[LINK] the weather makers

[Richard Chirgwin]

> <SNIP>
>   
>> Tomorrow? Yes. 20 years? I doubt it would be catastrophic, for
>> various reasons:
>>     
>
> Yes, I agree with this. I was carried away by my own rhetoric, an
> occupational hazard I'm afraid :-).
>   

Hyperbole is usually more fun than the alternatives ... seize back the 
world from the pinstripe army!

RC
> Noticed two items in this morning's SMH. One a "calculation" that coal
> reserves will be depleted within 20 years. This surprised me since I
> thought that we were talking much longer horizons.
>
> Second was Prof Bruce Thom's Op Ed piece on adapting to climate change.
> And note that he talked about a 50 year time frame - something so
> seductive about that 50 year figure!
>
>   
>> 1) 20 years is more than sufficient for a natural attrition of
>> personnel.
>> 2) 20 years is more than sufficient for orderly transition of
>> investment.
>> 3) Current solar, wind, and geothermal technologies have sufficient 
>> demand for personnel to replace lost employment (more than enough; as
>> I also remarked in the previous e-mail, each of these requires 
>> significantly more people per petajoule than coal).
>> 4) 20 years is a long timespan for technical development of the 
>> replacements, towards making them cost-competitive with coal.
>> 5) An immediate decision within Australia ("We will produce all 
>> electricity from non-coal sources in 20 years") would *not* destroy 
>> "30,000 coal industry jobs". It would not necessarily destroy one
>> coal industry job; because overwhelmingly most of our coal is
>> exported. What it *would* do is provide a huge impetus to investment
>> and technological development in the renewable sector - which would
>> be of huge value when the rest of the world wanted our renewable
>> experience more than it wanted our coal.
>> 6) Those 30,000 jobs are doomed *already*.
>>
>> An aside about the "independent science" that's being suppressed (not 
>> one of your notes, Alan, but something that nagged at me). I grabbed
>> a list of climate change sceptics from Sourcewatch, verified it
>> against some think-tank sites (who endorsed the same sceptics as
>> Sourcewatch denounced), and grabbed down some CVs.
>>
>> The result is interesting. Of 32 sceptics, leaving out 6 whose 
>> backgrounds could not be verified in a hurry:
>>
>> - only 12 have directly relevant qualifications (that is, advanced 
>> degrees in climate science, geology, etc). The rest are a smattering
>> of soft sciences (mostly economists) or inappropriate qualifications
>> (an electrical engineer, for eg).
>> - Of the 12 whose qualifications are relevant, 10 are either directly 
>> employed by industry or think tanks, or are indirectly funded by 
>> industry or think tanks.
>>
>> The "independent" camp is just two - that is, two high-profile
>> climate change sceptics out of 32 who are both (a) independent and
>> (b) appropriately qualified. One of these two, while saying he has
>> never received funding, has worked as an advisor to Friends of
>> Science, which has received oil industry funding.
>>
>> Richard Chirgwin
>>
>>
>>
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