The Guardian 25 January, 2006
Book Review by Peter Mac
The Weather Makers
Professor Tim Flannery’s book The Weather Makers examines current and future changes in weather patterns as a result of various atmospheric, geological and planetary forces, and the activity of human beings. The book makes it clear that very determined political action is necessary if we are to cope with the crisis we now face because of those changes.
From about 6000 BC until the industrial revolution, the average world temperature was remarkably stable at around 13.7 degrees Celcius, even though a cyclical cooling of the atmosphere could have been expected. Some scientists argue that this stability occurred because urbanisation and the domestication of animals slightly increased the emission of greenhouse gases such as methane and carbon dioxide (CO2), preventing the atmosphere from cooling.
However, since about 1800 the world’s weather has been gradually destabilised by the combustion of coal and petroleum, which emit CO2.
An alarming future
According to Flannery, the evidence of global warming is now irrefutable. Since 800 AD the world’s average temperature has risen almost one degree. In terms of world temperature variation this is an alarming change, which is now accelerating.
The polar ice is also melting, and the sea has risen between 8cm and 10cm over the last 150 years, with the rate of rise doubling between 1990 and 2000. Extreme weather events are now more frequent, and many species of flora and fauna are suffering extinction because of the warmer conditions.
The scientific estimates of weather patterns over the next 100 years contain grim news.
Even if world-wide emission of greenhouse gas ceased tomorrow, certain major changes would be inevitable over the next 50 years, because there’s no way known to remove CO2 from the air. The battle now is to forestall even worse changes which might occur. In order to do so, the people of the world must beat some of the world’s biggest corporations.
If emissions continue near the present level (which is most likely to happen if politicians like Bush and Howard get their way) the earth’s temperature will rise between 2 degrees and 6 degrees by 2100. Following a 5.5-degree rise, the Amazon rainforest, the "lungs of the world", will begin to collapse and burn, becoming an emitter of CO2 rather than oxygen.
Before 2100, the sea will rise, possibly by three metres, in which case it will inundate the world’s coastal cities and could kill millions. In Bangladesh alone 10 million people live about a metre above sea level.
By 2050 droughts will cripple inland cities in many countries. Agricultural output will plummet, and tropical diseases such as malaria will spread to new areas. Australia’s Great Barrier Reef will die, and our wonderful beaches will probably disappear by 2100.
Flannery states bluntly: "If humans pursue a business-as-usual course for the first half of this century, I believe the collapse of civilisation due to climate change is inevitable."
What can be done?
If immediate and decisive action is taken, with the aim of reducing emissions to 70 percent of 1990 levels by 2050, the worst of these events may be avoided.
Such action by governments would include heavy taxation of emissions, the banning of new coal-fired power stations, cessation of subsidised electricity for metal smelters, construction of new power plants maximising use of renewable energy, regulation of CO2 emitting equipment, enforcement of construction energy codes, and the subsidisation of renewable energy for homes and workplaces.
Flannery dismisses the concept of geo-sequestration (burying liquefied CO2 waste), because of the frequent need to convey waste material for disposal over vast distances, and because of the huge volumes of material involved. Burning one tonne of carbon (black coal is almost 100 percent carbon) produces 3.7 tonnes of carbon dioxide; the gas then has to be collected and chemically liquefied.
Some scientists are investigating the possibility of using photosynthesis to extract CO2 from the air, an area of research well worthy of government support. This would be a worthwhile and practical application of geo-sequestration — but this is certainly not what the Howard Government has in mind.
Flannery notes that the risks of explosion, problems of waste disposal and security breaches still plague nuclear power plants. The huge cost of construction (c. US$2 billion per plant), and the long period until profitable operation, have discouraged construction of such plants in the recent past.
