The environment – Page 80 – a sibilant intake of breath

Friends of Gin & Tonic

Friends of Gin & Tonic is an amusing website that sets out to mock climate change deniers. They describe their mission as: “Self Interest and Climate Change Denial” and elaborate by explaining:

We seek to inform the public of the findings of a handful of amateurs of unrivalled capability (but almost no ‘formal’ climatological expertise) that utterly undermine the so-called ‘scientific consensus’ that the planet is warming and that people are causing it. This ‘consensus’, the biggest scientific fraud in history, has been foisted on a gullible public by a politico-scientific elite intent on a single world government with themselves, via control of the United Nations, at its head. Exercising merciless control of the scientific literature by requiring that published work be consistent with such piffle as observations, physical principles, and mathematical models, this evil clique tries to suppress the promulgation of any alternative view. Small fringe groups like our sister organization the Friends of Science are thus reduced to using right-wing blogs, opinion columns of like-minded newspapers, and guerrilla publicity stunts at international meetings to promote their message.

Mockery is certainly part of the set of things richly deserved by climate change deniers, though it is not an adequate mechanism for countering their efforts in and of itself.

They came to my attention via DeSmogBlog.

2010 Arctic sea ice

The extent of Arctic sea ice has dipped below where it was at this time of year in 2007, the worst year recorded for sea ice. Within the next few months, we will see whether it goes on to set a new record low. If so, perhaps it could be the sort of dramatic event that drives people to take climate change more seriously.

It is important to understand that the maximum extent of sea ice during the winter is a less important climatic indicator than the minimum extent in summer. The Arctic is always going to be cold and dark in the winter, when it is hardly receiving any sunlight. As a result, at least a thin layer of ice will form, establishing a large extent of frozen ocean. What is vanishing is the multi-year ice, which endures from year to year. Climate deniers trumpeted how the maximum extent of ice this year was close to the 1979 to 2000 average, yet the major trend in ice extent and volume is ever downwards.

If the Arctic ends up ice-free in the summer, there will be numerous consequences. Species that depend on sea ice – including narwhals, seals, and polar bears – will be threatened. Also, migration between the Pacific and Atlantic will likely allow the emergence of invasive species. Because losing summer sea ice means losing a big white sheet that reflects sunlight back into space, it would also cause further warming.

Consequences of coal in China

The issue of how much China is really doing to fight climate change has arisen here before. One section from Barbara Freese’s book on coal provides some information pertinent to that discussion. She argues that the Chinese government has made great efforts to improve energy efficiency. Between 1996 and 1999, the Chinese economy grew by a startling 36%, while total energy use fell by 17% and greenhouse gas emissions fell by 14%.

One motivation for an official shift towards reduced coal usage is the sheer number of deaths from air pollution. While coal-fired power plants in the United States probably kill a few tens of thousands of people per year, those in China likely kill around one million. Indeed, it is estimated that one in eight deaths in China is the consequence of coal use – whether from particulate emissions, sulfur dioxide, reduced indoor air quality, mercury toxicity, or other factors.

That said, Freese acknowledges that continued economic growth is likely to reverse that trend, unless China commits itself aggressively to a low-carbon approach to development. That choice is very important to human welfare around the world and needs to be made soon. There are coal plants in the United States that have been operating since the 1920s. The world cannot afford for China to continue to deploy coal-fired power plants that cause such climatic damage, and which may prove equally enduring.

Emissions standards for trucks

In a piece of good news, the Canadian and American governments are rolling out new emissions standards for heavy vehicles, “including full-sized pickup trucks, delivery vehicles, buses, freight vehicles, service trucks, garbage trucks, dump trucks and tractor trailers.”

Trucking is one of the fastest growing causes of greenhouse gas emissions in North America:

The emissions from heavy trucks represent 6 per cent of Canada’s total greenhouse gas emissions. They have been increasing more rapidly than emissions from any other source and grew by 63 per cent from 1990 to 2007 as compared to 26 per cent growth in overall Canadian emissions for the same period.

While regulating efficiency sector by sector risks being more costly than driving economy-wide reductions with a carbon tax, it is nonetheless a welcome measure. Hopefully, the efficiency improvements driven by these new regulations will actually reduce emissions, and not increase them via the rebound effect, by reducing the cost of trucking.

Call for action from American scientific organizations

Four American national scientific academies have just released three reports on climate change, and called for a price to be put on emissions through either a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade scheme: the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council. There is one report on climate science, one on mitigation, and one on adaptation. The reports were requested by Congress and is funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They endorsed emissions reductions in the range of 57% to 83% by 2050, for the United States.

Hopefully, this will restore a bit of life to the wheezing efforts ongoing in the US Congress to produce climate legislation.

Are high speed trains good for the climate?

