Ways to Save the Planet 2 - if it isn't beneath you

We've had two more episodes of the series Ways to Save the Planet, that I discussed earlier. And, surprisingly topical for once, the Greens' spring conference has unanimously passed a motion condemning geo-engineering.

For the full text see page 30 of this pdf, but I will bring you some edited highlights.

Ocean-fertilisation poses an unknown but potentially serious threat to marine biodiversity, which plays an essential role in regulating the global carbon cycle, as well as putting fishing communities at risk.

Pity they didn't see episode 1 of Ways to Save the Planet which fertilised the top layer of ocean with deep water nutrients, causing a previously empty bit of ocean to fill with life.  Remember that much of the Pacific is desert-like already in its lack of biodiversity. These wave-powered pumps, if they work in earnest, are a means to greatly increase biodiversity. It deserves better than knee-jerk opposition. There's more...

Climate geo-engineering by increasing the earth’s albedo poses a major and unknown new threat to the climate system, to biodiversity and to people.

Er, how do you know the threat is major, if it is also unknown? We have a major and known threat of global warming, and that means - why do I feel like I am talking to a 4 year old here - it would be good to have a controllable system for global cooling.

Sure, the future is unpredictable if we control the amount of cloud cover or its reflectivity to manage the global temperature. But here is the thing. The future is unpredicable full stop. And it is rather more predicatable if we deal with global warming than if we don't.

So, as I was saying, two new episodes. The first was about a design for a tethered high altitude helium balloon wind turbine. Strictly this is renewable energy rather than geo-engineering, but the ends are much the same. They built a scaled down prototype which worked after a fashion. It would take a full size prototype to test whether such a turbine would have the output predicted. If so, 9.5 million of them could generate all the world's electricity. They would need 2500 times the global annual production of helium, which might be an issue. 

In the same niche, there's a video on TED, suggesting kites can be used to generate power.

The second new episode was on increasing the reflectivity of clouds - stratocumulus over oceans - by spraying micron-size droplets of sea water at them. As usual there were some problems. First they insisted on unmanned radio-controlled low carbon boats to deploy the equipment, and so went for the somewhat oddball Flettner rotor propulsion system. Plenty to build and test there, and it worked surprisingly well. It's not clear how much power the rotors would need, or where it would come from. There were solar panels on the CGI ships, which wouldn't be much good under cloud - but then if it is cloudy, the ship is already in the right place, right?

There was less success actually making the droplets small enough, but you can't have everything.

But what I thought was most telling about this episode was the objections. At the end of each episode a handful of experts - presumably - in lab coats are asked why the proposal is a bad idea or wouldn't work. Usually, they have given sound objections. 16 trillion lenses in space, are you kidding? But this time, they were stuck. All they had was vague objections to the principle of geo-engineering, much like the stuff from the Greens. But unlike blankets on icecaps, robot ships could be turned off at the first sign of trouble.

Unlike, indeed, a massive tree-planting operation, if that is done for geo-engineering purposes. Come on people, show some sense of perspective. I know you can hug a tree more easily than a robot ship, but that is no guide to how best to save the planet.

Ways to Save the Planet

Is there anything we can do to combat global warming other than reduce greenhouse gases? Actions which seek to cool the planet down directly, or sequester carbon from the atmosphere come under the heading geo-engineering. The little bolds and I have been following a series on the Discovery channel on this subject, called Ways to Save the Planet.

There are three basic responses to geo-engineering ideas:

1. Noooooo. Mucking about with the planet got us into this mess.

2. Aaaahhhhh. You see all we need is a little ingenuity, and everything will be back to normal. Global warming will be solved, if it is even happening at all anyway, which I doubt.

3. OK, will that work then?

I am firmly in camp number three. There is no reason in principle to reject geo-engineering. The planet is not God, and if it decides to kill us we are entitled to disagree and fight back. Even if global warming were halted by reduction in greenhouse gas emissions alone, we would probably need geo-engineering technology sooner or later anyway - nature has the power to turn nasty without our help. But any project has some enormous hurdles - that the earth is basically very very big, and any solution has to do an awful lot, and without using monumental amounts of energy.

There have been 4 episodes so far, all, unfortunately a little underwhelming. They follow the usual Discovery channel formula of injecting tension by having some mechanical thing go wrong, or threaten to do so, to dramatic background music and interviews with anxious engineers. Gripping.

