General and President Eisenhower had a simple way of categorising issues. They were dealt with according to their importance and urgency.
Eisenhower Matrix
To me climate issues belong to one of the lower quadrants because they are far from being urgent, regardless of their potential or proven importance.
Continue to study climates
As many other aspects of our life, the climates (yes, in the plural), their past and present evolution deserve to be studied and better understood. These are as important tasks as other research activities in different fields. But climate studies must not consist in developing untestable in silico fictions. Computer models help simulate complex combinations of already known laws. But the basic knowledge must come from evidences and from discovery of fundamental driving factors, not from tentative simulations that impose themselves onto reality. We, and that “we” includes scientists, are not in a position to know more by hypothetically splitting hair with the help of supercomputers. Data and evidences will not come as fast as we would like. This is a frustration that we must accept. Thus yes, more research is needed. But there is no reason to believe that climatology must receive a larger part of the pie than physics, medicine, biology, or other sciences when applying for grants and funds.
Reassign to IPCC its original role, dissolve UNFCCC
IPCC has been appointed as a panel of experts to provide advice to governments. Well infiltrated by green advocacy groups, without democratic foundation, and with unprecedented resources and power, these experts define a modern creed based on their estimate of the significance of those findings that they deem relevant to sustain their beliefs. In place since now 26 years, their continuing livelihood depends on not questioning their prophecies; this makes them dependant, the opposite of what is expected from experts.
IPCC must become similar to other scientific societies, and stop believing being the holder of a creed.
It can be a useful panel to review the plentiful scientific literature that is published on climate matters. But only the first working group should be kept and re-aligned on presenting the state of knowledge rather than the state of what is or should be the consensus about our knowledge. It should make act of modesty and, as in any other scientific community, become a forum where dissenting is more praised than harmony. And if climate loses its VIP status for all grant proposals, then the sheer number of programs and studies will be reduced to a hopefully more reasonable level.
The other working groups are not needed at all. These bodies of un-democracy try to impose a modern gospel and to define actions of a super-centralized authority. Their explanations and extrapolations are tainted with too much ideology to be acceptable. “Consensus of experts” is either an oxymoron or a method of imposing totalitarian views. In fact, as shown in Copenhagen, when matters get serious, biased experts have nothing to contribute.
As climate is not the foremost worry for humanity, it follows that the Kyoto protocol can be archived. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was created with the sole objective to address anthropogenic climate change; this institution can be dissolved too, without any regret.
With such reforms a lot of [otherwise] intelligent people will become available to work more concretely on more important subjects, if they are able to.
Stop De-carbonation
Activism and mitigation strategies to de-carbonate our society are at best meaningless, at worse may be counterproductive, and certainly distract us from other more important and urgent issues. They belong to the lower left corner of the matrix and should be stopped at once before having wasted precious resources to go into the wrong direction.
Energy must be used to fuel development and to improve the well-being of populations in all parts of the World. Curbing CO2 emissions means to literally prevent this to happen. Furthermore, the effect of such policy will be ridiculously small.
Stop fighting CO2! It’s a futile, costly, and worthless war.
Continue developing new energy sources, stop “energy transition at any cost”
It is a wise idea to depend less on fossil fuels, in particular on oil and gas produced in instable geopolitical regions. Any such finite resource should be used in such a way that its exhaustion will not come before valid alternatives will have been put in place.
But this needs to be done in an economic manner, without the biases induced by tax breaks, or direct and indirect subsidies for alternative energy sources. Arbitrary carbon taxes, absurd financial instruments such as carbon certificates, favouritism by subsiding politically correct partners, and racketeering by imposing nice eco-friendly labels: these practices must stop at once, regardless of constituencies that have gotten accustomed to such privileges.
Incompetent politicians and their technocratic epigones like spending other people’s money; they must be kept under democratic control.
To me, investments oriented at improving energy uses should be judged with different economic ratio as for usual enterprises. Offering positive value on the long term with relatively low risk, they project a longer shadow and should pay themselves back[1] in a longer period, rather 20-30 than 10 years (at the condition that the equipment’s life time is such). In Switzerland, a pay-back time of approximately 8 years is graciously offered with the guaranteed price for electricity production by photovoltaic panels. To promise such short returns by the way of subsidies or price guarantees is an irresponsible policy that asks consumers and taxpayers to pay non-entrepreneurs to take no risks.
Inefficient, intermittent and costly alternative power sources are promoted with the pretext of needing to reduce carbon dioxide emissions – even denominated now a pollutant by US EPA (these people don’t breathe, they pollute). For transportation, the shift from petrol to electric is still tentative since battery technology does not offer the necessary mileage and life time. And in case of success, it will require even more electricity to be supplied in a more complex and powerful distribution grid.
A solar or wind unit has a load factor of 5% – 25%; it means that another production source needs to be ready to make up for the missing supply during 75-95% of the time, by night or in absence of wind. Such stand-by unit will be thermal, or a storage-restitution system that will cost a multiple of all the rest[2]. Higher costs for the same service with no advantage and no economy: where is the justification?
In fact, the energy transition is not actually oriented to substitute CO2 emitting sources but rather to wipe away nuclear plants from the territory. This is evident in the German case, where coal fired units were re-started to replace the missing nuclear supply.
