Zone5

Probably only friends and people who know me well will know that before I became interested in gardening and all things permacultural I was in fact a passionate chessplayer. This is way back in my youth, when for a few years while still at school I filled most of my free time studying chess books – the Sicilian Dragon, Rook and Pawn endings, the games of Bobby Fischer- and traveled to chess tournaments at weekends.

Although I dreamed of Grandmasterdom and did achieve some local success and did well in a few junior competitions, I was never a serious contender, which was just as well because it would probably have lead to a narrower and less richly fulfilled life than the one I have been blessed with.

I hardly play at all these days, not being anywhere near a chess club, and not inspired to play  chess online (yet) but still regularly follow the top matches with great interest.  Some of the players still competing at the highest levels are familiar to me still- the UK no. 1 Nigel Short is my contemporary and I remember seeing him play when still a teenager at the Britsh Championships in Brighton some 30 years ago.

As it happens Short is playing in a major event in London this week, the London Chess Classic where he is up against among others two of the top players in the world, ex-world champion Vladimir Kramnik and the Norwegian phenomenon Magnus Carlsen who at just 18years of age is currently the world number 1.

I was gratified and surprised then to read a story on Chess Vibes by Arne Moll in which the author weaves together the themes of his early skepticism about chess computers with… climate change skepticism:

During the last few days, with the eyes of the entire world on the Copenhagen Climate Summit while climate ‘skeptics’ demand equal time in the debate and attempt to confuse public opinion with misinformation and politically motivated arguments, I was often reminded of how I myself used to look at chess computers in the 90s. As aggravated as I am now about the lowly tactics of today’s climate skeptics, I’m afraid back in the days I was a kind of computer-skeptic, too, in the sense that I found it very, very hard to believe chess engines could ever replace or imitate the best of human chess thinking. I simply couldn’t imagine a lifeless machine suggesting a subtle long-term positional exchange sacrifice.

He goes onto give a very good definition of a skeptic as being someone who will change their view if new evidence comes along but points out rather astutely that -from the point of view of a climate change denier- “Being a skeptic is only useful if the evidence is on your side”. It is worth reading down through the comments on the Chess Vibes article and comparing them with discussions on climate change sites- I am gratified that most of the chess fans there seem very rational and well able to handle the nuanced arguments about the science of climate change, and the nature of science in general.

While the likes of Carlsen and Short battle it out over the 64 black and white squares in London a much more serious challenge is taking place inside and out of the conference halls in Copenhagen.  Though the chances may be slim, lets hope a strategy can be found that doesnt involve too many unsound sacrifices, and the professional climate change deniers, working so hard around the clock to misrepresent the science, can be once and for all checkmated.

Brilliant debunking of the leaked emails by Unity here.