A Maribo exclusive, in honour of this.
PARIS (Unassociated Press) - The climate’s second doping sample contained elevated levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, scientists at a French doping lab confirmed on Friday.
Pierre Martin, who chairs the French anti-doping board, said that the lab discovered the carbon dioxide in the climate’s B sample had to have come from an outside source. The doping tests were ordered after the climate produced one of the warmest years in recorded history.
The result comes after years of speculation by scientists, environmentalists and the French media that the climate was participating in an elaborate, clandestine doping program. The test appears to confirm that ingestion of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by the climate is the primary cause of global warming.
Lawyers for the oil and coal industry continue to claim that warming is due to natural variability, and questioned the motives of the scientists at the testing lab.
“The climate has never knowingly ingested any illegal substances to enhance performance,” said spokesman Michael Henson. “This is the same old witch hunt, led by a group of maverick scientists jealous of the size of American cars and homes.”
The head of the World Anti-Doping Agency, Richard Pound, dismissed the claims of the global warming ‘skeptics’.
“Barry Bonds, Floyd Landis, the Ozone Layer, the strategy never changes. Deny, deny, deny,” argued Pound. “This time, the evidence is incontrovertible.”
The testing lab reports that carbon dioxide appears to have been the main element in an elaborate greenhouse gas program. Scientists confirm unnatural levels of methane, human growth hormone, nitrous oxide and a several other lesser greenhouse gases.
“The extent of the doping program is unprecedented,” added WADA head Pound. “The atmosphere has even been using a mysterious substance that our scientists have labeled ‘black carbon’”.
Pound added that his agency will move to strike the climate’s many recent temperature marks from the record books.
The climate’s A sample, taken in the 1990s, found that the planet appeared to be warming. Carbon dioxide – commonly referred to by the code “CO2” – was thought to be the primary culprit. While carbon dioxide does exist naturally in the atmosphere, it can also be introduced through activities like the burning of fossil fuels like oil.
The natural level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is thought to be around 280 parts per million (ppm). The B sample, collected after the warmest year in recorded history, showed a level of close 380 ppm, far in excess of the WADA limit.
Most damning for the climate is a new carbon isotope ratio test used by French testing lab. The test confirmed that the additional CO2 in the atmosphere was not naturally generated, and must be derived from an outside source like oil or coal burning.
Computer models developed by scientists at NASA also show that the additional CO2 is the only way to explain the climate’s performance over the past thirty year.
“You simply cannot generate this pattern of warming from natural causes alone,” commented NASA scientist James Hansen.
In anticipation of a positive test results, the climate has engaged in a broad media campaign. In a book to be released this June, the climate floats a number of theories for the elevated CO2 level, including a rash of recent forest fires, medication being taken to rectify the ozone hole, dehydration from the Indian monsoon and a bratwurst festival in Milwaukee on the day of the test.
The climate has few supporters left in the Earth community. In a brief statement, the Greenland Ice Sheet, the small island nation of Tuvalu, the Great Barrier Reef and thirteen other prominent geographical features called for action:
“The latest positive test signals that it is time to end the fruitless debate about the science. We must move on to solutions to the doping problem.”
The positive test could lead to strict regulations on carbon emissions. The atmosphere has one earlier doping offense, a positive test for CFCs that caused the ozone hole over Antarctica. Under World Anti-Doping Agency rules, a second infraction brings a lifetime ban on industrial emissions.
Although it is unclear whether a restriction on emissions can be enforced, many in the Earth community argue it is necessary to level the playing field.
“We all knew something wasn’t right with the climate,” said the Arctic sea ice. “I’ve lost 40% of my summer cover in the past 30 years. You’re telling me that is natural?”
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Breaking news: B sample confirms warming
Friday, April 20, 2007
The truth on greenhouse gases and meat consumption
Last week, Washington Post George Will wrote a sadly uniformed column attacking the public campaigns to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It drew the usual array of responses and partisan blustering (left, right, ridiculous).
At heart was Time Magazine’s “Global Warming Survival Guide” which featured advice like 51 Tips on Saving the Environment, never mind that global warming is not merely an environmental problem, and that many of the tips have nothing to do with the environment, rather with improving human health.
Tip #22 -- Skip the Steak – claims that livestock is responsible for around 18% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. That’s not a mistake. The number comes from a prominent UN report released last year.
What Time, what George Will and what the vast majority of commentators on this subject get wrong is why livestock is responsible for such a large proportion of the world’s GHG emissions.
Columnists and pundits love to joke about cow farts and manure – producing methane and nitrous oxide, respectively – like they’re in bad Adam Sandler movie. That is an important source of GHG. But, in reality, the majority of the emissions attributable to livestock are not coming out the back end, but coming from all the energy used to grow the grain that is fed to livestock.
The United States alone grows almost half of the world’s corn and soybeans. And more than two-thirds of that production is used to manufacture animal feed. It requires an enormous volume of oil, to produce fertilizer and run farm machinery, and an enormous area of land. In turn, it is responsible in part for a number of ecological problems, like the “Dead Zone” in the Gulf of Mexico.
Will seems to mistakenly stumble upon this point, in the midst of some sarcasm, but :
Ben & Jerry's ice cream might be even more sinister [than a steak]: A gallon of it requires electricity-guzzling refrigeration and four gallons of milk produced by cows that simultaneously produce eight gallons of manure and flatulence with eight gallons of methane. The cows do this while consuming lots of grain and hay, which are cultivated by using tractor fuel, chemical fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides, and transported by fuel-consuming trains and trucks.
The concept is right, the comparison is flat wrong. Producing a gram of dairy protein requires only a fraction of the energy of producing a gram of meat protein, especially beef (for the simple reason you don’t kill the cow every time you milk it).Of the feed produced in the United States, only 12% is devoted to dairy cattle (see here). The rest goes to beef cattle, poultry and pork production. That’s why you often hear claims that we should all eat less meat, but not less dairy.
In essence, this problem is not about meat consumption. It is about devoting a significant proportion of our energy and our land to produce meat. One of the biggest obstacles to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the future will be diet. We may or may not be exporting democracy to the world, but we certainly are exporting our meat-rich diets. As meat consumption rises in China and other parts of the developing world, the challenge of reducing oil consumption and reducing greenhouse gas emissions will grow. More on that later.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Climate change, the IPCC and the framing of science
In last week’s issue of Science, Matthew Nisbet and journalist Chris Mooney argued that scientists communicating issues like climate change to the public must “learn to actively frame information to make it relevant to different audiences”.
The paper has already generated a lot of debate. Should scientists be cowing to the demands of the marketplace in order to communicate their message? Or should we stick to our own means of discourse and risk losing the audience to well-crafted messages of non-scientists? Nisbet’s blog has a selection of the responses.
I thought about it a lot last week, when I was almost thrust into a short televised debate about climate change on Bloomberg News with Christopher Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, author of the utterly laughable book A Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming. In case you somehow can't tell from the title of his book, Horner’s not particularly interested in science, and he’s what you might call a skeptic of climate change.
In the end, there were technical problems with the studio on campus, and our department had to cancel. Before I continue… as I got online to post this blog – about Horner, communicating climate change and Nisbet and Mooney’s article – I found this post by NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt on the blog Realclimate, telling the tale of appearing on Bloomberg News with Horner. Don’t forget a second think Schmidt was a second-choice to me, or anyone. Let’s just say I happened to be by the phone when Bloomberg started making calls.
The invitation was a reminder that the “debate” is not over for many people. Sadly, some of North America has not graduated past the infantile pro-con, left-right, brown-green and environment-economy debates on climate change. Horner and Schmidt (or I or whomever) were (to be) given equal air time to discuss the findings in the (at the time, upcoming) IPCC report, even though as the token climate scientist, Schmidt was representing the conclusions of the 99+% of the scientific community that accepts the role of human activity in climate change.
Mr. Horner has recently become a regular on the pundit circuit. He relies on pithy, and frankly quite ridiculous, one-liners about climate science designed – “framed” – to:
a) tap into people’s pre-existing doubts that mere little people could affect something as grand as the atmosphere
b) reduce climate change to a partisan political issue.
The approach is well-suited to cable news channels, where statements are short, the viewer is distracted by stock quotes, baseball scores, terror alerts and flashing slogans, and everything is partisan. It is no surprise that Horner been featured on everything from the Daily Show to the Fox News’ childish bipartisan slugfest Hannity and Colmes.
