Category: The environment

Atmosphere, biosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, etc – everything about life and the state of this planet

Global emission pathway, made manifest

Over lunch yesterday, I had an idea for a climate change art installation that would represent the task that needs to be completed and, crucially, the kind of raw work that needs to go into it.

The central feature would be a steel bar extending up diagonally to the right, shaped like historical and projected future global greenhouse gas emissions, expressed in tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent. It would be anchored at the point of the present, but flexible and free-standing beyond that.

Toward the far end of the bar would be some physical mechanism for bending the whole thing downward. People who saw the installation would contribute physically to the process, which would take weeks or months. Some ideas for mechanisms:

  • A pulley system with a large array of blocks and tackle, allowing people to slowly wrench the bar downward
  • Platforms attached to the bar onto which weights could be progressively moved, lowering it
  • A chain attached near the end of the bar, connected to a large wheel that can slowly be turned

Whatever the mechanism, there would need to be a ratchet system in place to make sure the bar would not swing violently upward if something went wrong.

At the beginning, the whole setup would look like a business-as-usual projection, with annual emissions rising right out to 2100 as humanity continues to exploit coal and unconventional oil and gas (the conventional stuff plausibly being already exhausted by then). At the end, it would look like the curves from the Copenhagen Diagnosis, bent down to carbon neutrality.

An important part of the installation is that the process of moving the bar should be physically hard work for the people viewing the exhibit. It should be uncomfortable in formal clothes, and leave people feeling the strain of it for a couple of minutes afterward. With weights, it could be calibrated to the different strength levels of visitors. Some could move 1kg, some 10kg, some 20kg.

The installation would illustrate how a task that is impossible individually becomes possible when two things happen: when lots of people make an appropriate contribution, and where someone sets up a mechanism that directs and coordinates those actions.

I don’t think you could do this in North America. Some tourist would drop a weight on their foot and sue you and the gallery for millions of dollars. Maybe it could be done in England. If the city of Oxford was willing to take on the liability risks involved in Luminox, maybe there would be some English venue willing to tolerate those associated with a big steel bar under increasing tension.

The social and political importance of sustained Chinese growth

Some socio-economic questions are so complex that they are probably impossible to definitively answer, since we only have one planet to work with and one human history unfolding. We can’t run a bunch of trials and work out the probabilities involved (sweet, sweet Monte Carlo method). At the moment, one such question is: “What would happen geopolitically if economic growth in China really slowed down for a while?”

The question relates to how quickly China should deploy renewable energy, to help respond to climate change.

One can imagine a benign scenario where growth slows a bit while China focuses on greenery, the air in Beijing gets cleaner for a span longer than the Olympics, and China’s importance within the global system continues to increase smoothly (though how benign that increase is is another question).

One can also imagine a less benign scenario where the Chinese economy isn’t producing enough jobs to employ the generation entering the workforce. Without jobs, they could focus in large numbers on more destabilizing things, like overthrowing the Communist Party and establishing a more credible democracy (though what the many considerations involved in any such matter would be is another question, as well).

All told, the state of the global economy now seems pretty worrying. The immediate financial crisis was staved away with giant amounts of public money. But not much actual reform seems to have taken place in the financial system. At the same time, the European Union is dealing with a crisis and Japan continues to stagnate. If you believe that growth is generally good (though greenhouse gas pollution must fall), you have good reason to worry about the state of the world economy today. Alternatively, the same is true if you think growth is generally good for global stability, and global stability is important (World Wars are nasty things).

Ontario and offshore wind

Yesterday was an insane day – guest lecture, work, then a commercial photo project – so I have fallen behind on blog updates. Apologies.

That said, how crazy is it that the government of Ontario has called for a moratorium on offshore wind farms? This is a province with a government that is relatively serious about climate change. It is also a province that has not yet phased out coal, despite the many serious risks associated with it, and which is pondering new nuclear plants, despite all the special risks they involve. Writing in The Globe and Mail, Jatin Nathwani implausibly suggested that offshore wind farms raise ‘red flags’. A savvier letter to the editor declared that: “If offshore wind farms are enough to raise red flags about the environment, then fossil fuels should be raising flags that are redder than red.”

Wind farms would seem like the least of their worries, and actually a contribution to solving their troubles. Of course, NIMBY forces are strong, and politicians are thinking about elections.

P.S. Also in the news, yet more reason to worry about methane and permafrost: Melting permafrost to emit carbon equal to half all industrial emissions: study.

Mythbusters and animal products

I enjoy the show Mythbusters quite a bit. I like the contrasting personalities of the hosts, and I like the way they stress how the ultimate test of any theory is experiment. The constraints of a television show can somewhat restrain them, when it comes to being rigorous and showing their work, but it is obvious that there is more thinking (and math) that goes on in the background.

One aspect of the show I don’t fully approve of is their frequent use of animal products. They often use dead pigs as stand-ins for human beings, usually when testing myths about whether something would be deadly or not. They also use lard as a lubricant, and other animal products.

I don’t think it is always wrong for human beings to kill animals for their own purposes, but I do think there are many reasons to oppose factory farming and many reasons to use non-animal alternatives when possible. In that spirit, it seems to me that the Mythbusters could find analogues for human beings that didn’t have to be raised in the kind of conditions these pigs probably were. Also, it seems plausible that testing urban legends isn’t a sufficiently important purpose to justify the use of animal products, when there are reasonable alternatives available.

In the grand scheme of things, Mythbusters is a minute consumer of animal products. Fantastically larger quantities get consumed by human beings and other animals every day. That being said, the Mythbusters are role models within a certain community, and it might have a positive effect if they established a policy on the use of animal products that takes into account some of the ethical considerations involved.

Geothermal heating and fuel price risk

The building I recently moved into is distinguished by the technology which it uses for heating and cooling. Rather than use electricity or fossil fuels to generate heat directly, it takes advantage of the way in which the ground maintains a fairly constant temperature all year round, if you dig down deep enough.

One big advantage of this approach – when it comes to the residents of the building – is that it takes away the risk associated with volatile fossil fuel prices, and reduces the amount of electricity required. People living in such a building have a better guarantee that they will be able to heat their homes than people living in conventional structures will. This could be especially important if fossil fuel prices spike in the future, or even if they just progress relentlessly upward.

It can be challenging to identify situations in which the economic self-interest of individuals aligns closely with the aim of reducing greenhouse gas pollution. Geothermal heating and cooling seems to be one of the places where those interests align.

Related: Heat pumps

Local environmentalism

Perhaps it is unwise for me to criticize environmental groups at the moment, given that we are all trying to push a difficult issue forward at a time of considerable political hostility. Reagan’s 11th Commandment is a major reason why the Republicans are so strong in the United States. At the same time, it is disheartening to see people expending their useful energy on the wrong thing, when there is something they would care about a lot more available. Also, given that the environmental movement makes choices based on things that are still at the edge of scientific knowledge, there is a benefit in having public discussions, and making the strongest possible cases to one another. We should not assume ourselves to be infallible, but rather to be in a dialogue with an ever-emerging collection of complex information on how the climate operates.

All that said, I must confess that I am perplexed by how many environmental groups seem to focus their time. It might be a terrible thing that some ugly new development will replace a nice bit of woodland, but I think people need to consider the scale on which humanity is smashing nature. That little plot of forest is threatened along with a whole lot of other forests if catastrophic or runaway climate change occurs.

It reminds me of a person wandering in the middle of a battlefield, looking for their glasses. They realize one problem – that their glasses have been dropped – and they are working diligently at solving it by scrutinizing the ground. At the same time, bullets are flying all around them. They see the small problem, miss the big one, and focus their efforts in the wrong way as a consequence.

Climate change really is the over-riding environmental priority right now. If we warm up the planet five or six ˚C, it will ruin all conservation efforts that have been undertaken in the meanwhile. We need to solve climate change first – taking advantages of co-benefits where possible.

In any case, I think I can see the appeal of being a part of a group dedicated to saving the local bog. It has locavore chic. Also, the area might have a special importance to you personally. Finally, it has the benefit that even if your quest fails, the outcome isn’t so bad. Being part of something friendly and local is a lot more pleasant than confronting a terrifying spectre of global destruction. And yet, that seems to be what we are facing.

