A Musing Environment

Reading Ian McEwen’s excellent Solar, I ran across some numbers and checked them with Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

From Working Group 2, chapter 8 (pdf, go to document to see sources)

8.2.10 Ultraviolet radiation and health
Solar ultraviolet radiation (UVR) exposure causes a range of health impacts. Globally, excessive solar UVR exposure has caused the loss of approximately 1.5 million disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) (0.1% of the total global burden of disease) and 60,000 premature deaths in the year 2000. The greatest burdens result from UVR-induced cortical cataracts, cutaneous malignant melanoma, and sunburn (although the latter estimates are highly uncertain due to the paucity of data). UVR exposure may weaken the immune response to certain vaccinations, which would reduce their effectiveness. However, there are also important health benefits: exposure to radiation in the ultraviolet B frequency band is required for the production of vitamin D in the body. Lack of sun exposure may lead to osteomalacia (rickets) and other disorders caused by vitamin D deficiencies.

8.4.1.1 Global burden of disease study
The World Health Organization conducted a regional and global comparative risk assessment to quantify the amount of premature morbidity and mortality due to a range of risk factors, including climate change, and to estimate the benefit of interventions to remove or reduce these risk factors. In the year 2000, climate change is estimated to have caused the loss of over 150,000 lives and 5,500,000 DALYs (0.3% of deaths and 0.4% of DALYs, respectively). The assessment also addressed how much of the future burden of climate change could be avoided by stabilising greenhouse gas emissions. The health outcomes included were chosen based on known sensitivity to climate variation, predicted future importance, and availability of quantitative global models (or the feasibility of constructing them).

8.7.1 Health and climate protection: clean energy
In many low-income countries, access to electricity is limited. Over half of the world’s population still relies on biomass fuels and coal to meet their energy needs. These biomass fuels have low combustion efficiency and a significant, but unknown, portion is harvested non-renewably, thus contributing to net carbon emissions. The products of incomplete combustion from small-scale biomass combustion contain a number of health-damaging pollutants, including small particles, carbon monoxide, polyaromatic hydrocarbons and a range of toxic volatile organic compounds. Human exposures to these pollutants within homes are large in comparison with outdoor air pollution exposures. Current best estimates, based on published epidemiological studies, are that biomass fuels in households are responsible annually for approximately 0.7 to 2.1 million premature deaths in low-income countries (from a combination of lower-respiratory infections, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer). About two-thirds occur in children under the age of five and most of the rest occur in women.

Better cooking stoves use less fuel, reduce air pollution, reduce the burden on the environment and the women who collect wood, and reduce attacks on the women.

Greg Craven in his excellent What’s the Worst That Could Happen? A Rational Response to the Climate Change Debate, spends chapter 3 explaining why we should never trust ourselves, and chapter 4 on which sources he does trust and why.

Greg Craven

Reading these two chapters and doing his exercise on sources may help center any group studying climate change.

I rely on somewhat different sources than does Craven. I don’t ever look for the facts in one category he considers important, people saying something different than you expect—while I learn a lot from military analyses of the consequences of climate change, I don’t necessarily consider them reliable on climate change. Another difference between our lists is that I rely on the hierarchy scientists have created, eg, for Chernobyl facts, go to International Atomic Energy Agency. For climate change facts, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change provides the top level of discernment.

But over time, I have begun to understand which just plain folks I trust on climate change. Not to get the facts right, perhaps, but I trust that they care about climate change. So far, I’ve identified only one characteristic: they have changed their mind on something important.

Most people talking about climate change solutions sound just like they did before their interest in climate change. In the old days, they knew that the most important environmental issue was expanding nuclear power, eliminating nuclear power, avoiding meat, renewables, or living simply. Now it turns out that these are the most important solutions to climate change. They sound to me like they have added an amplifier to their recording: see, my solution is absolutely critical!!!!!!!!!

I also distrust their interest in climate change if they reference a number of extraneous issues. Wall Street Journal op-ed pieces on climate change frequently mention the United Nations as a problem. Many addressing climate change want to solve all the world problems, not just climate change and biodiversity loss, but poverty and women’s rights. I don’t object to solving all the world’s problems, but I don’t trust people to focus who have too large a vision.

So give me someone who emphasizes behavior change today in addition to promoting nuclear power from times long ago, or who promotes nuclear power now in addition to advocating for behavior change way back when. Someone who wants to focus on a small number of topics related to climate change (affordable energy, pollution), but doesn’t bring up furthering democracy or raising children. I hear that person as so interested in climate change, she is willing to concede that her old thinking was insufficient.

I know intellectually that I am unfair. Until I find a way to bring my intellect and my emotions into harmony, this is where I am.

What about you?

I’ve been asked a number of times to include water on my greenhouse gas spreadsheet, and now have the numbers to do so. Energy demands for water use are significant. Unfortunately, most of the water we consume never appears on our home water bill. Our bill doesn’t show us water use for eating and showering elsewhere, or for water use in agriculture or manufacturing—1 kg of cotton requires 2900 gallons of water (global average), a t-shirt 715 gallons. In many areas of the world, including California and the US, people consume fossil water (groundwater), and replacement will come from higher emissions desalination.

According to California Energy Commission (pdf), 19% of CA use of electricity, 32% of natural gas, and 88 million gallons of diesel goes to water supply and treatment, and wastewater treatment, for all uses. Energy for residential water, at least in California, comes mainly from electricity.

So how much of my annual electricity usage belongs to the category water use? What percentage of my annual water use appears on my home water bill?

