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We had a seasonal pub lunch with neighbours, and my christmas cracker included the question:

“How many gifts would you have if you received all the gifts in the song ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’?”

The song indicates the following gifts I will receive on each day:

on 1st day I’ll receive, a partridge in a pear tree;

on 2nd day, 2 turtle doves and a partidge in a pear tree;

on 3rd day, 3 French hens, 2 turtle doves and a partidge in a pear tree;

etc.

So, by the twelth day I will have received a total of:

12 x 1 partridges (each in a pear tree);

11 x 2 turtle doves;

10 x 3 French hens;

… etc; (until we get to)

1 x 12 drummers drumming.

So, the total number of gifts is:

(12×1) + (11×2) + (10×3) + … + (1×12)

which my abstemious wife very rapidly computed is 364 gifts.

By which time and after a few glasses of wine, I was of course wanting a more general result, so I declared:

“What about the number of gifts on the Nth day of Christmas?”

My wife mumbled “here we go!”, and by then my pen and paper napkin were at the ready …

Assuming the general gifts were denoted g1, g2, g3, …, gN, then we’d end up with…

N x 1 of gift g1

(N-1) x 2 of gift g2

(N-3) x 3 of gift g3

… etc. until

1 x N of gift gN

Let’s call the total number of gifts arrived at as G(N). So as an example, we already know that G(12) = 364

In mathematical notation I can write this in a different way (see Note 1), and solve the equation to show that …

G(N) = (1/6) * N * (N+1) * (N+2)

Testing this equation for case of N=12 I get

G(12) = (1/6) * 12 * 13 *14

           = 2 *13 * 14

           = 364

Job done!

When I got home I wondered if there was a geometrical way of deriving this result, rather like the trick that Gauss used as a young boy when the teacher asked the class to add the whole numbers from 1 to 100 (see Note 2).

I rather like the visual proof which I can show for N=4 as:

which generally (for N rather than 4), and expressed algebrailly, can be expressed as

^N∑[i] = (N² – N)/2  + N

= (N² /2) – N/2 + N

= (N² /2) + N/2

= (1/2) * N * (N+1)

My question to myself was can we do a similar visual trick with the Nth Days of Christmas sum? (I say we, but without the genius Gauss to assist me!).

We have to go three dimensional now to build a picture of the number. The child’s blocks I could find were too few in number and we don’t have sugar cubes, but we do have veggie stock cubes! So, I created the following …

The left hand portion represents 3×1 + 2×2 + 1×3 which is G(3)

The same number of blocks is in the right portion (in mirror image).

In the middle I have added 1+2+3+4 which is the familiar ⁴∑[i]

Put these all together and the picture is as follows:

which is clearly 1²+2²+3²+4²  which is the familiar ⁴∑[i²]

That’s a nice pictorial solution of a kind.

So in algebraic terms that gives

2 G(3) + ⁴∑[i]  =  ⁴∑[i²]

This gives me an algebraic solution that is not any simpler than the original solution I made on the napkin. The stock cubes give me:

G(N-1)  =  (1/2) * ( ^N∑[i²] – ^N∑[i] )

which can be solved (Note 3) to give

G(N) = (1/6) * N * (N+1) * (N+2)

as before.

However, I felt I had failed in my quest to avoid algebra or at least a much simpler algebraic resolution. Ultimately I couldn’t find one, but the visualization is at least a great way to play with the number relationships.

At least I will be very quick with the answer if ever I am asked

“How many gifts would you have if you received all the gifts in the general song ‘The N Days of Christmas’?”

“Oh, that’s easy, it one sixth of N, times N plus one, times N plus two.”

Richard W. Erskine, 30th December 2018

Note 1

G(N) can be written as the following sum:

G(N) = ∑ [(N – i + 1) * ( i )]

where ^N∑[] is shorthand for “sum of expression […] for i ranging from 1 to N”

Expanding the expression, I get

G(N) = ( (N+1) * ^N∑[i] )  –   ^N∑[i²]

Now, there are well known results that give us, firstly

^N∑[i] = (1/2) * N * (N+1)

and secondly,

^N∑[i²] = (1/6) * N * (N+1) * (2N + 1)

So, combining these I get,

G(N) = ((N+1) * (1/2) * N * (N+1) )   –  ((1/6) * N * (N+1) * (2N + 1))

Taking out a common factor (1/6) * N * (N+1), this becomes

G(N) = (1/6) * N * (N+1) * { 3*(N+1) – (2N + 1) }

Simplifying { 3*(N+1) – (2N + 1) } I get {N+2}, so

G(N) = (1/6) * N * (N+1) * (N+2)

Note 2

Gauss as a boy spotted a short-cut, which can be seen in the following picture:

The sum 1+2+3+4 is represented by the shaded blocks, and the unshaded blocks are also the same sum in reverse order. So, we can see

1+2+3+4 = (1/2) * 4 * (4+1) = 2 * 5 = 10

and in general

^N∑[i] = (1/2) * N * (N+1)

Note 3

G(N-1) = (1/2) * ( ^N∑[i²] – ^N∑[i] )

= (1/2) * { { (1/6) * N * (N+1) * (2N + 1) } – {(1/2) * N * (N+1) } }

= (1/2) * (1/6) * N * (N+1) * { (2N + 1)  –  3 }

= (1/2) * (1/6) * N * (N+1) * { 2N  –  2 }

= (1/6) * N * (N+1) * { N – 1 }

So,

G(N) = (1/6) * (N+1) * (N+2)  * N

or, rearranging

G(N) = (1/6) * N * (N+1) * (N+2)

as before.

Royal Dutch Shell plc, or Shell for short, have issued a statement, under pressure from institutional investors, on how they will contribute to achieving the Paris climate change commitments. They state:

“Shell fully supports the Paris Agreement and believes that society has the scientific and technical knowledge to achieve a world where global warming is limited to well below 2°C.” (Ref. 1)

That sounds pretty unequivocal, and Shell are spending a lot of money aiming to persuade us that they are indeed serious. Let’s take a look at their claims.

Reuters reported in March 2018 that:

“Shell, the world’s top trader of liquefied natural gas, currently produces around 3.7 million barrels of oil equivalent per day, of which roughly half is natural gas.” (Ref. 2)

That’s 1.35 billion barrels per year, of which 50% is natural gas. This equates to about 0.5 billion tonnes of CO₂ equivalent per year, or 0.5 GtCO₂e/yr  for short, from the end-use emissions from their products (Note 1).

Shell is claiming to take a lead on emissions reductions, but take a look at Shell’s own statement of ‘direct emissions’ (those resulting from operation of their operations):

“The direct greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from facilities we operate were 73 million tonnes on a CO₂-equivalent basis in 2017, … The indirect GHG emissions from the energy we purchased (electricity, heat and steam) were 12 million tonnes on a CO₂-equivalent basis in 2017” (Ref. 7)

So Shell are focusing on these production-based emission totalling 85 million tonnes of CO₂e in 2017, or 0.085 GtCO₂e.  

From the above figures we see that their production related emissions of CO2e are nearly 15% of the net CO₂e resulting from production and end-use (see Note 2). By no means a trivial part of their net emissions, but no surprise that their marketing focuses on their production methods not the 85% coming for end-use of their products, that they clearly cannot mitigate, except by not producing them in the first place.

This explains why Shell, in the disclaimer to their statement to institutional investors, state:

“Also, in this statement we may refer to “Net Carbon Footprint” or “NCF, which includes Shell’s carbon emissions from the production of our energy products, our suppliers’ carbon emissions in supplying energy for that production and our customers’ carbon emissions associated with their use of the energy products we sell. Shell only controls its own emissions but, to support society in achieving the Paris Agreement goals, we aim to help and influence such suppliers and consumers to likewise lower their emissions. The use of the terminology “Net Carbon Footprint” is for convenience only and not intended to suggest these emissions are those of Shell or its subsidiaries.” (Ref. 1)

The key words are “Shell only controls its own emissions”, but offers to “support society” in meeting Paris Agreement goals.

Off the agenda of this statement is any suggestion of keeping fossil fuels in the ground or an acknowledgement of the devastating implications of the IPCC’s 1.5C special report.

They plan to boost natural gas extraction, tripling this by 2050 according to the Reuters report. Citing measures such as use of CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) lead them to state an aspiration to halve the ‘Net Carbon Footprint’ (which includes end-use emissions) by 2050. This may seem to be an ambitious and welcome commitment for a fossil fuel major, but it fails to acknowledge the urgency with which we must decarbonise energy, and relies on the same magical thinking involved in the massive scaling required in CCS technologies by 2050 that many policy-makers are prone to.

This is a self-administered license to carry on extracting and selling fossil fuels.

Shell have been flooding the media with reports of how they are reducing carbon emissions, and they will fund events such as the annual New Scientist Live 2018, where they had a large stand in the middle of the exhibition hall; right next to BP’s stall offering, you guessed it, the same soothing words on emissions reductions. They will be back for more next year (Ref. 8).

If Shell are the trail-blazers amongst the fossil fuel majors, then what to expect from the laggards? 40% reduction by 2050, or 30%, or 20%, or less? What is the ambition of the industry as a whole, which last year was responsible for nearly 37 GtCO₂ overall (Ref. 5)?

But they, like the other carbon majors and all the minors, are collectively in denial about the challenge we face, and the urgency required to get to net zero emissions by 2050 or earlier, not 50%.

Shell can, as they admit, only seriously impact on the 15% (production emissions), not the 85% (end use emissions), of their fossil fuel cake, when the real issue is that we need a radical shrinking cake, not the growing one we have today.

I regard it as distraction tactics to focus on production emission, trying to deflect the discussion away from the calls to ‘keep it in the ground’.

Unfortunately for Shell and other gas majors, the science is showing we have run out of time.

‘Keep it in the ground, keep it in the ground’, the protestors cried at COP24.

They at least, will not be distracted by the latest greenwash from Shell and the others.

o o O o o

(c) Richard W. Erskine, 19th December 2018

Notes

1. This assumes 0.43 metric tonnes of CO₂ per barrel of oil (Ref. 3), and using 75% of this value for natural gas (Ref. 4). The figure of 0.5GtCO₂e for Shell aligns with the figure shown in the CDP Carbon Majors Report 2017 (Ref. 6). Note also that 5,800 cubic feet of natural gas is equal (using an energy metric) to a Barrel of Oil Equivalent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrel_of_oil_equivalent

2. Add the 0.5 GtCO₂e from the end-use burning of their products and we see that this 0.085 GtCO2e is nearly 15% of the total for which Shell is ultimately responsible for. Note also that CO₂e or CO₂ equivalent includes the CO₂ resulting from combustion as well as any leakages of methane, with the methane contribution converted into the equivalent amount (by its warming potential) of CO₂.

References

1. Joint Statement Between Institutional Investors on behalf of Climate Action 100+ and Royal Dutch Shell plc (Shell), 3rd December 2018

2. “Shell’s gas production could be triple oil by 2050: CEO”, Ron Bousso, 7th March 2018, Reuters

3. “Greenhouse Gases Equivalencies Calculator – Calculations and References”, US Environmental Protection Agency, EPA

4. “Frequently Asked Questions”, US Energy Information Administration, EIA

5. “Analysis: Global CO₂ emissions set to rise 2% in 2017 after three-year ‘plateau’”, Zeke Hausfather, 13th November 2017, CarbonBrief 

6. The Carbon Majors Database: CDP Carbon Majors Report 2017

7. Shell Sustainability Reporting and Performance Data / Greenhouse Gase Emissions

8. New Scientist Live 2019, Exhibitors / Shell

The Guardian reported “We have 12 years to limit global warming, warns the UN”, and many others published similar stories, following the latest IPCC report.

Well not quite that simple, but let me explain.

I want to start with a quote from Risk, statistics and the media: David Spiegelhalter’s IPSO lecture :

“there are some fundamental difficulties with story-telling from data. Classic narratives have an emotional hit to the reader, they reveal a clear causal path, and have a neat conclusion. But science and statistics are not like that – they can seem impersonal, they don’t have a clear chain of causation, and their results are often ambiguous.”

In other words, when we convey facts through narrative we often seek certainty whereas paradoxically, scientists are the ones often having to grapple with uncertainty and ambiguity. In our popular imaginations, we might think that the reverse was true.

Yet on global warming, the irreducible uncertainty is increasingly concerning the when, not the if, of serious impacts. By debating the when (and trying to put a date on it), we are in danger of losing sight of the grindingly unavoidable fact that if a tsunami is heading your way, and you are on the beach, the exact ‘when’ is somewhat academic; the imperative is to run like heck to high ground!

