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October 26, 2007
Rotten Pumpkins
by Sylvia S Tognetti
Its getting harder to laugh given what is in the news - e.g., droughts, wildfires, higher carbon emission rates... but it is Friday, and at least where I am, we are finally getting some rain. The Colbert Report is in re-runs this week but this clip remains timely, and would have been even more appropriate this evening anyway.
Update: Joe Romm has more on Global Warming's Halloween Horror - with links to frightening news about impacts of drought and in other cases, extremely high rainfall, on this year's pumpkin crop.
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What if... Gore had been president on 9/11?
by Sylvia S Tognetti
One post I never wrote ponders how things might have been different had Gore been president on 9/11. In this youtube video, he was asked that very question, and answers it himself, adding some perspective on subsequent crises, e.g., Katrina, and stronger warnings now being received about changes in the climate. What is only too clear is that clear warnings were and continue to be ignored.
By definition, disasters are not events themselves, but the lack of capacity to respond to them. What we have now is a fuller picture of a more complex disaster of which 9/11 was only a part - which reveals not only the incapacity but also the unwillingness of the Bush administration to respond, not just to 9-11 but to a whole series of events, meanwhile continuing to be in denial of science, even as the wildfires burn. Cheney can't even stay awake. Actually it is worse than that - by suppressing science and giving higher priority to missions to mars than to observations of the earth, this administration is actively trying to reduce the capacity to respond to profound changes in our global environment. Had Bush run for office on a platform of privatizing disaster response, he would not have even come close to being elected. Can somebody please tell me why we even have a government, and how it is that Bush came to be perceived as stronger on national security? I don't know about you but the news this week makes me want to go start a pumpkin riot or something (see next post).
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October 24, 2007
Convenient excuses
by Sylvia S Tognetti
More background on the situation in Atlanta in this NYT article. As I suspected, the release of water for endangered species is a convenient excuse for failure to conserve water, even after a drought has been declared:
With a public anxious over the possibility of running out of water, the corps has not been the only entity to shoulder blame.
On Oct. 1, Stone Mountain Park began to make snow for a winter mountain, hoping to attract children who had not seen the real thing. The mountain was planned during the very wet summer of 2005, and the state and local governments were duly informed, said Christine Parker, a spokeswoman for the park.
The state announced a Level 4 drought response on a Friday and, after park officials reviewed the list of exceptions for businesses, snow-blowing began the following Monday, before much of the public had fully grasped the severity of the situation. After the project was ridiculed in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the park shut it down. Ms. Parker said that only then did the park hear from state environmental authorities.
And as I suspected, a cover up for a more complex state of affairs. Via watercrunch - Alabama begs to differ on the amount of water and sees other motives:
Georgia has repeatedly framed its request as a contest between people in the Atlanta area and endangered mussels in Florida. Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality the action that Georgia seeks will have dire consequences on people and their livelihoods downstream in Alabama.
Georgia ignores the fact that the Farley Nuclear Plant sits on the banks of the Chattahoochee River and requires cooling water from the Chattahoochee...The lack of adequate cooling water could require a shutdown of the plant, putting the reliability of the electric power grid in the region at risk....
What the State of Georgia is seeking from you is a unilateral transfer of decision-making authority over the water in the federal reservoir at Lake Lanier from federal to Georgia control. that reservoir was built with federal taxpayer dollars for certain congressionally authorized purposes, which did not include the Atlanta area water supply. While Alabama understands the needs of residents in Atlanta, we cannot stand idly by and allow Georgia to take control of the water in that reservoir to the detriment of the people who live and work downstream in Alabama...
...Alabama is not willing to cede unilateral control of waters in the Chattahoochee River Basin to the State of Georgia.