As a scientist, what would I have done in response? Shrug off the one-liners and soberly summarize the facts and the strong consensus among the reputable research community? Engage in the debate, spending my precious air time spewing my own pithy counter-attack, featuring test-marketed phrases like “energy independence” or “the planet has a fever”? Or provide viewers with the rational, sober discussion of climate change that, in my mind at least, they deserve?
To best fit the medium and the audience, I would have towed the line between the approaches described above. Short, well-crafted statements about science peppered with more user-friendly language and key “it” words or phrases. What else can you do with 15-30 second snippets of air time to communicate information?
In others words, I would have “framed” the information to make it relevant to the audience. Now, I write this, at least the word frame, reluctantly. While logical and convenient, “frame” smells suspiciously of the marketing speak that is consuming everyday life, like the ubiquitous word brand, which not so long ago, was only used as a verb when discussing ruminants. We don’t want to just sell you our product or service or concept, we want to burn it deep into your flesh with a scalding hot metal rod. Alas, I digress...
The truth is, framing is not new to us scientists. Think of the research granting process. In most grant applications, the investigators must fit the proposed work to the constraints of the call for proposals and the funding agency. Research is essentially pitched in a particular vein to best fit the interested of the audience. Today, this often means framing your previous published research and your proposed research as crucial steps in understanding and solving great ecological and societal dilemmas like climate change, land cover change or declining biodiversity.
It goes on. Admission to graduate school? A post-doctoral job? A faculty job? The holy grail – tenure? At each rung on the ladder, one must present their area and method of research in a way that appeals to faculty or the university as a whole. Scientists, if they want to be successful, must know how to tailor information to the audience.
There is, nonetheless, some danger in the type of framing suggested by Nisbet and Mooney. By altering our method of communications to fit the medium, we risk lowering scientific research and expertise to the level of other partisan, subjective work produced by lobby organizations, political think tanks and the like. That’s why I so dislike the slandering of the IPCC process. Obsess over the politics too much, and the IPCC reports may start to appear, in the minds of the average public, as no better than all the other reports on climate change, or silly books like Mr. Horner’s, despite the fact that the IPCC represents the most thorough reading of scientific literature and expert knowledge on climate change.
Scientists are no different than anyone else. They’re not objective. What usually, though not always, sets scientific work apart is the method. State your hypothesis, state the way it was tested and state the way the results are analyzed, such that others, if so inspired, can replicate the results. The final results are then reviewed by others in the field before being officially released. The scientific method recognizes the subjectivity inherent in all work and attempts to remove, or at least reduce, it.
If we get too crafty in our presentation, stray too far from the core tenets of the profession, the true (and sometimes imagined) value of scientific work may be compromised.
In addition, I worry that, too often, the framing or presentation of science to the public is rooted, whether consciously or not, in the demeaning assumption that the public is not smart enough to understand the details. Personally, I feel this assumption has more to do with our arrogance, as scientists, than any true observation on the general public, though I admit I do not have any data to back this assertion (and could thus be convinced otherwise). And even if the assumption is correct, that the public isn’t able to or interested in understanding the details, then the root problem is not scientific communication. It is scientific literacy and basic education.
Framing may very well help win a few battles, say with folks like Christopher Horner, but only reforming science education and increasing scientific literacy will win the war.
Monday, April 09, 2007
Reactions to the IPCC
By my reading, the initial public response to the IPCC WG II report has been a mix of genuine concern (who is or will be affected), accusations (who edited what) and politics (who is to blame).
While I still want everyone to read the report, not the rhetoric, I have to say I was taken aback by this quote at the end of a Globe and Mail article:
"Climate change is now," says Avrim Lazar, president of the Forest Products Association of Canada. "It's dramatic and it's trashing Canada's forests as the first act of its appearance."
Just in case there was any doubt about how much people in Canada are freaking out about the mountain pine beetle and forest fires.
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Climate change and coral reefs
I'll be talking about climate change and coral bleaching on CBC Radio's Quirks and Quarks, today (Saturday) sometime between noon and 1 pm. You can listen online or download the show the day after it airs.
Don't forget to read the new IPCC report.
The IPCC Summary for Policymakers (SFP) is a compromise document based on the scientific results in the full report, out this fall, and negotiations between representatives from different countries. As is being widely reported, the language in the just-released SFP - not the full report being released this fall - was softened at the urging of certain nations.
A shame, of course. One could, maybe one should (?), write an entire PhD thesis in a department like ours on that subject alone. In the end, even with the compromises, the overall message of the SFP, that impact of climate change are widespread and will accelerate without mitigation, is the same.
Friday, April 06, 2007
New IPCC report released today
The Summary for Policymakers of the second section of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 report is being released today in Brussels. The full report will be published in the fall.
This section - Working Group Two - of the IPCC report covers the ecological and human impacts of climate change, and the extent to which people and ecosystems can adapt to climate change.
The release of this science-based report is all over the news. By next week, the findings will have been spun back and forth by columnists, pundits, bloggers and the like. I encourgage you to ignore all the press coverage, left or right, green or brown, conservative or liberal, apple or pc, and read the report yourself.
For more on the IPCC process, check out my Worldchanging post.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
The mountain pine beetle and the greenhouse gas budget
This is what you might call a kind of climate feedback. The Toronto Star reports that the Canadian government will not include carbon exchange in forests in the calculations of the country's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Heavily forested countries like Canada could theoretically benefit by including the potential forest carbon sink (in part due to re-forestation practices) in their official GHG budget. More carbon sinks, fewer emissions reductions required. The inclusion of (net) carbon uptake in forests has been a huge issue at international organizations.
Why the about-face? The mountain pine beetle. Infestations of the beetle have devastated lodgepole pine forests across the west in recent years. The Canadian Forest Service blames warm weather - hot, dry summer and mild winters - and a large number of mature trees for an epidemic in central British Columbia. If that was not enough, all the leftover, dry, dead wood has increased the fire risk. The Canadian government now recognizes that forests may no longer provide the same carbon sink, and may actually "hurt" the overall GHG budget.
This is a very, very, very big change in policy. Canada has been arguing internationally for the right to include forests in GHG budgets since the inception of Kyoto. Now, the effect of warmer weather on those forests may change that basic position.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Court says U.S. EPA should regulate greenhouse gases
In case you hadn't heard yet...
WASHINGTON, April 2 — In one of its most important environmental decisions in years, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate heat-trapping gases in automobile emissions. The court further ruled that the agency could not sidestep its authority to regulate the greenhouse gases that contribute to global climate change unless it could provide a scientific basis for its refusal. (NY Times)
The ruling has as much to do with US law as science. It essentially means that federal action on greenhouse gas emissions must not depend on the US Congress agreeing to legislation. The EPA has the power and the authority to do so under the Clean Air Act. The President could simply tell the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases.
Today's news is that the current holder of that title, despite the court decision and despite pressure from Congress and the Senate, still won't regulate greenhouse gases.
So it is possible that the real impact of the momentous Supreme Court decision may not be felt until January 20, 2009.
Friday, March 30, 2007
What the record corn crop actually means
U.S. farmers are expected to plant 37 million hectares of corn this spring, the largest area of corn since “the Allies invaded Normandy”. It is a 15% increase from last year, all thanks to the demand for ethanol. At the same time, the planted area of soybeans is expected to be 11% lower than last year.
That’s 90.5 million acres of corn, in American English (sick of getting sent data in pounds, cubic feet per second and acres, I'm a on one-person quest to convert to USDA and the USGS to metric).
The media has been all over this today. The coverage I've seen is largely missing the point.
Corn and soybeans are the two prominent crops in the central U.S. For the past 10-15 years, the “Corn Belt” has really been the “Corn and Soybean Belt”. In 2006, the planted area of corn was 31.9 million ha; of soybeans, 30.6 million hectares. The crops are often grown in rotation – corn on a field one year, soy the next – since the nitrogen-fixing soy helps reduce fertilizer needs on corn (and residual nitrogen from corn helps the soy the next year). Both crops are largely used to generate animal feed, a sizeable chunk of which is exported to Europe and Asia.
We’re not about to discover more fertile farmland in the US. The additional corn to produce ethanol is largely coming two ways:
1. Replacing other crops. Since soybeans and corn are usually grown together, the surge in corn means less soy being grown. That means fewer soy available as feed, both here and overseas.