Electricity for home water use
The US average, according to Energy Star’s Water/Wastewater Focus: A National, Collaborative Approach to Enhance Energy Performance within Municipal Facilities (pdf), is 1.5 kWh/thousand gallons (kgal) drinking water, and another 1.2 kWh/kgal sewage. (Typically about half of water goes to sewage.) Variations can be large—in my water district, East Bay Municipal Water District (pdf), water flows downhill, and the electricity use is 1.25 kWh/kgal, with another 1.5 kWh/kgal sewage. EBMUD estimates that a person halfway uphill in Berkeley/Oakland uses 25 kWh/year more than a person in the flats (assumes 50 gallons/day, personal communication David Beyer, EBMUD). Getting water to southern CA requires more pumping, and electricity costs are higher, 6.4 kWh/kgal.

To calculate your energy use for water, for indoor and outdoor residential, plus some for work or school, restaurants, and the gym:

• Get your yearly water use from your bills. Multiply ccf (hundred cubic feet) by 748 to get gallons. Divide by 1,000 to get water consumption in kgal.

• Round up. My assumption is that everyone should round up by at least the larger of 10 gallons/day or 20%, to count water use outside the home, from vacations and toilets and restaurants and showers at the gym to the water use on veggies at the store, etc. People in apartments who use a lot of water outside the home may want to double what the bill tells you.

• To calculate wastewater use, multiply water consumption by a value between 0.4 (a high percentage of your water goes into the yard rather than wastewater) and 1 (apartment dweller).

• Multiply water use estimate by electricity use/kgal, and multiply wastewater estimate by electricity use/kgal.

• Divide by the size of household to get per capita electricity use.

Example
Family Ex’s bill says that the two residents use 100 gallons/day, or 36,500/year = 36.5 kgal/year.

The Exes eat out about 10 meals/week, and one goes to the gym a couple of times/week. They are away from home 20 days/year. Add 40%, to get 51 kgal/year. (Your guess is probably better than mine.) If the Exes are typical, wastewater will be half that, or 26 kgal/year.

Multiply water use by 1.5 kWh/kgal, and wastewater by 1.2 kWh/kgal. (US values)

Electricity use: 51 (1.5) + 26 (1.2) = 110 kWh

Per capita electricity associated with water use for the two Exes is about 55 kWh/year.

Reducing water use
The Exes can reduce water use in a number of ways—see your local water utility for recommendations. Here is EBMUD’s watersmart page and their information on gray water. The NY Times describes the work of Greywater Guerrillas, a group that feels that the CA code is too complex, and expensive, in The Dirty Water Underground.

gray water idea from the greywater guerrillas

Xeriscaping can add beauty as well as reduce water use.

Suggestions I don’t always see on lists of ways to save energy for water:
• cook with less water—boil only as much as you need.
• turn water on and off while washing dishes. Run water continuously and you’ll use several times as much water.

More information
• The energy to heat water is not included, but is significant. If you heat water with natural gas, then 34 gallons of hot water for an entire clothes wash cycle requires 0.34 therms. Warm water has about half the energy requirements of hot water. Compare this to the energy cost of operating the washer, 0.3 kWh electricity. A gas dryer might use 0.17 therm, plus 0.5 kWh electricity, and an electric dryer 3.3 kWh. One reason so many utilities give rebates on water efficient washers is to reduce hot water use.

Pardee Reservoir is part of the EBMUD water system.

• Actual water use is MUCH greater than our bill tells us. According to Energy and Air Emission Effects of Water Supply (pdf), typical water use is 86 kgal/year, more than 230 gallons/day: this counts commercial and educational establishments, industry, parks, swimming pools, etc.

We in EBMUD’s service area use 130 gallons/person/day. These numbers are down because we are responding to the drought, and because industry has moved away. Numbers will stay down because we have adopted drought behavior. (personal communication Michelle Blackwell, EBMUD)

In numbers that have surely decreased—Californians have been changing their behavior, water use has becomes a tad bit more efficient, and industry has declined in both real and per capita terms—estimated CA water use in 2000 was 7 million acre feet for 34 million people, 180 gallons per day (gpd) per person, 67 kgal/year.

By sector in CA:
indoor residential: 22 kgal/year, 60 gpd
outdoor residential: estimates range from 9.4 kgal/year, 26 gpd to twice as much
commercial/institutional: 18 kgal/year, 41 gpd
industrial: 6.4 kgal/year, 17 gpd
unaccounted for: 6.7 kgal/year, 17 gpd
Waste Not, Want Not: The Potential for Urban Water Conservation in California (pdf)

For US numbers, see USGS Estimated Use of Water in the United States in 2000 (Notes: US population in 2000 was 281 million. Water used by power plants is for the most part returned, though at a higher temperature.)

irrigation: 490 gpd per person
public-supplied for 85% of the population: 180 gpd
self-supplied industrial: 70 gpd
self-supplied domestic, livestock, aquaculture, and mining: 46 gpd

• In addition to greenhouse gases, each 1000 gallons CA water use (pdf) produces 7.2 g NOx, 1.5 g particulate matter, and 11 g SOx. US averages are about 60% worse for greenhouse gas emissions, twice as bad for NOx, 10x as bad for particulate matter, and 2.5x as bad for SOx. This is due primarily to a different mix of sources of electricity.

• Desalination will become increasingly important in CA (and elsewhere) as population increases from 37 million today to 46.5 million by 2030 (US Census).

Drinking water scarcity is an issue in many parts of the world. By 2025, 1.8 billion people will be living in areas likely to experience absolute water scarcity. More than 40% of the world’s population may face serious water shortages if they must rely solely on locally available freshwater. Some of these places experience scarcity due to climate and others because infrastructure is unavailable; however, in some places, both issues are problematic.

