Category: Rants

Posts where I spout off on one topic or another

Four instruments, to understand aerosols

One of the enduring uncertainties about climate change is the importance of aerosols. Their chemistry and effect on the climate is complex. Some of them reflect sunlight immediately back into space, having a net cooling effect on the planet; others (like black carbon have a warming effect. Some aerosols interact with one another, and with other chemicals in the atmosphere, in ways that affect the climate. All of this ought to be better understood, if we want to understand how human activities (and natural phenomena) are affecting the climate, and so that we can prioritize on what sorts of emissions to reduce.

I was surprised to learn, from James Hansen’s recent book, Storms of My Grandchildren, that we have known since the 1970s what sort of instruments would be necessary to understand how aerosols affect the climate system, including whether their net effect is a warming or a cooling one. We need:

  1. A polarimeter, measuring the polarization of sunlight reflected off of aerosols
  2. An interferometer, measuring the infrared radiation being emitted by the Earth
  3. An instrument to measure the sun’s irradiance
  4. An instrument to measure aerosols and gases in the highest layers of Earth’s atmosphere, by observing the sun shining through them at sunlight and sunset.

The first two would have to be on the same small satellite. The other two would be on small satellites of their own. Together, these would allow us to determine the total forcing effect of aerosols on the climate.

The fact that we apparently aren’t rushing to get these devices built and launched has to be considered a massive failure of intelligence, far beyond the WMD-tomfoolery that preceded the Iraq war. These four instruments could be producing key data to let us understand our climate, at a time when we are running a dangerous global experiment on how it responds to our pollution.

Getting this data must become an international priority.

Overreacting to fears of terrorism

Writing for Salon.com, pilot Patrick Smith makes some excellent points about the breathless paranoia we now display about terrorism:

What has become of us? Are we really in such a confused and panicked state that a person haplessly walking through the wrong door can disrupt air travel nationwide, resulting in mass evacuations and long delays? “The terrorists have won” is one of those waggish catch-alls that normally annoy me, but all too often it seems that way. Our reactionary, self-defeating behavior has put much at stake — our time, our tax dollars and our liberties.

…

In fact, over the five-year span between 1985 and 1989 we can count at least six high-profile terrorist attacks against commercial planes or airports. In addition to those above were the horrific bombings of Pan Am 103 and UTA 772, the bombing of an Air India 747 over the North Atlantic that killed 329 people, and the saga of TWA Flight 847.

…

Here in this proclaimed new “age of terrorism,” we act as if the clock began ticking on Sept. 11, 2001. In truth we’ve been dealing with this stuff for decades. Not only in the 1980s, but throughout the ’60s and ’70s as well. Acts of piracy and sabotage are far fewer today.

Imagine the Karachi attack happening tomorrow. Imagine TWA 847 happening tomorrow. Imagine six successful terror attacks against commercial aviation in a five-year span. The airline industry would be paralyzed, the populace frozen in abject fear. It would be a catastrophe of epic proportion — of wall-to-wall coverage and, dare I suggest, the summary surrender of important civil liberties.

What is it about us, as a nation, that has made us so unable to remember, and unable to cope?

The message is similar to that of the excellent essay “Milksop Nation,” which won an Economist essay contest in 2002. Namely, that we do a poor job individually of assessing risks. We obsess over rare risks in which malicious actors want to do us harm, and we downplay common risks that are enormously more likely to injure or kill us. Worse, our political systems amplify our fears to the point of absurdity.

One thing we certainly need are people with the clear-sightedness and bravery to point out that we are fearful about the wrong things, and that we have real, pressing problems that we ought to be concentrating on instead.

Primer on website security

Smashing Magazine has put up a good article introducing some of the most common security vulnerabilities in websites. They are all things that site administrators should at least be aware of – including those who never actually touch code, but rely on something like WordPress to sort it out for them. Some of the attack types described include SQL injection, cross-site scripting (including the vulnerability of JavaScript), path traversal, cross-site request forgery, remote file inclusion, phishing, and clickjacking.

