Anti-Dystopian Future History

The Ministry for the Future, Kim Stanley Robinson

The standard model for climate change fiction is a narrative of calamity piling up, or of living among calamity. The fact that our system for living, one we support time and time again through our democracy, embeds us as part of the problem (some, admittedly, much more than others) seems to make divergence from a path to this calamity difficult to imagine.

But mapping out how this divergence could occur - scientifically, technologically, socioeconomically, ethically, and even spiritually - is Robinson's aim here. The central, eponymous concept is the creation, under the Paris Agreement, of a Ministry for the Future, a UN body focused on representing future generations and non-human residents of Earth. In Robinson's telling, this Ministry uses its limited budget in a precisely targeted way, finding the physical and - especially - the financial fulcrums where small changes can exact large gains.

But that's the philosophical backdrop. The novel itself opens with, appropriately for the subgenre, a calamitous near-future heatwave in continental India that, over a few days, kills tens of millions of people. This event unsettles the global order, with India's Hindu nationalist political class toppled, and solar radiation management (SRM) geoengineering unilaterally undertaken by the nation. It also motivates its characters, providing a clear view of the peril for the Ministry's head, Mary Murphy, and fuelling the rage of Frank May, an aid worker survivor of the heatwave. Their paths become entangled as the novel progresses over several decades, but much of the novel is a tapestry woven from parallel stories. These are told both by other inhabitants of the imperiled world and, fancifully, from the perspective of inanimate objects like a photon, a carbon atom and the Market.

While the overarching focus is climate change, as the novel progresses this broadens to encompass two key facets of this: refugees and biodiversity. Many of the strands, and especially those of Frank, deal with the trials, traumas and then resolutions of people forced to migrate directly by climate change, or indirectly because of its downstream societal impacts. In Robinson’s 21st century, after decades of strife, the world ultimately adopts a system explicitly modelled on the Nansen Passport scheme from the early 20th century. In parallel, he creates a Half-Earth movement that slowly but steadily drives societies to cede half of the Earth’s land area to nature, consolidating existing communities in cities, and allowing wildlife to recover in the wake of their retreat.

Wearing my Earth scientist hat, it’s refreshing, if ever so slightly uncomfortable, to read a climate change novel in which science doesn't play the dominant role in its resolution. It’s clearly important in framing the problem, and in monitoring its resolution, but the most successful drivers come from the economic and societal changes that the Ministry (and other bodies) engineer. Markets are tamed and repurposed via a carbon currency, financial transparency is hard-wired via a blockchain that destroys secrecy and corruption, and social media is democratised to put its power back into the hands of its users. And, as readers of his Mars trilogy of novels will attest, Robinson puts a lot of imaginative effort into how exactly these socioeconomic forces might be realised - arguably a little too much effort in some particularly dry segments.

An aspect I found intriguing, and liable to cause Robinson some trouble, is the novel's attitude to geoengineering. As mentioned already, SRM geoengineering plays an early and successful role in the novel, although it's clearly labelled as a temporary, placeholder fix in the narrative. But the novel also runs with icesheet management geoengineering, essentially pumping out the meltwater that lubricates icesheet collapse, and touches briefly on a novel (to me) mode of "staining" the waters of the Arctic Ocean to decrease its warming. These are all presented as successful needs-must approaches - a view of the potential role of geoengineering that I share myself, but a likely contentious one for environmentally-inclined fellow-travellers. For many, the moral hazard argument against geoengineering (sometimes even against just contemplating it) is simply unsurpassable. On a not-dissimilar note, Robinson doesn't shy away from issues of population, particularly where demographic transition in his imagined future brings benefits. Again, liable to upset some in the environmental movement who - with some justification - are ideologically opposed to contemplating this facet of Earth's problems.

Notwithstanding all of the foregoing positives, the novel isn't without its weaknesses. Principally in the character of Frank, whose role in the narrative is just too muddy - particularly so given he's introduced in such a pivotal way, and then precipitates a fateful run-in with Mary. But his arc quickly runs out of steam, and he becomes an ill-defined foil to Mary's more prominent narrative. More generally, the episodic nature of the novel - which has many "ecological sci-fi" precedents, including Brunner's Stand On Zanzibar and Brin's Earth - has a habit here of introducing then dropping threads that were just getting interesting. For instance, the whole "black ops" wing of the Ministry tantalisingly appears and then disappointingly evaporates, lost, seemingly, in a crush of competing threads. Plus, as already noted, Robinson's excitable fleshing out of some of his socioeconomic solutions can be tinder-dry at times.

But the ambition and scale of the novel absolves it of all of these problems. It’s easily the most realistic “climate positive” novel I’ve read. It may sound stupid out of context, but it’s quite the thing to read of atmospheric CO2 not just peaking but actually dropping, and dropping fast (5 ppm per year) by the end of the novel. I had to stop when I read that, as continual CO2 rise is just a simple, lifelong fact. But it’s not exactly a happy-clappy utopian novel, where the penny suddenly drops for everyone and we all start behaving sensibly. Instead, it's much more of an anti-dystopian tale, in which the planetary handbrake turn that’s executed is actually the result of the slow accumulation of multiple credible steps. So this feeds into a sense of realism and, for me at least, a more genuine positivity about the future.

I should conclude by noting that I finished reading it in the same week as I watched the darkly satirical Don’t Look Up. While that’s an excellent howl of a movie, one that doesn’t offer anything by way of a solution (or really intend to), this is much closer to the real deal. But the contrast between them was enjoyable to savour. I’ll be recommending it to my Earth science colleagues, but I think it’d be an enjoyable and informative read for anyone. If - characteristically for Robinson - a long one.

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Stray observations:

• I thought it was only me who was imagining something like the Half-Earth movement. Obviously not. It’s not a concept that I’ve seen written down before, but it seemed like a pretty good idea to me - and clearly to Robinson too. Of course, long-term I’d like to see a Whole-Earth movement in which we abandon the Earth to do interesting things elsewhere, leaving our cradle free for successor species … 
• Much like the Mars trilogy, Robinson has a nice section near the end where a major character takes a trip that allows the world that he’s built-up to shine. Here, more so than in the Mars triology, this feels necessary - like it shows what our efforts could achieve if we do the right thing, both by the Earth and by those living in it who are less fortunate than ourselves. In a literature dominated by abundant dystopias, giving a vision of how things could be different hit the spot for me. Ditto, as already mentioned, the novel’s late turnaround point when atmospheric pCO2 starts decreasing. 
• Another intriguing suggestion of Robinson’s is that advances in computing, AI and automation (none of which seem unreasonable) favour a kind of “Red Plenty” economics. Essentially, the market is (I think) streamlined and out-guessed by computing systems to the point that its purported efficiencies are unnecessary. It’s the portion of the novel where it feels closest to utopian thinking, but there’s still at least a veneer of realism. 
• It’s kind-of funny to contrast how David Brin’s corresponding stab at the future, Earth, treats the Swiss compared to here. For Robinson, they’re kind-of a beacon of sanity - albeit one with flaws - whereas Brin just made them the bad guys, what with their secret banking and mountains of gold. (Admittedly, he does claim that he did it for the surprise value.) 
• As an oceanographer, I can’t let the novel’s passing reference to the ocean that I’ve reproduced below go unmentioned. While it’s negative about the prospects for us doing anything to help the ocean, I can’t say that I disagree. Absorbing so much heat and CO2, it’s been extensively perturbed, and on a scale that we’d struggle to redress. So I’d agree with Robinson that probably the best we can do is stop making things worse, and allow it to just recover on its own.

