The problems that belief can cause

Unfounded beliefs can cause awful tragedy.  The Americans fought a disastrous war in Vietnam because they believed the Vietnamese were in league with the Chinese communists.  Years and thousands of wasted lives later, they found out that the Vietnamese and the Chinese had been at odds for a millennium. And Blair's belief in Iraqi weapons of mass destruction had Britain joining the Americans in wrecking Iraq, again with countless thousands of dead.

Of course, the moment you start to consider the futility of religious wars, the folly of ill-founded belief becomes only too obvious.  But I am more concerned with beliefs that are at least demonstrably on the shakiest of grounds.  In particular, those where there is good science to establish a strong base for disbelief.

Of course, I immediately recognize the problem in that weasel word "good." How do you tell good science from bad?  The philosopher Karl Popper is my favorite source for answering this question.  In essence, one of his strongest tests is that a good scientific finding is one that is independently replicable. If I scientist tell you non-scientist that I did X and Y was the result, and I also tell you how I did X, and you follow my recipe and Y happens, then you have a strong basis for believing that X causes Y. That is good science.

Of course, we may not have established the true basis for the link between X and Y, but at least we have a working hypothesis on which to found further questions.  And by linking a whole body of questions and their testable answers, we can build a world view that possesses a strong logic.  Armed with such a view, the need for belief in answering new questions weakens.

We may ultimately find that the link between X and Y is fortuitous, and that there is a better answer which improves our world view.  That, of course, is precisely what happened when Einstein linked mass and energy and overthrew Newton's view of the world which had directed our thoughts for over 200 years. But Newton's world is still taught in our schools, because it answers many of our day-to-day questions with adequate precision.

However, today there is a new problem. Bad science can give rise to disastrous beliefs.  There is an excellent example in the bad science of one Andrew Wakefield, who in 1998 published a paper in the prestigious Lancet claiming a link between inoculation and bowel disease which in turn caused autism in children.  It was bad science, because it turned out not to be replicable. Wakefield was eventually charged with fraud and found guilty, while Lancet withdrew the paper.

However, many felt that the risk of inoculation causing autism was unacceptable, and refused to have their children inoculated.  Seventeen years later the results are becoming apparent.  From America comes news of children being "sent home from school. Their families are barred from birthday parties and neighborhood play dates. Online, people call them negligent and criminal. And as officials in 14 states grapple to contain a spreading measles outbreak - -, the parents at the heart of America’s anti-vaccine movement are being blamed for incubating an otherwise preventable public-health crisis." (New York Times 30 Jan)

The human tragedies that the fear of inoculation has caused are innumerable.  There are the parents whose child contracted whooping cough, and with whom they had to sit day and night for nearly four months as their child fought for breath. They could not understand that the vaccine would not work once the disease had been contracted. There is the young mother who had consciously decided that the risks of the vaccine were so great that she should do without, then contracted rubella and gave birth to a blind, deformed child. There is a reaction building, and doctors are refusing to help parents who neglected to have their children inoculated. Perhaps America will slowly come to its senses.

If it is not replicable, it is not good science. Inoculation is eminently replicable - it may have slight side effects, but the risks of the side effects are minuscule compared to the risks of the infectious diseases it prevents.

We have to speak out against bad science.  It can cause beliefs that have tragic consequences.   Nowhere is this more apparent than in the area of climate pseudoscience. Billions of dollars are being diverted to prop up a belief system that daily is becoming more irreplicable. It is even going so far as to change historical data to try to convince us that the world is warming faster than before:

 (Thanks to Josh and WUWT)

The "adjustments" turn out to be in exact multiples of tenths of a degree, for reasons that no-one can explain. All are downwards in the early years, thus making the apparent warming greater than it would otherwise be.  And these are the "official" figures from the Global Historical Climate Network, the basis for all the fears about climate change.  Bad, bad science, with predictably tragic consequences.

Begone, prophets of doom!

The prophets of doom have a long history.  Job was prominent among those who suffered, yet remained confident even when his supposed friends told him the end was nigh. Recently, the breed has spawned a new source of doom - "The fossil fuel industry must be put out of business by 2050 to avoid dangerous climate change" intoned one David le Page recently in the Mail &Guardian. He is part of a long tradition of those who have advised abandoning all hope when facing difficulties.  Fortunately history has a message for him and his kind – the human spirit is such that it can rise to almost every challenge.

