If I read cyberman's latest correctly, then he is saying that all of the 0.5 degree increase is 'man-made'. He excludes entirely the possibility of natural factors. This is far from the consensus that Norvig found based on his extensive study of the peer-reviewed scientific literature. The IPCC, as far as I know, does not attempt to quantify it - but speaks in terms of the man-made contribution being "significant". According to cyberman, they're wrong: it is totally man-made - plus 'a bit more'.

 

David Whitehouse actually says that global warming has stopped (ie, the warming trend has stopped) either temporarily or permanently. cyberman ignores the 'temporarily' bit. My only problem with cyberman's use of the term "cluster" in relation to the past eight years is that it may be an on-going trend. It's too early to say, as we don't know what the next few years will bring, despite cyberman's certainty that global temperature will rise from 2010. In its usual use, 'cluster' suggests a body of data with a beginning and an end; that is not the case with the data since 2000. It has not yet ended.

 

Incidentally, the latest Met Office report confirms Whitehouse's claim of a flattening this century:

 

 "The forecast value for 2008 mean temperature is considered indistinguishable from any of the years 2001-7, given the uncertainties in the data".

 

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2008/pr20080103.html 

 

Met Office estimates the above average global temperature at 0.37 degrees for the coming year, 2008 (which means an insignificant 'cooling').

 

Quick: shut down the coal industry!!! (excuse sarcasm - I normally try to avoid it, but couldn't resist).

 

Barry

 

 

 

 

 

"quiksilverhg, thanks for the inspirational advice. I guess you must be a citizen of the US " title="smile!" longdesc="" height="20" width="20">"

Indeed I am; I studied engineering/science in college so I'm a big believer that experimental evidence beats theory every time.  The US has proven that capitalism works, socialism has continually slowed down the economies of countries that have implemented it (reference France) whereas the US is still going strong.  Where have the economies of the communist nations gone during their history?

"Most of the technologies that underpin our global economy are over 100 years old. The technology used to make steel, for example, was developed over 150 years ago and is basically unchanged since, despite the fact that far more efficient and less polluting techniques are known. The reason it is unchanged is that the developed countries steel industries were effectively relocated to Korea and China years ago. The pollution and inefficiencies were "outsourced" to the workers and peasants of China and the developing countries."

You talk about outsourcing these industries to other countries as if it is a blight to the places they move.  Ask any of the people who get these new manufacturing jobs if they would rather have the industries move their or not; the quality of life improves extraordinarily whenever one of these industries move in.  If you ever want these third world nations to move out of third world status the fastest way for it to happen is for modern industry to come in and provide jobs.  Maybe it starts with polluting industries or hard manual labor jobs, but it has to start somewhere and the truth is that it does improve the quality of life for people in these countries.

Capitalism has no interest at all in improving technologies of any kind if it can shift the environmental "externalities" off to developing countries and increase its profits. Very FEW CEO's will introduce a new technology unless it shows an improvement in the bottom line within 3 years.

Can you come up with any specific examples of revolutionary technologies that companies should introduce that they haven't?

Anyways I think we're getting off topic...weren't we talking about global warming?

Hi Barry,

What would the world temperature would be if CO2 levels were at pre-industrial levels? That's really what you are asking me. What I'm saying is that the hockey stick wouldn't be there and continuing the graph from its previous trend would indicate a current reading of around -0.2 deg C. ( on the usual temp anomaly scale) Which means that we're about 0.6 deg warmer due to anthropogenic effects.

 

I exchanged emails, five days ago, with David Whitehouse. I sent him the graphs I'd made from the same data. He did promise to scrutinise them and get back to me but so far he hasn't.  What he said again in the email was " that this is the part of the data that is noted by NCDC and the Hadley centre as being  statistically indistinguishable and no amount of statistics or smoothing will get a rising trend from it "  "Statistically indinguishable" is a term that mathematicians use in a very precise and correct way.  Most none mathematicians would say "well if they are indinguishable -then they must be all the same " . But mathematicians don't mean that at all! They do literally mean that they are staistically indistinguishable. To illustrate what I mean: There is a joke about a mathematician in a railway carriage who is told by his wife that the Scots seem to keep  mainly black sheep in their fields. He looks out of the window, sees a black sheep in a field, and says "Well I would say that there is, in Scotland, at least one field , which contains at least one sheep, and at least one side of which is black".