• I mentioned the strange position of Frank in the novel before, but the late and completely unnecessary introduction of a potential romantic partner for Mary is another strange misstep. It’s brief, and just a small part of the “Earth is healing” segment near the end, but it’s pretty glaringly incongruous in a novel that’s otherwise quite disinterested in its characters’ emotional lives.

An African In Greenland, Tété-Michel Kpomassie

An unusual (for me) foray into non-fiction with this rather unique ethnographic travelogue. I caught reference to it in a brief magazine report on BBC News 24 a few months ago, but an intriguing enough one to pick up the book.

In outline, a boy in Africa discovers Greenland and its native Inuit in a book, then spends several years steadily travelling through Africa and then Europe before finally taking the final leg to Greenland by sea. It sounds like a work of magical realism, but it's actually a richly detailed description of this journey, and of the author's subsequent time in various Greenland towns on the Labrador Sea coast.

And what detail! Kpomassie has an excellent eye, and a real gift in the telling. Whether it's the range of reactions to his colour and imposing size, the unique Greenlandic living and cultural practices, the extensive friendships he forms, his adventures on the sea or on the ice, or his gruelling (for a vegetarian) descriptions of local cuisine, it's all told with engaging flair. It helps that Kpomassie makes friends easily, bringing him into contact with a range of fascinating (and occasionally alarming) characters. His ability to rock up in a new city, town or fishing village, and then find himself digs with locals at (seemingly) the drop of a hat is really quite something. And his unique heritage and winning ways with local women certainly made me wonder if he made a longer-term mark on the Greenlandic gene pool!

Where the book sags a bit is in its episodic nature and its absence of a strong narrative journey - inevitable given it's a travelogue of a real actual journey. But the tale it tells is so good, the situations, the people, and the society so unique, that the book easily carries you with it. Well worth checking out.

Finally, Kpomassie's journey having taken place in the 1960s, it's also sobering to reflect on the climatic and cultural changes that the intervening decades have wrought.

Blue Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson

Epic in every way - in complexity, in characterisation, in actual physical weight - it's a strange feeling to finally finish KSR's exceptional future history of Martian terraforming. It's great to turn the last page on something I've been labouring under for weeks (*months* if the two preceding tomes are factored in), but it's been such an all-encompassing and absorbing book that I'm going to miss it a bit too.

In pocket summary, it picks up as the second - and successful - Martian revolution is concluding, on a Mars newly liberated from a flash-flooded Earth. Thanks to anti-aging medical technology, much of the original cast of Red Mars is still with us, together with their first and second generation children. These assorted narrators take us through factional Red (pristine, lifeless) and Green (transformed, bountiful) fights, fumbling efforts to kick-start Martian politics, and the solar system-wide issue of humanity's abundance in the wake of this anti-aging.

However, that description can't touch just how ridiculously broad the canvas here is. As well as the geology of Mars and the science of its transformation (both global *and* local), the socio-economics of its political awakening, and the gathering pace of solar system expansion, the novel finds time to take in (among other things) life in southeast England on a drowned Earth, sex-and-hunting cults on Mars, and the impact of low Martian gravity for regular and extreme sports. KSR can't even leave his convenient narrative trick of anti-aging alone, and embarks on a fully fleshed-out subplot digging into biological senescence and memory.

Inevitably, not all of this works, and I suspect readers will find themselves skim-reading the themes that don't interest them as much. For me, I couldn't care as much about political theory as KSR clearly does. But then I just couldn't get enough of the Red vs. Green tussles of Ann and Sax, or the scientific detail of Mars' animation, from global geoengineering to gardening its microclimates. And there's a great stretch where Nirgal, a first generation child, takes part in a solitary, round-the-world marathon (Mars-athon?), which really opened my eyes to seeing Mars as a (potential) physical, living-and-breathing place.

So almost impossible not to recommend to science fiction fans, but it's a real taskmaster of a trilogy of novels. But, I think, absolutely worth it.

Imagining Climate Change

The Wall, John Lanchester

One of the many failures of our culture when it comes to possible climate change futures is in playing out the likely consequences of change. "The future" becomes one purely of temperature extremes, rainfall change and, sometimes, agricultural shortages. Numbers that, while meaningful, don't capture the imagination and aren't extrapolated to day-to-day changes in our lives. This makes the future look like somewhere in which we have to, for instance, make do on 10% less food and spend twice as much time indoors sheltering from excessive heat. This overlooks what such changes will actually mean societally, and how they will play out for the daily lives of people in different places on different means.

The Wall is, arguably, an attempt to put human flesh and feeling around one climate future. It's a relatively slim volume, and focused around a small cast, but it makes great strides in sketching out how climate change can reshape a whole society, and what consequences and choices it might impose.

The book opens, almost with sly nod to Game of Thrones, with its central character, Kavanagh, braced against the cold, up on the Wall and looking for Others. The Wall is Britain's response first to sea level rise, but more significantly to the waves of climate refugees displaced from their homes. Kavanagh's job, as a Defender on a two-year stint, is to stop the Others from breaching the Wall and reaching the relative safety within. In this future, it is the young that serve on the Wall, while the old, whose past inactions have caused the Change which drives it, are cowed and nostalgic for lost beaches. And this service comes with double jeopardy for the Defenders - the risk of harm while serving on the Wall, and the penalty of being cast out to sea if any Others break through on their watch. Both of which become more than mere risks for Kavanagh as his tour of duty unspools.

In spite of its relative brevity, this creates an unnerving future Britain. Through the drama it inflicts on its characters, it shows how, while civilization may not necessarily fall under climate change, its best features can easily be worn away. Kavanagh is a relatable Everyman, but even he stops himself thinking too deeply about the Others or why they are so desperate to break into Britain. However, his resentment at previous generations, including his own parents, for their abject failure to avoid the Change is much clearer. This future Britain may not be (completely) materially ruined, but the isolationism fostered by the Change, and the resulting loss of humanity in its citizens, marks its true devastation.

So not the cheeriest read, but recommended.