Energy and Air Emission Effects of Water Supply (pdf)

Desalination will increase energy use/kgal by as little as 50% or as much as 140%.

• In dry states, water use also contributes indirectly to climate change, and ecosystem damage, because competition between ecosystem needs and human needs almost always lead to less productive ecosystems, and reduced carbon dioxide taken out of the atmosphere.

From the April 16 Science, Biotech Crops Good for Farmers and Environment (subscription required):

Fourteen years after genetically engineered crops began to take off in the United States, the overall benefits to farmers are clear, according to a new report from the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academies. The shift from conventionally grown crops has paid off economically and environmentally, says the panel. “We can stop arguing about whether the environmental and economic impacts are significant,” says agricultural economist Nicholas Kalaitzandonakes of the University of Missouri, Columbia, who was not on the panel…

Reduced tillage could offer the “largest single environmental benefit of GE crops,” the panel found, because it should mean less sediment, fertilizer, and pesticides washing into streams. But this hasn’t been proven, so the panel recommends that the U.S. Geological Survey investigate the impact of reduced tillage on water quality.

Key findings from Impact of Genetically Engineered Crops on Farm Sustainability in the United States, produced by National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences (order reflect report structure rather than importance):

• When adopting GE [genetically engineered] herbicide-resistant (HR) crops, farmers mainly substituted the herbicide glyphosate for more toxic herbicides. However, the predominant reliance on glyphosate is now reducing the effectiveness of this weed-management tool.

• The adoption of HR crops complements conservation tillage practices, which reduces the adverse effects of tillage on soil and water quality.

• Targeting specific plant insect pests with Bt corn and cotton has been successful, and the ability to target specific plant pests in corn and cotton continues to expand. Insecticide use has decreased with the adoption of insect-resistant (IR) crops. The emergence of insect resistance to Bt crops has been low so far and of little economic or agronomic consequence; two pest species have evolved resistance to Bt crops in the United States.

• For the three major GE crops, gene flow to wild or weedy relatives has not been a concern to date because compatible relatives of corn and soybean do not exist in the United States and are only local for cotton. For other GE crops, the situation varies according to species. However, gene flow to non-GE crops has been a concern for farmers whose markets depend on an absence of GE traits in their products. The potential risks presented by gene flows may increase as GE traits are introduced into more crops.

• Farmers who have GE crops have experienced lower costs of production and obtained higher yields in many cases because of more cost-effective weed control and reduced losses from insect pests. Many farmers have benefited economically from the adoption of Bt crops by using lower amounts of or less expensive insecticide applications, particularly where insect pest populations were high and difficult to treat before the advent of Bt crops.

• Adapters of GE crops experienced increased worker safety and greater simplicity and flexibility in farm management, benefitting farmers even though the cost of GE seed is higher than non-GE seed. Newer varieties of GE crops with multiple GE traits appear to reduce production risk for adopters.

• The effect GE crops have had on prices received by farmers for soybeans, corn, and cotton is not completely understood.

• To the extent that economic effects of GE-crop plantings on non-GE producers are understood, the results are mixed. By and large, these effects have not received adequate research. [Eg, food safety increased in livestock feed, downward pressure on price, lower pest control costs due to reduced pest populations, cost of new insecticides whether or not non-GE farming practices led to the need]

• Research on the dissemination of earlier technological development in agriculture suggests that favorable and unfavorable social impacts exist from the dissemination of genetic-engineering technology. However, these impacts have not been identified or analyzed. [eg, the impact on farmers with less access to credit, fewer social connections to university and private-sector researchers who grow crops for smaller markets, labor dynamics, farm structure, community viability]

• The proprietary terms under which private-sector firms supply GE seeds to the market has not adversely affected the economic welfare of farmers who adopt GE crops. Nevertheless, ongoing research is needed to investigate how market structure may evolve and affect access to non-GE or single-trait seed. Furthermore, there has been little research on how increasing market concentration of seed suppliers affects overall yield benefits, crop genetic diversity, seed prices, and farmers’ planting decisions and options.

Conclusions and Recommendations

• Weed problems in fields of HR crops will become more common as weeds evolve resistance to glyphosate or weed communities less susceptible to glyphosate become established in areas treated exclusively with that herbicide. Though problems of evolved resistance and weed shifts are not unique to HR crops, their occurrence, which is documented, diminishes the effectiveness of a weed-control practice that has minimal environmental impacts. Weed resistance to glyphosate may cause farmers to return to tillage as a weed-management tool and to the use of potentially more toxic herbicides. A number of new genetically engineered HR cultivars are currently under development and may provide growers with other weed management options when fully commercialized. However, the sustainability of these new GE cultivars will also be a function of how the traits are managed. If they are managed in the same fashion as the current genetically engineered HR cultivars, the same problems of evolved herbicide resistance and weed shifts may occur. Therefore, farmers of HR crops should incorporate more diverse management practices, such as herbicide rotation, herbicide application sequences, and tank-mixes of more than one herbicide; herbicides with different modes of action, method of application, and persistence; cultural and mechanical control practices; and equipment-cleaning and harvest practice that minimize the dispersal of HR weeds.

• Given that agriculture is the largest source of surface water pollution, improvements in water quality resulting from the complementary nature of herbicide-resistance technology and conservation tillage may represent the largest single environmental benefit of GE crops. However, the infrastructure to track and analyze these effects is not in place.

