Is carbon offsetting a real solution?

Can the market be the way forward in the fight against climate change, or is carbon trading simply a license to pollute? It's a question that RealClimate.Org is better qualified than I to answer. :::[Buying a stairway to heaven?]

Compliance with Kyoto, a mere 5% reduction in carbon emissions, was forecast by Nordhaus [2001] to cost a few percent of GDP globally. The cost to stop emission completely and immediately may not even be calculable. Carbonfund.org promises zero net emissions, for a fraction of 1% of the average U.S. income. Can this possibly be real, or are we talking indulgences and snake oil?

The idea behind carbon offsets is built upon the foundation of carbon emissions trading established by the Kyoto Protocol, a scheme called cap and trade. Carbon emissions for industries are capped at some level by regulatory permits to emit CO₂.
If a company is able to cut its emissions below that level, it can sell its emission permits to another company. The cuts in emissions are thereby steered, by the invisible hand of the market, to the cheapest and most efficient means. Cap-and- trade has worked well for reduction of sulfur emissions in the U.S., that are responsible for acid rain. CO₂ emission is intrinsically even better suited for cap- and-trade, because it is a truly global pollutant, so it matters not where the CO₂ is emitted.

The carbon emissions market requires a certification process to verify any reduction in carbon emissions. Carbonfund.org and the other similar operations take donations from people like me and use the money to pay for renewable energy sources like solar cells or wind farms, that would not have been built otherwise. For these efforts, they receive credits for reduction in carbon emissions that are certified as valid, and therefore eligible for trade in the emissions market. Instead of trading that emission credit, carbonfund.org "retires" it, so that it isn't used to balance higher carbon emission from another source. The certification process from the emissions market has an unintended benefit of providing an independent way to verify the carbon impact from sending money to organizations like carbonfund.org. It's a nifty idea.

Other blogs on: kyoto protocol global warming climate change carbon emissions tradingemissions credits

Most Aussies oppose nuclear power

Following up our recent posting on how the nuclear debate in Australia is simply a Howard wedge tactic designed to split Labor, is a Newspoll showing 51 percent of Australians opposed to nuclear power in Australia. :::[SMH]

Other results:

• More people opposed uranium enrichment than approved of it (46 per cent to 34 per cent)
• 44 per cent were against the opening any new uranium mines
• 22 per cent wanted no uranium mining at all
• supporters of nuclear power stations were mostly men or Coalition affiliates
• majority opposition came from women, people aged between 18 and 49, and Labor voters
• there has been a dramatic closing of the gap in the past 20 years

There has been a dramatic closing of the gap in the past 20 years of those who oppose or support the idea of enriching Australian uranium for nuclear reactors before enriching it.

• A 1988 poll showed 59 per cent of people were against uranium enrichment in Australia and only 25 per cent supported it
• In the latest poll 46 per cent opposed to uranium enrichment (13-point drop), and there has been a nine-point rise to 34 per cent for those in favour

On another point it is interesting to note that Howard's popularity is going in the same direction as Bush's, Blair's and Berlusconi's. The Iraq war disaster may not have seemed to initially affect Howard as much as his coalition cohorts, but it is a slow burn as Australians realise that a) Iraq seems to only go from worse to worse as we pass each new heralded milestone with lowered hopes and no respite, b) petrol prices keep going up while oil companies make record profits, c) we turned our largest wheat importer into an enemy and wasted much by the way of military resources, while we ignored problems in East Timor, who we have a duty to help after exposing them to Indonesia's revenge.

Other posts on nuclear in Australia:

• The nuclear debate in Australia
  Little Johnny Howard goes the wedgie on Beasley (but is too short).
  

Other blogs on: global warming climate change nuclear power australia

Spanish grape to chill out when globe warms.

To save their $US2.4 billion industry from global warming, Spanish winemakers are shading wineries, developing heat-resistant grape genes and in a mass 'treechange', uprooting and migrating up the mountains. :::[Miami Herald]

Heat and sunlight increase sugar levels in wine grapes, which can boost alcohol content beyond what is palatable. Hotter weather may also curb grape acidity, changing the flavor, and unexpectedly rainy and cold seasons can devastate a year's crop.

