Science – Page 71 – a sibilant intake of breath

Polar bears and climate change

From the media coverage, it seems that attitudes at Canada’s recent polar bear summit clustered around two positions: that climate change is a profound threat to the species, and that the species has been doing well in recent times. While a lot of the coverage is focused on supposedly different kinds of knowledge, I am not sure if there is much factual disagreement here. The issue isn’t the current size of the polar bear population, or how it compares with the size a few decades ago. The issue is whether a major threat to the species exists and can be anticipated, as well as how polar bear populations ought to be managed in the next while.

One quote from Harry Flaherty, chair of the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board, seems rather telling:

[Researchers and environmental groups] are using the polar bear as a tool, a tool to fight climate change. They shouldn’t do that. The polar bear will survive. It has been surviving for thousands of years.

This sits uneasily beside the knowledge that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide are already higher than they have been in more than 650,000 years and they are on track to become much higher still. In short, because of climate change, the experience of the last few thousand years may not be very useful for projecting the characteristics of the time ahead. This is especially true in the Arctic, given how the rate of climatic change there is so much higher than elsewhere.

On the matter of polar bear hunting, the appropriate course of action is less clear. Hunting in a way that does not, in and of itself, threaten polar bear populations might be considered sustainable. At the same time, it might be viewed as just another stress on a population that will be severely threatened by climate change. Given the amount of climate change already locked into the planetary system, it does seem quite plausible that the polar ice will be gone in the summertime well before 2100 and that all of Greenland may melt over the course of hundreds or thousands or years. I don’t know whether polar bears would be able to survive in such circumstances. If not, the issue of how many of them are to be hunted in the next few decades isn’t terribly important. It seems a bit like making an effort to ration food on the Titanic.

If we want to save polar bears, we will need to make an extremely aggressive effort to stabilize climate. Meeting the UNFCCC criterion of “avoiding dangerous anthropogenic interference in the climate system” would not be enough, since polar bears are likely to be deeply threatened by a level of overall change that doesn’t meet most people’s interpretations of that standard.

Fishing for krill

On several occasions, I have discussed the concept of ‘fishing down’ through marine food webs: starting with the top predator species, like tuna, and moving to smaller and smaller creatures as the big ones are depleted. In the waters around Antarctica, this process has come very close to reaching its logical extreme. Fishing for krill has become a big business.

Krill are shrimp-like marine invertebrates that make up a significant portion of the world’s zooplankton: the tiny creatures that eat phytoplankton algae. They, in turn, are eaten by all manner of other creatures, ranging up to large whales. Fishing them extensively risks knocking a whole tier out of the food web, with unknown but potentially severe consequences for all other forms of life in the ecosystem.

The krill that are caught are processed for fatty acids, used to make medicine, and fed to farmed fish. In particular, they are useful for giving farmed salmon more of a red colour, in contrast to the sickly looking pale pink much of farm salmon takes on. The current annual catch is estimated to be between 150 – 200,000 tonnes: much of that taken from the waters around Antarctica. Through the use of new technology, a planned new ship (the FV Saga Sea) will apparently be capable of collecting 120,000 tonnes annually. That is nearly one 1000th of the low estimate for the total global biomass of krill, and more such ships are planned.

While it may be that fishing for krill at this scale doesn’t pose a danger to marine ecosystems, it is worth noting that we have no scientific basis for being confident of that. An experiment is simply being performed in unregulated waters, which will have unknown future consequences. As with so many other instances of humanity’s engagement with the natural world, one cannot shake the sense that we are being awfully reckless.

Environmentalism: a faith or a fad?

If you want to seriously annoy environmentalists like me, there are two assertions that will rarely fail:

Environmentalism is a new religion.
Environmentalism is just a fad.

The first view generally arises from fundamental confusion on the part of the person making the assertion. Since they are used to seeing arguments about the morality of individual action presented in religious terms, they assume that anything that involves such arguments must be religious. The faulty syllogism is roughly: religion tries to tell me how to live, environmentalism tries to tell me how to live, therefore environmentalism is religion. This isn’t the case – both because the syllogism is fundamentally invalid, and because there are key differences in the basis for religion and environmentalism, respectively. The second argument does have some evidence to support it, but there is an overwhelming case for hoping it proves untrue in the long term.

