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editor
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 Posted: Mon Apr 21, 2008 11:27 am Post subject: |
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What's the carbon footprint of MASSIVE housing failures worldwide?
Again, are these 'scientists' wilfully blind to the PANDEMIC! of housing failures due at least in part to ill-considered energy-saving provisions?!
The Suicidal Planet
How to Prevent Global
Climate Catastrophe
Hardcover
By Mayer Hillman with
Tina Fawcett and
Sudhir Chella Rajan
| Quote: | EXISTING HOUSING
The Alliance to Save Energy found that if the set of policies they put forward for improving the efficiency of buildings and the energy-using equipment within them were implemented, national building energy use could be cut by about 14 per cent by 2020. However, there is no legislation for raising the standards of the existing housing stock in spite of the fact that much of it is poorly insulated and the equipment used in it is wasteful of energy. There is a limited program of intervention for low-income households, known as "low-income weatherization assistance." However, while 28 million households are in theory eligible for the program, there are funds for improving only just over 100,000 households each year. Because of its small scale, this program does not yet deliver much in the way of overall energy savings.
OTHER POLICIES
There are several other significant policies targeting energy efficiency in the residential sector. Utility-based financial incentive programs have been in operation since the early 1980s, offering a variety of options including rebates, low-interest loans, and direct installation programs, which are leading to an accelerated market penetration of energy-efficient lights and appliances. Federal minimum efficiency standards are also in place for many residential appliance, including refrigerators and freezers, clothes washers, water heaters, and central air conditioners. These standards are being raised at regular intervals. The Energy Star, a voluntary appliance-labeling program, was introduced in 1992 to educate consumers about the advantages of purchasing efficient appliances. It is run by the Environmental Protection Agency and uses endorsement labels to identify which new homes and appliances are the most efficient on the market. The program also applies to products for the commercial market and covers over forty different product categories. It is estimated to have made considerable energy savings through influencing choices made by manufacturers, retailers, and consumers. (From Fiddling While Rome Burns, pgs. 138-139) |
Our e-mail to author Mayer Hillman of London's venerable PSI:
| Quote: | From: editor
To: website@psi.org.uk
Cc: editor
Sent: Monday, April 21, 2008 4:38 PM
Subject: Re: Saving energy at the expense of proper ventilation - the cause of MASSIVE HOUSING FAILURES - worldwide!
Hello venerable PSI,
We run a weblog http://www.bccondos.ca/ in Vancouver, British Columbia devoted to the massive failure of multi-family housing not just here but worldwide - failures due in no small part to the energy-saving measures the authors of The Suicidal Planet are thoughtlessly! promoting in an otherwise impressive text. Even worse, the book makes no mention whatsoever of these spectacular failures, which continue to pose unconscionable economic, environmental and immediate human health risks and not just to locals. What kind of green science is it that fails to calculate the carbon footprint of SO MANY housing failures and economies like B.C.'s that promote a toxic cycle of redevelopment-repair-resell-rerepair-redevelop? Surely PSI isn't in the pocket of real estate magnates ... is it?
As the great British humorist P.G. Wodehouse might have put it, the scales have fallen from my eyes.
Editor
http://www.bccondos.ca
Tracking all aspects of massive failures worldwide of unaffordable, inaccessible, barrier-full,
multi-unit housing and those who promote and profit by them. |
Our e-mail to the BBC:
| Quote: | From: editor
To: http://www.bbcworld.com/Pages/ContactUsDepartments.aspx
Sent: Monday, April 21, 2008 4:53 PM
Subject: Over-zealous insulators and willfully blind scientists!
Hello BBC,
Hey, I'm getting right fed up of all these venerable (read: over-loved) green scientists who have somehow - but HOW?! - failed to calculate the carbon footprint of the massive housing failures occurring each year worldwide and, even worse, economies like ours in British Columbia, Canada, that actively promote a toxic cycle of repair-redevelop-resell-rerepair. Are ALL of these characters in the pockets of the real estate industry?
