Entangled States

Climate change God's judgement not Man's fault?

The BBC has a report this morning on a growing sentiment in parts of the developing world that the climate change that they are witnessing is not due to the actions of humankind. They are a result of God's judgement upon us. And as such, there is nothing we can change that will have any effect on the situation other than pray for help.

From the end of the article:

"Climate change is a global issue transcending national boundaries, but impacting first on those who can least afford to cope with the consequences.

The 'God not man' cry from the lady in Kenya's northern reaches illustrates a common problem relating to understanding the underlying causes, and underscores the incapability of people in such situations to deal with the crisis that has impacted so severely on their communities.

As Wangari Maathai, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, notes:

'Climate change will bring massive ecological and economic challenges… therefore, alleviating dehumanising poverty will become even more difficult.'"

Read the full article here.

The point the article is trying to make, but doesn't really in the end, is that attributing the climate changes to God leads us to think that God is going to be the one who's going to reverse them. It's the very definition of magical thinking and is not likely to be very effective.

It doesn't seem all that different, to me at least, than the line of thought attributed to people like the former Secretary of the Interior, James Watt, who believed the rapture was so imminent that there was no reason for Christians to conserve natural resources. Instead, the reasoning went, profligate use of the resources was a sign of strong faith that God was coming soon and would remake the earth and effectively restore everything we had used.

Not unlike using the ever-increasing equity in our homes to pay off our ever increasing credit card debt...

The BBC article really doesn't suggest any solutions to the problem of magical thinking among the poor in the developing world other than to "harness the power of youth". But as the sixties remind all of us who grew up in them, that doesn't really guarantee anything. Youth can act destructively as likely as they might act constructively. Such is the way of mankind.

Better, for Christians at least, would be to emphasize the meaning of stewardship among the Christian people in the developing world. We should be encouraging them to expect their governments to find ways to live gently in their environment, to do their collective best to steward the natural riches of the nations in which they live. I remember when I was in Swaziland, talking with local farmers who had begun to realize the toll that western style, petrochemical based agriculture was taking on their tribal lands. The old style tradition of small gardens, compost and regular crop rotation was much more effective at producing enough to eat, and was sustainable.

Of course that will require those of us who live in the developed world to put our money where our mouth is first. Otherwise why should anyone listen to us? We'd be like the Pharisees who bind others with burdens too great to bear while finding loopholes to excuse ourselves.

It will probably require us to downsize the homes we live in, move back into the cities closer to the places we work and shop, buy smaller cars, etc. In other words, live more like European society has been living for years. It's really not an awful thing to contemplate if we put it into that context is it?

Will our actions make a difference? There's a legitimate disagreement going on about whether the climate change we are observing is caused by human actions or not. But if not, it makes sense to act conservatively so as to try our best not hasten the rate of the change. Plus living as if it were will help us to start focusing our attention on what might be needed to survive what might come.

It's not all that bad really. Imagine living in a small German, French or Italian city, or in one of the villages that surround them. What's to fear in that future?

Climategate and the Irish Church scandal

Last week, while most of us here in the states were busy spending time with family and friends, the ongoing scandal of "Climategate" took a couple of new turns.

Climategate is the popular term referring to the release by a computer hacker of a large body of private emails written by climate researchers. As people have combed through the emails they've found a number of questionable statements regarding the data the researchers have been citing to support their contention that Earth is growing warmer.

Note that there's a variety of terms and causes that are typically included under the popular phrase "Global Warming". People use that term to imply that human beings, by using fossil fuels, are causing a global rise in temperatures that will have deleterious, even catastrophic effects on our climates.

But, more accurately people can speak of climate change (which means that some places are getting warmer and others are getting colder), anthropogenic change (which means human caused change), global warming in general (which means a rise in average temperatures on the surface of the earth), and rising Carbon levels (which can both be of natural cause and/or human origin) that can contribute to global warming.

How these different things lead to one another, or even interact is not well understood. It's not even clear that there's anything we as humans can do to change the system or that we're driving whatever change is being observed. But all of those questions are dependent on what has, until now, been a broadly accepted set of data that show that whatever the cause or mechanism, global temperatures are getting higher.

But that data is being called into question because of some references within the emails referred to above. These references have caused broad calls that the raw data about the temperature rise be fully published. Until last week, these calls were being rejected.

