Science – Page 49 – a sibilant intake of breath

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.

May you live in interesting times

In Vancouver, I had a conversation with Tristan about some of the major energy and environmental changes we are likely to witness in our lifetimes. These include:

Very significant amounts of climate change, very substantial climate change mitigation efforts, or both.
The probable collapse of most or all commercial fisheries globally.
The peak of global oil production, and progressive subsequent decline.

In some ways, the significance of all three is the same – humanity now has the capability to reshape the planet in very substantial ways and no political or economic arrangement to date has been sufficient to stave off some of our most dangerous and damaging behaviours.

Personally, I think this is a poor time to be bringing children into the world. While the loss of fisheries will be tragic, climate change threatens to undermine the ability of global civilization to feed and support itself, if it continues unchecked. Before I would feel confident that future generations will live reasonably good lives, I will need to see global emissions reach a plateau (very soon, if we are to avoid more than 2°C of warming) and begin the long and determined decline that is necessary to restabilize the climate on human timescales.

Within fifty years, we should have a pretty good idea of whether humanity will put in a solid effort in jumping over the various hurdles before us. Given the feedbacks in the climate system, there is no guarantee that even vigorous effort can prevent abrupt or runaway climate change. That being said, there is a big difference between devoting ourselves to making a real effort to overcome the obstacle and simply ploughing along blindly (accelerating all the while) until we hit it.

Military fuel use and climate

One of the organizations taking possible future fossil fuel scarcity most seriously is the American military. The Air Force is investigating how to make jet fuel from coal or natural gas. Meanwhile, the other branches of the military are looking for ways to reduce their fuel bills and vulnerability to fuel shortages. There is plenty of reason to do so, given that American forces are using about one million gallons of fuel per day each in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the cost per gallon in the most remote locations can run as high as US$400. The average cost for a gallon of fuel at a forward operating base is about US$15.

Some efforts being made include insulating tents, installing ‘smart grids’ on military bases, increasing usage of renewable forms of power, and investigating ways to use wastes for energy. As with other attempts to reduce fossil fuel dependence, there is no guarantee that these efforts will prove to be beneficial overall from a climatic perspective. If the Air Force manages to produce biofuels that are suitable for use in aircraft, have a decent energy return on investment, and do not compete with food crops, they may develop products and processes with considerable civilian applicability, and potential to mitigate greenhouse emissions. If, instead, they just perfect the oil German and Japanese trick of turning coal into liquid fuel, they may end up making the problem much worse. The very last thing humanity needs is another excuse to burn coal, when we really ought to be working out strategies to leave all that planet-warming carbon safely underground.

Of course, militaries are fundamentally hugely wasteful and destructive things. If we do manage to make a global transition to zero-carbon forms of energy, it seems probable that the world’s various armed forces will be the most resistant to accepting any restrictions on their emissions or fuel use. Much will depend on whether we can find energy sources that are actually cheaper and better than fossil fuels, or whether we manage to content ourselves with inferior options that don’t generate the same sort of climatic risks. In the first case, militaries may largely shift to low-carbon technologies on their own accord. In the latter case, prodding them into environmental responsibility may prove extremely difficult, especially if ongoing climate change has helped to make the world a less geopolitically stable place.

Generation IV nuclear

The Economist has an article summarizing a few possible next-generation fission reactor technologies. They include the Supercritical water-cooled reactor (SCWR), the Very High Temperature Reactor (VHTR), the Sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR), the Gas-cooled fast reactor (GFR), the Lead-cooled reactor (LFR), and the Molten-salt reactor (MSR). Most promise higher efficiency than conventional pressurized water reactors, largely because they run at a higher temperature. Some are also capable of using more esoteric forms of fuel. For instance, the MSR can use thorium once it has been ‘seeded.’

The article doesn’t give too much consideration to the many challenges facing the nuclear industry: cost, chief among them. Given how opaque the costs of nuclear are, it is hard to know whether existing reactor technologies are really cost-competitive with renewables now, much less untested new variants.

Gas by gas, or all together?

