Michael Specter has a smart article in last week's New Yorker on the practical and ethical challenges of measuring and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It touches on the complications of food miles – e.g., food may be produced more efficiently in Africa - the need for a carbon price, and how reducing deforestation in Brazil and Indonesia is the lowest of the low hanging greenhouse gas fruit.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Friday, February 22, 2008
Farming the land and the oceans
Last week's Science featured a fascinating global map of human impact on the world's oceans (top), produced by Halpern et al. The complicated mapping exercise concludes that 41% of the world's oceans are strongly affected by multiple human stresses.
The map is a fascinating - "stark" in the words of Science - aquatic sibling to the global agricultural land use maps that are generated by Navin Ramankutty and colleagues by blending satellite observations and agricultural data. 
The latest cropland and pasture land datasets (bottom) are described in a recent Global Biogeochemical Cycles paper entitled "Farming the Planet". The data shows that ~34% of the planet's ice-free land surface has been converted for human agriculture.
Unlike the ocean maps, the land use maps only reflect locations that has been directly transformed by human activity, and one form (agriculture) of human activity at that.
It'd be terrific to unite the scientists studying terrestrial and marine systems to create a ocean+land dataset of human disturbance that includes all forms of resource extraction on land (including agriculture).
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
British Columbia introduces a carbon tax
The government of British Columbia has announced a tax on all fossil fuels - gasoline, coal, natural gas, you name it. The revenue-neutral carbon tax is being touted as the centerpiece of what the Globe and Mail called 'the greenest budget ever seen in North America'.
The details of the tax plan and other components of the budget will be heavily scrutinized over the coming weeks, as they should be (e.g. is $10-$30/tonne too low to effect people's decisions? should consumers be taxed directly, or indirectly through taxes on industries?). Right now, the most important feature about this budget is the fact that it exists. North America will finally have a real example of carbon pricing, that can serve as a model or a cautionary tale. You can be sure many other provinces, US states, and federal political parties will be watching closely.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Coral bleaching and limits to ocean warming
A new paper by Kleypas et al in Geophysical Research Letters suggests that a possible upper limit to ocean temperatures – proposed by the “ocean thermostat” hypothesis – may spare some coral reefs from future coral bleaching events. The science has been more or less massacred by some of the press, so it’s worth explaining what is actually going on.
The “ocean thermostat” theory predicts that there is an upper limit to sea surface temperatures – somewhere around 30-34 C depending on the region. First things first: that does not mean if you put some ocean water on the stove, it is impossible to get the temperature over 34 C. The theory is based on a number of negative feedback mechanisms which only operate at relatively large scales, larger, say than the pot sitting on your stove. So the limit is expected to be 30-31 C in the open ocean, like the Pacific, and a bit higher, 33-34 C in enclosed seas like the Red Sea.
We’re used to hearing about positive feedbacks – temperature rises, sea ice melts, a darker surface (water) that reflects less radiation is exposed, causing temperatures to rise even more. In this case, rising water temperature would drive processes that would slow or stop the temperature rise. There are several candidate mechanisms. If the ocean thermostat really exists, it is likely caused by a combination of the mechanisms. One example is that as the ocean warms, more water evaporates, creating more clouds and reducing incoming solar radiation. Another is that warming of one area of ocean will create pressure gradients (with other cooler areas) creating currents that redistribute the water.
The sea surface temperatures across most of the tropics are well below the theoretical temperature limit suggested by the ocean thermostat theory. The maximum annual temperature could rise 3-4 C in most coral reef regions, well beyond the threshold for the corals, without hitting the thermostat limit. That's the case in the Caribbean, the eastern Pacific, much of the Indian Ocean, much of the Great Barrier Reef, etc.
The exception is in the Western Pacific. The warmest open ocean waters is the world are found in a zone that can stretch from the Indian Ocean well into the Central Pacific. It is affectionately known as the West or Western Pacific Warm Pool or WPWP. In a pathetic attempt to give you the illusion scientists are hip and clever, I will use the short form WP2.
You probably know of WP2, if not by name. For one, the Pacific section can be (loosely) thought of as the body of warm water in the equatorial Pacific that migrates eastward during El Nino events. Also, the Pacific section is home to the majority or at least a sizeable fraction, of what’s left of the world’s un-canned tuna and, in turn, to the majority of the world’s illegal fishing boats.
Many years, the WP2 is usually centered in SE Asian archipelago or the expansive territorial waters of the Pacific Island nation of the Federated States of Micronesia. Of course, the exact location changes each year, bringing the core of warm open ocean waters maybe closer to the Solomon Islands, or Palau, or Kiribati, or Tuvalu, or other neighbouring countries. The fishing vessels flying flags of convenience from Mongolia or Western Sahara or Suriname are usually close behind.
When the edge of the warm pool moves, say, western Kiribati, the rise in water temperatures (1-2 C) is quite likely to cause a coral bleaching event. If you take a look at the January degree heating week maps – that’s the accumulated heat stress metric we use to predict bleaching events – for the past several years, you’ll see that almost every year, there’s a hot spot somewhere outside of WP2’s home base. This has been the proximate cause of bleaching events in the Kiribati (Gilbert) Islands, the Phoenix Islands, Tuvalu and the Solomons in recent years - this may be, in part, a manifestation of long-term temperature trends.
That’s where Kleypas et al. comes in. The paper finds that open ocean waters with maximum annual SSTs above 29 C – in other words, our friend WP2 – have warmed less than any other parts of the ocean since 1950. The closer the SSTs are to 30-31 C, the lower the rate of warming. The data appears to support, at least, circumstantially the existence of the ocean thermostat. If correct, this would imply corals in the warm region could be spared from a dangerous temperature rise.
