Saturday, August 22, 2009

Climate Progress


Climate Progress

Climate Progress


Antarctica's Pine Island glacier and its implications for business strategy and the Great Disruption

Posted: 20 Aug 2009 05:53 AM PDT

You may remember Paul Gilding, former executive director of Greenpeace International, from Tom Friedman's Ponzi scheme column (see here and NPR interview here).  I asked him for a post, and he has offered up this recent post from his website (– a good follow up to Large Antarctic glacier thinning 4 times faster than it was 10 years ago: "Nothing in the natural world is lost at an accelerating exponential rate like this glacier").

In my work with companies around the world, one of my key messages is that business strategy needs to be based on science. The logic is simple. Whereas most future planning involves an array of complicated and interrelated uncertainties – like technology shifts, political moods, consumer behaviour, competitor actions – science is delightfully predictable. That's the thing about physics and biology, the rules were written long ago.

Furthermore, climate science is deeply relevant and material to most businesses and to all economies. Therefore this week's report (see here for BBC summary) that the Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica was melting 4 times faster than it was just 10 years ago, and is now dropping at 16 metres per year, should strike fear into the hearts of oil company executives and bring delight to the CFOs of electric car companies like Better Place (yes, such is the perverse logic of climate science in the business community).

Why is it so significant?

Despite the extraordinary increase in political focus and public attention on climate change, the real financial impact to date on the business community is marginal in most sectors. There is a lot of talk about emerging public expectations, furious lobbying on new government policy and certainly plenty of earnest commentary about corporate commitment, but nothing that really engages the CFO yet. Pine Island Glacier and similar developments could change all that.

As I argue in my Great Disruption writing and talks (see here for relevant links), human history shows we rarely respond to major threats until we declare it a crisis. This doesn't have to be an actual physical crisis, it can easily just be a shift in perception – where, apparently suddenly, something on the edges of the mainstream leaps on to centre stage.

This is what will happen on climate change. The great weight of evidence that climate change is accelerating will break through the public consciousness and political leaders will suddenly have to deal with high expectations of action.

So that brings us back to Pine Island, one of the world's largest glaciers. Just ten years ago, the best science said the Pine Island Glacier would melt in around 600 years, now they think it's about 100 years. (What will be the forecast in 5 years time?) It's not that this particular glacier is a key tipping point, though its melting could alone trigger sea level rise of 25-30 cm. The problem is that it's just the latest in countless stories about glaciers and other ice stores melting much faster than expected. (See here for a well referenced overview of this from New Scientist "Sea level rise: It's worse than we thought" and here for a recent article "Why it's even worse than we feared" by Newsweek's science editor, on the increasingly desperate warnings by leading scientists.)

So how will governments respond when the public suddenly comes to accept that we now face the potential for 1 – 2 metres of sea level rise this century? And what does this mean for business strategy?

Governments will do two things. Firstly they will panic about the global economic impact of a huge amount of residential, commercial and industrial infrastructure facing medium term damage or total loss and short-term collapse in value. Imagine for example if all affected housing, airports, ports, power stations and tourist developments were suddenly devalued by 25% for the risk of sea level rise.

Secondly governments will actually take action to cut emissions to reduce this economic risk. This is where it will get really interesting. Let's take just one example, the auto and oil industries. They face a perfect storm of risk and transformational change when the inevitable sudden shift occurs in the political landscape..

This perfect economic storm already has a number of winds gathering speed. Firstly of course is the heavy government action to protect and boost the global auto industry with tax breaks, direct investment and loans.. Secondly, electric cars, long sidelined as a marginal technology strategy are emerging as a serious global contender, driven by the success of petrol electric hybrids and responses like GM's Volt. Thirdly is the acceptance of high oil prices being the norm, with peak oil a matter of when not whether. Fourthly and most significantly is the reluctant acceptance by the global auto industry of climate change as a game changer. The new assumption is that zero CO2 personal transport is inevitable, just a matter of when and with what technology.

