The environment – Page 134 – a sibilant intake of breath

2008 Arctic sea ice minimum

It seems that the Arctic sea ice has reached its minimum area for the year. The record for reduction from last year has not been broken, but the situation is nonetheless disturbing. Whereas last year provided optimal conditions for melting, the unusually cold winter last year – arising from La Nina conditions – meant that this year’s melt should have been quite a bit less significant. As it happened, it was within 10% of last year’s record.

Walt Meier, a scientist at the American National Snow and Ice Data Center explained the situation:

I think this summer has been more remarkable than last year, in fact, because last year we had really optimal conditions to melt a lot of ice. We had clear skies with the Sun blazing down, we had warm temperatures, and winds that pushed the ice edge northwards. We didn’t have any of this this year, and yet we still came within 10% of the record; so people might be tempted to call it a recovery, but I don’t think that’s a good term, we’re still on a downwards trend towards ice-free Arctic summers.

In short, the Arctic ice is probably already locked into a death spiral. Here’s hoping that doesn’t lead to widespread melting of the permafrost, since the results of that would be catastrophic for humanity.

Naomi Oreskes, climate science, and the JASON group

The JASON Defense Advisory Group consists of top-notch American scientists who carry out requested research on behalf of the American government during the summer months. Past areas of research have included adaptive optics of the kind used to remove atmospheric distortions from telescope images, a system for communicating with submarines using very long radio waves, missile defence, and more.

Back in 1979, the JASONs looked into the issue of climate change – concluding that the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide could double by 2035, causing an increase in the mean temperature of the oceans and atmosphere. Despite not having any climatological background, they constructed their own mathematical model to approximate the relationships between greenhouse gas emissions, atmospheric concentrations, temperature changes, sea level rise, and other phenomena. Unlike many of their other non-classified reports, “The Long Term Impact of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide on Climate” doesn’t seem to be readily available online. Nonetheless, some information on both the report and the JASONs is included in this Times article by Naomi Oreskes: the woman most famous for her 2004 Science article “Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change,” in which she demonstrated that disagreement about the fundamentals of climate change existed in the media, not within the scientific literature.

The Times article, the Science paper, and the available JASON reports all make for informative reading.

Carbon emissions worse than criminal damage

In a fairly surprising precedent, a jury in the United Kingdom aquitted six Greenpeace activists of criminal damage to a coal plant. In their defence, they argued that their scaling of the smokestack and attempt to paint “Gordon [Brown], bin it” on the side was justified because of the greenhouse gas emissions being produced by the plant:

Jurors accepted defence arguments that the six had a “lawful excuse” to damage property at Kingsnorth power station in Kent to prevent even greater damage caused by climate change. The defence of “lawful excuse” under the Criminal Damage Act 1971 allows damage to be caused to property to prevent even greater damage – such as breaking down the door of a burning house to tackle a fire.

The not-guilty verdict, delivered after two days and greeted with cheers in the courtroom, raises the stakes for the most pressing issue on Britain’s green agenda and could encourage further direct action.

NASA climatic scientist James Hansen testified in defence of the activists.

It is virtually certain that the Crown will appeal the decision, and highly likely that the appeal will succeed. That being said, the situation may be indicative of the British public gaining an appreciation for the gravity of the threat posed by climate change, and the intolerability of coal power in a forward-looking, carbon-reducing economy. The fact that the UK is mulling the approval of new coal plants is definitely a major blot on its record as a fairly progressive state, where climate change is concerned.

Permafrost and climatic precariousness

When I look at the numbers involved, I sometimes wonder whether concerns about climate change adaptation in northern community are missing the main point. As discussed before, the Arctic permafrost contains 36 trillion tonnes (teratonnes) of carbon dioxide equivalent. By comparison, annual human emissions are in the neighbourhood of 29 billion tonnes (gigatonnes) of CO2 equivalent. That means that the permafrost as a whole contains as much greenhouse gas as over 1,200 years of human emissions at the present rate. Thought about another way, that means that annual melting of 0.08% of the permafrost would have as much impact on climate change as every vehicle, power plant, farm, and burned forest around the world.

It is as though the permafrost is a frozen block of fuel that we are holding a match to. If it starts generating enough heat to melt on its own accord, we will be in for a truly wild ride. The loss of seasonal road access for northern communities may end up being the least significant problem associated with melting permafrost.

Fungi are surprisingly compelling

On the basis of a recommendation from a friend of mine who works on environmentally-friendly gardening and landscaping in North Vancouver, I am reading Paul Stamets’s Mycelium Running: a book that details ways in which human beings can achieve ecological outcomes through the intelligent use of fungus. They can be used to increase the rate of forest recovery after logging, clean up contaminated sites, and so forth. I will post a review of the whole book when I finish it.

One aspect of the book I found surprising and interesting are the ways in which the similarities of animals and fungi are emphasized. Both ecologically and genetically, the two are apparently more closely linked than any other two kingdoms. Both breathe oxygen (fungi can be suffocated), both sometimes attack and kill plants or animals. Representatives of both kingdoms sustain themselves on dead organic matter, while others live inside other live organisms and extract nutrition from them parasitically.