I'm especially concerned about the mindless worship of all energy-saving measures with no consideration of their effects. Look at the food crisis created by inefficient U.S. biofuels! Consider, please, the toxicity of sick, over-insulated buildings! Health Canada did recently, probably in response to the asthma pandemic especially among young children!
More here http://www.bccondos.ca/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1295#1295.
I dislike giving interviews but I feel I'd actually talk to you even in the middle of the night if needs be to get massive housing failures worldwide somehow on the green agenda! |
We'll post any replies we receive here. Please check back soon for updates.
Link to this entry
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Last edited by editor on Fri Aug 01, 2008 11:43 am; edited 7 times in total |
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| Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2008 5:27 pm Post subject: |
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COUNTRY LIFE
Magazine Subscription
Are you ready for climate change?
Camilla Akers-Douglas tackles the enormity of
climate change - the facts, the figures and, most
importantly, how you can personally make a
difference
April 19/07
| Quote: | The Government wants to reduce UK carbon emissions by 60% by 2050, and plans to make all new homes carbon-zero within 10 years. Now, David Cameron and Gordon Brown, the two pretenders to the Prime Ministerial office, are engaged in a battle to woo the Green vote. Mr Brown's desire to make all homes energy efficient in the next 10 years includes a pledge to phase out old-fashioned lightbulbs by 2011. Mr Cameron has called for a 'Green air-miles allowance', giving people one short-haul flight a year at the standard rate of tax before higher rates kick in.
The EU has also recently agreed an ambitious deal for tackling climate change, committing its members to reducing their greenhouse-gas emissions by 20% by 2020 and to producing a fifth of their energy via renewable sources. It also wants 10% of the fuel used for transport to be from biofuels, and to ensure that 20% of its power comes from renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power and hydroelectricity.
The bigger picture may be daunting, but the best advice is to follow the old adage that it is easiest to pick low-hanging fruit, and start by making small changes that will bring immediate gains - such as not leaving electrical appliances on standby. (-- p. 109) |
| Quote: | | Town dwellers have an advantage. Terraced houses are more thermally efficient than free-standing ones - although for maximum effect, the drafty sash * windows should be sealed up (an act that people used to rattling sashes will regard as close to sacrilege; still, needs must). But country people are more likely to have a bit of ground around their houses, and this opens more opportunities to them. The windmill on David Cameron's North Kensington home looks more like a statement of intent, or even lifestyle accessory. If you have a field, you can erect a big enough windmill to make a useful contribution to your energy consumption. Geothermal heating, whereby pipes are buried underground so that water arrives in the house at a constant temperature and requires less energy to make it hot, can be installed in even quite small gardens. Mr. Cameron is digging up his at the moment. Country houses have more space for photovoltic cells, whereas the roof area of most London houses is too small to nmake a significant contribution. replacing conventional boilers with heat and power systems, which use the waste energy from heating the water to generate electricity may be attractive in houses with big fuel bills. ... (From Doing our bit for the planet, p. 93) |
Link to this entry
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| Posted: Sun Apr 27, 2008 1:29 pm Post subject: |
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VLM
Magazine Subscription
Cabin Fever
BARK Collective's 480 square feet of efficient, environmentally
friendly space allows a family of our - and a pet, if you can
believe it - to live off the grid
By Beverly Cramp
April, 2008
| Quote: | ... Using a standard ISO shipping container as the basis for the cabin, the resulting ATC is outfitted completely with Canadian goods. It is 480 square feet of efficient, environmentally friendly space that allows a family of four (and a pet the publicity says) to live off the grid (no need for connection to power companies). It can be transported by train, truck, plane, boat or helicopter and when folded into its package, looks like any standard metal shipping box.
The ATC has glass and aluminum folding doors, non-polluting paints and finishes, larch floors and decking and ceilings of wheatboard. The power comes from a BioDiesel generator that changes DC current to AC for lights, stereo and other plug-in devices. A BioDiesel heater is installed for providing heat when that is necessary. The bathroom has a composting toilet, water-saving devices and it’s surrounded by stylish coloured glass tile. The ATC shows that eco-friendly doesn’t have to be eco-ugly.