Le Page’s thesis is that if mankind consumes much more fossil fuel, the additional carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will cause the average global temperature to increase more than 2^oC above what it was in the pre-industrial era before 1800.   It is a difficult thesis to substantiate, if only because we do not know exactly what the average temperature was in the early part of the 19^th century.  We only started to have some idea of the global temperature around 1860, when calibrated thermometers became widely available.  Since then, it has warmed by a little over 0.8^oC.

The million dollar question is how much of this warming is caused by added carbon dioxide.  Clearly not all of it, because the temperature shot up between 1910 and 1940, and there was little increase in carbon dioxide over that period.  So we don’t know how much extra carbon dioxide is likely to cause the atmosphere to warm by 2^oC.  It seems decidedly irrational to propose getting rid of fossil fuels, all our coal, oil and natural gas, to achieve a target which is so ill defined.

Proposing to get rid of fossil fuels becomes even more irrational once you realize than nearly 90% of all the energy we use comes from fossil fuels, worldwide.  South Africa uses fossil fuel for nearly 95% of its needs. So the world cannot be weaned off fossil fuels overnight.  Indeed, right now the use of fossil fuels is growing rapidly, and that growth seems likely to persist as China develops, India follows and Africa finally takes off economically.

There is a direct relationship between economic growth and the consumption of energy.  When nearly 90% of your energy comes from fossil fuels, then there is an equally close relationship between economic growth and growth in fossil fuel use.  So in calling for restrictions on the use of fossil fuels, Le Page is in fact putting in a plea for less development.  That is all very well if you are part of the developed world, but if you are in the process of developing, and have millions living in poverty, then you actually view such pleas as highly irresponsible.

Events in India illustrate this very well.  When China announced it would start to curb its growth in emissions after 2020, and would aim for zero further growth after 2030, India went on record as saying it was not in the least interested in any curbs on emissions.  Its development problems were such that eliminating poverty was far more important than addressing climate change. Recently, it has banned foreign funding of Greenpeace and other non-governmental organisations which it saw as posing a “significant threat to national economic security.”  A decade ago, India was emitting about twice as much carbon dioxide as South Africa; today it is emitting about four times as much and growing at about 100 million tons per annum.

We must not underestimate the benefits of fossil fuel use. If the internal combustion engine had not come into widespread use during the 20^th century, we would have seen massive starvation on earth.  In 1900, nearly half the area devoted to agriculture was used to grow fodder for draft and carriage animals.  By 1940, fodder was still vital.  Surprisingly, the largest use of horses in warfare was the German invasion of Russia in 1942, which involved about one million animals.  Fossil fuels have allowed us to convert huge tracts of land to the job of feeding people, not animals.  That, and the increase in productivity due to scientific farming, has meant that the supply of food has grown faster than the human population, so starvation is no longer a real threat for most people.

While renewable energy may have its place, we have to remember that modern economies need constant power.  The South African economy is stuttering right now because even the fossil fuel supply is intermittent.  Try to imagine what life would be like if the most of our power stopped the moment the sun went down.  Yes, we as individuals could probably cope with gas cooking and paraffin lamps or candles. However, most of the energy we generate does not go to individuals, but to keeping our developed economy going.  Less than 100 organisations in South Africa use about two-thirds of all the energy we produce.  Modern economies demand energy to generate wealth, and that energy needs to be available every hour of every day.  An intermittent supply is better than nothing, but much worse than a continuous supply.

Indeed, we can measure the cost of not having energy, and compare it to the cost of generation.  The loss of power early in 2008 hit the South African economy with about R75 for every kilowatt-hour that was lost.  Compare that to the approximately R0.60 that Eskom spends at present to produce a kilowatt-hour. It is infinitely better to have too much power than too little.

Of course, we need sustainable development. But there is no point in committing economic suicide in an attempt to sustain ourselves, as Le Page would have us do. According to the Brundlandt definition, “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Yes, we have to worry about future generations, but we also have to do so without compromising our ability to meet our own needs.  My generation coped with the previous generation’s love affair with the Mutually Assured Destruction of nuclear weapons.  I have every confidence that my children will cope with the far lesser threats of climate change in ways that will amaze us.

