(1) The caveat.  

The next months of severe weather may produce horrible new auguries. We’ll see. If the Macondo spill is or causes or triggers an unparalleled ecological disaster all bets are off. However, even if the Gulf suffers quite severe effects, there will be a colossal argument as to how much of the damage is from the present spill. It may be that the conclusion settles down to this: the Gulf has needed better care for several decades, and there is a limit to how much BP should made to pay for historic damage which its accident has worsened.

(2) It is likely that BP was in the process of becoming, under Tony Hayward, more of an engineering company. The next few months will reveal the degree to which this was true, and if, and then why, this message failed to reach the Macondo operation. It doesn’t seem very likely that BP was very far from being as technically competent and as safety-conscious as other majors. 

(3) It is likely that all oil companies will have to prove themselves increasingly safety-aware, just as all regulators will have to show themselves cleverer at their work. This will impose new costs on exploration and much else. But these won’t be transformative, surely?

(4) If BP loses its current CEO and Chairman, or either one, as sacrifical lambs, that may slightly effect the company for better or worse, but in itself wouldn’t be a transformation.

(5) As BP cashes in some assets to fund its liabilities in the Macondo aftermath, that may improve rather than damage its financial prospects (make it a more coherent or profitable firm, for instance). It may not amount to a transformation so much as a valuable readjustment.   

(6) In the bigger picture I can’t see how the Macondo spill will hugely change the logic of the USA’s desire to shift from a 60-odd percent oil import dependency and back to the historic 30 percent dependency. The foreign sources of oil and gas are not getting notably more secure or agreeable as the years pass. The spill won’t much dent the US’s appetite for home-sourced oil.

(7) People who want the US to embrace high-cost fossil fuels as a response to climate change have latched onto the Macondo spill though damage to the Gulf Coast is not related to climate change (or not much, yet). Even if the link was made, and the US citizen accepted a tax-hike to European levels (none of which is immediately probable), demand for oil would be high, and demand for Gulf oil (including deep-sea Gulf oil) would surely be barely dented.

(8) Taxing fuel is a tense political business. The UK adds about 70 percent in taxes to oil prices and the US about 25 percent. So notionally there’s room for manoeuvre in the US. But politicians usually set taxes at levels which maximise revenue, or at least optimise it. Very few dare set taxes at levels which change behaviour, not least because such levels would be punitively high in political terms. And there is a further dimension: if “carbon” taxes were very high, income and employment taxes would have to be reduced, so people would feel rich and maybe rich enough to pay quite a lot of carbon tax.

(9) All in all, it isn’t clear that the Macondo spill will bring about or even much encourage the political drivers for radical transformation in the US or global oil business. BP may change hugely, but that’s far from ceratin. The accident will encourage better safety measures, maybe produce a leaner and cleverer BP, maybe spur a new health regime for the Gulf coast, maybe promote more discussion and awareness of the wider risks of the oil economy, including climate change.

(10) Meanwhile, it’s important remember the men who died in the initial explosion. More generally, I should say that I write all the above with the feeling that I hate scapegoating and grandstanding, and have a strongly believe that things do getter better almost all the time, especially in the West, and especially because we take risks and learn from our mistakes.

Related posts:

1. BP Gulf spill: the end of the phoney war We are at the beginning of the end of the...
2. BP oil spill update, 15 June 2010 It’s been a spectacularly bad few days for BP. Things...
3. The real climate change deniers In the run-up to the Copenhagen update of the Kyoto...

(1) In the White House and Congress, BP faces horrible criticism. If it really was cheapskate and keen on shortcuts which led to the disaster it will be fascinating to know why its regulators and contractors allowed this risk-taking.

(2) It is reported that various oil giants may swoop and buy BP. Presumably that’s because they think it’s under-priced at the moment, or at least has assets so good they outweigh its dreadful likely liabilities. Maybe other punters will think the same.

(3) We still have almost no idea how bad is the ecological damage caused by BP. The NOAA updates suggest a very small percentage of the vulnerable coasts have yet been hit, so far. The under-water damage is a matter of great (wild?) speculation.  I hate typing these words: I am ordinarily superstitious about anything which looks like discounting disasters.

(4) The US can undertake any energy rethinks it likes, as we all will, and it will still quite possibly want its own oil supplies. Deep sea drilling may well remain an option. This will, tangentially, produce an enormous pressure to scapegoat BP is a wildcard, out of line with industry practice, which can in any case be tightened.

