While getting your feet back under the desk after the Christmas and New Year break, two items in the media might interest you. The first is the story of the research ship Akademik Shokalskiy, trapped in Antarctic sea ice while carrying the 2013 Australasian Antarctic Expedition on a repeat of the trip undertaken a century ago (between 1911 and 1914). The ship became trapped on Christmas Eve, as reported for example by the BBC (Science continues for trapped Australasian Antarctic expedition) and passengers were only airlifted out on 2 January (Antarctic rescue of Adademik Shokalskiy ship completed).
Now, since one of the aims of the expedition has been to track how quickly the sea ice is disappearing, the fact that the ship has been trapped for well over a week is rather ironic. In itself, this fact does not mean that sea ice is increasing (although there is certainly no evidence of decline from the National Snow and Ice Data Center), but it does highlight the complexity of the factors which determine its extent at any given time.
For the present expedition, it seems that the crucial factor was a sudden increase in the wind from the high Antarctic plateau, which drove pack ice towards the ship. Measurements from the expedition show more fresh water towards the surface of the ocean, indicating a greater volume of meltwater, whether from sea ice or the ice cap itself, but this clearly does not reflect actual conditions in the area. There are a number of factors which affect the growth and shrinkage of polar ice, with average air temperature being just one.
The Australasian expedition, although now being face-savingly billed as one to collect data on a range of topics, seemed geared to make headlines to support the mainstream line on climate change; that its effects are being seen, that the main driver is human activity and that urgent action is needed. To this end, there were a number of ‘embedded’ journalists (a rather infelicitous description, as things turned out) ready to make headlines with stories of rising temperatures and melting ice.
The important thing about the Poles from the point of view of the climate change community is that this is where the effects of global warming should be most obvious. Certainly it seems that summer temperatures have risen significantly in the Arctic. However, this year, sea ice in the Arctic appears to have been much more extensive during the summer than in recent years. The previous seemingly steady decrease in the extent of summer ice had been seen as ‘proof’ of global warming and had led to over-enthusiastic predictions of ice-free summers by now.
None of this tells us what global and regional climate will be like by the end of the century. Neither does it tell us what the primary drivers of change are: we should not forget that, despite the supposed certainty, ‘proof’ of the enhanced greenhouse hypothesis has to date been purely in silico. Even that, to any disinterested observer, fails the test of predictability, given the failure of global temperatures this century to follow a path projected by any of the complex but incomplete computer models relied upon by the IPCC.
Which brings me to the second story, an interview in the Times (Google’s Ray Kurzweil predicts how the world will change). While at first sight unrelated to the sorry tale of the Antarctic expedition, there is an important lesson to be drawn. Kurzweil has a track record of making accurate predictions not just about technology – how important the internet would become and the point at which a computer would be able to beat a world-class chess player, for example – but also about the fall of communism in Europe. This is no guarantee he will be right in future (indeed, we are not told about the things he got wrong) but the man at least deserves to be listened to.
The point is that here is someone who has been willing to consider that radical change might occur even when most other people could not begin to envisage how this could happen. Most people looking to the future either project forward from their current limited knowledge (so ignoring anything other than stepwise improvements) or come up with ideas from the pages of science fiction (personal rocket packs and time travel). Very few look at what the rational extension of emerging technologies might bring.
The Australasian expedition is not only stuck physically in the ice but metaphorically in the mindset of straight line projection from current knowledge. For those who subscribe to the narrative of Dangerous, Anthropogenic Global Warming, we need to use the technology we have today to tackle the ongoing problems of business of usual, rather than put our faith in developing technologies which provide much better solutions.
For the IPCC and the scientific and political Establishment, the best is the enemy of the good: renewable energy they see as good enough to use as a basis for radical ‘decarbonisation’ of the economy, despite its imperfections. In fact, any objective view shows current global climate mitigation policy to be a colossal waste of resources, unnecessarily loading developed economies with cost while carbon dioxide emissions continue to increase.
One of Kurzweil’s predictions is that by 2033, just 20 years from now, we will be getting 100% of our energy needs from solar power. Most people (including me) would think that he is way off the mark on this one, but the logic of directly harvesting energy from the Sun – the ultimate source of all other energy sources – is enticing. It is certainly not impossible that in two decades we would have very cheap, efficient solar cells, but what he fails to cover (and it would be fascinating to hear more from him on this topic) is how to store energy for the times when it is needed.
It is very easy to criticise this vision of 100% renewable energy, but someone has to have the vision to make such proposals and encourage R&D. Perhaps in 2033 Kurzweil will be seen to have been right about IT but wrong about many other things, but if he provides a spur for researchers to work on what currently seem crazy ideas, he is doing Mankind a service.
And New Year’s resolutions? I’d suggest two: looking behind the newspaper headlines and coming to our own conclusions and not being afraid to indulge in blue-sky thinking. Recent years have been dominated by pessimism on both the environmental and economic fronts. Let’s make time for more optimism in 2014.
Martin Livermore
The Scientific Alliance
St John’s Innovation Centre
Cowley Road
Cambridge CB4 0WS
____________________________________