Development Roast Giving international development a proper roasting
Everybody knows Aesop’s fable about the farmer with the goose laying golden eggs: Day after day, the lucky farmer awoke to rush to the nest and find another golden egg, growing richer by the day. But with his increasing wealth came increasing greed and impatience, and unable to wait, the farmer decided to kill the goose and get all the eggs at once. But when he opened the goose, he found it empty, with no eggs and no way to get any more. He killed the very asset that produced his wealth, while he should have nurtured and nourished it.
Saving REDD after Cochabamba
The historical “World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth” held in Cochabamba last month highlights the need for a new global development model that secures harmony with nature and among people. Such a new system would require a change of mindset away from the current consumerist practices of human beings, and their striving for ever greater accumulation of material goods.
According to Working Group 2, the construction of new paradigms such as Living Well in Harmony with Nature requires the examination of different forms of wisdom and experiences, and a collective evaluation of current realities using new indicators that allow us to measure the well being of humans as well as the wellbeing of the planet.
China’s impressive forest regrowth
China is the fifth most forest rich country on the planet with more than 200 million hectares of forest. This is about 4 times more than Bolivia, which is the 15th country in the World in terms of forest extension (see Figure 1).
The Runaway Climate Train
I have been awfully quiet about climate change issues since the “Climate Gate” scandal broke on November 17th 2009. But by now there are several associated issues, such as “Glacier Gate” (1) and “Amazon Gate” (2), and it is time to figure out what it all means.
Climate Gate was the release (by a hacker or an insider) of thousands of e-mails and commented source codes from the Hadley Climate Research Unit (CRU). There is enough fascinating material to write books about it (3), but one of the e-mails that have attracted most attention is one from November 1999 where Phil Jones of CRU wrote to Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley and Malcolm Hughes (the authors of the famous “hockey stick” graph that Read More »
Reconciling melting glaciers and falling temperatures in the Bolivian highlands
Bolivia’s rapidly diminishing Chacaltaya glacier has been widely used as a symbol of Anthropogenic Global Warming (1). However, it is an unfortunate choice of symbol, because the retreat of this specific glacier is demonstrably not due to increasing temperatures caused by CO2 emissions.
Bolivia’s high CO2 emissions
Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) with average per capita incomes that do not even reach half the regional average ($4140 for Bolivia compared to $9321 for LAC) (1). Average productivity per person of working age is now exactly the same as it was in 1967 (2), despite the substantial advances in education, health, basic services and available technology over the last four decades.
Climate Feedbacks: Positive or Negative
“Lisa, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics”
Homer Simpson
By itself, a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere has only a modest effect on global temperatures – an increase of around 1ºC. Even a quadrupling of CO2 in the atmosphere would only cause a direct temperature increase of about 2ºC (1). However, this modest increase can be either amplified or reduced depending on the feedback effects.
How We Know What Isn’t So
“I will see it when I believe it”
Slip of tongue by Thane Pittman
Almost 20 years ago Thomas Gilovich wrote a very interesting book about the “Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life” explaining some of the mechanisms through which we tend to deceive ourselves and each other.
In this article, I will use some of his insights to analyze the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) theory. Our collective beliefs on this topic have so important consequences that we cannot allow ourselves to be deceived. If human carbon emissions are really overheating the globe, the costs of not believing this and not acting accordingly, could be catastrophic.
Does the World Benefit from Being Deceived?
“A good lie will have travelled half way around the world
while the truth is putting on her boots”
Mark Twain
As regular readers of this newsletter will have discovered, I believe the threat of Climate Change is being vastly exaggerated not only by the media and certain individuals, but also by big international institutions, such as the United Nations and WWF.
The World is Cooling so the WWF is Turning the Heat On
Last week, WWF came out with an alarming report “Climate Change: Faster, Stronger, Sooner: An overview of the climate science published since the UN IPCC Fourth Assessment Report” suggesting that Global warming is accelerating beyond IPCC’s forecasts.
That is a really impressive accomplishment at a time where everything points to the Earth being several years into a cooling cycle (1), probably related to the Sun having suddenly changed from unusually active to unusually quiet (2) and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation having turned into its negative mode (3).