Sammy and the Scientists
Somewhat belatedly, I have just seen a copy of an article which appeared in July's issue of the ENDS Report, a monthly journal which deals with environmental policy and business across the UK. The journal quoted several local senior scientists criticising our Environment Minister's view on climate change, and its editorial referred to him as "daft Sammy". The most stinging quote came from Sir Bernard Crossland, Emeritus Professor of Engineering at Queen's, who opined that "Sammy Wilson is ill informed on the reality of the situation, but I guess that he will not believe much of our present climate change is man made until the water is lapping up his knees in East Belfast". That quote obviously predated the most recent flooding. As the ENDS Report appears to be subscriber only, I shall put the relevant article in the extended entry.
ENDS Report, July Issue.
NI environment minister spurns climate Bill
Sammy Wilson, Northern Ireland's Environment Minister, says he will only back carbon-cutting policies which achieve wider benefits and will oppose the Climate Change Bill. Senior scientists from the province have condemned his views on global warming.
Northern Ireland's climate sceptic environment minister Sammy Wilson will vote against the government's Climate Change Bill and resist any policies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions which do not have other, non-climate related justifications - such as reducing traffic congestion or increasing fuel security.
In July Mr Wilson, a Democratic Unionist MP as well being a Member of the Northern Ireland Legislative Assembly, told the assembly's environment committee that achieving deep cuts in UK carbon emissions, mandated by the Bill, would lead to "all kinds of actions which will make life expensive for all our citizens."
Mr Wilson continues to tell all who will listen that there is no scientific consensus that human contributions to atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are driving the gathering pace of climate change across the globe (ENDS Report 401, pp 4-6 ). Senior scientists in and from Northern Ireland say he is wrong.
His stance poses an awkward challenge to the Westminster government - yet the ENDS Report found little awareness in DEFRA of his views, and the department declined to comment. The Climate Change Bill currently passing through the House of Commons aims to cut overall UK CO2 emissions through a process of setting targets and carbon budgets, and puts a duty on the UK Secretary of State for the Environment to achieve this (ENDS Report 394, pp 5-6 ).
The Bill legislates for cooperation and consultation between Westminster, the high-powered Climate Change Committee and the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in setting UK CO2 budgets and then hitting them. It does not mandate carbon budgets for devolved administrations, but it is highly likely they will be required - indeed, the Scottish Government is already promoting its own Bill which would set out Scottish budgets (ENDS Report 390, p 51 ).
Under the Bill, the UK Secretary of State must draw up a plan setting out the policies needed to hit the carbon reduction targets prepared in consultation with the devolved administrations. He seems unlikely to get much support from Northern Ireland while Mr Wilson remains responsible for environmental policy.
The 'relevant Northern Ireland department' must also lay out a programme for adapting the province to climate change. But Mr Wilson has no theory for why the climate is now changing, and no convictions about how, or how fast, climate will change in future. It is hard to see what kind of adaptation programme he could come up with.
Several Northern Ireland Fellows of the Royal Society - the UK's premiere scientific body - contacted by ENDS said he was wrong. "Sammy Wilson is ill-informed on the reality of the situation, but I guess that he will not believe much of our present climate change is man-made until the water is lapping up his knees in East Belfast, which is low-lying," said Sir Bernard Crossland, Emeritus Professor of Engineering at Queen's University, Belfast.
Theoretical physicist Professor Phil Burke, also of Queen's, said: "There is no doubt the very rapid increase in greenhouse gases caused by human activity is a major cause of climate change."
Northern Ireland scientists researching climate change-related issues were also alarmed by Mr Wilson's view. Professor Brian Whalley, a geomorphologist at Queen's, said: "He should look at all the government-produced analysis, climatic and economic, before making such sweeping statements with no scientific validity."
Professor Neil Adger, an expert on climate change adaptation from Northern Ireland now at the University of East Anglia's Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, said: "The basic science is so clear and unambiguous that anyone denying it is either a fool or deliberately misleading others for political or other ends. The impacts of climate change, already observed and apparent, are everywhere and Northern Ireland is not immune."
Scientists may be dismayed by his views, but there is no plan to meet with Mr Wilson in an attempt to educate him about the scientific consensus. Like the environmental NGOs in the province, they appear to have concluded there is little chance of him changing his mind.
