Gwynne Dyer, Climate Wars, November 21, 2007

This past week we had the pleasure of hearing Gwynne Dyer's lecture Climate Wars at the University of Alberta. I first heard of Dr. Dyer back in the 1980's when I saw a few episodes of War, based on his book of the same name. I hadn't followed what he was doing for some time, but in the past couple of years I read the second edition of War and a few of his more recent books, and discovered gywnnedyer.net.

Dyer's newspaper articles aren't published anymore in most large Canadian daily newspapers. The CanWest Global papers, for example, have an editorial policy (handed down from Izzy Asper) that conflicts with his opinions on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But whether you agree with him or not, his writing is direct and entertaining. We were looking forward to this talk.

It didn't disappoint. We were both a bit surprised by Dyer's forcefulness. My spouse had seen him speak once many years ago, and we saw television interviews with him during the invasion of Iraq, and expected him to be subdued, but direct and perhaps a little sarcastic at times. This talk had more energy: he almost yelled at one point!

The lecture is a promotion for a new book due out next year. As the name suggests, it's about the potential impacts of climate change, but from a military and strategic perspective. Dyer became interested in the subject after a bar-room conversation with a friend who contracts for the British Ministry of Defense. They were discussing the British government's plans to spend 30 billion pounds to renew Britain's nuclear arsenal, and the friend hinted that the Ministry anticipated an increased possibility of international conflict, associated with climate change, mid-century. Assuming that there will be a at least a couple of degrees (Celcius) warming in the next 35 or 40 years, and accompanying changes in the distribution of rainfall, and assuming that several studies predicting an adverse effect on the world's total food production are correct, there will be famines in industrialized countries with nuclear weapons. If this happens, there is the potential for large-scale wars, and northern countries that are the least affected might have to fend off less lucky countries.. Even if the conflicts don't destroy our civilization, hundreds of millions of people could starve or die in the fighting.

I didn't get a chance to ask him if he found out why the Ministry of Defense believes nukes will come in handy fighting off desperate countries whose people are starving anyway. Nuclear winter doesn't sound much better than universal food shortages.

After describing the potential problem, Dyer proposes the best possible outcome. Provided cutting greenhouse gas emissions is sufficient to avoid most of the projected climate changes, we ought to be able to achieve the necessary cuts in 35 years. We've already got the necessary technologies and it won't bankrupt the world. But it won't happen unless developed countries accept some sacrifices that won't be easy to sell at election time. It's unfair and unrealistic to expect developing countries to delay their economic development when today's rich countries didn't have to. We'll need to take deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions than developing countries for a long time, and we'll probably need to subsidize nuclear plants and other relatively clean sources of electricity in those countries. And we'll have to convince ourselves to do this for the good of civilization, even if it means making our own lives a little harder.

Dyer tries to be realistic though. In his closing remarks he admits we're probably not going to achieve the necessary greenhouse gas cuts, political inertia being what it is. But seeing as a staunch climate change skeptic like John Howard was about to lose an election, at least partly because of public opinion changes regarding climate change, he's a little optimistic. If we do fall short, we'll probably have to resort to some nasty tricks to make up the difference. For example, polluting the stratosphere with sulphur dioxide to give the planet a "yellow veil," a sort of sunscreen, that could delay some of the warming. In Canada, we may find ourselves in the perverse situation of paying Alberta, the richest province in the country, to cut greenhouse gas emissions associated with tar sands oil extraction, or to delay some of the extraction altogether. Sometimes, bribery is the only practical way.

Others (for example, here) give a much more detailed summary. If you get a chance to hear Dyer speak, I definitely recommend him. Whether you think climate change is a threat or not, Dyer's position doesn't seem colored by any particular political ideology or special interest perspective, but grounded in history and current scientific consensus.

The Turntable Factory Lives

Back in July I posted about the demise of the Turntable Factory
after the death of Joel Thorner. I'm happy to note that they're still in business, and apologize for jumping to conclusions.

I fought the sign and the sign won

Back in May I started riding my bike to work again. About halfway to work one morning in early June, I collided with a street sign.

Yep, it's pretty much as stupid as it sounds. The sign wasn't in the road, but on the edge of a sidewalk not far from an intersection I have to cross. The crosswalk in the intersection is part of the local bike trail system; the stretch of sidewalk isn't, but I ride along it briefly before hopping onto the road.