Stray observations:

• The climate future presented in the novel is an interesting one. The reader is first introduced to how cold it is, counter to ongoing global warming. However, it is later made clear that it’s much warmer elsewhere, which is suggestive of the cold in Britain being a result of changes in ocean circulation. The decline in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, for instance, is simulated to result in reduced warming in northwestern Europe relative to other locations. I don’t think that (m)any simulations would suggest strong cooling, but there’s something of a basis for the nature of the Change as it appears in the novel.
• A number of reviews have described The Wall as “this century’s 1984” or similar, presumably latching onto the fact that its future dystopia can be read as a warning for the present. And there’s certainly something prophetic in its world, but in terms of style and narrative the two books really don’t overlap. The Wall is far, far less didactic than 1984, and the better for it. The closer parallel is with Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, with its similarly pared-back text and narrative, although The Wall gets the nod because its particular environmental calamity is more unambiguously related to our own. (The Road still wins out in terms of total doom, however.)
• In another sly nod, The Wall introduces a politician character with more than a passing resemblance to a certain British Prime Minister known for populism and lying. That said, the narrative ultimately gives him a more noble path than one might expect from this affinity, so perhaps I’m overinterpreting.
• Intriguingly from a “future technology” perspective, the Britain presented in The Wall runs off of nuclear power. It’s fleetingly mentioned, and never referred to again, so it’s difficult to know if the author means much by this. Admittedly, the changed local climate in Britain sounds less favourable to renewables like solar, but there could be more to this choice by the author.
• While an underpinning, and largely realised, feature of the world of The Wall is "civilization within, barbarism without", one of my bugbears about the IPCC scenarios that we use in climate change research is that, no matter how bad their futures get, things remain civilised. I think scenario designers might do well to read The Wall and reflect.

Green Antarctica

Austral, Paul McAuley

Against the backdrop of a thawed Antarctica, prison guard Austral, herself a former offender and a genetically-modified “huskie”, gazumps her criminal accomplices and kidnaps the niece of a visiting dignitary. Partly to protect her, and partly to negotiate passage off Antarctica with the girl’s uncle, with whom Austral shares a family connection. The novel then follows the pair’s adventures as they cross the Antarctic Peninsula avoiding recapture while meeting up with the assorted people who now make the post-glacial habitat their home.

I really thought that I’d enjoy this novel more. It’s set in the less-explored space of accommodated climate change, it has a rather unexpected take on geoengineering, and presents an arguably positive approach, that of the “Ecopoets”, to adaptation to a warmed world. Of which, it’s a nice idea to present geoengineering as something that just didn’t work fast enough rather than being “Morally Unconscionable”, and I really liked that the novel’s “environmentalists” have worked with the grain of climate change to green Antarctica, and to do so through genetic engineering. And in marrying all this with a narrative fed by a modified human, as well as a wider backdrop of the corporate betrayal of both huskies and Antarctica, I thought it would be more successful than it is. Instead, it’s too much of an episodic “road trip”, where the sequential hook-ups seem a lazy way to explore the world. And where one never quite buys the conceit that the protagonist would be able to escape detection so well.

So, while it’s very nicely ambitious (so far, so McAuley), but just not as narratively satisfying as I’m used to with him.

A Parable

The Consuming Fire, John Scalzi

While my last Scalzi was a bit of a disappointment, the predecessor to this novel was a very enjoyable blast. A classic space opera, set in an interstellar empire on the brink of collapse, it was as much about it's colourful cast and their political machinations as it was about the disaster facing them all.

This time, disaster has arrived and the Interdependency is fragmenting, but Emprox Grayland II continues to be threatened as much by grasping political rivals. Underestimated as a naïve ingenue, she marshals her loyal friends to surprise her enemies, while striving to give her citizens the best chance of weathering the storm.

What it lacks in big surprises is more than made up for by Scalzi's inventive twists and turns that keep the reader guessing how (the extremely likeable) Grayland will beat the odds. It's also a joy as a thinly veiled parable for our climate changing times, especially the venality of those characters trying to turn a buck off the unfolding disaster. And it's all done with a brilliant lightness of touch, frequently an enjoyably profane one. Best of all, it's not done yet. Strongly recommended (... for space opera fans).

The BBC respondeth ...

Further to an earlier rant, I actually got a response from the BBC. And one where they actually half-agreed with me - which is more than I got when I complained about the excreable ''The Great Global Warming Swindle''. As they say, it's true that the BBC does "stick to the script" on climate change almost all of the time, but they overlook how damaging it is to go "off piste". Both to general public understanding of the non-debate that is climate science (actually, there's no shortage of debate - just not of the baseless "sceptic" sort), and to their reputation as factual broadcasters. Yes, there's a superficial sense in which it's "balanced" to present climate sceptic views, but only when the nature of that balance is plain. One doesn't see many science programmes that counter geologists with creationists, or medical scientists with HIV-deniers, or even historians with holocaust-deniers, but somehow climate change is fair game for this sort of treatment - despite both its science base and its potentially disastrous implications the world over. Anyhow, this is what they had to say ...

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Dear Andrew

Reference CAS-3433921-5SPGSZ

Thanks for contacting us about What’s the Point of...The Met Office? broadcast on 5 August.

In What's the Point of ...?, Daily Mail columnist Quentin Letts questions the continued relevance of British traditions and institutions, with an irreverent approach offering alternatives to well-established views. There is a long tradition on Radio 4 of columnists having licence to explore controversial subjects from a personal viewpoint and the light hearted tone of this series allows Quentin Letts to question even the most admired of organisations. Nevertheless we accept that in this episode about the Met Office, while there are legitimate questions to be raised about the accuracy of long-term predictions over the past 10-15 years and funding, the programme should have been more clear about where the balance of the argument currently lies on climate change and, in particular, would have benefitted from clarifying that the Met Office’s underlying views are in line with the scientific consensus.

The omission on these points is regrettable. Climate change is a recurrent theme on Radio 4 programmes and more mainstream views have been, and will continue to be, properly reflected in our output - for example, the following day’s BBC Inside Science included an interview referring to how the release of carbon dioxide may have had a significant effect on the atmosphere and this week’s Fry’s English Delight on weather also reflects the scientific consensus.

We do appreciate this feedback and your concerns have been sent to the programme team, and senior BBC management via our daily report, which means they have been seen by the right people.

Thank you for taking the time to bring this matter to our attention and giving us the opportunity to review it.

Kind regards

Ciaran Hanna

BBC Complaints www.bbc.co.uk/complaints

Yours, Seething in Southampton ...

While I've come to expect misrepresentation of science from the likes of Channel 4, the BBC is typically the sanest of media commentators. So it was something of a surprise when one of their long-running (but, hitherto, unlistened to by me) programmes took unwarranted pot shots at that bastion of UK climate science, the Met Office. The programme, "What is the point of ...?", ostensibly takes to task long-standing and seemingly venerable institutions, with the aim of cutting to the core of whether they're out of touch or even a nuisance. While there are many reasons to ponder how the Met Office fits into the modern world, what the programme served up did nothing to address this. Cue a "Seething from Southampton" shot across the BBC's bows ...

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Dear Sir or Madam,

I am writing to complain about the Radio 4 broadcast “What is the Point of the Met Office?” (5th August 2015).

