This is from US President Obama's interview in Rolling Stone:
When I ask him [Stephen Chu] how we are going to solve this problem internationally, what he'll tell you is that we can get about a third of this done through efficiencies and existing technologies, we can get an additional chunk through some sort of pricing in carbon, but ultimately we're going to need some technological breakthroughs
It is an interesting and rather pragmatic characterization of the solution. The pricing could, of course, drive efficiencies, use of efficient technologies and the development of new breakthrough technologies. But we're seeing how a comprehensive pricing scheme is a practical and political nightmare. Implementing a national or international pricing scheme that touches on a limited set of carbon-generating activities, let one alone taxes carbon across the board, has been hard enough (in the case of Waxman-Markey, you end up with a complicated bill that alienates even the supporters of action).
Maybe people are finally coming to the realization that a piecemeal solution might actually work the best. If we can use adopt "wedges" thinking, rather than one grand solution, to reducing emissions, why not do the same for the policy that encourages the emissions reductions?
In Obama's words:
We may end up having to do it in chunks, as opposed to some sort of comprehensive omnibus legislation. But we're going to stay on this because it is good for our economy, it's good for our national security, and, ultimately, it's good for our environment.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Obama and Chu on piecemeal climate policy
Monday, September 27, 2010
Glacier melt and water supply in North America
It is easy to forget that many North American communities, particularly in the Canadian prairies, also depend on water that originates in mountain glaciers. Case in point, the stunning figure at right.
The shows the model-calculated river discharge of the North Saskatchewan River (at Whirlpool Point), which flows across Alberta and Saskatchewan, with (light blue) and without (dark) blue the contribution from glaciers in the Rockies. The figure was reproduced by Natural Resources Canada from an article by Comeau et al. in Hydrological Processes.
The key change, obvious from the figure, is that without the glacial water source, there will be a huge decrease in summer water flows. The result is a more typical snowmelt-dominated hydrograph (chart of seasonal river discharge), similar to something you'd see in another part of the continent.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Response to Monkton's blustering about coral reefs
This claim appears every now and then. It is a good example of the problems with all of Monckton's arguments about climate change: i) it is based on an analogy, rather than an actual physical mechanism, ii) it ignores time scales, and iii) some of the "data" used to advance his argument is simply made up.
I've included the full responses from the three experts on the coral question (Jeffrey Kiehl, Charlie Veron and Nancy Knowlton) below. Their incredulity says enough.
Response from Dr. Jeffrey Kiehl
It is ironic that Monckton will accept that the geologic record clearly indicates that high CO2 leads to warm climates (thus CO2 is a driver for climate), but then uses the existence of life at these times to conclude that we need not worry. The point is that past warm periods developed over millions of years of time and lasted for millions of years. Thus, species could adapt to these changes. However, we also know that some species did not adapt. The concern about the future is that the rate of warming that is occurring and will continue to occur over the next century is unprecedented in the deep past. It took over 30 million years for CO2 levels to drop from 900 ppmv to their present levels, we are returning Earth back to this level in a mere 90 years. The accompanying rate of warming will also be unprecedented, certainly over the lifetime of our species. The issue is that our species and others will experience a rapid and large change that will have significant impacts on survivability. So both of Monckton’s arguments are flawed.
Response from Dr. John Veron
It is not possible for me to make any sense of Mr. Monckton’s assertions as they are not based on any scientific data or views that have ever been published. The levels quoted are higher than any spikes known to have existed. The time intervals quoted bear no relevance to the history of life.
Specifically:
Cambrian Era: Calcium carbonate (limestone) of the Cambrian, which abounds, has nothing to do with atmospheric carbon dioxide. Estimates of carbon dioxide levels at this time are not known with great certainty. There were no corals in the Cambrian, symbiotic or otherwise: they had not evolved then.
The Jurassic: There were high levels of carbon dioxide possibly reaching 2000 ppm for unknown time intervals with unknown effects on marine life. The spike immediately before the Jurassic caused the third great mass extinction. This extinction, which defines the Triassic/Jurassic boundary, was so drastic that it has been known
since the early 18th century.
