The success of Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth” gets a lot of credit in the US press for helping to elevate public awareness of, and concern for, the problem of global warming. I haven’t seen any actual data on this, but the fact that the movie is the third-highest grossing documentary of all time is pretty good supportive evidence.
More evidence comes from Australia: I subscribe to Google Alerts for “Global Warming” and “Climate Change.” That means that I get a daily email with a list of every news article on either subject that Google can find. In early September, Al Gore was in Australia for the opening of his movie, and engaged the government there (which is very Bush-like in its approach) in a public debate about global warming. Australia gets a couple of mentions in his movie, one because Australia is the only industrialized nation besides us that refused to sign the Kyoto agreement, and another because Australia figures to be a major loser (increasing drought and wildfires, the death of the Great Barrier Reef) if the planet keeps heating up.
Not surprisingly, during the time of Gore’s visit the number of news citations on global warming and climate change with an Australian dateline shot up dramatically. What's amazing is that Australian news coverage of global warming has stayed high. Yesterday, a third of the global coverage on the issue emanated from Down Under.
I’d say Al Gore is making not just a splash, but a difference.
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Thursday, December 7, 2006
Global Warming is not coming soon...
It’s here. That’s the message that needs to get out. It’s here right now.
Here are a couple of reminders from the news today:
Most worrisome, of course, is that we’re seeing the evidence today – and we’re already locked into several decades of further warming even if we immediately stop pumping CO2 and methane into the atmosphere.
Where is Chicken Little when you need him?
Here are a couple of reminders from the news today:
- Current temperature readings in the Alps show that they are the warmest they’ve been in at least 1200 years. The warming trend began in the 1980s, about the same time that the hockey stick graph of global temperatures shot upwards.
- We know the oceans are warming, and now we have hard evidence of what one of the consequences will be. A study published in Nature provides a direct link between warmer water temperatures and the shrinking of phytoplankton production – a double whammy since they are both the base of the ocean’s food web and a major carbon sink.
Most worrisome, of course, is that we’re seeing the evidence today – and we’re already locked into several decades of further warming even if we immediately stop pumping CO2 and methane into the atmosphere.
Where is Chicken Little when you need him?
Tuesday, December 5, 2006
We have met the enemy...
“When the subject is global warming, the villain is usually the United States.”
This was the lead sentence in an article in the Economist this week. The Economist, for those who don’t know, is a highly regarded weekly news magazine published in England. Sort of like Time or Newsweek, but with brains. And the courage to call it like it is.
Notice that is was the lead sentence in an article. Not an opinion piece. As far as the world is concerned, our shameless refusal to own up to our massive contributions to global warming (25% of the world’s CO2 output, for example) is a fact, not an opinion. The greatest crisis facing the planet, and our government has its collective head in the sand.
This was the lead sentence in an article in the Economist this week. The Economist, for those who don’t know, is a highly regarded weekly news magazine published in England. Sort of like Time or Newsweek, but with brains. And the courage to call it like it is.
Notice that is was the lead sentence in an article. Not an opinion piece. As far as the world is concerned, our shameless refusal to own up to our massive contributions to global warming (25% of the world’s CO2 output, for example) is a fact, not an opinion. The greatest crisis facing the planet, and our government has its collective head in the sand.
Monday, December 4, 2006
It's never simple
Just when you thought it was safe to bet on hydropower for clean energy, there’s new evidence that the reservoirs created behind dams in tropical countries may emit as much – or more – greenhouse gasses than their fossil-fuel counterparts.
In a report in the September 30th issue of Nature, Jim Giles reports on a growing body of research that shows that both carbon dioxide and methane are emitted in large quantities from the water trapped behind, and flowing from, dams in tropical countries. Studies at one site in particular, the Balbina Dam in Brazil, have concluded that the environment would in fact have been better off if they’d built a conventional fossil fuel plant instead.
The problem is organic matter in the reservoir behind the dam: plants submerged as the reservoir is formed and plant matter that gets washed in and trapped later. As the organic matter decays – rapidly in those warm tropical waters – carbon dioxide and methane are produced. There is still disagreement on a formula for calculating how much of these gases are released, and by what mechanism: more research is definitely needed, and urgently.
But the evidence we do have is enough that future construction of hydroelectric facilities in tropical countries needs to be approached with caution. Giles notes that the Clean Development Mechanism, which allows developed nations to fund clean-energy projects in developing countries as a way to earn carbon credits under the Kyoto Protocol, may need to be revised as well.
Even more scary, though, is that greenhouse emissions from tropical dams are not included in current climate models, and projections using existing evidence mean we are pumping around 20% more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere than we thought, bringing the day of reckoning that much closer.
In a report in the September 30th issue of Nature, Jim Giles reports on a growing body of research that shows that both carbon dioxide and methane are emitted in large quantities from the water trapped behind, and flowing from, dams in tropical countries. Studies at one site in particular, the Balbina Dam in Brazil, have concluded that the environment would in fact have been better off if they’d built a conventional fossil fuel plant instead.
The problem is organic matter in the reservoir behind the dam: plants submerged as the reservoir is formed and plant matter that gets washed in and trapped later. As the organic matter decays – rapidly in those warm tropical waters – carbon dioxide and methane are produced. There is still disagreement on a formula for calculating how much of these gases are released, and by what mechanism: more research is definitely needed, and urgently.
But the evidence we do have is enough that future construction of hydroelectric facilities in tropical countries needs to be approached with caution. Giles notes that the Clean Development Mechanism, which allows developed nations to fund clean-energy projects in developing countries as a way to earn carbon credits under the Kyoto Protocol, may need to be revised as well.
Even more scary, though, is that greenhouse emissions from tropical dams are not included in current climate models, and projections using existing evidence mean we are pumping around 20% more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere than we thought, bringing the day of reckoning that much closer.
Friday, December 1, 2006
Bush change of heart?
There are increasing hints in Washington that Bush is finally going to change his stance on CO2 emissions and possibly push for some kind of regulatory response to global warming. Nope – NOT because of the midterm elections – although I’m sure they may provide him some political cover for his “change of heart.” He’s changing his stance because Big Oil is changing theirs.
What? Big Oil is now FOR regulating CO2 emissions at the federal level? Well, yes and no. Of course they’d rather have no regulation at all, but if they must…. And why must they? Here’s where change is happening from the bottom up.
Turns out that the voting public is by and large (70%) convinced that global warming is a serious problem and are worried about the U.S.’s lack of action on that front. Because of this lack of action from the politicos in Washington, politicians at the state and even local level have responded to increasing pressures from the voting public and instituted measures to regulate CO2 emissions in their jurisdiction. When Republican Governor Schwartzenegger of California signed a major piece of CO2 emission legislation, Big Oil could see the handwriting on the wall.
In effect, the voters did an end run around the oil companies’ highly successful Washington lobbying efforts. Bravo for us!
These state-sponsored efforts create huge headaches for the big oil companies in two ways:
1. They would have to wage their head-in-the-sand battle against global warming measures on 50 fronts instead of one – expensive and difficult. Better to have the regulations come from Washington, where they can concentrate their efforts and lobbying funds.
2. Washington politicians are by definition less connected to the will of the people, the goings-on there are less transparent, and therefore it’s easier to secretly buy influence and water down regulations at the national level than at the state and local level.
Big Oil is agreeing to regulation so that they can return the regulatory efforts to Washington where they can have more control over it. Simple as that. Sure they may have to make a concession or two, but they’re experts at crafting legislation that looks like it’s accomplishing a lot but actually requires very little.
So, although it looks like Bush is having a change of heart on global warming, don’t you believe it. His heart still belongs to Big Oil. And where Big Oil leads, George will follow.
