450 by 2050

Oil Lenses

2010-06-23T17:49:00.001-07:00

So.

It was caused by poor management/decision-making, a mark of BP.

It's getting worse before it gets better.

At its core, the oil spill is both a horrible disaster and terribly instructive. People care about environmentalism in lots of circumstances. The oil spill, mountain-top removal, rainforest deforestation, whales - the best example for how action on climate change should be moving forward is the international measures taken following the discovery of the hole in the ozone layer. We don't even have to be cynical and say that there are all photogenic, which was my gut reaction. But the ozone layer is only somewhat photogenic, being an invisible layer of gas (though you still get scary images like this or (god) this). I don't think that that's the key at all.

Instead, we can compare all of these things and the actions being taken to fix/prevent them and deduce a couple of things about how humanity tends to respond to environmental dangers.

First, timing is a critical factor. When the hole in the ozone layer was discovered, that was something that was happening right then - it was growing. And the solution was something that we could put into effect very quickly. And, reinforcing that, we could quickly get results.

The oil spill is happening right now. It should be stopped right now - we can see that each hour brings a new cost in terms of the amount of oil pouring into the water. And we can see efforts to fix it, right now.

Deforestation and similar are happening, but at a slower pace - and they have been happening for a while. We can count how many trees are felled each hour if we want, but generally, people aren't too concerned.

That's because of the second factor - location. We are far away from rainforests, so we care less. The people closer to rainforests are the ones getting (badly needed) economic assistance from deforestation.

Location - or more accurately, proximity - is yet another reason for the quick response to the oil spill (and it was a quick response, even if it's been mediocrely managed and has only had slow results). The United States is powerful, and we're under threat. Other nations are more moved to consider their own potential oil spill problems (though I'm sure they've all been very helpful).

But the proximity aspect of a threat is strange, because the human mind is not logical. A global threat isn't really a threat against us, personally - especially when it's so far removed in time. And climate change is both removed in time (we'll only feel the real effects in decades, if not centuries) and, generally, removed in terms of proximity.

And that's why it's so dangerous. We could end the threat of climate change if we felt threatened enough - but the characteristics of climate change make it hard to feel threatened. At best, we feel like it'd be a good idea to maybe act on that, when we can.

Understanding this - through the lens of the flurry of activity surrounding this oil spill - helps in the fight against climate change. The better we recognize how the monster of climate change evades our human-sized perspective, the better we realize that it is a problem, and a problem that requires that we join together.

Because there's also a third aspect to threat response; identifying the instigator. BP is an easy company to blame - they're huge, they've got a history of safety problems, and they've made some public relations gaffes in response. Coal companies are easy to blame for mountain-top removal, a whole class of products easy to blame for ozone depletion.

But climate change? We can talk about our industrial-age ancestors or that guy in China all we want, but the truth is that it's us. Almost all of us - especially with growing middle classes and industrialization everywhere - have stake in this. And most of us don't want to admit it, so we don't.

Climate change is not a serious threat, because if it were, we'd be forced to blame ourselves.

The Decline of Hope

2010-06-13T16:53:00.000-07:00

Never mind the damn oil spill. We broke the Gulf of Mexico, we know - it happened, BP is to blame, the B-man is on the case (doing nothing quickly). It's true, greatest environmental disaster (and largest governmental response to an environmental diaster) requires some publicity. But no more. We're done. Tell us when something important happens.

Because the more we focus on the active threat of oil killing birds, the less we remember to fear the subtle. The oil spill, hurricanes, tornadoes, heat waves, and wettest-months-on-record (yay for the Pacific Northwest) are all fascinating stories, full of God/Nature's wrath, but that's not the only thing going on.

There's this terrible impulse that goes around to try and link the disasters occurring right now (wildfires, snow storms, hurricanes) to climate change. At best, you end up with "Someday, this could happen more often! Spooky!" and let's be honest, that's just not enough. It's not enough because, at the end of the day, people don't assume that natural disasters will ever happen again. At best, we buy insurance, even though we're sure we won't need it.

In reality, climate change is boring, even in the destruction that it will cause. We already know that it won't be like The Day After Tomorrow, which may or may not be a good thing (depending on your proximity to Emmy Rossum), but the truth is that climate change is way more boring than anyone else thinks. Think about it this way - we've already been going through it for at least twenty years, and no one's even noticed.

Here's the problem. Assemble a list of catastrophic events climate change will bring. To each item, amend the amount of time it will take for this to happen. You end up with stuff like THE OCEANS WILL RISE... TWO FEET OVER THE COURSE OF THE NEXT HUNDRED YEARS. Scary.

And it is scary, because it will change the lives of billions of people around the world, possibly make a couple (small, island) nations homeless, and force us to redraw our maps. (That's a little crazy to think about - we might have to change our maps.) But it's not Hollywood-Scary.

This is important, because this whole oil spill thing shows how powerful a Hollywood-level story can be, even when zee Media goes above and beyond all reasonable expectations in terms of reporting a story. According to this incredibly smart guy, zee Media has been trying to set the B-Man up as Harrison Ford-esque action hero/President, despite the fact that Obama can't do anything more to help this situation.

This is all very revealing of the psychology of climate change, which is the subject to study if you're a huge fan of depressing the hell out of yourself. Basically, climate change is a very large scale, very distant threat that probably won't affect you. You cannot be shown pictures of climate change approaching and/or encroaching on your backyard. And even the pictures you can be shown, of wildfires and floods and ice storms that kinda-sorta-might've been caused by climate change are weak sauce because, really? We had ice storms before, we'll keep having them, and isn't it supposed to be global warming?

And yet, this is the one time in history that we can actually prevent climate change. It's like someone, years ago, had said "Hey, maybe we should grab an acoustic trigger to prevent a catastrophic failure a mile under the surface of the Gulf of Mexico". Which they did. And no one did it.

But with climate change we're looking at an extremely not-simple fix, executed across all nations, for the foreseeable future... to prevent a disaster that will take hundreds of years to subtly arrive.

The pessimistic reality of this is why I've titled this post the Decline of Hope. This thing, climate change, is so huge that it dwarfs anyone and everyone. The most common reaction, it seems to me, is to ignore it. A less common but still frequent reaction is to deny it, because it's just not possible that the world as we know it can change (or that scientists can be right about something big). Unfortunately, an even more infrequent reaction seems to be to stand up and try and do something about it.

For the last year, I've fallen into the first camp. I'd like to relocate myself to the third, again, but it's hard. We all know that it is, because if you're reading this then at least you've thought about climate change.

But it does have to be done. Even if it's a depressing slog, it's necessary. Because even if it takes BP another two months to lock that oil down, the Gulf will, someday, be clean again. The birds can be cleaned off, and they might be able to replenish themselves.

But once climate change happens, it's almost impossible to go back - it lays too many blocks in the path. Ice disappears, ecosystems are damaged beyond reconciliation, and methane from all over the world is released into the atmosphere. When we reach the point of no return (here's to hoping we're correct and that it still lies in front of us), I certainly hope we've grown up enough to meet it head on. At the least, I hope that we don't start blasting the President for not showing enough emotion. It will truly be all of our faults.

Wolves that Cry Sheep Just Make Other Wolves Hungry

2009-10-02T16:03:00.001-07:00

So, there's this thing that comes up every so often in the climate debate about how incredibly wrong environmentalists are like, all the time. Well, no - they're wrong about the world ending, every time they say that it will. Which is fine, if you like making doomsday predictions - but it tends to hurt the climate change debate sometimes.

Consider for a moment that environmentalists have (as individuals, mind) made the following claims:
In the near future (less than 50 years):
We will all be poisoned to death by chemicals
We will be incinerated by ultraviolet rays from holes in the ozone layer
We will run out of food
The rainforests will be cut down
Most species will be extinct
There will not be enough top-soil left
We'll be out of fresh water
Acid rain will wipe out all the forests
The world will turn to deserts
We will run out of most minerals and fossil fuels
The climate will shift, get colder, and we'll find ourselves in a new ice age

The problem is exacerbated by the media, which is a terribly cliched thing to say in all cases except this one - because let's be honest. To most people, most Earth science is unexciting. Geological time-scales are not recipes for exciting new developments. But if there's an approaching catastrophe, that's interesting, and we all know how it goes. And the scientists get a little caught up in it (and funding becomes more readily available for the research-of-the-year) and environmentalists get caught up in it and all of a sudden, gloom and doom is coming.

You can debate some of the stuff - some of it might still happen, some of it (like the ozone thing) may have been stalled by the quick response from individuals and nations as a result of environmentalist efforts - but the over-all point remains, and is this:

To most people, the world is always in peril to environmentalists, and thus far they've been wrong.

So what does that mean to "most people" when they hear details about climate change?

Or, even worse, when they're holding the legitimate facts about climate change up against the politically-minded lies that this is more of the same hysteria and that nothing unusual is happening?

To set the record straight, here's the facts of the matter:

While global warming may have begun the same way many other environmental-doom fads have, we have discovered that climate change as a result of global warming exists and is caused by humans. We have an idea of what will happen. It will not be the end of the world, but it will be deadly to some, horrible to many, and uncomfortable for everyone else. If we begin acting now, we can prevent most of the deadly/horrible stuff and just keep with the uncomfortableness.

We know that climate change is real. It has gone through scientific tests and criticisms that no other doomsday claim from environmentalists has ever been subjected to. There is still consensus, which means that it's happening right now, and is still a danger.

Maybe the record is a little straighter, now, hopefully?

Oh, and for a demonstration of how this whole process works, read this article (via Yglesias) and try to nail down your immediate reaction. If it's negative, those environmentalists probably just hurt the cause.

And we're back.

2009-09-24T14:34:00.001-07:00

Sure has been a long time for the vast readership out there - how y'all been handling the break?

There are two basic elements that are part of the lack of updates. The first, higher-level, public reason is that I've been working a lot on things not related to environmentalism - basically, I've been busy. Which is fine.

In addition to just not having a lot of free time, though, the trailing-off-then-ceasing of updates basically resulted in environmentalism, climate change, and the next stage of human social organization (and, y'know, stuff) getting pushed onto the mental back burner, which is, perhaps understandable.

That is, it's understandable, but not okay.

Because here's the truth of the matter - it happens to everyone. We all have lives, and the simple truth is that for 99% of us, environmentalism and the consequences of climate change are not a part of our day to day life. The evidence, infrastructure, and industrialization is there, if you know where to look for it - but so is physics, and chemistry, and philosophy, and theatrical lighting design, and all sorts of other academic pursuits. It's true that every time we change a light bulb, we're making a choice (say, between incandescent and compact fluorescent - or even a LED fixture) and continuing to use electricity and all the things that come with that, and every time we do we could take it as an object lesson in environmentalism... but more often than not, we don't. I don't, anyway.

Which probably explains some things. The spectre of climate change is so huge and so spread out across the world (even if is concentrated primarily in developed, Northern Hemisphere nations) that it's hard to bring down to an individual level. In order to work against it, we really have to learn about the issues and keep them constantly in mind.

So should we? It amounts to social reorganization, essentially - and, taken further, begs for worldwide intellectual unity on a subject that isn't even agreed on by members of the US congress (which is, maybe, a bad example). Putting climate change and environmentalism into people's daily thoughts is a huge job.

But I, personally, don't see another way of accomplishing anything. We can rely on our governments and scientists and maybe the occasional retired statesman or rich, philanthropic businessman. We can keep our faith of "action" in the governmental sense - new policies, huge solar and wind farms, carbon taxes (or cap and trade), NGO fundraisers, all those things.

But all the evidence to date suggests that the sorts of things that'll come out of political compromises will be too slow. Even the ambitious goals of the B-Man Obama - assuming they get out of Congress unchanged, which won't happen anyway - aren't ambitious enough.

So the only alternative left to us is to act ourselves. Not as revolutionaries, or even activists. Again, 99% of us don't have the time and will for that - it takes a rare breed in all but the most special circumstances.

What is left to us - and what can make the difference - are the small choices. We don't want to see taxes raise, it's true, but to be responsible world citizens we may need to spend a little more.

We can drive a little less, and a little less heat will escape into space.

We can buy organic, local, environmental-responsible products. They're more expensive, it's true - but maybe then the ocean deadzones will shrink a little, and there'll be fewer cargo ships bringing our our grapes up from Chile. We can eat a little less beef, or choose the more responsible, smaller scale, local stuff over the industrial food-lot stuff at fast food restaurants. We can honor the restaurants that make a point of being sustainable with our business, and make the effort to support them.

We can choose more responsible forms of power, and as we show our demand, they'll respond. They'll build more solar, wind, geothermal; they'll hire more scientists, and make the technology better and more proven. It will be slow, but with a bit of willpower - a tiny pinch for each of us - the mass of this whole thing will grow.

But most importantly, we can think and talk about this thing. This climate change, this environmentalism - this change.

We haven't created this change - that was done slowly, over the last century and a half, by our parents, grandparents, and great grandparents. But we continue the change, every day of our lives, and that makes us party to us. We can ponder what it is, what it will be - and whether we can take the reigns away from habit and choose our own destiny.

Because this isn't just about the danger of climate change. That's what I've realized - and one of the things that gave me pause about coming back to this project, because the name - this goal of 450 by 2050 - doesn't encompass everything I want to talk about any more. I don't just want to think about the danger and prevention. We, as a generation, have been given a chance to consider our destinies. Climate change is dangerous, too - but so is how we confront it. It has the opportunity to open our eyes, and ask us whether this is really what we want.

And it gives us a chance to reinvent ourselves and our society. Not in a huge way, perhaps - maybe most things are fine the way they are, I don't know. But the truth is that we didn't decide the society we were born into - and if we continue as we are, unthinking, then we'll never have the choice.

So let's think about it, together and apart, and figure out if the current form of it all is really what we want. Confronted with this fear, though - and these very real dangers - it's hard to imagine someone answering "Yes."

The Wrong Way

2009-06-10T14:02:00.000-07:00

So, according to the New York Times, Republicans in the House have drafted their own energy bill. This in and of itself is not shocking - even though congressional republicans have been lagging behind and disorganized in how they approach these things, they're still expected to offer another choice (as in the whole stupid budget thing).

The shocking thing is the content: nuclear power, increased drilling, and nothing to restrict greenhouse gas production. Oh wait that's not shocking at all.

Now, to be fair, their position isn't so ridiculous. Lots of human problems are not solved by direct, large-scale action; some of the time, we just slowly work our way out of the issue. And there are jobs at risk, and the economy is doin' bad still, etc. etc.

But here's the thing. If we look at history, the environment has been one of those things that individual people just can't solve on their own with a little more money from tax cuts. The history of America versus the environment can pretty easily be viewed in terms of regulation equaling success. Without regulation, there's rampant pollution and ecosystem destruction (like clear cutting). With regulation, we're starting to save wetlands, forests, resources - hell, the ozone layer is starting to heal. The simple fact of the matter is that the scale of environmental problems are far above and beyond us individuals.

And that's fine. That's one of the big reasons governments exist as-is - to handle things that are beyond an individual. That's why we need Waxman-Markey bill; it wants to regulate, and it's trying to put us on the right path.

We don't have time to hope the problem works itself out. And we've only got one atmosphere. Time to make the decision, say that it might hurt a little in the short term, but press on down the path we truly know we have to walk. Because once again, these outspoken congressional republicans have offered nothing that can accomplish anything in the kind of time-frame we have.

The world comes crashing down

2009-06-07T12:09:00.001-07:00

Maybe this is a little idealistic, but what's wrong with admitting that you're wrong? Or, strike that - admitting that you need to investigate something before all the conclusions are drawn?

In this case, we're talking about hydraulic fracturing, a process where pressure is built up in the hole that we've drilled to the point where the surrounding rock formation starts to crack. The point being that then, gas and liquids can flow to the hole better, and you get increased yields.

So, that's fine. And tree-hugging, gaia-wounding protests aside, there have been (very specific) uses of fracturing that have passed the EPA.

Enter this little controversy, thanks to Grist and ProPublica.

I'm less concerned about the issue at hand - as horrible as it perhaps is, it's short-term. What's a little more concerning is the industry's reaction.

So here's the question: have the issues of climate change and sustainability hardened the coal, oil, and gas industries to the point of never admitting wrong?

I mean, what's the logical response to an investigation of a technique that might have as many as 1,000 cases of contamination? You stop doing it until you can find out if it's harming anyone. If it is, you either modify the method or stop doing it. Period.

But that's not what we're seeing.

When asked about the record of Chesapeake Energy, the nation’s largest independent gas producer, Mike John, a vice president of government relations for Chesapeake, told the committee that “I would emphasize that in my experience we have not seen any problems with hydraulic fracturing in my career.” John did not mention the recent Louisiana case in which 16 cattle died after allegedly drinking spilled fracturing fluids at a Chesapeake well site – a case that is still under investigation.

Let's be clear: I don't know anything about the dangers of hydraulic fracturing, but clearly there's concern from people who do. There are investigations (on multiple stages of the process) and allegations, and that should maybe give you some pause, as a company.

...Or, you know, as an elected official.

“I am proud that I am supported by the oil and gas industry because they employ a lot of people in my state and I am going to stick up for them,” said Rep. Dan Boren (D-OK). “I am sick and tired of a lot of folks in my own caucus coming after the largest employer in my state.”

Again, I don't know whether fracturing is a dangerous thing. But here's the kicker - neither does anyone else. And that should give a United States Representative pause.

I'm not saying that the oil/gas/coal/whatever business is an evil supercorporation with shady government ties. I don't want to say that our elected officials are obsessed with the seasonal buzzword "jobs". I don't want to get into a trading-out-green-jobs thing.

I just want someone to make a realistic decision. Forget the baggage. If information comes to light that one of your industrial practices might be a health risk, then you put a hold on it until you can investigate it.

But, hey, those liberals are babbling about climate change again. We've gotta stand by our guns, am I right?

Technology Revisited

2009-05-24T13:47:00.000-07:00

There's a great post by coby of A Few Things Ill Considered on The Energy Grid about the origins of our current mess. The basic problem is essentially politics, by which he means organizations of people. As groups of people, we haven't looked forward enough.

Which, while a simple and poignant way to put it, isn't anything new. The really interesting ground is where he goes next - why can't technology save us?

And it's true, humanity has always shown an ability to leap the natural hurdles that usually constrain growth. And that's a good thing - I don't think any of us, other than a very small minority, want the human race to go extinct, so if we can buck nature's rule that all species die off then hey, go us.

But at the same time, we may be hastened extinction - or, at least, a catastrophic loss of quality of life - just because we are so unconstrained.

And that's the key, the way coby puts it. The analogy he chooses is building a new bridge to alleviate congestion, and how that doesn't work - more capacity between A and B leads more people to drive, build houses at point A, work at point B, take A and B instead of going around to point C to dodge traffic, etc.

So isn't it the same thing with energy usage? Even if we discover futuristic technology - or just finally get around to making Fusion work - will it actually help us in the long(ish) run?

His answer is no, and I'd tend to agree. Unless regulated by some sort of negative pressure - governmental regulations or societal pressures - we'd just take the energy and grow until even that energy isn't enough. In fact, from the right way around, a limitless source of energy is actually far more frightening than an energy collapse - who knows if we'd be able to stop our expansion.

So what's the point?

The point is that we need to learn to regulate ourselves - and that maybe we all need to do some deep soul searching to decide if that's even possible.

A major step forward

2009-05-24T09:45:00.001-07:00

So either we learn to live sustainably or we find a way off this rock, right?

Well, both possibilities took major steps forward in feasibility on May 20th, when two astronauts and a cosmonaut proved that not only does their urine-to-water recycler work, it actually tastes great.

Imagine the possibilities!

Stating the Issue Simply

2009-05-23T13:33:00.000-07:00

More and more, sources of climate change denial are shifting from outright, tobacco-industry-esque denial combined with fake science to the view that we might be shifting the climate but we either don't know or can't do anything about it.

Well, we do know and we can do something about it.

And as this post on RealClimate about the recent issue of Science spells out pretty clearly, we need to act.

Comparing the two papers is obscured by the different units; mass of carbon versus mass of CO₂ (moles, anyone? Is there a chemist in the house?). But chugging through the math, we find the papers to be broadly consistent. Both papers conclude that humankind is already about half-way toward releasing enough carbon to probably reach 2°C, and that most of the fossil fuel carbon (the coal, in particular) will have to remain in the ground.

So the question is whether we act now or later to achieve a target like 450 by 2050.

Let's imagine both possibilities: we start working gradually now, following the general scientific consensus. We start moving away from coal quickly, we move on automobile emission regulation, and we start rebuilding electrical grids to work better and provide better information to the end user - the people using the power in the first (last?) place.

Added to that is global technological and professional outreach - helping to develop countries power and transportation infrastructure to make sure they don't repeat our mistakes.

It's a lot of work, but it's nothing that far out of the ordinary. In the United States, our lives will remain largely unchanged. Consumer habits will shift, but the bulk of the shift will be the young generation that grows up with an environmental conscience (I mentioned expanded education, yeah?). We put money into research, development, and construction, but that just creates companies that do the work - not a fundamental change. The government mandates different automobile regulations, but they already do. Again, not much of a change.

Clearly, it could end up being turbulent in the details, but on the whole it's business as usual - in the fundamental sense, even if we are breaking new ground in energy and infrastructure innovation.

But what if we squander the next thirty years before discovering, as a world, that we do have to do something?

I can't claim to be able to paint that broad a picture - my knowledge of international economics and relations is just not that great; and to be honest, the sort of shift that would need to overtake the world is, in its specifics, beyond anyone's predictive power.

Assuming that the world still reaches the same goal - because we have to - it would entail nothing more than a wartime effort - rationing, public work projects, and conscription. There'd probably be widespread disruption as the infrastructure is rapidly replaced - both power and transportation. What's worse, if we continue to build coal plants, they'll all have to shut down - or we'll have to find a way of making this stupid, stupid idea of injecting carbon dioxide into underground caverns actually work.

The international level could be even worse - for all the possible disruption a fast change in infrastructure could bring to the developed world, trying to green newly-developed nations like China, India, and Brazil could result in some nasty results.

There are a lot of possibilities. The point is, it's going to be expensive either way - but one of the ways is much, much more stable. Aren't republicans supposed to favor stability?

On the other hand, I've met very few people who aren't procrastinators at heart - and that's a little worrying.

Simple changes to the Mile per Gallon standard

2009-05-22T15:44:00.000-07:00

So two wedges towards 450by2050 can be achieved through better driving habits (reduction and extraordinarily better fuel consumption), right? How do we achieve them?

Fuel economy is pretty straight-forward - a combination of business/environmental ethics, government regulation, and consumer pressure. Not to say that it's easy (as citizens of the United States should know), but we seem to be getting onto the path. Obviously, technological development in the form of hybrids and plug-in electrics help enormously - and may let us achieve the 60mpg average that represents a stabilization wedge.

But mileage reduction - people driving half as much, even as we're adding more and more cars to the world - is a little trickier. Mass transit and alternative transportation play a part - but right now these things are pretty undervalued. Cars, for both convenience and prestige (especially in developing nations), are a way of life. We're moving towards reduction in some places, especially urban settings, but suburbs aren't going away, and neither is car culture.

But there are simple steps we can take to give people a better picture of their habits - and the easiest step that I can see is to mandate a switch from miles per gallon to a more information measure. (Inspired by posts and comments on Yglesias and Kevin Drum on Mother Jones.)

On those sites, there's some talk about replacing miles per gallon with gallons per 100 miles (a kilometer equivalent of which is already used some places in Europe, though I'm unclear on those details). The idea here is that it represents the diminishing returns of fuel economy a little better. Consider what seems like the identical leap between going from 10mpg to 20mpg and 20mpg to 30mpg. In the first case, you can suddenly travel 100 miles on half as much fuel (10 gallons to 5 gallons). In the second, though the mpg changes by 10 again, you're only going from 5 gallons per 100 miles to 3.33 gallons per 100 miles - nowhere near as much of a savings.

So that's one possibility. But there's another one that I favor even more - comparing gallons to travel time rather than travel distance. Essentially this: we assume that you travel 30 miles per hour in city traffic and 60 miles per hour on the highway (I'm assuming - straight-forward research could result in more accurate numbers). From there, we can say that your car gets, say, 1 hour of city travel or 2 hours of highway travel per gallon (an equivalent of 30 miles per gallon).

Suddenly you're able to weigh your options better - you'll have a much better, general idea of how far a fill-up will get you. Even better than that, you'll be able to gauge a change much better; you'll think about it and realize that your neighbor's plug-in electric hybrid can get 3 hours of city travel per gallon, instead of just comparing 30mpg to 90mpg and trying to remember how many miles your commute to work is to make sense of it all.

Would this help conservation? Research into similar sorts of steps taken with home electrical usage (some of which is detailed in the posts and comments linked above) seems to indicate that it would.

So let's do it. There's no reason not to want better, more straight-forward information. That's how we can start ordering our world, after-all.

So let's talk about Population (yayyyyyyy?)

2009-05-20T20:05:00.000-07:00

The size of the human population has been a concern for a long time, even way before the global population hit a billion (gosh, imagine that). In the 18th century, a dude named Malthus proposed that population growth was a seriously bad thing because then there'd be no food for anyone, and proceeded to suggest a lot of nasty things to limit population growth.

Well, now we're at 6.5 billion. So.

On the surface, population growth is scary. It's true that it's not hard to imagine a world covered by people and farms vainly trying to feed them all - or if you're having trouble imagining, science fiction might be able to give you a hand with it. So that's scary, anyway.

The truth of the matter, though, is that we'll each limit population growth before it gets too out of hand. I know we don't like moderate solutions, but the fact of the matter is that having a child is usually a rational decision that's made by parents (the vast majority of the time, anyway), and if we're starting to have catastrophic human populations then parents will start limiting. Now, what I just said should be inflammatory to a lot of people, since a huge number of people in the world don't have access to contraception and the sort of economic opportunities that can give people an alternative to popping out children - but that's getting better. Trickle down development schemes are, in places, making way for community based microloan situations, and that's a good thing. Education and available contraceptives are spreading.

Basically, it's still a huge job to make sure people have access to the knowledge and resources that make having a kid a rational decision. Is there still a lot of work to be done? Sure. But we're starting to get on our way, so it doesn't concern me as much (plus, it's not my field anyway).

The bigger problem isn't whether human population will ever slow. It probably will - and hopefully in a gradual, as-a-result-of-good-things kind of way.

The really big, long-term problem, as far as I'm concerned, is that we're already past the number of people who could live on the Earth sustainably. That is, the number of people who are here is already environmentally destructive - even if we were all living totally sustainable lives (and we very much aren't).

Now, this isn't as big a problem as it sounds because a vast percentage of the human population isn't actually degrading the environment a whole lot, because they don't have the economic power to take advantage of any environmental degradation to begin with. But here's the issue - and, by the way, a huge part of Hot, Flat, and Crowded - these people are starting to get more prosperity. And they should have that - they should have transportation, education and communication, comfort (which, in a lot of ways, means electricity), and plenty of good food.

But to get the poor in undeveloped and developing countries all of these things, at least the traditional way, we have to turn to messing with the environment.

So that sucks - I feel like I've covered this whole thing before.

But the thing that's really bad is just the different paces these things - population growth, development, and environmental destruction (climate change and loss of ecosystems) - are proceeding. Population growth is going quick, but is already starting to decline. Not that quickly, though. Development is going quick in some places, but slower in others - and it's likely that it's going to take a long time to really come through for large percentages of any given population, especially in countries like Asia.