A rise of even one degree Celcius will harm the lowland vinyards, and several prestigious companies are staking out suitable new locations in the cooler higher Pyranees. "Temperatures may rise 7 degrees Celsius by the end of the century", said Jose Manuel Moreno, professor of climatology at the University of Castilla La Mancha.

"Wine makers must plan to protect their grapes, because vines can keep producing wine for as many as 80 years and will be exposed to several generations of warming temperatures", reports Richard Smart, an Australian wine industry consultant advising on climate change.

global warning climate change global warming effects spain wine

Twenty one hurricanes, one hundred and twenty seconds.

Watching a fast motion visualisation of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season off the Mexican Gulf from space is a humbling experience. From where God is sitting, one can't help but feel awe for the power of nature.

The reconstructed weather maps taken from the Aqua and GOES-12 satellites is combined with temperature mapping of water surface temperatures, with orange depicting 31 degrees Celsius (87 Fahrenheit), the temperature at which the water starts to foment into hurricane fuel.

From January 1, 2005, a week before Arlene to Wilma on 0ctober 19, 2005, the visualisation takes 120 seconds showing the oceans build up heat reservoirs over summer to expel it as a hurricanes, offering some temporary relief to the ocean temperatures before another tropical storm ferments. Watch the seas just to the north of and around Cuba heat up, build up and inevitably become the genesis of Katrina.

It's also fascinating to watch the water bodies dramatically cool down in the wake of a hurricane, as the excess heat energy is transferred into extreme weather. You can get a real sense of this being one of Gaia's homeostatic mechanisms to maintain equilibrium, much like sweating is one of ours.

:::[NASA mpeg]
:::[21 Named Storms From the 2005 Atlantic Hurricane Season]

Other blogs on: global warming climate change hurricane katrina hurricanes

Global warming melts igloos, forces tent living.

Climate change may be an abstract concept for you. It may be difficult to perceive as yet, but the Inuit, attuned to to living on the ice over thousands of years, experience it every day not as climate change, but climate disruption. Spring has been arriving at remote Arctic village of Puvirnituq, in Northern Quebec, just south of Baffin Island earlier and earlier for the past six years. In times gone past traditional Inuit could look out the window and tell what the weather would be like the next day, "now it could be anything". Where snow once covered the mountains overlooking the villiage of Ivujivik, and ice covered the bay, there is now bare rock and open water. In April they experience June temperatures. Canadian officials visited Puvirnituq to disscuss climate change and the unexpected heat melted their igloo forcing them to decamp to a tent. Polar bears are coming dangerously close to humans in search of prey. Source: :::[SMH]

"It isn't just that it is warmer," Mr Aubin said. "It's the unpredictable nature of the weather now. We can go out hunting or fishing inland in March and find it's too warm to build an igloo, so we put up a tent and then the temperature suddenly drops again and we could freeze to death."

Other posts on global warming and the Inuit

• Global warming: Bush stands on fast thinning ice
  Shishmaref - A Casualty of Global Warming (photo essay)

Tags: global+warming, climate+change, artic, inuit

The nuclear debate in Australia

John Howard says he wants a debate on nuclear power to occur in Australia. That's fine by me, but I think the debate should be about the bigger problem of global warming and that nuclear should be just part of the conversation. But I can play on Howard's terms. Let me open the debate by asking what we do with the spent uranium?

As if on cue the government is just about to receive a report it commissioned that was conducted by Professor John Gittus, and independent consultant to the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO). Funnily enough it will say that the the latest type of nuclear power station is economically competitive with new coal fired power stations: :::[SMH].

Mrs Bishop said the study concluded that nuclear power was the safest, most secure way of generating electricity with greater price stability in comparison to gas or coal power generation.