 

David Whitehouse knows all this of course and I can only think that he must be a bit short of money and has decided to pocket a quick few quid by dashing off an article of this kind. It is clearly absurd to base an opinion on climatic change on the last seven years worth of data. If you'd done this over the past 40 years or so you'd have mainly alternated between a conviction that the world was heading for the next ice age and an equal and opposite conviction that the AGW problem was twice as severe as it actually is. The period since 2001 with its relatively level temperatures would be your first worry free time.

 

  

 

 

quiksilverhg you are exactly correct and it proves my point, sure the transfer of industry to developing countries is good for jobs  there etc but that is not the motive of the Capitalist, his motive is to extract the maximum value of his obsolete assets thus the transfer to developing countries. Like transferring a dodgy chemical plant to Bhopal in India for example. However in the process he usually fails to replace the plant at home and simply imports the product/s at a reduced cost due to the lower cost of labour in developing countries. I have visited many such plants in many countries and speak from experience. In India for example they still make motor cars in factories that were imported from Great Britain in the 50's. Likewise in Saudi Arabia they were still manufacturing 68 Chevies in 2001.

It's called Globalisation.

The (only) real problem with globalisation is that it is a way to keep really backward manufacturing technologies economically viable by transferring the problems they cause to developing countries and it masks the inefficiencies in the processes with really cheap labour. 

 

You ask for examples of revolutionary technologies ?

Not easy to answer as many of the technologies are not really revolutionary but are modifications to present processes. One I do know a bit about is the direct reduction of iron ore to iron. I did test runs of this process for the CSIRO about 30 years ago. It works really well, does not use coal but was marginally more expensive at the time. Those economics have now shifted and will shift even further if carbon trading ever really happens. Similarly in Aluminium smelting and manufacture, Cement manufacture and most of the really basic industries new more efficient techniques and technologies are ignored because the old plant is still doing the job in developing countries.

Yes we are off topic.

Dalek

Barry,

I thought you might be interested in this:

I've been playing with Excel again and plotting out 5 & 9  year rolling averages. I've also aadded the UK MET office forecast which is pretty much just a linear continuation of the rolling five year  ( the year itself +/- 2 years) average.

 

I also thought I'd increase the averaging to 9 years ( the year itself +/- 4 years) and there might just be something of a hint in support of your position Its far too early to tell, but its not beyond the realms of possibility that there is just the start of a down turn! You can't really see it in the the rolling five year average.

 

What's going to happen? Will the graph just keep going up like the UK MET office are predicting, with the aid of their expensive computer modelling , or will the graph take a down turn like it last did around 1940? We'll just have to wait and see!

 

quiksilverhg you are exactly correct and it proves my point, sure the transfer of industry to developing countries is good for jobs  there etc but that is not the motive of the Capitalist, his motive is to extract the maximum value of his obsolete assets thus the transfer to developing countries.

I'm sure this is going to be where our thought processes diverge, but I just don't see what the problem is.  Maybe his motives aren't purely benevolent, but in the end this looks like a win for everyone.  The company gets to increase its profits (which they usually use in R&D or to open up even more plants), the new country gets a new industry providing new jobs increasing quality of life; and the folks back home get a cheaper project; win, win, win.  Of course the loss comes when you consider that jobs are lost in the originating country like here.

The way I look at is this, if the atmosphere in our country wasn't so hostile to business to begin with then they never would have had to move out.  If it weren't for our country having an extremely high corporate tax rate, or ridiculous labor unions which ask for so much it hasn't been unheard of for them to bankrupt a company before they make a concession, or certain environmental regulations that are just plain absurd, then they never would have left in the first place.

Why blame the business for leaving when it's the socialistic/anti-business policies of our own country that chased them out in the first place?


And it seems like this entire thread is now off topic, we are discussing industry, and they are discussing the details of who's graphing/statistical skills are the best rather than what may be causing the increase or decrease of temperatures.

cyberman's graph of 11 January confirms the flattening postulated by David Whitehouse. The only line on the graph that doesn't is the speculative red line that points to a sharp upward future trend. Given that the Met Office has predicted a continuing levelling (0.37) in 2008, I don't see how the red line can be upward for that year. Each line, whether for Annual Average, or Five Year Average or Nine Year Average, shows the same thing for the past 7 or 8 years: a flattening (the variation betwen the highest and lowest temperatures for the period is less than a degree) whereas the increase in CO2 emissions has not abated.