On the other hand, he states that renewable and low-emission energy sources could meet Australia’s electrical base load requirements. Extensive installation of domestic solar collectors could boost electric power. Solar and wind generation, backed by natural gas for peak periods, is an immediate possibility for power plants. Wind generators utilising subterranean compressed air tanks for low wind periods are already under consideration in other countries; wind power now meets 21 percent of Denmark’s power needs.
Flannery also sees a crucial role for consumers in demanding products involving low greenhouse gas emissions, and in developing their own energy generating systems.
Big business makes bad weather
One fascinating section of The Weather Makers deals with how energy corporations dealt with evidence of global warming, and their frequently corrupt relationship with government.
In the 1980s US energy corporations tried openly to discredit this evidence. One coal lobbyist boasted that all evidence of global warming could be disproved. A coal company launched a documentary film The Greening of Planet Earth, which claimed that more emissions would bring an eternal summer and overcome the world’s food shortages. Until quite recently the Bush administration described this preposterous film as scientifically reliable.
A Bush administration aide (and oil industry lobbyist) managed to get references to climate research removed from government scientific studies. The White House suppressed or dismissed other reports.
Multinational fossil fuel corporations formed a lobby group called the Global Climate Coalition (GCC), with the stated purpose of "casting doubt on global warming". GCC convinced the US public that addressing climate change would dramatically raise the petrol prices, and prevented the 1982 Rio Earth Summit from taking decisive action against climate change.
Global warming is not the first industrial horror to threaten life on earth. The book reveals the horrifying possibility that if bromine had been chosen as an industrial aerosol, rather than the slightly cheaper chlorine, the ozone layer, the earth’s natural sunscreen, would have been destroyed very fast. Scientists would not have had time to determine why before ultraviolet radiation "killed you fast, by tearing apart your DNA and breaking other chemical bonds within your cells".
However, GCC began to break up, with Dupont leaving in 1997, followed by BP, and was dissolved in 2000. BP has now reversed its position and has become the world’s largest manufacturer of photovoltaic cells, used to generate electricity directly from sunlight.
GCC’s vitriolic website still operates. US energy corporations donated US$20 million to the Republican Party in 2000 and have subsequently increased their contribution. However, in 2000, world business leaders meeting at Davos in Switzerland described climate change as the world’s greatest threat.
The victims fight back
Legal action is being taken by people who have already been adversely affected by global warming. In 2003, three US states took the US Government to court over its greenhouse policy. In 2001 coal industry lobbyist Quin Shea had boasted that "we’re going to reverse every piece of paper that the EPA [the US Environmental Protection Authority] has put together where they could call CO2 a pollutant." However, the hapless EPA is now being sued by 10 US states over its failure to enforce regulation of CO2 as a pollutant.
Legal action is also being investigated by the Innuit people. They, and the people of the low-lying Pacific islands, are threatened with the actual material loss of their homelands. The islands are being swallowed by the rising sea, and the soil of the Innuit country is beginning to erode into the sea as the permafrost thaws.
The politics
The book correctly emphasises the importance of renewable energy sources, government emission control regulations, consumer demand and other initiatives aimed at curbing global warming. However, its treatment of global warming politics is weak.
Flannery details the shocking role played by the energy corporations, but seems unable to recognise that the current crisis has arisen, and is being perpetuated, by the unbridled greed of capital.
He also claims that "groups hitching their ideological bandwagon" (presumably peace activists or left or progressive groups) to the sustainability movement would alienate potential supporters. He fails to recognise that any movement concerned about the future of life on earth is absolutely loaded with ideological significance. Moreover, winning the aims of such a movement, including the intriguing possibility of establishing an international "Commission for Climate Control", will require massive political campaigns by a united front of all organisations concerned.
Despite these shortcomings, The Weather Makers should not be missed. The introductory scientific chapters, written colloquially but not "dumbed down", are essential background if the reader is to fully understand the points that Flannery is making. This fascinating, powerfully-reasoned and extensively-researched book is well worth reading.
The Weather Makers, Tim Flannery, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 2005, rrp $32.95.