local council.

[Jonathan Jarrett]

On Mon, 10 Aug 2009, M Holmes wrote:

> Arjan Hulsebos writes:

 	<snip>

>> Nuclear power isn't geen.
> Well, it doesn't produce lots of CO2, and that's supposedly at the root
> of the emergency.

 	I have to admit that as a medievalist the emphasis on `carbon' is 
slightly more aggravating even than it is to me as a thinking human being. 
There is *bugger-all* evidence that carbon dioxide levels in the 
atmosphere affect the Earth's temparature. What there is is a shaky 
correlation between carbon levels in the atmosphere since the industrial 
revolution or so and a rise in temparature. But correlation is not 
causation, and the temparature in the Northern Hemisphere at least was 
higher in the twelfth century than it is now (when Greenland was green, or 
at least greener) without carbon levels being as high (as we know from 
lake and ice cores), whereas carbon levels have been a lot higher in the 
past when temparatures have been *lower*.

 	Bottom line: if it's making a difference it's not distinguishable 
from outside phenomena. And we don't understand the outside phenomena well 
enough to model them so there's no decent way to tell. And if I were in my 
proper sceptic mode I'd start pointing out how many weather stations are 
in areas that have seen substantial urban development since the 1950s or 
on airports that have naturally seen a big increase in traffic the last 
twenty years and ask just how good you think the evidence for temparature 
increase really *is*. But I don't need to because there's a perfectly good 
crisis going on anyway, from which the whole carbon schtick is doing a 
really good job of distracting people. 'It's not us: it's carbon dioxide. 
If we plant enough trees on someone else's country we can balance it all 
out and keep the good life', or such seems to be the anaesthetic idea.

 	So why the emphasis? Because it's an *easy scapegoat*. You can buy 
a carbon offset for your transatlantic flight and feel as if you're not 
doing any damage. But the flight is spouting a bunch of other things into 
the atmosphere that are much nastier for things under it and in it than 
CO2, and when the flight is using up more fossil fuel that we can't 
replace and generally doing its small bit to take us to peak oil and 
beyond before we've done anything to meet what happens to civilisation 
then. "Carbon" is not the villain here, it's unthinking soundbite junkies 
who want to pay their way out of lifestyle change. I realise you good 
people are probably mostly or fully aware of this but that means I can 
rant and someone may hear it with sympathy rather than tagging me as an 
irrational climate change denier. I'm an environmentalist *anthropogenic*
climate change sceptic dammit. Rant over, yours,
 						  Jon

ObCD: Monster Magnet - _Superjudge_
-- 
       Jonathan Jarrett, Cambridge    jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk
    =======================================================================
  "With Capitalism, man exploits man.  With Socialism, it is exactly opposite"
 	                 -Robert Anton Wilson