Politics – Page 171 – a sibilant intake of breath

Obama and manned spaceflight

Apparently, Barack Obama is thinking of curtailing NASA’s future manned spaceflight activities. Specifically, there has been talk of canceling the Ares 1 rocket and scaling back the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle. If true, the news is welcome. There is very little evidence that ongoing manned programs – including the Space Shuttle and International Space Station – are generating useful science or providing other benefits. There is even greater doubt about the usefulness of returning to the moon.

Space exploration is an activity best undertaken by robots. They are cheaper to send up than humans and more capable. Given the very limited value provided by sending live people into space, it is something the United States should discontinue. At the very least, it is something that should be sharply scaled back while the government works to address America’s severe debts and other problems.

Ranking energy technologies, from wind turbines to corn ethanol

Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, headed up a study to quantitatively evaluate different electricity generation options, taking into consideration their impacts on climate, health, energy security, water supply, land use, wildlife, and more:

The raw energy sources that Jacobson found to be the most promising are, in order, wind, concentrated solar (the use of mirrors to heat a fluid), geothermal, tidal, solar photovoltaics (rooftop solar panels), wave and hydroelectric. He recommends against nuclear, coal with carbon capture and sequestration, corn ethanol and cellulosic ethanol, which is made of prairie grass. In fact, he found cellulosic ethanol was worse than corn ethanol because it results in more air pollution, requires more land to produce and causes more damage to wildlife.

It is naturally very difficult to assess the validity of any particular research methodology, given uncertainties about matters like the future development of technologies, the evolution of the global economy, the availability of fossil fuels, and so on. Nonetheless, it is good to see serious work being done on comparing the overall appropriateness of different energy technologies. Given the unwillingness of many states to impose serious carbon pricing solutions, and the tendency of governments to ‘pick winners’ when it comes to technologies being subsidized, the more high quality data available, the better.

While I haven’t looked over the study in detail, it does seem like the strongest objections raised against nuclear (which is ranked very badly) aren’t really about the environment or economics. The risk Jacobson highlights most is that of nuclear proliferation, and the dangers associated with making fissile material more widely available. Proponents of a nuclear renaissance probably won’t be keen to see discussion of “the emissions from the burning of cities resulting from nuclear weapons explosions potentially resulting from nuclear energy expansion.”

The entire study was published in Energy & Environmental Science, and can be accessed online.

A few Canadian climate news items

The last couple of days have been an active period in Canadian climate science and policy:

An expedition led by David Barber concluded that the Arctic is likely to be ice-free in the summer, as of 2015.
Environment Canada scientist Don MacIver resigned from the group organizing the next World Climate Congress after the federal government revoked his permission to attend and speak at the ongoing United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meeting in Poznan, Poland.
Gordon McBean, a prominent Canadian climate scientist, speculated that Environment Canada is not “functioning in a way that is conducive to providing the kind of leadership that we need.”
Chief Phil Fontaine told Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl that: “The actions of Canada in Poland are designed to undermine the rights of indigenous people here and elsewhere.”

Certainly, Canada’s negotiating position has been a problematic one. Many people have pointed out the disjunction between demanding binding emissions reductions from ‘all major emitters’ (including India and China) and stating that Canada has no intention of meeting the target it chose for itself under the Kyoto Protocol.

It is very hard to say that any Canadian government has played a constructive role in the development of international climate policy. Hopefully, that will begin to change as we are dragged reluctantly into the mainstream.

Rich and poor, under the Kyoto Protocol

This article in Slate makes a convincing case that the definitions of rich and poor states under the Kyoto Protocol make no sense and produce distorted outcomes:

The original climate negotiators had a simple way of defining wealth. First, they took the list of 24 countries that were part of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, a pre-eminent club of wealthy, democratic, free-market states that was formed in 1961; these included the United States, most of Western Europe, Japan, and a few others. Then they added several states of the former Soviet Union, like Russia and Belarus, as well as a handful from Eastern Europe, like Poland and Slovenia. This was basically Cold War logic on cruise control: First World and so-called Second World countries were rich; Third World countries were poor. The Kyoto Protocol, concluded six years later, maintained the same division. Rich countries agreed to institute caps on their greenhouse-gas emissions while poor countries agreed to do nothing.

The resulting deal had its flaws then. It makes absolutely no sense today. Belarus, for example, is lumped together with the rich countries, despite a GDP per person of about $10,000. As a result, it has an emissions cap like those in place for Europe and Japan. Kuwait, meanwhile, is considered poor. That means the oil-rich emirate is spared any obligations, despite the fact that its residents are about five times wealthier than the Belarussians.

Future climate deals will need to do a better job of distinguishing between those who have already developed and become wealthy (largely on the basis of CO2-generating greenhouse gas emissions) and poor states that are likely to suffer the worst effects of climate change after contributing disproportionally little to its emergence.

It makes sense to shift some states from the poor category to the rich one, and vice versa. It also makes sense to establish a special category for states that are (a) major emitters (b) relatively poor and (c) experiencing relatively rapid growth in emissions. An effective climate change treaty will need to address emissions from these states (such as India and China) as well as those from unambiguously rich states like Canada, Australia, and the United States. While the biggest issues in relation to the very poorest states concern how people will adapt to climate change, starting all major emitters (regardless of wealth) on the path to low carbon economies is the only way to avoid the worst consequences of climate change. Of course, establishing a new category doesn’t answer the tricky moral question of who ought to pay how much, in order to achieve the stabilization of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations.

