Taking the conserve out of conservative

Today I heard a story on NPR that I think makes plain the GOP position on all matters environmental:

LISTEN ON NPR

They won't even concede that biodegradable plasticware is better than petrochemical-based forks. I mean, if anyone had any doubts about where these people are coming from, this should clear it up.

Displacing world leaders from their comfort zones

Just read an interesting article about plans for the upcoming UN summit on climate change in Copenhagen [LINK]. Apparently the world leaders in attendance will be stripped of their entourage and be allowed just a single aide. That aide should be their country's environment minister, or equivalent. They will be put into small groups to talk about climate change and its impacts, pairing high-emission countries with those feeling the impacts. They will dine with activists and corporate executives. The idea is to get these leaders out of their political bubbles and force them to think about the effects of climate change in human terms (dare I say in ethical terms?). This seems like a great idea. I wish that the summit were longer, and that this kind of immersion therapy could be extended for several days. Removing the physical and artificial barriers of distance and isolation does wonders for thinking about a topic, and I have some hope that this will spur more urgent action. (Then I'll go back to being cynical when, e.g., the USA congress starts bickering about jobs and fairness and postpones actual action.)

Acid rain, a blast from the past like hearing an MC Hammer song

I just read, and quite enjoyed, a Slate article by Nina Shen Rastogi looking back at the acid rain problems of the 1980s [LINK]. She brings up a good point about the public awareness campaigns; I remember well many cartoons and kids shows mentioning and vilifying acid rain. I'm not sure that is happening now with global warming, but maybe it should be if it isn't. Anyway, the review also brings up two other good points. First, enacting acid rain mitigation strategies through federal legislation (e.g., the Clean Air Act of 1990) has dramatically reduced emissions of nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide from power plants and factories, leading to an improvement in the pH (i.e., acidity) of rain across the northeast USA and eastern Canada. The point being that these strategies are proven to be successful. Second, acid rain hasn't actually gone away, and it's still a hazard in some areas in the USA and Canada. Worse yet, industrializing nations such as China and India haven't gone through the cycle of discovering they are poisoning themselves, figuring out a way to fix it, and enacting the strategy. These countries could face serious environmental and infrastructure harm if they don't preempt emissions of acid rain precursors.

All of this sounds so much like issues involved with carbon dioxide and climate change that it's eerie, huh? I guess the disappointing thing is that there's still so much hesitation and resistance to doing something about these environmental issues in our culture. We've got clear examples of success, like the ozone hole and acid rain, where science described the mechanisms and suggested the causes, and mitigation strategies were adopted, and environmental catastrophe was avoided (or at least averted). It makes me wonder if past success has lulled us all into a false sense of confidence.... you can finish this disturbing thought.

"Greenest" cities

Just came across NRDC's list of greenest cites, which they actually call smartest cities. I like using 'smart' here rather than 'green,' and might try to remember to use that turn of phrase in the future.

Anyway, Seattle is at the top, which isn't a surprise. Other cities near the top are San Francisco, Portland, Oakland, and San Jose. Hmmm... seeing a trend here? Kind of a western, northern kind of vibe? Hmm.

Other cities of personal interest include Sacramento at #7 (good job Sac-town!), Denver at #9, and LA at #13. That's a pretty impressive ranking for LA considering the size of the place (and environmental problems that aren't going away any time soon).

Fort Collins is #3 on the medium-sized cities. They somehow get a good grade for transportation, though I'm totally baffled as to how that happened. Berkeley came in at a disappointing #11 in medium-sized cities. It might be because they rely on Alameda county and other regional resources, but that's just a guess.

Boulder is a small city (barely), and comes in at #2 for green building, but is just #56 overall. It's behind Santa Fe! This is quite a turn of events... what is going on Boulder???

So, go look for your favorite cities, the website is very nice: SmarterCities

More coverage of the Carteret Islands

In the NYTimes.com today (slash yesterday) there's a story about the disappearing Carteret Islands by NEIL MacFARQUHAR. Again the article paints the sea-level rise in the Carteret Islands as a product of global warming, but I remain very skeptical of the assessment. I still haven't seen a reasonable attribution study about these islands, and the rate of sea-level rise there seems at odds with the small global trend.