• The environmental, economic, and social effects on adopters and nonadopters of GE crops has changed over time, particularly because of changes in pest responses to GE crops, the consolidation of the seed industry, and the incorporation of GE traits into most varieties of corn, soybean, and cotton. However, empirical research into the environmental and economic effects of changing market conditions, and farmer practices have not kept pace. Furthermore, little work has been conducted regarding the effects on livestock producers and nonadopters and on the social impacts of GE crops. Issues in need of further investigation include the costs and benefits of shifts in pest management for non-GE producers due to the adoption of GE cops, the value of market opportunities afforded to organic farmers by defining their products as non-GE crops, the economic impacts of GE-crop adoption on livestock producers, and the costs to farmers, marketers, and processors of the presence of approved or unapproved GE traits and crops in products intended for restricted markets. As more GE traits are developed and inserted into existing GE crops or into other crops, understanding the impacts on all farmers will become even more important to ensuring that genetic-engineering technology is used in a way that facilitates environment, economic, and social sustainability in U.S. agriculture.

• Commercialized GE traits are targeted at pest control, and when used properly, have been effective at reducing pest problems with economic and environmental benefits to farmers. However, genetic engineering could be used in more crops, in novel ways beyond herbicide and insecticide resistance, and for a greater diversity of purposes. With proper management, genetic-engineering technology could help address food insecurity by reducing yield losses though its introduction into other crops and with the development of other yield protection traits like drought tolerance. Crop biotechnology could also address “public good” issues that will be undersupplied by the market acting alone. Some firms are working on GE traits that address public goods issues. However, industry has insufficient incentive to invest enough in research and development for those purposes when firms cannot collect revenue from innovations that generate net benefits beyond the farm. Therefore, the development of these traits will require greater collaboration between the public and private sectors because the benefits extend beyond farmers to the society in general. The implementation of a targeted and tailored regulatory approach to GE-trait development and commercialization that meets human and environmental safety standards while minimizing unnecessary expenses will aid this agenda (Ervin and Webb, 2006).

transgenic methods

Three 8th-grade students produced a video on nuclear power and won the C-Span StudentCam 2010 award.

Here is the video and transcript of their interview after they were told they won. (The transcript is not complete.) After the interview, stay tuned to see first prize winners for high school and middle school categories.

The short video Skype includes interviews with people as diverse as Dale Klein, then head of Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott.

I’ve been reading to prepare for the climate activist group, and have had no time for writing. Here are some brief descriptions of two of the books, with some online reading material. I intend to post more on them.

Mike Hulme’s Why We Disagree About Climate Change addresses a wide variety of challenges to agreement, from differing abilities to see the atmosphere, nature, as something that can be altered, to good people/good economists analyzing costs and benefits very differently, to distinct views of nature and solutions held by different cultures.

Listen to Hulme here.

Hulme’s discussion on cultures, over several chapters, cites several studies from social scientists on Cultural Theory. The idea behind cultural theory, originally developed by Mary Douglas (here is her description of both the theory and its history, pdf), is that which culture we belong can be determined with just two characteristics:

• strong or weak group identity (adherence to group norms)
• strong or weak grid (methods of control, or regimentation)

As described in a Guardian article on Mary Douglas,

The four [cultural] types are plotted on a graph with two axes. The horizontal axis represents the strength of group norms, such as family and local community, while the vertical axis represents the strength of the grid – those less intimate mechanisms of control such as laws, religious authority, economic forces and institutional disciplines.

Categories
• Strong group boundaries and minimal prescriptions—egalitarian
• Strong group boundaries and strong prescriptions—hierarchical
• Bound neither group incorporation nor prescribed roles—individualistic
• Excluded from group but strong prescriptions—fatalistic
Some lists include a 5th category, those few who withdraw from what they see as coercive or manipulative social involvement altogether—hermit

You might be in one culture here and another there, but most of us don’t switch wildly from culture to culture as we go through the day. Cultural theory helps us understand the different arguments we present and encounter, but no one person spends her life in a single culture.

Most groups (your workplace, religious group, bicycling group) include people from more than one, or all, cultures, but the group itself has a cultural identity. Google and Department of Energy are examples of two different work cultures, one individualist, one hierarchical. And there can be big differences among cultures that share similarities: compare Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Catholic Church.

People adopt a culture based in part on how they see nature, and in part they see nature in a certain way to justify their way of living. The cultures we join then provide a source, as Douglas says, of “irreconcilable conflict” between members of different cultures; besides seeing the world differently from one another, our differing views are means of expressing moral principles and loyalties to our cultures. “The message for research is never to consider conflict of opinions without looking for the underlying conflict between institutional forms. Cultural attack and persecution are the spice of life for a community.” We like to think that we do better with our time than expressing superiority, but for most of us, the contrast with other cultures helps us define ourselves, orient ourselves, and feel good about ourselves.

Although Douglas’ synopsis (pdf) provides a good starting place, cultural theory is more complicated in its details.

The book Cultural Theory by Michael Thompson, Richard Ellis, and Aaron Wildavsky, provides more detailed analysis. A number of more recent books provide more updated thinking on the subject.

More reading on the web:
• Cultural cognition project

• Cultural Cognition and Public Policy

• Cultural Cognition of Scientific Consensus Cultural cognition shapes our beliefs about scientific consensus.

• Risk and Culture study

• Second study

Upcoming: how do different cultures see nature? How do we see the solutions to nature’s problems?

Can someone explain this?

RealClimate has posted 5 discussions in the last two weeks on British journalistic handling of climate change, e.g.,

Daily Mangle It begins:

Yesterday, the Daily Mail of the UK published a predictably inaccurate article entitled “Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995?.

