The latest episode of the radio show and podcast Big Picture Science is all about the idea that we have entered the "anthropocene" or era of man. The guests include William Steffan, talking about the anthropocene concept, and a host of others including yours truly discussing the evidence that humans are changing the climate, and how we can best describe that evidence to people.
On a related note, the Yale Climate Media Forum has a story up about whether culture matters in discussing climate change, based on my upcoming publication on belief and climate change.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Climate in the era of humans
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Can we make the climate a part of the human world?
A new paper of mine, about to be published in the October issue of BAMS (Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society), looks at how the common, ancient human belief that the weather and climate are out of human control affects education and outreach about human-caused climate change. I outlined these ideas and my outreach message at a talk earlier this year. An early online version of the paper is available.
The article could really be a book, and, in fact, it may become one in a year or two. It grew out of several years of interdisciplinary research, involving everything from reading history and religious texts, to interviewing religious leaders, to participating in outreach programs, to donning a sulu and attending church in Fiji.
Here's the core argument:
Skepticism about anthropogenic climate change may therefore be reasonable when viewed through the lens of religion or the lens of history. In order to create a lasting public understanding of anthropogenic climate change, scientists and educators need to appreciate that the very notion that humans can directly change the climate may conflict with beliefs that underpin the culture of the audience.
I briefly trace the history behind this argument, and provide some modern evidence for the influence of belief on acceptance of the evidence for climate change. Despite what William Briggs, a critic of the early online release, my argument is not purely about religion, rather it is about the sense that the climate is to large to be affected by humans. This idea that we are small compared to the grand forces of nature and the atmosphere may be encoded in a structured belief system, or it may drive people's desire to climb mountains and stare at the view from the top.
Even in secular communities, a broad sense that forces beyond humans control the climate may partly explain the persistence of the argument that natural forcings like solar activity are the primary cause of observed 20th century climate change despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary.
I conclude with two broad suggestions for reforming climate change education and outreach:
Climate change outreach efforts need to address the perceived conflict between the scientific evidence and deeply ingrained cultural perceptions of climate. First, the development of human beliefs about climate should be added to educational materials and lesson plans. Existing education and outreach efforts rarely acknowledge any thinking about climate or climate change prior to the Svante Arrhenius’ 1896 study on atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature....
Second, educators and scientists should take lessons from approaches used in teaching of evolution, another subject where science can appear to conflict with pre-existing beliefs. Pedagogical research on evolution finds that providing the audience with opportunities to evaluate how their culture or beliefs affect their willingness to accept scientific evidence is more effective than attempting to separate scientific views from religious or cultural views.
The paper concludes with a message that I am regularly repeating at scientific forums, and will continue to write about at Maribo:
Climate scientists, for whom any inherent doubts about the possible extent of human influence on the climate were overcome by years of training in physics and chemistry of the climate system, need to accept that there are rational cultural, religious and historical reasons that the public may fail to believe that anthropogenic climate change is real, let alone that it warrants a policy response. It is unreasonable to expect a lay audience, not armed with the same analytical tools as scientists, to develop lasting acceptance during a one hour public seminar of a scientific conclusion that runs counters to thousands of years of human belief.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Climate change debates and flags of convenience
Monrovia is the capital of Liberia, the country where that vessel is registered. There is no thriving trade between Liberia and western Canada. Merchant ships merely register in Liberia in order to avoid regulations and to reduce costs. Liberia is the flag of convenience.
As a scientist, I sometimes find the challenge of communicating about climate change similar to that of operating a ship according to the rules of your native country while the "competitors" take advantage of the lawless wilds of other nations.
People opposing the basic science of climate change in the public sphere need not adhere to the slow, rigorous method of hypothesis testing or build coherent arguments over time based on the balance of published evidence. That provides the rhetorical advantage of adopting whatever "flag" or argument is convenient that week, whether about sunspots, an error in an IPCC report, or temperature trends on Mars. If the argument is proven false in the court of public opinion, you adopt another flag. The sequence of arguments does not have to be logically consistent. The goal of the organized sceptic movement* is simply to keep the ship sailing.
The temptation for scientists to adopt the practices of the opponents in the debate is what the late Steve Schneider described called the "double ethical bind" in a famously mis-used quote:
On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must include all doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both
The response to that honest, clear assessment of the communications challenge says enough. For years, that one line about offering up "scary scenarios" was itself a Liberia to many of Schneider's opponents.
It can be challenging to stay level-headed about communication in the face of often unscrupulous opposition. That's why I find that the keys to communication about climate change are not the usual suspects of technical expertise, passion, ability to drop jargon, etc. etc. In my experience, successfully communicating about climate change takes, more than anything else, patience and humility.
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* Note: It's important to separate the funded movement from individual people's doubts about the science of climate change, which can be grounded in science, culture, religion, politics, moral values, you name it. And there are vocal sceptics who rely on a consistent line of argumentation; perhaps Lindzen's earlier arguments about the water vapour feedback could fall in this category, though it's fair to say that ship has since migrated to other shores.
Sunday, October 02, 2011
Nutrient limitation missing from an otherwise good NY Times story on forests and climate change
The NY Times published a lengthy article about the climate implications of the forest diebacks and fires. It is, on the whole, a great and all-too-rare example of longform science journalism.
The article does miss one important point about CO2 fertilization, the increase in plant growth thought to come from adding more CO2 to the air.
Climate-change contrarians tend to focus on this “fertilization effect,” hailing it as a boon for forests and the food supply. “The ongoing rise of the air’s CO2 content is causing a great greening of the Earth,” one advocate of this position, Craig D. Idso, said at a contrarian meeting in Washington in July.
Dr. Idso and others assert that this effect is likely to continue for the foreseeable future, ameliorating any negative impacts on plant growth from rising temperatures. More mainstream scientists, while stating that CO2 fertilization is real, are much less certain about the long-term effects, saying that the heat and water stress associated with climate change seem to be making forests vulnerable to insect attack, fires and many other problems.
The CO2 fertilization effect is limited, because plants require more than just CO2 to do their job: photosynthesis. Water is certainly a limiting factor, but nutrients are just as important. In experiment after experiment, scientists find that the CO2 fertilization effect is short-lived without additional inputs of nutrients, particularly nitrogen.
One of the reasons CO2 fertilization may have accelerated plant growth in parts of Europe and North America over the past few decades may be the fact that we've inadvertently been fertilizing the plants with nitrogen, as well as CO2. We'll actually be talking about this in GEOB400 in a couple weeks. For the 6.7 billion or so of you who were unable to register this semester - yes, yes, the class is too small, I hear that all the time - I wrote about this on Maribo a few years ago, in a cross-post with Eli and Tamino:
One culprit is carbon’s chemical sibling nitrogen, that’s #7 on your periodic table if you’re scoring at home. Like many siblings, carbon and nitrogen are quite co-dependent, and, one might argue, a bit resentful about the whole thing. Carbon fixation - photosynthesis, plant growth – is limited by the availability of nitrogen. Though only up to a point. If there’s too much nitrogen, things get saturated, and the carbon-based plants pout and refuse to grow more.