An artistic blunder

Years ago, I returned home in a rage after seeing Amadeus. Surely Mozart could not have been that silly, vapid child Peter Schaffer had made him out to be.  So I re-read Mozart's letters, and the light dawned - Schaffer's interpretation was perfectly valid.  Wolfgang may have been a genius, but he was never a pompous ass.

In November I went to see the Turner exhibition at the Tate Britain.  I was overwhelmed by his sheer ability with paint, and the way in which he captured the very essence of light.  There were pictures at which one could stare for hours on end, reveling in their grandeur. There were tiny watercolours, with human figures the size of ants, but still they were captured in rapid motion.  And there were the wonderful seascapes, with storms rendered far more faithfully than anything those great Dutch and Flemish painters ever managed to achieve.

So when Mr Turner appeared on our screens, I hurried to see it, returned in a rage, read Turner's biography. and penned a hate letter to the director, Mike Leigh. Leigh is an English director of minor films which seem to be known chiefly for their slow pace and serious character (his enemies call "serious character" "bloody gloominess").  

Gloom reigned supreme in his Mr Turner. There were scenes when the Turner painting was captured in some latter-day views of Britain, and long lingering was felt merited.  After the third such trick, the idea, which was not very original in the first instance, palled - or do I mean "cloyed"? For the rest, a few scenes showing that the old man still had some life in his veins were meant to provide the story line on which the whole was knitted together. They didn't. Timothy Spall provided a gout-ridden grumpy old man as Mr Turner.  I am sure the character was the creation of Leigh - Spall is too good an actor to fall for such a travesty without a fight.

And travesty it was.  When I got home, I immediately read two or three different biographies.  The picture that emerged was of a simple, uneducated man whose genius took him far and wide and enriched him with knowledge and wisdom such as he could never have gained had he finished his schooling. There were many stories of his love of young people - Leigh's Turner was positively anti-juvenile. The real Turner was a man with a natural charm - Leigh's Turner  could best be described as a curmudgeon. In life, Turner had loyal, lifelong friends; in Leigh's film, one woman was the extent of his human contact. Turner could sketch with extraordinary facility; Leigh's Turner drew carthorses with crayons. Turner travelled widely; the audience at this film could have been forgiven for thinking he never passed Margate,

If there had been some sort of plot, the whole might have been forgiven.  As it was, one was left with the feeling that, having won a bucket load of cash from the lottery, the director felt he could throw a mess of pottage in the public's face and satisfy his sponsors. He shouldn't have, and he didn't.

Why the risks of climate change have been engineered away

One of the greater challenges we engineers face is telling our clients that their dream project doesn’t work.  If it costs too much, they usually accept our advice with ill grace.  Sometimes, it is technically impossible. Then they have great difficulty in believing us.  For instance, few will accept our advice that the ideal of creating a low carbon world within our lifetimes is probably not achievable.

The evidence that a low carbon world within our lifetimes is an unachievable dream is clear.  In 1998, the then developed nations signed the Kyoto Protocol, which placed legally binding commitments on them to reduce their emissions below 1990 levels. Global emissions in 1990 were 22.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO₂).  Fossil fuels made up 88% of the primary energy supply. In 2012, when the first Kyoto commitment period came to an end, global emissions were 34.5 billion tons, over half as much again as in 1990, and fossil fuels made up 87% of the primary energy.  So much for legally binding commitments!

Of course, the developing nations did not foresee the rapid development of China.  That put paid to the Kyoto ambitions.  Recently, there has been much cheering about China’s offer to start reducing its emissions after 2030.  It is perhaps not as encouraging as at first appears. Today China emits nearly 10 billion tons; business-as-usual until 2030 will see its emissions rise to nearly 18 billion tons.

And if the development of China was overlooked, then the possible similar surge in India’s emissions seems to have been forgotten. India has rejected outright any similar offer to reduce its future emissions, citing the need to develop its economy before it can take such a step. Today India emits about 2 billion tons; by 2030 it is likely to be emitting over 5 billion, and rising rapidly.

