Orange Hues

2008-09-10T13:57:00.004+05:30

The best explanation I could find on what the Large Hadron Collider was designed for...

A recipe. Build two pipes, each about 6 centimetres wide and 27 kilometres long. Bend them both into a circle and cool to 1.9 kelvin, about 300 °C below room temperature. Fill with protons - about a hundred billion of them to start with - all travelling as close to the speed of light as possible. Add a magnetic field a hundred thousand times more powerful than the Earth's to steer the particles through the pipes. And make sure the protons in each pipe move in opposite directions.

Now here's the exciting bit. Align the two pipes so that the particles collide. About twenty protons should smash into each other, creating showers of other particles. Take a good look at each one. If you spot a particle you don't recognise, shout.

Finally, repeat forty million times. Each second.

- New Scientist 1994 article

Wired too has an insightful take on the Best and Worst Case Scenarios for the world's costliest scientific experiment. See also the funny FAQ in the sidebar.

UPDATE: Here's an even better explanation in a CERN rap video.

HT Changes Tack, Gets Bold On Global Warming

2008-07-22T11:03:00.008+05:30

A day after I criticised Hindustan Times' glaring omission of Al Gore's speech on climate change, the paper carries a bold feature on global warming as if trying to compensate. But is it really informed by climate science?

Hindustan Times ran this extraordinarily bold full page feature in today's paper

I made the entry on HT's censorship of Gore's speech on Sunday evening. It was published at four places online and was sent to a bunch of prominent personalities -- Dr. R. K Pachauri, Sunita Narain, Bittu Sehgal, Malini Mehra, Barkha Dutt -- as well as HT editor Vir Sanghvi and three HT correspondents.

Today (Tuesday), the paper carried a bold story on global warming.

It's hard to say that this was in response to my write up but it does seem likely.

For one, the full-page feature is very loud and bold (see larger version of the above image) with a massive headline and a huge graphic disproportionate to the small content the story carried.
Second, such an aggressively promoted feature on global warming has not come out in HT since last year when the IPCC report came out and Indian print media woke up to this issue.
Most important indication is that this is relatively a much smaller story. It was released by the BBC two days ago and Google News has hardly 20-30 mentions of it, none of which are from outside UK. Compare that with 1000+ mentions of the Gore story from all across the world that HT did not publish.

It's as if they were trying to compensate!

A Hundred Months to Act? Not On Earth!

The original BBC story is available here. It's based on a report by a little known British think-tank called New Economics Foundation. My take is that it will be foolish to presume we have 100 months to act. IPCC itself has said, even if we start making serious reductions by 2015 (about 77 months away) we may still reach 2.4 deg C of temperature rise.

Nasa's top climate scientist James Hansen in his landmark testimony to the US congress last month (which was also not covered by HT) said: "the oft-stated goal to keep global warming less than 2C is a recipe for global disaster, not salvation." So you can imagine 2.4C would be a calamity.

We do not have time. This is why Gore's challenge is so significant. It calls for radical reductions right away. But it needs your support.

"I have seen first hand how important it is to have a base of support out in the country for the truly bold changes that have to be made now. That is why I'm devoting my life to bring about a sea change in public opinion that supports the truly massive changes."

- Al Gore at a blogger convention on July 19, 2008.

Hindustan Times' censorship of Al Gore's challenge continued into its fifth day today.

Notes

This entry was also made on, Whats With The Climate blog, emailed to IYCN & Green-India discussion lists and copied to the following:

Hindustan Times On Gore's Speech: "It Didn't Happen"

2008-07-20T18:24:00.011+05:30

The leading national daily keeps the Indian public in the dark about Gore's historic energy challenge by refusing to make any mention of it.

Despite Al Gore's Rock Star status, certain media organisations seem to have a thing or two against him. In the U.S. they have Fox News and in India it looks like Hindustan Times is keen to take on that role.

When Gore spoke in Washington on Thursday on the challenge to abandon fossil fuels, New York Times reported that the plan goes beyond even the most audacious ones. Bill McKibbon, journalist and climate activist went a step further when he said Gore deserved "the prize you get once you've won the Nobel." Nasa's leading climate scientist James Hansen called it "the turning point that is needed."

So how did Fox News report the challenge? Fox's reporting focused not on Gore's call but his personal emissions. Its reporter stood outside the Gore event and counted the number of minutes Gore's driver left the car on idle with the AC on to keep it cool when Gore and wife Tipper returned (it ran on idle for an earth destroying 20 minutes! The horror!).

Editors at Hindustan Times went a step further by pretending that Gore never spoke.

What Does HT Have Against Informed Public Opinion On Climate Change in India?

This isn't the first time Hindustan Times has negatively influenced the Indian public on climate change front. I consider deliberate omission of an important global event from its reporting as a negative influence. There are many many examples of omission on this front in the past. But there are also examples of deliberate negative influence. In early April, HT ran two ridiculous stories challenging man made global warming and discrediting the IPCC.

I exposed those stories on my blog and am currently suing the paper in the Press Council of India for publishing them. Its editor and correspondent have been served notices and I can't wait for the proceedings to begin. Have collected a wealth of evidence to share.

But let's give them some benefit of doubt and see if this omission was really intentional or caused by some other reason. Maybe it was too late for Friday's paper. Maybe they didn't have enough space. Maybe it wasn't relevant for Indian readers. Let's look at each of these reasoning.

"It was too late for Friday's paper"

Gore's speech began at 9.30 pm Indian time on Thursday and ended just before 10.00 pm. Okay that could have been a little close to their cut off time. But earlier in the day, around 5.30 pm Associated Press (AP) had released an interview with Gore previewing the speech. So there was plenty of time for the paper to run a story on Friday.

I was lucky enough to get hands on the AP story just as it was out and wrote about it around 6.00 pm. I found my hands on the actual transcript of the speech around 10, before Gore had finished delivering it in Washington. But by 9.00 pm itself, there were lots of media reports on Google News referencing the AP release. In fact, rival Times of India even published the AP story on Friday and mentioned it on the front page header too. So why did the Hindustan Times ignore it altogether?

Even if one accepts it was too late for Friday's paper, there can't be a reasonable explanation of its omission on Saturday as well, apart from it being intentional. TOI ran an editorial on it on Saturday. A full day after the speech was out when papers around the world were writing about it (1000+ mentions on Google News by now), India's leading newspaper pretends it didn't happen.

"They didn't have enough space"

A story as important as this deserves to create its own space pushing aside other less important ones. But perhaps there were other reports even more important that needed to be mentioned. Alright, lets see what else HT ran in the World section that day.

I can't see any of these stories being more important than Gore's challenge which, if pursued, could fix the US economy, end their national security threat and most importantly lead the world into addressing the climate crisis

"It wasn't relevant for Indian readers"

Looking at above stories, it's clear that wasn't the case. Climate change is a problem that will hit India severely. U.S and India share similar challenges in terms of moving from fossil fuels to clean energy sources.

The same is true for China and other Asian countries as well. So I looked up Chinese and Pakistani news publications to see whether they covered this issue. Turns out they did.

South China Morning Post, China

Xinhua News Agency, China

UDN, Taiwan

source

The News, Pakistan

Clearly, there are some vested interests at work to ensure that public opinion in India remains uninformed or misinformed about climate change. The effort seems to be working. For example, most people in urban India, even those who consider themselves "environment friendly" do not grasp climate change mitigation potential of their actions or how far their actions go to address climate change, in other words.

Today's (Sunday's) paper, for example, contains a full-page feature titled "Green brigade: Even five-year-olds are doing their bit to counter the dangers of global warming." The stories in this feature are commendable and probably inspiring to some but are largely uninformed about what causes global warming and what kind of actions can address this issue.

Only one of the several examples mentioned in the three stories have something directly to do with lowering energy consumption. Others are about minimising waste generation, saving water, tree plantation, ozone depletion, air pollution, unemployment, recycling and cultural education.

All of these are most welcome and do lower CO2 emissions but only indirectly. They certainly cannot be clubbed together under the title of "examples that counter the dangers of global warming." Even if every kid in India did all of that (and they should!), we'd still be nowhere close to addressing global warming as long as we kept burning fossil fuels. Apparently, even seasoned reporters can't differentiate between good environmental practices and those that mitigate climate change.

I'd rather see real climate change news in the papers. Al Gore's energy challenge is likely to be a historic event in the fight against this issue as I wrote previously. I'd like some answers as to why Hindustan Times kept its readers in dark about it.

Notes

This entry was also made on Whats With The Climate blog, emailed to IYCN & Green-India discussion lists and copied to the following:

History in The Making: Gore's Challenge Will Transform The Political Landscape

2008-07-19T22:35:00.008+05:30

Why Gore's "Generational Challenge to Repower America" changes everything.

Rock Star Al Gore (formerly a politician but now rivaling a rock star in his popularity), pulled a great performance in Washington DC this week when he got on to the stage and sang "Gimme 100% baby."

If you don't know what I'm talking about, Al Gore delivered a landmark speech on Thursday in which he proposed an audacious target of generating 100% U.S. electricity from renewable energy resources by 2018.

Having been frustrated for years over lack of vision on this issue from all of our leaders, the news had an electrifying effect.

Prior to Gore, no one has had the courage to propose such a humongous target. Not the biggest environmentalists, not the doomsday scientists, no journalist, no engineer. The closest someone has come is Lester Brown. In his book Plan B 3.0 he argues for a complete switch to renewables (largely wind power) and an eventual 80% reduction in emissions by 2020.

But even Lester Brown acknowledges that his plan is guided not by political feasibility but the necessity of such a target. Gore's plan on the other hand is unapologetically bold. He argues that not only is it feasible, it's also attractive as it will create employment and will pay for itself several times over. Besides, Gore's target betters Brown's by two years. Every other plan or proposal talks about 2030 or 2050 targets. Even an organisation as radical as the Greenpeace wouldn't have thought of proposing anything as audacious as this.

This is leadership.

Exactly What's Needed

And this is exactly the kind of leadership we need. Every few days a new report or evidence appears raising alarm about the extent of changes to our climate while our politicians are busy sleeping or playing the blame game. When we do hear of solutions and plans, they are piecemeal solutions, half measures and plans that are guided by outdated science.

Not A Technological Challenge

Some reports are calling Gore's plan unrealistic or outright crazy arguing that it's impossible. Well, perhaps they should meet executives of Ausra, the Australian company now based in U.S which is building Gigawatt scale solar thermal plants using a new technology that's cheaper than 2020 cost projections of the current one. Or maybe it's T Boone Pickens they should be meeting who's investing a billion dollars to install world's largest wind farm in Texas.