The various chemicals that cause the climate system to warm vary considerably in their characteristics:

How strong a warming effect they have
How long they remain in the atmosphere
What processes produce them
Whether they have other positive or negative effects
Etc

For instance, methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas (GHG) than carbon dioxide (CO2), but it stays around a lot less time. CFCs and HCFCs are very powerful greenhouse gasses that are produced by a relatively small number of companies for specific applications; CO2, by contrast, is produced by most forms of economic activity everywhere.

Faced with these sorts of variation, some people have argued that having one regime for all GHGs is not the best approach. Because of the damage they cause to the Earth’s stratospheric ozone layer, CFCs are covered by the Montreal Protocol to the Vienna Convention. That limited agreement has produced about 175 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent in emission reductions, compared to just a handful from the partially implemented Kyoto Protocol.

The advantage of putting all GHGs into the same legal instrument is that it could allow for mitigation to be balanced in the most efficient way. If Gas X is five times more problematic than Gas Y, the value of the carbon tax paid or auctioned permits purchased would also be five times greater. That way, people would focus on cutting emissions where it is cheapest and easiest to do so. The major disadvantage of bundling the GHGs together is that doing so can distort markets. One gas – HFC-23 – is so powerful and so cheap to get rid of that it has seriously skewed prices in global carbon markets. Rather than paying people huge sums of HFC-23, we should just be sharply limiting how much of the stuff people are permitted to make in the first place.

In an ideal world, it should be possible to have a well designed system that incorporates all GHGs. It should also be possible to have a series of overlapping agreements that do so. In practical terms, what the latter possibility allows is an alternative route that might be taken, if efforts to produce one big treaty continue to prove unsuccessful.

The IEA on peak oil and climate policy

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has recently charged its public position on peak oil. It now claims that output of conventional oil will peak in 2020, if demand continues to grow in a business-as-usual way:

After analysing the historical production trends of 800 individual oilfields in 2008, the IEA came to the conclusion that the decline in annual output from fields that are past their prime could average 8.6% in 2030. “Even if oil demand were to remain flat, the world would need to find more than 40m barrels per day of gross new capacity—equal to four new Saudi Arabias—just to offset this decline,” says Mr Birol.

A daunting task. Peak-oil proponents point out that the average size of new discoveries has been declining since the mid-1960s. Between 1960 and 1989 the world discovered more than twice the oil it produced. But between 1990 and 2006 cumulative oil discoveries have been about half of production. Their opponents argue that long periods of relatively low oil prices blunted the incentives for exploration. A sustained period of higher prices, they argue, should increase discoveries. They point out that the first half of 2009 saw 10 billion barrels of new discoveries, an annual rate higher than any year since 2000. The pessimists retort that recent discoveries are still not enough.

Insofar as climate change mitigation policies could help control demand growth, they could thus extend the timeframe during which humanity will address fossil fuel depletion.

The IEA argues that coordinated action to prevent more than 2°C of climate change would reduce global demand for oil in 2030 from 105 million barrels per day to 89 million.

Octopodes and tool use

Previously, I thought the most amusing use for empty coconut halves was emulating Monty Python and pretending that you are riding a horse. Now, it seems Indonesia’s Veined Octopus carries them around to use as an ad-hoc shelter. Apparently, this is the first unambiguous demonstration of tool use by an invertebrate. The behaviour is written up in the December 15th issue of Current Biology: “Defensive tool use in a coconut-carrying octopus:”

The fact that the shell is carried for future use rather than as part of a specific task differentiates this behaviour from other examples of object manipulation by octopuses, such as rocks being used to barricade lair entrances. Further evidence that this shell-carrying behaviour is an example of tool use comes from the requirement of the octopus to correctly assemble the separate parts (when transporting two shells) in order to create a single functioning tool.

Other significant talents of octopodes include colour shifting, escaping transparent boxes through tiny openings, using jellyfish tentacles as weapons, and having retinas the right way around, such that they have no blind spots.