And what were the ideas? A wave-powered pump bringing nutrient rich deep ocean water closer to the surface. Dangerous mucking about with the ecosystem? Not really - much of the Pacific is like the Sahara desert. Deep water nutrients would make an oasis - they would create an ecosystem where there is currently next to nothing. Greater plankton growth would mean faster carbon sequestration, and some of this carbon would find its way to the ocean floor for a reasonably long time.

Did it work? Briefly. But despite falling apart after a few hours, the location of the pump a week later was found teeming with life. So it looks like this idea could work. It's not going to do enough to change the nature of the challenge significantly, but can make some difference at a reasonable cost.

Next up covering the icecaps with reflective material to lower the albedo and thereby prevent melting and keep the earth's albedo lower. This one kinda puzzled me a bit. Surely you'll get more albedo bang for your buck covering something that isn't alraedy white. What I remember of the programme was an hour spent struggling with the practicalities of airlifting big rolls of white stuff to the arctic and unrolling it. Would it work? No idea.

Third was scattering the light from the sun with lenses in space. Discovery is in its comfort zone here with high tech lenses, rockets and so on. How many 60cm lenses are we going to need? 16 trillion! That's a whole lotta lenses. Well maybe if we make them 1 micron (0.001mm) thick, they'll be light enough that we can launch lots into space. Cue an hour of testing rockets and guns that might launch squillions of extremely fragile lenses without shaking them to bits. What fun. Did the rocket work? No. 

Clearly reducing the amount of light reaching the earth would reduce warming. A big lens in space - what could be simpler. But this idea involves a monumental space programme. How much, if it ever works at all, are 16,000,000,000,000 lenses going to cost to make and launch? Keep thinking, and lets not bank on this one.

Fourth was planting large numbers of trees by dropping seeds from an aircraft. Take a tree seed, in a lump of compost, wrap in a layer of wax, hard enough to break the ground surface, but which shatters on impact so doesn't impede the growth of the tree. Take 1000 of these in a cargo net under a helicopter and drop from a height and speed calculated to give a good spread pattern.

Again this was great fun, because the experiments involved aircraft, and dropping things out of them. The methods were ingenious, but I couldn't help wonder if - given the work that must be put into sourcing the seeds and assembling the wax canisters, and round tripping the helicopter (it would still take hundreds of trips to seed a square kilometre), whether it might not be easier to hire a few people with spades to plant the trees properly.

So we get to the dramatic final test of the idea. Did the seeds bury themselves in the ground at the right depth and the right distance apart from each other? Yes. Did they actually grow? No. Why not? Er, maybe the soil pH was wrong. Sigh. And maybe the guy with the spade would have known that.

Well that's all we've had so far. There's another 4 episodes, to come, and I hope they plan to end on a high note with some more promising ideas. Some geo-engineering ideas can be double-edged. If you lower the earth's temperature by controlling light or albedo, you do nothing for acidification of the oceans. So if it turned out that global warming wasn't a preeminent threat to us after all and was in fact no more serious than ocean acidification, then we may have to modify our strategy with this in mind. Much geo-engineering is diplomatically problematic. Whatever the global effect, there are likely to be local effects, that the locals may not like. Nonetheless, I think a common cause would be good for our diplomatic relations.

Yet I suggest this all has little significance yet for policy. Potential geo-engineering projects are much like potential technologies to save or generate energy. Some will work one day, some won't; we don't know yet which is which. Meanwhile we should apply the technologies and policy options we have. We are hardly at risk of doing more to combat climate change than might later prove to be necessary.

Gaining Faith in Twitter

Back from the Lib Dems spring conference in Harrogate, the greatest revelation for me was the use of twitter to comment on live proceedings. The 'back-channel' is the technical term for this kind of electronic muttering at the back of the room instead of paying attention to teacher. It has long been said about conferences that the main point is getting to meet people and talk to them, rather than the official speeches and whatnot. Twitter, it seems, brings some of the benefits of being able to talk, to a medium in which you are expected to sit, listen, and clap politely.

I signed up to Twitter a couple of years but didn't really see the point and didn't use it. And I still don't really - I probably won't use it again until the next conference. But during the debate on faith schools - and is this really yet another Lib Dem first? - I had to do what I could to sway the vote, and I had access probably to a handful of other delegates following the #ldconf tag.

