Category: The environment

Atmosphere, biosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, etc – everything about life and the state of this planet

Climate change ‘winners’

Today’s Globe and Mail makes a good point about the ongoing Russian heatwave and wildfires, namely that they are a partial counter to the argument that northern countries like Russia and Canada would benefit from a warmer climate:

Russia’s summer heat wave has dimmed prospects that northern countries will “win” from climate change thanks to factors such as longer crop-growing seasons or fewer deaths from winter cold, experts say.

Canada, Nordic countries and Russia have been portrayed as among a lucky few chilly nations where moderate climate change will mean net benefits such as lower winter heating bills, more forest and crop growth and perhaps more summer tourism.

…

“It’s not a matter of a benign shift to a longer growing season” for northern nations, said [Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado]. Russia’s heat wave doubled death rates in Moscow, wrecked a quarter of Russia’s grain crop and may cut $14-billion from gross domestic product.

It is certainly odd to see climate change deniers who – in the course of the same speech or article – will claim that climate change isn’t happening at all, that it is pefectly natural, that it is actually going to be beneficial, and that it is all China’s fault for building too many coal plants.

The fact is, all of our infrastructure was designed for the kind of climatic conditions human civilization emerged in. While it is certainly likely that a few people will benefit from climate change, for the most part it will mean that roads, buildings, agricultural systems, and so on are increasingly poorly suited to the area where they are situated.

I wrote before about climate change and Australian brushfires.

Pondering mosquito-cide

Generally speaking, it seems like a bad thing when human beings eliminate an entire species. That said, it is usually done by accident, as a consequence of habitat destruction and pollution. To a considerable extent, we should probably scale back those harmful activities, and think about backing up some DNA in the meantime.

In at least one case – the eradication of smallpox – the destruction of a species seems unambiguously excellent. Indeed, it is a shame we didn’t manage to finish the job, and that Russia made such huge quantities of smallpox as a weapon. Mosquitoes are another candidate for a species we could wipe out without guilt, especially since ecologists are arguing that they don’t serve a major ecological role.

The ethical question is: if it were practical to do so, should humanity exterminate all mosquitoes?

Energy in wasted food

Here’s a sobering fact: there is apparently more energy in wasted food in the US than in the Gulf of Mexico:

Americans aren’t, technically, eating an average of 3774 calories per day. This figure is calculated by looking at food produced, divided by the number of Americans. It assumes we’re eating all that, but, in reality, according to environmental scientist Gidon Eshel we really only eat about 2800 calories per day. That whopping 3774 includes both what we eat—and what we waste…

We use a lot of energy producing, transporting, processing, storing and cooking food we don’t eat. About 2150 trillion kilojoules worth a year, according to a recent study. That’s more kilojoules than the United States could produce in biofuels. And it’s more than we already produce in all the oil and gas extracted annually from the Gulf of Mexico.

This is suggestive for several reasons. Firstly, it reinforces the point that the United States cannot drill the way out of their oil addiction problems – domestic oil supplies just aren’t adequate to make much of a difference. Secondly, it is a reminder of how energy is both a critical and a largely hidden part of our society. Thirdly, it shows how people respond to economic incentives – such as the cheapness of food – by acting frugally or wastefully in response. Fourthly, it shows yet another area where conservation can help us, as we make the shift to sustainable and zero-carbon forms of energy production and use.

Sea ice extent and volume

Over at RealClimate, Dirk Notz has written a good post about climate change and Arctic sea ice. In it, he highlights the importance of aggregated data, pointing out how, despite variations in regional weather, the mean temperature of the entire globe during the last 12 months is the highest it has been since the beginning of the records 130 years ago.

The figure that is most watched, when it comes to Arctic sea ice, is the extent of ocean covered by ice. This isn’t a spectacularly good measure, however, as Notz explains:

The reason for this is mostly that sea ice in the Arctic has become very thin. Hence, in contrast to the much thicker ice of past decades, the ice now reacts very quickly and very sensitively to the weather patterns that are predominant during a certain summer. This currently limits the predictability of sea-ice extent significantly.

A better measure is ice volume, which has been falling consistently as the planet warms.

