Science – Page 83 – a sibilant intake of breath

Fishing and restraint

Research being done off Lundy Island, in the United Kingdom, shows how quickly some marine ecosystems can begin to recover when fishing is discontinued. A five year old marine protected zone has resulted in the lobster population increasing sevenfold, as well as benefits to other species. This is consistent with the kind of larger scale recoveries that took place during the world wars, when the need for merchant ships and the dangers of war prevented most fishing fleets from operating.

It makes a person wonder what would be involved in producing a genuinely sustainable national fishery (trying to do the same in the open ocean is probably impossible for the foreseeable future, given the sheer number of unapologetically rapacious national fleets). One idea that comes to mind is this:

Ban all imports. This will ensure that all fish being sold were caught under the sustainable approach.
Restrict all fishing equipment (except safety equipment) to that which was available at the height of the age of sail. That means no diesel engines, no fish aggregating buoys, no satellite navigation, etc.
Set catch quotas at a level where marine ecosystems as a whole remains vibrant and robust.

This would make fish dramatically more expensive, probably reducing consumption considerably. Arguably, it would actually increase employment in the industry. It would also make the industry rather more interesting to those both within and without it. Fishing from wooden tall ships has a lot more aesthetic appeal and romance than smashing the ocean floor and stripping the sea with freezer trawlers.

Of course, the above is supremely unlikely to ever happen. The question, then, is whether we will ever be able to come up with a mechanism that provides society with fish in an ethical and sustainable way, or whether we will keep plundering the resource, earning poorer and poorer catches, until we must be satisfied with whatever worms and jellyfish remain.

Hierarchy of climate change uncertainty

When people say that ‘the science of climate change is settled’ they are often being problematically imprecise. Elements of the science are certainly settled beyond a doubt – for instance, the simple fact that adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere raises global temperatures. Other elements are certain but less precise: overall warming of the planet will alter air and water currents, though we do not know exactly how. Still higher order questions have answers at lower levels of both precision and certainty.

This graphic sketches out a bit of what I mean:

Responding to climate change is perhaps the ultimate case of needing to make decisions under conditions of uncertainty. Simplistic conceptions of what it means for something to be ‘certain’ must give way to a more nuanced appreciation of the nature of knowledge and evidence.

Green shifts and pine beetles

The July 5th issue of The Economist has two articles pertaining to Canada and climate change. There is one on the Dion carbon tax and another on the pine beetle infestation in our western forests. Both topics have come up here before, but remain pertinent and worthy of discussion.

The critical ongoing question in the first case is probably how effectively Dion will be able to build support for his plan. In the case of the pine beetles, it is probably the extent of the epidemic, as well as the volume of greenhouse gasses that will be emitted as a result. Despite considerable efforts to prevent it, the beetles have now become established in Alberta, having killed more than half the lodgepole pine in British Columbia. Natural Resources Canada estimates that the infestation so far will produce 990 megatonnes worth of emissions by 2020: equivalent to well over a year of total Canadian output. If they spread into the boreal forest, the ecological and climatic consequences could be massive.

How politicians think

The Oil Drum has an interesting post on the psychology of leaders, arguing that their mindset has important consequences in relation to how they evaluate long-term questions like the future of hydrocarbon resources. The argument there is being made about Peak Oil, but it could just as well be applied to climate change:

Our leaders base decisions on lawyer thinking.

The outcome of a trial is not based on the facts; it is based on what they can convince the jury the facts might be. Likewise the outcome of an election is not based on facts; it is based on what they can convince the electorate the relevant facts, issues and threats might be.

Politicians do not deal in facts. They deal in perception. After years of working this way it becomes a framework in which they think.

The basic point is similar to the old joke about how public figures use statistics rather as drunkards use lamp posts: for support rather than illumination. Furthermore, the awareness that other politicians and politically active groups and individuals will use statistics in this way somewhat debases numerical evidence as a form or empirical awareness about the world.

