Radio
Ecoshock January 7, 2011
Hi there,
There are
three parts to this one hour program, available in CD Quality (56
MB) or Lo-Fi
(14 MB)
#1. I
interview Jeff Masters. Millions of people check with "The Weather Underground" for the
latest. They want the color charts, maps, satellite photos, - and - the big
picture from Dr. Jeff
Masters. As a Meteorologist, Jeff
was a "Hurricane Hunter", flying with the National Oceans and
Atmospheric Administration planes out of Miami. He flew right into the big ones, like Gilbert, and finally
Hurricane Hugo. In 1995, Masters
co-founded a web site, to make real-time sense of raw data pouring out of the
National Weather Service. We talk about
the relationship of wetter and warming winters to the blizzards that hit the
U.S. and Canadian Northeast, the wild winter heat wave in the Arctic, and
floods in Australia. What does the
future hold?
#2 A
bit of energy news. Oil burning has jumped significantly in 2010, the
biggest jump in over 5 years. Bad news
for the planet's atmosphere. With a bit
more energy news, involving Russia (now the world's largest oil producer,
bigger than Saudi Arabia) and China (likely the world's biggest oil consumer,
or heading that way). Why this impacts
the U.S. dollar and American government ability to borrow.
#3. Why
China went the standard American-style consumer route, complete with an
unsustainable oil path. Hear the
interview with Karl Gerth, who teaches modern Chinese history at Oxford. His new book is "As China Goes, So Goes
the World. How Chinese Consumers Are
Transforming Everything."
READ
MORE
We all
talk about the weather, and there has been more weather to talk about.
Millions
of people check with "The Weather Underground" for the latest. They
want the color charts, maps, satellite photos, - and - the big picture from Dr.
Jeff Masters.
As a
Meteorologist, Jeff was a "Hurricane Hunter", flying with the
National Oceans and Atmospheric Administration planes out of Miami. He flew right into the big ones, like
Gilbert, and finally Hurricane Hugo. In
1995, Masters co-founded a web site, to make real-time sense of raw data
pouring out of the National Weather Service.
This
week, "The Weather Underground" was number 57 for traffic, out of
all the Internet sites in the world.
It's huge.
Now we
need some answers, about the mega-rains, strange hot Summers, and blustery Northern
winters. It's a treat to have Dr. Jeff
Masters join us on Radio Ecoshock.
Of
course, everyone wants to know how the Northern Hemisphere got so much cold and
snow, after one of the hottest years on record. Before we talk about that, we quickly skip to another kind of
emergency, on the other side of the Planet: the epic floods in Queensland,
Australia,
Then we
get to the blizzards in the U.S., record cold in Britain, and heavy snow throughout
Northern Europe - is it just normal Winter, or something else?
Part
of the problem is the media lens. One reason 911 was
so over-powering: it happened in New York, an American news hub, with live
cameras. The latest surprising winter
weather is hitting New York, London, Berlin, Moscow, and Beijing - all the
biggest news centers.
We don't
hear about
extra heat in South America. Crops
in Argentina are threatened, yet another way that climate change will cause
hyper-inflation in world food prices, and gaps in availability (read mass
starvation) in the future.
Even in
my own country, Canada, the major newspapers did not report wild heat in the
Canadian Arctic and Greenland, up to 15 degrees above normal. Or buried little human interest stories in
the back pages, how aboriginal
people couldn't keep their ice cubes outdoors anymore, in January, because they
melted. That is serious where
people use the normally frigid outside as their refrigerators.
Reading
the mass media, I could think the whole world is cooling. But it is heating. Jeff explains.
It makes
me wonder how long TV weathermen and women can keep reporting these
extraordinary events without ever mentioning the words "climate
change". It's kind of a joke
around our house. We watch a long
string of horrible weather records, and it's all just captioned "weird
weather", - a strange string of accidents, with no cause. Any predictions on when the mass media will
let people in on the secret?