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October 22, 2007
Dry future?
by Sylvia S Tognetti
Not mentioned in the otherwise excellent NYT article by Jon Gertner regarding drought in the Southwestern US, was any mention of endangered species or any other environmental trade-offs that are the focal point of conflict in Georgia, where, according to Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, the state delegation has united "to put our people before sturgeon and mussels." That is probably because most of the remaining species and habitats in the Lower Colorado river have literally been externalized - across the border in Mexico, where the Endangered Species Act does not apply, and costs don't count, so the choice is a silent one. These are choices that should not have had to be made, that could have been avoided with a little bit of planning, and by using the capacity for foresight that science provides. As is pointed out in the report I contributed to regarding Ecosystem Changes and Water Policy Choices in the Lower Colorado river basin, fixing leaks in the plumbing - which now supply a trickle of water to the Colorado River Delta and keep it distinguishable from the surrounding desert won't solve the problem of sustaining a growing population in a region that is drying up. In the west, the situation is perceived as less urgent only because they have known this for along time, and, as Donald Wilhite points out, unlike in Atlanta, have more water storage capacity. The decision in Atlanta will be a political one - because of the endangered species act, it will at least have to be made with some awareness of the trade-offs being made.
These - and other droughts, will undoubtedly also raise awareness and provoke much discussion of global warming. This needs to be directed towards both adaptation and mitigation measures. Regarding drought elsewhere in the world, RealClimate has some guest commentary by Figen Mekik regarding drought in the Mediterranean, well worth reading in its entirety, in which he says:
Though it is “debated” in the US, most people in Turkey consider AGW to be a given. This is generally a good attitude, of course, but it opened the door for some government and city officials to simply blame AGW for drought instead of their incompetence in dealing with it. As a result, the Turkish General Directorate of Disaster Affairs started discussing whether AGW should be listed under “natural disasters” in order to provide better risk assessment and adaptation plans, and to prohibit building new structures in “high risk” areas.
One of the consequences of ignoring science is that lessons get learned the hard way, through crises. But it doesn't have to be that way. In the report on the Colorado river, we used scenarios of 2050 to explore the consequences of water policy options, while we still have some acceptable ones - roughly based on the approach used in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. There are, of course, other related approaches, such as one being developed by Leon Fuerth in the project on Forward Engagement, the objective of which is:
to encourage a more profound and continuous interaction between long-range forecasting and long-range policy-making. Encouraging this development is key to better safeguarding our society from unanticipated, strategic surprise and, in particular, assuring the continued ability of democratic governance to successfully deal with an increasing rate of change in every area of human activity.
I once had the opportunity to hear him talk about this initiative at a lecture at the World Resources Institute. Since he was the National Security Adviser to Vice President Al Gore, it was hard to listen to the talk without pondering how the past seven years might have been different.
Addendum: I neglected to include a link to John Fleck, whose excellent posts on the Georgia drought led me to the watercrunch blog. Among other things, he has a table of the Palmer Hydrologic Drought Index for north-central Georgia which shows that the current level of drought is not an unusual occurrence over the past century. What has changed is the level of vulnerability. I found a similar situation in the Washington DC area during the drought in 1989, when doing a graduate school research project. I may have to dig that up and see what is going on now.
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October 20, 2007
The difference between science and policy
by Sylvia S Tognetti
The challenge of communicating policy relevant science is perhaps nowhere better illustrated than this statement made by John H. Marburger III, as reported in the Washington Post, seemingly to justify White House rejection of the goal of limiting the global rise in temperature to 2 C, although, according to Stephen Schneider, it is entirely possible Marburger's remarks were taken out of context:
The president's top science adviser said yesterday there is no solid scientific evidence that the widely cited goal of limiting future global temperature rises to two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels is necessary to avert dangerous climate change, an assertion that runs counter to that of many scientists as well as the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
John H. Marburger III, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said at a news conference that the target of preventing Earth from warming more than two degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, "is going to be a very difficult one to achieve and is not actually linked to regional events that affect people's lives." ...
..."you could have emerging disasters long before you get to two degrees. . . . There is no scientific criterion for establishing numbers like that."
Regardless of what Marburger intended to say, it is reported as if there is a debate with legitimate opposing views as to whether there are or could be scientific criteria for establishing what is essentially a policy decision. Then, since he acknowledges the possibility of disasters at a rise of under 2C, it isn't clear what he means when he said this target is "not actually linked to regional events that affect peoples lives." Fortunately, Alden Meyer from UCS had a good answer: "The question for [Marburger] is, if not two degrees, what?"