Environmental destruction, meanwhile, is on a catastrophic path in the next 100 years - and it'll probably be too late to do much about it in just 40.

So here's what I'm saying - we have to head this problem off. We need to move - quickly - into developmental, humanitarian outreach. We need to get out into the world right now and find ways to leapfrog development, so that all the billions of the developing world don't have to jump the same hurdles the developed countries (us) did - or burn the same amount of coal, or desolate the same amount of wetlands, or anything else. At the same time, we need to be moving ourselves forward, towards sustainability, as an example and test case.

We've gotta get there somehow. Modern, urban/rural sustainability is the end-point of the industrial era - and we've got to arrive there. Whether we do it wisely, as a global race of rational beings, or whether we're forced to scratch out a sustainable living once things get harder... that's the question.

How's this Change gonna happen anyway?

2009-05-10T19:58:00.000-07:00

Since the B-man was elected, it seems like Change has become either a dirty word or just a guardedly-hopeful word, but I think it's worth a discussion above and beyond just the top-down, presidential stuff. So what about bottom up?

The New York Times reports on a video about consumerism called The Story of Stuff that's being shown in tons and tons of classrooms, created by a former Greenpeace employee and "unapologetic activist". And let's be honest - it's pretty spiffy and cool.

And it could make a real difference. I've been an advocate of encouraging small changes to start swaying people's minds, and there've been some great changes as a result of children. In Curitiba, Brazil (a great case-study for a lot of successful urban planning policies) elementary school recycling outreach achieved what are, essentially, wonders.

And the video has been successful, as the NYTimes documents. Kids who've seen it start having a better idea of the problem of garbage build-up and the linear supply train that our economies of scale are based off of. Sure, it's critical of capitalism, as some parents have noted - but at the same time, the video doesn't seem to be motivating kids to revolt against corporations and form a new Soviet Union. It's just raising awareness that throwing something away doesn't really get rid of it - or that burning coal or gasoline doesn't make the carbon that is a large part of it disappear. And that's good.

Because it's really the only way we'll start changing. Cap and trade is a great idea, but what we really need is a shift away from the entire concept of a linear supply chain. Part of that is climate change mitigation and achieving 450 by 2050, but it goes beyond that. Circular supply chains, renewable energy, and all of these great mitigation strategies are also the next step in sustainable development - something we're going to have to learn if we want to create a post-carbon world.

And if it's successful, then that's good activism.

Steps Forward

2009-04-26T16:11:00.000-07:00

Reading about the coming climate change is often a little depressing, especially with regards to what everyone is doing about it. While people in developed countries who are pretty comfortable are starting to become more green, that's mostly in end-consumer ways; buying different kinds of products that are better for the environment/energy usage. More organized efforts, both on general environmental fronts and specifically on mitigating climate change, are also starting to appear - Earth Hour, the Earth Day Every Day viral idea, and organizations like community gardeners (h/t Yglesias) are all examples.

But what gives me hope are some of the other social movements that seem to be moving forward in tandem. In the end, it's not just about mitigating climate change - it's about moving forward in terms of how we understand our humanity. Are we the master-species on this planet? Is it enough to just let anyone do anything? Or do we have to consciously construct our societies, and manage our interactions with the rest of the world?

I think we need to.

So there are a lot of things that are starting to give me hope. Thing like holistic health care - not even more people and doctors flirting with Eastern or non-traditional remedies, but things like Kaiser Permanente's "Thrive" ad campaign, that tries to get people to think about staying healthy by living well. To me, this is a sign that we're starting to back away from industrial-age ideas like technology is the be-all and end-all of health. If we start taking personal interest in our health - especially preventively - then it seems possible that we can start taking an interest in maintaining the planet's health, as well.

Another great movement are localized food movements. I think this is gaining more and more ground - and will gain even more if we ever get serious about making long-range, fossil fuel based transportation a little harder. But even if we don't, the local movement is still important. It's the first big step towards creating the kind of sustainable, 21st century city-communities that I think will be the next step in urban development. And I think there's going to be a lot of progress on this front, even if it's a little slow. Here, we can see that the public is mostly against big agriculture and all the subsidies its getting; and even though these subsidies are incredibly entrenched, I don't think it's going to be long before the absurdity of the system overwhelms itself.

And if local food production and distribution (i.e. farmers markets, Community Supported Agriculture, and urban farming) continue to grow and be more accepted, then that's an important first step in terms of changing economic theory. The basic idea here is that local markets, in many ways, attempt to move away from the standard "economy of scale" model that has come to dominate the way we try to business.

Because our economic system is still oriented almost exclusively towards maximum profitability - even despite growing talk of triple bottom-lines (that is, companies attempting to do the most environmental and social good in addition to making lots of money). I don't think there's anything wrong with profit - to, to be sure, a lot of families in both the US and the world could use a lot more money - but the nature of technology and economies of scale mean that sometimes efficiency and maximum profitability doesn't necessarily line up with what's best for the social and environmental good. And they don't have to!

Now, many a senator would argue with me on that, and say that the greatest economic growth - achieved by as many firms as possible making as much money as possible - is the ideal for a society. I would, of course, disagree - because there's more to life, and pursuing max profit diverts resources from finding that.

The idea I'm trying to get across is that society seems like it's starting to shift. Not in a sudden, revolutionary way, perhaps - who knows whether it'll come to that. But in the myriad of things going on, I feel like there are some important, good trends.

Or maybe I'm just too optimistic. Time will tell.

Fossil Fuel industry a little like the tobacco industry?

2009-04-25T12:27:00.001-07:00

It's a shocker, I know. The basic story is one that I think a lot of climate-change advocates already knew backwards and forwards - the fossil fuel industries have been deliberately creating doubt behind the science of climate change.

That alone is bad enough, but then the cause of doubt and confusion has been taken up by politicians, largely to push anti-regulatory, free-market ideas, and foolish people in general, who don't understand the complexity of climate science but think they do.

The basic truth: climate change is real, it's coming, and we're not doing enough about it.

Hoaxwatch: John Tierney edition

2009-04-21T18:16:00.000-07:00

So I was munching on my local, sustainable pizza and reading the New York Times at lunch today and read an absolutely fascinating article by John Tierney on the climate and how industrial societies eventually stop polluting. Apparently, everything's going to be okay with the climate because as time goes on, developed societies tend to move towards cleaner, greener technology.

The simple summary of the article is this:

As time goes on, societies pursue cleaner living - starting with drinking water and moving on to energy, going from wood to oil/coal to natural gas/nuclear and now maybe to solar.
Almost all countries in the world are growing and developing, so they'll start moving through the cleaning-up stages of things
Since there's never been a social energy revolution (that is, technology tends to drive changes in energy production, rather than human choice) in the past, we can't expect one to come
Therefore, we're better off waiting for all societies on Earth to gradually go cleaner

On the surface, Tierney's opinion column, which is masquerading as an article in the science section, seems scientifically counter-intuitive; that is, Tierney is playing the game of "Well, actually, research has shown that blah is true, rather than the popular conception!" In this case, the popular conception is that rich societies tend to emit more carbon dioxide emissions.

Which is true. But what really reinforces the point is the vague way he describes what the Kuznets curve (that is, a graph shaped like an upside-down "u" that shows a nation like the US or Britain rising in emissions, reaching a maximum point, then starting to reduce them) looks like.

By the 1990s, researchers realized that graphs of environmental impact didn’t produce a simple upward-sloping line as countries got richer. The line more often rose, flattened out and then reversed so that it sloped downward, forming the shape of a dome or an inverted U — what’s called a Kuznets curve.

And it's true what he says - carbon dioxide emissions and wealth are not a 1 to 1 correlation. But at the same time, while emissions do tend to level out, there are a few things that Tierney utterly and completely fails to point out.

First, no one is concerned about whether or not there's a linear relationship. If we go along in a business-as-usual way (more on that in a second), there's simply no way that climate change will be dealt with - even if we're just talking about developed nations. That's because climate change is fundamentally different from getting clean drinking water and cleaning up local pollutants - it's the same reason that people like Tierney write this stuff. Climate change is subtle and patient. We do not perceive climate change that same way we notice a brown cloud hanging in the air above a dirty power plant, or notice that half of the people living downstream of a factory are getting cancer. In short, people must be made to care about greenhouse gas emissions through education, because if they can't see it for themselves (and no one tells them) then they won't be moved to stop.

Second, Tierney decides that because revolutions apparently never work it makes more sense to just wait for every country to get rich enough to be clean and wonderful. Even assuming that societies approach a zero or negative carbon emissions point (and there's no evidence that they do), we cannot afford the amount of time that that will happen.

Why? Because climate change doesn't operate on some vague notion of how clean or dirty nations feel like they are - it is driven by the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. We've already driven the concentration up enormously. Keeping in mind that we're not going to fully stop or reverse emissions any time soon - no matter how revolutionary we are - we're going to have a hell of a time mitigating climate change if every undeveloped country in the world follows our lead. The number of developed countries that have created the current crisis is small compared to the rest of the world - especially as population increases in developing countries quicker. If we try to wait, like Tierney says, we'll be so far beyond the business-as-usual projections that we'll be off the map.

Because, at the core, that's what Tierney's missing. He doesn't see climate change as a threat - he sees it as a far off danger, safely exiled to the future. That's wrong. We need to start dealing with climate change right now - if we don't, we won't be able to stop the change.

I understand where libertarians are coming from, but climate change is something we absolutely have to move on. Right now.

What is this a fight for?

2009-04-18T19:34:00.000-07:00

Something I keep coming back to - along with the rest of world, apparently - is what, exactly, this is a fight for.

Lemme rephrase. So, the climate, right, it is a'changin'. So?

Popular reasons to think this is a bad thing:

We're making it harder for future generations to enjoy the same quality of life for a long time
Climate change will lead to disruption of human civilization - both food supplies and elements of our culture will be changed
Climate change will lead to disruption of the natural world - despite the natural world being old and complex
We should respect the natural world more - especially since climate change will cause a rise in species extinction
Fossil fuels and cars are messing up a lot of things - like foreign policy and urban planning
Any shift in climate will create instabilities in other, smaller systems, like the global economy
Climate change is a symptom of a larger problem humanity has regarding its relationship to the rest of the biosphere

It's an interesting exercise to think about, without a doubt.

Here's the problem, though - a lot of these are quite different, in the sense that they have different goals. In the case of reducing disruption - the prime reason that seems to be influencing national governments - it seems like we're being lured into trying to guess what amount of work we have to do to prevent catastrophic warming. This is short-term mitigation; we're interested in doing the least amount of work we can get away with. That makes sense given political and economic climates right now - and I'm sure many people in the US's current administration, for one, would love to do more - but it still feels lacking.

That, I think, is because I identify more with the final issue than anything. Climate change presents the possibility of incredible harm, but the world itself is harmful, all the time. Climate change will strike the least fortunate in the world the hardest (people in less developed countries, and specifically people without the means to change locations, will be struck hardest by droughts and high tides) and that, in and of itself, is a reason to fight it as part of a crusade against global poverty.

But at the same time, there's a bigger picture. Assuming we can get the political will together, as a globe, to truly prevent catastrophic climate change... what then?

There are a lot of people out there who aren't concerned with this question. It's too long term; we have to solve the problem before we can move forward.

But to me, that feels like the same kind of thinking that got us into this climate change situation to begin with - pursuing the short-term goal. Climate change isn't the only problem in the world; there's a whole host of issues relating to our numbers and technologies that have yet to break - water, especially, is the big one. And these problems will not have evaporated if we get back down to 280 parts per million - the pre-industrial concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. There will still be billions of humans on the world.

So to me, the big issue here is sustainability. But not necessarily sustainability as Americans tend to practice it; tacked onto a business-as-usual life. I am certainly for organic vegetables, local suppliers, and recycling. I love alternate and mass transit. But even though these things are all awesome, they're also a distraction in a way.

Because what we really need is a new paradigm. Our cities, transportation situations, and societies - the entire world over - are built on assumptions like cheap energy, consequence-free freight and transit, and a global food supply network. And we've built everything we have on the idea of expansion and growth - both countries and corporations aren't considered successful unless they're growing.

And there's just no way that that's sustainable.

I think the real fight here is finding a way to live within the biosphere. The most pressing issue in that struggle is climate change - which is structured around hitting the 450 by 2050 benchmark - but there are others. And it's going to require more than solar and wind plants built in the countryside to do it. This needs to be a revolution of paradigms. This needs to be our communication technology working to resolve problems all over the world - we can't allow India to drain its natural resources any more than we can allow our own country. But it can't end up being tyrannical - instead, we need to get to work, find sustainable solutions, and export them - free of charge. We need a civil service based on radical technology and ideas to spread across the Earth and find local solutions for all these problems.

Will it happen? I'm cynical enough to think probably not. I think we'll make okay headway in the fight against climate change and tackle these issues in a half-hearted way; that's the way our markets and our societies work. It responds quickly in terms of adjustments, but fights tooth and nail to preserve its foundations. In many ways, that's a really good thing. Just not this time.

Sorry about the rambling manifesto, but it's important to think about.

Intelligent Design: Skycrapers can be more than tall boxes

2009-04-14T20:31:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago, a condo was being built in downtown Portland - because we, apparently, can't get enough condos. The striking thing about this particular one was that somehow, I ended up looking at it a lot (it was centrally located to my life) and that for a while, at least, it was bright blue.

Although it took me a while to figure it out, it was because the construction crews were using sheets of blue plastic to protect all the windows, and because modern skyscrapers are essentially nothing but windows, that turned the whole thing blue. And it was awesome - until the building opened and now there's another metal and glass structure hanging out in the skyline.

I have to admit that we can do some pretty interesting things with steel and glass - very awe inspiring in their starkness. But at the same time, we can do other equally interesting things with a whole lot of other materials and (gasp) colors. And I'm getting tired of seeing nothing but starkness.

But are there interesting things that can be done to skyscrapers that are more than just aesthetic?

I saw an example in Vancouver BC a long time ago - I have no idea what the building is called, but googling "tree building vancouver" brought up this picture of it - and I think it looks pretty, even though the tree itself is just a little tacked on.

And, it could be argued, that despite shade in summer (but not winter) and a modest carbon dioxide-oxygen exchange, that one tree doesn't actually do a whole lot. And it's sort of right; but at the same time, there's also a psychological value in it, isn't there? To me, it's comforting - we don't have to give up everything that we know to live under a tree.

There are other ways to do it, though - instead of building stark and boxy and trying to tack on renewable energy, like I think we need to, the entire building can be designed around wind energy. This example, of the Pearl River Tower - website here - is a good one not only because it's being built, but it's also being designed to generate more electricity than it requires to operate. Will it do so? That's up to them, most likely - but the really cool point is that even now, before widespread adoption and any sort of focus on renewables, buildings are starting to be able to promise more energy than they consume. And I think that's incredibly important.

Are we ready to know down all of our buildings and put up renewable energy factories? No. And we probably shouldn't. But the fact exists that it's getting more and more possible every day - new buildings can be built better, both to conserve and to generate electricity, and older buildings can be retrofitted. In fact, it was just announced that several organizations, among them the Rocky Mountain Institute, will be retrofitting the Empire State Building to LEED Gold standards - meaning they'll cut power usage by 38%, among other things - by 2013. Sweet.

It's definitely possible. But at the same time, it's also easier to toss up another high-rise of condos. Sooner or later, though, that's not going to be enough.

The only real difference between these awesome, useful things and the standard buildings that are (or were) getting built all the time is the intelligence behind their design. It doesn't cost that much more money to design and build well - and it often gets recouped in lower operating expenses - but it requires talent. We need to make sure we're training that talent.

Important Issue Round-up - cap and trade and wind

2009-04-11T19:45:00.000-07:00

How about this weekend? Busy, innit?

Which isn't stopping Obama from backing down (a bit) from hard-hitting climate legislation. Yglesias has good points on how it's basically the Senate's fault - which is to say that the Senate is the least progressive of the three groups in control of the process (House, Senate, and White House). In the end, it probably will not pass - though the Reconciliation process might change up the game. So that's bad, anyway - cap and trade (hopefully heavily auctioned, and the auction revenues paid back to low-income families to help off-set the increase in electricity rates) is the most realistic way to phase out coal as a power source. Joe Romm thinks it's a pretty good bill, as is.

In the meantime, though, wind has been growing and hiring new people, which is good. The future relies heavily on solar - though new solar plants are showing up here and there - but wind, especially debugged and decentralized, is the way forward in my mind. It's strange that wind is so much farther ahead than solar - and probably points to something fundamental. Have to give some thought to that.

Meet the New Green Party: The GOP

2009-04-08T14:24:00.000-07:00

Since the collapse of McCain's campaign, the Republican Party has been in trouble. At the recent Conservative Political Action Conference, speakers like Rush Limbaugh pushed for a return to conservative principles to save the Party.

Up until now, these principles - fiscal responsibility and personal freedom - have been represented by big business, hands-off economics, and lower taxes.

But in our changing world, the only way for the Republican Party to return to their principles is for them to become environmentalists.

In the past, large profits were responsible and the greatest wealth bought the greatest freedom. But now we know that it's more complicated.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - in a report endorsed by all world governments and major scientific institutions - has confirmed that humanity is changing the climate for the worse. We must act soon or we'll ruin the resources our economies depend on.

But environmental programs cost money and impose regulations on people - why would Republicans support what they see as a liberal agenda item?

Because conservatives are responsible - and environmentalism is the core of modern responsibility.

Controlling how we affect the environment benefits us. Greener farming techniques could have prevented the 1930s Dust Bowl - or preserved modern fisheries. Recycling pollutants like fly ash saves money - it costs less and doesn't need to be cleaned out of rivers.

And right now, people - Democrats - are talking about a carbon cap and trade bill. Republicans have opposed it, but it's a conservative method of control, not a progressive one. Auctioning carbon permits will use a market mechanism that promotes personal choice, environmentalism, and reduces foreign influences.

All of this is, simply, responsible. Money spent now can - and will - save huge amounts in the future.

And environmentalism can cut taxes. One would think that conservatives would be first in line to put wind and solar power on the roof of every government building - they start earning money for themselves in less time than the War on Terror has lasted.

So there's fiscal responsibility - but can we protect our independence too?

If there's one thing the last century has taught us, it's that we have a connection with the Earth. This isn't tree-hugging philosophy here, just logic. The more our population grows, the more land and water we need to take from the natural world; kept artificially cheap by govenrment subsidies.

The simple fact is that freedom at the cost of the environment is not really freedom - not for long. We must work with our local systems to fulfill our wants, because that's the only way we'll be able to build a stable world. And shouldn't conservatives want stability? Shouldn't they be leading the charge for sustainable, local ways of life?

The Republican Party has become a supporter of disposible living that will ruin our people and country. Only environmentalism will recapture the people's trust and move the party forward.

The Long View

2009-04-07T20:20:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, when thinking about the track that humanity seems to be on right now, it's fun and interesting to think about the long-run view of it all.

There are a few different scales to consider. Let's go backwards.

First, in the cosmic sense, nothing is destined to last. While cosmologists aren't really sure what the universe, as a whole, is doing, they know it's one of several options. So here's what we know: at one point in the distant past, the universe (an infinitely dense speck of matter) started expanding. Exactly what the universe was before a tiny dot is unknown - we'll get to that. But this entire notion of expansion is pretty key, because the truth is that we can't even really talk about the universe being a tiny dot. There was nothing else to compare it to. This isn't even as philosophical as it sounds - there just wasn't anything else (there still isn't). There wasn't nothing that the tiny dot expanded into, there was just what there was, if that makes any sense.

So the universe started expanding very quickly. And as it did, it went from being very hot (like, so hot atoms couldn't even form) to something cold enough that proper elements like hydrogen could get together - but still hot enough for a bit of fusion, from hydrogen into helium. But it kept expanding, and eventually we got stars and planets and such. And now we're at now.

But the universe is still expanding. And weirdly enough, that expansion is speeding up. Again, it's not that all the galaxies are starting to move faster - the actual space in everything and between everything is just getting larger, like a balloon inflating.

So, three options. First, expansion could continue (and continue speeding up) and we end up with a universe where all the heat and energy is so spread out that it amounts to basically nothing. If there is matter left, it's just dark rocks, hurtling through space. This is called heat death - because there's nothing left but cold.

Second, expansion could slow down, then stop, then reverse. It would be mighty strange, but eventually, everything would wind up smashing back into a single, tiny point - like the universe at the beginning of time. At the end of time, time itself would essentially cease. Maybe something we don't know about would cause it to blow up again, and then a new universe would start up - who knows? It'd be a nice cyclical kind of thing, though.

Third, we could just end up bouncing back and forth, as expansion proceeds, reverses, stops before the Big Crush (as the second option is known), then starts expanding again. In terms of long-term, this is probably the best option for us to hope for, because the universe won't really end, and the expanding and contracting would probably stir things up enough to prevent heat death (maybe). So that's cool.

But any way you look it, it'd be a difficult universe for humanity to survive in forever. We probably won't manage.

After all, if we go down a scale - down from the universe to the much, much smaller solar system - then prospects are much more immediately bleak. In about 6 billion years (give or take a couple billion) the sun will turn into a red giant. Basically, the sun will fuse hydrogen in its core until there's no more - all that's left is helium. At that point, the sun will collapse a little - enough to start burning a bunch of the hydrogen outside of the core - and the outer shells of the sun will puff way out, and the sun will grow until its outer limits are at about Mars. The astute observer will notice that the Earth is closer to the sun than Mars. Well, so.

If we're still around when this happens, one hopes that we will have found a way to avoid this fate. But in any case, the Earth itself will be doomed (unless we do something really drastic like move the planet, which seems a little unfeasible. Maybe by then we'll be wise enough to let go.

So in terms of human events on the planet Earth, the sun going red giant is probably our upper limit.

But stepping down in scale again - to the level of our species - will we even be around that long to notice?

Generally speaking, species don't last for that long. It's hard to say how long an average species lasts - almost as hard as saying exactly what distinguishes any particular species. What we do know is that in the natural order of things, species go extinct and are replaced by new ones all the time.

The words "natural order" is key, though. As we can see from our current situation, there are a lot of natural rules that don't really seem to apply to humanity. In general, we're a strange one anyway - homo sapien is curiously lacking in close relatives (aside from big foot). For some reason or another, we are quite alone in our particular niche.

Also of importance is that our particular niche seems to be snubbing the natural order every way we can. We create simple ecosystems through agriculture for the sole purpose of supporting ourselves. This is a good thing - it's led us to be pretty successful, all around, in terms of ensuring our own survival. Agriculture and other technological advances have essentially led us to snub all the traditional carrying capacities that tend to limit the growth of a species. By and large, we have (or have the capability to) prevent the sorts of famines, diseases, competition, and over-harvesting that normally limit the size of a population. And the environmental, harmony-with-nature perspective of this blog aside, that's a pretty cool thing. I certainly don't want to change that.

The question becomes whether we have an unlimited ability to step over natural hurdles. We have vaccines and antibiotics, for example, that prevent population-controlling events like diseases, for example - but a highly resistant super-epidemic could still come into existence. And while we're really good at producing food, there could very well be an upper limit on that, too. So not to be all doomsday-scary, but who knows if we can keep snubbing the natural order.

So what's that mean? Does it mean that the day may come where humanity recognizes that it's time for its natural extinction, and goes quietly in the night? Well, probably not. But it may mean that we'll have to start limiting ourselves.

Of course, as a species, we've also discovered space flight (in all of its impracticality). We're not exactly close to getting any sort of significant number of people off the ground, or sustaining them once they do, but someday that may be the best answer we have. I hate the idea of condemning long-term ideas by labeling them sci-fi, but let's be honest - space colonization pretty much is. And that's okay.

But I could go around in circles on this for ages. Let's step down another step, to the sort of future we can imagine - say, 10,000 years.

Here's the state of things. The climate is changing. Research suggests that if we don't start working to prevent it, a bunch of feedback cycles will kick in and push us into a truly warm age. This'll be bad in the short term - the next 1,000 years, which is how long the effects of climate change will stay with us once it really gets going. The climate is a really big system - took us 200 years with all of our technology to really get it moving, and it'll take a long time to shift back.

But even if that happens, humanity will survive. We are survivors. After all the catastrophe is done, the climate may very well settle down into something nice, and we'll be ready. In the medium run (again, 10,000 years - ish) it might actually be a good thing. Or, biodiversity will be so utterly wrecked by human expansion and climate shift that nature, all over the planet, will start failing. That would be bad (and seems a little more likely - most of nature isn't equipped to react as quickly as we can).

I don't know whether that's meant to be hopeful or not. I certainly don't find it especially comforting. But after shirking all of nature's hurdles and built-in controls, maybe we've hit one we can't fix. It's a basic, discomforting truth that we don't even know if achieving 450 by 2050 will actually help anything. We hope it will - and suspect it will - but we don't really know. And this isn't even the standard models-don't-work denier stuff; we just don't have a very good idea of how far we'll get ourselves into feedback loops with a concentration of 450 parts per million, and it depends on a lot of factors.

But we'll survive. Whether or not we'll end up with a world we'll enjoy, take comfort in, and be able to thrive in - that's another question entirely.

On the other hand, though, the Earth is pretty screwed in half a dozen billion years anyway. Why try, right?

Incidentally, there's a lot of beauty in the idea that the universe will someday collapse back into a new Big Bang, isn't there? I hope that's the one that happens. And hey, maybe someday humanity will be widespread and powerful enough to make it happen.

It's the Green Police, baby

2009-04-05T21:39:00.000-07:00

Embarassingly, I think I posted this last night instead of saving it as a draft. Yay sleep deprivation! Good thing I don't have an audience of thousands RSS-feeding this blog.

But anyway!

So lately, some interesting developments have come up regarding the enforcement of environmental policy, which is something that can really only grow. It comes in a few different flavors.

First, a few weeks back I caught an article on New York City's "environmental conservation officers" and the difficulty they have A. enforcing regulations and B. getting people to take them seriously, despite their uniforms and guns. In general, they check on street-level enforcement stuff; whether fish markets are selling fish they shouldn't've been fishing, whether trucks are putting out too much gross stuff, whether oil is leaking from gas stations or body shops - stuff like that, stuff that leads New York residents to ask them things like "You’re not from here".

But it is, without a doubt, a good thing - environmental regulations are Good Things, and making sure that people know about them and comply with them is necessary. Without a bit of perspective about why we need to do things like protect fish populations and local atmospheres, the jump to protecting the planet with drastic action (the only kind that will work) is meaningless. The point is that what we each do matters, and the environ-cops are (hopefully) helping people realize that.

The Environmental Protection Agency, though, is taking a wider and harder approach. In December, they established a list of people who are Most Wanted for environmental fraud and other crimes. It's currently 21 people long, and will hopefully stop other law enforcement agencies from letting environmental criminals slip through their fingers.

Looking at the over-all mission, it's important - it's a smaller-scale version of the efforts that led to the establishment of Homeland Security. The basic idea: there's so much information in the world these days, how do we get something done?

But there's another message - a lot of these regulations aren't soft any more. The EPA, of late, has been trying to show that they have teeth - whether that's a national effort to round up the kind of people who pretend to train people in asbestos removal or going after people over-emitting carbon dioxide regardless of what happens in Congress. And that's something I applaud. Contrary to popular sentiment, we need to crack down and show people that environmental laws are important - because we can't get something done on feelings alone.

