I don't find the Olympics hopeful...

What if the athletes had to get to the games under their own power?

What if they played on whatever snowy slope or frozen lake was available?

What if people came to play instead of to watch?

In response to all this Olympic striving:

Life is not about being best.

It is about being you.

Bring It On

Nobody ever told me that divorce is hell
until I made up my mind
and then I heard it twice in a week.

Well thanks for the advice but
how the hell do you know?

I have a saying for you too.

A change is as good as a rest.

Chris Mooney's "Storm World"

If you're perplexed by the conflict over global warming, wondering how to decide who to believe, or wondering how "the other guys" can be so earnestly stupid, you might find some food for thought in Chris Mooney's book, Storm World.

If you're thinking, aha, Mooney, that's the guy who wrote The Republican War on Science, so that's where Laura's coming from - think again. I haven't read that book and probably won't, since I have very little faith in politicians of any stripe, either as people to rely on or as people to blame. I have my own work to do, walking the walk.

I recommend Storm World not as support for a position, but as context for thinking about positions regarding global warming. Mooney does an admirable (and surprisingly entertaining) job of chronicling the scientific debate around hurricane formation, hurricane intensity, and how global warming could influence hurricanes. Without hiding his own opinions, he illuminates the perspectives of numerous hurricane researchers and the way those perspectives have changed through time with ongoing research and debate. Although he disagrees with Bill Gray, he is refreshingly sympathetic towards this prominent hurricane scientist, who has devoted his retirement to convincing people that there is no global warming-hurricane connection. Mooney is also refreshingly critical of environmental activists making claims that are not supported by current hurricane research.

Overall, Mooney reveals that much of the actual discussion among scientists is not nearly so polarized or conclusive as media coverage suggests. More importantly, he takes us inside the research processes of actual scientists and shows how their quite different perspectives legitimately emerge from their work. This book may not make you any more certain about who to believe. In fact, it may well make you less certain, and that could be a good thing.

Good News? Not Yet.

Once in a while I see some talk about how increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere cannot be causing any global warming, because carbon dioxide only absorbs infrared radiation in certain narrow bands, and all the radiation in those bands is already captured by the current level of carbon dioxide. Sounds like good news! But I've always seen this argument buried among numerous other good news arguments, and somehow as I checked out each one and wound up disappointed, I never quite made it down the list to check out the saturation argument.

Until now. Here's a fine summary, and a fine example of the work of Spencer Weart. He is the author of The Discovery of Global Warming: A hypertext history of how scientists came to (partly) understand what people are doing to cause climate change. If you haven't dipped into that website yet, well, I wish you would.

Hearts Far from the Earth

A nation is not conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground. Then it is finished, no matter how brave its warriors or how strong their weapons.
Cheyenne Tsistsistas

Like many others on the Internet, I am repeating the above words without knowing much about their history. I first saw them on a poster about the "Sisters in Spirit" campaign to draw attention and response to the disappearance of hundreds of native women in Canada. The words have haunted me.

They came back to me this week, as I pondered a sad change in the hearts of women here. It goes along with a change in language, I think, where the terms "spring" and "thaw" and "runoff" are now heard less frequently than the term "breakup." What matters to people these days is not when the air is warm, or when the hills get bare, or when it's time to start garden plants, or when the pasture will green up, or how soon the fields might be tilled; instead, it's when the roads "break up" as the frost comes out, so that the heavy equipment in the oilfield grinds to a halt.

Twice in the last couple of weeks, I have heard young women rejoicing that breakup will be short this year. Both times I said I would rather see a couple of feet of new snow before then. In the past, almost anyone would have agreed that we need the moisture, but these women did not. One said she had to support her boyfriend during breakup, and the other said her boyfriend would be around the house too much.

The proverb talks about conquest, but conquest is not the only way for a nation to be finished. It can also be finished when the hearts of its women are too far from the earth.

Falling Faster

A couple of weeks ago, I suggested that climate change might happen too slowly for humanity to experience much conscious suffering because of it. The losses would be real, and enormous, but spread over several generations so that rosy stories of the old days would be dismissed as exaggeration or fairy tales.

Then Tim sent me an article about the arctic meltdown happening far faster than the climate models have predicted. That's an ironic twist. For years, the willfully ignorant would trot out old stories about early models overstating global warming predictions because they didn't account for clouds. Well, who knew? Errors can occur in more than one direction!