Extreme environmental recklessness

As a metaphor for better understanding the relationship between humanity and nature, some people have used the image of a lifeboat. A more appropriate one is that of a submarine. It captures the complexity of our surroundings, as well as the real danger that messing around with critical systems in an unenlightened way will have dire consequences. Right now, humanity is in the process of setting fires that test the air filtration capabilities of the machine, altering the gas mixture in ways likely to produce unexpected results, and banging away at the outer hull with wrenches, based on the unthinking assumption that our ignorant pounding won’t produce critical leaks.

When one looks at the state of our resource, pollution, and climate policies and actions, one is left with little hope that the future will be a long or pleasant one for humanity. This is not a matter of protecting endangered species or pristine areas of forest; it is about not compromising the basic physical and biological systems that provide the fundamental requirements of human prosperity and existence.

Private Copying Tariff increase

Canada has increased its Private Copying Tariff on writable CDs from 21 cents to 29 cents. Supposedly, the purpose of the tariff is to pay artists back for unauthorized copying. In total, the levy generates about $30 million per year. 66% of the revenues go to eligible authors and publishers, 18.9% to eligible performers, and 15.1% to record companies. That being said, the tariff does not give consumers a clear right to make copies of their music. It certainly will not do so if the new copyright bill tabled by the Conservative Party becomes law.

It is clearly unfair to assume that all writable CDs will be used to copy commercial music. It is also clearly odd to levy the tax on CDs but not DVDs, and to not make clear what rights are conveyed by the existence of the tariff.

Hopefully, we will see this system rendered more rational through future government policies and court decisions. Whatever your feelings on the ethics of copyright, the current arrangement is an ugly muddle.

Telephone call authentication

The telephone pranking of Sarah Palin by Montreal DJs demonstrates one kind of failure in the authentication of the origin of telephone calls to powerful people. The other kind of failure was demonstrated when American Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen hung up on President-Elect Obama, believing herself to be the victim of a similar prank.

A much more disturbing example was the threatening phone call made to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, supposedly from India’s foreign minister. The call resulted in Pakistani forces being put on high alert – an action that could easily have provoked counter-responses and escalation on the Indian side.

Authenticating the origin of phone calls would appear to be a challenging business. Being able to rapidly and accurately assess whether a call is genuine could prove extremely important, and yet those two goals are at odds. The more rapidly a decision must be made, the greater the possibility of error. Similarly, the greater the security of the system, the higher the chance a genuine call will be rejected as a fake. For instance, two callers that agreed on a list of passwords with which they could authenticate future calls might find themselves unable to demonstrate their identities in situations where they temporarily did not have access to the list.

Obama’s energy secretary

President-elect Barack Obama’s choice for energy secretary seems impressive: Nobel laureate Steven Chu. He is an experimental physicist, so he will be able to separate scientifically accurate information from bunk. He is also an advocate of alternative and renewable energy.

Since 2004, he was the head of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and concentrated his efforts on climate change. Hopefully, the choice reflects a commitment to addressing climate change, despite all the immediate clamour and apparent urgency of economic policy-making.

On an odd side note, about two thirds of the budget of the US Department of Energy is spent on nuclear weapons research and maintenance.

Leadership on climate, viewed in retrospect

A quotation from Joseph Romm highlights the differences between current and future perceptions of leadership quality:

Future historians will inevitably judge all 21st century presidents as failures if the world doesn’t stop catastrophic global warming.

Certainly, future generations forced to endure catastrophic climate change will consider their ancestors to have failed, whether they focus the blame on political leaders or others. I doubt the leaders of the 21st or late 20th century will be able to escape severe condemnation in a world that experiences mean temperature increases of 5°C or more, loses all its glaciers and sea ice, and experiences multi-metre increases in sea level.

Unfortunately, political leaders are conditioned to be a lot more concerned about the judgment of their voters at their next election (or of their generals, the next time the possibility of a coup is raised). The consequences of that may ultimately prove horrifically damaging.

A global response to the threat of asteroids

Climate change is not the only threat to humanity that the United Nations has been called upon to deal with. Another risk that bears consideration is that of the inevitable collisions that will occur between our planet and other big rocks in space. A group called The Association of Space Explorers has raised the issue recently, arguing that the near pass of Asteroid 99942 Apophis in 2036 should prompt some coordinated global thinking on appropriate responses to possible impacts. Their report refers the the Tunguska event of 1908, a three to five megatonne explosion which started fires large enough to engulf New York City. Apophis has a 1-in-45,000 chance of striking the Earth, but would generate a 500 megatonne blast if it did so. On an astronomical timeline, it is inevitable that an object of this magnitude will eventually strike the Earth.

The group has released a fifty page report entitled Asteroid Threats: A Call for Global Response (PDF). It covers both some technological options for deflecting incoming asteroids and decision-making processes through which such plans could be put into action. It makes a strong case that the probability of successful deflection is much higher if action is taken early. An extension of that is the need to take decisions before it is certain a collision will occur: a situation that significantly increases the probability that such a decision will need to be made within the foreseeable future.