Perhaps they should pay a visit to Greg Watson of Green and Gold Energy who's installing hundreds of MW of concentrator photovoltaic solar farms around the world that produce energy at three times the efficiency of traditional solar panels and at less than 40% of the cost. Or maybe they need to learn about Blue Energy which has orders worth thousands of MW of their tidal energy turbine platform for the oceans that also works as a bridge.

Gore did not create this target out of thin air. As he said in the speech, he met with engineers, scientists, and CEOs and had consultations over "solutions summits". One such expert was Paul Gipe whom Gore met in January this year. When asked about Gore's target, he said, "Ten years is certainly an aggressive target, but many experts [including himself] who consulted with Gore have said that it is achievable."

As someone who has been tracking emerging renewable energy solutions around the world, I came to conclude some time back that this is NOT a technological problem. We have all the technology today to take this issue head on. What we lack is the political courage. And this is what Gore has attempted to infuse in the leadership by setting up what others are calling an impossible target.

Great Timing

Before Gore gave the speech, fellow Democrats were complaining that it was poorly timed. They thought the party would be seen as "caring more about polar bears than Americans who have had to pay record prices for gasoline." Actually, there couldn't have been a better timing for Gore's challenge.

As Gore said in his speech, rising price of fossil fuels have made renewables more attractive than ever before. Those of us who care more about the environment than the economy have been watching rising energy prices with much glee. Each Dollar per barrel of oil price rise translates directly into reduced consumption of oil and reduced consumption of everything else that gets expensive.

At the same time it also makes renewable cost competitive as the gap between their prices narrows down. So this is absolutely the right time to make the transition to clean energy. As price of oil gets higher -- it's projected to be $200/barrel before the end of this year -- things will only get better.

Transformation of Political Landscape

I have not the slightest doubt in my mind that one or both presidential candidates will either announce that they're accepting Gore's challenge or will be forced to announce it.

Here's how I think things will go: Gore will give Obama and McCain time to announce the acceptance. If after a certain period, they don't, he's going to call out to the public to put pressure on them to do so. Either way, they will have to take on Gore's challenge now or when the oil crisis worsens.

Moreover, each candidate will try to out do the other in being first to make the announcements. I'm certain as I write, they are holding their own consultations with energy experts and are closely watching how people react to Gore's call. One thing is clear though, the public is on Gore's side.

According to an online poll that's currently running on San Francisco Chronicle website, close to 70% people believe the goal of carbon-free electricity is achievable with only 15% doubting it (live results on left). The increasing public support for the plan will mount enormous pressure on the candidates to accept the plan even though they very well understand that implementing it will require nothing short of another industrial revolution.

If the next president accepts Gore's challenge -- and if you ask me, that's close to a certainty -- then climate politics will be altered forever. This is going to set the agenda at G8 and it's is going to inspire UNFCCC to take bold decisions. As has always been the case in recent history, the world will follow the United States.

With a progressive U.S. stance, other nations, particularly the developing world will no longer be able to blame the West. So there's little chance the West will permit these countries to continue doubling or quadrupling their emissions every few decades. In other words, Gore's challenge changes everything.

Planned Strategy

It's obvious that Gore had planned this move a long time ago. It seems to be part of the deliberate strategy in which he refused to enter the presidential race earlier this year despite being pressured from all quarters and enjoying huge public support. Gore has played his trump card at a time when he has endorsed Obama and the latter has openly stated that he will consult Gore on the climate challenge. Now it will be extremely difficult for Obama to ignore Gore's call.

Turning Point

The challenge to generate all of U.S. electricity from clean energy sources by 2018 will give a huge boost to environmentalists and others around the world fighting for big reductions. As I wrote above, this will lead to increasing pressure on nations around the world and might well prove to be a turning point in our fight to combat climate change.

If the applause he received during his speech and the number of news headlines on the topic are any indication, Gore's new number appears to be an instant hit. Now it remains to be seen how it does on the charts. I can't seem to get it out of my head.

Words of Caution

A few words of caution lest anyone should complain of the overly optimistic future gazing above. Admittedly, this is only a speech although it's the very first time that we have someone calling for a bold and visionary response on this issue commensurate with the challenge. The speech has not been endorsed yet by either of the presidential nominees.

If the United States alone meets the challenge ten year later, that does not mean climate change would suddenly end. The developing countries need to move to clean energy as well. Besides, there is still warming already in the pipeline that will continue to worsen climate change for some time.

Another point to remember is that tomorrow if oil drops to $100 a barrel or below it might delay, if not threaten, implementation of Gore's plan. History of past oil crises show that as soon as oil gets cheaper people forget about conservation and alternatives.

This entry was also made on IYCN blog What's With The Climate.

Update 21-Jul: Some news reports are saying that Obama has accepted Gore's challenge. While both McCain and Obama have released statements welcoming the challenge, with Obama embracing it more wholeheartedly, it would not be entirely correct to say that either of them have accepted it.

It is not until they really commit to take it on with an explicit change in their previously stated energy policies, that it would be called an acceptance. John McCain's website does not even mention Gore's challenge (at least not under media releases) while Obama's site still states that he's looking at 80% emission reductions by 2050 and to "invest $150 Billion over 10 years in clean energy."

In other words, Obama has committed to investing 15 billion every year for ten years. This is way off Al Gore's plan which calls for investing several times that sum. Gore has said it will cost $1.5-$3 trillion over 30 years or an investment of $50-$100 billion every year.

Reviewing National Action Plan on Climate Change - Index

2008-07-17T13:26:00.003+05:30

A series of writings that review the National Action Plan on Climate Change.

The country's most important policy document that will determine how it deals with climate change is here. The National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) released by Prime Minister Mr. Manmohan Singh a little over two weeks ago is a historic document as it purports to address a challenge that is grappling humanity.

In a series of posts over the next few weeks, I will attempt an in-depth step by step analysis of the NAPCC, covering all its contents: principles and approach, each of the eight missions individually, their implementation, as well as areas that are conspicuously absent from the policy.

In my first entry, I will talk about the history of the plan, its scope & implications and how it was was received in the country and internationally. I will be publishing this over the weekend and will continually update this post with links to subsequent parts.

This entry was also made on the blog of Indian Youth Climate Network.

BBC Interviews Me (sort of)

2008-07-10T23:53:00.005+05:30

Akash Soni from BBC Hindi World News Service, UK called in yesterday to interview me for a ten minute special edition radio programme on climate change.

I wasn't the only one interviewed though. Others featured in the programme include chief executive of Centre for Social Markets, Ms. Malini Mehra and IPCC Chairman R.K. Pachauri.

I think I spoke to them for 20-25 minutes. Out of this, a generous two and a half minute clip made it on air! I can be first heard at around 35 sec into it and then at about 6 min 30 sec. Click the play button below to listen or download the mp3 file.

PS: During the conversation, I also told them about the SunCube solar power device developed by Green and Gold Energy in Australia and their Indian licensee, Square Engineering. They ran a snippet on it right after the climate change programme. Though I don't know where they got the details about output and price.

PPS: According to an independent estimate, around 25 million people in India listen to BBC Hindi Service!

India's Climate Change Action Plan Summary

2008-07-01T13:11:00.009+05:30

The Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has just unveiled the long-awaited National Action Plan on Climate Change. I've split the first 5 sections from the long document that summarise the policy and put it up on my server. You can download it here [10 pages, 2 MB].

The five sections contain: Overview, Principles, Approach, Way Forward: Eight National Missions and Implementation of Missions: Institutional Arrangements.

The complete policy including section #6: Technical Document, which is over 40 page long, is available on PMO website (a large 16 MB PDF with 52 pages).

I haven't studied it yet but my first impression is that although the initiatives listed are welcome, but...

without any firm commitment towards a target of emission reductions,
without setting up any time-frame to achieve those reductions and
without a commitment to phase out new energy generation from fossil fuels and their subsidies...

it is unlikely to make a significant short term or long-term impact into India's fast growing carbon emissions.

A longer, more detailed analysis including an official response from my organisation (CSM) will follow in coming days.

UPDATE 3-Jul: 'Climate Challenge India' coalition formed by CSM just released an interim assessment (PDF) I had the privilege to be one of the contributors to this report.

It's called Revenue Neutral Carbon Tax and It's a Good Thing!

2008-06-26T19:50:00.009+05:30

Not "Tax and Dividend." And certainly not "Cap and Dividend."

This is getting ridiculous. On an popular blog ('It's Getting Hot in Here') someone named Alisha Fowler, who, by her own admission, doesn't understand one bit of economics, is lashing out at James Hansen for supposedly suggesting a "Cap and Dividend" scheme to reign in CO2 emissions.

Only problem is, Hansen made no such proposal.

Hansen did not propose "Cap and Dividend", the term he used was "Tax and Dividend" something entirely different. I suggest Fowler looks up Hansen's testimony again. What Hansen has proposed is actually more commonly known as a revenue neutral carbon tax. This what it should be called. I don't know who re-invented this term but calling it "tax and dividend" is evidently a very bad idea as people confuse it with "cap and dividend".

To understand Carbon Tax visit Carbon Tax Center (CTC), an excellent resource on the topic.

Carbon Tax refers to a stipulated amount (such as a starter tax of $37 / ton) of tax applied to carbon content in fuels. Applied at the top most level of fossil fuel chain, i.e., - at the point they are extracted from earth. At the retail level, the starter tax would translate into about 10 cents/gallon of gasoline.

Revenue neutral because the collected amount is returned to the public. This is how it'll work, according to Carbon Tax Center:

Each individual’s receipt of dividends or tax-shifts would be independent of the taxes he or she pays. That is, no person’s benefits would be tied to his or her energy consumption and carbon tax “bill.” This separation of benefits from payments preserves the incentives created by a carbon tax to reduce use of fossil fuels and emit less CO₂ into the atmosphere.

How would Carbon Tax reduce emissions? The same way high gasoline prices are doing that - by reducing consumption and generating investment into alternatives. That said, it would be foolish to depend upon oil prices because they tend to fluctuate depending on a number of factors. Carbon tax on the other hand will grow by a predictable amount year after year, as CTC proposes. The $37/ton tax would become $74/ton the second year, $111 the third and so on until it reaches $370 by the tenth year.

It is simple economics that a high and constantly increasing price of energy would create incentives for conservation and efficiency. Industries would go all out to reduce their consumption and pursue alternatives. Money would begin pouring in to find cheaper sources of energy. It's a market driven mechanism and not one that relies on the governments or politics.

A carbon tax has nothing to do with a cap and trade. A large number of people have shown that cap and trade doesn't work. But don't confuse it with carbon tax. There is no cap applied anywhere and no emission credits traded with anyone. Cap and trade schemes such as the Clean Development Mechanism, are very complex, highly susceptible to corruption, take years to implement and have failed miserably in the past as a BBC investigation recently exposed.

