Are We Nearly Doomed Yet? Part 1.

On one of my bookshelves at home I have a paperback from 32 years ago called Science Fact (Topaz, 1977, edited by Frank George, Professor of Cybernetics at Brunel University), which is all about the exciting scientific and technological developments of the mid-’70s and how these might fare in the future. The book was certainly on the mark with such things as unmanned space missions, genetic engineering and advanced electronics. Other areas, such as parapsychology, seem just as contentious now as they were then. But one general assumption underlying this book is that our modern civilisation – the civilisation of electric lights, cars, fast food, indoor loos and central heating – is here to stay, despite the immense technology-induced and environmental stresses predicted at its conclusion.

However, there are other books written before or since that have painted a much more negative and edgy picture of modern civilisation and its prospects. Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb, James Lovelock’s The Revenge of Gaia and Mark Lynas’s Six Degrees are just some of the publications which portray a world about to be completely overwhelmed by such things as overpopulation, overconsumption, depleted resources and, of course these days, dangerous Global Warming.

Futurology is a perilous undertaking. Who knows what the world will be like in 2030, or even in 2012? We can speculate, but even the most sensible, conservative predicted outcomes are apt to be overturned if one of Nicholas Taleb’s black swans happens to flaps its wings. The rapid collapse of communism, the 9/11 attacks and the rise of the internet have altered the world in sweeping and unpredictable ways. Likewise, the great spontaneous global economic boom of 2014, the deadly flaming cockatoo virus of 2019 and Wu Li’s invention of nano-crystalline life forms in 2023 might change things utterly and in ways that could never have been precisely foreseen.

Civilisation itself could even be doomed. Something could happen to us so dreadful that we could end up back in the Stone Age without the skills such as flint-knapping and mammoth-butchering that enabled actual Stone Age folks to get by. Unsettled by that thought, some years ago I started to make a list of all the things I could think of that could doom civilisation before we had the chance even to colonise the Moon or Mars.

It’s a long list and of course is incomplete, and I won’t include it here. But it can be organised into three general categories, which I will include.

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1) Unknown unknowns (as per Donald Rumsfeld’s useful 2002 speech). Obviously not much can be said about these. Life on Earth might be instantly exterminated when the solar system enters a violent Gurnning-epsilon particle storm in 2035. What are Gurnning-epsilon particles? I don’t know, I just made them up on the spot. They are unknown unknowns.

2) Known unknowns. These I define as things we know might happen but we don’t know exactly when or where. This is the main category and a full list would probably take me all day to type in, but they include:

a) Asteroid or comet strike. A very big one would be the end of us, and even a medium sized impact would destabilise the world economy and cause far-reaching geopolitical changes.

b) Supervolcano eruption. Similar to asteroid impact in potential devastation. In this case, we know roughly where (e.g., the Sunda Straits region in Indonesia or under Yellowstone in the US) but not when.

c) Carrington Event. A solar storm so violent and focussed that it could cause electrical transformers to burn out over a large region of the globe, bringing the electrical grid to a complete standstill. The only one observed so far was in 1859, and it is almost impossible to predict when the next one will happen.

d) Gamma ray burst: These are intense flashes of gamma rays that emanate from colossal explosions in distant galaxies. If one of these went off and Earth was in its path, it would not be good news for us.

e) Thermonuclear war. Less fashionable these days, but you never know. The worst case scenario right now would probably be a showdown between the US and China.

3) The knowns. These would be things that we know are happening now, or about to happen, and are recognised as a threat (or a potential threat.) This is where it gets awkward, as many of the things that some people are identifying as a clear and present danger are being identified by other people as no such thing.

The current biggie is Anthropogenic Global Warming. On one side are proponents who argue that greenhouse effect + positive feedbacks = catastrophic global warming of between 2 and 6 degrees over the next century or so. On the other side are sceptics who argue that the greenhouse effect may be a fact but the climate is dominated by negative feedbacks which restrict any man-made warming (if it exists) to very modest levels at best. This I realise is an extremely limited and wholly inadequate summary of what is possibly one of the most complicated and rancorous debates ever in the history of the world. I have to say here: I’m a sceptic; I’ll write more about this in a future post.