We are already experiencing the impacts of global warming thanks to a rise of about 1C rise in global mean surface temperature (GMST). The impacts of man-made global warming are seen in thousands of places and contexts, and to cite just two – the rapid decline in the population of the European pied flycatcher; and the increasing severity of wildfires in California – illustrate how diverse these impacts can be.

So the questions being raised – how bad could it get and how soon – fit on a spectrum of possibilities. Our responses also fit on a spectrum, concerning how much work we are prepared to put in to limit the impacts. 

How much urgency are we prepared to put in to limiting the impacts or adapting to them, and will this be fair to everyone? Will it be fair to the energy poor of the UK, to rural Indians, to the flora and fauna already experiencing catastrophic losses (and set to escalate)?

If we miss the 1.5°C goal, can we limit it to 1.75°C,  and if not 1.75°C then maybe 2°C, and if not 2°C then can we limit it to 2.5°C,? The impacts are not ‘linearly related’ to temperature rise. There is an escalating level of impacts that ensue in areas such as heat stress, species loss, sea-level rise, crop yields, and more, and there are ‘tipping points’ that can create nasty surprises at multiple stages on this rising, jagged curve.

The context for this latest report was the Paris Agreement – arising from the  21st Conference Of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – held in Paris in December 2015. Hitherto, the UNFCCC had discussed policy aimed at ‘avoiding dangerous climate change’, which was deemed to be a 2C GMST rise. The UNFCCC in Paris was basing policy in part on the scientific input of the 5th Assessment Report by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) published in 2013/2014. However, low lying countries and those prone to the worst impacts of climate change requested that there be an investigation on the feasibility of limiting the GMST rise to a more ambitious 1.5°C, and also determining the benefits (in terms of reduced impacts) of 1.5°C as compared to 2°C.

The IPCC’s Summary for Policymakers of the 1.5C study includes the statement:

“Human activities are estimated to have caused approx. 1.0°C of global warming above pre-industrial levels, with a likely range of 0.8°C to 1.2°C. Global warming is likely to reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate. (high confidence)”

So, strictly speaking, it is ‘likely’ (meaning at least a 66% chance; for those that read footnotes) that we have between 12 and 34 years before we cross the 1.5°C threshold, unless we do something to improve on this prognosis.

So is 1.5°C more special than all the other thresholds laid out before us? Well, it is an upcoming and fast approaching threshold, and so, theoretically avoidable.

This is what Prof. Jim Skea told to Matt McGrath (BBC Environment Correspondent, 8th October 2018), summarising the IPCC report with two key observations:

“The first is that limiting warming to 1.5°C brings a lot of benefits compared with limiting it to two degrees. It really reduces the impacts of climate change in very important ways,” said Prof Jim Skea, who co-chairs the IPCC.

“The second is the unprecedented nature of the changes that are required if we are to limit warming to 1.5°C – changes to energy systems, changes to the way we manage land, changes to the way we move around with transportation.”

The 1.5°C report found – to the surprise of many – that there were significant benefits to keeping GMST to this lower level. For example, by 2100:

• 14% of the world’s population will be exposed to extreme heat (as experienced in southeastern Europe) at least once every 5 years in a 1.5°C world, but this rises to 37% in a 2°C world;

• Some sea-ice will remain in the artic in most summers in a 1.5°C world, but ice-free summers are 10 times more likely in a 2°C world;

• Urban populations exposed to water scarcity would increase from 250 million to 411 million;

• Species loss for insects, plants and vertebrates would increase from 6, 8 and 4% to 18, 16 and 8%, respectively;

• Coral reefs would suffer frequent mass mortalities in a 1.5°C world, but would mostly disappear in a 2°C world;

• Crop yields would be lower in a 2°C world, especially in sub-sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central and South America.

We see how there is a definite ‘non linearity’ occurring in some of the examples.

For some natural systems that have been able to recover to naturally occuring extremes in climate in the past, the future is a marked change. The effect of repeated, closely spaced extreme conditions means that they then fail to recover. Like a boxer that has been floored, they may get up once, or even twice, but at some point they stay down.

So coral reefs are hurting badly today (in a 1°C world), and will manage to cling on in a 1.5°C world, but will disappear in a 2°C world. This is a graph where the line falls off the cliff; no comforting linearity here.

A key concept introduced in the 5th Assessment Report was the ‘carbon budget’ – the maximum amount of cumulative carbon emissions allowable to stay within a target GMST rise. 

The news which, if not good, is at least something of a relief, is that the so-called ‘committed warming’ due to emissions to-date (all that heat locked up in the oceans that will continue to drive increases in atmospheric temperature / GMST rise until the system reaches equilibrium again), is less than 1.5°C; although changes (e.g. to sea-level raise) will continue for centuries to millennia.

The not so good news (or rather extremely challenging news) is that 2030 emissions must reduce by 45% versus 2010 emissions to achieve 1.5°C, and get to zero by 2050 (note also that for 2°C, 2030 emissions would need to reduce by 20% versus 2010, and get to zero by 2075).

The IPCC make it clear that achieving 1.5°C would require rapid and far-reaching transitions in energy, land, urban and infrastructure (transport and buildings), and industry. 

These system transition are unprecedented in terms of scale, but not necessarily in terms of speed (we have all seen how quickly cars replaced horse-drawn carriages in New York City), and imply deep emissions reductions in all sectors, a wide portfolio of mitigation options and upscaling of investments.

However, achieving 1.5°C cannot be achieved solely by decarbonising sectors, but must be supplemented by technologies that will take ‘carbon’ out of the atmosphere and effectively bury it. The 1.5°C pathways explored by IPCC assume between 100 and 1000 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) over the 21st Century. 

The most popular form of CDR currently being investigated is BECCS, which stands for Bio-energy with Carbon Capture and Storage. It works by growing plants/ trees that will capture carbon, and these are then burned to produce energy; but rather than re-release the carbon into the atmosphere, this is extracted from the exhaust gas stream, then buried in deep geological structures where CO₂ will remain in a condensed state. 

The required transition can be summarised in a graphic (produced by Glen Peters from the CICERO Institute), consistent with the median scenario from the IPCC 1.5°C report:

(Credit: @Peters_Glen, 15th October 2018, On Twitter)

This graph illustrates that human activities would (by 2100) need to move from the current situation – a net source of 40 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (40GtCO₂) – to becoming a net sink of -15GtCO₂. Coal would be eliminated, and oil would almost be; gas would be uncertain, but any that was used would need to be combined with CDR; land-use would need to move from being a net producer of greenhouse gas emissions to a net sink; and CDR/BECCS would have to be massively scaled up.

Many question the feasibility of such a large roll-out of CDR, requiring perhaps 2 or 3 times the area of India for the energy crops required (while at the same time, there are many other pressures on the land, not least, feeding a population that could grow/ stabilize at about 10 billion).

The graph above shows a complete change in the net CO₂ but this is like turning around a very large tanker on a sixpence.

Personally, I would conclude that the very tough challenge of keeping warming below 2°C has just got even tougher. The scale and range of changes needed requires something like a Marshall Plan for the whole world to stay below 1.5°C.

This is why many commentators such as Professor Kevin Anderson at the Tyndall centre in Manchester says that the only way we can square the circle is through a massive reduction in consumption (particularly amongst the high emitters). He has noted that if the top 10% of emitters reduced their emissions to the average European level, that would equate to a 33% reduction in global emissions!

We have run out of time to decarbonise all sectors fast enough, so are creating ‘magical thinking’ to imagine a scale of CDR that would allow us to continue to consume at the current rate (in the high emitting countries).

So the picture is mixed. Yes, the 1.5°C target is extremely important and worthwhile because it brings so many benefits as compared to 2°C. However, the already very challenging goal of decarbonising the world’s economy (both the established countries and those seeking justice and development), is made even harder.

Irrespective of whether you are an optimistic or pessimistic by nature, the fact is that we have to some extent already left it too late to avoid serious impacts. Whatever level of tolerance to risk we choose for ourselves and our families, by failing to seriously engage in action now, we are in effect making choices for our neighbours, for those communities and ecosystems that may not have the resources to adapt as well as we can.

Whether we imagine it is 0 years left to take action, 12, 34, or any other number that lies within the reasonable range between bad and catastrophic, we are really out of time. 15 years is a flick of the fingers in terms of transforming all sectors in all countries.

We should not hold up “12 years” as some magical number that is a binary switch between “we’ll be OK” and “it’s Armageddon”, but yet another milestone on the slow, and somewhat slippery path towards a very dangerous future.

Where each of us – as individuals, communities, countries or at whatever scale we wish to frame it – have started to take meaningful action, we should celebrate that and strive for wider and deeper change. Where this is not happening, we have to say that the sooner this process starts the better.

As Twitter just reminded me…

“The best time to start was 20 years ago, the second best time is now”

Let’s not wait another 12 years to act on the scale required.

Richard W. Erskine, 17th November 2018

Most people are naturally conservative with a small ‘c’ – they really find it very difficult to change.

For nearly 30 years after leaving academia, I spent a lot of time helping organizations be better at managing their enterprise information and retaining knowledge. Many skills are required to help such aspirations to be realised, and not merely technical ones; as I discussed in The Zeitgeist of the Coder.

As always, techies would run around thinking they had a silver bullet that would make people adopt new practices, simply by installing the software and with a few hours of training. Time and time again I would find that an organization that claimed to have made a big change hadn’t. They had changed very little because no real effort had been put into the changes in behaviour that are required to ensure that the claimed outcomes of an enterprise system rollout would actually transpire.

Old habits die hard.

In my large tool-box of diagrams I used when consulting is the following figure, which originates from the field of ‘business change management’ (I have been using it for many years; long before I became active in climate change).

The denial (or change) curve is just a name for the grey path from Denial to Commitment, with each stage described as follows:

• Denial – people do not believe that the change is needed or will really happen, focusing on business as usual and not engaging their own feelings.
• Resistance – people now know change is coming and engage their feelings of anxiety, anger and rejection. The focus is personal resistance, not the wider organization. It can be disruptive and even counter to one’s interests.
• Exploration – a switch occurs whereby people recognize need for personal change and start to explore new ways of working.
• Commitment – people gain mastery of new ways of working and the focus moves from the personal to the organization – and participating in helping to make the change a success.

The denial referred to here is the regular kind of denial we are all prone to, and is well known to psychologists. In the business context I worked in, it was an illusion to imagine you could get staff to jump en masse from Denial to Commitment.

Denial is more characterised by folded arms and non-communication than by argument or engagement; denial of this kind is a shutting out of the possibility of change, not arguing against it.

Resistance is different. The resentment and anger that comes with Resistance is almost a necessary part of the journey; finding reasons why the change won’t work, and using active measures to frustrate implementation. This can be loud and angry.

Only when the benefits of at least the promise of change start to become appreciated, does Exploration begin, and while there will still be arguments, they move from destructive ones (“It can’t work”) to constructive alternatives (“I don’t see how it can work, but show me”).

Commitment follows, and those that have made this journey are much better at helping others tread in their footsteps than an external consultant. Personal journeys get transformed into communcal ones. There is a tipping point, when enough people are reinforcing the positives so that everyone wants to join the party.

Of course, getting action on global warming and decarbonising our economy is much tougher than getting a large organization to adopt new practices, but maybe there is a lesson here.

For one thing, there is nothing wrong in using the word ‘denial’. Some claim that this is being conflated with ‘holocaust denial’ and is therefore an outrageous slur on  ‘contrarians’ (it is always contrarians that make this claim and merely, I would argue, because they wish to deflect criticism and adopt a posture of victimhood, whereas they are the aggressors).

In any case, I am not so much interested in the tiny percentage of politically motivated contrarians, or ‘ideological denialists’ as I would prefer to call them, even though some are in highly influential positions.

We have to find ways to work around them, rather than give them too much of our time (although it has to be said, I am frustrated at how much airtime these people get on Twitter; and maybe that is a problem with Twitter itself as a platform). Their attention seeking behaviour is self-reinforcing and will not be a path to change (ask a psychologist), and it is wasting time that should be focused on the conversations that really matter.

The great majority of people fit more easily into the standard psychological meaning of the word denial; they are blocking their eyes and ears hoping it will go away.

La la la … la la la.

We are all in denial in some sense and to some level; otherwise we’d be seeing a rebellion wouldn’t we?

It is surely unrealistic to expect it will be a smooth and easy (psychological) journey, from Denial to Commitment, and that we can convince people with a few graphs. We can show all the data in the world – on the efficiency of heat pumps; the health benefits of low meat and EV buses; the falling costs of renewables; the ecological impacts underway; or whatever – but until this becomes internalised as the way we think and act, every day and in every way, it will not lead to measurable outcomes.