The analysis also found the nuclear option was even more attractive when considering the cost of environmental damage and carbon dioxide emissions from new coal or gas-fired power stations.

"I welcome this report as a useful contribution to what I hope will be an evidence-based debate about nuclear power in Australia. The debate must focus on the facts and not be biased by emotion," she said in a statement.

OK, no emotion I promise (other than the emotion of surprise - this is the first time I have head of nuclear being economically competitive with coal). Now what about that spent uranium? What are we going to do with that? There I go, getting all emotional again.

I needn't. It seems Howard's attempts to talk up a nuclear debate is simply: :::[A red herring to prompt a Labor split.]

UPDATE:

Peter Hartcher's article elicited an interesting response published in letter to the editor of the SMH the following day:

Peter Hartcher gets John Howard's motives absolutely right when, out of the blue, the Prime Minister suggests a full debate on nuclear power for Australia ("A red herring to prompt a Labor split," May 26). Howard must know that because of economic factors here, the private sector wouldn't consider it in a fit. His real intention is much more cynical - to divide the ALP.

But I don't think Hartcher is altogether correct in claiming that because Iran is drenched in oil, it doesn't feel the need to develop nuclear power for electricity. When I was at the Australian embassy in Tehran in 1972 and 1973, the Shah frequently said oil was too valuable and finite a commodity simply to burn for power. With the backing of the Americans and the World Bank, he had a vigorous nuclear research program. This was the foundation for the program, which the revolutionaries who ousted him, including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have been building on.

Richard Broinowski Paddington

And a clever judo throw.

There's a very simple answer to the Prime Minister's devious and divisive call for a debate on nuclear energy. At every turn we must tell him: it's not about nuclear energy, Mr Howard, it's about renewable energy.

John Newton Glebe

Tags: global+warming, climate+change, nuclear+power, australia

Grim news on global warming.

With the CEI dutifully telling us that carbon dioxide is natural because plants breath it in, CSIRO scientist Paul Fraser's findings that plants are just not inhaling anymore will be most unwelcome for them. I recently blogged about a presentation he was about to deliver on the latest results of testing at the Cape Grim meteorological station in Tasmania at a climate meeting in Sydney in the middle of the month :::[2005 record growth in atmospheric carbon dioxide].

I just wanted to catch up with the findings: Source :::[The Age]

• levels of carbon dioxide - believed to be the single biggest man-made gas contributing to climate change - hit another record high.
• carbon dioxide levels increasing at almost double the rate they were in the early 1980s.
• combined greenhouse gas rises in 2005 resulted in record levels of greenhouse gas heating, known as radiative forcing, which is driving up the earth's temperature.

The rate of growth is unprecedented:

"We would expect carbon dioxide to grow every year, but I have been surprised that it has been growing at above average rates for four years straight, because we haven't seen that before," lead author Paul Fraser said. "It's a clear signal that fossil fuels are having an impact on greenhouse gas concentrations in a way we haven't seen in the past."

Global warming skeptics please note that it's not just bad news coming out of Gap Grim these days though:

The report's silver lining was the finding that gases that damage the earth's protective ozone layer - such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) once commonly used in refrigerators - have been falling since 1997.

The turnaround is the result of the Montreal Protocol, a legally binding international treaty adopted in 1989 by most countries, including Australia, that forced manufacturers to curb their use of CFCs.

Dr Fraser said it was proof that international agreements have a positive effect.

Other blogs on: global warming climate change cape grim CFC, carbon dioxide levels cei

ExxonMobil funds global warming spoofer

Being a discredited former NASA climate scientist pays when it comes to picking hobbys, if your hobby happens to be writing a web site spoofing 'global warming alarmism'. Roy W. Spencer's EcoEnquirer.com gets 43,000 page views a month satirising the bad news about global warming, and he gets paid to write for TCS Daily, a science and public policy thinktank that receives funds from ExxonMobil.