You might find it strange that nitrogen is limited, given that N2 or di-nitrogen gas makes up the majority of the atmosphere. However, N2 is unreactive. It only becomes available to plants when converted to reactive form by microbes. In the process of making fertilizer and burning fossil fuels, we not only have increased the rate at which this conversion happens, leaving more nitrogen in our soils and waterways, we've emitted nitrogen in other reactive, gaseous forms, like nitrogen oxides or NOx...
Monday, September 26, 2011
The folly of broad statements about adapting to climate change
In my climate change course, we devote a week to discussing climate and past civilizations. Among the goals of that week is to erase the notion that climate change is inherently "bad", or inherently "good", from the student's minds. The effects of climate change on any system, whether a society or an ecosystem, depends on the adaptive capacity and the rate of the climate change. The same climate change that spelled the end of the Norse settlements in Greenland did not affect (ed. crowd-sourced copy editing) the well-adapted Inuit of the region.
A recent, and controversial, book hypothesizing that the Easter Islanders were not done in by "ecocide", as argued by Jared Diamond and most archaeological evidence suggests, led to some discussion about the societal resilience to climate change. All roads lead to climate these days, I guess.
Judith Curry concludes a post on the subject with this statement, which supports a dangerously simple view of adaptation to climate change:
Occam’s razor suggests that we should tend towards simplest theories. However, in complex coupled social-ecological-environmental systems, simple theories are almost certain to be too simple. The complexity of such coupled systems precludes simple cause-effect analyses. If we are arguing about such a system on the scale of Easter Island, what hope do we have of understanding and managing such interactions on continental or even global scales? Ecosystems eventually adapt to climate change and insults from humans.
The comments about Easter Island notwithstanding - we argue about places like Easter Island because it all happened in the past and thus evidence is disputable, not because we can't understand complex systems - this statement concludes with exactly the type of simple, blanket view of complex problems that we should be teaching students to avoid. Theories like "Ecosystems eventually adapt to climate change and insults from humans" are indeed too simple!
Ecosystems do adapt. In a broad sense. But the question is not if they can eventually adapt, because we don't live in eventually. And, regardless of the time frame, we must remember that adapt itself is a vague term. To estimate the impacts of climate change, or other human insults, in the real world, we need to delve deeper and dispense with the vague generalities:
1. Define eventually: At what rate can the system adapt? Is the change happening faster than ecosystems, or people, can adapt such that they stay in the present state?
2. Define adapt: What exactly does adaptation look like? Say, coral reefs can "adapt" (in a collective, rather than an individual biological sense) to climate change by killing off the less resilient species and growth forms. That, for example, may be what is happening in South Tarawa where I do field work. You've got reefs dominated by a single, weedy species, and little habitat diversity. This new adaptation may not be desirable for those who depend on the ecosystem.
That's science. You don't just assume away an answer ("oh, we'll be just fine") based on a pre-conceived notions of what's "good" or "bad". You gotta analyse the data, do the math, unpack how the system works.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Climate change: An accounting problem
The latest RealClimate post, which describes the latest ice melt data from Greenland, features this really important figure. It illustrates an issue that arises every semester in my climate change course, and is, in a sense, fundamental to understanding to biogeochemical cycles and issues like why carbon is accumulated in the atmosphere.
The figure shows model-based annual anomalies (thanks ED) of snowfall (reddish-orange), water loss through surface melt and runoff (yellow) and net accumulation of mass (blue), all in Gt/yr. The key point is that an ice sheet shrinks not simply because it is melting (yellow), but because the loss of water through melt (yellow) is greater than the gain through snowfall (red). The difference is the change in mass (blue). It is an accounting problem; like your bank account, you need to look at the debits and the credits to know whether the balance is changing.
This is the same fundamental concept that underlies carbon dioxide accumulation in the atmosphere, and as MIT management expert John Sterman has shown, befuddles most people. Carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere not simply because we are burning fossil fuels and clearing land, but because the flux in to the atmosphere from those sources is greater than the flux out (to land, and the oceans).
As an aside, in my climate change course, one of the many ways we discuss these points is by watching the infamous "CO2 is life" advertisements created a few years back by the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The "Glaciers" video cites scientific evidence for snowfall-driven growth of ice sheets in the interior of Antarctica to suggest that ice sheets around the planet are not shrinking. The mistake in the ad is that in order calculating whether an ice sheet is shrinking, on net, you need to do the full accounting of all inputs (from snow) and all the outputs (from melt), not just cherry pick one part of the ice sheet, or one flux in or out.
The CEI ads, by the way, are hilarious. If you've not seen them, you really must. They are well worth two minutes out of your day; the Onion News Network couldn't have come up with fake ads that funny.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
24 Hours of Reality, 365 days a year
If you missed it live, all of the videos from the 24 Hours of Reality are available online. Pick a region of interest and watch the video. Each hour is comprised of a short introductory video, a local speaker delivering a variation of Al Gore's presentation about climate change, followed by a panel of experts back at the studio talking about the science and the issues.
The panel members rotated throughout the 24 hours based on expertise, and who could stay awake. Kudos to Paul Higgins from AMS for doing the overnight shift as well as some of the daytime panels. It's worth watching the highlights from multiple hours and/or watching multiple panel discussions, as the rotating cast made for some fascinating and interesting conversations. I was a part of panels that included Al Gore and four scientists (Kotzebue, Alaska, Hour 4) as well as mix from academia, broadcasting the UN, Hollywood and NGOs (French Polynesia, Hour 5; Dubai, Hour 16).
Monday, September 12, 2011
Climate reality... What a concept.
Starting a 8pm EST on Wednesday night, the Al Gore's Climate Reality Project will be doing a 24 hour live broadcast of people around the world talking about climate change. Here's their pitch:
24 Presenters. 24 Time Zones. 13 Languages. 1 Message. 24 Hours of Reality is a worldwide event to broadcast the reality of the climate crisis. It will consist of a new multimedia presentation created by Al Gore and delivered once per hour for 24 hours, representing every time zone around the globe. Each hour people living with the reality of climate change will connect the dots between recent extreme weather events — including floods, droughts and storms — and the manmade pollution that is changing our climate. We will offer a round-the-clock, round-the-globe snapshot of the climate crisis in real time. The deniers may have millions of dollars to spend, but we have a powerful advantage. We have reality.
I'll be taking part in some of the expert panels back in the studio, discussing some of the science and some of the issues after the on-site presenters are finished (for updates on times, follow me on Twitter: @simondonner).
As regular readers of Maribo, or people who heard my talk at AMS this spring know, I've been an advocate of what one might call a "humbler" approach to outreach about climate change. That approach is informed by my field research in the Pacific Islands, some related historical research over the past five years, and my outreach experience; the argument for it is described in a paper currently in press with the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (more on that later). I'll be bringing some of that thinking to portions of the broadcast.
In case you are not a child of the 80s... the title of this post is a play on a Robin Williams comedy album from the Mork and Mindy days.
Wednesday, September 07, 2011
Joining the twitter-verse
Following up on a promise made earlier this summer to expand to other online "media", I've joined Twitter (@simondonner).
I was initially quite skeptical of Twitter. That should come as no surprise; I am a scientist, an academic one at that, and skepticism is what we do. But the last thing the world needs is more academic curmudgeons.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Was Hurricane Irene caused by climate change?