Are we creating a regime of environmental protectionism where fascist, paramilitary operatives will strike down the hard-working factory owners over emitting a little too much carbon dioxide? Exaggeration aside, I certainly hope so - because we've got to get to work.

Something a little different

2009-04-05T21:30:00.000-07:00

I want to share this opinion/thoughtful prose piece published in the New York Times today. It's not the straight content of it so much as the emotional value of the question it asks - what is humanity's element?

I was glad to read that, because it's really the central issue in everything this blog deals with. How do we relate to the world, and what's our place in it? And, maybe more specifically - do we have to play by the rules, or have we legitimately overcome many of nature's limits?

I'm in danger of over-analyzing and over-questioning the piece, so I'll just leave it be. Just a final thought: more than anything, this is a struggle for humanity to find a way to be comfortable with itself. I think I'm starting to truly believe that.

And furthermore,

2009-04-04T19:43:00.000-07:00

Building power lines isn't always as simple as you'd think. In my mind, at least, I tend not to think about them; "they're everywhere, so whatever" is my basic train of thought.

But it does bare some consideration. Part of the reasoning behind pushing for a new, better smart grid is that we lose a fair amount of power - 3-6% of the electricity are figures I've seen, depending on a lot of factors like transmission voltage, direct versus alternating current, and distance electricity has to travel. A smart grid, in addition to being more efficient about allocating power, would also get us more efficient transmission.

But in addition to all the engineering, economic, environmental, and social questions we should be asking about more power lines, we need to ask the big one: are we just failing to embrace a new paradigm?

I hate using the word paradigm, probably due to too much exposure to Dilbert during formative periods of my life, but it works here. Since electricity became widespread, it's been expected that you build a power plant somewhere - either somewhere away from people, as with coal and nuclear plants, or just on the resource you want to use, as in the case of hydro and thermal power plants. But now that we're (slowly, slowly) shifting towards renewable energy, we really need to start asking ourselves whether it's truly better to stick with the paradigm that we build a big facility out in the world and transmit the power to where we need it - or whether we scale down the power plant and build those where-ever we need power.

To be entirely fair, we will probably always need some sort of a power grid, especially given the variability that goes along with renewable energy. Wind and solar resources in different geographic locations need to be able to cover for each other if they have to. But at the same time, there's a difference between base-load infrastructure and building lots of new power lines all over the place - and losing energy for our trouble.

Now, it's also fair to say that large solar and wind installations have the strength of economies of scale. Maintenance is easier. They're more efficient at generating power.

But here are more hard questions that someone needs to ask: what is efficiency, and how do we value it? The economic definition is that something is most efficient when it cannot be made better without some other aspect of it being made worse - which is nice, but when we talk about efficiency we really mean what it does for the amount of money it costs and whether there's a way to do more for cheaper. We're talking about money - people can cry "over-simplification!" (because it is), but when it comes right down to it, the main reason renewables are not considered competitive yet is because it costs more money to produce electricity.

But there's this handy word that economists use when they can't express something in terms of money - externality. There are positive externalities - good things - and negative externalities - bad things. In this case, coal plants that cause catastrophic climate change and harm the environment both before generating power (strip mining and mountain top removal) and after (fly ash and localized emissions) are "negative externalities". A solar panel, which does not do these things, has a "positive externality" component to it (although, in all fairness, most solar panels do have heavy metals in them, which are bad - they're working on it).

Over time, though, I get the feeling that we don't really label things as externalities because we want to categorize and tally them. We call these things externalities because we want to ignore them, for whatever reason. For me, personally, mitigating climate change and helping the environment is much more important than cost (as it is for 64,000 other people also enrolled in Pacific Power's extra-money-for-renewable-projects program).

What I'm getting at, in fits and starts, is that there's something off about the way we've been measuring these sorts of things. Pure, monetary efficiency is what got us into this problem to begin with - companies and people didn't take negative externalities aka climate change and environmental damage into consideration, just the bottom line. Lately, there's been a lot of talk about triple bottom lines - that is, a company must fulfill environmental and social concerns in addition to generating profit - and to be sure, tons of companies are doing great things.

But the discourse is still oriented towards money. If we consider what the fundamental idea behind a carbon tax or a cap and trade policy is, it's to apply negative externalities directly to economic costs. And while I support those things - because hey, human nature - I don't think that they can take us the distance.

We have to start considering things deeper. We have to start looking for externalities, and judging how much they're worth.

And we have to start thinking about the fact that the way we've done things might not be the best. I don't think it's going to be enough to just substitute a solar installation for a coal plant and call it done. We need shifts in technology, energy, transportation, and policy, yes - but to do that and see it through, we need a shift in priorities.

Vertical Axis Wind Turbines

2009-04-04T18:06:00.000-07:00

So we've all seen Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines aka big propellers that create electricity. And those are cool, but they seem to suffer from a scaling-down problem that makes them a little hard to on top of buildings, specifically - which is where the vertical axis kind come in.

But first, an interesting question: is there even any worthwhile wind on top of buildings?

One widely-quoted expert, Mike Sagrillo, says in an interview with Mother Earth News, not really.

The wind trips over obstacles, and when it trips, the wind can’t do the work it could have done without the obstacle. You’re creating turbulence and diminishing the quality of the wind resource. With wind, we’re dealing with quantity, yes, but we’re also dealing with quality. You want a nice fluid flow, not turbulence.

It's certainly a problem - and the greatest wind resources are, as a recent trip to Arizona and New Mexico anecdotally confirms, out in smooth, flat-but-not-too-flat land.

The whole interview is, essentially, a condemnation of vertical axis wind as something useful (at the moment, anyway). In general, Sagrillo - a small-wind columnist and expert with some long-term experience - believes that the scientific and engineering work hasn't really been put into creating vertical axis stuff that's worthwhile; in addition, issues of basic physics reduce the efficiency of vertical axis stuff about 5% (with horizontal axis stuff generally around 35% efficient in terms of getting power from wind, vertical axis is about 30% efficient). Not only that; generally, because vertical axis stuff looks so cool (and it does), most vertical axis turbines tend to be a little scammy. On the American Wind Energy Association website, Sagrillo wrote a column about a study of urban/residential wind turbines that compared actual power generation to what the manufacturers predicted it would be. In general, the performance is depressing - except for the turbines installed on top of buildings. (It's worth noting that these are horizontal axis turbines, I believe - I bring it up to illustrate the scam-ful nature of some wind turbine companies, and to illustrate that while the manufacturer numbers are based on a computer model, the model breaks down in urban settings.)

Which is kinda a drag, because - in my opinion - vertical axis wind power in an urban setting is one of the keys to creating a society not only capable of mitigating climate change but also continuing that work towards a profoundly different, more sustainable society.

But, fortunately for my own soul, my university has been helping with some cool work to actually create a relatively cheap, efficient vertical axis turbine. Not only have they made it (locally and quite sustainably, too), but they're set to testing the hell out of it with the help of several public organizations in Portland.

The HE-100 Wind Turbine has some benefits over a more conventional horizontal axis wind turbine. It takes up much less space, is capable of being stacked or set up right next to each other (remember, urban setting) and doesn't kill birds. According to the makers, they don't create the sort of vibrations and noise that would kill any practical urban application. And they may start to overcome one of essential problems with urban wind generation - the weak and turbulent winds created by a landscape broken by buildings - because they start producing electricity in 5mph winds, and unlike horizontal axis designs, are capable of utilizing wind that changes directions quickly.

Plus they're bright green and made from a lot of recycled material. Cool.

So anyway, I'm talking these things up a lot. There are two reasons; first, Portland State pride! Go Vikings? Or a mandate embracing both intelligent urban planning and sustainability, anyway (motto: in urbi serviat, let knowledge serve the city, cool stuff). The second and much more pressing reason is that this vertical axis wind turbine starts to break the conventions that Sagrillo talks about in the interview above; specifications on the turbine are publically available, and extensive testing will occur with units installed on Portland State University buildings and new Trimet facilities (Trimet is Portland's mass transit authority).

But more than that, this wind turbine - and others like it that are no doubt being research and created - represents something that I think is important. In the interview and other material, Sagrillo talks about how basic, physical laws mean that vertical axis wind turbines are a little less efficient and little harder to take care of than horizontal axis stuff. That may be true - I don't honestly know if the HE-100 design, or any other vertical axis design, stands up to that.

But at the same time, that product was conceived and is being built for a single purpose - to bring power generation to where the electricity is needed. In terms of pure numbers, a giant wind farm in the middle of nowhere (meaning, of course, the middle of a non-urban ecosystem) may produce more electricity out of the same amount of wind - and perhaps for less money - even counting the cost of transmitting power long-distance.

Yet, local power generation is important. It's the greatest step we can take to break away from both foreign energy (which is not just oil) and retreat from environmental destruction. The way I see it, proposing that climate change mitigation can only be accomplished with massive solar and wind installations is missing one of the points of climate change mitigation. Yes, there's a concrete target - 450 by 2050 - that will achieve important results, but we need to start looking beyond that. Climate change means not only human suffering, but massive environmental damage; are we short-sighted enough to continuing destroying the environment to achieve mitigation?

I don't know the numbers as well as a lot of people. It may well be possible that our only hope is huge installations in protected wildlife areas. We may have to make a devil's bargain to beat the heap-of-mistakes passed down to us by previous generations.

But one thing that won't change, regardless of whether or not we reach 450 by 2050 and start mitigating climate change, is that humanity needs a new paradigm. Not just respect for species (by not extinction-ing them) or respect for individual, picturesque ecosystems, but a respect for all ecosystems - including human ones. The only way we can achieve that given the growth of population and energy needs in the world is to start making the most of our cities - places where we've already paved over nature.

And the key to doing that is, first and foremost, local power generation. Vertical axis wind is one of those things. Whether or not a vertical turbine on top of a building works as well as a huge propeller on top of a hill somewhere - I'm not convinced that that matters as much as people think it does. I think the biggest thing is that we're using our cities well - they're starting to produce something, rather than just consume.

And hey, it is Portland State. Go Vikings.

Documenting a Flashpoint

2009-04-03T18:49:00.000-07:00

So, as I often do, I've been turning the idea of getting the word out about climate change beyond scientific circles. Now I'm not trying to say that there haven't already been mammoth efforts on that score (along with a couple Nobel prizes), but a recent Gallup poll says that 52% of US citizens believe there's scientific consensus on climate change and 47% believe in scientific consensus on anthropogenic warming (that is, humans are causing it). But when these folks surveyed Earth scientists, they found the numbers much higher - climatologists answered 96% or so to both.

But there was a funky thing going on. The farther away from climate science that scientists got, in terms of their primary discipline, the less they believed in the consensus on anthropogenic warming. That, to me, says some interesting things - when it's not your field of study, how important is a "scientifically trained" mind? Apparently, it's worth something - more Earth scientists, regardless of discipline, believed in consensus than random citizens. But it's not worth as much as a lot of people may believe - more often than anything else, the reasoning I hear behind climate change (and the reasoning I repeat myself) is that it's scientifically determined. Well, so; but apparently just being a scientist doesn't change much. I'd be willing to wager that scientists in radically different fields believe in consensus just as much as non-scientists (with equivalent education), or near enough.

So that says something interesting, but there was a specific fact that also leaped out at me. The group of Earth scientists with the lowest consensus, at only 64%, was meteorologists. And that sparked some thoughts.

Now, before I go on (and on) about this, a note. First, it's hardly a representative sample - the sample size for meteorologists was like, 34 people. That's not a very good statistic amount. But still, that's a fair amount of meteorologists who don't believe in consensus, especially considering that their field is much, much closer to climatology (I would argue, anyway) than, say, geochemists (more of whom, apparently, believe in consensus). So, yes, I understand - it's not representative.

But it kinda is, because in my trawlings around the internet, I've encountered other things about meteorologists. (And apparently, even the dudes on the television have to be accredited as meteorologists.)

And it also made me remember an article I read a while back. Sadly, I've googled to hell and back and can't find it, but the thrust of it was that meteorologists are bizarrely unaccepting of the concept of climate change. Which is strange. And, ultimately, sad - the meteorologist on television and the newspaper is one of the best ways people could be reached. Imagine having the weatherman explain what climate change could mean for your region in fifty years.

Indeed, if meteorologists were able to connect honestly with the public about climate change, then there would probably be a raise in the level of people who believe in consensus. I'm not trying to say that meteorologists should be quick to connect a weather-related disaster to global warming (newspeople kinda already do that) - I'm saying that meteorologists across the board should be knowledgeable about climate change and what it means.

I mean, what is that we're doing now but trying to change our own forecasts?

Finally, it's worth noting that the group of people who believe in global warming less than meteorologists are Economic Geologists. I had to look it up, but this is the group of people who figure out where valuable stuff is in the Earth. Great.

A return to the idea of Wind

2009-04-03T18:39:00.001-07:00

So in the past, I spent some time covering wind power (you can see right over there on the toolbar), but more and more I've started to realize that maybe I'm not really covering the right thing about wind power, because all I really ended up talking about was big propellers on top of big poles (or, in a drastic departure, small propellers on small poles).

Which is why it's so cool when I stumble onto something super-neat like using kites to generate incredible amounts of wind power.

It sounds ridiculous because it kind of is. Or maybe it's not as ridiculous as it is audacious - the speaker's words. Either way, it really comes down to exploiting the simple fact that wind is more powerful higher up - just, without building a big pole.

Video is only 6 minutes, so take the time - and next time I decided to drop by this blog thing I think I'll do something on the other super-neat wind invention, vertical axis turbines.

News Round-up

2009-03-31T09:17:00.000-07:00

Joe Romm at climateprogress.org has three great, informative, utterly important posts in a row.

First! Mitigating climate change will not be as expensive as the media makes it sound; many options pay for themselves.

Second! Even the most ambitious global solutions being talked about won't be enough at this point, based on several models created for judging the purpose.

Third! The energy/climate change budget proposal just introduced to the Senate is good! With some bad parts! Find out why! Also, a link to the summary of the budget itself (I think we all prefer the summaries because the actual bill is 648 pages long). Warning: it's a .pdf. Do I have to warn people about this?

Next, Earthhour was pretty successful!

My take on all these is this: the time is right because we simply can't delay. The first step is finding a way to reach more and more people with the real message - that we can't do this gently. I'm not saying the only alternative is violence - of course not - but the changes we have to make, and the speed with which we have to make them, may not be the most comfortable.

So yeah. Even if our economy is crippled, even if most of the Senate Republicans are standing up against whatever despite the enormous popular support the B-man enjoys. Even if we like our way of life the way it is now. Doesn't matter. We've gotta change.

We've gotta change wisely and responsibly, but we've still gotta do it faster, and our changes need to reach farther.

(My hat is tipped to Yglesias for the poll posted above.)

Perspectives

2009-03-30T21:09:00.000-07:00

So, yeah.

Sometimes, when I watch politicians on television, I cannot comprehend how they believe what they say they believe. I'm not even talking about religious stuff - I'm talking about things like free market systems and stuff (at least, in the current world).

It's really all in the perspective, innit. There are so many things that are so complicated that being able to wrap your head around them in their entirety is a rare gift - especially given the lack of experimentation done for information that could start to definitively settle some arguments (cough cough economists).

In other cases, though, it's very clear. From my perspective, at least.

Downriver in Manitoba, authorities have taken some of the guesswork out of the Red equation. Starting with the construction of the Red River Floodway in 1962 - informally named Duff's Ditch for Premier Duff Roblin - provincial governments have consistently taken a longsighted approach to flood protection. The floodway diverts overflow from the Red around Winnipeg. In 37 years, the floodway has been opened 20 times, saving $10-billion in flood damages, according to government estimates.

[...] But the political culture in North Dakota resists such solutions.

Earlier this week, one homeowner 15 minutes north of Fargo talked with pride about the flood-protection measures he'd erected with his neighbours. "That's how it should be," he said, trudging through knee-deep water inches from flowing into his home. "We don't need government in here screwing things up."

Seriously?

I understand distrusting government in a lot of circumstances, but there are some things they do well - like huge infrastructure projects. Like dams. And highways. And large construction projects that can prevent catastrophic flooding.

I'm not sure how much of this is really distrust of government and how much it's the idea that what we don't pay for now can't save us any money down the line. Citizens of the United States, especially recently, seem to be violently allergic to the idea of up-front investment - which is a little ironic, considering what we say we're trying to revive in the economy.

The analogy to climate change - especially since the Red River thing is a great example of one of the ways climate change will impact our lives - is very clear to me.

Again, be nervous about government. I believe in state militias and the second amendment (to a point, anyway). I believe in balancing power. But I also believe that government has a role to play in preventing tragedies that are beyond the scope of individual or small-community action - and that's climate change to a tee.

From Only It In For the Gold (which hat-tipped to "Kathy Austin @kdaustin") via A Few Things Ill Considered (which hat-tipped H.E. Taylor) gosh the blogotubes are complicated.

Nova Prospekt

2009-03-30T11:35:00.000-07:00

When I woke up this morning, something about space was jabbering through my brain. Maybe because of the second trip of space tourist Charles Simonyi, maybe because I watched Deep Impact last night (such a great movie - you lie, Rotten Tomatoes!), maybe because I found the wikipedia page on the Best Named Book Ever (Even If I Don't Agree With Its Conclusions), I dunno.

So by way of finding an excuse to talk about space (it's really big, you see - really really big), I want to wonder a little about our future.

Climate change is a looming threat which is going to take a lot more than the effort we - as a country and a world - have put out so far to beat. But can we beat it?

Some people (the Best Named Book Ever by James Lovelock among them) think that we just can't. Others believe that it's possible if we get working right now - but that work is, essentially, politically impossible in the current world. Other people are a little more optimistic - like me, sort of - while other people like Senator James Inhofe are so incredibly optimistic about climate change that they believe that even if there is warming, "God is still up there."

So, in short, there's a long list of possibilities.

But there are some general notes that are pretty certain. There is warming, and this warming is going to cause an increase in weather extremes. And while it's coming incredibly quickly by Earth's standards, we - as humans - do have time to prepare. In other words, this is not the Day After Tomorrow (and, point of fact, the scientists in that movie were as surprised as anyone climate-literate in the audience).

And most importantly, the further extremes resulting from climate change will not hit everywhere equally.

Most people think that even if we did everything right today, there'd still be fairly significant (around 2 degrees celsius - enough to be noticed, without a doubt) warming - we've stressed the climate enough that it's already reacting, and will keep changing just off of what we've already put into the atmosphere and oceans. So there's that.

So no matter what we do, something's going to happen - so let's imagine. In particular, I want to focus on hurricanes, droughts, and changed weather that will impact crops.

Let's imagine hurricanes the strength of Katrina (or stronger) hitting every year in a variety of places. We would either have to invest huge amounts of money in stronger defenses against rising water and wind (as well as inevitable rebuilding) or retreat from the places hit hardest by hurricanes - in the United States, that's the South all the way to Texas. That alone would cripple our national oil industry, even if work could still continue part of the year, and unless organized extremely well - with help from OPEC and some other nations - would result in wide-spread gasoline shortages. Industry related to the Gulf of Mexico - fishing, tourism, sugar cane - would most likely also be struck hard, just because maintaining infrastructure along the coast would be much more expensive.

Droughts, meanwhile, would hit dry places, especially as population increases lead to greater water usage. The question is the same - do we try to defend ourselves or retreat from the affected area? One possible means of defending ourselves is to build desalinization plants - most likely powered by nuclear reactors (which is proven technology - Japan has built eight). Unfortunately, the economics of new nuclear reactors are such that we would most likely be exhausting natural water sources before turning to them - unless some serious legislation was passed. Plus, no matter how fast we work, there's lag time in setting up the kinds of plants that would be necessary to keep agriculture in California and the Southwest going at the same level - in short, there's going to be some disruption to crops.

To a less-Biblically-epic degree, storms resulting from a faster water cycle (warmer air/water means more evaporation which means more water vapor in storm systems) would also hit agricultural land, but much more randomly. Defending against this would be harder - but so would retreat. On the whole, while we might be able to gen-engineer sturdier crops, set up mass greenhouses to defend against it, or just increase yields to the point of compensation, there would still be disruption here, as well.

I guess the main point I'm trying to make is just that - there's going to be disruption. A lot of the rhetoric against acting on climate change cites a need to preserve the economy - or just our society. A lot of it relies on creating doubt about the science, but that's just the means; the end is to preserve the status quo.

But that's not possible. The United States might be hit especially hard by climate change, due to our size and multiple coasts and irrigated deserts, but no country is going to soldier on exactly as it's doing now - especially given globalization. The economic crisis has shown that the financial structures of the world are deeply intertwined - but so are commodity and food markets. Disruption in some parts of the world - especially temperate bread-basket regions - will resonate through-out the globe.

There will be disruption. We've already killed the status quo - it just hasn't finished dying off yet.

So anyway, on that cheery thought, why don't we just escape to space and colonize another planet?

First, we have yet to find any that might end up being suitable - all the extra-solar planets we've found are gas giants that orbit very close to their suns (there might be a few exceptions to this by now, though - they're finding new ones all the time).

Something in our solar system, maybe? Well, there are some moons of Jupiter and Saturn that might work - or we could try to terraform Venus or Mars - but we're far below the technology that that would require. We couldn't even keep people in Biosphere 2 alive without injecting additional oxygen - there were too many variables. A simpler habitat might suffice, but the engineering and construction advances needed for any kind of colonization effort is just mindboggling (and would probably have to start with a space elevator). Space-based colonies suffer from the same problems - as well as the fact that we have no idea what happens to people when they live their lives in weightless space. While weightlessness could be overcome (such as with super-rad space colony designs), that's a whole new engineering/construction feat.

To me, it seems better to put money and energy into the problem now rather than later - especially since mitigating climate change has so many positive benefits, like reforestation and re-establishment of wet lands, a move towards localized, renewable power, pollution and heat-island reduction, and long-run-cheaper cars.

Or we could just pray, I guess.

The Relative Costs of Energy

2009-03-29T20:30:00.000-07:00

This article in the New York Times, aimed at comparing the prices of coal, natural gas, and renewable energy sources, raises some questions and issues that lurk in the background of any discussion on electricity generation.

Looking at the numbers cited by the article, here's how it breaks down (the unit, kilowatt/hours, is 1,000 watts per hour - the average lightbulb requires 50-120 watts per hour):

Coal: 7.8 cents/kilowatt hour
Natural Gas: 10.6
Nuclear: 10.8
Straight Wind (in a good location, utility-scale): 9.9
Wind with Natural Gas back-up: A little over 12
Thermal Solar (good location): about 20-21
Photovoltaic: About 30 (for utility-scale installations

(The article gets a little less specific as it goes on - partially because so much of it is dependent on location and stuff like that.)

So, the first big issue is how we define these costs. In this case, the New York Times is defining it by how much money the consumer would have to pay for electricity, given that the electric company passes on the cost of everything straight to the consumer. But it's worth noting that there's a huge difference between fossil fuels and renewable energy. Renewable energy plants (again, utility scale - more on that in a second) have, essentially, two costs associated with them: the initial construction and upkeep (maintenance). With fossil fuel and nuclear plants, you have those as well, but there are additional costs - the fuel itself. And with coal and nuclear plants specifically, there are also by-products that need to be dealt with - radioactive remains from nuclear and fly ash/slurry from coal plants.

That by itself tells one a lot about the fundamental differences between fossil fuels and renewables. And while nuclear waste is highly regulated, the coal ash is not - as we've seen at least three times this year, when ash or slurry (ash mixed with water) contaminated nearby water sources. But because of the industrial accidents involving coal ash, it's probable that there are going to be tighter disposal requirements coming down the pipe which may act to drive the price of coal, specifically, up a little. And to be fair, they do note that coal and natural gas are dependent on the market, so even without any technological innovation renewables could still end up cheaper in the near future.

Despite all this nitpicking, though, coal is still cheapest - a fact that the New York Times article points out several times.

Well, so?

We know climate change is happening, and we know it's going to be destructive. That's not a debate. We also know that the single largest factor contributing to it is the coal that's been burned constantly, in huge amounts, over the past two centuries.

There are all sorts of analogies one could use for this, lots of them involving doctors and medicines that don't work but are cheaper, but my head's a little wonky from traveling all day. The basic fact is that burning coal is the greatest factor that got us into this mess, and therefore it should be off the table. The NYTimes starts to hit on this a little ("environmentalists cite the indirect costs to society, like strip mining or spills of coal ash" but utterly fails to see the forest. Coal is the problem, and it's changing the world. Mountain top removal, strip mining, coal ash spills - these are problems. Climate change is a disaster.

Without going too far into crazy-territory (because I never, ever do that), coal needs to stop. As much of a fan as I am for a more honest pricing system that takes environmental issues into the true cost of things, burning coal as a primary national power source is so beyond the "negative externalities" idea as a pin-prick is from a gun shot. We need to get off coal, oil, and (to a lesser degree) gas-that-occurs-in-nature. Right?

The other issue with this report: the idea of "utility-scale power plants". You need a huge facility for efficient (and, therefore, cheap) generation of fossil fuel power. You simply can't generate any meaningful amount of electricity off of lots and lots of small fossil fuel generators - the economy of scale isn't there.

But wind and solar have that potential. Small scale wind is getting better all the time, especially with lots of research being done into vertical axis turbines that are safe and easy to have in cities (larger post on this is a-comin'). And tons of houses and cities already make use of solar panels - and huge tax breaks are already available or coming down the pipe for people to put them in. Not many people can put in solar today, but more will tomorrow, and more after that, until we hit a critical mass and have to start asking what we do with all these power lines we don't need anymore (exaggeration, but still).

The fact of the matter is that utility-scale power should be on its way out. Localized combinations of solar and wind - helped along with geothermal and tidal where-ever possible - are the future, because they're better for communities, cities, and nations. We're not there yet - not quite yet - but we're damn close if we just applied some energy (haha) to the problem.

But we don't. Or, at least, the NYTimes doesn't.

Last nitpick: for their nuclear number, they say "a new nuclear reactor, 10.8 cents." Don't get your hopes up, though - in the United States, at least, this number is entirely theoretical, since we haven't built a new plant in a while. I dunno how they got their number - probably through an expert, who probably used a combination of nuke plants in other countries and theory - but it doesn't mean much.

So in the end, my issue with this article is two-fold. First, they ignore what the real concern over coal power is. Second, they don't go the distance in terms of noting some key differences between renewables and coal - despite how its the differences that make renewables so much more desirable.

Seriously though, we need to get off coal.

I swear to god

2009-03-28T21:50:00.000-07:00

This morning I woke up and said "Okay, James, stop being so mean to Republicans - just because they worry that the economy is more fragile than the world is in danger. They just have different priorities."

My personal theory is that Representative John Shimkus (R-Illinois) is psychic and heard me think that thought as he was driving by the place I'm staying in Arizona (because he also travels through time, you see). I'm forced to believe this because the idea that someone elected by thousands of people to represent them for anything at all - never mind in the federal government - could be so dumb that he doesn't understand anything about

Gaaaaaahhhhh.

Okay I'm done.

I mean, I just don't understand how you can be so willfully ignorant - does he just ignore every piece of information on this subject that crosses his desk? Illinois has to have some kind of climate change advocacy or lobbyism going for

No, I'm done. I am done.

But it's worth noting that the out-spoken, willful ignorance of a few conservative politicians and pundits do not represent the entire Republican party - nor conservatives in general. And while I'm (obviously) guilty of picking on the weak, stupid and sick members of the herd, I also firmly believe that the issue of climate change is larger than any partisan considerations.

