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IPCC report on Climate Change UPDATE

February 2, 2007 6 comments

If you’re tired of politicians and pundits and would like to read what actual climate scientists say about climate change, you can download the IPCC report released today (.pdf)

I have only skimmed the report (have to go to that job).  The article summary is pretty strong but I won’t say any more until I’ve read the report.


UPDATE: 03 February
No huge surprises (to me) it is pretty much the “smoking gun” I expected.  The White House said the report was “valuable” but came out against either controls on CO2 emissions, any kind of carbon tax, or any tough carbon-trading schemes.  (The European carbon-trading market was oversupplied at the beginning so it has resulted in little more than a windfall profit for some companies without any real incentive to lower carbon emissions). 

I was disappointed by the dearth of data from after 1995, but scientific reports are often that way when relating information that is still under analysis.  For example, the latest discoveries of meltwater lubrication of glaciers and ice caps (dubbed “dynamical ice loss” in Greenland and other places.  And while they did predict the extent of permafrost reduction, it was still early for quantitative factoring of billions of tons of methane release from the Siberian and other permafrosts. 

What everyone wants to know is the amount of sea level rise, and 3 feet by the end of the century doesn’t sound so bad.  But is is bad (assuming it is that little – a dangerous assumption given the radiative forcing elements that could not be factored).  The insurance industry is fully aware of what 3 feet will mean, and the economics of coastal flooding are beginning to soak into the financial community as well.  Even discounting the economic cost of damage to agriculture, the cost of carbon remediation may turn out to be the greatest bargain in history if we can “git ‘er done”.

The White House also felt that if the US unilaterally pursued carbon reductions, it would put our economy at a disadvantage against the developing world and particularly China.  But China is beginning to face up to global warming on its own, and in any case our economy has always been driven by innovation.  If we can get the jump on other countries in developing low-carbon energy and transportation modalities, that “disadvantage” will turn out to be a very smart move as other countries will have to go lo-carb eventually, and buy the technology from us.  Unfortunately given the “climate” of denial in our country, we’re not currently in a technological leadership position.

So: an important report, if only because it makes denial less tenable and provides the sheaf-waving evidence to prompt world leaders to quit stalling and move.  And in particular, to help the evangelical environmentalism movement gain traction against the Second-Coming “Suck the Earth dry” whackos. 

As Ann Druryan says; “We batter our planet as if we had someplace else to go.”

Notes:

I have HAD IT with these m-f SNAKES in this m-f CITY!!!

January 20, 2007 1 comment

A record drought in Australia has driven snakes in search of water:

Many venomous reptiles are moving into residential and business areas in search of moisture. Last week a 16-year-old boy in Sydney died from a bite by an Eastern Brown, one of the world’s deadliest snakes.

Many parts of Australia have been hard-hit by the drought, described as the worst for more than 100 years. Experts have warned that an army of snakes is on the move, looking for water. Driven by extreme thirst they have been discovered in gardens, bedrooms and even Australian shopping centres.

Hospitals have reported a rising number of snakebites. Toxicologists have said there have been 60 serious cases since September.
- BBC News: Australians face snake invasion

Most of the websites I checked said that the risk from snakebites in Australia is overstated – Oz has “7 of the 10 most venomous snakes in the world, if you are a mouse”.  (I liked this one: “Alcohol is involved in a significant number of snake bites”)  But the same article says; “Largely due to their behaviour, Australia’s poisonous snakes are actually some of the least dangerous in the world.”  Unless, I suppose, something like a drought changed their behavior.

The only venomous snakes I’ve encountered were rattlesnakes and one time a copperhead.  Neither are particularly dangerous if you keep your eyes open and don’t bother them.  And neither is likely to kill you even if you do get bitten.

I’d much rather encounter a rattler than an irritated pit bull.  Rattlers can only strike half their length, so take two steps back and you’re fine.  They won’t chase you because you’re too big to eat.  Dogs, on the other hand, are territorial pack animals, often give chase, and can run 25mph.

One rattler I encountered in Washington state was snoozing.  I was climbing a cliff at Vantage on the Columbia river.  As I raised my head above the edge of a plateau, I found myself face-to-face with a rattler, coiled up under a sagebrush.