What? Big Oil is now FOR regulating CO2 emissions at the federal level? Well, yes and no. Of course they’d rather have no regulation at all, but if they must…. And why must they? Here’s where change is happening from the bottom up.
Turns out that the voting public is by and large (70%) convinced that global warming is a serious problem and are worried about the U.S.’s lack of action on that front. Because of this lack of action from the politicos in Washington, politicians at the state and even local level have responded to increasing pressures from the voting public and instituted measures to regulate CO2 emissions in their jurisdiction. When Republican Governor Schwartzenegger of California signed a major piece of CO2 emission legislation, Big Oil could see the handwriting on the wall.
In effect, the voters did an end run around the oil companies’ highly successful Washington lobbying efforts. Bravo for us!
These state-sponsored efforts create huge headaches for the big oil companies in two ways:
1. They would have to wage their head-in-the-sand battle against global warming measures on 50 fronts instead of one – expensive and difficult. Better to have the regulations come from Washington, where they can concentrate their efforts and lobbying funds.
2. Washington politicians are by definition less connected to the will of the people, the goings-on there are less transparent, and therefore it’s easier to secretly buy influence and water down regulations at the national level than at the state and local level.
Big Oil is agreeing to regulation so that they can return the regulatory efforts to Washington where they can have more control over it. Simple as that. Sure they may have to make a concession or two, but they’re experts at crafting legislation that looks like it’s accomplishing a lot but actually requires very little.
So, although it looks like Bush is having a change of heart on global warming, don’t you believe it. His heart still belongs to Big Oil. And where Big Oil leads, George will follow.
Monday, November 13, 2006
Double whammy: acceleration and feedback
The global warming naysayers always accuse the scientific community of exaggerating the dangers posed by global warming. In fact, the opposite is true. What the naysayers don’t get is that the scientific projections are, by their nature, almost always conservative. Why? Because they tend to extrapolate past history linearly into the future. What’s wrong with that? Two things: acceleration and feedback.
Acceleration: The problem with extrapolating past CO2 emissions trends into the future is that the increases aren’t linear – they’re accelerating. New data presented by the Global Carbon Project (a consortium of 200 scientists worldwide) at an Earth science conference in Beijing earlier this month shows that global carbon emissions are now growing at a 3.2% per year clip. The average rate of growth as recently as the 1990s was 0.8%. That means that our CO2 production rate has quadrupled from one decade to the next – and we’re only halfway through this one. That also means that we’re already way beyond the IPCC projections that the naysayers were throwing so much heat at in 2001.
It’s not just the carbon, either. Sea-level is now rising at a rate that’s at the upper end of the IPCC projections of just five years ago, and that rate is also accelerating.
In an earlier post (September 12th) I described a plan put forth by two scientists for solving the carbon problem using existing technologies. They based their plan on the fact that we were pumping 7 billons tons of carbon into the atmosphere a year. Now we’re pumping 9 billion tons a year into the atmosphere. That’s almost a 30% increase in just a few years.
Feedback: One feedback loop that has gotten a fair amount of press before occurs in the polar regions: as more ice melts, less sunlight is reflected back into space and therefore more is absorbed into the ocean, heating it up, which melts even more ice, which means more sunlight is absorbed into the ocean, and so on and so on. Because of this feedback loop, many scientists believe we may have already passed the point of no return on Arctic sea ice – and when it’s gone, we don’t know if it will ever come back.
A second worrisome feedback loop has come to light more recently: as the permafrost in the northern tundra melts, less sunlight is reflected back from these regions as well, meaning the ground absorbs more sunlight, heating it up, causing more permafrost to melt, and the spiral continues. The big problem here is that there is a HUGE amount of methane trapped under the permafrost, and as the permafrost melts that methane escapes into the atmosphere. Recent measurements in Russia indicate that the rate of methane emission is accelerating as well. Add to this the fact that methane is 20 times more potent that CO2 as a greenhouse gas, so releasing more methane heats up the atmosphere even faster, which means ice and permafrost will melt even faster, releasing methane at an accelerating rate…..you get the idea.
We’re just starting to get a handle on the nature and size of these feedback mechanisms – which means they aren’t represented in the climate models yet. Which means that the climate models, if anything, are underestimating the severity, and urgency, of the global warming problem.
Acceleration: The problem with extrapolating past CO2 emissions trends into the future is that the increases aren’t linear – they’re accelerating. New data presented by the Global Carbon Project (a consortium of 200 scientists worldwide) at an Earth science conference in Beijing earlier this month shows that global carbon emissions are now growing at a 3.2% per year clip. The average rate of growth as recently as the 1990s was 0.8%. That means that our CO2 production rate has quadrupled from one decade to the next – and we’re only halfway through this one. That also means that we’re already way beyond the IPCC projections that the naysayers were throwing so much heat at in 2001.
It’s not just the carbon, either. Sea-level is now rising at a rate that’s at the upper end of the IPCC projections of just five years ago, and that rate is also accelerating.
In an earlier post (September 12th) I described a plan put forth by two scientists for solving the carbon problem using existing technologies. They based their plan on the fact that we were pumping 7 billons tons of carbon into the atmosphere a year. Now we’re pumping 9 billion tons a year into the atmosphere. That’s almost a 30% increase in just a few years.
Feedback: One feedback loop that has gotten a fair amount of press before occurs in the polar regions: as more ice melts, less sunlight is reflected back into space and therefore more is absorbed into the ocean, heating it up, which melts even more ice, which means more sunlight is absorbed into the ocean, and so on and so on. Because of this feedback loop, many scientists believe we may have already passed the point of no return on Arctic sea ice – and when it’s gone, we don’t know if it will ever come back.
A second worrisome feedback loop has come to light more recently: as the permafrost in the northern tundra melts, less sunlight is reflected back from these regions as well, meaning the ground absorbs more sunlight, heating it up, causing more permafrost to melt, and the spiral continues. The big problem here is that there is a HUGE amount of methane trapped under the permafrost, and as the permafrost melts that methane escapes into the atmosphere. Recent measurements in Russia indicate that the rate of methane emission is accelerating as well. Add to this the fact that methane is 20 times more potent that CO2 as a greenhouse gas, so releasing more methane heats up the atmosphere even faster, which means ice and permafrost will melt even faster, releasing methane at an accelerating rate…..you get the idea.
We’re just starting to get a handle on the nature and size of these feedback mechanisms – which means they aren’t represented in the climate models yet. Which means that the climate models, if anything, are underestimating the severity, and urgency, of the global warming problem.
Monday, October 30, 2006
Stern medicine
The Stern Report (“The Economics of Climate Change), alluded to in an earlier post, was officially published last week. Commissioned by the British Government, the report is a comprehensive overview of the economics of climate change, and manages to be both optimistic (there’s still time) and cautionary (but if we wait too long…).
This report is a thorough, painstaking and ultimately courageous step forward. The authors recognized they would have to go way out on limb after limb with their assumptions and projections, but rather than take the safe course, they went out onto every limb, taking care to clearly document their assumptions and their methods of projection. Creating economic projections for a single country a year into the future can be a pretty daunting task – this group tackled the entire global economy and went out a hundred years.
But they did it right. Here are the highlights:
Cost-benefit analysis
The report starts with a cost-benefit analysis. On the cost side, looking at a relatively narrow range of the possible economic impacts (based on the 2001 IPCC report), the price tag for global warming is estimated at 5% of global GDP. Per year. If you add in more recent evidence and take a broader view, the costs could rise to 20% of global GDP per year.
On the other hand, the costs to reduce greenhouse gasses are estimated in the 1% of global GDP range. “People would pay a little more for carbon-intensive goods
Is this a no-brainer, or what?