It's like this - the changes we have to make go beyond progressive. Being progressive means you think there are some tweaks to be made. These changes are revolutionary - but not violently so. Instead, we've been given not only the means but the excuse as well to reinvent ourselves for the better. Maybe that's progressive or liberal or Democrat or whatever, but I see it more as a great opportunity (although, admittantly, one born from disaster).

And despite these few conservative politicians, I think that this opportunity extends to everyone. Solving climate change isn't about creating a liberal paradise - it's about tackling an issue. And while there are conservation elements to it, and while we certainly have to be careful about our cure being worse for the environment than the disease, that doesn't mean anything regarding party lines. There are ways of confronting climate change from all angles - and we need to be doing it, right now.

So I say screw you, John Shimkus - and Republicans and Democrats alike should too. Because people like him don't help anyone; he pisses off Democrats and makes Republicans look bad - and way worse than that, he holds back the actions that both parties should be taking. And just because he's stupid, and that's no excuse.

And since I'm trying to get better about hat-tipping, thanks Yglesias.

Updated thought:

OR AM I JUST FALLING INTO HIS SNARE?

Let's

see.

Oh, no. No, I'm not.

Interesting, while those links aren't as outrageous as the "PLANTS WILL DIE." argument, the commentary leveled by my new favorites (when it comes to Illinois politics at least) progressillinois.com shine some light on carbon cap-and-trade.

I thought about writing a letter to the Chicago Tribune or the Slate Journal-Register, the nearest newspaper to Shimkus's district that I could find (and winner of the "Just pick one name, honey, you don't need three synonyms" award) - but then I realized that, as a resident of Oregon who has never set foot in Illinois's 19th district, I don't have much of a leg to stand on.

Anyone out there from the FIGHTIN' 19TH (or around there, anyway) wanna do me a favor and send them a letter sharing the character of the man they've chosen to represent them?

Journalism, Deniers, and the Truth

2009-03-27T22:07:00.000-07:00

If you'll take a trip backwards in time to a wonderful era where this blog was half as old as it is now (i.e. a month ago - time crawls), we'll find a post I made recapping the stupid events surrounding a stupid (but probably still intelligent in his own way) man - George Will.

And now, A Few Things Ill Considered follows up the story (not based off my post, in case there's any confusion) and the column written by Chris Mooney and published in the Washington Post with a few choice words:

Congratulations, Chris, it is very well presented and important material. I can't however share your warm fuzzies for the WaPo's change of heart, because, well somehow presenting two sides to a debate, you know, bat-shit crazy versus intelligent reality, still falls a little short for me!

To which I add: yes!

Because it's a problem. I can't help but recall the scene in Good Night, and Good Luck. where Murrow convinces his producer that McCarthyism does not have two equal and balanced sides.

Well; so.

The IPCC has done its job. We can debate how we should go forward - and we should. We can debate economic facts - because if we know anything it's that we don't know how to build a truly sustainable economy. We can even debate to what degree we should value conservation versus the bigger picture of climate stabilization. But we cannot debate that climate change is occurring and that it is caused by humanity.

To me, that means that we have an ethical duty to try and stop it.

Apparently others don't agree.

Drill Baby Drill!

2009-03-27T21:12:00.000-07:00

Ah, the memories of Sarah Palin. Still so painful.

And yet, despite what I had hoped were just memories, I've been seeing this a lot lately. It started with a few bumberstickers scattered around the US southwest - though, technically, they were "Drill Here, Drill Now" - and I didn't think much of 'em, since hey, I still see Gore/Lieberman bumberstickers.

But then I watched an hour of CNN and saw ads by BP, among others, talking about drilling in the continental shelf by way of energy independence. And then I heard Michael Steele (this guy, man, this guy) reiterating the catchphrase that he (apparently) coined.

So is it a good idea?

Well, it depends on what sort of idea you're looking for. If you're just looking for a way to get off foreign (especially Saudi) oil, then continental shelf drilling is a way, sure.

But given everything we know (and considering what this blog stands for), off-shore drilling doesn't really take care of anything else. Off-shore drilling goes beyond just reinforcing an old, bad habit - it actively delays the actions that we can and must take to prevent further climate change. The primary problem is that it moves us away from developing the kind of transportation that's going to make the difference - plug-in electric and hybrids - but I think there's a deeper problem, too.

Going for off-shore drilling sends a message that we aren't interested in something new. And that's the key issue.

Because Obama's not about to sanction off-shore drilling. As far as I've heard, it's not even on the table - it's just a grudge that oil companies and Republicans are holding on to.

But it's important because it keeps coming up, and public-relations people for oil companies are trying to get it into the minds of people. And if it sticks, then that may be a sign that there's still a ways to travel in terms of starting to tackle climate change.

That said, I haven't necessarily seen any evidence that anyone beside the die-hards and oil companies are interested in such a thing. But with ads running, it's something to keep an eye on.

Cap n' Trade

2009-03-27T19:11:00.000-07:00

So let's talk about cap and trade a little.

I admit that I'm a little unstudied on the details of it. Here's my understanding:

An American system (which would need to be passed through Congress) would build off an already-implemented European system, with a few updates. In general, though, the principle remains the same: emiting more carbon dioxide (or just carbon? Not sure) than a certain amount (the cap) means that your company would have to buy enough permits to cover the overage. The "trade" part comes in because you can buy permits from other companies that don't have as great a need for them (because they've reduced their carbon output). The idea is that carbon emissions can be regulated with a free market hand, and that can produce more innovative carbon reduction strategies than a straight tax. (Or, the fact that it is a theoretically-free market is just supposed to appeal more to conservative economists - I don't know.)

So that's all pretty straightforward, in relative terms. The real questions are how the to-some-degree-successful European system can be adapted to not only work better (they had a rocky start, for reasons I'll explain) but also to work for the United States, because we're all special people.

One of those questions is how companies get permits to be traded in the first place. My understanding is that the Europeans gave a certain number away and that that caused a lot of problems (because then the prices of the permits were so low that no one needed to cut back to save money). From what I've heard, the possible solution (and also what the European Union is doing now) is to have the government auction a certain number of permits which are then distributed between companies. How that fixes things, I don't know - my knowledge of both the details and economics are a little too sketchy at this point (but at least I admit that). And, of course, it's all conjecture anyway; no one has actually introduced a carbon cap and trade bill, they're just thinking about it.

The other problem that people perceive is one of geography. Right now, there are parts of the country (the interior and South, mostly) that depends heavily on the fossil fuel trade. Texas is huge into refineries and oil. Parts of the country like West Virginia are huge into coal. Much of the power plants in the interior are fossil-fueled. So that's half of the geography equation.

The other half is that a carbon cap and trade bill is supposed to encourage innovation and emissions reduction. The concern here is that a disproportionate amount of that innovation would come from places like California and New York, which would result in more high-tech jobs in those places. So the net effect some people worry about is that jobs would leave some parts of the country (as fossil fuel industries have to shell out more money for innovations or permits) and jobs would be created in other parts (where the innovation is actually going to take place).

In a nutshell, this is why cap and trade seems like such a tough bill to pass through Congress. Not only are the Republicans against it, because they're opposed to it ideologically (but should they be, really?) but the worry is that some Democrats will be against it at well, because it may cost jobs in their states. That would bring the number of people likely to vote for it below 60, which is the supermajority that's become essentially required now because everything is filibustered now because the Republicans are horrible, spiteful individuals that can't see past their own personal aggregation of power to the bigger picture that would save not only their constituents but also the nation (not bitter, not bitter - must remember, Democrats filibuster too, everyone is evil [LINK TO YGLESIAS?]).

Possible solutions? Well, they're thin on the ground - mostly because, in my own, admittantly untutored view, this is more an issue of perception than fact. Leaving out the fact that Republicans have been known to make up crazy facts about bills they don't like (example: the mythical high-speed rail line between LA and Vegas ), there just isn't a lot of knowledge about what cap and trade might do. But the economic crisis has got everyone (a little understandably) shook up, which is why this is generally thought of as A Bad Time To Try For Cap And Trade.

That hasn't stopped the B-man's administration from putting forward the idea that a cap and trade bill could contain multiple regions based on geography - but again, details, no one knows, etc. - and if people have made up their minds that cap and trade is a Bad Idea or this is a Bad Time, then all the logical, wisdom-based alterations in the world probably won't help.

I have no idea why I'm so bitter today. Too much coffee? Too many videos of deniers who, inexplicably, have desks in the Chambers of Congress?

...Sorry. Not bitter. Not bitter. It's been a strange day.

Here's the thing that anyone invoking the geographical question seems to be missing - the effects of climate change, especially in the short term, are also geographically focused. While the global marketplace might spread the effects of things like shocks to food and water systems all over (remember when weather made fast food places take tomatoes off their burgers?), the localized effects will be predominantly in the southern and coastal areas of the United States. And that seems like an important point to consider.

Obama: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

2009-03-26T21:33:00.000-07:00

From SolveClimate.com, the Guardian reports that Obama may have to delay signing a Copenhagen climate change degree.

I don't think I've mentioned it here, but an upcoming global summit on climate change is due to occur at Copenhagen soon, and it was hoped that the groundwork for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol (which expires in 2012 and the US never bothered signing anyway) could be worked on and signed.

But Congress, man. Congress. (If you didn't click the article, Obama may have to delay because of opposition in Congress. Go read the story.)

There's a lot of stuff going on here. First, a lot of Democrats are from states heavily dependent on coal and other fossil fuels, so there's worry that they couldn't support climate change legislation (though they should - sustainability and renewables keep us all going in the long run). Second, while Obama could, technically, agree to follow through on his own, it might hurt his what, nine-week-old administration?

I don't honestly know whether the B-man should sign it or not. Obviously, my first choice would be for Congress to be on-board for the completely-necessary reinvention of our way of life. Barring that, though, I think I might still be enthralled enough by our new president to go with his reasoning (which is that the government will be in a better position to fight the good fight in six months, and Kyoto doesn't run out for 2.5 years anyway). And I certainly understand that Obama has some other stuff on his plate - his budget, health care, so on and so on.

But at a certain point, there will be members of Congress who, because of ideology, money from oil/coal companies, distrust, or their own warped world view, refuse to go along with any climate legislation - and a certain point, action needs to be taken against them. I don't mean we should like, take them out back and shoot them (that would be mean) - but someone should be standing up and asking them whether they, at long last, have no sense of decency. After all, they're firmly obstructing action on one of the biggest issues of our time.

UPDATE

The Onion understands me. I love The Onion.

Hoax-Watch: Joe Barton, R-TX

2009-03-26T20:44:00.000-07:00

God damn. (From climateprogress and DeSmog.)

You'll notice that Barton uses the name Christopher Monckton - I'm pretty sure I've already covered him and the fact that he's wrong (yay for archives?).

Representative Barton, who was voted into office by Texans (good for you!), is falling into one of the classic traps of global warming denial, and adding his conservative-cherry-on-top to the end of it. The argument is simple - because the Earth's climate has varied in the past and life still exists, the present climate variation is nothing to worry about.

There are two key elements that separate this climate shift from all previous ones.

First, humanity is dependent upon the Earth to such a greater degree than ever before. We have stretched the Earth beyond its sustainable limits - which is something we'll have to reckon with, one of these days - and there's simply not much space left. In the past, climate shifts caused movements of people; where should we move now? Warming won't open up enough of Canada and Siberia to settlement to deal with misplaced people along coasts, in desertified areas, or in the paths of new hurricanes. And we don't know what the hell an accelerated water cycle will do - never mind the idea that ocean currents could shift (yes, it could happen - just don't think of Day After Tomorrow as an example). And saying that humans will adapt is a horrible argument anyway - species adaption due to environmental stresses is not fun and easy. In this case, it would most likely mean a large die-off - millions and millions of people.

Second, because this climate shift is caused by huge injections of straight CO2, rather than sun-cycles causing CO2 to be released from the oceans a little quicker along with albedo shifts on the planet, the coming climate change is happening fast. Recklessly fast. Generally, we talk about climate shifts over long, long amounts of time - usually thousands of years. This one is coming up quicker, and when change happens fast it causes more stress - especially when it goes so fast large organisms (like, everything that isn't microscopic) can't adapt quickly enough.

(Side-note: There is evidence in ice-cores that there was a super-quick climate shift about 13,000 years ago, associated with the Younger Dryas period. From wikipedia, temperatures in Europe may have plunged 5 to 7 degrees celsius (which is a lot) over as short a time as ten years. Crazy, right? Except that the predominant theory to explain the shift is either an impact event or a massive, ice-locked lake covering a huge part of North America suddenly flooding the Atlantic and breaking the Gulf Stream current. In either case, we'd notice the event much more directly than global warming.)

Where was I?

Right: Barton is so wrong.

But that's not the problem. The problem is that he's using his narrow-headed, utterly-wrong rhetoric to justify conclusions about economics. Yes, some environmental measures cost money. Yes, cap and trade may have problematic economic effects - though honestly, who really knows (I have an expert who wants to write a post about cap and trade, so we'll see).

But we have to do this. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, Congress voted unanimously to go to war - no one asked what the cost would be. This sounds like a horrible analogy, but it's not - we're at war with our habits, our technology, and our nature. We need our leaders to declare war on all of these things - and follow through, too. We can't second-guess ourselves and hold ourselves back - because if we are reckless in the measures we attempt, it is only because we need to work quickly to preserve the world for our children.

To me, that deserves some recklessness.

Religious Action

2009-03-26T19:43:00.001-07:00

The lecture the Archbishop of Canterbury gave yesterday brings up an interesting angle on outreach and conservation efforts. The essential thrust of his speech was to argue against philosophies that don't consider:

the basic truth that the environment as a material system is finite and cannot indefinitely regenerate itself in ways that will simply fulfil human needs or wants.

Which is per the Wonk Room. Full text of the Archbishop's speech is here.

While this isn't a change of heart or anything, I think the outspoken nature of the Archbishop's speech brings up an interesting dynamic that I, personally, haven't thought about before. I didn't grow up in a church-going family, so I think I tend not to think about the effect that religious organizations can have on local communities. But now that I do, it could be substantial - especially concerning educational outreach.

Because what the Archbishop says is true. As long as you don't believe that the Earth was created just for humanity, there's a moral imperative to protect it. And even if you do believe that the Earth is just for us - that doesn't mean we can't ruin it, too.

My feeling is that there are very large fundamentalist Christian populations in the United States who don't believe in global warming. I don't know whether that's because those churchs generally align themselves with conservativism (which, for whatever reason, doesn't want to save the world) or because of some deeper religious objection to the idea of climate shift - but they're going to need to get on-board at some point. (Or, they can just hope for rapture. Depressing thought.)

A list of the necessary stabilization wedges

2009-03-26T18:49:00.000-07:00

Joseph Romm has updated his list of necessary stabilization wedges to obtain 450 by 2050. Among people pushing for 450, Romm is pretty much the most intense (and for me, at least, inspirational). Personally, I think we differ in some things, but there's no doubt that his technical expertise and knowledge of the subject makes his list of stabilization wedges incredibly important to study.

Here's the list:

1 wedge of albedo change through white roofs and pavement (aka “soft geoengineering)
1 wedge of vehicle efficiency — all cars 60 mpg, with no increase in miles traveled per vehicle.
1 of wind for power — one million large (2 MW peak) wind turbines
1 of wind for vehicles –another 2000 GW wind. Most cars must be plug-in hybrids or pure electric vehicles.
3 of concentrated solar power (aka solar baseload)– ~5000 GW peak.
3 of efficiency — one each for buildings, industry, and co-generation/heating for a total of 15 to 20 million GW-hrs. A key strategy for reducing direct fossil fuel use for heating buildings (while also reducing air conditioning energy) is geothermal heat pumps.
1 of solar photovoltaics— 2000 GW peak
1/2 wedge of nuclear power– 350 GW
2 of forestry — End all tropical deforestation. Plant new trees over an area the size of the continental U.S.
1 wedge of WWII-style conservation, post-2030

To put this list in context:

This is a huge amount of effort, spread over the entire world. In addition to all of this, behavior like building new coal plants would have to cease (to what degree carbon-releasing activities like cement production would have to cease is, to me, unclear) - and that's the real problematic part.

The real truth that I'm starting to wrap my head around (thanks Thomas Friedman) is that it's not so much about the United States. We're still the greatest consumer of energy, yes, and we have to keep fighting, but the real task is developing nations. (I feel like I've said this before, recently, though, so I'll shut up.)

Because Romm believes that we need to get rid of coal plants as quickly as possible, he's pushing for concentrated solar very heavily (5000 GW is a huge amount considering there's barely any of it in the world right now - there's less than 1 GW in the world now). It's simple technology that can be enacted fairly cheaply and easily in the American southwest and other desert regions (remember, this list is global). While that is the most efficient way to react to the challenge of reducing carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere, it's not without its costs - if the plants are of the cheaper, simpler variety, large amounts of water need to be used, which is a problem because the best place for these plants is desert. Something to think about.

Most important, I think, is that Romm has chosen to reduce the amount of nuclear to half a wedge - and follows that up with a note that says if he could, he'd get rid of it, but he thinks we have to make a devil's bargain to beat climate change. And it's true - despite what People On The Internet say, nuclear, as it exists right now, has too many trade-offs to be effective.

Also important are the unconventional wedges that he pushes for - especially the albedo increase and World War II-esque conservation efforts.

Albedo increase happens naturally - more ice reflecting more sun to create more ice is the main positive feedback cycle that results in ice ages (usually after something related to a Milankovitch (solar) cycle has started creating a bit of ice and pushing down carbon dioxide levels). While this is an enormous effort, it's also a simple one - and one that absolutely anyone can do. Unfortunately, painting pavement white also seems like something that no one will go for - not yet. It's one of those basic changes that people will rally against. Something to think about, anyway.

Conservation efforts, I think, deserves more thought - and maybe because I'm more optimistic than Romm, I believe may also be worth more than 1 wedge. Especially in the market of using more local goods - reducing necessary transportation - I think there's a lot to be gained here. Also, in terms of industrial conservation, more and more industries may be feeling pressure to reduce carbon outtake. Again, Romm has done the math and I haven't, so all I can say is that I'll be awaiting more details on what he sees as conservation. (I should also reread his plans for energy efficiency, in part because I'm not sure how much I'm confusing what he sees as conservation and efficiency, and in part because they're very good.)

On the whole, though, one thing shines through. This is a monumental effort that needs to start today.

On the one hand, it's a sobering thought. But on the other, how many times do you really get to save the world in your lifetime? Pitching in with this might be your only chance.

Earth Hour

2009-03-25T20:41:00.000-07:00

Heard of Earth Hour?

Important stuff first: 8:30 to 9:30, this Saturday, March the 28th, your own local time. Turn out all the lights you can while still being safe (so keep your headlights on). The idea is to show solidarity and a will to change the course we're on in terms of energy, global warming, and electricity.

Website here. If you're going to do it (and you god damn should!) then sign up, let them know you're supporting them. Then head somewhere high and see how many lights in your city click off at 8:30.

Edward Norton, awesome man that he is, is the American front-man for this operation, which originated in Sydney, Australia, and has been moved forward with the help of the WWF (the wildlife dudes, not the other ones). Personally, I've been a fan of Norton ever since Death to Smoochy, so rock on, you angry Nazi you.

But, in what's quickly becoming my style, let's go a little deeper.

Personally, I believe in education and understanding above everything else - it even says so in the blog description, so it must be true! (I also believe in using hyphens to separate clauses, but that's just because I'm weird.) So it's natural that I support this, like, hard. I think I even have a bit of a crush on this; it combines energy/climate change awareness with a potentially awesome spectacle; buildings like the Capitol Records tower and the Empire State Building are going dark for an hour. In the short hand, it's gonna rock.

Will it be effective?

Well, Earth Hour (am I supposed to capitalize this? I can't tell) has happened just twice before - it started in 2007. And they've gone from 1 city worldwide to 400 in the US to, now, thousands and thousands expected to participate this year. That, by itself, sounds pretty successful.

So I guess the question I'm really trying to ask is whether awareness - or, in this case, participation in what could be called the greatest thing to happen to candle-makers in the last several decades - matters. On the one hand, of course it does. On the other - does this event transition into greater commitment to environmentalism in general, and a movement forward of the agenda?

Common sense says duh, and it's all got to start somewhere. The fact that most people aren't outraged and worried is - to me - a sign that they don't know enough about the situation we're in. Maybe this'll get some more people curious.

And with the growing success of this, and the ever-awesome Earth Day just around the corner, and the Do Not Drive Day lurking somewhere in the calender year, I guess the question becomes whether there are any more days that can be added to the year that are just as cool and awareness creating.

Ideas?

Local food potluck day? Make a garden day? Shut-off-your-house's-power day? March on the nearest coal plant day? Picket and boycott senators until they agree to a carbon cap n' trade? Play-outside day? Hm.

UPDATE:

Found a really interesting tidbit on the earthhour.org site on China and India's involvement. In short, China is trying to turn out all their municipal buildings, and India is putting out the call in newspapers and so on (we'll have to wait and see how far they get, of course, but it's promising).

Quote:

WWF's Global Climate Initiative China Director Ms. Yanli Hou said the strong support for Earth Hour in China and India is undermining one of the central arguments used in parts of the developed world to resist taking strong action on climate change."For too long people have been saying that they can't tackle climate change until China and India do so too. The success of Earth Hour shows that the people of these countries are in fact ready and willing to take the lead on climate change," said Ms Hou.

And it's true, to a certain extent.

China is currently building the first zero-emission city in the world, and whatever ecological damage the Three Gorges Dam does (along with the hundreds of other new Chinese dams) at least it cuts down in carbon dioxide emitting.

It brings up a question I want to spend some time on soon - to what extent do we worry about the environment in our hurry to prevent the damage from climate change? It seems a little contradictory - to me, at least - but there are well-known people willing to do whatever is necessary to get us below 450 and back to pre-industrial levels. I think it's a fascinating question - and sooner or later, we've gotta square with it.

Intelligent Design: Painting with the colors of the wind (or air flow anyway)

2009-03-25T19:03:00.000-07:00

Let's talk about circulatin' the air, shall we?

There are basically two schools of thought. One is that mechanical systems - fans, heating, air conditioning - are capable of controlling the temperature inside a building, and that's the end of that. The other is that the design of the building itself can moderate its own temperature at a comfortable level, if it's designed to emphasize that.

It's pretty clear straight off what we tend to use in this day and age. For a long time, mechanical systems have been so cheap and are so much simpler that they've been the pick of choice.

But they take energy, and use it inefficiently. Lots of heating and cooling vents - especially in commercial buildings - are put way up high, for example, leading to most of the heat collecting pretty uselessly at the top of the room (easy to notice the next time you have to change a light bulb up high). Another source of inefficiency is air leaking or heat radiating through windows.

And that's starting to change a little - any list of environmental human improvements will include an array of insulation tips, and people are starting to get concerned about modern HVAC systems. But there's not much a house that isn't designed for natural heating and cooling can do in terms of being retrofitted - on the whole, it's going to rely on mechanical HVAC to maintain a comfortable level. Renovations can improve the efficiency of those systems, but not much more.

The simple truth is that maintaining a naturally-comfortable evel is a design challenge, and one that needs to be considered and embraced from the early stages of architectural design. There are a ton of factors to consider - temperature, shade, rain and snow, direction of the sunlight based on season, size of rooms. Just a whole lot of stuff!

But if it's done right, efficiency shoots through the roof. And a lot of new innovations are helping with it.

First, better insulation and sunlight-management/ in general, especially around windows. All sorts of double-glazed, triple walled windows are coming onto the scene that are very good at not only keeping a good amount of heat in but also keeping too much heat (in the form of sunlight) out. The physical structure of the building can help with this too - a slightly angled roof can let in sunlight during the morning and evening but keep it out during the hotter midday. And the layout of a room can have sunlight falling on an intermediate brick or tile wall which absorbs lots of heat during the day and radiates it a little slower in the evening.

Second, unpowered air circulation systems have hit the scene in a big way, spurred on by LEED certification (I'm getting around to LEED, I swear!). The idea here is that the physical fact that hotter air rises can be used to power a circulatory system. Essentially, vents at the top of a room collect warm air and funnel it into a pipe. The pressure of more warm air behind it pushes air through the pipes (imagine a line of parents on Christmas Eve waiting in line to buy a Wii, only with particles of warm air) which take it back down to vents in the bottom of the room. Suddenly, the only-slightly-cooler air is doing double duty in warming the house again. I'm a little more unclear on this, but in (my own) theory, the system should be able to work in reverse with cool air.

The key is that the air doesn't settle at the bottom or top of the room, which has two effects. First, it means that energy in the system - heat from sunlight - is used more efficiently, since it's in constant circulation. That leads to the entire room reaching an equilibrium temperature (designed to be a comfortable room temperature, which is part of the challenge) quicker and more efficiently, rather than the air in the room stratifying into regions of cold, room temp, and hot.

Second, the fact that air is in continual motion feels good, and can help cool you off. Really, the feeling of cooling is produced better through moving air than cold air, so an unpowered method of keeping the air in motion is helpful, especially if it's not windy outside and you can't get a cross-breeze going.

There's a lot more; designing a building that uses sunlight and ventilation efficiently is both challenging and entirely dependent on the building and site themselves. But still, there are ways of doing it - our pre-industrial ancestors have been doing it for a long time. Southwest Native Americans didn't live in caves because they couldn't build real buildings (far from it), they used caves because the stone and shade kept them at a comfortable temperature (and for defensive purposes, but that's an added bonus). In general, people's permanent dwellings were built with methods and materials that made them comfortable without the use of electricity (because it didn't, like, exist).

That said, to date, it has been cheaper to throw together a building and HVAC the hell out of it later. But consider this: 90% of the cost of a building (including construction, overhead, various utilities, and possibly renovations) after 10 years is in running it, not building it (I'll find a source for this when I have internet). So doesn't it make sense build 'em to run as efficiently as possible?

Three thoughts, one of them supremely depressing

2009-03-24T21:50:00.000-07:00

So here are three things that have been on my mind and are, most likely, directly related to the road trip I'm on through the US southwest.

1. Shouldn't the additional carbon dioxide emitted along highways assist plant growth? Why doesn't there seem to be an appreciable difference? How many factors do we have to take into account?

2. Since solar PV power is almost as effective distributed as concentrated (in other words, it doesn't benefit a whole lot from an economy of scale in terms of placement and utilization; put another way, it doesn't help a lot to clump panels together) then wouldn't it make sense to have a small solar panel mounted on the long expanses of telephone poles that run across the country? I mean, there's infrastructure - especially to get the panels off the ground and away from people/animals - access roads, and distribution built right in. I think I'm gonna send a letter to McCain about this (or just tweet him?).

3. If there's a miracle and we - that is, the US - found a way to stop imported Middle Eastern oil tomorrow, would that even help the situation? Basic economics would say that OPEC would then (maybe) lower the price a little and when industry picks up elsewhere, there'd be more oil available to people like China and India and bam, suddenly those industries start using more of it. I guess what I'm wondering about is whether or not we'll ever be able to leave any oil in the ground, or whether the existing infrastructure will just be used and used and used until it's all done and all the damage has been done any way. What's the way out? Is there one, short of global revolution? Or will we someday start economic sanctions and threaten to invade if a country starts putting out too much CO2? If I could create that world tomorrow, would I? Man.