And every time, some prominent name or public figure, fed up with media coverage or with the persistence of skepticism about science or the lack of action, throws statistics out the window and says yes. Or says something like "Irene’s got a middle name, and it’s Global Warming", as 350.org founder Bill McKibben wrote in the Daily Beast. That in turn draws legitimate pushback, further polarizes the public discussion about climate change, and makes some long-time participants of the debate want to smash their head against a wall.
The good news is that this cycle has been going on for long enough that people have finally began to reword the question. In Climate Central, Michael Lemonick tried "Is climate change making this storm worse than it would have been otherwise?". That is a slightly better than the staple question, but still demands more certainty than can really be provided by the evidence.
The New York Times asked the subtly different, but far more sensible question: "Are hurricanes getting worse because of human-induced climate change?". By shifting from the particular storm to the sequence of storms over time, it becomes a question we can actually answer with data and statistics. As the article by Justin Gillis finds, scientists including NOAA's Tom Knutson, who I worked with on a related subject, are divided on the interpretation of past data on hurricane intensity.
Hurricane Irene was a reminder of one of factor that should draw more attention in the climate change and hurricanes discussion: rain. The worst damage from Irene came from the heavy rains and floods in Vermont and surrounding areas (the above photo is from CBC News). You can see the data yourself on the USGS real-time streamflow page for the state, a fantastic resource for everyone from regional planners to recreational paddlers (my old haunt the Millstone River in New Jersey reached almost triple the flood stage on Sunday) which may be subject to budget cuts.
If I had to place money on which feature of tropical cyclones or hurricanes would increase the most because of climate change, I'd bet on rainfall, ahead of other metrics like intensity (wind speed) or surge height. Warmer water means more evaporation; warmer air can hold more water.
That doesn't mean the flooding in Vermont was caused by human-induced climate change. But it might mean that we can get more agreement on the answer to the New York Times question.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Another Friday afternoon, another buried climate/energy policy decision
It may very well be an unfortunate coincidence. Or perhaps it may be the start of a trend. In a move that could appear in a dictionary under "burial, as in a controversial decision", the U.S. government has announced support for the much-debated Keystone XL pipeline, which will carry oil from the Alberta oil sands to the central U.S. and the Gulf Coast, on a Friday afternoon in the summer when the news media is less active. And not just any Friday afternoon... a Friday afternoon when a hurricane is bearing down on the several of the largest metropolitan areas of the country, including New York City.
Storm surge calculus
Jeff Masters' latest forecast for Hurricane Irene, besides warning New York City and coastal New England of damage, serves as a reminder of something to consider whenever you see a static map depicting what your community would look like if sea level rises by X m: the level of the sea is constantly varying, because of the astrononomical tides, storm systems and ocean currents.
On Sunday, New York City could be seriously damaged by the storm surge from Irene, even though the storm will have weakened to Category 1 at most, because the passage of the storm could coincide with a high tide:
At 9:30am EDT this morning, a wind analysis from NOAA/HRD (Figure 1) indicated that the potential storm surge damage from Irene rated a 5.1 on a scale of 0 to 6. This is equivalent to the storm surge a typical Category 4 hurricane would have. While this damage potential should gradually decline as Irene moves northwards and weakens, we can still expect a storm surge one full Saffir-Simpson Category higher than Irene's winds. Since tides are at their highest levels of the month this weekend due to the new moon, storm surge flooding will be at a maximum during the high tidal cycles that will occur at 8 pm Saturday night and 8 am Sunday morning. At those times, Irene is expected to be near the NC/VA border, then close to Long Island, NY, respectively. Thus, storm surge damage rivaling that experienced during Hurricane Isabel in 2003 is likely in northern NC, southern Maryland, and up Chesapeake Bay on Saturday night. It looks like Irene will pass New Jersey during low tide, which may limit the storm surge inundation to 3 - 6 feet there. Coastal New England from New York City to Massachusetts may also see storm surges characteristic of a Category 1 hurricane during Sunday morning's high tide, even if Irene has weakened to a tropical storm. I continue to give a 20% chance that a storm surge high enough to over-top the Manhattan flood walls and swamp the New York City subway system will occur on Sunday.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
The reality of Canada's new regulations on carbon emissions from coal-burning power plants
On Friday, the Canadian Minister of the Environment announced new emissions rules for coal plants which supposed encourage a shift to effective capture and storage of carbon. And, yes, you may be right to be suspicious about any new regulations announced on a Friday afternoon in the middle of August, when the vast majority of Canadians are planning for the weekend and ignoring the news. According to Minister Peter Kent:
These proposed regulations take into account the fact that many electricity facilities across Canada are old and need to be replaced soon. We're acting now to ensure that power companies understand today, the rules that will affect the new investments they have to make tomorrow. It allows for an orderly process - the bedrock of certainty.
The scant news coverage pointed out that the new standards only apply to plants built after July 1, 2015, thus exempted some proposed new coal plants.
That includes Calgary-based Maxim Power Corp.'s contentious proposal for a 500-megawatt expansion at its HR Milner facility, which received final approval from the Alberta Utilities Commission earlier this month and must be built by July 31, 2015 - a condition of the go-ahead (Calgary Herald)
(b) a declaration that includes the following statements:
(i) that, based on the economic feasibility study referred to in paragraph (c), the unit,
when operating with an integrated carbon capture and storage system is, to the best of
the responsible person’s knowledge and belief, economically viable, and
(ii) that, based on the technical feasibility study referred to in paragraph (d) and the
implementation plan referred to in paragraph (f), the responsible person expects to
satisfy the requirements referred to in section 9 and, as a result, to be in compliance with
subsection 3(1) by January 1, 2025;
So, again, if I am reading this right, you can gain an exemption from the regulations if you are able to conduct a study showing that the CCS system will be capable of meeting the new emissions regulation by 2025.
Putting this all together:
1. Any coal plants built before July, 2015 which have not reached the end of their useful life [ed - see comment #1] are exempt. Given the expected shift towards natural gas in the next few years, it is entirely possible that the regulations will not end up applying to
2. Any coal plants built after July, 2015 are exempt until 2025 so long as it is technologically possible to install a CCS system by 2025. Therefore, CCS systems are unlikely to be operating at any large scale coal plants in Canada for another 15 years. This delay may reflect the technological challenge of CCS or the values of the current government, or both.
Hopefully, I'm wrong.
Friday, August 19, 2011
Science and communication post-doctoral fellowships at UBC
The University of British Columbia’s new TerreWEB program is interested in engaging a scientist to facilitate challenges in building research and training involving TerreWEB researchers and collaborators. Highly qualified candidates interested in developing innovative research programs and fostering Graduate Student training are invited to apply. Appointments can range from 2 to 3 years. Click on the image for the full ad.
This is a great program. A large range of UBC faculty, including myself, are a part of program, so applicants have a terrific choice of potential supervisors.
The one drawback: The applications are due on August 31st! If you're interested, get cracking on that application.
Potential students interested in the program should contact a TerreWEB faculty member for more information about applying to UBC (and to the program).