(5) We are in the very early days of what will almost certainly be a ghastly political and legal process. One notices not merely how few people have said anything brave or even decent but also how few have said anything which can be proved wrong. Thad Allen seems an exception.

Related posts:

1. Will the BP spill transform the oil business? I was asked to appear on Radio 4’s special programme BP:...
2. BP Gulf spill: the end of the phoney war We are at the beginning of the end of the...

Having killed 11 workers, the event is already a human tragedy. Time will tell whether it emerges as a case of widespread, serious, persistent ecological damage. I am the first to admit it may.

But it is striking how the Amoco Cadiz (1978), Exxon Valdez (1989), Saddam Hussein’s Gulf War spill into the Persian Gulf (1991), Braer (1993) and Sea Empress (1996) were all widely advertised as potentially huge disasters, but were mostly seen to have had serious effects only for a year or so, if at all. My point (though I didn’t make this on-air) is that the anticipatory buzz got translated into a false history. People end up believing that these events did turn out to be as bad as was predicted as possible. (See details at my Life On A Modern Planet: A manifesto for progress, Manchester University Press, 1995, free download.)

[See below for some updated links for recent Exxon-Valdez and Prince William Sound research.]

Similarly, Chernobyl has for 25 years been characterised as having had massive consequences in cancer and birth defects. (See my www.chernobyllegacy.com.) The reality is sad enough, but much less powerful. Genetic modification of crops has so far failed to deliver the disasters which were predicted for it a decade ago. (See perhaps my pamphlet on the subject, GMOs: The troubled beginning of the 21st Century, IEA, 2000, free download).  BSE has proved horrible for a few hundred families, but not cataclysmic for the rest of us.

I do think things are improving. I mean that the media is slightly less prone to wind us all up nowadays, and the environmentalists have much less traction than they used to. I am also fairly sure that academics (especially at the universities of Lancaster and East Anglia) have failed in their bid of the 1990s to induce a sort of generalised anxietyabout industrial and ecological horrors, which they characterised as Risk Society (in which they followed some dreary germanic lines of thought). (See perhaps my Risk: The human adventure, ESEF, 2001, free download.)

I should have said that one of the pernicious tropes of media and campaign work is to say that such and such a disaster “may” happen, or has the potential to happen. The point here is that this is an unaccountable remark: just logically nothing would ever prove it wrong. It’s a safe and even cowardly class of remark.  

I notice that in the Obama administration anti-corporate riffs remain popular (“Our job basically is to keep our boot on BP’s neck” was Interior Secretary’s Ken Salazar’s charmless remark), and that is low rent stuff. Of course, it happens that BP’s back story is ripe with ironies, from its Beyond Petroleum smugness to its accident-prone recent US record. But anyone whose heart does not go out to the firm in its present crisis almost deserves to be on the receiving end of this kind of bad luck themselves, just for a chastening taste of what the fates can dole out.

Additional note

Updates on Exxon-Valdez and Prince William Sound:

Rather cheerful accounts:
http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/stories/oilymess/welcome.html
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16280-is-the-exxon-valdez-spill-site-finally-clean.html
 
Rather less cheerful account:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/03/090323-exxon-anniversary.html

Related posts:

1. BP Gulf spill: the end of the phoney war We are at the beginning of the end of the...
2. Will the BP spill transform the oil business? I was asked to appear on Radio 4’s special programme BP:...
3. BP oil spill update, 15 June 2010 It’s been a spectacularly bad few days for BP. Things...

I admire Stewart Brand’s remarkable book not least for the frank exuberance of Brand’s realisation that being really green is quite different from being a normal green. Its seriousness and freshness reminds me of Mike Hulme’s recent work. It usefully expands on James Lovelock’s rewriting of green verities.  And, like Hulme and Lovelock, I think the rather robust Stewart seems to miss the real significance of some of his own messages.

This matters because almost all commentators are missing the moral and political importance of anticipating the likely failure of mankind’s much reducing greenhouse gases. Mr Brand (like Hulme and Lovelock) seems to believe that mankind won’t head-off climate change. Brand’s great value is in proposing that we will, instead, have to engineer a more benign climate. But he is light on some essential detail.

