A Musing Environment

There was a good discussion on the post Reducing Our Own Emissions 10%.

Before I get to what these and other Friends (and some non-Friends) are saying about changing our greenhouse gas behavior, the origin of the discussion:

I wrote If We Could Move Like Centipedes in part to address people’s sense that “there is nothing I can do” because “I am just one person”. If enough of us could move, we could get out of danger, and this post suggests several ways for us to act. One of these is to reduce our own emissions 10% in the coming year. I took these ideas to Friends General Conference, to both a workshop and an interest group, and the ideas made it into an epistle for Friends everywhere. Then two California Friends Meetings in Pacific Yearly Meeting began considering committing to 10% reductions in GHG emissions in the coming year for all Friends in the Monthly Meeting.

There are several other actions that count as motion: educating ourselves about the science, impacts, policies, and the emotional and spiritual aspects of what will happen — from negative emotions like guilt to positive ones like responsibility for the solutions — and behavior change. Educating ourselves about how to communicate on climate change. Laboring with legislators, and if that is unsuccessful, replacing them.

It would not have occurred to me to ask all Friends to change our GHG behavior. Now that the question is being asked, I am interested in the discussion. It is useful to ask hard questions of one’s self, even if today’s answer is “not now”, because it is important that we try to walk in God’s path consciously.

Positives (from the comments, and what I’ve been hearing – what have you been hearing? Let us know):

• Don exudes pride and enthusiasm. (He deserves to feel this way!) This is typical: changing our lives, so we are happier with who we are, feels really, really good. I don’t know how much time Don put into these changes, but most of us spend much longer thinking we should do something than the something actually takes. There are several suggestions in these comments on how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Bob and another Don point out there are numerous easy changes in the house.

• Those who have already changed the most are better able to see how to make more changes. It often doesn’t feel like an obligation, more like walking further on the path. Many still use the word joy months or years later.

Others I know are taking the bus locally even when they own a car, or taking trains short distances (24 hours), particularly to Friends events.

• Liz, Pam, and Gretchen discuss psychological and family conflicts: travel feels different when it’s to visit sick family members (and so rules about whether the airplane is OK are different). The family/housemate likes warmer winter temperatures, cooler summer temperatures, short flights over long bus trips, and no clothes line. (Gretchen’s comments include many more details.) It’s much harder when the desire to fly long distances for vacations is more vital than, or at least strongly competing with, the desire to reduce GHG emissions. Chris also talks about the difficulties – he’s created a life where he accepts jobs and committee meetings far from mass transit and then needs a car.

Chris also discusses the benefits of community efforts, like the “One Less Car Day!” October 4. It must be a trend, because I bicycled by an elementary school 20 miles east of SF, where a big sign announced October 2 – 6 is “Walk to School Week”. (As teachers know, students who get to school by a combination of muscle power and bus arrive more settled and ready to study.)

• Anonymous says record-keeping, ugh. He (or she) also faces the family member/tenant/housemate challenge, but sees working with housemates as a behavior to change – from not at all to more often. Instead of cutting back 10%, he suggests a 20% reduction from however much you consider necessary (what is necessary for a typical American or Canadian? others?). He walks and bicycles more than he flies and drives (I’m assuming that the actual numbers given were typos, walking 1/10 as many hours as one flies is a lot of flying!)

• Several people point out that much can be accomplished by higher efficiency in distribution power, switching away from coal, etc, We need to work with our legislators to mandate improvements. And taxing GHG emissions (through a cap and trade program), and taxing ourselves to pay for third world improvements.

OK –here’s the question – are people actually working with their legislators, other than signing those petitions no one reads? Personal visits to legislators from a group are more likely to be effective, particularly if you are prepared. If not, we shouldn’t list this under behavior change.

Gretchen’s new bike is inspiring her to help with local bike transportation issues.

• Others like the idea of planting trees or buying carbon offsets. This can help, as can working for nuclear power instead of coal (or solar or wind power, but at this point, they are not ready to displace an entire large coal power plant.) (For the question on replacing your car with a more fuel-efficient model, see post on how airplanes and cars compare. But don’t trash your inefficient car, as it may be an improvement for someone else – one person told me that he makes sure each car he buys gets at least 5 mpg better than the previous one.)

Negatives:

• We find it easier to talk about changing light bulbs than changing behavior, beyond turning off lights in empty rooms.

Transportation is particularly difficult: many see no alternative to current choices. Alternatives do exist, but we have trouble seeing them. Sort of like the days of slavery, when so many could not imagine cooking their own meal or planting their own crops. Life can change – but we can’t see it, even if it leads to a way of living that makes us happier with who we are.

It is hard, but relatively easier, to personally buy more efficient bulbs, shift electricity away from high GHG emitting sources, mandate better buildings and more efficient appliances and cars, and decrease industrial GHG emissions. Low GHG substitutes for fuels will be harder to come by (some can be replaced by cellulosic biofuels, but we will also be burning lots of coal to liquids, or synfuel, soon). Most of us find the roundtrip flight once or several times/year, or long car trips at high speeds, hard to reflect on. Most of us find it hard to shift toward a world (in the US anyway, worldwide some are already there) where people live and work near good mass transit, and use it, or to restrict ourselves to activities accessible by muscle or mass transit. Where we schedule longer vacation and work trips to accommodate the extra time required for bus and train. Where we make longer trips, because we will schedule many fewer of them.

• While some cities/towns both have good transit and are affordable, this is often not the case in the US. It is important that our cities be places where the poor (and middle class) are welcome, and where they can get around.

• Some appear to be relying strongly on the effectiveness of offset programs. Some say they’ve cut back as much as possible, but still must make that trip once/year, but others talk about buying GHG offsets in the same way people in the Middle Ages purchased indulgences, possibly to equal effect.

• This discussion on behavior change is not occurring in most Friends Meetings yet (I hope this statement is not correct, that in a future post I will be able to say that lots of Friends have taken the call from the Friends General Conference epistle to heart).

Updated — it turns out EPA provides GHG emissions for cars!
Second update — two examples added at end.

In the previous post, the greenhouse gas cost per airplane mile is calculated at 2 – 4 times the cost of the fuel alone, anywhere from 1 – 1.9 pounds carbon dioxide equivalent per mile, a little more for people who don’t walk to the airport. How do cars compare?

Go to EPA to find GHG emissions for cars – you may want to divide their fuel economy and multiply by your own FE (typically 20 – 30% lower than EPA indicates). You can add the cost of manufacturing the car, see examples below*.

In the particular examples chosen, the Toyota Prius (assume 45 mpg) pollutes 0.62 pound carbon dioxide equivalent/mile, and the Dodge Durango (12 mpg) 2.1 pounds.

It appears that the airplane is worse than the Prius and a better choice than the Durango, at least for one person. Although the fuel economy of airplanes is actually about the same as a Prius, airplanes deposit water vapor, etc high in the atmosphere, so create about 2 – 4 times as much damage as would be expected from the amount of oil used.

However, the typical person makes choices based on time rather than distance: both commutes and vacations are determined by travel time. Many opt for some combination of more trips and longer trips. (Ditto for convenience cooking equipment – fancier meals, not reduced cooking time. Computers for easier word processing – nicer layouts, not faster turnaround.)

What figures into your decision on whether to fly or take slower transportation? Is the environment a part of your calculation?

*Separate GHG costs into two portions, the cost of manufacturing the car and the cost of using the fuel.

First, the car. The US Department of Transportation says that the average car lasts 125,000 miles.

Find the weight of your car. On the Road in 2020 (pdf) provides GHG costs of material: assuming that your car is made from mostly recycled materials and will be recycled in turn, multiply the weight in pounds or tons by 2.5 to get the amount of carbon dioxide released in manufacture in pounds or tons (note: if your car is extra light because it’s heavy on the aluminum, the GHG emissions for manufacture are higher per pound, sigh).

A Prius weighs 2,890 pounds, a Durango 6,600 pounds. Multiply by 2.5 –the Prius manufacture GHG cost is 7,200 pounds carbon dioxide equivalent, the Durango is 17,000 pounds. Assuming that the car lasts 125,000 miles, this comes to 0.058 pounds/mile for the Prius, 0.14 pound/mile for the Durango.

EPA says the Durango gets 15 mpg, emitting 12.0 tons GHG in 15,000 miles, so most drivers get 12 mpg or worse. EPA says the Prius gets 55 mpg, emitting 3.4 tons in 15,000 miles, so most drivers get 44 mpg or worse (actually, Prius drivers tend to drive more efficiently, so perhaps the Durango real driver penalty should be higher).

Divide by 0.8 to get more realistic driver emissions, and then divide by 15,000 miles and multiply by 2,000 pounds to get the per mile emissions: 2 pounds carbon dioxide equivalent/mile for the Durango, and the Prius 0.57 pounds. The greenhouse gas cost of manufacturing the Prius adds another 10% to the fuel cost (just over 0.05 pounds), 7% more for the Durango.

You can add your two figures to get total greenhouse gas/mile. For the Prius, this will be 0.62 pounds/mile. The Durango comes in at 2.1 pounds/mile.

If you don’t want to do weight separately, add 10% to your fuel GHG emissions for a high fuel economy car, and 7% for one with low fuel economy.

If you want to pay GHG tax on your car, say $20 – $50/ton (see previous post), multiply pounds carbon dioxide equivalent/mile by the number of miles/year, and divide by 2,000 pounds in a ton to get GHG emissions in tons. Then multiply by the tax/ton. Note: this ignores GHG from other pollutants, which are relatively small unless you always drive your car short trips – your car is much more polluting cold than warm. If most of your trips are less than 5 miles, round up in calculating GHG costs.

Example 1:
Prius. You get about 44 mpg, and your total emissions, car plus fuel, are about 0.62 pounds/mile. You choose to charge yourself a $35/ton tax. You drive 8,000 miles/year.

GHG emissions = 12,000 miles * 0.62 pounds CO2e/mile = 7,500 pounds carbon dioxide equivalent

Tax = $35/ton * 1 ton/2,000 pounds * 7,500 pounds = $130. This doesn’t add much to your yearly costs. At $3/gallon, you’re paying $800 for gasoline. Donate the money to improving your insulation, or someone else’s, and ask your legislator to add this tax to everyone.

More expensive example:
Durango. You get 12 miles/gallon, and your total emissions, car plus fuel, are 2.1 pounds carbon dioxide equivalent/mile. You drive 12,000 miles/year, and charge yourself $50/ton.

GHG emissions = 12,000 miles * 2.1 pounds CO2e/mile = 25,000 pounds carbon dioxide equivalent

Tax = $50/ton * 1 ton/2,000 pounds * 25,000 pounds = $630. This adds more to your yearly costs, but at $3/gallon, you’re paying $3,000 for the gasoline. Donate the money to funding a new car, and ask your legislator to add this tax to everyone.

How much should we be paying for airplane flights? It’s a frequently asked question, at least I’ve been asked often.

Surprisingly, people who fly pay no sales tax on flights that leave the state, nor do they pay the fuel taxes required of car and truck drivers. Flight taxes (partially?) cover security costs and air traffic control, rather than contributing to the common good. This means that those who don’t fly subsidize those who fly often.

Industry reports that airlines now get 46.8 passenger miles/gallon. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report Aviation and the Global Atmosphere suggests that the radiative forcing is 2 to 4 times higher than the carbon dioxide emitted predicts, in part because of aerosols, NOx, water vapor, and other gases released in the upper troposphere.

Let’s use an example of a one-way trip from Los Angeles to New York to London, paying American fuel tax on the first leg, British fuel tax on the second, and greenhouse gas taxes of $20 (expected tax in the next decade or two) or $50 (further along) per (American) ton of carbon dioxide.

This analysis will ignore sales tax for tickets. You may wish to pay your share of living in society by paying extra for your ticket: sales tax is 8.25% in Los Angeles, higher in New York City, and much higher in London.

Fuel tax is currently not applied to commercial airlines. Californians pay 18.4 cent/gallon federal plus 45.9 cent/gallon state for fuels. This is intended to cover road construction and some mass transit. On a $2/gallon base price, add 16.5 cent for sales tax. British fuel tax is about $4/gallon.

The leg from Los Angeles to New York is 2,500 miles. Assuming 46.8 passenger miles/gallon, one person’s share is 53 gallons of fuel. CA and federal fuel taxes, if applied, would add $34 to ticket price; sales tax adds $9.

On the New York to London leg (3,500 miles), the British fuel tax on the 74 gallons you are responsible for adds $296 one way, if applied.

Assume an initial greenhouse gas tax of $20 per (American) ton carbon dioxide equivalent*, and just over 0.5 pounds carbon dioxide eq/passenger mile, including upstream costs.** But the actual GHG effect is much greater, as if we added between 1 and 1.9 pounds carbon dioxide/passenger mile to the atmosphere, using the 2 – 4 x factor recommended by IPCC. For the LA – NY leg, this comes to 1.2 – 2.4 tons carbon dioxide equivalent. Add between $25 and $48 GHG tax for a one-way trip between coasts.

The leg between New York and London adds between 1.7 and 3.3 tons carbon dioxide equivalent, using the 2 – 4 x factor, and the $20/ton greenhouse gas tax adds between $35 and $65. Total for both legs: $60 – $110, one way.

This is the price of an early greenhouse gas tax. If the tax increases to $50/ton, the LA-NY leg should include a greenhouse gas tax of somewhere between $62 and $111. The NY-London leg adds between $88 and $166. Remember, these price increases are not for the round trip. Total for both legs, $150 – $280.

A longer answer for all those who have been bugging me about greenhouse gas offsets for flying. Please let me know if this analysis could be improved.

To do this yourself:

Find air miles for one way or round trip at some calculator such as WebFlyer.

Multiply number of miles by $0.01 – $0.019/mile (accounts for IPCC fudge factor on extra greenhouse gas effects of airplanes) for a greenhouse gas tax of $20/ton carbon dioxide equivalent.

Multiply miles by $0.025 – $0.048/mile (accounts for IPCC fudge factor) for a greenhouse gas tax of $50/ton carbon dioxide equivalent.

Divide number of miles by 46.8 to get gallons of fuel per passenger, then calculate fuel and sales taxes for your state.

Add sales tax to ticket cost (optional).

Invest the money in reducing your own emissions, or someone else’s. You can buy compact fluorescent bulbs, for example, and ask the local food bank to distribute them, perhaps 3 per family.

Note: I’ve changed assumptions about greenhouse gas tax since first posting.

*Sometime in the next decade or two, greenhouse cap and trade policies will create an effective greenhouse tax of about $20/ton carbon dioxide. People in policy differ on how fast technological change and policy implementation will reduce emissions, how much can be accomplished by mandate (better fuel economy for cars and air conditioners) rather than capping emissions, etc. Some people in policy believe that cap and trade policies will create a tax of more than $100/ton carbon dioxide, others that it will never go over $50. Failure to address climate change seriously today will lead to much higher costs tomorrow.

** This assumes 21.1 pounds CO2eq/gallon jet fuel, plus 16% for upstream costs of discovery, refining, and transportation. Greenhouse gases for building the airplane are not counted, and are relatively small compared to the GHG cost of the fuel.

Lots of good comments and questions to the previous post on cutting our own greenhouse gas emissions, and I will address a couple of the points raised soon.

Several people have talked to me recently about the frustration of communicating with family members about the importance of climate change. What are your experiences, and do you have recommendations?

in talking with your own children, and with your generation and older…

Two Quaker Monthly Meetings in California (Pacific Yearly Meeting) will be looking at a proposal to commit to reducing our own greenhouse gas emissions by 10% in the coming year. What will it take?

For people who fly, one tenth of the miles (or more) shifted to mass transit. For people who drive, some combination of driving less, driving more efficiently (a car with higher fuel economy, no more than 55 mph, etc), driving with others rather than alone. In the house, most people can cut back 10% easily by switching to more efficient light bulbs, replacing old appliances if not efficient with new ones, turning off the computer if you won’t be using it for a while, heating and lighting only rooms you are in. During the California electric crisis, we cut back 10% on electric use – when interviewed for local TV, everyone said, “I didn’t do anything really, just…”

Caveat: there will be a major improvement in energy efficiency soon, due to California’s new regulations. For example, vampire power — the energy sucked up by electronics and appliances not being used — will be more carefully regulated in coming years. For many microwave ovens, more electricity is consumed by the clock and keypad than by the oven!

For the first year of changing our behavior, it may make sense to ignore greenhouse gas emissions from mass transit, and concentrate on reducing use of the car, airplane, and motorized boats.

Comments? Is this a good goal for the first year, impossible goal?

An important theme in Jared Diamond’s Collapse is how often people won’t change behavior that gives status; the Easter Island example is cutting down trees for statues. There are many examples today, such as how and how often we drive and fly.

Another way we can get into trouble is by not changing our views with changing realities. Union of Concerned Scientists has just produced a report on the dangers of nuclear power. The report is new, but the data are mostly old, except for the Davis-Besse plant.

From David Bodansky’s Nuclear Energy (Second Edition), chapter 14:

The historical record of nuclear reactor performance can be interpreted as showing that they are very safe or that they are very dangerous. The former conclusion follows if one limits consideration to plants outside the former Soviet Union (FSU). The latter conclusion follows if one focuses on the Chernobyl accident and takes it as a broadly applicable indicator.

As of 2003, commercial reactors outside the FSU have a cumulative operating experience of more than 10,000 reactor years (by now it’s 11,000 reactor years). No one has died from an accident from radiation exposure, neither worker nor public. [Two people died in a Japanese reprocessing accident.] Military reactors in the West have had problems: in 1961, three army technicians died.

No reactor has a zero chance of accident. Accidents range from release of radionuclides (Chernobyl) to incredibly expensive damage to the reactor core (Three Mile Island, TMI) to near misses to harmless breakdowns. The latter two categories can be expensive if remedial measures and lost time add up.

Potential major accidents are of two types:

• Criticality accidents, where the chain reaction becomes uncontrolled. In light water reactors, negative feedbacks (feedbacks which work in opposition to whatever is happening) make this event improbable.

• Loss-of-coolant accidents, where the reactor becomes so hot that melting of the fuel cladding and the fuel can occur. Radioactive materials could possibly escape from the reactor vessel and perhaps the outer reactor containment. The TMI accident resulted in substantial core melt, but no large loss of radioactivity from containment.

Criticality accidents are essentially impossible in Western reactors, but loss of coolant remains a concern.

Achieving Reactor Safety—Changes in Design

• Emphasize passive safety systems even more. Active systems depend on proper responses from pumps or valves, for example, while a passive system might depend on gravity or that warm metal expands.

• Improve redundancy, either more of identical units or more than one way to respond in an emergency.

• Multiple barriers or defense-in-depth to prevent radionuclide release: zircaloy cladding of fuel, pressure vessel and closed primary cooling loop, and heavy outer reactor containment. The reactor containment was successful for TMI, but no containment system existed in the Chernobyl reactor.

• [One academic told me that current design assumes a malicious operator, because there is no essential difference between a malicious operator and one who puts paper over warning lights. This is a subset of passive systems changes.]

• Do probabilistic risk assessments on each design. While this does not provide an accurate risk assessment, they suggest areas of relatively high risk.

Post-TMI Safety Developments

The accident at Three Mile Island showed that efforts by government and industry up to 1979 were inadequate. The nuclear reactors themselves, operator training, and inter-utility communication needed improvement.

One consequence of improving reactor design, a very expensive delay post-1979 of new construction and retrofit of old reactors, was a general improvement in capacity (90% today for nuclear power plants, 73% for coal); both accidents and refueling take time. Output dropped between 1979 and 1982, began to rise substantially in the mid-1980s, and reached a high in 2002, six years after the last American nuclear power plant went into operation.

The Institute of Nuclear Power Operations was established to improve communication. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) intensified its watchdog role.

Their data show a decrease in unplanned scrams, automatic shutdowns of a reactor following failure. The rates were 7.3 per 7,000 hours of reactor operation in 1980, 1.2 in 1990, and under 0.1 in 2001. One result was the improved capacity factor, referred to earlier.

The rate of industrial accidents (this has nothing to do with radiation) per 200,000 worker-hours in 2001 was 0.24 for nuclear reactors, compared to 4.0 for U.S. manufacturing as a whole. [The accident rate is likely higher/worker-hour for the coal industry. Coal requires many more workers to supply the same amount of energy, a coal train every day versus a truckload of fuel every year or two, as 100,000+ times as much fuel is required. So no matter how coal compares per worker-hour, both worker safety and transportation accidents for coal compare unfavorably per kWh.]

There are still problems, in spite of all these improvements. In early 2002, deep corrosion was discovered during refueling in the Davis-Besse reactor vessel head. Boric acid had leaked through cracks in nozzles, producing a cavity 4 in by 5 in, to a depth of 6 in, large enough that it might have been discovered earlier if workers had been sufficiently vigilant. Inspections at other similar reactors produced no evidence of similar leaks.

How serious was the leak? There was no radioactivity release, and no damage except at the location. The NRC analysis was not complete when the book was published, Perhaps there was no likelihood of core damage, even if the corrosion penetrated the wall. While the safety systems appear to have been intact, and would likely have worked in spite of the corrosion,

the failure to detect and correct the corrosion promptly showed serious weaknesses in the monitoring procedures of the reactor operator and the NRC. This single event does not negate the very good and improving record of nuclear reactor performance, but should serve as a reminder against complacency.

The cost to Davis-Besse was hundreds of millions in repair costs, tens of millions in fines, and two former workers, and one former contractor, indicted for providing false information.

If I get a chance, you’ll see a writeup on safety in the coal industry.

Union of Concerned Scientists is also hosting a cartoon survey, choose your favorite cartoon on the attacks on science.

MALBOROU, NIGER–On a hot afternoon in July, a chanting, dancing, drumming crowd has formed on the main road that crosses the village, half an hour’s drive north of the border with Benin. The villagers have begun the rain dance. They want to bring on the monsoon that drenches the earth every year from June to August; it’s now several weeks late. The millet crop needs 3 months to ripen, and time is running out for planting the seed.

The people who live on the flat, reddish-brown, dusty landscape of southern Niger depend heavily on the West African monsoon: In 2001, 39% of the Nigerian gross domestic product came from agriculture, which employs 90% of the workforce and involves virtually no irrigation. Niger’s neighbors throughout the Sahel, the strip of Africa that stretches across the continent directly south of the Sahara, face similar circumstances. From the 1970s to the 1990s, the Sahel suffered severe drought, leading to some of the worst famines in recent history. Precipitation levels began to rise beginning in the late ’90s, but crops were once more devastated by drought in 2005; 2006 did not begin well.

From Science, August 4, pp 608 –9

Lack of good weather data in Africa means scientists can’t help improve model predictions: the current network of 1152 weather watch stations (not all of which report) is 1/8 the minimum number needed. A European-led consortium of 140 institutions from Europe, America, and Africa has begun a 10-year project to monitor and thoroughly describe the West Africa monsoon: rainfall; cloud structure and water content; amount, movement and characteristics of air-borne particles; distribution of water in river systems; etc.

Africa’s weather is affected by what happens on other continents; in return the Sahara and Sahel regions affect the entire planet. The Sahara supplies much of the world’s aerosols (suspension of fine solid or liquid particles). Sahel weather systems during monsoons affect Atlantic hurricanes (I have no clue how).

Meanwhile current models are all over the place as to what will happen in the future in the Sahel: severe drying, wet conditions, modest drying. Models show varying sensitivity to land or sea temperatures, for example, and with so little data, it’s difficult to fit the models to the data to see which work better.

The rains arrived this year at the end of July; later would have been too late. Hopefully within the decade, it will be possible to know whether this is climate change or seasonal variation.

Maximum sea ice in the Arctic is shrinking more rapidly than before. Satellites showed an average shrinkage of 1.5% per decade since 1979, but for this year and last, it is now 6% per year.

There’s still a fair amount of ice left, about double the size of the United States. But this will change; already the melt season is two weeks longer. Oceans absorb more than 95% of light, while ice reflects some 80 – 90%, the water around and under the sea ice warms, and the melt rate speeds up.

This process will not increase sea level (melt ice in a full glass of water and check for spills), but will freshen the water. Concerns about shutting down the currents due to a large increase in fresh water center on the much greater impacts of rapid melting of Greenland’s glaciers. However, marine animals are being badly hit:

According to [Joey] Comiso [a research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center], if the winter ice retreat continues, the effect could be very profound, especially for marine animals. “The seasonal ice regions in the Arctic are among the most biologically productive regions in the world,” he said. “Some of the richest fisheries are found in the region, in part because of sea ice. Sea ice provides melt-water in spring that floats because of low density. This melt-water layer is considered by biologists as the ideal layer for phytoplankton growth because it does not sink, and there is plenty of sunlight reaching it to enable photosynthesis. Plankton are at the bottom of the food web. If their concentration goes down, animals at all tropics level would be deprived of a basic source of food.”

A recent argument against nuclear power which I have now heard too many times is that nuclear power is almost as bad as natural gas because there are such great quantities of greenhouse gas emissions in the enrichment process. The authors of the arguments, Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen and Philip Smith (the rebuttals standardize the paper as SLS), have not used the normal process used by those who want to be heard by scientists: get your arguments together for peer review journals, and then wait for the judgment of experts. They have gone directly to the public: Nuclear power – the energy balance.

A major thesis is that utilities are devoting tremendous energy to refining the uranium (but presumably don’t realize it or they would find economic alternatives). They argue the following:

• Rich ores are near exhaustion and the energy costs of lesser ores are enormous, indeed, they may be greater than the energy produced by the nuclear reactor.
• The “energy debt” to be paid for decommissioning nuclear power plants is significant.
• The energy costs of waste disposal are enormous.

I may have heard this argument only recently, but it’s been around long enough for knowledgeable people to respond.

Physicists from the University of Melbourne in Australia point out that the SLS paper produces energy assessments using theoretical relationships between money and energy, while other analyses use measured energy. The SLS paper assumes 30 times as much energy for building and decommissioning as is actually the case. The energy used at the Olympic Dam mine, according to SLS calculations, is more than the actual electricity production of south Australia. The Rossing mine, with its lower quality ore, costs more than $1 billion to operate yearly, according to SLS analysis, though the actual cost is less than $100 million. The SLS paper overestimates actual energy use by a factor of 80. See the whole article for more details. This group also addresses nuclear mistakes and proliferation.

There are a number of other analyses, see for example Nuclear Energy Institute.

The SLS site points to the World Nuclear Association.

I addressed earlier the question of whether there is Enough Uranium in slightly less detail but with a good reference.

The WNA and NEI sites are pro-nuclear sites, but they go through a review by people who appear to care about getting numbers right.

Occasionally there are questions as to whether estimates of greenhouse gas emissions include the total GHG emissions from mining to decommissioning and waste disposal. All (almost all?) analysis today for all activities is life cycle analysis, needed by governments and businesses to make valid choices.

According to the WNA site, GHG emissions from nuclear power are 2.7% those of coal power. The NEI site comes in around 2%. The analysis is for different countries.

Details on life cycle costs of driving in a future post.

Over the last two decades (compared to 1970 to 1986), the number of major wildfires in the US West increased by a factor of 4, and the area of forest burned increased by a factor of 6. Canada has also seen an increase. Much of this increase was an abrupt change in the mid-1980s.

Political fights have centered on early Forest Service practices of controlling fires, and whether logging companies should thin the forests. A report in the August 18 Science, based on data from western fires, finds climate change to be the largest factor. This is especially true in the northern Rockies, which is seeing the largest increase.

This change has been dramatic. The number of days each year when fires burn (time from first discovered to last controlled) has increased by 78 days. The average large fire now burns 37.1 days, compared to 7.5 days before. The largest increase is in snow-dominated forests at elevations of about 2.1 km (1.3 miles).

Snowmelt provides 3/4 of western streamflow. There is low fire danger during periods of snowmelt and for about one month afterward. Unfortunately, snowpacks are gone one to four weeks earlier than 50 years ago, and streamflows peak earlier.

Data show that years with early snowmelt and a longer dry summer period have five times as many wildfires as years with late snowmelt. Forests that were once protected by late snowpacks, from elevations between 1.7 and 2.7 km (1 to 1.7 mile) are now seeing fires.

Warmer summer temperatures and reduced winter precipitation are associated with early melting of snowpack and so with increased numbers of large fires. In some forests (ponderosa pine), there is a smaller association with moist conditions before the hot summer, increasing the amount of combustible material available. Land use (extensive livestock grazing and effective fire suppression) in some areas, particularly California, may contribute to the increases in large fires.

Fires are much harder to put out. The 1988 Yellowstone Park fire lasted more than 3 months, burning more than 1.5 million acres. $120 million and 25,000 firefighters weren’t able to eradicate it. Finally the snows began in mid-September.

More than 95% of burned acreage comes from less than 5% of wildfires. A large wildfire can cost $20 million/day, and governmental agencies have spent $1.7 billion during fire season in recent years. Many years, damages in the West exceed $1 billion. Damages to natural resources are sometimes extreme and irreversible. And wildfires contribute to climate change.

Wildfires worldwide add an estimated 3.5 billion metric tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere each year. [This is about double the US contribution.] Where increases in wildfire are partly caused by land use, (very expensive) intervention can reduce the numbers and severity. In most of the West, this won’t work.

Bluetongue disease is a viral insect- borne infection of cows, sheep, goats, and deer, so named because one of the symptoms is a blue tongue from bleeding. It’s been spreading from Africa as European summers warm, arriving in Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and the Balkans since 1998. Beginning August 14, the virus has been found in the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium. This year, Europe’s summer was hot; July was the hottest month on record in the Netherlands. Some scientists blame climate change for the spread of the virus.

Several details to be figured out, for example, the northern European virus resembles the Nigerian version, but there is not much trade in ruminants between the two areas. Hopefully a cold winter will kill off infected midges.

From the September 1 Science

The June 9 Science magazine has a perspectives article on what has led to changes in migration, development, and reproduction in numerous species as seasonal timing changes (spring begins earlier, winter later).

Phenotypic plasticity –

the ability of individuals to modify their behavior, morphology, or physiology in response to altered environmental conditions

explains some of the ability of species to respond to climate changes. Additionally, heritable genetic change is occurring in birds, squirrels, and mosquitoes.

Examples include earlier reproduction in Canadian red squirrels to take advantage of earlier spruce cone production. Blackcaps (birds) have a genetically distinct subpopulation which winters in Britain rather than Iberia. Another bird, the European great tit is moving its egg-laying date forward as caterpillars mature earlier in the year. North American mosquitoes that live in pitcher plants now initiate larval dormancy on days that are shorter, and the sun more southerly, than the cues from a few years ago, and take advantage of a longer growing season.

The genetic changes all relate to season:

earlier or more flexible timing of reproduction in squirrels and birds, later arrival of winter in mosquitoes, and a longer growing season for fruit flies.

Temperature change alone does not appear to be enough to cause a genetic response. Some of the new mosquitoes were moved to simulated new climates to test how they responded to various seasonal cues such as day length, and temperature, and temperature appeared not to be of great importance. Additionally, there appears to be no evidence of animals evolving for either greater heat tolerance of a higher optimal temperature. Part of the reason is that climate change is fastest in winter at high latitudes. [This article was published before this year’s long hot summer.]

Species show differing abilities to respond to climate change:

Small animals with short life cycles and large population sizes will probably adapt to longer growing seasons and be able to persist; longer life cycles and smaller population sizes will experience a decline in population size or be replaced by more southern species.

John Holdren, president of AAAS and prominent in climate change policy, predicted a possible sea level rise of 4 meters (13 feet) this century in a BBC broadcast last month. This prediction is much worse than fears expressed in May.

“We are not talking anymore about what climate models say might happen in the future.

“We are experiencing dangerous human disruption of the global climate and we’re going to experience more,” Professor Holdren said…

He blamed President Bush not only for refusing to cut emissions, but also for failing to live up to his rhetoric on harnessing technology to tackle climate change.

“We are not starting to address climate change with the technology we have in hand, and we are not accelerating our investment in energy technology research and development,” Professor Holdren observed.

The United States is not the only country struggling with whether fundamentalists should be able to prevent publication of scientific discussions, with whether religion is the enemy of science. The July 21 Science looks at Picking a Path Among the Fatwas (AAAS membership needed):

Scientists in Iran find themselves challenged by true believers; some are trying to negotiate a peaceful compromise.

On one hand, a prominent Iranian sociologist, Ramin Jahanbegloo, was arrested for “contacts with foreigners” on his way to a Belgian conference, and was held without legal counsel in a prison notorious for torture. [He was released August 30 after a videotaped confession. There are several sites with more information, such as this Canadian one and this one from his colleagues at the University of Toronto.]

How should evolution be presented? Teheran’s Museum of Natural History begins with several glass cases showing traditional scientific evidence, a diorama depicting traditional scientific understanding, and one last display case with a couple of citations from the Koran and a poster from the Creation Evidence Museum in Texas.

On the other hand,

Iran is investing heavily in science now, after decades of neglect (Science, 16 September 2005, p. 1802). Even the Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has issued a fatwa, or edict, calling on researchers to secure Iran’s position as the “leader in science” in the Middle East over the next 20 years.

According to the chancellor of the Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Bagher Larijani, brother of Iran’s nuclear negotiator,

“[Religious constraints are] a problem,” he says. “We scientists must approach [the religious leaders] very quietly and humbly to explain ourselves.” Larijani, an endocrinologist and Iran’s chief medical and research ethicist, says that such dialogues have already encouraged Iran to embrace research tools banned in other Muslim countries, including human embryonic stem cells and transgenic plants and animals. To meet Iran’s 20-year science goal, he says, scientific and religious experts must come together to work out their differences. Or, as Shiva Khalili, a psychologist at the National Research Center of Medical Sciences in Tehran puts it, “science and Islam must be harmonized.”

So even though constraints and self-censorship are problems (though not all Irani scientists agree), Iran is working on science questions that the current United States government finds exception to. [To be fair, much of the current difficulties experienced by American scientists are expected to disappear by January 20, 2009, or earlier.]

E.O. Wilson has begun a dialogue with Baptist pastors.

“Dear Pastor”, the self-described secular humanist begins in both his new book (The Creation: A Meeting of Science and Religion) and an article in the New Republic (A scientist’s plea for Christian environmentalism), we may not agree on everything, but where we agree, we can work together.

Many evangelicals have already begun to address what climate change will do to the poor, see especially the Evangelical Climate Initiative. But the effects on other species will be catastrophic as well.

I haven’t read the book yet, but can wholeheartedly recommend the article.

In parts of Europe, extensive data exist on pollinators, provided by everyone from “Victorian vicars” to scientists. The July 21 Science magazine includes a study analyzing changes in their reported numbers since 1980.

Species richness on squares 10 km by 10 km in both the Netherlands and the United Kingdom were measured for both bees and hoverflies. In half of the UK cells, and 2/3 of Netherlands cells, there were significant losses in bee species. A tiny number of cells saw increases. There was also a decline in plant species that depend solely on bees for pollination. No one knows which came first.

Hoverflies fared better. In the UK, 1/3 of cells showed a loss of hoverfly species diversity, but 1/4 showed an increase. In the Netherlands, one in six cells lost diversity and one in three gained.

Especially hard hit were pollinators tied to a few plant species, with long tongues, with only one generation per year, or that don’t migrate.

In the UK, 75 wild plants depending on insect pollination declined, while 30 depending on wind or water increased. In the Netherlands, only bee-pollinated species declined.

Not only wild plant species suffer: agriculture depends in part on wild pollinators.

The UK and Netherlands have modified their landscapes extensively; in the latter, the entire landscape is considered artificial. These countries do have some of the best records, however. It is likely that pollinator loss, and the loss of plant species that depend on pollinators, is occurring worldwide.

Los Angeles intends to plant one million trees, and expects to recoup $2.80 in energy savings, pollution reduction, storm-water management and increased property values for every dollar spent. A study from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that ten million trees in Los Angles, along with universal light-colored roofs and pavement, could lower peak summertime temperatures by five degrees.

Sacramento Municipal Utility District is providing up to 10 free trees per property (obviously, Sacramento lot sizes are larger than in Berkeley). They also supply expertise on tree planting and growing.

Though the effect is less dramatic in humid areas, Iowa has pushed private utilities to plant trees over the last 15 years.

There isn’t universal praise for the program. Some engineers are not used to thinking of trees as technology, and one third of residents in Sacramento see trees as work.

Let’s hope more utilities adopt such a program. The reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from air conditioning from city trees is more important than the carbon the trees absorb directly.

Find out more in the Washington Post article, Shade Crusade Takes Root.

Check out the Biological Soil Crusts site.

Crusts are formed by living organisms and their by-products, creating a surface crust of soil particles bound together by organic materials. Aboveground crust thickness can reach up to 10 cm.

Some pretty pictures, and a textbook.

The current issue of California magazine focuses on climate change.

Extreme Science looks at results from Inez Fung on models and the new data coming in:

[A]ll these signals, she suggests, demonstrate that the fragile balance that keeps the earth’s ecosystem functioning properly—a complex and finely regulated series of homeostatic effects that tends to maintain its stability for generations at a time—may…now be spiraling out of control.

Fung is among the group of leading climatologists who have signed the amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in support of eleven states suing EPA for not regulating greenhouse gases.

Some detail on what is happening.

Synthetic Solutions examines aspirations for biofuels, using plants to make fuels. The science is currently at a primitive, how do things work? stage, but Jay Keasling has big aspirations, creating fermenting microbes that can create ethanol, and butanol, say, rather than ethanol:

It’s easier to ship, has more energy (per gallon), and is less corrosive.

Plug and go describes advantages of plug-in hybrids, cars that operate totally on batteries for short trips, so they require less oil (or biofuels, eventually). Instead of an expensive electricity sector requiring nuclear power plus wind (or that dreaded coal) for base load plants, with natural gas (plus solar) peak load plants for times of high usage, most of the grid could be run on some combination of nuclear plus wind plus solar. The electricity that would be wasted at night today could charge cars in the plug in hybrid future. During times of electricity needs, the cars could be discharged to help the grid.

Sounding the Alarm has a few choice quotes you may want to use on what is happening, how easy and how hard it is to make change, and the morality of emitting more than our fair share.

Global Warning displays what we are already seeing on a world map. What we will soon see. Or may see.

Kilimanjaro shows changes in glaciers over the years, both in Tanzania and in Glacier National Park. People in Tanzania depend on both the water collected by the forest they are destroying and the glacier melt that will soon be no more.

Tuvalu is a Pacific Island state, where the average elevation is less than half of the height of an SUV. Emigration has begun.

Leaders in Bangladesh, with a population almost half that of the U.S. on land area about the same as Wisconsin, are trying to find ways to adapt, such as gardens that float on water. But a half-meter sea level rise would displace 10 million people. [Dhaka, the capital far inland, has an elevation of only 8 meters.]

Tanganyika, the longest fresh water lake in the world, contains almost 1/5 of the world’s freshwater. It has warmed by 0.8 C over the past 80 years, slowing down the growth of algae, thus affecting the entire food chain.

Residents of Churchill near Manitoba, Canada, are already shifting from an economy that depends on polar bears to a more diversified tourist industry. Sometime soon, enough ice will be gone that Churchill can act as a seaport.

Flower Power is the story of John Harte’s work warming up a part of the Rockies. In the slightly warmer environment, sage replaces flowers, doubly bad. The current ecosystems in the Rockies hold more carbon than the new warmer ecosystems, so a warming releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, a positive feedback. The sage is darker than the flowers, so more sunlight is absorbed, another positive feedback.

The frightening thing, [Harte] says, is that, for lack of understanding, biological feedbacks like those in the meadow are not factored into our current global warming models. While the models anticipate increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide from future fossil fuel emissions and from some feedbacks like increased water vapor and lower ice reflectivity, they don’t account for the carbon that will be unleashed from the ground, and the oceans as the world warms. If they did, Harte says, the upper-limit increase in global temperature by 2050 would not be 8 degrees Fahrenheit, as is currently projected, but closer to 12 degrees [almost 7 degrees Celsius].

California at Risk describes climate change effects expected for California. California is likely to see big changes, detrimental changes, in agriculture (the wine industry alone is worth $45 billion/year to California). A rise in sea level could overwhelm already fragile levees in the Delta, which supplies drinking water to 22 million [of 36 million Californians; it also supplies much of the agricultural water in California.] A continued increase in forest fires (nationwide in 2005, a total area larger than the state of Maryland was burned), plus changes in precipitation, temperature, and pests, could reduce forest size by 1/5 this century. See the temperature change and agriculture map, and the sea level rise map.

China’s sorrow provides a picture of the harm done by the large increase in fossil fuels in China—the author didn’t see the blue sky or yellow sun during a 1,000-mile (car) trip through China. The blackest market shows more.

Unforbidden cities details the kind of gated communities China is building at the rate 10 – 15 per day. Harrison Fraker, Jr. and his students spent a semester designing an alternative community that depends less on cars, is able to supply most of its energy needs through photovoltaic (solar) panels, wind, and biogas (natural gas from plants), and reduces energy need through good design. It also collects rainwater; clean water is a precious commodity in China. If the design can be modified to meet Chinese standards, or vice versa, the Chinese government is able to implement the new design immediately. There is interest now:

several cities are vying for the opportunity to build one of these prototypes, resource-self-sufficient, transit-oriented neighborhoods.

Can we adapt in time? describes one way of dealing with imminent environmental catastrophe: the destruction of fishing in Gloucester, Massachusetts by denial and fighting all attempts at regulation. There are reports on the large effects that climate change has already wrought, but we ignore them. [how many changed their behavior or their messages to their legislators as a result of, and after, this summer’s heat?] We may not be wired to respond to long-term threats, we are more likely to notice the moment.

There are a few errors. Estimates of sea level rise this century differ from author to author. The 2001 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report assumes a maximum increase of 33 inches, but points out great uncertainties in understanding ice sheet stability. The 2007 IPCC report is expected to predict larger sea level rise, perhaps as much as 2 meters increase this century, and 3- 4 meters/century afterwards. The U.S. does not emit 30% of the world’s greenhouse gases, though it once did, decades ago. The current figure is 21%. Errors are few.

Overall, this provides a perspective on the changes we are seeing, and expect to see. The editorial says that people don’t appear to respond to fear messages. But we need to know what is happening, what may happen, if we are to change the future.

Note: not all links are up, will update later.

John Holdren in an op ed piece in the San Francisco Chronicle advocates rapid changes in policy. John Holdren is one of the most important people in US energy policy, president of AAAS, MacArthur award winner in 1981, founder of the Energy Resource Group at UC, Berkeley, Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy and Director of the Program on Science, Technology, and Public Policy in the John F. Kennedy School of Government, and Professor of Environmental Science and Public Policy in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, at Harvard University, etc.

What he cannot do from his position is ask, how will people who fail to take climate change seriously today feel in 10 years, or in 5 years, when options are fewer. or no longer exist? How will we address young people — those who will be alive mid-century, answering why we who are adults today dawdled, failed to change our behavior, did not elect legislators focused on climate change, did not campaign for programs that limited greenhouse gas emissions and raised fuel prices and tax ourselves to pay for third world mitigation, or argued against nuclear power?

Also watch John Holdren’s talk at the China US Climate Change Forum. There are four talks in this video, beginning with Holdren’s talk and ending with Paul Baer’s talk on EcoEquity. In between, speakers focus on the China contribution to the problem and to the solution. The message sounds much different when accompanied by a discussion as to what will happen if we don’t respond sufficiently, and how hard it will be to succeed.

The term climate sensitivity is used frequently. There is a temperature increase associated with each doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide, so that temperature would increase by n degree C when atmospheric carbon levels reach 550 ppmv (parts per million volume) and then would go up about the same amount if carbon levels reached 1100 ppmv. This ignores the contribution of other greenhouse gases.

Climate sensitivity is estimated to be between 1.5 C and 4.5 C, with a middle value of 2.9 – 3 C. As Holdren points out, there are questions as to whether sensitivity is even higher, because we are seeing the current increase with enormous pollution which masks climate change by reflecting light and cooling the Earth (temporarily).

For a discussion of voluntary simplicity, fast forward to 1:48:30 or so. Baer places current “sustainable” emissions of carbon at 0.3 tonnes C (multiply by 44/12 to get to carbon dioxide).

Read the op-ed piece, see the video, and then comment here.