So the dream appears unachievable.  The question is then whether it will turn into a nightmare.  There are many who claim that a higher carbon world will be wracked by disaster. In this scenario, the seas will rise, storms will rage, drought will strike, and the biosphere will disappear. These are the predictions of many climate models. While all agree that the models are not very good, the question has to be asked – Suppose the models are right?

Back to the engineers.  Today, humanity depends on us engineers to provide the defences against the seas, floods, droughts and even fires and earthquakes.  Generally we do quite a good job.  Many people stay warm and dry, have enough to eat and drink, and rarely experience the disaster of fires or earthquakes.  Of course, our solutions come with a cost, and there are some who are still trapped in poverty whom we have not yet found ways to save.  But this is largely a social problem. We engineers recognise that while we can make a contribution, poverty is not something we alone can solve.

If this is the state of the world today, then the disaster scenario predicted by the climate models implies that the defences we engineers have built will be found wanting.  In this case, to address the risks, we need to enquire where the existing defences may be too weak to withstand a fiercer onslaught.   

Will the seas rise and drown our cities?  The Dutch have done a good job of teaching the world how to live normally below sea level, so that is not an insuperable problem.  Will there be greater floods than ever known?  Generally engineers design for a one-in-a-hundred-year flood. If we start to get more than that, we should have some time to improve the design to cope with the new one-in-a-hundred.  Will droughts strike with greater frequency and severity?  Our water supplies are already reasonably robust, and over half our water is used quite inefficiently for agriculture. It seems likely that we could withstand more extensive drought, particularly if supplies can be boosted.

This is the basic message that seems to have been lost in the panic about the risks of climate change – we already have a high degree of resilience against the climate, thanks to generations of engineers working in the service of humanity.  That resilience needs maintenance if it is to continue to provide the desired level of protection. It may need reinforcement if the climate should become more extreme.  But the risks presented by climate change are by no means insuperable. The costs are most unlikely to be as excessive as some doomsayers would have us believe.

Moreover, some of the benefits of more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere should not be overlooked.  Satellite images show the world greening and deserts retreating. Many European greenhouses are being controlled at over 1000 parts per million CO₂, two-and-a-half times atmospheric levels. This has been found to boost vegetable and fruit production very significantly.

So the risks that climate change may prove unduly destructive are almost certainly overstated, while the supposed driver of climate change, carbon dioxide, is proving beneficial to life. The proposed “solutions” to climate change, such as carbon taxes, can now be seen to be the chimeras they really are.

Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.

I thought the title of this was from Euripides - but when I checked, I found no-one knew who first had the thought.  

But I was driven to reflect on the gods driving men mad when reading The Frackers, by a Wall Street Journal writer Gregory Zuckerman.  It is the tale of the men who changed the face of the world of energy during this century. 

George Mitchell was the son of a Greek goatherd, an immigrant to the US.  He saw the possibility of stimulating the flow of gas from tight rock by a combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing. It worked.  He died in 2013, aged 94, rich, famous and happy. 

Aubrey McLendon was related to old oil and mineral wealth.  He founded a company, Chesapeake, which almost cornered some of the most valuable rights to shale gas.  It grew rapidly to being one of the most valued companies on the stock exchange before gas prices fell dramatically because of over-supply.  McLendon had borrowed to the hilt, had spent as if there were no future, had paid himself as if no-one else had any interest in the profits, and had enriched his family's estate at the expense of the company with no apparent thought of the morality of what he was doing. Then the private equity groups invested in his company, who also had an interest in its profits, recognized that he was destroying the company through his greed, and forced him out with a mere $48 million as a golden handshake.

Tom Ward had been a schoolmate and then a partner of McLendon's.  He was the quiet foil to his extrovert partner.  When Chesapeake grew, he too started showing off his wealth.  However, gas prices fell after Hurricane Katrina, and suddenly the stock underpinning Chesapeake's debt was worth much less.  Ward could not agree to spending more and more to purchase rights. He left to found SandRidge Energy, focusing on the production of gas from conventional sources, not shale, but using fracking to stimulate his wells.  Before long, SandRidge was a stock exchange darling.  When the gas oversupply caused prices to drop again, SandRidge's stock fell out of favour, and Ward lost 90% of his wealth, over $2 billion, in less than 2 weeks. He fought back, even selling some of his own shares to the company at inflated prices, and finding creative ways for the company to fund his family.  Eventually the private equity groups backing the company had had enough of his costs.  He departed with a $90 million farewell gift.