Carbon tax on the other hand is a transparent way of putting a price on carbon. It has been applied very successfully in Sweden and elsewhere as well. It's no surprise therefore that so many economists and other eminent people support a carbon tax. In his book, Plan B 3.0, renowned environmentalist Lester Brown calls it an exciting new option.

I briefly met Mr. Brown couple of weeks ago when he visited India to launch his book and deliver a talk. I've been a big believer in Carbon Taxation for a long time so it was great to see him endorse it. I asked him about the support that Cap and Trade traditionally gets versus Carbon Tax which is much less understood by the general public. He responded that almost all economists of the world agree beyond doubt that carbon tax can be a very effective solution in reducing emissions.

When I pointed out that Nick Stern isn't a proponent, his response was that Nick was a supporter earlier but more recently he's changed his position perhaps in view of the political opposition that any taxation scheme receives.

Some of the prominent economists that support carbon tax include Paul Volcker, former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve; Lawrence Summers, former president, Harvard University; Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute.

Al Gore is another longtime supporter of carbon taxation and in fact he even tried to introduce a version of it during the Clinton administration.

I think the blogosphere is full of far too many people talking authoritatively on issues related to climate change when in fact they have no clue what they're talking about. This is a classic example. The blog where this was posted - It's getting hot in here - is a popular team blog so it's all the more surprising that Fowler wasn't led to the corner and politely told that she's a little off in her evaluation. A day after the post, it still stands without a correction or an update.

For further evidence, check out comments to Alisha Fowler's post. Commentor after commentor goes on and on about why she's wrong and why "cap and dividend" "as proposed by Hansen" is a great idea! None of them have any idea that what Hansen proposed was quite different from what they're talking about.

More Cluelessness Courtesy The Breakthrough Blog

Fowler has cross posted her entry on The Breakthrough Blog where even more cluelessness prevails. Her colleague, Teryn Norris has another post on similar lines vehemently attacking Hansen titled "Is James Hansen Undermining his Credibility." In which he says: "Dr. Hansen declared he would fight against any agenda other than cap-and-dividend." Really Teryn? Did he say that?

Climate Change Solutions: Delhi Youth Summit Presentation

2008-05-30T13:25:00.014+05:30

I just attended the Delhi Youth Summit on Climate organised by the enterprising folks at Indian Youth Climate Network (IYCN) who put this event together in three weeks!

I made a presentation on Countering the Challenge: Youth and the role of media in social and political transformation. I talked about the challenge from climate change (its severity, scale and the speed of changes needed), causes of this challenge and how we should counter it.

What I hoped to achieve through the presentation is instill a sense of urgency about the problem and show a path towards solutions. I proposed that a widespread and comprehensive media campaign targeted both at the society and the leadership can bring about the required changes in our attitudes and policies so that we can begin to tackle this problem.

The underlying argument is that personal lifestyle changes although important will not bring about the change needed and that it can be meaningfully addressed only through policy changes. I also argue that technology is not holding us back, rather it's lack of social awareness (about severity, scale and speed) and lack of political will. I've tried to show how we can change this with the help of media.

The presentation contains some video clips so it's quite large. There are two ways to download.

Download presentation & videos separately

Presentation

Videos

Also on YouTube.

Get entire presentation

Available here

It's a little crude in its present state (I put it together the night before presenting it). But the message is important and I hope it gets through. I will continue to work on it to refine and make it more compelling. Will update this post as and when I do.

You are free to use this in any way you wish (as long as you don't call it your own!). If you use the material without changing the intended message, please attribute the source and provide links (you'll find them on the last page). If you want any help in presenting it, feel free to email

Our Inefficient Cars & The Poulsen Hybrid Solution

2008-05-05T22:24:00.022+05:30

You may be surprised to learn how inefficient that shiny new car is that you drive to work everyday. Thankfully, there's a solution in sight.

I think a lot about cars and urban transport. I honestly believe that cars are unsustainable for a large number of reasons and that we must give them up in favor of walking, using the bicycle, two wheelers and public transport. In my personal life, I've taken the first step towards that by placing a moratorium on single and dual passenger car travel - will only take out the car when there are three or more people traveling (more on that later).

One of the reasons cars are unsustainable is their horrible inefficiency. I've mentioned this before but here's what Amory Lovins of Rocky Mountain Institute has to say:

I've been thinking in background for 20 years about the physics of cars and why are they so inefficient that you know, your car's using a 100 times its weight in ancient plants everyday and yet only 0.3% of that energy ends up moving the driver. This didn't seem very good.

Of all the fuel energy you put into the car, 87% (seven eighths of it) never gets to the wheel. It's lost first in the engine, driveline, idling and accessories.

Of the 1/8^th of fuel energy that does reach the wheels, half of that either heats the air that the car pushes aside or heats the tires and roads. Only the last 6% of the fuel energy actually accelerates the car and then heats the brakes when you stop.

- Amory Lovins in Car of the Future

Not everyone is as inspired to give up their cars -- most people actually love theirs -- so we must live with them for some time. The only alternative then is to produce more efficient cars. But the auto industry has refused to budge so far, you say. Soooo... you get the independent auto makers to produce efficient cars. But how do you do that? It's not as simple as producing water bottles, you know. Well, give them an incentive. Announce a $10 million prize for a car that is over 3 times as efficient and sells in large numbers.

This is precisely what Auto X-Prize is all about.

I've been following Auto X-Prize development for almost two years. I think it's a great initiative though I feel they should have aimed higher -- 300 MPG instead of 100 (today's cars average about 29 MPG in US). We need to make a big leap to make up for the inefficiencies of the past century. Nevertheless, it's an exciting venture and I can't wait to find out who among the 64 contenders wins the X-Prize and what it does to the industry.

Popular Mechanics magazine just announced a list of the top 10 contenders according to them. They're all good but the one that has the greatest likelihood, in my opinion, isn't on anyone's radar. It doesn't feature in the list and it's never been mentioned on AutoBlogGreen or TreeHugger, two popular blogs covering green cars and low-impact living. Both of them have dozens of posts on other X-prize contenders.

The Solution

I'm talking about Poulsen Hybrid. A product of a ~~European~~ US company* called Alpha-Core, it's essentially a couple of rear wheel hub motors which can be installed in any conventional car to convert it into a plug-in hybrid, increasing its mileage significantly. So you get 2 hub motors, two controllers along with batteries and a charger which go in the trunk -- all for $3300. Give it a couple of hours and you car's now a plug-in electric hybrid!

(* Founder, Ulrik Poulsen has an unmistakable Scandinavian accent so I assumed it's a European firm but Alpha-Core website says they're based in Connecticut, US.)

I think it's an absolutely brilliant concept. Totally inexpensive, efficient, simple and it doesn't even mean getting a new car. If it works as promised, it should sell in huge numbers - many times more than any of the fancy cars in Popular Mechanics list. Converting an existing internal combustion engine car into a plug-in electric to get mileage in the range of 100 MPG without any substantial mechanical changes to the car and at such low cost is an unbeatable proposition.

More reasons why I like the Alpha-Core/ Poulsen Hybrid solution:

Retrofitting existing cars to make them more efficient is the most effective and sustainable way of tackling auto emissions. There are well over 600 million cars in the world. Any new new alternative automotive solution will take several decades to become mainstream provided it is cost effective and is available worldwide. While we need new technologies, the greatest impact will come from a technology that can improve the existing one running inside each of those 600 million cars.

Alpha-core has been in the manufacturing business since 1982. So unlike most other X-Prize contenders, it's not a startup - it doesn't need any funding to get going.

The product is ready for launch. There's no long development cycle in between by the end of which most companies discover their technology isn't yet ready or that it has a fatal flaw. In an audio interview, founder Ulrik Poulsen says it's expected to be available by June 2008. That's next month!

Go Poulsen Hybrid!

UPDATE 7-May-08: AutoblogGreen makes amend, writes about Poulsen Hybrid. Links to this post. Most people commenting are overwhelmingly positive about this.

Climate Change in Media: HT Reaches New Low

2008-04-03T18:28:00.031+05:30

Two recent articles in Hindustan Times challenging human induced climate change raise questions about credibility of its reporting and integrity of its correspondent. It also raises a question for serious environmentalists on how to respond to such reports. (view updates)

Two days ago (Apr 1, 2008) Hindustan Times carried an article titled Climate change not as big a problem: report. Lest anyone should think it as an April Fool's joke, it was a completely serious piece based on real events. Today (Apr 3, 2008), the same correspondent published a report titled: 'Sun too causes global warming.'

Both articles are highly misleading, contain factual inaccuracies and at the very least deliberately hide widely known facts that counter its argument to paint a biased picture. In the following paragraphs, I will attempt to highlight the key issues raised by each of the stories.

Climate change not as big a problem: report [1]
by Chetan Chauhan | Page 14, HT New Delhi, Apr 1, 2008 | 353 words

Opening excerpt:

An international civil society report has debunked the claims of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, saying there is no evidence available to show loss of human life directly due to climate change.

The report of the Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change [CSCCC], to be released in India on Tuesday, says there is no evidence to suggest climate change has caused an increase in diseases.

Highly Misleading

By pitting CSCCC [2] directly against IPCC [3], the article creates the impression that both organisations are of similar stature. Nothing could be further from the truth. IPCC is a Noble prize winning United Nations body made up of hundreds of scientists and governmental representatives while CSCCC is merely a coalition of so-called global "think tanks" - corporate lobbyists funded by big oil corporations, the likes of ExxonMobil, to further their interests.

The HT article makes no mention of the background of CSCCC - who comprises the coalition and how are they funded. Unlike IPCC, which was formed two decades ago, CSCCC was only organised a little more than an year back [4] by International Policy Network (IPN) which is a well known recipient of Exxon funding. IPN has received $390,000 from Exxon [5]. Several other members of the coalition have also been a beneficiary.

Paul Reiter, the expert cited in the article, for example, sits on the "Scientific and Economic Advisory Council" [6] of an organization called the "Annapolis Centre." What is Annapolis Centre? It's a US based "think tank" [7] that has pocketed $793,575 from ExxonMobil and has been very active in playing down the human contribution to global warming.

Reiter doesn't have anything too substantiative in his research papers [8] published in scientific peer reviewed journals to back his claims of lack of relationship between disease and climate change. It's unclear how many other claims of CSCCC report are backed by research in peer reviewed journals.

Yet, here's a newspaper that reaches out to a country of one billion, publishing unsubstantiated "research" of corporate lobbyists that have a direct financial interest in sensationalising their so-called findings; and pits them against a neutral, highly conservative group of scientists and government representatives whose work is completely based on pure scientific research published in peer-reviewed journals.