Climate change refugees

George Monbiot says that about 2,600 people are evacuating from Carteret Islands in the tropical west Pacific. He attributes the evacuation to three things, mostly sea-level rise, but also the removal of mangroves and local volcanic activity. The sea-level rise apparently is manifest as high tides in springtime, which flood the very low atoll. The YouTube video below appears to corroborate the view that sea-level rise is pushing these people from their homes.

I don't have any real knowledge of this situation, but I have to admit that I am skeptical that this "sea-level rise" is due to global warming. There certainly has been measured sea-level rise, and some regions are likely to be harder hit than others, but the video appears to suggest this atoll has been cut into two by rising water, and the shoreline has receded by tens of meters (reportedly in just a few years). This does not suggest the kind of sea-level rise expected globally. The wikipedia page for the Carteret Islands also imply that there is not much evidence for this being a result of global warming, pointing out other influences that might be deleterious to the atoll, including normal erosive processes, isostatic adjustment, and use of dynamite fishing. If anyone knows of a true attribution study, that would be great, but until I see one, I am working under the assumption that this migration is probably related to human activities, but unlikely to be strongly related to global warming.

Melting glaciers, changing rivers

Well, in another blatant theft from DeSmogBlog, I bring you Jeanne Roberts' article about glaciers in the Swiss-Italian Alps melting. The interesting part of this article is not just that the glaciers in Europe are melting, this is really old news by now, but actually that the Swiss and Italian governments are implicitly acknowledging -- and I dare say adapting to? -- climate change by renegotiating their border. Yeah, two countries are talking about how to redefine their border without bothering to send a bunch of kids to their horrible dismemberment and death. 

The importance of the melting glaciers is clear for countries like Switzerland, which are landlocked and use mountain runoff for freshwater. The melting glaciers provide a lot of fresh water to streams and rivers, that is then used for the human population of those countries. In a glacier-free Europe, that source of water is gone, and countries will have to rely solely on seasonal snowpack melting. This isn't a great strategy, though, since the melt season is getting longer and longer, and seasonal snowpack is quite variable. Essentially the absence of the glaciers will add a level of instability to the water resources of interior Europe.

It is also worth noting that this story comes on the heels of a scientific paper about changing streamflow made waves two weeks ago. The paper is by Dai et al., and is in the upcoming issue of Journal of Climate. Some of the news coverage of the paper was a bit out of control. The paper is a compilation of data sets from around the world, measuring streamflow in large rivers. The main point of the paper is to show the basic results of the combined data set, and to provide a climatology to other researchers who want to know how much freshwater is going from the land into the oceans. You wouldn't have gotten that from the media coverage, much of which seemed to focus on the Colorado river, which isn't even mentioned in the paper by name. The headline grabbing aspect of the paper is a cursory examination of the trends in the data. Freshwater input into all the ocean basins except the Arctic show a decrease in overall streamflow, while the Arctic has an increase. It is not clear from my reading of the paper that these trends are (1) statistically significant or (2) attributable to climate change. The first point will be cleared up over the next couple of years as more people look at the statistics of this and other data sets. The second point will hopefully be better accounted for in future studies by trying to explicitly incorporate human-made changes in streamflow (for agriculture and including building dams and resevoirs). In the meantime, it is an interesting data set, and could have important implications for budgets of freshwater flux to the oceans. Whether the rivers are drying up remains an open question, and one that a lot of us are very interested in. 

EPA rules on greenhouse gases

The EPA today ruled that greenhouse gases are pollutants, and thus can be regulated by the EPA. This is potentially a game-changing decision, since it says that greenhouse gases cause substantive harm to people, just like sulfur emissions (acid rain), CFCs (ozone hole), or mercury (drinking water, fish), which are all regulated. No rules or even targets have been announced, and the EPA (and Obama administration) say they would rather have Congress control greenhouse gas emissions. The bottom line, though, is that if Congress drops the ball (yet again) on adopting strict regulations on greenhouse gas emissions, the administration now has a strong case in stepping forward with its own set of rules. See story in NYTimes.com for more details.