Starting with the religion argument, the first step is to establish the nature of religion. The key element of ‘faith’ is a willingness to accept something without empirical evidence: whether it is the existence of a god, the existing of karma, or whatever. Religious beliefs of this kind cannot be empirically disproved. By contrast, virtually all claims made by environmentalists are dependent on their empirical correctness for strength. If mercury didn’t actually poison people, we would be wrong for avoiding it on that basis. The only non-empirical claims behind environmentalism are about what has value. If we didn’t value human life or the natural world, we would have no reason to be concerned about pollution or climate change, and we would have no reason to take action to prevent them.

Every environmental position and argument is open to as much empirical and logical scrutiny anyone cares to apply to it. Everyone is free to perform whatever experiments they like and, if those experiments produce interesting or unexpected results that can be reproduced by others, they can expect them to eventually become part of the body of scientific knowledge. Likewise, people are free to argue about the moral and logical premises of the ‘what should we value’ debate.

Moving on to the ‘fad’ argument, it is certainly the case that public interest in the environment waxes and wanes. Sometimes, catastrophic events draw special attention to the issue. At other times, people find their attention drawn to other happenings. That being said, I think Denis Hayes is right to argue that: “If environment is a fad, it’s going to be our last fad.” Right now, humanity is living with the following assumptions at least implicitly made: (a) the planet can support six billion of us, with more being added daily (b) at least for most of those people, material consumption can continue to rise at several percent per year. Even if we came up with some miracle machine to solve climate change tomorrow, some new issue would arise as the ratio between the total available mass and energy on the planet and the fraction used by human beings continued to fall.

We live in a finite world and, in at least some cases, we are starting to brush against the physical limitations that exist. For that simple reason, environmentalism is important and likely to be enduring. Thankfully, unlike religions which tend to get tangled up in their own history (witness all those trying to prove that the Bible is somehow historically accurate), environmentalism is generally scientifically grounded. As such, its content and prescriptions have the potential to improve as our understanding of the world deepens. For that, we should all be thankful.

Book on communicating climate science

Over at RealClimate, they are encouraging people to read a free book on communicating climate science: Communicating on Climate Change: An Essential Resource for Journalists, Scientists, and Educators. It was written by Bud Ward for the Metcalf Institute for Marine and Environmental Reporting. It is available online as a PDF, and printed copies are available by mail for US$8.00.

Given how much public communication on climate change is of low quality, we should hope that good books on this topic get the attention of authors and editors.

The Economist on the dire state of the world’s oceans

A recent issue of The Economist features a leader and a special report on the state of the world’s oceans. As with a lot of their environmental coverage, it sits awkwardly beside the rest of their analysis. It is astonishing that the newspaper can argue that “the mass extinction, however remote, that should be concentrating minds is that of mankind” while not doing a lot more to advocate effective action. Like most of the policy-making community, they haven’t really internalized the fact that climate change is an issue of over-riding importance, and that nothing else can be durably achieved until it has been addressed. In addition to highlighting the dangers of climate change, their coverage includes discussion of how overfising risks rendering sharks and tuna extinct; how the oceans would require tens of thousands of years to recover from the pollution already released into them; how the Greenland is “on track” to melt completely, raising sea levels by seven metres; and how acidification, pollution, and climate change threaten to eliminate coral reefs.

Clearly, it is one thing to have accepted the collective judgment of the scientific community. It is quite another to have fully incorporated the consequences of that judgment into your structure of beliefs and behaviour.

A new Antarctic ice core

A new research station in Antarctica, being constructed by a Chinese expedition 4,093 metres above sea level, could significantly increase the length of the paloeclimatic record available to scientists. The longest previous Antarctic ice core – discussed in Richard Alley’s book The Two Mile Time Machine – provided information on temperatures and atmospheric composition going back more than 800,000 years. Given RADAR images suggesting that the ice at the new site is more than 3,000 metres deep (and the slow rate of snowfall at this location), it could lengthen that record to as much as 1.5 million years.

Having as much paleoclimatic data as possible is very important for understanding the climate system. It allows more scope for unravelling the interconnections between different feedback cycles within the climate, as well as more data on how the system responded to various kinds of forcings: from changes in the orbital characteristics of the Earth to volcanic eruptions.