'Sun too causes global warming' [9]
by Chetan Chauhan | Page 17, HT New Delhi, Apr 3, 2008 | 327 words

Opening excerpt:

FRESH RESEARCH by Danish Space Research Centre can possibly give a new twist to the controversy whether Green House Gas emissions is the major contributor for global warming. The Center's research based on climate date [sic] of 150 years shows that varying activity of the Sun is the most systematic contributor to natural climate variations.

Completely Inaccurate

The article falsely states that new research claiming sun as the cause of global warming has now emerged and that it may alter the widely held belief in man-made global warming. Global warming skeptics have been arguing sun as the cause for several decades. In fact Danish Space Research Centre's (DNSC) Galactic Cosmic Ray theory itself is over 11 years old. [10] So it's absolutely false to imply that this is a new discovery that somehow challenges man made global warming.

Not only is it old research, it has also been debunked several times (see here, here, here, here and here). In July last year the prestigious Royal Society of UK published a study concluding that the Sun's output cannot be causing modern-day climate change. [11] To quote BBC News on it: Mike Lockwood's analysis appears to have put a large, probably fatal nail in this intriguing and elegant [Galactic Cosmic Ray] hypothesis. He said: "It might even have had a significant effect on pre-industrial climate; but you cannot apply it to what we're seeing now, because we're in a completely different ball game."

Mysteriously, the HT article quotes Deepak Lal, former Indian Foreign Service officer in support of the Galactic Cosmic Ray theory. How is Lal related with the Danish Space Research Centre is not mentioned in the article. I looked up his background. Among other things, Lal is the author of a little known book on globalisation called "In Praise of Empires." [12] More interestingly however, he is a Senior Fellow at the CATO institute. [13] What is CATO institute? You guessed it -- a US "think tank" funded by ExxonMobil. It has received $110,000 from Exxon. [14]

Questions about journalistic ethics and accountability

The two articles raise serious questions. Why did the Hindustan Times publish misleading, inaccurate, unsubstantiated and biased reports on climate change. Did the correspondent receive an incentive for publishing these from outside or is there an organisation wide effort to discredit opinion against climate change?

Those of us who understand the severity of this planetary emergency have watched every mention of this issue in mainstream Indian media with interest over the last year. Most of us can also recall a time prior to the release of the IPCC report when climate change was conspicuously absent from Indian media. The Stern report for example, which was hailed as a landmark event in UK (released at the end of Oct 2006), never found a mention in India's two main newspaper for months. This conspiracy of silence was broken only when the crescendo of international reporting on the issue reached mile-high by the time the IPCC report came out (Feb 2007).

Poor reporting is worse than no reporting. In this particular instance, it's hard to accept that this came out simply as a result of ignorance. Chetan Chauhan has been covering environmental issues for HT for some time and it's hard to imagine someone at that position being incapable of making a distinction between CSCCC and IPCC or being unable to conduct simple background checks through web searches prior to writing.

A bigger question for those of us who see through such reporting is: how do we address this problem. How do we respond to such reports to bring the truth to public attention. And how do we make the media accountable for what it writes or does not write.

On my part I plan to follow this post with a formal complaint to the Press Council of India unless HT issues a well-placed corrective article in the following days.

Notes and Links

This entry is also posted on Green-India mailing list and copied to the following:

References:

1 HT April 1, 2008: Climate change not as big a problem: report

2 Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change [2] (CSCCC) website

3 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on Wikipedia

4 The CSCCC is organised by IPN according to this Wikipedia entry.

5 International Policy Network fact sheet on ExxonMobilSecrets.org

6 Paul Reiter on Science and Economic Advisory Council of The Annapolis Center

7 The Annapolis Center fact sheet on ExxonMobilSecrets.org

8 Reiter's research background on DeSmogBlog

9 HT, April 3, 2008: Sun too causes global warming

10 DNSC 1997 research papers on sun-Climate connection [PDF] and cosmic ray flux and global cloud cover [PDF]

11 BBC News on Royal Society study: 'No Sun link' to climate change

12 Deepak Lal's In Praise of Empires

13 Deepak Lal at CATO

14 CATO fact sheet on ExxonSecrets.org

UPDATE 5-Apr 2008: IPCC Chairman, Dr. R. K. Pachauri Writes Back

Words of encouragement and support have poured in from several quarters via various channels. Including one from Noble Laureate and IPCC chairman, Dr R. K. Pachauri himself. Dr Pachauri graciously took out time to reply to my email. My sincere thanks to everyone once again. I've compiled all responses - received via email or on Green-India group - as comments on this page. Read Dr. Pachauri's response. Note: timestamps on these comments may not be valid.

UPDATE 5-Apr 2008 [2]: CSM Issues Press Release

Centre for Social Markets (CSM) headed by Ms Malini Mehra, which last month served as adviser to Al Gore's climate project in India, has issued a press release against the climate change misinformation campaign in the media. It discusses the launch of "Civil Society Report on Climate Change" in India by deputy chairman of planning commission - Montek Singh Ahluwalia.

UPDATE 9-Apr 2008: TreeHugger picks up this story

TreeHugger.com - the US based popular green blog, which has a daily reach of around 200 million (that's as much as Hindustantimes.com), has published a detailed story based on this entry calling it a "complete, excruciatingly well-referenced analysis which elegantly dismantles the erroneous arguments put forth in both [HT] pieces." The TreeHugger post quotes widely from this blog and its author. Thank you TreeHugger!

UPDATE 1-May 2008: Malini Mehra writes in HT

Founder and CEO of Centre for Social Markets, Ms. Malini Mehra wrote an oped piece in Hindustan Times, published on Earth Day, flaying the two HT reports calling threat from climate change exaggerated and unfounded. an excerpt:

Having failed to win the argument in the West, the climate deniers are now moving into India and China. They see our country as a soft-touch for their propaganda and easy to hoodwink through arguments pitting poverty against development. What they do not realise is that there is a domestic movement brewing in India for positive action on climate change.

Complete article can be found here.

UPDATE 11-May 2008: Frontline Magazine writes on this issue

Well known political analyst, journalist and activist Praful Bidwai penned a column in Frontline magazine (Apr 26 - May 09) on this issue. Opening excerpt follows:

Falling back on pseudo-science?
Indian policymakers are clutching at straws to duck their responsibility to reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.

AS Indian policymakers come under growing pressure from global scientific and political communities on climate change, they are increasingly resorting to disingenuous, devious or downright specious arguments to avoid taking purposive action to cap and reduce the country’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, which are rising 3.5 times faster than the world average.

The detailed article calls the CSCCC report flimsy and "an exercise in charlatanry and sophistry." It also references this blog post as containing "some interesting facts" on the issue. Complete article can be read here.

UPDATE 20-May 2008: The Unsuitablog cites this post while parodying CSCCC with a game called "follow the links."

UPDATE 03-June 2008: Filed a formal complaint with the Press Council of India along with related evidence.

Epicenter of Earthquake Was Delhi University: US Geological Survey

2007-11-26T12:46:00.000+05:30

According to USGS, the epicentre of Delhi earthquake was just south of Delhi University near GT road, not Delhi-Haryana border as media reports have said. (See UPDATE 26-Nov, 4.15PM)

Delhi experienced what's being called a "moderate" earthquake this morning. It recorded 4.6 on Richter scale. I've felt earthquakes in the past and this was by far the strongest because its epicenter was right in Delhi.

However, there seems to be some confusion over where exactly lies the epicentre in or around Delhi. Media reports mention Delhi-Haryana border but the Delhi Haryana border is not a single location, it stretches for several kilometers. However, the latitude and longitude figures released by India's meteorological department does not match this.

Epicenter According to the Met Department

According to Indiainfo and ZeeNews,

The epicenter of the tremor was at the Delhi-Haryana border at 28.6 N latitude and 77.9 E longitude. Precisely it was centered around 10 kms from Bahadurgarh in Haryana.

This does not make any sense because those figures are for a location in U.P nowhere close to Delhi or Haryana. Enter 28.6°N, 77.9°E in Google Maps and you get this.

(Scale: 20km)

As you can see, the epicenter according to the met department is not consistent with the statement that it's on Delhi-Haryana border. It's actually about 100km East of the point where Bahadurgarh is. (see UPDATE below)

Epicenter According to U.S. Geological Survey

The National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC), part of U.S Geological Survey maintains a database of earthquakes around the world. According to their data, the epicenter location was actually right in the middle of North Delhi just south of Delhi University.

Enter 28.677°N, 77.204°E in Google Maps and you get this.

(Scale: 2km)

(Scale: 500m)

The figures released by USGS have a location uncertainty of +/- 18km but that still doesn't put it anywhere close to the figures provided by the met department.

I will update this post when I have more info but if you know a more reliable source of the epicenter location, please leave a comment.

UPDATE 4.15PM: Correct Met Dept Location Now Confirmed

It seems the media reports picked up wrong Longitude figure released by the Met department. Met Department's list of earthquakes in November available on its website (scroll down to 25) puts the Longitude at 77.0E instead of 77.9E as reported in news reports mentioned above.

This puts their stated location at Delhi-Haryana border near Najafgarh or about 10km from Bahadurgarh. View location on Google Maps.

(Scale: 10km)

The Amateur Seismic Centre (ASC), an independent centre based in Pune, continues to go with the USGS data source and puts the epicenter at Malka Ganj-Kamla Nagar in Delhi University area, as mentioned above.

Note that both USGS and Met department locations are from their preliminary reports.

UPDATE 8.00PM: I wrote to ASC's Stacey Martin to find out which data is more credible. Stacey kindly wrote back that eventually India Meteorological Department (IMD) figures will be more accurate since its monitoring station is in Delhi itself while USGS/NEIC's closest monitoring station is in Kabul. However, as of right now, the latter has provided figures up to three decimal places so at the moment ASC is going with NEIC's epicenter in North Delhi.

Since this is only preliminary data, it's likely to be corrected and the final IMD location will only be available in the public domain in 18-months due to CTBT constraints.

Past Earthquakes in Delhi Region

Here is some historical information on earthquakes in Delhi, taken from ASC report of today's quake.

This is one of the strongest earthquakes in the Delhi region since 2001 and the biggest since 1960. Prior to this latest earthquake, the strongest local earthquakes to have originated within the Delhi metropolitan area since the 1960 Gurgaon earthquake was a Mb=4.3 earthquake in the Dwarka-Najafgarh area on 28 April 2001 that caused minor damage & widespread panic. The strongest known earthquakes in the Delhi region include the M6.0 Khurja-Bulandshahr earthquake on 10 October 1956, the M6.0 Gurgaon earthquake on 27 August 1960 and the Mb=5.6 Moradabad earthquake on 15 August 1966. Historically, the 15 July 1720 earthquake in the Delhi region caused the greatest damage in the city causing many deaths and widespread damage including knocking down large parts of the Shaharepanah (city wall) in Old Delhi from Kabuli Gate to Lal Darwaza and the battlements of the Fatehpuri Masjid.