Response from Dr. Nancy Knowlton
This paragraph completely ignores the fact that the seawater chemistry and the buffering capacity of seawater were very different during the times described from what they are today… The problem with CO2 emissions today is that the effects of burning fossil fuels on ocean pH first operate on the scales of decades to centuries, thus causing the acidification that has been observed. Eventually the pH of the ocean will be buffered again, but for hundreds of years ocean organisms will be affected by abnormally high acidity (low pH), and it is the damages associated with acidification over the “short” term (the next hundreds of years) that concern biologists. (see also Assertion 4)
Response from Dr. Lee Kump
One must carefully distinguish between conditions that were acquired and sustained over millions of years such as these, and abrupt events such as fossil-fuel burning that disturb these longer-term equilibria. Over long time scales the carbon cycle is balanced, and the oceans (and the life in them) can form limestone at essentially any atmospheric CO2 level. On these long time scales, rivers bring the building blocks for the calcium carbonate skeleton to the ocean; when CO2 levels are high, these compounds must accumulate to higher concentrations to overcome the increased acidity generated by the CO2, but this adjustment takes only millennia.
Monday, September 20, 2010
The second "global" coral bleaching event
The NY Times article calls the concurrence of events "only the second known global bleaching of coral reefs". Though the characterization is awkward and not terribly accurate, as the bleaching is not really "global", it does point to the right comparison. The spatial extent of coral bleaching in 2010 is likely to be second to that observed in 1998, which people have taken to calling the first "global bleaching event". It is no coincidence that these "global" events occurred during two of the warmest, if not the two warmest, years in observed history.
It is also no coincidence that both 1998 and 2010 began with strong El Nino conditions, which later flipped to La Nina conditions. In a simplistic sense, that "maximizes" the area of ocean which experiences anomalous warmth that tends trigger mass coral bleaching events. This year, the El Nino event causes anomalous warmth in the eastern and central Equatorial Pacific. The migration of the West Pacific Warm Pool back westwards, as El Nino subsided, helped cause the high temperatures and bleaching in Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific. Atmospheric teleconnections may be responsible for some of the anomalous warmth in the Caribbean, as has been suggested in past studies. And as the article indicates, the recent switch to La Nina conditions is increasing concern about bleaching in the southwest Pacific, including the Great Barrier Reef, over the southern hemisphere summer.
One area of uncertainty in the science community is to what extent can coral reefs which have experienced bleaching in the recent past, whether 1998 or more recently, can become more resilient to future temperature stress. The year 2010 may serve as a great biophysical experiment.
[UPDATE: The Atlantic and Gulf Rapid Reef Assessment is inviting divers in the Caribbean to join them in "monitoring simple, ecosystem-
level pigmentation changes in live corals and any associated changes
in live coral cover using the newly updated BLAGGRA Line Transects
protocol (www.agrra.org/BLAGRRA). Sites can be very quickly and
repeatedly surveyed by small teams of 1-2 experienced divers. A
representative assessment can be made of reefs in the area affected by
bleaching, and/or sampling can be focused on special-interest sites
(such as within and outside of MPAs)"]
Friday, September 17, 2010
Another example of the Canadian government "muzzling" scientists
From the Montreal Gazette:
The Harper government has tightened the muzzle on federal scientists, going so far as to control when and what they can say about floods at the end of the last ice age.
Natural Resources Canada scientists were told this spring they need "pre-approval" from Minister Christian Paradis's office to speak with national and international journalists. Their "media lines" also need ministerial approval, say documents obtained through access-to-information legislation.
The documents say the "new" rules went into force in March and reveal how they apply not only to contentious issues including the oilsands, but benign subjects such as floods that occurred 13,000 years ago.
I'm always surprised by Canadian or American government efforts to limit or control public statements by scientists. Forget the logic of the communication policy itself. It goes without saying that controlling public appearances by scientists is bad policy in a democratic society. But it is even worse politics. Tales of muzzling always make it into the media. It's futile to attempt to hide such a policy in a world of Twitter, WikiLeaks and Youtube. And the eventual tale of "muzzling scientists" always makes the government look bad in the end. So why bother? Political masochism if you ask me.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Really, what does the Republicans "climate zombies" accomplish?
A colleague mentioned this list (also see Joe Romm) of statements about climate change by Republican candidates for Senate. With one exception, they all doubt that human activity is responsible for climate change.