Looking at it another way, each metric ton of CO2 emitted today is causing about $85 worth of damage. Data from the carbon-trading markets indicate that the cost to eliminate that metric ton of CO2 is about $25. “In other words,” says Her Majesty’s Treasury, “we’d be better off…in the order of $2.5 trillion a year.” Throw in the creation of new markets for carbon reduction technologies, and you could add another $500 billion a year of benefits.
Pretty much a no-brainer. Or as we say in Minnesota: Ufda!
What to do?
Well, act now rather than later, to be sure. But the report goes on to list four key elements to acting now successfully:
This report is a thorough, painstaking and ultimately courageous step forward. The authors recognized they would have to go way out on limb after limb with their assumptions and projections, but rather than take the safe course, they went out onto every limb, taking care to clearly document their assumptions and their methods of projection. Creating economic projections for a single country a year into the future can be a pretty daunting task – this group tackled the entire global economy and went out a hundred years.
But they did it right. Here are the highlights:
Cost-benefit analysis
The report starts with a cost-benefit analysis. On the cost side, looking at a relatively narrow range of the possible economic impacts (based on the 2001 IPCC report), the price tag for global warming is estimated at 5% of global GDP. Per year. If you add in more recent evidence and take a broader view, the costs could rise to 20% of global GDP per year.
On the other hand, the costs to reduce greenhouse gasses are estimated in the 1% of global GDP range. “People would pay a little more for carbon-intensive goods
Is this a no-brainer, or what?
Looking at it another way, each metric ton of CO2 emitted today is causing about $85 worth of damage. Data from the carbon-trading markets indicate that the cost to eliminate that metric ton of CO2 is about $25. “In other words,” says Her Majesty’s Treasury, “we’d be better off…in the order of $2.5 trillion a year.” Throw in the creation of new markets for carbon reduction technologies, and you could add another $500 billion a year of benefits.
Pretty much a no-brainer. Or as we say in Minnesota: Ufda!
What to do?
Well, act now rather than later, to be sure. But the report goes on to list four key elements to acting now successfully:
- International carbon pricing: The report calls the current global warming problem one of the biggest market failures of all time, and the reason is simple – the true costs of carbon usage are not accounted for by the market. To have the market work for us instead of against us, we need to starting adding in this cost – through taxation, carbon emissions trading and/or regulation.
- Technology policy: In the long term, developing the technologies we need to drastically reduce our carbon usage is properly the role of private industry. Trouble is, we may not have a “long term” to work with, so in the short term, governments can and should provide the necessary incentives to accelerate the process.
- Removing barriers to change: All systems resist change, and large companies and institutions can be the worst offenders. Government can help overcome this inertia through a combination of providing good information about the problems and “best practice” solution, by setting standards for new infrastructure so that our current carbon-usages doesn’t become ingrained, by tax and other policies designed to stimulate movement toward a lower carbon, more efficient economy.
- Adaptation: No matter what, the report says, we will be facing significant consequences from the global warming we’ve already created. The CO2 we put in the air today lasts for a hundred years. And the consequences will fall most heavily on the countries least able to handle them. Governments can assist these countries through provision of good information, and planning and financial assistance.
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Sun may give us a breather - let's not blow it.
In an interesting article in New Scientist magazine (16 September 2006), Stuart Clark looks at evidence that the sunspot activity may strongly influence the Earth’s warming and cooling cycles. When sunspot activity is high, global temperatures go up. When sunspot activity is low, little ice ages occur.
In fact, the first evidence of the role of sunspots came as researchers noticed that periods of extremely low sunspot activity corresponded to two recent mini Ice Ages: the Little Ice Age of the late 1600s – when the Thames regularly froze over, and you could walk from Manhattan to Staten Island during the winter - and a similar period from the mid 14th to mid 15th centuries.
Turns out there is a boom-bust sunspot cycle with a duration of about 200 years or so where periods of high sunspot activity are followed by a crash. We’ve been in a high-activity period for a while now, but activity levels are the lowest they’ve been in 50 years. We’re about due for a crash.
Don’t pull out the extra winter coats just yet, though. Recent sunspot activity and global temperatures were pretty well correlated until 1970 or so, an indicator that human-generated warming has overwhelmed the sunspot cycle’s influence. Best guess: a sunspot activity crash might cool off the planet by about 0.2 degrees Centigrade. And these sunspot lulls don’t last that long – in 50 to 100 years, the sunspots will be back as strong as ever.
At best, we might get a little breathing room, a little extra time for the politicians to quit being political and start being leaders. A little extra time to overcome the economic inertia and get serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
At worst, a “natural cycle” slowdown in global warming will give the naysayers just the ammunition they need to stonewall our efforts for another 50 years – so that when the sun rejoins the global heating party we’re even worse off than we are today.
In fact, the first evidence of the role of sunspots came as researchers noticed that periods of extremely low sunspot activity corresponded to two recent mini Ice Ages: the Little Ice Age of the late 1600s – when the Thames regularly froze over, and you could walk from Manhattan to Staten Island during the winter - and a similar period from the mid 14th to mid 15th centuries.
Turns out there is a boom-bust sunspot cycle with a duration of about 200 years or so where periods of high sunspot activity are followed by a crash. We’ve been in a high-activity period for a while now, but activity levels are the lowest they’ve been in 50 years. We’re about due for a crash.
Don’t pull out the extra winter coats just yet, though. Recent sunspot activity and global temperatures were pretty well correlated until 1970 or so, an indicator that human-generated warming has overwhelmed the sunspot cycle’s influence. Best guess: a sunspot activity crash might cool off the planet by about 0.2 degrees Centigrade. And these sunspot lulls don’t last that long – in 50 to 100 years, the sunspots will be back as strong as ever.
At best, we might get a little breathing room, a little extra time for the politicians to quit being political and start being leaders. A little extra time to overcome the economic inertia and get serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
At worst, a “natural cycle” slowdown in global warming will give the naysayers just the ammunition they need to stonewall our efforts for another 50 years – so that when the sun rejoins the global heating party we’re even worse off than we are today.
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Living beyond our means
This year, our planet began living beyond its means on October 9th. This according to calculations by the Global Footprint Network. They have designated October 9th as this year’s “World Overshoot Day” – the day we humans have used up all the resources that the planet can naturally replace in a year.
The idea behind their calculation is this: the planet can re-grow a certain number of trees each year. If in a given year we cut down more than that number, we start to borrow from the next year’s tree crop. The same principle applies to pollution – the planet can absorb a certain amount of carbon dioxide in a year. Once we exceed that amount, we’re basically passing along the absorption job to next year. If you take all these factors and add them up, you get our ecological footprint. October 9th is the day our collective footprint exceeded the capacity of the planet to sustain it.
But we can’t just stop using resources, so we’ll basically have to “borrow” about another 30% of the planet’s annual resource budget just to see us through the end of the year. It’s exactly like a family who spends all income by October 9th, and has to borrow a third of a year’s pay just to get through the year.
Sure, a family can get into this kind of jam for a year or two and survive, but this kind of deficit borrowing can’t work for very long. It doesn’t work on a planetary scale either. Sooner or later we have to pay the piper.
Unfortunately, we humans have been running an ecological deficit for some time now. The Global Footprint Network’s data goes back to 1987 when the World Overshoot Day was December 19th. That means in 1987 we only had to borrow about 3%. Nearly 20 years later, we not only haven’t solved the deficit problem, but we’re now borrowing 30%. And the really scary part is how quickly we went from 3% to 30%.
And we are starting to pay the piper –rising sea levels, more catastrophic weather, spreading disease…you know, the price for global warming.
The idea behind their calculation is this: the planet can re-grow a certain number of trees each year. If in a given year we cut down more than that number, we start to borrow from the next year’s tree crop. The same principle applies to pollution – the planet can absorb a certain amount of carbon dioxide in a year. Once we exceed that amount, we’re basically passing along the absorption job to next year. If you take all these factors and add them up, you get our ecological footprint. October 9th is the day our collective footprint exceeded the capacity of the planet to sustain it.