I was energised by supporters of Amendment 3, including Vince Cable and Tim Farron, calling the original motion an attack on faith schools - which it was not - and calling for support for Amendment 3, as a "compromise". In fact the original text was a compromise - it respects parental choice of a faith school, and even allows new faith schools, but it demands of faith schools the same high standards of non-discrimination, tolerance and inclusivity, that are expected of all other taxpayer-funded schools. Extremists on both sides will argue that you can't trust the other lot to run schools at all. But that is prejudice. This position does not prejudge a school by the faith, or not, of its leadership, and is supported by a broad coalition of liberal believers and liberal atheists. This coalition is exactly the kind of initiative that is vital in today's society that is at risk of having walls go up between believers and unbelievers.

Rabbi Jonathon Romain spoke at the fringe meeting in support of this compromise, saying 

I want my children to go to a school where they can sit next to a Christian, play football in the break with a Muslim, do homework with a Hindu and walk back with an atheist - interacting with them and them getting to know what a Jewish child is like. Schools should build bridges, not erect barriers.

A Rev Chad of St Chad's (no relation) also spoke at the fringe explaining that he felt the christian ethos was about reaching out to the community, not erecting barriers to keep it out.

It is hard to credit then, the arguments for amendment 3. I suppose if somebody comes to you and says "I represent Jews, or Catholics or Hindus..., and I say this policy is an assault on our faith schools", it is difficult to disagree. But it remains the case that opinion among believers is as divided on these questions as opinion always is, and anyone claiming that a faith speaks with one voice is being a little mischeivous.

Amendment 3, then, sought to maintain selection by faith, that is in Romain's words, to erect barriers not bridges, in part 1, and in part 2, to allow discrimination in employment against senior teachers (eg a head of chemistry) who were of the wrong faith, or who suffered a crisis of faith or the failure of a marriage. Part 1 passed, thanks to the the wrong "assualt on faith schools" hyperbole - that I can't blame delegates for buying in to. Part 2 fell, thank, er, Providence.

Overall I am satisfied with the outcome. I raised this whole issue a year ago on Lib Dem Voice, at a time when many in the party blogosphere were holding pointless and destructive arguments over the existence of God and the merits of religion. And even then I thought the selection by faith issue would be too tough to crack and suggested a compromise on it. It is a shame perhaps that my compromise wasn't put to conference. It allowed selection by faith, but insisted that a declaration of faith be considered sufficient. This addressed the problem of people having to go to church under false pretences, of believers missing out because some cleric or other thinks they don't believe well enough or objects to their lifestyle/social class, etc. It reflects the fact that faith is simply not visible to somebody outside one's own head, and does not justify giving unelected clerics, or anyone else, a gatekeeper role to public services that we have already paid for through taxation.

But the win, as far as I am concerned, is this coalition of liberals. I joined the Lib Dems to make common cause with other liberals, not with (or against) other atheists. The religion and faith schools questions seemed to threaten to divide this party. Blair and Bush might be mocked and condemned for their pro-war faith, but really it doesn't matter. Non-believers can be just as hawkish. What matters is your politics. 

I hope you understood all that from my tweets.

Greenpartywatch: GP candidate faces axe for trying to save the planet

A storm is brewing in the Green Party over an article by Chris Goodall, their PPC in Oxford West and Abingdon, arguing that nuclear power will be necessary as part of the solution to climate change.

He goes where Mark Lynas and Stephen Tindale have gone before. Many leading environmentalists now take the view that nuclear is just too useful a source of low-carbon energy to do without; that concerns over nuclear waste, while valid environmental concerns, pale into insignificance compared to climate change.

Opponents frame the debate as "nuclear v renewables", but this is just framing. Let's take as read support for renewables and efficiency. Then what? Where is the rest of our energy coming from?

Realistically, what nuclear is up against is Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). A good idea, but not yet, and perhaps not ever, a technology ready to be deployed. If you are convinced that CCS will work, then you can probably afford to be anti-nuclear. But why would you be so convinced?

Here is a question I put to Steve Webb MP, in a Lib Dem Voice webchat way back.

Do you agree that we should be looking to make progress on carbon emissions, primarily with techonlogies that exist, such as wind, nuclear, CSP, CHP, rail, and smart meters rather than gambling on technologies that might never exist, such as CCS, much better PV, and particular road transport solutions? Where technologies look promising, but don't yet work, rather than buy inferior versions of them, supporting that inferiority, why don't we offer prizes to companies that bring them to viability?