Stewart (I’ve enjoyed an hour or so with him in person, so claim acquaintance) argues that climate change will probably be very important and bad. He admits his own track record on predictions is not perfect, however, and notes lightly that no-one can be sure this will be one of his better ones. He can take comfort, and does – rightly – that people of the calibre of James Lovelock (they are mutually admiring) agree with him. So far, so routine.

He then points out how daunting it would be to try to switch quickly out of fossil fuels. Like Lovelock, he bigs-up nuclear power, as would Lovelock. He also favours genetic modification of crops as an energy-saver and much else. (I can’t remember if Lovelock’s a fan of GM, but I know I am.) It happens I am a mild fan of nuclear, but reckon there are lots of issues which might yet scupper its being a big player. Anyway, Mr Brand shapes up as a useful neo-Green. I am happy to say that there’s nothing he says which will shock a reader of my own Life On a Modern Planet  (Manchester University Press, 1995.)

Stewart then goes on to argue that we may well end up doing geo-engineering, whose potential power he admires. I think he’s saying that we won’t do meaningful alternatives to fossil fuels so we’re going to need to fix the system with cloud-making (or whatever). But there’s a gap. I think he needs to tell us whether he thinks that we needn’t bother with big investments in renewables. In particular, do we have to do his favoured nuclear? Or does he think we need huge amounts of both carbon reduction and climate control? How much does he like climate control as a bet? Is climate control engineering only a poorish Plan B to replace a good Plan A of climate control by greenhouse gas reduction? Is emissions reduction a policy whose failure we have – literally – to anticipate? Or is climate control only a halfway decent way to fill the gap left by half-hearted  carbon reduction?  Or is it a racing certainty that it will work so well we don’t have to worry about our present behaviour? (I do hope it is.)

Stewart is not making the Hulmean Move (that, firstly, we can’t achieve much climate benefit by anything we can or are willing to do and that, secondly, climate is far more like to improve man than man is likely to improve the climate). But Brand is Hulmean in this sense: he is of the AGW alarmist school and doesn’t propose carbon reduction as a runner.

Brand may be making a fresh version of the Lovelockian Fallacy. The venerable James has written that it will be very hard – actually, going on impossible – to avoid climate catastrophe. But Lovelock nonetheless argues for lots of nuclear and other investments and action, though (I am at pains to point out, since he isn’t) by his own argument the horse has already bolted. On Lovelock’s own analysis, we will be building nuclear power stations to power a civilisation which will have retreated to the caves.  Brand is less obviously contradictory than Lovelock, but would be more valuable if he was clearer on whether he thinks we can save ourselves the effort of trying to avoid causing a climate catastrophe and instead merely aim to fix the one we will have created.

For what it’s worth, you’ll see that I have written on Hulme and Lovelock at some length here and in the Social Affairs website.

Related posts:

1. Bland cannot be the new Tory brand An Op Ed style comment piece to coincide with the publication...
2. Climate Change (AGW): Let’s take it seriously Most of the books on global warming science and policy...
3. Global warming: A new war of religion? The battle lines in the climate change wars are not quite...

I said, what I believe, that there seems to be a solid and sound consensus amongst most scientists that man has warmed his planet. I then said, what I believe, that much of what follows from that remains quite uncertain, especially as to the details of who will suffer what and where as a consequence of global warming. I said (and this is the bit where I let myself down) that there was – within the “consensus” – quite a wide range of predictions of likely temperature rise. They ranged, I said, from the comparatively mild to the very dire. Actually (now I check the IPCC website) I think the consensus is that a doubling of CO2 from pre-industrial levels (due quite soon) will likely lead to a 3 degree Celsius temperature rise.

Now. I am pretty sure that is also the kind of rise which is postulated by the consensus as being truly dreadful for the planet. It seems also that a doubling of CO2 is pretty well inevitable. All in all, hang on to your hat.

Related posts:

1. RDN on Plimer, Paltridge, Monbiot and climate change The latest climate change row concerns a book by the...
2. Climate Change (AGW): Let’s take it seriously Most of the books on global warming science and policy...
3. The real climate change deniers In the run-up to the Copenhagen update of the Kyoto...

I have learned quite a bit from Spiked Online over the years. I like their manichaeism: it’s liberating. I agree that on the whole we should be working out how to satisfy human needs and wants rather than assume that they are trivial. (Though, like George Monbiot, I often wonder in what degree the Online team of Fox, Hume, Furedi etc are still RCP. Are they “Revolutionary”, “Communist” and a “Party”?) 

Still, on climate change they do seem to be in a slightly weird place.

