The Atlantic on Freeman Dyson's global warming skepticism

Kenneth Brower of The Atlantic has penned a piece about the life and work of physicist Freeman Dyson, "The Danger of Cosmic Genius."

In the range of his genius, Freeman Dyson is heir to Einstein—a visionary who has reshaped thinking in fields from math to astrophysics to medicine, and who has conceived nuclear-propelled spaceships designed to transport human colonists to distant planets. And yet on the matter of global warming he is, as an outspoken skeptic, dead wrong: wrong on the facts, wrong on the science. How could someone as smart as Dyson be so dumb about the environment? The answer lies in his almost religious faith in the power of man and science to bring nature to heel.

Brower comes down hard on Dyson, particularly for what he sees as his misplaced faith in science and technology:

“Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion,” Dyson complains in his 2008 New York Review of Books essay on global warming. This is far too gloomy an assessment. The secular sect on the rise at the moment is Dyson’s own. A 2009 Pew poll found that only 57 percent of Americans believe there is solid evidence that the world is getting warmer, down 20 points from three years before. In response to climate change, we have seen a proliferation of proposals for geo-engineering solutions that are Dysonesque in scale and improbability: a plan to sow the oceans with iron to trigger plankton blooms, which would absorb carbon dioxide, die, and settle to the sea floor. A plan to send a trillion mirrors into orbit to deflect incoming sunlight. A plan to launch a fleet of robotic ships to whip up sea spray and whiten the clouds. A plan to mimic the planet-cooling sulfur-dioxide miasmas of explosive volcanoes, either by an artillery barrage of sulfur-dioxide aerosol rounds fired into the stratosphere or by high-altitude blimps hauling up 18-mile hoses.

None of these projects will happen, fortunately. They promise side effects, backfirings, and unintended consequences on a scale unknown in history, and we lack the financial and political wherewithal, and the international comity, to accomplish them anyway. What is disquieting is not their likelihood, but what they reveal about the persistence of belief in the technological fix. The notion that science will save us is the chimera that allows the present generation to consume all the resources it wants, as if no generations will follow. It is the sedative that allows civilization to march so steadfastly toward environmental catastrophe. It forestalls the real solution, which will be in the hard, nontechnical work of changing human behavior.

What the secular faith of Dysonism offers is, first, a hypertrophied version of the technological fix, and second, the fantasy that, should the fix fail, we have someplace else to go.

Read more.

Stewart Brand's TED Talk: Proclaiming four Environmental 'Heresies'

This is a must-see talk -- and be sure to stick around until the end when he gets into geoengineering and GMO's.

Hey, deep ecologists: the planet is not your nature preserve! - An SD Classic

In the absence of a Creator a number of people have taken to worshipping the next best thing, creation itself. This phenomenon has been exemplified by the rise of Gainism and the Gaianists. Given the poor state of the environment today this sentiment has mutated into the kind of reverential desperatism and misanthropism that is now the all too familiar opium promoted by the deep ecologists. God may be dead, but religious sensibilities that showcase the unworthiness of man have been retained by these radical environmentalists, resulting in a worldview that perpetuates defeatism, shamefulness and self-loathing.

The deep ecologists and Gainists ascribe divine status to nature—a kind of neo-pantheism--and like their religious forbearers, have insisted on keeping humanity outside the gates of heaven. In their view, man is dirty, irreverent, and profane. His sheer presence is an affront to the divine processes of nature, the very cause of paradise lost; terms like ‘biodiversity’, ‘symbiogenesis’, ‘biosphere’, and ‘homeostasis’ have replaced the old religious canons.

The Earth, they would argue, would be better off without the meddling of humanity and their omnipresent disruptive technologies. The deep ecologists are on a self-prescribed mission to recover paradise and turn the Earth into a giant nature preserve where the only observers would be those creatures trapped in endless cycles of mindless selection and procreation. Birth, life, death, birth, life, death—the perpetuation of the Darwinian cycle as an end unto itself, a cycle with no other purpose than to satiate the aesthetic sensibilities of the nature worshippers.