Octopus intelligence has long been appreciated. For instance, Octopus vulgaris is the only invertebrate protected by the 1986 Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act (ASPA) in the UK.

Spoofing Canada on climate

Earlier today, pranksters impersonating Environment Canada issued a phony press release which contained new targets for greenhouse gas mitigation in Canada. While Canada’s actual targets are 20% below 2006 levels by 2020 (equivalent to about 3% below 1990 levels) and 60-70% below 2006 levels by 2050, the press release included the much more ambitious figures of 40% below 1990 levels by 2020 and over 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. The release also made reference to a major transfer of funds to the developing world, as compensation for past harm and to encourage both mitigation and adaptation actions.

Compared to Canada’s real targets, the phony tougher targets are much more in line with an emissions pathway set up to reduce the risk of more than 2°C of warming. The stunt also draws attention to how Canada isn’t really negotiating in Copenhagen. We came in with a pair of targets that we say we will reach, regardless of what anyone else does, though we also frequently say that we won’t do anything until the US acts. Indeed, our environment minister was saying less than a month ago that Canada won’t take meaningful action for years. It should also be recalled that the government once promised that their intensity-based approach would lead to emissions peaking by 2012. Nobody mentions that pledge anymore.

The identities of those behind the stunt remain unknown. Hopefully, it will draw attention to Canada’s evasion and lack of ambition, prompting a genuine change of targets and approach soon.

Copenhagen global editorial

Along with 56 other newspapers in 20 languages, The Guardian recently printed a front page editorial about the Copenhagen climate change conference. Apparently, the tactic of having many papers print it simultaneously has not been used previously. It seems fitting that this happen on an issue of such universal importance.

The editorial highlights the risks associated with climate change, and the inadequacy of actions taken so far. It also includes a brief response to the CRU emails issue:

The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger rise of 3-4C — the smallest increase we can prudently expect to follow inaction — would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea. The controversy over emails by British researchers that suggest they tried to suppress inconvenient data has muddied the waters but failed to dent the mass of evidence on which these predictions are based.

They acknowledge that a comprehensive deal is unlikely in Copenhagen, but propose that one be adopted in next year’s June meeting in Bonn.

The whole piece is worth reading.

A page for waverers

[Image removed at the request of a subject (2019-10-01)]

This page is intended for those who (a) don’t believe that climate change is happening, (b) don’t think human beings are causing it, or (c) don’t think it’s something we need to take action on. You may believe that nothing is changing at all, or that the problems associated with adapting to climate change would be a lot more manageable than those associated with stopping it in the first place.

Those in your position should consider a few things. First, there is the matter raised by Greg Craven. In the face of something potentially threatening, we cannot always wait indefinitely to make a decision. Indeed, we are making a decision implicitly in every day when we fail to take action. What we need to do is make the most intelligent choice based on the information we have, not decide definitively who is right: those who think climate change is an enormous problem, or those who think it is a manageable or non-existent one.

Consider the decision to take some precautionary action. While that does leave us facing the risk of taking more action than eventually proves to be justified, we also need to be aware of the risk that climate change is just as serious a problem as those who are most concerned about it have been claiming. If they are right and we do nothing, the future of civilization could be at risk. Precautionary climate policies may also produce other benefits, such as less dependence on imported fossil fuels and reduced emissions of air pollutants.

I recommend that you have a look at some of the high-quality sources of information linked on my climate change briefing page. I also recommend that you give some serious thought to risk management, the credibility of various sources, and the potential consequences of making the wrong choice.

It may be worth noting that, when I first started reading about climate change seriously back in 2005 or so, I was sympathetic to the argument that it might not be all that serious a problem, and perhaps we should aim to adapt to it rather than stop it. The understanding of climate science I have accumulated since then has left me deeply concerned that climate change is an enormous problem, about which we need to take decisive action quickly. I think many fair-minded people who take the time to look through the credible information available will read the same conclusion.

If you take a fair shot at that and still want to argue against climate action, at least you will be doing so from a more nuanced and well-informed perspective.

Last updated: 10 December 2009