So what would be a simple, politically popular, economically beneficial and environmentally significant action that governments could take if they were suddenly under pressure to act? How about using their leverage over the auto industry, taxes, standards and good old-fashioned political leadership to drive the auto industry towards an electric future, driven only by renewable power. Such a policy position, in the context of a global crisis on a scale commensurate to a war footing, would virtually overnight (i.e. a decade or so) transform the oil and auto industries. The politics and economics stack up very well, with massive job creation and new infrastructure needs along with powerful national and consumer economic benefits. (One of the leading disruptive contenders in the space, Better Place, claims per km running costs for electric cars are up to 70% cheaper, even allowing for amortised battery costs.)

The numbers at stake are staggering. Global oil trade in 2008 was around $3 trillion. The US alone sent $440 billion off shore for its oil, much to the delight of Middle Eastern oil exporters. Even little Australia spends about A$20 billion per year on retail petrol sales. Imagine the consequences of these numbers dropping by 25% or 50% with a focused government effort. Imagine the economic consequences of disruptive electric car companies like Better Place or China's BYD taking this market away from the oil giants!

Seem far-fetched? Think again. Change at this scale is absolutely possible, in fact I believe an inevitable consequence of the science. In fact the good news for society and the bad news for any business not thinking this way, is that we've done it before. To quote Lester Brown from his excellent book Plan B 3.0 where he compares our current challenge to the real world experience in WWII. "The shift from producing cars to planes, tanks, and guns was accomplished within a matter of months. One of the keys to this extraordinarily rapid restructuring was a ban on the sale of cars, a ban that lasted nearly three years.."

So if your company isn't monitoring the Pine Island Glacier very closely, I suggest your business strategy and your company may soon be under water. The Great Disruption is well underway.

YouTube, Sinclair prove Anthony Watts knows as much about copyright laws as about climate science

Posted: 19 Aug 2009 12:42 PM PDT

When we last left our favorite former TV weatherman, he was offering the 'inanity defense' for his effort to censor Peter Sinclair's Climate Denial "Crock of the Week" video.

The man behind the top anti-scientific website WattsUpWithThat regularly defames top climate scientists and pushes the most seemingly detailed but ultimately nonsensical analyses (see here) — yet he could not even be bothered to spend one minute googling "copyright laws" or "fair use."  The result:   Not only did he publish the most embarrassing, torturous and self-revealing  defense of censorship ever seen on the blogosphere but, YouTube has now (inevitably) sided with Sinclair and reposted the original video:

Sinclair explained to me the process for reinstatement on YouTube — and thanked Watts for the publicity boom — in an email:

In July, as part of my "Climate Denial Crock of the Week" video series, (http://www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610) I published a piece that criticized and parodied the work of well known climate denier Anthony Watts, and his "SurfaceStations.org" project.

On July 26,  Watts made what I regard as an improper "DMCA" claim against the video, and had it removed from YouTube.

The DMCA, (Digital Millenium Copyright Act), was originally intended to  protect copyright owners from internet abuse, but has been occasionally used improperly, notoriously by authoritarian religious groups and cults, in order to restrain criticism and free speech on the internet.

After some investigation of related cases and obtaining additional opinions as to relevant copyright law, I confirmed my original belief that my videos in no way violate copyright law, especially in light of the principles of critical review, parody, and  transformational use of material.

In accordance with established YouTube guidelines, I filed a "counternotice",  affirming that, "under penalty of perjury, that I  have a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of a mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed  or disabled."

As of today, I have received the following confirmation from YouTube:

"In accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we've completed processing your counter-notification regarding your video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcxVwEfq4bM

This content has been restored and your account will not be penalized."

I wish to extend my sincerest gratitude to YouTube, to all those who advised and supported me in this effort, and most especially, to Anthony Watts and SurfaceStations.org, for providing invaluable exposure to my video series, and greatly increasing my traffic and visibility.

