Nearly 25-years has passed and now it's certain we will 'fry' the planet

“In short, the problems with which the Earth’s stressed atmosphere confronts us are not only technological, but economic and political.

The challenge is to begin the process that will solve these together.

But this is true not only of the problems we have described. It is also most certainly true of the latest and most profoundly disturbing symptom of the impact of humanity’s atmospheric brinksmanship – the perturbation to the atmosphere’s greenhouse properties, and the threat of global warming”.

by Robert McLean

 

So said Jim Falk and Andrew Brownlow in the “Greenhouse Challenge – what’s to be done?” – published in 1989.

Jim Falk serendipitously arrived in my life after listening to a University of Melbourne lecture at which Professor Peter Harper, of the University of Bath, discussed the importance of the accurate calculation of carbon dioxide emissions.

The route to meeting Prof Falk was not as simple as saying “hello” as he was first introduced to me by a friend, Dr Hans Baer, also from the University of Melbourne, whom I had introduced myself to after hearing him ask the most penetrating and relevant question at an earlier lecture at which the proposed very fast train was discussed.

Dr Baer, an anthropologist at the Melbourne university, spoke at a Tatura (northern Victoria) environmental film festival stressing the importance of community in addressing the massive unfolding societal changes we face because of oil scarcity and climate change.

Prof Jim Falk - "We are going to
fry the planet".

Both Dr Baer and Prof Falk were heading for lunch after listening to Prof Falk and they invited me along.

Hearing Prof Falk had co-authored a book about the greenhouse challenge in 1989 it was too good a chance not to ask about “then” and “now”.

Modern Americans first heard of climate change a year before Falk and Brownlow published their book when NASA scientist Jim Hansen warned a U.S. congressional committee of the importance of both reducing and controlling greenhouse gas emissions.

The implications of reducing and controlling those emissions triggered immediately the fossil fuel industries’ propaganda machine and fear and doubt about what Prof Hansen had said was suddenly everywhere.

Jim Falk and Andrew Brownlow wrote their book in the shadow of what had become a manufactured controversy and aware that there were in fact some doubt about the accuracy of the computer modelling that clearly demonstrated that the world was bound for serious trouble.

Questioned about “now”, nearly 22 years later, Jim said there was no longer any doubt and in answer to the question, “Where are we headed?”, he said “We are going to fry the world”.

Jim, who retired in 2010, remains an Honorary Professorial Fellow in the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, at The University of Melbourne.

He move to Australia from England when young, attended Scotch College from 1952 to 1964, graduated with first class honours in physics at Monash University in 1968, and received his PhD from Monash in theoretical quantum physics in 1974.

He worked at the University of Wollongong in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science/Science and Technology Studies at the time he and Andrew Brownlow wrote and published “The Greenhouse Challenge”.

An overhead slide from Prof Harper's
Melbourne presentation that makes clear
our available tiny carbon budget.

Meanwhile, Prof Peter Harper, who played a key role in the development of the ZeroCarbonBritain2030, a concept that attempts to show that in 2030 the UK could be a fully functioning modern economy with net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, describes himself as an environmental observer, analyst and commentator.

He says that as an independent writer, lecturer and consultant, he speaks for the future.

“It (the future) has few advocates in the present, or at least few who really understand the implications. I try to imagine the world my great-great-great grand-daughter in the 22nd century would prefer,” he said.

“What is the best way to serve her preference?”

Prof Harper has considered world carbon dioxide emissions and is convinced the world’s nations would be better placed if they measured their success on that scale and abandoned the perverse addiction we have to measuring a nation’s worth with the Gross National Product (GNP).

He sees the secure future of the world in measuring per capita GHG emissions and within that our success should be based on how close we are to reaching what is a clearly definably number.

That number from now through to 2050 for a population of about eight billion should be just over three tonnes per person every year, and reducing.

Australia’s per capita number is about 26 tonnes and only huge and dramatic structural changes - behavioural, social, and political - would take Australia anywhere near what is needed if the world is to avoid catastrophic climate change.