There’s also resource depletion, from fossil fuels running out (peak oil, peak coal, peak gas, etc) to overfishing. Again, there is plenty of controversy. Overfishing? I’d say this is a problem (albeit not a civilisation-killer.) Peak oil? I don’t think this is so much of a problem (again, more of this later.)

And there is environmental degradation – farmland turning into desert, salt water contaminating fresh water, toxic waste accumulating in the food chain. Again, like the resource depletion category, this one is multifarious, debatable, perplexing and deserves a blog post of its own.

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Threats can also slip from one category into another. For instance, the Ebola virus is deadly but cannot spread easily – it’s a known, but is not a threat to modern civilisation at the moment. However, should Ebola mutate into something that could spread as easily as flu or the common cold, then it might well become a threat to us all – so, more of a known unknown.

This post is threatening to go on forever, so I’ll attempt to wrap it up and send it on its way. What I’ve been trying to say, in my clumsy, rambling fashion, is that the future is uncertain (well, d’oh) and that there are a number of things (currently known to us or not) that could do us in. So how do things stand at the moment, here at the end of 2009? Are we nearly doomed yet?

Looking at my (extremely makeshift and incomplete) dashboard:

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1) Asteroids: nothing threatening us right at the moment, according to NASA’s Near Earth Object Program, anyway.

2) Supervolcanoes: the Yellowstone caldera has been on the move of late, rising by about 7cm a year for the last three years. A threat? Perhaps not in the next 12 months, although I think this situation will bear watching.

3) Solar storms: the Sun is extremely quiet at present, so another Carrington Event is perhaps unlikely at the moment. However, our level of knowledge about the Sun and its internal processes is still extremely poor, so no guarantees.

4) Global Warming: despite some claims of thousands dying each year from AGW who would otherwise be alive, the evidence for this is weak, in my opinion. There are many people affected by war and famine across the globe – are they victims of man-made Global Warming or just victims of war and famine? To my mind, Occam’s Razor suggests the latter. It’s possible that 2009 has seen a slight but not dramatic rise in average temperatures from 2008, consistent with an El Nino year. However, summer Arctic ice increased from 2008, Antarctic sea ice also increased from 2008, and the current northern hemisphere winter (2009/2010) has been very cold so far. Whatever the medium or far future may bring, I don’t think Global Warming will be a threat to civilisation in 2010.

5) Everything else (war, pestilence, resource depletion, environmental degradation, odds, sods, etc.): nothing stands out in 2009 that looks as though it will destroy us in 2010. Swine flu hasn’t been as virulent as feared. The US and China aren’t about to fire nukes at one another, ditto India and Pakistan. Iran might destabilise further in the next 12 months but unless this triggers a major war across the Middle East, I don’t see an immediate threat to us there. There are still oil and coal reserves in the ground, and the environment is not so far gone that most of us cannot feed ourselves throughout 2010.

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So – a cautious thumbs-up from me, then. Modern civilisation made it intact through 2009, I give it good odds to do the same through 2010 too.

I intend to make Are We Nearly Doomed Yet? a regular feature on this blog (once a year, perhaps, or twice yearly?) Obviously, however, I might forget or lose interest. Or a giant asteroid could actually strike the Earth over the next few months, in which case maintaining this blog will not be my highest priority.

In Praise of Aviation

Birds do it. Bees do it. Educated fleas don’t do it, because although they can jump prodigious distances, they lack wings. Actually, to be a little more precise, fleas (both the educated and the ignorant varieties) can’t do it under their own power, but, like us, can manage it by hitching a ride on something that does have wings.

What am I on about? Flying, of course. Aviation – one of the routine technological wonders of our world.