But we can’t just stop using resources, so we’ll basically have to “borrow” about another 30% of the planet’s annual resource budget just to see us through the end of the year. It’s exactly like a family who spends all income by October 9th, and has to borrow a third of a year’s pay just to get through the year.
Sure, a family can get into this kind of jam for a year or two and survive, but this kind of deficit borrowing can’t work for very long. It doesn’t work on a planetary scale either. Sooner or later we have to pay the piper.
Unfortunately, we humans have been running an ecological deficit for some time now. The Global Footprint Network’s data goes back to 1987 when the World Overshoot Day was December 19th. That means in 1987 we only had to borrow about 3%. Nearly 20 years later, we not only haven’t solved the deficit problem, but we’re now borrowing 30%. And the really scary part is how quickly we went from 3% to 30%.
And we are starting to pay the piper –rising sea levels, more catastrophic weather, spreading disease…you know, the price for global warming.
Friday, October 13, 2006
There's gold in them thar global warming
I suppose it would be nice if everyone would take up the challenge of combatting global warming just because it's obviously the right thing to do, but I'll be happy if they get into it just for the money.
A study by the Global Development and Environment Institute of Tufts University said that failing to act now to reduce global warming could end up costing trillions of dollars per year by the end of the century. By contrast, spending a tenth of that today to limit the future rise in global temperatures to less two degrees could cut that in half. The good news – there’s still time to act and make a meaningful difference. The bad news: due to our inaction to date, we may end up spending 3-4% of total world economic output on the consequences.
Still, studies like this may help galvanize the movers and shakers of the world, who tend to see things more clearly when there’s a price tag attached.
Speaking of seeing clearly, environmental voices have been saying for a decade that fighting global warming can be an economic boon for any country that engages in the battle, creating new technologies, new jobs, and new wealth. The day before the study was published, Shell Oil came out with a statement that climate change represented a billions-of-dollars opportunity for businesses due to the demand for products and services aimed at reducing carbon emissions. And this from their web site: “Shell is a global group of oil, gas and petrochemical companies with a broad portfolio of hydrogen, biofuels, wind and solar power interests. Our aim is to meet the energy needs of society, in ways that are economically, socially and environmentally sustainable.”
Hopefully, they’ll put their money where their mouth is.
A study by the Global Development and Environment Institute of Tufts University said that failing to act now to reduce global warming could end up costing trillions of dollars per year by the end of the century. By contrast, spending a tenth of that today to limit the future rise in global temperatures to less two degrees could cut that in half. The good news – there’s still time to act and make a meaningful difference. The bad news: due to our inaction to date, we may end up spending 3-4% of total world economic output on the consequences.
Still, studies like this may help galvanize the movers and shakers of the world, who tend to see things more clearly when there’s a price tag attached.
Speaking of seeing clearly, environmental voices have been saying for a decade that fighting global warming can be an economic boon for any country that engages in the battle, creating new technologies, new jobs, and new wealth. The day before the study was published, Shell Oil came out with a statement that climate change represented a billions-of-dollars opportunity for businesses due to the demand for products and services aimed at reducing carbon emissions. And this from their web site: “Shell is a global group of oil, gas and petrochemical companies with a broad portfolio of hydrogen, biofuels, wind and solar power interests. Our aim is to meet the energy needs of society, in ways that are economically, socially and environmentally sustainable.”
Hopefully, they’ll put their money where their mouth is.
Law: the Stick
In Great Britain, the opposition party and environmental organizations have long called for a bill setting regular carbon emissions reduction targets. No surprise there. The surprise is that such a bill may be introduced by the Government.
Why would a conservative government introduce such a bill? Add up the overwhelming scientific evidence, growing awareness of the economic costs of inaction (see previous post), and, perhaps most importantly, a growing public consensus that our planet is really in grave danger, and the arithmetic becomes pretty compelling to almost any politician.
I say “almost any politician” of course because I live in the United States.
The advantages of passing laws to enforce socially desirable ends has a long history of success in general, and in solving environmental problems in particular. The problem with voluntary action in a free market economy is that no one wants (or can afford to) be first. No automaker wants to be the first to make slightly more expensive cars with better gas mileage – they fear they’ll go out of business if consumers choose their competitors’ cheaper equivalents. A law raising fuel efficiency standards, on the other hand, puts everyone on a level playing field AND gets automakers into competition with each other to invent the most efficient means to the end. Everyone wins. Using the law as the stick got us out of our smog problem and is well on its way to solving the ozone problem.
We can go a long way toward limiting global warming by just passing a law limiting carbon emissions by the power and transportation industries, and then sitting back and watching the free market economy go to work on the problem.
Why would a conservative government introduce such a bill? Add up the overwhelming scientific evidence, growing awareness of the economic costs of inaction (see previous post), and, perhaps most importantly, a growing public consensus that our planet is really in grave danger, and the arithmetic becomes pretty compelling to almost any politician.
I say “almost any politician” of course because I live in the United States.
The advantages of passing laws to enforce socially desirable ends has a long history of success in general, and in solving environmental problems in particular. The problem with voluntary action in a free market economy is that no one wants (or can afford to) be first. No automaker wants to be the first to make slightly more expensive cars with better gas mileage – they fear they’ll go out of business if consumers choose their competitors’ cheaper equivalents. A law raising fuel efficiency standards, on the other hand, puts everyone on a level playing field AND gets automakers into competition with each other to invent the most efficient means to the end. Everyone wins. Using the law as the stick got us out of our smog problem and is well on its way to solving the ozone problem.
We can go a long way toward limiting global warming by just passing a law limiting carbon emissions by the power and transportation industries, and then sitting back and watching the free market economy go to work on the problem.
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Biofuels the answer? Stay tuned...
Biofuels have gotten a lot of press as the answer to both global warming and to our dependence on foreign oil. In a well-written and -researched piece in New Scientist magazine, Fred Pearce warns us that the silver clouds of corn-based and sugar-based biofuels both have dark linings. Right idea, but we aren’t there yet.
Bioethanol is made from processing either starchy plants (like corn) or sugar-rich plants (like sugar cane). With corn, you first have to pre-process it to turn the starches into sugar, then the corn sugar or cane sugar is fermented and distilled to produce ethanol. Using biofuels instead of fossil fuels greatly reduces the emissions of greenhouse gases from an automobile. Good so far.
Trouble is, it takes a fair amount of fossil fuel to produce the corn-based ethanol due to that pre-processing step, not to mention the fertilizers and tractor fuel used in growing the corn in the first place. Study results vary depending on their assumptions, but the upshot is that if you look at the entire process, it’s not clear that corn-based ethanol is much of a leap forward, environmentally speaking. Then there’s the fact that it takes a lot of land to grow the corn: it’s estimated that if the U.S. turned its ENTIRE corn crop into ethanol, we’d meet about 10% of our fuel demand. And a lot of people around the world would go hungrier. There are already signs of a shortage of corn and a spike in prices worldwide as a result of the so-far modest demand for corn-based ethanol.
Sugar-based ethanol has its own problems. Although the ratio of greenhouse gases saved vs. used in the production is much higher, it also requires a lot of land and the fear is that tropical developing countries will clear-cut more forests to get that land, which will make global warming worse. Sugar growing is also very water-intensive, and fresh water is another non-renewable resource that’s getting scarce in many areas of the world. Finally, as word that sugar-based ethanol is more environmentally friendly spread and the biofuel industry jumped on the bandwagon, world sugar prices doubled, which is not good for a lot of world’s population.