We have to pass through The Denial Curve – the pain and anger of the ‘loss’, for what we assumed was forever. That high consumption, limitless travelling, throwaway culture, and our infinite planet, with a mode of consumption that we have somehow slipped into sometime in the 60s or 70s. We have to shake ourselves out of a kind of consumerist trance.

We need to make so many changes at so many levels that the change is bound to create huge anxiety and then, of course, Resistance.

If people are resentful at feeling trapped between a rock and a hard place – between the  terrifying consequences of inaction and the trapped-in-the-headlights ‘conservative’ preference for inaction  – then that is entirely natural. Yet this is exactly the ‘tension’ that needs to be explored, and ultimately, needs to be resolved in each of us, and in our communities.

I sense that there is already a growing number of people who have moved from cross-armed denial, to resentment and hence Resistance. This is to be expected, and we should expect it to get a lot louder. We’ll need strong leaders and ‘counsellors’ amongst us, to help guide people on the journey; despite the noises off.

I would argue therefore that we should embrace The Denial Curve, rather than get stuck in the loop of raging against denial per se (that’s what the ‘ideological denialists’ want!).

If we can reassure people and find ways to help them transition from Resistance to Exploration, then that is the hardest part. Commitment will follow.

(c) Richard W. Erskine, 2018

Those pesky Europeans, imposing their values on us – you know, a belief in the rule of law and all that. How dare they!

Freed from this prison, the UK can forge a new future with the world, based on emerging economies, and Britain’s long-established record for gun-boat diplomacy.

What can possibly go wrong?

China, for example, has emerged as a powerhouse likely to overtake the USA as the largest economy in the world by 2050. Ok, so they execute more people than the rest of world put together and lock up millions for ‘re-education’; anyone who does not support the ruling dictatorship.

Sunlit uplands.

Hey ho, at least they want to buy our stuff, so what’s not to like?

Ok, so they actually want to steal our stuff – the stuff they have not already hacked using their superior mathematicians (check out the Olympiad results) – but will then be handed over legally. As the mafia discovered, the easiest way to rob a bank is to own one. And the easiest way to steal from, say, Rolls Royce is to own it. Expect when, not if.

Sunlit uplands.

And what about weapons? Well Saudi Arabia is a great client, and the advantage of having an on-going war – namely pulverising Yemen back to the dark ages and murdering children without challenge (let alone journalists) – is that there is such a great repeat-business order book. BAE Systems shareholders are smiling all the way to the bank.

Sunlit uplands.

There seems no end to powerful and anti-democratic forces who want our stuff.

Let’s cut ourselves off from the cultures that we spent hundreds of years wrestling with – in war and peace – and ultimately worked together with to create a platform for peace, diversity and sharing, of hope, and collaboration. Be it the scientific endeavours, or the regulations that allow safe medicines across Europe, or the protection of consumer rights in telecommunications or even swimming on beaches (without going through the motions).

Who exactly are our friends?

Those in Russia, China and Saudi Arabia that have a long history of suppressing freedoms or those in the EU that have a long history of non-conformism and defence of freedoms, even in the face of despots (Diderot eat your heart out).

As we confront issues such as the unrestricted power of Google and Facebook, or the issue of man-made Global Warming, do we trust the USA, China, India or Russia to act as our friends, and in our interests? Not bloody likely.

Oh, but <keep chanting in the dark> ‘sunlit uplands’ (you know it makes you feel better, you just have to believe and everything will work out – even Chris Grayling’s 50 mile tailbacks for lorries – no pain, no gain).

Is there another path?

We could work with Europeans to push for change and to continue the tradition of European enlightenment and rebellion against elites, towards a better world however flawed; including radical reforms of the EU?

Inside the tent, we have a chance to make the changes, but outside it we merely become prey to deals with those that neither share our values, nor value them. Those who turn our creativity into death and destruction. Is that what we want?

How would you choose in this turbulent world?

Will the UK ultimately find itself  a slave to China, where we will have to attend re-education camps in Milton Keynes; where we will have to unlearn the Glorious Revolution (such a dangerous idea)?

Fanciful?

No less so than the sunlit uplands of post-Brexit Britain we have been promised in the false prospectus of Boris Johnson or Jacob Rees-Mogg; a race to the bottom future of vestigual government, and the power of moneyed elites, who want to frame our future in 19th Century terms.

How about a 21st Century world where we are leaders in Europe, using our talents in genomics, engineering, and yes, regulation (we Brits are geniuses at that), to build a better, safer world. Where we transition our industries to confront climate change, mental health, ecocide, the digital economy and other great challenges; as Brits and as Europeans.

Is that too much to ask?

Richard W. Erskine, 2018.

I have an hypothesis.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) won’t find any retained data at Cambridge Analytica (CA) gleaned from Facebook user’s. They might even find proof it was deleted in a timely manner.

So, would that mean CA did not provide an assist to the Trump campaign? No.

Because the analysis of all that data would have been used to provide knowledge and insight into which buttons to push in the minds of voters, and crucially, in which States this would be most effective.

At that point you can delete all the source Facebook data.

The knowledge and insight would have powered a broad spectrum campaign using good old fashioned media channels and social media. At this point, it is not micro-targeting, but throwing mud knowing it will stick where it matters.

Maybe the focus on micro-targeting is a smokescreen, because if the ICO don’t find retained data, then CA can say “see, we are innocent of all charges of interference”, when in fact the truth could be quite the opposite.

It is important the ICO, Select Committees in the UK Parliament and, when they get their act together, committees on Capitol Hill, ask the right questions, and do not succumb to smokescreens.

But then, that is only an hypothesis.

What do I know?

(c) Richard W. Erskine, 2018

If you spend even a little time looking at the internet and social media in search of enlightenment on climate solutions, you will have noted that there are passionate advocates for each and every solution out there, who are also experts in the shortcomings of competing solutions!

This creates a rather unhelpful atmosphere for those of us trying to grapple with the problem of addressing the very real risks of dangerous global warming.

There are four biases – often implied but not always stated – that lie at the heart of these unproductive arguments:

• Lack of clear evidence of the feasibility of a solution;
• Failure to be clear and realistic about timescales;
• Tendency to prioritize solutions in a way that marginalizes others;
• Preference for top-down (centralization) or bottom-up (decentralization) solutions.

Let’s explore how these manifest themselves:

Feasibility: Lack of clear evidence of the feasibility of a solution

This does not mean that an idea does not have promise (and isn’t worthy of R&D investment), but refers to the tendency to champion a solution based more on wishful thinking than any proven track record. For example, small modular nuclear has been championed as the path to a new future for nuclear – small, modular, scaleable, safe, cheap – and there are an army of people shouting that this is true. We have heard recent news that the economics of small nuclear are looking a bit shaky. This doesn’t mean its dead, but it does rather put the onus on the advocates to prove their case, and cut the PR, as Richard Black has put it. Another one that comes to mind is ‘soil carbon’ as the single-handed saviour (as discussed in Incredulity, Credulity and the Carbon Cycle). The need to reform agriculture is clear, but it is also true (according to published science) that a warming earth could make soils a reinforcer of warming, rather than a cooling agent; the wisdom of resting hopes in regenerative farming as the whole of even a major contributor, is far from clear. The numbers are important.

Those who do not wish to deal with global warming (either because they deny its seriousness or because they do not like the solutions) quite like futuristic solutions, because while we are debating long-off solutions, we are distracted from focusing on implementing existing solutions.

Timescale: Failure to be clear and realistic about timescales

Often we see solutions that seem to clearly have promise and will be able to make a major contribution in the future. The issue is that even when they have passed the feasibility test, they fail to meet it on a timescale required. There is not even one timescale, as discussed in Solving Man-made Global Warming: A Reality Check, as we have an immediate need to reduce carbon emissions (say, 0-10 years), then an intermediate timeframe in which to implement an energy transition (say, 10-40 years). Renewable energy is key to the latter but cannot make sufficient contribution to the former (that can only be done by individual and community reductions in their carbon intensity). And whatever role Nuclear Fusion has for the future of humanity, it is totally irrelevant to solving the challenge we have in the next 50 years to decarbonize our economy.

The other aspect of timescale that is crucial is that the eventual warming of the planet is strongly linked to the peak atmospheric concentration, whereas the peak impacts will be delayed for decades or even centuries, before the Earth system finally reaches a new equilibrium. Therefore, while the decarbonization strategy required for solutions over, say, the 2020-2050 timeframe; the implied impacts timeframe could be 2050-2500, and this delay can make it very difficult to appreciate the urgency for action.

Priority: Tendency to prioritize solutions in a way that precludes others

I was commenting on Project Drawdown on twitter the other day and this elicited a strong response because of a dislike of a ‘list’ approach to solutions. I also do not like ‘lists’ when they imply that the top few should be implemented and the bottom ones ignored.  We are in an ‘all hands on deck’ situation, so we have to be very careful not to exclude solutions that meet the feasibility and timescale tests. Paul Hawken has been very clear that this is not the intention of Project Drawdown (because the different solutions interact and an apparently small solution can act as a catalyst for other solutions).

Centralization: Preference for top-down (centralization) or bottom-up (decentralization) solutions.

Some people like the idea of big solutions which are often underwritten at least by centralised entities like Governments. They argue that big impact require big solutions, and so they have a bias towards solutions like nuclear and an antipathy to lower-tech and less energy intensive solutions like solar and wind.

Others share quite the opposite perspective. They are suspicious of Governments and big business, and like the idea of community based, less intensive solutions. They are often characterized as being unrealistic because of the unending thirst of humanity for consumption suggests an unending need for highly intensive energy sources.

The antagonism between these world views often obscures the obvious: that we will need both top-down and bottom-up solutions. We cannot all have everything we would like. Some give and take will be essential.

This can make for strange bedfellows. Both environmentalists and Tea Party members in Florida supported renewable energy for complementary reasons, and they became allies in defeating large private utilities who were trying to kill renewables.

To counteract these biases, we need to agree on some terms of reference for solving global warming.

• Firstly, we must of course be guided by the science (namely, the IPCC reports and its projections) in order to measure the scale of the response required. We must take a risk management approach to the potential impacts.
• Secondly, we need to start with an ‘all hands on deck’ or inclusive philosophy because we have left it so late to tackle decarbonization, we must be very careful before we throw out any ideas.
• Thirdly, we must agree on a relevant timeline for those solutions we will invest in and scale immediately. For example, for Project Drawdown, that means solutions that are proven, can be scaled and make an impact over the 2020-2050 timescale. Those that cannot need not be ‘thrown out’ but may need more research & development before they move to being operationally scaled.
• Fourthly, we allow both top-down (centralized) and bottom-up (solutions), but recognise that while Governments dither, it will be up to individuals and social enterprise to act, and so in the short-medium term, it will be the bottom solutions that will have greater impact. Ironically, the much feared ‘World Government’ that right-wing conpiracy theorists most fear, is not what we need right now, and on that, the environmentalists mostly agree!

In the following Climate Solutions Taxonomy I have tried to provide a macro-level view of different solution classes. I have included some solutions which I am not sympathetic too;  such as nuclear and geo-engineering. But bear in mind that the goal here is to map out all solutions. It is not ‘my’ solutions, and is not itself a recommendation or plan.

On one axis we have the top-down versus bottom-up dimension, and on the other axis, broad classes of solution. The taxonomy is therefore not a simple hierarchy, but is multi-dimensional (here I show just two dimensions, but there are more).

While I would need to go to a deeper level to show this more clearly, the arrows are suggestive of the system feedbacks that reflect synergies between solutions. For example, solar PV in villages in East Africa support education, which in turn supports improvments in family planning.

It is incredible to me that while we have (properly) invested a lot of intellectual and financial resources in scientific programmes to model the Earth’s climate system (and impacts), there has been dramatically less modelling effort on the economic implications that will help support policy-making (based on the damage from climate change, through what are called Integrated Assessment Models).

But what is even worse is that there seems to have been even less effort – or barely any –  modelling the full range of solutions and their interactions. Yes, there has been modelling of, for example, renewable energy supply and demand (for example in Germany), and yes, Project Drawdown is a great initiative; but I do not see a substantial programme of work, supported by Governments and Academia, that is grappling with the full range of solutions that I have tried to capture in the figure above, and providing an integrated set of tools to support those engaged in planning and implementing solutions.

This is unfortunate at many levels.

I am not here imagining some grand unified theory of climate solutions, where we end up with a spreadsheet telling us how much solar we should build by when and where.