That changed over the weekend:

"The U-turn by the university follows a week of controversy after the emergence of hundreds of leaked emails, 'stolen' by hackers and published online, triggered claims that the academics had massaged statistics.

In a statement welcomed by climate change sceptics, the university said it would make all the data accessible as soon as possible, once its Climatic Research Unit (CRU) had negotiated its release from a range of non-publication agreements."

From here.

This is critically important, and frankly should have happened long ago. The scientific method fundamentally depends upon transparency. The worst sin a scientist can commit is to fake data. Data points need to be published, and the methods used to obtain them fully disclosed so that the data can be verified and if not, errors can be identified.

The fact that there are loud critics challenging results is no reason at all to hold back on the publication of raw data. If anything it all the more reason to be scrupulously honest. If there are errors, the opponents are going to be the most likely people to find them. And if they're found, they can be corrected. Which will lead to better data, and better understanding of what is happening. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I can add that I believe the same thing to be true about pretty much any human endeavor, including theological thinking and church governance.

There's been a great deal of human mischief done to people by the Church because of the sense that the institution needs to be protected from harsh questions. Take the situation in Ireland right now. A series of four archbishops have acted to cover up many many cases of sexual abuse by clergy inflicted upon children throughout that country. Their need to protect the church from "scandal" and not the children, has allowed the abusers to continue to have free access to more victims.

A transparent and public airing of the scandal from the very beginning would have been very embarrassing for the Church. But it would have saved the lives of many children. There's no doubt what Jesus would do.

Global warming: no turning back?

So okay, the headline is a little alarmist. I should probably say "Rising C02 levels" rather than "global warming" and "rising in spite of any efforts to stop them" instead of "no turning back". But that will hardly make people read about this new study.

Tim Garret, a physicist specializing in Atmospheric research, has created a new model predicting the amount of C02 that civilization produces. He models it on some specific and mostly obvious assumptions. Admittedly his first one, that conservation does not slow energy use, it accelerates it in overall terms is counterintuitive, but defensible.

Using these assumptions he's created a mathematical model that attempts to predict the future effect of a number of possible changes we might make in response to a rise in C02 levels. In essence he's created an economic model, but used typical physicist assumptions in that he's views civilization as a heat engine rather than an ensemble of rational actors. Not all economists think his contribution has any value.

But, that aside, his model does make some depressing predictions:

"Garrett says often-discussed strategies for slowing carbon dioxide emissions and global warming include mention increased energy efficiency, reduced population growth and a switch to power sources that don't emit carbon dioxide, including nuclear, wind and solar energy and underground storage of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning. Another strategy is rarely mentioned: a decreased standard of living, which would occur if energy supplies ran short and the economy collapsed, he adds.

'Fundamentally, I believe the system is deterministic,' says Garrett. 'Changes in population and standard of living are only a function of the current energy efficiency. That leaves only switching to a non-carbon-dioxide-emitting power source as an available option.'

'The problem is that, in order to stabilize emissions, not even reduce them, we have to switch to non-carbonized energy sources at a rate about 2.1 percent per year. That comes out to almost one new nuclear power plant per day.'"

Read the full article here.

The suggestion that we need to create that many new nuke plants is probably already moot given this news.

Overuse of natural resources 'caused Nazca collapse'

Back when I was in High School and the works of Eric Von Daniken were still new and popular, I was fascinated by the mysterious works of the Nazca people in Peru. Von Daniken claimed that the giant figures that the Nazca people carved into the plateaus of Peru were meant to be seen by alien spaceships. (A bit of a reach perhaps, but if you know Von Daniken's work, exactly what you'd expect.)

But what made the lines so much more mysterious was the fact that the people who had made them apparently disappeared without a trace soon after. If Von Daniken was to be believed, something I was willing to do as a sophomore in High School, perhaps the alien arks had been in fact summoned and the people of the Plains of Nazca returned to the stars.

Turns out the explanation is much less poetic. But ultimately more important to us today. According to a new study, a team of archeologists have found that the civilization that created the enormous figures on the plains died off because they over consumed the limited natural resources they depended on.

A report on the BBC site explains:

"Analysing plant remains [the archeological team] reveal how the destruction of forests containing the huarango tree crossed a tipping point, causing ecological collapse.

The team have published their findings in the journal of Latin American Antiquity.

