Does Anyone Drought Climate Change Anymore?

So a little play on words in the title, but seriously - Does anyone really doubt that climate change is happening?

From the Washington Post today, front page, "The persistent and dramatic decline in the snowpack of many mountains in the West is caused primarily by human-induced global warming and is not the result of natural variability in weather patterns, researchers reported yesterday." Note that it is NOT the result of natural variably, but it is OUR fault.

The study was published by the journal Science, and explains the problem of "When the snow fields melt earlier and more suddenly, dams are able to capture less of the water and must release more of it to flow on to the ocean." And to think that the Colorado River is already running low because of the demand of Las Vegas and other big cities.

Good thing I don't live on the West Coast, right? Between the mudslides, fires, and now this, I'm lucky here on the East Coast. Well, not really. As much as I would rather deny it, eventually climate change will hit me too. Remember Atlanta last summer? Granted there's no study to say that their lack of water was because of climate change, but it's not outside the realm of possibility.

Does anyone feel safe given the lack of attention, action, and legitimacy that the US gives climate change?

The solution to climate change: culture change

The past week has been incredibly exciting and full of emotion. Beginning last Wednesday, the National Council on Science and the Environment (NCSE) brought together scientists, government officials, politicians, and the general public to discuss Climate Change: Science and Solutions. Many of us at the conference experienced strong emotions of anxiety, and even despair as we saw that the negative impacts of our carbon emissions and deforestation clearly overshadow the solutions to climate change (or "climate disruption", as John Holdren accurately described it).

It's not that we don't have solutions, it's that they require societal and cultural change on a massive scale. Sure, many changes such as improving energy efficiency are win-win actions, or "low hanging fruit". But to minimize the negative effects of climate disruption, we really need to create drastic changes to the way we produce food, manage forests, travel, and use energy.

Up until now, we have not had to pay for the pollution we emit and the natural resources we destroy - so we have been paying artificially low prices for all the wood, paper, water, and gas we use. But since we haven't been paying the REAL costs, we have been building up debt, and now we are in the hole (much like the U.S.'s national debt.)

But the depressing story of our ecological debt is not the full story. Monday was Martin Luther King Day - a day to honor and recognize the power and success of the social justice movement and all those who dedicate their lives to create positive change. MLK and the civil rights movement have made incredible progress by inspiring America to stand up for justice. The movement gave power to a beautiful component to American culture: that of tolerance, appreciation of diversity, and love of justice. It is on these same principles, and with a similar momentum, that we can transform our culture away from blind consumerism and toward socially and environmentally responsible lifestyles.

Start now by transforming your personal, political, and business life. Adopt a new habit every month, take a day to meet with your local, state, and or US representative to tell them what they need to be doing for you (ie. improving mass transit, taxing/regulating coal to subsidize clean energy, protecting forests, the environment, and American jobs through fair trade regulations.) And finally, take a lead at work by making sure your office and/or business has good practices - from recycling and being energy efficient to collaborating with other businesses on how to be environmentally and socially responsible in your field.
Let's create a happy ending to this story.

What are the most impactful actions you can take this year?

Reflections on Hope

Cross-posted from the blog Climate Teacher - a blog post by Elizabeth Swain

Thursday, December 20, 2007
We are not helpless...

Events this week left me remembering the column my mentor Dana Meadows wrote about the depressing signs from the Arctic. (This from 2001, when the forecasts were that it might take fifty years before the Arctic was free of sea ice in the summer, a prediction that some reports are now saying was too optimistic.) The way Dana ended the column then rings true for me today.

"Is there any way to end this column other than in gloom? Can I give my friend, you, myself any honest hope that our world will not fall apart? Does our only possible future consist of watching the disappearance of the polar bear, the whale, the tiger, the elephant, the redwood tree, the coral reef, while fearing for the three-year-old?

Heck, I don't know. There's only one thing I do know. If we believe that it's effectively over, that we are fatally flawed, that the most greedy and short-sighted among us will always be permitted to rule, that we can never constrain our consumption and destruction, that each of us is too small and helpless to do anything, that we should just give up and enjoy our SUVs while they last, well, then yes, it's over. That's the one way of believing and behaving that gives us a guaranteed outcome.

Personally I don't believe that stuff at all. I don't see myself or the people around me as fatally flawed. Everyone I know wants polar bears and three-year-olds in our world. We are not helpless and there is nothing wrong with us except the strange belief that we are helpless and there's something wrong with us. All we need to do, for the bear and ourselves, is to stop letting that belief paralyze our minds, hearts, and souls."