2. Reducing other uses of corn. The major uses of corn are animal feed, exports (mostly feed), food and now fuel. The domestic animal feed isn’t changing substantially lest we change our diets; the domestic food is a small fraction; the surplus here is coming from exports.
Those headlines about the impending choice between food and fuel? That’s not happening here, at least not yet. Ethanol is being generated in the US via planting more corn (at the expense of soy) and exporting less corn. The result is not less food in the store. It is less grain being sold for feed overseas.
That has market implications and environmental implications overseas(more on the environmental side later). As has been widely reported – the “tortilla effect” in Mexico – the price of corn has been high because the supply is being diverted (from exports for feed) to ethanol. It is important to remember that plenty of other factors affect food and crop prices. People seem to be getting carried away blaming ethanol for everything, like the price of wheat, which is rarely used for feed or to generate ethanol.
As for the US, with a 15% increase in planting of heavily fertilized corn, at the expensive of largely unfertilized soybeans, there may also be a record amount of nitrogen in central US soils this summer. A wet spring means a large hypoxic zone is likely to appear in the northern Gulf of Mexico next summer.
The new, new, new Clean Air and Climate Change Act
Canada’s proposed Clean Air Act emerged yesterday from a special Parliamentary Committee barely recognizable. The opposition parties did not so much retool the bill, as is widely reported, they rewrote it. Even the name changed. Originally, the Made in Canada plan, then the Clean Air Act, it is now the Clean Air and Climate Change Act. The new edition looks a lot like Liberal Leader Stephane Dion’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction plan: a commitment to reaching the Kyoto targets by 2012, emissions caps and fines for large emitters, no vague use of the word emissions and no use of the much-reviled, at least in these parts, term “intensity-based”.
Under normal circumstances, the bill would go to a vote, and with the support of all three opposition parties in the minority Parliament, pass. These circumstances are anything but normal. The sitting Conservative could use a vote on the new Act to trigger an election or could agree to pass the act with some further revisions.
The decision, by all parties, is bound to have more to do with politics than anything else.
For those keeping score at home, Canada is now averaging one new greenhouse gas emissions policy proposal every two months. Perhaps if this proposal forces an election, the rate will increase to one every three weeks or so, surely some sort of record.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
More on purchasing carbon offsets
The people at Clean Air - Cool Planet have put compiled a nice guide (pdf) to the many companies selling carbon offsets.
If you are thinking about donating money to go carbon neutral - which was named 2006 word of the year by the New Oxford American Dictionary, quite an accomplishment given the tough competition (surge anyone?) and the small matter of being, er, two words - spend five or ten minutes reading through the guide first.
There's a lot of money in carbon guilt these days. Companies have rushed into the game with bold promises to gobble up your carbon emissions but without any oversight.
The Retail Offsets Guide has kind words for three North American based companies -- Climate Trust, NativeEnergy and Sustainable Travel (a subsidiary of the Swiss company Myclimate).
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Al Gore's testimony
Al Gore delivered impassioned addresses about climate change before a US Congress subcommittee and a US Senate subcommittee today. I recommend watching some video before his testimony is spun out of control by the pundits.
While I could have done without the bit about America being the natural leader of the world (is that the result of evolution or intelligent design?), and the exaggerated language of crisis is always hard on a scientist's ears, there is no denying that Gore's testimony was powerful.
Friday, March 16, 2007
A long overdue clean-up in the Pacific
The LA Times ran this nice story about WWII veteran Leon Cooper who has been lobbying the US government to clean up the polluted beaches of the Tarawa, the site of bloody battle in 1943, and now the capital of Kiribati.
I spoke with the Times reporter about the causes of pollution on the crowded atoll and offered some graphic descriptions of beaches ("civilization after the apocalypse", the most extreme statement always makes it in the story, c'est la vie).
The beaches in the southern half of Tarawa, where the battle was fought, and where nearly half of all the i-Kiribati live, are not a pretty sight. For a detailed description an photos of Tarawa, check the dispatches on my home page.
Now, before condemning the i-Kiribati for polluting their backyard, and the site of a bloody WWII battle, it's worth asking how the problem evolved.
The i-Kiribati's traditional waste management system, like that of all indigenous groups in the Pacific, was simple but effective. All the waste, human and otherwise, was organic. It was swept under the coconut trees, where it regenerated the soil, or it was, ahem, deposited on the beach below the high tide line. Go there today , and you will still see people sweeping the ground in front of their huts like in the old days.
But two things changed. First, the influx of packaged goods meant that not all the garbage would biodegrade (in our lifetime). Second, the shift from subsistence living to a cash economy caused migration of people from the outer islands to Tarawa, the capital, and the only place with paying jobs. And more people means more human waste, all concentrated on a narrow atoll. The nutrient pollution from all the waste has degraded the already small supply of groundwater. This then caused a serious human health crisis.
This story is not unique to Tarawa. It is happening all over the Pacific, all over the tropics, all over the world, really, as communities switch from their indigenous lifestyle to a part, albeit a small one in this case, of the global economy.
The good news here is that the new recycling program has dramatically cut plastic and glass waste. And just maybe, the US government will respond to Mr. Cooper's earnest pleas to clean up Red Beach 1 and 2?
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Going carbon neutral
It’s hip, it’s trendy… and it’s wildly unregulated.
Everyone is going "carbon neutral". The latest to join the craze is US Presidential candidate John Edwards. He has pledged to run a carbon-neutral campaign by “conserving” energy and purchasing carbon offsets. The other candidates are bound to ante up.
Is this even possible? Offsetting the emissions from the campaigns of every US Presidential candidate may require reforesting the entire country. A truly efficient solution would be shortening the campaign by, say, a year or so.
It raises an important question. Which carbon offset-ers can you trust? The proliferation of companies offering to sell carbon offsets is a more than a bit suspicious. Many cannot, and are not required to, confirm that your money will result in a reduction in GHG emissions. The same problem is happening at the macro-scale, with EU countries investing in many questionable offset schemes in China through the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism.
I can recommend a few relatively trustworthy operations (check here, bottom of page). In many cases, the exact reductions cannot be confirmed, but an effort is at least being made.
If you know of more, let me know. And maybe John Edwards, Barrack Obama, Hillary Clinton and whomever else declares in the next few months.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
The NY Times attack on An Inconvenient Truth
Yesterday's NY Times had an inevitable article about the scientific community's discomfort with the alarmism of Al Gore's Oscar-winning power point presentation (a new category?), An Inconvenient Truth.
There are some legitimate problems with An Inconvenient Truth. It overplays the evidence for a link between climate change and hurricane intensity and for a link between climate change and infectious disease like malaria and West Nile Virus; it muffed a bunch of smaller details that I covered last year.
These issues are important. The whole question of Gore's alarmism, the politics of fear, is worth serious discussion. But the Times article? It is just plain bad.
Rather than speak to mainstream climate scientists with legitimate beefs about these details, the article opens with quotes from noted skeptics of the entire notion of human-induced climate change, and then falls into the same old ridiculous "he said, she said" arguments that poisoned public discourse on climate change in the past. The article is like a sad blast from the past. For a very thorough "debunking" of the article, read this by David Roberts at Gristmill.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
New emissions targets for the UK and Canada?
The British government announced it will be putting forth a new climate change plan that calls for a 26-32% reduction in GHG emissions below 1990 levels by the year 2020 (BBC). The UK has had a long-term goal for 2050 for quite some time (60% below) 1990 levels; perhaps with an eye to an eventual election, the government is finally setting the much-needed near-term targets.
The Canadian government just announced that new regulations on GHG emissions will be announced soon. The announcement-that-they-there-will-be-an-announcement was made during the BC, that's British Columbia for those scoring at home, stop on a cross country tour to dole out money from a reinstated environment fund.
There is no word as to whether the US government will announce it is going to announce an annnouncement about a new GHG emissions policy.
If the new Canadian regulations have any teeth, they could be considered either a testament to the power of electoral politics or evidence that public outrage over a government decision (last year's woeful Clean Air Act) can actually make a difference. I'll let the pessimists and optimists fight that one out.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Climate change and Caribbean coral reefs
Our latest research on climate change and coral reefs in the Caribbean was published (online) today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In the study, my colleagues and I used historical temperature data and climate models developed to examine the probability of the widespread coral bleaching happening in the Caribbean, like in 2005, with and without human influence on the climate. For a short summary of our findings, take a look at the department's press release.