Another important point is made about the differences between political and objective reality:

Politicians tend to inherently believe that the outcome of an event will depend on people’s perceptions and beliefs about that event. Politicians have very little experience with situations where objective reality is more important to outcome than the subjective perception of the reality.

This tendency is especially damaging when it comes to climate change. Because it progresses at an uncertain rate, it may well be that climate changes slowly while the perceptions of most people remain fairly stable, then changes too quickly for anything low-cost and effective to be done. On a problem characterized by uncertain time frames and potentially strong feedback effects, we need to get out in front of the issue, rather than being led by public or elite political opinion.

Dyed panels for concentrating solar

A team from MIT may have developed a cost-effective solar collector system for buildings. It consists of panes of glass coated with particular dyes. Each pane collects light in a specific range of wavelengths and delivers it to a relatively small area of solar cells. As such, the technology would replace some relatively expensive photovoltaic components with cheaper glass ones. It would also do away with the need for moving sun-tracking mirrors.

As with many human innovations, there is a natural precedent. Photosynthetic pigments in chloroplasts help to capture the light used in photosynthesis. They too differ in colour depending on the peak wavelength being targeted, thus explaining why you can have your algae in red, brown, yellow-green, etc.

Unbalanced sea level rise

One intuitively expects that if enough of Greenland melts to raise global sea levels by, say, three centimetres, that rise will occur everywhere more or less simultaneously. Detlaf Stammer, of Hamburg University, has suggested otherwise. His research on meltwater data since 1948 shows that meltwater forms a ‘slow wave’ of “rising sea levels that gradually works its way south from Greenland, down the American coast, reaching the tip of southern Africa after about a decade.”

Fifty years after any Greenland melting occurs, Stammer’s model suggests that sea level rise will be thirty times greater around Greenland and the east coast of North America than it will be in the Pacific ocean. If true, this will have a big effect on the kind of climate change adaptation planning that needs to take place. Everyone is exceptionally worried about Bangladesh right now, but perhaps they should be more immediately concerned about Florida and the Maritimes.

American biodiversity

Over at Shifting Baselines, Josh Donlan has written a highly interesting history of American biodiversity, in the form of an open letter to the next American president. It touches upon the extinction of North American megafauna, philosophical questions about intrinsic value in nature, and then question of what should be done to protect the diversity of life.

It is long (for a web document), but well worth reading.

‘Hair shirt’ environmentalism

In environmental discussions, I frequently see people deriding ‘hair shirt’ environmentalism: basically, the idea that a sustainable society should involve self-sacrifice. There are libertarian sorts who assert their right to live as they wish, without interference. There are also strategic environmentalists who believe that (a) personal sacrifice is not strictly necessary and (b) only approaches that do not call for it will succeed on a societal level.

In order to get into the analysis of this a bit, I think it makes sense to separate three basic ‘hair shirt’ positions. Each holds that it is either necessary or desirable to cut down on some collection of conveniences:

Conserve or we’re doomed

The people of Easter Island didn’t stop their wars and stone head making because they were guilted into it by hippie sorts. They stopped because their ability to sustain a society failed. Conceivably, this could happen at the level of a contemporary state, a region, or the global society.

This viewpoint includes those who think runaway climate change is a major concern, either because it is likely or because the sheer destructiveness it would bring justifies extensive precaution even in the face of a low chance of occurrence. It also includes those who think that when oil runs out we will (a) be unable to locate adequate replacement forms of energy and (b) that this will make civilization impossible to sustain.

Harm Principle advocates

These people argue that libertarians are wrong to assert that one person’s choice to fly or drive is not the business of others. In particular, there is the welfare of those alive now who are vulnerable to climate change (especially in the Arctic, in megadelta, and in small island states). There is also the matter of future generations, and the argument that it is morally wrong to pass a damaged and diminished world on to them.

For these people, it is fine to keep consuming as much energy and as many goods as desired, provided the mechanisms through which they are produced, used, and ultimately disposed of do not cause morally unacceptable harm to others. Naturally, questions about what types and levels of harm are permissible are contested.