I don’t fly very often, but greatly enjoy the experience – I try to get a window seat and am always captivated by the views. I love the fantastic cloudscapes – mountains and valleys, vast plains and faerie castles all made of white fluff, which I am certain would feel like refrigerated candy floss, were I able to open a window, reach out and grab handfuls of the stuff. There are also interesting things to glimpse when it’s dark – from the air, cities at night are mysterious and beautiful entities, patterns of glowing lights that resemble luminous sea creatures on some alien ocean floor. Travelling between London and Tokyo earlier this month, I found myself looking down from a great height upon the Siberian wilderness, where lonely rivers cut their way through great mountain ranges in the darkness, and distant settlements were lit up by what appeared to be giant hellish torches (possibly gas flares, as much of this is oil country.) There’s always something fresh and different to see.

Flying is also a brief and welcome break from chores, duties and other ties. Not being a business traveller, I am unencumbered by laptop or Blackberry, and can luxuriate in the freedom from work and indeed everyday life in general. It’s like a mini holiday within a holiday. I even don’t mind the food.

And I am not alone. Despite the economic downturn and the real problems faced by airlines, people still want to fly. According to the Air Transport Action Group (ATAG) 40% of all international tourists travel by air, and while the technology now exists to conduct much of international business and affairs of state by video link, business and diplomatic travel appears to be largely as popular as it ever was. World dignitaries used 140 private jets to arrive at Copenhagen for the recent COP15 climate summit (no video-conferencing for them!) Compared to travel by ship and train, flying has its obvious advantages – it is fast, convenient, and relatively cheap.

Even people who believe that aviation is the devil’s work and is contributing to catastrophic global warming still somehow manage to fly when they feel the need (like George Monbiot this year, when he hopped across the pond to lecture the Canadians, and like Plane Stupid activist Katrina Forrester when she embarked on a secret trip to New York in 2008 to meet up with kindred spirits and also to see the sights, by air rather than by sea, because “the boat cost £4,000 and the plane was so cheap”. And who can blame these folks? (Well, Joss Garman might, but that’s another story.) Indeed, how else would far-flung global citizens, even those of the environmental persuasion, get from A to B in these accelerated times?

There are more reasons why I find aviation interesting and inspirational.

Firstly, the field has been a hotbed of innovation and technological advancement ever since the first flimsy box kite-like machines struggled into the air a century ago. Given a dream, an incentive and a set of challenges to overcome, we as a species are at our problem-solving best.

Secondly, aviation is a game changer. In the early days of powered flight, it would have been easy to think of aeroplanes as merely an exotic sort of personal conveyance. Who in 1903 could have foreseen the vast changes wrought by air travel over the next handful of decades? Warfare has been transformed utterly, and tourism, once the preserve of a privileged few, has become a mighty industry. Large and small enterprises of all kinds now have the potential to span continents and oceans. Along with telecommunications, aviation has shrunk the world and condensed it into something rather like Marshall McLuhan’s global village.

Also consider the synergies embodied in a modern airliner, like the Virgin Atlantic Airbus A340-600 that brought me back to London Heathrow from Narita. The plane could not have flown without jet engine technology, of course, but neither could it have functioned without the advanced materials developed to constitute its airframe, or the modern electronic systems designed to control this giant metal beast, or the up-to-the-minute software created to manage and monitor all the intricate processes of air traffic control, flight booking and even duty-free shopping and in-flight entertainment. In turn, surely all these other technologies would not be as sophisticated as they undoubtedly are, in 2009, without the impetus and the catalyst powered flight has provided.

Lastly, the conquest of the air has paved the way for the eventual human colonisation of space. We’re not progressing as fast as I had hoped, in this regard (I was one of those children in the 1970s who expected a moon base and a man on Mars by the end of the 20th century), but I’m of the firm opinion that we’ll get there eventually. Barring a medical miracle, I won’t be around to witness much of this next phase, although maybe (just maybe) I’ll have collected enough air miles, by the time I get old, to book a flight with Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. I live in hope.