Earth Hour coming tomorrow

Well, Earth Hour is coming up tomorrow, (28 March, 8:30PM). It's an hour when people voluntarily turn out the lights to mark awareness of the link between energy generation/use and climate change. Last year, Google joined in the fun by making their front page black (I don't remember if it was just for an hour or a whole day). The event is organized through an official web site at earthhour.org.

An article on Yahoo! news cover the "event." Toward the end, they quote Bjorn Lomborg (infamously of the skeptical environmentalist), saying Even if a billion people turn off their lights this Saturday the entire event will be equivalent to switching off China's emissions for six short seconds." This followed a sentence saying, "Critics said the initiative was little more than empty symbolism."

Um, yeah.

The whole point is to make a gesture. It's like wearing an AIDS ribbon (back in the days before it lost all meaning). The ribbon doesn't cure AIDS, and turning out your lights doesn't change global warming. But if the Las Vegas strip is dark for an hour (as planned) and the Sydney Harbour is dark for an hour, and now even China is joining in, that is a meaningful gesture. It shows how far we are coming (despite my previous post) in educating the public about the dangers of climate change.

Plus it reduces light pollution, which is a good cause unto itself.

Americans still don't want to believe

Gallup has a new poll out, conducted using 1,012 Americans over the phone over three days early in March 2009. The results?

First the positive:

• 60% of Americans are personally worrying about global warming a "great deal" or a "fair amount."
  
• 53% of Americans believe the effects of global warming have already started.
  

Just as a reminder, the symptoms of global warming have been diagnosed from observations (and observations"), and this has been true for many years. Also, the impacts of global warming are also being felt already. Examples include the extinction of some species (notably the golden toad), the steady decline of artic sea-ice (which endangers the polar bear and other arctic species), melting permafrost, changing migration patterns, etc.

What else does the poll say?

• 60% of Americans don't think global warming will pose a serious threat to themselves or their way of life.
  
• 41% of Americans think the seriousness of global warming is exaggerated by the media.
  
• Global warming ranks 8th out of 8 environmental issues Gallup asked about in terms of how much people are worried, including 40% of people who worry "not at all" or "only a little" about global warming.
  
• Trends for all these show that people are worried less about global warming and think the seriousness is exaggerated than in previous years. All age groups except the 18-29 year olds show the trend in thinking the threat is exaggerated.
  

I'd like to insert a big sigh here.

Well, here's a prediction, then. There won't be significant political action to tax carbon emissions in the United States until a majority of Americans think global warming does pose a serious risk to their way of life. When this happens (and it will happen), it will be far too late to stop dangerous climate change from occurring. That is, unless the mainstream media starts covering the issue in a truly unbiased way (i.e., no longer presenting the big issue as controversial). That might convince the majority of Americans that they need to be concerned.


UPDATE:This just goes to show why some Americans still don't get it:

"We are cooling. We are not warming. The warming you see out there, the supposed warming, and I use my fingers as quotation marks, is part of the cooling process."

-- Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele, filling in for radio host William Bennett

Great animation about climate change

Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip from Leo Murray.


Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip from Leo Murray on Vimeo.

I saw this posted on Grist, and thought it was pretty cool.

I'm not a fan of the "tipping point" argument, actually. Not that I don't believe there are tipping points, but just because I don't know how to really quantify the risk they pose. We don't know where the tipping points are, but we do know about the mechanisms of adverse amplifying feedbacks in the climate system that could introduce these tipping points. I'm interested in the physical processes, and trying to quantitatively understand their impact on the climate system.

Endangered Species Act to be undermined by new rules

This is outrageous. The Bush administration is trying to introduce some kind of executive rule that would allow federal agencies to conveniently ignore the impact of projects on endangered species. Not only that, but the new rule would apparently ban federal agencies from assessing the greenhouse gas emissions from projects. You need to go read the story, there's one at Yahoo!. There are some additional reactions at gristmill.