But I do envisage a heuristic tool-kit that would help a town such as the one I was born (Hargesia in Somaliland), or the town in which I now live (Nailsworth in Gloucestershire in the UK), to be able to work through what works for them, to plan and deliver solutions. Each may arrive at different answers, but all need to be grounded in a common base of data and ‘what works’, and a more qualitative body of knowledge on synergies between solutions.

Ideally, the tool-kit would be usable at various levels of granularity, so it could be used at different various scales, and different solutions would emerge at different scales.

A wide range of both quantitative and qualitative methods may be required to grapple with the range of information covered here.

I am looking to explore this further, and am interested in any work or insights people have. Comments welcome.

(c) Richard W. Erskine, 2017

This essay is based on an extract from a talk I did recently that was well received. This specific part of the talk was described as very helpful in clarifying matters related to our carbon dioxide emissions. I hope others also find it useful. 

David Cameron said on 24 January 2013 “We’re paying down Britain’s debts” and got a lot of stick for this misleading statement. Why? Let me try to explain.

The deficit is the annual amount by which we spend more than we get in taxes. Whereas, the debt is the cumulative sum of year on year deficits.

As many politicians do, Cameron was using language designed to be, shall we say, ‘economical with the truth’. He was not the first, and he won’t be the last.

We can picture deficit being added to our debt using the following picture (or for greater dramatic effect, do it live if you are giving a talk):

If the deficit declines this year compared to last year, that may be of great solace to the Chancellor (and that was the situation in 2013), because maybe it’s the start of a trend that will mean that the debt may reach a peak.

Cameron could have said “Our debt keeps rising, but at least the rate at which it is rising is slightly less than last year. We’ll need to borrow some more to cover the additional deficit”, would the a honest statement, but he didn’t. It simply wouldn’t have cut it with the spin doctors.

The reality is that the only thing we can conclude from a deficit this year that is smaller than last year is that that the debt has increased by an amount less than last year. That’s it. It doesn’t sound quite so great put that way, does it?

You need year-on-year surpluses to actually bring the debt down.

Deficit and debt are useful in making an analogy with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, because the confusion – intended or accidental – over deficit and debt, is very similar to the confusion that occurs in the mind of the public when the media report changes in our carbon emissions.

Let’s explore the analogy by replacing “Deficit” with “Emissions”, and “Debt” with “Atmospheric Concentration” …

The annual emissions add to the cumulative emissions in the atmosphere, i.e. the raised Atmospheric Concentration.

There are two differences with the financial analogy when we think about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Firstly, when we add, say, 40 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere (the green coloured area represents the added carbon dioxide) …

… then, within a short time (about 5 years) 50% of the added carbon dioxide (that is 20 billion tonnes, in this illustration), is absorbed in oceans and biosphere, balancing the remainder of carbon dioxide added to atmosphere, and we can visualize this balance as follows (Credit: Rabett Run, which includes a more technical description and an animation) –

Secondly, unlike with the economy, once the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide goes up, it stays up for hundred of years (and to get back to where it started, thousands of years), because for one thing, the processes to take carbon from the upper ocean to the deep ocean are very slow.

Unlike with the economy, our added carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere always goes in the wrong direction; it increases.

So when we see stories that talk about “emissions stalling” or other phrases that seem to offer reassurance, remember, they are talking about emissions (deficit) NOT concentrations (debt).

The story title below is just one example, taken from the Financial Times ( and I am not picking on the FT, but it shows that this is not restricted to the tabloids).

Whenever we see a graph of emissions over the years (graph on the left), the Health Warning should always be the Keeling Curve (graph on the right).

So the global garbon dioxide emissions in 2014 and 2015 where 36.08 and 36.02 billion tonnes, respectively. Cause for cautious rejoicing? Well, given the huge number of variables that go into this figure (the GDP of each nation; their carbon intensity; the efficiency level for equipment and transport; and so on), projecting a trend from a few years is a tricky business, and some have devoted their lives to tracking this figure. Important work for sure.

Then 2016 came along and the figure was similar but slightly raised, at 36.18 billion tonnes.

But we were said to be stalled … 36.08, 36.02 and 36.18.

I liken this to heading for the cliff edge at a steady pace, but at least no longer accelerating. Apparently that is meant to be reassuring.

Then comes the projected figure for 2017, which includes a bit of a burp of carbon dioxide from the oceans – courtesy of the strong El Nino – and this was even predicted, and horror of horrors, it makes headline news around the world.

We have jumped by 2% over the previous year (actually 1.7% to 36.79 billion tonnes). Has the ‘stall’ now unstalled? What next?

The real headline is that we are continuing to emit over 35 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, year on year without any sign of stopping.

Only when emissions go down to 0 (zero), will the atmospheric concentration STOP rising.

So in relation to our emissions what word do we want to describe it? Not stall, not plateau, not ease back, but instead, stop, finito or end. They’ll do.

I have discovered – from talking to people who do not follow climate change on twitter, or the blogosphere, and are not fans of complex data analysis – that what I explained above was very helpful but also not widely appreciated.

But in a sense, this is probably the most important fact about climate change that everyone needs to understand, that

the carbon dioxide concentration will only stop rising when emissions completely stop.

The second most important fact is this:

whatever value the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide gets to – at that point in the future when we stop adding more – that it is where it will stay for my grandchild, and her grandchildren, and their grandchildren, and so on … for centuries* to come.

The Keeling Curve  – which measures the global atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide – is the only curve that matters, because until it flattens, we will not know how much warming there will actually be, because of the third most important fact people must understand is this:

broadly speaking, the level of warming is proportional to the the peak concentration of carbon dioxide.

So when we see stories that talk about “emissions stalling” or other phrases that seem to offer hope that we’ve turned a corner, remember, they are talking about emissions (deficit) NOT concentrations (debt).

It is amazing how often the deficit/ debt confusion is played on by policitians regarding the nations finances.

The ’emissions stalling’ narrative of the last few years has led many to imagine we are, if not out of the woods, then on our way, but I think the confusion here is a failure of the media and other science communicators to always provide a clear health warning.

The truth is that we, as a species, are a long way still from showing a concerted effort to get out of the woods. Worse still, we are arguing amongst ourselves about which path to take.

(c) Richard W. Erskine, 2017

[* Unless and until we find a way to artificially extract and sequester carbon dioxide; this is still only R&D and not proven at scale yet, so does not rescue the situation we face in the period leading to 2050. We need to halt emissions, not just “stall” them.]

#carbondioxide #emissions #debt #deficit

People are arguing as to whether the loss of the EMA from the UK will hurt us or not, and I think missing some nuance.

The ICH (International Committee on Harmonization) has helped pharma to harmonize the way drugs are tested, licensed and monitored globally (albeit with variations), enabling drugs to be submitted for licensing in the largest number of countries possible.

For UK’s Big Pharma, the loss of EMA is a blow but not a fatal one, they have entities everywhere, they’ll find a way.

There are 3 key issues I see, around Network, Innovation and Influence:

1. Network – New drug development is now more ‘ecosystem’ based, not just big pharma alone, and UK has lots of large, medium and small pharma, in both private and public institutions (Universities, Francis Crick Institute, etc.). And so do other EU countries, which form part of the extended network of collaboration. UK leaving EU will disrupt this network, and loss of EMA subtly changes the centre of power.
2. Innovation – Further to the damage to networks, and despite ICH’s harmonization, being outside of EU inevitably creates issues for the smaller innovators with less reach, shallower pockets, and a greater challenge in adapting to the new  reality.
3. Influence – not being at the EMA table (wherever its HQ is based) means that we cannot guide the development of regulation, which is on an inexorable path of even greater harmonization. Despite the UK’s self-loathing re. ‘not being as organized as the Germans’, the Brits have always been better than most at regulation, its deep in our culture (indeed much of the EU regulations neoliberals rail against have been gold-plated by the UK when they reach our shores). But outside the EU, and outside EMA, we won’t be in a position to apply these skills, and our influence will wane.

Unfortunately, the Brexiters have shown that they misunderstand the complexity not merely of supply chains in the automotive sector, for example, but the more subtle connections that exist in highly sophisticated development lifecycles, and highly regulated sectors, like pharmaceuticals.

A key regulatory body moving from our shores will have long term consequences we cannot yet know.

Can Britain adapt to the new reality?

Of course it can, but do not expect it to be easy, quick or cheap to do so.

Expect some pain.

How far do we go back to find examples of investigations of injustice or the abuse of power?

Maybe Roger Casement’s revelations on the horrors of King Leopold’s Congo, or the abuses of Peruvian Indians were heroic examples for which he received a Knighthood, even if later, his support for Irish independence earned him the noose.

Watergate was clearly not the first time that investigative journalism fired the public imagination, but it must be a high point, at least in the US, for the power of the principled and relentless pursuit of the truth by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

And then I call to mind the great days of the Sunday Times’ ‘Insight’ team that conducted many investigations. I recall the brilliant Brian Deer, who wrote for The Times and Sunday Times, and revealed the story behind Wakefield’s fake science on MMR, even while other journalists were shamelessly helping to propagate the discredited non-science.

But those days seem long ago now.

Today, you are just as likely to find The Times, The Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail and Spectator – desperate to satisfy their ageing and conservative readership, or in need of clickbait advertising revenue – to regurgitate bullshit, including the anti-expert nonsense that fills the blogosphere. This nonsense has been called out many times, such as in Climate Feedback.

Despite Michael Gove’s assertion that “Britain has had enough with experts” the IPSOS More Veracity Index of 2016 suggests differently  – It appears that nurses, doctors, lawyers and scientists are in the upper quartile of trust, whereas journalists, estate agents and politicians lurk in the lower quartile.

No wonder the right-wingers who own or write for the organs of conservatism are so keen to attack those in the upper quartile, and claim there is a crisis of trust. This is  displacement activity by politicians and journalists: claiming that there is a crisis of trust with others to deflect it from themselves. The public are not fooled.

It is a deeply cynical and pernicious to play the game of undermining evidence and institutions.

As Hannah Arendt said in The Origins of Totalitarianism:

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”

But investigative journalism is not dead.

In Russia there are many brave journalists who expose corruption and the abuse of power, and they have paid with their lives: 165 murdered since 1993, with about 50% of these since Putin came to power. He didn’t start the killing, but then, he didn’t stop it either.

The nexus of political, business and mafia-style corruption makes it easy from the leadership to shrug off responsibility.

And so we come to Malta, where the same nexus exists. Daphne Caruana Galizia has been exposing corruption for so long, there were no shortage of enemies, including the politicians and police that failed to protect her. Her assassination is a scar on Malta that will take a long time to heal.

The EU has produced anodyne reports on partnership with Malta and programmes continue despite a breakdown in the rule of law and governance, that have provided a haven for nepotism and racketeering. Is Malta really so different to Russia in this regard?

Is the EU able to defend the principles it espouses, and sanction those who fail to live up to them?

The purveyors of false news detest brave investigative journalists as much as they love to attack those like scientists who present evidence that challenges their interests. Strong institutions are needed to defend society against these attacks.

Remainers like myself defend the EU on many counts, but we also expect leadership when that is needed, not merely the wringing of hands.

(c) Richard W. Erskine, 2017.

In his Harveian Oration to the Royal College of Physicians on 15th October 2015, Professor Sir Mark Walport made the following observation:

“My PhD supervisor, Sir Peter Lachmann, has framed the distinction between the subjective and the objective in a different way, by considering whether questions are ‘pollable’ or ‘non- pollable’; that is, whether a question can be answered in principle by a vote (a pollable question), or whether the question has a right answer that is independent of individual preferences and opinions (a non-pollable question). This distinction can be easily illustrated by a couple of examples. It is a non-pollable question as to whether there is an anthropogenic contribution to climate change. There is a correct answer to this question and your opinion or mine is ultimately irrelevant. The fact that there may be uncertainties about the scale and the nature of the contribution does not change the basic nature of the question. In contrast, it is a pollable question as to whether nuclear energy is an acceptable solution to providing low-carbon power, and I will return to this later.”

The question presents itself: does the BBC understand the distinction between pollable and non-pollable questions related to science?

BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday 12th September included two discussions on the nature of science reporting and how it has changed over the years, particularly at the BBC.

The first was with Steve Jones , Emeritus Professor of Human Genetics at University College, who led a  review of the way the BBC itself reports science, about the changing nature of science reporting, while the second was with Richard Dawkins, Professor of evolutionary biology and David Willetts a former science minister, considering the “public’s evolving relationship with science, evidence and truth”.