(Hint: #3 is the depressing one.)

I sure have been asking a lot of hypothetical questions lately, haven't I?

Also: Southwest Wind Power!

The EPA goes on crusade (carefully)

2009-03-24T21:42:00.000-07:00

So the EPA is gearing up to try and figure out how to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act (or Klinneract, if you're a fan of the new weird) - which, in practice, means carbon dioxide, since that's the big one that hasn't truly been labeled as a pollutant.

As this New York Times article points out, it's gonna be a hard fight.

Specifically, trying to declare CO2 as a pollutant - or, more accurately, trying to declare excessive anthropogenic sources of CO2 as polluting - has so far been an uphill battle. The GWBush blocked it pretty outright, and a very popular talking point on the internet is that CO2 is not a pollutant, but rather Life itself (for plants).

Yet, the IPCC - which, let's recall, is endorsed by all world governments (or almost all - I need to check this) - has made the point that it's primarily CO2 that's driving this world towards a harmful climate change, and that the bulk of that change is being driven by humanity.

So, yeah.

It shouldn't be too hard to figure out where I stand on this issue, and of course there are going to be problems - but I can't help but feel a little worried about the regulatory path. Of course we need regulation, but if it's done the wrong way around, it might just hurt the effort by making people bitter and provoking illegal behavior. Prohibition seems like a strange example, but it (and a thousand other examples) do illustrate that people will go to great lengths for profit, and in the past that's been falsifying scientific or technical information.

So... yeah.

Please try, EPA - but please understand that you can't do it alone. And you shouldn't. And, hopefully - you won't.

Modern Morality

2009-03-24T21:15:00.000-07:00

Ever since I watched Barry Schwartz's TED talk on wisdom that I posted a while back, the idea of doing good for the sake of doing good has been on my mind - and the more it's been on my mind, the more I see the exact opposite in the world around us.

To summarize, there were two key points in the talk. First, wisdom is knowing how to benefit others and can be learned. Second, when people are given other incentives in addition to benefiting others, they tend to do good less. (The talk is very good, go watch it.)

So I've been converted, in short. But that apparently doesn't stop me from trying to convince people that environmentalism has tons of benefits beyond just being a good, morally right thing to do. (In fact, I just submitted an opinion piece to the Oregonian about the benefits of environmentalism - we'll see if it gets published.)

But this is apparently normal for not only environmentalism, but all kinds of politics. Take the opinion article Barack Obama published in a ton of newspapers today. Here he's talking about the economic crisis:

...we have an economic, security and moral obligation to extend a hand to countries and people who face the greatest risk. If we turn our backs on them, the suffering caused by this crisis will be enlarged, and our recovery will be delayed because markets for our goods will shrink further and more American jobs will be lost.

And we've seen this other places in the B-man's repertoire; for him, while climate change is a looming threat, the big reason for renewable energy inventiveness is the American jobs and exports that we can create.

In political terms, that's probably right. There's a stereotype in my head of a bleeding heart liberal crying out "but what about the environment and the children and the poor!" and it all falling on the deaf ears of hawkish, patriotic white males who may or may not be wearing business suits. But that's just in my head, and I have a very active [bleeding-heart liberal] imagination.

In reality, I think that the big B-O might have both the communication skills and the popularity to bring up this idea of doing right by the world and make it stick. In more subtle ways, I think he already has - but on the whole, his policies are framed in the context of bringing America back to power.

Like I started out saying, we - environmentalists - are guilty of this as well. In part, I think it's because pleas to save this species, cease that pollution, or save those rainforests fall on deaf ears all too often. Maybe too many environmentalists start off as street-level canvassers and are just god damn tired of getting waved off by apathetic people (wearing business suits?). On the whole, it seems that environmentalists and other commentators - Thomas Friedman stands out in my mind for this - have shifted towards pointing out the benefits associated with environmental work. And they do exist, without a doubt.

But more and more, I've been wondering whether the movement will change. As direct evidence of climate change collects (as opposed to predictive, scientific evidence that most people can't really feel) I wonder whether this movement will become a struggle against evil - our generation's world war.

And maybe this is the start. The economic crisis has brought the elite - especially the financial elite - down a peg in the public eye. Maybe we're getting closer to the tipping point, where the majority of the population believes something is wrong - and the majority really wants to change it. Maybe then we'll have good for the sake of being good.

I can dream, anyway.

AIG bonuses in the grand perspective

2009-03-23T21:20:00.000-07:00

So AIG is going to give back 50 million of the bonuses.

From Randall Munroe at xkcd:

I know. 165 million is a lot of money, especially spread around a relatively small number of people - who also happened to mess up really bad recently - but this whole story is much more interesting if we go a little deeper than just outrage at those damn financial people.

For example, what's the message? The bonuses were contractual, and were allowed to go forward by the US Government - but the same people will go to great lengths to reduce the bonuses if enough people get outraged?

I'm not blaming the B-man for this (because I secretly lurve him, apparently) as much as I recognize that he miscalculated, politically. That in itself is a little disappointed - that it should even be a political miscalculation to begin with - but I also respect the fact that there are a lot of factors that have led to this AIG thing being blown up into a big deal (but at the same time, I refuse to use the words "mainstream media" - wait, damn).

But what's the moral of the story? If you make a big fuss - and there are a lot of other people making a big fuss - then the rules can bend. On the surface, our moral code (mores?) says that that's a bad thing. On the other hand, it's spectacularily evident that our society has, on some level or another, failed. It's a great big market failure (ha ha, economics pun) and despite the politics, that's starting to become clear. And thus, we - as a people - don't care about no stinkin' contracts.

And all of this just makes me imagine what can happen when we unite as a people in outrage.

But what really outraged people? The money, apparently - certainly we didn't care this much when the latest IPCC report came out, or when entire rivers were flooded with coal slurry. It's something about our taxes being used poorly in an extremely public fashion.

So is telling people the best way to save the environment is to get A. expensive home improvements B. tax hikes and C. more expensive power really gonna fly? Probably not.

The B-man says we need inventiveness, and that's true. The world will benefit, because they're going through it right now. But what the US needs is a little different - we need to swallow this pill whole.

And that might mean less pure technological innovation and more user-friendliness and marketing. It's like the difference between an IBM Thinkpad and one of the new Macbooks - at least in terms of aesthetics, since otherwise it'd be a pretty loaded debate (especially on the Internet!). One is the present, one is the future.

Sustainability is our future. In fact, it's our only future.

Now let's get people to understand that, appreciate that, and most of all - yearn for it.

Dealing with the financial structure and people with too god damn much money is part of that, but let's not get tunnel vision here. There's lots more to do.

(And why aren't we more outraged about subsidies? That's tax payer money too! For coal power! And agribussiness! Oh never mind, too much all at once. I'll save it for another post.)

Moving Forward: Technological Innovation

2009-03-23T16:39:00.000-07:00

The B-Man gave a speech about how we need ourselves more inventiveness to help the climate crisis along - and it's a good speech, too. I'd recommend the full transcript (scroll down a little to their update).

In all the furor of the economic crisis, though, I feel like there's a key component missing from the new Democratic environmental rhetoric. Yes, renewables. Yes, innovation. Yes, weatherization and efficiency. But it's all based around this idea that America can become a leader in the field of renewable energy, save Californian agriculture, or stop rising seas from taking out our coasts.

Those are good reasons, but it's a global problem - so let's take a moment to put this all in perspective.

We are an enlightened people, and environmentalism seems to be spreading through the young population fairly quickly. More than that, we're going to take more damage from drought and hurricanes as the weather shifts. We've got the communication structure for a movement to get off the ground quickly, and right now we've got a president who gets the seriousness of the problem.

In short, if the situation were the same and Americans were the only people in the world, I would think that it's more likely that we'd be able to reinvent ourselves.

But China, India, and a dozen other countries. There are literally billions (thousands of millions!) of people who want to live like we do - and there's no plan to make that happen without stressing the environment the same way the United States and Europe did.

So yeah, Barack. I agree with you - we need inventiveness. But we can't hold on to it - for all the damage we've done for the world - for all the damage we're starting to understand how to stop - we have an ethical duty to give that to the rest of the world.

What we truly need is an expansion of one of the volunteer international Corps, dedicated to building clean, effective systems in the world and educating people on sustainability. With the technology that we can bring to the table, we can give people the ability to live better and sustainably.

...or that's the hope, anyway. It may be too early to say that when we're still the least sustainable nation on Earth.

Hurdle for Energy Efficiency

2009-03-23T08:41:00.000-07:00

A story in the USA Today (I know, right?) nevertheless has a good story about how energy efficiency appliances can make people more comfortable with wasting power. The prime example is a man who claims that his wife will sometimes wash/dry just one piece of clothing because of her high efficiency washer/drier. Lord, those stupid wives, right men?

There is a good point being made, though - we can't just rely on mandates from on high. That was fine with the ozone layer - it was a more simple problem with a simpler solution. The government could say "This chemical bad!" and people could say "Well, guess that chemical is bad and we can't really buy it anymore anyway. Wonder what's on TV?"

Climate change, though, is going to need a little bit more; both the problem and the solution encompass our entire way of life. So instead of just giving people a high-efficiency light bulb, they need to understand what the importance of using less power - or we won't be successful.

Then again, I may be reading too much into this research. The story below that one in this morning's USA Today was a study that measures how free each state is - the primary determinant that catapulted New Hampshire to "Most Free State in the Union" was lack of a seat-belt law. Gah.

How Bad Will It Be?

2009-03-22T22:51:00.001-07:00

Joseph Romm, at climateprogress.org, has put together an article that summarizes his research into how bad climate change could be for the world.

There's a lot of things I want to add to the margins of this, by ways of context, though.

First, I think that this introduction to the idea of how global warming will screw us over, as a species, is important because for a long time we've been painting ourselves as two separate worlds. On the one hand, we have nature, and in the other, humanity - who has paved over nature and created its own environments.

But that's false. We all eat food grown or sustained on the Earth and the sun. All of our power comes from the sun - nature's engine - and the energy that its fed into the Earth in various ways. Even geothermal and nuclear power - based on elements and heat from the interior of the Earth - comes from stars; the sun's parents and grandparents, whose violent explosions provided the energy that created the radioactive elements that keep the Earth warm. (Most other power sources are a little more straightforward.)

Word-twisting aside, we depend on the land - and for a long time now, we've tended to think of that philosophy as something that belongs to people with long hair and a penchant for marijuana. And that's the core of unsustainable philosophies that have led to use taking too much, using too much, and leaving too much behind.

But not only that. It's also led environmentalists to frame environmental behavior as something that benefits nature. It's all about saving the rainforests, the polar bears, or the salmon. These are all important things, but we have to be honest. The real reason we should be saving all of these things is not because of the cure for cancer in the rainforest flower we might wipe out tomorrow. That'd be nice to save, but the real issue is stability.

Individual species die out - it's a fact of life. But when they start dying out quicker than before, then there might be a problem - because the stability of our living systems is being challenged. And when we start shifting the entire world, that's a huge dent to stability, because while nature is very good at adapting, it's good at adapting at longer timescales. When it's been forced to adapt quicker - like, when a 10km asteroid hits it - then the world changes, the dinosaurs die out, and mammals get their chance.

Environmentalism isn't about saving nature. It's about saving the planet - and everything, every place, and everyone on it.

Which is why Romm's post (oh yeah, that!) is so important. Because while Romm is interested in how pine forests may be wiped out by swarms of beetles, it's not as important as how climate change is going to change the world - and affect us. And, if we continue as we are, it will. That's why it's important to read - this is a global issue, in the widest possible sense, encompassing all of nature and all of humanity.

Second, I want to call attention to another aspect of Romm's analysis. In general, Romm tends to go much farther than the mainstream - although almost always supported by scientific reports in the process. In part, he's quicker to pick up on studies and quicker to pick up on their significance. Another part, though, is his mindset - he tends to think about the worst case scenario, while newspapers and policy-makers tend to think of the best case.

So when Romm says that business-as-usual will get us to 800-1100 parts per million, it's very possible and very supported by science - and it's not something that people are falling over themselves to admit. In terms of human growth, we've been growing at something 2 ppm a year. While that might increase, that's not the big issue. As noted before, the big problem is positive feedback cycles that may start - mainly, more methane as ice and permafrost melts and more carbon dioxide as the forests and oceans give up the ghost and say no more, no more (or, rather, when the finite oceans and forests don't scale up their carbon intake the way we'd like them to, or when we cut down all the forests). It's these feedback cycles that Romm thinks spells doom and gloom for everyone.

And here's the kicker - for me, at least. It's possible (though much less likely) that some of the feedback cycles can kick in, even at a level at or under 450. So even if we make it, we still might not be in the clear.

It's become increasingly clear to me that humanity needs to pursue sustainable practices to achieve stability. And now, based on all the research countless scientists have done, and the further work people like Romm have done collecting and interpreting it, I can say that we won't be able to breathe easy, even after we achieve 450 by 2050 (and it's vital that we do).

Instead, we'll be like the people who summit Mount Everest. We'll make it to the top, take a moment to celebrate with the breath we have left, then start climbing down.

Recasting Environmentalism

2009-03-17T21:03:00.000-07:00

There hasn't been much blogging lately, which I regret - real life events, including but not limited to finals, have started to take precedence.

There is one issue that's been floating in my head, lately. Mainly, I think, my mind has been percolating everything I've been reading since the election about the identity crisis facing Republicans.

What are Republicans, any more? There are some issues that are strong Republican issues - pro-life, fiscal responsibility, personal freedom - and I'm sure they'll remain so. But more than anything, it seems like Republicans have blindly cast themselves into the position of the fat-cat, anti-change party.

I want to be clear. While I don't prescribe to conservatism, especially regarding issues like gay marriage and health care, I think it's clear (and certainly the blogosphere has said it enough) that Republicans aren't really all that conservative anymore; they're really just holding onto the issues they know will work. (Could the same be said for democrats? Well, maybe - but to be fair, the B-man seems to be taking some bold steps with regards to foreign policy and energy policy.)

But this is an environmental blog, right?

Well, that's why I bring up the issue - because I want to ask why there's such a connection between liberalism and environmentalism. Because the more I think about it, the less I'm sure.

I understand why environmental issues are often an easier pitch to liberal, progressive audiences - it seems to stand to reason that progressives will be more willing to embrace the changes that a greater environmental agenda calls for.

But why? Aren't I just trapping myself into the same conservative = anti-change trap again?

Because when I try to just look at conservative principles - outlined above - then it becomes very unclear to me why conservatives seem to be so against protecting the environment.

On the surface, there's the "don't mess with my business" idea, but that's depressingly short term. We have proved, by now, that tragedy of the commons issues do exist - that is to say, there really are situations where everyone pursuing their own personal gain without regard to the big picture end up destroying common resources and making everyone worse off. It really happens!

And if we look to the long term, then it seems very strange that conservatives don't support sustainable farming practices, environmental management, and renewable energy. All of these things put more economic responsibility - and freedom - on the individual and the local community, rather than the state or large corporations. Shouldn't that be desireable to a conservative?

To focus in on an example that I like, shouldn't conservatives support solar panels and wind turbines on the roofs of government buildings? There's a high initial cost, but they start to pay for themselves in less time than our recent wars will last - at which point they start reducing government expenses, meaning lower taxes (without higher deficits!). It's not just good economic sense - it's conservative economics. Or it should be, anyway.

But then again, environmentalists are dirty hippies, therefore environmentalism is for Democrats.

Intelligent Design

2009-03-16T16:59:00.001-07:00

Yay! New segment!

Intelligent Design is a series aimed at investigating a few things - first, how have we arrived at this place just by building things (mostly infrastructure), what we're designing and building now, and steps we should be taking to move forward into an age where we design things to (first) meet the 450 by 2050 deadline and (second) promote a future that can live with the world, not at its expense.

So a selection of random topics could be:

Geothermal water heating/cooling
BedZED sustainable living community
The growth of current sewer treatment systems
Ecoroofs
Integrating solar panels into the urban landscape
Building better parking lots
The deterioration of modern building materials

And many other things!

Stay tuned!

Hoax-Watch: Michael Steele, RNC Chairman

2009-03-16T16:48:00.001-07:00

It's important to call people on the mistaken things they say - the more we don't, the stronger those mistakes become. And it's doubly-important when it comes to influential people making mistakes - or lying - because they have the power to convince large numbers of people.

So when the Republican National Committee uses the name "Greenland" as a primary piece of evidence for current global cooling, there's a responsibility to say "No, Mister Steele. No, that's not right."

The quote:

We are cooling. We are not warming. The warming you see out there, the supposed warming, and I am using my finger quotation marks here, is part of the cooling process. Greenland, which is now covered in ice, it was once called Greenland for a reason, right? Iceland, which is now green. Oh I love this. Like we know what this planet is all about. How long have we been here? How long? No[t] very long.

According to multiple surviving Icelandic texts, Eric the Red thought up the name Greenland to make it sound more attractive than Iceland (even though its climate is much harsher).

But it goes a little deeper than that.

When Greenland was settled, it was more hospitable than it is today. There were more forests, better soil, and stable wildlife. Out of those things, what Norse settlers didn't destroy (through over-farming and timber harvesting) the Little Ice Age during the Middle Ages finished - and while it was at it, it seems to have wiped out the Norse colony itself. It took another few hundred years for Greenland to be settled by Europeans again.

So, in a way, Michael Steele is hinting at something correct; he's just off by five hundred years. There was a cooling trend that made Greenland inhospitable - but it reversed. And, with the help of humanity's industrialization, has continued to reverse - on and on and on.

In the end, Michael Steele can safely be labeled ignorant. (Which is a problem, considering how he's become a powerful figure for conservatives.) But his ignorance exists on so many different levels - basic history, a basic knowledge of how climate works, any sort of understanding of climate cycles - that it's really mind boggling that he's the head of the second most powerful political party in the United States. And they let him on the radio.

Nuclear Expenses

2009-03-14T11:08:00.000-07:00

It's a popular notion that Lewis Strauss, chairman of the US Atomic Energy Commission (which would eventually become the Department of Energy, the regulator we have now) once said that by 1960 or so nuclear power would become too cheap to meter. That is, nuclear power would be so cheap and plentiful that power companies wouldn't have to meter it - and, therefore, charge you.

This is maybe a myth, and almost definitely an exaggeration. According to newspaper articles of the time, Strauss actually said "It is not too much to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter..." before going on to talk about how awesome nuclear power will be. Would be. Would have been?

But as this collection of quotes starts to show, there were plenty of people who got nuclear power's deal right. The best quote I found was from a book written by Gordon Dean, Strauss's predecessor.

...But it is important to remember that, even if coal were mined and distributed free to electric generating plants today, the reduction in your monthly electricity bill would amount to but twenty per cent, so great is the cost of the plant itself and the distribution system.

To express it in the simplest terms: you can save a lot of money on fuel if you have an atomic power plant, but it will cost a great deal more to build than a coal-burning plant.

The simple fact of the matter is that nuclear power is expensive, for two reasons.

First, and least, disposal of nuclear materials. I'll get back to this one.

Second, the plant itself is incredibly expensive. A large share of the cost is in safety systems and permits - because if a nuclear plant goes bad, it can go very bad. But they're also just huge facilities, and complicated machines - they're controlling a nuclear reaction, for god's sake.

A recent cover article for Time Magazine and a paper by one Craig A. Severance, summarized in his typically fiery style by Joseph Romm here, show the real reason nuclear power plants haven't been built in this country for several decades. Nuclear power - even with the massive subsidies and other helping hands given to the industry by congress - is prohibitively expensive, on the order of two to three times as much as fossil fuels and even more expensive than renewables. To quote Severance, "...nuclear power is not economically feasible."

Is that the end of the nuclear story? Has the world moved beyond the atomic phase that helped create the Cold War and into a new era of something-else? Certainly, other nations are still building some reactors - advanced Generation IV reactors, as they're known - that could accomplish some cool things to make nuclear power cleaner and more plentiful.

And certainly, nuclear power has been found to be helpful to long-range sea vessels, like submarines, aircraft carriers, and icebreakers (really! - Russia and Finland operate some). The small size of the reactor and long period of time between refueling makes them ideal for away-from-home operation. And in terms of human suffering, it's probably better to have a nuclear accident at sea than near a city...

Only time will tell. It's unlikely the nuclear reactors we have are going to go anywhere anytime soon - most likely, they'll just be decommissioned as they reach the end of their lives, replaced by whatever society turns to next.

And what might that be?

Why, solar power, of course. As we'll see in the coming weeks.

Inspiration - don't worry, it's about climate change eventually

2009-03-09T22:52:00.001-07:00

So I'm reading a book by the economist-blogger Tyler Cowen about government involvement in the arts (it's more than you think!) and he made a really, really good point that has wide implications.

His essential point is that, in the context of art, for-profit (Hollywood, Broadway, best-sellers) and non-profit (experimental theatre and films) companies/movements/institutions aren't worlds apart by any means - there's a lot of flow back and forth. His example: Hollywood often adapts plays generated for non-profit theatre for large movies. It's a good idea that's started changing the way I'm thinking about the theatrical world.

But it goes farther, I think. One of the best transmitters of information in the artistic world is inspiration - partially, I think, because art is often a combination of perspective and the personal. If that sounds stupid-art-critic, then you're forgiven (plebe).

Seriously, though, it's not hard to imagine. Anyone can get inspired by pretty much anything. Or rather, by random things, anyway. It seems straightforward to make the leap from that idea to one where works resulting from non-profits inspire a screenwriter - or vice versa. (After all, the 90's are over - Hollywood makes good movies now. Again.)

So what?

Well, consider my friend Barack's words, paraphrased by yours truly: it's going to be American innovation that will see us through these trying times. And I guess that's sort of true, but the B-man is pretty chill in general, so I'll let it slide.

I think Cowen's point about movement between the different worlds of the arts is important to an understanding of technical innovation. At its core, invention and science are creative - they rely on looking at something in a different way to find something worthwhile.

So is there anything we can do to create a better atmosphere for American innovation? After all, if there's any group of people who is way too inspired, its artists. Can we learn something from the indirectly subsidized nature of arts economics (essentially, tax breaks for donations and charitable foundations are hugely beneficial to the arts) and apply that to how we can start moving from an industrial to a post-industrial society and dealing with climate change?

As is usual, I don't claim to have an answer. Thoughts?

Sort-of Hoax Watch: Bad Reasoning

2009-03-09T21:09:00.001-07:00

This isn't properly a Hoax-watch article, but I found some funky logic while poking the internet for facts about concrete. An Irishman writes:

The concrete industry has been unfairly characterised in recent years as a ‘culprit’ in the environmental equation. [...] Environmental performance is of course ‘relative’ and substituting one construction material for another is a viable proposition if one material is more friendly to the environment than another. However, to date, the Irish Concrete Federation have not unearthed any scientifically based independent study, in Ireland or abroad which suggests that substitution of concrete with timber or steel is of benefit to the environment. On the contrary, recent figures produced by an independent group of leading 1Irish consultants show that one tonne of softwood contains 10 times the embodied energy and 8 times the embodied CO2 as one tonne of structural concrete. Comparing concrete to steel, steel consumes 30 times the amount of energy in its production than concrete for the same mass of product.

See what's going on there?

First, consider concrete. Now consider a tree. What's different about the two of them? What, specifically, is different in their "embodied energy" and "embodied CO2"? Yes, that's right - the tree, even a tree used to build a house - receives its energy from the sun, free of charge to humanity, and is actually sequestering carbon dioxide taken out of the air - and will continue to do so until it's burned. Concrete, on the other hand, was molded in a kiln, most likely with fossil fuel energy, and produced carbon dioxide in the process. Ah assumptions.

Second, consider concrete, then steel. Take an equal weight of concrete and steel. Which do you suppose, you who are probably not a structural engineer but might have some common sense, would go farther in terms of building a structure? If you answered steel, then you're right. Yay!

Concrete is heavier than steel. It's also cheaper.

I'm not trying to say we should replace concrete with wood or steel. They're all totally different materials, and they all have their place (although we should really start doing more interesting things with our steel skyscrapers - even painting them would look much nicer). I object to the horrible reasoning used by some random person I found on the internet.

(Side-note: Why do I go after the random people? Answer: It's interesting and, I hope, informative - at the least, in the form of logic.)

So let's talk about Concrete (yayyy)

2009-03-09T20:23:00.000-07:00

Concrete is essentially everywhere for a reason. It's relatively easy to make and the materials that go into it are pretty common, so no one is really bereft of concrete resources. And it's useful - it can handle a lot of force squashing it, resists fire, can be poured into a mold, etc.

It's also environmentally damaging - the creation of concrete every year puts out 7% of the world's annual CO2 emissions, which is an absolutely huge amount - for comparison, every car in the world is about 35% (though they both pale in comparison with burning coal for energy). Much of the world's concrete is used by China for things like the Three Gorges Dam - which is a solid concrete structure with a span of 2,335 meters (a little less than 1.5 miles). Holy crap, right?

But concrete's environmental damage is a little strange, because according to this paper, we could make a lighter-but-still-strong concrete out of fly ash - one of the left overs from the coal industry. Fly ash could replace cement, which is the main source of carbon dioxide emissions in the concrete-making process, to not only lower carbon dioxide emissions but also remove a source of toxic waste that was loudly demonstrated to the world a few months ago. Super neat, right?

I don't know what the catch is. I'd like to think that it's primarily because most industrial companies are still fixated on a linear production model (raw materials make the product, the product is thrown away at the end) rather than the much more environmentally-friendly, common sense circular cycle, where industrial outputs ranging from by-products like fly ash to waste heat are used as inputs for another nearby industry.

(If you want a great example of a circular production system, Kalundberg, Denmark, was built around the idea. This is their website, but some of their English is kaputt - there might be a better explanation here.)

The point being, if you're not really going out of your way to look into circular supply systems or recycling materials - and power plants aren't going out of their way to advertise their ponds and piles of semi-toxic fly ash and coal remnants - then it stands to reason that fly ash recycling isn't done very much. That's my gut feeling, but I honestly don't know. It could also be purity of materials.

Even though my own analysis is a little hamstrung by my lack of materials engineering knowledge, I bring up the subject because it's interesting, and because I like the idea of a circular production model. Nature, after all, heartily embraces a circular cycles - including your own body. Fun fact: it's very likely that not a single molecule in you - including brain cells - is more than nine years old. And if anything has stood the test of time, it's biological life - organisms have survived and flourished on this Earth for over three billion years. Even animals and plants as we know them have been around for many, many times the tenure of the human race.

Just sayin' that we could learn from nature, that's all.

Also: without any further evidence of negatives (they do recycle fly ash, just not at any significant level), fly ash concrete sounds like the way to go.

Hoax-Watch: Some Random Guy

2009-03-08T19:37:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I don't always get deniers dropped into my lap, so I end up googling them. The denier I ended up with today isn't especially well known or anything - our new friend arclein just happens to be the third result from a google search for 'global warming ipcc is wrong'. We have interesting methods, here at 450by2050, and apparently we're about as discriminating as a cluster bomb.

The post google brought me to was this, where our friend arclein quotes an article about Christopher Monckton ("The Viscount of Monckton to you, plebes!") and his analysis that showed the IPCC was off in their calculations - which causes arclein to say that he knew it all along, the IPCC is a corrupt bunch of... chaps. This, of course, conveniently forgets the fact that Monckton was utterly wrong for the sole reason that he was, in fact, not a scientist or mathematician, but rather a rich person who thought he was very smart.