Re-reading this, I have decided, again, six years later, to believe that these words are true. There is nothing wrong with me. I have decided (again) to believe that the way I feel is the way any sane person would on a rapidly sickening planet. I have decided (again) to believe that millions of people feel the same way, even if they don't wear those feelings on their public faces.

And I see the possibility -available to us as soon as we stop assuming there is something wrong with us – that we could decide together that we are not helpless, either. That, too, would be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Scientists Say It -- Again

World data for 2007 are in, and again it was among the hottest on record. We have heard the message before, and we need to keep hearing it. This time, the reporter, Juliet Eilperin (Washington Post, 12 January 08, p. A3), provided a nice short summary:

"The world is about 1.44 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it was in preindustrial periods, and many scientists warn that the globe cannot afford to get 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than it was in pre industrial times. Current climate models indicate that Earth will warm by about three-quarters of a degree over the next two decades because of greenhouse gasses already emitted into the atmosphere."

Okay, we "can't afford" to allow global average temperature to go up 3.6 degrees F. We're already up 1.44 degrees, and past emissions mean another 0.75 degrees is coming within two decades (2028), which adds up to 2.19 degrees F. So we are already committed to a 2.19 degree increase -- 60% of the 3.6 degree increase we "can't afford".

And still we go on emitting with no agreement to stop.

Young people are about to inherit an incredible mess from their parent and grandparent.

Set of Simple Numbers for Climate Change

This was taken from The Jakarta Post, an English-speaking newspaper, after the Bali Conference. Although it was published almost a month ago, there are some interesting figures which will cause equally interesting global discussions. Even with the modest target of slowing down, and not stopping, global warming, it is surprising to see resistance from several American policy-makers.

Anyway, 25 - 40% is still a very considerable challenge for both developing countries, which trends are increasing carbon emissions, and developed countries, which will face severe opposition if they have to cut consumption among 'prosperous' communities.

Monday, December 17, 2007 11:52:35 AM

Set of simple numbers will help shape 2 years of post-Bali climate talks

BALI, Indonesia (AP): Behind the millions of words at the Bali climate conference, in documents, speeches and slick brochures, lay a set of simple numbers: 2 and 445 and "25 to 40."
That's 2 degrees Celsius, 445 parts per million of carbon dioxide, and a 25-to-40-percent reduction in global-warming gases - a formula, some say, to save the planet from climate change's severest consequences.

In the end, at U.S. insistence, none of those numbers appeared in the U.N. conference's key final document. But in the coming two years of crucial climate negotiations, as authorized at Bali, those simple numbers are sure to become chips in the high-stakes diplomatic, political and economic bargaining of almost 190 nations involved.

Saturday's decision ending the two-week meeting capped a year in which a U.N. network of climate scientists delivered troubling news: Global warming is a fact, very likely attributable to manmade emissions; warming seas are rising faster all the time; impacts are already felt, from species extinctions to erratic weather.

Things could get much, much worse if the world doesn't sharply reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and a handful of other industrial, transportation and agricultural gases blamed for global warming, the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in its series of reports.

The IPCC noted that the atmosphere has already warmed by an average 0.7 degrees Celsius compared with the early 19th century, and that with an additional 1.3 degrees, totaling 2 degrees Celsius, serious effects would ensue: regional water shortages; crop failures; widespread loss of coral reefs; more deaths from heat waves; more severe storms.

To keep the cumulative rise to 2 degrees Celsius, the panel concluded, heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere should be kept below 445 parts per million in carbon dioxide or its equivalent in other gases. The concentration is now estimated at below 400, after subtracting offsetting heat-shielding effects.

Early in the Bali conference, more than 200 scientists, many of them U.N. report authors, made a rare foray into politics and diplomacy with a petition calling on the U.N. climate treaty nations to adopt, as a "minimum requirement," those 2-degree and 445-ppm ceilings.

The European Union and many other nations had already done so, endorsing the goal of reducing industrial nations' greenhouse gas emissions by 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, a formula the IPCC suggests to keep temperatures rising no more than 2 degrees Celsius.
That goal was also inscribed into the early drafts of the Bali final document, which envisioned contributions, too, from such fast-developing poorer nations as China and India, in the form of voluntary programs to rein in emissions growth.