Inside, the compact cabin has everything needed for home comforts and of course everything is Canadian-sourced. A kitchen with a marine stove, fridge, cabinets, dishes, cutlery and even syrups and jams. Designer lighting by Canadians such as Omer Arbel and his Bocci lights, wall murals by Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, coffee tables from Brent Comber, occasional chairs by Molo Design and B.C.’s award-winning Teale Merkeley, and of course a Bensen sleeper couch from Niels Bendtsen’s (of Inform fame) factory. There are books, comics and sound systems from Canadian sources. Wireless technology is provided by, of course, the very Canadian company Research in Motion and their popular BlackBerry palm pilot. There are even clothes in the closets courtesy of Canadian designers. ATC is a wonderland of Canadian creations.
According to Studer, the ATC can also be adapted for many future developments such as making electricity by riding a bicycle or even rubbing a balloon against your hair. Like most forward-thinking designers, the possibilities are endless for BARK. Importantly, these possibilities hold the promise of new and better ways of doing things. (-- pgs. 34-35) |
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| Posted: Tue May 06, 2008 3:23 pm Post subject: |
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COUNTRY LIFE
Magazine Subscription
Rock Solid
Britain's local distinctiveness is literally rooted
in its terrain. Mark Hedges explores how the country's
geology has shaped its development
Special Issue - Why the world loves England
Sept. 6/07
| Quote: | Britain is blessed with some of the most extraordinary and varied geology in the world. Lying on the edge of a great continent, through tectonic activity Britain has been split, shoved and submersed in a way that a huge land mass never is. Drive across Britain, as the geological map opposite demonstrates, and you will pass through many types of scenery and local distinctiveness. ...
All Britain's local distinctiveness has its foundation in geology. The local rock became the building stone for the cottages and houses, and the underlying geology decided the type of agriculture of an area. In Britain's case, our geology has shaped our history, and has done as much as anything else to put the Great into Britain. Without the tin in Cornwall, the Romans would not have come; without the clay, the country would not have had enough oaks to produce a great navy; without the coal, there would have been no Industrial Revolution, no Empire.
There are large dormant volcanoes in the Caldonian uplands. Five hundred million years ago, a sea as wide as the Atlantic divided England fronm Scotland. The sedimentary chalk was formed in seas while dinosaurs roamed; the great moors of the West Country are formed by hard granite plugs that have pushed themselves up through the sedimentary rock; the Cotswold oolitic limestone was formed in an environment similar to the Caribbean today; most of the coal was laid down in great carboniferous forests 280 million years ago. The variation is almost endless.
The different rocks mean that Britain is a major producer of building stone of varied types that influenced local styles. The chalk's fossilised sponges made the flint cottages of southern and eastern England; the metamorphic slate of Cornwall and south Devon, formed at great heat and pressure, shape its houses; the Weald's clay was initially used for the wattle-and-daub houses and finally made the hanging tile houses of Sussex.
The tough missstone grit gives the rough-hewn stone of the houses of Yorkshire and the Pennine moors. Britain has clay, salt (Cheshire and the North-East) and even high-=purity limestone for bricks.
London itself is made out of 'London Stock,' the characteristic yellow-brown or red brick that has been the building material of so much of its housing and gives London its own local distinctiveness.
Would we still love the Cotswolds if the villages weren't filled with shops and houses made from the golden oolitic limestone? How much pride is embedded in the White Cliffs of Dover? Would any of our national parks be remarkable without their base geology? It's unlikely that Edinburgh or Durham would exist but for their natural geological defences.