The Guardian Disappoints It begins

Over the last few weeks or so the UK Guardian (who occasionally reprint our posts) has published a 12-part series about the stolen CRU emails by Fred Pearce that are well below the normal Guardian standards of reporting. We delineate some of the errors and misrepresentations below. While this has to be seen on a backdrop of an almost complete collapse in reporting standards across the UK media on the issue of climate change, it can’t be excused on the basis that the Mail or the Times is just as bad.

Whatevergate It begins:

It won’t have escaped many of our readers’ notice that there has been what can only be described as a media frenzy (mostly in the UK) with regards to climate change in recent weeks. The coverage has contained more bad reporting, misrepresentation and confusion on the subject than we have seen in such a short time anywhere. While the UK newspaper scene is uniquely competitive (especially compared to the US with over half a dozen national dailies selling in the same market), and historically there have been equally frenzied bouts of mis-reporting in the past on topics as diverse as pit bulls, vaccines and child abductions, there is something new in this mess that is worth discussing.

Contrast that with the treatment of Simon Singh, a science writer with a PhD in physics, author of Fermat’s Last Theorem and Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe.

Simon Singh is in the midst of a libel suit he is expected to lose. His crime is a science book, Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial.

From a NY Times blog (with links):

He wrote, “The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying, even though there is not a jot of evidence. This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments.”

The BCA asked for a retraction and an apology. Singh refused. The Guardian offered the BCA the opportunity to print a clarification and write a response, so they could lay out evidence supporting their claims. The BCA refused. The libel case is the result. (Note that the case is peculiar in that it has been brought against Singh personally, not against the newspaper that published the article, as is more usual.)

Dr. Simon Singh

Singh is being sued for writing a book on the inadequate justification for some medical treatments. If the climatologists, and groups like IPCC, being maligned by the British media had jillions of dollars and unlimited time, could they also sue? If libel laws are so draconian in the UK (and in many parts of the US, laws are being passed to protect Americans from British law), why do journalists there engage in smear campaigns?

Greg Craven in What’s the worst that could happen? explains how he decides which sources he depends on. I am offering my own explanation after sending someone a list of some of the sources I depend on. He said, yes, he relied on the same sources, and then forwarded a report from a group of a very different kind. So, it’s an interesting question. My criteria differ from Craven’s, and yours differ from both of ours. How do you decide which sources you trust, and why?

First, some definitions:
• Sources are the original reports of data, analysis, or meta-analysis (combining data from multiple sources, as in the uber-reports from groups like IPCC)
• Peer-review is the process of review by elites in the same field (hence, “peers” of the researcher or theorist submitting the report.) In the science or policy community, peer-review is the first step toward publication or use of the data. These communities are usually careful to avoid relying on or citing data that has not been subjected to peer review.
• Channels pass on information. I aspire to be a channel, try to avoid being a source, i.e., adding mistakes. The NY Times is another example of a channel.

Besides peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed work, there is a category called gray literature, described in RealClimate’s IPCC errors: facts and spin. This category includes major organizations such as International Energy Agency, World Bank, United Nations Environmental Programme, government statistics offices, and more. Groups like World Wildlife Fund are also included, but their information needs to be even more carefully checked. Generally, it is more useful to cite the original source WWF depends on and avoid citing WWF.

So my criteria for passing along information on scientific and policy topics: Is it
• peer-reviewed, e.g., published in peer-reviewed journals
• respected by the scientific or policy expert community, as shown by its inclusion in major reports such as National Academy of Sciences of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
• accepted over time, surviving or correcting any criticism that may arise (e.g., no disagreement appears in Science or Nature magazines).

I’m pretty conservative, and rarely use information/analysis in my presentations before it reaches major report status.

Everything I’ve described depends on writing rather than personal statements. People can be respected or not in their field of expertise, but few speak for the science community. Election to head American Association for the Advancement of Science is one of the ways scientists communicate that the person is trusted to report scientific understanding, including nuance.

I have heard a number of people and organizations willing to accept the reports of IPCC on science and impacts, but ignore IPCC’s policy analysis. If this describes you, perhaps you can explain how you choose your sources. Whatever your answers, please share!

Addendum The reason I use this method is because when I started looking into energy and environmental issues, I discovered I had misunderstandings both in facts and interpretation. Scientists and policy makers make mistake—those errors on Himalayan glaciers made it into my presentation. But the number of errors has declined markedly in recent years.

This group was first discussed here, now some more details.

We will meet bi-monthly from the end of March to early June, resuming in the fall. Some of us will meet in person while others will participate through videoconferencing. Two different kinds of meetings will occur each month: one, a class on concepts and practices of effective climate activism; the other, a time to plan, revise and carry out individual or group projects. For the activist portion, we will apply three “vital behaviors” addressed in the class sessions. Leave a comment (saying “do not publish”) to sign up for the group.

A tentative list of topics offers a starting point for discussion, revisable as we go along:
• Sources of information Which sources can I count on, and why? How do I choose between conflicting sources? Which communicate to people like me/different from me? What do IPCC and the sources they rely on say that makes me uncomfortable? How do I respond to this discomfort?

• Education Which facts and images are most likely to push the public to consider changing behavior (e.g., polar bears, changes in precipitation, higher temperature, health effects)? Experiences may be more persuasive than data, but data matter. How can we combine these to communicate effectively?

• Communication strategies Some work, some don’t. How do I tailor messages to people like myself vs. people who are different; what about cultural barriers; resistance to/distrust of data?