As a long-standing part of the British establishment, one whose work features in both our daily lives (the weather) and the longer-term fate of the Earth (climate change), the Met Office is ripe for an evaluation of both its role and its performance in this role, and I tuned in to the programme hoping for such an appraisal. However, rather than investigating how well the Met Office actually performs in its role (e.g. how accurate it is, whether this accuracy has improved with time, is this level of accuracy cost-effective), the programme makers instead chose the lazy journalism route of setting “climate sceptic” cranks onto meek and mild Met Office spokespeople.

We first had an amateur meteorologist who, while noting the complexity of climate science, seemed inexplicably interested in replacing computers with humans in matters of weather prediction. Next up was Piers Corbyn, brother of the currently newsworthy Jeremy, a fellow of the not-showing-my-working school of weather prediction, and a long-term opponent of non-sunspot-related climate change. This was all topped off by the Rt. Hon. Peter Lilley, spouting as fact the ridiculous claim that climate change stopped in 2004 – something that would come as a surprise to all of the jobbing scientists far outside the Met Office who make it their job to measure and analyse the Earth’s climate.

There are plenty of reasons to wonder whether a large, centralised and bureaucratic “weather service” still has a place in the modern world, but these simply weren’t touched on in this programme. When privatisation was raised, it was less in the context of whether it could actually work, and more in the service of a threat to rein in the Met Office’s climate projection work. But rather than investigate whether said projections were outlandish as claimed, the programme boiled down to the usual climate sceptic bluster which any fact-checker could easily have punctured. Did it not, for instance, even occur to the programme makers to check whether the Met Office’s climate projections lie outside the range of those of their international peer organisations? (They don’t – as recent IPCC reports show.)

By way of summary, “What is the Point of ‘What is the Point of …?’” was my final thought about this programme. This edition was my first time with this programme, and will doubtless be my last. A listener hitherto unaware of what the Met Office did, or how well it did it, would most likely exit the programme with the view that it (a) blows money on seemingly expensive computers, and (b) produces extreme “doomsday” predictions to justify its continued existence. As such, it left me thinking that, if one can’t trust the programme on institutions which deal with scientific matters that can easily be fact-checked, how can one possibly trust it on those where the arguments for and against are more qualitative and open to interpretation.

Yours faithfully ...

Please note: For full disclosure, while I do not work at or for the Met Office, my work as a professional oceanographer does involve periodic collaboration with fellow researchers there, including with climate projection.

Existence (or something like it)

More than 20 years ago, David Brin wrote his gargantuan, world-encompassing novel, Earth. Similarly to John Brunner's classic novel, Stand On Zanzibar, its central plot was revealed only gradually, built up step-by-step from the perspective of dozens of characters, each with a different view of the world they live in. It took on just about every environmental theme going from climate change to overpopulation to extinction, then threw in space stations, errant micro black holes and the Tunguska event, and a smattering of technological forecasts, including a then-prescient treatment of the world wide web. Epically long, it was also epic in its scale and ambition, and it more or less worked, culminating in an genuinely impressive climax in which the Gaia hypothesis was made flesh.

Flash forward to today, and Brin has written Existence, which is easily as large, and again builds its world from the bottom-up, fragmenting its narrative across a cast that includes - among others - an elderly astronaut now on orbital clean-up detail, a mischievous science fiction writer, a climate-displaced Chinese scavenger and a trust-fund baby with a penchant for illegal space flight. This time, while environmental matters still hover at the edges, the main focus lies with humanity's lonely position in the cosmos. This apparent loneliness doesn't last many pages into the novel, when an unexpected find in Earth orbit answers the question "are we alone?" firmly in the negative. Or seemingly so, at any rate. But the answer comes with caveats, and as the novel progresses it becomes clear that the answer is also plural.

As I was refreshing my memory and writing the above, I was struck how much the two novels share - at least in summary. What they don't share is that while Earth's epic page-count makes it an engrossing page-turner, Existence's comparable length makes it a gruelling chore. In part, I think one of the reasons is that all of Earth's scattered narratives serve the whole: an all-encompassing treatment of environmentalism. By contrast, Existence is much less coherent, and serves up amateur rocketry, (virtual) space aliens, muddled extropian thinking, uplifting animals and settings or situations that, while interesting on their own, read as disconnected in the novel. For instance, the wealth contrast between the scavenging lifestyle of Bin and the super-entitled, playboy adventures of Hacker makes sense at first in world-building, but Brin really doesn't do anything with it. And, by the end, this sort of detail has been completely left behind.

As a result, while Existence is sporadically interesting and enjoyable, it is ultimately a tedious read. Were it about half its length - a feat of editing that wouldn't be as difficult to achieve as one might imagine - its sins would be much more forgiveable. As it stands, Existence is only intermittently clever, and while it has some interesting ideas, it spaces them widely within a plodding millstone of a book. If I turn to Brin again, it will only be when his page count drops to the vicinity of 300.

A child's-eye view of apocalypse

It's safe to say that Beasts of the Southern Wild is a pretty unique film - at the very least in terms of what usually appears in cinemas our way. It's part family drama, part climate change fable and part meditation on community. But its principle strength is viewing all these various facets from the imaginatively-skewed perspective of a child living through them. The child, Hushpuppy, has an amphibious and anarchic childhood in the "Bathtub", an inundated area of swampland at the very edge of (a generally unseen) civilisation. Already largely underwater - hence its name - periodic storms threaten to finish the job, and Hushpuppy's tumultuous, knockabout life with her father is further imperilled by him gradually succumbing to illness. But in Hushpuppy's mind, her world is also threatened by the mysterious, ice-age aurochs that she's heard about at school, and infused with the mystery of her long-departed mother.

The film reviewer's shorthand for a film like this is probably something like "lyrical", but "magical" seems a popular one-word summary judging from the reviews (and posters; see above!) that I've come across. And they're right. It's a thoroughly enjoyable and affecting tale made wholly memorable by the performances of both central actors, particularly the child playing Hushpuppy. She's simply fantastic. And it does a brilliant job of playing the adult world's trouble and strife as the backdrop to the child's world of exploration and imagination. One touch I particularly liked was that the aurochs, though actually wild cattle in reality (now sadly extinct), are imagined by Hushpuppy (and visualised in the film) as something more akin to giant-sized boars because of her family's "pet" boar.

And, of course, any film that attempts to dramatise climate change - especially in a non-preachy way that's doesn't frighten the horses - gets the big thumbs up from me. Yes, it's too soft on the Bathtub's benign anarchy, and a little hard on the heavy-handed efforts of the authorities to help its residents, but it's a pretty honest and fresh presentation of a not unlikely future. A future that, as Hurricane Sandy bears down on the Eastern Seaboard, doesn't seem quite as far off anymore.

Grade: A- (high +2 on the Leeper Scale)

No need to worry?