For those who run websites but know nothing about coding, there are three take-home messages:

  1. Update your software, to ensure that security holes get patched as they emerge. If you are still running WordPress 1.5, you have a big problem.
  2. Keep an eye out for weird behaviours. Are links appearing on your site that you didn’t put there? If so, there is a good chance it has been compromised.
  3. Remember: the internet is a dangerous place. Running a Mac doesn’t mean you’re safe from malware and other sorts of attacks. Neither does running a virus scanner or avoiding dodgy websites. If you have information you want to keep private, keep it encrypted. If you have data you don’t want to lose, back it up.

Sadly, the great majority of people are annoyingly indifferent about security these days. It seems like a couple of my friends always have their MSN or Facebook accounts taken over by spammers, and others are content to let their blogs fill up with spam comments. Such recklessness makes the internet a worse place, and it would be appreciated if people who choose to engage online do so with a bit more diligence and respect.

The 2035 glacier claim and the IPCC

Previously, I described an asymmetry between the approach of climate change deniers and climate scientists, with the latter unwilling to retract any claims no matter how poorly justified or effectively rebutted. I think the instance with the IPCC and ‘poorly substantiated’ Himalayan glacier data is illustrative.

A failure to properly vet some information has come to light, and the IPCC has responded in an open and honest way:

In drafting the paragraph in question, the clear and well-established standards of evidence, required by the IPCC procedures, were not applied properly…

The Chair, Vice-Chair, and Co-Chairs of the IPCC regret the poor application of well-established IPCC procedures in this instance. This episode demonstrates that the quality of the assessment depends on absolute adherence to the IPCC standards, including thorough review of ‘the quality and validity of each source before incorporating results from the source in an IPCC report.

Climate deniers have jumped on all this to argue that it undermines the overall conclusions reached by the IPCC. Far from calling into question the overall scientific consensus, this willingness to concede errors demonstrates one of the reasons for which it is robust, namely a willingness to accept and respond to valid criticism. By contrast, deniers of various stripes tend to rub along well with one another, even when they have wildly different positions: that climate change isn’t happening, that it is actually beneficial, that it is caused by something other than greenhouse gases, etc.

The MSC and BCs sockeye salmon

I have written before about how the certification of a fishery by the Marine Stewardship Council is not sufficient cause to think it is genuinely sustainable (even before factors other than fish numbers, such as fossil fuel use by ships, are taken into account). More evidence for this has been forthcoming recently. Now, they have decided to certify the British Columbia sockeye salmon fishery, despite how the fish numbers are dwindling and subject to an ongoing inquiry. Last year’s run on the Fraser river was less than 10% of what had been expected. The recent history of salmon in BC is a catalog of failure. The decision to certify regardless certainly doesn’t leave the MSC looking very credible. Their decision doesn’t become official until a 15-day complaint period has concluded, and people will hopefully be able to persuade them to think differently during that span.

For those who really care about environmental issues and are willing to make personal choices to reflect that, I recommend avoiding fish (and other sorts of meat) entirely. Keeping fishing activity at a sustainable level just seems to require more political integrity and long-term thinking than any of the world’s governments can muster. It’s so much easier to grab a haul now, earn a bundle, and leave the mess for those who will come later.

Open query: causes of denial and delay

I have my own theories about why people either:

Why do readers of this blog believe that both stances are so prevalent, at a time when the key science behind climate change is well understood?

Socrates and modern America

In their always-worthwhile Christmas issue, The Economist has an article on what Socrates might think of the state of discourse in the United States, especially political discourse:

In 1968 Stringfellow Barr, an historian and president of St John’s College in Maryland, wrote a Socratic critique of American discourse: “There is a pathos in television dialogue: the rapid exchange of monologues that fail to find the issue, like ships passing in the night; the reiterated preface, ‘I think that…,’ as if it mattered who held which opinion rather than which opinion is worth holding; the impressive personal vanity that prevents each ‘discussant’ from really listening to another speaker”.