• Confusions about solutions What makes a real difference? How can we shift focus from small-impact solutions (eg, recycling and avoiding hair spray) to large-impact solutions aimed primarily at climate change? How do we evaluate and explain to others which solutions are worth working on?

• Handling emotions How do we help people perceive the urgency of the problem, then prevent despair once they do? What are the emotions (e.g., denial, fear) that lie behind refusal to talk about climate change, insistence that it isn’t happening, or insistence on certain solutions? How do we balance our ideals with desires for “the good life”?

• Envisioning the future Our message is not about how things are going to get better—because they won’t. Suppose the best we can do is to get worse less fast? How can we use thinking about the future to galvanize action rather than mire us in defeat?

• Targeting influencers Given the limits of our own personal influence, whom can we reach to change their message? (e.g., politicians, environmental groups, news media, on-line groups.)

• Burning Issues What are the current policy debates an activist should prepare for? E.g., do we have technology today to address climate change or do we need to invest in future technologies? Cap and trade vs tax – both or which, and why? Aid for green solutions in other nations? Revised codes for architecture? Other laws?

Muir Woods—We all have pictures in our mind of the beauty of Earth. What are yours?

NOAA has set up a new site:

Climate Watch magazine, includes Arctic Air Ushers in Chilly December and January too, it’s due to Arctic Oscillation, with the Arctic currently at higher than average air pressure. The Arctic is much warmer than usual.

Data and Services, including Climate and You

Understanding Climate, including Annual State of the Climate report.

Videos, including Climate Forecasts Improve Humanitarian Decision Making in West Africa

Education, including Teaching Resources

Climate trends available at climate.gov—doesn’t look like temperatures have stabilized to me.

The new group will meet over 6 months, beginning in late March. Some will meet together in person, others to participate through videoconferencing.

The Forecast: Climatologists are warning that the temperature increase over pre-industrial times could reach 4°C (>7°F) by 2060. Many more areas would see decreased precipitation; others with increased precipitation would still have drier soil, causing floods and famine; the hottest day of the year in northeastern North America could be 18-22°F hotter than ever before. Yet the numbers of Americans seeing climate change as serious, or caused by what we do, declined significantly in the last year and a half.

The Invitation: Become a Climate Change Activist. Join the support and learning group described below to give your activism focus and impact. For instance, an effective climate change activist engages in a few vital behaviors:

• Teaching climate change science and impacts to others and hold them emotionally during the process. Those who don’t take climate change seriously are often in emotional denial. Denial is also seen in the solutions people choose.

• Reducing your own greenhouse gas emissions in the coming year, and working with others to reduce theirs. This gives the activist a realistic sense of what helps and what blocks voluntary behavior change, which is a necessary part of the solution.

• Finding a solution that Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says is necessary and important, ideally one that makes you uncomfortable. Learn why policy analysts say it’s necessary, and advocate for it. The goal is to move away from choosing solutions we want, to working for solutions that are recognized as essential.

• Accessing the spiritual wellsprings that support and nurture us in selfless activism. We will keep a process log or journal that includes reflections on where and how we seek guidance and draw strength for the struggle, as well as honestly naming our doubts, concerns and questions about what is being asked of us.

The Format for Group Support and Study: meet twice monthly for six months.
• one session/month to study what is known about teaching and working on climate change, update our current information and evaluate sources.
• one session/month to work on vital behaviors above, and evaluate impact of your actions. The group may unite to work on one project, or support one another on a range of projects.

Prerequisites: Besides commitment to the group and its aims, a general agreement on sources (IPCC and the sources IPCC sees as valid) is important. There are sources that tell us that IPCC is wrong, but they are rarely peer-reviewed (a minimum requirement) and feed into our prejudices rather than provide a much-needed guide to what’s real.

I’ve heard this question so many times: what can I do that will be effective? Perhaps this group can help you answer that question.

photo credit

Leave a comment (with a “do not publish”) if you are interested in joining this group. We’ll begin in late March, and take a summer vacation. Young people also welcome. The hope is to meet together in Berkeley and online at the same time.

This addendum adds details.

Share with others who might be interested.

When I taught science, I learned that some students believe scientists are white men.

Many are, of course, but there are a large number of exceptions, many quite prominent. Shirley Jackson, past president of American Association for the Advancement of Science, physicist, etc, etc.

Shirley Jackson

David Blackwell, mathematician, etc (check out video interviews, including his experience in elementary school, Howard, and Berkeley).

David Blackwell

And many, many more.

From the new National Academies African American History Program site, a partial list of African Americans who have made significant contributions to science, engineering, and medicine.

REDD, Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, has been described as one of the few accomplishments at Copenhagen, an agreement by the rich world to pay people in the forested world to care for the land.

Scientists don’t find this a slam-dunk solution—problems include reversibility (land owners changing their mind, or forest fire), additionality (is another forest being cut down?), etc.

Now a new report, Will the $3.5 billion forest fund work?, asks whether it makes sense in the absence of very clear rules to throw $3.5 billion at parts of the world that haven’t done so well with these problems and this kind of money in the past.

Two examples from the report:

The Surui have been involved in a dispute over land ownership. Here teens show off the solar panels.

India forest rights laws: do they protect the poor and the forests? Many don’t feel that these are the actual government objectives.

From a study at UC, Berkeley: Trees invading warming Arctic will cause warming over entire region, study shows:

As the Arctic warms, shrubs and other plants are moving in, making the area more amenable to trees. One way they do this is through local warming: snow, and the bare ground replacing the snow, both have higher albedo, that is they reflect more sunlight, than do the darker plants moving in. Now another cause of Arctic warming has been found. Trees add water vapor to the Arctic air.

