Signs From Earth

Climate Change vs. National Security

 A coal fired power plant in Germany. Action against causes of climate change is tied to significant reduction in world use of fossil fuels. Photo: davipt/flickr

Slowly the idea seeps into major media mindset that climate change presents challenges far beyond polar bears and melting ice, that political stability and security of nations also are at risk. As has been discussed here and elsewhere, carbon emissions affect how the atmosphere works, and this in turn impacts stability and security of food and water supplies, and eventually survivability of societies.

The question remains whether these concerns linking continued use of fossil fuels and their impact on global climate will make a meaningful difference in the views and actions of policymakers and the public. 

John Broder reports in an August 9 New York Times article, "Climate Change Seen as Threat to U.S. Security,"  that climate change impacts in other nations, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and South and Southeast Asia, could demand an American humanitarian or military response.

“The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.

What Prospect to Limit Carbon Emissions?

Global Carbon Emissions by Country in 2000: With about four percent of world population, the United States produces a quarter of the planet's heat-trapping carbon emissions. All land areas in map equal 100 percent. In this cartogram larger country size means more carbon emissions as a percentage of total emissions. From worldmapper.org  

Reports this week in Politico and the New York Times indicate prospects are dimming that climate legislation will come out of the U.S. Congress this year. If so, what chance for global agreement in December when negotiators and thousands of climate groupies burn all that carbon to fly to Copenhagen for the big international climate meeting? After all, this COP-15 summit is being billed as the crucial conference to cooperate and agree on common goals to limit planet-warming carbon pollution.

The United States produces the most carbon pollution per person, and until recently led the world in total carbon emissions. So unless the US arrives in Copenhagen with a firm commitment to lead by example, why would other nations, especially China and India, bother to change their ways? After all we burned all that coal, oil, and natural gas to develop our materially rich and highly mobile way of life, who are we to tell developing nations they can't aspire to the same living standards?

Climate Catastrophe? A Rational Action Approach

 

Two years ago an Oregon science teacher produced a video called "The Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See." Greg Craven's schoolroom lecture on how to think about global warming and decide whether action against it is needed became an internet hit with over seven million viewings.

Craven has now turned the movie into a book (isn't it usually the other way around?) called "What's The Worst That Could Happen? A Rational Response to The Climate Change Debate." 

Craven uses tools of risk assessment to help us decide how to think about and approach this issue. The focus is not on what to think about global warming, but how. The graphic above is adapted from his book, and summarizes the core argument: He sees this as a choice between action and no action against something that is true or false. 

If you see global warming as false, we do nothing against it, and nothing happens, then we can "Party!" On the other hand if you see it as false, we do nothing, and all the scientific projections come to pass, then "Global Catastrophe" is our future. 

As Craven points out, taking action against global warming comes with significant costs, but is less expensive than "Global Catastrophe." This is all about making choices and living with consequences.

Greg Craven's Website: What is The Worst That Could Happen?

"...get out of Facebook and into somebody's face."

"Just Do It": In case you have not read NYT columnist Tom Friedman's assessment of the climate bill currently under consideration by the U.S Congress: He doesn't like the deeply compromised bill, but says it is all there is between some action and nothing. And he says no legislative action will occur unless We the People begin to take some action:

"...Attention all young Americans: your climate future is being decided right now in the cloakrooms of the Capitol, where the coal lobby holds huge sway. You want to make a difference? Then get out of Facebook and into somebody’s face. Get a million people on the Washington Mall calling for a price on carbon. That will get the Senate’s attention. Play hardball or don’t play at all."

Climate Fight Site: Carbon War Room

Sir Richard Branson is behind Carbon War Room, a new web effort designed to ramp up action on reducing carbon emissions and move the world "beyond the carbon economy." With a growing research database, resources, and widgets to post to your own website, the site's "About Us" page reveals:

"The Carbon War Room is a global philanthropic inititative, founded to harness the resource and skills of the Planet’s entrepreneurs and institutions to urgently deliver solutions that enable humanity to prosper beyond the carbon economy. Our Founders include some of the world’s leading entrepreneurs and institutions who are passionate about solving this problem..."

The website's creators envision the "battles" against carbon in seven "theatres," including: transportation, electricity, the built environment, industrial processes, agriculture and deforestation, development of transition economies, and in "adaptation mitigation." Thanks to Joel Makower for the tip...