Marburger should know better than to make such statements, and if that is what he actually said, journalists should know better. I was going to say they get away with this kind of shoddy journalism because of a lack of public appreciation of the the scientific process, but I think most people know that life is uncertain and that science is not a crystal ball. So the best explanation I can come up with at the moment is that they get away with it because it is more convenient than debating acceptability of risks for which there is no data on probabilities, and because too often, such statements go unchallenged.
Scientists, and others who do know better and seek to use science for policy, often sigh knowingly at such statements - as happened when the article was held up in opening statements of the Science for Nature symposium I attended yesterday at WWF regarding forests and climate. So during the next break, I took the opportunity to discuss it with Stephen Schneider who was also at the symposium - and who is seen in the picture above along with Chris Field, both standing next to Al Gore when he made a statement about receiving the Nobel Prize. Schneider was among those whose work led to the establishment of the IPCC and who have been part of it from the beginning. The person who actually took the most leadership to bring about the establishment of the IPCC and who also belongs in that picture is Bert Bolin.
Noting that he has had enough experience with journalists to know how often things are taken out of context and misrepresented - Schneider said the statement might not have been as bad as it was made to sound, and that it could have been a great statement if Marburger had only clarified that the selection of a target is a policy decision. However, it would be necessary to see the full text of his remarks to determine what he actually meant. After all, Marburger did acknowledge that there could be dangers even with a temperature rise under two degrees. According to Schneider, the IPCC selected the 2C target because there is a realistic shot at being able to achieve it.
In a presentation Schneider gave on Thursday morning in the opening session of the symposium, he talked about the issue of whether the "jury is still out" which depends on the standard of evidence. Science and policy have different standards and ways of looking at the world, and there is no probability data for the future. That is why scientists build models, and why Cost Benefit Analysis is meaningless outside the OMB - the trade-offs are political. Asked whether they thought the science was settled or unsettled, I was relieved that most in the audience waited to raise their hands until asked whether they thought that was a dumb question - which it is. So, when it comes to policy, we have to rely on informed judgments, and on trust. Schneider's judgment is that it is not too late to prevent the big stuff, such as the melting of Greenland, but that it will be necessary to address the problem as fast and as fair as possible. For Greenland, there is not a long enough time series and there is a lot of noise, but the degree of melting sure looks like a trend.
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October 15, 2007
Gore doesn't have to make any plans...
by Sylvia S Tognetti
First of all, congratulations to Al Gore and to the IPCC for the well-deserved Nobel Prize, to the Nobel Committee for recognizing the climate crisis as a threat to the security of mankind, and to the BBC for substantive coverage, that focused on the reason for the award, and, unlike this AP article which appeared in the NY Times, did not attempt to "balance" the story with false and misleading allegations by Bjorn Lomborg - as if the Lomborg were actually a legitimate authority on anything. (debunked already, over and over and over..., as were allegations of "errors" in his film - more here from RealClimate,) The best commentary so far regarding his detractors is from Paul Krugman, who explains "Gore Derangement Syndrome" - select quotes: "The worst thing about Mr. Gore, from the conservative point of view, is that he keeps being right"... "the biggest reason the right hates Mr Gore [is that] their smear campaign has failed. He’s taken everything they could throw at him, and emerged more respected, and more credible, than ever. And it drives them crazy." Bob Somerby promises more.
It is no accident that Gore keeps being right, and I don't see that he has in any way "reinvented" himself. Here is an excerpt from a February 2005 interview of Leon Fuerth by Harry Kreisler in a "Conversations with history" series at the UC Berkeley Institute of International Studies. Fuerth, who is now a Research Professor at George Washington University, was a National Security Advisor to Vice President Al Gore, after having worked with him since shortly after Gore was first elected to Congress:
In the Congress, you worked for the Intelligence Committee later in its early period, correct?I worked for the House Intelligence Committee as my first job after leaving the Foreign Service. I was there for a total of about six years. Around that time, Aspin was reassigned to the Arms Services Committee, which he eventually chaired. The House leadership assigned, then, young Congressman Gore to the Committee. One of my jobs in the committee was to be the staff resource on arms control verification, and Gore expressed an interest to learn something about this. The staff director steered me in his direction, and we began to form at first just a ... the two of us talking about these issues in a systematic way. When that was finished, after about a year, it began to develop into a purposeful collaboration to affect the course of public debate on nuclear weapons and arms control.