Ah – I’ll just be going, then.  I lowered back down and inched along the ledge, climbing up again several feet away.  I’ll admit my heart beat a bit faster but i couldn’t afford to get very agitated as gravity was a far bigger hazard in that situation than the snake would be.  If the snake ever noticed me, it gave no sign.

(Title: with apologies to Samuel L. Jackson in Snakes On A Plane)

Maybe they should build a reactor

January 9, 2007 7 comments

I didn’t realize Iran had a smog problem, but apparently over 10,000 people have died from air pollution in the last year, including over 3,600 in one month.

Most of the deaths were caused by heart attacks and respiratory illnesses brought on by smog, they said. The scale of the problem led one senior official to say living in the Iranian capital was like “collective suicide”.  Cheap fuel encourages car use in Iran, correspondents say, and many vehicles do not meet global emissions standards. “It is a very serious and lethal crisis, a collective suicide,” the director of Tehran’s clean air committee, Mohammad Hadi Heydarzadeh, told an Iranian newspaper.

They probably got that way imprisoning “ecology nuts”.  My advice to Iran’s leaders – forget about holocaust-denial conferences and get busy developing some electric cars.  That ought to keep you out of trouble for a while.

Bound to learn the hard way

November 25, 2006 16 comments

I don’t know how guarding the natural environment got to be a “right-wing/left-wing” thing, but somehow it’s become “liberal” to advocate conservation.  Never mind the tremendous economic importance of topsoil, fish stocks, or a stable climate; you’re a ‘leftie’ and can be dismissed out of hand if you want to head off environmental catastophe.

But your precious ‘free market’ is no good when there’s no fish to sell, when kids are dying of asthma in your cities, or when your cities are underwater, or when our nation’s enemies are funded by our addiction to the oil that they have under their sands. 

Take ‘bottom-trawling’ – please.  In this method, a 5-ton steel plate is dragged across the ocean floor to act as a moving anchor for an enormous net that sweeps the sea clean.  Not only does it leave behind only empty water, it mangles the sea floor that shelters the food and reproduction chain for the very fish it is catching.

This is a criminally stupid and short-sighted practice, but United Nations negotiations on fisheries have failed again to ban it.  Heavens!  You wouldn’t want to interfere with the ‘free market’! 

The ‘conservative’ approach seems to be to deny that anything bad could ever happen.  What, exactly, are conservatives conserving? 

Oh crap, what did I say?

August 12, 2006 Comments off

I got an email yesterday from an editor at the Chicago Tribune:

I plan on using your letter to the editor on Saturday (tomorrow). Thanks for writing.
Sincerely, Dodie Hofstetter Editor, Voice of the people,  Chicago Tribune

Thanks, Dodie.  Except… I can’t remember what the hell I wrote!  I write lots of cranky letters to newspapers.  Let’s see… the Trib?  It could have been energy conservation, gay rights, the invalidity of comparing Molly Ivins to Ann Coulter, or “bicycles and cars sharing the road”.  At least I think I sent some of those to the Trib – I read a lot of newspapers online.

The winner is:

Sharing the street
Motorists seem to be most torqued off about bicyclists who run stop signs. The few who dart through heavy traffic deserve criticism, but cruising through when traffic is light posts no hazard to anyone.

When you are your vehicle’s engine, you learn a lot about energy conservation. If I could, I would make every stop sign in the world into a yield sign for motorists and bicyclists alike.

Traffic is a fabric of forgiveness; let’s all try to cut each other some slack. Think of it as one thing you can do today to make the world a little nicer place for everyone.

George Wiman, Normal, Ill.

It must have been in response to the recent spate of letters from motorists and cyclists who each want the other drawn and quartered on national TV.  I should have used the word “poses” instead of “posts”.  And I do think it’s silly to bring any vehicle to a complete and full stop on a deserted street. 

By the way, I just read that 2/3 of the energy in oil is wasted before it ever makes it to your tank.  It triples the significance of every gallon of gas I don’t  burn while riding my bike.  I’m helping keep the price of gas down!  (And so is everyone who makes the decision to buy a car that gets good mileage).

BP heads off major oil spill

August 7, 2006 5 comments

In a move that will reduce US oil production by up to 8 percent, British Petrolium (BP) is shutting down a huge Purdhoe Bay pipeline was found to be severely corroded.