Socrates’s alternative was “good” conversation or dialectic. To converse originally meant to turn towards one another, in order to find a common humanity and to move closer to the truth of something. Dialectic, in other words, is decidedly not about winning or losing, because all the conversants are ennobled by it. It is a joint search. Unfortunately, as Mr Barr put it, it is also “the most difficult” kind of conversation “especially for Americans to achieve”.

Quite possibly, the worst discourse of all is that surrounding climate change, both in the United States and Canada. People deny that it is happening or suggest absurd causes, they interpret policies to reduce its severity in absurd and hyperbolic ways, and they singularly fail to either convey the most important aspects of the issue to the observing public or engage one another in meaningful discussion.

We have to hope that the climate isn’t as sensitive as the scientists endorsing a 350 part per million target believe; if so, we will probably toast the planet long before our discourse on climate change reaches a level of maturity sufficient to generate good policies.

Heathrow’s third runway and the carbon price

I have commented before on the incoherence of how the United Kingdom plans to both cut greenhouse gas emissions and increase airport capacity. The December 8th report from the Committee on Climate Change perpetuates this mis-match, saying that the third runway for Heathrow could be compatible with government emission reduction targets, provided the price of carbon reaches £200 per tonne by 2050.

To me, this view is rather perplexing. Why build a runway, then use taxes to choke off the demand for it? Either your taxes won’t prevent the flights, making it harder to reach your carbon targets, or they will and your investment in the runway and supporting facilities will be a waste. The committee also assumes that aircraft engine efficiency will improve by 0.8-1.5% per year, that biofuels that don’t compete with food crops will emerge, and that high speed rail will displace a lot of short-haul flights in Europe. To take advantage of assumptions about the future to defend a dubious current policy is a practice all too common. Rather than pretending they can have it both ways, the UK should acknowledge that achieving its climate change goals will require reducing incredibly emissions-intensive activities like air travel.

Thankfully, the British Conservative Party – which is likely to take power with the next election – continues to oppose construction of the runway, precisely because it clashes with climate change objectives.

The climate change denier at the helm of Whole Foods

Disappointingly, it seems that Whole Foods CEO John Mackey maintains the scientifically untenable position that we don’t know what is causing climate change. Furthermore, he thinks that those seeking to regulate the dumping of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere want to: “raise taxes and increase regulation, and in turn lower our standard of living and lead to an increase in poverty.” This seems in keeping with how people sometimes have absurdly overblown concerns about the degree to which certain things are dangerous (terrorists, kidnappers, genetically modified organisms), while not appreciating the overarching threat to humanity and the planet’s ecosystems that climate change represents.

People need to appreciate that our wastes, being released into the atmosphere, are threatening the future basis for all human welfare. We need to stop obsessing about plastic bags and GM soybeans and begin with the serious work of replacing our energy sources with zero-carbon, renewable options.

Goodbye to Vancouver, again

Vancouver skyline, highway, and SkyTrain tracks

My eighteen days in Vancouver were full of wonderful times with family, friends, and Emily. It was certainly worth spending the time on the bus for. As stated before, Vancouver puts Ottawa to shame as a city. It has so much more happening, not just because of the Olympics but because of the size, the location, and the fact that it is a city that has to pull for itself, whereas Ottawa exists to try to organize all the rest. Vancouver is certainly not without problems, but the degree to which it is alive and interesting more than makes up for it in my mind. I will be leaving the city with a lengthy list of appealing activities and places left undone and unvisited, for lack of time.

Given the need to mitigate climate change, I don’t know how often I will be able to visit Vancouver, going forward. While effecting political change is far more important than minimizing our personal emissions, doing the latter does seem necessary for retaining credibility while trying to do the former. That said, it certainly rankles a bit to see people flying halfway across the world for a sunny weekend, while you agonize about whether and how to go see your home city for the first time in two years. An ironic consequence of trying to behave ethically in relation to future generations is that other people raise their expectations of you, without necessarily adopting higher ones for themselves.

My thanks to everyone who helped to make this visit so special and worthwhile. This visit will certainly be a significant data point, while I am trying to solve the puzzle of where and how to spend the next few decades.