 

I agree that seven or eight years is not enough time to reach conclusions and note cyberman's belief that a period of 13 or 14 years will be necessary. (He says: "I think the argument will be settled in the next 5 or 6 years. The UK Met Office has forecast a further 0.3 deg rise by 2014. If that does happen then even the most diehard sceptics won't have a case. If it doesn't, there will have to be a complete rethink, and and probably an admission that there may not be such a big problem after all".)

 

I'm always cautious of people who answer a direct question by rephrasing the question for the questioner. cyberman is wrong when he says: "What would the world temperature would be if CO2 levels were at pre-industrial levels? That's really what you are asking me".  

 

No, it's not what I'm really asking at all. I'm not interested in pre-industrial levels which cannot be measured consistently with the measurements made in the industrial era (consistent measures only begin mid-late C19th). This is what I actually asked (and what you failed to answer): "cyberman, you might like to tell us, directly and in a straight-forward manner, what proportion of the 0.5 degree warming of the past 25 years (the 'steep increase') was 'man-made'".

 

There is a pattern in cyberman's debating style, which is neither fair nor hard. When evidence and logic don't support him, he resorts to personal attack. Unable to effectively counter David Whitehouse, he resorts to the accusation that Whitehouse wrote his article in order to pocket a few dollars - "he must be short of money". cyberman also tends to misrepresent his opponent's point of view. I have pointed out previously how Whitehouse leaves open the options: the current cessation of the warming process (since 2000) may be temporary or permanent. How can cyberman read the entire article and not see the word "temporarily" in black and white?

 

Which leads me to the green line on cyberman's graph, which he calls the climate skeptic's projection. It shows a continuing decline. I can only say that it takes a skeptic to understand that skepticism leaves all the plausible options open, subject to evidence. Likely possibilities are an insignificant cooling, a continuing flattening, or an insignificant warming over the next seven years.

 

My plasma screen rocks (though I wish I could afford an LCD),

 

Barry

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"cyberman's graph of 11 January confirms the flattening postulated by David Whitehouse." No, not really. Its just a possibility.  If there were to be a general downturn then the first clue you might see was a local maximum, but for a confirmation you'd need several additional points on the graph all telling the same story.

The Met Office have forecast +0.38 for this year and if that turns out to be correct the yellow line will start to show an upward gradient again. The last point (yellow series) showed a drop because the 1998 peak dropped out of the long term average. That was really quite an oddity and I'd say it was a mixture of experimental error an the El Nino effect. The following two years were cooler and due to a La Nina build up.

I quite like a flutter and I'm willing to take bets that the temperature chart will plot a path which is closer to the red forecast than the green one!

 

Go on Barry take the bet, make it big enough so that you can buy that LCD (if you win of course)

Cyberman says; I quite like a flutter and I'm willing to take bets that the temperature chart will plot a path which is closer to the red forecast than the green one!

owenss says;  Go on Barry take the bet, make it big enough so that you can buy that LCD (if you win of course)


My question is to owenss, what bet are you making? 


The fence is a place familiar to 'socialists' who have not been defending capitalism against reactionary attacks upon it, nor defending the active worldwide extension of the bourgeois revolution and attempting to move the theoretical argument past even basic defense of those democratic norms, so I will guess that we will find you sitting uncomfortably astride the barbed wire with the claim that you have insufficient understanding of the science and outright variability of climate to hazard a guess.  But is this not what you would presume Barry to say, and if not why not, but if so, why do you encourage the bet? 


Cyberman is self evidently a believer in the notion of positive feedback (from water vapor and clouds) from increases in carbon dioxide levels.  A doubling of CO2 would only produce theoretically 1.2 C rise (that is no problem) without a positive feedback.  Most people do not know that and assume that increasing carbon dioxide levels is the problem of itself. 

 

Yet currently there is no evidence that warming is anything outside ranges and rates that have been seen before industrialisation and I think that positive feedback is very unlikely (see the reasoning of Kininmonth and Lindzen and even Bob Carter).   But anyway the point is that there is still very good reasons for being opposed to the scaremongering and demands to end the debate and take measures to reduce carbon use now. 

 

There is a real debate just developing while the scaremongers pretend that there is no genuine debate at all.  People like Gore and Flannery and Garrett are the main problem right now and Greens and the ALP in Australia are clearly to the right of the Coalition parties yet again. 

