Prime Minister Martin had received a standing ovation for a speech in which he said "To the reticent nations, including the United States, I say there is such a thing as a global conscience, and now is the time to listen to it. Now is the time ... for action." I guess next they will blame Clinton? Oh, wait - anonymous Bush-Administration officials are also reported to have told conference organizers that "any chance for the United States to sign on to the Kyoto global-warming protocol would be scuttled if they allowed Bill Clinton to speak" - as if that were ever a remote possibility. But they backed off, Clinton spoke, and they walked out anyway. The US was not the only country to receive Fossil of the Day Awards but you can read about the rest of them here. In the end, the US agreed to "exploratory global dialogue on future steps to combat climate change" still ruling out any "negotiations leading to new commitments."

In spite of all of the above, there were some accomplishments:

We also now have more certainty on an area of uncertainty I pointed out in the initial blog post - whether science and public opinion has any effect whatsoever on Bush administration decisions, and therefore, on the climate. But, as the CAN newsletter points out, the train from Kyoto is leaving the Montreal station, leaving the Bush administration [mostly*] on the platform, and much of the world looking forward to the working with the next president, in 2009.

As for Kyoto, nothing is perfect, but an emissions cap is generally regarded as essential for lowering the cost of carbon emission reductions through markets for emission reduction credits. Although questions remain about feasibility of carbon markets in practice, IMHO, a cap on emissions can also create economic incentives for the kind of technological innovation that will be needed to begin to move beyond a fossil fuel economy. The real challenge is how to do that, as well as respond to unavoidable impacts. But there are a lot of creative ideas and possibilities floating around that just seem to need a policy framework for getting us from here to there. For a very readable overview of what was on the table in Montreal, that explains the meaning of many of the acronyms, see this article at the EcosystemMarketPlace. More thorough reporting and analysis in the Climate Action Network Eco newsletters, and the IISD Earth Negotiations Bulletins (which should have a final summary up soon).

*You are either on a train or you are not... Or, as a Montreal train conductor might say: "Alors, vous montez, ou vous restez sur le quai?"

[The pictures were taken last year at a behind the scenes tour of the ExpoRail, Canadian Railway Museum, compliments of Daniel Laurendeau, seen in the last picture, channeling the operator of a Montreal Streetcar. At the time, I was in Montreal for a combined working group meeting of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment - which I will probably blog about in the near future - the full reports are due to be released in January. In addition to ExpoRail, I also, of course, managed to squeeze in some aikido practice and a visit to the water museum which, at least at the time, had a great exhibit about climate change in the Great Lakes. ]

Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 7:23 PM

December 9, 2005

Untapped frontiers

by Sylvia S Tognetti

Addendum to the last post: More details on this in the Guardian where "professional sceptic" Chris Horner, in an e-mail from last January, refers to Europe as an "untapped frontier," compares himself to Neil Armstrong, and justifies his proposal by saying "US companies need someone they can trust, and it's just a den of thieves over there." No, I think the den of thieves emanates from the Foggy Bottom - (for non-Washingtonians, a former swamp area near the White House that has been infested by the Lernaean Hydra).

Thanks for the last link to DeSmogBlog - a new blog by public relations professional, Jim Hoggan, who is infuriated and disgusted by the use of PR talent to spread disinformation about climate, in what he calls a "triumph of disinformation." He goes on to explain the fundamentals of ethical and unethical PR - this is required reading. Its about time the PR industry started to police its own profession - another untapped frontier.

Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 11:22 AM

December 8, 2005

What a surprise!

by Sylvia S Tognetti

Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 8:38 PM

December 7, 2005

Who domesticated who?

by Sylvia S Tognetti

I've been reading a book on Climate Change in Prehistory, which actually has a chapter heading with the title, "Did we domesticate dogs or did they domesticate us?" This morning, via a link in the HuffPost, I found the answer in this article in Wired Magazine, that reports on the development of a cell phone developed to keep track of dogs. But seriously, we probably never would have survived the ice age without the teamwork, and cooperation may be something we learned from them. I may have more comments on this subject when I finish the book...

Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 12:18 PM

Keeping an eye on the eye of epsilon

by Sylvia S Tognetti

It's still there. Jeff Masters tries to explain. As for the reason for so many hurricanes made landfall in the US in this season, he explains in a previous post, that a ridge of high pressure over the eastern US that steered storms toward the Atlantic and Gulf coasts was formed in response to a strong warming of the ocean in the North Central Pacific which deflected the jet stream. But concedes ignorance as to the reason the ocean warmed in the Central North Pacific - which would be a question for the climatologists...

Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 11:39 AM

December 1, 2005

Post-normal hurricane season

by Sylvia S Tognetti

Update 12/2/05, 9 pm: Jeff Masters/Wunderblog has now posted a list of all the hurricane records broken in 2005 hurricane season, which has defied "normal rules" and isn't over yet... Epsilon was upgraded to hurricane status and favorable conditions for tropical storm formation may last into mid-December. So there could be a Zeta.

Since at least 1851, according to Jeff Masters Wunderblog, no tropical storm has come within 500 miles of the Canary Islands, until last Monday, when Delta knocked "God's Finger" into the ocean - a historical landmark and major tourist attraction. And although hurricane season officially ended at midnight (Nov. 30th), Epsilon, which marks the first time on record that 3 tropical storms have formed in November, is expected to linger until tomorrow, December 2nd.

Global warming? Or flip flop, from inactive to active hurricane period? Or both? Or is this debate merely an artifact of the media's obsession with finding a smoking gun - which makes a better story line, given Low Ambiguity Tolerance among consumers of news? And of presenting complex and multifaceted science and policy issues as a two sided debate.

[Addendum: or maybe it is the policy process itself that has a Low Ambiguity Tolerance - see also this post by Kevin Vranes.]

It is, or should by now be, common knowledge that one can't link individual hurricane events to global warming, and that asking whether global warming caused Katrina is the wrong question. But that doesn't mean it isn't a contributing factor, or that there isn't an link between global warming and an increase in the intensity of hurricanes. The record isn't long enough to say anything conclusive about hurricane frequency. There have been plenty of articles and posts on this, but here is one more, by James Risbey, Karl Braganza and Thomas Homer-Dixon that provides a good summary of scientific evidence, from theory, models, and observations, all of which point to a link, and presents the context and nuance that are missing from most news accounts, but that are critical for understanding complex problems and their implications. In case you haven't followed this one, more on this in RealClimate, in this Washington Post article, in this interview with Judith Curry, and in presentations made by Kevin Trenberth, Judith Curry, and Kerry Emanuel at the Environmental Seminar Series of the American Meteorological Association, which I attended but did not blog about at the time because Chris Mooney put up a good summary of it here. But will add that, in informal remarks afterwards, Judith Curry also raised the issue discussed here, that the media always makes scientists look more divided than they are, because they present issues as a polarized debate when the reality is, that climate researchers and hurricane forecasters just have different perspectives and are learning from each other - and could and should do more of that.

Still, it seems like every time a hurricane comes ashore, as we are all reminded of this likely connection, Roger Pielke Jr. is there to remind everyone that there is no evidence that additional hurricane intensity has contributed to the increase in damages, which depend on what lies in the hurricane's path, and that reducing greenhouse gas emissions won't prevent this. Fair enough. But it does not seem like a constructive way to frame the problem. As to whether current scientific understanding of global warming and hurricanes justifies policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it depends... on values. It should also be common knowledge that life is uncertain, that science is no crystal ball, and that waiting for more data also has a cost. What we do know tells us that humans have increased the uncertainty of the climate itself even if we are uncertain by how much or what the impacts will be.

However, it would help if there were more clarity about what the benefits of reducing emissions are, and are not. And to also bring an equal amount of attention to the need for policies aimed at reducing vulnerability, and adapting to more rapid changes and greater variability in climate that are now unavoidable. I have not heard any claims that reducing emissions would significantly reduce the frequency and intensity of hurricanes over the forseeable future. The reason to reduce emissions is to stablilize atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gasses at or below a level needed to prevent average global temperatures from rising to a level that would cause more catastrophic impacts, as opposed to just devastating ones. But long-term benefits are never quite as compelling as a hurricane headed for New Orleans, or even the reduction of snowfall, upon which water supplies depend in the western US, and which can be a matter of life an death to reindeer herds in the arctic, which is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, and those who depend on them, who are literally on the front lines.

Those who do not have children, or nieces and nephews, or some unreconstructed economist, might say something like "what has posterity done for me?" I'm not really in a philosophical mood this morning, but see this essay by Dmitri Podborits, where he talks about "deferring the recognition of the universe's challenge until the crisis that is currently visible on the horizon becomes detectible through market and monetary mechanisms, signals from which in this particular peculiar civilization apparently take precedence over the other six senses" - the sixth being rational reasoning. I have nothing against economists who recognize the limits of their discipline but find economic anthropology to be more interesting and perhaps even useful for thinking about the long-term. Adopting an impersonal and delayed view of reciprocity, often found in traditional subsistence economies, we might think of leaving something for posterity as a way repay a debt to our ancestors, who developed the wits to survive an ice age. In Post-Normal Times, we will need those wits. When dealing with uncertainty, this broader concept of reciprocity and of value is even rational... I'll elaborate on that when I'm in the mood for a diatribe. In the meantime, policies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, such as reducing sprawl development patterns, and improving public transportation, can have many other environmental and social benefits - even if they don't reduce the frequency and intensity of hurricanes. In New Orleans, improved public transportation would have reduced vulnerability to Katrina.

Posted by Sylvia S Tognetti at 1:36 PM