Ron Paul On Climate Change

2007-11-25T05:30:00.001+05:30

How can a presidential candidate so right about almost every other issue be so mistaken about climate change?

I've just spent the last three hours learning about Ron Paul, a U.S presidential candidate I knew nothing about earlier and one who has recently experienced an unusually strong upsurge of support surprising many. TIME is calling it "The Ron Paul Revolution." CNN went nuts when Ron's online campaign collected a record sum in a day. The Washington Post just did a story trying to make sense of the revolution.

People are excited for good reason. Watch him speak and it wouldn't take you long to say to yourself: "Wow, I love this guy!" His speeches call for an end to "the U.S. empire" - words you'd expect from an activist, not a presidential hopeful. He also frequently mentions the "military industrial complex" - when was the last time you heard a presidential candidate admit its existence since Eisenhower coined the term. He talks of abolishing the IRS and the federal reserve, getting troops back from Iraq immediately, following a dramatically modest foreign policy than any past presidents, he's for freedom of the internet, in favor of same sex marriages and says the biggest threat to our privacy is the government. Ron Paul wants to drastically limit the government's ability to play big brother.

In fact, all his suggested policy measures are radical. And this is the most striking thing about him. As the TIME story notes, Ron is the most anti-establishment of all candidates. He has the courage to admit big policy mistakes of the past and the vision of a radically different future based on a few simple principles he's been known to hold for decades. You can't get a better candidate than this. Or so I thought.

Until I Googled his position on climate change and found that he thinks this issue is overblown. His website doesn't even mention the term and in this clip from a visit to Google in July this year, Ron says "there are two sides of the (global warming) argument." In another video from August when asked whether increasing carbon dioxide in atmosphere is an important issue, he answers that it's debatable.

There are good people who are in politics, in both parties, who hold this [issue] at arm's length because if they acknowledge it and recognize it then the moral imperative to make big changes is inescapable.
- Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth

It's incredible for someone to say this in 2007. Although none of the presidential candidates have been known to completely grasp the severity of climate change problem, yet for a candidate to say that it is an overblown issue is frankly quite outrageous. To hear these statements after IPCC fourth assessment, after Stern report and dozens of independent scientific institutions have raised alarm over climate change, is...well, I've run out of adjectives. I don't know what to call it.

Needless to say, there is no debate, no other side. Global warming and other effects of climate change are a scientifically proven certainty. I can't imagine what ratio of denial, ignorance and bias would have combined to make Ron hold those opinions. It's very disheartening. On the one hand, I'd love to see him in the oval office - his term could really have a revolutionary impact on U.S politics and its relationship with the rest of the world.

But on the other, the world can't afford another five years of inaction on the issue after ten years of the worst environment and energy policy from Washington. It could be very dangerous to have a global warming skeptic as the U.S. president when we're in the midst of what Al Gore rightly calls a planetary emergency. There may be hope though. In the Google interview he also admits that he doesn't know enough about this issue. I hope he finds out soon because he'd putting a lot of votes at stake otherwise.

iPhone's $200 Price Cut = $2 Billion Customer Handout

2007-09-07T17:12:00.000+05:30

Steve Jobs just handed out $1.92 billion to past and future iPhone customers. What does it mean for Apple and why did they do it? Orange Hues blog unveils the mystery behind the move.

On September 5, Steve Jobs confirmed the massive margins of iPhone when he announced an unprecedented $200 price cut on the device within 10 weeks of its introduction. It's been justified as a trend in the technology industry but I think the real reason runs deeper than that. Just consider that the reduction is 33% of original price ($599) and a whopping 50% of the new price ($399). Such cuts have *never* been seen in the industry for a mass produced consumer product.

If that wasn't enough, Jobs even announced that Apple will pay back $100 to every iPhone owner so far, after several Apple loyalists revolted saying that they have been duped for being Apple fans. While much is being written about Apple's generous gesture and what it means for Apple as a brand, nobody seems to have done the numbers to calculate the financial cost to the company.

What Does It Mean: Unprecedented Profit Margins

So here's an attempt to see what it means to take $200 off, what is now, a $400 product. Over 800,000 people have purchased an iPhone so far (from Apple's estimate of 1 million sales by end of September) out of its 10 million target by end of next year. That translates to Apple handing out more than $80 million to iPhone customers now ($100 x 800,000) and $1.84 billion over the next 16 months ($200 x 9.2 million).

Irrespective of the reasons, one thing that's abundantly clear from Steve Job's $1.92 billion handout is that Apple's profit margins for the device are way beyond anything ever seen in the industry.

When Jobs first introduced the iPhone on January 10th, I wrote a few hours later that it's poised to become Apple's most profitable product in its entire history. I based that on the simple premise that even with a two year contract, the phone is still not subsidised as is the industry norm. So naturally there's a sum that AT&T is passing to Apple for every sale of the mandatory contract. A few weeks later, details emerged that it's even better than that - Apple also has a share in monthly payments that AT&T receives from iPhone owners.

We don't know if it's a one time cash deal or AT&T shares revenue on some other basis. Lets assume that Apple gets $300 for every iPhone sold (@$399) and $10 from each month's bill. If Apple achieves its target of 10 million phones by end of 2008 (18 months from its release), that's an earning of whopping $8.8 billion. A very small part of which is the actual hardware cost.

Compare iPhone's profit with the puny margins in gaming consoles or the PC industry. It's well known, for example, that both Microsoft and Sony sell their consoles for loss in hope of making it up over sales of games. This is in a market that sold just 26 million units last year. On the other hand, there were 957 million mobile phones sold the same year.

Clearly, Apple hit a jackpot with iPhone. There is no other category of mass produced consumer product that makes that kind of margin on those kind of numbers.

Real Reason Behind Price Cut: Preempt Competition

There's little doubt therefore that iPhone will make a windfall of money to Apple's bank balance. But why did Jobs have to give such a large cash handout? No matter how high the margins, no company likes to part with such a sizable amount. Apple isn't known for increasing value by reducing price. They do it by giving more at the same price with regular product revisions. So what has changed since Jobs announced the price in January?

The stock market which drove Apple's stock down at the news thinks it's poor sales behind the move. Nothing could be further from the truth. A number of analysts have pointed out that there's no way that could be the reason. There is no "fatal flaw" with the phone either. In fact, several customer surveys say iPhone buyers have overwhelming voted in the favor of the device.

There may be truth to the argument that it's merely because Apple wants to hit economies of scale. Yes, but is it a planned move on the lines that - milk the first few months of crazy iPhone madness and then reduce price to expand the market - I doubt it. Before Jobs announced the price in January, nobody could have predicted the media frenzy that followed at the time and then again at iPhone's launch. Somehow I can't justify that Apple had planned a $200 cut from the start.

What seems much more likely is that this a reaction to Google Phone and other competitors planning to enter the market. The much talked about Google device which was just fiction a few months ago has now become an almost certainty. A number of people have cited inside sources to claim that the Google Phone is real. The latest revelations come from a Boston Globe article from three days before Apple's announcement that cite a number of people having seen the phone.

In his address at Moscone center and later in interviews, Steve Jobs repeatedly said he wants to be "even more aggressive." But hey, aggressive with what? Apple truly doesn't have any competition! Sales figures for the month of July suggest that iPhone is the only smart phone out there selling like that and despite the prohibitive price, it's already equaling sales of much lesser price phones.

So where's the need to be aggressive? Clearly this is not about today but about future competition. Usually Apple has competitors petty much in knots as to how and where to strike at Apple's offerings. But this time things went a little differently. Remember that Apple, which loves to keep their products secret until the very last moment, was forced to announce iPhone six months in advance of the launch because of FCC disclosure. This essentially gave the Nokias and the Googles a generous lead of half a year to plan their offerings.

Things have changed since Apple's announcement in January. Google isn't the only one entering the market. Microsoft, which had previously ruled out a Zune phone, now admits the idea is "not unreasonable." I'm sure RIM, Palm, Nokia and other cell phone makers are prepping up launch of their own "iPhone killers" as the media would call them. Although I've little doubt that Apple will maintain its lead, the company isn't leaving anything on chance. With the price cut, Apple has clearly made a preemptive strike to ensure they have a smooth run.

And this is absolutely the right time to strike. If they had made such a large reduction after the announcement of Google Phone or another competitive product, their stock would have really taken a beating. Besides, it would reflect very poorly on the brand. Apple has never been known to indulge in price wars with a competitor.

I don't know if Steve jobs plays chess, but if he does, he must excel at it. You have to credit this man's vision for anticipating moves of future competitors and disarming them before they even enter the battlefield. It takes courage to give away $2 billion.

Related links

MSNBC reports on the Apple's $200 price cut and $100 rollback
CNBC video on Apple's inexplicable price cut
IT Wire: US iPhone sales go ballistic in July
Boston Globe article: Introducing the Google Phone
Gizmodo: Microsoft Admits Zune Phone Not Unreasonable

Past iPhone posts from Orange Hues blog

Jan 10, 2007: First to identify Apple's large profit margins behind iPhone
Jan 10, 2007: First to identify real reason behind iPhone's future success
Jan 12, 2007: First to identify another cell phone using multi-touch

Quote: On Working Hard

2007-09-03T19:06:00.000+05:30

Seth Godin nails it...

It's hard work to make difficult emotional decisions, such as quitting a job and setting out on your own. It's hard work to invent a new system, service, or process that's remarkable. It's hard work to tell your boss that he's being intellectually and emotionally lazy. It's easier to stand by and watch the company fade into oblivion. It's hard work to tell senior management to abandon something that it has been doing for a long time in favor of a new and apparently risky alternative. It's hard work to make good decisions with less than all of the data. [...]

Richard Branson doesn't work more hours than you do. Neither does Steve Ballmer or Carly Fiorina. Robyn Waters, the woman who revolutionized what Target sells -- and helped the company trounce Kmart -- probably worked fewer hours than you do in an average week.

None of the people who are racking up amazing success stories and creating cool stuff are doing it just by working more hours than you are. And I hate to say it, but they're not smarter than you either. They're succeeding by doing hard work. [...]

Hard work is about risk. It begins when you deal with the things that you'd rather not deal with: fear of failure, fear of standing out, fear of rejection. Hard work is about training yourself to leap over this barrier, tunnel under that barrier, drive through the other barrier. And, after you've done that, to do it again the next day.

The big insight: The riskier your (smart) coworker's hard work appears to be, the safer it really is. It's the people having difficult conversations, inventing remarkable products, and pushing the envelope (and, perhaps, still going home at 5 PM) who are building a recession-proof future for themselves.