Subsequent to this I wrote a letter to the Today team at the BBC, which is reproduced below, which I am now sharing on my blog:

Dear Sir/ Madam

I wanted to thank the BBC Today team for two excellent discussions that John Humphreys had, first with Prof. Steve Jones, and then subsequently with David Willetts and Richard Dawkins.

John Humphreys posed the challenge to Prof. Jones, as to why we should ‘believe’ climate change; and I am paraphrasing his words:

A. The world is warming

B. This warming is man made, and

C. There is only one way of stopping it.

This was an alarming way to approach the topic, for two reasons.

Firstly, the science – and by virtue of that statement, scientists – unequivocally answer A and B with a resounding ‘Yes’.  There is an aggregation of scientific evidence and analysis going back at least to John Tyndall in the mid 19th Century that brought us – no later than the 1980s in fact – to a consilience of science on these questions. I discuss this history and the nature of ‘consilience’ in an essay, here: https://essaysconcerning.com/2017/05/02/a-climate-of-consilience-or-the-science-of-certitude/ 

To question this is at the same level as questioning whether cigarettes cause lung cancer. There is no debate to be had here.  Yes, debate on how to get teenagers  to stop taking up smoking, but that’s a different question.  To say that everyone can have an opinion, and to set up a controversial ‘debate’ on these questions is the “false balance” Professor Jones identified in the report he did for the BBC. Representing opinions is not a license to misrepresent the evidence, by using ‘false balance’ in this way.

Secondly, however, scientists do NOT speak with one voice on how to stop it, as John Humphrey’s phrased his C question.  That is a why the UNFCCC takes up the question here which require policy input, and yes, the input of ‘values’.  Whilst the A and B questions are not questions where it is appropriate to bring values to bear on the answers; solutions are full of value-based inputs.  So the C that John Humphreys should be opening a dialogue on this:

C(amended): There are many solutions that can contribute to addressing the given man-made global warming – either by mitigation or adaptation – which ones do you advocate and why?

And of course many subsidiary questions arise when debating these solutions:

• Are we too late to prevent dangerous climate change, therefore need a massive reduction in consumption – a degrowth strategy?
• Can we solve this with a kind of Marshall Plan to decarbonise our energy supply, but also heat buildings and transport, through electrification?
• What role does nuclear energy play?
• Given the long time that excess carbon dioxide levels remain in the atmosphere, and the legacy of the developed worlds emissions, how can the developing world receive carbon justice?
• Even if we decarbonised everything tomorrow, what solutions are feasible for reducing the raised levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; what degree of sea-level rise are we prepared to tolerate, ‘baked in’ already to the Earth system?
• Is a carbon tax ultimately the only way forward, and what price do we put on carbon?
• … and so on.

Yes, science can help answer these kinds of questions, but the values play a large part too.  

The fact the BBC still gets stuck in the groove of ‘debating’ A and B, is I think woeful. As woeful as ‘debating’ if smoking causes cancer.

I think David Willetts acknowledged the difference in these classes of question, whereas Richard Dawkins was disappointingly black and white; not recognising the role of values in the C(amended) class of questions.

David Willetts made the interesting point that in social science, there is often greater difficulty in getting to the truth, and this is highly problematic for politicians, but that for the physical sciences, if we’ve discovered the Higgs Boson, it is much clearer.  He made a lot of the need to bring values to bear on decisions and ‘not being able to wait for yet another report’. However, there is a qualitative difference with climate change: it requires long term strategic thinking and it is a challenge to the normal, national political cycles.

On the question of Lord Lawson. By all means invite him to discuss the economics of decarbonising the economy. But last time he was asked on – more or less to do this – and had a discussion with Justin Webb, he was asked by Justin to comment on Al Gore’s statement that we needed to push ahead with the solutions that are already available to us. Move on, in other words.

Instead of answering this question Lord Lawson tried to poke holes in unequivocal science (A and B), instead of addressing C; he has no intention of moving on.  He lost, and seems quite bitter about it; as he went on to make personal attacks on Al Gore.  While the interviewer cannot stop Lord Lawson saying these things, he should be called out on them.

“I am not a scientist” is a statement that US Republican Congressman use to avoid confronting the fact that A and B are true, and not up for debate.  John Humphreys should not be using the same statement (but he did on this episode). 

If climate change is “the big one” as he himself noted, surely it is time he made the effort to educate himself to the point where he understands why A and B are unequivocally “Yes”, in the same way that “Does smoking cause lung cancer?” has an unequivocally “Yes” answer.  There are no shortage of scientists at the Met Office, Cambridge, Oxford, UCL and elsewhere who I am sure would be happy to help him out here.

Today was a good discussion – even a great step forward – but the BBC is still failing in its public service duty, on this topic of global warming.

Kind regards,

Richard Erskine

What seems to be clear to me is that John Humphreys is not alone amongst journalists in failing to distinguish between non-pollable (where evidence accumulated over many years holds sway, and values have no place) and pollable questions (where values can have as big a part to play as the science).

It is about time they started.

o o O o o

The tragic fire at Grenfell Tower breaks one’s heart.

There was a question asked tonight on BBC’s Newsnight which amounted to:

How is it, in 21st Century UK, a rich and prosperous country despite everything, that a fire can engulf a tower block in the way it did last night?

This got me thinking.

People from the council, politicians and others talk of the need to ‘learn lessons’ in a way that makes one wonder if they really believe it.

Apparently, in the British Army they ban the use of such language. Because we all know what this means. Another report. Another expert ignored. Another tragedy, and another lesson unheard, and ignored. A lesson demonstrated through a change in behaviour, great, but some aspirational statement that one will change at some indeterminate time in the future? No thanks.

We know that tragedies like this are multi-causal, so no single cause can explain it. But that doesn’t mean it was unforeseen. In this case there are factors that have been raised:

• cladding that is not fire-retardant, but rather designed to make a building more aesthetically pleasing, with scant regard for how it undermines the underlying fire-safety of the original building;
• a lack of any alarm to warn the residents of fire;
• a lack of sprinklers in rooms or hallways (whereas in hotels this is standard practice; why the difference);
• a failure to implement a report by a Select Committee of Parliament published following a previous tower-block fire;
• a building with only one staircase for escape;
• building standards that are evidently not fit for purpose and widely criticised (for some time) as providing a very low bar for compliance;
• an arms length management organisation that refused to listen to the concerns of residents.

These and no doubt other factors compounded to either make the fire worse than it should have been, or the response to the fire by residents and rescue workers less effective than it could have been.

No doubt there will be questions about how it is that experts have known about the risks of the kind of cladding used, and have published papers on this, but their knowledge has fallen on deaf ears. No one in authority has had the smidgen of intellectual curiosity or moral impulse to track it down using Google. We apparently need another report to rediscover stuff we already knew, which who knows, maybe they will read this time.

No doubt there are questions to be asked of organisations like the British Standards Institute (BSI) that produces standards in this case that seem to fail to challenge the industry to reach the highest common factor for health and safety, but instead, to arrive a lowest common denominator of standard. They specify tests that are clearly not real-world tests. One is bound to ask if the BSI is fit for purpose, and whether its processes lead to an excessive chumminess with the industries it works with. It has a business model where it generates and sells standards and associated consultancy. Better not rock too many boats? No doubt the standards are “pragmatic” in the business-speak synonym for barely adequate.

Christoper Miers, in his conclusion of a report entitled “Fire Risks From External Cladding Panels – A Perspective From The UK”, wrote:

“Can anything be done about the worldwide legacy of buildings with combustible cored composite panels?  Unless something radical is done, such as national retro-fitting subsidy schemes, it seems inevitable that there will be further fires involving aluminium-faced polyethylene core panels.  Nightmare scenarios include multiple-fatality building-engulfing fires as in China, or given the proximity of towers in some districts, the ignition of neighbouring buildings’ cladding from an external cladding fire, or disintegrated burning panels igniting the roofs of lower buildings adjacent.

It is difficult to envisage owners voluntarily stripping off entire existing aluminium composite panel facades and replacing them with Fire Code-compliant cladding panels, as the cost would be prohibitive.  Partial replacement with barrier bands of fire resistant panels has been suggested to stop fires spreading, [48] but given the flame heights at the Tamweel, Torch and The Address, such barrier bands would have to be substantially large.  The works necessary to provide these barriers would involve much of the scaffolding and associated costs of full replacement.

It seems inevitable that insurers will differentiate between buildings with and without combustible aluminium composite panels and will charge higher premiums for higher risks.  One or two more fires, or a fatal fire, could lead to insurance cover being refused if the risk is considered excessive.  Insurance issues, bad publicity and loss of property value might then make retro-fitting external cladding a viable option in commercial, as well as fire safety terms.”

But despite all these unlearned lessons, there is something far more insidious at work here.

The sneering right wing commentators like Richard Littlejohn of the Daily Fail have waged a campaign for many years against what they claim is an over-weaning attempt by the liberal elite to protect us from ourselves, which goes under the catchy title of “elf ’n safety” (snigger, snigger, sneer). Imagine …

Poor Johnny can’t even go diving off some rocks without someone doing a bloody risk assessment, then someone else has to hold a flag. 

Stuff and nonsense – in my day we used to ski down black runs blindfolded. Never did us any harm.

You get the picture.

I remember once doing a study for the HSE (Health & Safety Executive) back in the 90s, and some of the horror stories of what used to happen in industries like farming and chemicals would make your hair stand on end.

And of course deaths and injury in these and other industries have fallen dramatically in the last few decades, thanks to organisations like the HSE. Far from hurting productivity, it has helped it, by enhancing efficiency and professionalism. In some industries it even drives innovation, as with the noise regulations for aircraft.

And even in the more parochial area of school trips, there was plenty of evidence that just a little bit of prior planning might well prevent poor performance (and injury).

But no, to Richard Littlejohn and his ilk, the “world has gone mad”.

Too often the bureaucrats seem to have bought into – maybe unconsciously – this background noise of derision towards health and safety. They feel inclined to dismiss the concerns raised by experts or ride roughshod over citizens concerns.

What do they know? Business must go on.

And once again we have the chumminess effect: councillors too close to developers, and lacking the critical faculties to ask searching questions, or even obvious ones.

For example, one might have imagined a councillor asking the questions …

“This cladding we plan use… is it anything like that used on that tower block that went up in flames in Dubai? Have we assessed the risks? Can we assure the tenants we have investigated this, and its OK?”.  

There is good box-ticking (in the cock-pit of an aeroplane) and the bad kind. The good kind is used by engineers, pilots, surgeons, school-teachers and others who are skilled in their respective arts.

The bad kind is used by bureaucrats wanting to cover their arses. We heard some of this  last night on Newsnight “we got the design signed off”, “we followed the standards”, etc.

Where is the imagination, the critical thinking, the challenging of lazy assumptions?

And most importantly, where is the answering of tenants’ questions and concerns, and taking health and safety seriously as the number one requirement, not as an afterthought?

But risk assessment planning and execution is incessantly mocked by the sneering, curled lip brigade who inhabit the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and other right wing denigrators of “elf ’n safety”.

This has created a culture of jocular disregard for safety.

Try this. Go to a cafe with a few friends and ask “shall we have a chat about health and safety?”. I bet you that they will – whatever their political views – either laugh or roll their eyes.

Well, maybe not any more. Maybe they may feel suitably chasticised for a while at least, and stop their lazy sneering.

The champion sneerers have been successful through their drip, drip of cherry-picked stories or outright myths; their project has had an insidious effect, and has done its worst inundermining respect for health and safety.

But you see, it is not really health and safety that they have in their sights.  It’s just the easy to mock first hurdle in a wider programme.

There is a bigger prize: regulation!

What the de-regulators like Daniel Hannan want from Brexit is a bonfire of regulations, as he wrote about in his 2015 ‘vision’.

David Davis, the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, claims not to know the difference between a ‘soft’ Brexit and a hard one.

Well, here’s a guide, David.

A hard Brexit is one where we have a bonfire of regulations; where we have no truck with experts who advise us on risks of ethylene-based cladding or excess carbon dioxide in our atmosphere; where ‘risk assessment’ is a joke we have down the club; where the little people enjoy the fruits of ‘trickle down’ economics in a  thriving Britain, free of (allegedly) over-weaning regulation.

But the British have made it clear they do not want a hard Brexit.

I hope and trust that the time is over for the sneering, arrogant advocates for de-regulation, and their purile and dangerous disregard for people’s health, and their safety.

Whether in bringing forth and implementing effective measures to prevent another terrible fire like at Grenfell Tower, or in all the other areas of life and work in the UK that are important for a safe and secure future, the time to take experts and regulations seriously is needed now, more than ever.