Numbers Alone Show Vote Rigging

Figuring out whether election results from Iran are fraudulent is simple, according to New York University political scientists Bernd Beber and Alexandra Scacco. In their June 20 Washington Post op-ed The Devil is in the Digits, they discuss the lack of randomness in the last digit of polling results from each province:

"...Last digits in a fair election don't tell us anything about the candidates, the make-up of the electorate or the context of the election. They are random noise in the sense that a fair vote count is as likely to end in 1 as it is to end in 2, 3, 4, or any other numeral. But that's exactly why they can serve as a litmus test for election fraud. For example, an election in which a majority of provincial vote counts ended in 5 would surely raise red flags...."

"...The numbers look suspicious. We find too many 7s and not enough 5s in the last digit. We expect each digit (0, 1, 2, and so on) to appear at the end of 10 percent of the vote counts. But in Iran's provincial results, the digit 7 appears 17 percent of the time, and only 4 percent of the results end in the number 5. Two such departures from the average -- a spike of 17 percent or more in one digit and a drop to 4 percent or less in another -- are extremely unlikely. Fewer than four in a hundred non-fraudulent elections would produce such numbers...."

From Bernd Beber website: Annotated Version of The Devil is in The Digits

From Alexandra Scacco website: Election Results Data Used in Analysis

Climate Change: The Problem for Others

The political reporting site fivethirtyeight has produced an inverted pyramid graphic that well explains why concern for climate change, global warming, global weirding, you name it, is a problem not for us to worry about. 

It's just too abstract, far off, something for others to furrow their brows for.

According to the results of a survey out this spring, climate change is something for plants and animals, future generations, people in developing countries, and others, but not me, to be concerned with. And this is why little or nothing gets done to reduce carbon emissions. If we have to choose between solving the problems in front of us or those facing others or the future which to choose?

This is a visualization of the results of a study, Climate Change in the American Mind, published recently by the Yale Project on Climate Change and the George Mason Center for Climate Change Communication.  

Yet the main problem we face with kicking the can down the road, allowing heat-trapping carbon to keep building in the atmosphere, is that unless we set ourselves on a pathway towards drastically reducing our emissions now, little we do in the future will matter, as has been written here and many places elsewhere previously:

Signs From Earth: A Thousand Years of Warming Ahead

Signs From Earth: Hot Planet - Our Path Ahead

 Sources:

Profile (and Seas) Rise for "Climate Refugees"

 

Tulun Atoll in the low-lying Carteret Islands in the Pacific Ocean. Photo: NASA via Wikipedia.

The drowning Carteret Islands northeast of Papua New Guinea get the attention of The New York Times in an article "Refugees Join List of Climate-Change Issues," which also discusses the emerging awareness that hundreds of millions could lose their homes due to rising seas and other effects of climate change. 

..."There could be 200 million of these climate refugees by 2050, according to a new policy paper by the International Organization for Migration, depending on the degree of climate disturbances. Aside from the South Pacific, low-lying areas likely to be battered first include Bangladesh and nations in the Indian Ocean, where the leader of the Maldives has begun seeking a safe haven for his 300,000 people. Landlocked areas may also be affected; some experts call the Darfur region of Sudan, where nomads battle villagers in a war over shrinking natural resources, the first significant conflict linked to climate change...."

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The phrase "climate refugee" comes into increasing use, yet has no legal definition. Geoff Dabelko wrote in 2007 at The New Security Beat in the postiing, "A Word of Caution on Climate Change and “Refugees” that the word "refugee" is problematic when applied to being driven from one's place because of environmental conditions.

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"In order to achieve refugee status, people must be fleeing persecution or violence and must cross a national border," he said.  Dabelko continues that discussion here in the introduction to a new report from the Woodrow Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program, where he is director. 

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A beacon, ECSP and its blog The New Security Beat continually explores the confluence of issues like population, water, ecosystems, resources and migration -- and their impact on security, economy, and society.

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As people increasingly are displaced from the accumulating catalog of climate impacts, perhaps we need to consider expanding the legal definition of refugee, or find new words to describe environment- and climate-driven flight from home. Right now no internationally accepted term exists for people moving because of environmental reasons, and according to the International Organization for Migration, the terms "environmental refugee" and "climate change refugee" have no basis in international refugee law. 