-- Seth Godin in Labor Day

Quote: On Bicycle

2007-07-27T23:05:00.000+05:30

I always knew the bicycle was the most energy efficient vehicle but this is just amazing...

Pound for pound, a person on a bicycle expends less energy than any creature or machine covering the same distance. A human walking spends about three times as much energy per pound; even a salmon swimming spends about twice as much.

From the book Stuff: The Secret Lives of Everyday Things

(found via TreeHugger)

Update 28 Aug: Excellent post on "How to Ride Your Bike to Work".

Scott Adams Stole My Carpool Idea!

2007-07-23T01:29:00.000+05:30

I came up with the idea of an efficient carpool network that really works. While I sat over it for an year or so and did nothing about it, by an amazing stroke of co-incidence Scott Adams comes up with something almost identical.

In Palam Vihar, Gurgaon where I live (an otherwise fine place), one long standing problem has been the woefully inadequate public transport. Most residents somehow manage with their cars, however, since single car families are most prevalent - one car is never sufficient. Thinking about this problem over a year and half ago and mulling over the then recently introduced "Centrex" feature by our phone company (call any other resident for free), I came up with an idea that went beyond the needs of Palam Vihar residents.

A massive carpool network that works on a system of credits. Lets say person X doesn't have a car today and wants to go from point A to point B. So he places a call to a toll-free number and enters the locations. Now person Y has a car, is going the same location but doesn't know person X. He calls up the automated voice network, learns about person X, looks up his profile and finding him OK offers him a lift. Person Y just earned a credit sold by X.

To really understand the implications of this, you need to follow a link I'll add later in the post. But at that time I mulled over it for weeks together and developed it in quite detail. I thought Google would be the ideal company to launch something like this. Around the same time, I entered the following brief notes about the concept in my "ideas" spreadsheet as idea #4:

Description

Notes

So last month when I come across a post in which Dilbert creator Scott Adams describes an almost identical idea, I couldn't believe my eyes. It was like he scanned my brain while I was asleep! The similarities were uncanny.

More seriously though, this is actually a pretty awesome idea. As Scott says, the biggest problem with carpooling is inconvenience. An all-pervasive carpool network solves this problem. There are only two large differences between Scott's idea and mine. One, I think GPS will make it more effective but I don't think it's absolutely necessary. Second, I conceived it around eBay like feedback by buyers and sellers. I think that would make the system very credible.

P.S: How does the network provider makes money from this? Scott hasn't thought of that. I did. Since I thought Google should provide this service, they make money the same way they always have - from advertising. Since they know where people are going, they can serve pre-registered ads from retailers and companies along the route. If you don't like to get ads / text messages then pay Google a small sum to get an ad-free ride.

The China and India Argument

2007-07-03T16:12:00.001+05:30

The western media is making increasingly shrill noises about the growing threat of emissions from China and India while completely ignoring the scale of emission that goes on in their own backyard.

In an increasingly environmentally aware world China and India are becoming the new villains. Every other day there's a news report highlighting the growing might of the two countries and the harm they are set to unleash on the environment.

Lets take this post, as an example. Made by our friends at AutoblogGreen, it announces that "Low cost Indian cars could be environmental disaster." What caught my attention is not that it ignores India's adoption of tough Euro emission norms which are more stringent than EPA standards of US. Nor that it disregards that Tata's upcoming air car will emit anywhere from 25% to less than 1% of CO2 per km compared to an internal combustion engine gasoline car (more on that in next post). What I find most interesting is that there's no acknowledgment of the environmental harm done by cars in the west today while pointing to the future "environmental disaster" to be caused by Indian cars.

The problem with the China and India argument is that it's disproportionate. It's made to move people's attention away from far greater environmental crimes that are being perpetrated in the west. Here is an apt example from automotive industry itself which is representative of total emissions. In 2005, the United States produced around 12 million cars. India, on the other hand, produced just 1.6 million. In other words, the U.S. with less than 1/3rd population of India, produced 7.5 times the number of cars. If we adjust the figure by population, US is around 23 times worse than India!

I should mention here that these are production figures, not sales (see source PDF). India's share should actually be less than this since some of the cars were for exports. We export more cars than China, whereas US doesn't do much car exports if I'm correct. I'm not even going to compare the size of Indian cars (an estimated 80% of our cars are small cars compared to 15% in US) or their efficiency (estimated around 50% higher than US) or the historical automotive production (more than 100 years in US vs. 25 in India). Let's just say that it will take a long time for us to catch up to the level of "disaster" US cars are unleashing over the environment right now.

This is not to say that India should not do all it can to avoid reaching that scale. The point is, emissions on a much larger scale are caused in U.S. today and therefore it should be the last country to point a finger at China and India. Climate change is a global problem and all emissions are bad regardless of where they are caused. What the world needs from the U.S. is leadership in cutting down dramatically on emissions, not finger pointing.

I've covered the India and China argument in the past on this blog without directly referring to it. The George Monbiot interview I pointed out recently touched upon it when Monbiot attacked the interviewer's contention that China is a big problem by saying:

For us to turn to the Chinese and point the finger at them and say they are the problem, we have to become hypocrites on a scale that's almost unprecedented. I mean, the Chinese at the moment produce 2.7 tons of carbon per year. Canadians produce 19 and the Americans 20.

Don Brown, a U.S. scientist at IPCC, who has worked on the moral and ethical dimensions of climate change holds a similar view:

What are the other issues. Well, the issue of no country has to do anything until everyone else [India and China] does something, okay. That's the third excuse, unfortunately my country has been using for twenty years. We don't have to do anything until everyone else does something. That's a moral issue. Can a co-criminal decide that they don't have to stop their crime because the other co-criminals haven't stopped doing it? As a matter of moral and ethics, we believe that that excuse is also morally bankrupt.

UPDATE 13-Jul: Autobloggreen added a response to this post a few days ago. It admitted that decision made by US in the past were unsustainable but the author still did not recognise the difference between the *scale* of emissions caused in US vs. China or India.

A new post made yesterday finally demonstrates the scale that I was talking about.

Looking at this shocking graph with US on the left and a bunch of countries on right, no one can argue that China and India pose an "environmental disaster" in the near future.

At least not without first acknowledging the environmental disaster that US is today.

UPDATE 15-Jul: Sunita Narain, noted environmentalist, editor 'Down to Earth' magazine and head of Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), shares similar thoughts in her magazine editorial from May-31:

"Currently, two things are happening. One, China and India are being projected as the new villains—they pollute; they will increase emissions; they don’t want legally binding commitments and are, therefore, blocking global negotiations."

She goes on to raise some important points and concludes that the developing world must force rich nations to make the necessary reductions in emissions.

Ford to World: "We Promise Global Warming, Melting Glaciers and Dead Polar Bears"

2007-06-25T06:32:00.000+05:30

An ad campaign launched today by Ford India seems to be making a mockery of worldwide resistance to global warming. It shows an iceberg apparently destroyed by the SUV and a couple of polar bears stranded on a thin ice sheet.

Top: Close-up view of their ad. Click to see complete background of the ad. The image was downloaded from Ford's site and was available here (ZIP file) at the time of posting.

Left: The complete full-page ad from The Hindustan Times, June 25, 2007.

I woke up this morning to find this shocking full-page ad in the newspaper. My first thought: "Could they be any more INSENSITIVE?" What were they thinking by placing a large honking SUV in front of an iceberg that seems to have been destroyed by it? What are they trying to say? That the "beastly power" (their term used in the ad) of the new 4X4 Ford Endeavour is capable of destruction beyond the roads? If so, then that would be spot on.

Or were they trying to laugh at those of us who are concerned about global warming? Are they, by any chance, celebrating the recent decision of US Automobile standards organisation (CAFE) that gave US Automakers 13 more years to improve vehicle efficiency to a level that we should be getting today? I wonder if it was Al Gore that's the butt of their joke whose hit documentary last year showed increasing cases of drowning polar bears as they can't find any ice to latch on to because of global warming caused by automobiles, among other reasons.

Sarcasm apart, it's probably the work of an ignorant graphic designer approved by some equally dim executives at Ford. That said, this is height of ignorance. No topic has attracted as much media coverage worldwide in recent months as climate change. Papers have devoted special supplements, magazine after magazine continues to come out with special "Green" issues and talk show hosts have gone hoarse talking about the topic. Heck, even 5-year old kids know that polar bears are dying because of global warming...

India, which woke up late (around Feb 2007 after the first IPCC report) to the issue of climate change has now witnessed enough media coverage for it to be quite well known. Arvind Mathew, president and MD of Ford India, would have to be living in a cave to not see the connection with the depiction in this ad.

One thing is clear though, this would never have happened in the U.S. If this ad is released there today, Ford would be lynched. Despite their sorry environmental record, all U.S. automakers have been under tremendous public pressure recently to appear green. Ford U.S. has even been running pro-green ad-campaigns, which incidentally, have also featured polar bears but there they are shown as protected and with care "to ensure that the images are anatomically and scientifically correct".

Ford, in U.S. has also been touting its top-10 green credentials, which at #1 includes, not improved efficiency, but, hold-your-breath: seat covers made of recycled fabric!

Thanks to AutoblogGreen for all the coverage of green issues in the U.S. auto industry. I wonder if our friends there (Sebatian, Mike, Sam?) can ask Ford U.S. for a comment.

UPDATE: If you're just as outraged at this as I am, write to Ford and demand an explanation.

UPDATE 2: Am I over blowing it?

Some of you may think I'm fussing over something trivial. Maybe I overstated it in the heat of things, but there are a bunch of things here that pushed me over the edge...

SUVs

SUVs represent everything that's wrong with the auto industry.
They are less safe than the regular cars and on top of that they give the illusion of greater safety.
SUVs are also less fuel efficient than regular cars which themselves are far less efficient to begin with.
They have far too much space than what's needed or used for city travel.

U.S. Automakers

The U.S. auto industry is one of the biggest reasons we are in this mess today.
They've had over 100 years to look for alternatives.
They've had these alternative technologies for decades.
They conspired to destroy mass transit in the middle of last century.
They have a history of suppression of new technology.
In a more just world, the U.S. automakers would be prosecuted in court. Maybe one day they would be.

Internal Combustion Engine

It's a disgrace that the predominant mode of personal travel in the 21st century is still the massively inefficient internal combustion engine.
At just around 20% mechanical engine efficiency, they are the most inefficient modes of transport.
At less than 1% of well-to-wheel efficiency they waste 99% energy which should be a criminal offense.
Yet they are sold to public as high-technology, a panacea.

(I can substantiate each of the above statements if anyone wants me to, but I think there's nothing new here. All of this is quite well known. The problem is, we're so surrounded by mediocrity and inefficiency that we learn to ignore it.)