Friday, August 12, 2011
Canada's sham of a federal climate policy
In yesterday's Globe and Mail, Marc Jaccard wisely pointed out the gaping flaws in the Canadian pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 17% by 2020. The pivot point is a proposed new coal-burning power plant in B.C.Alberta:
Stephen Harper can’t allow new coal-fired electricity plants to be built, such as the one Maxim Power is proposing in Alberta, and achieve his promise to reduce Canadian greenhouse-gas emissions 17 per cent by 2020. As a researcher of energy-economy systems, I say this with virtual certainty. I also know that any scholar in my field would agree with me, and that the Prime Minister’s expert advisers would tell him the same thing.
There are two stories here. The first is that Canada has made many emissions pledges but repeatedly failed to enact any plan to meet those pledges. This is not a partisan issue. It happened under majority and minority Liberal governments, and it is happening under minority and now majority Conservative governments:
In 2007, Mr. Harper committed Canada to a 2020 target for greenhouse-gas reduction but hasn’t implemented policies that would achieve it. Like Mr. Chrétien, Mr. Harper must know his scant policies will fail. Recently released internal government documents show he’s receiving information from civil servants telling him his current policies are not transforming the energy-economy system in the direction he’s promised.
The second story is that climate policy is ineffective and meaningless without short-term and long-term goals. With no short-term emissions target, we end up delaying shifts in the energy infrastructure, and in the case of the coal-burning power plant, committing to future emissions which make meeting the long-term goal more difficult if not impossible. Jaccard praises the approach taken by the Campbell government in B.C.:
In 2007, then-B.C. premier Gordon Campbell also committed to a 2020 emissions reduction target. But to convince people of his sincerity – especially after two decades of climate policy failure by all Canadian governments at all levels – Mr. Campbell acted very differently. First, he got an independent body to set interim targets for 2012 and 2016, so people would know within a political time frame if he were on track to keep his promise. Second, he asked his advisers what investments needed to happen in 2007, and every year thereafter, to meet the 2020 target. On that basis, he immediately implemented a zero-emission electricity policy, which caused the cancellation of two proposed coal-fired electricity plants that had signed preliminary supply deals with BC Hydro.
Granted this approach is certainly easier, and more politically palatable, in a jurisdication where hydro-power is abundant. Nevertheless, it is a good model to follow.
Friday, August 05, 2011
The complexity of climate change policy
Buried in a couple recent news stories, which themselves were buried by the news of the debt standoff in the U.S., were a couple fascinating nuggets that reveal a lot about how climate change mitigation policy does, and does not happen.
One is an agreement to raise fuel efficiency standards in the U.S., which will presumably also become the rule in Canada. The... greement to that vehicles sold will average 54.5 mpg by 2025, although with loopholes related to measurement of efficiency, the actual average will be more like 43 mpg.
Why did it happen? (NY Times):
It is an extraordinary shift in the relationship between the companies and Washington. But a lot has happened in the last four years, notably the $80 billion federal bailout of General Motors, Chrysler and scores of their suppliers, which removed any itch for a politically charged battle from the carmakers...
The new mind-set in Detroit has been helped by some give and take on the government’s side. G.M., Ford and Chrysler pressed for less onerous mileage goals for their profitable pickup trucks and got them. And the administration agreed to revisit the new requirements halfway through their course, with the possibility of adjusting them. In the end, though, Detroit was faced with an undeniable political reality: there was no graceful way to say no to an administration that just two years ago came to its aid financially.
The auto bailout as climate policy: investing in the companies provided some leverage in the battle to reduce emissions from passenger vehicles. Was the Obama administration prescient here, knowing that there were little odds of carbon tax on fuel? More likely, the U.S. government was merely taking advantage of an opportunity to use some leverage to push an emissions reduction effort. Of course, the idea of "nationalizing" companies in hopes of enforcing a climate change policy would cause the "Tea Party" to self-combust.
The other example is the Alberta government's approval of a carbon capture and storage project (Globe and Mail):
Calgary-based Swan Hills Synfuels LP aims to use an unproven method, coal gasification, to reach 1.4-kilometre-deep coal deposits in central Alberta, convert them to gas underground, capture the emissions before they ever see daylight and use the gaseous coal to run a power plant. The new plant would serve a whopping 300,000 homes while producing one-third the emissions of a similarly sized regular coal plant – or about the same carbon output as a natural-gas plant. Because the project will divert 1.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year – providing the cost certainty of coal and environmental performance of natural gas – Alberta coughed up $285-million for the $1.5-billion development.
Now, investment in a CCS project in Alberta is not a huge surprise, especially considering the particular plant can aide in oil recovery. But then there't this nugget:
Industry members, politicians and academics said provincial funding is necessary because there’s little incentive to reduce emissions. CCS is “viable, but it comes at a cost,” said Don Lawton, a University of Calgary geophysicist who studies CCS. “But until there’s a price on carbon, it’s an expense that has to be borne by somebody.” Mr. Lambert said the project would die without provincial money. “I don’t think I could deliver the returns investors would need to put their money up,” he said.
So the CCS projects go ahead, but solwly, and at great expense to the province of Alberta because of the lack of a federal carbon price, which was strongly opposed by politicans from Alberta. Unlike the automobile case above, pricing carbon is critical to making CCS work.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Organic vs. conventional agriculture
The new Scientific American blog Science Sushi dispels some myths about large-scale organic agriculture. Here's one example:
Some people believe that by not using manufactured chemicals or genetically modified organisms, organic farming produces more nutritious food. However, science simply cannot find any evidence that organic foods are in any way healthier than non-organic ones – and scientists have been comparing the two for over 50 years.
Better for the environment does not necessarily mean better for you (or for the climate). Not that the environmental benefits are clear either:
Yes, organic farming practices use less synthetic pesticides which have been found to be ecologically damaging. But factory organic farms use their own barrage of chemicals that are still ecologically damaging, and refuse to endorse technologies that might reduce or eliminate the use of these all together.
It's worth a read.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Is it time to start holding virtual conferences? The case of the International Coral Reef Symposium
The only thing hotter than the U.S. and Canada (east of the Rockies!) in the past week was the discussion on the Coral-List, the NOAA-managed read by pretty much anyone that does research related to coral reefs, about the cost of attending next year’s International Coral Reef Symposium. The ICRS is THE meeting in the world of coral reef research. Thanks to the Olympian once-every-four-years timing, attendance is, I’d argue, as mandatory as it comes in the sciences. Miss an American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting, and you can attend another in six or twelve months. Miss an ICRS, and, well, you’ve got four full years to train for the next one.
The full week registration fee for the meeting has been set at AU$960 - AU$1250, depending on membership in the scientific society and the date of purchase. While registration fees of $1000 or more are not unheard of for scientific meetings in other branches of research, like say medicine, the price is extraordinary for the natural sciences, and especially for a sub-field in which many of the researchers are based in developing countries. Naturally, people from small NGOs in SE Asia to large academic instituions in North America are upset and stating that they will not attend.
Shocking as they be to many, the real story is not the registration fees. The real story is is the travel.
In addition to timing, the ICRS shares a logistical challenge with the Olympics. There is no optimal site for the event. Coral reefs are found throughout the tropics and subtropics, and that is excluding the cold water reefs in places like our own BC coast. Coral reef researchers are even more widespread, with scientists dotting every continent save Antarctica (I think - anyone at McMurdo care to correct me here?). No matter where the ICRS is held, be it Florida (2008), Okinawa (2004) or Bali (2000), a majority of top researchers in the field will have to travel long distances to attend. That means a lot of money – I estimate a weeklong trip to Cairns for the meeting from this part of the world could cost CAN$3500-4000 with registration. Moreover, that means a lot of greenhouse gas emissions. All for a scientific meeting about an ecosystem which many argue is existentially threatened by climate change and ocean acidification.