All this means is that biofuels aren’t a biopanacea (yet) for replacing fossil fuels in our automobiles. As Fred Pearce points out, though, the industry is still in its infancy, and even the U.S. Department of Energy is funding research looking at alternative organic fuel sources that don’t have the downsides that corn and sugar do. The most promising alternative is fuel made from cellulose, the raw material that all plants are made of. One attractive possibility that’s been in the news lately is switchgrass. It can yield twice as much ethanol per acre as corn, and we can develop hybrids that grow on otherwise unused land with relatively low maintenance. What we need is an efficient process for converting the cellulose to ethanol. Stay tuned.
Bioethanol is made from processing either starchy plants (like corn) or sugar-rich plants (like sugar cane). With corn, you first have to pre-process it to turn the starches into sugar, then the corn sugar or cane sugar is fermented and distilled to produce ethanol. Using biofuels instead of fossil fuels greatly reduces the emissions of greenhouse gases from an automobile. Good so far.
Trouble is, it takes a fair amount of fossil fuel to produce the corn-based ethanol due to that pre-processing step, not to mention the fertilizers and tractor fuel used in growing the corn in the first place. Study results vary depending on their assumptions, but the upshot is that if you look at the entire process, it’s not clear that corn-based ethanol is much of a leap forward, environmentally speaking. Then there’s the fact that it takes a lot of land to grow the corn: it’s estimated that if the U.S. turned its ENTIRE corn crop into ethanol, we’d meet about 10% of our fuel demand. And a lot of people around the world would go hungrier. There are already signs of a shortage of corn and a spike in prices worldwide as a result of the so-far modest demand for corn-based ethanol.
Sugar-based ethanol has its own problems. Although the ratio of greenhouse gases saved vs. used in the production is much higher, it also requires a lot of land and the fear is that tropical developing countries will clear-cut more forests to get that land, which will make global warming worse. Sugar growing is also very water-intensive, and fresh water is another non-renewable resource that’s getting scarce in many areas of the world. Finally, as word that sugar-based ethanol is more environmentally friendly spread and the biofuel industry jumped on the bandwagon, world sugar prices doubled, which is not good for a lot of world’s population.
All this means is that biofuels aren’t a biopanacea (yet) for replacing fossil fuels in our automobiles. As Fred Pearce points out, though, the industry is still in its infancy, and even the U.S. Department of Energy is funding research looking at alternative organic fuel sources that don’t have the downsides that corn and sugar do. The most promising alternative is fuel made from cellulose, the raw material that all plants are made of. One attractive possibility that’s been in the news lately is switchgrass. It can yield twice as much ethanol per acre as corn, and we can develop hybrids that grow on otherwise unused land with relatively low maintenance. What we need is an efficient process for converting the cellulose to ethanol. Stay tuned.
Saturday, September 23, 2006
Clinton Global Initiative
The big news from the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative was Richard Branson’s commitment to donate ALL profits for the next 10 years from his various companies (Virgin Airways et al.) to the development of clean energy sources. That is projected to be about $3 billion or so. As Bill Clinton said, “That’s serious money.” (Read the NYTimes article)
Overshadowed was the announcement by Clinton that he and several other conference attendees are setting up an investment fund (The Green Fund) which will raise $1 billion for the development of renewable energy sources. Add it up, and these two private efforts will outspend the U.S. Government’s Department of Transportation on clean energy research.
The Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) brings together an impressive array of global political and business leaders for the purpose of addressing some of the world’s pressing problems, including energy and climate change. Besides generating practical ideas for initiating change, attendees are required to make financial or other commitments to help implement those ideas. There’s definitely an atmosphere of competitive philanthropy about the sessions, with major commitments announced and commitment documents signed with much fanfare.
Whatever works, I say, and good for all of them. Besides the $4 billion plus raised to combat global warming, another $3 billion or so was raised to help in the battles against poverty, disease and religious/ethnic conflict.
I happened upon CGI’s web site just in time to listen to Bill Clinton’s closing address. First, I really miss having a president who can talk intelligently off-the-cuff about important issues in plain English. Second, it was pretty uplifting to see major business leaders marching up to the dais to make commitments in the fight against global warming. Most commitments, unlike the well-reported Branson donation, were practical programs of action.
One example: WalMart committed to substantially reducing the amount of packaging used in the products it sells. Such reductions contribute to the fight against global warming by (a) reducing the number of trees cut down to produce the paper parts, (b) reducing fossil fuels used to make the plastics specifically and the energy used to make the packaging generally, (c) reducing the fuel used to transport goods by reducing their size, and (d) reducing the waste processing afterwards. As one step, they will begin a program of rewarding suppliers for minimizing packaging. If their program is successful, they estimate that, by 2013, they will have avoided over 600,000 metrics tons of CO2 emissions and taken over 200,000 plus trucks off the highways per year.
In another, the Green Building Council announced a joint venture with Newland Communitiesto launch a $250,000 program to education consumers about the virtues and value of building green.
But beyond the occasional monster effort were hundreds of smaller ones that definitely add up, many in subtle but long-lasting ways. In encouraging potential contributors to realize that even small scale efforts can have a big impact, Clinton related how he and George Bush Sr. caused a couple of schools in New Orleans to be rebuilt (post-Katrina) using green-building standards. Those kids will be learning about environmental stewardship every single day, said Clinton, “and they’ll take that with them wherever they go.”
Overshadowed was the announcement by Clinton that he and several other conference attendees are setting up an investment fund (The Green Fund) which will raise $1 billion for the development of renewable energy sources. Add it up, and these two private efforts will outspend the U.S. Government’s Department of Transportation on clean energy research.
The Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) brings together an impressive array of global political and business leaders for the purpose of addressing some of the world’s pressing problems, including energy and climate change. Besides generating practical ideas for initiating change, attendees are required to make financial or other commitments to help implement those ideas. There’s definitely an atmosphere of competitive philanthropy about the sessions, with major commitments announced and commitment documents signed with much fanfare.
Whatever works, I say, and good for all of them. Besides the $4 billion plus raised to combat global warming, another $3 billion or so was raised to help in the battles against poverty, disease and religious/ethnic conflict.
I happened upon CGI’s web site just in time to listen to Bill Clinton’s closing address. First, I really miss having a president who can talk intelligently off-the-cuff about important issues in plain English. Second, it was pretty uplifting to see major business leaders marching up to the dais to make commitments in the fight against global warming. Most commitments, unlike the well-reported Branson donation, were practical programs of action.
One example: WalMart committed to substantially reducing the amount of packaging used in the products it sells. Such reductions contribute to the fight against global warming by (a) reducing the number of trees cut down to produce the paper parts, (b) reducing fossil fuels used to make the plastics specifically and the energy used to make the packaging generally, (c) reducing the fuel used to transport goods by reducing their size, and (d) reducing the waste processing afterwards. As one step, they will begin a program of rewarding suppliers for minimizing packaging. If their program is successful, they estimate that, by 2013, they will have avoided over 600,000 metrics tons of CO2 emissions and taken over 200,000 plus trucks off the highways per year.
In another, the Green Building Council announced a joint venture with Newland Communitiesto launch a $250,000 program to education consumers about the virtues and value of building green.
But beyond the occasional monster effort were hundreds of smaller ones that definitely add up, many in subtle but long-lasting ways. In encouraging potential contributors to realize that even small scale efforts can have a big impact, Clinton related how he and George Bush Sr. caused a couple of schools in New Orleans to be rebuilt (post-Katrina) using green-building standards. Those kids will be learning about environmental stewardship every single day, said Clinton, “and they’ll take that with them wherever they go.”
Friday, September 22, 2006
Are you kidding me?
Here’s a good one. The Cato Institute published a “policy analysis” entitled: “Is the sky really falling? A Review of Recent Global Warming Scare Stories” written by Patrick J. Michaels, who has some impressive-looking climatology/ecology credentials. This “study” is not only featured on the Cato Institute’s web site, but also on the George C. Marshall Institute’s web site. (See a previous post – the top British science academy has written ExxonMobil to stop funding the GCMI because it disseminates misleading information about climate change).