So my contempt for the internal combustion engine, the U.S. automakers and SUVs, together with my concern for global warming combined to lead to an outburst when I saw that ad.

Notes and links

Ford-India microsite for Endeavour 4X4. Find the picture in downloads section.
News coverage of the launch of the new Endeavour
New CAFE standards announced for US automakers
Official website of Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth
Pro-green ad campaigns run by Ford in U.S.
Top-10 Green achievements of Ford

Polar bear trivia: Bush administration, which has long been denying that global warming is dangerous, first conceded it late last year when they called for protection of polar bears. Later, in March 2007 however, Bush barred scientists travelling abroad from talking on polar bears or climate change.

Quote: On the Failure of Non-Violence

2007-06-24T03:44:00.000+05:30

And so, today, to me, the debate in all this connects up to a very much bigger question in the world which is that here you have a movement, 15 years of the most spectacular non-violent resistance movement in a country like India. The NBA has used every single democratic institution it could. It has put forward the most reasoned, moderate arguments that you can find, and it's been just thrown aside like garbage, even by an institution like the Supreme Court of India, even in the face of evidence that you cannot argue with.

So, I keep saying this that if we don't respect non-violence, then violence becomes the only option for people. If governments do not show themselves to respect reasoned, non-violent resistance then by default they respect violence.

-- Arundhati Roy, in a September 2003 interview, speaking on the failure of Narmada Bachao Andolan and its implications for Indian democracy.

In a way, Roy predicted - three years ago - the changing face of resistance movements around the country that we're witnessing today in Nandigram and elsewhere.

Related links

The "Failure Of Non-Violence Bothers Me"
(Access requires free registration. Quote: p-5)

All of Arundhati Roy's writings and interviews from Outlook magazine

James Hansen Calls on Scientists to Be Assertive About Climate Change

2007-06-20T19:05:00.001+05:30

World's leading scientist on climate change has issued a call to other scientists to get together and clearly communicate the threat of rising sea level

Dr. James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and a longtime critic of US policy towards climate change is another hero of mine. Hansen has been called a "whistle blower" in the past for his role in exposing how NASA and the Bush administration edits and censors scientific reports that go against their policy. In this post I highlight what Hansen refers to as the gap in public and scientific perception of climate change, what causes that gap and how it affects policy.

The huge gap between public and scientists

Hansen often refers to "a huge gap" that exists between "what is understood about global warming and what is known about global warming – understood by the relevant scientific community, and known by those who need to know, the public and policy-makers." He further adds that the "scientific knowledge that has emerged in the past several years is startling, and it has dramatic implications for the fate of life on this planet – if we fail to communicate it well enough to drive prompt actions."

In a recent interview, Al Gore too spoke of this gap. When asked to comment on IPCC findings, he said that recent results show IPCC's worst scenarios coming true. "Many scientists are now uncharacteristically scared," he said. As a way of explanation he added that typically what happens is that people and the media exaggerate scientific claims and the scientists themselves are conservative. But today, "this situation is exactly the reverse. Those who are most expert in the science are way more concerned than the general public" on the issue of climate change.

This is clearly is a failure of communication between the scientists and the public. James Hansen has now issued a call to fellow scientists to shed their reluctance and alert the public of the reality. The following is abstract of his paper:

I suggest that a `scientific reticence' is inhibiting the communication of a threat of a potentially large sea level rise. Delay is dangerous because of system inertias that could create a situation with future sea level changes out of our control. I argue for calling together a panel of scientific leaders to hear evidence and issue a prompt plain-written report on current understanding of the sea level change issue.

The problem with science

Hansen has been at the forefront of educating the public of the impending dangers of climate change and the need for worldwide action. Unfortunately, not all scientists are as outspoken as him. Most scientists, by the very nature of their work, are conservative people. They are paid to ask questions, to raise doubts and to pick holes in arguments and analysis. This is also how a typical peer-reviewed scientific publication works.

All that is fine, of course. You don't want junk science to bypass the filter of peer reviews and get published. The movie, An Inconvenient Truth, for example, quotes from a survey that found that in the last 10 years there were no articles in peer reviewed journals that questioned global warming. The so called "scientists" that have been questioning the phenomenon in popular media would never stand a chance of getting published because of the peer review process.

Therefore, this "scientific reticence" - the reluctance of scientists to endorse an idea wholeheartedly even with compelling evidence is an inherent part of the scientific process. The problem comes, when evidence of an idea, such as climate change, is so overwhelming that any scientific reticence hurts the process of communicating the importance of the idea. In the paper on scientific reticence, James Hansen argues:

I believe there is a pressure on scientists to be conservative. Papers are accepted for publication more readily if they do not push too far and are larded with caveats. Caveats are essential to science, being born in skepticism, which is essential to the process of investigation and verification. But there is a question of degree.

Scientific reticence and climate change

Hansen argues that this is precisely what is happening in the climate change discussion. George Monbiot recently recounted an event that's a perfect example of scientific reticence in the context of climate change:

At a meeting I attended in 2005, Sir David King, the British government’s chief scientist, proposed that a ‘reasonable’ target for stabilizing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 550ppm CO2 (which means approximately 630ppm CO2e). It would be ‘politically unrealistic’, he said, to demand anything lower. Simon Retallack from the Institute for Public Policy Research reminded Sir David that his duty is not to convey political reality but to represent scientific reality. King replied that if he recommended a lower limit, he would lose credibility with the government

So, lets get this: the chief scientist to the British Government admitted in public that he was reluctant to convey the reality of the threat to the government because he was afraid of being laughed at? Incredible as it sounds this is exactly what happened. And it's not an isolated incident either. In the paper Hansen shares his own account:

`Scientific reticence' leapt to mind as I was being questioned, and boxed-in, by a lawyer for the plaintiff in Automobile Manufacturers versus California Air Resources Board. I conceded that I was not a glaciologist. The lawyer then, with aplomb, requested that I identify glaciologists who agreed publicly with my assertion that the sea level was likely to rise more than one meter this century if greenhouse gas emissions followed an IPCC business-as-usual scenario: `Name one!'

I could not, instantly. I was dismayed, because, in conversation and e-mail exchange with relevant scientists I sensed a deep concern about likely consequences of business-as-usual global warming for ice sheet stability. What would be the legal standing of such a lame response as `scientific reticence'? Why would scientists be reticent to express concerns about something so important?

IPCC: a failure

With thousands of scientists from world over, IPCC is perhaps the biggest collaborative scientific effort in history. The three IPCC reports that have come out in recent months have had significant impact. Yet, despite the "political buy-in" (their panel had hundreds of government reps who had to agree to everything), they have failed to move the world leaders to accept any tangible cuts in emissions, as evidenced in the recently concluded G8 summit. Al Gore recently referred to the summit as a disgrace. That's not all, even scientific studies that have surfaced in past few months have repeatedly shown IPCC estimates of extent of climate change to be extremely conservative.

Therefore, if success of IPCC is to be measured in terms of conveying the reality of the science of climate change and whether it led to action, IPCC has been a dismal failure so far.

The implications of this are obvious. Scientists have the responsibility to communicate science - not to toe a political line. If they fail to deliver, the public and the policymakers remain in dark and base their decisions on a flawed sense of reality. It's like the doctor giving a patient an incorrect diagnosis of his heart condition, making him believe he's better than he actually is. If the patient continues to live the way he has in the past, very soon it may be too late to save him.

References and Links

Dr. James Hansen's latest paper: Scientific reticence and sea level rise

NYT report from Jan 2006 Climate Expert Says NASA Tried to Silence Him

Hansen's earlier paper referring to the gap between public and scientists [PDF]

Al Gore's interview that carries his comment that scientists are scared

Monbiot's article and video that carry accounts of chief British scientist Sir David King admitting to what Hansen calls scientific reticence

Arctic melting beyond IPCC worst scenarios

G8 agreement a "disgrace": Al Gore<

Ethics of Climate Change: Don Brown's Impassioned Appeal to Policy Makers

2007-06-20T10:30:00.001+05:30

A recent talk by Donald Brown at IPCC exposes the moral and ethical bankruptcy of the developed world and poses important questions for all policy makers grappling with how to respond to climate change. Video and transcript of his talk follows

Transcript of Don Brown's talk on Moral and Ethical Dimensions of Climate Change
I've tried to retain the original emphasis of the talk below, though not always successfully. Words I could not make out are left as blanks.

What are the moral and ethical dimensions of climate change?

Vice President Gore in his movie^[1], I'd assume most of you saw the movie, says three times that climate change is a moral issue. And he makes this emphasis but he doesn't explain. What does it mean to say that climate change is a moral and ethical issue?

What does entail by that? I'm here to convince you that there's a lot more to the assertion that climate change is a moral and ethical issue and how important it is. How desperately important it is. That we encourage others to have this conversation about moral and ethical dimensions of climate change.

One of the reasons why this is so urgent, not only it is the steepest of the cuts we need that is so urgent but a lot of the moral and ethical issues are actually hidden in scientific and economic arguments about climate change. We need to educate others what the moral and ethical issues are.

It's not just one moral and ethical issue. It's many different moral and ethical issues. I work at Penn State, we've created a program called... a collaborative program on the ethical dimensions of climate change. We're working with 17 ethics institutes around the world on this and if this weren't such a very very very very scary problem, it'd actually also be an exciting problem because it's gonna force us to think through multi levels of institutions - how we make international law. It's going to bring every...climate change in my view is going to force us to rethink moral norms, ___ norms and international norms.

Let me dig into what we believe the moral and ethical dimensions of climate change are. There are many of them. We've identified eight major issues. What we're trying to do and what we encourage others to do is to not talk about morality or ethics in the abstract but to pay really a close attention to the international debate about climate change.

We are following the debate, teasing out at the moral and ethical issues and then doing rigorous ethical critiques of those issues. There's a paper, a White paper on the Ethical Dimensions of Climate Change^[2]. Looks like I didn't bring enough of this. This is the first start. You'll see it's a fairly rigorous attempt to dig deeply into the moral and ethical dimensions of climate change. Let me just identify what we think are the most pressing moral and ethical issues of our time about climate change at this moment in history. These are gonna change as this debate unfolds and we attempt to try to follow it.

The first issue is, how much warming should we tolerate. Another way of stating this issue is what is the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases that this world should identify as a target. There is no more obvious moral and ethical issue than this issue. It will literally determine who lives and who dies. Whether ___ survives, whether ___ islands survive. The issue of atmospheric targets, we must see it simply not as a scientific issue but as the most profound kind of moral and ethical issue. Issue#1.