... What man has done is to use the local geology to shape it. The characteristic dry-stone walls of the Cotswolds, the Lake District and the Pennines are made using the local limestone. The walls of Dartmoor are of granite. Hedges frame the great cattle-rearing areas of Leicestershire and the West Country. ... (-- p. 134) |
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editor
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| Posted: Thu May 08, 2008 9:42 am Post subject: |
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COUNTRY LIFE
Magazine Subscription
Finding An Architect in Yorkshire
By Marcus Binney
Feb. 22/07
| Quote: | Digby Harris (info@francisjohnson.fsnet.co.uk) is part of the partnership which continues the legendary Yorkshire practice of Francis Johnson & Partners, the most accomplished country-house architect of his generation. The hallmark of a Digby Harris building is the wonderful choice and handling of building mateirals, whether brick or stone. Mr. Harris says: 'Francis used to lament that he never built a stone house. By good fortune, I am now on my third.'
Smooth ashlar facing stone is relatively cheap compared to what it used to be, thanks to modern cutting techniques. One client found a sandstone quarry near Richmond producing a lovely golden stone. Stone slates are coming from Northumberland. 'They're the only quarry producing riven slates of the northern variety, brownish rather than the black as you get in the West Riding.'
The key to his success is the choice of suppliers. For bricks, he often goes to the York Handmade Brick Company, which produces colors, sizes and shapes to order. ...
He laughs when I ask him about sash windows. 'I am now on the last single-glazed house we shall be able to build. The problem with double glazing is that it's never guaranteed for more than 10 years, and that's about the time when seals start to go. The likelihood is that they will have to be replaced, and that probably outweighs the loss of heat from single glazing in carbon-footprint terms.'
Aesthetically, he says, the best way to get the right proportions is to mirror the chunky glazing bars of the early 18th century. If you want thin astragals of the late Georgian kind, you have to form a lattice over a large sheet of glass. Visually, this works well, but if the double-glazing seal goes, it will be difficult to replace the glass without damaging the frame. (-- p. 110) |
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| Posted: Thu May 15, 2008 2:26 pm Post subject: |
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Reason for Hope
A Spiritual Journey
Hardcover
By Jane Goodall with
Phillip Berman
| Quote: | | Gary Zeller has invented the EcoBlock. It is lighter and cheaper than the kind of brick you build houses with. It is made, by his special process, out of industrial waste, including toxic waste. So strong is its coating that it is expected to last at least three hundred years. (emphasis added) The EcoBlocks are helping to solve waste disposal problems in parts of Eastern Europe and various places in the developing world; at the same time they are being used to cheaply build schools, hospitals, and so on. I hope that many more factories for EcoBlocks can be set up. In Europe it is suggested that women living within two miles of a waste disposal dump run the risk of giving birth to babies with serious birth defects such as spina bifida and hole in the heart. Clearly, we need ecobrick factories - and some of the other inventive ways of dealing with waste that are on the market - in place of dumps. (From Chapter 15, Hope, pgs. 236-237) |
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editor
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| Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 2:43 pm Post subject: |
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Harrowsmith Country Life
Magazine Subscription
Self-Sufficient with Style
A couple balks at spending $35,000 to hook up to the
hydro gird and decides to go it alone on ther state-of-the-art
eco-homestead in the country.
By Paula Salvador
April, 2008
| Quote: | They feel good that their (Bay of Quinte, Ont.) house doesn't demand any fossil fuels. The solar tubes supply hot water for showers and can also be used to heat the house by means of the radiant heating system of tubes laid out in concrete flooring. There is a propane boiler as a back-up hot water system, but it has only been used a few times (in the dead of winter, after more than four cloudy days in a row).
But on very cold or sunless days, Les and Gwen prefer to fire up their masonry heater in which they burn sustainably harvested wood. There's also the advantage of a little stone oven that has been built into the masonry. Gwen uses it to bake bread and cookies...
... The house stays cool well into a heat wave. Likewise, when it gets cold, it takes days for the house to cool down. One particularly frosty March, Les and Gwen were away for a couple of weeks and the house was left on its own. When they got back, the first floor was still 13C. But that was part of the passive solar strategy: The sun streaming in through the windows is absorbed by the big stone wall around the fireplace - that's enough to keep the pipes from freezing.