Put This On

Put This On is a site worth looking at if you’re a man who buys into the whole idea of avoiding wasteful living. After all, it makes a lot more sense to spend $300 dollars on dress shoes that will last twenty years than to spend $80-100 on shoes that will fall apart in six months and look bad in the interim.

Just don’t get addicted to the site and buy some gargantuan wardrobe. Something you only wear once every year won’t get worn out quickly, but also probably doesn’t justify the resources that go into making it. Put This On is good about encouraging the purchase of used formal clothes, including the inexpensive and apparently superior-quality clothes available at estate sales.

They have some very professional video segments on denim, shoes, and work clothes.

In any case, the site is already very famous and most of you had probably already heard of it. For the few who hadn’t, though, it seemed worth mentioning.

Now or Never

Tim Flannery’s slim book Now or Never: Why We Need to Act Now to Achieve a Sustainable Future does not mince words, when it comes to describing the seriousness of the situation humanity now finds itself in, with regards to the diminishing capacity of the planet to sustain human flourishing:

There is no real debate about how serious our predicament is: all plausible projections indicate that over the next forty to fifty years humanity will exceed – in all probability by about 100 percent – the capacity of Earth to supply our needs, thereby greatly exacerbating the risk of widespread starvation, or of being overwhelmed by our own pollution.

Flannery, previously known for his book The Weather Makers, describes the latest climatic science as detailed by James Hansen before scoping out some of the options that exist for mitigating its seriousness, if humanity acts quickly enough.

Flannery is also forthright on the matter of just how difficult it will be to prevent unacceptable amounts of climate change – hinting (but never saying directly) that geoengineering may be required. The book places a strong emphasis on the possibility of drawing carbon dioxide from the air and into biological sinks, and considers the role that carbon markets and offsets could play in driving such actions. It does not adequately consider the issue of certainty, however. To be really worthwhile, the carbon needs to be removed from the atmosphere indefinitely – something that cannot really be ensured by planting trees (which could burn or be cut down) or enriching soils with carbon (which could be re-released).

All in all, I wasn’t hugely impressed with Flannery’s argument. He seemed overly focused on defending livestock agriculture, too bullish on pyrolysis and biochar as sequestration techniques, and overly eager to attribute intentions to nature. At many points, Flannery brings up the Gaia Hypothesis, which I think is often dangerously misleading in its implications. There is no reason to believe the Earth ‘prefers’ one state or another, or that it will always respond to shocks by moving back in the direction of how it was. Rather, there is evidence from the paleoclimatic record that when the climate system is pushed aggressively enough, it can swing into dramatic new states, in a way that could be profoundly hostile for humanity and most of the planet’s other species.

One of the most interesting aspects of the book is the inclusion of responses written by prominent individuals including Peter Singer (who very effectively rebuts Flannery’s argument that meat eating isn’t too problematic) and Bill McKibben. In his response, Gwynne Dyer neatly responds to some of the book’s Gaia language, while also making a key overall point:

Whether you want to dress [knowing human manipulation of the climate] up as human beings becoming the consciousness of Gaia, or just see us as the same old self-serving species we always were, we are taking control of the planet’s climate. This billions-strong human civilization will live or die by its success in understanding the global carbon cycle and modifying it as necessary to preserve our preferred climate.

Those key points – the seriousness of the risk of climate change and the importance of taking action in response – have not yet really been absorbed by either the general public or the world’s political elite. If that is to change in time for the very worst possible outcomes to be avoided, that needs to change quickly. By helping to publicize those key facts, Flannery certainly seems to be helping that process, even if there are valid criticisms that can be raised against some of his perspectives and proposed responses.

Widening the search

A while ago, I wrote about how I am looking for climate-related jobs in Toronto. So far, the search has not gone especially well. Positions listed tend to be either very junior or too senior. Also, most of what is available looks more tedious than meaningful or engaging.


For a number of reasons, I am now broadening my focus beyond Toronto. I am looking for jobs anywhere in the world that would offer the opportunity to apply my knowledge and skills to meaningful work on helping to fight climate change. I am also considering academic programs that would be useful, that would put me in contact with people doing interesting work, and that would put me in places where new and important ideas are developing.

If readers have any suggestions, please let me know.