Science – Page 64 – a sibilant intake of breath

Limiting total historical human emissions

The BBC recently published an article that goes together well with two of my earlier posts. Like my post on how many greenhouse gasses humanity can safely emit and my post on the (absent) long-term future of the fossil fuel industry, it highlights how preventing catastrophic climate change obliges humanity to keep a significant proportion of all available fossil fuels in the ground. The BBC piece cites an article in Nature which argues that we must leave 75% of the remaining fossil fuels untouched, if we are to avoid dangerous climate change.

What this highlights is how the world has two great stocks of carbon, between which humanity is generating an ever-increasing flow: (a) the stock of fossil fuels, containing carbon dioxide that hasn’t been in the atmosphere since the Eocene period 30 – 50 million years ago, and (b) the stock of carbon dioxide currently in the atmosphere, trapping ever-more energy from the sun. If we are to live in a world without massive disorder, displacement, and upheaval by the end of the century, we need to start closing the spigot from (a) to (b), even though it will mean leaving a lot of usable fuel underground.

That will take more restraint than humanity has been able to muster for any collective project so far.

Cap-and-trade by the EPA

According to a legal analysis from the Institute for Policy Integrity (PDF), the Waxman-Markey bill currently holed up in a Congressional committee isn’t the only way the United States might get a cap-and-trade system in the next year or so. In the wake of the recent ‘endangerment finding, the IPI analysts conclude that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has sufficient authority under the Clean Air Act to create a cap-and-trade system all by itself, without Congressional input:

If Congress fails to act, President Obama has the power under the Clean Air Act to adopt a cap-and-trade system that auctions greenhouse gas allowances. President Obama also has the power under the Clean Air Act to implement an executive agreement at the international level, rendering Senate approval of a climate treaty unnecessary. EPA’s first priority must be to meet its legal obligations without impeding the work being done in Congress. But if Congress fails to act decisively, then putting those powers to use will be an essential stop‐gap to avoid complete inaction on climate change.

While the threat is unlikely to be realized (the EPA would probably feel like they are overstepping themselves), it might be a useful stick with which to drive action in Congress. The Republicans on the relevant committee are all resolutely opposed to Waxman-Markey, but might find their thinking altered in the event that cap-and-trade became an inevitability, with the option of either their involvement in design or their total sidelining.

Incidentally, the fact that not a single Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee is considered likely to support the bill demonstrates what a dinosaur party they really are. The world is finally starting to move on climate change mitigation, with the United States playing a critical role in that development. To simply make themselves into obstacles – denying the science and obstructing the political process – demonstrates that the Republican leadership just doesn’t have a handle on what is arguably the most critical issue of the contemporary era.

The origin of swine flu

I am curious about the origin of the swine flu currently radiating out from Mexico. The CDC thinks it arose from one individual who was superinfected with both human and swine flu varieties, which then exchanged genetic information.

It certainly would not surprise me if this was simply the latest monster disease to emerge from the factory farming of meat. Packing together unhealthy, antibiotic-marinated animals in proximity with human workers is pretty much the most efficient possible incubator for novel pathogens. While it must be acknowledged that even the most responsible forms of agriculture raise risks of disease evolution and transmission, the characteristics of contemporary factory farming make it much more likely. A notable previous example is MRSA: a disease that seems to have emerged from pig farms in the Netherlands, and which now kills more people per year in North America than AIDS does.

[Update: 4 May 2009] Two updates: Firstly, the text on the Wikipedia page for swine flu no longer includes the text about the CDC I mentioned in my original post. The older Wikipedia text is available here.

Secondly, there is now an article in Newsweek that affirms a link between factory farming and the swine flu epidemic. According to the article: “This virus has been evolving for a long time, no doubt aided in its transformation by the ecology of industrial-scale pig farming in North America.”

[Update: 5 November 2009] Six months after the outbreak started, it appears that not much effort is being put into discovering exactly where the virus came from, or how it passed into the human population.

Baseload solar power

Albiasa Solar, a Spanish company, is planning a 200 MW concentrating solar plant in Arizona that will feature the capability of storing heat in molten salt, so it can continue to generate power throughout the night. The plant is expensive, with a cost estimated around $1 billion, but it will require no fuel and produce no waste. Hopefully, it will also provide experience that can be used to reduce the costs of such construction in the future.

All told, concentrating solar with energy storage is a very promising looking technology. It has many of the advantages of fossil fuel and nuclear plants, no fuel requirement, and good sustainability credentials. Plus, there is a lot of high quality solar land available in the southern US, as well as southern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.

Needless to say, this is a much more practical way to get 24-hour solar power than space-based systems would be.

Biofuels and nitrous oxide

In theory, biofuels are an appealing climate change solution. They derive the carbon inside them from atmospheric CO2 and their energy from the sun. They can be used in existing vehicles and generators, and store a lot of energy per unit of volume or weight. The raw materials can be grown in many places, without massive capital investment. Of course, recent history has given scientists and policymakers an increasingly clear understanding of the many problems with biofuels. A report (PDF) from Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE) of the International Council for Science (ICSU) concludes that, so far, biofuel production has actually produced more emissions than using fossil fuels would have. Partly, this is on account of the nitrous oxide emissions associated with the use of artificial fertilizers in agriculture. Over a 100 year period, one tonne of nitrous oxide causes as much warming as 310 tonnes of carbon dioxide. Corn produces especially large amounts of nitrous oxide, because it has a shallow root system and only takes in nitrogen for a few months each year.