Richard W. Erskine, 15th June 2017.

There seems to be a lot of discussion about an apparently simple question:

Can science be ‘certain’ about, well, anything? 

If that meant not doing anything – not building a bridge; not releasing a new drug; not taking off for the flight to New York; not flying a spacecraft to Saturn; not vaccinating the whole world against polio; not taking action to decarbonise our energy supply; Etc. – then this lack of 100% certainty might totally debilitate a modern society, frozen with doubt and so unable to act.

But of course, we do not stop implementing solutions based on our current best knowledge of nature and the world, however limited it might be. We make judgments. We assess risks. We weigh the evidence. We act.

I think scientists often fall into the trap of answering a quite different question:

Do we have a complete and all encompassing theory of the world (or at least, ‘this’ bit of the world, say how black holes work or how evolution played out)?

And everyone will rush defensively to the obvious answer, “no”. Why? Because we can always learn more, we can always improve, and indeed sometimes – although surprisingly rarely – we can make radical departures from received bodies of knowledge.

We are almost 100% certain of the ‘Second Law of Thermodynamics’ and Darwin’s ‘Evolution by Natural Selection’, but almost everything else is of a lower order.

But even when we do make radical departures, it doesn’t always mean a complete eradication of prior knowledge. It does when moving from superstition, religious dogma, witch-doctoring and superstitious theories of illness: as when we move to the germ theory of disease and a modern understanding biology, because people get cured, and ignorance is vanquished.

But take Newtonian mechanics. This remains valid for the not too small (quantum mechanical) and not too massive or fast (relativistic) domains of nature, and so remains a perfectly good approximation for understanding snooker balls, the motion of the solar system, and even the motion of fluids.

As Helen Czerski describes in her book Storm In A Teacup, the physics of the everyday covers many interesting and complex phenomena.

In the following Figure, from her entertaining TEDxManchester talk The fascinating physics of everyday life, she shows how the physics of the every day applies over a huge range of scales (in time and space); bracketed between the exotic worlds of the extremely small (quantum mechanics) and extremely large (general relativity) which tend to dominate our cultural perceptions of physics today.

Want to build a bridge, or build a solar system, or understand Saturn’s rings? Move over Schrodinger and Einstein, come on board Newton!

And yes, if you want to understand the interaction of molecules? Thank you Schrodinger.

Want to predict gravitational waves from a distant galaxy where two neutron stars are collinding? Thank you Einstein.

That is why the oft promulgated narrative of science – the periodic obliteration of old theories to be replaced by new ones – is often not quite how things work in practice.  Instead of a vision of a singular pyramid of knowledge that is torn down when someone of Einstein’s genius comes along and rips away its foundations, one instead sees new independent pyramids popping up in the desert of ignorance.

The old pyramids often remain, useful in their own limited ways. And when confronting a complex problem, such as climate change, we see a small army of pyramids working together to make sense of the world.

As one such ‘pyramid’, we have the long and tangled story of the ‘atom’ concept, a story that began with the ancient greeks, and has taken centuries to untangle. Building this pyramid – the one that represents our understanding of the atom – we follow many false trails as well as brilliant revelations. Dalton’s understanding of the uniqueness and differentiation of atoms was one such hard fought revelation. There was the kinetic theory of gases that cemented the atomic/ molecular role in the physical properties of matter: the microscopic behaviour giving rise to the macroscopic properties such as temperature and pressure. Then there was the appreciation of the nuclear character and the electronic properties of atoms, leading ultimately to an appreciation of the fundamental reason for the structure of the periodic table, with a large dose of quantum theory thrown in. And then, with Chadwick’s discovery of the neutron, a resolution of the reason for isotopes very existence. Isotopes that, with the help of Urey’s brilliant insight, enabled their use in diverse paleoclimatogical applications that have brought glaciologists, chemists and atmospheric physicists together to track the progress of our climate and its forcing agents.

We can trace a similar story of how we came to be able to model the dynamical nature of our weather and climate. The bringing together of the dynamics of fluids, their thermodynamics, and much more.

Each brick in these pyramids starting as a question or conundrum and then leading to decades of research, publications, debate and resolutions, and yes, often many new questions.

Science never was and never will be the narrative of ignorance overcome by heroic brilliance overnight by some hard pressed crank cum genius. Galilieo was no crank, neither was Newton, nor was Einstein.

Even if our televisual thirst for instant gratification demands a science with instant answers, the reality is that the great majority of science is a long process of unfolding and developing the consequences of the fundamental principles, to see how these play out. Now, with the help of the computational facilities that are part of an extended laboratory (to add to the test tube, the spectometer, x-ray diffration, and so much more) we can see further and test ideas that were previously inaccessible to experimentation alone (this is true in all fields). Computers are the microscope of the 21st Century, as one molecular biologist has observed.

When we look at climate change we have a subject of undoubted complexity, that is a combination of many disciplines. Maybe for this reason, it was only in the late 1950s that these disparate disciplines recognised the need to come together: meteorology, glaciology, atmospheric chemistry, paleoclimatology, and much more. This convergence of disciplines ultimately led to the formation 30 years later to the IPCC in 1988.

At its most basic, global warming is trivial, and beyond any doubt: add more energy to a system (by adding more infra-red absorbing carbon dioxide to the atmosphere), and the system gets hotter (because, being knocked out of equilibrium, it will heat up faster than it loses heat to space, up and until it reaches a new equilibrium).  Anyone who has spent an evening getting a frying pan to the point where it is hot enough to fry a pancake (and many to follow), will appreciate the principle.

Today, we have moved out of a pre-existing equilibrium and are warming fast, and have not yet reached a new equilibrium. That new equilibrium depends on how much more fossil fuels we burn. The choice now is between very serious and catastrophic.

The different threads of science that come together to create the ‘climate of consilience’ are diverse. They involve everything from the theory of isotopes; the understanding of Earth’s meteorological system; the nature of radiation and how different gases react with different types of radiation; the carbonate chemistry of the oceans; the dynamics of heat and moisture in the atmosphere based on Newtonian mechanics applied to fluids; and so much more.

Each of these threads has a well established body of knowledge in its own right, confirmed through published evidence and through their multiple successful applications.

In climate science these threads converge, and hence the term consilience.

So when did we know ‘for certain’ that global warming was real and is now happening?

Was it when Tyndall discovered in 1859 that carbon dioxide strongly absorbed infra-red radiation, whereas oxygen and nitrogen molecules did not?  Did that prove that the world would warm dangerously in the future? No, but it did provide a key building block in our knowledge.

As did the findings of those that followed.

At each turn, there was always some doubt – something that suggested a ‘get out clause’, and scientists are by nature sceptical …

Surely the extra carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere by human activities would be absorbed by the vast oceans?

No, this was shown from the chemistry of the oceans to be wrong by the late 1950s, and thoroughly put to bed when sufficient time passed after 1958, when Charles Keeling started to accurately measure the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The ‘Keeling Curve’ rises inexorably.

Surely the carbon dioxide absorption of heat would become ‘saturated’ (unable to absorb any more heat) above a certain concentration.

No, this was raised in the early 20th Century but thoroughly refuted in the 1960s. Manabe & Wetherald’s paper in 1967 was the final nail in the coffin of denial for those that pushed against the ‘carbon dioxide’ theory.  To anyone literate in science, that argument was over in 1967.

But will the Earth system not respond in the way feared … won’t the extra heat be absorbed by the oceans?

Good news, bad news. Yes, 93% of the extra heat is indeed being absorbed by the oceans, but the remainder is more than enough to ensure that the glaciers are melting; the great ice sheets are losing ice mass (the loses winning out over any gains of ice); seasons are being affected; sea levels are rising inexorably; and overall the surface temperature is rising. No need for computer models to tell us what is happening, it is there in front of us, for anyone who cares to look.

Many pour scorn on consensus in science.

They say that one right genius is better than 100 fools, which is a fine argument, except when uttered by a fool.

Even the genius has to publish, and fools never will or can, but shout from the sidelines and claim genius. All cranks think they are geniuses, whereas the converse is not true.

Einstein published, and had to undergo scrutiny. When the science community finally decided that Einstein was right, they did so because of the integrity of the theory and weight of evidence were sufficient. It was not a show of hands immdiately after he published, but in a sense, it was a show of hands after years of work to interrogate and test his assertions.

It was consilience followed by consensus (that’s science), not consensus followed by consilience (that’s political dogms).

We are as certain that the Earth has warmed due to increases in greenhouse gases – principally carbon dioxide, arising from human activities – as we are of the effects of smoking on human health, or the benefits of vaccination, and much more.  And we are in part reinforced in this view because of the impact that is already occuring (observations not only theory).

The areas of doubt are there – how fast will the West Antarctica Ice Sheet melt – but these are doubts in the particulars not in the general proposition.  Over 150 years of accumulated knowledge have led to this consilience, and was until recently, received wisdom amongst leaders of all political persuasions, as important and actionable knowledge.

The same is true of the multiple lines of enquiry that constitute the umbrella of disciplines we call ‘climate science’. Not a showing of hands, but a showing of published papers that have helped create this consilience of knowledge, and yes, a consensus of those skilled in their various arts.

It would be quicker to list the various areas of science that have not impacted on climate science than those that have.

In the two tables appended to the end of this essay, I have included:

Firstly, a timeline of selected discoveries and events over a long period – from 1600 to nearly the present – over which time either climate has been the topic or the underlying threads of science have been the topic.  I have also included parallel events related to institutions such as the formation of meteorological organisations, to show both scientific and social developments on the same timeline.

Secondly, I have listed seminal papers in the recent history of the science (from 1800 onwards), with no doubt omissions that I apologise for in advance (comments welcome).

When running workshops on climate fluency I used a 5 metre long roll – a handwritten version of the timeline – and use it to walk along and refer to dates, personalities, stories and of course, key publications. It seems to go down very well (beats Powerpoint, for sure) …

All this has led to our current, robust, climate of consilience.

There was no rush to judgment, and no ideological bias.

It is time for the commentariat – those who are paid well to exercise their free speech in the comment sections of the media, at the New York Times, BBC, Daily Mail, or wherever –  to study this history of the science, and basically, to understand why scientists are now as sure as they can be. And why they get frustrated with the spurious narrative of ‘the science is not yet in’.

If they attempted such arguments in relation to smoking, vaccination, germ theory or Newtonian mechanics,  they would be laughed out of court.

The science of global warming is at least as robust as any of these, but the science community is not laughing … it’s deeply concerned at the woeful blindness of much of the media.

The science is well beyond being ‘in’; it is now part of a textbook body of knowledge. The consilience is robust and hence the consequent 97% consensus.

It’s time to act.

And if you, dear commentator, feel unable to act, at least write what is accurate, and avoid high school logical fallacies, or bullshit arguments about the nature of science.

Richard Erskine, 2nd May 2017 

Amended on 17th July 2017 to include Tables as streamed Cloudup content (PDFs), due to inability of some readers to view the tables. Click on the arrow on bottom right of ‘frame’ to stream each document in turn, and there will then be an option to download the PDF file itself.

Amended 31st October 2017 to include a Figure I came across from Helen Czerski TED Talk, which helps illustrate a key point of the essay.

TABLE 1 – Timeline of Selected Discoveries and Events (since 1600)

TABLE 2 – Key Papers Related to Climate Science (since 1800)

END of DOCUMENT

Cherish not only those who you love, but that which you love. Yesterday I went with my wife on the March for Science in Bristol, the city where we fell in love many years ago. We were on one of over 600 marches globally, to express a love for the science that has brought us so much, and promises so much more.

We do not want in the future to find ourselves mournfully recalling the words of some great poet, words of regret at our careless disregard, our taking for granted –

“When to the session of sweet silent thought,
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste….” 

(Shakespeare, Sonnet 30)

Humanity needs more experts now than ever before, but it also needs poets and novelists too to find that voice, that will reach the hearts of those who will be hurt by the cynical disregard for truth, for evidence.

This is no longer the preserve of cranks, but now influences men (and it is mostly men) in power who attack the science of evolution, vaccination and climate change, that has saved the lives of billions and promises to save the lives of billions more in the future. Notwithstanding the more prosaic inability to live without the fruits of science (try having a no science friday).

That is why the over 600 cities that Marched for Science yesterday spoke with a true voice. Science is for everyone and we all benefit from its fruits but just as few really know where their food comes from, we have become blind to the processes and creativity of the scientists who will bring us the next wonders, and the next solutions to the challenges we face. We the people, and scientists, must both now pledge to remedy our careless assumption that the Englightenment will prevail against the tide of ignorance that has reached the pinnacle of power, without strong and systemic defenses.