A Quiet Victory for Common Sense

In November 2009, anti-aviation activist group Plane Stupid launched a “hard-hitting” cinema ad showing computer-generated polar bears falling from the skies over a city centre, impacting on buildings and cars in a spray of blood. The message? A short-haul flight is said to generate 400 kg of carbon dioxide, which is about the weight of an adult polar bear; in effect, Plane Stupid were saying that your family holiday in Majorca last year contributed to greenhouses gases in the atmosphere and thus contributed to theoretical man-made global warming, which in turn is said to be behind recent Arctic ice loss, which in turn is said to be endangering the species Ursus maritimus. In future, so the reasoning goes, save the planet and the bears by not flying; don’t go to Majorca by plane – go by train, boat or bicycle (or better still, don’t go at all.)

This short and very graphic video has its admirers – “flawless execution”, “impactful” and “attention grabbing” are some of the comments I’ve read on various internet forums. Others, however, include “distasteful”, “fraudulent” and “hysterical.” Even Ed Gillespie (AGW believer and also co-director of Futerra, a green-leaning ad agency) expressed his doubts in this Guardian article: “…I’m still not sure it will change behaviour, the danger is that by pumping up the high octane drama of an ad, you increase the risk of viewers feeling manipulated and dismissing it as pure propaganda. Or lapsing into highly questionable failures of tact and taste in pursuit of ‘edginess’.”

I found the Polar Bears ad unpleasant in the extreme and complained to the Advertising Standards Authority. This is what I wrote.

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I am writing to complain about the “Polar Bear” cinema ads produced by climate activist group Plane Stupid, which have been shown in British cinemas since 20th November 2009. These ads show computer-generated polar bears falling out of the sky and landing on buildings and streets with grisly realistic impacts.

Here are the reasons why I am complaining.

These ads are meant to be hard-hitting, as they are designed to dissuade people from taking short-haul flights. They are also designed to jolt and appal people, basically, being depictions of animals being dropped from a great height. The intention is to cause shock, upset and guilt. Now this might be justified if the ads depicted a road accident and were meant to dissuade people from drink-driving. However, there is no clear connection between travelling by air and causing polar bears to fall out of the sky, obviously. To spell this out further – there is no simple or clear connection between aviation and polar bear deaths.

These ads imply that by flying, air passengers are contributing to the burning of carbon-based fuels, which creates more carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere, and which in turn causes global warming (and also causes the deaths of polar bears, due to the shrinking of the Arctic ice pack.) This implication is contentious in several ways, and my personal view is that it is incorrect. Firstly, as the recent “Climategate” revelations have highlighted, the theory of man-made global warming remains very controversial and unclear. The “evidence” for catastrophic warming relies largely on computer models, and the efficacy of these models is being increasingly challenged and questioned. Also, even though (according to the global warming theorists) the world has been warming since the late 1970s, during this time polar bear numbers do not show a clear decline, according to a recent report by the U.S. Geological Survey.

In my view, these ads are thus contravening:

a) Section 6: Harm and Offence, by depicting gratuitous, violent and gory deaths.
b) Section 5: Misleading Advertising, by implying that air travellers are contributing to global warming, when it is by no means certain that they are.
c) Section 5: Misleading Advertising, by implying that air travellers are killing polar bears, when it is by no means certain that they are.

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I came back from a trip to Japan last weekend and found that the ASA had sent me a reply by letter; here it is:

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8 December 2009
Dear Mr Cull
YOUR COMPLAINT ABOUT PLANE STUPID

Thank you for your recent complaint about a cinema ad by the above organisation.

We received a number of complaints about it and approached the advertiser for their response. They confirmed that they had received a large number of complaints directly and were understandably concerned at the response to the ad. They therefore took the decision to withdraw the ad early and have given us their assurance that it will not be used again.

As the ad is no longer being shown, there would be little to achieve by investigating further. We are satisfied with the action Plane Stupid has taken to resolve the concerns raised. Brief details will appear in a list of informally resolved cases on Wednesday 23 December.

Thank you for taking the time to bring this to our attention.

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It is encouraging to know that others thought and acted along the same lines that I did, and that there has been a quiet victory for common sense.

Our complaints had an impact.