Spiked likes science (and points out that real Greens seldom do). So they are well up for the kind of people (say, the Royal Society, et al) who argue that the evidence suggests that genetically modified crops (GM, or GMOs) are OK.

Spiked likes the Enlightenment project of evidence-based speculation, interrogation and challenge.

But something about climate change science – which has the same sort of scientific supporters as GM – sticks in their craw.

This prompts the thought that maybe Spiked likes GM because the Greens hate it and don’t like climate anxiety because Greens do.

As a free market person, and a believer in progress and industrialisation, it galls me that climate change might be bad and anthropogenic. I don’t like contemplating the amount of state regulation anthropogenic global warming AGW will entail. I’m not in love with the idea that the Greens may be rightish on this one. (I am pretty sure we will largely ignore their calls for dramatic action.)

I do indeed see that the “religion” of science often now coincides with the “religion” of greenery and that means we never quite know whether (say) climate scientists are being strictly impartial as to the evidence.

Still, that’s how the mop has flopped. At the very least, Spiked ought to explain why they are happy to be in a long line of creationist, Lysenkoid, flat-earth science-deniers.

Related posts:

1. The real climate change deniers In the run-up to the Copenhagen update of the Kyoto...
2. Climate Change (AGW): Let’s take it seriously Most of the books on global warming science and policy...
3. Global Warming Policy Foundation: strategic error? Lord Lawson and Benny Peiser are bonny climate change policy...

Don’t worry though. In this site you will find lots of good stuff on climate change and I hope you enjoy it. 

The reason my name and picture appear on a piece not written by me is that it was written by another Richard North. He’s the one who writes books about the Ministry of Defence and food and health matters, the last often with Christopher Booker (such as Scared To Death).

It doesn’t matter much, but I agree with about a third or half of the Mail On Sunday piece.  

Carbon trading has indeed had elements of the scam about it, but it’s early days and the general approach may yet mature into something useful. If it’s true that a coal generating plant very much like Kingsnorth (and hated by the greens) is to be built in India (and supported by climate change funding from the EU and elsewhere), that speaks more to the folly of the UK greens than to the folly of funding of overseas coal plant. After all, the hated plant may be a big improvement on conventional coal plant in the UK. And it may be a massive improvement on the coal plant which would have been built in India without our help.

Related posts:

1. Royal Mail kicked to death by union I told BBC Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine show that it’s...
2. Spiked Online: in a climate muddle The little Spiked essay introducing its After Copenhagen climate debate...

(1) The campaigners. They’ll say that they have moved things on quite a bit and must be given lots more funding so they can press on.

(2) The politicians. They’ll say that they have made a decent beginning on a difficult road and would have liked to go further but some foreigner or other (and even domestic politics) held them back.

(3)  Business will say that they welcome the emerging consensus that action (to rig markets) has only one direction of travel and that they are longing to invest to help (which is code for having more predictable markets to work in).

(4) The handful of climate change deniers will  hug to themselves the refusal of the vast mainstream to accept their arguments, and indeed will claim their own view is suppressed whilst the alarmists who dominate the mainstream are liars.

(5) The alarmists will thrill to their anxiety that the agreed action is wholly inadequate which is blindingly obvious though lots more research is needed to dot the i’s and cross the t’s not least to persuade the purblind.

(6) The extreme climate change science sceptics will thrive on denouncing the expense and interference involved in delivering Copenhagen as wasted and dangerous (because to do anything about a non-problem is a waste).

(7) The extreme climate change policy sceptics will say the same thing (but because doing too little about a problem might as well not be done at all).

(8) The pathetically mild climate change science and policy sceptics (that would be me) will say it might all just about be worth doing because it’s not going to happen too quickly or cost too much before we get a chance to say we want to increase or scrap the planned actions which may be useful on other grounds. 

 (9) Obama will win because he will be shown to be different from Bush.

(10) The anti-Obamas will win because he will be shown to be not all that different from Bush.

(11) The Chinese, Brazilians and Indians will say the rich world is disgrace.

(12) The rich world will say (much more politely) that the boot’s on the other foot.

Related posts:

1. The real climate change deniers In the run-up to the Copenhagen update of the Kyoto...
2. Spiked Online: in a climate muddle The little Spiked essay introducing its After Copenhagen climate debate...
3. Global Warming Policy Foundation: strategic error? Lord Lawson and Benny Peiser are bonny climate change policy...