But that wasn't very current, was it? Happened in 2008 - ancient history by now. So I found some more recent posts, and in pretty short order, an interesting pattern started to appear; our friend arclein knows about everything.

For example:

Arclein knows that polar bears will be just fine despite any temperature shifts

Arclein knows that the world is cooling because duh it's been snowing a lot

Arclein knows that the world will cool for the next 30 years

Arclein knows how to test super-batteries that probably don't exist

Arclein knows how to solve the economic crisis

Let's be honest for a second. Arclein don't know these things. The Monckton example alone (never mind the polar bears and global cooling and blaaaahhh) demonstrates that the fact that he "always found the IPCC position seriously suspect" is completely wrong. It's worse than wrong - it's arrogance. As is asserting that polar bears will be okay because no one eats seals and they've been spotted in warmer areas of Canada - therefore, what are the stupid things whining about, jesus, they're just animal con artists.

What arclein really does is try and apply mathematical reasoning to everything in the world. His train of thought seems to consist of "there is evidence of something, therefore it is true, therefore ". And because he's quite trained in mathematical reasoning, he is apparently a master of the Real World - because reality is based on logic, right? Right guys? Guys?

Yes, we've having a cold winter. Yes, a scientist said that it could be a lot of factors aligning to make a cold stretch. Or, he could have just been saying maybe - and he could also still be only one scientist.

Yes, the polar bear has lived in the Hudson Bay area. Yes, seal populations may not be ready to crash. But could it be - could it be possible? - that biological systems are sometimes more complicated than simple if-then statements?

Honestly though, he could be right about the economic stuff. I kind of doubt it, based on context, but I'm hardly an expert - but nothing about arclein suggests that he is, either.

Here's the bottom line - this isn't simple. No one is saying it is - except arclein (and journalists - but that's another post). His work on biochar may be really great, I honestly don't know - but I do know that he's fallible, wrong, and far too ready to jump to conclusions.

How can I be so sure? I'm not actually a climatologist, am I - I'm just a dude. And it's true - I really am. But I indulge myself in common sense, from time to time, and that tells me that a guy proven wrong several times and using those conclusions to make more statements is probably just plain wrong. And honestly, I'm pretty ready to believe that! Also, he's v. arrogant, therefore, v. annoying. Oh man, starting to get a hang of this logic thing!

(To be fair, I don't know that arclein is a male - that's just an assumption based on the kind of people who tended to get advanced math degrees 40 years ago. And people who tend to get advanced math degrees.)

This criticizing-some-person's-blog thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Maybe I'll nip at the heels of the CEI again the next time the hoax-watch clock strikes 12.

Human-Watch

2009-03-08T12:46:00.000-07:00

The world population is growing at the rate of about seven million per month.

Thinking about population growth is worrying because in terms of train of thought (or logic, if you're so inclined) I always arrive at the problem that there's going to be no space to put everyone, not enough resources to feed everyone - hell, you could argue that we've already arrived at that point - and that even if we, as a country, the grand United States of America, get our act together in a new age of responsibility there's still going to be billions and billions of people who want - indeed, need - electricity, modern medicine, and food. Where's it going to come from?

Save the World I

2009-03-08T12:33:00.000-07:00

There's a bird singing outside my window - despite the cold and the wet of our weird winter.

That's a good reason to want to stop climate change.

(To emphasize, these are the shifts we have to be concerned with - because when it comes to protecting species from extinction, our record is not very good, even considering the people who lead geese with airplanes.)

Preventing climate change is the right thing to do - and getting more urgent all the time.

Update: It might not have been a bird anyway. What's that say about our world?

The Balancing Act

2009-03-07T21:05:00.000-08:00

The big question is how do we move forward, isn't it?

I mean, not in the sense of what do we do now, I'm more clear on that. The answer to that one I know right off - we be better people, more responsible people. Because if there's one thing that I learned from this interesting article on the Icelandic collapse, it's that it's very easy in this day and age to be a supremely irresponsible person and be honored for it - and even after they're done honoring you, because you may or may not have been directly responsible for causing the collapse of an entire country's economy, you still get to lie low with a ton of money. And if there's a second thing I learned from that article, it's that apparently Icelandic men are very rude - so there you go! And by being more responsible, less rude people, we can all live in our socialist paradise, which consists of a government willing to tell you that maybe ruining the environment for short term profits isn't a good idea - and actually able to stop you, when the whim strikes them.

So that's easy. Isn't it?

But what about this question of making people realize that? How do we do that? On the one hand, it could be very simple - we could all get ourselves elected to government, somehow make the other people in government go away, and then somehow make people care. Not only simple, just very straight forward in general.

But, being the cynic that I am, the world may be such that that isn't always possible. So how do we go about this?

The common idea, at least in environmental circles, is to scare the bejeezus out of people, which is fine - and come to think of it, that's the common idea in most circles as well anyway, so it might as well be good, right?

The other common idea which is gaining a little bit more in power is that well, we shouldn't scare people, because that's not nice, we should just show them how much money they stand to gain by going green. Sometimes this is true and sometimes it's not - in general, I don't think there's any argument that reversing the entire idea behind the industrial revolution - more is better, cheaper is more efficient, yay profit - may be somewhat hard to do.

So, it seems to me, most environmental groups go in for a combination of these two general thrusts. Which is fine - except that beyond introducing the world to words global warming and then letting the chips fall where they may, these movements don't seem to have reversed our course a whole lot. And I'm totally being mean about this - environmental groups have created a ton of good things for a whole lot of people, and very definitely put us in the general area of the right track. From where we're standing now, we think we might be able to see the track, somewhere off over there, even if it seems like a bit of long walk.

And is that the best? Well, maybe so.

But at the same time I just can't stop myself from wondering whether, hey, maybe we're selling ourselves a bit short. I mean, yes, human nature, survival, profit, just general crassness all around - but when it comes right down to it, people aren't that bad. Some people are, without a doubt (there was this guy named Adolf once who not only ruined a lot of countries and people's lives but also singlehandedly brought down a popular form of moustache) but in general, people are really not that bad. Even someone like George Will, who is really trying his damndest to make sure that everyone is thoroughly confused about an already-confusing issue for no particular reason - he's probably not actually that bad a guy. We could probably have coffee without one or the other beating each other up. (George, when this shows up on your RSS feed, consider it a date.)

So if people aren't that bad, and trying to save the environment is a really great thing to do... well, then why aren't we doing it? Despite all the scary/profitable logic spewing out of random people with green binders on busy downtown corners, it can't be denied that we haven't really taken any huge steps to halt this problem, you know? I mean, yes, you can say that the real hard evidence hasn't been there for that long, and there's a lot of interests being all annoying about it (speaking of which, I should do another hoax-watch, they're fun), but that's setting aside the fact that we've always really known that this wasn't good for the Earth. I mean, smog kills people. It has killed people. And worse than that, it smells bad.

So what's going on?

Well, I don't know. Do you? No? Well, I have a few theories, anyway.

The biggest issue, the way I see it, is that we don't really think the environment needs to exist anymore. I mean, really. I mean, it's less of an active, pave-it-all! kind of mentality and more of the idea that hey, nature, you were good to use for a long time, but then we discovered concrete, you know? It's not you, it's me. We've moved on. And scientists talking about how the cure for cancer might be buried in a rainforest that's about to be cut down - that just doesn't help. After all, why do we care? We have laboratories for that kind of stuff.

I find myself thinking this way sometimes. Again, not in an active burn-it-all-down kind of way - not even thinking any sort of way. More of a lack of consideration. Even living in the Pacific Northwest, in Portland - renowned for its natural parks and all - and growing up camping and hiking and doing all sorts of wonderful activities that more kids should do these days, I forget about the environment sometimes. And I run an environmental blog!

Or even worse, maybe, we end up thinking of nature as kind of a theme park with nice sounding names. Like, do whatever you want to the environment, as long as you don't mess up my favorite hiking spot Eagle Creek, because I want to go there next weekend! Don't you dare harm the glaciers - they look very pretty! Or, we must preserve this species because it is rare, and beautiful!

I have a professor who believes that as cities have grown we've become separated from nature - even as our cities rely on it more and more - and it makes a lot of sense. What do we need nature for - my apartment building has 12 stories. Twelve! Take that, nature!

All of these ways of thinking are both extremely harmful and extremely familiar, I think, and that's a very unfortunate combination when it comes to thinking. It's the same kind of attitude that leads us not to care that thousands upon thousands of people die every year because of car crashes, I think, and yes, you should be shocked and surprised, even if you already knew that.

I don't really know what the cure to this is. Research has proven that people are happier with lots of parks and green space - but a city part is really just a parking lot with grass and trees, it's not really nature. Nature is icky - it involves bugs, and worms, right?

I don't think many people are willing to lift much of a hand to save bugs and worms just yet. Not for personal sacrifice - and maybe not even for personal gain.

So, yeah. Guess we're screwed. What's the alternative?

Obama Continues Being Awesome; Former President Still an Asshole

2009-03-05T10:32:00.001-08:00

Despite his apparently greying hair, President Obama has continued to b awesome when it comes to undoing the anti-scientific agenda of the president who came before him.

The latest news of the awesomeness is that he's trying to undo the former president's decree that federal officials don't have to talk to experts about whether or not they'll harm the environment when they do things. According to the New York Times:

In brief remarks, the president said he had signed the memorandum to “help restore the scientific process to its rightful place” in the working of the Endangered Species Act.

“We should be looking for ways to improve it, not weaken it,” Mr. Obama said of the act, according to a pool report. The president said it was “false” to say people must choose between economic growth and environmental protection.

Which is absolutely, unequivocally right.

Meanwhile, Republicans continue to be hilarious - some have condemned Obama's change because it may delay needed stimulus projects - because, you know, they might hurt the environment, or something?

I can sympathize a little bit with anti-regulation policy makers, even if I think they need to take a closer look at human interactions and stop treating an Economics 101 textbook as an exhaustive guide to understanding human behavior, but this is just too ironic. Come on, people. Don't you listen to the things you say?

Who's got responsibility? We do! We do!

2009-03-04T13:41:00.000-08:00

If you live in Portland and ever venture downtown, chances are good you've run into a Children International person before - they try to get you to donate money to put a kid in a developing country through school and stuff, and if you do then you get letters from your kid and yada ya.

And if you've ever been approached by these people, you might have noticed that they are so much more aggressive than people from Greenpeace and so on - and they all are, so it must be something in their training. It's crazy.

So anyway, I got drawn into a conversation with one of them today and he convinced me to donate some money but anyway, that's not the point.

We were talking about sustainable development and energy (and this blog yeah go me) and education and stuff, and we found that we agreed on a huge thing - we have a big responsibility in this country to be a role-model for other countries. I think we underestimate the effect the idea of the United States has on people in unlucky situations around the world - or, at least, I do. To ironically quote Anchorman, we're kind of a big deal - probably mostly because of pop culture, but still.

There's a lot of things we could do in terms of exporting goodwill - stuff like the Mercy Corps and stuff - but we need to go further. There's a lot of research into things like small-scale solar power/greenhouses to power a small village, and that's the kind of the thing we need to be really interested in. We need to step up and say that the way the West developed was what it was - we made mistakes and we're starting to see consequences from it - but that the world can't afford to see the rest of the world develop the same way.

This touches, tangentially, the kerfuffle regarding the Kyoto Protocol - we're pissed off that China and India are given more leeway in terms of carbon emissions because they're still developing. We're not angry because that hurts the Earth, though; our politicians are angry because they think that would be giving our rivals an economic advantage.

And here's the key. When we declare that we don't want to see the rest of the world follow a Western-style development, because it'd mess up everyone's life (as one can see in China's air quality, by way of example), we also need to make a commitment to worldwide sustainable development.

Because here's the thing - no matter what we do, if the rest of the world does what we've done over the last 200 years in terms of industrialization, then there will be no chance to get to 450 by 2050.

This is pithy, but it's a global problem that has to have a global solution. A major part of that solution is going to be the developed, technological powers looking to help the rest of the world - primarily by helping them develop straight into a sustainable, carbon-neutral society. And we need to do it because it's the right thing to do, not because there's a dividend payment a year down the line, and because our future way of life hangs in the balance.

Ancient Civilization

2009-03-04T00:04:00.000-08:00

Ancient discoveries hint at civilization before civilization was supposed to exist.

This kind of thing always fills me with a bit of wonder. I mean, when you think about it, I feel like there's very little doubt that a human 10,000 years ago didn't argue, love, lie, act charitably, and care about his or her children's future. (Things like a joke from 1900 B.C. - which is probably more funny if it isn't translated from a long-dead language - really help this idea along, too.) Over all, I think it's very likely that humanity has changed less than we think it has. And when we start looking at history that way, new interpretations start to come out - like the idea that the pyramids may have been motivated a little by religion and a lot by economic stimulus, and the fact that there are parts of the year where farming is greatly reduced because of the flooding of the Nile but people still need jobs. (I'll look around for a source on that one - I know there's a bunch around, but it's been a long day.)

At the same time, though, it's a little interesting to think that humanity - humans, just like us, no different except in the knowledge they have to pass on - have existed for so long, but only lately have we sprung into such technological influence. (And even if you're a global warming denier - which you shouldn't be, seriously, read the IPCC report - just take a look at some of our biggest cities and compare them to how big they were 100 years ago. Or 1,000. It's been a big change.) To put it extremely lightly, our species has exploded. We were doing pretty good for a while there - maybe the last 5,000 years - and yet in the last 200 we've doubled and doubled and doubled, and expanded all the while. Look at population graphs - they're absolutely insane to think about.

I feel like I'm being a little circular, so let me get to my point: we are such a young species when it comes to the responsibility we've created for ourselves. We've had the power to change our environments for a very long time, but never this quickly and this dramatically. And nothing in our history indicates that we've ever had to deal with this level of responsibility before - whereas many things in our history indicate that we, as individuals, haven't changed a whole lot. What's really grown is informational systems - the ability to pass down complex information.

And now the test is whether those informational systems can organize themselves and produce a new age of responsibility. Because we need it, real bad.

I <3 the IPCC

2009-03-01T18:08:00.001-08:00

In case anyone has ever wondered why I bring up the IPCC so much, it's because it really is the voice of reason and consensus in this whole thing. At gristmill, Andrew Dessler points out that not only are the IPCC reports scientific consensus, but international consensus as well.

Also, I would pay money for a bumber sticker of the title to this post.

Bill Becker is the Man

2009-02-28T11:05:00.000-08:00

Bill Becker has a great post over at Climate Progress about why action is needed now - even though it looks like deniers are gearing up to fight over Obama's environmentalist policies.

In his post, he presents a list of reasons that climate change should be tackled as an issue - but I don't know if that's the right way to go about it. That TED talk on wisdom is still stuck in my brain - I can't stop wondering if the only way to actually achieve as large a goal as 450 by 2050 is if it becomes the great moral struggle of our time. And that's difficult when the enemy isn't a specific group of people that we can label.

In other news, plastics are terrible for the world but especially sea creatures.

What Are We Waiting For?

2009-02-27T17:36:00.000-08:00

Don't think I've forgotten what this blog about. And a question that seems to be occurring to me lately is this - are we just waiting for technology and politicians? Or is there something we can do to help the journey to 450 along - hopefully so that we actually manage it.

On the one hand, it seems fairly obvious from our election system that one individual doesn't have a lot of political power in the United States. And we don't have a lot of commercial power, either - we can choose a particular path, but that doesn't really affect the fortunes of the companies involved.

On the other hand, though, individuals have their own sort of power. A technical term might be something like "functional organizational and inspirational ability" or something, but whatever - we all have the power to convince and motivate other people.

I'm not talking about petitions or letters to congressmen - although these are good things. More than anything, it's the people we deal with every day that often need convincing.

Friends, in particular. Of course they don't need to be a climate change activist to be your friend - but have they heard about the decline of fisheries? Or the feedback cycles involving methane that might be starting? Or solar power?

At some point or another, a bunch of individuals turn into a group of people - and groups of people have political and economic power.

So start convincing people. Explain these things to them. Write a letter to the editor. Remember that the point is to make them say "Huh, that's interesting" - not for them to change their mind.

That's how the real work will start. Environmental work so far is more of a political game of appeasement - it must become something that's deeply ingrained in our minds. We have to start doing more.

Civil Disobedience? Civil Disobedience!

2009-02-27T17:18:00.000-08:00

So I've been hearing a lot about the civil disobedience planned for Monday at the coal plant that helps run the Capitol building in Washington D.C..

Among other things, it appears to have already worked - Nancy Pelosi issued a letter suggesting that the plant switch over to %100 renewables.

Let's dig a little deeper. Beginning civil disobedience actions is a bit of a turning point - I say a bit because so far it's only been the one event. On the surface, it seems like this is just an expansion on the old tactics some environmentalists have been using (and are still using) today - things like chaining themselves to trees, or chasing whalers around the ocean.

But when we start talk about marches containing thousands of people - that feels like a turning point. It feels different - this isn't an event that consists of the most extremist environmentalists around. Potentially - since it hasn't happened yet - this could open people's eyes that this movement is gaining ground. This might make some progress in filling in the gap in most people's minds between themselves and environmentalists.

So is the civil disobedience ball rolling? Maybe not yet - but this seems like a good start. And Pelosi's response is good, too - even though it feels political.

We'll find out what'll happen, I suppose.

If you're going, though, just remember that you're a representative, not just a marcher.

Fusion: An exploration of growth

2009-02-26T19:06:00.000-08:00

So I read a yet-to-be-published book on fusion which was, essentially, a history of how many scientists have taken fusion personally and ruined their careers. In the end, it was really a story of how great the scientific method is - because it tries to strip wishful thinking and ego out of science. In theory, anyway - but in the case of fusion, the promise of abundant, cheap electricity clouds people's thinking.

That's all well and good, but it brings me back to a couple questions. First, for our purposes, it is important to remember that climate science is also a subject that people (including climate scientists) have a huge stake in, so it's important to be skeptical. That applies both ways, too - and is really the reason that the IPCC was set up.

But more than that, it really got me thinking about civilization's energy needs. Fusion power is so alluring because seawater can be turned into huge amounts of energy - and therefore cheaply solve the world's energy problems. And when most people think about energy problems, I think they think of energy shortages.

And that's fine, because there are a ton of places where there are energy shortages. Something like three quarters of the world's population would get a tremendous improvement to their quality of life with access to more clean, reliable electricity. But would new and better forms of power plants really help?

Because here's the thing. Humanity damages the environment - in lots of ways, we always have. The Romans decimated Europe's forests and contributed to the growth of the Sahara desert, for one pre-industrial example. Industrialization has done a lot of damage - no one can really try to dispute that. Much of the damage done was because of rapid, unregulated growth - the new, industrial cities grew faster than infrastructure, factories manufactured things without regard to their byproducts, and so on.

So if the rest of the world is industrialized by a quick infusion of electric power, is that a good thing?

The point I'm trying to get around to is whether growth is a good thing. According to basically every economist and politician, growth is the best thing ever - we measure our economic prosperity by, essentially, how much we've grown (or haven't grown, lately). Well, why?

Economic and industrial growth is good for two reasons. First, as noted before, plenty people in the world aren't benefiting from technology and energy the way, say, Americans and Europeans are. Economic growth in places like China is, in part, bringing a higher quality of life to people. In places with high quality of life, economic growth means that growing populations have access to new jobs - and that's good too.

But do we think that way? Or have we become obsessed with bigger and better economies?

Certainly, when people are losing jobs due to a shrinking economy - that's bad. But someday - and I'm sure I've made this point in earlier posts - growth will have to stop. And we need to look forward to that future.

And someday, we'll find a specific amount of energy that is enough. Perhaps we already have, in the form of communities like BedZED (I want to write a post about this soon). But when we find that point, will people be happy with that? Will politicians? Will we be content?

Or will we keep looking for growth? If we can solve our energy problems with renewable power - and there's a lot of cool research into how small solar operations can greatly benefit small communities in developing countries, as an example of how it could - will we still spend millions and millions of dollars on fusion research? Just because it's cool, and because we think we'll need even more energy?

Or can we find balance, as a species?

Sorry about all the questions - I'll get back to nuclear power and other topics shortly. Sometimes I just find myself in a wondering mood.

Arctic Explorer-Bloggers

2009-02-23T13:27:00.000-08:00

So there are some explorers trekking up to the North Pole, taking measurements of ice thickness the whole way - and they're blogging it! Yay technology!

It's pretty cool, on a scientific-reality-show level (or maybe just active travel documentary). And, on one level, it's good to see technology and the media (albeit, the British media) pushing the environment and scientific efforts to test climate change to the forefront of the culture (ha right).

But let's throw our thoughts into the future, shall we? What are they going to find?

It's not that I'm worried that their results will disprove global warming and cause my whole pro-regulation Al Gore house of cards to come tumbling down. The real danger isn't really what they discover - chances are, though, that if they find anything remotely scientific, the media is going to make a big thing about it. I mean, based on the investment the BBC has already put into it, I don't see how they can't.

Here's the thing - their measurements are just one part of the hugely complex chaotic puzzle of the climate. They're taking a series of measurements, yeah, but that's like taking a photo of the movie and figuring out the plot just based off that one photo. In the end, they might end up with some useful data - and I'm sure their photographer will bring back beautiful pictures, and I'm sure their documentary efforts will reveal a strange world we don't think about much, etc etc - but the truth about climate change won't be changed based on what they discover. Added to? Sure. Changed? No. We have consensus already.

I'll still be following this, though. It's kind of like a new episode of Planet Earth, but with over-worked scientists instead of David Attenborough (which, perhaps, is not a good trade - but don't tell them).

I love TED

2009-02-22T22:52:00.001-08:00

This is one of the most subtly profound things I've heard in a long time.

Watch the video. But in basics: we need to revive the idea that some things are worth doing simply because they're worth doing. Trying to make it worth doing for other reasons is actually harmful - and, I personally think, a little disingenuous, if not dishonest.

We need to work to restore the environment, public health, and build up the quality of life for people worldwide for many, many reasons. But above all else, we all need to do it because it's worth doing - and that's the only reason we should need.

Political Anti-Environmentalism

2009-02-22T21:57:00.001-08:00

There are times that I've wondered what I'd do to help turn around some of the mistakes the human race indulges itself in. It's just idle thought, and depending on my mood a lot of different answers can come to mind.

So I can kind of understand where Marc Morano (who works for senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma) comes from - apparently, he's asked himself what he would do to for the cause of anti-regulation.

Unfortunately for the world, his answer is apparently to lie.

Joseph Romm, operating off of information from Thinkprogress's WonkRoom, has an interesting look at the network Morano has set up.

All I really have to say about this is this: believe in a cause, but don't lie for it. If you believe in that cause then it should be strong enough to survive a few answers of "I don't know" - and if you can't support your cause without knowingly twisting the truth, maybe it's time to think about getting out of it. Before you start doing damage.

George Will is a Dangerous Idiot

2009-02-22T15:39:00.001-08:00

LAST WEEK on The Climate Debate:

George Will publishes a column in the Washington Post. It is full of stupidity and lies.

Bloggers react!

Washington Post refuses to correct errors!

Bloggers react more!

The Antarctic is pregnant, and it's Al Gore's baby!

And now: the thrilling Conclusion!

...

Seriously, it is pretty horribly disgusting. Now, I'm not trying to say that we should be rounding up climate change deniers and shooting them out back by the chemical shed or anything, but there is something to be said for responsible media. (There's actually a lot to be said for responsible media, but I'll take what I can get.)

I'm all for varying perspectives and debates with a lot of different viewpoints. And it's true that even with the absolute consensus that we're seeing a global warming trend, there's room to argue about the details.

But George Will is a liar, and the things he's saying are harmful to this nation and the world. They're just not true - which is where the responsibility thing should come in.

And, point of fact, I don't even think that the Washington Post should necessarily apologize or correct his column. They should say that Will is responsible for all of his content, and then Will should apologize. Because he's a liar, and not to put too fine a liberal-naive-cutesy spin on things, but my parents always taught me that liars shouldn't, you know, blatantly lie about things and not apologize when they're caught.

But my dislike and - dare I say it? - hatred of George Will is nothing compared to my disgust that he has such an outlet. It just reinforces my belief that if there's one thing environmentalists and climate changers need to do, it's outreach. The science is there, y'all - but the media and most people in the world haven't caught up with either the facts or what's going to get us out.

If you're reading this, write a letter to your newspaper or local news affiliate asking them to run more stories on climate change - and get the facts right. (Being polite might help - my one-sentence version is a little rude.)

The more the truth is spoken the more people start to understand it. And we need to understand it to act.

(Post-script: Yes, I do love the Center for American Progress. Deal with it.)

Nuclear Proliferation

2009-02-22T14:20:00.000-08:00

There are a few reasons that nuclear power isn't all that widespread in terms of worldwide usage. The United States, along with countries that developed nuclear weapons because of the Cold War (Russia, China, Britain, and France), were in large part already developed enough to have an energy infrastructure built off of fossil fuels. Meanwhile, most of the world doesn't already have that infrastructure - but as they develop and their energy needs increase, the nuclear option is pretty limited because the big countries don't want everyone to have nukes.

So we're left with a few questions.

Is it good to prevent most countries from obtaining nuclear weapons? There are a couple issues here - obviously, some countries (we're not naming names) might be tempted to use them aggressively, but on the other hand, India, Israel, Pakistan, and North Korea already have nuclear weapons. All of those countries have the potential to get into an armed conflict pretty easily and quickly (or, in one case, are already in a sort of armed conflict - lookin' at you, Israel), yet there haven't been any nuclear exchanges, well, ever. And it seems like the Mutually Assured Destruction policy of the Cold War didn't end the world - might it be a good thing for everyone to have nuclear weapons and therefore no one wants to use them?

Well, that could be a real bad idea - first, it makes it much easier for a small group to get their hands on one and blow up a city somewhere (for further information, see every post-Cold War action-thriller movie ever). Second, it'd really only work well if every government on Earth was pretty stable, which they clearly are not. Living on the West Coast, I'm a little worried about the possibilities of a certain someone flinging a nuke at the US as a parting shot.

And there is something to be said for us becoming complacent about nuclear weaponry. I'm young enough to not really remember the Cold War, and I was certainly not alive during the Cuban Missile Crisis. My sense is that the idea of nuclear devastation has basically dropped out of our collective minds. It seems impossible. In this kind of a culture, it's easy to wonder aloud whether there's really a danger anymore.

At the same time, it is worth wondering how much a right some countries have to prevent other countries from developing nuclear weapons. Does fairness even come into play at the level of international politics? Should it?

Before I get going on philosophical arguments concerning political power structures that I don't know nearly enough about, let's move on to our next question: is nuclear power great enough to risk nuclear proliferation?

Well, is it?

Nuclear reactors are capable of generating a lot of energy. But, because they have such a potential to go wrong, they're really quite expensive. Some people are trying to change that - pebble bed reactors, for example, might be one way to go - but on the whole, they're expensive. And not clean.

Let's go backwards a little bit. How easy is it for countries to get nuclear weapons from a nuclear reactor? Not that easy - nuclear weapons, to be at all efficient (and not weigh as much as a skyscraper) need to use refined uranium or plutonium. Nuclear reactors, on the other hand, can (and should) use much less concentrated material. In order to make a weapon, in other words, you've gotta refine the hell out of your nuclear fuel. In order to do that, you have to do something like seperate U-235 from U-238 (also known as depleted uranium) - and the only difference between them is that u-238 is heavier by three neutrons. That's not a lot, and hence, it's very difficult to create what's called weapons-grade material.