High speed rail is often held up as a model transport option for a carbon constrained world. By offering speed and convenience, the idea is that such trains will displace flights and thus lead to lower emissions. Of course, running a train at high speed requires using more energy to get up to speed and to combat air resistance. In a recent column, George Monbiot points out this and other issues with high speed trains as a cimate change solution:

Throughout the recent government documents there’s an assumption that the new railway will be sustainable because it will draw people out of planes. But buried on page 162 of the report on which the department has based its case, published in March 2010, are the figures which derail this assumption. Of the passengers expected to use the new railway, 57% would otherwise have travelled by conventional train, 27% wouldn’t have travelled at all, 8% would have gone by car and 8% by air. In other words, 92% of its customers are expected to switch to high speed rail from less polluting alternatives. Yet the same report contains a table (page 179) suggesting that the savings from flights not taken outweigh the entire carbon costs of the railway. It provides neither source nor justification.

The 2007 report shows that even if everyone flying between London and Manchester switched to the train, the savings wouldn’t compensate for the extra emissions a new line would cause. “There is no potential carbon benefit in building a new line on the London to Manchester route over the 60 year appraisal period.” A switch from plane to train could even increase emissions. Unless the landing slots currently used by domestic flights are withdrawn by the government, they are likely to be used instead for international flights. The government has no plan for reducing total airport space.

I do think there are situations where high speed rail could provide environmental benefits. In particular, it could be good to connecting major urban centres that are not too far apart, and where zero carbon forms of electricity are available. Many such connections could be made between cities on the east and west coasts of North America.

GDP growth versus emissions growth in Canada

The blog of the Pembina Insitute has a very interesting post on how annual greenhouse gas emissions are changing in different Canadian provinces. Since 1990, they are way up in Alberta, up a good bit in B.C. and Saskatchewan, up a little in Ontario and Manitoba, and flat in Quebec. Alberta alone contributed more than 50% of Canada’s GHG emissions growth.

These graphs – comparing contributions to GHG emissions growth, GDP growth, and population growth between 1990 and 2008 – are rather interesting:

The biggest story that jumps out at me from this is how Ontario and Quebec show that it is possible to achieve economic growth with moderate or non-existent growth in GHG emissions.Quebec added as much to Canadian GDP as Alberta did, at the same time as their emissions fell slightly.

Displaying carbon footprints

Environmental activist organizations are always dreaming up new pranks to try to get media attention. Here’s one that occurred to me.

You could build some pedal-powered vehicles, a bit like bicycles. They would differ because they would be geared to allow someone to slowly pull a heavy load, rather than to move just themselves relatively quickly. Behind them, representatives from different countries could tow weights equivalent to the mean amount of carbon dioxide equivalent emitted each year by their fellow nationals.

You could have a little procession, arranged from the countries with the lowest per-capita emissions to those with the most. The representative for Bangladesh would only need to tow 900kg. That would be equivalent to a cube of water 97cm to a side, which would weigh about as much as a small car.

Following could be a representative from Sweden towing a 7.5 tonne cube, approximately two metres to a side. It would weigh about as much as three small cars, plus a Hummer H1.

Then, you could have an American towing a 22.9 tonne cube of 2.84 metres to a side. That’s akin to about two Greyhound buses.

The unfortunate Canadian and Australian would be hauling 24.3 and 25.9 tonnes, respectively. Those are cubes of 2.9 and 3.0 metres, each equivalent to about a 20-foot shipping container. That is akin to towing a Bradley Fighting Vehicle. Those people would not be moving quickly.

Another way to look at this is to say that it would take the entire payload capacity of the Space Shuttle to carry the average Canadian’s average annual emissions into space.

Sustainability as an intergenerational project

I think this quotation from Richard Feynman is rather wonderful:

We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.

It would be a splendid thing for humanity to have tens of thousands more years of history. In order to accomplish that, however, we need to find ways to keep from snuffing ourselves out, or pushing ourselves back down below the level of ‘civilization.’

Accomplishing that seems to require a process similar to the one Feynman outlines for scientific advancement. We must learn what we can about truly sustainable human societies, implement that knowledge, and then pass along that combination of learning and physical achievements to be carried forward by those who will come after.

I can’t help feeling that if Feynman was still alive, our societal discussion about climate change would be a bit more sophisticated and productive.

Satirizing environmentalism

While effective climate change policies have yet to be implemented in most places, there do seem to be signs that environmental consciousness has established itself in the popular discourse. No doubt, this owes a lot to how serious people – both scientists and policy-makers – have continued to stress what a major issue climate change is, and how vital it is to address it.

One sign of that high level of visibility comes from this week’s posts on The Onion, a satirical newspaper:

No doubt, this level of prominence owes something to the ongoing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Nonetheless, maybe this kind of deep cultural penetration actually bodes well for environmental policy in the long run.