And he responded

We should certainly use readily available technologies such as CHP and smart meters as far as possible. But Carbon Capture is essential to the planet. China and India are rolling out new unabated coal-fired power stations at an alarming rate. Unless those emissions get captured we are all in trouble. So investing in CCS research has got to be a priority. In terms of prizes for companies that bring forward new ideas, in a world of carbon rationing and carbon markets, there ought to be strong economic 'prizes' for green technology - the key is to remove the barriers which prevent them getting to the commercial viability stage.

The position on nuclear - too little too late - had been given previously.

To support this policy it seems necessary to believe that CCS will actually work, and to be willing to gamble the planet's future on it working. Carbon capture is essential to the planet? Nuclear is too little too late. One could just as well say the opposite. Nuclear is essential to the planet, and CCS is too little too late. The second position has the advantage that nuclear is known to work, and building CCS-ready plant actually means building dirty coal plant.

So we face the same questions the Greens do, and we will continue to debate them, just as the Greens, er, oh...

Mr Goodall’s remarks had left many party members “seriously concerned”, the Green Party leader, Caroline Lucas, MEP, said last night. “It is of great concern to me that a candidate should be promoting a policy which is at odds with the party manifesto, and I shall be taking that forward,” she said. ...  Asked if this would include disciplinary action and possibly even de-selection as a candidate, Ms Lucas would only say: “We will be taking appropriate measures.”

What really bothers me about this - because of course parties should be able to remove candidates who reject their values - is that Goodall's position is being seen by the Green party not as a contribution to the debate on how to save the planet, but as a rejection of the idea that we should be saving the planet - as a rejection of the party's values.

And this way madness lies. If you happen to believe that technology A will do a job better than technology B, for empirical practical reasons, this says nothing about your political values. If, when you explain your reasons, people invoke disciplinary procedures, that does suggest a deliberate attempt to keep heads in the sand and protect sacred cows from any kind of criticism.

But as I have said in the past, it is only by debating these questions openly, by taking evidence on the chin when it hurts, that we stand any chance in the long run of getting the right answers.

Chris Goodall, if you're listening, have a look as well at some of the benefits of trade, enterprise, and science.

Principal Components of Principles

Alix and Jennie have resurrected the peculiar fascinating 2005 political compass, the one that suggets some odd-looking criteria for defining left and right.

I come out pretty close to Alix: left on the main axis of internationalism/rehabilitation, and right on the minor axis of free trade and war. I was against the war, so I must be really keen on free trade.

OK the fascinating thing about this survey is these axes were not chosen by the authors, but arose as a statistical outcome of the actual answers actual voters gave to the questions. Let me try to explain this a little bit.

Lets say you have a 1000 responses to a survey of 20 political questions with simple for/against type answers. What the principal components analysis does is find a formula for a number that would let you predict the answers to one survey, given no other information, with the greatest possible accuracy.

And it turns out that this number reflects opinions on hanging/flogging and nationalism. So this is the principal principle axis. What this means is that if you know somebody is, say -4, on this axis, you can predict their answers to the whole survey with, say, 80% accuracy.

Nobody chose hanging/flogging/internationalism - it is just that this formula and this number gives you the best predictive power. Some other formula might reflect different priorities, but only give 75% accuracy.

It gets a bit more complicated with two axes, but the principle (the principle of the principal principle?) remains the same. With a second formula and a second number, you can raise the predictive power to, say, 90%. A number reflecting views on war/free trade does this better than any other.

What does this mean - well it means that the data is telling us that views that belong together on an axis are highly correlated with each other. Supporters of hanging and flogging tend to be nationalist, and supporters of free markets tend to be pro-war. It also tells us how much the parties overlap, and therefore how difficult it is for any party to position itself clearly without alienating a lot of supporters.

OK that's the good and interesting. What's wrong with this picture? Well for starters, there were only 1 or 2 questions on war and 6 on economics. Having 6 similar questions means that those 6 are 30% of the data and will almost certainly be reflected in a principal component. War may have found itself tacked on as a statistical artefact but I suggest there should be 6 questions on war too before we read too much into this correlation.

Similarly there were 6 questions on inter/nationalism - another 30% of the data - and two on crime. So nationalism is going to come out of the analysis,  picking up one or two more questions in the same way.

So I think a safer interpretation is that there are two components or groupings by which answers are predictable: 1. nationalism and 2. economics, in a survey where a third of the questions are on nationalism, a third are on economics, and the last third are an assortment of other topics.

Oh. That's not exactly surprising is it? If we had a survey with 6 questions about electoral reform, 6 about income tax and 8 assorted others, I wonder what the two axes would be labelled then?