That’s what spawned the “corals saved from ocean thermostat” headlines. Here’s the catch – ok, three catches. These are not criticisms of the paper rather crucial issues touched on in the paper which were not addressed in the news pieces (and may lead to abuse of the results):
First, the notion of a temperature ceiling sparing coral reefs is limited to this very warm open ocean region. In fact, one of the most interesting results of the paper is that while WP2 has not warmed as rapidly as other parts of the tropical ocean, it has expanded. In other words, the edges have warmed. That, as we’ve seen, has caused bleaching events in a number of countries like Kiribati
Second, the extent and severity of coral bleaching is related to experience. Kleypas et al. compiled bleaching reports from islands within WP2. In these locations, coral bleaching tended to occur with temperatures only 0.2-0.3 C greater than the usual maximum experience by the corals. The threshold is generally thought to be 1-2 C. Corals, like any organisms, adapt or acclimate over time to their environment. Since temperatures historically have shown less variation in the WP2 than other parts of the tropics, the corals living there may be naturally more sensitive to temperature stress. If so, the ocean thermostat might not provide the protection that was suggested in the media reports.
Third, the ocean thermostat theory is predicated in part on warming being limited to the surface ocean. Historical temperature profile data suggest ocean warming is also occurring at greater depths. The implications of the warming at depth needs to be fully investigated before we propose an upper limit to surface ocean temperatures in the future.
In other words, there's much more to come on this story.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Biofuels and the "land use cascade"
As readers of Maribo no doubt heard, two papers in last week’s Science addressed the greenhouse gas emissions that arise from clearing lands for biofuel crop production. It is an important subject that has been widely discussed within the scientific community, including my own collection of colleagues, for the past year or two. You might say these papers are the first to “do the math”. The papers conclude what many carbon cycle experts suspect: that any greenhouse gas benefits that come from using biofuels instead of oil are negated when you include the emissions associated with land clearing.
The publication of both papers at once is enlightening because they tackle slightly different, but complimentary, issues.
Fargione et al. address the direct emissions from the land cleared to plant the actual biofuel crops. The examples includes Brazilian Amazon to soybean biodiesel, Brazilian Cerrado to soybean biodiesel, Brazilian Cerrado to sugarcane ethanol, Indonesian or Malaysian lowland tropical rainforest to palm biodiesel, Indonesian or Malaysian peatland tropical rainforest to palm biodiesel, and US Central grassland to corn ethanol.
Searchinger et al. use a global economic model to look more at the indirect emissions. In the developed world, including Canada and the US , forests or grasslands are not being cleared to plant biofuel crops. Instead, biofuels are being produced on land previously devoted to other crops or from grain diverted from another use (i.e. corn grain goes to the ethanol plant rather than the boat shipping it overseas). The change has a cascading effect on the world market. There is less grain available, which can cause other countries to clear land to feed the market.
I like to call problems like that addressed in the Searchinger et al. paper “land use cascades”. There are countless examples -- one of the my favourites is the effect that the surge in soybean production in the US and Brazil in the 90s had on the Yasawa Islands in Fiji (I tell the whole story is here).
These cascades are becoming increasingly important, and increasingly global in scale. For example, the same thinking needs to be applied to forestry-based carbon credit programs. If a segment of BC coastal rainforest slated for logging is protected, does that mean some other forest must be logged to provide the missing pulp and paper? If so, what effect does that have on the net emissions? We may discover that net greenhouse gas savings only occur if we also reduce demand for the products that would otherwise come from that land either cleared (biofuels) or saved (forest carbon credits). More on that later.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Tom Delay and “believing” in climate change
During a TV interview a couple days ago, former Republican congressional leader Tom Delay began an attack on John McCain’s lack of “conservative” credentials with the subject of climate change. Basically, he said the conservative position should be that “man is not the cause of climate change”. When pushed on the subject, he uttered the following line:
It is arrogance to suggest that man can affect climate change. There’s no science that supports such a notion.
Never mind the fact that Delay was forced to leave office because of ethical violations, or that he has a ghostwriter for his blog (ah, the rebellious independence of the blogsphere), or that he may be simply trying the blame women for climate change. It is worth listening carefully to his choice of words and emphasis.
Climate change activists tend to assume anyone who doubts or refutes the scientific evidence is motivated entirely by politics, by money, by ideology, or by all three. No doubt, that trifecta affects Delay’s thinking on the issue. This statement, however, makes it abundantly clear that those are not the only reasons his community dismisses the overwhelming scientific evidence for climate change
Notice, Delay is not arguing that the climate doesn’t ever change. In his words and his tone, he is saying that the climate is far beyond the control of mere people, that it is controlled by other, grand forces. The arrogance of which he speaks is a belief that people can intervene on God’s turf.
Is this Delay's genuine belief? Or is it a clever talking point, a set of code words that tap into people’s pre-existing beliefs in order to cast doubt on evidence for climate change and the policy regulating greenhouse gas emission? That I can’t say. Either way, climate change communicators and activists dismiss his argument at their own peril.
As I argued in a recent essay (more here) the very notion that humans can affect the climate runs counter to thousands of years of belief that the sky is the domain of gods. Acceptance of human-induced climate change is a real paradigm shift. It is a mistake to assume people that doubt the scientific evidence are motivated only by greed or politics. If those of us communicating climate change to the public fail to address the fact that it can conflict with fundamental beliefs, we’ll fail as communicators.
Friday, February 01, 2008
Supporting carbon capture and storage in Alberta
Following close on the release of Alberta's heavily criticized GHG reduction plan, a joint federal-Alberta task force has recommended the federal government spend $2 billion to kickstart carbon capture and storage (CCS) in Alberta.
The task force nails one point: we have to stop blustering about CCS and put some shovels in the ground. The question is who should pay. If the federal government enacted a carbon pricing policy - whether a tax or cap and trade - the onus would fall as it should on the companies responsible for emissions. That's how it happens with all other regulated emissions.
Here, with no price on carbon, the task force and the oil companies are effectively saying that nothing will happen unless the federal government kicks in money at the beginning. If this happens, it will be widely criticized as a handout to oil companies.