Moral minimalists

This group argues that living a simple life is a virtue unto itself. It is split between those who simply choose to adopt such a life themselves and those who argue that others should or must do likewise. In that sense, they are a bit like vegetarians; some try to convert people willingly, others assert that there is a universal moral requirement to be vegetarian, and some are happy to let others do as they wish.

I don’t think any of the views is entirely correct or entirely incorrect.

I do believe that there are ongoing societal behaviours that run a strong risk of undermining the material basis for society, over the long term. Most critical by far is climate change. Runaway climate change would almost certainly mean the end of human civilization. Avoiding that is both prudent and a strong moral requirement. That being said, it is hard to estimate how the climate will respond to a particular collection of forcings – especially when there are tipping points to consider. It is also hard to predict what future generations will be able to do. It is possible that the end of oil will be a global disaster; it is also possible that the transition to renewable sources of energy will be relatively unproblematic.

I also believe that there are many things people in the rich world do as a matter of course that cause unacceptable harm to those alive today and those who will live. I think this is a strong moral basis for requiring behavioural change, including potentially painful changes like restricting air travel and curtailing harmful forms of agriculture.

The moral minimalists have the weakest case, when it comes to asserting the universal validity of their ideas. That being said, they draw attention to the ways in which changes in societal expectations can have big ecological effects. Think of the way in which the ill treatment of whales and primates has come to be rejected by most people. Similarly, note how nasty bogs to be cleared away have become pristine wetlands to conserve – in people’s imaginations, at least, if not in relation to their behaviour. Changes in the general worldview of a society can certainly affect sustainability: both for good and for ill.

In any case, I don’t think it is legitimate to reject the possibility that ‘hair shirt’ actions will be necessary, either on the basis of individual liberty, non-necessity, or political strategy. The strategy point I will debunk more thoroughly another time. For now, it suffices to say that telling people the transition will be relatively painless leaves you in an awkward position if it transpires that deeper (and less voluntary) changes are required.

Artificial geothermal sites

Geothermal energy has generally been seen as limited to areas lucky enough to have hot water bubbling to the surface. Iceland, for instance, manages to produce about 19% of its electricity and about 90% of the heat for homes from geothermal sources (though they also manage to have higher per capita emissions than France or Spain). The Philippines manages to generate 25% of its energy from geothermal sources. One intriguing suggestion to broader the applicability is to create by design what plate tectonics has sometimes produce by chance. The idea is to drill two shafts into hot dry rock, pump cool water down one, and exploit the hot and high-pressure water coming up from the other. If successful, such techniques could make geothermal energy dramatically more widely available. One estimate holds that 100 gigawatts worth of engineered geothermal could be created in the United States by 2050, at a ‘commercially acceptable price.’

There are problems, of course. Our drilling expertise mostly relates to porous oil-bearing rocks: not the more solid sorts that would be between the shafts. There are also concerns that building artificial geothermal sites will destabilize the surrounding land. A project in Switzerland apparently caused a small earthquake back in 2006.

Hopefully, the technology will prove viable in some areas. The more renewable power options we have, the less we need fossil-fuel powered plants to balance the grid. Furthermore, the more different types of renewable energy are in use, the more resilient the system is to climatic changes and other shocks.

Carbon v. CO2

When it comes to carbon pricing, there is one slightly confusing element that should be clarified. Carbon taxes are sometimes expressed as a price per tonne of carbon dioxide (CO2), and sometimes as a price per tonne of carbon. One tonne of carbon is equivalent to 3.67 tonnes of carbon dioxide. As such, a price of $10 per tonne of carbon dioxide is equivalent to a price of $36.70 per tonne of carbon.

The reason for this is basic. One mole of carbon weighs 12 grams. (A mole is a quantity of matter equivalent to 6.02 x 10^23 molecules or atoms. It is like a much bigger version of a dozen.) Each oxygen in a molecule of CO2 contributes 16 grams. As such, a mole of CO2 weighs 44 grams, while a mole of carbon weighs 12. The ratio is 3.67 to one.