The abstract:
Episodes of mass coral bleaching around the world in recent decades have been attributed to periods of anomalously warm ocean temperatures. In 2005, the sea surface temperature (SST) anomaly in the tropical North Atlantic that may have contributed to the strong hurricane season caused widespread coral bleaching in the Eastern Caribbean. Here, we use two global climate models to evaluate the contribution of natural climate variability and anthropogenic forcing to the thermal stress that caused the 2005 coral bleaching event.
Historical temperature data and simulations for the 1870-2000 period show that the observed warming in the region is unlikely to be due to unforced climate variability alone. Simulation of background climate variability suggests that anthropogenic warming may have increased the probability of occurrence of significant thermal stress events for corals in this region by an order of magnitude. Under scenarios of future greenhouse gas emissions, mass coral bleaching in the Eastern Caribbean may become a biannual event in 20-30 years. However, if corals and their symbionts can adapt by 1-1.5°C, such mass bleaching events may not begin to recur at potentially harmful intervals until the latter half of the century. The delay could enable more time to alter the path of greenhouse gas emissions, although long-term "committed warming" even after stabilization of atmospheric CO2 levels may still represent an additional long-term threat to corals.
Mapping sea level rise
In a recent issue of EOS, the American Geophysical Union's weekly journal /newsletter, scientists from the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets presented a new geographic analysis of the risk of sea level rise to the population and land area around the planet. You can view and download the high resolution maps and geographic datasets from the project at the CRESIS website.
The maps depict the impact of a 1 - 6 m rise in sea level. This degree of sea level rise, of course, could only happen with a major contribution from ice sheet melt, the rate of which is still being resolved by the scientific community, and even if so, won't be happening this weekend. So take a look at the maps, but use them with caution.
Friday, March 09, 2007
Distribution of greenhouse gas emissions
For an alternative way to view the distribution of greenhouse gas emissions discussed below, the site Worldmapper, which features "a collection of world maps, where territories are re-sized on each map according to the subject of interest", recently posted some great new maps.
The map of toy imports is also a rather disturbing comment on the world.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
More on the inequity, climate change and coral reefs
The statistics provided in the Bioscience essay (pdf) were derived from geographic (GIS) analysis of global datasets on population, reef distribution, gross domestic product and greenhouse gas emissions.
The figures on the right give a broader picture of some of the results. The top figure (A) shows the total population living with a given distance from coral reefs. The population has been divided into the developed world, the developing world, and Arab countries + small islands (relatively wealthy countries not technically considered developed by the UN). 
The second figure (B) is a frequency distribution of population and GDP for people living within 50 or 100 km of coral reefs (the distribution looks similar with a distance of 10-20 km). This is only a rough measure of wealth and of dependence on reef, but it helps demonstrate the basic thesis, that the majority of people living in close proximity of coral reefs are in developing countries. As we elaborate in the paper, people who are responsible for only a tiny fraction of the world's greenhouse gas emissions stand to suffer the most if climate change results in long-term degradation of coral reef ecosystems.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
The inequity of the global threat to coral reefs
In the March issue of the journal Bioscience, my colleague David Potere and I discuss the inequity of the threat climate change poses to the world’s coral reefs (the pdf is now available through my home page). A snippet:
“Coral reefs have been adopted as an iconic “flagship” ecosystem in the effort to encourage reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. It’s simply good marketing. Coral reefs are charismatic: Colorful underwater images of corals, sponges, and reef fish are bound to draw a strong emotional response from even the most hardened audience. Who among us would want to be blamed for killing Nemo?
With all this focus on the aesthetics of coral reefs, the potential human inequity of the threat posed by climate change is often ignored. The majority of the people who depend on coral reef ecosystems for shoreline protection, fisheries, and tourism revenue live in poor, developing countries that are responsible for only a tiny fraction of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.”
The commentary is based on GIS analysis of population data, coral reef maps, greenhouse gas emissions data and economic data, and my experience doing research on climate change and coral bleaching. I’ll be posting some auxiliary data on Maribo in a few days.
Monday, March 05, 2007
Climate and the Gulf of Mexico "dead zone"
My colleague Don Scavia and I have an article in the latest issue of Limnology and Oceanography about the effect of climate on the development of the seasonal “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico.
I’ve written a bit about this issue before on Maribo. The intensification of agriculture in the central US since the 1950s – huge increases in nitrogen fertilizer use, planting of more nitrogen-fixing soybeans, drainage of wetlands, installation of artificial drains under fields – caused a 2-3 fold increase in the amount of nitrogen the Mississippi River delivers to the Gulf of Mexico. The large influx of nitrogen now promotes the growth of a seasonal low oxygen or hypoxic zone each summer on the continental shelf of the northern Gulf of Mexico.
From the 1980s until quite recently, however, agricultural land use and land cover were relatively stable in contrast to the more dramatic changes in the previous three decades (the surge in interest for ethanol may end the relative stability). The one factor that changed the most, year to year, is the weather. Our study examines how this year-to-year variability in rainfall influences the amount of nitrogen flooding down the Mississippi in the spring and the extent of hypoxia in the Gulf.
The study finds that, absent any major changes in land use and land cover, the year-to-year variability in precipitation across the “Corn Belt” (in the previous November and December and in March, April and May) is the primary driver of the year-to-year variability in amount of nitrogen delivered by the Mississippi during the late spring (in May and June). Using this relationship, the study then examines how climate variability affects the potential size of the hypoxic zone and the implications for reducing nitrogen losses and the size of the hypoxic zone. During very wet years, a nitrogen reduction of 50-60% – close to twice the original recommended target – is necessary to reach the goal of minimizing the size of the hypoxic zone (< 5000 km2).
The results are a reminder of the importance of factoring climate variability into water quality or aquatic ecosystem policy, particularly given the changes in climate expected to occur in the coming decades.
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Organic Inc.
Last week, the grocery store chain Whole Foods has bought out its primary rival Wild Oats. The response, expressed with a palpable taste of “I told you so”, seems to be that the buyout represents the final proof of Whole Food’s transformation from idyllic, local organic food store to corporate behemoth high on money, power, and high fructose corn syrup is now officially complete.
The talk of this transformation as some archetypal, to use a word from 11th grade English class, fall from grace, the way people response when a hometown sports hero signs a free agent contract with another team, is amusing. Wild Oats was not your local health food store. The food is as expensive, and is shipped as insanely (Chilean orange anyone?), as that at Whole Foods. As the article Is Whole Foods Straying From Its Roots? in yesterday’s NY Times points out – if you can get past the self-righteous undertone – Whole Foods is in essence trying to stop the larger, traditional grocery stores from taking some of its market. There’s always a bigger fish in the sea.
It brings us to a question that has divided environmental movement for years. Which is better? Getting the big fish to change or having lots of little fish take over? In other words, do you work with Walmart to become more environmental friendly? Or do you boycott their stores?
There’s no easy answer, not in today's world. I will say this. I’m sad to hear the Wild Oats on Nassau St. in Princeton will be closing. That’s not to say I like shopping there. I simply like the idea that people in town can walk and bike to the grocery store, whatever that store is. The only Whole Foods in the area is on Rte 1 and has no pedestrian or bicycle access. Now that is a crime.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
The policy that won't die
Before tackling some of the new developments in climate science and climate policy, we've got to battle an old nemesis.
The concept of “emissions intensity” appears to rearing its mathematically twisted head again in Canada. According to yesterday’s Globe and Mail, a draft of the new federal climate policy includes what everyone is referring to as intensity-based targets. I've harped on this many times before, and with some luck, will do so here for the last time.
Emissions intensity is the amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions divided by some measure of economic productivity, like GDP. Say your goal is to keep the emissions intensity constant. If GDP goes up, emissions go up. Since inflation causes GDP to rise every year, an intensity-based emissions plan may very well involved an increase in emissions.
That’s not to say there is no value in using intensity-based measures in an emissions policy. Say the country’s emissions are growing – each year, more is expected to be emitted than the last year – because of economic growth. That means at the beginning of emissions controls, simply slowing the growth may be an accomplishment. The problem is that the climate does not care about GDP. So, at some point, the policy has to involve actual reductions in emissions below current levels. The common beef with recent Canadian policy proposal is that point is being set too far into the future.