The house also harvests the rain. ... After a final ultraviolet treatment, it's perfect for all their cooking, and their morning coffee. Lucky for them, because their well water turned out to be good for nothing more than flushing the toilets. It is potable but its strong sulphur and iron content makes it taste terrible.
At a glance, this completely sustainable house may seem beyond reach, but Les's advice to any homeowner is to start with the basics. "The no-brainer part is passive solar. That's the first principle. Then insulate the hell out of it, because energy saved is much better than buying it." (The couple insulated walls with straw bale (R40) and ceilings with rock wool (CR40). (-- pgs. 68-72) |
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editor
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| Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 12:53 pm Post subject: |
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Harrowsmith Country Life
Magazine Subscription
Self-Sufficient with Style
A couple balks at spending $35,000 to hook up to the
hydro gird and decides to go it alone on their state-of-the-art
eco-homestead in the country.
By Paula Salvador
April, 2008
| Quote: | They feel good that their (Bay of Quinte, Ont.) house doesn\'t demand any fossil fuels. The solar tubes supply hot water for showers and can also be used to heat the house by means of the radiant heating system of tubes laid out in concrete flooring. There is a propane boiler as a back-up hot water system, but it has only been used a few times (in the dead of winter, after more than four cloudy days in a row).
But on very cold or sunless days, Les and Gwen prefer to fire up their masonry heater in which they burn sustainably harvested wood. There's also the advantage of a little stone oven that has been built into the masonry. Gwen uses it to bake bread and cookies...
... The house stays cool well into a heat wave. Likewise, when it gets cold, it takes days for the house to cool down. One particularly frosty March, Les and Gwen were away for a couple of weeks and the house was left on its own. When they got back, the first floor was still 13C. But that was part of the passive solar strategy: The sun streaming in through the windows is absorbed by the big stone wall around the fireplace - that's enough to keep the pipes from freezing.
The house also harvests the rain. ... After a final ultraviolet treatment, it's perfect for all their cooking, and their morning coffee. Lucky for them, because their well water turned out to be good for nothing more than flushing the toilets. It is potable but its strong sulphur and iron content makes it taste terrible.
At a glance, this completely sustainable house may seem beyond reach, but Les's advice to any homeowner is to start with the basics. "The no-brainer part is passive solar. That's the first principle. Then insulate the hell out of it, because energy saved is much better than buying it." (The couple insulated walls with straw bale (R40) and ceilings with rock wool (CR40). (-- pgs. 68-72) |
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editor
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| Posted: Fri Jul 18, 2008 11:44 am Post subject: |
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What's the carbon footprint of MASSIVE housing failures worldwide?
Again, are these 'scientists' wilfully blind to the PANDEMIC! of housing failures due at least in part to ill-considered energy-saving provisions?!
Heat
How to Stop the Planet
from Burning
Hardcover
By George Monbiot
| Quote: | Like Bush, the Conservatives have also cut or suspended their funding for energy efficiency programmes and other means of preventing climate change. Environment Canada is beginning to look like the Environmental Protection Agency in the US: an official body whose staff are treated by the government as enemies of the state.
I don't blame you, the citizens of Canada, for this. Not all of you, at any ratel. I know that many Canadians are just as angry about these policies as we are in Europe. An opinion poll by Decima Research showed that 59% of those surveyed believed that Canada should not withdraw from the Kyoto protocol, while only 31% supported Harper's position. The provincial governments of Quebec, Manitoba, and Newfoundland and Labrador have vowed to stick to the terms of Kyoto, whatever the federal government might do. The will have to do it without help, however, as Harper has cut their environmental funding. In June 2006, 1400 Canadian mayors committed themselves to cutting greenhouse gases by 30% by 2020 and 80% by 2050. It's not nearly enough, but it still puts Harper and his flock of chickens to shame.
While in the temperate parts of Europe the graver impacts of climate change will be slow to arrive, in Canada they are already knocking on your door. The Arctic is warming much more rapidly than lower latitudes, with serious consequences for the culture and subsistence of your native peoples; for biodiversity and for infrastructure: already roads and airstrips which will cost billions of dollars to replace are bginning to sag and split as the permafrost melts. As the tundra warms up, it could release the massive store of methane and carbon dioxide it contains, greatly accelerating global warming.