But countries can obviously do it - North Korea, for example. And even though enrichment facilities can be detected by the world community, it's still not all that clear how a nation can be convinced to put down their nuclear weapons.

(The case of North Korea is also interesting because when they were accused of creating nuclear weapons, they voluntarily withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Meanwhile, India, Pakistan, and Israel never even signed it - so in the end, how useful is the treaty? (I guess that depends on how many nations would have nukes if there was no treaty. Hm.))

So is every nuclear reactor a gamble that some nation might acquire nuclear weapons? In a general sort of way, yes - although the world is developing a lot of different methods of preventing that sort of thing, ranging from diplomacy to embargos to Israel's semi-regular bombing of reactors they think might be generating weapons-grade material.

In the end, I can't personally get too worked up over nuclear proliferation concerns, if only because I don't think building reactors in developing nations is really the right way to go. In fact, as we improve our other alternative energy technologies (mostly solar), we may be able to move towards closing the book on nuclear weapons - and if that means sacrificing power from nuclear fission, well, I don't think anyone'll hear me complain.

Next up: reactors are really expensive anyway.

"Scientists must rein in misleading climate change claims"

2009-02-17T01:27:00.000-08:00

Via the New York Times's DotEarth, Vicky Pope, a meteorologist for the British government, has this to say:

...natural variability [of things like melting ice] has been ignored in order to support a particular point of view, with climate change advocates leaping on the acceleration to further their cause and the climate change sceptics now using the slowing down to their own benefit. Neither group is right and all that is achieved is greater confusion among the public.

Which I agree with and I only hope that (as a climate change advocate) I haven't added to. Not that I have incredible influence or anything, but being hypocritical is bad - no matter who's watching.

I can't deny that when I see a news story that seems to support the idea that climate change is already affecting the Earth, my first reaction is to call it that way. But in reality, these things aren't really climate change taking it's toll - but they are good examples of what may come down the line more frequently.

In the long term, there are two types of things that climate change will do.

One, it will tend to push extreme moments more towards the extreme, and increase them in frequency. This will probably be felt by humanity the most, since we care when hurricanes strike other countries, and our global food supply is hurt by droughts anywhere in the world.

Two, it will slowly change the foundations of ecosystems - more acidic oceans, higher temperatures, acceleration of the water cycle. We're pretty well insulated from the direct effects of these - our technology and our omnivore nature have let us be pretty adaptable. But species closer to their habitats, with fewer options open in terms of sources of nutrients, will feel this.

But, like Pope says, not yet.

So apologies if I've confused anyone.

Post-bedtime pre-sleep update:

It's a bad headline, though. Pope argues that not just scientists, but the media should be responsible for reining in the fervor. And in a lot of ways, our media systems are at fault, in all the old familiar ways.

But we can't place all of the blame squarely on the shoulders of the people who talk loudly. Just three-quarters of it, maybe. People have a responsibility to get informed. Period.

And one more thing I've noticed

2009-02-16T22:13:00.001-08:00

If a website makes fun of Al Gore - for his work on climate change, at least - then they're probably going to have bad science. By all means, read them and use your own intelligence to think about what they're saying - I don't want to make too bad of a generalization about people I've never met.

But really, my experience has always tended a specific direction. The guy won a Nobel Prize for a reason, y'all.

(God, now deniers are going to call me a member of Gore's cult again.)

Hoax-Watch: What's the Sun got to do with it?

2009-02-16T21:13:00.000-08:00

In my travels around the internet, I've had some exhausting conversations with climate change deniers regarding the impact of the sun on climate. So let's be clear.

The sun drives our climate, without question. Everything we see around us (and a great amount that we don't) related to meteorology, ecosystems, climate, hell, urban planning; it all relies on the sun (whose name is Sol - fun fact of the day!).

In fact, through one way or another, the sun is responsible for all electricity generation, with two exceptions - nuclear and geothermal (though you could make a really convoluted case for geothermal). All other cases, solar (duh), wind, hydro-electric depend on the sun one way or another. Hell, even fossil fuels - the sun provided the energy that ancient forests locked away in the form of carbon, which fossilized over time.

So the sun is important.

But is it driving the warming we've seen lately?

In a word: no.

In two words: Definitely not.

First, background. I've heard this whole sun-not-human cause thing before, but for this post I wanted someone I could point at to say that they're wrong. One of them we already know - Professor Jan Veizer believes the sun is responsible for global warming. But with the help of trusty google (which is really all you need), I Felt Lucky and found the post The Sun Also Sets at a blog thoughtfully named globalwarminghoax.wordpress.com. How nice!

They posted an article from Investor's Business Daily, which I'm not sure I place a lot of trust in for my climate-related news - but at least they quote some kind of scientific study. Although, reading a bit further, I lost that trust pretty quickly. Here's a quote:

“The effects of solar activity and volcanoes are impossible to miss. Temperatures fluctuated exactly as expected, and the pattern was so clear that, statistically, the odds of the correlation existing by chance were one in 100,” according to Hoover fellow Bruce Berkowitz.

The study says that “try as we might, we simply could not find any relationship between industrial activity, energy consumption and changes in global temperatures.”

Well, sorry Bruce, but the rest of the world's scientists have!

I'll address the actual science in a second, but I just have to heap some more scorn on this. I'm a little sorry to keep bringing up the IPCC's reports, but apparently people keep not reading them, so hey, whatever. The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's report says that there's no doubt, human industrial activity responsible, blah blah blah. I swear I keep repeating myself.

So let's look at this sun-centered idea a little closer.

There are three ways that scientists think the sun could affect the shift we're seeing in the Earth's climate.

First, the strangest one. The sun is powerfully magnetic, but that magnetism waxes and wanes over time depending on output (a little bit, anyway). Now, forget that for a second; there are these things called cosmic rays. They come from a lot of different sources, including the sun, neutron stars (look them up they're cool), black holes, active galaxies, and all sorts of astronomical things. Essentially, they're radiation - atomic stuff flying through space - but they're strange because they have so much energy behind 'em. When cosmic rays hit the atmosphere, they do strange things, and there's a chance that one of those things is giving water vapor an extra kick towards becoming a cloud to form. So, the theory goes, cosmic rays may encourage cloud growth, the clouds would reflect sunlight, and the Earth would cool. So a lack of cosmic rays would mean less clouds, more sunlight hitting land or water, and warmer temperatures.

Still with me?

The interesting thing is that the sun's magnetic field can mess up cosmic rays. And the magnetic field varies. So, if the magnetic field is varying the right way and preventing cosmic rays from reaching us, that could mean fewer clouds due to cosmic rays and warmer temperatures. And hey, we're seeing warmer temperatures!

The big problem here? No one really understands how this whole cosmic ray = cloud thing works; current research hasn't generated anything definite. And worse, while models have found some relationships between cosmic rays and temperature in the past, all of that breaks down in the last 30 years - because humanity's carbon emissions are starting to overwhelm natural systems.

This is a point I'm gonna keep coming back to. The Earth's climate varies naturally. That does not mean we can't influence it. We are influencing it. And we're doing it at such speed that we're overwhelming the natural stuff. Natural shifts take so much longer than what we're seeing happening right now.

Okay, second theory: sunspots. These are dark spots on the sun (and may also reflect how many cosmic rays the sun does or does not swallow up). More directly, though, they influence how bright the sun is. So, lots of sunspots equal dimmer sun; fewer sunspots equal brighter sun, and therefore warmer Earth. Right?

Except that sunspots work on an 11-year cycle, generally (that's just the way the sun works). Furthermore, astronomers have been keeping tabs on the level of sunspots since the 19th century. The simple fact is that sunspots and Earthly temperatures don't add up.

The third theory is that the sun might just be a little brighter. We don't really know what the sun does, on a grand scale - we've observed a lot of cycles, but we don't truly understand them (the same way we don't truly understand the climate).

People point to Mars. And, truth be told, the Martian ice caps have been melting lately (ironically, the ice caps are crusted over with frozen carbon dioxide - dry ice). To be more accurate, they've been melting for a couple Martian years (about two years), and that's all the data we have.

There are other examples of stuff going on in the solar system. Jupiter's storm systems are changing. Pluto is getting hotter despite moving away from the sun. There's a hot spot at one of Saturn's poles.

But here's the thing, y'all: these are planets, not thermometers. Now, if we had a research team on Mars, measuring the ice, measuring them again, figuring out exactly what makes up the atmosphere, creating climate models, etc. - that might be something. But to say that the Martian ice caps shrinking a bit over the course of no more than three Martian years must mean that climate change on Earth is caused by the sun - that's reaching. Mars has a climate all its own - and that climate is every bit as complex as Earth's. (In fact, in the case of Jupiter and Saturn, their climates are probably much, much more complex.)

It's cherry-picking examples. We are on the Earth. We have satellites in orbit, measuring solar activity. We have reliable records of sunspot data for the last 130-or-so years. We have thousands upon thousands of scientists experimenting, modeling, and writing papers that lead to scientific consensus on climate change. And all evidence suggests that the sun is not responsible.

But when a NASA satellite takes a few pictures and measurements, that suddenly absolves humanity of any responsibility for their actions?

I'm not saying NASA doesn't matter. Hell, I'm not even saying the sun doesn't matter. But these leaps that are being made boggle the mind - and confuse people. You cannot directly compare the Earth and Mars; Mars has a different kind of orbit, atmosphere, and composition. You cannot compare the Earth and a gas giant for the above reasons. And there's no way in hell you can compare the Earth and Pluto - which isn't even a planet, because it's so much like an asteroid.

We shouldn't stop studying other planets. But we need to remember that they are what they are, and despite all the effort that's gone into understanding the Earth, we still don't understand its climate beyond broad predictions. So until we understand other planets (or the sun) better than we understand our own home, can we lay off the ignorant caused-by-the-sun nonsense?

Fusion Power (aka miniature sun aka awesome)

2009-02-16T14:13:00.001-08:00

So this article featuring Brian Cox on practical fusion power made me start thinking.

Right now, fusion power is in its pre-adolescence. Not infancy - that'd be when everyone was still scrambling to figure out cold fusion (fusion without needing the heat/pressure of the sun). By now, they've settled down a little and said, "Well, maybe we do need a hundred million degrees of heat to do this right - let's figure out how to do that."

And the surprising thing is that it's been done in a couple different ways already. And a potentially-commercial fusion reactor is being built (by the Europeans, damn them - we can't have nice things!).

Theoretically, fusion power is enormously powerful. It works along the same rough lines as nuclear power, only it puts the smallest atoms together instead of pulling the larger atoms apart.

The good thing about that is that there's a lot more hydrogen (even the weird types of hydrogen man-made fusion seems to require) in the universe than uranium, and helium is a much better waste product to create than some of the stuff I was talking about in my earlier posts.

And fusion could generate a lot of power. A massively huge amount of power, really. So much so that Brian Cox is pretty sure that it would solve the world's energy problems - even taking into account how big our population could grow.

And to one part of me, the part that played Sim City 2 a lot, that's totally awesome. I mean, fusion power. But another part of me wonders.

First, I have to throw out the inevitable comparison to nuclear fission power, which was once thought to be too cheap to meter and now appears to be barely competitive with renewable power sources. Are we just blinded by the idea of creating miniature suns?

But more than that. Right now, we have the potential to provide as much energy as necessary to the whole world. We could have done it with dirty fuels or fission power, and now we can do it with renewables. The technology is there already. And we should do it, without a doubt.

So there are two questions to me. Will fusion power, whenever it comes along (first experimental power generation projected to be 2030, which probably means 2035 - then who knows), be so great and plentiful that we can give it away for free or super-cheap to developing nations? Or will nations who build fusion power plants just use the additional power for things like desalinization (god I hope not)?

And second, can we afford to wait for fusion power to get clean power and electricity to people around the world?

I'm putting together a post on global poverty and climate change, but until then let me just say that we can't wait. We need to start right now - because developing nations and their citizens don't have the techno options we seem to (and we won't even let them have nuclear power plants, in most cases). The development of a minority of world nations are pushing the planet to a destructive brink - can we afford to force other nations to repeat our mistakes?

None of this changes the fact that fusion is roughly the coolest thing ever.

Chaos Theory

2009-02-15T15:04:00.000-08:00

What is chaos theory and what's it got to do with 450-by-2050?

In a simple sort of way, chaos theory suggests that systems that include a lot of interacting things aren't governed by complex rules. Instead, simple rules and a whole lot of stuff lead to unpredictable, complex results.

Pool is a good example. If you have a cue ball and the eight ball, math can predict where the ball is going to go. Right? Simple system - there's only so many ways the cue ball can strike the eight, and only so many places both of them can go.

But imagine breaking at the start of the game. The cue ball goes and hits the balls, and they all start to ricochet off each other in strange and interesting ways. I don't know enough about pool to know how well professionals can control the result of breaks (and, truth be told, it seems like my friend who is really good usually manages to sink at least one, while I barely ever do), but trying to mathematically predict where each ball will end up will lead to immense frustration.

The second simple thing that chaos theory says is that complexity increases over more time. The more time you give the system, the more interactions there are. Since each interaction has uncertainty in and of itself, and each new arrangement (again, thing of pool balls) depends on what happened before, uncertainty increases dramatically over time. Can you predict the outcome of a pool game based on the break? My experiences in bars tend to say no.

But it gets really complicated when we talk about something like weather, or ecosystems - things that have billions of interacting elements occurring over huge spans of time.

Now, we can talk about low pressure systems, temperature, and storm fronts all we want, but the fact of the matter is that weather prediction is based on observation, not prediction. We can observe a low pressure system that appears to be moving towards us, and figure that that system is large enough that it should hang out. And we can also say that, in the past, a low pressure system like that tends to cause rain.

And yet, the world's greatest super-computer (or, in this day and age, network of super-computers) is totally incapable of calculating exactly how the smoke from a cigarette will twist, turn, and mix with the air in a room - never mind the weather of a planet.

So what's the point?

The point is that we don't know and are very bad at predicting. With the pool balls, we have a chance - we understand the physics of the situation, and it's a very simple and constrained system. But to really talk about chaos, we have to talk about everything - the scratch on the cue ball, the microscopic bumps of the table, even the inebriation of the players - because it all matters. And, given enough time, each of those things are going to affect the outcome, all at the same time.

In terms of science, the idea of chaos changes a lot of notions we have. We can't ever really know what's going to happen - even when it comes to something we believe, like climate change. We have ideas, we think we know generally - but we can't predict it. But just like how we don't know how rising temperatures will affect the climate, we don't know what a loss of species or lower river height will do to an ecosystem. It could be nothing or, over time, it could be everything.

And first and foremost, chaos theory (applied this way, at least) says that we - humans - are a part of the system. What we do affects the world - and what happens to the world affects us. Despite our cities, we still live off the land. It's something we have to remember.

And it continues...

2009-02-14T18:16:00.000-08:00

Fishing experts think that there's going to be a major change to fish populations as the oceans respond to climate change.

It's no secret that commercial fishing is already incredibly destructive - fish are, basically, not used to being scooped out of the ocean by nets whose mouths make a circle 900 meters around (big). In fact, off-shore fishing is one of the most fuel-intensive food sources we have, right behind beef.

Because of things like industrial fishing, every oceanic fishery in the world is either at peak output already or in decline. Not to be depressing, or anything.

Climate change has wide-reaching effects is the short story. Can we, as a species, adapt and survive? Yeah. But do we really want to? And is it worth the destruction? I'd hope that an intelligent species would answer no. (Market forces, on the other hand, may be answering for us...)

This is why this is all so important

2009-02-13T19:40:00.000-08:00

To preface the piece of news I'm gonna post, I want to share something I learned recently.

My parents remember a time in American classrooms where plate tectonics was not accepted, a time when it was a new and experimental theory, and a time (the last fifty years) where it's been fully accepted and, in the age of GPS satellites, completely proved.

But in the first half of the 20th century, geologists had a hell of a struggle getting people to listen to their idea that the continents can move. That is, academic geologists had a hell of a time writing papers and hosting discussions to convince other academic geologists (who also write paper sand host discussions).

Meanwhile, practical geologists searching frantically for new deposits of oil accepted and used the idea that the continents had been organized very differently, once. They didn't write papers or textbooks about it, though - they just found oil.

This is kind of a problem with academia; often, it separates itself from people using science for practical purposes. In a sense, the practical people can often see things that academics - sometimes mired in theories and papers - waffle or don't fully appreciate.

That's why it's more scary when The [British] Institute of Mechanical Engineers issues a report that says current efforts to reduce emissions are 'useless' and we should start planning for a changed world.

These are mechanical engineers, the people designing and building every little piece of technology in the world. I don't want to stereotype people with a certain job, but I don't think it's a stretch of the imagination to think that these are people concerned with a lot of practicalities - and the starkness of their report kind of reinforces that.

And I get this image in my head of a room full of politicians, pundits, celebrities, and scientists talking over each other about what the hell we can do and whether we should do something and so on, while a couple mechanical engineers in the corner shrug and say "Well, looks like we should start building power plants on higher ground."

That's our current progress.

And that's why it's so important to do more. Much more.

Some news

2009-02-13T11:27:00.001-08:00

Yay news!

Here's what's been going on in the world, for better or for worse.

According to Romm, The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says that we're up to about 386 ppm - an increase of 2.28 ppm since last year (although the measurements are preliminary - I'll keep y'all updated).

So, 64ppm in 41 years... not lookin' good, and that doesn't take run-away climate shifts that may add to this number into account.

On the other hand, according to Yglesias, high-speed rail has been included in the stimulus package to a degree that makes him - an unabashed urbanist, which I'll post about at some point - pretty happy. I'm happy too; more rail means less cars, and while they're not the most pressing issue in terms of causing climate change (coal plants are!), they could be responsible for two wedges. We'll see.

In related news, I saw Daniel Sperling on the Daily Show the other night (well, morning; I watch it online), and he thinks that we'll be at 2 billion cars in the next 15 years. Uh, yay? Depending on how we go, though, that may not be a bad thing - they might all be hybrid/plug-ins. But probably not.

Nuclear Waste

2009-02-12T18:54:00.000-08:00

There are a few widely-cited problems with nuclear power. First, they're expensive. Second, their operation can be modified to help create nuclear weapons. Third, and perhaps most important for our purposes, they produce a lot of waste.

How much waste? Depends on how you look at it - most of the radioactive waste generated by the world is clothes, gloves, and rags used in the vicinity of radioactivity (including hospitals, refineries, and some factories, not just fission reactors). If we want to talk about the dangerous stuff, that's classified as high-level waste and transuranic waste - this is the stuff that reactors make and that we dispose of. We end up with about 12,000 metric tons of high-level waste a year, or, to use an analogy, 100 double-decker buses worth. And more of the transuranic stuff, which is just designated as anything dangerously radioactive that takes a really long time to decay.

So why does waste even exist?? If you watched the introductory video I posted a week or so back, it says that a neutron splits a uranium atom (or, as we'll see, an atom of something else) and creates energy and... stuff. There's a lot of random stuff that nuclear reactions create - and, apparently, since they were born in radioactive fire, these molecules tend to be a little radioactive too.

So what makes it dangerous? Broadly speaking, if something is radioactive that just means it's unstable; over time, the atom spits out parts of itself, which can hit other things and do some damage. Each time an atom emits something, it changes - becoming another type of atom (which is usually more stable and therefore less radioactive. Which is fine - in fact, it's totally cool, yay alchemical transmutation!

But the stuff they spit out can hit things like your cells, or, more dangerously, the genes that are held inside your cells. Broadly speaking once again, radioactivity does not mix well with the things that make up your body.

And the biggest problem is that we don't really manage the radioactive waste all that well.

Some background on the reactor process, first. The easiest way to make some nuclear energy is to take some uranium and maybe some plutonium and bring it together. That's it, really - you have a nuclear reaction! In that sense, making a nuclear weapon isn't difficult - it's mostly getting the materials and forming it into a bomb that'll explode when you want (and not before).

The difficulty comes with controlling it and getting electricity out of it. Basically, you slow the reaction down by mixing other junk in with the uranium. In the process, some of your uranium splits apart, forming other stuff - and at a certain point, you've made too much stuff, and it's walling off the unsplit uranium.

In practical terms, in almost all US reactors, the vast majority (over 95%) of uranium is wasted. Along with the radioactive stuff created, all of this is dumped somewhere into it decays. Unfortunately for us, that takes billions of years - and because of the radioactivity, whatever container this stuff is in degrades. It's like nature is giving nuclear power the finger, really.

So, we've tried leaving it in ponds or empty fields until the damn steel containers degrade and the waste leaks into ground water and then all it is is cancer and lawsuits and blah blah blah - so it stands to reason that the US Government is always looking for the best way of disposing of this stuff. Right? I mean, right?

Apparently not, though, because the best method has been held up by economics and politics.

If you notice before, I said that "US reactors" waste 95% of their uranium. We're not the only ones with reactors - in fact, the large majority of, say, France's electricity is produced through nuclear power. This upsets some people, but the upshot is that they're better at it than we are - they reprocess their nuclear waste (by removing the stuff that got created in the first go), re-use it, and end up using almost all the uranium they have.

So why don't we reprocess waste? President Carter said we couldn't, as part of his policies on nuclear proliferation [more on that in a future post], and by the time Reagan said we could, building new nuclear power infrastructure had stopped because of cost/environmental concerns. Irony?

Of course, once the uranium is all used up, the French (and other reprocessing countries) still have to deal with the other radioactive stuff - radioactive elements that can't be burned up for energy in a conventional nuclear reactor. That's where the second part of the cleaner nuclear power system comes in - fast reactors.

Fast reactors are, essentially, a nuclear reactor on speed - it doesn't try to control the nuclear reaction so much as supervise it, and because they throw out so many stray neutrons, they're capable of converting other heavy radioactive elements to fission power. It's great! And they're safer than I make them sound, too - France has one that's doing exactly this, and Japan has one and is building several more. (Of course, there's a small problem in that they use liquid sodium as a coolant, which tends to burn when mixed with water or air, but there are engineering ways around this.)

So how effective is it? They manage to reduce their waste by about a third, which isn't bad. In terms of theoretical technology, more efficient fast reactors would be able to reprocess and burn almost all fuel - it's just that no one wants to build them.

Short of re-using nuclear fuel, the other options are either storing it on Earth somewhere or shooting it up into space. Right now, shooting it into space is essentially off the table, because rockets explode occasionally and if that rocket were carrying a huge dirty bomb then that would suck for us, below it. So until we figure out how to either launch spaceships with lasers or build a space elevator (which we should totally do, not that it'll happen soon), space is outta reach.

So Earth it is. Where?

Dropping it into the ocean is somewhat dangerous (currents can disperse it all over the place) and illegal, so that's out (except for a special case I'll get to). Sticking it in the ground somewhere seems to be the next best option, except for the cost (of finding and building a site) and another weird little problem.

Some nuclear fuels take literally millions of years to become safe to be around. Setting aside cost and the fact that we can't guarantee any containers for millions of years - what happens if someone stumbles onto it in a million years? Who will that someone be, what language will they speak, what level of scientific know-how will they have - will they even be human? How do we warn them?

It's a little strange that this is a problem, given how much forward-thinking worrying about it requires, but it is.

But are there other options? Why, sure!

So Earth has this thing called plate tectonics, right? In some places, new materials are coming up from underneath the crust, solidifying, and pushing plates apart. In other places, though, material (aka seabed or land) is being pushed down under the crust through some process or another. So, some say, why not drop it into the center of Earth (slight exaggeration).

It's not a bad idea. After all, the reason we have plate tectonics 4 billion years after the Earth formed is because of all the radioactive junk (mostly uranium) knocking around in the core and mantle - its decay creates heat, which radiates around (and really confused 19th century geologists trying to figure out why the Earth was hot without knowing about radioactivity). There are still problems, though - not the least of which is simple philosophical; do we really want to build a society on literally shoving radiological materials under the rug of the Earth, out of sight? From another perspective, though, it is recycling, of a sort...

To get back on topic, though, the worst thing about nuclear waste is that nuclear power itself is politically charged and complicated. Doing things that might create weapons-grade uranium or plutonium are extremely frowned on, and is not technology that the "Free World" will up and give to a nation without nuclear weapons. That, in and of itself, spells trouble for any sort of wide-spread nuclear reprocessing ideas. Also, because of nuclear weapons, the Cold War, and perhaps Chernobyl, nuclear power on a whole has acquired a particular air of danger to it - and that makes changing the system much, much harder. Also, money (I keep dancing around this issue because I plan to devote an update to it).

So it's a problem. Insurmountable? No. But we've gotta start talking about it, internationally - something that seems to have been really stop-and-go since the Cold War ended.

And maybe, someday, we'll get a space elevator out of the deal.

Hoax-Watch: The Competitive Enterprise Institute

2009-02-11T21:56:00.000-08:00

So there I was, cruising Youtube for weird videos, and I find an ad with the tagline "They call it pollution, we call it life", and while the ad is so incredibly proud of its ignorance and lack of forward thinking that it was hilarious (and scary), I figured it was a little too similar to the last (and first) video I hoax-watched.

Which is why I'm so freakin' happy to find that the Competitive Enterprise Institute (a name so bland I struggle to remember it two seconds after I read it, apparently) did another really similar ad. Joy! The glaciers are actually doin' fine, y'all!

My first reaction was being a little amazed at the production values - this is no run of the mill youtube video. This video has been edited. And has a voice-over without having that persistant hum in the background.

So I dug a little. The Competitive Enterprise Institute (please click that link so their webmaster knows that I was the one who sent you, even if you close the tab a second later) is a large, influential anti-regulatory think tank with over 30 staff members.

Now, obviously, I can't really match that in terms of, you know, funds, or influence, or, like, number of interns or whatever - but doesn't that just make it embarrassing that they're so incredibly wrong about everything?

I'll start at the end and work backwards. First, yes, carbon dioxide can be good. Right now it's bad. We've covered this before. Yes, fossil fuels have accomplished a lot, but they've done a lot of damage, too - and isn't it a darned good thing we have alternate forms of energy we didn't know about a hundred years ago? Gosh, maybe that soccer mom should ditch the mini-van and look into a plug-in hybrid (she's only driving two kids anyway, I mean really?).

So, lots of rhetoric. A calming female voice. The sun setting behind what I can only assume is a petroleum refinery (and even that doesn't make it look any less sinister).

And now, rewinding, we get to the point. The glaciers and ice sheets. Are we being lied to by the mainstream media?

To answer that question, I looked up the papers they flash clips from. I managed to find a copy of the second one - the one about the East Antarctic snow-fall thickening the ice - and found that it references the other paper, too. And I found something really funny. Check out this line:

"Our results show that the East Antarctic ice-sheet interiorincreased in overall thickness [...]and that this increase is probably the result of increased snowfall.Both of these observations are consistent with the latest IPCCprediction for Antarctica's likely response to a warming globalclimate."

The IPCC? As in, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change? The ones who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore for their work on researching and confirming the threat of climate change?

Yep.

And check out what the paper has to say next:

"However, the IPCC prediction does not considerpossible dynamic changes in coastal areas of the ice sheet."

Scientists remove the poetry from things. When they say "possible dynamic changes in coastal areas of the ice sheet", what they really mean is billions of tons of ice being undermined, breaking apart, and melting. You know, what happened to the Larson B ice shelf. Warmer ocean waters can get under ice sheets - especially the ones anchored to bed rock - and break them apart real quick (geologically speaking - a couple months for us). It's a hugely possible huge problem.