Hence the question on many people’s minds. Should the ICRS go virtual?
Of any scientific conference, there are certainly strong arguments for making the ICRS virtual: no optimal location for the meeting, cost being a significant barrier for many potential participants, travel restrictions being problematic (e.g. Middle East researchers requiring special visas for places like the U.S. and Australia), and of course the subject of conference being sensitive to atmospheric CO2. A counterargument is that the meeting is held only once every four years, in part for some of these very reasons, so rather than make ICRS virtual, other annual meetings should go virtual and adopt an Olympic schedule for the “live” meetings. A compromise first-step would be a hybrid meeting in which people had to option to participate "live" or online.
Society has adapted quickly to tectonic shifts in the way we communicate. Virtual conferences, which so many disdain for missing that personal connection of a live meeting, will become perfectly normal to us at some point in the future, just as e-mail, web browsing, Google Earth, Facebook, and Twitter have. It's a question of when, not if.
My question is: Which scientific society is willing to be the early adopter?
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Climate impact of different foods
Earlier this week, the Environmental Working Group, a research and lobby group in DC, released a report on the “environment” and "health" impact of different foods. It found that lamb is the worst offender, followed by grain-fed beef, pork, cheese and farmed salmon.
The report was brought to my attention by a writer at the Huffington Post, who subsequently published this story which includes thoughts on the report a number of outside experts on the issue. I commented on the climate impacts of feed production and the logic of farming top-of-the-food chain fish like salmon, both issues that have been discussed frequently here at Maribo.
Here's a more complete list of my thoughts upon examining the short report:
1. “Environmental” impact or “health” impact can be very different than “climate” impact. For example, I’d expect lamb to be much lower on a list based purely on greenhouse gas emissions (i.e. per gram of food produced). I can't comment on "health" impacts as it is not my area of expertise.
2. What I call the “land use cascade” is potentially the largest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions from food production, but also the hardest to calculate. That’s why GHG emissions from dairy relative to beef cattle tend to be overestimated (more methane from dairy cattle, more land required to grow feed for beef than dairy products). It’s also why any study like this should have large positively skewed error bars.
3. All meat is not created equal in terms of greenhouse gases. Grain-fed beef is far less efficient than pork, which is again far less efficient than poultry.
4. If your food choices are motivated purely by concern about greenhouse gas emissions, eating less grain-fed beef is more important than eating locally.
5. Historically-speaking, we are just starting to develop industrial-scale farming of fish, as discussed in the recent Time cover story. Farming the ocean is, in a sense, thousands of years behind farming on land. Right now, many of the choices we are making are, as I put bluntly in the Huffington Post story, “stupid”. Cattle are logical choice for farm animals. They eat grass, so they are only one step away from the sun. Salmon are much higher up the food chain. That’s why many of us say farming salmon is like farming wolves or tigers – you need the whole ecosystem to support the one salmon.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Eliminating the US corn ethanol subsidy is no panacea
One possible casualty of the endless U.S. budget fight may be the federal subsidy for corn ethanol production. There's been a lot of quiet, and some not-so-quiet, cheering from the environmental community, based on the premise that eliminating the subsidy will lessen nutrient pollution from growing so much corn.
In reality, cutting or repealing the 45-cents-per-gallon ethanol tax credit is unlikely to have much of an effect on planting decisions. As a recent article in the NY Times nicely explained last week, the subsidy is, at this point, unnecessary. Between laws requiring blending of ethanol into gasoline, the federal ethanol mandate, the tariff on imports, the size of the ethanol production industry, and the high price of corn, there's already enough incentive to maintain the status quo in corn production and corn ethanol production.
There are certainly good reasons to eliminate the subsidy. No one should pretend that doing so will solve of the problem of nutrient levels in the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. That is a far greater challenge.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Housekeeping and new links!
I wanted to draw people's attention to the updated list of links on Maribo. I've added a few new links which I learned of at the terrific Google Science Communication Fellows workshop last month: Alan Townsend's new blog State Factors, Jon Koomey's blog and Eugene Cordero's effort Green Ninja.
Maribo itself is likely to change in the next few months. I'm considered new formats for the blog, and also alternative approaches to online outreach about climate issues. Feel free to pass along any suggestions!
Monday, July 11, 2011
Farming the sea
Especially troubling, many of the most popular farmed species are carnivores, meaning they need to be fed at least partly with other fish. By one count, about 2 lb. of wild fish ground up to make fish meal is needed on average to produce 1 lb. of farmed fish, which leaves the ocean at a net loss.
I've written about this before: A substantial proportion of the wild harvest is used to maintain marine aquaculture of carnivorous species like salmon. It is wildly inefficient, the marine equivalent of farming wolves rather than herbivorous cattle. This is why many experts conclude that the future for pescetarians is probably the blander, lower-on-the-food-chain species like tilapia and catfish.
In coverage of aquaculture, we tend to focus on the sexier and scarier subjects: pollution from farms, genes mixing with the wild population, PCBs in farmed salmon, etc. Certainily, no doubt, these are all serious concerns (except perhaps the PCBs). But the feed-to-fish ratio is the very core of the matter; if you get less fish protein out than you put in, aquaculture doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense.
Walsh gets to this central dilemma in the second half of the article:
When producers began raising fish intensively, they picked species that people like to eat: salmon and sea bass. But those species are high on the food chain, and raising them on a farm is a bit like trying to domesticate tigers. [ed - nice. I always say wolves] The aquaculture industry has gotten better at replacing fish meal with plant-based feed, but not fast enough. You're not feeding the world sustainably if you need to remove the base of the marine food chain to do it.
The solution that many propose is expanding the use of plant-based products in fish food. That brings it's own complications. For one, salmon certainly didn't evolve eating soymeal, cornmeal or wheat, so shifting to a majority plant-based diet will likely involve further genetic engineering, which has supporters and detractors.
And second, feeding plant products to fish would add another player in the struggle for the world's productive croplands.
Forget food vs. feed. Or food vs. fuel. In the future, it will be a battle of the 4 Fs: food vs. feed vs. fuel vs. fish.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Canada upsets other countries at climate negotiations
Though news of Canada's selective emissions reporting drew little attention here at home, other countries took notice. From Post Media News:
OTTAWA — Foreign diplomats bombarded Canadian climate change negotiators with questions Thursday in Bonn, Germany, as they challenged the Harper government's transparency and policies to fight global warming.
In the wake of media coverage highlighting missing and conflicting information in an Environment Canada submission to the United Nations, officials from Australia, China, Lebanon, the United Kingdom and the Philippines questioned government policies regarding fossil fuel subsidies and the Alberta "tarsands," a lack of investment in clean energy and the scientific evidence used to determine its greenhouse gas emissions target...
Representatives from other countries pounced on Canada after Michael Keenan, an assistant deputy minister at Environment Canada, delivered a presentation suggesting that the government was showing "significant ambition" in its proposal to crack down on greenhouse gas emissions.
But his presentation appeared to generate more questions than answers.
