On March 2nd, Guardian columnist George Monbiot launched an extraordinary attack on feed-in tariffs and on solar photovoltaics (PV) in particular. Even for George, who has honed his invective skills to a fine point over the years, his language was remarkably intemperate: “pricey conceit… great green rip-off… scam… comically inefficient… squandering the public’s money… perfectly useless…  a swindle… blinded by sentiment” etc, etc.

A lot of this seemed to be aimed, very personally, at Jeremy Leggett, Executive Chairman of Solarcentury. For years, Jeremy has been flying the flag for the UK solar industry and for the benefits for introducing the kind of feed-in tariffs that have transformed the renewable energy scene in many other countries.

Within a couple of days, Jeremy had mounted a robust defence of PV, feed-in tariffs and the importance of maintaining a long-term perspective. Citing 13 examples of inaccuracy, misrepresentation and hyperbole (reinforced by a further 12 points following up on a response from George), he has set out to set the record straight.

Over the weekend I spent a happy hour reading through this four-phase battle, point by point. It matters. There’s a lot resting on the success of these feed-in tariffs, and that in turn depends on trust on the part of the general public. A George Monbiot polemic is purpose-built to undermine that trust.

I really admire George. He’s a brilliant campaigning journalist, and a deep, persistent thorn in the side of today’s political and business elites. I often end up reading his Guardian articles metaphorically punching the air at the blows that he’s landed – on my behalf, as it were. This week’s article on biodiversity here in the UK is hugely impactful.

But I’m sorry to say, on this occasion, that he’s way out of line. Jeremy Leggett’s detailed refutation of so much of what he was claiming in the original article demonstrates just how poor George’s initial research was, and how (on this occasion, at least) his love of adopting deliberately controversialist positions simply overwhelmed basic journalistic standards.

This too is a serious matter. As one or two bloggers have already pointed out, if he’s got it this badly wrong on feed-in tariffs, what’s to say he hasn’t got it equally wrong on other critical issues?

One of the talking points for me was that George declined on a number of occasions to meet with Jeremy and talk all this through – despite knowing full well the impact his article would have. More than anything else, this reveals a streak of know-it-all arrogance that has always been there in George, but which he usually keeps under control.

But rather than take my word, why don’t you check it out for yourself on the Guardian and Jeremy’s own websites. If nothing else, it will help you get your head around the complexities of feed-in tariffs.

George Monbiot's article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/01/solar-panel-feed-in-tariff
 
Jeremy Leggett's response: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/mar/09/george-monbiot-bet-solar-pv or http://www.jeremyleggett.net/solar-revolution/

What are we to make of the furore around climate science? There are implications for environmental campaigners, government and businesses currently agonising over the implementation of low carbon strategies, as well as for scientists - climate scientists in particular - and the whole scientific community in general.

To start with thee and me. Most of us won’t have a degree in science, and may not even have a GCSE in one of the natural sciences. So we tend to trust what the scientists say without considering too closely what they mean. Consequently, we are rubbish at understanding the uncertainty that is intrinsic in all scientific inquiry. Climate science is no different. A hypothesis was made: that the most recent warming is mainly due to greenhouse gases added to the atmosphere by human activity. This hypothesis developed from the fact that we’ve known since the 19th century certain gases warm the climate, and that humans now generate a lot more of these gases. Despite a lot of effort over the last 40 years, this hypothesis has not been disproved.

As a consequence, climate scientists consider the likelihood that human emissions of greenhouse gases are contributing to a warming climate to be very likely – i.e. 90% certain. The figures below gives the degrees of certainty the IPCC gives to its conclusions. The big step between labelling something likely or very likely means the latter appellation is not given lightly.

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Virtually certain  > 99% 
Extremely likely  > 95%  
Very likely  > 90%  
Likely  > 66%  
More likely than not  > 50%  
Unlikely  > 33%   
Very unlikely  > 10%  
Extremely unlikely  > 5%  

Source: IPCC Report (2007) Summary for Policy Makers p53

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Nothing in the ‘climategate’ scandals undermines this conclusion. Where thee and me need to get sharper is in comprehending the various levels of uncertainty attached to the projected consequences. In policy and decision-making terms uncertainty translates into risk management strategies – and something with a 90% chance of being true would surely top the risk register. As David Mackay, DECC Chief Scientific Advisor puts it: “since 1750 we have burnt ½ trillion tonnes of carbon, and are on track to burn the second 1/2 trillion in less than 40 years.  The cumulative consequences of that first 500 billion tonnes suggest the next 500 billion (and the rest) ought to stay underground.” (Mackay, 2009)

It would be astonishing if that scale of intervention in the natural cycles of the earth would be without adverse consequence. 