Issue#2. The world is emitting 7 billion tons of carbon. We're headed to 20 billion tons of carbon in this century under one of the IPCC scenarios. We've got to reduce the 7 to 2.5 billion tons in next thirty years. The moral issue is, how do we allocate who gets to use those two and a half billion tons of carbon. How do we allocate? Does United States get to use more per capita than China or India? There could be no more obvious moral and ethical issue than who gets the right to use the atmosphere as a sink. And it's hardly on our lips.

Issue 3. Who's gonna pay for damages from climate change? This is the issue the developing countries are now starting to bring to the negotiation. And it is also a moral ethical issue. Morals and ethics would have the 'polluter pays' principle^[3] - there's this whole area of philosophy called retributive justice^[4] that has a lot to say about this. This is a justice issue.

Now, they're the obvious ethical questions that climate change raises. There's a whole host of probably more important moral and ethical issues but they are hidden inside scientific and economic arguments about what we should do.

The next issue is, how about scientific uncertainty. What are the ethical and moral dimensions of scientific uncertainly. Why is no one articulating the scientific uncertainty as a moral issue. Clearly, all across the world if you do dangerous behavior, it is criminal to do very dangerous behavior and you can't use as a defense that you didn't know for sure it was going to happen. It is criminal to do very dangerous behavior. Once you have enough evidence. Once science says there's a rational risk, it is a moral issue.

In this case, there are a certain aspects of climate change which makes the excuse that United States and a couple of other countries was, for 20 years of scientific uncertainty, morally and ethically bankrupt. What are aspects of the scientific uncertainty? Well, if you wait for all uncertainty to resolve, its too late, the damage has already been caused. Those that wanna hide behind the scientific uncertainty haven't asked the victims of climate change what bet they wanna take. There are questions of procedural justice. There are enormous questions of justice involved in an attempt to use scientific uncertainty as an excuse.

But no one is calling those that want to rely upon uncertainty as an excuse and identifying that as a moral and ethical question.

Issue#5. Cost. For 20 years United States, I used to represent the Clinton administration here. I'm the former negotiator. And for 20 years we used the excuse we don't have to do anything because the cost to our economy alone is prohibitive. Think about that. One country states the costs of its economy alone when the harms are somewhere else?

There are various variations of the cost argument that we need to see in moral and ethical terms. One form of it is cost-benefit analysis. There's a whole series of dueling cost-benefit analysis about Kyoto and post-Kyoto regimes. Those cost-benefit analysis raise the most profound kind of ethical questions and no one is calling the proponents of those costs-benefit analysis about the ethical issues.

Issues such as harms and benefits are disaggregated. The fact that the cost-benefit disenfranchise future generations though discounting. The fact that cost-benefit analysis think everybody and everything in the world is a commodity. The fact that cost benefit analysis makes people in poor countries lives less valuable than people's lives in rich countries. And I could go on. The fact that people use cost-benefit analysis on this problem and people don't identify the more obvious moral and ethical questions is very strange, is very very strange.

What are the other issues? Well, the issue of no country has to do anything until everyone else does something, okay. That's the third excuse, unfortunately my country has been using for twenty years. We don't have to do anything until everyone else does something. That's a moral issue. Can a co-criminal decide that they don't have to stop their crime because the other co-criminals haven't stopped doing it? As a matter of moral and ethics, we believe that that excuse is also morally bankrupt.

What about the issue of well, we don't have to do anything until there are new less costly technologies which can be invented that would get us out of this mess. What does ethics have to say about that issue?

What about the trading regimes? Are there ethical problems in trading regimes? And there in fact could be. It all depends upon what form the trading regimes take.

The long and short of it, in the White paper what we're trying to do is to get philosophers and religious people to look at these issues rigorously and begin and deepen the ethical critique of these issues.

Now, if the world took climate change as a moral and issue, it would radically, radically change the way this is being negotiated. Countries would have to immediately admit that they have to reduce their emissions to their share of safe global emissions. Countries that have caused problems would have to admit that they have some responsibility to pay for damages and so forth.

So, the significance of seeing this as moral and ethical issue is profound, I believe, okay. And that's why I want to thank you for organizing this conference. We all need to encourage people to see this in terms of moral and ethical issues. And not talk about it in the abstract. But in terms of concrete justifications of doing something that people are not doing.

Let me just conclude by the following. Bill McKibben, who's a wonderful writer, about six years ago wrote an op-ed piece in New York Times and he said the following:

I'm sitting here wondering why Americans don't see climate change as a moral and ethical issue. It makes me think of my parents, who were really good people but did not get civil rights until they saw the dogs on the bridge in Selma, Alabama.

(Police used German Shepherd dogs to quell protesters during the American civil rights movement)

He went on to say, "it's all of our duties, it's all of our duties to help people see the moral and ethical dimensions of climate change." Especially those of us that understand the problem. We have a particular duty, in my view to get people to see the moral and ethical dimensions of this problem.

The challenge is, what are the dogs on the bridge for this problem that we can help get other people to see. Thank you.

References and Links

1. Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth
2. White Paper on the Ethical Dimensions of Climate Change (PDF)
3. Polluter pays principle
4. Retributive Justice
5. Climate change is an international emergency

Interview with George Monbiot

2007-06-08T11:16:00.000+05:30

George Monbiot is a hero of mine. He's the only guy in the journalistic circles who gets the science of climate change right, understands the scale of the problem and is not afraid to speak his mind.

Monbiot doesn't usually give TV interviews so it was great to come across a video interview, in which he talks about: why climate change is the biggest issue facing humanity, why a war-like effort is needed to combat it, why Stern review isn't enough, why people in the West would have to be "hypocrites on an unprecedented scale" to point fingers at China, why journalists don't understand climate change, how the media censors news and what are the potential proposals to address climate change.

The link above is part-1 of the 4-part interview (~ 23 minutes in total). You will find links to other parts on the same the page. Video works quite well adapting to your bandwidth. Not to be missed.

About George Monbiot

iPhone Ad Videos

2007-06-04T13:03:00.000+05:30

When Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone earlier this year, I wrote the same day that the brilliance of the iPhone lies in its user experience - not its "features" which is how the industry and the media are used to looking at cell phones ("does it have wifi, does it do 3G, infrared").

iPhone shows that it's not about what the phone can do, but how it does it.

Three iPhone ads started airing last night that focus exclusively on the user interface. To quote a seasoned Apple observer...

In over 20 years I can't remember Apple ever showing how easy it is to *use* their software. [...] their commercials are always hardware-centric with some allusions to ease-of-use but never a systematic display of their OS or app interfaces [...]

Until now. The three new iPhone commercials that started airing last night are utterly unambiguous interface showcases.

- Ziya Oz

Here are all three iPhone Ads for your viewing pleasure.

iPhone Ad: Never Been an iPod

iPhone Ad: How to

iPhone Ad: Calamari

High resolution versions of ads are available on Apple.com.

Other iPhone posts from Orange Hues blog

Steve Jobs' iPhone: What's the Big Deal?
iPhone: Apple's Most Profitable Product Ever?

Other Apple posts from Orange Hues blog

"Climate Change is Not Urgent, it's an International Emergency"

2007-05-03T09:55:00.001+05:30

Two days ago yet another study surfaced that highlights the immense size of climate change problem the world faces today. New observations from the field find that Arctic ice sheet is melting at a pace 30 years in advance of what the computer models predict. The blue area in the graph shows the range of melting predicted by the models used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. The actual melting shown by the red line is decades ahead of the prediction.

This could mean that sea-level worldwide could rise at a pace no one expected. When the IPCC reports came out, they shocked the world. Now it turns out, IPCC assessments are too conservative. This is hardly surprising to those of us who have been following this issue closely. IPCC works on a consensus-building approach - every government representative must agree with the scientists, and they have an early cut-off period after which they can't consider any new scientific evidence. Now BBC writes that this is the third time in past few months that new studies have shown IPCC reports to be too conservative.

It's well known that most of the countries in the world have yet to act on climate change. America and Australia, two of the largest per capita polluters have no targets to curb carbon emissions. Africa, which has probably the most to lose by changing climate, is too mired in its own problems to pay attention. Asia, particularly China and India, is content playing the blame game with the developed world, which has responded likewise. The issue is particularly bad in India because we are the only country in the world where there is least awareness about climate change, according to a recent Gallup poll.

However, even a few countries in Europe that are genuinely concerned about the issue and have addressed it with targets appear to be doing far short of what is necessary. George Monbiot's latest column in Guardian does an excellent job of making the complex clear about the relationship between government targets of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and rising global temperature. Here is a ten-point summary of Monbiot's article using original quotes:

Any level of climate change is dangerous for someone, but there is a broad consensus about what this word means: two degrees [celcius] of warming above pre-industrial levels. This aim has been adopted overtly by the UN and the European Union, and implicitly by the British, German and Swedish governments.
The average global temperature is affected by the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere [...] usually expressed as "carbon dioxide equivalent".
A paper published last year [...] suggests that if greenhouse gases reach a concentration of 550 parts per million, carbon dioxide equivalent, there is an average of 82% chance that global warming will exceed two degrees. Only if concentrations are stabilised at 400 parts or below is there a low chance (an average of 28%) that temperatures will rise by more than two degrees.
You begin to understand the scale of the challenge when you discover that the current level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (using the IPCC's formula) is 459ppm. We have already exceeded the safe level.
To give ourselves a high chance of preventing dangerous climate change, we will need a programme so drastic that greenhouse gases in the atmosphere end up below the current concentrations.
But no government has set itself this task. The European Union and the Swedish government have established the world's most stringent target. It is 550ppm, which gives us a near certainty of an extra 2C.
The British government makes use of a clever conjuring trick. Its target is also "550 parts per million" but of carbon dioxide alone. When you include the other greenhouse gases, this translates into 666ppm, carbon dioxide equivalent (a fitting figure). The government's target, in other words, commits us to a very dangerous level of climate change.
In my book Heat, I estimate that to avoid two degrees of warming we require a global emissions cut of 60% per capita between now and 2030. This translates into an 87% cut in the United Kingdom. This is a much stiffer target than the British government's - which requires a 60% cut in the UK's emissions by 2050.
But my figure now appears to have been an underestimate. [...] If carbon emissions are to be distributed equally [over growing population], the greater cut must be made by the biggest polluters: rich nations like us. The UK's emissions per capita would need to fall by 91%.
But our governments appear quietly to have abandoned their aim of preventing dangerous climate change. If so, they condemn millions to death. What the IPCC report shows is that we have to stop treating climate change as an urgent issue. We have to start treating it as an international emergency.

Links

George Monbiot's complete article: The rich world's policy on greenhouse gas now seems clear: millions will die

IPCC's 2007 working group-I report on scientific evidence of climate change published 2nd Feb 2007 and working group-II report on climate change impacts released 6th Apr 2007. More about IPCC's recent reports.

BBC story on the latest study on Arctic melting. New York Times coverage of the same story. And original source of the above graph.