He is the scientist who has been responsible for amost two decades of confusion and controversy over the disparity between satellite temperatures and surface temperatures. His research showing the Earth was warming more slowly than surface temperature readings would indicate. He won NASA's Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal in 1991 for that work, but this month a government study concluded there was no statistical difference between the two climate records, finally clearing the air (or allowing us to move in that direction).

His other hobby? He's a god-rock-god:

He's lead guitarist in a contemporary Christian rock band at St. Mark's Lutheran Church in Huntsville. (His environmentalist-mocking alternative lyrics to Supertramp's "Give a Little Bit": "I'll take a little bit, I'll take a little bit of your wealth from you/So give a little bit, oh, give a little more than a dime to me.")

Oh, one of them "the Lord wants us to be rich" Christians? Just wait till the money tables have turned on you. :::[Washington Post]

Other blogs on: global warming, climate change, global warming skeptic, ExxonMobil, climate change denial

If Iran is like Hitler's germany then war must be soon.

Off topic ... but the bleat that Howard and that new conservative Canadian Prime Minister are making over the since withdrawn story of Iran making Jews and Christians wear armbands suggests to me that we (they) are very close to going to war against Iran. :::[SMH] The same pattern of demonisation of Saddam Hussain happended before the US invaded. His sons were rapists, he was a baby killer, and oh yea, people were were sexually humiliated and tortured in henious ways at Abu Ghraib. What I don't understand is why they/we want to go again when they are so bogged down in Iraq? For unfathomable reasons, the world's last sole superpower is rendering itself a laughing stock for foes and friends alike, much like the scorn that the Romans are treated with in the Asterix comics.

Update: ::[Claims not true]

Mind you, well may we laugh; without Getafix, the Druid who could cook up superstrength potion in his cauldron, Asterix would have had no option but to pay tithe to Caesar. We don't have a druid in Australia, just a gnome, and he is in Canada paying tithe to Rome. He is using his position to help demonise Iran to pave the way for Bush to sell a war:

Mr Howard, speaking in Ottawa after a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, said the suggestion was further indication Iran was heading down the wrong path.

Mr Howard, speaking in Ottawa after a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, said the suggestion was further indication Iran was heading down the wrong path.

"If that (the report) is true, I would find it totally repugnant," Mr Howard told reporters before the report was debunked.

"It obviously echoes the most horrible period of genocide in the world's history and the marking of Jewish people with a mark on their clothing by the Nazis, and anything of that kind, would be totally repugnant to civilised countries.

"If it is the case, it's something that would just further indicate to me the nature of this regime.

"It's a calculated insult, if it's true, not only to Christians but most particularly to Jews."

Mr Howard was joined in the attack on Iran by the US and Canada, who said they had no details on the issue beyond the newspaper report.

Well it's not true. If Iran is expecting an apology from Howard there's a long queue, and we don't like queue jumpers. In my analogy I would have to say New Zealand was more like that Gaulish village holding out to Rome. After they told the US navy to not even think of docking a nuclear warship off their fair shores in the 1980's they had a quiet taste of what it must be like to be Cuba. You don't see the NZ Prime Minister, Helen Clark, having to sidle up to Caesar and sully her country's good name with constructing another raft of lies on which to float another expeditionary war. Their economy has recovered now and is far less dependent on America and her dollar. They are ranked #1 in world environmental performance and, whatever they have been drinking it has not hurt their performance with two NZ teams in the finals of the Super 14 Rugby. Not to take anything away from the Hurricanes but there was that bad call in the 69th minute by referee Jonathan Kaplan whose name will forever be typed in small font on this blog. I blame his clear vendetta against the Waratahs - in the 10 games he has refereed the 'tahs we have never won. I blame that and that fact that we have a gnome and no druids in this country.

Oil War Iraq Iran Australia Canada US New Zealand

Carbon dioxide spot: They call it an ad, we call it a lie.