So, ‘climategate’ does not let any of us off the hook of responsibility for serious action – by governments, organisations and individuals. 

And no more excuses for us becoming anything but much more intelligent consumers of science. Promoting selected conclusions of climate science as irrefutable facts has long been the vice of media, but environmental organisations really ought to know better. Now, bereft of a trusted interlocutor to help them understand the science, the public is unsurprisingly withdrawing ‘belief’ that climate change is actually happening. Both climate scientists and campaigning organisations have a lot to do to rekindle that trust. As do governments. Even though we may (rightly) whinge at their muddled prevarication, governments have not (yet) faltered in their risk analysis that there is enough certainty around climate change to justify action. Businesses that have reached the same conclusion need to ramp up the evidence that they too are of serious intent. Mutuality of benefit in the business-government-public triangle of climate change action depends on the thread of trust not being broken.

So what about the climate scientists? As I suggested in my last blog on climate science there are only very small reasons to question the methodology of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that right now is soliciting evidence for its fifth report.  When IPCC chief, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, he returns from his Communications 101 course, he will be making sure his organisation’s perfectly good methodologies are rigorously implemented. Paradoxically, trust in climate science could be enhanced by the whole sorry tale.  

One positive outcome should be more discipline and aptitude for communication amongst senior climate scientists. The few who became caught up in the excitement of it all and sacrificed dispassionate presentation of evidence to campaigning fervour have risked the reputation of all science. Science funders know it must not happen again.

Bob May, one time government Chief Scientist points out that science progresses through organised scepticism – continual challenging of research outcomes to both extend knowledge and improve certainty. He’s really cross that the word ‘sceptic’ has been recruited, not by genuine challengers of research outcomes (and methodologies) but by what I have dubbed the malicious naysayers. Very different from those who deny something out of fear or misunderstanding, these naysayers are driven by knowingly wrong motives, and are often paid by organistions with the most to lose should low-carbon policies be implementated with any seriousness.

Separating the useful sceptics and contrarians from the malicious naysayers is vital. They need to be challenged head on. And the best way to do that - something all science needs to take on board - is transparency and far more involvement of the public in science – upstream where research projects are designed as well as downstream where the outcomes are debated. 

I’m still reeling from the surreal sight of Lord Whacko Monckton (the climate contrarians’ eccentric of choice), captured on Newsnight last night doing an imitation of Al Gore at a public meeting in Australia. Frightening stuff.

Whenever I see Monckton at work, it reminds me just how desperate people must be to have their doubts and prejudices about climate change affirmed by some public figure – indeed, by any public figure at this stage of the debate.

The politics of climate change in Australia are even worse that they are here in the UK. That may well be, paradoxically, because changes in their own micro-climates over the last 10 years have been so much more visible. And painful. And this has polarised the debate about whether these changes are primarily a consequence of man-made emissions of greenhouse gases, or primarily natural climate variability. The end result is that the Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, might have to call a general election to break the impasse on his proposals for a carbon-trading scheme.

Could it get that bad here in the UK? Very improbably, but the whole tenor of the debate has deteriorated so badly, so rapidly, that it's now a serious political headache, rather than a minor irritant.

The combination of the ‘climate gate’ fiasco at the University of East Anglia and the growing concerns about the workings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), broader concerns of the whole peer review process (the so-called ‘Gold Standard’ of scientific research), and the utter failure of Copenhagen has transformed the climate debate here in the UK.

Where they were once thought as contrarian outliers, both the Daily Mail and the Daily Express are now thought to be closely aligned with public opinion. Ed Miliband (the Secretary of State in the Dept of Energy and Climate Change) must be in despair.

So should we be pressing the panic button? I think we should. The damage done to the credibility not just of climate science but also of the UK’s entire approach to climate change is already serious – and getting worse. This could be extremely problematic in the run up to the general election.

So if I was Gordon Brown, I would be asking David Cameron and Nick Clegg to issue a joint invitation to Martin Rees, the President of the Royal Society, asking him to convene a high-level Scientific Panel to comment on ‘the state of the science’ two years from the publication of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report at the end of 2007.