Sorry for my bitter sarcasm. I usually try to tone it down, but I'm past the point of patience.

My children have started bringing me news stories about greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. James brought me this one, about carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere rising faster than expected. That could cause problems for the models, eh?

Wayne, at Niches, has been writing about drought in the southeast U.S., and when he looks at a period longer than just this year, he sees that they are in their worst drought in 100 years. In his October 26th post, he has a whole round-up of news about things worsening faster than expected.

And today, I hear that the the domino effect is underway in the Canadian boreal forest. It used to be counted as a carbon sink, with tree growth removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Climate change was supposed to make it an even better sink, by accelerating tree growth. Instead, with less snow and hotter summers, there are more forest fires, so the forest has become a carbon source.

I guess it's encouraging that my kids are bringing up the subject now.

I'll feel better when they start suggesting that we walk.

Falling Slowly

Does it matter? Sometimes I picture a future world where there are debates about whether the rich farmland, large cities, and rainforests seen in a few old pictures ever really existed, or whether they were imagined by prophets dreaming of heaven.

Via Contrary Goddess and Sharon (jewishfarmer):

ENVIRONMENT: Warming May Trigger Agricultural Collapse

The study referred to in the above article is reported in detail in William Cline's new book, Global Warming and Agriculture: Impact Estimates by Country. A look at the Peterson Institute's "In Brief" overview of the book shows that the more optimistic estimates of future agricultural production rely heavily on carbon fertilisation offsetting the negative effects of high temperatures (not to mention a fortuitous escape from all sorts of other harmful effects such as water shortages and severe weather events). Carbon fertilisation? I must look for an update on the dark side of that issue: hidden hunger.

Yes, the fall may be too slow for many to notice. And if so, the emotional suffering may be much less that we would expect, because few will know what has been lost. Even as they starve, people may not know that there was ever much hope of anything else.

Rolling Stone on How to Keep Rolling

Read this first.
Ethanol Scam: Ethanol Hurts the Environment And Is One of America's Biggest Political Boondoggles : Rolling Stone

Then browse the links here, and tell me - does it not sound a bit like a celebration of the many benefits of starvation as compared to poisoning and heatstroke?

Ah, but the money is in the answer to the question: who starves?

Two Pet Peeves

I'm sure others might draw a very different web; I know there are places where the arrows go both ways, and there are numerous other influences and outcomes. But this highlights my own pet peeves about the way the world is.

And for all you quick-on-your-feet bloggers who attended the SaskBloggers BBQ/picnic, this is what I wanted to say when I had all your attention and then had to say I lost my train of thought.

Now that I look at it, I guess I've probably said it before.

The Science Commons

Oh, at last! When I was a biology student, online publishing of scientific literature was just hitting the mainstream. I was excited to think that, in a few years when I was out in the world somewhere away from a university library, I would be able to browse through all this vast array of scientific knowledge and delve deeper into anything that intrigued me.

But even before I left the sheltered wonder of the university, I was quickly losing sight of my dream behind a wall of insurmountable subscription fees. No individual of modest means could possibly aspire to maintain subscriptions to more than a handful of journals. Yet important research papers are scattered across literally hundreds of journals, making it virtually impossible to stay broadly informed without membership in an institution that can afford the subscriptions. And where do those fees go? How could it possibly cost the publishers that much to put a journal online? There must be some enormous profits involved here.

Today, as I dreamed, I can browse through the entire vast array of newly published scientific literature right here at my computer in small-town Saskatchewan. But as soon as an article catches my interest, I come up against that subscription wall. Sometimes Google can find me something similar, but if I want the real thing, I have a choice between an absurd per-article download fee and a two-hour drive to Regina to read it at the university library.

Now, at last, there is an effort to change that. The Public Library of Science is offering a new model that makes scientific literature freely available to all. The Creative Commons website has an interview with one of its founders, Berkeley biologist Michael Eisen, that lays out the rich potential and urgent need for this approach.

I almost want to be a scientist again.

UPDATE: SimplyTim has suggested another repository of free literature, in the medical and life sciences: PubMed Central. I took a quick glance down the first page of the journal title list, and decided I don't dare dig deeper there until the snow flies. Thanks Tim!

Adaptation

I may have said this before.