But there is a cure to the new quasi-religious environmentalist fervor: humanism. And it doesn’t matter what kind of humanism, be it secular humanism, Christian humanism, Buddhist humanism, or transhumanism. Even better are those humanistic codes, like Buddhism and transhumanism, which are nonanthropocentric and demand the respect of all life. Humanist sensibilities work to ensure that it is the quality of life that is maintained rather than pseudoscientific and quasi-religious abstractions.

One can be an environmentalist and a humanist. The key is to make this planet habitable, sustainable and humane. It is this last crucial point that the Gainists and deep ecologists have failed to grasp, and in so doing, have come to represent a dangerous and misguided ideology.

This article was originally published on June 14, 2006.

RAND institute considers producing liquid fuels from coal

It looks like the U.S. government has RAND looking into the implications of using coal to produce fuel: Producing Liquid Fuels from Coal: Prospects and Policy Issues. This could be a big deal, especially considering the size of the industry it would likely create. A CTL industry would undoubtedly yield important energy security benefits -- most notably a lowering of world oil prices and a decrease in wealth transfers from oil users to oil producers. It would also make the U.S. significantly less dependant on foreign oil.

At the same time, however, the advent of a CTL industry would very likely instigate a host of environmental problems. And it would ultimately prove to be a costly and myopic diversion at a time when more innovative energy solutions are required.

RAND speculates that a domestic CTL industry could produce as much as three million barrels per day of transportation fuels by 2030. This would require 550 million tons of coal production annually. While the U.S. has considerable coal reserves, the amount of mining that would be required (most prominently in Wyoming and Montana) would be nothing short of intense. The residual impacts of mining would adversely change the landscape, the local ecology and water quality. In addition, the coal-to-liquid process requires extremely high levels of water consumption -- this at the dawn of a water shortage crisis.

More conceptually, however, the idea of producing liquid fuel from coal seems more reactionary than visionary. This move would not address the green house gas emissions problem and it would be yet another industry that ravages the Earth in search of a non-renewable resource.

While RAND's conclusion is somewhat tempered and cautionary, the institute does suggest that the U.S. engage in an "insurance policy" approach that promotes the early construction and operation of a limited number of commercial CTL plants.

Here's to hoping that the billions of dollars required to create a fully robust CTL industry will instead be directed to something that's less environmentally insensitive and with an eye to the future.

Read RAND's analyis.

Freeman Dyson on the 'religion of environmentalism'

Physicist Freeman Dyson reviews A Question of Balance: Weighing the Options on Global Warming Policies and Global Warming: Looking Beyond Kyoto in the New York Times Review of Books.

Says Dyson,

"All the books that I have seen about the science and economics of global warming, including the two books under review, miss the main point. The main point is religious rather than scientific. There is a worldwide secular religion which we may call environmentalism, holding that we are stewards of the earth, that despoiling the planet with waste products of our luxurious living is a sin, and that the path of righteousness is to live as frugally as possible. The ethics of environmentalism are being taught to children in kindergartens, schools, and colleges all over the world.

Environmentalism has replaced socialism as the leading secular religion. And the ethics of environmentalism are fundamentally sound. Scientists and economists can agree with Buddhist monks and Christian activists that ruthless destruction of natural habitats is evil and careful preservation of birds and butterflies is good. The worldwide community of environmentalists—most of whom are not scientists—holds the moral high ground, and is guiding human societies toward a hopeful future. Environmentalism, as a religion of hope and respect for nature, is here to stay. This is a religion that we can all share, whether or not we believe that global warming is harmful.

Unfortunately, some members of the environmental movement have also adopted as an article of faith the belief that global warming is the greatest threat to the ecology of our planet. That is one reason why the arguments about global warming have become bitter and passionate. Much of the public has come to believe that anyone who is skeptical about the dangers of global warming is an enemy of the environment. The skeptics now have the difficult task of convincing the public that the opposite is true. Many of the skeptics are passionate environmentalists. They are horrified to see the obsession with global warming distracting public attention from what they see as more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet, including problems of nuclear weaponry, environmental degradation, and social injustice. Whether they turn out to be right or wrong, their arguments on these issues deserve to be heard."