“Broad-leaved deciduous trees are not as dark as evergreen trees and so are generally assumed to be less important. But broad-leaved trees transpire a lot more water through their leaves and are actually able to change the water vapor content and increase the greenhouse effect. As the air warms, it can hold more water vapor, and the greenhouse effect increases further,” [UC Berkeley graduate student Abigail L.] Swann said. “So, broad-leaved trees end up warming the entire Arctic.”

More importantly, the researchers’ model predicts that the increased water vapor would melt more sea ice, resulting in more absorption of sunlight by the open ocean and dumping more water vapor into the atmosphere. This positive feedback will warm the land even more and encourage faster, more efficient tree growth and perhaps a faster expansion of trees into the Arctic.

All told, the model predicts an additional 1 degree Celsius increase in temperature over the Arctic as a result of this effect. Global warming already is predicted to increase temperatures in the Arctic between 5 and 7 degrees Celsius within the next 100 years.

Dr. Robert DuPont got a phone call one day to ask him about nuclear power. His specialty is phobias, people whose behavior is restricted by all the what ifs in their lives. A journalist persuaded him to watch 11 years of media coverage on US nuclear power, coverage dominated by what ifs. From a PBS interview:

[F]ear is very important, because danger is around the corner. And fear is a way of signaling that there might be a problem ahead. It’s a reaction to the possibility of a predator lurking behind that bush when you’re out walking. So I think being able to anticipate dangers is very important.

Yet nuclear power’s safety record is excellent. So what accounts for public perception? After all, fear of what ifs doesn’t do us much good.

Well, there are a number of factors. One is that the threat is concentrated. It’s the fear like Three Mile Island. A reporter said off the record that if the public only knew, the East Coast of the United States was almost destroyed. Well, of course, nothing like that happened, but that was in his mind. And he thought about that. So it’s a cataclysmic event that really gets people going. It’s a risk people don’t control. People accept tremendous risk if they control it. But if it’s controlled by somebody else, they can’t accept it. If it’s perceived as needed, people will accepted it; whereas if it’s not perceived as needed, they will dismiss it. The problem of familiarity is probably the most important. And that is when we’re familiar with something, we don’t fear it. But when it’s alien, when it’s unfamiliar, we fear it more.

And on all four counts, nuclear power generates fear. It’s a cataclysmic accident that people are concerned about, some desperate kind of thing. It’s controlled by “them”, the utilities or the government, the scientists, or whoever it is, that is perceived as being the bad guys. It’s unfamiliar to most people. And most people feel they don’t really need nuclear power; that they can get their power from coal or oil or windmills or some other basis. They don’t really need the nuclear power.

photo credit

photo credit DuPont’s work antedates driving while texting.

In contrast to the what ifs toward nuclear power, often our reaction to fear is insufficient. I hear this frequently as, “Well, we have to die of something” when people talk about cigarettes, alcohol, and coal use (direct pollution from coal still kills more people yearly than climate change). DuPont says,

The capacity of human fear to be eroded by repetition, by familiarity, is unlimited. It is just an amazing thing, that no matter what the risk is, if the thing is repeated over and over again, there’s no fear. There’s no protection from the fear. People will continue to do something over and over again, even if it has a terrible probability of a disaster.

And the single best example of that is cigarette smoking. Everybody knows cigarette smoking is lethal. There is no question about that. It’s not debated. It’s known that it’s lethal. And we have 55 million people who not only voluntarily smoke, but who pay billions of dollars, $40 billion a year, for the privilege of killing themselves with this known lethal agent. Now, if fear were really protecting us, you couldn’t have any smokers. It would be impossible. So you realize that fear is a very imperfect shield against health risks….

So simply getting rid of fear is not a health-promoting goal. What’s important in both cases is to have the fear be realistic; that the fear fits the facts of the risk. And from my point of view, the contrast is very clear. With respect to drug abuse, we want more fear; and with respect to nuclear power, we want less fear in terms of a public health or the public interest goals.

So what can we do?

It’s quite remarkable to me, the number of Americans who hold anti-nuclear views. For them it’s like motherhood and apple pie. I mean, they don’t even get to the point of asking a question of what it is that’s going on. It’s just taken for granted.

Perhaps the first step for anti-nuclear power people is to ask a question. “What about nuclear waste?” is a statement, what are your questions?

Nuclear phobia–phobic thinking about nuclear power: A discussion with Robert L. DuPont was published in 1980, and is now out of print.

image credit. China is more dangerous than the US, where National Academy of Science estimates 10,000 die from coal power pollution each year. Chernobyl (pdf) has killed 50 – 60 so far, with up to 4,000 more deaths possible over the next 6 decades from that initial exposure.

scary? image showing water vapor, from an anti-nuclear site

Sometimes people tell me that they are also opposed to people dying from coal power. But nationwide, is there is much fascination with the sins of coal power? Texting while driving gets surprisingly little attention among the public compared to concerns about brain cancer from cell phone radiation, even though brain cancer rates have declined since 1987.

I’m interested in how people challenge this tendency in ourselves and others to apply worry disproportionate to actual risk.

Gary Braasch’s site now has a new feature: Climate Photo of the Week.

New photos posted on Mondays.

Nature Reports Climate Change takes a look at the need for regulations for geoengineering, and their complexity, in Planning for plan B.

There is strong concern about rapidly increasing temperatures, perhaps as much as 4°C within 5 decades, and the paths are mitigation, geoengineering, or catastrophe. Re the 2nd path (which is likely to include overlap with the 3rd):

the legislative situation — hazy and full of holes — means that any nation or company, or even an individual with the will and financial means to do so, could start to interfere with the climate.