Sure I agree with all the commentators that the stance of all these candidates is depressing. The similarity of their statements suggests that it has less to do with what the individual's actually think about climate change, than the fact that climate change has become so politicized in the U.S. that Republicans need to express doubt in order to win their party's nomination. From their vantage point, denial and doubt is the only viable option.
As such, what's far more depressing to me than the statements themselves is what those statements imply about the utter failure to communicate the science of climate change and the rationale for climate change solutions in a non-partisan way. Maybe this should serve as a lesson that years of doing things like calling people who question climate change "brain-dead zombies" hasn't accomplished anything but maybe "fire up the base" (which in itself, didn't accomplish much in the past two years!)
You can be right without being arrogant. I've said it before: rather than demonize people who question climate change, it's worth thinking about their motivation and their reasoning, faulty as though it may be. Otherwise, the water will be flooding the front steps here in Vancouver, and we'll still be having the same inane arguments.
Thursday, September 09, 2010
Drinking to save the climate
A group of Swedish scientists calculated the GHG emissions generated from the production of a number of different common beverages and the nutritional benefit of those beverages per unit emissions (left).
The verdict? If you want to minimize emissions, pas up on the wine and go for water, soy drinks and oat drinks (mmm?). Beer and milk are almost a dead heat in terms of emissions, though the authors caution against adding beer to your cereal in the morning [update: er, that's a joke. the paper doesn't venture into breakfast habits!].
If you want to maximize the nutritional value for each unit of climate damage (the "NDCI index"), it is milk all the way. The reason is that beer and wine offer basically zero nutritional value. Soft drinks too. Alas, it's true, there's no nutritional value to high fructose corn syrup!
With UBC being a sustainable university, milk and oat drinks will now certainly be a popular choice at all the undergrad parties and faculty functions.
The exact numbers should vary by city, region and country, based on transportation of the beverages ("drink miles"?) and production practices. I'd guess the general breakdown should be roughly similar in most locations, given that the nutrient densities are more or less constant from place to place and lower limits to the production emissions.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
A year of extreme weather: Is more bleaching to come in the Caribbean?
The heat waves have not only been on land. I mentioned a few weeks ago that high ocean temperatures has led to widespread coral bleaching over the past year, including occurrences in the Central Equatorial Pacific and Indonesia.
More may be to come. This is the NOAA Coral Reef Watch bleaching outlook for the fall, based on current temperatures and an experimental long-term forecast. It calls for the possibility of "Alert Level 2" thermal stress, which in general tends to cause mass coral bleaching and some coral mortality (in reality: the response is highly variable in time and space). If the forecast is correct, observations of bleaching would probably start to happen sometime in September.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Interview with Simple Climate
A couple weeks backs, I answered a few questions about coral reefs and climate for at Andy Extance's site Simple Climate.
At the end, he asked how I would explain the global warming situation to someone who had no previous exposure at all. Of course, like any scientist, my first instinct is to launch into a discussion about the radiative transfer, the carbon cycle, etc. But explaining the science without considering the context is pointless. Here was my quick answer for Andy:
I’d start with talking about how it can be hard to “believe” that people can change the climate. For thousands of years, we’ve assumed that only powers greater than us could possible influence something as vast as the atmosphere. That’s enshrined in most cultural and religious traditions. But today, there are so many people on the planet, and we’ve consume so much energy every year, that we generate enough waste products – greenhouse gases – to alter the climate.
I’d then stress separating the science from the politics. The science tells us that human activity is changing the climate. How you want the world to respond to that information is a value judgment. As a scientist working on this subject for a number of years, I can provide you a reasonably informed opinion on the costs and benefits of different responses. But the choice is not mine alone.
After all that, if the person was still awake and interested, I’d then talk about the scientific evidence.
Sunday, August 08, 2010
Climate change education: A blast from the past
"Our industrial civilization has been pouring carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at a great rate... If it remained, it would have a very marked warming effect on the earth's climate, but most of it will probably be absorbed by the oceans. Conceivably, however, it could cause significant melting of the great icecaps and raise sea levels in time."
From Planet Earth: The mystery with 100,000 clues, a brochure produced by the U.S. National Academy of Science as part of the first International Geophysical Year, 1957-1958.