Greenpeace: Eat kangaroos to combat global warming

More kangaroos should be slaughtered and eaten to help save the world from global warming, environmental activists say.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this.

Bush skips talks on climate change, extends middle finger at UN

The unilateral streak that has come to define the neocon Bush administration has once again reared its ugly head, this time at the United Nations talks on global warming. The gathering, which is bringing together the leaders of over 80 countries, is geared around efforts to combat human-instigated climate change.

The talks come several days after an announcement that melting temperatures this summer shrank the Arctic Ocean's ice cap to a record low and that the fabled Northwest Passage is now open.

George W. Bush, however, will not be there, and instead plans on convening his own meeting on how to address global warming. His hope is to avoid global treaties and anything that could give the United Nations jurisdiction over the issue.

The U.N. continues to exist as a toothless, and subsequently, useless entity -- thanks mostly to the U.S.'s utter disregard for the institution and all those countries who use this an excuse and inspiration to go it alone.

Meanwhile Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper is at the global warming talks, but his presence is about as useful as Bush's no-show. His own environmental advisory body, the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy, directed sharp criticisms at the Conservatives for their climate-change strategy and accused them of overestimating what the plan will accomplish. The report claimed that Harper's plan is vague, uses questionable accounting methods and exaggerated greenhouse-gas cuts it would result in.

What a sad mess...

David Roberts on vegetarianism and environmentalism

Gristmill staff writer David Roberts suggests that meat-eaters make for poor environmentalists. This article is largely in support of PETA's recent claim that meat-eating is worse for climate than driving. Roberts writes:

Depending on your inclinations, you can heed the health arguments, the moral arguments, or the environmental arguments (regardless whether you agree with the UN study that meat production is the No. 1 contributor to global warming, it is obviously a very large contributor, never mind CAFOs' horrid effects on land, air, and water). Taken together, these arguments strike me as dispositive. It is not possible to participate in industrial animal farming with clean hands.

Add to all this the fact that unlike giving up a car, moving closer to work, or retrofitting a home to be more energy efficient, giving up meat involves virtually no cost or inconvenience. Eating meat is entirely an aesthetic choice, based on taste and habit. Taste and habit are not convincing counterweights to the arguments against meat.

So yes, you should eat less meat; ideally you should eat none. You ought to be a vegetarian.

Entire article.

Why there should be an X Prize for an artificial biosphere

Conventional futurist wisdom suggests that if our atmosphere should completely go to pot -- which it certainly appears to be doing -- humans could still eek out an existence living in self-sustaining biospheres. This would hardly represent a desirable outcome, but hey, it would certainly beat extinction. Moreover, a successful biosphere would prove to be an important step in the direction of space colonization, terraforming and remedial ecology.

But there is one major problem with this suggestion: we have yet to create a closed ecosystem that can support human life for the long term. This revelation seems strange at first, but it's true. We can send men to the moon, but we can't sustain an artificial ecosystem. The fact that we haven't been able to do so needs to be taken much more seriously. The Earth's natural biosphere is still the only functioning one we have; all our eggs are currently residing in one basket.

It's time to revive the biosphere projects of the early 1990s. Given the private sector's recent enthusiasm to develop space tourism technologies, perhaps another X Prize is in order.

BIOS-3 and Biosphere 2

Our inability to create a closed ecosystem is not for a lack of trying. To date there have been two major biosphere projects, both of them failures.

The Soviets conducted a number of experiments in BIOS-3 from 1972 to 1984. Technically speaking it was not a completely isolated biosphere as it pulled energy from a nearby power source and dried meat was imported into the facility. BIOS-3 facilities were used to conduct 10 manned closure experiments with the longest experiment lasting for 180 days. Among its successes, the Soviets were able to produce oxygen from chlorella algae and recycle up to 85% of their water.

More recently there was the Biosphere 2 project in Oracle, Arizona. At a cost of US$200 million, Biosphere 2 was an attempt to create a closed artificial ecological system to test if and how people could live and work in an independent biosphere. It was a three-acre Earth in miniature complete with a desert, rainforest and ocean. Organizers conducted two sealed missions: the first for 2 years from 1991 to 1993 and the second for six months in 1994.

