Clive Best

The last few days we have spent exploring the region around Port Augusta. The weather has been very hot but finally cooled to a mere 35 today. On New Year’s eve went to Whyalla which is a steel town on the other side of the estuary about 50 minutes from Port Augusta. The main interest for us was the very shallow beach area which would look good in a Red Sea resort. The weather was so hot - over 40 degrees that I couldn’t face the long ankle depth walk out for 300 metres to swim. Whyalla is a largish affluent place with good sea and boating access.

Then on New Year’s day we drove down to Melrose because I saw an advert for local wine there. Melrose is in the Southern Flinders and was one of the main settler towns for agriculture. There was a great detailed museum there which highlighted the ambitions and frustrations of the early settlers. There would be one or two years’ good harvest followed by drought, plagues of locusts and mice. However it is beautiful countryside with a lovely old pub there facing Mount Remarkable. It is on the edge of pastural agriculture and in fact there is a line north of which supposedly farming was not viable.

On Saturday 2nd Jan we drove to Wilpena Pound which is a very beautiful reserve about 3 hours drive north of Port Augusta. It is dominated by a large crater-like escarpment and surrounded by beautiful forests. There is a system of trust whereby visitors pay a park entrance fee. It really is a fabulous park with kangaroos, old Gum Tree forests and long hikes through the forest and hills. We could only spend a couple of hours there but managed to get lost and nearly walk into the biggest spider’s web I have ever seen. The spider looking big and mean in the middle of it. I expect it was deadly poisonous. On the drive back we stopped off in Hawker and found an art gallery full of prints and original paintings by a local artist Jeff Morgan. We bought some prints for Naomi’s house.

Yesterday we went for lunch at the Old Willow Brewery near Quorn. The daughter of the owner is a friend of Naomi’s and the restaurant is in a beautiful spot beside the old Pichi Richi Railway. This was way the best meal I have eaten yet in Australia. I had a salad of grilled freshwater crayfish called Yappies and an armoricain type sauce followed by a perfect Rib-eye steak. I had a good sleep when we got back to Port Augusta.

Tomorrow we leave for Adelaide and then fly to Perth on Thursday.

Barossa Valley hosts some of Australia’s best vineyards. We took a 2 day tour through Clare Valley, Barossa Valley and Adelaide Hills sampling and buying wine on the way before ending up in Adelaide. The countryside is very beautiful and less arid than Port Augusta. There are rolling hills, scattered vineyards and lovely wineries. The towns and villages have many stone  houses and it all looks very affluent - no doubt owing to the great wine grown here and exported around the world.

We visited and bought wine from :

• Penfolds. I tasted some of the best Cabernet Sauvignon ever and David and I ended up buying 2 very expensive bottles (Cellar Reserve) to keep long term.
• Jacob’s Creek
• Yalumba
• Seppeltsfield
• Wolf Blass
• Peter Lehman
• Bird in the Hand (Adelaide Hills)

After that we staggered back down to Adelaide for David’s last night in Australia . The taxi drivers turned out to be real mercenaries and Anna and I got refused a lift and told that the restaurant the other taxi had taken the rest of us was just 3 blocks away. After 20 minutes walk a local explained we needed to take a tram! Eventually we got a taxi with a nice Chinese driver in time for a great steak and more beer.

Today we drove to Quorn, about 45 minutes from Port Augusta,  in 40 degree heat. Quorn is in the Flinders mountains and was a staging point on the old Ghan railway. Today it seems a magic place where time stood still and all the shops, pubs and railway stations are just as they were 100 years ago. The drive there and back to Port Augusta passes some wild empty scenery. I am writing this at 7pm and outside it is still 37 degrees.

