Category Archives: Climate Journalism

Climate Journalism

Global warming will cause “Climate wars”

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By Zeeshan Hasan

Climate Wars: The Fight For Survival As The World Overheats by Gwynne Dyer investigates the worst case scenarios of global warming, via studies done by and interviews of risk-assessment professionals at the Pentagon and defence policy think tanks. It does not make for reassuring reading. As the world heats up, the tropical and sub-tropical regions of Asia, Africa, Central America and South America are likely to become hotter and more arid; this is likely to decrease agricultural productivity and food production in these densely populated regions. The outcome could be a new age of warfare.
One possible location for conflict identified by Dyer is South Asia, where many of Pakistan’s rivers are reliant on sources in the Indian Himalayas. Due to global warming, the overall climate of the region is likely to become more dry and arid. This could spark increasing tension between India and Pakistan over the water in their shared rivers, possibly ultimately resulting in warfare between these two nuclear-armed states. This analysis of conflict potential also holds true for India and Bangladesh; however, since Bangladesh is not a nuclear power, the prospect of nuclear warfare between these two countries does not arise.
Another frightening possibility is of a Russia-China war. China is likely to become hotter and drier as global warming progresses. This is likely to affect water availability and agriculture, a major concern for a country of over a billion people. This may fuel expansionism on the part of China with the goal of controlling more land for food production. Any such expansionism might result in warfare with Russia, the dominant power among the ex-Soviet republics in the region.
These concerns seem remote in today’s world, where the worst case scenario for a bad crop in any country is increased food imports. However, the worst case scenarios of global warming inevitably involve a hotter, drier globe with less productive agriculture closer to the equator. In this scenario, it is not clear where the required shortfall in food will be produced, and whether there will be enough to go around. It seems that we may be living in an age of plenty which will be cut short by climate change. Life on a warmed globe means an age of scarcity, and increased risks of conflict.
By far the best outcome for everyone would be if governments around the world prevented global warming by real measures to cut carbon dioxide emissions. This requires taxes on fossil fuel use, and reinvesting the tax proceeds in renewable energy such as solar and wind power. Unfortunately, the governments of the world are still dragging their feet rather than taking real action, even though the UN IPCC report of 2018 made clear that there are now only 11 years left to cut carbon emissions and prevent potentially catastrophic warming of more than 1.5degrees Celsius. Further delay could well doom us to a future of climate warfare.

Climate Journalism

How ‘Merchants of doubt’ fooled the public about climate change

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By Zeeshan Hasan

In 1988, Dr. James Hansen, senior climate scientist at NASA, testified to the US Senate that global warming caused by burning fossil fuels was a serious threat. Yet for 30 years the world did practically nothing, and both greenhouse gas emissions and global warming continued. Global inactivity was largely due to successive US governments pretending that the science of global warming was still uncertain and not worth the expense of reducing coal, oil and gas use. The intentional ignorance of climate science on the part of the American politicians was encouraged by a small group of right-wing scientists who were not specialists in climate change, but were rather driven by ideological opposition to the increased government regulation that would obviously be required to tackle issues such as global warming. Reluctance of US authorities to consider reducing fossil fuel use resulted in all other countries refusing to to act as well. How this happened is the subject of Merchants of Doubt: How a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming, by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway.
Oreskes, a professor of history of science at Harvard University, points out that a number of the prominent scientific advisors of the US government (recurring names are Fred Seitz, Fred Singer, Robert Jastrow and Bill Nierenberg) started their careers in nuclear weapons and missile research in the midst of Cold War conflicts with Russia. Thus these scientists were reflexively anti-Communist and inclined to oppose any scientific research that made a case for more government regulation; they saw such regulations as a sign of the socialism which they had opposed all their careers growing within the US. Hence this small but influential group of senior scientific advisors continuously opposed emerging scientific findings that tobacco caused cancer, that industrial pollution caused acid rain, and finally that dangerous climate change would be caused by burning coal, oil and gas. Unfortunately, these anti-regulation/pro-market scientists found support in the fossil fuel industry, various pro-market media and think tanks, and various US politicians whose political campaigns received money from coal/oil/gas companies. The result was that the science of global warming and climate change was perceived by the media, the government and the public as contested for decades after a scientific consensus on these issues was in fact established. Due to these manufactured doubts, government policy was slow to accept the scientific evidence on the danger of man-made global warming.
Of the various scientific issues discussed by Oreskes, climate change has by far the biggest impact on humanity as a whole and thus also created the most resistance amongst anti-regulation scientists, corporate lobby groups and politicians. Reading Oreskes’ book, one sees how naïve it is to expect that worldwide government policies regarding global warming would be simply be decided based on scientific evidence. The fact is that the political systems which have been established to govern democratic countries are not set up to make decisions based on science. Rather they are set up to encourage politicians to make decisions based on the likelihood of winning the next election. Multinational coal, oil and gas companies have more than enough money to make political donations big enough to legally “buy” political support for their industries in spite of dire scientific warnings. The public has largely been deceived by fake science produced by non-specialists in climate change presenting themselves as ‘experts’ and muddying up the waters with doubt. Oreskes’ book has also been made into an informative film.
The past 30 years has shown that voters around the world, and especially in the US, have not been sufficiently informed of the dangers of catastrophic global warming which could cause worldwide water shortage, crop failures and famines resulting in hundreds of millions of deaths if left unchecked. Fossil fuel companies and anti-regulation scientists and politicians have taken advantage of the lack of knowledge of climate science among the public to deceive and endanger us all. Hopefully this will change as the media and the public wake up to the threat of global warming. Only the tireless activism of all members of the public can change the cycle of misinformation and election of climate-skeptic politicians. Otherwise the world will continue getting hotter, and our children might grow up to inherit a climate running amok.
Climate Journalism Science