We ignore these threats at our peril.

Let’s not regret being so careless that we allowed an opinionated, ideologically motivated few to use their positions of power to drown out the voices of reason.

Let us, most of all, not waste our dear, precious time.

. . .. o o O o o .. . .

Richard W. Erskine, essaysconcerning.com, 23rd April 2017

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

The speakers at the Bristol event were Professor Bruce Hood from the Bristol University’s School of Experimental Psychology; TV naturalist Chris Packham; science writer and scientist Dr Simon Singh; At-Bristol’s creative director Anna Starkey; and, scientist and writer Dr Suzi Gage.

Youtube videos of their speeches available here >

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLz3n5TyzhVlR88vhkd8guOjH8F53kizSt 

According to Megan McArdle in a Bloomberg View opinion piece we cannot trust computer models of the climate because economists have failed when they tried to model complex economic systems.

Leaving aside the fundamental fact that the ‘atoms’ of physics (molecules, humidity, etc.) are consistent in their behaviour, whereas the ‘atoms’ of economics (humans) are fickle and prone to ‘sentiment’, this is a failed form of denialism.

Clive James is known as a man of letters and, in the UK at least, as an erudite and  witty commentator on culture, for which he is widely respected. He has also been extremely courageous in sharing his thoughts on his terminal cancer, with his customary wit and flair.

For all these reasons it is sad that he has decided to become embroiled in climate change in the way he has. For sure he has the right to an opinion, but he seems to have muddied the art he loves, with the science that he clearly does not, and the result will satisfy neither discipline.

For those in broadcasting and the media, paid to express a view on anything and everything, it must be easy to develop a self assurance that belies any lack of knowledge. We are now resigned to the almost daily stream of nonsense that those such as Melanie Philips and others produce, given free rein to fulminate in the press.

Clive James’s poem “Imminent Catastrophe” was published in the New Statesman, and discussed  in an article by Kaya Burgess in The Times, 17 March 2016  is barely more subtle, even shrouded as it is in the form of a poem.

The poem reveals more about Clive James’ self-declared ignorance on climate change than it does about the scientists, and if there is a metre absent then it is surely in his poetry, not the predicted sea level rise.

Let’s unpick the poem.

“imminent catastrophe”

No self-respecting climate scientists has ever talked about “imminent” catastrophe. The timescales vary greatly depending on the impacts in question. Yes, there is a strong argument about how fast we need to stop emitting carbon dioxide, in order to avoid the medium to long term consequences. But that is a distinction lost on CJ.

“Not showing any signs of happening”

There are many signs and CJ must either be too lazy or too blinkered to find out about them. The receding mountain glaciers are not imminent, they are already well on their way, and there are many other signs, as illustrated in NASA’s ‘Vital Signs’.

“The ice at the North Pole should have gone” 

A typical exaggerated straw-man statement, rather than an accurate reflection of the scientific position. The clear evidence is that the minimum in sea ice is on a downward trend. “The Arctic Ocean is expected to become essentially ice free in summer before mid-century”, says NASA (see Vital Signs above).

“Awkwardly lingering”

Yes it is … rather like those discredited contrarian memes, that CJ slavishly trots out.  Not much creativity at work here I am afraid on his part.

“It seems no more than when we were young” 

CJ’s anecdotal personal experience is worthless, like those who claim that smoking is safe because granny smoked 20 a day and lived to 90, so it must be ok. The disrupted weather systems are already bringing extremes in terms of both wetter winters and hot summers, depending on the region. While ‘attribution’ can get us into the difficult area of probabilities, the dice is already slightly loaded towards more extreme weather, and the loading will increase as the world warms. The National Academy of Sciences have just reported on this  (But once again, I am sure that CJ will not want his opinion to be confused by facts).

“Continuing to not go up by much”

Well, CJ might not be impressed by the sea level rise so far, but the projected sea level rise is expected to be up to 1 metre by the end of the century, which would have a devastating impact on many countries and many cities situated near sea level. The long term picture, over millennia, offers little solace because of the long time it takes for elevated concentrations of carbon dioxide to remain in the atmosphere.

“sure collapse of the alarmist view” 

A word of caution here from CJ regarding the sceptics’ who “lapse into oratory”, but he clearly shares the belief that those who warn of serious impacts of global warming should be labelled alarmist, while at the same time being affronted at the label denialist. Sauce for the goose is apparently not sauce for the gander.

He lazily conflates the science with those that who at first sight may easily be cast in the mould of  alarmist: those dreaded environmentalists.  Let us assume for arguments sake that some of who he objects to are shrill alarmists. Does that have any bearing on the veracity of the science? Of course not, yet he applies his broad brush to tar anyone who might dare raise a concern.

Scientists for their part are often a rather quiet and thoughtful bunch. They often take years before publishing results, so they can check and re-check. But what are they to do about global warming? Keep quiet and they could be criticised for not raising the alarm; yet if they tell us about the worst prognostications in the calmest of voices, they will surely be accused of alarmism. A no-win situation.

It is rather easy for those like CJ, whose opinions are unencumbered by knowledge, to discount thousands of diligent scientists with an insulting and pejorative label.

“His death … motivates the doomsday fantasist”

Scientists such as  Sagan have demonstrated a far less parochial view of the future than CJ. Boltzmann foresaw the heat death of the universe and scientists routinely remind us of what tiny specks we humans are in the universe. It is CJ not they that need reminding of how insignificant we all are.

Scientists show an amazing ability to have both a deep knowledge which challenges our deepest assumptions of the world, and a positive attitude to humanity. A combination of realism and optimism that is often inspiring.

The real fantasists here are those like CJ who imagine that they can stand judgment on 200 years of cumulative scientific knowledge, by rubbishing all those men and women who have established the understanding we now have, including the scientific evidence for global warming resulting from human activities that is now incontrovertible.

It is sad that someone who knows and loves poetry should decide to adulterate his art with this hatchet job on another discipline, science, for which he has little empathy and even less knowledge, but feels qualified to insult with the poetic equivalent of a latter day Margarita Pracatan.

Entertaining for some no doubt, but a rather sad reflection on CJ. He could have used a poem to provide a truly reflective and transcendent piece on the subject of climate change, but instead merely offered an opinion piece masquerading as art, clouded by contrarian myths.

We still love you Clive, but I really hope this poem is not your last.

(c) Richard Erskine, 2016

Note: If readers would like a presentation of a golden thread through the science, in plain English, then my essay Demystifying Global Warming & Its Implications aims to provide just that.

At this time of year, cynics and sceptics pour scorn on Santa and his faithful reindeer, the prancers and dancers of this festive time. The gauntlet is often laid down as follows. Santa will visit all those children who want presents from him – in about one billion homes – which he has to visit on Christmas Eve.

Thankfully, Fermilabs published the calculations some years ago and proved that Santa, travelling at close to the speed of light, would have no problems covering the ground, in 500 seconds, leaving a generous but fleeting 0.15 milliseconds per dwelling to wolf down some sherry and mince pies. We are of course assuming there is just one Santa, but please note that in Iceland they have 13 Santa Clauses, sons of a horrible mountain hag called Grýla (we leave the re-calculation as an exercise for the reader!).

So what about data? Let’s think not about boring networks and bandwidth, but something more fantastic: the whole of our digital universe.

The Guardian reported back in 2009 that “At 487bn gigabytes (GB), if the world’s rapidly expanding digital content were printed and bound into books it would form a stack that would stretch from Earth to Pluto 10 times.”

Assuming 500bn Gb was being added every 18 months, the speed of the 2009 virtual stack of books was about 1000 kilometres per second. This is fast but well short of the speed of light, that is 300 times this value.

The rate of growth is not constant. It too is doubling every 18 months. It is no wonder this was characterised as the “expanding digital universe”. IDC’s fifth annual study on the digital universe published in June 2011 estimated that we had reached 1.8 trillion gigabytes. We are exploding according to plan!

Translated into a velocity, I have calculated that the exponentially accelerating virtual stack of books, reaching well beyond our solar system, will be travelling at more than the speed of light by 2018. Unlike Santa and crew, our ‘virtual stack’ does not have to comply with the special theory of relativity (Einstein, 1905).

So data will not only catch Santa, but accelerate well beyond him, if we carry on at this rate.

With some thought and some digital out-sourcing, maybe Santa can use this virtual stack as a delivery mechanism, and so create a little space in his busy schedule at this time of year to enjoy the mince pies and sherry at more leisure, and avoid indigestion.

Merry Yuletide.

Republished from my 2011 post on thoughtfeast

I think that James Hansen, as much as I respect him and his huge contribution to the science of climate change, and his personal commitment to communicating the risks we face (including getting arrested), has been outrageous in calling COP21 a fraud.

What would have happened if he had chaired the meeting? Hitting everyone over the head until they agree with a carbon tax, which he sets? I suspect the meeting would have ended in acrimony and the world would be in despair at no agreement.

Diplomats may not be great at science, but the converse is also true.

Laurent Fabius possesses another kind of genius.

Is the current agreement flawed? Yes, in many ways, but it is a framework on which to take us forward with 5-yearly reviews, and things that many developing countries had requested, like loss and damage.

I marvel at the ability to bring more than 190 countries together, all with very different histories and current needs, to knit something together.

French diplomacy tonight deserves our gratitude, not our scorn.

Is 1.5C achievable? The science suggests almost certainly not. So why include it? Because low lying and vulnerable countries demanded it. It is a recognition of their plight. Is that a sop to them, a fraud? No, its called diplomacy and of course not an easy thing for scientists like Hansen to accept.

It would not be the first time that ‘creative ambiguity’ was used in the cause of a greater good (I am thinking the peace accords in Northern Ireland where, if we had instead insisted on absolutely rigorous unambiguous language, would still be in a war there).

There is a joke about the visitor to Ireland who asks a local old man for directions to a place he needs to get to … and the old man says … “If I were going where you are heading, I wouldn’t have started from here!”.

We cannot change where we are starting from, not Hansen, not Fabius.

We can all help, individually, in our towns, in our communities, as voters, etc. to help turn aspiration into reality. e.g. like three examples below:

• In the USA, State lawmakers bypass Congress to support 50 percent clean energy by 2030 at Paris Climate Conference
• and my local town, Stroud, fighting climate change
• and my local football team Forest Green and its owner, Dale Vince, inspiring Australian politicians

I think we all need to stop whinging about how hard it is and #JFDI.

By we, I mean all levels of civil society across the globe, utilities, politicians, industry, engineers, and all who can contribute.

It is surprising how much can be achieved when everyone decides to work together.

That spirit of working together may be up against huge hurdles, and punishing odds, but it is not a fraud.

(c) Richard Erskine, 12th December 2015

Ted Cruz decided to use a Congressional Committee to ask the question “Data or Dogma? Promoting Open Inquiry in the Debate over the Magnitude of Human Impact on Climate Change.”

A number of commentators have explored the why & wherefores of the meeting and analysed Cruz’s partisan summary .

My purpose here is not to reproduce those arguments. Detailed responses to Ted Cruz often repeated talking points are available.

I want to express my intense irritation at the dishonest use of emotional language by Ted Cruz, when labelling (the majority of) climate scientists, and those who are calling for action on global warming, as “alarmists”.

This is one of the oldest tricks in the book; to try to make your position seem reasonable by use of emotionally charges labels to apply to your opponent (or their arguments) in a debate. Unfortunately, as long as there are politicians, there will be abuse of language as a substitute for substance.

It is worth also recalling some wise words from Robert Thouless as true today as when first published in 1930:

Once we are on the look-out for this difference between factual and emotional meanings, we shall notice that words which carry more or less strong suggestions of emotional attitudes are very common and are ordinarily used in the discussion of such controversial questions as those of politics, morals, and religion. This is one reason why men can go on discussing such questions without getting much nearer to a rational solution of them. …

Those who show enthusiasm in support of proposals with which a speaker disagrees are extremists, while those showing similar enthusiasm on his own side are called staunch. If a politician wishes to attack some new proposal he has a battery of these and other words with emotional meanings at his disposal. He speaks of “this suggested panacea supported only by the bombast of extremists”, and the proposal is at once discredited in the minds of the majority of people, who like to think of themselves as moderate, distrustful of panaceas, and uninfluenced by windy eloquence. Also we may notice that it has been discredited without the expenditure of any real thought, for of real objective argument there is none, only the manipulation of words calling out emotion.

Robert Thouless, Straight and Crooked Thinking, Pan, 1930 (revised 1953)

Ted Cruz (like many politicians left and right), uses emotive words to  try to make a case that is stronger than it deserves.