It is not unreasonable to ask the government to play venture capitalist, to provide seed money to help advance new more sustainable technologies or industries. Oil is hardly a fledging industry. And, in any case, for the technology to thrive, the seed money has to be coupled with regulation. Otherwise, it is a handout.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Greenhouse gases, meat consumption and the Amazon
The Sunday NY Times has a good story on the global environmental burden of meat production, an issue that's been covered here on and off over the past couple years. Meat production, particularly beef, is responsible for a large proportion of the world's greenhouse gas emissions due to the energy required to grow animal feed, the clearing of land for feed crops, N2O emissions from fertilizer application and both N2O and CH4 emissions from the animals themselves. The graph at right shows the consistent rise in per capita consumption in the Americas and Asia over the past 45 years. Meat production and consumption is expected to continue to rise due to rising demand in China and other parts of Asia.
The demand for animal feed, coupled the demand for biofuels, is being felt most of all in the Amazon, the one large area of "unused" and potentially productive farmland left on the planet. The rate of Amazonian deforestation increased in the last few months, and may increase further in the rainy months to come, when most illegal cutting usually occurs.
Friday, January 25, 2008
Alberta's climate change plan
Last Friday's post on transit plans ended with this aside:
But I can guarantee you no one, at any level of government anywhere in the country, wants to look like Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach, who toured Washington this week trying to deny the environmental impact of oil sands operations... The argument: large facilities are required to "reduce the intensity by 12 per cent." This while they plan to triple production. So if intensity is the emissions per unit of production, that means the emissions would multiple by 2.64. Canadians do understand fractions.
Prophetic? The release of the Alberta government's dubious climate change plan invited no shortage of ridicule.
There are two things any discussion of this must concede right away. First, the fact that Alberta has recognized the need to address climate change, let alone release a plan, is a huge positive change. Second, Canada's economic boom in recent years has been driven in large part by high oil prices encouraging expansion of production from Alberta's tar sands. So, like it or not, Alberta's in a difficult place on this issue.
That all being said, the plan is purposely deceptive, relying on tricks of language and statistics to pretend that meaningful action will be taken. The report also displays a fundamental misunderstanding of climate change, discussing it as an environmental problem, rather than a problem that will affect the economy and human well-being worldwide.
For the number: the plan calls for a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions below business-as-usual projections by 2050. Given that the usual business is carbon-intensive, this equates to a 14% decrease from 2005 emissions.
Now, Alberta's GHG emissions increased by over 40% from 1990, the baseline most of the planet is using, to 2005. Therefore, the 2050 target is around 20% above 1990 levels. I can't provide exact numbers because the reported total 2005 emissions in the Alberta plan is lower than what I find in the federal inventory. This may be a simple reporting issue.
Comparing to a business-as-usual scenario that involves ramping up oil sands production paved
the way for the disingenuous graph
to your right. It appears that Alberta is calling for far greater emissions reductions than any other province. Two reasons: i) the comparison is to the business as usual projections, which again, assume a huge increase in oil extraction from the tar sands, ii) BC, Quebec and Ontario have set emissions reduction targets for 2050, but based on current or 1990 levels rather than Alberta's business-as-usual approach, so no comparison is made.
The idea of setting a target based on business-as-usual emissions follows from the "stabilization wedges" approach developed by Steve Pacala and Rob Socolow at Princeton; the word wedge even pops up in the Alberta report. Their popular idea is to use a variety of strategies to at least stabilize emissions by 2050-2055. The Alberta "wedges" include carbon capture and storage (70% of reductions), conservation (12%) and "greening energy production" (18%). Again, the breakdown appears to put the burden on industry, particular those related oil sands production. But the calculations have been done assuming a huge expansion in oil sands production. So, at best, it is a wash.
However you crunch the numbers, the Alberta's plan openly conflicts with even the mediocre plan put forth by the Conservative government. It openly conflicts with the idea that the developed world should shoulder a greater burden of emissions reductions -- the reason global emissions are expected to rise without any mitigation is supposed to be development in the Global South.
Following this template, it will be extremely difficult for Canada to meet any scientifically meaningful long-term emissions target. NDP leader Jack Layton summed it up well: "This program put forward by the government of Alberta would be totally contrary to virtually any target that anyone has set anywhere."
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Status of the Coral Reefs of the Caribbean
If you've come across a headline "Hurricanes and Global warming devastating Caribbean coral reefs", here's why. The IUCN and the Global Coral Reef Monitoring network just released The Status of the Coral Reefs of the Caribbean after Bleaching and Hurricanes in 2005, a long-awaited report compiled by dozens of scientists including myself. The report examines the impacts of the events of 2005 and long-term forecast for Caribbean reefs. The latter based in part on our ongoing work on the effect of climate change on coral reefs.
Here is take-home message, from the executive summary:
"This is a pivotal moment for the coral reefs. The world is already committed to some further warming due to past greenhouse gas emissions and the expected emissions from existing world energy infrastructure (Chapter 2). Thanks to more than a century of ‘committed warming’; events like 2005 are expected to occur more frequently by the 2030s. The only possible way to sustain some live coral on the reefs around the world will be to carefully manage the direct pressures like pollution, fishing and damaging coastal developments, and hope that some coral species are able to adapt to the warmer environment. However, a dramatic reduction in
greenhouse gas emissions in the next 20 years will be critical to control further warming and dangerously high CO2 levels that will probably reduce the robustness and competitive fitness of corals and limit the habitats for many other organisms living on Caribbean coral reefs."
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Carbonland continues to shrink
The latest Carbonland vs. States United for Climate map shows more and more states are agreeing to long-term reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Carbonland continued to shrink thanks to Midwestern Regional Greenhouse Gas Accord, which includes Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin and the province of Manitoba; an executive order in Florida; and Montana and Utah joining the Western Climate Initiative. Maryland's membership could be solidified any day by a bill before the state legislature.
Nothing has changed on this side of the border. Alberta remains the lone member of Carbonland though one may argue that Ottawa should be considered une île de carbone.