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I’ve always been intrigued by the origins of things. From whence did they originate? How did they come about? What gave rise to it being done so, rather than not?
Now, one can read about the origins of almost anything; man, earth, the side parting. You can do so by using THE great modern invention of our time – the web or by doing it2 the old fashioned way, by reading a book. Here you will find a myriad of different theories, put forward by an equally dazzling list of authors claiming to have THE definitive solution. Equally, and perhaps more satisfying, there are events that have occurred that cannot be fundamentally explained, or if they can, certainly not in a way that allows my mind to picture the event.
Take, for example, the Moai Statues of Easter Island. Now various theories place the creation of these statues at differing periods separated by centuries. What they all agree on is, they were created using stone not indigenous to the island. And certainly not a stone that was transportable by any known means. Which begs the question, “How did they get there?” My mind can’t even fathom such an event occurring…well, actually I can, but to realize it, one would require a Dreamworks production budget and most would then just argue that it was far fetched.
Similarly, my mind and imagination hit a vacuum like wall when challenged to imagine what time must have been like prior to what many like to call The Big Bang. This is my favorite description of The Big Bang, “a cosmological model of the universe that is best supported by all lines of scientific evidence and observation. The essential idea is that the universe has expanded from a primordial hot and dense initial condition at some finite time in the past and continues to expand to this day.” Come again? I don’t get it. First I don’t get how something is growing at an infinite level. What exists on the other side of infinity? It’s growing, right? Well, what’s it growing into? A big space? A big empty space that drops as deep as it ascends high? An ocean of nothingness that drops into an abyss of nada…? Exactly. I just can’t do it.
Then, there is the issue of what existed before tick tick boom? Again, we’re told that, “the universe was filled homogeneously and isotropically with an incredibly high energy density, huge temperatures and pressures, and was very rapidly expanding and cooling. Approximately 10-35 seconds into the expansion, a phase transition caused a cosmic inflation, during which the universe grew exponentially. After inflation stopped, the universe consisted of a quark-gluon plasma, as well as all other elementary particles. Temperatures were so high that the random motions of particles were at relativistic speeds, and particle-antiparticle pairs of all kinds were being continuously created and destroyed in collisions. At some point an unknown reaction called Baryogenesis violated the conservation of baryon number, leading to a very small excess of quarks and leptons over antiquarks and anti-leptons—of the order of 1 part in 30 million. This resulted in the predominance of matter over antimatter in the present universe.” Yes but antiquarks, antischmarks…what did the gaff look like? I mean just try and fathom it.
Bearing in mind that nothing existed in this ‘infinite density’ you can’t start imagining swirls of clouds, or “C-beams shimmering in the dark at the Tannhauser Gate.” And that for me is the fundamental intrigue, letting the imagination run to a point so far removed from the shackles of time and space that no book or theory can actually paint the picture.
It instead requires an experience of the event. The joy of unchartered territory is that no one can tell you you’re wrong…
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The problem a lot of people have with the climate lobby is their evangelical approach to the whole issue.
In the absence of any real (i.e. widely believed in) god, the greenies seem to have taken the place of religion by telling us to believe in something, otherwise bad things will happen when we die.
If they would get rid of the attitude, and explain exactly why we are wrecking this planet, and that harm is being caused right now, they might get a bit further with the likes of Sammy and a largely apathetic public.
They also might get a bit further if they stopped trying to give the impression the world will be saved if we all put our cardboard in the green bin.
It won't. It will be saved when we find a way to clean up carbon emissions and eventually find a viable alternative to fossil fuels.
Nuclear springs to mind, but almost all of the greenies object to that too. In fact they object to most things, including farting cattle it would seem.
I genuinely hope we find an alternative to fossil fuels soon, so then we can stop having wars over sandy places with oil underneath them, and we can tell the Russians to do whatever they want with their gas.
Getting back to nuclear, I have no idea how much plutonium and uranium is in the ground, and we might end up fighting wars over places that have it underground. But at least it would be better in the next few decades or centuries than filling the air with poisonous crap.
No matter what your opinion of man-made climate change, you cannot be happy when you see pollution.