If we humans are so adaptable, why don't we adapt our own lifestyles, now, instead of waiting until adaptation is forced on us and on all those other living things that aren't so adaptable?

Viral Bits

Kate (smalldeadanimals) has a post up about the media and blog buzz over Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion's French citizenship. I was intrigued, not by the political topic, but by the illustration of the way bits of news (or not-news) "go viral" in the blogosphere.

This phenomenon has nagged at me for a couple of years now, as I watch little dust devils of commentary swirl up whenever Kate mentions anything to do with climate. I just sneeze and move along, but many people who breathe that stuff in seem totally lacking in immunity to the infectious bits.

Kate quotes Ezra Levant discussing the virus-spreading quality of the Internet as a good thing: whatever is interesting catches on. I would agree - if only the infection caused those infected to pursue their new-caught interest with vigour, openness, and balance. Instead, infection seems to produce a sort of reverse immunity, with greater susceptibility to future infection if newly encountered viral bits resemble the old. Such familiar-looking bits will produce a new round of inflammation and vigorous replication of viral bits from previous infections. Meanwhile the generic rejection response for totally unrecognized foreign bits goes into overdrive, preventing any infection by novel bits that might serve to balance the system.

If people actually responded to something "interesting" by exploring further, finding deeper and wider information that allowed them to view the interesting bit from very different angles, then an infection would be a good thing. It would strengthen and invigorate the mind.

There is, of course, a problem with this viral infection analogy: we associate immunity with health, but a mind that rejects any foreign matter is unhealthy indeed. It is liable to be hurt by all those things that it refuses to know.

Here I can see the value of the viral spread of ideas on the Internet. If there is unhealthy immunity at the level of news outlets (rather than at the level of an individual mind) - if news outlets are rejecting publication of stories that are foreign to established ways of thinking - then the blogosphere provides a new channel for healthy infection.

But what is a healthy infection? Are some of the infections unhealthy? Here I see the power of the viral infection analogy. Mentioning a virus brings to mind several qualities: something harmful; something that relies on encoded information; something that operates invisibly until symptoms suddenly erupt; and something so small as to seem a mere fragment.

A virus does harm by injecting a tiny snippet of misleading information into the workings of a cell. I call it misleading, because it leads the cell astray to serve the purposes of the virus. An infected cell drops its normal activities and instead produces copies of the virus - both its information code and its injection apparatus - until the entire cell self-destructs.

The healthy cell was a marvel of sophisticated harmony, with a host of interacting functions derived from an enormous store of information. Yet the injection of one tiny snippet of new information brought the whole thing to ruin.

Can the whole body of science around anthropogenic global warming be brought to ruin in a similar fashion? Some would like you to think so.

In a recent CFRA Ottawa radio interview, popular climate-fear-soothing geologist Tim Patterson talked about the way science can be totally changed by a single study. Michael Crichton makes the same point in his speeches, and uses the same example: the sudden shift in geological sciences when the idea of plate tectonics became accepted. Crichton and Patterson use this example to belittle the idea of a "scientific consensus" around anthropogenic global warming. They imply that the whole idea of global warming caused by human activity is just as vulnerable as the old idea of fixed continents. They hint that their own contrary voices are on the verge of bringing a major new enlightenment to science.

Their example has great power, and I am sure they know it. Crichton's audience can easily identify with his story about noticing the apparent fit between South American and African coastlines, and about a schoolteacher dismissing his observation. What an apt example to use when you are belittling scientific consensus! It suggests that scientists of the day were ignoring contrary evidence that was obvious even to a casual observer; and thus, it affirms the value of casual observations that seem contrary to a global warming trend.

Crichton and Patterson would like you to think that the scientific consensus about global warming is on the verge of self-destruction, as a healthy infection of new ideas works its way through the scientific community. However, I suspect that their own opinion is somewhat different. I suspect that they are well aware of the strength of the scientific consensus and do not expect it to collapse from within. Instead, they hope to spread enough infection through public opinion outside the scientific community, so that climate change research will be starved of public support, at least to a degree and for a time.

Why do I doubt their sincerity? I have spent some time following up the bits of contrary evidence that these authors and other skeptics present. I have explored the topics they raise by seeking out published research by other authors. I have seen the way the skeptics select examples and omit context. I have learned enough of the scientific background to recognize some of these deceptions immediately, rather than after plowing through reference papers.