Ten indicators from the Met Office

One reason we can have a lot of confidence about the basic science of climate change – that the world is warming, because of people, in ways that could be harmful to humanity – is because there are numerous independent indicators showing the same trends. A new report from the Met Office in the United Kingdom highlights this, pointing to ten distinct indicators that all show the planet warming:

  1. Rising air temperature over land
  2. Rising sea-surface temperature
  3. Rising marine air temperature
  4. Rising sea-level
  5. Rising ocean heat
  6. Rising humidity
  7. Rising tropospheric temperature in the ‘active-weather’ layer of the atmosphere closest to the Earth’s surface
  8. Declining arctic sea-ice
  9. Declining glaciers
  10. Declining spring snow cover in the northern hemisphere

Deke Arndt, who co-edited the report, explained that: “The records come from many institutions worldwide. They use data collected from diverse sources, including satellites, weather balloons, weather stations, ships, buoys, and field surveys. These independently produced lines of evidence all point to the same conclusion: our planet is warming.”

None of this is new, really, but there is value in re-expressing it and stressing how the different indicators reinforce one another. Climate change deniers often fixate on details, raising doubts about a single measure and then suggesting that this calls into question the whole edifice of climate science. What work like this Met Office report indicates is how climate scientists are approaching the problem in a way that reduces the danger of such dangerous extrapolations.

Of course, that means climate change is something we really do need to worry about, and which we ought to be taking much more action about.

Open thread: the future of Russia

After the collapse of communism, many in the West assumed that democracy and free market capitalism would triumph in the former Soviet Union. Instead, it seems the chaos in the post-communist period permitted the emergence of economically powerful oligarchs, as well as massive growth in the wealth and power of organized crime groups. Now, former members of the security services, led by Vladamir Putin, are continuing to cement their own control.

There is much about Russia that is worrisome: the suppression of the free press and murder of journalists; continued appalling conduct in Chechnya; ongoing attempts to dominate neighbouring states, including through war; the exploitation of Europe’s dependence on Russian fossil fuels; and more.

What do readers think might happen to Russia in the next 25 or 50 years? What are the most desirable and undesirable plausible outcomes, from the perspective of the Russian people, the world as a whole, central European states, the European Union, and the United States? What effect would different potential outcomes in Russia have on Canada?

Better two-stroke engines

Apparently, it might be possible to make efficient two-stroke engines that are less polluting than their predecessors.

Improving the efficiency of gasoline and diesel engines is an important undertaking, both because it will be a while before electric vehicles are ready for near-universal urban deployment and because there will be rural vehicles running on fossil fuels for quite a while yet.

How to shift the US Congress?

Writing for Grist, Randy Rieland has come up with a summary of arguments about why cap-and-trade is dead in the United States for now. He is right to say that the blame lies primarily with Congress, rather than with the Obama administration. Congress is the most powerful branch of government, and has been highly effective at blocking environmental legislation in the past. While the Democratic leadership in Congress is theoretically allied with the administration in the White House, even the two together clearly haven’t been able to overcome the wall of opposition to meaningful climate policies that has been constructed by Republicans, or the cowardice of moderate Democrats who are unwilling to fight to address this key problem.

The stragic question now becomes how to change Congressional behaviour, and do so before climate-related disasters become so frequent as to finally discredit climate change deniers completely. We cannot afford to wait that long, both because of the physical lags in the Earth’s climate system and the lags in our own infrastructure deployment. By the time the full danger of climate change is unambiguously on display, it will be too late to avoid some terrible effects. It will also be too late for the relatively unintrusive policies being proposed today to work. Sterner stuff will be required.

Baseload solar in Italy

I mentioned before how, by using molten salt as a heat collecting medium, concentrating solar power plants can achieve higher temperatures and continue to produce electricity after dark. Now, the first facility with that capability is being built.

The Archimede Solar Thermal Power Plant is being built in Italy, at a cost of 60 million Euros. It will put out only five megawatts of power (as much as three and a half large wind turbines), but hopefully it will serve as a proof of concept for more ambitious facilities.

US Senate fails again on climate

So, it seems the possibility of a cap-and-trade system in the United States to help deal with climate change has been killed by Congress, at least for the moment. As I have argued before, if the current generation fails to take action to prevent dangerous or catastrophic climate change, that failure is what history will remember us by. We will be remembered as the people who had all the necessary information, but who were so selfish and dysfunctional that they couldn’t step up and take even the first small step.

I remain unimpressed with humanity.