"I was also struck that the colleague from Canada didn't refer to the tarsands issue or at least only once in passing," said Peter Betts, the lead European Union negotiator and a director at the United Kingdom's Department of Energy and Climate Change, during the session. "This has been an issue featured much in the press, and I know there have been allegations from the press that the emissions from that sector have not been included in Canada's inventory (report submission to the UN)."
His remarks were followed by a delegate from Australia — traditionally a Canadian ally at climate negotiations — who questioned how Canada could increase its "level of ambition" when it was turning away from engaging international markets. Lebanon also jumped in, questioning the pace of a commitment to phase out subsidies for fossil fuels, including the "tarsands," and raising doubts about Canada's intention to harmonize its policies with the U.S. without matching its partner's proportion of investments in clean energy.
Wednesday, June 01, 2011
Honesty in Canadian emissions reporting
For five years, Canadian government represnetatives have claimed they are meeting all the obligations under the Kyoto Protocol... except the emissions target. In other words, Canada has met the reporting deadlines but achieved little else. The claim has been subject of much ridicule, here and elsewhere. [it is, incidentally, a classic and well-documented problem with international policy; governments viewing success as filling out the paperwork, not achieving the goals of the actual policy]
It turns out, we are now aren't even filling out the paperwork properly:
OTTAWA — The federal government has acknowledged that it deliberately excluded data indicating a 20 per cent increase in annual pollution from Canada’s oilsands industry in 2009 from a recent 567-page report on climate change that it was required to submit to the United Nations...
The numbers, uncovered by Postmedia News, were left out of the report, a national inventory on Canada’s greenhouse gas pollution. It revealed a six per cent drop in annual emissions for the entire economy from 2008 to 2009, but does not directly show the extent of pollution from the oilsands production, which is greater than the greenhouse gas emissions of all the cars driven on Canadian roads.
... Environment Canada provided the oilsands numbers in response to questions from Postmedia News about why it had omitted the information from its report after publishing more detailed data in previous years. A department spokesman explained that “some” of the information was still available in the latest report, which still meets Canada’s reporting obligations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
“The information is presented in this way to be consistent with UNFCCC reporting requirements, which are divided into broad, international sectors,” wrote Mark Johnson in an email.
He was not immediately able to answer questions about who made the decision in government to exclude the numbers from the oilsands or provide a detailed explanation about changes in emissions.
To be fair, maybe this is a common problem this past year, and the reporting by other UNFCCC signatories was also limited or delayed.
Although the report was due in April, during the last election campaign, Canada was the last country to file its submission. Environment Canada even filed its submission after earthquake-stricken Japan, and was unable to explain in detail why its report was late.
Friday, May 27, 2011
Climate communication: Shaking things up
I've been advocating that scientists need to experiment with new ways of communicating with the public. Now I don't know whether this video will work as a communications strategy, or whether I even agree with what they are saying ("we're scientists, you're not" could come across asarrogant), let alone the language they use to say it. But let's not be too academic here. Regardless of what you think of the finished product, this group deserves props for at least trying something different:
Monday, April 18, 2011
An argument for a gas tax
Last Thursday I gave a talk at the annual American Association of Geographers meeting in Seattle. The AAG attracts throngs and throngs of academic geographers from around the world. Frankly, the meeting is so big you need to be a geographer to navigate your way to a chosen talk, the subject of which may very well be a Marxist analysis of neoliberal influence on the map of the conference centre (“the orientation places the economic geography presentation rooms at the top”).
Seattle is just close enough to Vancouver that someone who is busy, or who possesses an unrealistic and slightly delusional sense of what is possible in a fixed amount of time, or, in my case, both, could convince himself to go there and back in a day. I chose to take the bus, rather than drive, because doing so is more energy efficient and would give me the chance to do some work.
The return bus fare was $48 (that’s Canadian $ for those of you scoring at home). It was, I later discovered, a bit of a deal – return fares can run up to $72 or so. That morning, the price of gas at the station near our house was $1.33 per litre (L). At that price, in order for a single-occupant vehicle trip to be cheaper than the bus fare, the car would need to average less than 7.88 L per 100 km (or 30 mpg) on the 458 km return trip from our house to the conference centre*.
You are unlikely to get that fuel efficiency with anything other than a small vehicle or hybrid car, especially given the traffic you can expect to encounter. And that’s not including the cost of parking. If you add in $20 for parking, the car would have needed to average 4.6 km/100 L, or 51 mpg, which is probably only possible, if at all, with a carefully-driven Toyota Prius, a Chevy Volt, one of the older two-door Honda Insights, or maybe Nissan Leaf if you asked the polar bear in the backseat to hold a bunch of extra batteries on his or her lap. Even at the premium, book-at-the-last-minute bus fare of $72, a car would still need to average at least 11.8 L/100 km (~20 mpg) excluding parking costs, or 8.5 L/100 km (27 mpg) including parking costs, in order to best the bus costs. In other words, at today’s price, there is a clear and immediate financial benefit to leaving the car in the driveway and taking the bus**.
At low prices, gasoline is inelastic. The price won’t significantly influence our behaviour. But as prices move well upwards of $1 per L (towards $4 per gallon), the story may change. The last time gas prices reached beyond today’s level there was an increased demand for high-efficiency vehicles and public transit.
The problem, to remove my scientist hat and channel Thomas Friedman, is that the price signal is coming from the wrong place. Right now, gas is expensive because of the price of oil. The proceeds are going to the oil industry – some of that money stays here in Canada, but much of it goes overseas – and inspiring more exploration, which could conceivably lower prices, or maybe to things like CEO bonuses. If the price of gas were high because of a tax, especially one for which the revenue was invested in things like transit, improved automotive fuel efficiency, battery technology and charging stations, wouldn’t we all be better off? I’d guess that the only thing people hate more than paying a premium at the pump is paying that premium to oil companies.
*L per 100 km? What foreign tongue is this you ask? Canada and the metric world measures fuel efficiency as the gasoline required to go a distance, whereas the US and some other nations use the distance you can cover on some fixed quantity of gas. That difference is in itself rather fascinating, and probably the subject of someone’s cultural geography thesis.
** A full accounting would include the wear and tear on your car – with that, the bus wins hands down over any car on the market. I’ve ignored that here because I’m interested in what will most likely factor into the choice of bus vs. car. My sense is that people don’t consider the daily dribbling costs of wear and tear when making decisions. We moan when the mechanic says you need a new fan belt, but don’t think about the prorated cost when going on a subsequent trip. So we’re unlikely to make a decision based on the per km wear and tear. This is just a hunch; I could be wrong.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Geopolitics at Climate Dialogue
Over at Climate Dialogue, Gerald Singh writes about the geopolitics of climate change and the strengths of weaknesses of scenario analyis:
... This raises the interesting question of what is the value of scenario studies. The future is inherently unpredictable, and there are entire books dedicated to the failures of humanity’s best and brightest when it comes to predicting the future. The problem is further compounded by the idea that our own predictions influence how we act in the future. But where would that leave us? If we rid ourselves of the tools that scenario analysis gives us (regardless of how poor they might be), what can we do?
The post goeson to talk about a climate change and Mexican immigration study that caused some debate last year. Check it out!