But when he throws around the label global warming or climate “alarmist” to compensate for the paucity of genuine science on his side of the argument, and does this while chairing a US Senate Committee, this is abuse not merely of argument but of power.

When will Republicans realise that they are being manipulated, using the oldest tricks in the dishonest argument handbook?

In the light of the IS attacks on Paris that has terrorised the city, thoughts inevitably turn to the climate talks in December, COP21, and how France will respond.

Will this change the venue or format of COP21?

The message is that the conference remains on course. This is the right decision. This conference is much too important to be blown off course by the actions of murderous ideologues.

The event already had in place security that is inevitably needed for an event like this, with badged access to the conference area itself. I suspect they had already factored in what many Parisians expected might be coming (even if the reality was much more shocking than anyone had imagined).

Will security be beefed up? Yes, inevitably, but it would be a mistake to create an image of a besieged COP21 with popular protest groups shut out of the conference behind even higher ‘walls’ (an impression that many protest groups already feel).

Total security for the large numbers of the ‘unbadged’ outside the conference would be impossible. What to do? Not to be heard in Paris, to stay away?

I don’t believe so, but I do believe we need to re-think the organization of the protests, and I had this feeling even before the terrorist attacks.

We, the citizens of planet Earth all qualify for a ticket to this event: ‘how to save the Earth’, and clearly we cannot all be there.

Whereas UK citizens, like me, can find low carbon ways to travel to Paris, what about a citizen of Indonesia or Canada? Flying in large numbers to Paris would not exactly send a consistent message. A couple of tonnes of carbon dioxide for each far flung protestor: is that the right price?

There needs to be protesters there for sure, and the French people are protesters par excellence. We need people there to create that energy, to help remind the delegates why we are here.

The people – and many of these student groups – understand the challenge better than the politicians, and understand the severe limitations of our politicians to speak for them, and show vision and leadership. They need their voice heard. Often, these events are accused of being ‘corporatist’ and the voices of the status quo still get undue access to the high table.

The organisers need to recognise this imbalance and not to allow the terrorist attacks on Paris to widen this imbalance further.

The COP21 organisers should create a protest space within the conference zone itself: a space where delegates must pass through and is a wall of images, tweets and statements from protest groups who are physically unable to be there. Every hour of every day, delegates must be reminded of why they are there.

We need the words of all nations represented … Bangladeshi, Egyptian, Kenyan, … not just the middle-class Europeans and North Americans who can afford to fly to be there.

If we want a global protest, inside the COP21 tent, then let’s find a way to do this that does not compromise the inevitable demands of security for delegates and observers.

Let’s bring protest to the heart of COP21.

E .O. Wilson, the great evolutionary biologist, was in conversation with Jim Al-Khalili on BBC Radio 4’s ‘The Life Scientific’ (a little gem of a series)

He discussed his early years (from age 8!), discoveries, and his ideas on how Darwinian natural selection works in  creative tension between individual selection (the self gene variety) and group selection (which many biologists dispute). Fascinating stuff.

In reference to Darwin, he said …

“the man was impossible, he was always right”.

HUMANITY & BIODIVERSITY

In the latter part of this wonderful programme, Jim Al-Khalili steered the conversation to Ed Wilson’s concerns about biodiversity and the impact that humanity is having on it.

For those of you who may be unable to access the BBC iPlayer or a download of the programme, I wanted to share his words, which were so powerful and insightful I felt compelled to transcribe them (my punctuation, because this was a mesmerising stream of thought):

”Humanity has palaeolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like power … now that’s an extremely dangerous combination” …

“We are by instinct related closely to the survival of our distant ancestors by a driving need to strike nature as hard as we could and to draw as much as we could from it, and we haven’t lost that at all;

And we now come to a higher level recognition that we struck too hard and too far and we are threatening the world that we first entered so aggressively and so successfully in Africa;

And we’ve somehow got to pull back our instincts to exploit and subordinate and convert to our immediate welfare because if we take too much more of the Earth’s biodiversity we render the biosphere unstable;

We could in the worst circumstances reach a tipping point in which the whole thing collapses, and we with it.”

Humbling and thought provoking. Nothing to add.

So Google, or at least its Vice President, Vint Cerf, has now had a flash of inspiration!

It has realised that information preservation is important.

The Huffington Post reported :

Cerf told the American Association for the Advancement of Science that “if we want people in the future to be able to recreate what we are doing now, we are going to have to build the concept of preservation into the internet”.

Cerf says that a “digital vellum” must be developed which can maintain the state of hardware and software, as well as raw data, so that the web as it appears today can be experienced in decades to come.

“When you think about the quantity of documentation from our daily lives that is captured in digital form, like our interactions by email, people’s tweets, and all of the world wide web, it’s clear that we stand to lose an awful lot of our history,” he said, according to the Guardian.

This is an old story that pops up from time to time, like when the BBC’s re-hash of the Doomsday Book turned out to be unreadable after 15 years

People have for some time been discussing the probable gap in the historical record as society makes its messy 50 year transition from a paper-based world to a truly digital one (I think perhaps we are halfway through this transition, which varies in speed according to industry and culture).

Information scientists and those at the sharp end of delivering strategic platforms to industry have known about the preservation issue for as long as there has been IT, and strategies and standards are now well developed for addressing the preservation of information – at the physical preservation, content preservation and intellectual preservation levels.

As Jeff James, the Chief Executive of the UK’s National Archives, pointed out on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme (14^th February 2015 – in response to this Google story), institutions such as his have a number of successful strategies for ensuring the national archives, at least, will be preserved in perpetuity.

Google naively sold the vision that content does not need the disciplines of information science – curation, preservation, indexing, etc. – because Big Search and Big Data mean the old skills are irrelevant. No, they are even more relevant today than ever, but of course, need to be reframed in terms of digital standards and strategies.

It is because businesses and institutions fired all those people like records managers in the past, because they imagined a word-processor and a fileshare meant that such disciplines were unnecessary, and did not implement enterprise content management (ECM), that there will be a hiatus in their historical records … not because we didn’t know how to standardize or migrate formats.

Those of us that work on information management in industries as diverse as healthcare, engineering and pharmaceuticals have if anything been on the case for even longer than our national archives.

The issue of aging storage devices has long been solved, because at least for those using ECM systems, content is silently moved to newer storage devices periodically, without even the need for human agency.

The issue of document formats is the next easiest to address (at least for those artefacts that are commonly regarded as documents). These may have been created in many forms:

• Take a clinical safety report for a new drug, written using Microsoft Word 97.  Knowing that Microsoft upgrades its software at least once every 2 years, it is an obvious worry that the report might not be readable in 20 years time. In addition, this report might form part of a huge dossier that is then submitted to the regulatory authorities, to get approval for the drug, and will need to be accessible for some decades after a drug has been taken off the market. So let’s say, at least 50 years from the date of its creation; so we need to preserve the context not just the content.
• Alternatively, imagine we have created a design for a bridge, using 3D computer-aided design (CAD) software, and then rendered this as 2D drawings (elevations and cross sections) that engineers will use to build the bridge. These are printed on large format sheets that the engineers and construction workers can take on site, and stored digitally in some format

These are non-trivial problems for a raft of reasons of which the format is the least difficult.

At the content level, we need to ask questions of content like,  “Do we ever need to revise, or reuse, the content?”, “For viewers of the content, what level of fidelity is required?”:

• For the drug safety report, we want to make it non-revisable, non-deniable, so we could create a PDF-A (a flavour designed for archiving which is non-revisable) and for belts and braces, we also store a rendition in a facsimile format (using the TIFF standard, like the RAW type format from a good camera), because the information is quite flat. In this way, we have covered all bases. We are 100% sure we could read the document in 100 or even 1000 years. The fact that TIFF is such a basic format – just rows of coloured dots – is a weakness when it comes to reuse (e.g. editing) but a strength for long-term ‘readability’. A visitor from Alpha Centauri would have no problem understanding it, and so viewing it.
• What about the engineering drawings? If we come back in 75 years to do a major re-work on the bridge, due to the failure of some components, then would we need to get hold of the original revisable 3D CAD  files? Yes we would! So how do we solve this problem? One strategy is to ensure there are industry standards for specialised formats like CAD (there are), and we make sure these are ‘forward compatible’ (i.e. new versions of software can read old content).  Where this is problematic, we need, periodically to refresh old content to bring it forward to newer formats; this is one of the strategies that national archives use.

In the document world, Goldfarb and others created ‘Generalized Mark-Up Languages’ (GML) in the 1960s, to get around the problem of different  formats, but mainly to enable high fidelity sharing of data/content between people and systems.

This evolved into SGML (Standard GML), and over time into XML (eXtensible Markup Language). There are two main benefits I wish to stress here:

• Firstly, a separation of content from presentation, meaning that we can take the same content and render it for different viewing contexts or devices (this is now routine today, as people observe viewing the same content on different styles and devices).
• Secondly, we can create different ‘dialects’ of XML specialised for different industries or applications, in the media, healthcare, finance, etc.

So, for example, NewsML allows many news agencies to send news to an aggregator like Reuters whose systems can automatically process those documents, because the syntax and semantics have been standardized. This includes not only content but the indexing information (in modern parlance, the meta-data) used to characterize or contextualise the content – which ensures high fidelity routing/ targeting of the information to Reuters’ clients.

For more complex situations, like that of a drug dossier, containing say 20,000 files, the whole structure can be defined using an XML ‘schema’ to standardize the structure and its meaning: it specifies what is required in terms of context, metadata and the content itself.

Interestingly, the HTML for which Sir Tim Berners-Lee is famous for, the World Wide Web is a kind of dumbed down SGML/XML which is great for creating simple web pages on the WWW, but loses the two main benefits mentioned above (contextual rendering and industry dialects).

Of course, some technologists would prefer to ignore the practicalities of information management, such as the need to think about document standards. Instead they propose a magic bullet which is to preserve software and hardware environments. By virtualizing the whole stack of software and hardware we preserve everything needed to read the old content. While virtualized systems have a big place in modern IT (because they enable fast deployment of complex systems), they do not obviate the need to tackle the underlying information management standards.

A regulator in healthcare is not going to certify a software stack instead of a document standard (and by ‘document’, I mean the whole machinery of meta-data, context and content formats).

Google may be in danger of looking for a technological magic bullet where none exists. Meanwhile, back in the real world of industry, the rest of us are finding solutions today to all aspects of the information preservation and fidelity issue.

So what if Google did offer a ‘Digital White Hole’ (instead of a Black one), to provide improved access to archived information? What would that mean?

I ask this because Google are on a mission to monetize both our content and our internet personas and behaviour. Unlike National Archives, they do not have a public duty to do what is best for our content, only what is best for them. And they already have an hegemony in relation to search!

Do I really want ‘search’ to extend to the custodianship of content? A new hegemony?! I don’t think so.

When I make a search, Google chooses to put results at the top for those who have paid to be there, not the most appropriate to my context. If I want a drug safety report from 30 years ago, would I expect Google to be the best custodian of such content in the future?  At present, there are no signs that would be even a remotely realistic outcome.

The risk we as citizens or businesses might face is that we become beholden to large service providers like Google to gain access to our archived content, with no statutory safeguards.

If this used some magic virtualized ‘digital vellum’, we might find it difficult or impossible to take our content away and move it to another provider.

The issues of long-term preservation and fidelity of information/ content are too important to be left to commercial interests alone (but of course they will need to play a role).

This is why the standards based approach, coupled with pragmatic strategies as illustrated earlier are what I would recommend. No magic, just hard work, experience, collaboration and persistence.

These are what work today in many industries/ businesses, albeit not implemented universally. If we face a ‘Black Hole’, all the more reason to scale up what we know works.

I would not fly on planes today without a standardized dossier called the Aircraft Maintenance Manual (AMM), linked to the actual maintenance applied to each plane in service, which is a global industry standard, independent of any commercial interest. Planes are like flying paragons of information management!

There is today, particularly in domestic use but also in a surprising number of businesses, far too much content that is unmanaged, unindexed and uncared for, stored on file shares in proprietary formats, not using the well established methods and tools (such as ECM) that would ensure digital and intellectual preservation.

Google’s rather belated realization that the world is not as simple as they would have had us believe, is a great first step (for them), but is it for us? We shall see.

Rather than imagining they have discovered something new, they might be interested in learning how others like Jeff James of the UK’s National Archives, and those of us at the coal face of information management, have been addressing these issues for many years.

Welcome Google, to the world of business critical content, and long-term preservation.

You’ve certainly taken your time!