Jeff
compares the situation to CFC's (chlorofluorocarbons) used in refrigeration. There were warnings in the 1970's and early
1980's these could cause damage to the Earth's protective ozone layer. But governments did not meet to act until
after a huge hole was found in the ozone layer, over Antarctica. With climate, it may take something like
a complete melting of all the Arctic ice in Summer, to bring real action?
The
relative heat wave in Canada's Eastern Arctic was unknown even to Canadians,
until more populated cities started to melt recently. In the far North, there are few people, few weather stations, and
no cameras, to record December temperatures up to 15 degrees Celsius above
normal.
Every
time the U.S. or the U.K. gets a big snow storm, the global warming deniers
start chanting the mantra of "global cooling." More mocking videos,
some of them from TV weather personalities, go up on You tube. In Jeff's blog, at wunderground.com, he suggest
extra snow might be linked to climate change.
Here is
the most relevant part from that blog posting.
From blog
post by Jeff Masters, December 28, 2010:
"The
remarkable Post-Christmas blizzard of 2010 has ended for the United States, as
the storm has trekked northeastward into Canada. The blizzard dropped epic
amounts of snow during its rampage up the U.S. Northeast coast Sunday and
Monday, with an incredible 32" falling in Rahway, New Jersey, about 15
miles southwest of New York City. The highest populated areas of New Jersey
received over two feet of snow, including the Newark Airport, which received
24.1". Snowfall amounts were slightly lower across New York City. The
blizzard of 2010 dumped 20.0" inches on New York City's Central Park,
making it the 6th largest snowstorm for the city in recorded history, and the
second top-ten snowstorm this year. Remarkably, New York City has had four of
its top-ten snowfalls in the past decade ..."
And in
that blog entry, Jeff Masters begins to list off the top 10 snow-falls of
Central Park, which range from 1888 to two in 2010.
Later, he
continues, under this headline, quote:
"An
unusual number of top-ten snowstorms for the Northeast in recent years
The
Northeast has seen an inordinate number of top-ten snowstorms in the past ten years,
raising the question of whether this is due to random chance or a change in the
climate. A study by Houston and Changnon (2009) on the top ten heaviest snows
on record for each of 121 major U.S. cities showed no upward or downward trend
in these very heaviest snowstorms during the period 1948 - 2001. It would be
interesting to see if they repeated their study using data from the past decade
if the answer would change. As I stated in my blog post, The United States of
Snow in February, bigger snowstorms are not an indication that global warming
is not occurring. The old adage, "it's too cold to snow", has some
truth to it, and there is research supporting the idea that the average climate
in the U.S. is colder than optimal to support the heaviest snowstorms. For
example, Changnon et al. (2006) found that for the contiguous U.S. between 1900
- 2001, 61% - 80% of all heavy snowstorms of 6+ inches occurred during winters
with above normal temperatures. The authors also found that 61% - 85% of all
heavy snowstorms of 6+ inches occurred during winters that were wetter than
average. The authors conclude, "a future with wetter and warmer winters,
which is one outcome expected (National Assessment Synthesis Team 2001), will
bring more heavy snowstorms of 6+ inches than in 1901 - 2000." The authors
found that over the U.S. as a whole, there had been a slight but significant
increase in heavy snowstorms of 6+ inches than in 1901 - 2000. If the climate
continues to warm, we should expect an increase in heavy snow events for a few
decades, until the climate grows so warm that we pass the point where winter
temperatures are at the optimum for heavy snow events."
That's
the kind of compact facts and analysis that keeps wunderblog.com in the top 100
most visited Internet sites in the world.
Plus all the snappy graphs and satellite shots we can't show you on
radio.
Scientists
have been predicting increased droughts in dry areas, and floods in wet areas,
for a long time. But most of us thought
it would happen in 2100, or maybe 2040.
I never thought I'd see such climate instability, so soon. Is climate disruption coming sooner than we
thought, and if so, what does that mean?