While the basic physics of climate change are extremely well understood (just as the flammable properties of gasoline are very well understood), the full workings of the machine in which it is taking place remain mysterious (as the characteristics of a complex gasoline-powered machine might be). This is especially true when something unprecedented is altering the dynamics of that system. Regrettably, one piece of data that cannot be extracted from past climatic records is precisely what consequences the human emission of greenhouse gasses will have. That said, by shedding light on the history and dynamics of the climate system, better paleoclimatic data could play an important role in evolving the climatic models that provide our most informed projections.

The station from which the new core will be drilled should be finished by the end of this month.

‘Third hand smoke’

In the last couple of days, I have seen a number of news sources talking about ‘third hand smoke.’ This refers to the blindingly obvious fact that smokers stink, as do their clothes, homes, furniture, cars, etc. Before the UK smoking ban, just spending a night in a pub would leave your clothes smelling appreciably of tobacco for several days (and often several washes) afterwards. Anyone who has spent a lot of time riding in buses or airplanes will be able to tell you that a heavy smoker can usually be identified from a couple of seats away, even if they don’t happen to be smoking during the voyage. It is similarly obvious that those breathing the rank odour of stale tobacco are probably inhaling some of the toxins that come along with it, as well.

I maintain that smoking is one of the most vile habits a person can have (as well as being a singularly idiotic affront against your own health). Hopefully, the increasingly society-wide rejection of the practice will spread, become more firmly entrenched, and eventually emerge as the worldwide norm.

Colour temperature and photography

One way in which colours are categorized is according to the temperatures at which materials emit them, when heated in a vacuum. The phenomenon of warm things emitting light can be observed readily: for instance, when a bar of iron is heated from red, to orange, to yellow, to white. Some of the key colours photographically are those akin to the light of the sun around noon (about 5500° Kelvin) and the light from incandescent bulbs (about 3300° K). Just as with the heated iron bar, the hotter the light source, the ‘cooler’ the temperature appears: ranging from reds and oranges at low temperatures up to greens and blues. This can be a bit confusing, since the colours artists describe as ‘warm’ are actually produced by low temperatures, and vice versa.

Virtually all digital cameras have the ability to adapt to different colour temperatures. This is important because our eyes generally make the correction automatically. Looking at a scene under fluorescent lights, it doesn’t seem as green to us as it really is – and will appear on film or an uncalibrated digital sensor. Exactly how you set the white balance on your camera varies by model and manufacturer, but it is worth checking the manual over.

In addition to being used to correct for the dominant type of lighting in a scene, colour balance can be set so as to create a desired look that may not have been present in the original scene. For example, intentionally using the white balance for warm light (low temperature) in a scene with cool light (high temperature) exaggerates the cool light in the scene. As a result, you get a very cool looking photo like this one. By contrast, intentionally using the white balance for cool light (high temperature) in a scene that already has fairly warm light will exaggerate the warm light, as with this photo.

For users of Canon cameras, here is an easy way to try this out:

First, head out on a cold winter’s day and find a wintery looking scene.
Then, go into the white balance setting for your camera. If you have a point and shoot camera, this is normally done by setting the control dial on your camera to ‘P,’ then pressing the ‘Func. Set’ button in the middle of the wheel on the back. Scroll down once and you should be in the white balance menu. Press the ‘right’ button until you have ‘Tungsten’ selected.
If you have a digital SLR, there is usually a dedicated white balance button on the back, labelled ‘WB.’
Shoot the winter scene with that setting, and you will get a cool blue looking result.
Secondly, try shooting a warmish scene (such as one taken around sunset outside) with the camera set to ‘Cloudy.’ That will make it look even warmer, which is sometimes attractive.

When you choose a colour balance setting on your digital camera, you are telling it how to process the raw data from the sensor into a JPG image. Since the raw data isn’t normally retained, this is an irreversible choice (though it is possible to approximate a white balance change using software like Photoshop). For cameras capable of recording the data from the sensor as a RAW file, you will be able to select whatever white balance you like after the photo has been taken. Thanks to CHDK, a great many Canon cameras (including inexpensive point and shoot models) can be given this capability.