Why eliminate nuclear? The short answer is fear. A longer one is the hate of technologies that need to be deployed at such a large scale that, in both senses of the word, power is concentrated in too few hands. Three Miles island, Chernobyl, Fukushima are all incidents that gave arguments to the anti-nuclear movement. Even if we know that new generations of nuclear plants can be made intrinsically safe so that the human errors that caused earlier accidents cannot have the consequences they had; even if alternative processes (e.g. thorium, super breeder) may offer an almost unlimited electricity supply with almost no wastes; even if there are solutions for waste management, the anti-nukes have decided to destroy the reputation of anyone who would promote such development. And in fact there remain almost no advocates for nuclear energy in Europe. The French company Areva sells its technology elsewhere in the World but has stopped hoping to change the published opinion in its own country. This happens in the Western World; meanwhile, China will quadruple its capacity by 2020, India is on its way of doubling it, and more is to come. One day, we will be purchasing Chinese technology to re-install nuclear plants in Europe.
The “energy transition” acclaimed by governments in Europe and North America is imposed upon the citizens of these countries in a rather undemocratic manner. Even in Switzerland, where we vote on issues such as roads, taxes, minarets, and vacation homes, no referendum has been held to initiate this monstrous collectivist program. It may be too dangerous to expose its ultimate futility and its horrendous costs. To make it almost irreversible we are put in front of a complex fait accompli. Pharaohs in Egypt had no business plans when constructing pyramids, the Swiss federal council makes serious plans to ensure that the same kWh will be delivered at the same 220V socket for a multiple of the cost. What a progress!
Development: to be fostered rather than inhibited!
| When discussing the chart tying GDP with carbon emissions, I somehow disingenuously argued that not emitting one tonne of carbon may reduce the GDP by 150 $[3]. It is clearly the case today, but could be wrong in the future if alternative energy sources would become true substitutes for fossil fuels. The future will tell. But in any case the so much needed economic development is tied to more energy uses. Today, and still for quite a long time, to 86% this energy is mostly made by burning coal and hydrocarbons. It is therefore true that asking for immediate emission reduction, or even for controlled growth of the emissions, means asking to slow down social and economic development. While this may satisfy the intellectuals and do-gooders of the rich world it is understandable that it is infuriating the people and their leaders in emerging and developing countries. The coming climate conference in Paris in 2015 will be a scene for this drama. |
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Environment and Health Protection
Much progresses could be made to protect the environment and to safeguard people’s health because economic conditions have allowed for it. Technologies are available that can be put in place as rapidly as the financial situation can allow. This is one more reason to foster economic development. However, much remains to be done, also in affluent societies, and mostly at local level. Clean air and water should be widely available, and wastes must be disposed of in a safe and definitive way.
A precision: by clean I don’t mean containing nothing.
Rather, we need to recognize that an unavoidable pollution accompanies all our activities, and to allow for immission[4] thresholds for man-made substances at levels that are not representing an unbearable risk in case of prolonged exposition. There is no logic and no reason to aim at levels near or at the natural background, as Swedish environmental laws are asking for. Setting thresholds must remain a technical matter and not be submitted to political opportunism.
Agriculture
As seen in the charts shown in the development section, agriculture production has not stopped meeting the growing demand. This challenge will go on because the World population is still growing and needs more and better food supply. Calls for organic, barely self-sufficient small holdings, or low input agriculture don’t come from hungry and poor people but from well-fed ones who are forgetting where the food they eat is coming from. Inefficient means of production are no solution. Also, asking for a diet change, e.g. to go vegetarian, is one of these manifestations of centralized idealism. Confronted with the impossibility to increase the agricultural area, production will only satisfy demand if intensified. Crop yields will improve with better seeds and cultivars, better soil management, more efficient plant nutrition and irrigation, and more effective protection against weeds, insects and diseases. Despite of all disinformation on intensive agriculture, it can be done without lasting impact on the environment and in all safety for growers and for consumers. But I repeat: it has to be more intensive, not less, also on small holdings in developing countries. Research and development is highly concentrated in the hand of few companies that have assembled a vast know-how, in particular in molecular biology, genomic, proteomics, metabolomics, etc. Public R&D and extension services should be increased and re-oriented toward local adaptations and practical methodologies rather than to esoteric or bureaucratic objectives.
[1] Discounted payback time or internal rate of return are arithmetically expressing the same.
First, all investment costs, operational expenses, interests and amortization charges must be compounded into their calculation without any consideration for subsidies or tax breaks. This basic economic analysis can then be improved by political decisions about financing and fiscal conditions. I’ve seen even one of the most reputed consultancy firms making the mistake of taking subsidies and tax breaks as integral part of the internal value of a project. Anything can be justified with such tautology, the taxpayer will continue to pay.
[2] See on my blog a calculation example for supplying an uninterrupted consumption of 100 MW.
http://blog.mr-int.ch/?p=1369
[3] One can also argue, as disingenuously as I did, that if 30-100 US $ per tonne are spent for CO2 capture, transportation and storage, then the GDP will improve correspondingly.
But if it generates 30-100 by costing 150, it is a lousy proposition.
[4] Immission: word used in French and German to mean the effect on the environment and on health of foreign substances when introduced at certain concentration into the atmosphere or into water bodies.