Monday, April 11, 2011
REDD: Seeing the forest for the trees
The newest Climate Dialogue post looks at the pros and cons of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries Programme (REDD+):
At first glance, the REDD+ framework seems to hold great promise; upon closer inspection, however, the list of barriers to REDD’s success is long. Most criticisms of REDD+ are focused on the details of the Programme’s framework and challenges for its implementation...
For more, check Climate Dialogue!
Wednesday, April 06, 2011
Faster sailing across the Central Pacific: Wind speeds and El Nino
The new paper by Young et al. about increasing wind speeds and wave heights over the past twenty years created a bit of a buzz in the climate science world, not to mention the sailing world. Finally some good news, the windsurfer in me first upon seeing the paper.
The paper itself does not speculate about whether human-caused climate change is the driver of the global trend in wind speeds. That may have been a wise choise, as it would be difficult, statistically or dynamically, to attribute the rend in the reasonably short time series (~23 years) to any single forcing factor.
The spatial pattern, however, is quite striking:
If there were no labels on this figure, I'd have guessed it was the trend in sea surface temperatures over the same time period. The steepest trend is in the Central Pacific, including the waters around the Gilbert and Phoenix Islands of Kiribati.
In a map of temperature trends over the past two to three decades, the Central Pacific should jump out because of the increasing frequency of "Central Pacific" El Nino events, also known as El Nino Modoki. The more freuqent occurences of the "CP" El Nino is a subject of much research, and has been attributed by some authors to climate warming. The CP El Nino is responsible for a number of mass coral bleaching events, including 2002-3 in the Phoenix Islands, 2004-5 in the Gilbert Islands, and 2009-10 across the whole region.
It is not surprising to find a similar -- at least visually, take this with a grain of salt, I've not done the statistics -- spatial pattern in the surface wind speeds across the Pacific. More frequent Central Pacific warm events likely means larger pressure gradients, more convergence, and higher winds across the region (my paper in the Atoll Research Bulletin describesa CP El Nino event in relatively lay terms). More analysis will need to be done, but at first glance, the wind speed trends over the Pacific appear to be driven by temperature trends and the status of climate oscillations, which themselves may be driven in part by climate change.
Monday, April 04, 2011
Let’s Get the Lipstick off the Pig (at Climate Dialogue)
"Climate change is not being effectively addressed through the UNFCCC process, which has instead evolved into a sterile talk shop, unable to overcome the resistance of those who would block meaningful action on climate change."
For more, read the latest post by the student team at Climate Dialogue!
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Adaptation, Fairness and Finance at Climate Dialogue
Here's a teaser:
We face an extremely difficult, complex challenge in responding adequately to mitigate and adapt to climate change. One particularly thorny aspect of this challenge is how best the West can fulfil their ethical obligation to help developing countries build capacity and fund the level of response required to successfully adapt to climate change.
Head to Climate Dialogue to read the rest!
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Food prices and the ongoing biofuel debate
People worldwide are being affected by a rise in the price of food. The causes are complex and interacting: last summer's drought in Russia, the price of oil, speculative trading in commodities, economic instability, political unrest on the Middle East, you name it. As Tamino mentions, some people sceptical of efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions blame the increase in food prices on those efforts, namely the cultivation of biofuels like corn ethanol. Though I think Tamino's post misses the point of this debate.
The impact of corn ethanol, or an individual drought, or any other individual factor, on the price of a global commodity is very hard to quantify. The diversion of the U.S. corn crop to ethanol production over the past decade has undoubtedly affected food prices, despite U.S. government claims to the contrary. The various factors have interacting, nonlinear effects on the price of each commodity, and the commodity prices each affect the others, so it is hard to work out, say, a coefficient for each driving variable. But that's not the problem.
The real problem with any "climate change mitigation = more corn ethanol = higher food prices" argument is the first part: the claim that producing corn ethanol is addressing climate change.
In reality, the use of ethanol from corn as a fuel might actually result in greater greenhouse gas emissions than the use of gasoline, because of the land and energy required to grow the corn, harvest the corn, and convert the corn to ethanol. As such, the primary motivation for the expansion of corn ethanol production in the US is not climate change. Ethanol production is about appeasing regional interests, maintaining of the agricultural subsidy system and reducing reliance on imported fuels, probably in that order.
The only reason that corn ethanol gets promoted by politicians in the U.S. as a solution to climate change is that in the current political atmosphere, very few actual climate change mitigation proposals can pass, and because of some effective lobbying and the power of the Presidential primary process, expanding corn ethanol production looks like climate change mitigation to the public.
Throw out the word biofuels and people might think action is being taken to address climate change. Look at the acutal conversion efficiencies and total lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of the current feedstocks in the U.S. and you find a different story.
There is definitely reason to be concerned about the market effects of diverting so much of the U.S. corn crop to ethanol production. The real key to the story, the one to to look for in the coming months, is the price of meat. The majority of cereals and oils, the commodities for which the price has spiked the most, are used to generate animal feed. If you look back to 2008, you’ll see that the price of meat is likely to spike next.
This dynamic demonstrates the real battle we face in the future. It’s not food vs. fuel, it is feed vs. fuel. If the world wants to keep using the most productive croplands to provide biofuel feedstocks, we had better be prepared to eat less or much more expensive meat.
Friday, March 25, 2011
Climate change hits the big time
I received this "important" notice from "Desmond Tutu" today. You know an issue is important when it is being abused for email scams!
Perhaps the scam could also be seen as a unintentional bit of social commentary, on the fact that a lot of aid funding for climate change adaptation or awareness generally goes on international consultants rather than to people in developing nations.
Attention: Sir/Madam,
This is to inform you that the NELSON MANDELA FOUNDATION and WILLIAM J. CLINTON FOUNDATION in Collaboration with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has held an Internet Raffle Draw, and your Email Address was among the 2010 Email Addresses that was
picked through the computer ballot system. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change/Nelson Mandela Foundation and William J. Clinton Foundation were conceived with the objective of human growth, educational, and community development, and to create awareness to the dangers posed on our planet by climate change.
To celebrate the 18th anniversary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change /Nelson Mandela Foundation and William J. Clinton Foundation in conjunction with the United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU) is giving out a yearly donation of $ 900,000.00 (Nine Hundred Thousand United States Dollars Only) to 18 lucky recipients. These specific Donations will be awarded to 18 lucky international recipients worldwide in different categories for their personal business development and enhancement of their educational plans and to create awareness in their community on the dangers posed on our planet by climate change as a Result of pollution. Recipients are only eligible to be awarded this donation once. We therefore with great pleasure notify you that your email address happened to be among the eighteen email addresses selected for this Donation. BELLOW ARE YOUR WINNING DETAILS...
Please note that these donations/Grants are strictly administered by the UN. You are by all means hereby advised
to keep this whole information confidential until you have been able to collect your donation, as there have been cases of
double and unqualified claim, due to beneficiaries informing third parties about his/her donation. Finally, all funds should
be claimed by their respective beneficiaries, not later than 14 days after notification.
On behalf of the Board kindly, accept our warmest regards.
Regards.
Rev. Dr. Desmond Tutu
Foundation officer.