An ExxonMobil funded lobby group, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, is going on the attack to stake out the high ground in the public conversation on global warming that is likely to erupt around the opening of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth". Two 60 second tv ads produced by the institute will be played in 14 U.S. cities from May 18 to May 28, 2006. :::[Thinkprogress]

The CEI commercial
Carbon Dioxide: they call it pollution, we call it life

I see that ExxonMobil are conserving their record profits wisely and not spending much on production values. Global Warming Watch felt it needed a rejoinder and dug deep into our treasury to fund the writing of the counter-ad (no production budget, sorry):

Video	Audio
Long shot opening on a shot of man standing in a large glass tank up to his ankles in water. Water is filling it fast, with the level rising as he speaks.
	Presenter: "Some oil and coal companies tell us that carbon dioxide is natural and shouldn't be classified as a pollutant by politicians wanting to legislate against rising emissions.
The level is at his waist and rising fast.
	Presenter: "They imply C02 can't be a pollutant because we expel it, and it is absorbed by plants for food."
The level is now at chest height and rising.
	Presenter: "That it provides us with transport and is it is harnessed to make energy and free us a life of back-breaking labour."
Level is starting to cover shoulders. Presenter stretches to full height. Tilting chin al
	Presenter: "That it supports all life."
Water level is at chin height.
	Presenter: "But you can also say the same thing about water." SFX: last few words spoken under water yet audible.
Camera pulls back to longer shot as the water continues to rise rapidly . Presenter starts to float off. Super: Carbon Dioxide: Too much is dangerous for all life.
	VO: Don't let big oil flood you with lies. The scientific consensus holds that the current rate of emissions increase, unchecked, IS going to change the climate. It's time to act.

It must be getting hard to maintain that global warming is not occurring.

The television commercials: :::[CEI]

Other bloggers commenting on CEI's advertisements:

• :::[But...But...Carbon Dioxide is So Natural!]
  Eloquent post by LitBrit of The Last Duchess blog
• Thank You For Exhaling
  
• Know thine enemy
• Who needs oxygen when we've got carbon dioxide?
  
• "they call it a spot. we call it a stain."

More: :::[Global Warming Watch]

Other blogs on: global warming, climate change, carbon dioxide, CEI, skeptics

And now, a message from the President of the United States

President Al Gore: "Good evening, my fellow Americans. In 2000 when you overwhelmingly made the decision to elect me as your 43rd president, I knew the road ahead would be difficult. We have accomplished so much yet challenges lie ahead.

In the last 6 years we have been able to stop global warming. No one could have predicted the negative results of this ... :::[Crooks and Liars]

See the video :::[Windows Media Player]:::[Quick Time]

Other posts on: Al Gore and global warming:

• Al Gore, Global Warming Crusader-in-Chief.

Other blogs on: global warming, al gore, satire

Emissions cuts Bonn mots: After you. No, after you!

One hundred and ninety of the world's nations will be meeting in Bonn on May 15-16 to attempt to create a dialogue between the developing world, the 40 rich nations subscribing to the U.N.'s emissions capping Kyoto Protocol, and the United States which generates 25 percent of the heat trapping greenhouse gasses responsible for the unnatural rate of warming. We are currently warming at 0.2°C per decade and at this rate 35 years to 50 years is all we have before the climate is irreversibly damaged according to experts Gorbechov talks to: :::[SMH].

Many poor countries want industrialised nations to make deeper cuts before they consider putting a brake on emissions from factories, power plants and cars.

They say rich nations have been the source of most greenhouse gases since the Industrial Revolution.

The poor countries have a point, and it is the same one the US warned was the reason why Kyoto was weak. But it plays into the hands of big oil and big coal and it would be hard for the poor coutries to argue this way had the US not pulled out of Kyoto in 2001.

And while they have a point in terms of the rhetorical framework contructed around global warming, entrenching fossil fuel dependence is not a sensible position for their long-term when it is at the opportunity cost of adjusting their economies to run on green energy. There has been an unchallenged assumption that converting to greener economies will come at the cost of growth framing this whole global warming debate. Today, this has been challenged in Australia by the Australia Institute: :::[SMH]

THE Federal Government's argument for not signing the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions has been rocked by new analysis showing the economic impact on Australia would be much smaller than expected.