Does it still stack up? What should people make of all these recent revelations? Is the Climate Change Act (to which all three political parties have signed up) still based on robust scientific foundations? Can people still have confidence in the way climate science drives climate policy?

Martin Rees would be asked to recruit three or four top scientists (reflecting different shades of opinion), a couple of business people (like James Dyson or Richard Lambert of the CBI), and a couple of scientifically-literate ‘pillars of the community’ in whom the general public has absolute trust. No NGOs, let alone campaigners!

Give them two months. Bang out a short, sharp report written for lay people, not for scientists. Blitz the media. Run a full-page ad in the Mail and Express for weeks on end – instead of today’s highly questionable ‘Act on CO2 ‘ ads.

Overkill? Possibly. It seems ludicrous that what is still by any standards a rock-solid scientific consensus should have to be shored up by such extreme measures. But if we don’t, might we be looking at an Aussie-style meltdown in public opinion in the near term?

This mischievous thought occurred to me as I was wading through the latest sclerotic surge of climate scepticism – which is fast becoming the press’s default position on the issue. (If the mainstream media really is engaged in a mass conspiracy to boost ‘warmism’, as James Delingpole and his like insist, then it’s doing a pretty lousy job of it...)

In December, it was Climategate and the embarrassing farce that was Copenhagen. Last month we had Glaciergate: the revelation that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had managed to include in one of its reports the wildly unfounded claim that the Himalayan glaciers might all melt to nothing in the next 25 years.

Proof that climate science is all a wild exaggeration, as some claimed? Actually, no, it was just proof that the most august international bodies can make a complete prat of themselves along with the rest of us.

But next month you can bet there’ll be another shock exposé, as the hounds of scepticism scent blood on the lumbering tracks of the climate consensus, and the media, having decided that global warming is sooo last century, daahlings, cheer them on to the kill.

In practice, of course, the same boring old science which has welded that consensus together hasn’t changed one bit. The global temperature is rising rapidly, and there’s no plausible explanation for it other than greenhouse gases. We can’t say for sure what the effects might be, but since it appears to be on track to take us right out of the comfort zone in which human civilisation has evolved and flourished, then, on balance, we probably ought to do everything we can to cool things down.

And, er, that’s it. Very boring. Go back to your homes, nothing to see here.

Except, what if we’re wrong? What if somehow, against all the weight of accumulated evidence, climate change does indeed prove to be a myth?

Well then, we’d be mad to waste our money and effort on... what, exactly?

Renewable energy? Not such a waste in the light of peak oil and politically vulnerable gas supplies, though, is it?

Energy efficiency? Ditto, with bells on.

Forest conservation? Pretty essential if we’re to stem the crash in biodiversity and reduce floods and soil erosion.

A shift to electric cars, alongside more walking and cycling? Enjoy cleaner, quieter streets, a healthier populace, and reduced pressure on health service budgets...

Technology transfer to the developing world? Managed properly, it could be one of the most effective ways of lifting people out of poverty – not to mention boosting emerging economies.

And so on, and so forth...

Almost all the stuff we need to do to slow global warming is stuff we probably want – and eventually, will need – to do anyway. We might do it a little earlier than otherwise, but if we plan for it, and stick to those plans, we can make the transition that much smoother, and more cost-effective.

So what’s not to like?

Yes, I am being a bit simplistic. Without climate change, we wouldn’t spend billions on unproven technologies like carbon capture and sequestration, and we might pause before rushing into biofuels with quite such forest-felling abandon. But overall, the ‘co benefits’ of robust action to tackle climate change have been vastly understated.

It was neatly summed up by a cartoon doing the rounds at Copenhagen. It shows a climate sceptic pointing in horror at a flipchart listing all the positives of a low-carbon economy:

Copyright 2009 Joel Pett.  Posted by permission.

Innovation is famously described as one per cent inspiration and 99 per cent  perspiration – great ideas are rarely enough, the challenge is to execute them.

Sustainable innovation can be a time-consuming and sometimes frustrating process. Our latest report Paint the Town Green has been more than three years in the making but what a story we have to tell.

The report is about a multi-year innovation collaboration which set the goal of creating sustainable paint systems, and about the new products, services and processes which came out of it. It explains how to conduct innovation driven by environmental and social responsibility and why it makes good business sense.