Disrupting Earth’s climate is to awaken a sleeping beast

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By Zeeshan Hasan

Fixing Climate; The Story of Climate Science and How to Stop Global Warming by eminent climate scientist Wallace Broecker (who unfortunately just passed away)and his co-writer Robert Kunzig is an informative look at the science of global warming as well as a summary of the options for solving it. Wallace Broecker was professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University, and through his research first discovered one of the primary regulators of the planet’s climate; namely the “thermo-haline conveyor,” the network of ocean currents which circulates hot and cold water over much of the Earth’s surface.

A recurrent theme in Broecker’s writing is his view of Earth’s climate as a sleeping beast which we awaken at our peril. The relative stability of climate for the past ten thousand years (since the end of the last ice age) is exactly what allowed humans to develop agriculture and create civilisation. Thus, we have greatly benefited from the long sleep of the climate beast. However, the carbon dioxide emissions created by our modern society’s dependence on fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas risk disrupting the climate and waking the climate beast. The consequences could be sudden and drastic.

Whereas we may think of climate change as being gradual and taking place over centuries or millennia, climate science has shown that drastic changes have happened very quickly in the past. A prime example is the end of the “Younger Dryas” ice age, a cold period which lasted from 12,800 to 11,500 years ago.

“The [ice] measurements … had shown that the warming at the end of the Younger Dryas had been abrupt … the ice layers were suddenly half as thick … most of that change had taken place in just a few years” (page 141).

So the scientific evidence is that climate change of sufficient magnitude to end an ice age can occur naturally in “just a few years,” not centuries or even decades. This bodes ill for our future, as our burning of coal, oil and gas is now changing the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere faster than any time in history. If a similarly quick global warming were to happen now, humanity would have little time or ability to adapt to it. The results would be catastrophic in terms of increased desertification, reduced food production and famine.

Aside from temperature rise, the biggest threat to Bangladesh in particular is from sea level rise. This is another area where research in climate science has made it clear that big changes can happen at a frightening pace.

In the 1980’s a colleague of Broecker’s, Richard Fairbanks, thought he could pinpoint a time when sea level rose twenty metres in a single century (page 171).

The above is indeed a stark contrast with the scientific conservatism of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) assessment of sea likely sea level rise being 59 centimetres by 2100.

The IPCC scientists specifically did not take into account the recent observations of accelerated ice loss from Greenland and Antarctica — essentially because they didn’t know what to make of them (page 183).

The problem is that scientists are generally cautious by nature, and unwilling to talk about possible worst case scenarios until that outcome is virtually certain. Unfortunately, if we wait until the worst case global warming scenario is inevitable before we start doing anything, it will be too late; the climate will have already changed, and humanity will have to suffer the awful consequences. Scientific conservatism in this case is lulling the public and world governments into a misplaced sense of security. So what is to be done? The answer is clear.

Which brings us to the one absolute certainty; no significant solution to the [carbon dioxide] problem can emerge until governments worldwide, and especially that of the United States, follow the lead of Norway and the European Union and impose either an emissions cap or a direct tax on [carbon dioxide] (page 266).