What bothers me, the reason I keep writing about this, is that the use of emissions intensity so often smacks of politics and marketing. Reducing emissions intensity sounds nice: We’re become less intense. We’re becoming more efficient.
See, in the policy, the emissions intensity “target” could be converted into an estimated emissions target.. Simple. Take the emissions intensity “target” set for industry for whatever year – say 2020 – and multiply by the projected GDP (which was used to estimate the intensity in the first place). That would give you the actual emission target.
This is never done. Why? Because it would lay bare the fact that actual emissions target in the policy is higher than the current emissions. And, that is a fact that the authors and promoters of the policy, regardless of their political stripes, would prefer to hide from the voters.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Business as usual
I spent much of the past seven weeks working with Blue Ventures, a coral reef conservation organization, in Andavadoaka, a pretty remote coastal village in SW Madagascar. Blue Ventures is doing some terrific work monitoring the effect of fishing practices and other disturbances on coral reef health in the region and training both local people and foreign volunteers. The villages in the region are all collaborating to set up a network of Marine Protected Areas – essentially no or limited take zones – to ensure long-term maintenance of fish populations and overall ecosystem health.
Personally, the highlights working with the BV staff and local fisherman to idenitfy candidate MPA sites and learning, through interviews, what some of the local people understand about the life and death of corals. To learn more, I suggest checking out BV’s blog.
While I was gone, there has been lots of activity in the climate world. The “Summary for Policymakers” from the next IPCC report – basically the executive summary of the first section of the report – was released. The strong conclusion about the effect of human activity in the climate was no surprise. I hear that much ado has been made out of the “low” sea level rise predictions. It is important to remember that the IPCC is a consensus document and thus is bound to be a conservative assessment of the science. Due to the difficulty in representing ice sheet processes – see Michael Oppenheimer’s post on this on Real Climate – climate models are not able to predict the contribution of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets to sea level rise with enough certainty to be included in the IPCC results. If the recent evidence for accelerated melting in parts of Greenland and West Antarctica turn out to be long-term trends, rather than one or two year anomalies, the sea level rise this century would above the IPCC estimates. Right now, science cannot say with much certainty.
How is the rest of the world responding? The US Congress is leaning towards some form of greenhouse gas legislation; the candidates for 2008 are battling to be the greenest (how about cutting the length of the campaign to save some energy). The EU has pledged a 20% reduction in emissions by 2030 and may raise if other nations agree to meet their bet. The Canadian Parliament has passed a bill forcing the country to comply with Kyoto, though yet again not including an actual plan. British Columbia has gone Schwarzenegger on GHG emissions. NJ Governor Jon Corzine looks to the same. Australia’s banning incandescent light bulbs. Oh right, and about a billion people just watched Al Gore win an Oscar.
The real surprise to me -- there’s a beaver actually living in the Bronx River. Chalk one up for ecosystem restoration.
Thursday, January 18, 2007
A little break
Maribo is on hiatus while I'm out doing some field work. It'll be up and running again in a few weeks, with more tales of climate science, coral reefs and the politics of climate change.
Friday, January 05, 2007
A fresh start in Canada?
The new year has provided Canadians with a new Environment Minister, a mea culpa from the Prime Minister on climate change, not to mention a few temperature records and, if you're from the east, a serious case of snow and ice withdrawal. More on that last bit later.
It is hard not to wonder whether the previous Environment Minister, Rona Ambrose, was a sacrificial lamb. Lay aside the lack of qualification and actual performance aside. The Minister had an impossible job: developing a new climate policy that would please her own party required her to state that the Kyoto targets were unachievable (without spending billions on credits overseas), which was bound to enrage the opposition parties and a large portion of the public. Given the stance of the government, this was going to be a disaster no matter who was in charge.
The cabinet shuffle could be seen as a defeat for the sitting government. Or it could have been the plan all along: someone takes the bullet, is then rewarded by moving to a new (and more desirable, in some eyes) cabinet post, and a new minister is appointed that can then assemble a real policy.
Either way, let's hope the new year brings a serious Canadian climate policy with emphasis on both short-term actions and long-term goals.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
The plan to protect New Orleans and the Gulf Coast
Back to the Gulf Coast... The NY Times earlier this week that US Army Corps of Engineer Plans to build a costly and complicated systems of levees and mechanical barriers, and to replenish offshore barrier islands in an effort to protect the Gulf Coast has come under fire from scientitst.
How's this for a quote:
“The most shocking thing to me is that they would even consider some of the things that they are considering,” said Robert J. Young, new director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines, a project of Duke and Western Carolina universities.
At a special session about the corps’s proposals at a meeting of the Geological Society of America in October, Dr. Young said his fellow scientists “were just stunned.” Dr. Young, who helped organize the session, added, “I saw mouths dropping open at the scale of proposed coastal engineering.”
Reducing emissions at an airport near you
There was a full page ad in Monday's NY Times for the new Boeing 747-8 praising the aircraft's fuel efficient engines, and Lufthansa for buying a few.
The ad, if not the plane, seemed to represent a major shift. Not long ago, airlines and aircraft builders would highlight the only the comfort, the leg room, of new planes. Now it is all about marketing energy efficiency and re-branding (oh, I loathe that term, why not just call the public cattle?) your company as clean and green.
For the airlines, though, it will need to be about more than marketing. The Associated Press reports that airlines flying in Europe will be specifically included in a greenhouse gas emissions trading program. The European airlines have come out in favour of the decision, because it easier on them than the alternative, higher airline taxes. The program will apply to all internal flights beginning in 2011, and all flights in and out of Europe by 2012, thus influencing U.S. and other foreign carriers as well.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Supporting renewable energy in Mexico
A guest post from my colleague Jason West about his work in Mexico:
While living in Mexico City a few years ago, I started the Solar Mexico initiative as a collaboration with the Mexican Foundation for Rural Development, a Mexican nonprofit, to support renewable energy projects in rural communities of Mexico which lack electricity and running water. In 2004, I installed five household solar electric systems, subsidized through private donations, which will continue to provide electricity for five Mexican families that earn less than $5 per day (see pictures, a pdf).
They are very basic household solar electric systems which provide families a few hours of electricity every night to run lights, a radio, or a small television. The system has a 35 Watt solar panel, and a battery which charges up each day for the families to use at night. Each system costs about $600, and we ask the families to pay 20% of that – given that the solar panels are expected to last for 25 years or more, it’s a pretty good deal. It was great to see families turn on electric lights in their own homes for the first time, and to see what a big improvement this can bring to their lives.
Now I am planning another trip to Mexico, at the end of January, and am trying to raise money. I hope to raise $1500 in December, which together with money already raised, will subsidize six household solar electric systems. Tax-deductible donations can be made on the Solar Mexico site.
I’ve also been interested in exploring other renewable technologies. I bought several flashlights that charge when you shake them, and those work well, but the families in Mexico complain that they are not very bright. I also worked with a non-profit in DC to arrange demonstrations of a solar “Hot Pot” cooker, which will cook food using only solar energy. This technology is an affordable way to avoid taking wood from the desert environment, while reducing labor and indoor smoke from cooking fires. The demonstrations apparently went well, and I hope to evaluate their use on this trip to Mexico, before subsidizing more demonstrations in other villages.
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If you have any comments or ideas, you can contact Jason at solarmexico@yahoo.com.
Friday, December 15, 2006
The ongoing recovery in New Orleans
Almost 16 months after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, many parts of New Orleans are still putting the pieces together. I spent part of Thursday cleaning up yards in the Lakeview neighbourhood with the Beacon of Hope Resource Center.
Lakeview is adjacent to the 17th Street Canal levee, one of three levees that breached during Katrina. This NASA image from after the storm shows the Canal stretching into the city from Lake Ponchotrain (middle-left), and the flooding of the neighbourhoods (to the right).
For a sense of the scale of the flooding, you only have to see the yellowish line along the outer walls of many of the remaining homes that marks the maximum height of the floodwaters.
Few of the residents of this area returned to New Orleans after the storm. The old neighbourhood was now a patchwork of empty streets full of abandoned and badly damaged homes. The eerie quiet was interrupted only by the sound of sound of houses being razed and debris being removed.
Denise Thornton and the founders of the Beacon of Hope wanted their old neighbourhood back, but found little help from the government. So they started on their own, raised money for equipment to clean up yards, remove dead tress, replace storm drains and gut old houses, one by one. Thanks to outside donations and support from the United Way, the grassroots clean-up organization is now expanding to other parts of the city.