'These were very special forests,' says Dr David Beresford-Jones from the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, UK who led the team.

The huarango tree (Prosopis pallida) is a unique tree with many qualities and played a vital role in the habitat, protecting the fragile desert ecosystem, the scientists say."

Read the full article here.

Over logging these trees destroyed the environmental balance that the people depended on to be able to live in the hostile environment.

One wonders how much longer we have until we reach a similar tipping point in regions of the earth that are carrying far more than the normal capacity because of our use of high-energy storage resources like oil and coal. Or until our over logging of forests too drastically reduces the environments ability to sequester sufficient carbon dioxide that might cause a runaway greenhouse effect.

More information on this story here on one of the Discovery Magazine's blogs.

Study: Wealth buys rescue from urban heat island

News of a study linking death rates caused by the weather to the mean income of a neighborhood was just published here in Arizona:

"[The] link between money and the ability to cope with extreme weather emerged clearly in the research. Among the startling revelations: For every $10,000 an area's income rises, the average outside temperature drops one-half degree Fahrenheit.

'It's an environmental-justice issue,' said Darren Ruddell, a geographer who led the study. 'The people who are most vulnerable are also living in the worst conditions. It's a double whammy.'"

Read the full article here.

The study looked specifically at a heatwave back in 2005 during which something on the order of 31 people died here in Phoenix because of heat related stress.

The major finding is that wealthier neighborhoods are able to afford the sort of landscaping, grass, and shade trees that allow the overnight temperature to lower more quickly than it does in a neighborhood with mostly asphalt, concrete and dirt lots. Add to that the financial resources in the wealthier neighborhoods that allow the residents to use their air conditioners when it's 100 degrees or higher outside. (Which in Phoenix can be our summertime overnight low temperature.)

Local people have reacted with programs like the water stations that are set up around town during heat advisories. Trinity Cathedral has a group of volunteers called our "Hotshots" that work with the Salvation Army in our neighborhood to staff one such site that serves the urban homeless during high heat days.

The interesting finding in the studies is that xeric landscaping (which is a design which attempts to create a local landscape as much like the original desert environment as possible) may be making things worse. The motivation behind xeric landscapes is water conservation. But by not using water on landscapes, we are losing the evaporative cooling that vegetation enables overnight.

Twenty years ago the area where I now live was pretty much just citrus orchards. I live about 3 miles from downtown Phoenix. I imagine that miles and miles and miles of trees right up against the urban setting of the city had a major effect on the temperatures. It was less the desert landscape that kept things cool and more the trees.

Perhaps it's time to rethink what we do outside?

Supernova event recorded in the Earth's ice

Neat! New details about a claim I remember being made at the beginning of this decade:

"Chinese and Arabic astronomers left historical documentation of a supernova that occurred in our own galaxy in the year 1006 (SN 1006), and another one 48 years later (SN 1054). Some of the writings about SN 1006 say there was a visual explosion half the size of the moon, and it shone so brightly that objects on the ground could be seen at night. We know these writings weren't just fantastical imaginations because we now have the 'leftovers' of these supernovae; Supernova Remnant 1006 and the Crab Nebula. But now there is more evidence. A team of Japanese scientists has found the first evidence of supernovae in an ice core sample."

Read the full article here.

The short version is that scientists are able to observe Nitrogen Oxide spikes in multiple ice core samples at depths that correspond to the dates of known super-nova events. (There's also evidence of a third, unrecorded event as well.)

The next interesting question - which isn't answered in this article and perhaps hasn’t been studied yet - is whether or not these super-nova events had any effect on the Sun and/or Earth's magnetic fields and the Sun's flux levels.

If they do, that might help explain some of the odd non-cyclical climate changes that occur for no apparent cause. (Perhaps the Sun's fusion rate is perturbed by a massive flux of elementary particles from a nearby supernova or x-ray burster event.)

Return to Virtue

I just posted an article over at the Episcopal Cafe pointing to this wonderful lecture by the Abbot of Worth. It's the inagural Noah Lecture (a british charity) and deals primarily with finding a theological basis for sustainable living.

The good Abbot finds his foundation in a call for all of us to return to the cardinal virtues - especially and more importantly - the prime virtue of Temperance.

