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Julia in the Sky with Diamonds

By Michael Kile - posted Wednesday, 27 October 2010


Picture yourself on a train in a station
Where plasticine people tell marshmallow lies about marmalade skies
Suddenly she's there at the carbon turnstile
The girl with red hair and kaleidoscope eyes
And you're gone.
Aaaah!

In Papua New Guinea they call it mani bilong skai. Big bags of it have been promised by a new breed of international offset entrepreneur to villagers prepared to sign away the "rights" to carbon imbedded in their forests. But they are not the only folk dazzled by sky money. Indigenous communities in northern Australia are now accusing state and federal governments of stealing their Wild Rivers carbon credits.

Julia has rejoined the eco-entrepreneurs down at the Carbon Cargo Cult Club (CCCC). She too wants to get high in the sky with diamonds (crystalline carbon). The Prime Minister reaffirmed her membership on 27th September. The government, supported by the Greens and two independents, will "consider mechanisms for introducing a carbon price (including a broad-based emissions trading scheme, a broad-based carbon levy, or a hybrid of both)." Her department will take the minutes.

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The CCCC is an elite club. Only true believers qualify for membership of its Multi-Party (sic) Climate Change Committee (CCC). They must be "committed to tackling climate change" and "acknowledge that effectively reducing carbon (dioxide) pollution by 2020 will require a carbon (dioxide) price".

While the CCC may discuss other aspects of climate change policy, "its deliberations will be broadly limited to the issue of a carbon (dioxide) price".

Welcome to today's equivalent of the road bilong cargo (pidgin: rot bilong kako). This road, we are told, will lead to not only fabulous (sustainable) cargo, but also the power to control the planet's elusive thermostat. It will lead to a promised land where the alleged benefits of doing what the government - and its handful of advisers - want us to do outweigh the alleged costs of not doing it.

On abandoning her Citizens' Assembly election pledge, the Prime Minister justified the decision by emphasising she was "more interested in outcome than method." The CCC presumably will tell us at some stage precisely what quantitative - measurable and verifiable - outcomes a carbon price will deliver for the nation's future climate. Will there be less "extreme weather events", less droughts and deluges? Will it produce a Goldilocks climate by 2020, 2030 or 2050; one neither too hot nor too cold, but just right for Australia and the planet?

Why is creating sky money by monetising – not carbon, but carbon dioxide - an (unjustly demonised) trace gas currently comprising about 0.0385 per cent of the atmosphere - so irresistible for the political class? Firstly, it's easy. It can be done merely by government decree, like printing new currency. Secondly, it will conjure up a new revenue stream, assuming the public continues to be duped by sermons on "saving the planet", eerily reminiscent of the fundamentalism of an earlier age. Thirdly, it will create a new "property" right literally out of thin air, bringing wealth and wonder to investment banks and the fortunate whose carbon "assets" the Department of Climate Change and (now) Energy Efficiency has placed on the nation's carbon account (CON).

Whether sky money takes the form of a tax or securitised carbon credit – it is shaping up as another example of twenty-first century sub-prime "wealth"; an exercise in dubious financial alchemy far surpassing the collaterised debt obligations, credit default swaps and so on that led to the 2008 global financial crisis. Greed, liberally mixed with suppressio veri and suggestio falsi, corrupts not only financial markets, but also science and politics. As they say in PNG, samting nogut.

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Cargo cult science

Cargo cults emerged in remote parts of some south-west Pacific islands in the nineteenth century. They increased during and after World War II, with the sudden arrival – and cessation – of supplies by air. Perplexed indigenes developed rituals they believed would deliver them similar "cargo". They built imitation landing strips, aircraft and radio equipment. They also devised ceremonies mimicking behaviours of those receiving cargo they believed was sent by their ancestors to them, but had been stolen or intercepted by foreigners.

Cult leaders were typically messianic figures in Melanesian culture. While most seem to have been possessed by some kind of religious vision there may have been a few that were deliberately unscrupulous, exploiting the beliefs of gullible communities. Cult rituals tended to be secretive and held remote from established towns.

