But what is happening at the moment in the artic seems rather different. The world’s most northerly land based weather station is at Cape Morris Jessup in Eastern Greenland. It has recorded temperatures above zero in February only three times in the last 20 years. The years are 2011, 2017 and 2018. This year the temperatures are averaging 15 degrees centigrade above the normal average. That looks more like a trend and less like a short term blip.
It is possible, of course, that worrying about this is unnecessary and we’ll flip back into a cold decade. It is also possible that the central forecasts of the scientific community are right and that all we are seeing is a sign of a gradual warming process that we can just about get on top of in time to avoid a drastic change if we pull out all the stops.
What worries me is that there is a third possibility that is actually a lot more plausible than the idea that climate change is all a scare story. The little discussed third possibility is that climate change is happening a lot faster than any of the careful objective scientists dared to predict under severe challenge.
We know as a matter of scientific fact that CO2 levels are now at 407 ppm and rising. This is well above the highest level that has existed since humans have been on the planet and extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is scientifically certain to create extra warming. We know that artic ice levels keep breaking records for the lowest levels ever witnessed and that is an unavoidable scientific fact that white ice reflects heat and open water absorbs more of it. We know there is a lot of methane both frozen under the ocean and frozen on land in permafrost and that this is a much more dangerous greenhouse gas. We don’t really know for certain how much of it will be released or how quickly as global temperatures rise.
What if all those factors cause climate to change more rapidly than the more sober forecasts have led us to expect? Greenland is a rather worrying place to find evidence of warming happening more rapidly than predictions. Melt sea ice and you don’t change sea levels. Melt significant amounts of the Greenland Ice Shelf and we lose the following cities: New York, New Orleans, London, Shanghai, St Petersburg, Venice. We also lose much of Bangladesh and the fertile parts of Egypt.
If there is even a remote possibility that we might be about to trigger such enormous damage then it really ought to persuade even the most cautious person to press for speedier action to limit the risk. The possibility looks less remote with every passing year.
There are, of course, some grounds for optimism. The weight of money that the Paris accords have put behind research and development of alternative energy generation, energy conservation, energy storage and low energy products is creating a huge momentum. It is entirely possible that technology has reached a tipping point and we are going to move in a much more sustainable direction with real speed and enthusiasm. Low energy approaches are becoming cheaper and more efficient more rapidly than predicted and the volume of sales is bringing prices down and encouraging even more rapid technological development in a virtuous circle.
Unfortunately, the fossilised ways of the past don’t end easily. There are a lot of vested interests in the old ways of doing things. Donald Trump, President Putin and reactionary oil states like Saudi Arabia are not exactly promoting an enlightened embrace of urgent change. We are in a battle between the new technology and the old and there is no guarantee that it will be won quickly enough to avoid catastrophic long term damage to the climate taking place.
In these circumstances there is not much doubt about what would be the morally correct choice for a British government to take about its investment policies, its industrial strategy and its political allies. There also ought to be little doubt about what would be the choice that would give the country the most successful economic future. No country ever prospered by linking its fate to a declining technology.
Yet the UK government continues with its policy of making nice soundbite announcements on environmental issues but putting all its serious energies in the wrong direction. It is busy welcoming Saudi Arabian royalty for a state visit. It has incentivised fracking. It has given tax incentives to North Sea Oil and Gas exploration. It has all but banned onshore wind farm developments. Then it has tried to generate a few positive headlines by trying to promote the use of electric cars. The bulk of its money has gone firmly behind old technology. A few hundred million is going into the future.
It is impossible to detail the extent of the failure so I’m going to stick to one area of policy. The UK is in the middle of a home building boom. It ought to be a perfect opportunity to redesign a significant part of our housing stock and to embrace the future. That just isn’t happening:
- There is no requirement for new homes to generate as much electricity as they use so they won’t be equipped with solar panels or heat exchange systems as standard.
- There is no requirement for them to have electric car charging points so there won’t be a quick cheap and easy boost to the number of people owning one.
- There is pathetically little financial support for universities to research and develop new products like graphene heaters or insulating paintwork and even less help to develop such products commercially in the UK and bring them to global markets. So the new homes won’t be equipped with the latest technology and UK industry won’t get a shot in the arm to help it develop.
- New homes will not be equipped with electricity storage facilities as standard. So the UK will need greater energy production capacity than it really needs because we are missing out on opportunities to even out demand
There is a real risk of the world not acting rapidly enough in order to tackle climate change. But there is also a real change underway to a more sustainable economic model. It is hugely worrying that the current UK government is not dong remotely enough to embrace the change.