From his lecture:

"So how does the metaphysics of virtue work when applied to climate change? Let’s take each of the four classical virtues in turn and look very briefly at their connection to environmental action. Firstly, fortitude: we are going to need courage to address our ecological problems. National and local communities will need courage to create a culture of environmental awareness and to take concrete steps to address climate change. Secondly, justice: justice will lead us to reach solutions that protect the weakest against the actions of the strong, so that third world countries are not left paying the ecological price for first world consumption. Thirdly, temperance: we will need to moderate our use of resources and develop technologies that enable us to use them more efficiently. Finally, prudence: we will need to act with prudence and not risk irreversible changes to the climate. At the same time, prudence requires us to recognise the benefits of industrial culture in relieving poverty, so we will not misuse the prudential principle to undermine those benefits.  The key point to note, however, is that the tradition of the virtues insists that all the virtues are operative at the same time. So simply emphasising justice is inadequate; each helps to define the other. As we shall see later, the addition of the theological virtues of faith, hope and love generates a comprehensive picture of human action that constitutes the Church's unique contribution.

These examples are broad applications of the virtues but even these generalised insights give the missing ingredient in the current environmental debate: the virtues provide an agreed framework within which to conduct the debate about what actions we need to take in the light of climate change. Most importantly, the framework of the virtues can be used for deciding both policy questions and lifestyle issues."

Read the full article here.

I'm so stealing this for the essay on Temperance that I'm working for our aspirants here in the Diocese of Arizona... grin.

Culture Change: You. Will. Not. Be. Able. To. Get. Food.

Ugh and Ugh. A article that points out that the Peak Oil situation combined with the observed undergoing climate change may be creating a much more immediately dire situation together than on their own. Maybe not so quickly in the developed world as in the developing, but according to the article it's a matter of time. (Says your writer who lives in the US's 5th largest city, in the middle of huge desert.)

"You. Will. Not. Be. Able. To. Get. Food. Need this be spelled out any more plainly? It is time to consider that the stage has been set for petroleum-induced famine.

We have 'innocently' accommodated rising population with greater and greater food production via technology and the profit motive. But now we have run out of room to grow, as biotechnology, for example, has severe limitations -- major ones being petroleum dependence and topsoil loss. The biggest wild card for our existence is climate change, as we see with floods and other extreme weather affecting our food supply.

We are headed for massive shortages of food and other essentials, mainly brought about by the depletion of geological fossil reserves of cheap energy and water. The situation is demonstrated regularly with easy arithmetic based on statistical indicators from the United Nations, Worldwatch Institute, World Resources Institute, Earth Policy Institute, and numerous governments. Usually the full force of the message is offset by predictions of huge rises in future human population growth that are simple extrapolations of historical trends."

Read the full article here.

Hat tip to the Oil Drum for the pointer.

Agency Calls for ‘Energy Revolution’

Sorry to be so quiet here over the past week. I've been in North Carolina meeting with representatives of the Moravian Church's Northern and Southern Provinces to finish up the crafting of a Full Communion agreement between our church and theirs.

I'll post something about that effort in a bit.

In the meantime, here's an article from the New York Times that reports on a growing recognition that energy shortages are going to continue to grow, and are going to have a world-wide effect.

"The International Energy Agency, a group that advises industrialized countries, said Friday in a report that investments of at least $45 trillion might be needed over the next half-century to prevent energy shortages and greenhouse gas emissions from slowing economic growth.

Nobuo Tanaka, the agency’s executive director, called for ‘immediate policy action and technological transition on an unprecedented scale.’

Mr. Tanaka said the world would ‘essentially require a new global energy revolution which would completely transform the way we produce and use energy.’

The report sends a strong warning that the combination of growing demand for energy in countries like China and India, the dangers of climate change and the scarcity of resources are going to require huge shifts in the global economy. Countries will have to overcome objections to building nuclear power plants and to storing large amounts of carbon dioxide underground or beneath the ocean floor."

Read the full article here.

You should follow the link above if, for no other reason, to see the picture that heads the story. It's a line of chinese motor scooter owners waiting in line in China to find gas for the vehicles.

I'm planning on buying a motor scooter this fall for use here in Phoenix. Perhaps I need to be thinking about an electric one rather than a gas powered one...

Global warming or global cooling?

Which is it?

An article today reports on research that the Antarctic iceshelf is expected to disappear relatively soon:

"Last summer sea ice in the North shrank to a record low, a change many attribute to global warming.

But while solar radiation and amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are similar at the poles, to date the regions have responded differently, with little change in the South, explained oceanographer James Overland of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

What researchers have concluded was happening, was that in the North, global warming and natural variability of climate were reinforcing one another, sending the Arctic into a new state with much less sea ice than in the past.

'And there is very little chance for the climate to return to the conditions of 20 years ago,' he added.

On the other hand, Overland explained, the ozone hole in the Antarctic masked conditions there, keeping temperatures low in most of the continent other than the peninsula reaching toward South America.

'So there is a scientific reason for why we're not seeing large changes in the Antarctic like we're seeing in the Arctic,' he said.

But, Overland added, as the ozone hole recovers in coming years, global warming will begin to affect the South Pole also. "

And then there was an article in the BBC that reported that the climate forecast was for global cooling for the next few years (at least until 2015 or so)

"A new computer model developed by German researchers, reported in the journal Nature, suggests the cooling will counter greenhouse warming.

However, temperatures will again be rising quickly by about 2020, they say. Other climate scientists have welcomed the research, saying it may help societies plan better for the future.

The key to the new prediction is the natural cycle of ocean temperatures called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), which is closely related to the warm currents that bring heat from the tropics to the shores of Europe.

The cause of the oscillation is not well understood, but the cycle appears to come round about every 60 to 70 years.

It may partly explain why temperatures rose in the early years of the last century before beginning to cool in the 1940s."

(NB: this effect would only slow the increase in global warming if the model that predicts if verifies.)

So which is it: global warming or global cooling?

The answer is that the system scientist are trying to understand is extraordinarily complex. And the interrelations in the system between various inputs is not yet well understood. It's because of this difficulty that I've consistently tried to use the term "Climate Change" on this blog rather than global warming. If what we're seeing happen continues, parts of the globe are going to get warmer, but some areas, like Arizona and northern Europe might well get cooler. That's why Climate Change is really a better phrase.

The additional question that folks are trying to answer is how much of the change is happening on account of human activities and the changes they bring to the environment. The majority of scientists believe that a significant portion of the change is due to human causes. But not all scientists agree, and even the ones that do agree, don't agree on the degree. (Of course if there's any degree of contribution, assuming that the change is bad, stopping our contribution will at least slow the rate of the change. Which may not seem like such a big deal to people who can manage the change by turning up the level of air-conditioning another notch - but it is a big deal to folks who are losing their crops and being forced into chronic hunger as a result.

500 Scientists question human contribution to Global Warming??

The news that a sizable number of scientists had signed a document that questioned the commonly accepted wisdom that human activities contribute to the observed effects of global climate change was announced with some glee by people opposed to that view.

Apparently a number of the scientists who's names appeared on the letter are reporting that they were not contacted in advance, and that they do not agree with the letter to which their signatures are appended.

From the Smog Blog:

"Dozens of scientists are demanding that their names be removed from a widely distributed Heartland Institute article entitled 500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares.

The article, by Hudson Institute director and Heartland 'Senior Fellow' Dennis T. Avery[,] purports to list scientists whose work contradicts the overwhelming scientific agreement that human-induced climate change is endangering the world as we know it.

DeSmogBlog manager Kevin Grandia emailed 122 of the scientists yesterday afternoon, calling their attention to the list. So far - in less than 24 hours - three dozen of those scientists had responded in outrage, denying that their research supports Avery's conclusions and demanding that their names be removed."

Read the rest here.

Gosh. Who'd have thunk it...

Shell Oil reports record breaking profits last quarter. And it turns out the Hudson Institute has some interesting connections to Exxon Mobile.

Special guest author - in honor of Earth Day "week"

My daughter Kenney and I were talking the other day about writing and blogging. She said "I was lucky that I was a grownup because it meant that people cared what I thought". She was pretty sure no one would read anything she wrote because she was just a teenager.

I told her that I thought the people who read my posts (thanks btw) are doing it neither because of who I am (most of you don't know me personally) or because of my age. People read what I write because I've tried to say something interesting. But that the first step and the most important thing about getting people to read your writing was to actually write something.

So she asked if she wrote something, whether or not I'd put it up on my blog for her. I said I would. By the time I got home that evening she handed me her finished essay: a rant on why Earth Day matters. (She's very concerned about the environment; it's a frequent topic of conversation between us.)

Since she came through on her end, I'm coming through on mine.

Here's a bit of what she wrote:

"Being in high school, I get exposed to millions of things everyday. Aside from the obvious of profanity, viruses, or just plain stupidity, you would be surprised to know that there are many students in high school out there that actually care about the world. One thing especially is the environment. My friends and I discuss the "going green" movement almost everyday at school and compare ways that we have so far done our part for the world. This fascination expands even further from the classroom. Many students belong to societies and clubs that are meant to help the environment. I do not belong to one of them, I would like to, but I don't have much time. I am one of the millions of Americans who are extremely busy and can barely even think about the environment sometimes. However, in my free time, I enjoy going onto sites that are for this "green" movement. Such sites like www.thedailygreen.com, help surfers to make smart moves and gives them tips to make their carbon and environmental footprint justa little smaller. However, while on those sites I find many things to be annoying. These are, but are not limited to, the idea of public transportation, the clarity of their ideas, the idea of "green food", and just our government in general. I may be a teenager, but that does not mean I can not rant like an adult, and I think that it is time that teenagers have somewhat of a say in this global issue."

Click the link to read the full essay.

Michael McElroy: Saving Money, Oil, and the Climate

Harvard Magazine has a good survey article that discusses various actions that we can take right now here in the States that will minimize our dependence on fossil fuel, start to decrease our contribution to climate change and save our economy some serious money.

From the beginning of the article:

"I shall argue that by changing the way we fuel our cars and light trucks—by switching from continued reliance on hundred-year-old, internal-combustion-engine technology to a combination of oil and electrically powered transportation—we could reduce our dependence on imported oil and lower our emissions of CO2, and we could effect this transition at a net savings for the U.S. consumer. The key is to build on the success of the hybrid technology introduced by Japanese auto manufacturers (notably Toyota and Honda) in the 1990s."

The article goes on to discuss the various options available and the consequences that each has in the three areas listed in the title.

It ends with a caution that any systemic change is going to be difficult given the entrenched economic interests of that want to see the present fossil fuel dependence continue. But it may be that, given an increasingly brittle supply chain, that resistance will end up being futile...

Read the rest here.

Thanks to Ann Fontaine for the tip. (Which I gratefully receive, in spite of the fact that the article was published in Harvard Magazine...)

Losing Greenland

I seem to be fully engaged in the "Earth Day" meme today... Or maybe it's just that lots of people are posting on a topic that I really care about.

Either way, it looks like it's going to be a busy day here on the blog.

So here's an article posted about the increasing melt-rate of the ice sheet covering Greenland.

"‘2007 was a shocking year,’ Scott Luthcke, who works with GRACE at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, told me later.

One record melt season does not spell the end of Greenland, of course, and journalists must always be wary about sounding too alarmist based on short-term records. But overall, the outlook for Greenland is simply not good: Changes in speeds of the island’s outlet glaciers show that, no matter whether they are advancing or retreating, they are far faster at changing their behavior than anyone had thought before.

As the article was going to press, we learned that another pair of key Greenland papers would appear the next day online in Science. Such is the peril of scheduling features far in advance while knowing your competitor journal has interesting papers under review.

The basic point of the two new papers -- that vast quantities of meltwater can form and then drain away atop the ice sheet each summer – made it into my feature anyway. But if you want more details, check out the original papers at the Science Express website. One paper, with lead author Sarah Das of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, reports on a 4-kilometre-long melt lake that vanished into the ice sheet within the space of two hours. The other, with lead author Ian Joughin of the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory, describes seasonal speed-up in ice flow along Greenland’s western flank – though not so much in the outlet glaciers. Together, the papers confirm how meltwater likely helps lubricate the slippage of the ice sheet towards the ocean."

Read the rest here.

While this is worrisome in and of itself, keep in mind that there's reason to believe that a big slug of cold fresh water is going to disrupt the North Atlantic conveyor currents that cause northern Europe's climate to be much more temperate than it ought to be.

If this melting trend continues, we're going to find out pretty quickly whether or not the currents will get switched off. And if they do, it's going to be a tough transition for the palm trees in Dublin. (Amongst others...)

Food Rationing in USA?

It's unclear how to understand the relative weights of the causes of the present food shortage, but no matter what is going on, the net effect is that world food supply chains are becoming more brittle than they have been in years.