The terrific, very 1950s, accompanying film "The Inconstant Air" describes the basics of weather and climate, including the greenhouse effect. What I find most fascinating is the film provides historical context to the viewer - i.e. mentioning that early human societies though that gods controlled the weather - something that is generally missing from education and outreach on climate change today. We are so buried in the politics, we forget and ignore history, and therefore fail to appreciate that the very premise (that humans are affecting the climate) is quite revolutionary.
Thursday, August 05, 2010
Yes, this is the Environment Canada forecast for Vancouver
The text version includes the phrase "Local smoke", which usually has other connotations out here on the West Coast.
It is very hazy outside, but the situation is far worse across the world in Moscow.
Friday, July 23, 2010
Widespread coral bleaching over the past year
Maribo's been quiet the past few months because of field work, other research, the Canadian summer and a major case of blog exhaustion. I may be inspired to write more on the exhaustion issue later, we'll see.
In the meantime: Last year, I mentioned that several parts of the Indo-Pacific were at risk of coral bleaching in the coming year. The same El Nino event that melted the Vancouver Olympics and weakened last year's Atlantic hurricane season, did indeed cause coral bleaching across the Central Equatorial Pacific from October through the spring. We're still putting together the data for Kiribati (home of this whimsical coral).
The Pacific since sloshed back towards more neutral or La Nina conditions, the unusual warmth has been pushed to the western Pacific and Asia, leading to bleaching in Thailand, Malaysia and other parts of SE Asia. Add it all up, and 2010, which the data shows may end up being the warmest or second year in the observed temperature record, may end up also having the most extensive bleaching since 1998.
The management response in Malaysia is impressive. The Department of Marine Parks has banned diving in several popular dive sites in order to give the reefs the best chance to recover (the Telegraph):
"We expect [the corals] to recover or at least improve." Mr Abdul Jamal said The Department of Marine Parks claimed the damaged coral was solely the result of rising sea temperatures and not tourism activities.
However, Mr Abdul Jamal explained that by banning diving, the coral will be given time to regenerate naturally. The closures are likely to affect tourism revenue over the summer, but authorities argue the priority is to safeguard one of the country's main attractions – its coral reefs.
Will this ensure the coral reefs recover to the previous state? No, but it increases the odds. Short of covering the entire reef with a sheet, you can't really stop a bleaching event. But you can manage the system to encourage recovery. This is the type of management - of climate change adaptation - that many of us in the community have argued is necessary to help coral reefs survive the predicted warming over the coming decades.
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
"I think the sun has come closer to our island"
(why it is warmer and the copra dries faster than in the old days, according to a 97-year old Kiribati unimwane or elder)
The quote came to me second hand, via Kiribati religious leader I met while conducted a field project in the Central and Northern Gilbert Islands. It comes with the usual caveats about translation and the accuracy of anecdotal climate observations.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Record warmth continues in March
The unprecedented warmth across Canada stands out in the NOAA global temperature map for March. But Canada was not alone. According to NOAA's data, this was the warmest March and the fourth warmest January - March in recorded history.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Climate change and human rights
I had a nice long interview about different aspects of climate change with human rights expert Darren Thorne as part of a new podcast series Human Rights and Wrongs, hosted by the Mark. As always, feedback and comments are welcome.
[Update] On the podcast, we discuss the pitfalls of Canada relying on the US to determine climate policy. One of the problems is that it may be a long wait. From the Globe and Mail:
Environment Minister Jim Prentice is signalling further delays in imposing greenhouse gas emission standards on the oil sector and other industries, saying Ottawa does not want to lose jobs and investment by driving activity out of the country.
The Conservative government is waiting for the United States to decide how it will impose climate-change regulations before acting here. And the U.S. Congress could take up to two years to pass legislation that sets caps on greenhouse gas emissions, Mr. Prentice told a Senate committee Thursday.
Add the delay to the fact that the whatever US legislation is produced will be tailored to the US economy (i.e. provide loopholes for industries that are more prominent in the US than in Canada), and there's even more reason to pursue a national strategy.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
The Mark: Why U.S. environmentalists should support offshore drilling
Last week, President Obama shocked environmentalists by opening millions of acres of the American continental shelf to oil and gas drilling. The announcement reminded me of a backpacking trip I took to Malaysian Borneo several years ago.