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So if not refugee, what now to call those driven elsewhere by the effects of human-induced climate change?

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Who Doesn't Work Where

Geography of a Recession: The New York Times offers an interactive map showing unemployment across the United States by county (above,) metropolitan area, those areas with housing bubbles, rural areas, and manufacturing centers. The map was based on a nationwide average unemployment rate of 7.1 percent. Most severe job losses are in housing boom and manufacturing areas, and those with previously high unemployment rates. 

The map accompanies an article by David Leonhardt, "Job Losses Show Breadth of Recession":

"What does the worst recession in a generation look like?

"It is both deep and broad. Every state in the country, with the exception of a band stretching from the Dakotas down to Texas, is now shedding jobs at a rapid pace. And even that band has recently begun to suffer, because of the sharp fall in both oil and crop prices..."

Al Gore Plea to Scientists: "We Need You"

 

Al Gore speaks to a packed AAAS session at Chicago's Fairmont Hotel. by Dennis Dimick

Self-described "recovering politician" Al Gore brought his campaign against human-induced climate change into the belly of the scientific beast February 13. 

Speaking in Chicago to thousands of scientists at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the former vice-president showed an updated slide show with pictures and charts of recent floods, fires, and disappearing ice at both poles. 

He also showed clips of several advertisements from his Alliance for Climate Protection which campaigns for alternative energy and against coal. 

What was striking was Gore's call to action. This to a group with more accumulated knowledge about the cause and effects of global warming than any other, but also with more reticence than any other group to speak forcefully and clearly about what they know. 

As Stanford climate scientist Stephen Schneider said earlier in the day to a session on media coverage of climate change, "We lead with our caveats."

Gore pleaded with the scientists to get involved in public education on the issues, to no longer separate the work they do from the civilization they live in.

"This is no time to sit back. This is a historic struggle. We as a species must make a decision," Gore said. "We've now reached a stage where continuing on our present course would threaten the entirety of human civilization.

"We have to go far quickly. And the only way that's going to happen is if those of you who are in a position to exercise influence and communicate your understanding of what this is all about make a decision to get involved. We need you to be actively involved.

"Scientists can no longer in good conscience accept this division between the work you do and the civilization in which you live. I'm asking you for help.

"I believe in my heart that we do have the capacity to make this generation one of those generations that changes the course of humankind. The stakes have never been higher."

The scientists could also take some cues from the presentation style of Gore's slide show, designed by Duarte Design. Bad powerpoint-style presentations dominate at meetings like this, the slides larded with poor-quality pictures, inscrutable graphs, charts, and hundreds of data points. 

In that sense scientists are their own worst enemies when communicating clearly and effectively. 

Better presentations are a good start to more effective communication about scientific work and findings. Scientists, and anyone, wanting to communicate more powerfully could start by reading Garr Reynold's book Presentation Zen, Nancy Duarte's book slide:ology, or Edward Tufte's essay, The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint.

Desert Power for Europe?

 

Center for Global Development chart shows  "direct normal radiance (DNI)" or amount of sunlight hitting the ground in watts per square meter across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. CGD is exploring the potential of capturing the ample solar energy in North Africa to power Europe.

 

A new kind of "cold war" has unfolded between Europe and Russia this winter. 

Europe was chilled in January over lost supplies of Russian natural gas because of a price dispute between Russia and Ukraine. 

Europe imports a quarter of its natural gas from Russia, and four-fifths of that supply flows through Ukraine, a former Soviet state. Ukraine has been protesting proposed Russian price increases, and in retaliation Russia shut Ukraine's supplies. The dispute has been settled, for now.

Center for Global Development analysts Kevin Ummel and David Wheeler have been pondering the economic potential of capturing and moving solar energy from North Africa as a way to reduce Europe's energy vulnerability and to lower greenhouse gas emissions. They explore the potential of using solar thermal or concentrating solar power (CSP) arrays to boil water and turn steam electric turbines.

Of course front-end construction subsidies would be required, but their research indicates the potential of meeting energy needs of 35 million people by 2020 at a price potentially comparable with coal- and gas-based power production in Europe. 