On Christmas Eve we took a boat trip up the estuary from Port Augusta. The boat weaves through the mangroves until it reaches nearly the very end of the sea inlet - only accessible at high tide. You begin to get a feel of just how tough it was in the early settler and explorer days. The country is wild, beautiful and dangerous. Early explorers believed there was an inland sea in the central part of Australia and set off to make their fortunes. One cannot imagine how they managed to get so far relying on finding water sources on the way. Later on camels were the only way to send supplies into the bush to cattle ranchers and farmers. Every few years a savage drought would destroy years of effort as homestaeds and communities had to be abandoned. The camels arrived  by boat to Port Augusta with their Afghan handlers and it seems this is where the name “GHAN” comes from for the trainline. The first trans- Australian railway was constructed in the late 19th century with wooden sleepers. The line was eventually closed around 1960 because termites had destroyed many of the sleepers and the lines would buckle under the intense heat. The new railway has concrete sleepers and carries freight across Australia north to Darwin and West to Perth. Port Augusta is the terminus point for both lines. Similarly huge “road trains” leave via truck terminals heding north to Alice Springs.

In the afternoon we visited a private refuge for Yellow Tail rock wallabies. They live in a gorge near the Flinders Range a drive of about 1 hour from Port Augusta near Quorn. The countryside is beautiful and empty. Rugged red rocks dominate an arid plain. The wallabies live in the rocks surrounding a natural water hole. We were very lucky that the weather had stabilised and they were down near the path. This was the first time we had seen wallabies and kangaroos in the wild. The yellow tails have an amazingly smooth hopping movement which enables them to climb sheer rock faces seemingly effortlessly.

Christmas Day lunch  of turkey and all the traditional trimmings outside in Naomi’s garden. It felt very strange to be outside in the hot sunshine.

We finally arrived in Port Augusta to spend Christmas with out daughter Naomi. She started work here 2 months ago as a vet, having just qualified in London. The temperature is 37 degrees and it is a very dry semi-arid area.  Our travels took this far took  us to:

1. Melbourne staying in St Kilda’s for a wild Saturday night. Some trendy pubs seething with people and bouncers on the door plus nice outside restaurants.

2. The Great Ocean Drive. A wonderful stretch of coastline between Melbourne and the limestone coast. It passes famous Bells Beach, and some rugged wild coastlines before we stooped for the night in Kingston.

3. From there to Adelaide which is an elegant laid back city with wide open boulevards and a fairly decent city centre. We stayed in Glenelg to be next to the sea, went for a swim on the beach and caught the sun after just an hour. There is a tram direct to the city centre which worked great and everyone was very friendly. This morning we headed to the airport to meet our son David flying in from Sydney and Naomi’s Grandad flying in from London, then headed out for Port Augusta.

Port Augusta is a dry town at the crossroads of the trans Australian railway and road systems into the bush. A couple of goods trains passed us on the way here. These trains must be 500 meters long. Similarly immense Road Trains dragging two sometimes three containers set off across the desert to Alice Springs and beyond. This is a world away from anything you will experience in Europe or even the US. The distances are immense, the environment hard yet there is a stark beauty to the scenery hard to find anywhere else.

We arrived in Australia on the 15th December to spend Christmas with our daughter naomi who recently got a job as a Vet in Port Augusta which is  about 300 km north of Adelaide. The journey is very long from Europe and therefore I  probably needed the impetus of visiting our daughter in order to get us to travel here at all. Australia immediadetly gives you an impression of open spaces which we have lost in Europe. On arriving we spent the first night with friends Greg and Jan in Manley. We made a tour of the main sights of Sydney which give an impression of a wonderful physical setting and good architecture. Manley is in a beautiful position at the entrance os Sydney Harbour and one of the best beaches.

Day 2 we picked up the rental car and headed south down the coast and after 5 hours driving ended up in Ulladulla after passing some great beaches and scenery. You begin to get a feel of he vast scale of Australia when you find just what little impact you have made after a day’s driving on a map of the whole country.