I suppose that some might believe this argument that the current system is bloated and that federal agencies really can do their own assessments. However, the idea of independent review is so fundamental to science, and is so successful, that to just throw it aside for an intrinsically flawed self-evaluation system seems ludicrous to me.

We'll see how this plays out. Whether my paranoid, leftist brain is overpowering my rational, pragmatic one will come clear in the coming weeks and months.

Newsflash? No. (again)

Well, in place of posting some hasty response to a story or new paper, I thought I'd point out that there's way more climate-related press these days than even a year ago. It's too much to ingest, much less to respond to it all. The press is saturated with climate, global warming, deniers/skeptics/inactivists, and all manner of good and bad reporting. Nothing new for some fields, though I think the climate science community is still learning to deal with so much attention. Maybe that is a good topic for a post in the near future... why do climate scientists STILL get abused by both the mainstream press and alternative press (on both sides of the issue)?

Anyway, here's a couple of recent stories.

First, the US government might believe in human-caused global climate change. LINK Didn't this happen years ago? Geez.

Apparently the army isn't waiting to see what the higher-ups say, because they're going green. LINK This is actually a pretty big story, as the army is a gigantic consumer of energy.

And a little good news, there's a lot more gorillas in the world than previously believed. LINK

A late addition, I just saw this news story about Plattner et al. who find that the "pipeline" or the "committed climate change" might be much longer than had been thought. LINK

Impact of warming on insects and other ectotherms

There has been quite a lot of press coverage of a new paper in PNAS (doi:10.1073/pnas.0709472105) by Deutsch et al. about how global warming might affect land-based invertebrates. The paper is very short, and easy to understand, so I recommend it. It's actually a simple idea, based on empirically derived "fitness curves" for different organisms. As I read it, the story comes down to the fact that tropical temperatures don't vary much during the course of the annual cycle, while at higher latitudes it does. This has affected the organisms that live in these different climate regimes; tropical organisms have come to "expect" a small temperature variance, and don't do well when the temperature changes more than normal. Organisms from places with distinct seasons are more amenable to temperature swings. This has been derived empirically as these fitness curves, which are broad for extra-tropical organisms and narrow for tropical ones. An interesting characteristic is that the maximum fitness level comes at a temperature optimum, followed by a precipitous decline. So Deutsch and co-authors followed up on this, defining a "warming tolerance" and a "thermal safety margin," which just measure how close an organism lives to its maximum temperature tolerance and to it's optimal temperature, respectively. Then they apply a warming scenario to see what happens, and it turns out that tropical insects (the data they used), get pushed really hard compared with midlatitude insects. This is somewhat surprising, since the tropics don't warm as much as higher latitudes, but because the tropical organisms live so close to their maximum temperature already, they are heavily stressed by the more moderate warming. They extrapolate to a global scale of impact on insects, and then three extra classes (lizards, frogs, turtles). This part of the paper does not seem surprising after the initial analysis, though the extension to lizards, frogs, and turtles helps deliver the message.

We often hear about the impact of climate change on biology, ecosystems, etc., but we don't often see such a concise and simple, yet far-reaching and quantitative analysis of "impact." This paper stands out to me because of these traits, and gives an excellent example to use when discussing the importance of climate change beyond temperature, precipitation, etc.

Environmental Research Letters - Best of 2007

An e-mail I received today:

Environmental Research Letters (ERL) has just released the Best of 2007, a mixture of Perspectives and Letters that best represent the high quality and breadth of the contributions that were published last year in ERL, as chosen by the Editorial Board, guest editors and publishing team.

This special collection includes contributions to invited focus issues on Environmental Health and Justice, Northern Hemisphere High Latitude Climate Change, Tropical Deforestation, and Global Impacts of Particulate Matter Air Pollution, as well as an editorial from ERL's Editor-in-Chief, Professor Daniel M Kammen.