Michaels’ thesis is that, for political and press-bias reasons, only the bad news about climate change gets published. His “proof” of this claim? I have to quote it in full, just so you know I’m not making this up (if you want to read the whole thing, click here .)
“It is highly improbable, in a statistical sense, that new information added to any existing forecast is almost always ‘bad’ or ‘good’; rather, each new finding has an equal probability of making a forecast worse or better. Consequently, the preponderance of bad news almost certainly means that something is missing, both in the process of science itself and in the reporting of science.”
I try to be open-minded, but that’s about the lamest thing I’ve ever seen a supposedly reputable scientist say. In print, no less. Memo to Michaels – not all slices of data are random.
Follow me on this one. Suppose your neighbor comes to you and says that he has been measuring the temperature outside his front door since June 1st. It’s now June 30th, and he says that there is a definite warming trend, because every week was warmer than the week before.
Using Mr. Michaels’ logic, however, we’d have to assume that your neighbor is withholding data, since the “odds are” that half the weeks should be colder.
There’s another explanation, of course, namely that we’re heading from spring into summer. During this time, temperature fluctuations aren’t random (half warmer, half colder).
The reason, Mr. Michaels, that almost all the studies report “more bad news on global warming” is not because scientists are suppressing half the data. It’s because global warming is actually happening.
Michaels’ thesis is that, for political and press-bias reasons, only the bad news about climate change gets published. His “proof” of this claim? I have to quote it in full, just so you know I’m not making this up (if you want to read the whole thing, click here .)
“It is highly improbable, in a statistical sense, that new information added to any existing forecast is almost always ‘bad’ or ‘good’; rather, each new finding has an equal probability of making a forecast worse or better. Consequently, the preponderance of bad news almost certainly means that something is missing, both in the process of science itself and in the reporting of science.”
I try to be open-minded, but that’s about the lamest thing I’ve ever seen a supposedly reputable scientist say. In print, no less. Memo to Michaels – not all slices of data are random.
Follow me on this one. Suppose your neighbor comes to you and says that he has been measuring the temperature outside his front door since June 1st. It’s now June 30th, and he says that there is a definite warming trend, because every week was warmer than the week before.
Using Mr. Michaels’ logic, however, we’d have to assume that your neighbor is withholding data, since the “odds are” that half the weeks should be colder.
There’s another explanation, of course, namely that we’re heading from spring into summer. During this time, temperature fluctuations aren’t random (half warmer, half colder).
The reason, Mr. Michaels, that almost all the studies report “more bad news on global warming” is not because scientists are suppressing half the data. It’s because global warming is actually happening.
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Choosing enemies over friends
Brazil has been working toward energy independence since the big world oil crisis of 1973. They may achieve it this year. How? They’ve systematically invested in ethanol made from homegrown sugar. It was a long, expensive process, but today ethanol accounts for at least 20% of its transportation fuel use, while the rest of the world limps along at 1%. Good for their energy independence, great for global warming (besides the reduced emissions, you can’t grow sugar in the Amazon rain forest).
The Brazilians have gotten so good at this that they have ethanol left over for export. The U.S. has a rapidly growing demand for ethanol, and a (finally) official mission to wean ourselves off imported oil. You’d think, says Thomas Friedman in a column entitled “Dumb as we wanna be” (published yesterday in the New York Times), that importing Brazilian ethanol would be a no-brainer.
Not only would it be cheaper, but their sugar-based ethanol also:
Instead, he continues, the Midwest farmers and agribusinesses who produce U.S. ethanol have convinced Congress to levy a 54-cent-per-gallon tariff on imported ethanol. So we’re taxing imported fuel that, if we purchased it, would help out an ally and neighbor. On the other hand, we don’t tax imported crude oil that, when we purchase it, definitely helps out a few rich enemies. As Friedman asks, “Is this stupid, or really stupid?”
The Brazilians have gotten so good at this that they have ethanol left over for export. The U.S. has a rapidly growing demand for ethanol, and a (finally) official mission to wean ourselves off imported oil. You’d think, says Thomas Friedman in a column entitled “Dumb as we wanna be” (published yesterday in the New York Times), that importing Brazilian ethanol would be a no-brainer.
Not only would it be cheaper, but their sugar-based ethanol also:
- has lower greenhouse gas emissions than our corn-based variety;
- uses much, much less fossil fuel to produce (sugar ethanol creates 8 times as much energy as the fossil fuels it takes to make it, while corn-based ethanol only produces 1.3 times as much); and
- can be produced in poor, tropical countries so that its purchase could help alleviate poverty in that part of the world, a fair amount of which is in our own back yard.
Instead, he continues, the Midwest farmers and agribusinesses who produce U.S. ethanol have convinced Congress to levy a 54-cent-per-gallon tariff on imported ethanol. So we’re taxing imported fuel that, if we purchased it, would help out an ally and neighbor. On the other hand, we don’t tax imported crude oil that, when we purchase it, definitely helps out a few rich enemies. As Friedman asks, “Is this stupid, or really stupid?”
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Climate change misinformation
One of the biggest challenges facing those trying to get the public to understand the severity of the global warming problem is that there is so much bad information out there masquerading as science, and so little good science being presented to the public at large in an accessible way. The trouble is that as a rule scientists mostly just talk to themselves, and in a language that most of us can’t understand. This is a rule that has to be broken, otherwise they’ll continue to have the same kind of problems they’ve had trying to explain why the “theory” of evolution is something you can take to the bank, despite the fact that it’s a “theory.” You know, like the theory of gravity.
Sometimes its relatively easy to weed out the bad information just by using the common sense “duck test” (if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck….). Articles that contain good information, for example, are usually full of references to peer-reviewed scientific journals. These are journals where a scientist can’t get something published until a panel of “peers” reviews it for methodology and reasonableness. Articles no with science or bad science rarely have references, and when they do, the references are to articles in non-scientific publications, to interviews with individual scientists (no peer review there!), or to “studies” by “institutes” that, it turns out, get all their funding from companies or organizations with an ax to grind. One piece I saw that was trying to debunk the science of climate change, a piece that unfortunately got a lot of air time, was full of footnotes – pretty impressive-looking until you got to the footnote list at the end and realized that the main source for the “science” was an “opinion piece” on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal.
The most insidious misinformation, I think, comes from those studies from supposed think-tanks, “institutes” with impressive sounding names like “The George C. Marshall Institute” and “The Competitive Enterprise Institute” for example. These institutes are experts at dressing up their misinformation to sound like the real thing. Taking their cue from the Republican party (no coincidence there!), they have been attempting win the argument by controlling the language of the debate.
Okay, back to the need for scientist’s to fight smoke with fire. Just recently, the Royal Society, Britain’s top scientific academy, wrote a public letter (click to read it) to ExxonMobil taking the company to task for publishing misleading scientific information, specifically naming a piece in ExxonMobil’s “Corporate Citizenship Report” that claims that there are no objective studies showing that global warming is caused by human actions. After pointing out the huge number of such objective studies that have, in fact, been published, including one co-authored by one of ExxonMobil’s own scientists, the letter says: “It is very difficult to reconcile the misrepresentations of climate change science in these documents with ExxonMobil’s claim to be an industry leader.” The letter also points out that, in addition to its own misrepresentations, the company has given $2.9 million to fund 39 different groups that routinely misrepresent the science of climate change to the public, and asks the company to stop funding such groups. [In fairness, ExxonMobil also gave money to 24 organizations who do present the climate change situation accurately.]