Day 3 we tried to drive inland to head south to the Victoria coast. You rise up in through the fotthills of the  Great Diving Range and the temperature began to rise dramatically. By the time we stopped for lunch there was a strong hot wind with tempretaures in the high 30’s - just the wrong thing for bush fires. Driving south towards Cann River we started passing through thick smoke areas which looked like clouds. Finally in Cann river a dark storm like cloud spread over the eastern coast. The road was closed by police so there was no access eastwards towards Melbourne and all rooms in the town were booked. The policeman said last time he did this in 2003 the road was closed for 6 days ! He advised us to head north again and take some small unmade road south east to avoid the fires. A chinese family took his advice whereas we decided to head west and booked a room in a resort called Mallacouta and this turned out to be a good move. Mallacoutta is miles from anywhere on the coast but has a nice friendly atmosphere. The temperature had fallen from 41 degrees in he morning to 12 degrees by the time we arrived as clouds spread in from the sea. It rained hard during the night which was good news for us as the fires were brought under control on the coast as a result.

The next morning the road was open so we headed back the way we came and kept going. There is a vast rain forest on the road stretching 50 miles or so where all the fires had been and you could see many scorched trees. Australia has vast areas of natural forests. We stopped for lunch at Lake Entrance and met the chinese coupe who had parked in front of us. They had had a nightmare drive the night before in the dark with no other traffic down this unmade steep mountain road. they left Cann River at 5pm and finished at Orbost 6 hours later shaking from the experience ! We headed on towards Melbourne and spent the night in St.Kilda’s a nice seaside suburb.

One thing that will not be addressed in Copenhagen is the damage done by an  ever growing human population on the natural balance of the Earth. This is  the real elephant in the room which eventually we must have to face up to. Even if we eliminate completely CO2 emissions from energy production by developed countries we humans will continue to degrade the earth while our numbers increase.

These are the back of the envelope calculations of Mankind’s emissions of CO2 resulting just from there being 7-9 billion of us on the planet whether we burn fossil fuels or not.

1. Breathing : People on average breath in about 7 litres a minute of air. The air we breath out contains 4% CO2. In affect we are burning food(carbon) in oxygen to provide the energy to keep warm and  active. Each one of us therefore emits about 0.3 liters of CO2 a minute weighing 0.6 gm, or 0.3 tons of CO2 per year. The current population is 7 billion and UN  forecasts a population  of 9-10 billion by 2100. Lets take a nice round figure of 10**10 people as the maximum human population. This gives:

Yearly CO2 emissions through breathing :  3 Gigatons/year

2. Domesticated Cattle breathing: Cattle are a key source of sustainance to many people throughout Africa and the rest of the world. The world populaion of domesticated cows is about 2 billion. Each cow produces about 1.5 tons of CO2 just by breathing. Methane emissions from cows humans and agricuture are completely ignored here

Yearly CO2 emissions through of domesticated cows : 3 Gigatons/year

3. Agriculture, Deforestation through burning and land clearance. As ever increasing numbers of people demand food  more from the available arable land so the pressures on natural envirnments and especialy forests increase. Forests are a key sink of the carbon cycles.

Figures resulting from deforestation from FAO : 2-4 Gigatons CO2/year

4. Finally the emissions of CO2 from Burning of Fossil fuels by developed and developing nations - Industrialisation. The agreements hoped to be reached  in  Copenhagen focus entirely on man-made (western industrial) induced emissions of CO2 high energy production. The current global figures for all CO2 emissions caused by the burning of fossil fuels  in 2008 is:

Yearly emissions fossil fuels: 5 Gtons CO2/year.

There are important measures that can be agreed in Copenhagen to reduce emissions of CO2 by industrialised countries. Yet these can only delay catastrophy while population levels increase beyond sustainable levels.

I recently heard a comment on BBC Radio 4 which compared the powerful Climate Change movement  to an inverted pyramid, because the arguments are based on just a few basic scientific measurements. The recent controversy regarding the leaked emails between the two main groups that provide global temperature data to the IPCC highlights how sensitive these core results really are. The two main people involved are Prof. Phil Jones who leads  the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and Michael Mann who is Professor at Penn State University and published the hockey stick data based on merging tree ring derived temperatures over thousands of years to CRU’s gobal data. This featured strongly in the IPCC 2001 reports and Al Gore’s film. The other famous Hockey stick shows a rise in CO2 levels since the industrial revolution following apparently steady levels over thousands of years derived from Ice cores. Taken together these two hockey stick graphs purport to show that there is overwhelming evidence that human emissions of CO2 are driving up global temperatures.