There are concerns about commercial interests:

the possibility of profit from carbon credits has led to fears that the cash incentive could push geoengineering ahead too fast, or in the wrong directions. Already, evidence exists that the profit motive can lure unscrupulous companies into the market. In November, the US Securities and Exchange Commission charged a Pennsylvania-based company, the Mantria Corporation, with operating what regulators called “a $30 million dollar Ponzi scheme”, saying it used exaggerated claims and aggressive marketing to con people into investing in biochar sequestration.

And governments:

Suppose, says [Granger] Morgan, [an engineer and director of Carnegie Mellon's Climate Decision Making Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania], “a major state finds that because of climate change it can’t feed its people and starts doing [geoengineering], or decides it’s a lot cheaper than mitigation”. Then the world could face tough decisions about whether to condone geoengineering or try to stop it. “If we haven’t done the research,” Morgan says, “the international community has to fall back on a moral argument, as opposed to a science-based argument.”

While most climatologists feel mitigation is less risky and cheaper, now there is “real concern that mitigation is simply not going to be effective enough to halt catastrophic effects of climate change”, according to Phil Willis, chair of the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee.

Simulating volcanos can create other problems. And it is’t cheap.

Mitigation is better. Perhaps our governments will see that. Perhaps people who elect the governments (in countries where that is an option) will make clear to legislators that we want a strong mitigation response to climate change. But the widespread belief in the climate community is that geoengineering will look increasingly attractive as governments and the world’s population fail.

“Geoengineering is the most serious governance concern that we’re going to be facing in the next couple of decades,” argues Maria Ivanova, director of Yale University’s Global Environmental Governance Project. “It’s really about planetary survival.”

SceinceInsider, put out by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has a series on The Climate in the Senate. While 60 Senate votes are needed for climate change legislation, 67 are needed for a treaty. No one finds that scenario likely.

There are a number of bloggers reporting on the annual American Geophysical Union meeting. One, at Nature’s Climate Feedback, includes an interview with climatologist Steve Schneider (OK, that’s Copenhagen), and a report that whatever is happening with the Greenland glaciers, speeding glacier loss, it’s not all that increased meltwater lubricating the bases. Time to change my slides.

The AGU blog roll is here. There’s one on contrails,

In 2005, aviation represented 3.5 percent of anthropogenic radiative forcing, up to 4.9 percent if you include cloudiness caused by the contrails. Future contrail impacts could be two to three times higher by 2050, a 20 percent increase per decade.

one on What Does More Atmospheric Carbon Mean for Plants? discussing the complex interplay between nitrogen deposition and carbon sequestration.

one on sea level rise in the SF Bay Area

plus discussions of a number of other geophysical topics, including earthquakes, volcanos and Mars. One, Would Finding ET Collapse Religions?, discusses a challenge that may face Earthlings soon, as astronomers improve their ability to find smaller planets.

Are you young? Are you any age, but looking for a few explanations with big print and lots of pictures? Are you a teacher looking for help? Check out NASA’s new site, Climate Kids.

For those living in areas that haven’t seen much climate change over the last decade or 3, check out Climate Time Machine.

Update: Climate Time Machine shows the history of temperature, effects of sea level rise on New Orleans, etc. With sea level rise expected to be between 3 and 6 feet this century, what are we going to do for the people there?

How much food do we waste in the US? The old numbers are shocking, but new research using a different methodology produces scary numbers: “Nearly 40% of the food supply in the United States goes to waste.”

According to the ScienceNow post,

Food waste is usually estimated through consumer interviews or garbage inspections. The former method is inaccurate, and the latter isn’t geographically comprehensive. [Kevin] Hall [a quantitative physiologist at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) in Bethesda, Maryland] and his colleagues tried another approach: modeling human metabolism. They analyzed average body weight in the United States from 1974 to 2003 and figured out how much food people were eating during this period. Hall and Chow assumed that levels of physical activity haven’t changed; some researchers think that activity has decreased, but Hall and Chow say their assumption is conservative. Then they compared that amount with estimates of the food available for U.S. consumers, as reported by the U.S. government to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

The difference between calories available and calories consumed, they say, is food wasted. “We called it the missing mass of American food,” says co-author Carson Chow, a mathematician at NIDDK. In 2003, some 3750 calories were available daily per capita; 2300 were consumed, so 1450 were wasted, comprising 39% of the available food supply, the team reports in the November issue of PLoS ONE. This figure exceeds the 27% estimated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) from interviews with consumers and producers.

Much of the waste is probably happening at home, say experts. A study published earlier this year by Jeffery Sobal, a sociologist at Cornell University, and colleagues examined food waste in Tompkins County, New York, through interviews. They found that production accounted for 20% of waste, distribution for about another 20%, and consumers for the remaining 60%. “Food waste used to be a cultural sin,” Sobal says.

Food Waste picture credit

For those wanting the report, The Progressive Increase of Food Waste in America and Its Environmental Impact begins

Food waste contributes to excess consumption of freshwater and fossil fuels which, along with methane and CO2 emissions from decomposing food, impacts global climate change. Here, we calculate the energy content of nationwide food waste from the difference between the US food supply and the food consumed by the population. The latter was estimated using a validated mathematical model of metabolism relating body weight to the amount of food eaten. We found that US per capita food waste has progressively increased by ~50% since 1974 reaching more than 1400 kcal per person per day or 150 trillion kcal per year. Food waste now accounts for more than one quarter of the total freshwater consumption and ~300 million barrels of oil per year.