(1) If adding carbon to atmospshere produces an effect which is like driving a car at 30mph, 40mp or 50mph in a built-up area, then present policy is bang-on. Evidence tells us that every bit of speed (carbon) adds to the danger the drivers (humans) are causing. Every bit of easing of speed produces a good effect, and straight away.  

(2) If the effect of adding carbon is like putting cats amongst pidgeons, removing the cats will calm the pidgeons after a bit of a flurry. There may be some dead and mauled pidgeons. In such a case, present policy may be quite effective, though we’d have to wait for the climate to adjust to our removing the anthropogenic cause and that might take a bit of time and some damage may stay done. If AGW is like this, current policy is about right, but likely to be hard to sell.

(3) If the effect of adding carbon is like stirring jam into custard, there’s nothing to be done because we have caused effects which simply can’t be undone. Lots of scientists and alarmists use this argument (listen out for talk of tipping points), though it’s counter-productive to their cause. Sceptics also use this case, but might point out that the analogy is weak because they are saying that though the custard may have gone a funny colour, there’s precious little evidence that man’s jam did it.

These are inexact examples, but are fairly workable. (1) describes a tidy linear system; (2) describes an untidy linear system and (3) describes a non-linear system.

So which is it?
I am an ignorant non-scientist, but here goes with how I jive these takes. I don’t think the climate is like (1) but I wish it were because then the results of policy would be neat, proportionate and immediate. Speed kills. Yes, walking pace would be great. Decarbonise as much as you can.

However, the effects of carbon are complex and not least by being delayed and long-lasting. So the cats and pidgeons thing of (2) is quite apposite to how some scientists see climate change (especially if you factor in the idea of the cats killing some pideons and mauling others). If the climate is quite like (2), and I can imagine that it is, it would be fairly amenable to policy but in a trying way. Human’s don’t like delayed gratification, and anyway the dead pidgeons stay dead don’t they? On the other hand – imperfect analogy - the total, multi-generational pidgeon species might not have have been much damaged by the impromptu cull. 

I rather accept that that the climate might be a little like (3) in that there may be some very sudden and unnanounced consequences to AGW which turn out to be permanent and deleterious. Trouble is, if we are on the brink of these changes, then we probably can’t avoid them and if they are catastrophic it’s game-over anyway. But if the effects are pretty survivable, the more all kinds of other changes will mask them and the longer life - including human life – will have to work round them. (The custard goes from yellow to pink, and humans get to like the latter.) In all sorts of ways, case (3) argues for inaction by humans. [Remember, sceptics might not accept that this is a competent analogy though it's closer to what they think than (1) 0r (2).]

I very much doubt we can predict the detailed effects of what AGW will be so I think it is hard to choose between (2) and (3). I quite like (2). I can imagine that if for some reason our adding carbon has caused a problem (I am not all that persuaded that we can predict that in anything like detail), our removing it might remove the problem, eventually. But I have no idea how many pidgeons will get killed or mauled, so I don’t know how much I care. The catastrophism of (3) has many clever scientific adherents, and I accept they may be right, but the more I think that they may be right, the less I worry.

Point is: unpicking the analogies shows just how hard it will be to make policy stick.

Weaknesses in the analogies
I think (3) is the weakest analogy. It doesn’t do the quite the work I want. I want it to fit the sceptics like Philip Stott and Mike Hulme, but it doesn’t quite. Those who I want to put in that camp actually argue that the climate is infinitely more complex than stirring jam into custard. For a start, they stress that it is important to see that all sorts of natural forces are adding jams of all sorts of colours to the custard. The resulting colourful pudding is plainly not just the result of man’s jam. The analogy is even weaker if you consider that the sceptics don’t so much say that we couldn’t suck out the jam we added, but that we still wouldn’t know what difference that would make and that it would probably be slight.

Related posts:

1. The real climate change deniers In the run-up to the Copenhagen update of the Kyoto...
2. Climate Change (AGW): Let’s take it seriously Most of the books on global warming science and policy...
3. RDN on Plimer, Paltridge, Monbiot and climate change The latest climate change row concerns a book by the...

Related posts:

1. The real climate change deniers In the run-up to the Copenhagen update of the Kyoto...
2. Three takes on climate change science What kind of a beast is climate change? Is it...
3. RDN on Plimer, Paltridge, Monbiot and climate change The latest climate change row concerns a book by the...