The scientific evidence for human induced climate changed is based on 3 main pillars:

1. Global temperatures are rising since the industrial revolution and particulary in recent decades. It is assumed this rise is due to increases in man made greenhouse gases particularly CO2

2. CO2 measurements at Maona Loa and elsewhere clearly show that CO2 concetrations are increasing caused by fossil fuel emmissions. CO2 is the most important anthropgenic greenhouse gas and drives the climate.

3. Global Circulation models predict a rise in temperaturs of between 1-6 degrees by the end of this century. These models have many unknown parameters. The predictions depend on these  parameters being  fined tuned to agree with the above temperature trends.

So lets look at these one by one.

1. Is it really beyond doubt that global temperatures have risen in recent decades? Mann’s graph would appear to make this clear. However his analysis is  based just on only one long term source for historic temperatures namely tree ring data. It ignores other historical measurements or derived data including estimates of falls during  the little Ice Age, rises during the the Warm Roman period. The flat tree ring data  are merged with the CRU/Hadley with the  (now challenged) global tempretature data for the last 20 years.

The hockey stick relies on the tree data to give the impression of a long flat and stable climate. Many reputable scientists think however that the climate was not that stable over the last thousand years. In particular the little Ice Age and the medieval warm periods with reports of Romans growing wine in York etc. Michael Manns hockey stick graph succeeds in eliminating both these periods. Did they really exist or  have they been deliberately suppressed in order to have a bigger political impact ? Tempretaure measurements using isotope concentrations in Ice cores in Greenland show detail of temperatures back to the last Ice age and support the historic evidence of medieval warm period and the little Ice Age.

The second graph above shows satellite global average temperatures of the earth’s near surface based on thermal microwave emission of oxygen. Note that the excessive rise recently is not apparent, but fine details like  the cooling during Mount Pinatoubo erruptions show up nicely.  This graph does not support the accentuated  hockey stick effect.

2. CO2 emissions. Data from Maona Loa and elsewhere show that CO2 concentrations have been rising since the 1950s. They are currently around 380 ppm having risen steadily from 316 ppm in 1959.  This is actually still a tiny number as it represents just 38 molecules of CO2 in every 100,000 molecules of air. On average there are 100 times more H2O molecules in air than CO2. Since both molecules vibrate to absorb infrared in a similar way you can see that it is actually water vapour which dominates the greenhouse affect on earth.  This is obvious to anyone who has spent the night in the desert where the air is so dry that heat loss can cool the air to freezing point over night. CO2 does not do much good for you in the desert in keeping you warm.

CO2 dissolves in water. The oceans contain large amounts of dissolved CO2 and more CO2 dissolves the colder it gets. Likewise the Oceans emit CO2 as they warm up thus increasing the concentration in the air. The effect is known to all of us. If you take a fizzy drink and leave it in the sunshine then it loses its fix fast, whereas put it in the fridge and it remains fizzy overnight as the water losses CO2 much slower.Al Gore seems not to know this fact because in his film he made the exagerated claim that a correlation of CO2 levels with previous Ice Ages proved that CO2 concentrations drive the Earth’s temperature. It is of course exactly the opposite way round. Ice ages are caused by astronomical effects related to slow changes in the Earth’s orbit and direction of spin. As the Ocean cools so it dissolves more CO2 out of the atmosphere and levels fall. In fact there is a clear time delay between the two signals of 1-2  thousand years.

Solubility of CO₂ at a partial pressure for CO₂ of 1 bar abs.

A 5 degree rise in ocean temperatures would seem to imply about a 15% decrease in CO2 concentration in the Ocean, causing a significant increase in the atmosphere.

Effect or Cause ?