Here's a piece on how rationing is starting to appear even in Silicon Valley:

"Many parts of America, long considered the breadbasket of the world, are now confronting a once unthinkable phenomenon: food rationing. Major retailers in New York, in areas of New England, and on the West Coast are limiting purchases of flour, rice, and cooking oil as demand outstrips supply. There are also anecdotal reports that some consumers are hoarding grain stocks.

At a Costco Warehouse in Mountain View, Calif., yesterday, shoppers grew frustrated and occasionally uttered expletives as they searched in vain for the large sacks of rice they usually buy.

'Where's the rice?' an engineer from Palo Alto, Calif., Yajun Liu, said. 'You should be able to buy something like rice. This is ridiculous.'

The bustling store in the heart of Silicon Valley usually sells four or five varieties of rice to a clientele largely of Asian immigrants, but only about half a pallet of Indian-grown Basmati rice was left in stock. A 20-pound bag was selling for $15.99."

Read the rest here.

I know that food pantries here in Phoenix are running out of food. Part of that is because food suppliers are really working on tightening up their supply lines so that there much less waste and less overstock than there used to be. But simultaneous to that is a significant increase in demand. Perhaps this may be spreading upstream a bit?

Top 20 Carbon Producing Cities

Wired News has the report of a new study from Purdue University that lists the top carbon footprint producing cities in the United States.

Oddly enough Phoenix is not on the list. But tiny Jim Thorpe, just north of Bethlehem PA where I lived before moving to Phoenix is on the list at number 12...

Who knew that my move to the 5th largest city in the US was going to play a significant role in my part of reducing my carbon footprint!

Here's the list. Where's your city?

1. Harris, Texas (Houston), 18.625 million tons of carbon per year
2. Los Angeles, Calif. (Los Angeles), 18.595
3. Cook, Ill. (Chicago), 13.209
4. Cuyahoga, Ohio (Cleveland), 11.144
5. Wayne, Mich. (Detroit), 8.270
6. San Juan, N.M. (Farmington), 8.245
7. Santa Clara, Calif. (San Jose), 7.995
8. Jefferson, Ala. (Birmingham), 7.951
9. Wilcox, Ala. (Camden), 7.615
10. East Baton Rouge, La. (Baton Rouge), 7.322
11. Titus, Texas (Mt. Pleasant), 7.244
12. Carbon, Pa. (Jim Thorpe), 6.534
13. Porter, Ind. (Valparaiso), 6.331
14. Jefferson, Ohio (Steubenville), 6.278
15. Indiana, Pa. (Indiana), 6.224
16. Middlesex, Mass. (Boston metro area), 6.198
17. Bexar, Texas (San Antonio), 6.141
18. Hillsborough, Fla. (Tampa), 6.037
19. Suffolk, N.Y. (New York metro area), 6.030
20. Clark, Nev. (Las Vegas) 5.955"

Read the rest here.

More Hurricanes making landfall?

Might be an active Hurricane season coming up according to a study just published:

"The Earth's jet streams, the high-altitude bands of fast winds that strongly influence the paths of storms and other weather systems, are shifting--possibly in response to global warming. Scientists at the Carnegie Institution determined that over a 23-year span from 1979 to 2001 the jet streams in both hemispheres have risen in altitude and shifted toward the poles. The jet stream in the northern hemisphere has also weakened. These changes fit the predictions of global warming models and have implications for the frequency and intensity of future storms, including hurricanes.

[...]Jet streams twist and turn in a wide swath that changes from day to day. The poleward shift in their average location discovered by the researchers is small, about 19 kilometers (12 miles) per decade in the northern hemisphere, but if the trend continues the impact could be significant. 'The jet streams are the driving factor for weather in half of the globe,' says Archer. 'So, as you can imagine, changes in the jets have the potential to affect large populations and major climate systems.'

Storm paths in North America are likely to shift northward as a result of the jet stream changes. (emphasis added) Hurricanes, whose development tends to be inhibited by jet streams, may become more powerful and more frequent as the jet streams move away from the sub-tropical zones where hurricanes are born.

The observed changes are consistent with numerous other signals of global warming found in previous studies, such as the widening of the tropical belt, the cooling of the stratosphere, and the poleward shift of storm tracks. This is the first study to use observation-based datasets to examine trends in all the jet stream parameters, however."

Read the rest here.