It is possible that better feedstocks, agricultural techniques, and biofuel production processes will eventually make these fuels ecologically viable. Not all transportation can be electrified, and there will probably always be industrial processes that require petroleum-like feedstocks. Nonetheless, it must be recognized that the world has been going about biofuel production in the wrong way. That is something that should be borne in mind particularly by the citizens of states that are lavishing government support on them, both in the form of subsidies and by mandating that they comprise a certain proportion of transportation fuels.

Counting greenhouse gas emissions

Greenhouse gas emissions figures, as dealt with in the realm of public policy, are often a step or two removed from reality.

For instance, reductions in emissions are often expressed in relation to a ‘business-as-usual’ scenario, by governments wanting to flatter the results of their mitigation efforts. That means, instead of saying that emissions are X% up from last year, you say that they are Y% down from where they would have been in the absence of government action. Since the latter number is based on two hypotheticals (what emissions would have been, and what reductions arose from policy), it is harder to criticize and, arguably, less meaningful.

Of course, the climate system doesn’t care about business-as-usual (BAU) projections. It simply responds to changes in the composition of the atmosphere, as well as the feedback effects those changes induce.

The second major disjoint is between the relentless focus of governments on emissions directly produced by humans, compared with all emissions that affect the climate. For example, drying out rainforests makes them less biologically productive, leading to more greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. Similarly, when permafrost melts, it releases methane, which is a powerful greenhouse gas. It is understandable why governments don’t generally think about these secondary emissions, largely because of the international political difficulties that would arise if they did. Can Canada miss its greenhouse gas mitigation targets because of permafrost melting? Who is responsible for that melting, Canada or everyone who has ever emitted greenhouse gasses? People who have emitted them since we learned they are dangerous?

While the politics of the situation drive us to focus on emissions caused by voluntary human activities (including deforestation), we need to remain aware of the fact that the thermodynamic balance of the planet only cares about physics and chemistry – not borders and intentionality. When it comes to “avoiding dangerous anthropogenic interference in the climate system” we need to remember to focus on both our absolute level of emissions (not their relation to a BAU estimate) and to take into account the secondary effects our emissions have. Doing otherwise risks setting our emission reduction targets too low, and thus generating climate change damage at an intolerable level.

Fighting malaria with fungus

All the chemicals that human beings use to kill living things (weeds, bacteria, viruses) are subject to the same basic problem of resistance. A chemical that doesn’t manage to kill a few individuals will leave them with a huge opportunity to reproduce without competition. As such, all pesticides, herbicides, and antibiotics are likely to become less effective with time. Andrew Read, a Professor of Biology and Entomology at Penn State, is working on an approach for controlling malaria that circumvents this difficulty.

The mosquitoes that spread malaria are not born with the disease. Rather, they must bite someone who is infected. It then takes 10-14 days for the parasites to develop in the female mosquitoes, after which they reach the salivary glands and the insect becomes infectious. Read’s idea is to create a fungus that becomes lethal to mosquitoes after 10-12 days. As such, the fungus would exclusively kill the type of mosquitoes that infect people with malaria. The brilliant aspect of this is that the females will already have reproduced before being killed. That makes it far more difficult for genes resistant to the fungus to emerge and proliferate within the gene pool. That could make it an especially valuable tool in the fight against malaria – an illness that kills about one million people a year.

The idea is similar in some ways to the insect killing fungi described in Paul Stamets’ book, though his colony-exterminating approach seems like it would eventually breed resistance in a way that killing only older female mosquitoes would hopefully not do.

European Commission green paper on overfishing

In addition to their illegal and deeply unethical fishing practices overseas, countries in the European Union have also been exploiting local stocks in an unsustainable way, encouraged partly by counterproductive government policies. All this is clearly articled in a green paper issued by the European Commission and described by the BBC. It mentions factors including subsidized fuel, and the willingness of politicians to inflate allowable catch numbers in defiance of scientific advice.

If we are ever going to get sustainable global fisheries, we are going to need governments with the fortitude and integrity to manage their own fish stocks, first. The sad examples set by Europe, Canada, and others are not encouraging on that front. Indeed, it continues to appear that reduced human consumption of fish will arise as the inevitable product of over-exploitation, not as the result of restraint motivated by long-term self interest (much less, any concern for marine ecosystems themselves). Hopefully, voters will eventually become cognizant of what is happening and demand that politicians abandon their damaging support for a fishing industry driven by the availability of short-term profits, rather than the management of a potentially sustainable resource.

The ROM and evolution

Wandering through Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is an enjoyable way both to experience the diversity of life and appreciate the degree to which its history has come to be comprehensible for human beings. From the grand displays of ancient bones to the more abstract explanations of taxonomy and evolutionary history, the place is a monument to the scientific understanding of the world. Given the power of that discourse – derived from the exceedingly high level of evidence provided by physical remains, genetics, and the study of living creatures – it makes it all the more astonishing that anybody out there believes that the Earth is 6,000 years old, that all the creatures on it were created simultaneously, and that evolution is not a powerful ongoing process that explains our biological origins.

Over and above matters of scientific understanding, the story told by the ROM is also enormously more compelling than the story of creation by an omnipotent god. The latter may have fireworks, but the former has a lot more power and beauty. It makes the creation story look like a bad Hollywood film that happens to star someone famous: the Waterworld of theories.

The possibility of rapid sea level rise

A recent study in Nature examines data from corals in Mexico and concludes that very rapid sea level rise took place during the Eemian period – a previous interglacial where temperatures were about 2°C warmer than they are at present. Sea level rise during the period is estimated at four to six metres, as the result of ice sheets collapsing. On the basis of this data, geoscientist Paul Blanchon concludes that: “a sudden, catastrophic increase of more than 5 centimetres per year over a 50-year stretch is possible.” Obviously, that is a much more rapid and dramatic increase than the one included in the fourth report of the IPCC.

Joseph Romm has more commentary on the study.