 

Pseudo-leftism is the biggest obstacle to reasoned debate (as we are constantly observing) and furthering the interests of proletarians and all progressive forces the world over.  In Australia for example the ABC is full of pseudo-leftist liberals and is thus the most reactionary of all MSM.

I think this 2 part John Laws interview of Bob Carter is well worth a listen given the debate that was compelled with the ABC screening of the Martin Durkin doco ‘The Great Global warming swindle.’

 

http://svc028.wic002tp.server-web.com/sound_JL/carter%20one.mp3

 

http://svc028.wic002tp.server-web.com/sound_JL/carter%20two.mp3

 

and while we have world class experts in the field like Richard Lindzen

 

http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv15n2/reg15n2g.html

 

and William Kininmonth

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kininmonth_%28meteorologist%29

 

unconcerned with the burning of fossil fuels etc then I cannot get all worked up and worried.

 

On the issue of Al Gore and his inconvenient truth the following is IMV very good

 

http://ff.org/centers/csspp/pdf/20070330_kininmonth.pdf

 

I have never been fond of gambling but harming industrial development and charging for carbon is a very bad bet at this point.  I will have $10 on the bet on condition that Cyberman reverse his colour scheme.  Greens are the alarmists and have always been wrong.  Reds are unambiguously for rapid development massive consumption and plastic shopping bags for that matter.

 

PS to everyone.  As to the notion that the observational fact that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere lags temperature by many centuries (800 years or more) has been dealt with in the credible scientific papers to explain that the carbon dioxide is forcing the temperature, well all I can say is that I just can’t find it!  The stuff at the Mann site is very unconvincing.  I am convinced that Mann etc are alarmists and green activists and that his ‘hockey stick’ has been done over by the two Canadians like the proverbial dinner.   

 

In conclusion; Martin Durkin is correct on the main point that as presented by the alarmists global warming is a swindle of massive proportions.  Now that the fact of ice thickening on Antarctica and Greenland is established the biggest arrow (massive sea level rise) is missing from the alarmist quiver, so the high tide of this green mush ought to have been reached with or without a bit more warming. 

 

The regeneration of a recognizably left world view with a mass base in industrialized countries is now possible, because Reds will defend living standards.  As the green attack on living standards comes up against a period of economic recession they are going to find the going tough.  I’m backing proletarian self interest to smash green politics.  It is like the Iraq war stuff; at every mile stone the anti war movement split.  Now the only one’s left chanting not in our name wouldn’t even help the Pakistanis deal with their mass murdering Islamo fascists.  Yet still the world moves on!!

 

 

 

 

I think that the whole debate about what can reasonably be concluded from  David Whitehead's graph has become a distraction.  Frankly, I don't care too much whether the graph really  shows that no warming has occurred in the past 7 years or not.  It would not be knock-down evidence against the anthropogenically induced global warming hypothesis, just a (small) thorn in its side.  Certainly, there could be all sorts of explanations for it - as Whitehead has surmised , something else could be going on that so far "science" has not discovered. That's an interesting area for scientific research and not one that will be resolved by the sort of discussion that is going on here.

Maybe the whole consensus view on the causes of global warming will one day be overturned. That would be fun!  But the deeper issues would remain and they relate to the ideology which underlies the entire Green movement.   That ideology is currently being fed by fears that we dreadful humans are heating up the planet.   If the consensus on that were overturned, we can be fairly certain that  the  anti-human, anti-progress, anti- development  philosophy  behind the popularity of the Green movement would re-emerge in a different form. 

It's been around (in varying forms) since the beginning of capitalism.  The amazing thing about it currently is that it appears to have now been embraced by significant elements of the capitalist class...purely opportunistically in most cases, I'd guess, however not always consciously.    It's an ideology that has its material origins in a general discontent about the way things are...... and the religiosity of it leads me to think that it is playing a role that could be compared  to the role of formal religion historically.  

Patrick, Jesus mate I was only having a joke. As to gambling I love it but I am careful only to gamble with a positive EV If you don't know what EV is then you are probably right to avoid gambling.

 

As to sitting on the fence about GW well GW bores me to tears. Humanity faced down nuclear extinction I think in comparison hotter weather will be a walk in the park.

 

As to the bet Barry my advice is avoid it because I think it has negative EV.

 

( to anyone unfamiliar with EV it stands for expected value and is a basic concept in gambling theory)

This will be my last contribution to the 'flattening' issue - I think patrick and keza are right to want a deeper and more political/philsophical discussion.

