Comments from Tim Flannery

This week I attended Energy21 in Australia. Tim Flannery was the key note address speaker (Australian of the year) with some interesting things to say. It went something like this:
If you took the world’s air, and compressed it to a liquid its volume would make up 1/500th of that of the oceans. Given therefore the container size (a great deal less that the oceans) the air is much more sensitive to pollutants (by volume) that the sea.

Over the last 120 years we have introduced a number of technologies that threaten the balance ecology of this planet directly. These impacts have all been to the atmospheric ecosystem. The first of these technologies was the electrical production based on coal fired (and now oil and gas fired) power stations. The second was the introduction of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in 1928 and the third was the internal combustion engine (petrol and diesel based) that drives a lot of our ground based transportation today.

We faced two crisis now facing our third crisis as a result of the rapid uptake of these technologies.

Let’s talk about these crisis and our responses:

The first crisis was acid rain. The sulphur dioxide from both the production of electricity from coal fired power stations was seen to cause acid rain; which was destroying the forests. This was observed after the fact (many years of SO2 build up) but was acted upon quickly with scrubbers installed at power stations. The resulting management of the problem has had an immediate impact.

Fortunately for us SO2 is short ivied in the atmosphere, it is quickly dropped out by combining with water causing H2SO4 (Sulphuric Acid) hence the term acid rain1.
See: http://www.epa.gov/acidrain/what/index.html

CFC’s and GHG’c unfortunately are longer term problems. Once created their life is in the order of hundreds of years.

Turning then to CFC’s; the second problem. We realized in the 1970’s that a hole was growing over the south pole. But it took us until the late 80’s to understand the link between CFC’s and Ozone depletion. To put this in proportion, in Australia Tim Flannery tell us that you have about 20 minutes when you go outside (without protection) before you become sunburned. This is at today’s protection rate where the Ozone layer blocks 90% of the sun’s harmful UV rays. If we didn’t act to stop the hole in the Ozone layer and deplete it completely (which was possible) then we would walk outside and be burnt in 20 seconds. This level of UV would destroy life (plant & animal) on this planet as we know it, so again something had to be done quickly. The Montreal Protocol banded the production of CFC’s and the Ozone hole has stabilized. It will take many years for the Ozone levels to rebuild, but the catastrophic possibility of Ozone depletion was avoided.

Now the third impact of our electrical production and transport technologies is creation of Green House Gases (GHG’s). We spill an increasing amount into the same container that we breathe from. The impact is Climate Change. Why are we surprised? With acid rain and ozone holes we have seen that we have large impacts on this relatively small container in a short time. As I mentioned above air is 1/500th of the oceans volume; so a little amount of GHG’s has a large influence. Unlike the impact of sewage and other contaminates in our oceans, our influence in the air is much higher.

The issue is this:
- Unlike water pollution – it’s difficult to see the impact because CO2 is invisible.
- Unlike Ozone and acid rain, the impact will have an avalanche point (it will have small impacts then cascade in impact)
- Temperature change (climate change) is very small (only 0.6oC average at the moment)
BUT
It’s there, and 2oC change will be catastrophic. We have already seen the impact of drought and storms due to 0.6oC increase throughout the world. When the polar ice starts melting, instead of the ice reflecting solar radiation, the blue sea will absorb it, so this provides a positive feedback loop that will reveal itself as an “avalanche” of change.

There is no doubt we can act and be successful in combating air pollution like acid rain and CFC’s – but we must start now otherwise we will enter the avalanche period and then there is no turning back. The impact of CFC’s and sulphurdioxide pollutant also to some degree acts as coolants. The risk is when we cut that pollution; the GHG’s again accelerate the impact of the current levels of GHG’s in the atmosphere. And, unlike Sulphur, the GHG’s will take hundreds of years to reduce their levels. So it is important we react and react strongly. For the impact is social and economic. More storms are obvious, drought and lower agricultural production is obvious.

Tim was very enlightening as a speaker, and in addressing the energy conference (Energy21 - Sydney) he made provocative and pointed requests to the power industry to take positive action and not wait for regulation to push them in a direction. He mentioned the culpability of the senior management teams in those organizations who understand the impact but use economics as a reason for inaction. The Stern report lays out well the fact that the mid to longer term economic impacts of inaction. This impact on all of us in society is actually the reason to do something and doing it now.


1Since coal and petroleum often contain sulfur compounds, their combustion generates sulphur dioxide. Further oxidation of SO2, usually in the presence of a catalyst such as NO2, forms H2SO4, and thus acid rain.