[Update: And, no, this plan won't get Alberta at ticket out of carbonland].
The good news is that, thanks in no small part due to provincial and state pressure, federal legislation in both countries could paint the whole map red. Real federal legislation is inevitable in the US, especially if the Democrats prevail as expected in the fall, and in Canada, especially if the Liberals force an election. Climate change is bound to be a prominent election issue here, so even the emissions intensity loving Conservatives will be forced to propose a real policy that features some type of carbon pricing and possibly even deals with the oil sands.
A bit more discussion on "domain of the gods"
can be found here. I appreciate any and all opinions on how these issues can be addressed in climate change education.
Friday, January 18, 2008
Funding and new transit announcements
Earlier this week, British Columbia announced a massive new public transit plan including over $10 billion for rapid transit lines in my new home of Vancouver. It has raised much excitement but also many questions about who will be paying for it all.
A couple days later, the Globe and Mail reported that Canada will copy the new and relatively meaningless US vehicle mileage standards. Today it rather ignorantly reports the move will increase automobile prices by thousands of dollars (even if it were true that costs have to go up to meet the standards, it would happen regardless of the Canadian decision because prices are driven by the US market).
You get the feeling that Canadians are concerned only about cost of transportation, not the efficiency. For the foreign readers of Maribo, it is important to understand that thanks to Canada's unique federalist system, 95% of the political life in Canada is spent arguing over which level of government should be paying for things. We tend to roll out massive public spending programs or new federal regulations without having secured any of the funding. With programs like the BC transit plan, the hope is that by generating excitement, the level of government announcing the program can guilt the other levels into coughing up some money.
Most of the time, guilting the province or the feds fails. So Canadians are quite skeptical of grand proposals for things like expanding public transit, building new inter-city train lines, etc. If you want to raise the ire a Torontonian, just ask about the waterfront redevelopment plan (the response will begin with "which one?").
On the odd occasion, the guilt approach actually works. We Canucks are, after all, generally apologetic people who hate to disappoint others.
Is this one of those odd occasions? Perhaps we've reaching this nexus of voter concern about climate change, oil prices, urban air pollution and traffic congestion that the every level of government will find a way to contribute at least a decent proportion of the requested funds for the BC transit plan, for Toronto's light rail plan, etc. Don't expect the SkyTrain all the way down Broadway to UBC to appear anytime during, say, the current millennium. And don't expect the auto manufacturers in Ontario to suddenly embrace new fuel efficiency standards. But I can guarantee you no one, at any level of government anywhere in the country, wants to look like Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach, who toured Washington this week trying to deny the environmental impact of oil sands operations*.
* The argument: large facilities are required to "reduce the intensity by 12 per cent." This while they plan to triple production. So if intensity is the emissions per unit of production, that means the emissions would multiple by 2.64. Canadians do understand fractions.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
International year of the reef, sort of
I began the year writing about coral reefs and the twin threats of rising temperatures and rising pCO2. One reason for that, which I neglected to mention, is that International Coral Reef Initiative has designated 2008 the International Year of the Reef.
There was some hope the UN would also recognize 2008 as the International Year of the Reef. Unfortunately, the UN has already designated 2008 as the International Year of the Potato. Yes, people sure do love Nemo, but apparently he can't hold a candle to Mr. Potato Head.
If anyone has a bootleg Mr. Potato Head where the potato is a massive Porites and the arms and legs are branching corals, let me know.
The generation that will "solve the problem"
At the bottom of a potentially depressing article about school authorities in Montana canceling a talk by climate scientist and lead IPCC author Steve Running out of fear it would be "one-sided" are two wonderful quotes that capture the message I think we scientists need to be delivering to high school and university students.
The first is from an enlightened student:
“I was insulted as a high school student prepared to enter the world I need to hear both sides of the story,” the student, Kip Barhaugh, 17, said in an interview Tuesday. “I don’t feel there is another side. Global warming is not a controversial issue, it’s a fact. We need to be prepared to deal with it.”
The second is from Running:
“Our generation caused the problem,” he said, “and I want to talk to high schools because they are the generation that will solve the problem. And we can’t solve the problem without a free discussion.”
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Rising CO2 and other reef organisms
A study in last week's Nature Geoscience, the new Nature spin-off journal, sort of like CSI: Geosciences, examined how higher pCO2 concentrations in the ocean could impact not corals, but another group of important calcifying organism on coral reefs: crustose coralline algae.
Wait... algae? Little green plants? Algae is a broad term encompassing all sorts of small plant-like organisms and causes a lot of confusion in casual conversation about coral reefs. It is used to describe the microscopic little dinoflagellates (zooxanthallae) that live in coral tissue and provide corals with food energy and colour. It is also used to describe the fleshy turf or plants that can come to dominate a reef after disturbance like removing the grazing fish, sedimentation, etc. Crustose coralline algae (CCA), the pink-ish layer encrusting on the dead coral skeleton in the centre of the above photo, is a red calcifying algae common on tropical reefs and more poleward coastal ecosystems.
One of CCA's many important ecological roles is being a kind of reef cement, or glue, that the binds fragments of reef together, as in the photo above from Butaritari, Kiribati. The experimental study found that elevated pCO2 concentrations inhibited the growth and recruitment of CCA. This preliminary finding - based on mesocosms conducted in Hawaii with a natural flow-through seawater and CO2-treated seawater - is a reminder that increasing CO2 concentrations could affect a broad array of calcifying organisms that play important ecological roles.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Cheaps cars for everyone?
While I appreciate it is ridiculous for anyone in North America, where the myth of the open road originated and where the average car current gets worse mileage than a 1976 Datsun, to complain about automotive developments in other parts of the world, it is hard not to wonder whether the release of $2500 Nano will be a disaster for the planet, not to mention India's already crowded roads and hospitals, destroying whatever naive hope that the developing world can leapfrog past our car-based culture to an efficient, modern transportation system.