Read more at the Mark.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Pod science: PRI's The World Science
For all those lamenting the decline of science journalism in print and on television, its worth checking out the growing number of science podcasts.
One great example is Public Radio International's The World: Science hosted by Rhitu Chaterjee. The show has a more global focus than most other programs, including some recent interviews with young inventors in India and this week's discussion of the international politics of geoengineering. The show also features a fun segment on the music that scientists listen to while they work. The music segment features yours truly this week, but don't hold that against the show!
Thursday, April 08, 2010
Tongue-tied on global warming
A few days ago, I waded into the old "global warming" vs. "climate change" debate to demonstrate a simple point about public communication.
The issue at hand is not which term is most appropriate. Of course, there is a legitimate argument to be had on that question. Michael Tobis intelligently advocates for climate change, as do most scientists. Others argue that the two terms describe different phenomena and should not be used interchangeably.
These arguments highlight the very disconnect between scientists and the public that I was getting at in the initial post. I'll obnoxiously quote myself:
Rights and wrongs of the different labels aside, the fact is that there is a disconnect here. We use a term that means less to people. And it puts scientists and others communicating the real scientific consensus at a disadvantage.
Too often, we are oblivious to the way the public perceives science. And if we do see the disconnect between scientific and public language (or style), we tend to stubbornly insist that our language (or style) is the only correct option. This only exacerbates the problem. High-minded debates about semantics like the phrase-ology certainly won't diminish the common view that academics and scientists are disconnected from reality.
Should we suspend those debates? Of course not. But let's save our energy for the more critical issues. We also shouldn't allow semantic debate to get in the way of public communication, as the Google search history I showed suggests may be the case. Like many scientists, I not wild about the terms global warming or ocean acidification or ozone hole; but if the price of increasing public understanding of the science is occassionally having to say one term instead of another, well, that's a pretty good deal.
Sunday, April 04, 2010
Coal ship runs aground on Great Barrier Reef
Ironic, yes. Why bother with that whole slow process of burning the coal and oil, then having to wait for the emitted CO2 to change the climate and alter the ocean chemistry, thus threatening corals that are the cornerstone of the Great Barrier Reef, when you can just ram a ship right into the reef itself?
From the Onion New York Times:
BRISBANE, Australia (AP) -- A coal-carrying ship that strayed outside a shipping lane and ran aground in protected waters was leaking oil on Australia's Great Barrier Reef and was in danger of breaking apart, officials said Sunday.
Saturday, April 03, 2010
Global warming trumps climate change?
So much of the online climate "debate" is about effective communication, not science. Earlier this week, I met with a public opinion expert who critiqued the way many scientists and environmental groups speak about, er, climate change, no global warming, maybe the climate crisis, global heating, countdown to a meltdown, springtime for CO2, waterworld, the greatest threat facing humanity, well, you know what I mean.
The expert raised example after example of scientists, NGOs, government, etc. shooting themselves in the foot while talking about, um, the impact of human activity on the climate system. Take the oldest argument of them all: global warming or climate change?
At right is the Google trends graph of average worldwide searches for global warming (in blue) and climate change (in red). The top graph is standard Google searches, the bottom graph is news references.
The graph shows that "global warming" is far more common a search term. The average person is more likely to use and recognize the label "global warming", as evidenced by the search volume. But "climate change" appears more often in the news. Why? In no small part because all the writers, and especially all the people quoted in the articles, say "climate change".
Now, we can argue the semantics of the different terms. Generally, scientists reject the term "global warming", because it is not used in the literature and supposedly "less accurate" because the entire planet is not warming at the same rate. I've used that argument many times, and now wonder if it may be a mistake to do so (as has been pointed out to me, "global" simply implies the whole planet is warming, which is true!).
Rights and wrongs of the different labels aside, the fact is that there is a disconnect here. We use a term that means less to people. And it puts scientists and others communicating the real scientific consensus at a disadvantage. Do a Google search for "global warming" and "climate change". With "global warming", the term the public is more likely to use, a "skeptical" site comes up second [note: search is done from Canada, others may find different results].