 

However, I'll sign off by pointing out that cyberman's yellow line could not possibly move upwards if the Met Office prediction of 0.38 for 2008 proves accurate. He says: The Met Office have forecast +0.38 for this year and if that turns out to be correct the yellow line will start to show an upward gradient again. 

 

This can only happen if we accept that 0.38 is a higher value than 0.41. The reason the gradient won't rise is that the previous year was warmer (0.4). Just look at his graph. Of course, overall, that's still a warmer temperature than 30 years ago but the issue is whether there is a demonstrable flattening or levelling out this century. In other words: +0.38 is cooler than +0.4, so the yellow line must decline. In agreeing with David Whitehouse, I have never disputed that the past eight years' pattern may prove to be a temporary development. Natural occurences like El Nino and La Nina just show how variable climate is, and also how rises and coolings cannot be attributed entirely to human activity.

 

In response to my claim that "cyberman's graph of 11 January confirms the flattening postulated by David Whitehouse.", cyberman replies: "No, not really. Its just a possibility".  However, I'd say the flattening is reality rather than a possibility because the data demonstrates it. The possibility is that it may be only a short-term development - that's the real possibility because it is yet to happen.

 

The offer of a bet is a bogus one. First of all, I don't bet with anyone who tries to convince me that 0.38 is a higher value than 0.41. That's basic. But, also: cyberman drew up the green line on his graph as his view of what climate skeptics should predict. By contrast, the red line has authoritative backing, from the Met Office. The red line shows a steep upward climb of more than a degree by 2014. cyberman's (unauthoritative) green line shows a decline of nearly 2 degrees. I do not accept the green line as the viewpoint of the skeptics - we skeptics leave options open. It's cyberman who has no doubts: temperature will increase from 2010. No doubts about it. Steve, his green line does not represent my view, so why should I back it? It ain't my horse. (My position is that there will be a minor shift either downward, upward, or at pretty much the same level as for this century. I'm willing to bet that there won't be any dramatic/significant shifts either way).

 

In the meantime, I kinda wish I hadn't become so involved in this specific discussion. There are much bigger issues, far more important, and they relate to the need to expose the reactionary nature of green politics and to reassert the concept of progress as a slogan of the Left. Thank you, patrick and keza, for the wake up.

 

Barry

 

 

 

 

 

 

Barry,

" However, I'll sign off by pointing out that cyberman's yellow line could not possibly move upwards if the Met Office prediction of 0.38 for 2008 proves accurate"

I'll just explain this quickly and I'd like to sign off too. The yellow line take the average of the point for the year shown and 4 years either side of it, which makes it a rolling 9 year average. If you count back 5 points from the last yellow point shown you'll be at the 1998 peak. This point was included in the second last 9 year average but not the last one, which is the reason for the slight drop.

The next time we add a yellow dot,  1999 will no longer be included in the running total which has a value of +0.30  . So, if 2008 turns out to be warmer that 1999 the yellow line will start to turn up again, if it is cooler than 1999 it will continue to move downwards.

I quite like the ideas of John McCarthy. With the imminent downturn of the capitalist economy, and the continuing GW problem,  it is important that some of his ideas should be put into practice sooner rather than later. If socialism is to be considered to be scientific then we need to take into account the best scientific advice too. Maybe it better to try to find another thread.

 

 

 

Thanks patrickm for inviting me to comment on global warming

 

I don't see GW as much of a problem when you compare it to the problems that people dealt with during the last century. Two Worlds wars killing tens of millions of people, a whole continent falling to the fascists and a cold war that came close to unleashing thousands of nuclear bombs on the cities of the world. These were all problems that were faced and resolved (yes I know that the nukes still exist but the threat to use them has been greatly diminished)

 

Global warming is a problem that is completely within the scope of people to resolve. You couldn't stop Hitler by reducing your carbon emissions but it seems that you could stop GW by a massive behavioural change. People are quite good at massive changes in behaviour, we do it all the time.

 

Global Warming may turn out to be more difficult to deal with than I think but we are facing it from a really advantageous position. The world is developing at an unprecedented pace, literally billions of people are being dragged out of poverty. Two things that always accompany development is an initial environmental degradation followed by environmental improvement. Major cities always show increased air and water pollution followed by clean air and water acts. We both live in the same city can you remember the air pollution that existed when we were children.