Yesterday's Friday Seminar on ocean acidification had a very interesting "sting" in its tail about the anthropogenic emissions scenarios that we all use, and fear. The speaker, the great Andy Ridgwell from Bristol, brought in some economics work that's been done on actual patterns of fossil fuel extraction and consumption. Though this is entirely empirical, and doesn't shed much light on underlying causes, it suggests that, although there are large reserves of fossil fuels that could be used to kick us far into a warmed and acidified future, we won't use them. Economic factors will kick in long before then to make all of the alternatives more attractive. The model, which looked like it fit the data pretty well, suggested that the actual amount of fossil fuel consumed would be towards the lower end of the scenarios (or even below). And that's even without factoring in the direct actions (low/no population growth; switch to renewables/nuclear) that the lower scenarios envisage (or, at least, not doing so explicitly). The result of such a scenario, while still worrying from a climate perspective, would be far less so from an acidification perspective. So, very interesting. And, as Andy himself pointed out, the sort of news that liable to be picked up and distorted by so-called "climate skeptics" in short order.

The thing I drew from it was that I (and, presumably, much of the rest of the scientific community) unthinkingly go along with the assumption that we'll continue to consume fossil fuels so long as there are some. I guess I have a toy model of humanity in my mind which just malevolently keeps on using damaging fuels regardless of the consequences. In my defence, I read the evidence of human "progress" as supportive of my view, but I think that I'm perhaps being a little inflexible and unkind in my mental caricature of humanity. I guess that stems from my deep pessimism about civilisation's relationship with the Earth. Even, I fear, if we save ourselves, we'll doubtless have goose-stepped all over the rest of the planet's biota to do so. Anyway, it was a strange moment sitting in the seminar to think that perhaps, just perhaps, the scenarios which we've been taking as gospel are mistaken about just how much we'll pay at the pump. It was liberating, but alarming - in a climate-skeptics-will-just-love-misrepresenting-this way.

Of course, the model Andy used is only empirical (which he duly noted), and may fail to pan out in the future. Especially if there's more resistance to, or problems with, energy alternatives. Which, unless we get fusion going on a commercial basis soon-ish, might well be the case. Regardless of the cost, we'll use fossil fuels if nothing else is around to fill the gap in our energy-hungry civilisation. Further, as a questioner pointed out afterwards, the model ignores "unforeseen consequences", such as natural sinks for carbon dioxide suddenly becoming sinks under climate change. Those might just come back to bite us even if we do (grudgingly) switch away from fossil fuel.

Still, it's the first seminar in a while that's made me think (oh, and blog).

Framing

This week is Challenger 2010 week at NOC, so I've been in local-organising-committee mode doing all sorts of little jobs for BAG-who-shall-be-obeyed. It's been fun, but pretty hectic. I can't imagine how much of a stressathon it's been for BAG - it's enough of a trial getting the little things sorted out without having the whole conference on your back.

One of the highlights that I've found time to see was a lecture last night from Mike Hulme, a climate scientist from UEA. Not someone I knew a lot about going into his plenary seminar, but someone whose name I was familiar with. Anyway, he gave an interesting talk based around one of the key messages of a book he published a couple of years back, Why We Disagree About Climate Change.

The main narrative of his seminar focused around how different people frame climate change, and how this framing colours how they interpret and respond to evidence or discussion concerning it. Framing is one of those things I'm faintly aware of but never give any thought to, preferring instead to stick to more tangible topics. So it was nice to have someone else do the heavy lifting and present a summary of what the major frames that people use in the context of climate change. Little came as a surprise, but it was good to see a rather over-familiar subject viewed askew from a social sciences perspective.

I suspect that some people might have thought the seminar was a bit too artsy or airy-fairy sociological for an ostensibly scientific subject but, in a way, that kind of view was really the meat of the seminar. That is, the way people frame a subject dictates how they perceive, among other things, other frames, and that those viewing things from a high-minded scientific frame (I mean, who does this???) need to realise that what's compelling to us isn't convincing to others. One of the upshots of which is, Hulme argued, scientists need to tailor their messages in different ways when dealing with different communities.

In principle, this sounds almost totally obvious, but Hulme meant more than simply altering our language, or shifting the emphasis of our presentation onto aspects more easily understandable. He meant that we should imagine climate change through the frames of others, and determine what sorts of things are likely to be interesting or persuasive. And, also, what sorts of things just won't work with a particular audience. In the context of so-called climate scepticism, this might mean avoiding any attempt to persuade that climate change has an anthropogenic component, and focusing instead on subjects that one might get agreement on, for instance climate adaptation.

In questions afterwards, Hulme made this re-framing sound almost a little sinister, suggesting that it should be used as a tactic to gain entrance and credibility within (so-called) skeptical communities. I know he didn't mean it like that at all, but his phrasing might have excited the more conspiratorial fringes. Anyway, overall it was a well-paced introduction to his book and to the role that the social sciences might play in making progress in minimising climate change. Certainly, it's been clear for a long time that the sciences, for all of their direct and detailed knowledge, have very little to offer society when it comes to getting action on climate change. We already know more than enough to tackle the first-order part of climate change, but our civilisation seems reluctant to act on even this information - more nuanced detail isn't going to change this. Approaches that try to engage with people at philosophical, ethical, moral and spiritual (yikes) levels seem much more likely to succeed.

Changing the subject slightly, another interesting "spiritual" revelation came out of a debate on geoengineering between an advocate and a scientist from Greenpeace. Normally I find myself in the sceptical camp when it comes to geoengineering, but the empty platitudes and scare-mongering from Greenpeace pushed me decidedly towards it. Time and time again the Greenpeace spokesman just played up the uncertainly and dismissed geoengineering out of hand. He was firmly of the opinion that we should do nothing that could be deleterious to the world, and just plain refused to answer the question "what should we do in the face of a sudden, unexpected climate calamity?" (or, rather, words came out of his mouth, but they did not engage with the question). Greenpeace have almost a theological devotion to environmental issues that sees everything in black-and-white, and which won't even countenance research that might give us a Plan B at a minuscule cost to the Earth. It's a holier-than-thou mindset that is so far from persuading anyone that it's not even funny. As the great ecologist Garrett Hardin said many years ago, "With friends like these the environment needs no enemies".

Anyway, the conference has one more day to run and, despite the science, I'm quite looking forwards seeing the back of it tomorrow. I think I'll stick to attending conferences in the future. Even small-scale organising like that I've been involved in doesn't seem to suit me!

Oooh, a jet!

Contrails ahoy! That's the first one in days - a proper high-flying, condensation trail-producing, volcanic ash-risking aeroplane. Heading south-west too.

Judging from the ongoing commentary on all things volcanic, it's becoming another opportunity to bash the UK Met. Office and, in particular, climate models. Some argue that the (positive) data from a handful of test flights is transparently more credible than the (negative) synoptic output from regularly data-assimilated models that have been carefully developed over years. Even the normally money-grubbing RyanAir has seen through that cheap shot and noted that, in a dynamic situation, a clear air corridor today is useless for planning flights in even a few days time. Ho-hum.

Science fiction + Mythology = ...