I applaud the Royal Society’s willingness to send (and make public) this letter, and I hope scientific organizations the world over with take heed and start to get publicly involved. Of course, it helps that the British government doesn’t have its head in the sand about global warming, unlike another large, English-speaking country I could name…..
Sometimes its relatively easy to weed out the bad information just by using the common sense “duck test” (if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck….). Articles that contain good information, for example, are usually full of references to peer-reviewed scientific journals. These are journals where a scientist can’t get something published until a panel of “peers” reviews it for methodology and reasonableness. Articles no with science or bad science rarely have references, and when they do, the references are to articles in non-scientific publications, to interviews with individual scientists (no peer review there!), or to “studies” by “institutes” that, it turns out, get all their funding from companies or organizations with an ax to grind. One piece I saw that was trying to debunk the science of climate change, a piece that unfortunately got a lot of air time, was full of footnotes – pretty impressive-looking until you got to the footnote list at the end and realized that the main source for the “science” was an “opinion piece” on the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal.
The most insidious misinformation, I think, comes from those studies from supposed think-tanks, “institutes” with impressive sounding names like “The George C. Marshall Institute” and “The Competitive Enterprise Institute” for example. These institutes are experts at dressing up their misinformation to sound like the real thing. Taking their cue from the Republican party (no coincidence there!), they have been attempting win the argument by controlling the language of the debate.
Okay, back to the need for scientist’s to fight smoke with fire. Just recently, the Royal Society, Britain’s top scientific academy, wrote a public letter (click to read it) to ExxonMobil taking the company to task for publishing misleading scientific information, specifically naming a piece in ExxonMobil’s “Corporate Citizenship Report” that claims that there are no objective studies showing that global warming is caused by human actions. After pointing out the huge number of such objective studies that have, in fact, been published, including one co-authored by one of ExxonMobil’s own scientists, the letter says: “It is very difficult to reconcile the misrepresentations of climate change science in these documents with ExxonMobil’s claim to be an industry leader.” The letter also points out that, in addition to its own misrepresentations, the company has given $2.9 million to fund 39 different groups that routinely misrepresent the science of climate change to the public, and asks the company to stop funding such groups. [In fairness, ExxonMobil also gave money to 24 organizations who do present the climate change situation accurately.]
I applaud the Royal Society’s willingness to send (and make public) this letter, and I hope scientific organizations the world over with take heed and start to get publicly involved. Of course, it helps that the British government doesn’t have its head in the sand about global warming, unlike another large, English-speaking country I could name…..
Friday, September 15, 2006
Global Warming and the Supremes
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear its first global warming case this session. Back in 2003, the great state of Massachusetts sued the Environmental Protection Agency for deciding not to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emitted by America’s cars and trucks. Now, Massachusetts has been joined by a consortium of nearly 75 cities, states and environmentally-concerned organizations in petitioning the Supreme Court to overturn the EPA’s decision, based on the fact that the EPA has a pretty broad mandate to regulate emissions that can “reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.”
The EPA is defending its decision not to regulate (and has won so far through the lower courts) with arguments based on mostly on law and some on “merit.” It’s saying, basically, that it doesn’t have the authority to regulate greenhouse gases, and even if it did, it wouldn’t because the science is too fuzzy.
Here’s the gist of their argument, which I present as an example of the Bush administration’s recurring strategy for stonewalling in pursuit of corporate appeasement.
Short version: the usual Bush head-in-the-sand approach of asking for more studies. And note what a small part the scientific merit plays in all this.
It will be interesting to see how the Supremes handle this issue.
On the one hand, they are distinctly “conservative” (interesting irony there – the conservatives battling conservation) and would be under pressure to side with the administration on this one. On the other hand, the amount of scientific research that supports the fact that global warming is a clear and present danger has increased dramatically in both substance and airtime in the years since this lawsuit was initiated – you’ve got to hope the Supremes have some desire to not appear utterly stupid. Best of all, the NAS, on whose 2001 report the EPA is resting the “merits” of its case, has since issued a report confirming the “hockey stick” graph, which says that, yes, Martha, global warming is human-induced.
My money, sadly, is that the Supremes will acknowledge the science but rule in favor of the EPA’s stonewalling on a technicality or two. It would be the safe thing to do.
The EPA is defending its decision not to regulate (and has won so far through the lower courts) with arguments based on mostly on law and some on “merit.” It’s saying, basically, that it doesn’t have the authority to regulate greenhouse gases, and even if it did, it wouldn’t because the science is too fuzzy.
Here’s the gist of their argument, which I present as an example of the Bush administration’s recurring strategy for stonewalling in pursuit of corporate appeasement.
- First, they say the petitioners, all 75 of them, are not legally entitled to bring suit against the agency because they can’t show they’ve been harmed by the EPA’s decision not to regulate, and even if they were, they can’t show that a reversal of the EPA’s decision would remedy the problem.
- Second, they maintain that the Clean Air Act (CAA) doesn’t specifically empower them to deal with greenhouse gases, and when Congress has wanted them to deal with a new category of tailpipe emissions (such as CFCs), Congress has specifically widened the CAA to deal with the issue.
- Third, they say that the CAA gives them wide latitude in exercising “judgment” as to what constitutes a credible threat to public health and welfare, and that, in their judgment, there is still too much scientific uncertainty (based on a 2001 study by the National Academy of Sciences) as to whether global warming is human-induced, and if it is, by what mechanisms (i.e. to tailpipe emissions really matter?), and even if the mechanisms were known, the best remedies have yet to be identified.
Short version: the usual Bush head-in-the-sand approach of asking for more studies. And note what a small part the scientific merit plays in all this.
It will be interesting to see how the Supremes handle this issue.
On the one hand, they are distinctly “conservative” (interesting irony there – the conservatives battling conservation) and would be under pressure to side with the administration on this one. On the other hand, the amount of scientific research that supports the fact that global warming is a clear and present danger has increased dramatically in both substance and airtime in the years since this lawsuit was initiated – you’ve got to hope the Supremes have some desire to not appear utterly stupid. Best of all, the NAS, on whose 2001 report the EPA is resting the “merits” of its case, has since issued a report confirming the “hockey stick” graph, which says that, yes, Martha, global warming is human-induced.
My money, sadly, is that the Supremes will acknowledge the science but rule in favor of the EPA’s stonewalling on a technicality or two. It would be the safe thing to do.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Would that it were true
When out promoting his film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” Al Gore introduces himself as “The man who used to be the next president of the United States.” There’s a pause while people laugh, then Gore deadpans: “It’s not funny.”
No, it’s not funny. Think of what an intelligent president could have done with the convergence of two powerful forces: the strong, post-9/11 sentiment to be free of dependence on foreign oil, and the growing consensus that global warming is pushing our country (and the rest of the globe) toward catastrophe.
He could have pushed the twin engines of alternate fuels and greater efficiencies hard, promoting them not just as a matter of national security (which they are), not just as a moral obligation in the face of global warming (which it is), but as an unparalleled opportunity to use the US’s legendary entrepreneurial skills to seize leadership in the everyone-knows-its-coming environmental products and services industry.
He could have used the White House bully pulpit to get his energy-industry cronies to see the handwriting on the wall, telling them, in effect, “You can’t lick them – so join them.” Then, instead of giving them billions in tax-payer financed incentives to expand their petroleum-based lines of business, give them the same billions in incentives to transition to a 21st century lines of business.
By now our auto fleets would be averaging 35 miles to the gallon and the word “hybrid” would be losing some of its meaning. Wind and solar power technologies would be rapidly improving, bringing down the cost to consumers and causing another future-oriented sector of the economy to flourish. Maybe, just maybe, we’d have had one less reason to invade Iraq.
If only.