Through all of this, I have begun to recognize not only the deceptions, but the techniques behind them. One key technique is to inject deceptive information where it is least likely to be challenged, and most likely to be repeated. For example, both in his radio interview and in a parliamentary hearing, Patterson has talked about the Ordovician period, 450 million years ago, when CO2 levels were much higher and yet there was an ice age. However, in his research papers submitted for publication, he doesn't mention this example. Presumably he doesn't mention it in the friendly discussions he claims to have with other scientists, because he knows he would be laughed out of the room. During the Ordovician, the distribution of land masses was totally different (plate tectonics again), ocean circulation was totally different, and there weren't even any land plants yet. Naturally the relationship between atmospheric composition and global temperature was a bit different back then!

But in the blogosphere, often unnoticed, Patterson's fragment of detail about the Ordovician goes viral, as do numerous other bits of disinformation. And fast-paced blogs like Kate's, where these viral bits propagate, are much more interesting than my tedious, several-days-late rebuttals. Then when the symptoms appear, in the form of public complacency about climate or even outright hostility towards reducing CO2 emissions, some people wonder how it happened.

Shooting in the Dark

I believe this comment over at sda may have been aimed at me:

I have noticed that some environmentalists are very selective in their concerns.I know of one that gets on a plane,flys halfway around the world using more fuel than my 2000 acre farm does in at least three years,to educate people that could get the same information from a book or the internet.He then comes home and says how well THEY treat their environment.I believe that he is a graduate of the CBC-David Suzuki school "of the other guy make changes" school of environmentalism.

Sorry, spike, you missed. Just because I'm married to him doesn't mean I agree with him. And just because he's married to me doesn't mean he's an environmentalist.

By the way, I don't recall him saying they treat their environment well. I recall him mentioning walking to work in Kathmandu and crossing a bridge over the "sewer" - he figured that was a more accurate word for it than "river" would be. And he mentioned arriving at work and blowing his nose, which was crusted with just as much grime from the air as if he had been shovelling inside a granary.

But your closing comment is very amusing. He is always insisting that people must stop trying to change other people, and instead change themselves. It's working very well for him: as long as he can keep the rest of us busy fixing ourselves, it keeps the heat away from him!

(Ouch, I'm a little snarky today, no?)

Klein's Breath in the Grand Scheme of Things

Alberta Premier Ralph Klein admits a connection between humans and global warming:

I don't argue with the science that all of us - as we exhale, as the population grows, as there are more vehicles on the streets and more carbons produced - that we contribute to global warming.

I wonder how terrifying it was for him to admit that to himself, given that he thinks his own breath is part of the problem. Really, Mr. Premier. The natural functioning of a human body only contributes to global warming after breathing stops. Up until then, you're a carbon sink. Carbon in, when you eat - remember carbohydrates? Carbon out, when you breathe. More carbon in than out, as you grow. Wait - it just occurred to me - dieting contributes to global warming! Somebody call Hollywood!

Relax, though. While some people shrink, others grow.

By the way, Mr. Premier, on your second point - population growth does not absolutely have to be a contributing factor. If the existing population were living with carbon uptake and emissions in balance, and the additional people didn't upset that balance, no problem.

On the other hand, we don't have to have "more vehicles" to have a problem. The existing vehicles have contributed to the existing problem, and will continue to add to it.

Let's get this very clear. A human being can exist within the carbon cycle, in balance. In fact, if we're out of balance, we can't carry on indefinitely, because we're using up a carbon sink - whether it's a forest being burned up in cooking fires (and not replaced by new growth), or the oilsands being mined out, or soil fertility being exhausted growing biofuel feedstocks. At some point we will be forced to resolve the imbalance.

We might want to consider resolving it early. Wouldn't it be nice to have some oil left in the oilsands after it becomes fabulously valuable as an industrial feedstock? Wouldn't it be nice to have some options about how we make the transition to a different lifestyle?

Yes, a different lifestyle. That's what I said.

Most of humanity currently has - or aspires to - a lifestyle that is beyond any possibility of balance within the carbon cycle. Since it comes down to lifestyle, each one of us has the choice: do we want the imbalance resolved or not?

It would be nice, though, if our politicians could help to make this clear.

Environmental Scare-Mongering . . .