He was a person who had been elected to office. What in his character or his personality made him open to looking down the road to the future and understand issues? That's not a virtue that many people in Congress seem to have.
No, but it was something innate in him. By the time I met him, he had already been involved in forming something called the Congressional Clearinghouse for the Future.
This would have been what year?...
...Early, really early. I remember that when the staff director directed me to go see Gore, he said, "The new member says to me he wants to learn something global." And at that point, the idea of globality was a little odd to me, but it was like an isotopic marker for Gore's method of thinking. I mean, he naturally went for the full system. I didn't understand how smart he was for a while, but it became clear. The other thing in the relationship is that he told me early on, explicitly, to tell him what I thought was best for the country and leave the politics to him. And he meant it. So that was the foundation of the relationship, that I knew I could tell him anything -- I could tell him the truth, I could tell him I thought he'd just done something wrong, and that it would be absorbed without rancor, and that my value added to him was to tell it as I believed it.
This is, I presume, not the way most congresspeople are?I wouldn't say that, because by implication that would be a criticism for many excellent people in the Congress.
Okay, you're right.
All I can tell you is that's the way he was.
He was exceptional, let's say.
I think he was in many ways. I also know that there were times when on my advice he would not take positions that had become popular and accept political cost for these. I saw him do it time and time again, sometimes with his teeth gritted.
Regardless of whether Gore runs for president, this recognition conferred on him with this prize reinforces a broader framing of the concept of national security, which, for too long, has been defined by in narrow military terms like MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) that fueled the nuclear arms race. It also served as a blinder to any threat that could not be countered with force or threats of force, such as poverty and global warming, which require some capacity for collaboration, and also a willingness to do so. (For more on the history of debate over the meaning of the concept of security that has taken place since the end of the Cold war, see this post by Joe Brewer at the Rockridge Institute.) Scientists, in this case the IPCC, have also played an important role in this building the capacity for global collaboration, which requires common understanding of the problems and challenges being faced. Scientific assessments provide a good point of departure for this. Given that Gore's first climate hearings came 10 years before the IPCC, I suspect he played an enabling role in the development of the capacity we now have for global scientific assessments, along with a number of scientists and scientific organizations whose work led to its formation.
Eventually, I'll write a post about Gore's call for a Global Marshall Plan - though I think we need a new name for it, because the Marshall Plan left out the developing world, which was then left with the devastation of the Cold War. So I would call it a Post-Cold War Reconstruction. For now, I just want to note a forecast made last February by Jeffrey Feldman:
The Democratic candidate who wins the 2008 nomination for President will not be the candidate who simply puts forward the best policy proposal on Iran or Afghanistan or any other individual military issue. The candidate who wins will be the candidate who reframes the entire debate on national security in progressive terms--the candidate who steps up and liberates the country from the destructive logic of the propaganda frame that President Bush calls "The War on Terror."
Note also that, if Gore does decide to run, he doesn't have to make plans... There are plenty of people doing it for him. And so can you! Just visit www.draftgore.com, and sign the petition...
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October 9, 2007
Between a hoax and a catastrophe
by Sylvia S Tognetti
The Lomborg, now brought to you by the Washington Post, still claims to be in the mythical middle ground, somewhere in between claims of climate change as catastrophe and hoax where he is looking to have "a sensible conversation" with honesty "about the shortcomings and costs of climate policies, as well as benefits." He could start by making honest and sensible arguments himself and perhaps by acknowledging and responding to his critics, but then he might not get space on the front page of the Outlook section in the Sunday Post - or on the Colbert Report. But at least Stephen nailed him (video link) - as much as could be done in the few minutes in which he appeared on the show. Meanwhile the Post continues to demonstrate why we should all be more skeptical about what we read in the papers.