At least the Nano gets 47 mpg (and isn't made out of clay).
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Carbon tax vs. Cap-and-Trade
At the behest of the Canadian government, the National Round Table for the Environment and the Economy completed an important study on the long-term climate policy options for Canada.
The Globe and Mail headline screamed "Panel proposes carbon tax" because of course taxes are scary evil things that make good headlines. It is worth looking at what the report actually says:
The first recommendation:
Implement a strong, clear, consistent and certain GHG emission price signal across the entire Canadian economy as soon as possible in order to successfully shift Canada to a lower GHG emissions pathway...
The second:
Institute a market-based policy that takes the form of an emission tax or a cap-and-trade system or a combination of the two.
In other words, the bottom line of the study, by my reading, is that time, not the ongoing tax vs. cap-and-trade debate, is what matters the most. We need to install an effective carbon pricing policy - whether via a carbon tax, cap-and-trade, or a combination, whatever will work politically or logistically - as soon as possible if we want to achieve the long-term emissions reductions with minimal economic consequences. Yes, the structure of the policy is extremely important, but if we wait to long, any policy will fail to meet the long-term targets.
Sunday, January 06, 2008
What is dangerous?
Last week, I referenced a figure from a recent Science review that brilliantly illustrates the current predicament for the planet and, in particular, the planet's coral reefs.
Those of you who have been following climate science and policy for a while will remember that Article Two of the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) - the godfather of all climate policy, the precursor to Kyoto, all the COPs, and to Bali, the document that was signed by pretty much every country on the planet even the US - famously called for the:
" stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system."
A central challenge of climate change science and policy research since 1992 has been defining dangerous . Not just because the word appears in some international agreement, but because it is a useful way for us to determine allowable levels and trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions.
Notice the important use of term "climate system" rather than climate. This recognizes that the issue is not just the weather and the climate; changes in the oceans, in the planet's ice sheets or in the terrestrial biosphere could be dangerous to the planet and humanity.
Adjectives, of course, are difficult to clearly define. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary takes a big whiff on dangerous with "exposing to or involving danger". The UNFCCC text is more helpful in providing the following as a benchmark:
"such a level [of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations] should be achieved within a time-frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner."
So, most scientific efforts to define "dangerous anthropogenic interference" have focussed on the collapse of major ice sheets (which would presumably threaten the economy), shifts in ocean circulation causing abrupt climate change (ditto), and sometimes debilitating tropical droughts (threatening food production).
What about coral reefs? The UNFCCC text states that an ecosystem not being able to adapt naturally to climate change is dangerous. As the figure illustrates, corals reefs will be in imminent danger if greenhouse gas concentrations are not stabilized around or below 500 ppm CO2-equivalent because of increased frequency and severity of coral bleaching events and the consequences of CO2-driven changes in ocean chemistry. As it, ocean warming due to climate change has already dramatically increased the likelihood of coral bleaching.
Yet the predicted demise of the world's coral reefs has only been included as an example of dangerous anthropogenic interference in a few studies (e.g., Harvey, 2007; O'Neill and Oppenheimer, 2004).
Why? Pardon the building of a straw man... I can only presume that people think coral reefs are not that vital to humanity. Sure, losing Nemo would be a shame, but it wouldn't be a disaster, like all of Greenland melting into the ocean.
That argument is not only wrong, it betrays a very northern, developed bias in our thinking. Coral reefs provide food, income and shoreline protection to hundreds of millions of people, almost all of whom live in developing countries. For those people, degradation of coral reefs surely would be dangerous.
Saturday, January 05, 2008
Another reason to support Obama?
"When you are snorkeling through the coral reefs, you realize that a slight change in temperature or increase in sediment and runoff could end up destroying it all and making it unavailable for your children. That is something you worry about."
- Barack Obama in an interview with Grist
Thursday, January 03, 2008
Temperature and CO2: A new figure for a new year
Last month, Science had a terrific review article on the threat that rising CO2 concentrations and rising temperatures pose to the world's coral reefs. Scientists, alas, are not great marketers. The plight of the world's coral reefs is a tough sell at a time when most North Americans are "holiday" shopping and powering all manner of coloured lights, inflatable Santas and animatronic reindeer (though the review did garner some front page and radio attention the week of publication).
In my mind, the most compelling feature of the paper was this one figure to the left (reprinted here without any particular permission, shhh). It is a simple inversion of the famous 420,000 year record of temperature and CO2 plots from the Vostok ice cores, shown in every climate change course, presentation and documentary. The very same data, plotted a different way: temperature vs. CO2, rather than temperature and CO2 over time.
I hope to see this figure used more often, whether in relation to coral reefs or not, because it clearly demonstrates three crucial points about the planet's current situation:
1. There is warming in the pipeline, like it or not. Today (pt. A) lies far outside the cluster of data points from the Vostok core. Those points represent a rough historical relationship between temperature presuming the climate is at equilibrium. Right now, we are experiencing what climate modelers call the transient response to CO2 forcing. If CO2 concentrations froze now, global temperatures would continue to rise until the climate reached equilibrium
2. That equilibrium point lies outside any experience the planet has had in the past 420,000 years, even without any future increase in greenhouse gas concentrations (as the current CO2 level is unprecedented). A further increase places the planet in an even farther outside the envelope of anything in the "recent" geological record, to use a geologists warped definition of the word recent.
3. Oceanic ecosystems - particularly coral reefs - that are sensitive to both the physical (temperature) conditions and the chemical (pCO2) conditions are already and will continue to experience a thermal and chemical environment not seen for hundreds of thousands of years. As I've said before, if you are a coral, pick your poison. This naturally raises the issue of what constitutes dangerous climate change, a key question tossed about a bit lately (see Climate Progress) that I will return to later.
Andrew Revkin, on his NY Times blog Dot Earth, has been asking what language, if any, can most effectively communicate the urgency of climate change, most recently using the idea of the "elevator speech" (Eli's is good). Is there one figure that tells the story best?