All this, I realise, is hardly likely to boost your self-image. But in other respects we look up to you. Your R-2000 building standards are a model the rest of the world would be wise to adopt. ... (footnotes omitted) (emphasis added)(-- pgs. xi-xii) |
Here we go AGAIN!
Link to this entry
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editor
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| Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2008 10:46 am Post subject: |
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Harper's
Magazine Subscription
Green Dawn, In China
By Mara Hvistendahl
February, 2006
| Quote: | These high-density five- and seven-storey apartments nestled in southwest Tangye will house the villagers the city is displacing. Other sustainable communities around the world have had trouble attracting residents, and once people come, glitches in experimental technology and layout have made it difficult to retain them. Despite a regional housing shortage, it took four years to fill the 800 units of an eco-development in Malmo, Sweden, and only 100 of a hoped-for 5,000 residents have settled in a sustainable "utopia" in Arizona. (emphasis added) But the Chinese government will use its imposing will to ensure that its eco-cities are filled. China's urban growth agenda involves relocating entire downtowns and building new satellite cities outside existing urban areas. Overall, some 3.6 million Chinese have been evicted in the last decade to facilitate the country's ambitious projects.
...Technically, work on Tangye is still awaiting final approval, but this central road has already been paved and the state press reports that a first phase of construction will be completed in July. Because China can dispense with zoning laws and property rights, real estate projects move so quickly that many of the land-related protests sweeping the countryside occur only as the developments near completion. The government also is not afraid to handle such protests with force. In December paramilitaries fired on villagers who had blockaded a new wind-power plant near Hong Kong - a project praised by environmentalists as a model for mainland China - killing as many as 20. Just as in the economic realm, where China has wed capitalism to authoritarianism, the country has developed its own peculiar style of environmentalism. As many of the world's top eco-designers can now attest, it is a style that gets results. (-- p. 53) |
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editor
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| Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2008 12:43 pm Post subject: |
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Oh, no! STILL ANOTHER 'expert,' extolling the virtues of insulation with NO thought to the weathertightness pandemic!
The Last Generation
How Nature Will Take Her Revenge for Climate Change
Hardcover
By Fred Pearce
Our e-mail to Fred and New Scientist:
| Quote: | From: editor@bccondos.ca
To: http://www.newscientist.com/contactperson.ns?recipient=envfdbk
Sent: Sunday, August 31, 2008 1:35 PM
Subject: Re: Fred's call to insulate no matter what the consequences
Re: Fred Pearce and the call in his book, The Last Generation, to insulate homes with NO THOUGHT to the weathertightness pandemic sweeping the planet due, at least in part, to misguided energy-saving building standards of the 1970s
What is behind this peculiarly European affection for North America's construction fraudsters, whose spectacular record building failures are at last beginning to cover the globe? What's the carbon footprint, I wonder, of a failed housing economy that may employ legions of marginally-skilled laborers, creating the illusion of a 'hot, booming' economy when, in fact, it's a thin cover for planned obsolescence and ultimately a crying waste of resources?!
I know you can write, Fred, but can you read? Prove it! See annotated links at the poor, beleaguered website, www.bccondos.ca http://bccondos.ca/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1387#1387 and, for goodness sake, spread the word!
At least have a look at a few of the photos documenting a small number of well-insulated, carcinogenic disasters! How much are housing failures contributing to the asthma pandemic among school children? A truly New Scientist would start writing about the implications of Health Canada's study linking indoor building quality with respiratory illness and probably cancer http://bccondos.ca/forums/viewtopic.php?t=54 |
We'll post any replies here. Please check back soon for updates!
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editor
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| Posted: Thu Apr 30, 2009 12:09 pm Post subject: |
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New York Times Magazine
Magazine Subscription
The Civil Heretic
How did Freeman Dyson, the world-renowned scientist and public intellectual, wind up opposing those who care most about global warming?