The cults misread the relationship between cause and effect. A necessary condition for the arrival of cargo was the presence of real airstrips, control towers, aeroplanes and so on. Cultists believed this was a sufficient condition. They repeated the same error on another level too, believing that imitation control towers and airstrips were just as functional as the real thing. Determining causation is clearly a tricky business.

Does the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis face a similar challenge? Is it compromised by flawed assumptions of causation? Is the presence of a certain trace amount of carbon dioxide necessary or sufficient to cause "dangerous" climate change? Will a price on Australia's carbon dioxide emissions be necessary or sufficient to prevent "climate disruption" here, especially if the other 98.5 per cent the world's carbon dioxide emitters take no action? Is an alarmist CCC – which has only one climate scientist who already advises the government - necessary or sufficient to provide sound independent advice on such fundamental issues?

Some experts like Gavin Schmidt,a leading climatologist from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, maintain the Earth's climate is so irreducibly complex there will never be established laws of climate change. If so, how will the "ceremony" - spending billions on super-computer "control towers" and data collection "airstrips" - ensure delivery of the precious climate "cargo", namely genuine predictive power? Or will the day of performance verification be delayed continually by the modellers, as is the case with most prophetic ventures?

Before policy-makers proceed further with their mission of decarbonising the world, perhaps they should consider another question: Is there a difference between worshipping Prince Philip or John Frum on the Vanuatan island of Tanna in the hope of attracting cargo, and attributing oracular status to readings from the Books of Garnaut, Stern, Steffen, and other climate futurologists?

It is time to revisit the late Nobel laureate Richard Feynman's 1974 address at the Californian Institute of Technology. His views on Cargo Cult Science should be read by all involved with "tackling climate change" and "harnessing public dialogue."

"We really ought to look into theories that don't work and science that isn't science", Feynman said. The cargo cults did almost everything right. Their form was perfect, but the rituals didn't work. No aeroplanes landed. "So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they are missing something essential."

For Feynman, what was missing was: "a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty. For example, if you are doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid – not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results...

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way.

"We've learned from experience that the truth will come out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature's phenomena will agree or disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven't tried to be very careful in this kind of work. It's this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in cargo cult science."

Furthermore "you should not fool the layman when you're talking as a scientist...I'm talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you are maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen.

"One example of the principle is this: if you've made up your mind to test a theory, or you want to explain some idea, you should always decide to publish it whichever way it comes out. If we only publish results of a certain kind, we can make the argument look good. We must publish both kinds of results. I say that's also important in giving certain types of government advice."

Feynman's wish

Feynman hoped his CalTech audience would have: "the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, and so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom."

Melanesian cargo cultists built mock airports and performed pantomimes, but they failed to attract cargo. Cargo cult scientists claim "the science of climate change is settled." They build computer models with tricky assumptions and dummy variables, but they have yet to show genuine predictive power. Cargo cult politicians make inflated promises about delivering another "cargo" – the ability to manipulate Australia's climate by imposing a new tax – but are silent on this truth: the chaotic nature of climate change makes it a futile ambition. Cargo cultists from our business and financial sectors insist a legislated carbon price is required to deliver "certainty" – and trading profits.

Let us not fool ourselves, or be fooled by others. Stage-managed cabals, pre-determined outcomes, committee confidentiality and dodgy science are surely relics from another age, a darker space. Give us instead leaders – and scientists – of honesty and integrity; not rent seekers and dreamers high in the sky with diamonds.

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About the Author

Michael Kile is author of No Room at Nature's Mighty Feast: Reflections on the Growth of Humankind. He has an MSc degree from Imperial College of Science and Technology, University of London and a Diploma from the College. He also has a BSc (Hons) degree in geology and geophysics from the University of Tasmania and a BA from the University of Western Australia. He is co-author of a recent paper on ancient Mesoamerica, Re-interpreting Codex Cihuacoatl: New Evidence for Climate Change Mitigation by Human Sacrifice, and author of The Aztec solution to climate change.

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