I crossed the street and shifted into a higher gear just before reaching the curb. The shift was a bit rough and I looked down to see if the chain was on the right ring. While looking down I drifted to the right without realizing it, and when I looked up again I had just enough time to see that I was going to hit the sign, and to make sure I didn't hit it with my head.

I hit the signpost with my right shoulder and, I soon discovered, my right index finger, and fell over to the left. Getting up my shoulder and collarbone area hurt quite a bit, so I felt it for signs of a broken bone. I was relieved to find everything still intact, but after a few seconds I saw that my finger was bleeding rapidly, dripping all over my glove, the bike, and the sidewalk. After sitting on the sidewalk for a minute, I rummaged through my bike bag and found some paper towels to wrap around my finger. Still a bit dazed, I thought "Hey, I gotta get to work!" and headed on, despite being closer to home.

I cleaned up at work and saw the extent of the damage. My finger was slashed open between the tip and the first joint. I didn't see the impact, but since I had the right brake lever depressed, I think my finger got caught between the signpost and the half-inch of exposed inner brake cable. The impact with the post pressed my finger into the brake cable, causing the slash.

The closest walk-in clinic was about 10 blocks from work, and I didn't feel up to the walk. I tried to work for a bit, but had a lot of trouble typing and mousing and my finger wouldn't close, so I called my gracious spouse to come collect me and the bike. If I'd just turned around and gone home right after the accident, I could have walked into the clinic across the street from our condo. It took five or six stitches to patch the finger up (photo courtesy of Ms. Kim Lew). I also got a tetanus shot and some antibiotics to enjoy. Luckily, my shoulder was just bruised and not dislocated.

The accident prevented me from riding for about five or six weeks. It also showed that there is a good chance -- better than I had realized -- that I'll be killed one day because of my own stupidity. Stupidity being unavoidable, it's time to review my life insurance coverage.

Joel Thorner

Last summer we got my old stereo system out of storage and hooked it up with a set of new speakers. The draw was my Dual 606 turntable; we were looking forward to playing some old records again, ones I'd been carrying around for 20 years and hadn't heard in most of that time.

It was great, listening to old vinyl and reliving the naive optimism of high school. About halfway through side four of Rush's All the World's a Stage (hey, I said naive optimism, didn't I?), the old 606 just quit. The drive motor stopped working, the strobe light went off, everything was dead. Shit.

The next day was Sunday and I Googled around for a while looking for advice about what might be wrong and whether it was worth fixing. I found a bunch of positive comments about a place called The Turntable Factory, run by a guy named Joel Thorner. I surfed over to the site and had a look. It wasn't slick or polished, one of those home-made sites where all the text is centered, the fonts are huge, and the background images and colours make your head hurt. But there was a lot of information there, and it felt like a pretty dedicated person was behind it all.

I couldn't find an exact description of my problem anywhere, so I decided to send a question to the email address advertised on the site. Within an hour, I got a response from Joel Thorner himself. In our brief exchange of emails that evening he gave me some detailed advice on the likely causes. And he declined to take any payment for the advice.

I've meant to give fixing the 606 a try, but because tearing the turntable apart is a minor project in itself, and I don't have a lot of experience with a soldering iron, I've procrastinated.

But I visited the Turntable Factory site occasionally. Along with the advice on turntable repairs, the site gave details about some serious health problems that Joel Thorner had. He suffered from emphysema, and depending on his condition, he would have to throttle back repair work. I checked back every once in a while to see how he was doing.

Sadly, Joel Thorner died last Sunday, July 1st, and the Turntable Factory is closing down. Obviously, I didn't know the man, but in my one interaction with him he seemed to be a genuinely nice guy who loved what he did and had a lot of integrity. RIP.

Narcissism

I've been reluctant to start a blog, because I thought it might seem too self-adoring.

Not that I think people with blogs are all narcissists. I've read lots of blogs that are funny or informative, and I wouldn't call their authors narcissists. I've just been afraid that my own thoughts might not be funny or informative enough to justify publishing them, and that would seem narcissistic.

Recently I've been reading the blogs of some friends I saw again after several years, and realized that it was a great way to keep up with the events in their lives. And I also realized that some old friends might be interested in what's going with me, so here goes.