"This process has to be driven by the science," said environmentalist Matthias Duwe, of Europe's Climate Action Network. "There are no questions any more about the sheer scale of the challenge we are facing."

But the numbers were rejected by the United States, and dropped from the Bali document.
"The European approach is focused exclusively on the science, but we also have to analyze the actual technological pathways it takes to get to a particular objective," Jim Connaughton, White House environmental chief, told reporters here.

"We can be very ambitious, but cuts that deep, that fast, are simply beyond reach."
Alone among major industrial nations, the United States rejects the relatively modest cuts of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. The task the rest of the world has now taken on, with the upcoming "Bali Roadmap" negotiations, is to try to bring the Americans into a new, post-2012 regime of deep and mandatory reductions in greenhouse emissions.

Many look beyond the Bush administration and toward a new negotiating partner, chosen in next November's U.S. presidential election, a president many expect to be a Democrat.
They were encouraged by the words last week of a key Democratic environmentalist, Sen. John Kerry, discussing the upcoming climate negotiations with The Associated Press.

"If scientists are telling us we have to keep Earth's increase in temperature to no more than 2 degrees Celsius and 445 ppm, that has to be the guide," the Massachusetts senator said. "That's the heart and soul of any negotiation."

The Sixth Extinction

A every interesting article by Michael Novacek, senior vice president and provost of the American Museum of Natural History, appeared in the Washington Post this Sunday titled The Sixth Extinction: It Happened To Him. Its Happening To You.. The article begins discussing the five other mass extinctions and the last of which occurred about 65 million years ago that wiped out the dinosaurs and 70% of all other species. According to Novacek, we are now experiencing what scientists predicted over a decade ago...the sixth extinction event.

In the article, Novacek notes that in 2007 of 41,415 species that were assessed by the IUCN (http://www.iucn.org/) 39% or 16,309 species were threatened with extinction. That is an alarming number considering that the UNEP estimates that 1,750,000 species are known and 14,000,000 are actually out there (http://www.unep.org/GEO/geo3/english/220.htm) and of that less than 2% and 0.3% (respectively) are actually assessed.

In simpler terms, Novacek says that the IUCN numbers show that one in three amphibians, one quarter of the world's pines (and coniferous trees), one in eight birds, and one in four mammals are threatened with extinction.

The numbers are alarming for the mass extinction event that is already shown to be taking place, but as Novacek points out "We are our own asteroids. Still, the primary concern here is the future welfare of us and our children. Assuming that we survive the current mass extinction event, won't we do okay? The disappearance of more than a few species is regrettable, but we can't compromise an ever-expanding population and a global economy whose collapse would leave billions to starve. This dismissal, however, ignores an essential fact about all those species: They live together in tightly networked ecosystems responsible for providing the habitats in which even we humans thrive. Pollination of flowers by diverse species of wild bees, wasps, butterflies and other insects, not just managed honeybees, accounts for more than 30 percent of all food production that humans depend upon."

I couldn't put it into better words. "The primary concern here is the future welfare of us and our children..."

Novacek echos what Our Task is all about. We need to find a way to carry out our goal--a mutually sustaining relationship between humans and the Earth.

The article continues to say what the world will be like after the mass extinction event takes place. Novacek says that the 21st century will mark the end for many species that are threatened with extinction now and that the devastated ecosystems will allow more invasive pests and weeds to take over and destroy them further. He says this is particularly dangerous because we haven't built up a biological resistance to all of these different pests and weeds.

He also says that people do care about what is happening and that recent surveys correlate with that fact. One downfall he says is that all the hype with climate change is taking attention away from other issues including deforestation and water pollution. To quote Novacek, "Global warming is of course a hugely important issue. But it is the double whammy of climate change combined with fragmented, degraded natural habitats -- not climate change alone -- that is the real threat to many populations, species and ecosystems, including human populations marginalized and displaced by those combined forces."

This is also what OT is all about. We want a mutually sustaining relationship between humans and the Earth. We want to draw attention to many different environmental important issues including global warming, climate change, deforestation, water pollution...etc.

The article ends by listing things that people are doing including protecting certain species through conservation, controlling emissions, and green building.

One of the last things Novacek says is "The first step in dealing with the problem is recognizing it for what it is."

That is my challenge to you, OT blog, let us, together, find out a way to help in this first step...helping people recognize it for what it is...and I believe we are well on our way to doing so!

