Climate change and the power of a good story
Whether or not you agree with his argument, Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth was a masterpiece of communication, galvanizing debate by people and governments; something that scientists and environmentalists struggled to do. Keeping up the story-telling, this time from the sceptical side, is Australian broadcaster Mike Smith. Irrespective of whether the rationale is correct, I had to admire this explanation of the scale of Australia’s carbon emissions:
Imagine 1 kilometre of atmosphere that we want to rid of human carbon pollution. We’ll have a walk along it.
The first 770 metres are Nitrogen.
The next 210 metres are Oxygen.
That’s 980 metres of the 1 kilometre. 20 metres to go.
The next 10 metres are water vapour. 10 metres left.
9 metres are argon. Just 1 more metre.
A few gases make up the first bit of that last metre.The last 38 centimetres of the kilometre – that’s carbon dioxide.
A bit over one foot.
97% of that is produced by Mother Nature. It’s natural.Out of our journey of one kilometre, there are just 12 millimetres left. About half an inch. Just over a centimetre.
That’s the amount of carbon dioxide that global human activity puts into the atmosphere.And of those 12 millimetres Australia puts in .18 of a millimetre.
Less than the thickness of a hair. Out of a kilometre.
As a hair is to a kilometre – so is Australia’s contribution to what Mr Rudd calls Carbon Pollution.Imagine Brisbane’s new Gateway Bridge, ready to be officially opened by Mr Rudd. It’s been polished, painted and scrubbed by an army of workers till its 1 kilometre length is surgically clean. Except that Mr Rudd says we have a huge problem, the bridge is polluted – there’s a human hair on the roadway. We’d laugh ourselves silly.
There are plenty of real pollution problems to worry about. It’s hard to imagine that Australia’s contribution to carbon dioxide in the world’s atmosphere is one of the more pressing ones. And I can’t believe that a new tax on everything is the only way to blow that pesky hair away.
Perhaps we all need to just take a few deep breaths.
While I admire the use of analogy, Smith’s reasoning can be countered. As the Arabian parable said, it was the last straw added to the load which broke the camel’s back. Oh hang on, that’s another story with a message.
Reported in the HeraldSun; spotted by WOBF.
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August 25th, 2009 at 10:43 am
Useful story for getting the right perspective. So what fraction of a human hair is NZ?
There is no analogy with straws and camel’s back, as that implies that there is an upper limit to CO2. We know from geological history that CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has been 20 times higher in the past, and the levels dropped again without roasting every plant and animal.
Instead CO2 should be viewed as a trace fertilizer than helps plants grow.
CO2 is a “life essential” — without which we would all die. (There’s a message in that.)
August 26th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
This story and the responses are riddled with the generic fallacies raised by global warming sceptics. The idea of a “hairs length” is so misleading it paints a picture that CO2 produced by humans only accounts for a tiny fraction of the problem of the warming planet. The comparison with the bridge is flawed as it supposes that the problem will only stretch over the 1km.
Nice point on the “straw” by the way. I believe it catches the point perfectly.
August 26th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
[…] much CO2? Found this on En Avant. Imagine 1 kilometre of atmosphere that we want to rid of human carbon pollution. We’ll have a […]
October 23rd, 2009 at 12:15 am
Hmm. You need to look into the warming effects of CO2, compared to other gases. It’s perhaps comforting to pull these stats out of context but what appears to be a conservative and logical argument is in fact a radical and ill informed position that argues against the consesus of the worlds climate research community. People advising such international bodies as the IPCC. Wheres your evidence?
October 23rd, 2009 at 6:47 am
Vanessa
Read my last paragraph again. I don’t agree with his conclusion, even though everything leading up to it is factual. My point was that this was a clever use of parable, not agreement with his argument.