To read the ERL Best of 2007, visit http://herald.iop.org/ERL_Bestof2007/m261/crk//link/1319 where you can access the online table of contents or download the full pdf version of this very special collection.

ye olde iron fertilizing effect

So apparently people now think they can make money by throwing iron into the ocean... YES, throwing iron into the ocean.

Here's the, actually very good, story on NYTimes.com: [The Energy Challenge: Recruiting Plankton to Fight Global Warming]

The basic idea is that plankton reproduce like mad when the conditions are right, and in large swaths of the ocean the conditions are right. Except there isn't enough iron. So, when you dump some iron on those areas, plankton bloom, creating regions of increased biological activity. The upside to this, according to some, is that the plankton use carbon from the ocean to make their little calcium carbonate exoskeletons, which when the critters die, can sink to the bottom of the ocean. This means that carbon is removed from the atmosphere-ocean system... it is sequestered, like an OJ juror. So now at least two companies, so cleverly named Planktos and Climos, think they can get governments (or companies working under cap and trade systems) to pay them to go throw some iron into the ocean.

I do not reject this idea outright. There are clearly some good ideas here, but we have to be careful. Here are a couple of my primary concerns.

First, I'm worried that these plankton species will produce a lot of methane waste, possibly negating any decrease in atmospheric CO2 that they might be responsible for. There is similar concern with nitrous oxide, apparently.

Second, the amount of carbon actually deposited might be less than has been thought recently. This is actually in this week's Science [LINK].

Third, as these operations scale up, will they account for their own carbon emissions. Boats are notoriously bad for emissions, and there's going to have to be a lot of boating involved. Also, where is this iron coming from, and how much energy (i.e., carbon) is going into collecting and transporting it?

Finally, there are possible feedbacks that could negate any good this will do. Including the old DMS-cloud condensation nuclei, in which more biology produces more aerosol (in the form of dimethylsulfide, DMS) which acts as nucleation sites for cloud droplets, making more cloud. The effect could be to shade the surface, reduce SST, and thus reduce biological productivity, leaving a rusty sea surface instead of a nice, healthy green one. I don't know if this is feasible, but things like this always seem to come up.

Also consider the amount of carbon dioxide that needs to be removed from the atmosphere. I've just come from a talk that reminded me of this. Carbon dioxide, when frozen, has about the same density as water. That means that a ton of CO2 is about one cubic meter (size of a coffee table). You're now talking about removing billions of tons of carbon dioxide annually, which is an enormous mass, many cubic kilometers of frozen CO2. The ocean is a big place, but we've got to be careful about how and where such deposits are made, or they'd just be mixed back up to the atmosphere. There's just so many potential pitfalls that it is hard to imagine a successful implementation. But as I said at the beginning, I'm willing to keep an open mind on the subject, and would be happy to see a successful strategy.

Would I qualify?

A small story, ultimately of no consequence, suggesting the "need" for a Nobel Prize for the Environment: LINK.

Funny as it may sound, I don't think it would be a very good idea to add such a prize. I would like to see more earth scientists honored for their contributions to understanding physics, chemistry, and dynamical system, but the Nobel prizes are so high profile, and climate change such a charged issue, I think such a prize would be politicized immediately. That would sully the award, because there would always be questions about why people get the prize. Not only that, but it would be difficult to separate scientific achievment in understanding the environment from conservation of the environment, which is more social science or economics or political or who knows what. If conservation groups tended to be awarded the prize, then earth scientists would be even less likely to be honored, since they wouldn't get the environment prize and they'd usually be excluded from the physics or chemistry prizes.

There is also the issue of the maturity of the fields of meteorology, oceanography, climate dynamics, environmental sciences, and such. While those of us in the field could come up with a list of deserving people, it would be difficult after a few years to say with confidence that a person(s) have made a lasting positive contribution. This comes up in the other science prizes when people complain that awardees get the award decades after the work, but the defense is that it takes that long to figure out what work needs to be honored. We don't really have very many decades of work to choose from (of course, excluding the early pioneers like Bjerknes, Charney, Richardson, Ekman, von Neuman, and many other dead folks).