I just took another look at details about expected sea level rise in the IPCC report, which Lomborg clearly misrepresents, but see this post by Joseph Romm, who has already taken the time to sort it out - in that and in 3 earlier posts he links to. It would be nice if Lomborg included references for statements that seem like they are pulled either out of context or out of thin air itself, i.e., on what basis does he make the claim that the dramatic increase in Greenland's melting seems transitory? And who exactly is "scoffing" that the IPCC severely underestimated the rate at which glaciers are melting? But even suppose Lomborg were right in selecting an average value for expected mean sea level rise from what is clearly a conservative estimate for reasons that have to do with the scientific process - such as a reluctance to quantify processes not yet sufficiently understood, like the speed of ice flow at outlet glaciers and ice streams that have changed more rapidly than expected. What is of concern from a policy perspective are the impacts of Sea Level Rise for which average values aren't very helpful because they are driven by extreme but normally occurring events. As stated in the IPCC Technical Summary:
The greatest climate- and weather-related impacts of sea level are due to extremes on time scales of days and hours, associated with tropical cyclones and mid-latitude storms. Low atmospheric pressure and high winds produce large local sea level excursions called 'storm surges,' which are especially serious when they occur with high tide. Changes in the frequency of occurrence of these extreme sea levels are affected both by changes in mean sea level and in the meteorological phenomena causing the extremes.
For more on scientific reticence, see this paper (pdf) by James Hansen and stay tuned for my review of Chris Mooney's book, Stormworld.
What I find particularly annoying are Lomborg's repeated accusations and mischaracterizations of the views of unnamed environmental groups or just plain "people." Environmental organizations and individual advocates, and scientists who also "want to put out the fire" are quite a diverse bunch who, unlike Lomborg - or Luntz, or even Nordhaus and Shellenburger, can disagree with each other in a number of ways without setting themselves apart from and attacking all "environmental groups" and who have been trying to have an honest and sensible conversation about how best to address the climate crisis in time to avoid a catastrophe. This conversation is hardly limited to the costs and benefits of the Kyoto Protocol. Addressed in a smart way, investments in reducing carbon emissions could have numerous other benefits - e.g., see: Barack Obama's energy plan, or Al Gore's call for a Global Marshall Plan (UN webcast - Al Gore's remarks don't start until approximately minute 35) which calls for addressing the climate crisis in ways that also fight poverty. Regarding costs and benefits, see also this post here on PNT by Paul Baer on The worth of an Ice Sheet - which makes the case that to determine what an ice-sheet is worth, we have to first determine what will be required to actually save it and what the trade-offs would actually be. Thanks to the Lomborgs and the Luntzs of the world, that conversation has barely begun. Given that the melting of the Greenland ice sheet is beyond anyone's practical experience, any insistence that the costs are large relative to the benefits is pure hubris.
Update: Joe Romm dug up another paper and provides more details on the increase in ice discharge from Greenland outlet glaciers and changes in ice flow speed that have been observed. It also appears to be the paper Lomborg relied on to claim that "the Kangerlussuaq glacier is inconveniently growing." But that is hardly what the paper says. But go read Joe Romm's post. The Washington Post needs to publish some corrections.
2nd update: The Washington Post has not published corrections but they did publish an excellent rebuttal by Judith Curry, which should have been on the front page of the Sunday Outlook section, but at least it's in print. Hat tip again to Joe Romm.
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October 5, 2007
One of the most important developments in the history of science?
by Sylvia S Tognetti
So says Andy Albrecht, as reported in the New Scientist. In a post that must have disappeared into one of those parallel universes, but that shows up in my rss feeds, David Appell asks what they could possibly be talking about. Stephen Colbert explains:
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October 4, 2007
Emerging values of the Colorado River Delta
by Sylvia S Tognetti
One of the projects that has kept me busy over the past several months is a case study conducted by the Sonoran Institute in collaboration with Island Press - and myself as a consultant, entitled Ecosystem Changes and Water Policy Choices: Four Scenarios for the Lower Colorado River Basin to 2050. The scenarios, which are based on the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) framework, explore the consequences of different kinds of water policy choices for the river's Delta, and for human well-being. Given the broad scope of the MA, and my previous work on that and on the general subject of ecosystem services, my role was primarily to develop the conceptual framework, narrowing it down to something we could actually do that would be worthwhile, given time and budget constraints. As for the Colorado River, it was somewhat of a learning experience for me - but Mark Lellouch and Karen Hyun did an amazing job of bringing together the relevant information for this complex case and in developing most of the narrative of the scenarios. I urge you to read the more complete versions in the full report rather than in the summary version. There is also a press release here, and an article about it in the LA Times here. There was an interesting response to the Dry Future scenario when it was presented at a recent conference but first a brief overview.