In our
November 19, 2010 Radio Ecoshock show, Dr. Tim Garrett from the University of
Utah said climate change is really a long-term natural disaster. He suggests weather extremes produce, quote
"an ever increasing environmental pressure on civilization, that
continually acts as an ever stronger force, that eats away at what we have
produced in the past."
[Tim
Garrett interview 24 min Lo-Fi]
[Tim
Garrett interview transcript]
When I
heard that, I thought of storm-drains overwhelmed in England, levees breaking
in the United States, the unhealed scars of massive flooding in Pakistan, crops
burned out in Russia. Jeff Masters, is
it possible extreme weather events, driven by climate change, could slowly
cripple the global economy?
We agree
that will happen.
It looks
like the world climate has been destabilized, to some extent. Our science is now in catch-up mode, trying
to understand how sensitive the whole Earth system is. Is it possible we might have a few
relatively quiet years, in terms of storms, floods, and heat? If the climate moves in uneven steps,
instead of a steady progression, the public and the politicians might lose
focus.
Jeff
agrees this is a major concern. Climate
change can be step-like, rather than a steady curve upwards. He ominously expects a new and fairly
permanent change to our climate, sometime in the next decade. No one knows when, but it is coming. But if we have a few quiet years, the
climate deniers might persuade the public (who are only too happy to keep on
with fossil fuelled life) that no action is necessary. Global warming has "stopped" these
deniers would say. But the carbon
continues to build up, and the physics of what happens is well known.
While
most mainstream weather reporters dodge the connections to climate change,
millions of people bail out to get the straight news from Jeff Masters and his
co-conspirators at the Weather Underground.
The truth
will get out.
I'm Alex Smith,
and this is Radio Ecoshock.
=============
News on
the energy front is all over the map.
Some day,
I would like to report the world will burning fewer fossil fuels next
year. We cannot say that now.
According
to a Reuters
business report, quote:
"Oil
demand growth jumped 2.2 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2010, the biggest rise
in six years, and forecasts for an addition 1.5 million bpd of use in 2011,
according to a Reuters poll."
The world
will burn even more oil, pushing up levels of greenhouse gases well past the
already dangerous level.
The bad
news/good news coming out of that devastating flood in Queensland, Australia is
a tiny slow-down in world coal production.
The
Wall Street Journal reported December 30th, coal mines responsible for
almost 25 percent of Australia's big climate-killing export have been flooded or
isolated by flooding. The world's
largest producer of specialized coal used to make steel, and Australia's
largest coal miner, BHP Billiton called in a rare contract clause called
"force majeure" - meaning the coal cannot be delivered according to
contracts, mostly with China, - because of uncontrolled forces of Nature.
Australia
helps pollute the atmosphere by producing about a third of a billion tons of
coal every year. Around 25 percent of
that coal is temporarily halted. Many
coal lines cannot run. The Planet will
catch a temporary break, due to historic flooding, likely augmented by the same
coal burning. Australia is being
heavily damaged by it's own polluting coal industry.
While
Queensland floods, Perth
Australia just went through 4 days of heat over 40 degrees C. Blistering hot, Mate.
The actual
smokestacks for Australian (and Canadian) coal are in China, producing consumer
products for Western Countries, Africa, South America, and the growing Middle
Class in China itself.
Now China
has a new oil supply route, the first pipeline directly from Russia to Northern
China. According to BBC
News, the pipeline between eastern Siberia and North-East China will carry
300,000 barrels a day.
Russia,
says the BBC, "overtook Saudi Arabia as the world's largest oil producer
in 2009."
Little
reported in Western newspapers, outside business circles, China and Russia
recently concluded a
very significant agreement. Until
now, almost all of the oil sold in the world is paid in U.S. dollars. China and Russia have agreed to trade
directly in their own currencies, by-passing the dollar.