WattsUpWithThat who regularly defames top

Carbon polluters launch another PR campaign — FACES of Coal — seriously!

Posted: 19 Aug 2009 11:41 AM PDT

http://www.altiusdirectory.com/Society/uploaded_images/Coal-Miners-Day-756006.jpgIt's not enough for the coal lobby to hire a top GOP voter-fraud company to run massive "grassroots" efforts to undermine climate and clean energy action.

Now Ken Ward, Jr., the best journalist in West Virginia, reports today:

This afternoon, the coal industry is launching yet another public relations campaign — this one billing itself as "an alliance of people from all walks of life who have joined forces to educate the general public and lawmakers about the importance of coal and coal mining to our local and national economies."

This group is calling itself the Federation for American Coal, Energy and Security, which creates the nice abbreviation, FACES of Coal. The group is having a kick-off press event this afternoon at the offices of the Charleston Area Alliance, a regional chamber of commerce group.

The FACES of coal?  This acronym must be the work of real "Mad" Men, perhaps the genius who came up with Frosty the Coalman, Clean Coal Night, Deck the Halls with Clean Coal.   I'm guessing they figured it was better than their first choice, the Federation for Everyone's Coal, Energy and Security.

Still, does the industry understand what people associate with "faces of coal"?

Here is the rest of Ward's piece:

Among those I'm told are taking place in today's event are West Virginia state Sen. Roman Prezioso, D-Marion, Vivian Parsons, executive director of the County Commissioners' Association of West Virginia, and Rick Rice, president of Mountain State Steam Inc. in Buckhannon.

This group joins the Friends of Coal, Citizens for Coal, and the West Virginia Coal Association –  not to mention those fine letter-faking folks at the American Coalition for Clean Coal Energy (Five more fake constituent letters to Congress, written by the ACCCE's PR outfit, have been discovered, congressional investigators announced yesterday) — as well as the National Mining Association and who knows how many other industry front groups out there … oh yeah, don't forget the new organization Friends of America.

The coal industry has all the friends that money can buy.

Related Posts:

Warren Buffett: "Doubling the carbon dioxide we belch into the atmosphere may far more than double the subsequent problems for society."

Posted: 19 Aug 2009 11:07 AM PDT

http://www.economy.com/dismal/graphs/blog/warren_buffett.jpgOkay, the NYT op-ed by the sage of Omaha, "The Greenback Effect," is almost entirely about our economic crisis.  Still, it's nice that one of our top economic gurus  understands global warming is nonlinear — and thinks enough people might understand that point so he can use it as a springboard for discussing monetary policy:

IN nature, every action has consequences, a phenomenon called the butterfly effect. These consequences, moreover, are not necessarily proportional. For example, doubling the carbon dioxide we belch into the atmosphere may far more than double the subsequent problems for society.  Realizing this, the world properly worries about greenhouse emissions.

[Yes, Buffett may be confusing CO2 emissions with CO2 concentrations -- join the club -- but it's impossible to tell from this short hit.]

The butterfly effect reaches into the financial world as well. Here, the United States is spewing a potentially damaging substance into our economy — greenback emissions.

The article's final mention of climate impacts is, however, quite lame:

Unchecked carbon emissions will likely cause icebergs to melt. Unchecked greenback emissions will certainly cause the purchasing power of currency to melt. The dollar's destiny lies with Congress.

Note 1 to  Buffett:   Likely???  What do you think is already happening?

Note 2 to  Buffett:  It is land-based ice that humanity needs to worry about, not sea-based icebergs.  Kind of  surprising actually that the editorial page editor of the NYT let that one go by.  "Icebergs" should have been replaced by "glaciers" or "ice sheets."  I suppose this just shows that even the most sophisticated opinion makers don't really understand the basics of this issue.

Still, it's a start for Buffett, who hasn't been known for sagacity on this issue: