Getting to Green

More useful than fact

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:12:44 GMT

I'm currently reading Dorothy Ross's book The Origins of American Social Science. Truth be told, I've just started reading it, so I'm not yet sure whether it's any good as a whole, but one sentence in the first chapter smacked me upside the head, big time.

That introductory chapter (as so many others) undertakes to place the subject matter into context. Ross calls it "the discovery of modernity", and touches on European intellectual and philosophical responses to -- among other things -- the French Revolution. The concept of history emerges, bringing with it the idea of progress. And it's during her discussion of the general adoption, and resultant impact, of the ideas of history and progress that Ross writes:

In a still Christian culture, progress could compensate for the intolerable imperfections of the world.

OK, so it's hardly a clarion call to arms. Shakespeare would never have envied its quotability. Sondheim might be able to set it to music, but Rodgers or Gershwin would have had trouble. Still, it stopped me in my tracks (which is to say, in my chair). Let me try to explain why.

First, there's the presentation of the myth of progress (and, to my mind, "progress" clearly has major mythic elements to it) as a successor to religious mythology around which a society could organize its emotional life.

Second, there's the connection of this succession -- during the first half of the nineteenth century, largely in Europe -- to the development of a scientific perspective. Ross goes on to speak of scientists who "propounded the laws of nature as 'rules through which divine governance flowed,' thus fusing the scientific view of law as observed regularities in nature with the older religious concept of natural law as the agency by which God governed the natural world." Somehow, I immediately thought of the Yale Report of 1828.

And third, I was struck by the fact that a large portion of society -- not limited to the USA, but perhaps more prominent here -- is still working its way through that transition two centuries later, is as likely to take a step back as one forward, and is certainly not ready for the next (call it "existentialist") logical step. That existentialist step is what our communication efforts to date have insisted that society take.

So, perhaps as evidence that when the student is ready the teacher will appear, I quickly formed a notion of (1) why this country, for all its good points, maintains an insistence on threatening the ecology on which higher forms of life entirely depend, and (2) what educational institutions need to do to counter that insistence.

We need to construct a convincing model of sustainability as the next step in progress. We need the model to make such obvious sense that educators in virtually all disciplines find it informative. And we need to communicate that model widely, consistently, continually, and comprehensively to our students, our neighbors, and the world as a whole.

Yes, many of us in the sustainability field are driven by "the intolerable imperfections of the world" in which we find ourselves -- the threat that we perceive to our planet and our progeny, the malformed mechanisms by which society determines its direction, the empirical evidence faced off with assertive ignorance and irresponsibility. But focusing on those imperfections and pointing out their idiocy hasn't been working well enough. Whatever progress can be made by that approach has already, for practical purposes, been achieved. We need a different focus going forward. We need a different focus so that we can go forward. The myth of 'progress' has proven strength and can easily be adopted in our efforts.

We need a strong myth at the center of the sustainability movement. We need to heed the advice of Salman Rushdie, that "sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than facts." There are many ways in which a sustainable society can be shown to be progress -- a step in the right direction, an improvement on the imperfections around us. As educational institutions, we need to construct that picture, we need to show it to all and sundry, and then we need to sell the hell out of it.

Just between you, me and the bedpost, the education system sells myths all the time. We don't call it that; in our more honest moments we call it "cultural reproduction", but still . . .

We can do this. We need to do this. There's now enough backing in the economy and the political sphere that the risks are manageable, and are probably exceeded by the development (read "funding") opportunities. As institutions, we're better positioned to do this than just about anybody else. And it can only enhance our public image (offsetting the worldly imperfection of rising tuition rates).

Hopenhagen

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:25:25 GMT

If you believe Ban Ki Moon, the UN climate summit next month in Copenhagen will be a failure by any rational standard. Oh, he and other politicians will find a way to put a positive spin on things and thereby create the opportunity to declare a limited success. INo doubt, their speech-writers are already drafting a framework for self-congratulatory pronouncements which disguise their irony behind a smile and a statement about how much work there remains to do.

If you believe Angela Merkel (who's not only an international political leader, but also has a doctorate in quantum chemistry), we can't afford for Copenhagen to fail.

If you believe James Hansen, or the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or the Union of Concerned Scientists, or the National Academy of Sciences, or the Royal Society, or the WBGU, or the Science Council of Japan, or the Israeli Presidential Conference, or just about any scientific body of substance, it may already be too late. And if it's not too late now, the window of opportunity is rapidly closing.

So, what's a self-respecting educator (or educational administrator) or student (or parent of students) to do? How can we encourage or embarrass the "leader of the free world" into actually leading the free world in a positive direction?

There is an answer. Or at least a potential answer. Or at least the hope of an answer.

Remember "hope"? Remember that it's audacious? Remember who told us those things? Maybe it's time to remind that individual of why he was elected. Maybe it's time to stop hiding behind the specter of China, and India, and Harry Reid.

At least, that's what a group of folks -- including raging radicals like Advertising Week, AOL, Business Week, Clear Channel, Coca-Cola, Cosmopolitan, Discovery Channel, Getty, Google, the International Herald Tribune, National Geographic, Newsweek, Ogilvy, SAP, Scientific American, Seventeen, the Economist, the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal are saying.

Combining the campaign theme of Hope with the conference site of Copenhagen, these organizations and more have put together a global petition on the web and asked people around the world to sign it during the month leading up to the UN climate conference.

www.hopenhagen.org

Sign it. Spread the word. Put it on your campus website. Chalk it on your sidewalks. Paint it on that big rock on the quad -- you know, the one that's typically covered in a variety of Greek letters. Soap it on the windows of the dining hall. Flash it on the JumboTron during half-time. And organize a series of events during the run-up to the conference.

We need to convey the unmistakable message that failure is not acceptable. Because, truth be told, failure is not survivable. At least, not for long.

Free beer!

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:36:56 GMT

Well, maybe not free beer where you are right now, but I do promise free beer to anyone who shows up at Greenback and asks to collect.

More to the point, "free beer!" is a phrase that's proven effective on campus for getting people's attention. What I'd like to draw your attention to is the single best reframing of an issue in the WBGU report. (This is the last post on that report, I promise. But it's in many ways the most important, so read on. And let me know if you get thirsty.)

What the report's authors have done, in an information-dense 7.5 pages, is to describe a transition plan for decoupling developed and developing economies around the world from fossil fuel while stimulating economic growth (even by traditional measures). Rebirthing economies is what all of us in the sustainability business (in higher ed or elsewhere) should be talking about at every opportunity. Rebirthing/decoupling the economy is a major step towards solving a whole raft of problems, so there's something here for everybody. It's win, win, win (unless, perhaps, you're a senior executive of an oil or coal company).

Want to . . .

Shrink the size of the Federal government? Decouple the economy from fossil fuels.

Balance the national budget? Decouple the economy from fossil fuels.

Pay down the national debt? Decouple the economy.

Restore our balance of trade? Decouple the economy.

Reduce our risk of terrorism? Decouple the economy.

Stop sending troops into harm's way? Decouple the economy.

Bring peace to the Middle East? Decouple the economy.

Create more high-tech jobs at home? Decouple the economy.

More manufacturing jobs? More skilled service jobs? Decouple the economy.

Bolster the strength of the US dollar? Decouple.

Reduce air pollution? Decouple.

Protect clean water? Decouple.

Rehabilitate our blighted cities? Decouple.

Revitalize family farming? Decouple.

Build better suburbs? Decouple.

Stimulate research funding for higher ed? Decouple.

Reduce emissions of greenhouse gases? (Thought we weren't going to get there, didn't you?) Decouple.

Look, it might not be a necessary step on the road to curing cancer (although you never know), but I can make a decent logical case that decoupling the economy from dependence on fossil fuels is a key step toward achieving any of the above list of goals. And, without backing off on the climate change debate at all, we need to be talking about all (or at least many) of these goals. To all of our students, regardless of academic discipline. And to anyone else who will listen.

By broadening the discussion from just climate change (which sounds kind of techno-nerdy and so is readily deflected in political conversations), we can recruit fiscal conservatives, economic developers, community advocates, pragmatists, "realists", America Firsters, pretty much anybody and everybody to the side of the angels.

And given the tepid leadership coming out of the nation's capitol, our better angels can use all the allies we can recruit for them.

Want to trigger a rebound in the stock-market? Decouple the economy from fossil fuels.

A different kind of currency

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:00:08 GMT

It's an article of faith among those of us who inventory greenhouse gases that "current account" emissions don't count. For example, if Greenback were to heat our campus by burning wood chips ("current" biomass), the resulting CO2, methane and nitrous oxide wouldn't appear in our GHG inventory. What makes an emission "current" is that the energy comes from burning something which grew fairly recently and which is presumed to be replaced by another like object (tree, cornstalk, whatever) in the near future.

"Current account" emissions are kind of like one of those natural cycles that you studied in middle school science. Think of the "water cycle": water evaporates, condenses, falls out of the sky, runs downhill, and ends up in a lake or ocean just in time to start evaporating all over again. Well, the natural "carbon cycle" is kind of like that. Carbon dioxide exists in the atmosphere until it gets absorbed by plants. The plants get burned, which releases the CO2 back into the air. Or they fall down and rot which releases the CO2 back into the air (some of it as methane, but then the methane breaks down in the presence of oxygen). Or the plant gets eaten by an animal which breathes in oxygen and uses the carbon ingested to convert O2 into CO2, which gets exhaled -- oops, I mean "released" -- back into the air. There are some more scenarios, but you get the picture.

In theory, the whole process maintains some sort of equilibrium, neither increasing nor decreasing the level of CO2 in the atmosphere very much. So when we burn fossil fuels, we count the tons of CO2 we're emitting, but if we burn cornstalks we figure that the emissions are just part of the natural carbon cycle (even if sped up a bit by human intervention).

The flaw in this model lies in the presumption that the cornstalk burned today will be replaced next year when the farmer replants, and that the tree burned (in whole or in small parts) this year will be replaced with another, similar tree within a couple of decades. Sometimes, that's true. Sometimes, it's not.

Now, I don't intend to go off on a rampage about deforestation in the sourthern hemisphere (although that is, in fact, a major ecological disaster right now). What I do want to mention is the aspect of the WBGU report (you knew I was going to get to the WBGU report, didn't you?) that deals with this type of emission. In a nutshell, WBGU recognizes the behaviors (deforestation, etc.) which increase one-time current account emissions as a problem, proposes an international protocol to address them, and -- most important -- proposes a firewall between accounting for current carbon and fossil carbon.

What that means is that nobody -- not Greenback, not Wal-Mart, not nobody -- gets to offset their fossil carbon emissions as a result of doing something which they claim will decrease current carbon emissions. Some sharp operators have been selling offsets based on promises not to cut down forests. Others have sold offsets based on the planting of seedlings -- they've calculated the amount of CO2 the tree will absorb in its lifetime, and used that estimate to create salable offsets.

The problems with current cycle emissions reductions being used to offset fossil carbon emissions are many. First, some of those forests weren't going to get cut down anyways, so no real reduction has taken place. And many of those seedlings were replacing trees recently cut down, so the replanting is, again, not a real reduction. And what's going to happen to those trees at the end of their normal lifespans? Whatever the answer, all the carbon they were storing is going straight back into the atmosphere. I'm not saying that there can't be legitimate GHG reductions achieved by paying attention to current cycle carbon. But any mixing of current and fossil carbon, from an accounting perspective, makes legitimacy extremely difficult to determine. And current carbon offsets are usually an order of magnitude cheaper than true fossil carbon offsets, so Gresham's law applies.

As a result, the WBGU suggests attention to land use, land use change, and forestry (under the unlovable acronym LULUCF), as well as reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (mostly, but not entirely, in developing countries). And it bars offsets generated in either sector (fossil or current) from being used in the other.

It's a realistic approach, it creates two large problems in the place of one gigantic one, and it may help the diplomats in Copenhagen to reach at least some consensus agreements, even if (as seems increasingly likely) they're not going to be able to deal with the elephant in the room.

Mixed message on methane

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:28:19 GMT

A word to the wise (and otherwise): don't get H1N1. Just don't. Do whatever you need to do, but minimize your likelihood of infection. It comes on fast, it comes on strong, and you're not worth a tinker's dam while you're down with it. Not fun.

So now, on a lighter note, let's talk about swamp gas. Landfill exhalations. Cow farts. Methane.

If I have a major quibble with the approach in the WBGU report I was commenting on last week (and will have a couple more comments on in future), it's that it lumps methane in with carbon dioxide for greenhouse gas accounting purposes and so, by implication, for mitigation planning.

Now, I understand some of the reasons for handling methane that way. Burn fossil fuel and you don't just get CO2, you also get methane and nitrous oxide. The quantities are small, compared to the CO2 you get, but the multipliers are significant (like 21 and 310 -- that's how much more powerful GHGs methane and nitrous are than CO2). So for fossil fuel combustion, it's easy to account for the three gases at the same time, and the mitigation steps you're likely to take (like burning less of that stuff, or switching from coal to natural gas) affect all three simultaneously.

But there are also reasons why methane should be tracked separately from CO2. For starts, there are activities (like decomposition of organic matter in the absence of oxygen, or operation of a confined animal feeding operation) that produce lots of methane but little or no CO2. To mitigate these emissions, you need to be thinking along very different lines. And, to my mind more important, methane behaves very differently, as GHGs go, from carbon dioxide.

Carbon dioxide takes years (some say decades) to rise to the level in the atmosphere where it has its greatest GHG effect. On the other hand, once it gets there, it stays for millenia. Methane, conversely, becomes effective as a GHG very quickly but also tends to break down within about a decade or so. (In fact, the multiplier for methane used to be even higher, before scientists determined just how short-lived its effect is.)

One of the implications of that difference in behaviors is that, if we want to make a significant near-term impact on the effects of accumulating greenhouse gases, one thing that might make sense is to attack our methane emissions fast and hard. We can't solve the climate change problem by eliminating methane output alone, but you've got to start somewhere. And reducing methane emissions could create a short-term negative blip that's not caused by a downturn in the economy. (Think of the psychological impact of the recent report that US GHG emissions have decreased as a result of the current economic situation. Could any single news item do more to solidify the link in people's minds between addressing climate change and going into economic free-fall?)

Anyways, I'm not absolutely convinced that the WBGU should have proposed addressing methane separately from CO2, but I'm also not sure they got it right. Simple has its advantages, and they're already proposing a number of other approaches which increase complexity. Since there are fewer reasons to account for nitrous oxide emissions separately from CO2, maybe we might just as well leave methane as part of the CO2-equivalent accounting community.

It's all so hard to think about. Especially when your whole body still hurts.

Equivalent ain't

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:31:25 GMT

(On the way to work: "My Roots Are Showing" by Natalie MacMaster. If this doesn't do it for you, check your pulse -- you might be dead!)

One of the complicating factors in efforts to date to reduce GHG emissions is their "one size fits all" attitude. Not so much "one size fits all participants" as "one size fits all gases". The truth of the matter is that while all GHG emissions can be expressed in "CO2 equivalency" in order to roll each GHG inventory up to a single number, the sources of -- and so the steps needed to reduce -- three of the six "Kyoto gases" are in a class by themselves.

I'm talking about fluorinated GHGs -- sulphur hexafluoride, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and perfluorocarbons (PFCs). Each of these has a "radiative forcing factor" (think of it as a multiplier to calculate CO2 equivalency); most of these factors are in the range of 1,000-22,800.

For colleges and universities, fluorinated GHG emissions are pretty rare -- generally the result of coolant loss from chillers and other industrial equipment. Indeed, most of the emissions of these gases result from leakage during their use in industrial processes. Unlike CO2, methane and nitrous, these gases don't get generated from fossil fuel combustion.

Since viable substitutes are available for all fluorinated GHGs, eliminating their emissions is a matter of mandating that their use be discontinued. The world has a successful model for doing just that -- the Montreal Protocol which mandated the phased elimination of CFCs and HCFCs, and which has been very successful in eliminating the problem of stratospheric ozone depletion.

The recent WBGU report recommends just such an approach. What I like about it is its inherently conservative nature ("let's not reinvent the wheel") as well as the fact that treating different GHGs differently, by its very nature, communicates the complexity of the problem better than does lumping everything in together. It demonstrates reasonability. And reasonability has been in short supply.

Great green groups

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 20:21:23 GMT

(Music for the drive in this morning was Mulgrew Miller's Landmarks. His playing is remarkably expressive through a very wide range of styles, and this album (assembled from three different session, each with different personnel) is remarkably well-balanced.)

Following in the footsteps of yesterday's post, one of the things I like about the way the WBGU report reframes the climate change issue is that, after shifting from a percent-reduction to a carbon-budget perspective, it then groups countries (state governments are, after all, the key decision-makers here) not by historical responsibility for the mess we're in, but by how long their budget (based on population) will last them at their current emission levels.

For purposes of analysis and prediction, the authors divide all countries into three groups. Group 3 is those countries whose budgets will, at current emissions levels, last them more than 40 years. Members of Group 2 have budgets which are -- if they don't cut emissions -- good for 20 to 40 years. And Group 1 (of course) is the rest of us.

During the period of transition, countries and economies in Group 1 will likely have to acquire (through approved mechanisms and with oversight) carbon emission allotments from Group 3 countries who don't need all they have. It's not an issue of offsetting emissions (an approach of spotty reputation, at best) -- it's merely a matter of getting what you need in a fair and equitable way from folks who are willing to sell at an agreed price. And that price, of course, will provide funds to help Group 3 countries develop renewable economies so they don't turn themselves into Group 1 countries.

Again, there's no moralizing, no blame, no singling out for attention, no real difference in the rules everyone is being asked to sign up to. Thus, the complaint of "not fair" again quickly becomes untenable. And the last (least emitting) are positioned to become first (most helpful). With all the rights, honors and privileges thereto appertaining.

Dawn after the dark (?)

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:32:12 GMT

As I was driving into work this morning, I was listening to Cyrus Chestnut's "Dark Before the Dawn" -- one of my favorite piano trio CDs.

Stood on its head, that title seemed to sum up my mood after reading the latest special report from the WBGU (which stands for either "German Advisory Council on Climate Change" or "Wissenschaftlicher Beirat der Bundesregierung Globale Umweltveraenderungen", depending on whom you ask).

The report, titled (English only, from this point on) "Solving the climate dilemma: The budget approach" makes a number of very smart suggestions. And while those suggestions seem likely to work well in combination, they're logically independent of one another. As a result, I'll deal with them one at a time.

The idea at the heart of the report (as reflected in its subtitle -- why is it that subtitles are generally more informative than the titles that precede them -- isn't that kind of backwards?) is that we need to stop conversing in terms of percentage GHG reduction and start speaking in terms of the decreasing amount of GHG per capita we can afford to emit.

In a strictly mathematical sense, of course, it makes no difference at all. But, in a way, it reminds me of the problem-solving protocol suggested by a former co-worker. My ex-comrade-in-wage-slavery used to say that the first thing to do when presented with a problem is to see if the wording can be changed such that the problem goes away. Of course, he wasn't really talking only about verbiage, he was talking about perspective, point of view, the way the issue was being framed.

So long as the GHG emissions issue is framed in terms of percent reduction, it's going to remain a hard sell to a large portion of the American public. Looked at in percentage reduction terms, the US of A has to cut a lot more and a lot faster than virtually any other country. Of course, that's because we've been the biggest contributor to the problem.

Yes, China now emits a bit more than we do -- they passed us in 2008. But this year's increase in greenhouse effect, and next year's, and many years' after that, are the result of gases emitted years ago when the Chinese economy wasn't yet growing like Topsy. CO2 has a long latency period, as a greenhouse gas.

Still, the fact that China is now the number one GHG emitter, combined with the fact that most US citizens (to the extent that they allow themselves to believe in climate change at all) have a kind of "instant on, instant off" mental model of the process, means that selling the idea that we need to stop doing what we've been doing is pretty tough. In the minds of short-sighted exceptionalists (is there any other kind?), it just doesn't seem fair. And if it isn't fair, they're not going to do it.

What the WBGU report does -- and does brilliantly -- is to present what needs to happen in terms that are explicitly fair. Not necessarily pleasant (we'll get to that later), but glaringly and unequivocally equitable to all the people in the world.

In effect, the report calculates the amount of carbon dioxide (we'll talk about the other GHGs later) the world can afford to emit over the coming decades and allocates them equitably across national populations based on population at a fixed point in time. Every man, woman and child gets the same amount of CO2 emissions for free; if you want to emit more than that, you need to acquire the rights of someone who isn't going to use their full allotment. (Of course, the transaction wouldn't take place at an individual level -- national governments or economies or other collective entities would do the business involved.)

Does it make the need to reduce our GHG emissions go away? Not at all. We (North Americans) need to reduce our output of CO2 as much under this approach as under any other. What it makes go away is the tenability of the "not fair" argument. It decreases the noise level in the conversation, and leaves more room for logic and cooperation. Which are what will be needed in Copenhagen in a couple of months. Which upcoming event was the trigger for preparing and releasing this report.

More to come.

"Blue" (by) U

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 18:30:49 GMT

So if educators in "red" states should take it upon themselves to correct their elected climate change deniers in public, do those of us in "blue" states get a free ride? Not at all.

Too many people on the "blue" side of various aisles condition their support for Waxman-Markey, or Kerry-Boxer, or more substantive climate change legislation on the availability of corporate welfare for increased nuclear power, for "clean coal" technology, and for extravagant hand-outs to existing utility companies. Not all, but still ...

Some of these Democratic legislators come from coal states, and seem to think that the coal industry is in their future as much as it was in their past. Somehow, that seems unlikely to me. Respected educators from State U, from Tech, and from elsewhere need to point out that "clean coal" is a term of theory, not of practice. And even if it were real (at the point that the coal is burned), it wouldn't do anything to address emissions from mining, from transportation, from forest destruction, from plateau (oops, I mean "mountaintop") restoration.

Blue state economists should point out that the case for subsidizing utility companies is bogus. The argument, of course, is that existing utilities will need to spend money to make their generation facilities cleaner and, in the absence of Federal subsidies, will have to pass the costs on to consumers. What nobody points out is that subsidizing the utilities takes the decision about where to spend that money out of the hands of consumers. If, instead, any Federal dollars (and I'm not saying there should be Federal dollars, I'm only saying "if") went directly to families (say, in the form of a refundable tax credit), they could choose to spend it either on the now higher-cost electricity from fossil fuels or on truly renewable (hence truly sustainable) power -- leveling out the playing field, at least partially.

Blue state scientists (hard and social) might want to comment on what a bad deal nuclear power has been, still is, and will continue to be in the future. In addition to the inherent security risks from the plants themselves, there are (of course) still issues with spent fuel and water consumption, and serious questions about whether nuclear power contributes to global warming simply by virtue of the heat it pumps into the system.

Institutions of higher education claim to have staked out leadership positions for themselves by signing the PCC, by committing to reduce their net GHG emissions (eventually) to zero, by educating the next generation of leaders. The problem is that the planet doesn't have until some time called "eventually". It doesn't have another generation or so. Based on the latest credible information available (more next week), we have maybe a decade to make serious reductions and perhaps half that time to change course on the way to getting serious.

The time for public leadership is now. Higher ed claims to want to lead -- to run with the big dogs. If that's what we really want, we need to go into the tall grass while it's still green, whether we're (ourselves) "red" or "blue".

Coming to a "red state" (near) U

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:04:44 GMT

Any real debate is over. Take a look at the following, and then let's talk about whose words these are.
Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases
in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising
global average sea level. Global mean surface temperatures have risen by 0.74°C (1.3ºF) over
the last 100 years. The rate of warming over the last 50 years is almost double that over the last
100 years. Global mean surface temperature was higher during the last few decades of the 20th
century than during any comparable period during the preceding four centuries.
Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very
likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations. Global observed
temperatures over the last century can be reproduced only when model simulations include both
natural and anthropogenic forcings, i.e., simulations that remove anthropogenic forcings are
unable to reproduce observed temperature changes. Thus, the warming cannot be explained by
natural variability alone.
Observational evidence from all continents and most oceans shows that many natural systems are
being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases. Observations
show that changes are occurring in the amount, intensity, frequency and type of precipitation.
There is strong evidence that global sea level gradually rose in the 20th century and is currently
rising at an increased rate. Widespread changes in extreme temperatures have been observed in
the last 50 years. Globally, cold days, cold nights, and frost have become less frequent, while
hot days, hot nights, and heat waves have become more frequent.
U.S. temperatures also warmed during the 20th and into the 21st century. U.S. temperatures are
now approximately 1.0ºF warmer than at the start of the 20th century, with an increased rate of
warming over the past 30 years. The past nine years have all been among the 25 warmest
years on record for the contiguous U.S., a streak which is unprecedented in the historical
record. Like the average global temperature increase, the observed temperature increase for
North America has been attributed to the global buildup of anthropogenic GHG concentrations
in the atmosphere.
Total annual precipitation has increased over the U.S. on average over the last century (about
6%), and there is evidence of an increase in heavy precipitation events. Nearly all of the Atlantic
Ocean shows sea level rise during the past decade with highest rate in areas that include the U.S.
east coast.
---
The global atmospheric CO2 concentration has increased about 35% from pre-industrial levels to
2005, and almost all of the increase is due to anthropogenic emissions. The global atmospheric
concentration of CH4 has increased by 148% since pre-industrial levels. Current atmospheric
concentrations of CO2 and CH4 far exceed the recorded natural range of the last 650,000 years.
The N2O concentration has increased 18%. The observed concentration increase in these non-
CO2 gases can also be attributed primarily to anthropogenic emissions. The industrial fluorinated
gases, HFCs, PFCs, and SF6, have relatively low atmospheric concentrations but are increasing
rapidly; these gases are entirely anthropogenic in origin.
Tell me, who is that writing?

No, it's not John the Revelator (even though the words have an apocalyptic ring to them). It's the Bush administration, in 2007. The Bush EPA, to be more precise, in an internal report available here. These are words that our tax dollars have paid for. It's knowledge that you and I own.

And what the Bush administration said is that there is no remaining scientific question, no further significant uncertainty. Thus, the rational elements of both of the parties that control this, the most powerful (and highest-emitting, per capita) nation on the face of the earth agree. There's no remaining fig leaf for denying climate change, and anyone who says otherwise is both a fool and a liar.

Now, I'm not one of those who equate climate change denial with shouting "FIRE!" in a crowded theater, but I do think it's time for the educational community in states whose elected representatives are acting in a manner profoundly destructive of the general welfare to point out that fact. After all, that same Republican-run EPA found that "elevated levels of greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public welfare." More specifically, it anticipated that "severe heat waves are projected to intensify in magnitude, frequency and duration over the portions of the U.S. where these events already occur" (hmmm ... that would be the red states in the South). "Disturbances like wildfire and insect outbreaks are increasing and are likely to intensify in a warmer future with drier soils" (sounds a lot like Southern California to me). "Climate change is projected to constrain over-allocated water resources in the U.S." (which would be the Great Plains, the entire Mountain time zone, the Southwest).

Now most of the major universities in the states we're talking about are state-run. I don't expect them, as institutions, to declaim against elected representatives from the same political parties which run their state governments. But it's not unrealistic to expect respected administrators and tenured faculty members, acting as individuals but with some level of solidarity, to exercise their right as American citizens to speak plainly on their own time. In most of these places, alumni of State U occupy positions of influence in both the public and private sectors. Teachers those alums once studied under, and the leadership of the institution whose teams they wildly cheer for, can exert significant leverage.

There's no time like the present.

No time at all.

More than morality

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 20:20:23 GMT

For a while now, I've been hearing that climate change is, among other things, a moral issue. The basic argument centers on the truth that the people who will suffer first and worst as the planet heats up are ones who had little or nothing to do with creating the problem. People living in marginal settings -- in semi-deserts, on unprotected coastal plains, in the Arctic -- are already seeing increased incidence of droughts, wild-fires, storm surges and ice melt. Coincidentally or otherwise, the countries and cultures which have put the most greenhouse gases into the atmosphere over the past century or so are relatively sheltered from the impacts. Only relatively, and only temporarily, but long enough to allow an extended state of denial.

Now, according to The Guardian (UK), the Archbishop of Canterbury -- the head of the Church of England and the Anglican Communion worldwide -- has raised the stakes a little bit. Rowan Williams, speaking at Southwark Cathedral, has described us (well, he meant his flock, but I think we can extrapolate) as being addicted to "fantasies about prosperity and growth, dreams of wealth without risk and profit without cost". As a direct result, he says, the human soul has become "one of the foremost casualties of environmental degradation". Thus, taking steps to actively mitigate climate change is necessary for us to become fully human again.

This isn't the first time Williams has spoken about climate change. Earlier this year, he pointed out that God had no "safety net" for the human race which, as a result, faces a whole range of doomsday prospects (of which climate change was one, but only one). He also criticized the deniers of climate change, saying that humanity faced being "choked, drowned or starved" by its own stupidity.

I guess that's one of the advantages of being a major religious leader -- you can decry the stupidity of the human race and people take you at least somewhat seriously. By comparison, that's never worked for me. Not even once.

But when our culture treats political reality as if it trumps physical reality and the economic environment as more immutable than the ecological one -- when our response to reports of rising sea levels threatening to overwhelm South Pacific islands is to jet right down and see them before they're gone -- maybe "stupidity" is too mild a term. Maybe an all-out religious assault on the root of all evil (not money itself, but the unbridled love of money) is entirely overdue.

And if, as Agence France-Presse reports, Barbara Boxer's Environment and Public Works Committee will take up climate change legislation later this month, maybe we can hope for a number of Episcopal (US Anglican) leaders -- along with all those college and university presidents who signed the PCC -- down in DC lobbying for responsible action. (Wouldn't that be a nice change from what passes for politics-as-usual?)

After all, if the latest accounting by Germany's Advisory Council on Global Change (see, I'm an equal opportunity Europhile) is to be believed, we have far less time to act than previously estimated. (More on that later -- I just started reading the report, myself.)

Nobel-ity

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:05:37 GMT

I thought I awoke this morning to the announcement that President Obama had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Then, I thought that I was still asleep. Now I hope I wasn't, on the theory that no one's dreams -- certainly not mine -- should have that kind of an effect on reality.

And if that first paragraph sounds confused, that's probably appropriate. I'm confused. I thought that before a person won what's arguably the most prestigious honor in secular society, (s)he was supposed to actually accomplish something. I mean, potential is wonderful, but there's nothing more common than unrealized potential. Personally, I can understand the reflex to celebrate any POTUS whose middle initial isn't W. Still, I had thought that the collective heads of the Nobel Committee were calmer than mine. At least, I'd hoped that they were. Now, I'm not so sure.

As the morning progressed, however, it occurred to me that Obama's Nobel might be just what the ecological sustainability movement needs. It might inoculate us against the dreaded mythical Al Gore.

Not the real Al Gore. I have no problem with the real Al Gore. What I have a problem with is people who have a problem with my ostensible relationship with some semi-divine "Al Gore" character that, in truth, I don't recognize. (That first paragraph starting to look almost cogent yet?) You know, the object of sardonic remarks like "What Would Al Gore Do?" and "when you [meaning me] realize that Al Gore doesn't walk on water ..." and (more recently), "Too bad nobody warned Al Gore before he bought that condo in San Francisco."

Now, sustainability is a large portion of my life, but I have never worshipped Al Gore. In fact, most months I don't think about Al Gore even once (provocations aside). But I don't know how to challenge or disown my assumed Al-Gore-acolyte status without seeming to back down in a battle of wits not yet fully joined. I'm hoping Obama's Nobel will help me find a way.

After all, the Gore semi-divinity projection seemed to get a lot worse after he and the IPCC were honored in 2007. Winning half a Nobel seems to have conferred (confirmed?) semi divinity. And if 0.5 Nobel Peace Prizes equals 0.5 times divinity (at least in the minds of my verbal antagonists), what does 1.0 Nobel Peace Prizes equal?

I haven't thought this through fully yet -- what creative powers I hold won't be at their peak until just before wake-up time tomorrow morning -- but I'm hoping the answer includes at least one snappy comeback for the next time someone tries to Gore me.

Still, I fully admit that my creativity may not be up to this deity-level task. (After all, I more often play at the Warlord level.) Please feel free to make suggestions.

Let's go to the movies!

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:27:40 GMT

One of the tools I find most effective when talking to students about climate change is (no surprise here) streaming video. NASA has done a couple of pretty good ones, but predictions change rapidly as new data becomes available, so I'm always on the lookout for the newer and the more visually impressive.

Lately, some of the best videos have been based on climate modeling and predictions out of the Met Office Hadley Centre -- the UK's main government agency on such matters.

The relevant portion of the official Hadley Centre website is here.

An interesting set of articles is also available at the New Scientist site. (I didn't have to sign in, so I hope it's generally available. Please holler if it's not.)

For years, what the climatologists have been saying is that we need to keep the temperature rise below 2 degrees centigrade, to avoid major problems. That's technically true, but what people hear is that what climate change is threatening is a 2 degree rise, which is false.

What Hadley Centre is now predicting if things don't change is (on the global average) a 4 degree centigrade rise by 2055. And large areas of the globe (largely the parts that are uninhabitable by virtue of being underwater) will stay below that average. Which means, of course, that other areas will rise by more then 4 degrees.

In the northeastern USA (except for the portions of the coast which will actually cool down by virtue of now being -- you guessed it -- underwater), their model shows an 8-10 degree centigrade rise. That's 14.4 - 18 degrees Fahrenheit. That's huge.

And, even in late 2009 (locally known as a year without a summer), that's scarier than the latest horror movie.

Students may love to be scared when they know it's just a flick, but (my impression, at least), not so much in real life. At least for now, it's getting them riled up.

Which is one way I know that I'm doing my job.

Standards and students

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 13:33:11 GMT

Curricular innovation has been a hot topic on the Green Schools List (email "subscribe grnsch-l" to listserv@listserv.brown.edu) the past week or two. And no wonder -- getting colleges and universities to operate sustainably is hard, but not nearly as hard as getting them to teach sustainability in all its variety and complexity.

State universities probably have an easier time when it comes to curricular innovation. (Note: I didn't say "easy", I just said "easier". Everything is relative.) At private universities, there's little in the way of effective central authority, so academic freedom (read: "don't tell me what to teach") tends to dominate. Change can still happen, but it isn't fast and it usually isn't pretty.

Probably the most enlightening item, however, wasn't about universities, nor colleges. It was about high schools in Washington state, and about the sustainability learning standards which have been adopted. They're pretty detailed, and comprehensive, and impressive. Students are expected to be able to:

Create realistic models with feedback loops, and recognize that all models are limited in their predictive power.
Analyze relationships between national interests and international issues; evaluate impacts of international agreements on contemporary global issues.
Analyze how economic choices by groups and individuals impose costs and provide benefits.
Analyze and evaluate (dis)advantages of different economic systems, and the effects of specialization on global trade.
Analyze and evaluate effects of distribution of resources on sustainability.
Evaluate the ethics of technology use based on historic patterns.
Understand and analyze the causal factors that have shaped major events in history.
Evaluate how human interaction with the environment has affected economic growth and sustainability.

The full set of standards is available here. Given that they're addressing high school students, the true content of terms like "analyze", "evaluate" and "understand" probably gets moderated somewhat, but still ...

... I'll be honest. If I had reason to believe that the typical Greenback graduate had as complete an understanding of sustainability, and as comprehensive a perspective on why it's an issue, why it's important, what we need to do about it, how we can do that as this set of high school learning standards would seem to imply, I could die happy.

(Not that I'm in any rush, you understand!)

If you're going through San Francisco ...

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:24:37 GMT

... be sure to check your under-seat cushion, which can be used as a flotation device in the entirely likely event of a water landing.

All right, not all than entirely likely, at least not this week. But almost entirely likely this century, and I don't mean just the last few years thereof.

According to a presentation at this week's "4 degrees and beyond" conference at the University of Oxford, a fair amount of real estate around the San Francisco Bay, including the area which includes SFO, is highly likely to disappear due to rises in ocean (or, in this case, bay) level.

And SFO won't be the only victim. I could well have titled this "A rebuilt New Orleans -- the world's most expensive artificial reef", or "DelMarVa deluged" or "Arrivederci Rhode Island". And if you own an oceanfront timeshare in the Southeast (like Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia or the eastern coast of Florida), you might want to put it on the market as soon as the Dow tops 10,000 again.

The presentation was prepared by a team at the Met Office's Hadley Centre. It's just one of a number of presentations from the two-day conference, slides and audio from which are freely available here. I expect to spend a fair amount of time this evening (and maybe tomorrow evening, as well) looking, listening, learning, and being glad that I didn't have to rack up a lot of air miles to visit not only the UK, but also the future.

Hey, Dr. President -- get ready for a road trip!

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:25:47 GMT

Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman has two recent NYT op-ed pieces, It's Easy Being Green and Cassandras of Climate. Krugman points out that the reason we (the whole world, but most clearly the USA) aren't doing something about climate change is that we lack the political will that results from looking further than the end of our collective nose. The truth is too inconvenient to the economic powers that be. No surprise there -- Krugman has "gotten it" for quite a while. Changing the energy base of the economy will create both winners and losers; yesterday's winners are likely to be tomorrow's losers, and they're spending vast quantities of money to make sure that doesn't happen.

The more recent convert (and, until recently, a devotee of globalism uber alles) is Tom Friedman. But now not only does Friedman now "get it", he recently pointed out an even more inconvenient truth: in terms of the development of green energy, China is positioning itself to beat our pants off.

Meanwhile, back in the real world (business operations, not academe or punditry), three major utilities have just dropped membership in the US Chamber of Commerce in protest of its antagonistic stand on climate action, and Nike is reportedly considering doing the same. All this within a single week, so (we can hope that) maybe it's the start of a tsunami within business politics as usual.

Maybe, just maybe, major players outside the beltway are starting to re-tilt the playing field to favor facts over well-funded fantasies. Inside the beltway, of course, the fantasy world is still spinning in all its glory.

On the off chance that Congress ever figures out how the USA can afford to save all the money on health care that every other developed country is saving (while achieving better outcomes than we do), its focus will shift to climate change. When that happens, we need business executives, pundits, and everyone else who "gets it" to make as much noise as possible.

And we need all those PCC signatories -- you know, the 600+ college and university presidents who proved themselves willing to stand up in public figuratively -- to stand up in public literally. We need them to hie themselves to our nation's capital, to button-hole their states' elected representatives, to speak to the press (local, national, global), and to demand action. The whole idea of the PCC is for higher ed to demonstrate leadership on this critical issue. The way things are right now, that's what leadership looks like. Or should.

Sub/urban subjectivity

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 16:23:12 GMT

I've pretty much given up on the mega-corporate media as sources of objective information with one exception -- they do report objectively on the subjective. They trumpet conventional attitudes and "conventional wisdom", amplifying aspects of both which serve a particular set of interests (not necessarily the interests of you or me). I was gobsmacked by one specific instance of that this Sunday.

An article by a writer with the Associated Press seemed to have no other purpose than to promote sales of "crossover" vehicles as cool, financially attractive and environmentally responsible. The item focused on a suburban mother of two who intended to buy a new crossover sometime in the next year. This woman's situation was presented as typical, her response to it logical, the case described thereby instructive. Yet nothing about her story made objective sense even for her, much less as an example for anyone else.

To put things into perspective, this is a 34-year-old woman with two daughters (one nine years old, the other nine-months), a husband and two small dogs. She currently has a 1997 Nissan Quest which she calls "excellent" in terms of reliability, but "ancient" in styling and insufficiently versatile. She lives in Carteret NJ and frequently drives to visit relatives in Queens (NYC); the article makes this sound like a long trip by emphasizing that she has to cross two rivers (the Hudson and the East) along the way.

OK, look. I don't know where in Carteret or where in Queens, so I don't know which of many possible routes this lady typically travels. But a quick check of Google Maps tells me her whole trip is probably no longer than 36 miles one way. Even to someone who grew up in the Northeast, that's not a long way. An hour there, a couple of hour visit (I'm guessing), an hour back. The dogs will be OK on their own for that duration. (Trust me, I've owned a lot of dogs.) And in this case, the scenery goes from less urban to more urban to moderately urban -- not a lot of vehicular versatility required, as I understand that concept.

But there's a very real chance that this particular mom defines "versatility" somewhat differently than I do. She says that living in NJ means that she drives everywhere. Maybe driving to the school requires different vehicular capabilities than driving to the store or a friend's house, at least in New Jersey. It certainly doesn't in Backboro. The NYC area is pretty flat by my standards. And all their roads are paved (at least nominally -- do potholes, patches and steel plates count as "pavement"?). Anyway, the quote that seems most revealing is the one where the subject explains why she won't consider a sedan. "We can't get the strollers, an overnight bag, and a couple of other things into a passenger car." What other things? Full-sized refrigerators? Four-by-eight sheets of plywood? The original prop Time Machine from the Rod Taylor/Yvette Mimieux movie? And "strollers"? Why more than one? Who needs a second stroller? The nine-year old? The dogs? The husband? And who says a sedan won't do? I know lots of people who carry that amount of stuff (OK, not the Time Machine) in sedans, especially when the trip is only an hour long.

The real truth comes out in the last paragraph. "Everyone's driving a crossover; you don't see many minivans. They're not the cool car for moms to drive anymore." Sounds a lot like a subjective rationalization of a desire to cave in to artificially stimulated demand -- the overwhelming urge to spend money on the solution of something which (in objective terms) isn't a problem. She's got a minivan. It has enough room. It runs reliably. It probably gets slightly worse gas mileage than the crossover she's lusting after, but not enough to make up for all the energy required to build a brand new vehicle and deliver it to New Jersey. It's not even a case of money "burning a hole in her pocket(book)", because she's not rushing out to buy right now -- she's planning to purchase sometime next year.

Personally, I hope she takes the intervening months and asks herself what, in her current transportation situation, is broken. Because if nothing is broken, nothing needs fixing. And that's instruction we could all take from this case.

Hamster heat

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 20:06:58 GMT

A new, significant and potentially very useful report makes reference to an aquarium full of hamsters connected to rudimentary motors producing a lot of frantic running, a lot of sweat and heat but -- in the end -- very little light.

The report itself is well worth reading. So's this summary from Grist.org

A loss of faith?

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:27:09 GMT

Listening to NPR this morning, I heard a representative of the Bipartisan Policy Center (who? should I trust anyone whose first name claims to be "bipartisan"? is this like some Aetna-funded association of Average American Individual Policy Holders to Protect Our Way of Health? or a hidden-moneybags-funded so-called association of scholars?) talking about the political hurdles facing Waxman-Markey and similar climate legislation in Congress. One of the reasons he cited was "the deep mistrust that people in Congress and across our country now have about market-based approaches to problem solving."

Really? I mean, I don't have a philosophical problem with the idea that a market-based solution (read "money") isn't everything. Money certainly isn't an obvious way to manage demand for what's currently a free resource, particularly now that the Supremes seem likely to grant corporations complete control of the legislative process (through "conservative" removal of century-old restrictions on corporate political $peech).

But even if that's true, I haven't sensed any public loss of faith in markets as a whole. Has coverage of the NYSE or Nasdaq decreased any? Is consumer confidence no longer a concern? Isn't all the tempest in a teabag about keeping the government "out of my Medicare" a vote (even if a corporate-sponsored vote) in favor of market mechanisms?

Before I'll buy into the idea that Americans distrust market-based approaches, I need to see some evidence that the word "tax" has lost its cyanidic glow or that a social democratic party is poised to win an election (any social democratic party -- any election at any level in any state other than Vermont).

Has anyone seen such evidence? Are B-school enrollments significantly down? Is there something else I'm missing?

Well, yes, there is. Or at least there was. I missed the announcement of the creation of the Bipartisan Policy Center, a non-profit founded by former Senators Bob Dole, Howard Baker, Tom Daschle and George Mitchell. (Or at least ostensibly founded by these centrist luminaries. Nothing in our nation's capital is ever what it seems.)

Nevertheless, 'tis a puzzlement.

A (pro)portion of sense

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 12:34:54 GMT

When you've got a personality like mine, you get used to being alone. A lot. (Actually, it's kind of peaceful, once you get used to it.)

A recent iteration of solitude came as a result of charter signatories to the PCC filing (or not filing) their Climate Action Plans. What passes for mainstream media in this country, if they took notice at all, wrote the "higher ed screws up on sustainability -- just another instance of no accountability" story. I (more or less alone) was more upbeat. Of course, as of right now, any of us could be right. Or wrong.

But at least one early indicator should shorten the odds on yours truly. AASHE -- one of the three organizations which originated the PCC, has just announced their Campus Sustainability Leadership Awards. Four schools, in four different categories. All of them charter signatories. And guess what ... three of the four hadn't filed their CAPs as of this weekend!

Now, truth be told, only one school really missed the deadline. Two of the three were granted one-month extensions, probably to allow them to get over one last administrative hurdle. (Even more truth be told -- setting a Sept. 15 deadline for any sort of major decision/action on an American campus is a little self-defeating. Most academic years start in late August or very early September, and I pretty much kiss the first two weeks off in terms of being able to get stuff done on -- or with -- the academic side of the house.)

So, if three of the four winners didn't make the original deadline (or, depending on how you look at it, three of the many schools who didn't make the deadline turned out to be award winners), what does that mean?

It means that filing a report on time, especially when "on time" is somewhat arbitrary, might not be the most important thing a university or college can do to promote sustainability. Not that it's trivial, but there's a lot of room to maneuver north of "trivial".

A quick look at what NYU, UNH, Furman U or Butte College have done makes it clear why each of them was selected. (Not that other schools necessarily deserved to lose, but these four definitely deserved to win.) And, to put things in proportion, their selection as winners will be remembered long after their CAP filing date is forgotten.

Of course, the accomplishments that got them selected will be remembered, and will have beneficial effects, way longer than that.