PLEASE HELP PROTECT/SAVE OUR PLANET.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Julie Bishop and Australian Opposition parties need to do better research about climate policy
The Australian Prime Minister, who heads a minority coalition in Parliament, has proposed carbon pricing scheme that will begin in 2012. The opposition parties are lobbying hard against the scheme, or any scheme that puts a price on carbon. In her regular blog for the Sydney Morning Herald, Deputy Leader of the Opposition Julie Bishop uses an argument that will sound familiar to argues that will sound familiar to Canadians and Americans: in essence, why should "we" take action if China is not?
One of the principal arguments of the Julia Gillard - Bob Brown government to justify imposing a carbon tax on Australia is that the international effort on climate change will leave us behind and that even China is taking dramatic action to reduce its carbon emissions.
This is deeply misleading. What the government doesn't tell you is that even if the Chinese government met its stated targets of cutting carbon emissions "per unit of GDP", there will in fact be a massive increase in emissions from China for the foreseeable future.
And here is the evidence:
University of British Columbia Professor in Geography Simon Donner calculates in an article titled "China's emissions pledge depends entirely on economic growth" that the Chinese emissions "intensity" targets would still result in substantial emissions increases.He says: "If China keeps up the planned 8 per cent/year growth, emissions in 2020 will be 74-90 per cent higher than 2005 levels".
When I heard about this "citation" yesterday, I was puzzled. What article is she talking about? I'm fairly certainly I'd remember if I'd published an article about Chinese climate policy. It turns out she is referring to a brief Maribo post from two years ago in which I pointed out that the China's new emissions target is based on emissions intensity, and thus represents less of a decrease than it might sound. This brings up all sorts of interesting questions about appeals to authority, blog posts vs. published research, etc., which I'd be happy to discuss.
Now had the Deputy Leader or her staff or whomever writes the posts in her name contacted me or, say, done more than typed "china's emissions pledge" into Google (the post comes up #3, at least from here), she may have learned that many international policy experts think it is reasonable to allow nations with developing economies to set targets based on emissions intensity. I've written numerous posts arguing just that. In fact, that point was touched on in the previous paragraph in the post though only fully fleshed out in other posts:
It is, however, a reasonably fair way to bring a reluctant developing nation like China into an international emissions control framework.
The moral here is not what I wrote. The moral here is that Australians should be just horrified that by the lack of research and analysis being done by the opposition parties on the carbon tax proposal. They should not be citing a two-year old blog post written by a Canadian university professor for which the data is now out of date. I'd guess it took me about 20 minutes to do the analysis and write that post. Certainly that's not too much time to spend working on your position on a critical policy proposal.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Climate change and the oceans; UCAR Magazine
The UCAR Magazine has a good short review of recent research into the ocean's response to climate change. Bob Henson manages to summarize some of the new thinking about coral bleaching, plankton productivity, ocean acidification, and ocean "deoxygenation" all in one article. It's worth a read.
Climate Dialogue: Counting carbon
A new post about carbon accounting schemes is up on Climate Dialogue. Check it out!
The previous post looked at the logic behind temperature targets.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Phew, must be that global warming
Perhaps the climate change communications MVP should go to the funniest individual or organization. Humour is probably more effective than either aggression or humility.
Friday, March 11, 2011
The MVP of climate change communication
The Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason is giving out the third Climate Change Communicator of the Year award. Voting is open until April 15th.
The award raises a question that comes up around award time in the sporting world. Is the most valuable player the one who produces the most - say, hits the most home runs - regardless of the success of their team? Or is the most valuable player the one who captained or contributed the most to a successful team?
If you believe the former, then the communicator of the year is the one who racked up the most statistics, be it blog posts, policy briefings, public talks, op-eds, etc. Given the rough state of public and political discourse on climate change, maybe this is like voting for the slugger on the last place team. One could argue that the most valuable communicators may not score well using the standard individual metrics, but doing more to advance the "cause".
That raises a second question: for what should we award a climate change communicator? Advancing public understanding of the science? Or influencing public or political opinion on climate change policy or solutions? These are two very different goals. The most valuable communicators might in fact be ones who best help audiences differentiate between science and judgments made based on science. In that view, the most valuable communicator will not be the strongest advocate for action.
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
Coverage of today's congressional hearing on climate science
The U.S. House of Representatives held a hearing about climate science this morning, as a part of the deliberations on a bill that would challenge the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. These congressional hearings can seem like a circus, with a set of climate scientists countered by people with nice sounding credentials making arguments by analogy or just wholly baseless claims about climate science (case in point: just read or watch Donald Roberts' testimony).
This time the real circus may have been the coverage. After my morning class, I clicked on Science Magazine's (by then complete) live blog of the hearing with Gavin Schmidt of Real Climate in hopes of getting a feel for what had come to pass in the halls of Congress. Unfortunately, this legimate attempt at science coverage by a news organization with the aide of an expert from the field became more of a circus than most congressional hearings thanks to the commenters. I think commenter Roger Pielke Jr. posted more than Schmidt and blog host Eli Kintisch combined.
But that's the whole challenge, isn't it? Climate communication, like climate change, is a signal to noise problem.
Monday, March 07, 2011
Banning the trade of shark fins
I took the picture at left just a couple weeks back in a market on the Pacific Coast of Central America. Frankly, it the photo could be from the Indian Ocean, the Caribbean or the western Pacific, I've seen the same thing on the coasts of all the tropical oceans.
You'll notice the fin-less sharks in the bin are all small: the larger sharks are dumped at sea after being "finned". The fin is worth so much more than the meat that there's no value in bringing a big heavy dead shark back ashore, even though it is obviously a potential food source. In Kiribati, people do catch sharks and sell the fins, but at least they also take the shark home to eat.
You don't have to be the least bit interested in marine conservation or the dwindling global shark population to see the practice as finning and leaving the shark behind as ridiculously wasteful. Perhaps a ban of shark fishing may be politically or logistically impossible in today's world, I don't know. I can say that if we are going to continue to catch sharks for human consumption, let's at least catch the whole shark.
Thursday, March 03, 2011
Climate communication: Be aggressive or be humble?
There's continuing disagreement inside and outside the scientific community about not only what scientists should say about climate change, but how they should be saying it. The communications literature states there is not one right approach, but a range of different approaches which may be suitable depending on the audience.
The climate blogosphere got in a tizzy in January about an advance copy of the text of a talk to be presented by Kevin Trenberth at the recent American Meteorological Society. The debate centered around Trenberth's idea that certainty about climate change is so great we should invert the common "Is this event caused by climate change?" line of questioning. As it states in the abstract, "Given that global warming is unequivocal, the null hypothesis should be that all weather events are affected by global warming".
All the talks from the "Communicating Climate Change" session (One and Two) at AMS were recorded and are now available for viewing online. Trenberth's talk and my own presentation "Making the climate a part of the human world" provide examples of two very different ways of thinking about communication of climate change (viewers be patient, the audio of my talk doesn't kick in for about 90 seconds). You might say the different methods of analysis - I take a deep historical perspective to explain the confusion of today - lead also to clear differences in what I can best describe as temperament. A simple breakdown would be that Trenberth goes on the offensive (i.e. prove me wrong) while I've been told my approach is almost defensive (i.e. let's be more humble, there's a good reason the science is hard to believe). Obviously, I'm partial to the latter, it is my research after all. I do accept that there may also be a time and a place for the former too.
Update: More discussion of these questions at Class M and Rabbet Run.
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