So
far that trade is small, in the border areas, but it could get big. It is one more move away from the weakening
U.S. dollar, as the basis for international trade. If that trend continues, the American government will have more
difficulty borrowing, to support it's huge deficits. More here.
Now the
world's largest oil producer, and the up-and-coming world's largest oil
consumer, may be dumping the dollar.
Previously
Russian oil was delivered exclusively by rail tank cars. Undoubtedly, more pipelines are in the
works, to feed the huge and growing market for Chinese gasoline, and all those
new cars.
The
atmosphere will pay the price, as will we all, as climate instability hammers
away at our economies.
A key
question: why did China decide to go with the car and oil civilization,
rather than jumping ahead into clean energy? Why has consumerism triumphed in the East, even as we see
resources running out, and the environment severely threatened?
We'll
find out more, in our next Radio Ecoshock interview. "The Chinese Consumers."
The
biggest, the best, the most, the worst - that is the new China. Where bicycle bells turned to traffic jams
in 20 years. New Manhattans rose up out
of the ground. Pollution smeared the
sky and the rivers. The world's biggest
airport, the world's largest wind farms, the world's biggest everything, as the
greatest population on Earth, became "Consumers".
"As
China Goes, So Goes the World. How
Chinese Consumers Are Transforming Everything." That's the title from a new book by Karl
Gerth. He's a fellow at Merton
College, teaching modern Chinese history at Oxford University, in Britain.
[Book
review in Foreign Affairs]
[publisher info on this
book. After Wikileaks, I no longer
publish Amazon.com listings.]
I'm going
to get lazy here, and just reprint my ideas for the Karl Gerth interview. We got to most of these questions, but not
all, and Karl raised other issues. For
example, he suggested it was not impossible that America, "the Saudi
Arabia of coal" might end up providing coal for Chinese factories and
homes. Another climate killing
development that is always possible.
The Chinese are already short of coal, as they opened a new (inefficient)
coal burning power station every week.
Coal
shortages, along with other factors, including environmental goals, caused
blackouts in some Chinese cities this year. Get more details here,
and here.
Here is
that Karl Gerth interview script, to give you clues on our discussion:
Karl,
I've been watching China for two decades now, nervous and amazed.
Economists
tell us North America and Europe can be measured by the health of consumer
buying. Give us a couple of snapshots,
of the new Chinese consumerism.
What
makes this so startling, is the tsunami of change, from the recent era of
China's leader, Chairman Mao Tse-Tung.
When it comes to acquiring and wasting "stuff" in the 1960's
and early 70's - what were the sayings and customs, that kept consumerism in
check?
Is there
a particular date when China changed tracks, and why did it happen?
Was this
an inevitable demand from below, or a political directive from the Communist
Party? Maybe we should take the case of
private car ownership, as an example.
In the
early 1990's, there was still hope, especially coming from Greens in the West,
that China would see the pollution, the scarcity of oil, massive deaths and
injuries in car accidents. They could
go directly for sustainable energy, bypassing our mistakes in the fossil fuel
age. Why didn't that happen?
It all
seems to sad, Karl. Take the
bicycles. Here in Vancouver, we are
battling businessmen to get just a couple of safe bike pathways, into the
downtown. To get work within walking
distance of where we live. Really, to
get some of the things China already had.
Tell us about China, when you first went there.
I suppose
car production has become central to the economy now, as it was in the U.S. a
few decades ago?
I want to
get to the changes in Chinese food.
Talk to us about the new demand for meat, and the consequences.
This is Radio
Ecoshock, talking with Oxford historian and author, Karl Gerth, about the new
Chinese consumers. Karl, your book is
almost a house of mirrors. We start
looking at China, and see reflections of our own excess. Like their love affair with disposable
products, and the avalanche of waste.
Is that Chinese, or American?
What are
some of the Western brand names most popular in China?