But for leaks and occasional overflows in the plumbing of the Colorado River that has made it possible to irrigate 3.5 million acres, and for now 30 million people to live in a dry and largely desert region, and which would otherwise divert every last drop of water, it would be difficult to distinguish the Delta from the surrounding Sonoran desert. Given the context of what we now know to be regularly occurring long term drought in the western US, exacerbated by climate change and the water demands of an exploding population, efforts to restore the Colorado River Delta might seem like a "faith-based initiative." However, even though in Mexico, the Delta is no longer in a collective blind spot where any water that reaches it is regarded as waste, At a conference I attended last March at the University of Utah Stegner Center, even Pat Mulroy, commonly referred to as the Las Vegas Water Czar, acknowledged the need to ensure water for the Delta.
Although reduced to 8% of its original size, the Delta remains an interacting mosaic of terrestrial, wetland, freshwater and marine habitats that support high productivity in the Sea of Cortez, and high concentrations of fish and wildlife that include numerous endemic species of fish, and over 360 species of birds, including many migratory ones for whom it is a stop along the Pacific flyway, and the largest known concentration of the endangered Yuma clapper rail. It is used for shelter and feeding by over 350,000 shorebirds that represent over 50% of all bird species in North America, and is likely important also to the endangered totoaba fish and vaquita porpoise populations that inhabit the upper Gulf of California. Last but not least, it supports livelihoods and ways of life valued by local communities, many indigenous to the region, as well as recreation and tourism. Proposals to increase the supply of water for agriculture and urban growth through repairs in the plumbing would come at the expense of the Delta and would do little to do little to resolve growing conflicts over what has become a diminishing supply of water. In addition to altering precipitation patterns, climate change also increases rates of evaporation.
In the scenarios, this kind of a business-as-usual approach, with an emphasis on continuing to develop new supplies of water, leads to a Dry Future – a scenario in which there are few choices left to be made, and those few remaining are ones that no one would be likely to choose for themselves. The other three scenarios are somewhat more optimistic but depend on whether we actually make choices, now, and are willing to pay the cost using various kinds of economic instruments that also create incentives for conservation. Survival of the Delta, unlikely if The Market Rules, will depend on whether lessons are learned from past mistakes. As we see in Powell’s Prophecy, this (in part) long anticipated situation should not come as a surprise to anyone. Finally, the improbable but not impossible scenario, that enough water is allocated to achieve a functioning Delta and Estuary Once More, is made possible by fundamental changes in beliefs and values that occurred following a series of crises in the early 21st century, which led to a recognition that ecosystems are the foundation of human security and freedom, and is helped along by a Supreme Court decision that requires protection of the endangered vaquita porpoise in extra-territorial waters of the upper Gulf of California.
These scenarios, which represent different values and beliefs about the future, are not a road map - which would require much more extensive research and analysis, but simply pull together much of the known information into a narrative form that is intended to illustrate trade-offs and what choices remain available, so as to engage stakeholders in a discussion of the future they desire for the Basin, and of what trade-offs they are willing to make. Indeed, when Mark Lellouch presented the Dry Future scenario at a recent conference, which directly addressed the theme of a session entitled “The Southwest at 50 M People; the Colorado River at 10 maf (million acre feet): What If?” - it did indeed generate audience discussion. But although these figures are well within accepted scientific estimates of population growth and reduction of flow associated with climate change, other panelists did not accept the premise inherent in the title of the session. Instead, they argued that shortages could be addressed through various kinds of market mechanisms, interstate storage and transfers, and technical measures such as desalinization, which can, in theory, provide an unlimited supply of water.
In practice, although desalinization and other technical measures do provide options, given their costs, our scenarios find it unlikely that they would help ensure water for the Delta. They would also do little to address quality of life in the region, which does not rely on water alone. In the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment framework, and as pointed out by the Nobel prize winning economist Amartya Sen, the most basic aspect of human well-being is to have freedom of choice and action as to how other kinds of needs are met (i.e., the ability to earn a livelihood, to maintain good health and social relations, and to be secure). It remains to be seen whether we have the capacity to make such choices. As Bob Adler also points out in his book, Restoring Colorado River Ecosystems: A Troubled Sense of Immensity
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