The failure of Biosphere 2

Setting up and managing the parameters that drive a functioning ecosystem proved to be exceptionally difficult. Soon after the launch of the first mission, oxygen levels started to decline at a rate of 0.3% per month. Eventually the internal atmosphere resembled that of a community at an elevation of over 4,000 feet (1,200 m). Oxygen levels eventually settled at a dangerously low level of 14% (rather than the nominal 21% found on Earth) and team members started to become ill.

Organizers had no choice but to start pumping in pure oxygen and bring in other supplies from the outside. Biosphere 2 ceased to be a closed system (as much as it could be given the circumstances) and was branded a failure.

As it turns out, oxygen was hardly the only problem. Biosphere 2 also suffered from wildly fluctuating CO2 levels. Most of the vertebrate species and all of the pollinating insects died, while cockroaches and ants started to take over the place. The ocean eventually became too acidic and the ambient temperature became impossible to control (biospheres don't come with thermostats).

Compounding the environmental problems were health and psychological issues that affected the team. After two years of relative isolation, the 4 men and 4 women left Biosphere 2 depressed and malnourished. Interpersonal relationships had regressed over the course of the two years, creating what the biospherians called a 'dysfunctional family.'

After the first experiment, the Biosphere 2 organizers conducted a shorter six month stint that ended in 1994. After the completion of this more focused experiment the owners decided to change directions and asked Columbia University for advice. Today it is largely a place where students can conduct experiments and tourists can loiter.

Lessons learned, lessons not learned

Consequently, the Biosphere 2 project has been considered a big joke. If it's a joke, however, I'm not amused. Biosphere 2 was an important and eye-opening project. It revealed to us not only the difficultly of managing a closed ecosystem and the fragility of human psychology, but how challenging it will be for us to manage Biosphere 1 -- the Earth's biosphere -- should things really start to get out of whack.

In this sense, Biosphere 2 should not be considered a failure, but rather a wake-up call to scientists, environmentalists, politicians and the general public. It should have resulted in the immediate creation of similar projects and related research.

Unfortunately, the impetus these days from the private sector is towards the development of space tourism technologies like space planes and space hotels. Perhaps some entrepreneur should start an X Prize for the first viable and long term biosphere. It is the space tourism industry, after all, that would most certainly benefit from the creation of a working biosphere; humans will not go very far in space without a self-sustaining ecosystem around them.

Moreover, given the rate of global warming and the ongoing depletion of the ozone layer, our atmosphere may start to turn on us. In the more distant future there will be such risks as global ecophagy. In our desperation, we may have no choice to but to dwell in temporary biospheres until we learn to fix our broken planet.

The Canadian Conservatives' faux environmentalism

The minority Conservative government in Canada is launching a series of attack ads in which they slam the Liberals and their new leader, Stephane Dion. No, it's not election time in Canada; this is how the Conservatives do business. Knowing they're on thin ice, and failing to actually govern and implement effective policies, the government's primary concern has shifted to propaganda.

The ads suggest that Dion is a weak and unproven leader who would take Canada in the wrong direction. The ads also slam Dion and the previous Liberal government for their poor environmental track record. Yes, the previous government should be ashamed of their disregard for environmental issues, but this is really starting to be a tired tune.

It has been one year since the Conservatives took power and they have yet to unveil an environmental policy. They've used the year to do nothing more than attack the previous government. This tactic completely backfired on the Conservatives late last year at the UN's global warming conference in Nairobi, Kenya. Since that time, Prime Minister Steven Harper has relieved MP Rona Ambrose of her environment post and assigned John Baird to the position. Part of the motivation to do so is the Canadian public's growing concern with the environment. Baird has acted big and has admitted that global warming is happening, but that's been the extent of his work.

One year of lip service, empty gestures, and meaningless rhetoric. There is no Conservative environment policy and no vision.

But put together a series of attack ads, well, that they have the time and resources for. What an embarrassing and infuriating government we have here.