“We regret that it is necessary to take this action and we apologize to the nation and the State of Alaska for the adverse impacts it will cause,” BP America Chairman and President Bob Malone said in a statement.

A 400,000-barrel per day reduction in output would have a major impact on oil prices, said Tetsu Emori, chief commodities strategist at Mitsui Bussan Futures in Tokyo.

“Oil prices could increase by as much as $10 per barrel given the current environment,” Emori said. “But we can’t really say for sure how big an effect this is going to have until we have more exact figures about how much production is going to be reduced.”

It’s bad news for everyone but it’s a good thing BP found the problem before it resulted in an enormous spill.  It will be interesting to see how it translates at the pump.  I had no idea one pipeline could amount to so much of our country’s oil production.

Update -

A private part of the common good

July 18, 2006 2 comments

When I was a kid my dad would often stop his ‘53 Mercury, get out, and clear an obstruction in the road.  It might be a branch, some rocks, even a bale of hay that had fallen off a truck.  Then he’d get back in the car and we’d drive off.  I thought it was normal for people to do that. 

In later years, I came to understand that it is not normal.  Most people, if they see a branch in the road, would drive around them, muttering “somebody should do something about that.”  Today, people seem to feel that any harm to the public good can only be addressed by a public agency – the highway department, the schools, the police, someone ‘official’.

On the better side of the ledger, check out MrsDoF’s latest post, Making walking worthwhile in which she combines the common good with her private good.  Go check it out and give her some props :-)

What if everybody did something?

Wind farms across country stopped by political maneuver

May 31, 2006 4 comments

WASHINGTON, May 31, 2006 (UPI)—The U.S. government has ordered work stopped on more than a dozen wind farms, saying the giant turbines might interfere with military radar.

Not buying that for a minute.  The new wind turbines are about 310 feet tall.  How low does military radar need to go?  I suppose a threatening plane could fly 200 feet off the ground in a circle around the turbines…

But supporters of wind power say the reason for the actions is political and has little to do with national security, the Chicago Tribune reported Wednesday.

In one instance, critics say, a group of wealthy vacationers believe a proposed wind farm off the Cape Cod, Mass., coast would spoil the view of the ocean from their summer homes.

Ah.  Call me cynical, but that, I can believe.

The attempt to stop the planting of 130 turbines in Nantucket Sound has led to a moratorium on new wind farms across Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota, the Tribune reported…
- Post Chronicle: Government blocks wind farm plans

Great.  A bunch of wealthy people (including Ted Kennedy) are whining about the Cape Wind Project and it puts a stop to a part of our national energy portfolio. 

Yes, some people don’t like windmills.  Are they the same people who want action on global warming?  Wonder how their precious cape will look after sea level comes up five feet or so?  What will it do to their tourism industry if their quaint New England towns are under water?  Will they be petitioning the government for levees?  How quaint will that look?

It’s the 21st century now.  We need a more diverse energy portfolio, and not just for environmental reasons.  We especially need to take advantage of environmental energy differentials.  By their nature, such differentials are more diffuse than concentrated energy sources like coal or oil, so will necessarily require large structures to harvest.  If they’re waiting for the environmentally perfect (and concentrated!) energy source to come along, it’s going to be a long wait.  We just don’t have that kind of time.

This is why we have a ‘shortage’ of landfill space

May 25, 2006 4 comments

It’s odd, I know, but I like to look in dumpsters.  Trash is where you see the whole chain of consumer value from the other side; what are people willing to pay to get rid of?  In this case, it’s a couple hundred 4-foot fluorescent light tubes.  Each one contains a few milligrams of mercury but they’re going to a plain old landfill alongside my dinner leftovers.

I commute on a bicycle and my route takes me past this dumpster, which is near a large building.  It has this many bulbs in it about twice a month.  And that’s just one building.  Multiply it by all the superstores and hospitals and… well you name it… and you get a pretty significant amount of mercury.  In landfills it is turned into particularly nasty organic compounds by bacteria, the kind that feed on my dinner leftovers.  These compounds can outgas with the methane that landfills constantly produce.

‘Simple’ solution?  (OK, not so simple) separate out toxic and non-toxic trash.  Then there’d be no shortage of space for bulky, non-toxic trash.  And we’d keep the mercury out of the biosphere.