Would Sammy be happy to breathe from a canister of compressed Beijing air for a month? I doubt it.
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This kind of discussion was on Talkback a few weeks ago. Everybody who came on had their own ideas on how the earth and solar system came about? Who is right and who is wrong? Nobody knows. One thing we do know is that humans are destroying this earth. Temperatures are rising and the ice caps are melting. People say that we need to take more care of the environment. That is true. We do but how is it going to stop the destruction? I doubt anyone let alone Sammy knows. Maybe Sammy could give up his gas guzzler and get on his bike!!
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RJ wrote:
'In the absence of any real (i.e. widely believed in) god, the greenies seem to have taken the place of religion by telling us to believe in something, otherwise bad things will happen when we die.
If they would get rid of the attitude, and explain exactly why we are wrecking this planet, and that harm is being caused right now, they might get a bit further with the likes of Sammy and a largely apathetic public.
They also might get a bit further if they stopped trying to give the impression the world will be saved if we all put our cardboard in the green bin.'
RJ, this does not describe any environmental organisation I know. There is a very large body of scientific evidence supporting the consensus position on climate change going back 30 years or more and around 10,00 peer-review scientific papers (unlike religion and the other theories on climate change).
Environmentalism has nothing to do with what happens when we die. It is concerned with what people are doing to the planet and what a degraded environment does to people.
The environmental organisations I know are very clear about extent of the climate crisis and about putting forward viable solutions. Not simply putting cardboard in the green bin as you claim but solutions for energy efficiency, demand management, renewables, public transport, resource management and more. Solutions which would create jobs, tackle fuel poverty, food poverty, transport poverty, and make life better for people.
You mention nuclear as a solution. Nuclear is not solution, in the short or long term. We need to make very significant cuts in our carbon emission but the middle of the next decade - in about 6 or 7 years. New nuclear will take much longer than that to come on stream - 15 or 20 years. It will be 30 years before the Government's full nuclear programme is up and running. This is much too late.
In the long term nuclear isn't a viable option. There is a finite amount of uranium available in the quantities and quality necessary. Even at current rates of use some experts suggest there is 60 - 80 years of relatively cheap accessible uranium. If the world moves to nuclear for our energy needs we will use that up much quicker - perhaps in 20 or 30 years. If we opt for nuclear we will just be lurching from one energy crisis to another.
Uranium uses a lot of energy to extract and process and so it is quite carbon intensive. the Government's nuclear build programme would cut the UK's carbon emissions by just 4%. That's very little gain for the high costs.
We have viable solutions to the energy crisis now. They are firstly energy efficiency, then demand management and lastly a wide range of renewables - wind, solar, wave, tidal, marine currents, geothermal, air source pumps and biomass. We don't need expensive, ineffiecient and environmentally damaging 'solutions' like nuclear.
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Nice reply, hewhosits.
Ok, maybe it's the media and not the greenies who reckon they will convince me I am filling the green bin to save the planet.
(There are in fact 2 reasons I fill the green bin: because they only come for the black bin every 2 weeks, and to line the pockets of the recycling company)
But on the whole, the environmental lobby puts me off by being preachy and very disrespectful to those who disagree with them, yourself excluded.
This is a great shame, because I largely agree with their aims of reducing reliance on fossil fuel.
On the subject of nuclear, surely uranium extraction is no more polluting than coal and oil extraction. The difference is when the fuel is used. Nuclear doesn't fill the air with muck.
You also have to see the wider picture. It is not doing us any good buying oil and gas from countries that are either unstable, run by madmen, or both.
Even if nuclear caused a 4% increase in carbon output, it has to be balanced against the benefits of not relying on these countries and suffering the effects on fuel price of their political whims.
There may only be enough cheap uranium to last the century, but at least we will be buying from Canada and Australia, not Russia and Iraq.
You also mention the renewables. They sound great. I really do hope we get all of our electricity from these sources, but why is it not happening? It's because they are nowhere near efficient enough.
Let's get 80 - 100 years out of nuclear by which time the boffins will be able to power Belfast from the ripples of a seal swimming in Strangford Lough.
What's the story with that big red and yellow thing they put in the lough a few weeks ago anyway? Is it living up to its fanfare?
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