Signing would have relatively minor consequences for Australia's competitiveness and could be easily managed, the report on the effects of carbon pricing has found. And it warns Australia's failure to sign is likely to be far more costly in the long run
than if it were to participate.

Knew that would startle you. Here is a bigger eye opener.

The Government has justified its failure to ratify the protocol by arguing compliance would have a disproportionate impact on the economy because of Australia's heavy dependence on industries with intense carbon emissions.

But the report said the industries that would be most affected by the imposition of a price on greenhouse gas emissions - aluminium, alumina, steel, nickel, gold and liquefied natural gas producers - account for just 1.5 per cent of gross domestic product.

"The international competitiveness problem is much smaller than has often been claimed," says the report, prepared for the Australia Institute by Hugh Saddler and Clara Cuevas, from the energy consultancy Energy Strategies, and Frank Muller of the University of NSW.

One-point-five piddly percent of the GDP? How come these guys get to have so much influence on government policy? On our environment? Our kids' futures? And their's? You can't even get away with calling it disproportionate. It's obscene, and it exposes the anticipated Bonne mexican standoff between the poor countries and the US, our partners in eco-crime, as pure artifice.

Other posts on: emissions reductions not coming at the cost of economic growth:

• Petrol hits $A1.25, and leather hits pavement.

Other blogs on: global warming, climate talks, Bonn, Australia, energy, emissions, Kyoto Protocol, Australia Institute

2005 record growth in atmospheric carbon dioxide

Global warming is great for those who like broken records. A CSIRO scientist, Paul Fraser, will present the latest results of testing at the Cape Grim meteorological station in Tasmania at a climate meeting in Sydney tomorrow: :::[SMH]

Dr Fraser said carbon dioxide grew by two parts per million (0.54 per cent) in 2005, the fourth year in a row of above-average growth.

"To have four years in a row of above-average carbon dioxide growth is unprecedented," Dr Fraser said in a statement.

"In addition, the trend over recent years suggests the growth rate is accelerating."

He said the 30-year record of air collected at the Cape Grim observation station showed growth rates of just over one part per million in the early 1980s but, in recent years, carbon dioxide had increased at almost twice this rate.

"This is a clear signal that fossil fuels are having an impact on greenhouse gas concentrations in a way we haven't seen in the past," Dr Fraser said.

The good news is that methane has seen a slight decrease over the past two years, and that ozone depleting gases have been decreasing since 1997. Actually, that last bit is fantastic news; it comprehensively demonstrates that we can do something effective about climate threat without suffering a fall in economic growth.

other blogs on: global warming, climate change, carbon dioxide

Al Gore, Global Warming Crusader-in-Chief.

The perception that the United States is the source of all global warming evil for squandering their unique leadership status is not helped when you look at their leader. "Do I have to?" I hear you groan. I only bring it up by way of making the point that the Emitter-in-Chief is not the only leader the US has; there is Al Gore, and he is showing leadership on global warming.

If he were to hitch his presidential campaign to that wagon I would say he can't go wrong. He's a younger man with time on his side, at some point he will be thrust on the center stage of the biggest global events we will ever witness, climate change. But these days he introduces himself as the man who "used to be the next president of the United States" when he presents his documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" that he is crisscrossing the country with. Whether he is dinkum about his ambitions or not, he seems the real McCoy about his subject: :::[ABC News]

You learn in "An Inconvenient Truth" that Gore has focused on global warming longer than he's been a politician; he studied at Harvard under Roger Revel, one of the first scientists to realize that the industrial age has created a new and unnatural injection into the atmosphere of CO2 and other greenhouse gases that would change the climate of the entire planet.

In Al Gore's 'slideshow' prelude to the film he comes across as a convincing harbinger to the ABC journalist:

Whatever your politics, it is an authoritative and compelling demonstration of the unassailable reality and dangers for humanity of the continuing addition to the atmosphere of greenhouse gases emitted from the burning of fossil fuels — coal, oil and gas.