You have
a subtext in the book, "As China Goes, So Goes the World" - which
again reflects back on us. The whole
game of "brand name" products is to project status. And yet China is famous for producing
look-alike fakes. How does the world's
largest counterfeiter deal with this confusion?
Even
deeper, you suggest China's political elite have purposely steered the population
into Consumer issues, to keep them away from meaningful politics. Of course, that could never happen
here. How can you back that claim up,
in China?
I read
American financial blogs. There is a
whole pack of pundits predicting China will collapse, due to a real estate
bubble, many times larger than the fallen American market. And we have seen Google space photos of
tracts of empty houses, even empty new cities, in China. You say the wealthiest developers are
connected directly to the current rulers.
Is there big trouble brewing in Chinese real estate, and what does that
mean for the Communist Party?
You have
a whole chapter on "Extreme Markets". Part of that is the sex trade.
Can you briefly explain how population policy, may be driving it?
The other
extreme market so hated by Western Greens, is the Chinese reversion to
traditional medicine that demands exotic animal parts, like bear claws, the
Tiger penis, and shark fins for soup.
Is China so large, these demands alone, could bring about species
extinction?
I'm Alex
Smith. Our guest is Karl Gerth, with a
new book "As China Goes, So Goes the World". As we've seen, hundreds of millions of
Chinese people have bought into the Western ideal of consumerism. They love televisions, mobile phones,
refrigerators, air-conditioners, and all the electronic goodies. Almost 70 percent of that runs on coal-fired
electricity, burned inefficiently, with low-grade equipment.
Karl, the
right-wing voice of U.S. business, the
Heritage Institute, claims Chinese dependence on coal is, quote, "an
insuperable obstacle to an international [climate] agreement." Their graph shows Chinese coal burning
quadrupled, from around 200 million tons in 1999, to 826 million tons in
2009. Now the government has stopped
publishing coal statistics. How serious
is this problem of coal burning in China?
A couple
of weeks ago, in December, news agencies reported some Chinese cities were
running very low on coal, even reduced to rolling black-outs. Nothing is simple in China. The coal producers say the government fixed
price is too low. Some local
governments may be limiting coal use to reach energy efficiency targets, set by
the central government in Beijing. And
it's a colder winter than expected. Or:
are they just perilously close to Peak Coal?
As you
point out in your book, there can be no Chinese consumer revolution, no surge
of jobs for the millions leaving rural lands for the city, without burning
coal. I'm feeling a kind of unstoppable
force here, a fear we can't save the climate, now that Asia is living just like
us. Do you see signs of hope?
Karl
Gerth, the whole project of turning the most populous country on Earth, into a
consumer paradise, is even less sustainable, than our own over-heated
economy. And we love to blame somebody
far way for world problems. How have we
in the West contributed to Chinese pollution?
I was
surprised to learn that one quarter of China is desert - and that area is
growing rapidly, partly due to consumer demands, but also water problems. Can you explain?
We've
covered some doom and gloom. What are
some of the fun parts, the way Chinese people express themselves, in what they
buy?
Does
China need the Western markets any more?
Can they just feed their own consumer market, with their own products,
for decades?
Of
course, we have to end with a look into the tea leaves. Some pundits expect China to crash into
hyper-inflation, with mass riots, followed perhaps by a split into two nations:
North China dry and hungry, with millions leaving for new land in Siberia. South China too hot for rice, the staple
crop.
Others
see China as the next world leader, surviving from it's deep cultural roots,
it's long history, it's hard working people.
Would you care to throw your hat in, and picture China in 2030? Where is this going?
We've
been delving into the new consumer culture sweeping China. The book is "As China Goes, So Goes the
World, How Chinese Consumers Are Transforming Everything," by Oxford
historian Karl Gerth. The book is
short, and full of facts and ideas that kind of punch us in the face, on every
page. Karl, I was astonished at some of
the raw numbers coming out. How could
anything and everything be that big!
Karl
Gerth, thank you for talking with us.