Incidentally, the matter of what wavelength of light is emitted by objects of different temperatures is a key part of the physics of climate change. One neat thing about science is the way you often run into aspects of one field that are relevant somewhere very different.

Climate in 2009: predictions

Two related events are likely to dominate climate news for 2009: the first year of the Obama administration and the UNFCCC negotiations in Copenhagen. Arguably, the biggest open question is just how dedicated Obama will be to domestic and international climate change action. It may be that he lives up to the high expectations of the environmental community, setting the stage for the rapid deployment of a cap-and-trade carbon pricing system in the United States and playing a constructive role in the creation of an international legal instrument to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. It may also be that his focus lies elsewhere, or that Congressional opposition makes his platform harder to implement. The Obama administration failing to make climate a priority issue from the outset is probably the most likely ‘bad news’ climate story of 2009, whereas successful domestic and international engagement is probably the most likely ‘good news’ story.

American re-engagement with the UNFCCC process is a necessary condition for progress, but it will not be sufficient in itself. Much depends on whether India and China can be brought into the agreement, as well as whether deforestation can be successfully incorporated into a new accord. Given the urgency of reducing emissions (starting the long path to stabilizing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gasses), it must be hoped that all the key states will rise to the challenge and develop a fair and effective approach.

If there are going to be big climatic surprises in 2009, they are more likely to be physical than political. It is nearly certain that there will be strange and destructive weather somewhere, and that at least some people will attribute it to climate change (whether plausibly or not). A big surprise could take the form of an extreme weather event, or simply the sharp acceleration of a tend such as glacier loss, permafrost melting, or changes in precipitation patterns.

With luck, 2009 will be seen as the year in which the world really began turning the corner towards emissions reductions. Most of the governments most bitterly opposed to action on climate change have been eliminated, and an accord between the big players (the US, China, Japan, Europe, etc) would have the momentum to drag everyone else along. The road ahead will continue to include shifts in policy – as well as very active debates on who should bear which costs – but the general outlines could be affirmed this year and global implementation could begin in earnest. Those broad outlines include the need for both total and per-capita emissions to start falling globally (perhaps with a brief period of residual growth in very poor states), that per-capita emissions should converge between all states, and that many of the costs of global mitigation and adaptation be borne by the societies that have created the problem.

For the sake of all future generations, let’s hope this will be a year of great progress.

Grid technologies to support renewable power

The MIT Technology Review has a good article about renewable energy and the ways electrical grids will need to change in order to accomodate it. Both key points have been discussed here before. Firstly, we need high voltage low-loss power lines from areas with lots of renewable potential (sunny parts of the southern US, windy parts of Europe, etc) to areas with lots of electrical demand. Secondly, we need a more intelligent grid that can manage demand and store some energy in periods of excess, for use in times when renewable output falters.

The article highlights how the advantages of a revamped grid are economic as well as environmental:

Smart-grid technologies could reduce overall electricity consumption by 6 percent and peak demand by as much as 27 percent. The peak-demand reductions alone would save between $175 billion and $332 billion over 20 years, according to the Brattle Group, a consultancy in Cambridge, MA. Not only would lower demand free up transmission capacity, but the capital investment that would otherwise be needed for new conventional power plants could be redirected to renewables. That’s because smart-grid technologies would make small installations of wind turbines and photovoltaic panels much more practical. “They will enable much larger amounts of renewables to be integrated on the grid and lower the effective overall system-wide cost of those renewables,” says the Brattle Group’s Peter Fox-Penner.

In short, a smarter grid holds out the prospect of overcoming the biggest limitation of electricity: that supply must always be exactly matched to demand, and that prospects for efficient storage have hitherto been limited. The storage issue, in particular, could be profoundly affected by the deployment of large numbers of electric vehicles with batteries that could be used in part as an electricity reserve for the grid.

Providing incentives for the development of a next-generation grid (as well as removing some of the legal and economic disincentives that prevent it) is an important role for governments – above and beyond the need to put a price on carbon. While carbon pricing can theoretically address the externalities associated with climatic harm from emissions, it cannot automatically deal with the externalities holding back grid development, which include the monopoly status of many of the firms involved, issues concerning economies of scale, the fact that the absence of transmission capacity restricts the emergence of renewable generation capacity (and vice versa).

The full article is definitely worth reading.