No, it’s not funny. Think of what an intelligent president could have done with the convergence of two powerful forces: the strong, post-9/11 sentiment to be free of dependence on foreign oil, and the growing consensus that global warming is pushing our country (and the rest of the globe) toward catastrophe.
He could have pushed the twin engines of alternate fuels and greater efficiencies hard, promoting them not just as a matter of national security (which they are), not just as a moral obligation in the face of global warming (which it is), but as an unparalleled opportunity to use the US’s legendary entrepreneurial skills to seize leadership in the everyone-knows-its-coming environmental products and services industry.
He could have used the White House bully pulpit to get his energy-industry cronies to see the handwriting on the wall, telling them, in effect, “You can’t lick them – so join them.” Then, instead of giving them billions in tax-payer financed incentives to expand their petroleum-based lines of business, give them the same billions in incentives to transition to a 21st century lines of business.
By now our auto fleets would be averaging 35 miles to the gallon and the word “hybrid” would be losing some of its meaning. Wind and solar power technologies would be rapidly improving, bringing down the cost to consumers and causing another future-oriented sector of the economy to flourish. Maybe, just maybe, we’d have had one less reason to invade Iraq.
If only.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Well, CAN we do anything about it?
One of the ongoing debates in the global warming biz is whether we can solve the problem with known technology or whether we have to rush to develop something revolutionary (can you say “hydrogen fuel cell”?). We need both, argue scientists Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala in a 2004 paper in Science magazine (re-presented as a well-written piece in the September issue of Scientific American): we can level off our CO2 emissions for the next fifty years using existing technology, then plan on new technologies to help us reduce our emissions substantially over the following fifty years.
One major benefit of a plan like theirs is that we actually do something while we’re waiting the 30-50 years for new technologies to be developed to the point where they can make a measurable difference.
A second is that they provide a practical reference frame for actions we can do.
Here’s the background:
The authors acknowledge that no single solution can accomplish this goal, so they break it up into seven more manageable chunks (which they call “wedges” from their graphical illustration) of 1 GtC/yr each. So at least seven existing, proven technologies can accomplish an emission savings that will amount to 1 GtC/yr by 2056.
Once such “wedge” can be obtained by doubling our automobile gas mileage from 30 mpg to 60 mpg. The math: assume each auto travels 10,000 miles a year and gets 30 miles to the gallon. With current fuels, each car therefore puts about ton of carbon in the atmosphere each year. Assuming 2 billion cars on the road in 2056 (a four-fold increase), they would put out 2 GtC/yr in greenhouse emissions. A doubling of the vehicles’ fuel efficiency would halve that amount – a savings of 1GtC/yr or one “wedge.”
The authors present a list of 15 such solution, including substituting natural gas for coal in power plants, capturing and storing CO2 generated by existing and future plants, using electricity more efficiently in buildings, etc. Admittedly, some of these interact, so you can’t simply do all 15 and expect a 15GtC/yr savings. For example, producing cleaner electricity means that you can’t save as much by using that electricity more efficiently.
Still, with 15 (at least) technically feasible methods at our immediate disposal to combat global warming, what are we waiting for?
One major benefit of a plan like theirs is that we actually do something while we’re waiting the 30-50 years for new technologies to be developed to the point where they can make a measurable difference.
A second is that they provide a practical reference frame for actions we can do.
Here’s the background:
- To avoid disaster, we have to avoid doubling the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. They set a target maximum of 500 parts-per-million (ppm) (vs. the 280 ppm pre-industrial level).
- To stay below 500 ppm, we have to basically hold the current CO2 emission rate constant for the next 50 years, and then substantially reduce it in the 50 years after that.
- The current emissions rate is 7 billions tons of carbon per year (7 GtC/yr). If we do nothing, this rate will double in the next 50 years (to 14 GtC/yr). Therefore, we have to look for solutions that will, in aggregate, reduce emissions by 7 GtC/yr by 2056.
The authors acknowledge that no single solution can accomplish this goal, so they break it up into seven more manageable chunks (which they call “wedges” from their graphical illustration) of 1 GtC/yr each. So at least seven existing, proven technologies can accomplish an emission savings that will amount to 1 GtC/yr by 2056.
Once such “wedge” can be obtained by doubling our automobile gas mileage from 30 mpg to 60 mpg. The math: assume each auto travels 10,000 miles a year and gets 30 miles to the gallon. With current fuels, each car therefore puts about ton of carbon in the atmosphere each year. Assuming 2 billion cars on the road in 2056 (a four-fold increase), they would put out 2 GtC/yr in greenhouse emissions. A doubling of the vehicles’ fuel efficiency would halve that amount – a savings of 1GtC/yr or one “wedge.”
The authors present a list of 15 such solution, including substituting natural gas for coal in power plants, capturing and storing CO2 generated by existing and future plants, using electricity more efficiently in buildings, etc. Admittedly, some of these interact, so you can’t simply do all 15 and expect a 15GtC/yr savings. For example, producing cleaner electricity means that you can’t save as much by using that electricity more efficiently.
Still, with 15 (at least) technically feasible methods at our immediate disposal to combat global warming, what are we waiting for?
Friday, September 8, 2006
The Other overpopulation
It’s well known that overpopulation is one of the prime drivers of our environmental problems. Too many people are chasing too few resources, resulting in environmental degradation. We in the so-called highly-developed countries think that the solution to overpopulation is for those less-developed countries to practice population control.
Which is pretty self-serving, because it ignores the reality that sheer numbers of people is only half the story. The impact of a population on the environment is a function of both the number of people AND the amount they consume.
So its true that in many developing countries, the sheer number of people is overwhelming their own resource base, even though most of them are living in poverty.
But we highly developed nations are also contributing mightily to population/resource problem – it’s just that we’re working the other side of the equation: consumption. In fact, with 20% of the population, we consume more than half the resources. For example, according to the Worldwatch Institute highly developed nations account for:
Scientists consider that there are about 28 billion acres of productive land and water on the planet. So for Earth's 6.5 billion people, a sustainable ecological footprint is 4.3 acres per person. The current average: 5.7 acres, which means we’re using up the planet faster than it can replenish itself.
In the US, each person's ecological footprint is a whopping 23.7 acres. To put this in perspective, we'd need about four additional planet Earth's to extend our standard of living to the rest of the world.
I'm not advocating that we all start living in poverty to solve this imbalance. But lets keep it in mind when thinking about who’s to blame for overpopulation, and start working on ways to maintain a healthy standard of living on a much smaller environmental footprint.
Credit where credit is due: much of this info came from a textbook called Environment.
Which is pretty self-serving, because it ignores the reality that sheer numbers of people is only half the story. The impact of a population on the environment is a function of both the number of people AND the amount they consume.
So its true that in many developing countries, the sheer number of people is overwhelming their own resource base, even though most of them are living in poverty.
But we highly developed nations are also contributing mightily to population/resource problem – it’s just that we’re working the other side of the equation: consumption. In fact, with 20% of the population, we consume more than half the resources. For example, according to the Worldwatch Institute highly developed nations account for:
- 86% of the aluminum used
- 76% of the timber harvested
- 68% of the energy used
- 61% of the meat eaten
- 42% of the fresh water consumed
Scientists consider that there are about 28 billion acres of productive land and water on the planet. So for Earth's 6.5 billion people, a sustainable ecological footprint is 4.3 acres per person. The current average: 5.7 acres, which means we’re using up the planet faster than it can replenish itself.
In the US, each person's ecological footprint is a whopping 23.7 acres. To put this in perspective, we'd need about four additional planet Earth's to extend our standard of living to the rest of the world.
I'm not advocating that we all start living in poverty to solve this imbalance. But lets keep it in mind when thinking about who’s to blame for overpopulation, and start working on ways to maintain a healthy standard of living on a much smaller environmental footprint.
Credit where credit is due: much of this info came from a textbook called Environment.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)