 

My advice about GW is keep an eye on it but relax, there's no need to stress yet. We are still more likely to die in a nuclear fireball than to succumb from the extra heat generated by GW.

Nasa have just reported the figures for 2007. David Whitehouse's article was based on the last seven data points from the Uni of East Anglia/UK Met offices data set : http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/info/warming/gtc2006.csv

 

The Nasa group are saying that 2007 was equal in temperature to 1998. Or joint second. The UK group have 1998 as the hottest year.

 

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/earth_temp.html

 

The contrarians will no doubt try to make the most of these small disagreements in the US and UK data sets but, as both are independent, and subject to the same experimental error, there is really nothing to be surprised about.

 

So, sorry but the guys at Nasa aren't reporting any let up.

I am on a research to the question that how the melting of north polar ice cap affects the coast of Florida due to the predicted increase in global temperatures, and it's a pity that i am in lack of data on this . Would anyone here share me with your research? Thanks. My e-mail is c_g_001@163.com.  Thanks again! 

Fear, you might try: http://www.dep.state.fl.us/cmp/issues/build.htm

also: http://www.physorg.com/news74179708.html

Try entering the search terms: - rising water coast florida - into your favourite search engine.

Good luck.

Dalek

Fear 001,

To understand the extent of the problem in the Arctic , it is worthwhile taking a look at this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW1JeFVCZ_Q

The contrarians response to the record loss of ice in the summer of 2007 has been to say " Oh, but its all frozen again this winter". But why did it thaw in the first place? We are quite lucky in a sense. Thawing sea ice, which is already floating on the oceon,  does not make much difference to world sea levels, so of course we can probably live without sea-ice at the Arctic. There might even be some short term benefits in terms of shortened shipping routes. However, if we ignore this what is next? If it is a significant loss of Greenland ice or the oceons warming to the extent that they do become CO2 emitters rather than the CO2 sink that they are now , then we really are going to be in trouble.

We do have to do more than just recognise the extent of the problem. We have to take the correct decisions right now. The Green groups, and many of the mainstream politicians, are much too concerned about how various renewable energy supply targets, 10%, 20%, 25%, or whatever,  are going to be met. Discussion of geothermal, solar, wind energy possibilities are interesting but the danger is that they become a diversion from the real question. The important proportion to be concerned with is the other 75% or more. I don't see that the choice, for the vast  majority of countries,  can be anything other than coal or nuclear energy for electricity generation. Hopefully, if it is coal it will be with carbon capture and storage (CCS) but we see precious little evidence that is actually happening. I can understand the safety concerns over the nuclear option but I really don't see that we have a choice now.

 

Cyberman, before you get all hot and radioactive under the collar I suggest you read this:

Dalek

Reaction time: climate change and the nuclear option

By Ian Lowe

Posted Fri Sep 14, 2007 8:55am AEST
Updated Fri Sep 14, 2007 2:55pm AEST

There is no objective truth about the future performance, cost and safety of nuclear reactors. There is a range of defensible opinions, as well as some that appear indefensible.

Even when dealing with the history, some people are selective in choosing evidence that seems to support their position.

We are all influenced by our experience, our culture and our values in trying to make sense of complex and uncertain issues. So you should read all statements about the nuclear issue - including this essay - with a critical eye.

The Fox Report of 1977, on the proposed Ranger uranium mine, made the telling point that nuclear power, while it had been relatively safe and clean until that time as a means of generating electricity, had two fundamental problems: it produced radioactive waste that would need to be stored for immensely long periods, and it provided fissile material that could be diverted to produce weapons.

The report argued that it would be irresponsible to contribute to a worsening of these problems without convincing evidence that they had been solved, or were at least likely to be.

After considering these arguments, I accepted that I had been wrong to support nuclear power and became more critical.

I now found that the claims about the economic case for nuclear power were very dubious, usually based on careful selection of the past evidence or heroic assumptions about future costs.

Back in the UK, I was involved in the late '70s debate about a bizarre proposal by the electricity authority for a crash program to build 36 nuclear reactors in 15 years to avert the coming energy crisis.

There was at the time no evidence that an energy crisis was imminent, but when we analysed the demand for concrete, steel and other materials that would be produced by the proposal, we found that it would itself have created a crisis, which the authority would then claim to be solving!

So by the time I returned to a permanent appointment at Griffith University in 1980, I had become very jaundiced about the claims of the nuclear power industry.

