Globally warned – review of Hamilton and Hansen

So,Tony Kevin,a former diplomat,just likeRudd,doesn’t share Hamilton’s pessimism.What is it with the foreign policy geeks that they have so much difficulty with reality?

I have read “Requiem For A Species” and it is spot on in the main but I am not so sure about reconstructing a future.

Two words describe our problem – cupidity and stupidity. We have crossed the Rubicon in that regard.

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“He digs deep into climate-change denialism, seeing it as a maladaptive coping strategy against the evident failure of the Enlightenment myth of eternal human technical progress fuelled by inexhaustible planetary resources”

If so then Clive Hamilton confuses a particular scientific issue with the more general Enlightenment principles which have made human progress possible. I also suppose that as a Green candidate in the recent Higgins by-election that he is anti-nuclear. Not to mention his initiation of the current campaign by Senator Conroy to censor the internet.

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Podargus and Robert Lawrence, feel free to wallow in climate pessimism if this rings your bells. i am more interested in what processes of reasoning make James Hansen – probably the world’s greatest living climate scientist, who knows far more about the subject than any of us here – still an optimist. about humanity’s chances, if we move to the right policies quickly enough . I have read his book which I reviewed – have you? Perhaps you should, before you write condescending putdowns about former diplomats who presumably know nothing about climate change. [You might even read my book, if that’s not too big a stretch] .

Just for the record – before anyone else joins in the game before reading the books that I read and reviewed – and I don’t think anyone else in Australia has yet reviewed either book as thoroughly and favourably as I have – you would know that Hansen strongly supports nuclear energy as part of the decarbonisation solution . You should also know that Hamilton [page 177] offers a balanced, and certainly non-hostile, judgement on it.

Bill Kerr, I commend to you pages 99-108 and all of Chapter 5 [‘Disconnection from Nature’] in Hamilton’s book. I don’t think he is at all confused about the harmfulness of the scientific world view of man’s separation from and mastery over nature, that became dominant during the Enlightenment, and was not seriously challenged until Thoreau and, later, Rachel Carson and Bill McKibben. If you haven’t time for all this reading, just go see ‘Wall-E’ : it makes the same point visually .

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For that matter – maximum number of operating nuclear reactors was achieved in 2002 (445) and now we stand at 339 of working nuclear reactors – this is not argument against nuclear power (far from it), this is argument against sunsustainable exponential growth (of nuclear reactors in this case)…

There is absolutely no reason we could not have a global build rate of 100 1GWe nuclear reactors/annum, or more. Itr is well within our capabilities if we spend a few years gearing industry up for it.

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In my darker hours I tend to fall in to Hamilton’s viewpoint, but most of the time I think we can turn it around. Like Finrod wrote it’s well within our capabilities.

However I would like to point out that even if we cannot reverse the damage we have done to the climate, we will need even more, inexpensive, and reliable sources of energy if we are going to survive as a species. A full collapse of the climate, of the worse possible case, can only be answered by more, not less technology to supply food, water and shelter.

One way or the other the choice is clear.

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My book on Australia’s climate crisis is “Crunch Time -Using and abusing Keynes to fight the twin crises of our era” (Scribe Publications, Melbourne 2009).

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hi Tony,

I went back and read the thread on your book, Crunch Time, and watched the interview at the Crunch Time site. You make some good points about Rudd but I balk at the Green Keynes solution.

Just wanted to make a general point since you have expressed frustration about your book not being picked up by the mainstream media and you have ideas that you believe are important to be discussed. This also relates to your reply to my comments about Clive Hamilton.

The answer is simply that you and Clive (and James Hansen for that matter) ought to open source your books. If your ideas are so important that they are required reading for saving the planet then they ought to be open sourced. I would suggest that this is why you are writing here, because Barry open sources his ideas and that is the most rapid way of obtaining a following in today’s world.

ie. I would probably take up your challenge to read certain sections of Clive and reply to them if it was open sourced. But not really prepared to do so if they are not, given my pre-existing views about Clive. The whole idea behind book reviews and writing books is to generate enough interest in them for them to be read and studied.