Harold Hamm was the son of a poor Oklahoma farmer.  He was essentially unschooled, but he had a nose for oil.  His country-bumpkin manner fooled many who crossed his path, and he was able to amass huge acreage of rights in North Dakota that eventually turned the state into one of the biggest oil producers in North America.  He also struck it rich in Texas.  In 2012, his stake in Continental Resources was worth $12 billion - yet when he wanted to build his sister a larger house, she would only let him remodel her bathroom. He, however, fell foul of divorce laws, and in October 2014 it was reported that his wife was about to become his ex wife with a possible payment of $18 billion - the richest award ever.

These were some of the main characters in this extraordinary tale.  It had all the makings of a Greek tragedy - whence my turning to Euripides-who-wasn't. What drove these men to seek more and more wealth?  Most people would be content with a few million dollars, enough to keep them fed and housed for the rest of their lives.  But hundreds of millions? Thousands of millions?  Surely this is enough to excite the envy even of the gods.  No wonder they struck back!

A modern King Canute!

So the EU hopes to cut its carbon emissions by 40% by 2030, relative to 1990. By doing so, it hopes to save the world.

The futility of its policies soon becomes clear after a modicum of analysis.  In 1998 the world signed up to the Kyoto Protocol which sought that by 2012 emissions would be less than they had been in 1990.  Instead emissions grew by 55%.

To be true, the EU made some progress over this period. Largely due to the economic downturn after 2008, by 2012 the emissions of the 12 nations who had been members of the EU in 1990 were 7% less than they had been in 1990.  Britain, Denmark, France, Germany and Italy all managed to reduce their emissions, but Spain’s emissions were up by over 40% and Ireland’s, Norway’s and Portugal’s by over 20%. Moreover, Germany’s emissions are due to increase over the next few years as it constructs more than a dozen new coal-fired power stations to replace its nuclear fleet.

But the best measure of the futility of the EU’s ambitions comes from the signal that the world is not turning away from fossil fuels. Every year since 1990, fossil fuels have made up almost exactly 87% of the world’s primary energy supply. 

EU President Van Rompuy is clearly the latest edition of King Canute.

Anyone for a carbon tax?

Our Treasury seems wedded to the idea of a tax on carbon emissions.  In this, they are cheered on by the Department of Environmental Affairs, but the Department of Energy and the Department of Public Enterprises both seem to be having some reservations. If it is proving difficult to finance Eskom, and economically undesirable to hike the cost of power any more, why would we want to increase the power cost yet further in the vain hope of saving the planet?

It all goes back to that proud moment in November 2009, when our State President stood before the world at a gathering in Copenhagen. He offered to reduce our carbon emissions by large amounts provided the developed nations would help with the costs of the reductions.  At the time, it was seen as a noble gesture on our part.  Now, the gilt has fallen from the offer, not least because the anticipated help has been conspicuous by its absence.  The developed nations have come face-to-face with the economic downturn. Saving the planet has moved lower on the list of priorities.

There are three major things wrong with the tax idea.  First, the plan announced by President Zuma wasn’t a plan in the first place.  What he said was:

With financial and technological support from developed countries, South Africa for example will be able to reduce emissions by 34% below ‘business as usual’ levels by 2020 and by 42% by 2025.

This was a scenario from the Long Term Mitigation Scenarios, which was called “Required by Science.” Now scenarios are not plans, they are sketches of what might be possible.  Moreover, science does not require anything; it merely provides a platform for understanding.  But the Department of Environmental Affairs sprang upon the scenario with glee, believing in their zeal that science really had produced a plan out of some magic hat.  With no further thought of the implications of what they were doing, they set about trying to implement something that had every chance of not being possible. The carbon tax is part of their plan of implementation.

The second thing wrong with it is that it is an economic disaster.  Treasury evaluated the impact, and found it made the rich richer and impoverished the poor. Indeed, the impact was hardest on the poorest. To understand why it is a disaster, you need to recognize that there is a very strong relationship between economic growth and the consumption of energy.  To grow the economy, you have to provide more energy. But over 90% of South Africa’s energy comes from fossil fuels. Most of our energy gives rise to carbon dioxide emissions.  So economic growth means more energy which means more emissions.