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Religion and the 400 Club
From Andrew Dressler at Gristmill, a quote from Imhofe's #10, weather expert Chris Allen, that links my last two posts on how the 400 Club claims expertise and how long-held religious beliefs can pose an obstacle to understanding climate change:
My biggest argument against putting the primary blame on humans for climate change is that it completely takes God out of the picture. It must have slipped these people's minds that God created the heavens and the earth and has control over what's going on...
What these environmentalists are actually saying is "we know more than God - we're bigger than God - God is just a fantasy - science is real...He isn't...listen to US!" I have a huge problem with that.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Attack of the climate skeptics XXII: Inhofe's last stand
Like most horror movie sequels, this flick is worse and even less plausible than the last. I normally hate to draw attention to this drivel. Unfortunately, the latest supposedly consensus-busting release from US Senator James Inhofe did not go straight to DVD. It received attention from the NY Times, inspired a shouting match on Fox News, granted, that's not much of an accomplishment, and naturally ticked off the blogs (Romm, desmogblog).
1. “An IPCC expert reviewer”: The claim of many a 400 Clubber. It means absolutely nothing. The IPCC reports are public documents. As Tim Lambert pointed out, anyone who asks to see them and considers submitting a comment can call themselves an expert reviewer. Even if you were actually asked to review a section, it still means nothing. On request, I reviewed the corals and climate sections of WGII. That doesn’t mean I can claim the authors had any respect for my review, nor could I claim any responsibility whatsoever for the final report.
Consensus is unusual in science. That’s what makes the widespread agreement among the community of experts around the world on the basic science of climate change and climate change impacts so remarkable.
Friday, December 21, 2007
The separation of earth and sky
Apologies for the sporadic posting and delay on the series of Kiribati posts. Moving always takes longer than I imagine it will (any tips on buying furniture in Vancouver are welcome!)
In this month's Climatic Change, I have what probably appears to be an out-of-character editorial essay on how religious or traditional belief systems can pose an obstacle to climate change communication. The essay was initially developed during my field work in Fiji a couple years back (that explains what has to be the most unusual abstract in Climatic Change history) and supplemented with further research and interviews.
In a nutshell, I argue that the climate science and education community have been missing the base reason that people are reluctant to accept the urgency of human-induced climate change:
The notion that humans can strongly influence or be in control of the climate counters thousands of years of religious philosophy and existing traditional belief systems worldwide.... The conflict between the basic notion of human-induced climate change and a millennia-old belief in a separation between earth and sky may underpin the slow public response to warnings about climate change.
This is not an indictment or endorsement of religion, rather a discussion of the separation of earth (the domain of humans) and sky (the domain of the gods) in different traditions and the need for a long view of human history when communicating climate change. I encourage people to read the essay and provide feedback on how we can use these ideas to improve climate change communication efforts. Here's a bit of the conclusion:
From Galileo to Darwin, science is full of examples where new discoveries challenged traditional beliefs. If history is a guide, it can take decades or centuries for the new science to become the new orthodoxy. The battle over public acceptance of natural selection is still being fought 150 years after the publication of the Darwin’s The Origin of Species. The potential for human-induced climate change may not belong on a list of the most fundamental scientific discoveries of last 500 years. Like those discoveries, however, it does challenge a belief held by virtually all religions and cultures worldwide for thousands of years. This long view of history needs to be reflected in campaigns to educate the public, who do not have the benefit of years of graduate training in atmospheric science, about the science of climate change.
The true communications challenge facing climate scientists, educators and policymakers is time. Aggressive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions could need to begin in the next decade to avoid “dangerous anthropogenic interference” in the climate system, likethe collapse of major ice sheets, shifts in ocean circulation and the widespread degradationof coral reefs (e.g., O’Neill and Oppenheimer 2002). Garnering strong public and political support for any substantial near-term action is requiring society to adapt beliefs held relatively constant for millennia in a matter of years.
Monday, December 10, 2007
The Canadian Principles
Read them and weep? The leaked document contains Canada's official stance on the post-Kyoto agreement. On the surface, most the nine principles are quite reasonable though many said that about the statement from the APEC summit.
Three key, and questionable, items stand out:
i) "a truly global solution" and "binding emission reduction targets for all major emitters" = an old summer trick to plunging in a cold lake. I'll jump in the lake, but only if you (China and India) jump with us. You don't have to jump as far from the dock (lower target) but you have to agree to go now (which I know you won't do).
ii) "the agreement should set a target date..." = no short- or mid-term targets
iii) "... and include goals for global emission reductions by 2050" = actually, no long-term target either, as the word goal in the policy-speak means something is non-binding.
Yes, the caution is understandable given Canada's failure to reduce GHG emissions after signing Kyoto. Unfortunately, the climate may not understand.
Saturday, December 08, 2007
It just had to be Bali
I visited
i) The U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee passed a bill requiring long-term cuts in GHG emissions, the U.S. Congress passed a progressive energy bill and the news media is a twitter about the guts of emissions policy like carbon taxes vs. cap-and-trade, auctioning permits, etc. (take a look at the Cleantech Collective for ongoing coverage and debate)
ii) The three opposition parties in
In essence, international climate policy is being sabotaged by North American politics. The subtleties in the reporting from
Yet the use of the language of false choice, reminiscent of “you are either with us, or you are with the terrorists”, by Bush Administration officials, and the parroting by the talking and blogging heads is affecting the policy debate. The Conservative Government in Canada seems to hoping for that degree of influence, trumpeting a "Canadian" approach, which is not only deeply flawed... it is not even a Canadian idea, more or less lifted from US policy.
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Searching for the right words
In today's NY Times, science reporter Andrew Revkin has a commentary about the challenge of communicating the need for action on climate change. The associated post on Dot Earth, Revkin's NY Times blog, includes my Desmogblog "100 year letter" and my thoughts on the communicating the urgency of action. If you have any other motivational campaigns or strategies, leave a comment here or at Dot Earth.