Safety

By then it was clear that nuclear power was expensive, but the industry still had a reasonable safety record and could justifiably claim that it killed and injured fewer workers than did the production of coal-fired electricity.

Even this argument was subsequently weakened in 1979 by the Three Mile Island accident; the reactor almost melted down and was effectively destroyed. While good management of the crisis averted a major radiation leak, it is sobering to reflect that the same basic design is used in most of the world's reactors.

We were not so lucky with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, which spread a swathe of radioactive pollution across Europe from the Ukraine to the western parts of the British Isles. That marked the end of public support for the European nuclear power program.

The level of nuclear power then steadily declined, as old reactors were retired and not replaced.

The Thatcher government tried to prop up the nuclear industry by enacting an obligation for a minimum percentage of power to come from sources other than fossil fuels, but instead this kick-started the UK wind energy industry.

By the end of the 20th century, nuclear power looked like a dying industry.

Re-badging

Then something very strange happened.

A small group in the UK nuclear industry concocted the idea of re-badging it as the answer to global climate change.

This struck me as a very improbable line. The nuclear power industry had previously used every trick in the book to disparage environmental activists, who had been critical of the industry's record.

But desperate times call for desperate measures.

The nuclear lobby embraced the science of global climate change, aligning themselves with their old foes such as WWF and Greenpeace.

The industry embarked on a very clever campaign of briefing journalists and opinion-makers with the new line: global climate change is a serious problem, clean energy is needed, renewables are unreliable so the world needs nuclear power, which they re-defined as being "clean".

Though the claim to cleanliness was dubious, it was seized on by some politicians and journalists.

Their enthusiasm was perhaps a sign of desperation, born of a desire either to cling to the old idea of centralised electricity or to find a "silver bullet" for climate change now that the urgency of the issue was plain.

This campaign had not yet reached Australia when I spoke to the Press Club two years ago, saying that nuclear power was not a sensible solution to climate change, but I was concerned that it might be transferred here from Western Europe.

Not long afterwards, the tide turned on public perceptions of global warming and the studied inaction of the Howard Government was finally shown by its own polling to be indefensible.

Then the Prime Minister returned from Washington in mid-2006 to announce that Australia needed to consider nuclear energy as an option. Interviewed on AM, Howard said:

"What I am saying to the Australian people is: let us calmly and sensibly examine what our options are. Let's not set our faces against examining all of those options and when all the facts are in, we can then make judgments. But I don't think all the facts are in in relation to nuclear, because we've had very little debate on this issue over the last 25 or 30 years, because everybody's said, 'oh well, you can't possibly even think about it.' That's changed a lot."

It wasn't clear at that point that things had changed a lot, but the Prime Minister set about ensuring that they did.

Nuclear by Tuesday

A task force described by John Clarke as "people who want nuclear power by Tuesday" was hastily put together. The process was so rushed that Howard was only able to give the waiting press the names of some members of the taskforce on the day he announced its formation.

In a reminder of the truism expressed by an anonymous American as "Facts ain't given, they're gotten!", the task force seems to have set about finding facts that would show the nuclear industry in the best possible light.

The subsequent report by Dr Ziggy Switkowski and his colleagues was hailed by the Prime Minister and his media cheer-squad as giving the green light for the nuclear industry: "a glowing future" was the Freudian slip in a headline used by The Australian.

That section of the press even rang me to ask if I had been persuaded by the "rational argument" of the report to "move beyond my emotional opposition to nuclear power."

I told them that my opposition to nuclear power was rational and based on both the experience of the last 50 years and a sober assessment of global futures.

Change is coming

Energy is essential for civilised living, but the current approach of basing our energy-intensive lifestyle on fossil fuels is unsustainable. We need to make fundamental changes if our society is to survive.

The nuclear option does not make sense on any level: economically, environmentally, politically or socially. It is too costly, too dangerous, too slow and has too small an impact on global warming.

That is why most of the developed world is rejecting nuclear power in favour of renewable energy and improved efficiency.

We should be a responsible global citizen and set serious targets to reduce our greenhouse pollution, but we should not go down the nuclear path.

The rational response to our situation is to combine vastly improved efficiency with an investment in renewable energy technologies.

Professor Ian Lowe is the president of the Australian Conservation Foundation and author of the latest Quarterly Essay, Reaction Time: Climate Change & the Nuclear Option. The essay will be launched by Robyn Williams at the Brisbane Writers' Festival on Saturday September 15.