Early CO2 measurement data

It turns out that there were also regular CO2 measurements made before 1960 which have been dismissed as inaccurate and ignored (see above). So what are we to make of all this? Maybe the old CO2 measurement data were biased by local polution at the time. Maybe the temperature data are themselves  biased by their proximity to urbanisation. My strong feeling is  that the case for CO2 to be a primary driving force for climate change has not yet been made. Water Vapour and clouds are between one and two orders of magnitude more important. Several estimates place water vapour as being 95% of the greenhouse effect on Earth with CO2 providing about 3%. Human additions to CO2 concentrations on this scale are < 1%  of greenhouse gas effects. This does not mean to say that it is not important to curb emissions,  but the doomsday scaremongering on climate which sometimes seems more politically motivated than justified is miss directed. The best way to curb CO2 emissions is anyway to expand dramatically Nuclear Power rather than industrialise yet more of the countryside for very little return.

3. Climate Models. These predict future climate based on complex theoretical interpretaion of how earth systems work. they attempt to model, solar heating, radiation balance, atmosphere/Ocean interactions, Ice dynamincs, Cloud dynamics, Carbon cycle, solar variation, albedo changes, phytoplancton feedback etc. The variables are endless with many unknowns. Only by fitting to past climates is it hoped that some of these parameters be pinned down to give reliable future predictions of climate. Currently models that correctly follow the observed past temperature profiles of recent years need to include CO2 effects to some degree. This would appear to support that CO2 has begun to effect temperatures. However if there are natural variations at play which are causing warming such as a continuing recovery from the little ice age, these effects are of course not included in the models.

The Earth’s climate is such a complex system that I doubt whether anyone can be 100% certain one way or the other. Human damage to the Earth’s environment is self evident and we don’t need the one issue of climate change to dominate all others for political reasons. One thing is for certain is that the next 10 years of  data will decide  one way or the other. I think a far greater threat to the Earth and to the natural environment is human over-population with the consequent destruction of the natural environment. James Lovelock estimates that the  world population which the Earth can sustain long term is about 1 billion people. On the same timescale as the IPCC predictions of a 1-6 degree rise in global temperatures the world population will rise to 9 billion.  So I would like to see a IPPC - Intergovernmental Panel on Population Control, although I doubt whether this will ever happen.

The current emissions of CO2 from burning fossil fuels is about 5 Giga tons per year.  A back of the envelope calculation estimates that  9 billion people will emit 3 Giga Tons of CO2 a year just by breathing ! Is it not time for a reality check ?

references:

1. http://www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures/

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_controversy

Last week we were in Israel. I was invited to give a talk at a NATO workshop on Web Intelligence. It was a great trip not only because there were some interesting people at the workshop but also because it was held at Ein Bokek on the Dead Sea. Swimming in the Dead Sea is quite an experience because your body becomes just like a air-filled flotation device. You are quite unstable so as you lie backwards you can easily flip  over onto your front. You really don’t want to get the water in your eyes as it stings like hell. The water is saturated salt and crystals of salt condense out at various places. The Dead Sea is also the lowest point on Earth at -500 meters below sea level. The river Jordan flows into the Dead Sea and there is basically nowhere else for the water to go as it can’t flow into the sea! It evaporates in the intense heat until it reaches salt saturation and then the evaporation slows to a small level. Thousands of years ago the sea was much higher and you can see this from the surrounding mountains. Probably the waters have been partly diverted by man for irrigation and partly the climate has become drier. There are even plans to open a channel from the Red Sea to ensure levels. Of course the sea would just run downhill!

Afterwards we spent two nights in Jerusalem at the Gloria Hotel inside Jaffa Gate. The hotel is run by Greeks associated with the Greek Orthodox church and I would really recommend the place as it has lots of character, is reasonably priced and in a perfect position. Jerusalem is a unique place steeped in religion and ritual. Ultra orthodox Jews, Armenian priests and Muslims seem to mingle yet clearly live separated lives. On Friday afternoon we walked to the Western Wall which is the last remaining stonework of the second temple. The Temple mount is a level flat surface built around the rock where Abraham is said to have offered his son for sacrifice 3500 years ago. The rock is now inside the Temple Mount Mosque originally built in the Umayed period 700 AD. Over 3000 years of history are clearly visible with Roman sites mentioned in the bible like Bethseda clustered around the small walled city.