Ironically, this year the lake should be solidly frozen by mid-December, but with the recent move out west, I'll be missing the new year's tradition mentioned in the letter.
UPDATE: There are some interesting (and a couple crazy) comments after the Dot Earth post. My response was:
"In communicating publicly about climate change, my first instinct is always to talk about the inequality, that the developing world will pay the largest price for a problem largely created by the developed world. (followed by the unfortunate irony that the developed world also has more money to spend on adaptation). Unfortunately - I wish this were not true - opening up with photos from Bangladesh or Kiribati, the Pacific island nation where I have done field work, can lose the audience, for all the reasons cited by the sociologists in the earlier Dot Earth post. So, sometimes it may help to start with a real local or personal example, then talk honestly about how the rest of the world is being and will be affected by climate change."
Monday, December 03, 2007
Changes
One important, non-Kiribati related note. Although Maribo remains in the same place in the virtual world, back in the real world, remember that?, I have moved to the University of British Columbia in wonderful and currently rather damp Vancouver.
After several had a several fun, fascinating, educational and smog-choked year in Princeton and the NY/NJ areas, it was time to ditch the work visa. In other words, I remained in the U.S. for almost the entire reign of the climate-challenged Bush Administration, only to return to Canada when the equally climate-challenged Harper government is undermining international negotiations and aiming for a majority in Parliament. Political masochism? Or going where you are needed? You can choose.
Oy, Canada.
Re-opening: Climate change and Kiribati
The name of this blog is a local word that was once used to describes the waves on the outer reed in Tarawa, the capital of the equatorial island nation of Kiribati. Tarawa and the other 32 islands of Kiribati are coral atolls, low-lying circular chains of islands created entirely by corals.
An atoll is created by corals growing along the slopes of a sinking old oceanic volcano, a fascinating idea proposed by Charles Darwin during his famous voyages across the Pacific that was not actually confirmed until US scientists started drilling (and testing bombs) in the Marshall Islands in the 1950s. In short, the reef maintains itself near sea level, sand starts to collect, some seeds blow in, and you end up with a malleable ring of flat, narrow islands of sand, coral rock and a few trees all surrounding a shallow lagoon.
The islands in a developed atoll like Tarawa or others in Kiribati is protected - partly - from the erosive action of open ocean waves by a fringing or "outer" reef. When you visit a populated, claustorphobic atoll like Tarawa, you spend a lot of time looking at those waves and wondering about the future. That's why I called the blog Maribo.
Maribo's been on hiatus for six weeks while I was conducting field work in the namesake nation of Kiribati. Over the next few weeks, in addition to some of the usual news items, Maribo will feature stories about the reality - and the unreality - about climate change in what people assume is one of the most vulnerable places on the planet.
What's really happening in Kiribati? Is there evidence for sea level rise? Are other threats more prominent than climate change? What do the local people think? What can be done to help a low-lying nation cope with climate change? Stay tuned.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Nobel Prizes for all
There is an important message buried in the decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize not only to Al Gore but to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Science rarely comes from one person or one eureka moment.
We all love the myth of the maverick scientist, the patent clerk that works out the theory of general relatively. Most scientific advances don't happen that way, they come from gradual increase in the understanding of the different aspects of a problem. There are breakthroughs along the way, there are people that rightly receive recognition for those breakthroughs, but none of it would happen without the work that came before.
Our knowledge of climate change comes from the work of tens of thousands of scientists around the world conducted over decades, much of it thankless grunt work in the field, in the lab, or in front of the computer screen. The genius of the IPCC (and the UN Framework Convention) is the recognition that with an issue this important, the world requires a summary analysis of the work of the entire scientific community. It is unique in all of science. It is by no means perfect, but without it, we would be left without evidence of the strong consensus among the scientific community about climate change, evidence that is needed to advance public understanding and public policy.
As for Al Gore, the duel awarding of the Nobel Prize says that an issue or cause needs a figurehead, and the figurehead needs that large community of workers to hold him/her up.
Friday, October 05, 2007
The 100 year letter project
The folks at Desmogblog asked a group of writers, scientists and activists to write "a letter to their great, great grandchildren about their vision and hopes for their world in 100 years, in the context of global warming". You can read my tres Canuck letter here.
The biofuels post generated some good discussion on the blog and elsewhere about who - scientists, journalists, editors - is responsible for placing a new piece of research in context. We need to keep having these types of conversations.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Greenhouse gases from biofuels and the reporting of science
You may have read that a study by Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen and colleagues currently under review reports that biofuels, like corn-base ethanol and rapeseed biodiesel, emit more greenhouse gases than the fossil fuels they replace. It was covered by Reuters, the Times (UK) and the magazine Chemistry World (update: podcasts available on Scitizen). The news then bounced all over the internet, appearing in Grist, Green Car Congress, and a number of blogs like Alternapower, Green Diary, Biofuels Digest, Climateer Investing, Earth2Tech, Big Biofuels Blog, Classically liberal, After Gutenberg, Digital Journal, I could go on.
There is one other phrase you are unlikely to have noticed above. Under review.
In this case, that process is still underway. But that's where things get screwy. Unlike other journals, where submitted articles are sent to individual expert reviewers selected by the editors, APC includes an open review process. That means in addition to the normal peer review, anyone in the community can read the submitted paper online and offer comments. Personally, I like the system, as it gives authors a wider array of reviews and helps eliminate the chances that one irrational reviewer will derail a good piece of research.
The unintended consequence of the open discussion, however, is that an unpublished, and hence, unfinished paper is there for anyone to read. The paper can be reported in the media and the public can get the mistaken that the findings are accepted by the scientific community.
Think about this.
How could the N2O from fertilizer offset the GHG reductions from cutting gasoline use, if other studies accounting for GHG from all aspects of biofuel production, including N2O from fertilizer, found that biofuels were, at the worst, a wash with traditional gas? What, then, has this study done to find such a dramatically different result? And how is the scientific community responding?