Sometimes, usually when I'm all alone out walking somewhere in the countryside, I fantasise about a life on Earth in the absence of humanity. How good it would be to just go anywhere I wanted, and how great it would be for ecosystems to return to a civilisation-free state. As evidenced by such films as 28 Days Later and I Am Legend (or the more peaceful excerpts of them, at least), I'm not alone in trying to imagine such a world. And in a similar vein, Margaret Atwood's latest novel, the dystopian tale The Year of the Flood, is a literary take on this apocalyptic theme.^[1]

The novel is set in a somewhat extrapolated future in which western societies have "brazilified"^[2] into super-rich gated communities governed by corporations, and crime-ridden slums occupied by the underclass. Biotechnology is a major industry in this world, and the genetic engineering of animals has created a diverse range of chimeric organisms tailored for particular purposes such as wool or meat production, and even as harvestable sources of transplant organs for humans. Alongside this increase in synthetic diversity, natural biodiversity has dwindled due to the depredations of a burgeoning human population.

Against this backdrop, the novel follows two women escaping from very different situations in this economically divided world. Threatened by a sadistic boss, Toby leaves a life of violent servitude in the slums; meanwhile, Ren escapes the scrutinised confines and corporate perfidy of the gated compounds. The two women meet in an ecological commune known as God's Gardeners, which operates outside of corporate rule but constantly has to defend itself from the neighbouring, lawless slums. Here they meet Adam One, the leader of this group, and are introduced to his theological interpretation of biology, with its catalogue of Saints such as Rachel Carson, Francis Crick and James Lovelock, and its core belief in a coming "Waterless Flood" that will end the tyrannical reign of humanity over the Earth.

Unbeknownst to God's Gardeners (and largely narratively off-stage), an idealistic geneticist known as Crake has developed a lethal virus that will deliver an Earth-cleansing "Flood". In tandem, Crake has also created a replacement for mankind in the form of a novel, and ecologically benign, human species. The release of the infectious agent triggers devastating mortality and the collapse of societies worldwide, and while God's Gardeners are somewhat better prepared, they too are caught off-guard by both its severity and the changed world that it leaves in its wake. In the aftermath, Toby and Ren find themselves trapped separately in safe, if temporary, havens, but events conspire to both reunite and threaten them.

The novel largely runs in parallel to Atwood's earlier novel, Oryx and Crake, and both novels share characters as well as the key event of the devastating global pandemic. This wide overlap between the two novels brings both advantages and disadvantages.

On the plus side, it allows Atwood to more completely flesh out her dystopian future. Oryx and Crake was largely filtered through life in the super-rich enclaves, and specifically the experiences of a character very close to Crake. The Year of the Flood spends much more time in the poverty-stricken surrounding areas, and takes in some of the corporate world (the health spa, AnooYoo; the animal-themed sex club, Scales and Tails) in addition to the austere world of God's Gardeners. In a nice detail, the latter organisation is also used to provide the sermons and hymns that open each chapter, and which illuminate the depredations of humanity on the Earth.

However, on the down side, it does mean that readers of the earlier novel lose out a bit by already knowing something about the steadily approaching calamity. This event doesn't come as a surprise in the novel, since its time-line is already fractured, but it does mean that the narrative can feel something like a retread at times. More seriously, Atwood can't resist tying the two novels together, and doing so in a quite ham-fisted manner. First of all, though The Year of the Flood uses some very different locations and perspectives, one of its central characters is intimately connected to the protagonist from Oryx and Crake. Nothing wrong with that, but Atwood employs this connection in an utterly implausible coincidence at the tail end of the book. A coincidence, I should add, that also deflates the satisfyingly ambiguous ending of the original novel.

One area in which this novel particularly distinguishes itself is its melding of Christian mythology with environmentalism. As touched on already, Adam One constantly refers to the "Waterless Flood" and talks of both Ararat and a New Eden as God's Gardeners' haven during the flood and the cleansed world after it. The sermons more generally present a religion in which biological concepts like predation, eusociality and pollination are given a theological spin. I really quite enjoyed these rather florid extrapolations of Atwood's, and thought that she did a pretty good job of making a plausible stab at a religion more in tune with ecology (cf. "Let us make man in our image ... and let them rule ... over all the earth"). That said, she's clearly having a bit of fun with the shoehorning of religious ideas into agreement with less palatable concepts like disease and death, and the latter sermons after the release of the "Waterless Flood" are actually quite dark as God's Gardeners gradually come to terms with the thought that perhaps the New Eden is not for them.

So, overall I'd judge the novel very much as a mixed bag. I really liked the texture of it, and enjoyed being back in Atwood's apocalyptic world, but I just wish that she hadn't tied this novel so tightly to the previous volume. Follow-up visits by authors to their fictional worlds don't have to tie up the loose threads of predecessor volumes, and in this case really shouldn't have.

In passing, I think that the pandemic of both novels presents something of an interesting moral challenge to ecologically-minded readers like myself. It's the deliberate outcome of the actions of an idealistic environmentalist, but it's obviously an appalling event that kills practically everyone on Earth. But when I read of yet another species swallowed by extinction, or hear of a particularly strident protest against the thought that perhaps we've enough humans now, or see some especially wasteful new product or technology, then I start thinking the same way as Crake. Absurd, since I do think that biological diversity alone is not everything, and that civilisation is at least as important, but I feel, deep inside, where he's coming from. Given the sordid future that Atwood creates, and then destroys, again, I don't think that I'm alone.

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[1] I say "literary" here since Atwood has an ambiguous relationship to science fiction (an issue on which she's not alone as I've commented before). It's difficult for me to see this volume, its predecessor and earlier works like The Handmaid's Tale as anything but science fiction, but Atwood prefers the term "speculative fiction". Possibly because she prefers all her books to sit together in the fiction section of bookshops; possibly because she perceives an antipathy in critics towards genre fiction. Either way, I do find the protests of "serious novelists" about the branding of their work as genre pretty annoying, not least because they're parroting the snobbishness of the critics. That said, if a few science fiction books like this one go "undercover" to infiltrate the literary fiction shelves, perhaps they'll serve as a Trojan Horse to get the genre (at least its best proponents) a little more acceptance.

[2] Brazilification: The widening gulf between the rich and the poor and the accompanying disappearance of the middle classes (Generation X).

A Momentary Lapse of Consumption

Uncharacteristically, we remembered Earth Hour this year, and managed to organise ourselves with enough candles (and fuel for the fire!) to take us through the hour. We also managed, for the first time ever, to get the house down to zero electricity consumption [*]. To date, our best has been ~50 watts, but this evening we hit rock bottom as evidenced by this (shamefully out of focus) photograph ...


Of course, it is still something of a token event, and after 21:30 we almost immediately boiled the kettle as usual for an evening drink (~3000 watts), but I suppose that we did temporarily slow our CO₂ production. Nothing on the news though to suggest the wider significance of the event. Perhaps climate change fatigue has set in.