New complexity discovered in ecosystems

Todd Palmer, ecologist, University of Florida, has discovered a new complexity in nature. Giraffes in Kenya feed on thorny acacia trees, so protecting the trees from giraffes, elephants, and other herbivores should help acacias to grow better, right? Wrong. Acacias and a species of ants live together in a mutually beneficial arrangement. The ants nest in the acacia's thorns and feed on nectar produced by the thorns. They also swarm out and attack giraffes and elephants when they start feeding on the acacia. But that's not the end of the story. If you protect the acacias from herbivores, the acacias grow fewer thorns and produce less nectar within a year or two. Then the ants become lazy and drop their guard, leaving the acacia vulnerable to invasion from a third actor -- wood-boring beetles. Soon their tunnels have the tree sickly, dying, or dead.

Similar complex interactions have been observed when wolfs are killed (elk expand killing off aspen) and when sharks are killed (populations of small algae-eating fish balloon and without the algae, corals die). The moral of the story: we humans have a lot to learn about Nature before we can tinker safely with its complex feedback systems.

Protecting the Use of Oil Commodities or Polar Bears?

A recent article from the Associate Press titled "Decision on Listing Polar Bear Postponed" got to me this morning.

The article opens by saying that the federal government needs a few more weeks to decide whether not to list polar bears for protection under the Endangered Species Act because of the destruction of their habitat due to global warming/climate change.

The article doesn't state that the USFWS is against listing polar bears, but it admits that even listing polar bears as threatened would "trigger limits on development, particularly oil and gas exploration and production, that could harm the animals." What are your thoughts OT blog?

I believe that protecting animal and plant species under the Endangered Species Act should not be based upon whether or not the result of protection limits our oil commodities or any other type of commodity, development, etc.

We will have to wait and see what their decision is, but because the ESA exists to protect plant and animal species that are under the threat of extinction (endangered or threatened) due to habitat destruction. The protection of endangered and threatened species is important because it preserves biodiversity.

Biodiversity is basically the variability found throughout life on Earth. It allows for adapation to change through genetic diversity. Many ecosystem services are a direct result of biodiversity including medicines. Two examples of medicines from forests are Taxol, a cancer drug from the Pacific Yew, and Quinine, a malaria drug from the cinchona tree. Biodiversity is essential to maintaining life on this planet and getting us safely through the 21st century and beyond. Creating a mutually enhancing relationship between humans and the Earth--and thus protecting biodiversity (and species like polar bears who are important to their ecosystems)--is what Our Task is all about.

Diamond Exposes Global Hoax

Jared Diamond, the Pulitzer Prize winning geographer, gets it about right in his 2 January New York Times op-ed piece on the future of Earth.

For decades high-income countries (like the US) have been promising the low-income countries that if they will only institute free markets and honest governments, they will be able to enjoy high-income lifestyles. This promise is a cruel hoax.

Diamond notes a factor of 32 separating lifestyle-related consumption in low- and high-income countries. If just China an India were to overcome the factor of 32 and reach the consumption levels the high-income countries already have, world resource consumption and waste production would triple. If the whole low-income world were to reach high-income consumption levels, world rates would increase eleven fold. It would be the equivalent of world population ballooning from our present 6.5 billion to 72 billion (at current average consumption). While some are hopeful that as many as 9 billion people can be sustained on Earth, nobody is suggesting Earth can support 72 billion. Such a prospect is simply beyond Earth's resource sources and waste sinks.

So, the promise of high-income lifestyles for all is a hoax. It won’t happen. We can’t all live the way the billion richest do. So, what can we expect? What should we do?

Low-income people know their chances of catching up are nil, and many are becoming increasingly angry. Some are becoming terrorists or are “not playing by the rules” by engaging in "asymmetric warfare". With IEDs and explosive vests easy to make, the rich are no longer protected by oceans and high-tech WMDs.

Now security can only be achieved by making consumption and living standards more equitable everywhere. Fortunately, this is possible without destitution because consumption in high-income countries is so unbelievably wasteful and contributes so little to happiness and quality of life.

The obstacle to change has been political will. Even here there is hope as illustrated by a large majority of Australia's voters recently replacing denial-driven politicians with comprehending new ones who support action on climate change and other conservation efforts. Other examples include the growing environmental movements in China and India, and the current of change now sweeping through US politics.

Diamond is cautiously optimistic that we can—and will—solve what he calls the world's "consumption problem". And so am I. Nothing is more important to the future of young people today. Everything is at stake for young people, and they need to have a voice in shaping the future of Earth. This is what Our Task is all about.