Friday, September 28, 2007
The "technology-based" approach
Politics today seems a lot like marketing without the free samples. The Bush Administration has elevated the political "branding" to an entirely new level - I'll let the reader decide whether it be considered a low or a high - whether it be the rather Orwell-ian naming of the major pieces of legislation, like the Healthy Forests Initiative, which supported logging on national lands, and the Clear Skies Initiative, which rolled back amendments from the Clean Air Act, to name just two, or the less formal labeling of policies like the "surge".
Everyone involved at some level in public policy has one example they love to mock. Remember the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism? That was the New Coke of the War on Terror, a moniker test-marketed in a variety of public addresses in the summer of 2005. It didn’t take. Government officials quickly reverted to the original formula.
At the various climate meeting and photo-ops this week, there was increasing mention of the Bush Administration's "technology-based" approach to climate change, something that began in earnest at the APEC summit. It is a careful exercise in branding. The Bush Administration is attempting to link technological solutions to climate change with its adherence to voluntary, non-binding, or "aspirational" emissions targets.
This is setting up a dangerous, false dichotomy: pitting the "technology-based" Bush approach vs. the economy-crushing emissions targets, falsely implying the proponents of hard emissions targets are suggested we get there without the use of technology, when in fact the entire purpose of the emissions targets is to force the development of cleaner energy technologies.
Let's not be fooled by this.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Intensity targets for the world, says PM Harper
The Globe and Mail reports that Canadian PM Stephen Harper is pushing for a new international climate change plan using intensity-based emissions targets rather actual emissions targets, like Kyoto.
Harper is correct in asserting that many countries, including China, are currently unwilling to accept hard targets. In that case, an intensity-based targets may be an acceptable middle ground (though not indefinitely!) for countries in the midst of economic growth and development. Not for the whole world, and especially not for the worst per-capita polluters like the US and Canada.
The claim that this "Canadian" idea is the best way to engage the US is laughable.
First of all, the emissions intensity tack taken by the Can. Conservative party and now at least temporarily enshrined in government policy came directly from Bush Administration policy set over five years ago. I wrote a warning about this 16 months ago in the Toronto Star (at the time, I admit, I never considered the plan would be lifted almost digit for digit from US policy!).
Second, time is running out on the Bush Administration and its refusal to accept real emissions targets. There are multiple bills with medium and long-term emissions targets before Senate and the Congress, summarized by this dizzying World Resources Institute chart. States representing almost half the US population have set long-term emissions targets. I even drew a map. And all the major contenders for the Democratic Presidential nomination are putting forward climate change plans with real emissions targets.
Third, the Conservative government is a minority, and all three opposition parties support real emissions targets. The only reason their approach to climate change may survive is that no party in Parliament wants to force an election over this, or possibly, any other issue. The result is that the Canadian government is now advancing a policy that is dishonest, regressive (with respect to other developed nations), and does not have the support of the Canadian people.
For other opinions, try the Toronto Star's latest editorial, the Globe's editorial, and the various angry online reactions (here here here).
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Greenhouse gases and meat production
There’s a lot of chatter today about the role of meat consumption in climate change. The UN entered the fray last year with a report estimating that livestock are responsible for 18% of the world’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, more than the total for all forms of transportation. It is, at first glance, hard to accept. But the UN estimate is, if anything, rather conservative.
Read more at Celsias
Saturday, September 22, 2007
A big week for the climate
A NY Times editorial sums it up:
The coming week could set a record for the number of high-profile hours spent discussing global warming and what to do about it. It begins with a special one-day session at the United Nations, at which Al Gore will press the case for strong collective action to stop the rise of greenhouse gases. It ends with a two-day White House “summit” involving all of the major emitters, including India and China. Both of those nations have been conspicuously absent from climate negotiations, but their help in arresting global emissions is essential.
The problem needs all the attention it can get. But if talk is good, it is also cheap. And it will change nothing unless it leads to a real treaty with real, and enforceable, limits on the production of greenhouse gases. That means a broader and more inclusive version of the Kyoto Protocol, a noble but flawed treaty that expires in 2012.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
The complexity of ice melt
Over the past few months, the science media and those of us in the echo-chamber known as the blogosphere has been following the Arctic sea ice melt season with a fervour normally reserved for only for the hurricane season, and that arguably should also be applied to the summer fire season.
If you want a simple climate-ice connection, try a small temperate lake.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Delays on clean coal
This article about Saskatchewan Power withdrawing plans for a "clean coal" plant, because of rising costs and safety concerns, is an important reminder that implementing carbon capture and storage (CCS) at coal plants will not be easy. Many political, financial and logistical hurdles remain.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Franklin rises from the grave
"Ah, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage,
to find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea."
Oh, if only John Franklin or Stan Rogers were still alive. The European Space Agency reported this weekend that ice-free passage from Europe to Asia is possible, causing all manner of excitement among climate change junkies, shipping companies, oil companies and sea kayakers.
I wouldn't blow your money on an Arctic sun cruise just yet. The Northwest Passage will probably freeze up or become blocked again in a matter of days or weeks. The real question is what happens next year, and in the years after that.
If you've got a hunch, lay down a bet with William Connolley.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Ice melt in Greenland
There's been plenty of discussion here and elsewhere about the current record lows for sea ice in the Arctic. A few days ago, the Guardian reported about evidence for rapid melting in Greenland as well this summer. The article reminded me of this picture I took in July of this meltwater pool on the slope of a east-flowing glacier in SE Greenland.
The IPCC's method for estimating of sea level rise do not account some of the processes that are now being observed and described in the article, particularly how meltwaters appear to be flowing to the bottom of the ice, effectively lubricating the path to the sea. There's a big push afoot to incorporate these more complex ice melt processes into global climate models. In a few years, the model predictions for sea level rise over the next century could be quite different.
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