Cilmate Changes ...Changes Things

The talk now is that of course, capital has been too conservative in its reaction to climate change.

I would add that as a former scientist myself, many of the climate researchers have been conservative in their claims when publishing to the scrutiny of peer review. However the hysteria built up by a minority did dammage the credibility of the whole conjecture that man is influencing climate radically. The upside for the researchers was more public attention and more funding. However, the actual conclusions drawn do not extrapolate to how frightening climate change could be. This is because scientists like capital are a little conservative and used to slow progress with sudden spurts from atypical genius's and outright flambouyant chancers like watson and crick.

What the extapolations talk about now is scenario building. We look at different projections and models for in particular how sea currents, dessertification and air masses will interact. So for example, the failure of the north atlantic artic- accelerator : as the ice receeds the convective-conveyor will cease to pull the gulf stream north of the grand banks and the whole of northern Europe will be flung into cold winters which are more akin to those for the 50' and higher latitudes.

One thing is clear: private industry will not pick up the bill for infrastructural renewal and will only become green if it pays and is legislative. It is the public purse which will have to carry the burdon and basically that means more tax revenue than current %/GDP while the adjustments to sea fronts, energy provision, water and sewerage and so on are implemented.

Having said that private industry will not pick up anything outside their own factory gates, they will have to adapt and new ventures- particularily in Low Cost Production Countries - will have to have wider risk predictions based on climate scenarios. Not least in this is civil unrest driven by connectivity, dissatisfaction and rising food prices.

One large area of the western economy as a whole which must be examined is agriculture. The north american policies and the EU CAP run the risk of picking up a huge bill from farmers who expect the state to tell them how to adapt and then pay for it. Climate change represents both a threat to agriculture but also a huge opportunity to liberalise the major systems to press farmers respond entrepreneurially to threats and positive fortuities.

Accelerated climate change, vis a vis let us not forget, emissions based global warming, is the single biggest challenge mankind has until the globe enters the next ice age, when nature will show her teeth in the issue of climate.