Some species of animals extrude their digestive organs when eating. Fungi might be considered an extreme elaboration of this. Instead of having a stomach inside the body, filled with digestive enzymes, the mycelium leaches them out into surrounding matter, then draws in the liberated and partially processed nutrients therein.

In any case, fungi are quite fascinating. For one final example, consider the genus Pleurotus. While their culinary properties are their major claim to fame, their ability to metabolize crude oil is also rather remarkable. You can start with a bucket of crude spilled on a beach somewhere, introduce some spores, and eventually wind up with material that is entirely safe for the natural environment in general.

May being excluded from leaders’ debates

I think it’s a shame that Green Party leader Elizabeth May is being excluded from the leaders’ debates for this election. The longstanding isolation of the Green Party is largely the product of Canada’s first-past-the-post system and, given that they are so severely hampered by the technicalities of Canada’s electoral system, it seems fair that meeting the technicality of having a sitting Member of Parliament is sufficient procedural justification for their inclusion.

More substantively, there is major focus on the environment in this campaign. As such, having a candidate present whose party is focused explicitly on environmental issues would probably add to the caliber and intelligence of the discussions that result.

Two American cap-and-trade plans

While both John McCain and Barack Obama have endorsed a national cap-and-trade system as the centerpiece of their climate policies, the two proposals differ on several highly important grounds. The most important by far is the mechanism of permit allocation. Under the McCain system, permits to emit carbon would be granted for free to those with existing records of emissions; under the Obama system, all those wishing to emit will be required to buy permits at auction. The practical differences between the approaches are massive. Under the auction system, those who wish to pollute are made to pay. Under the free allocation system, those who have polluted in the past are granted valuable credits that they can either use to pollute or sell for cash.

As described before, consumers experience price rises in either scenario. What differs is where the windfall accrues. Under an auctioning system, it ends up in the hands of government, which can use it to fund low-carbon investments or refund it to the population as a hole (as in a cap-and-dividend system). Under a free allocation system, it simply goes into the coffers of the biggest polluters.

Even with a Democratically-controlled Congress and Senate, getting a plan based on 100% auctioning approved would be very challenging. Democrats from areas where extractive industries and automobile manufacture are economically important and politically powerful will resist policies that will be costly to dirty industries. That being said, it is arguably wiser to start with a policy position that is stronger than can probably be enacted and then compromise, rather than starting with a position that is weaker than necessary to get the job done.

Resources on basic climate science

To those who want to reinforce their understanding of the first principles of climate change science, here are a couple of straightforward explanations worth examining:

The Carbon Cycle: this page from NASA’s Earth Observatory describes how carbon behaves in the atmosphere, hydrosphere (oceans), and lithosphere (rocks).
The Greenhouse Effect: this page from the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research provides a basic description of what the greenhouse effect is.

Understanding these two basic areas of science is a fundamental prerequisite for being knowledgeable about climate change. The BBC also has a rather good website explaining the key concepts for laypeople.

Buying, but not using, carbon credits

One attractive element of a cap-and-trade system for reducing greenhouse gas emissions is that it would permit entities other than firms to buy credits, which they could then choose not to actually use. For example, a cap-and-trade system might mandate that emissions in 2020 return to 1990 levels and require that all credits be auctioned, rather than issued for free to past polluters. In Canada, that would mean selling 596 million tonnes worth of emission permits.

Firms wishing to emit greenhouse gasses would then need to buy permits for whatever quantity they choose to emit. Given the cap on the total number of permits to be sold, the price of permits will rise to the point where a sufficient number of emissions are cut. Because of the economic incentive produced to cut out whichever emissions within the economy would be cheapest to eliminate, the overall cost of compliance is minimized.

If, however, groups exist that feel that cuts deeper than 1990 levels by 2020 are required, they could buy permits on the same market. In so doing, they would reduce the supply available and increase the price of those remaining. This would induce firms to eliminate emissions where the cost per tonne is between what the price of permits would be without this independent action and what the price has become along with it.

Climate action withdrawn

The Government of British Columbia has suddenly decided to retract my Climate Action Dividend (discussed here before). Previously, they had decided to issue them to anyone who filed a provincial tax return in 2006 or 2007. Now, they are being retracted from everyone who was not a resident of BC as of December 31st, 2007. This strikes me as rather poor planning on their part. The administrative costs of re-collecting the money will form a deadweight loss, and the government will henceforth have less credibility when issuing credits of this kind.

I suppose I will need to pack up and return my compact fluorescent bulbs, returning the inefficient incandescent ones to the sockets, remove the weather stripping from my doors and windows, switch back to my old and inefficient hot water system, swap out my low-flow showerhead, partially deflate the tires on my vehicle, and rip out my new crawl space insulation… Actually, I probably directed the money towards paying down student loans.

This can be dubbed the “Oh, wait. You are probably not going to vote in the next BC election, are you?” retraction.