It is possible to reduce the linkage between economic growth and energy consumption, but this cannot happen overnight.  Nowhere in the world has there been delinkage at the rate that the Long Term Mitigation Scenarios would require – and, note well, the scenarios were long-term to begin with.

It is also possible to reduce the reliance on fossil fuels.  Indeed, this is precisely what the Department of Energy’s renewable power programme is designed to do.  But even the latest Integrated Resource Plan Update would not produce the sort of drop in reliance that the Mitigation Scenario would require.

The Department of Environmental Affairs recognizes these problems, so it has come up with a different plan.  It aims to set up a carbon trading platform, which will allow companies that produce carbon in excess of some arbitrary limit (which the Department will set) to buy emission credits from companies which produce less carbon than the limit.  Treasury, advised by a group of would-be carbon traders, has agreed to this ploy. 

There are at least three objections – on Treasury’s own calculations, there is insufficient volume of tradable carbon to support such a scheme; a few industries which have found ways to save carbon have already cashed in on the various pre-existing schemes such as the Clean Development Mechanism; and, most damning of all, it would establish a bureaucracy within the Department of Environmental Affairs which could control emissions and thereby the entire economy at the merest whim. The fact that carbon trading platforms have been a disaster in the US and have cost the European Union billions in ineffective support (and lost VAT) has not been sufficient to persuade either the Department or Treasury that such a scheme is ill-advised. Treasury is doubly culpable in this – the foxy carbon traders showed it how to design a carbon henhouse, a sure-fire way to lose the chickens!

The third thing wrong with a carbon tax is that it would achieve nothing.  There seems to be some sort of zeal in our Government to save the world from a possible carbon hell.  South Africa emits around 1% of global emissions.  Suppose we were to reduce our emissions by a quarter, which would probably wreck our economy for good, the global impact would be absolutely nil. 

It might be justified if the rest of the world had similar zeal, but it demonstrably has not.  The Kyoto Protocol came into effect in 2005. In the first commitment period, 2008-12, many developed countries agreed to legally binding limits on their emissions. What happened? Well, between 2008 and 2012, global fossil fuel use went up by 8.5%, and the contribution of fossil fuels to global primary energy supply was unchanged at 87%.  Is it worthwhile committing economic suicide to protest the failure of others to observe legally binding limits?

Moreover, with every passing year the whole rationale for reducing carbon emissions is becoming weaker and weaker.  In the past 16 years, emissions have gone up 40%; global temperatures have been stationary.  Indeed, there has been only a short period in our history when the hypothesis that carbon emissions and global temperatures are linked was supportable. That was between 1970 and 1997. Before then, the world cooled as emissions increased, and since then the temperature has not changed.

Instead, a different hypothesis has emerged. This proposes that there will be more extreme weather in a warmer world.  However, it is not demonstrable.  To the contrary, it has been possible to extend many measures back to the late 1800’s. We can now see how extreme the weather was in earlier times.  Even though the world has demonstrably warmed over the past 150 years, there has been no detectable change in the frequency or severity of extreme events.  One of the surprises has been that the world has not become measurably wetter, which seemed very likely in a warmer world.

So the rationale behind a carbon tax is now very weak.  It always was weak.  The idea that a tax will encourage a change in social behaviour is seductive, but a little thought will soon show the flaws.  It was long hoped, for instance, that swingeing taxes on tobacco would reduce smoking, but it had little effect. Other laws became necessary to bring about the desired social change.  Alcohol consumption continues unabated – the annual increase in the sin tax has an imperceptible effect.  At least with tobacco and alcohol, it is possible to cut down on consumption.  Carbon, with its direct linkage to energy and wealth creation, can only be cut back by greater efficiency. Most large users of energy have already done much to improve their efficiency as far as possible.  Further improvement is up against the law of diminishing returns. 

Carbon emissions are therefore inelastic, in economic terms. Adding a cost to energy has an impact on the demand by closing otherwise profitable industries. Jobs are then lost.  It is happening in our economy right now. That is ultimately the reason why there are no grounds for taxing carbon.