Photographs of various energy sources and solutions

Personal Commentary

Two major things will happen to Ireland and the world in the coming years. In the short-term an energy crisis is on the horizon. In Ireland we are particularly badly prepared for this energy crisis as we currently import 90% of our energy needs. I used to think that the second event would take longer (two or three generations) before the significant effects of climate change would affect living conditions in Ireland. Now I am not so sure.

Previously, I used the slogan favoured by managers to narrow down my own opinions of what might happen, that is “hope for the best, prepare for the worst”. I try to get my information from a range of sources and think that the following points deserve attention, when forming an opinion on climate change;

  • The world population has never been as swollen.

  • Fossil fuels have become a major driving component of global economics in the last century or so.

  • In the western world, we have become used to third-party technological fixes solving all our problems.

  • Much of the “richer” world has also become a throw-away society. We no longer have the thrift that was ingrained in previous generations.

  • Finally, some people believe (wrongly, in my opinion) that we are merely human-beings and could never have such a major impact on our surroundings.

In hoping for the best, I put the predictions of hard-science and logic such as the Icarus group or the IPCC in the "best" box. For years the IPCC have been battling to get the facts out. This eventually happened last year in 2007. I often wondered how much ground the IPCC had to give in this battle of wills to produce their report of 2007. Did this mean that their worse-case scenario predictions were watered down?

In my own "worst" box, I put the observations of entities like Transition Culture or Carbon Equity. I used to think that the truth lay somewhere between these best and worst poles. However the worse-case scenario predictions are continuously evolving as the world's climate warms. This means that previous predictions can be compared against what is actually happening. I am always looking for indicators from the media, websites, contacts etc for changes to future predictions. On February 7th, 2008, I believe I found a significant "mainstream" article in the Irish Times. The following are excerpts from Professeur William Reville's piece from that day;

"...The behaviour of the polar ice sheets is the biggest uncertainty in predicting the effects of global warming. Worryingly, none of the climate models used to-date takes major features such as ice streams or accurate representations of the bottom of the ice sheets, into account. Intensive research is needed to update these climate models.

..Much liquid water has been discoverd under these great ice sheets which could exacerbate the destabilising effects of global warming, allowing them to slide into the ocean before melting...

If the west Antarctic ice sheet melts, sea levels will rise by 19 feet (5.8m). If the Greenland ice sheet melts also, levels will rise by a further 24 feet (7.3m) and if the east Antarctic ice sheet melts, levels will rise by a further 170 feet (58m) - a total rise if 213ft (65m) if all the ice melts."

Basically a respected scientist in the Irish Times was repeating what groups like Carbon Equity had said months earlier. I don't think that anybody is too sure of when sea-levels will rise significantly but changes to the climate are certainly happening. What will the consequences of these changes be? You have to find your own answers to that one. Human awareness of these changes in the economically richer world seem only to be heeded when they hit pockets - like rising fuel and energy prices. Hopefully we can use our financial resources wisely now to make the decline after peak oil and associated climate change as gentle as possible for us and future generations.

(Most of the following was written in January 2007)

In general terms, the easiest place to detect climate change at present is closer to the poles. 1947 was a record-setting cold year in the UK, Ireland and New York. It is no coincidence that the temperatures dropped in all these places at the same time. It happened because of their distance from the North Pole. Most of the significant decisions on climate change are made in urban environments at temperate latitudes. While temperate latitudes show many climate changes more readily than many other regions, I believe that urban environments, apart from detecting temperature changes, are amongst the more difficult places to witness changes because it is harder to read other clues left by nature, from wildlife for example.

A person does not have to travel to different parts of the world to gather evidence of climate change. Depending on the part of the world you are in, speaking to somebody who works outdoors and has several working decades under their belt should provide plenty of insight. Nevertheless (and conscious of my carbon footprint), here I wish to include some of my own experiences from different parts of the world.

I have spent time in Africa, U.S.A and Ireland. I arrived in Malawi, Africa in November 2001 during a heatwave in Malawi (our thermometer reached its maximum of 45ºC in the shade). A famine in many regions of several countries in the sub-saharan region followed shortly afterwards.

As I’m sure many “economically rich world” people feel when they go to the “economically poorer world”, I felt like a hypocrite. I was there to work on a hippo project. There were some issues with people raising crops on land, traditionally used by hippos for grazing. We were looking at solar-powered electric fences as one possible solution. The reason I felt like a hypocrite was that nothing went to waste in Malawi. People re-used everything. Bottles were collected, lids from bottles were collected. One guy had the job of recycling rubber tyres into sturdy threads that were used in thatching buildings. I was managing a wildlife project in a country with an abundance of wildlife; in the rainy season, crocodiles regularly killed people that lived close to water. Yet, I came from a country where the badger could be considered the most fearsome wild animal. A country, for whatever reason, that had lost most of its forests, the wolf, the boar, the eagle and many other species. A country where bottled water travelled several dozen or hundreds of miles before arriving in your local shop. Most people in the richer world are so used to seeing this water in the fridge of their local shop that they do not put any thought into it. There was plenty to think about while in Africa.

In Malawi, minibuses and pick-up trucks were often used for public transport. They were always full. I would guess that 75% of Malawians had bicycles that they used regularly. Many Malawians listened to their radios, while cycling around. While I was there the “Top 40” was sponsored by Monsanto – the world’s leading producer of genetically engineered seed. Zambia also made news, while I was there, for being the only sub-saharan country to refuse genetically modified maize seeds. The following is from a magazine interview that I read at the time;

“Did Zambia have valid reasons for rejecting GM food aid? No! But the anti-GM lobby may be shocked to hear me say that yes, Zambia had very valid reasons for its concerns. Two of these reasons require comment.