From a distance, it is hard to truly appreciate not just the physical, but the social devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina and the levee failures. The clean-up effort not only makes life more palatable for those that are there now, but it may encourage others to return. This is not just about the comfort of seeing people walk by your house or some lights on down the street; with so few people in these neighbourhoods, the property tax base has collapsed, making it even harder for the city to provide any services to the community.
If you’re in New Orleans, give the volunteer coordinator, Liz Widener, a call. They appreciate when out-of-towners spend even half a day (like me) removing weeds, debris and mowing lawns. If you want to plan a special trip to volunteer, they can even get you a discount at a local B&B.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
The hurricane season
I’m in New Orleans for a meeting. Naturally, it has me thinking about hurricanes, climate change, and just how toxic the subject has become.
The 2006 Atlantic cyclone season came and went with far fewer storms than originally forecast. Why? El Nino conditions caused greater upper-level wind shear, slowing hurricane development and helped divert the storms that did develop safely into the middle of the Atlantic. This was relief for many coastal dwellers in the Caribbean, the Gulf Coast and the Atlantic seaboard.
It should also be a cautionary tale for everyone out there talking about the threat posed by climate change.
Hurricane Katrina and the devastating 2005 hurricane season provided a legitimate opportunity to raise concerns about the possible future effects of climate change. Not because those events were caused by climate change, or that the overpopulation of vulnerable coastal areas is a huge, separate problem, but because some research suggested it was the type of event that could occur more frequently in a warmer climate.
Hurricanes have become a rallying cry for the greenhouse gas reduction movement – just look at the posters for An Inconvenient Truth. The 2006 hurricane season was promoted like the upcoming fall television season. As I remarked back in June, the press covered “opening day” of the hurricane season, a loose date not exactly etched in the climate’s schedule, as if we were all awaiting the opening pitch of the baseball season, and all the balls had been juiced.
It was crazy. Not because there is serious uncertainty in the science relating hurricane intensity and climate change (see the recent statement from a WMO meeting on tropical storms). But because even if future warming in the tropical Atlantic does increase the likelihood of more intense storms, there will still be weak hurricane seasons. Just like even if the planet warms by several degrees, there will still be cold days.
Everyone forgot the basic rule, the difference between weather and climate. You just can’t lean on an individual event, or an individual season, for proof of climate change. It is a house of cards. Your argument is doomed to collapse.
That doesn’t mean people should stop talking about hurricanes. It is important to continue to study and discuss the effect of climate change on hurricane intensity. Climate models can be used to investigate how warming could alter the probability of individual events like more powerful storms or storm seasons. Depending on those results, individual storms or storm seasons can continue to be legitimately seen as examples of events that some research suggests may be more common in the future.
But those working to promote concerns about climate change must not fall into trap of looking at individual storms or storm seasons as the smoking gun for climate change. It has emotional appeal - but it is fundamentally bad science. Hurricane Katrina and the 2005 Atlantic cyclone season did not end the “debate” about climate change, nor did the weak 2006 Atlantic cyclone season reignite the “debate”. Let’s not reduce it to that.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Warming and ocean biology
A research article in last week’s edition of Nature found that recent ocean warming has decreased “primary” productivity, the productivity of phytoplankton (e.g. algae), in the ocean.
This important result may seem counterintuitive. If the ocean is warmer, wouldn’t algae grow more? So I thought it warranted more of an explanation that was offered in some of the press coverage.
The trend is driven largely by changes at low latitudes where the ocean is “stratified”. There, a layer of warmer, less dense surface water sits above colder, heavier (saltier) water. The thermocline (or pycnocline) you hear about is the zone of steep temperature (or density) change between the two layers. Because of the layers have different densities, they don’t mix very well. Think oil and water, although not nearly that extreme.
The nutrients that phytoplankton require for growth are more abundant in colder, deep waters. That’s why most of the world’s greatest fisheries are in regions of upwelling. For example, think of the cold, productive Pacific off the S. American coast. El Nino got its name from a periodic warming of surface waters that hurt fishing catch. During an El Nino event, a shift in air pressure and surface winds advects the warm surface waters from the central Pacific towards to the South American coast. This increases stratification and decreases upwelling of colder, nutrient-rich waters that promote phytoplankton productivity and, in turn, the fishery.
So, in the case of climate-forced warming of the ocean, the surface warming causes greater stratification and further inhibits mixing. That means fewer nutrients, and less phytoplankton production.
The inverse is expected to occur in high latitude, less stratified, parts of the ocean (it’s cold at the top too!). There, temperature and light limit growth more than nutrient availability, so warming is expected to increase productivity.
In the Nature study, the group of scientists compared estimates of productivity derived from satellite measures of ocean colour to sea surface temperature. As was expected, there was an inverse relationship between temperature and productivity in the stratified ocean.
There’s only ten years of data -- the instrument has only been on the satellite for ten years – much too short to define a clear long-term trend in one direction or the other. The first three years there was a decrease (increase) in temperature (productivity) largely because of shift from El Nino to La Nina conditions in the Pacific; afterwards, there was an increase (decrease) in temperature (productivity). What is important for climate change research, however, is that the study appears to confirm theory and the results of previous studies using climate and ocean ecology models. It gives us an idea of one central response of ocean biology to any long-term climate warming that may occur.
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Last word on James Inhofe
From the Washington Post, falling or at least lightly pressing against its (the media's) own sword:
"The last hearing on global climate change chaired by Sen. James M. Inhofe provided an excellent and public tutorial on why Americans should be grateful that it was, in fact, his last. The departing chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has occupied a unique perch from which to take action on climate change. Instead, he has used his time at the committee's helm to cast spurious doubts on the problem even as the scientific consensus about its reality and severity has gelled. Last week, the Oklahoma Republican held a hearing to denounce the real villain in the debate: the media.
The press, it was claimed, has hyped climate change hysterically. It has ignored dissenting scientific voices. And it has sought to advocate for climate-change policy, instead of just reporting on the science. And this is the grave national problem -- not rising sea levels, melting ice caps, loss of habitats or shifts in oceanic currents -- that warrants the attention of the senator's committee.
Mr. Inhofe's complaints are meritless. If anything, media coverage of global warming has tended toward excessive caution. Scientific alarm at the concentration of greenhouse gases predates the current media attention to the subject. Many media organizations, in a quest for balance, have given climate-change skeptics far more ink and air time than justified by the support their position carries among reputable climatologists. But even debating the merits of Mr. Inhofe's charge acquiesces to changing the subject -- which all along should have been how to craft reasonable policy to reduce greenhouse emissions.
Democratic leadership on this issue should bring a welcome change. While some Republicans support strong action on climate change, they have been stymied by the White House and by congressional leadership that has insisted on debating basic science that is no longer the subject of serious dispute. It's a little like debating the future of the space program by holding hearings on whether the earth is actually round. It's long past time to move on to something useful."
Here, here.
Friday, December 08, 2006
Worldchanging
I wanted to put a plug in for the terrific website Worldchanging. The site is all about solutions, the ideas and the technologies that will help build towards a more sustainable world.
I'll be contributing some cross-border thinking and examples to the new Worldchanging Canada "local" edition, launched a few weeks back. Take a look when you have the chance.
You may also be interested in the site's very well-received book Worldchanging: A Users Guide for the 21st Century.
Thursday, December 07, 2006
A modest proposal
A few months ago, Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen published an essay in the journal Climatic Change proposing that the world could eject sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere, sort of a gaseous solar shield, could combat global warming.
Sulphate particles, emitted by burning of coal and many other activities, reflect incoming solar radiation. They are though to have offset some of the expected warming over the past century.
The eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1992 emitted 10 Tg of sulphate (10 million metric tons) into the stratosphere, and helped cool the planet by 0.5 degrees C the following year. Crutzen's proposal would effectively be creating a small Pinatubo every year.
So, a scientific meeting was held, a talk was given at the UN meeting in Nairobi and now the 'geoengineering' proposal has developed some life in the scientific community and in the media.
I think we should come down out of the stratosphere. This should be seen as a modest proposal, in the tradition of Jonathan Swift, that's all. It demonstrates the type of drastic action that could be necessary if serious action is not taken to slow greenhouse gas emissions. It is a reasonable alternative only in the worst case scenario.