AlterNet: How New Energy Order Will Dramatically Change our Daily Lives

Here's another article that looks at the global and geo-political consequences occuring because of rapidly rising energy prices.

Even if the prices are rising because of profiteering (not a surprising thing as supply lines become brittle) they're still climbing. The effect is the same as if the cause were unequivocally connected with Peak Oil.

"It's strange that the business and geopolitics of energy takes up so little space on American front pages -- or that we could conduct an oil war in Iraq with hardly a mention of the words 'oil' and 'war' in the same paragraph in those same papers over the years. Strange indeed. And yet, oil rules our world and energy lies behind so many of the headlines that might seem to be about other matters entirely.

Take the food riots now spreading across the planet because the prices of staples are soaring, while stocks of basics are falling. In the last year, wheat (think flour) has risen by 130 percent, rice by 74 percent, soya by 87 percent, and corn by 31 percent, while there are now only eight to 12 weeks of cereal stocks left globally. Governments across the planetary map are shuddering. This is a fast growing horror story and, though the cry in the streets of Cairo and Port au Prince might be for bread, this, too, turns out to be a tale largely ruled by energy: Too many acres turned over to corn (and sugar cane) for the creation of biofuels; a historic drought in Australia and other climate-change-induced extremes of weather -- a result of the burning of fossil fuels -- that have affected crop yields; and many new middle-class consumers, in China and elsewhere, coming on line, with a growing desire for meat, the production of which is heavily petroleum based."

The article goes on to list 5 key areas that the rising prices will effect - ranging from the rate of new energy infrastructure development to the slow failure of resource poor societies...

Read the rest here.

Tropics expanding fast

There's been a number of stories lately about some new data showing climate change is having the effect of expanding the tropical belt surrounding the earth's equator:

"Signs of a very different 21st-century climate are already showing up, and not just in the melting arctic. A new review in Nature Geoscience highlights reports that the boundaries of the tropics, defined by temperature, rainfall, wind, and ozone patterns, have shifted poleward by at least 2 degrees latitude in the last 25 years. According to climate models, that's as far as the tropical belt was supposed to creep by the end of this century. Five different methods used to measure the tropics all show more or less breakneck rates of expansion -- one gives as much as 4.8 degrees in 25 years. "

One of the real problems with this is that it has the effect of decreasing the range of the temperate zone, which in turn decreases the total space available for deciduous trees. Which lowers the efficacy of that particular carbon sequestration method.

Read the rest here.

NYTimes: Study Details How U.S. Could Cut 28% of Greenhouse Gases

Here's a little something for you to read this morning:

"A new report says the country is brimming with opportunities to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, while saving money at the same time."

From the article:

"The report said the country was brimming with “negative cost opportunities” — potential changes in the lighting, heating and cooling of buildings, for example, that would reduce carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels even as they save money. “These types of savings have been around for 20 years,” said Jack Stephenson, a director of the study. But he said they still face tremendous barriers.

Among them is that equipment is often paid for by a landlord or a builder and chosen for its low initial cost. The cost of electricity or other fuels to operate the equipment is borne by a tenant or home buyer. That means the landlord or builder has no incentive to spend more upfront for efficient equipment, even though doing so would save a lot of money in the long run.

Another problem, the report said, is that consumers often pay no attention to energy use in choosing gear. Computers, for instance, can be manufactured to use less power, but with most users oblivious to energy efficiency when they are shopping for a computer, manufacturers perceive no competitive edge in spending the extra money on efficiency.

“What the report calls out is the fact that the potential is so substantial for energy efficiency,” said Ken Ostrowski, a leader of the report team. “Not that we will do it, but the potential is just staggering here in the U.S. There is a lot of inertia, and a lot of barriers.”"

I know we've had to scrounge around to find money to do a formal energy audit here at the Cathedral. But we found it. Because we believe just what the report is saying. That there are simple ways for us to reduce our energy use, save money and help the environment. All at the same time.

And the money savings are going to increase at the same rate the energy costs increase.

I pushed for the same thing to be done at my former parish. We spent about $25,000 fixing the heating system and controllers five years ago. The net effect was to save us almost $10,000/year in heating costs. We started making that money back in the third year. And the congregation has less to worry about now that heating oil prices are threatening to spike once again.

The problem here in Arizona is cooling rather than heating, but the same principles hold true. And we're getting ready to do what needs to be done.

Read the rest here.