Its not that I’m especially excited by paint – though I must confess to a soft spot after working on it for so long. Essentially the report shows how to use sustainability as a new lens to reinvent and rethink every aspect of our life. If we can do this with paint, imagine what you can do with cars, mobile phones, homes and holidays.

The three-year project set out to study the entire lifecycle of paint – from raw materials through to manufacturing, use and disposal - to find ways to make it more sustainable. It brought together ICI Paints AkzoNobel, a manufacturer and supplier, construction group Carillion, a major user of paint, and Forum for the Future.

Here are a few of the innovations:

• Dulux Ecosense, a new range of eco-paint with half the carbon and water footprint of the standard paint sold two years ago and 40 per cent less waste.
• Improved cans which use less plastic and are easier to clean and recycle.
  A recycling scheme in which vehicles delivering paint to Dulux Decorator Centres bring back used cans.
• Envirowash - a mobile brush and roller cleaning station for building sites: instead of pouring contaminated water down the drains it is captured for reuse with the paint residue filtered out.
• Manufacturing improvements that save millions of litres of water used in cleaning production equipment by using it to make new paint.

We also developed new tools for the project like our Streamlined Lifecycle Assessment (SLCA) method and Environmental Impact Analyser  –  a tool to measure the key impacts of a proposed new formulation and compare them against an existing product. This was the key which allowed ICI Paints AkzoNobel to develop both Ecosense and Ecosure trade paint, which won Green Product of the year in the Green Business Awards 2009.

Paint the Town Green marks a unique point in Forum’s innovation work. Some years ago we resolved to only work on practical innovation projects and not write any reports. We caved in on this project, but that’s only because we’re convinced there’s a great story we want to share with others. We hope it provides the one per cent inspiration you’ve been looking for.

I went with anticipation to a ‘Bristol Festival of Ideas’ talk earlier this week, where Stewart Brand, chaired by Brian Eno, was talking about his new book Whole Earth Discipline. I left feeling rather dispirited.

For those of you who don’t know Brand, he is the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog and a grand old man of the US environmental movement.

His central message was that the problems facing the world are so great that we have to do “whatever works” in order to tackle them. That means concentrating people in cities, and embracing GM, nuclear power and geo-engineering. We are changing the earth so profoundly anyway, he argued, that we might as well do more of it.

I am a big technological optimist myself and am certainly on the eco-pragmatist side of the movement. But I found Brand’s recipe – at least as he dished it out in Bristol - unfulfilling.

His was a totally technocratic version of the world, encouraging us to “focus on the numbers” and “just do what works”. There was no room for vision or values, just a managerial approach to engineering the status quo.

Brand told us to “put aside ideology” and ridiculed most environmentalists as luddites who “would have opposed the wheel”.

While I liked Brand’s willingness to slaughter sacred cows, I was troubled by what he didn’t say. Surely we need both technological answers and changed values? Surely the environment movement shouldn’t be shorn of all sense of vision? Is more of the same, just better managed, really enough?

Read more about Whole Earth Discipline (publishers website)

It was the sort of mud that seems intent on dragging you down, slurping up your ankles and slipping under your soles. But the view redeemed all seven miles of undignified tumbles and slides as I walked from Lyme Regis to Seaton on the UK’s Jurassic Coast. Sparse vegetation skidded down the exposed bones of the cliffs, irate waves clawing at them like wildcats. I got back to the B&B to find a lively discussion under way about huge boulders tumbling down to the sea on an almost daily basis – while heedless tourists fumble around for fossils below…

Ever since ten-year-old Mary Anning found a complete ichthyosaurus some 200 years ago, Lyme Regis has been a hub for fossil hunters. It’s all thanks to giant mudslides – the largest in Europe – that expose new rocks and leave Jurassic remains scattered across the beaches.

For geologists, this ongoing erosion makes the site a whole lot more interesting – but
rising sea levels and freak storms are changing the shape of coastlines around the world at a violent rate. Defences like jetties and marinas can keep the waves at bay – but they also stop coastal habitats and systems from responding to the changes in their own way. This can detract from the fossil-strewn appeal of beaches: not great for local economies dependent on tourism.

The question is, how to find the right balance between preserving towns like Lyme Regis and its surroundings for visitors – on the one hand – and protecting the natural life and geological interest of the coast, a World Heritage Site, on the other.

It’s a small case in point, but as the climate teeters, knowing when to interfere – and just how far to go – could be the dilemma of the decade.