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[*] Actually only near-zero since we left a handful of devices on - the electricity meter for starters. But these consumed less than 1 watt, so the meter struck out at zero for the whole hour.

Geoengineering survey

The UK's major funding agency for environmental topics is slowly getting around to tackling geoengineering. Though they're not committing any funds to its study just yet (unlike their physical sciences counterpart), they are initiating a public consultation. How touchy-feely / useful this will be is up for grabs. Prior to running this, they've sent a note around academia to gather the community's opinion (and to spare themselves some work by fielding for questions to ask the public!). As I seem unable to resist putting my oar in, I've obviously replied ...

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I am responding to the request for comments on NERC's public dialogue on geoengineering.

With respect to the particular questions raised in the request, I would respond as follows.

1. What are your hopes and concerns about the potential use of geoengineering technology?

In an ideal world, I would hope that it proves unnecessary to resort to geoengineering technologies in the future. All of the schemes proposed to date either have negative (or uncertain) secondary effects, are prohibitively expensive, or (further) disrupt natural ecosystems. As such, I would hope that their use is restricted unless serious climate change occurs unexpectedly rapidly.

Furthermore, I am concerned with our lack of understanding of the full effects of such purposeful climate modification. For instance, methods to reflect incident solar radiation may deleteriously alter cloud and rainfall patterns, or introduce acidic pollutants to the atmosphere. Similarly, methods that remove CO2 from the atmosphere through oceanic modification will (at least temporarily) accelerate ocean acidification and may expand ocean anoxia (with further consequences for the production of greenhouse gases). In the case of technologies that enhance natural biological sinks for CO2, changes in biodiversity are also liable to occur.

I am additionally somewhat concerned that the availability of geoengineering technology may serve to diminish efforts to decarbonise technological societies, the so-called "moral hazard". Since measures to address CO2 emissions are liable to lead to increased costs in the short- to medium-term (and the benefits are liable to be economically unquantifiable "externalities"), geoengineering schemes that promise to resolve climate change at a fraction of the cost will appear strongly attractive to governments.

All that said, I hope that government and other bodies are able to fund research into geoengineering so that, should disastrous climate change appear unavoidable, such technologies are available for use and considerably better understood. Given that some geoengineering research can run alongside existing research, it need not be especially expensive to investigate. But having a more complete understanding of possible climate interventions is crucial if they are to serve as a plausible "Plan B".

I would also hope that governments and other legislative bodies would assist to ensure that researchers are permitted to undertake small-scale trials of potential geoengineering technologies. In early 2009 an open ocean trial of iron fertilisation was heavily disrupted by legal activity, despite its activities being almost insignificant compared to the natural background of ocean processes. If geoengineering is to be evaluated properly (even for use as a "Plan B") it is important that efforts are not derailed by disproportionate or misguided appeals in the courts.

2. What questions should we ask people about the future of geoengineering research? What issues and options should be considered?

Both the question subjects and wording should be carefully considered (and/or studied in of themselves) to avoid polarising members of the public who are not familiar with climate issues in detail. For instance, the two following statements are liable to elicit different responses despite asking the same question.

• Should geoengineering technologies (which purposefully alter the climate) be (a) investigated, and (b) potentially deployed?
  
• Given that technological societies have already inadvertently altered climate, should geoengineering technologies (which purposefully alter the climate) be (a) investigated, and (b) potentially deployed?

That said, I would suggest the following as possible questions to ask people during public dialogue.

• Given that technological societies have already inadvertently altered climate, should geoengineering technologies (which purposefully alter the climate) be (a) investigated, and (b) potentially deployed?
  
• If geoengineering technologies are deployed, how should they be controlled? For instance, by companies or special interest organisations, by national governments, or by transnational organisations such as the United Nations.
  
• Under what circumstances should geoengineering technologies be deployed? For instance, to return climate to its pre-industrial / modern state, or only when severe climate change is occurring.
  
• When evaluating the safety of a geoengineering technology, how much weight should be given to negative impacts on natural ecosystems? For instance, consider a situation where a technology cools climate but significantly damages wildlife.
  
• Should small-scale trials of geoengineering be permitted or banned?
  
• Should geoengineering technologies complement or supplant efforts to decarbonise technological societies or the development of adaptations to climate change?
  
• How should geoengineering research be funded? For instance, by normal government routes, or by private organisations that are either responsible for CO2 emissions or can profit from geoengineering.
  
• Is any additional oversight, that is beyond government and regulatory authority, required for geoengineering? For instance, should lay individuals be formally involved.
  
• Should the UK engage with geoengineering if the principle benefits of it are received elsewhere? For instance, some geoengineering schemes are liable to have the greatest benefit for high latitude (polar) areas.
  
• Should the UK engage with geoengineering if negative consequences are caused elsewhere? For instance, some geoengineering schemes may cool the Earth, but impact negatively on weather patterns (e.g. the monsoon) in areas outside the UK.

Since geoengineering is tantamount to the alteration of the Earth at the largest scale to suit human needs and interests, I would additionally suggest that any questioning of public attitudes is accompanied by questions that aim to establish how people value and evaluate the worth of the Earth. For instance, whether participants consider that the Earth, its ecosystems or its charismatic megafauna have cultural (or other) worth. I certainly think it would be useful to know *why* people hold particular views (or which views overlap) alongside the views themselves.

Finally, given geoengineering's necessary connection to climate change, it seems crucial to me that some assessment is made of participants' views of climate change science as well. People whose views do not accord with the scientific consensus are liable to respond differently to those who accept current evidence and thinking. If one does not trust observational data or modelling simulations for climate change, it seems unlikely that these will be viewed positively for assessing geoengineering.

For reference, I am a coauthor of a review of ocean geoengineering (Lampitt et al., 2008; [1]), and was lead author on a study of the use of ocean pipes for geoengineering (Yool et al., 2009; [2]).

[1] Lampitt, R.S., (10 other authors) and Yool, A. (2008). Ocean fertilisation: a potential means of geo-engineering? Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. A 366, 3919-3945, doi: 10.1098/rsta.2008.0139
[2] Yool, A., Shepherd, J.G., Bryden, H.L. and Oschlies, A. (2009). Low efficiency of nutrient translocation for enhancing oceanic uptake of carbon dioxide. J. Geophys. Res. 114, doi: 10.1029/2008JC004792

Disgruntled from Southampton

As solid and enjoyable as the Today programme is, it frequently drops the ball on science. Today's failings were annoying enough for me to complain to them for the first time. Grrrr ...

One of the aspects of science presentation in the media that I find most annoying is the inconsistency in the reporting.

A short while ago, I heard Justin Webb questioning David King on the veracity of climate science, and again muddying the waters of a settled area of science ("settled", obviously, in the scientific community).

But earlier in the programme I heard the Today panel cooing over some clearly erroneous "science" about dancing in humans. Thankfully, I'm no expert in "dance science", but even an oceanographer can spot a number of serious flaws in the reported work, flaws that the Today team were either oblivious to, or quite happy to ignore for the sake of a story.