By Nicholas Dawidoff
March 26/09
| Quote: | IT WAS FOUR YEARS AGO that Dyson began publicly stating his doubts about climate change. Speaking at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University, Dyson announced that “all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated.” Since then he has only heated up his misgivings, declaring in a 2007 interview with Salon.com that “the fact that the climate is getting warmer doesn’t scare me at all” and writing in an essay for The New York Review of Books, the left-leaning publication that is to gravitas what the Beagle was to Darwin, that climate change has become an “obsession” — the primary article of faith for “a worldwide secular religion” known as environmentalism. Among those he considers true believers, Dyson has been particularly dismissive of Al Gore, whom Dyson calls climate change’s “chief propagandist,” and James Hansen, the head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and an adviser to Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth. Dyson accuses them of relying too heavily on computer-generated climate models that foresee a Grand Guignol of imminent world devastation as icecaps melt, oceans rise and storms and plagues sweep the earth, and he blames the pair’s “lousy science” for “distracting public attention” from “more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet.” ...
“The climate-studies people who work with models always tend to overestimate their models,” Dyson was saying. “They come to believe models are real and forget they are only models.” Dyson speaks in calm, clear tones that carry simultaneous evidence of his English childhood, the move to the United States after completing his university studies at Cambridge and more than 50 years of marriage to the German-born Imme, but his opinions can be barbed, especially when a conversation turns to climate change. Climate models, he says, take into account atmospheric motion and water levels but have no feeling for the chemistry and biology of sky, soil and trees. “The biologists have essentially been pushed aside,” he continues. “Al Gore’s just an opportunist. The person who is really responsible for this overestimate of global warming is Jim Hansen. He consistently exaggerates all the dangers.”
Dyson agrees with the prevailing view that there are rapidly rising carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere caused by human activity. To the planet, he suggests, the rising carbon may well be a MacGuffin, a striking yet ultimately benign occurrence in what Dyson says is still “a relatively cool period in the earth’s history.” The warming, he says, is not global but local, “making cold places warmer rather than making hot places hotter.” Far from expecting any drastic harmful consequences from these increased temperatures, he says the carbon may well be salubrious — a sign that “the climate is actually improving rather than getting worse,” because carbon acts as an ideal fertilizer promoting forest growth and crop yields. “Most of the evolution of life occurred on a planet substantially warmer than it is now,” he contends, “and substantially richer in carbon dioxide.” Dyson calls ocean acidification, which many scientists say is destroying the saltwater food chain, a genuine but probably exaggerated problem. Sea levels, he says, are rising steadily, but why this is and what dangers it might portend “cannot be predicted until we know much more about its causes.” ...
... Dyson has said that it all boils down to “a deeper disagreement about values” between those who think “nature knows best” and that “any gross human disruption of the natural environment is evil,” and “humanists,” like himself, who contend that protecting the existing biosphere is not as important as fighting more repugnant evils like war, poverty and unemployment. ...
Dyson has always been strongly opposed to the idea that there is any such thing as an optimal ecosystem — “life is always changing” — and he abhors the notion that men and women are something apart from nature, that “we must apologize for being human.” Humans, he says, have a duty to restructure nature for their survival.
All this may explain why the same man could write “we live on a shrinking and vulnerable planet which our lack of foresight is rapidly turning into a slum” and yet gently chide the sort of Americans who march against coal in Washington. Dyson has great affection for coal and for one big reason: It is so inexpensive that most of the world can afford it. “There’s a lot of truth to the statement Greens are people who never had to worry about their grocery bills,” he says. (“Many of these people are my friends,” he will also tell you.) To Dyson, “the move of the populations of China and India from poverty to middle-class prosperity should be the great historic achievement of the century. Without coal it cannot happen.” That said, Dyson sees coal as the interim kindling of progress. In “roughly 50 years,” he predicts, solar energy will become cheap and abundant, and “there are many good reasons for preferring it to coal.” (-- pgs. 35-37) |
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