Let’s not forget all those anthropology, paleoclimate or paleoecology classes. Large injections of aerosols or particles into the atmosphere in the past (from volcanic eruptions) had devastating impacts on life, from massive famines to species extinctions. The year after the eruption of Krakatoa – and after Mt Pinatubo – was popularly referred to as the year without a summer.
We'd have to be supremely confident in model results to embark on this scale of planetary experiment. We're not just talking about turning the thermostat down a notch. We're talking about altering stratospheric chemistry, solar radiation, ozone concentrations, and cloudiness, which would together radically alter ecosystem function across the planet.
This is the solution to climate change? Maybe there is a danger in is using the same type of thinking that got you into a problem to get you out the problem.
Most of all, I'm concerned about the effect that discussing these geoengineering proposals on policy. It sends the erroneous message that there is one magical solution to climate change, that if we wait long enough, the scientists will invent some pill the planet should put under its tongue.
Monday, December 04, 2006
A win for the environment?
There are a lot of ways to interpret the result of Canada’s Liberal party leadership vote this weekend. The choice of former Environment Minister Stephane Dion, whose dog is actually named Kyoto, for leader will be considered by many a victory for the environment. To be more precise, it will be considered a recognition on the part of Liberal delegates that “environmental” issues (you know I hate that term), especially climate change, should be central to the party platform and will be prominent in voter’s minds come the next election.
No doubt, it is ironic that Dion is seen as the champion of climate change and the environment, given that his government failed to implement an effective Kyoto plan and allowed greenhouse gas emissions to rise. As the Globe and Mail reports, this is not lost on the opposition parties:
Minutes after his victory, opposition politicians tried to tag Mr. Dion for being part of the Liberal Party during the sponsorship scandal and for wrapping himself in green despite the fact that greenhouse-gas emissions rose under his watch.
My guess is that tactic will not work. Few truly blame Dion for the Liberal party's past failure on climate change. Dion is well regarded, in Canada and even moreso around the world, for trying to promote the need for national and international action on climate change (despite opposition within Canada and within his own party) and for his strong role as chairperson of the UN climate meetings in Montreal last fall. His victory will be rightly seen by the international community as evidence that Canada is still serious about addressing emissions, despite the weak policy forwarded by the current government.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Role of environment in Canadian leadership battle
The Liberal party of Canada is choosing a new leader this weekend. In the past week, the buzz has been about a motion before the House of Commons calling the Quebecois a "nation" within Canada. As has happened in the past, the argument about Quebec's place in or deal with Canada has devolved into a debate about linguistics (what is a nation? what's the difference between a Quebecois and a Quebecker, other than the french-english translation?).
Chantal Hebert, columnist for the Toronto Star, makes a point about the issue that should be dominating this weekend's leadership vote:
The environment, not Quebec's arrangement with the rest of Canada, has dominated the public discourse this fall; an overwhelming number of voters currently disapprove of [PM] Harper's performance on the issue. It is the calling card of the Green party and it stands to be the sleeper issue in the next election.
As of today, the Liberals would be well-advised to spend as little time as possible enshrining their status as an endangered species in Quebec and as much time as possible supplying their party with oxygen on the environment.
After all, it is not as if the Liberal record on the environment was that much more commendable than the party's standing in Quebec.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Upcoming AMS statement on climate change
The American Meteorological Society, the professional organization for many atmosphere and ocean scientists, is preparing a statement about climate change that presumably will be released at the annual meeting in January (?).
The current draft is a reasoned summary of the scientific evidence, and how that evidence should be interpreted and used. Since the organization is US-based, the climate change impacts of the paper tend to focus on the US (Alaskan permafrost, western water concerns). I'd like to see more mention of the sensitivity of the planet's ecosystems to climate variability and change, and examples of ecological impacts of past and projected future climate change (species migration, coral reefs, etc.). But that is less the mandate of AMS than other scientific organizations.
For a very direct summary of the evidence for human influence on the climate, I suggest reading the amicus brief (jump down to page 16 of the pdf) filed by 15 top scientists for the Supreme Court case. Thanks to Realclimate for the link.
Climate change before the US Supreme Court
Following on yesterday’s post about the possibility for action on climate change in the US:
The US Supreme Court began hearing arguments today in a case about whether the EPA is required to regulate CO2 emissions under the Clean Air Act (see yesterday’s strong NY Times editorial). The suit was filed by a bunch of states and environmental organizations after the Bush Administration chose not to enforce any CO2 regulations.
From my understanding of the case, the court could effectively decide one of four ways.
i) The EPA must regulate CO2 under the Clean Air Act (because of the potential deleterious impacts of climate change)
ii) The EPA has the option to regulate CO2 under the Clean Air Act
iii) CO2 does not fall under the Clean Air Act but could be regulated otherwise
iv) The EPA does not have jurisdiction to regulate CO2, as there is not sufficient evidence to support the need for CO2 emissions controls.
The unlikely Door #1 would radically alter the status of emissions control in the US. It’s most likely the court decision, expected in the spring, will be along the lines of Door #3. Though that would technically be a losing verdict, it would strongly advance the argument for emissions policy.
There’s one thing that makes this case risky: the chance, albeit small, that the court meanders close to Door #4. This would not only make federal emissions controls unlikely, it could be used to argue against state policies or international agreements.
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Calls for climate change legislation in the US
The organization Environment New Jersey is calling for Governor John Corzine to pledge to reduce the NJ's greenhouse gas emissions by 70% by the year 2050. It is also encouraging NJ legislators to support the federal Safe Climate Act (supported by Rep. Waxman of California) that would cut emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. If you're interested in joining the campaign, check the organization's website.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
"Carbon tax" in the US?
Neglected in the initial media excitement over the Democratic sweep in the U.S mid-term elections was a local ballot initiative in the city of Boulder, Colorado.
Voters there approved what is essentially a carbon tax. The new tax is based on the home energy use (ie. $per kWh) and the revenues will go to the city's Environmental Affairs Office. The city council is hoping it will help Boulder reduce its GHG emissions to 7% below 1990 levels by the year 2012, a goal based on the Kyoto Protocol.
Similar initiatives exist in Portland, Oregon and Austin, Texas. Small steps in a few liberal communities, sure. But you have to start somewhere.
Sunday, November 19, 2006
The final word from Nairobi
Snippets from the UN FCCC final report:
"At the meeting, activities for the next few years under the 'Nairobi Work programme on Impacts, Vulnerability and Adaptation' were agreed. These activities will help enhance decision-making on adaptation action and improved assessment of vulnerability and adaptation to climate change.
Another important outcome is the agreement on the management of the Adaptation Fund under the Kyoto Protocol. The Adaptation Fund draws on proceeds generated by the clean development mechanism (CDM) and is designed to support concrete adaptation activities in developing countries.
The CDM permits industrialized countries, which have emission targets under the Kyoto Protocol, to invest in sustainable development projects in developing countries that reduce greenhouse gas emission, and thereby generate tradable emission credits. The Conference recognized the barriers that stand in the way of increased penetration of CDM projects in many countries, in particular in Africa.
Parties welcomed the "Nairobi Framework" announced by the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, which will provide additional support to developing countries to successfully develop projects for the CDM. Rules were finalized for the Special Climate Change Fund. The fund is designed to finance projects in developing countries relating to adaptation, technology transfer, climate change mitigation and economic diversification for countries highly dependent on income from fossil fuels.
At Nairobi, Parties also adopted rules of procedure for the Kyoto Protocol’s Compliance Committee, making it fully operational. The Compliance Committee, with its enforcement and facilitative branches, ensures that the Parties to the Protocol have a clear accountability regime in meeting their emission reductions targets.
Talks on commitments of industrialized countries for post-2012 under the Kyoto Protocol advanced well, with Parties reaching agreement on a detailed work plan spelling out the steps needed to reach agreement on a set of new commitments.
'We are seeing a revolutionary shift in the debate on climate change, from looking at climate change policies as a cost factor for development, countries are starting to see them as opportunities to enhance economic growth in a sustainable way,' said Yvo de Boer. 'The further development of carbon markets can help mobilize the necessary financial resources needed for a global response to climate change and give us a future agreement that is focused on incentives to act,' he added.