I am pleased to note that the journalist, Bill Blakemore, is himself convinced. It seems like a bold move that the American ABC News program forcefully assert the scientific consensus that there is manmade global warming, even though it shouldn't seem that way:

And yes, as our research here at ABC News has confirmed, virtually all the credible climate scientists say that if humanity continues with business as usual in pouring carbon dioxide into the atmosphere unabated, then global temperature will continue to soar into temperatures far higher than the human species has ever experienced, making Earth incapable of supporting civilization "as we know it" (that used to be a joke line in a Monty Python skit), perhaps with, as eminent Earth systems scientist James Lovelock speculates, "only a few breeding pairs of humans left near the poles," where, he supposes, life may still be tolerable.

The other thing on Al Gore side is that he doesn't chew gum while he walks the talk. He has established the Alliance for Climate Action, a "collection of local, regional and state-level professionals committed to working to reverse the growth of greenhouse gas emissions in Burlinglton, Vermont", as the Burlington Electric Department website describes it.

"Professional", now there's a refreshingly pleasing word to be associated with leadership. I have never thought it professional when the Emitter-in-Chief chews gum while he talks the walk. And just what is that chewing motion when he pauses during his speeches all about? Bush is not ruminating, that's clear from this side of the Pacific.

global warming climate change al gore an inconvenient truth

Boxing The Glacier - The Blovel

Introduction.

If you thought witnessing global warming equals watching paint dry then bookmark our Boxing the Glacier blovel, wherein a heady brew of murky industrial and political agendas compete with the latest mainstream climate science for public mindshare in a race against time as we hurtle through space towards a catastrophe that not even Michael Crichton could dream of in his wildest fictions.

All in this novel blovel form - blovel being a novel in live-blog format that takes its plot lines and characters from the real world to entertain and inform. It's a total experiment and I take as inspiration Crichton's blends of fiction and pseudo-science in State of Fear. Not just the book, the phenomenon; the guy has been received by the President of the United States as some sort of climate change expert, for god's sake. His scientific credentials extend to writing Jurassic Park, The Great Train Robbery, Westworld, Prey and Rising Sun.

Yet his global warming views have helped shape policy: :::[TNR]

As reported in Rebel-in-Chief, a new book on George W. Bush by Weekly Standard Editor Fred Barnes, soon after State of Fear's December 2004 publication, Crichton was contacted by Karl Rove with word that Bush had read his novel and wanted to meet him. In January 2005, Crichton spent an hour with Bush. The session, Barnes writes, found the men "in near-total agreement."

What is this upside down world we live in? No longer is fiction embargoed from science when developing public policy. And that is acceptable? This new reality slipped in via the same trojan embedded in the public psyche that facilitated the notion of Intelligent Design coming to challenge Darwin in the science class-room. That virus didn't survive the sanitory court rooms, but while the trojan lives anything can and does go wrong. We have a serious problem on our hands with global warming, and the one thing that is going to help is a scientific understanding of climate change. The right information will help us make the right decisions and survive. Yet in an ironic inversion of the classic Crichton plotline of a dystopian scientocracy we have a case where NASA's top climate scientist, James E. Hansen, claims he is censored by the White House. He charges that NASA's scientists are intimidated into withholding scientific findings that run counter to Administration policy.

Throw into that crazy crucible the withering speech of satirist comic Stephen Colbert at the Annual Washington Press Corps Dinner, add the reaction of the President to the blowtorch of truthiness, flavour with the media's pretense that it did not happen, stir, forment, and presto ... Boxing the Glacier.

We have good guys, we have bad guys, we have the fate of humanity hanging in the balance. What more do you want? A plot? It doesn't work that way, this is a blovel where I get my inspiration from the real world. You will just have to wait until I spot one I think I could work with. I think I may have one but I am going to give it the overnight test so, please, watch this space.

global warming climate change blovel blogging