Broecker’s conclusion is shared by most climate scientists. To prevent dangerous climate change, carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced by replacing fossil fuels rapidly with nuclear, wind and solar energy. This will require huge investments, and the only way the money can be raised is through a carbon tax. Those of us who care about what the future holds for our children need to start thinking about how to bring about this colossal change in the world economy. The only way to solve the climate crisis is to put continuous and increasing public pressure on politicians around the world to transition away from fossil fuels.

Climate Journalism Ecological Breakdown and Response Regenerative Culture Toxic Media Climate

Painted As The Activist Elite (by Ian Paterson, Extinction Rebellion Glasgow)

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Bio: Ian Paterson is a Medical Repatriation worker from Glasgow, who enjoys eco travel blogging, being working-class, avoiding capitalism and saving the planet.

The sneering comes in the undertones of commentators, whilst offering their dissection of our movement. We are an ‘activist elite’, they intimate – a posturing group without diversity.

‘Climate Change is Firing Up Middle Class Activism’, screams the headline in the FT (Dec 9th) in Pilita Clark’s sweeping analysis. Although it’s warming to read that she knows personally of two separate individuals with no history of activism, who are now “part of a burst of middle-class climate activism that has few precedents and no famous leaders”, it is a mixed message that contains a subtle sour aftertaste.

Meanwhile in Glasgow: I’m sat in my second Extinction Rebellion meeting, held within one of the great Glasgow University’s lecture rooms. Whilst sat in the 24th best university in the UK – an establishment I could only have wished to attend – I look around me. It is not class that unites us, of that I am certain.

I was brought up by a single mother on benefits and was unfortunately expelled from school at age 14, for truancy. I found it hard to focus on educational matters during teenage development but it always seemed oxymoronic to remove me for not attending. And so began an unqualified working-class life of dead-end jobs; retail, offices, targets and sales.

Around six months ago and after a two decade long battle with enforced capitalist employment, I finally found myself settling into a job role which focused on my passions and helping people, as a Medical Repatriation Consultant. I immediately saw a change in my behaviour. I started to donate blood, began to help migrants, joined leftist people-power campaign group Momentum, and I joined Extinction Rebellion.

As I glance back around at my colleagues in our Glasgow University meeting room, I see doctors, nurses, students, Green Party, SNP and Labour employees, recycling industry workers and the unemployed. What unites us is not class but a detachment from Capitalism.

Doesn’t the economic system, which dominates our industry, promote selfish, irresponsible, instant gratification? Doesn’t removing yourself from that system help people return to their natural state of cooperation, altruism and empathy?

Back in the media: “What relationships do you have with front-line communities in the global south, indigenous communities and how are you acting in solidarity with them?” Dalia Gebrial (Oxford Uni, LSE) poses in an interview with Novara Media (Nov 26th). It strikes me as unusual that editors working for Novara, are channelling questions through the host, when a multitude of questions from the general public await and go unrepresented throughout the interview. Echoes of Alex Salmond’s staff, influencing debate on his TV show, spring to mind.

“Do you not think it’s precisely the problem, saying that we need the global south to join us, rather than them leading the movement” Clare Hymer (Novara, Momentum, Warwick Uni) goes on to add in the same interview, suggesting a colonial superiority forms part of the tone of Extinction Rebellion.

The interview culminates in the host, Michael Walker attempting to salvage balance, in saying “it’s all very well pointing out the limitations of a movement, but what’s the value of critiquing the movement… do you think there’s actively something bad going on with Extinction Rebellion?”. No charges are filed.

How exactly Hymer and Gebrial expect the global south to lead on this matter is not offered during this interview – only critiqued. If you look at global south nations’ emissions, they are often dozens of times less polluting than Western countries’ are, and the global south generally has far less opportunity, infrastructure and empowerment to tackle climate issues.

All we can do is offer Novara the benefit of the doubt; that these academically wealthy, New Media journalists are attempting to provide a voice to the voiceless. And indeed if that is the case, then I’d welcome them to share this article, as it was written by a working-class nobody, from a city with the lowest life-expectancy in Europe, devoid of educational opportunity and without voice in the media.

In the face of critical comments, I see Extinction Rebellion colleagues listen intently, in an effort to use all this information as constructively as possible and my hope is rekindled.

As Gillet Jaunes have just won their minimum wage increase and workers’ rights, our attention should turn to winning an even greater prize in planetary survival, through the immeasurably more ethical means of non-violent direct action.