To put it another way, the scientists who wrote the paper that the CEI is quoting in their ad think that the IPCC was playing it safe with their predictions.

Good job, Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Here are the facts of the matter - listen up, CEI, ye who get paid in ExxonMobil dollars to lie to people. In some places - high altitude areas of Greenland, the interior of the Antarctic continent - ice is thickening because of increased snowfall. The cause of the increase? Higher sea levels. It says so in the paper you quoted.

It also says that the thickening of the ice is enough to offset less than a tenth of yearly sea-level rises.

It's all about the big picture, guys. Is ice melting all around the world? No. Has the Pacific Northwest (my backyard) been having the weirdest, coldest, snowiest weather in more than 30 years? Sure. Does that mean climate change isn't a threat? Absolutely not.

Now wake up and use your brains to get people to help with fixing this mess.

How Coffee can solve the Climate Crisis

2009-02-09T11:19:00.000-08:00

I may not be the richest person around, but there's no doubt that I'm not in danger due to extreme poverty. To that end, I drink a lot of coffee - it's a luxury good, at its core, really. But coffee is one of those luxuries that becomes a way of life, really. At the moment (a moment distinctly lacking in coffee), it feels like a way of life, anyway.

But at the same time, if everything goes according to plan and the coffee I make in the morning doesn't taste like its gone bad or whatever, I don't really give it much of a second thought (except when I'm drinking it and then all my thoughts are of its deliciousness). It's just what happens.

For me, coffee as a part of waking up is important. Changing that results in bad things (such as nonsensical blog posts).

But society is heading towards a change. Explosive population growth, consequences of industry - social revolutions.

To tie up this lame and absurd thought experiment, knowing what coffee does for me is the first step towards preparing for a day when I won't have it. Along the same lines, we all need to take stock of what society is, what it does for us - and what's most important and should be preserved.

And clearly, what's most important is coffee.

Update to the Australian situation

2009-02-08T23:45:00.000-08:00

I'm not alone in linking the Australian heat-wave that led to deadly fires to climate change.

Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but it looks like the scientists in the article are calling on Australia to take more steps to fight climate change. Well, sure - but the point is that it's a global issue, not necessarily Australia's fault. And while I have to claim ignorance on the details of Australia's renewable energy programs and other environmental efforts, I doubt that they're worse than most other countries (I do know that wind power is very popular, also).

Should these fires be a wake-up call for the Australian people and government regarding climate change? Absolutely. But it should be a wake-up call for everyone else, too - there won't be a part of our interconnected, interdependent society that won't be affected.

Nuclear: An Introduction

2009-02-08T16:09:00.000-08:00

Nuclear energy is pretty amazing, in the sense that it inspires awe. It is, quite literally, alchemy - we just don't bother to make gold much (and, ironically, it's much simpler to make gold into lead, rather than the reverse).

I'm going to avoid a scientific discussion of what goes on in an atomic reactor for now, mostly because it's beside the point - let it be noted, though, that from an objective stand-point it's pretty cool.

Instead, I'm going to focus on how nuclear power forms a stabilization wedge, whether it's feasible, and what the costs and benefits of doing so would be.

In the process, we'll touch on France (who has invested in a lot of nuclear plants), how North Korea and Iran complicate a nuclear stabilization wedge, whether reactors could be better, and just what in the world we do with all that dumb waste, anyway. Along the way, we might find out why environmentalists are so divided over nuclear power - it seems like people either think we should build as many as possible or dismantle every one of the ones we have.

To start, to get a single stabilization wedge, we'd need to double current nuclear power generation by swapping reactors in for 700 GW worth of coal-burning plants. That would mean building 14 new plants a year for the next 40 years, in addition to replacing about 7 older plants a year.

To date, we haven't built a single nuclear reactor in over two decades.

I've said it before, but I'll say it again - stabilization wedges are tough work.

A Taste of the Future

2009-02-08T15:56:00.001-08:00

The most deadly firestorm in Australian history just occurred in the southern state of Victoria.

"...a prolonged drought and the weekend’s searing temperatures made recent conditions particularly bad [for fires]. More than 700 houses were destroyed and two townships were almost completely leveled in the disaster."

The cause of the fire(s) themselves aren't really important, in the long view of things. The conditions that led to them are. Global warming doesn't just drive the temperature up - it increases the extremes. Weather that was going to be dry and hot becomes drier and hotter, and it's a thin margin in absolute terms between uncomfortable and dangerous.

There won't be a global firestorm that makes us fall to our knees and repent our industrial ways, that's not the way it works. But the world is changing - and in 50 years, we might all know someone whose life was destroyed by fire.

It's time to start acting.

What is the path forward? Trains!

2009-02-07T18:30:00.000-08:00

Two stabilization wedges (see 'What is a stabilization wedge?' for more info) exist in cars, specifically. The first: by 2050, halve the average travel distance of 30mpg cars driven per year, from 10,000 miles a year to 5,000. The second: by 2050, double the average gas mileage, from 30mpg to 60. If we did both of these, the savings in carbon dioxide released would be even better. Sweet stuff, right?

Lester Brown has a guest column at gristmill that spells out how incredibly awesome high-speed rail is, what it's done for Japan and Europe, and how we should go about doing it properly. The short story is basically that high-speed rail is energy efficient and super cool. Trains! Going 190 miles-per-hour is sweet!

Of course, he holds up Europe and Japan as great examples of high speed trains moving people around, and the only flaw there is that Europe and Japan are much more compact than the United States - especially when you start going East-West. A nationwide connection of high-speed rail is a little dubious, but there's no doubt that high-speed rail could benefit areas like the Pacific Northwest (Portland to Seattle in an hour is probably feasible), the Californian coast, and of course all up and down the East coast.

Would it cost a lot? Absolutely. But it would be totally worth it. Check out Brown's article.

Depressing Wonderment of the Week

2009-02-07T13:47:00.000-08:00

So, population growth.

There is no doubt that humanity has started to exceed the natural carrying capacity of the Earth - and that our rate of growth is so great that we're going to far exceed it and nothing but a natural disaster can stop us. That's pretty depressing, right?

Conventional scientific wisdom thinks that over-population is going to lead to a decline - either an event, like a disease that wipes half of us out at once, or just a long, slow reduction as our resource systems (food, water, energy) can't keep all of us alive. It's conventional wisdom because that's what happens in living systems, to non-human species. And to be fair, it happens in human systems as well.

But I'm stuck on this idea that humanity is nothing the Earth has ever seen before - and I think it's true.

There's a comparison that's become pretty popular among environmentalists and people who thought that the Matrix was really deep - it says that humanity is most similar to a virus in terms of biological process.

I'm not sure that's true, though. It feels like shoe-horning to try and compare a virus and humanity. Yes, expanding, using resources, etc. - there are simularities, but it ignores a lot about the way humanity works, like our history and potential at living within other systems, the level of control and shepherding we can display over living beings, and our sentience. So while I think virus = human is kinda sorta interesting to think about, I don't think it gets at the truth of the matter.

Humanity is on its own in terms of its course. We have our own decisions to make.

And - here's the depressing part - while our population growth could definitely lead to catastrophy, and definitely already has, our technology has saved us from so many depletion events already. As technology improves (and, theoretically, gets more equitable), we'll be spared more and more of the events that would normally deplete a species all at once. So what are we left with? A long, slow decline and a scramble for limited resources.

That'll be fun.

Both the natural world and humanity would benefit from steps taken to limit our population growth.

Waste and Efficiency

2009-02-07T12:14:00.000-08:00

So I stumbled across an old-ish study on how the US wastes food (thanks, Gristmill), and it got me thinking about the quest for efficiency in the Obama-era.

But let's think about efficiency. Generally, it means making something better without costing more in the grand total. Unfortunately, applied to the economy and stuff like that, it seems like that ends up meaning making more money, without regard to "externalities", or things that can't be priced out (like a forest, or the quality of the air). Now, that's a little cynical (for some reason I've had a negative impression of most economists lately, can't imagine why), but is largely true.

And the fact that a ton of food gets wasted for no real reason is a good example of how money isn't really the be all and end all of efficiency.

Consider modern agriculture in the United States. Since the Green Revolution that followed World War 2, modern agriculture is all about huge farms, tons of artificial fertilizer, and technological systems to help with irrigation. We pour a huge amount of resources - in terms of energy, water, and fertilizer - into improving crop yields each year.

And yet, a frankly huge percentage of that goes to waste before it's even harvested. And yet, the system is, apparently, economically viable.

Without sounding too hippity-dippity, isn't this a clear case of a market failure? Modern farming is not a good thing for the environment - and we're not even getting all we can out of what we're putting in. Is it that difficult to find something to do with odd-shaped cucumbers - to the point where it isn't even economical to harvest them?

Doesn't make much sense to me.

Hoax-Watch: What is this Carbon Dioxide nonsense anyway?

2009-02-06T19:22:00.001-08:00

My first choice for Hoax-Watch is a short, straight-forward video on the wonderfulness of carbon dioxide. "The Myth of Global Warming"

This video has a few things going for it:

1: An expert waxing over how great CO2 is for plants and therefore there's nothing to worry about.

2: The power of graphs on computer screens! It's science! Also: the University of Ottawa?

3: A "An Inconvenient Truth" reference in the youtube description - from now on the mark of a serious contender for Hoax-Watch.

4: Youtube comments. Hilarious!

First, I don't think anyone has ever said that carbon dioxide isn't consumed by plants. I know that I got a pretty negative reaction from some people for claiming that carbon dioxide is a pollutant - and it's true, my language was a little vague. The real point I was trying to get at was that carbon dioxide poured into the atmosphere at a rate far exceeding any natural events has a polluting effect.

I think the same thing applies here. Plants need carbon dioxide, sure - but is more of it a good thing in that respect? While I don't have an answer, I hope that the article I posted a while back about trees dying because of climate change might indicate something.

But really, this unidentified woman talking about how wonderful its been for farmers to get a little bit more out of their harvests is missing the point entirely. Personally, I am not worried about plants, specifically - more about rising temperatures, storms, and droughts. But hey, it sounds really nice when you say that climate change has been giving little gifts to the working Joes on the farm.

And then we move into, apparently, the entire department of Earth Sciences at the University of Ottawa. First, Jan Veizer tells us that carbon dioxide has varied a lot and that that hasn't always been connected to temperature. Cool!

Jan Veizer is, without a doubt, a scientist - I checked out his page at the Unversity of Ottawa and read a short paper he wrote about the climate. And more than that, he speaks like a scientist. Here's the quote from the video:

"Changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide has had little effect on Earth's long term temperature, in comparison with natural causes."

Veizer's papers are so scientific this spin video can't even get rid of the science. First, the natural causes Veizer mentions essentially boil down to the sun - a common thing for deniers to say. It's true that changes in solar output drive a lot of climate change. Unfortunately, a recent study has said that there is no doubt that the sun has nothing to do with recent increases in temperature - so there goes Veizer's natural causes.

Second, and more important, we are not talking about Earth's long-term temperature. Long-term, in this case, is geologic time. Veizer's graph? It's time scale is in hundreds of millions of years. I, honestly, don't give a shit about what happens in the smallest of increments on Veizer's graph - I care about the next 41 years, maybe the next 100 at the outside. Veizer (and the next guy, as we'll see) is missing the big point - historical records are just a clue, not the answer. More on that in a second.

Along similar lines, the next University of Ottawa professor (seriously, why Ottawa?) in line makes a big point of blowing up a section of the well-known double graph of temperature and CO2 levels found from studying ice cores. Apparently, the temperature changes and then the CO2 changes. Fascinating! Apparently, global warming is a hoax and CO2 levels are increasing because the temperature is magically rising!

Well, I have two problems with that. First, again, look at the time scale. Hundreds of thousands of years - with a carbon dioxide level of 100-300 ppm through-out. It took us 200 years alone to get way above that, to 380ppm.

In the end, The Point is not whether, in the planet's past, CO2 levels and temperature have shared a relationship or not. That's extremely interesting - and might influence the decisions we make today - but it's totally different.

A hundred thousand years ago, there were no factories, cars, or coal-burning power plants. We have departed from historical methods of climate change - history cannot predict anything. It can suggest possible results, but here's the key - we have very little idea how kicking the climate in the butt like this will change things. It's a shock to the Earth's system - and no talking about temperature changing CO2 levels three hundred thousand years ago denies that.

The first and last thing to remember when confronting deniers trying to use wishy-washy scientists as evidence is this. Every single nationally and internationally recognized organization that has been created to determine whether climate change is a problem or not thinks that it is. These are organizations who employ scientists to read every paper they can find and figure out what the big picture is - and they believe climate change is coming, humans are bringing it, and that it's gonna change the world.

And finally, ' "Carbon dioxide is a "convenient myth" rather than an "Inconvenient Truth" '. Seriously? That's the best you can do?

Stepping Forward - Michigan

2009-02-06T09:57:00.000-08:00

Michigan, home of the Still-Big Three, has been hit hard for a long time by economic conditions. Detroit especially has been hurt by suburban growth - large parts of its city neighborhoods have become urban prairie, lots and blocks reclaimed by nature.

So how should they move onwards?

In her recent State of the State address (related political word that also makes me giggle: gubernatorial), governer Jennifer Granholm promised a lot of things - the most significant of which, for me at this blog, is a near-moratorium on coal plants, and a promise to reduce fossil fuel-based energy 45% by 2020 (sounds familiar...).

And it's great! The Michigan State government has already halted production of about eight coal plants, and Skip Pruss (awesome name), director of the Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth, said straight out that "Some of these will not be built."

Sweet!

Coal power, in case you didn't know, is incredibly dirty, and responsible for a huge percentage of carbon emissions. (And, for the record, it's much more difficult for the coal companies to Clean it, no matter what Obama said during the debates or what they say in their ads.) The only problem is that they create a lot of energy (hence, you know, the industrial revolution in the first place), so they're hard to phase out - and never mind the politics of it.

So that's coal - but what, exactly, would a 45% reduction in the next 11 years look like? When I first read it, I was like "Michigan is cutting its fossil fuel use almost in half, sweet!" but now I've gotta wonder (if only because I'm not that great at math!).

Using the mystical power of Google, I found a number for current Michigan fossil fuel usage for electricity - 69.5% (the source seems accurate - but even if it isn't, exact numbers aren't really that important for this exercise).

So, if fossil fuels are providing about 69.5 percent of your power generation and you reduce it by 45%, well - then you'll end up with only about 38% usage in 10 years. That's great, right?

It also means that Michigan has to find a way to fill in 38 million megawatt/hours per year without relying on fossil fuels. To put that in context, according to my Carma.org source, that'd be installing about 20 times as much renewable energy. That's a lot. Especially for a Northern state (not a lot of sunlight, doncha know).

But man, would it be some fresh air. I hope Michigan is up to it!

Introducing a new feature

2009-02-04T22:21:00.000-08:00

Hey readers!

Just posting to introduce a super-cool new feature I'll be updating with occasionally - Hoax-Watch!

There are a lot of people in this world who claim they aren't really convinced regarding climate change. And that's fine! I hope this blog gets some new information to you and helps you make informed decisions for yourself.

But then there are people who go a little farther - the people who twist science and language to try and prove that there's no problem. To be honest, these people frustrate me a little bit - so I thought it might be healthy (and informative!) to take out my frustration on 'em a little publically.

So, for your enjoyment, I'll be holding up some people, videos, and articles for everyone to see, then doing my best to point out why they're so utterly wrong about the world and the tactics they're trying to use to convince other people.

It'll be fun, I promise.

The stimulus

2009-02-04T19:33:00.000-08:00

So, currently, Congress is going back and forth in their classic style over stimulating the economy ("We need stimulus now!" "Right! Let's just get these revisions past the House..."), and it just keeps coming back to one place for me. At the core, this is really about consumer habits - along with those damn executives, I suppose - so it puts me in mind of the political/social challenge behind getting people motivated about the climate.

Basically, people need to save more and risk less. Right? But we've all got our routines - and, more to the point, our budgets and our salaries - and with all the government money flying around who really knows if people will absorb the idea that something basic has to change.

Well, so. Reacting to climate change is just as basic, and just as difficult. Does that scare people?

Personally, I think trying to find a way to compost things while living in an apartment is kinda fun.

Nuclear Power

2009-02-04T19:23:00.000-08:00

Here's a little bit of a warm-up on nuclear power, in case you've never heard of it and/or are in elementary school.

Personally, I'm a bit divided on whether this video is hilarious or not - but at least it does explain things pretty well. And man, the music.

Wind: A Conclusion

2009-02-03T10:57:00.000-08:00

Wind is a complicated subject - and I doubt that I've managed to address all the issues (although I think I hit on some major ones).

As is usual when it comes to energy and the climate, the jury isn't out so much as it's intensely disoriented - no matter what side you're on, you can really pick your conclusions and find (pseudo-academic) papers to support them, which doesn't really help the issue.

At the core, the biggest issues with windpower seems to be the simple act of deciding on where they should go. Right now, sites are a little more limited than would be ideal - too far away from anything else, and you end up wasting a lot of energy on transmission costs (power lost as it travels through the wires). Maybe the B-Man's smart grid will help with that - but we'll still have to consider pretty carefully where we put these things. Too close to people might create some health problems - which are still debated - and very possibly annoy them. In the path of migratory birds or next to a big bat cave might also be bad (it seems likely, for example, that Wayne Manor doesn't run on wind power). Off-shore is good, unless your windfarm can be seen from Ted Kennedy's porch, and so on and so on.

Above all, though, wind power's yields depend on the wind going past the turbines - and that's something that needs to be pretty carefully considered. But is it worth the above to get better energy yields? I don't know the answer.

A geology student I know thinks that wind power is actually far more ideal for the West Coast than the East Coast, because more wind blows in off the Pacific ('cause it's bigger; also, something to do with ocean currents). That's unfortunate, because most wind power is being developed in the Northeast part of the United States. Ah well.

Personally, none of the wind critics I've read or spoke to have made me think that wind should be condemned. We're a little lacking in totally renewable resources; we should probably make use of all the ones we can - especially if we want to achieve 450 by 2050. And man, we do. We do.

So that's wind. Y'all learn something? Next up is nuclear, I think - and man, that'll be fun.

Opinion Article

2009-02-02T10:53:00.000-08:00

In the interests of revealing more about my personal self, I'm going to link to an opinion article I wrote that was just published in my regional newspaper.

If you read this blog, the opinions are nothing new - hopefully still interesting though.

If you haven't read this blog before, well... I hope you find something interesting!

More Superbowl

2009-02-01T17:54:00.000-08:00

Of course, despite the way I wonder whether Treehugger's efforts to point out the environmental waste in the Superbowl is truly effective in convincing people of anything (which they aren't really trying to do anyway), I do think they make an interesting point when it comes to car commercials - specifically Toyota's. The basic point: no one's advertising hybrid, environmentalism, or efficiency.

Well, why?

It could be that the ads were conceived and made before Obama let states set their own emission standards (hey B-man, thanks for that one - owe you one).

It could also be Toyota and other car companies believe that current low gas prices mean that people don't care about fuel efficiency. Which, to a certain extent, might be true.

But personally, I'm putting my bets on them deciding that no one watching the Superbowl cares. The Superbowl ads are supposed to be slick, fast, and fancy, and there's a stereotype that football is for unintellectual, blue-collar types - the kind of people who wouldn't exactly describe themselves as environmental. True? No.

But, I'd be willing to bet that in some marketing office somewhere, one of the suits wondered if they should make a point of being environmental. And I bet he was shot down - because it's the Superbowl, man! Bring on the celebrities and sexy people (not necessarily mutually exclusive).

I mean, Toyota alone has promised ten new hybrid or electric cars in the next several years - as Treehugger points out, you'd think they'd have something to say on that score.

In the end, I think this reveals something cutting about audiences and marketing in general. It seems pretty clear, based on these ads, that either people don't think environmentalism is slick and sexy - or that marketing people don't think that people think it is.

It's all enough to make your head spin, really.

Maybe PETA had the right idea after all.

The Superbowl and our Ways of Life

2009-02-01T15:36:00.000-08:00

So, the Superbowl, right?

As usual, the Superbowl (we're on like 43 now, right?) has provoked reactions above and beyond the kind of thing you'd expect. For example, PETA wanted to air an ad that was deemed too suggestive - which is apparently a double win, since the ad's become an internet sensation and they didn't even have to pay for the premium air-time.

And meanwhile, environmentalists like the fine dudes over at Treehugger.com are lamenting the fact that the Superbowl tries to get away with calling itself green (and carbon neutral) despite all the flying and over-eating and such that comes with it. And that's fine. They're also live-blogging the ads based on their messages and products from an ecological viewpoint, and that's fine too. And entertaining! Don't get me wrong.

But there's an aspect to this whole ritual - environmentalists getting pissed off at popular culture while popular culture continues to ignore them - that has been going on for a really long time, and continues to be incredibly unhelpful to the overall cause of, you know, saving the planet from our mistakes.

As an environmentalist, I tend to get a little worked up about this whole thing. I think it's important, understandably so.

But you can't communicate urgency with feeling alone. The fact that I care can't make you care - especially if you don't want to. And people aren't going to hear about global warming and revolutionize themselves - not in a society as big as ours.

So how can we convince people that this is something worth fighting for?

I can't claim to know for sure. But my suspicion is that we have to explain and educate first, and then offer short steps. Above all else, we have to get the idea into people's minds - not as something revolutionary, just as a simple fact.

I'm not convinced environmentalists are taking the right steps forward, as yet. On the whole, it's been a trillion decisions that have led us to this place, on the edge - and so few of those decisions have been malicious. We can't start with blame, unless it's first with ourselves, collectively - and we shouldn't start with blame if we don't move on to what can be done.

So have a good Superbowl. It's a celebration. As long as we know that it has its excesses, and that steps could be taken to make it better for the planet - then that's enough for now.

Musical Inspiration

2009-02-01T15:20:00.000-08:00

Here's some music that's been putting me in my own little world lately:

Nothing much to do with my push for 450 by 2050, but man - that's some stop-motion.

Also, the album Set Yourself on Fire by Stars.

Wind: What about the little ones?

2009-02-01T10:40:00.000-08:00

One of wind power's oft-cited drawbacks is that it kills birds and bats - and man, isn't that a depressing thought? Poor little flying sparrow scissored down by the rotating blades of man's consumptive nature manifested in reality? Or something?

For both land and off-shore wind turbines - the big industrial ones - the major concern is with birds and bats. Generally, only flying species seem to be affected, because at the ground level wind turbines just don't take up a lot of space. Lots of people graze livestock like cattle on wind farm land (and apparently they like it - they move their grazing throughout the day to be in the shadow from the turbines!). Same story with off-shore; the construction might spook some fish, but the concrete base and metal pole are so inert they probably won't have a huge effect on local water animals.

So that leaves the ones that can fly into the whirling blades of death.

Generally-speaking, trying to measure a number of bird/bat kills at wind turbines seems to be heavily influenced by local geography, luck, weather, and whether or not you're for or against wind technology in general. For example:

The folks at windaction.org (an anti-wind power site) put together a report based on a paper that says that some European wind farms have had "mortality rates as high as 103 to 309 birds/turbine/year". Reading an abstract of the paper they're basing this off of, though, it turns out that the actual range of bird kills is not 103 to 309, but "respectively 2.8-103 and 8.5-309" for two different locations. Clearly, it's hard to estimate how turbines will affect birds.

Bats might be a greater problem - it seems that the acoustics of industrial wind turbines can mess with a bat's sense of echo-location. The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) notes that bat deaths were found to be higher than previously understood in 2003, and that the industry is working to fix it - possibly through the use of sound alarms that alert bats to the danger. Whether or not that'll work, who knows?

The AWEA also notes that even if we take the upper numbers of bird deaths for wind turbines, the number of flying creatures killed is magnitudes lower than the number killed by tall buildings, airplanes, and human-owned cats (really). Their numbers - probably on the low end, since they're an advocacy site - are that less than 1 in 100,000 of human-caused bird deaths are caused by wind power sites. Anti-wind people counter that in-city bird kills are of common species while wind sites are sometimes situated in the path of more-in-danger migratory birds - though that's based off one dude's anti-establishment paper, and seems a little suspect.

In the end? Wildlife deaths have become a bigger part of the conception of wind power because it has such an image attached to it - and because wind power's other problems are so variable. Because wind power is so open-ended in terms of where we put it, we feel compelled to latch onto a generalized draw-back to be fair.

In the end, pollution and smog has probably killed plenty of flying creatures - as well as our cities, our windows, and our cats; never mind the larger, indirect costs of habitat destruction (especially of wetlands). The world isn't ideal; there's no reason to expect wind power to be either, in regards to wildlife.

Not to say we shouldn't try to prevent animal deaths, though - bats can be really cute sometimes.

It's okay to know that people are wrong without knowing why.

2009-01-31T15:27:00.000-08:00

In the course of the research I do for this blog (because, believe it or not, I wasn't born into this world with full knowledge of our climate change crisis - sucks, huh?), I run across a lot of people who deny some or all of this whole global warming thing. And it gets really confusing, because sometimes they're really good at debating, or they really are scientists with a ton of credits to their name, and I start to think "But man, this guy (or girl, but mostly guy) really sounds like they know their stuff."

Here's the thing, though.

Science is not exact - it's easy to pick a single scientific paper apart. It's also easy to find research that supports your view. Science is not an individual thing - the truth is in the sum total, provided by organizations like the International Panel on Climate Change (hey Al, if you're reading this (and of course you are) congrats on the Nobel Prize). These are the people who review thousands of papers to figure out a good guess at what's really going on.

Wikipedia has a good article on Scientific Opinion on Climate Change, which is totally credible since they're just collecting statements by various organizations. Of note, this quote: "With the July 2007 release of the revised statement by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, no remaining scientific body of national or international standing is known to reject the basic findings of human influence on recent climate."

And that's really the key. "scientific bod[ies] of national or international standing" - not some dude with a webpage (or even a doctorate).

Even more importantly, though: the climate is not simple.

In this blog, I'm sometimes guilty of making things sound really simple - and maybe more often, I'm guilty of thinking they're simple too. They're really not. In my last post, I talked about warming atmosphere equaling warming oceans, which is happening - but the way it happens is incredibly complicated and includes a ton of different chemical and meteorological processes.

Which is why we have scientists - to understand this stuff.

But at the core, no one really understands the climate. It's way, way too big. We think we understand some generalities - and we know some things for sure - but it's still really complicated.

(Even worse, the nature of the Universe makes any complex system inherently unpredictable - yay for Chaos Theory and rewatching Jurassic Park!)

Basically, what I'm trying to say is that there are a ton of ways that foolish, misguided (and potentially dangerous) people can twist science into something that isn't true - and sound really smart in the process.

But in the end, we all have to rely on common sense. If gigantic panels of scientists in every country (at least not dominated by the oil trade), independent organizations, and the United Nations are saying that they've looked at all the papers, and the consensus is that there's climate change - what's the chances that a few dudes somewhere can pick a single scientific paper apart and unravel a huge conspiracy?

For whatever reason, there are people in this world who choose to disbelieve climate change - and the truth of it is that we don't have the time to deal with them. We need to get to work, not walk some fools through the steps to understanding - especially if it's against their will.

Global warming exists, and it's getting worse. That's all there is to it, at the core.