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I have not read Clive Hamilton’s latest book but have read James Hansen’s and, with others was instrumental in bringing him to Australia recently
I follow the political dynamics of climate change very closely and look at why our society fails to respond. Under our rather exclusive democratic system Australians elect governments to get on with a job and largely leave them to it. Governments who want to remain in power listen closely to the debates occurring in society and adjust policies accordingly. Difficult but innovative policies such as the GST are only introduced if the government has built enough political capital and has other policies that can balance the negative. The GST was balanced by incarcerating asylum seekers or taking the high moral ground in Timor – Howard was very good at it.
In Australia governments on both sides advocated emissions trading schemes though the Howard government’s concepts were actually broader. He did more than Rudd to get the nuclear debate out into society and his government started the Australian Greenhouse office but at the end of the day he had to keep faith with the political conservatives.
Rudd’s main policy had a complex emissions trading plan developed by Ross Garnaut which defied explanation to the man in the street. His Government then took this concept and so mangled it that it defied explanation to the Government. They were then unable and unwilling to sell it to the electorate but to their credit Malcolm Turnbull and Ian MacFarlane stayed the course because they honestly believed that we had to start somewhere. I agreed with this course of action. Turnbull was not fired from Liberal Party leadership because of his support for the CPRS. He was fired because of poor leadership skills and Godwin Grech, a mistake so profound that he could no longer command the numbers.
The media has been the chief activist for the dissemination of climate change information and some sections such as the Fairfax press have done a very good job. The Rudd Government has never explained climate change or mitigation measures to the Australian people. It has chosen to allow the issue to be attacked because of all the internal contradiction of its policies and because neither Kevin Rudd nor Penny Wong could sell fish to starving seals. From stimulus spending to coal mining to banning nuclear power, nothing this Government does is consistent with climate change mitigation.
I think that Rudd and the Australian people believe in the futility of Australia’s climate change policies on the basis that we are too small a player. Doing nothing on this basis is not an option and is akin to the appeasement politics prior to the Second World War and endorsing pig iron sales to Japan and a national policy of neutrality. The “we’re too small” line is, I submit, an economic rationalist’s twist on the sceptic’s argument. According to data from the US Energy Information Administration in 2008 Australia mined 428 million tonnes of coal which produced 1 billion tonnes or 7.7 percent of the World’s coal derived carbon emissions. Coal earns Australia anywhere from 2.5% to 5.5% of a 1 trillion dollar. We are not too small to have an impact; rather the reverse is the case.
The appeasement argument also includes the sceptic line and statements such as “Weather is determined by planetary forces. The Australian economy will not change the weather” is climate denialism of the first order. These arguments find fertile ground in a society that can’t differentiate between astronomy and astrology. As Professor James Hansen asserts, we are ring masters in managing the World’s weather. Australia’s 428 million tonnes per annum of coal is our whip and we are flogging the planet with gusto.
From my discussions with James Hansen the time will come in the not too distant future when our coal exports are not welcome anywhere. Not in China or India or Japan. Long before that however their value will fall and the industry will cease to be viable. With the accelerating evidence of climate change, this time may only be a decade away. Our aluminium and smelted metals dependant on coal power will also cease to be viable. At that stage, with a collapsing dollar and squandered reserves our national security and economy will be threatened.
The arguments for “doing nothing because it’s not happening” or “we’re too small” are straight out appeasement politics. As Hansen advises Mankind’s impact on global temperatures is now greater than the natural forces that could ever create another ice age.
To maintain our national security, economic wellbeing and pride as a nation we should embrace the following measures. I have borrowed many of these from other contributors to this site.
1. Do everything possible as individuals to stimulate public debate. The BNC website is a great demonstration of leadership in this regard.
2. The matter of CO2 emissions is urgent. As coal is the major source then coal must be targeted, banning the construction of any coal fired power plants.
3. Stop the development of any future coal exports and programme an orderly contraction of the existing industry.
4. Create a Federal bureaucracy drawing on industrialists from private industry and scientists from our Universities, ANSTO and CSIRO to manage the roll out of low carbon generating technologies.
5. Carry out a six to twelve month programme of explanation to the Australian people the source of the problem and the mitigation measures required. This will of necessity include adoption of nuclear power.
6. Tax all coal and gas produced, whether for export or domestic use. The tax proceeds to be used for the prompt design and construction of Generation 3 nuclear plants such as the Westinghouse AP1000 as currently constructed in China. Some of the tax revenue would compensate private citizens for increased power costs.
7. With other partners such as the US or UK, put a major research effort into Generation 4 reactors. This would include the possibility of nuclear retrofits of existing coal fired plants
8. Put more effort into getting geothermal power online. This will probably mean long distance HVDC transmission.
9. Expand University places for physics, and power engineers and recruit outside Australia for more teaching positions in physics, nuclear power and mathematics.
Australians are at war with the planet and coal burning is our main weapon. We are certainly large enough to affect the outcome but policies of doing nothing would make Neville Chamberlain proud.

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And AIUI DV8 “Graeme Bird” also posts under the name “Louis Hissink” —

if you want to read some really wacky stuff … read him.

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I’d hate to leave the last word on ”Storms of my grandchildren” to Peter Lalor. Hansen is a top climate scientist, not a popular interpreter of climate science like Monbiot etc ( or myself) . Hansen’s authoritative knowledge is what gives his book its unique integrity and credibility: and excitement, as he takes us through the development of global climate science over the past two decades. This book will be a classic of the environmental movement. Certainly it works for me – but maybe Peter Lalor just doesn’t like climate scientists.

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