First, there are concerns that African countries would lose their GM-free status if they started to cultivate GM food and thus lose a potentially lucrative market in Europe. Africa’s main trading partner is Europe and in view of the EU moratorium on GM food, African countries that favour the GM technology must decide what to do.

But patterns of trade are changing. My country Kenya has discovered in the last five years that neighbouring Uganda has overtaken Britain as our largest trading partner. From a regional perspective, the common market for Eastern and Southern Africa has recently surpassed the EU as Kenya’s main trading bloc…..

With GM technology, Africa can quadruple its maize output, more than triple sweet potato output and increase banana output by eight times (Dr. Florence Wambugu)”

I also kept an eye out for African stories, when I got home. The following is about a UN report on the Congo, from the Irish Times, 2003;

“A controversial section of a UN report detailing the continued plundering of Congo’s minerals has been omitted for fear it might derail the country’s fragile peace process…. After initially focusing on African involvement, over the past year the panel focused on the complicity of Western multinationals in the illegal exploitation of gold, diamond, cobalt, coltan and other minerals. Last October, the panel accused 85 companies of breaching OECD standards through their business activities…However, no Western government has investigated the companies’ names with alleged links to such abuses. Instead, some, including the UK, US, Belgium and Germany have lobbied to have their companies names cleared from the “list of shame” in recent months. ‘Many governments, overtly or covertly, exerted pressure on the panel and the Security Council to exonerate their companies’ said Ms Patricia Feeney. In this week’s report the cases against 48 companies are described as “resolved” and requiring “no further action”. They include Barclay’s Bank and mining giant Anglo American. But four British companies; diamond giant De Beers, air transporters Avient and Das Air and the mineral exploitation venture Oryx Natural resources – still have “unresolved” cases. In the last report Avient was alleged to have been contracted to conduct bombing raids over eastern Congo in 1999 and 2000. It also allegedly sold six attack helicopters to the Kinshasa government in 2002.”

I flew back to Europe on the day of the U.S invasion of Iraq. The day before a missile had been fired at an Israeli plane taking off from Nairobi; where I was leaving from. After take-off concerns were forgotten, it was a beautifully clear day for flying. Over the Sahara, ancient landmarks that looked like they had been created by water could be seen. Over Libya, I saw round fields of green crops– artificially irrigated, stand out from the sandy landscape and then I flew over the Mediterranean, Italy and the Alps. Sort of like the way astronauts change their world-views after seeing the earth from space - I was stunned. It was the most beautiful landscape I have ever seen in one day.

I arrived in the Western United States in November 2006. The plains winters are infamous in the United States. While the weather sometimes hit temperatures as low as I have ever felt (-25ºC), the snow was on the ground for less than half of the three months I was there. A colleague told me that when he was a child, the snow normally stayed on the ground for 4 or 5 months around the winter time of year, with or without the infamous warmer Chinook winds. While I was there, we got two very cold spells of about a week each.

When I left Ireland for the U.S, there were still berries on many plants, which would rarely have happened two decades earlier. I was told that while I was away, a garden flower bloomed around Christmas Day. With all the current-day talk of the E.U, it is easy to forget that Ireland is closer to the Arctic Circle than it is to Gibraltar. People on the western seaboard sometimes point out to a setting sun over the ocean and say “next stop America”. The U.S.A is not the next stop due west of Ireland, Newfoundland or Canada is.

We get more heat energy from ocean currents in Ireland than we do from the sun. Without this ocean heat, we would have temperatures similar to places closer to Irish latitudes such as Moscow, Northern Mongolia or Edmonton in Canada. The most northern part of Ireland is at a higher latitude than the most southern parts of Alaska.

As I write in February 2007, we have entered the coldest spell in Ireland since Summer 2006. Temperatures in New York have plummeted to record lows and the UK is preparing itself for a very cold spell. BBC Weather forecaster Jay Wynne said “On Friday, it will feel more like -5 to -10ºC in most of the towns and cities in the UK due to the strength of the wind”. More than 100 gritters and snowploughs in Aberdeenshire are already on standby, in advance of the snowfall warnings’ (from BBC website).

In the 1970s, a small number of scientific papers speculated about the dawn of a new ice age. This caught the imagination of the world’s newspapers and at least one book was written on the subject. In Ireland and the rest of the world, there is now scientific consensus that human activities are driving global warming. However, in Ireland, the UK and other parts of Europe, we should not forget our latitude and remember Newton’s third law of motion that for every reaction there is an equal but opposite reaction. That winters will get warmer for the near future is understood but in my opinion, we should be prepared for more sudden, sharp cold spells as the forces of nature try to right themselves. Eventually, after about two or three generations, ocean currents are likely to get affected by melting freshwater land-ice from places like Greenland and the heat energy that gets transported to Ireland from the sea may stop. Indeed, it appears that the warming up of the sea which would melt this land ice has started as there is evidence from fishing agencies that cod have become more difficult to catch because they have moved to colder waters to survive.

I think people do not like to hear about climate change because it is not an abstract concept. I believe many people have already sensed it and are aware of climatic changes on a conscious or if they have never thought about it, subconscious level.