Besides a decline in planet warming greenhouse gas emissions, a move towards solar can improve European energy security. Gas supplies are not forever, and as long as Europe depends on Russia for natural gas it will have to bend to Russia's will, caprice, or need to use its own gas supplies.

Center For Global Development: Europe is Left in the Cold to Ponder North Africa's Solar Energy Potential

Center for Global Development: Desert Power: The Economics of Solar Thermal Electricity for Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East

Time Magazine: Out of Africa: Saharan Solar Energy

Business Week: Lessons from the Russian Gas Dispute

Congressional Research Service: Russian Natural Gas: Regional Dependence

Toles: Morning in America, Part II

Tom Toles in the Washington Post, January 19, 2009.

"Morning in America, Part II. Getting it Right This Time. Before it Gets Us."

The Whole Earth is Now Online

The Whole Earth Catalog and its spawn CoEvolution Quarterly and Whole Earth Review were among my favorite reads and inspirations in the decades when they were in print.

Long gone from the dead tree publishing landscape, my fading collection of several Catalogs and an almost complete set of Co-Evolution Quarterly/Whole Earth Review still graces my shelves.

The Whole Earth Catalog is now online. 

Transformed from paper to electrons, this wonderous archive marks a period in our recent history when the contemporary environmental movement was beginning to take shape.

Carrying motto "Access to Tools," Whole Earth was handbook and manual for those seeking instructions and tools to create a better world and self-sufficient life with their own initative, passion, and energy.

Edited by Stewart Brand and a host of smart people like Kevin Kelly, Whole Earth is where I first saw the work of agrarian poet and essayist Wendell Berry and ecological agriculturalist Wes Jackson, who started The Land Institute in Kansas.

Whole Earth led me to Berry's influential book The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, and to Jackson's New Roots for Agriculture.

I discovered the work of Donella Meadows here, a MacArthur Fellow and one of the authors of the 1970's book The Limits to Growth.

Meadows' essay Places to Intervene in a System is significant, along with her sequel essay Dancing With Systems.

"Places" is mandatory guide to understanding any type of system: an organization, economy, living body, ecosystem, or a city, and explains why a small shift in one thing can create a big shift in most everything. She explains why most change is misguided, misapplied, and mistimed because of a failure to recognize "leverage points."

The Catalog's influence was documented in a 2007 book by Andrew Kirk, Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism.

The Whole Earth family of publications was the internet before there was an internet, blogs before blogs. The arrival of a new edition or issue was an event, everything else was set aside until a full perusal of the copy that had just shown up in the mailbox.

--DD

Links:

Caribou Barbie, Photobombing, et al

NYT: Buzzwords of 2008

"Politics without buzzwords is like sports without clichés, math without numbers or Blago without bleeps. Tough to imagine, in other words, especially in such a game-changer of a campaign year in which buzzwords were flying like shoes. Buzzwords are what political wiseguys use to sound all important and knowing in a profession whose prime currency is the illusion of being both. They are like secret passwords for the chattering class, the verbal equivalent of a terrorist fist jab.

"Picking out political buzzwords from 2008 is like shooting moose in a pigpen..."

Mass Migration as Climate Adaptation

Nature Reports Climate Change: 

Here Comes the Flood

Janos Bogardi & Koko Warner: 

"Policymakers must start to view mass migration as a form of adaptation so that the global response to climate-induced migration is one of facilitation rather than neglect.

"Two leviathans are about to collide on the world stage of science and politics — climate change and migration. Their combination brings us to a tipping-point that could spawn a phenomenon of a scale and scope not experienced in human history. 

"Beyond reducing the greenhouse gases that drive global warming, we are now faced with the task of finding ways to deal with the impact of climate change. Next in line, or perhaps even ahead of mitigation, adaptation is the new game in town....

..."With increasing numbers of the world's population living in areas exposed to the negative consequences of climate change, we need urgent action to identify adaptation pathways that prevent or at least reduce environmental migration flows. A rapid and collaborative effort is needed to discuss options, including resettlement, and to further understand the implications of climate change-related migration for affected countries and regions. Fundamentally this requires dialogue about things we know already, as well as vigorous imagination, to find alternatives that will keep this planet a home for all of us, rather than for just the fortunate few."

Also See: Global Farm Land Grabs