Think it would cost a lot?  Many lakes and streams in Illinois can no longer produce edible fish due to mercury.  That’s a huge industry, shot down.  Much of the mercury comes from from burning coal, but a goodly amount of it – and other nasty chemicals too – comes from dumpsters like this.  Big economic impact. 

That’s why landfills need elaborate containment systems, and an expensive political process to locate them far from people with enough clout to mount an effective protest.  I have a hunch it would be cheaper to deal with the toxic stuff separately when you account the real cost.

Earth Day 2006

April 22, 2006 9 comments

There is one thing about Earth Day that I just can’t figure out: how it became a partisan issue.  For some reason people on the “right” seem to take glee in expressing their distain for environmentalism in all its forms, swimming in denial on all ecological problems, appointing oil-company executives to environmentally important government posts, giving away the store to oil companies, and so forth.  At the same time, people on the “left” seem to be trying to match the right’s idiocy – in mirror image – by grabbing onto every conceivable environmental cause, even those that are incompatible with each other or plainly unsupported by science.  Then both sides point with glee at the other side’s idiots and claim that they, and only they, are seeing the issue clearly.

News flash:  It doesn’t matter if you are a Republican, Democrat, or Libertarian – we all live on the same planet.  Nature doesn’t give a damn what your economic/political/religious theory is because nature is not a conscious entity.  Nature also does not care about your concerns – the consequences of our actions won’t wait until we have worked out the chinks in human society.  And Nature is big, but it is not unlimited.  Nature is the physical world, operating at a level of complexity that just won’t fit on a bumper sticker.

If you dig up inconceivably huge amounts of fossil carbon from when the Earth was a LOT warmer, burn it back into the atmosphere, you get acidic seas and high sea levels, along with lots of unpleasant climatic and biological consequences.  Pour mercury into the air from coal-fired power plants, and you’ll have kids with neurological problems, especially if they eat a lot of fish.  Let enough polluting cars choke up the air in L.A., and you’ll have asthmatic kids dropping like flies.

Since we’re all in that equation together, how did it get to be a partisan issue?  Righties, do you think a disaster will pass you by if you don’t believe in it?  Lefties, do you think you can jump on every bandwagon without prioritizing?  Both sides, shouldn’t you take the trouble to see past the partisan blather obscuring the subject?  Read stuff written by scientists, engineers, and technical service people, not crappy novelists or politicians.  Make the distinction between think tanks and research institutions. Get a clue.

Since Nature won’t compromise with us, we are going to have to learn to compromise with each other.  The ‘free market’ isn’t going to integrate global-scale environmental consequences, so regulations will be necessary.  And there are no environmentally benign energy sources.  Nuclear power poses a rather thorny waste storage problem.  But (a lot) more radioactivity gets into the atmosphere from coal than from nuclear.  Windmills are variable-output so they can only supplement, not replace, other sources.  Solar cells take quite a bit of energy to manufacture.  We will have to make choices.

One choice that has almost no downside is conservation.  How this got to be controversial is completely beyond me.  Back when I was a kid people said; “Waste not, want not”.  Is that not true anymore?  I must have missed the memo. But somehow there are people who act as if they are being tortured if they have to even think about how much they waste.

The preservation of our planet is not helped by ill-considered environmental movements.  Every household reycling study I have seen shows that only metals (especially aluminum) and some plastics can be recycled profitably.  Some non-metallic materials are also worth re-using (like adding rubber to asphalt) and toxic things like electronics need to be recycled even if at a loss.  But even a cursory examination of the chemistry of paper recycling will make you want to spend a few minutes in ‘preview’ mode before clicking ‘print’.  Conservation and some alternative fibres are the way to go there.

Recently I saw a photo of an automotive traffic jam – in Beijing, China.  That dog won’t hunt in Beijing any better than it does in Atlanta – it’s still incredibly wasteful, to say nothing of frustrating.  Urban planning worldwide is going to have to get smarter.

And so are we.  In our consumer choices, our votes, and our culture, we’re going to have to recognize the common good, and that will mean more than looking for a green label or reciting a slogan.  We might even try listening to each other.  How much progress can we make otherwise?

Until we find someplace else to live (and acquire the ability to go there), every day is Earth day.