We spent the last night in Tel Aviv, altogether a more modern dynamic young place. The beach goes on forever with rich deep sand. The walk to Jaffa is long and straight. We went for a swim in the warm sunshine with an air temperature of 25 degrees in late November.

Last weekend was the 6th Olive Festival at Colletta. It is one of the best social events we have and this year was no exception. We spent Friday picking olives in the traditional way. This involves laying down nets under the trees and thrashing them with bamboo cane sticks and if done properly the majority of the olives end up in the net rather than falling in the road or down the hill. Despite various fears of over-zealous pruning, the olives this year were more abundant than ever. I think we reached a record harvest of some 310 kilos in just one and a half days. Perfect sunny weather again and much laughter. We had to stop picking on Saturday morning to make our way down to the frantoio (olive press) in Nasino for lunch - Garello’s.

First we sat down to a home-cooked meal with great food and the local wine. The atmosphere is great and then after lunch all our  the olives are ground between two old marble mill stones, then spun in centrifuges in some ancient ritual involving Italian engineering at its best -  before being  bottled. It is a magic day for everyone young and old.

However all things must come to pass and this year the shadow hanging over the day was the assemblea of the condominium on Sunday. This turned out to be  a nightmare for all present. Colletta  had fairly much  settled down in the previous year to a more or less stable situation in Colletta where things worked, things were fixed if needed and visitors and Collettiani alike were happy. However stable quiet and happy existance seems to be impossible for some people. After 8 hours of unnecessary nonsense I thought we had reached some sort of compromise from all the machinations but I am now having my doubts. There are two proverbs applicable to all this :

“When it ain’t broke don’t fix it”

“The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t”

I have just finished reading the book “Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air” by David MacKay who is a professor of physics at Cambridge University. It is a breath of fresh air which cuts through all the politics to analyse our real options for a future without fossil fuels. The news for Britain and most of Europe is not good unless we expand Nuclear Power. The problem is that the energy density of renewable energy is way too small. The most promising renewable for Britain is wind energy, although it is still currently 3 times more expensive than nuclear. The key problem is that the area of land needed to make a big impact is vast. If one covered 10% of the surface of Britain (all the windy parts) in wind farms one could power about 20 light bulbs per person. This is a huge area of land, would have a massive impact on the countryside and represents  roughly twice the total number of wind turbines in existence today (US + Europe combined). However even then it  only produces about half the energy currently  consumed by car transport per person. A future transport system without fossil fuels would most likely have to be electrically generated by these same wind turbines or something else !

Solar energy for Britain will not make a large contribution and is best used for water heating. However it can produce large power if allowed to cover vast areas  in deserts using optical concentrators (mirrors and lenses) plus photovoltaic farms. This means that the US could conceivably replace most of its fossil fuel requirements with a solar energy farm covering most of Utah. Europe would have to import energy from Libya or Tunisa where huge solar energy farms the size of Yorkshire  would need to be placed in the Sahara desert. Again though we would be dependent for energy security on foreign supplies.

Wave power is too ineffective compared to wind. Tidal power however is fairly economic for a smallish contribution at specific sites like the Severn estuary and tidal pools like the Wash, and has the advantage that it is reliable (unlike wind speed). Biofuels and Biomass burning is just a non-starter. Britain could only sustain < 1 million stone age men burning wood and living on the borderline from the available land. Applying science to exploit non-nuclear  renewable energy based in Britain could perhaps sustain  a population of 10 million with a moderate standard of living. The current population is 60 million.

The only possible way for Britain (and northern Europe) to be sustainable in the medium term without fossil fuels is a 10 fold expansion in Nuclear (Fission) energy. Renewables can provide a significant contribution but a core energy supply which is 100% guaranteed is essential. Eventually nuclear fusion might  provide a long term stable energy “nirvana” with  endless supply -  but this is still a distant dream and despite ITER is still not a certainty. I believe that it is achievable within  50 years given the willpower and the commitment.

It is very attractive and fashionable  to take an emotional  political/ideological/religious stance on energy and climate change but the numbers have to add up, and quite frankly they don’t without nuclear.  To pretend that  a future built just on green renewable energy  can sustain a world population of 9 billion  is simply daft.