For starters, the data originate from a self-selected sample so are not representative, and are (I believe) UK specific so may not translate between cultures. Which, needless to say, didn't stop the interviewee from extrapolating wildly to the whole of humanity. This dubious data was then used in an evolutionary flight-of-fantasy in which the interviewee first confidently tacked on some faintly plausible relationship with fertility, but then went off at the deep end by positing an explanation for older male dancing that drew on discredited group selection theory.

To wit, any older male "stepping aside" for younger males would be at a strong evolutionary disadvantage since they would likely leave less descendants than less accommodating rival males. To be fair, it's conceivable that some variant of kin selection could play a role here, but the Today interviewee blithely played the super-confident expert while peddling his science-lite story.

Such a double standard in reporting is infuriating to scientists. Work that's firmly grounded in vast quantities of data and deep theoretical understanding is pilloried, while work that, to put it charitably, needs more data and better hypothesis-testing gets as much airtime and polite approval from the Today team.

I understand the realities of reporting that place science as just one other story, but Today does its listening public a disservice by failing to properly contextualise the science that it does report. We expect Today to focus on important stories when it comes to the political and economic arenas, why can't it do the same for science?

My carbon jackboot

I took another of these "carbon footprint" quizes. I didn't come out so badly (see here), but I suspect I've lied a bit about assorted aspects of my Earth-screwing lifestyle. Apparently, if everyone lived like me, we'd only need a little over one extra Earth-like planet to get by on. Seems a tad unlikely.

Not, of course, that I entirely trust the calculations underlying these rather rarefied quizes. Ecology has only gotten into assessing and enumerating ecosystem services in a big way in the past decade or so, so I'm a little skeptical that the assorted factors that go towards this number-of-Earths estimate are well-constrained.

Still, it's faintly informative, and probably captures something about our lifestyles. That said, my ecologically-minded friend AMG managed to rack up 5 Earths! I seriously doubt that I'm 3 Earths more virtuous.

A god walks among us

We just had a rather entertaining seminar from Paul Falkowski [*]. Extremely wide-ranging, from molecular biology to global biogeochemical cycles to human evolution to the anthropocene. And pretty entertaining too. He knows how to have an audience eating out of his hand.

Anyway, among other interesting points that he mentioned...

• Most biological diversity in the world is in function not form, since most organisms are single celled and bacterial.
  
• From examining the distribution of processes between evolutionarily disparate lineages, it's clear that "quantum evolution", via horizontal gene transfer, is an important process.
  
• The main elements involved in life on Earth are (the usual suspects ...) H, C, N, O, P and S; of which all bar P are linked together through electron exchange processes.
  
• The whole world is run off the back of about 1500 genes, all else is just embellishment.
  
• The evolution of language and complex memory in humans has allowed the dissemination and collation of vast amounts of information, which in turn has given us the ability to vastly alter and control our environment.
  
• Some point I now can't clearly remember about how the accelerating accumulation of wealth in technological societies that somehow means that they're predisposed to plundering the Earth's resources (i.e. co-opting more and more of the planet's infrastructure).

Anyway, all good stuff, and presented with an impressive zeal. What I liked most was the scale covered, from cellular machinery through biogeochemical cycles to the grand sweep of Earth's history and our (probably deleterious) role in its future. I was a little bit less impressed by the occasional name-dropping (though he's earned it), but overall a great seminar. But having seen him in action in Florida last year, I wasn't surprised.

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Knowing of my editorial predilections, my officemate asked if there was an article on Falkowski on Wikipedia. I checked and there wasn't. One lunch hour's activity later, and now there is. He totally merits it, but I've probably grossly oversimplified his interests.

A good idea?

Yesterday saw the publication of a "statement from the UK science community" orchestrated by the Met Office in support of the scientific consensus on climate change.

We, members of the UK science community, have the utmost confidence in the observational evidence for global warming and the scientific basis for concluding that it is due primarily to human activities. The evidence and the science are deep and extensive. They come from decades of painstaking and meticulous research, by many thousands of scientists across the world who adhere to the highest levels of professional integrity. That research has been subject to peer review and publication, providing traceability of the evidence and support for the scientific method. The science of climate change draws on fundamental research from an increasing number of disciplines, many of which are represented here. As professional scientists, from students to senior professors, we uphold the findings of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, which concludes that "Warming of the climate system is unequivocal" and that "Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations".

Although I am one of the almost 2000 signatories, I did think twice about signing up, and communicated this in my response to the initial request for support. Not, I should add, because I in any way disagree with or have qualms about the statement, but because it's not clear to me what the best course of action is when dealing with the toxic morass created by so-called climate skeptics [*].

This, of course, has reached something of a head with the carefully timed, and carefully selective, publication of e-mails and computer files (most likely) stolen from the Climate Research Unit at UEA. While they contain little that surprises me, and at worst paint certain scientists as rude and unhelpful towards other scientists, the publication of this material seems to have greatly elevated the shrillness of so-called skeptics to new highs (or lows, depending on one's perspective).

Even some scientists have been hand-wringing about portions of the content published to the internet. Seeing how the so-called climate skeptics have operated over the years, and having noted the parallels between their strategies and those of similarly misguided creationists, anti-environmentalists and tobacco interests, I can't say that I'm particularly offended or dismayed by the material that I've seen. It seems a fairly inevitable response to the crass stupidity, goalpost-shifting, disingenuity and outright lying that largely passes for so-called skepticism in such circles.

This is probably because I've exasperated myself dealing with such people in Usenet and at Wikipedia over the years. I've realised from repeated encounters that while a minority of (almost always) hostile opponents can be swayed by a straightforward laying out of "the facts", the majority of such "discussions" don't go anywhere useful. Sometimes one is faced with a continually moving target, where responses to one false statement merely result in its replacement with another. Other times, an opponent will just disappear from a discussion, often to reappear later or elsewhere making similar or even identical false statements. While it's often a pleasure to deal with the eager-to-learn minority, these latter types now quickly fray patience after years of dealing with them.

Anyway, in spite of (or perhaps because of) the foregoing, I decided to sign up to a statement which I knew would just get thrown back at us as further evidence of some vast left-wing conspiracy to enslave the "freedom-loving" moral majority (or something ...). But in the end, I still think, or perhaps hope, that the long game is the one we should play. Keep confronting the so-called climate skeptics whenever they pop up, and hopefully slowly contain their particular, and peculiar, brand of "individualism". We'll see.

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[*] I preface "climate skeptic" with "so-called" deliberately since they don't merit the term "skeptic". With some notable exceptions, whose views are a lot more mushy under questioning, the baying mob are denialists plain and simple. Nothing will change their view, and when climate change becomes undeniable, they'll find some way of worming out of the mess that they've partially helped create. It would be nice to think that there'd be a satisfying "I-told-you-so" somewhere down the line, but I expect material circumstances to change sufficiently that a future comeuppance will offer no pleasure.