Brazil put forward a concrete proposal for an arrangement to provide positive incentives to reduce deforestation emissions in developing countries. This proposal will be discussed at a meeting in March next year. 'The spirit of Nairobi has been truly remarkable,' Conference President Kibwana said. 'Let us now use the momentum of this conference to carry this spirit forward and jointly undertake the kind of concerted action we need for humankind to have a future on this planet.'
The next round of negotiations under the Kyoto Protocol and talks under the United Nations Climate Change Convention will be held in Bonn, Germany in May 2007."
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
"Out of step, out of arguments and out of time"
Say what you will about the effectiveness of the United Nations in recent years, but it was comforting to hear Secretary-General Kofi Annan use such clear language about the science behind climate change:
"This is not science fiction. These are plausible scenarios, based on clear and rigorous scientific modelling. A few diehard skeptics continue trying to sow doubt. They should be seen for what they are: out of step, out of arguments and out of time."
The comments came during a speech about the new "Nairobi Framework", a new UN effort to help nations in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world participate in the Clean Development Mechanism (of the Kyoto Protocol)
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Rating performance on climate change
A German organization has released their latest "Climate Change Performance Index", evaluating the accomplishments of the 56 top GHG-emitting countries.
The final rankings lie somewhere on the mildly amusing - thoroughly depressing continuum, depending on your nationality, your level of cynicism.
Top marks went to Sweden, the UK, Denmark, Malta (who knew?) and Germany, in order. The US (53rd) and Canada (51st) actually managed to score lower than Iran. It could be worse: we both beat China, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia.
Of course, what do you expect when the Environment Minister (in Canada) has the temerity to utter the statement "We're on track to meet all of our obligations under the Kyoto Protocol but not the target". At least admit you failed the test. Don't try to weasel a good grade for penmanship.
Monday, November 13, 2006
Canada faces "grilling" over Clean Air Act
It is one thing when the national media jumps all over a controversial government decision, especially one that hurts that country's international reputation. That is expected from your own media (e.g. Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail). It is another when the international newspapers and wire services do too. The aftermath of the Clean Air Act announcements, the international response to Canada's seeming abandonment of the Kyoto Protocol, the Env't Minister's decision to not attend some climate meetings in Nairobi, and the response from the opposition parties to the Conservative government decisions has been all over the international news (try Reuters, for one).
The irony is that the Conservative government (say that they) chose not to push for near-term reductions in greenhouse gas emissions or to even attempt to meet the Kyoto commitments because they felt that climate change was not a big issue to Canadian voters, but by doing so, they have essentially made climate change into a big issue. Now, climate change and emissions policy could be a deciding factor in a spring election.
The Clean Air Act is more than just bad policy - it is bad politics.
Sunday, November 12, 2006
As the corn turns
Last week, I was at an EPA symposium about nutrient pollution in the Mississippi River Basin. Although the seminars had titles like “Nitrogen Processing in Flow-Controlled Backwater Systems of the Upper Mississippi River” and “Nitrogen Removal Capacity of Entire River Networks—Interactions of Geomorphic, Hydraulic and Biological Factors”, the same subject kept cropping up:
Ethanol
In 2004, the production of corn-based ethanol reached 3.4 billion gallons – or 2% of all U.S. gasoline by volume – by far the highest in history. The Energy Policy Act calls for ethanol production to more than double, to 7.5 billion gallons, by the year 2012. Since energy independence is likely to be one of the only areas of agreement between the Bush Administration and the newly Democratic Congress and Senate, it would not be surprising to see an even more aggressive policy emerge in the next couple years.
Every passing mention of the inevitable expansion of corn-based ethanol production brought sighs from many of the participants.
Why? First, most of the people I spoke with agree with the conclusion that the energy derived from corn-based ethanol is, at best, only slightly greater than the energy required in production. It may be net energy loss. Second, the participants of the Symposium have for the most part been working on the difficult challenge of reducing nitrogen pollution in the Mississippi River Basin. Increasing the production of the fertilizer-intensive crop will make it even more difficult to goal of shrinking the nitrogen-fuelled “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico.
To meet the 2012 ethanol goal, corn production is bound to increase [the only other option is to meet the goal purely by diverting corn grain away from feed or exports – not impossible, but less likely given the financial incentive to expand production]. That will require either the conversion of existing croplands to corn or the cultivation of existing croplands to corn.
The total area of croplands is unlikely to change significantly – it hasn’t in the past century. The best croplands were identified long ago. The change over the century has been in what crops are grown on those lands. Right now, around 2/3s to 3/4s of US croplands are devoted to just three crops: corn, soybeans and wheat.
So the thought it is that the extra corn production will come either at the expense of some other crop or at the expense of croplands currently left uncultivated. Some at the meeting suggested that farmers will replace soybeans with corn. Others, myself included, dismiss that notion: soybeans have been expanding for fifty years in the US and are too valuable crop to abandon (for ecological and economic reasons). It is more likely that either land devoted to other crops or lands contained within US Conservation Reserve Program – essentially farms are paid to leave some croplands fallow – will be used to expand corn production. Unless there is a major change in the production practices, the addition of more corn cultivation does not bode well for the nitrogen cycle.
The one reasonable argument for expanding corn-based ethanol production is that creating a market for biofuels will spur research on more efficient fuels. Thanks to market forces, corn-based ethanol may pave the way for a sensible form of biofuel production: either the “cellulosic” ethanol from high yielding grasses like switchgrass (that require no fertilizer) or biodiesel from oil-crops like soybeans, rapeseed or canola. If so, let’s hope the transition does not take too long.
Friday, November 10, 2006
Bon nuit, Senator Inhofe
We should all rejoice at one change brought about by Tuesday's US election.
Thanks to the Democrats victory in the Senate, Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe will no longer be head of the Senate Environmental Public Works Committee. Inhofe is famous for calling global warming the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people" and openly supporting the dubious conclusionns of those termed climate 'skeptics' over actual scientific assessments, including those conducted by his own government. He actually received a score of zero from the League of Conservation Voters.
Forget feelings about politics, about climate science, or about environmental issues: it was an insult to American people to have someone who displayed outright contempt for science and reason, as head of a committee whose very decisions depend on scientific expertise.
Inhofe is being replaced by Democrat Barbara Boxer of California, who has stated that climate change is one of the greatest challenges of this century, a swing so far in the other direction it will give Senate watchers whiplash.
Monday, November 06, 2006
UN Climate conference opens
From the Associated Press: "At the opening of a two-week United Nations conference on climate change, the negotiator, Harlan Watson, also told reporters that the United States was voluntarily doing better at restraining the emission of such gases than some of the countries committed to reductions under the Kyoto Protocol."
Although the actual metric Watson uses - annual emissions increase over only one year - is totally ridiculous ("oh officer, I was only going 60 mph", when in fact you were driving 85 mph for three hours and slowed down a minute ago upon spotting the police car), he does have a point. US greenhouse gas emissions have grown 16% since 1990, hardly a point of pride, but slower than Kyoto signatories New Zealand (21%), Ireland (23%), Canada (27%), Portugal (41%) and Spain (49%).
Watson also confirmed that US policy on climate change is unlikely to change under the current administration. Maybe some of candidates in tomorrow's mid-term election will respond to his statement, or at least mention this week's UN conference. It has to garner some attention: including both houses of congress, all the state assemblies, state comptrollers, state attourney general and dog catchers, I'd say there are roughly 6.7 million people on the ballots here tomorrow.
Friday, November 03, 2006
Legality of ignoring the Kyoto Protocol
As a number of Canadian news outlets are reporting, Dr. Roda Verheyen, LL.M. (London), a Canadian attorney, has written a legal brief contending that Canada already is or will be legally breaching the Kyoto Protocol and UN Framework Convention on Climate Change by not making any "demonstrable progress" on GHG emissions reduction.
It appears to be a strong argument, though I am not the right judge of a legal document. If it is found to be true, keep in mind:
i) Canada, while among the worst offenders, would not be alone in breaching the Protocol. Spain's GHG emissions are 49% over 1990 levels.
ii) There are no immediate legal or financial penalties at the moment. Breach of the Protocol is supposed to mean tougher emissions cuts in the next agreement. Politically, that seems an unlikely way to engage a country that has made no progress; if you blow the first target, it is that much harder to meet the next one. The only certain impact (of a legal judgment) would be a (further?) dent in Canada's green, internationalist image.
If you are interested in a copy of the brief, let me know. It is too large to post.