. . . from a Kyoto critic.

Licia Corbella's doom-and-gloom article appeared in the Calgary Sun on December 11, 2005. She stated that in order to meet our obligations under the Kyoto Protocol, Canada has to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 270 megatonnes (mt). She then reviewed figures from Environment Canada, presenting them as evidence that the target is impossible to reach.

In 2002, Canada's entire manufacturing sector spewed out 62.9 megatonnes.

Then comes the transportation sector, which includes all those planes, trains and automobiles, pipelines and Paul Martin's tax-exempt Canada Steamship Lines freighters.

Ground, park and dock them all and we would remove 190 mt of GHGs.

Combine those two sectors -- manufacturing and transportation -- and that adds up to 252.9 megatonnes, leaving us short by 17.1 megatonnes.

She goes on to raise the specter of billions of Canadian tax dollars flowing to Russia to buy emissions credits, because, she implies, it's obvious that we can't shut down our entire manufacturing and transportation sectors.

Let's back up to 1990. That's the base year for Canada's Kyoto commitment. Our target is to reduce our emissions to 6% below 1990 levels. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I remember it, Canada did have a manufacturing sector in 1990. Canada also had a transportation sector. If these sectors are the big baddies, obviously we shouldn't need to totally eliminate them to achieve a 6% reduction.

Check the Environment Canada figures for yourself, and see how cleverly Corbella has chosen her sectors. Obviously transportation has to be included, because everybody knows it's the other guy's SUV that's the problem. At 180 mt for 2002, transportation is a big part of the 719 mt total. A big part, yes, but where's the other 539 mt? Clearly it's not all in the manufacturing sector. But manufacturing is the perfect contentious target, vilified by those eager to assign blame for environmental problems, and defended by their opponents as the engine of our economy. Corbella knew exactly what she was doing.

She was scaring people into assuming that they must watch helplessly as government either turns Canada into a have-not country, or backs out of its Kyoto commitment.

In reality, where is the rest of the 539 mt total? For starters, it's in "Electricity and Heat Generation" at 129 mt. That refers to "thermal combustion-derived electricity" - such as the electricity that is powering my computer right now, that runs my refrigerator and my freezer and my washer and dryer and my Christmas lights and the lights that get left on when no-one is in the room. If I reduce my use of this electricity, it won't cripple the economy.

Where else? How about Residential [Energy Use], which refers to fuel combustion in homes, at 44 mt. Turn down your thermostat at night (I have to remember to put some slippers on when blogging after bedtime), invest in some weatherstripping and insulation, maybe upgrade some windows. How will that hurt the economy? Sure, if everybody did enough of it, maybe the demand for natural gas would level off. Drilling in southwest Saskatchewan might slow down a bit.

What about agriculture? We hear so much about belching cows. This appears in the table as "Enteric Fermentation," and it amounts to only 22 mt. Another 8 mt are attributed to "Manure Management." Meeting the targets doesn't mean giving up all our steak and milk. We might do well to look at our crop production practices, though. "Agricultural Soils" refers to emissions of nitrous oxide; this happens when nitrogen from fertilizers of various kinds goes partly into the air instead of the plants. The figures are estimated, with large uncertainties, but the value given is 29 mt. Then you have to consider emissions associated with fertilizer and pesticide production, and fuel combustion to run the tillage and harvest equipment; these figures are hidden in other categories, such as "Industrial Processes" and the already-mentioned "Transportation."

If you're running a total in your head, you know there's still a big chunk missing. The "Industrial Processes" that I just mentioned account for 51 mt. (How many of Corbella's readers would realize that there was an entire category separate from "Manufacturing," called "Industrial Processes"?) "Waste," mostly solid waste disposal on land, gives another 25 mt.

Of particular significance to southeast Saskatchewan, given our economic dependence on the oilfield and on coal-fired power generation, are the categories of "Fossil Fuel Industries" at 73 mt and "Fugitive Emissions" at 55 mt. Not only do we release GHGs when we generate power or drive our cars, we also release them when we produce the fuels in the first place. (In case you're wondering, "Fugitive Emissions" refers to things like spills, leaks, venting and flaring during oil and gas production, plus a much smaller amount of methane released from coal deposits during mining.)

I haven't covered all the categories. Most of the rest are relatively small; "Land Use, Land-Use Change" actually has a negative figure to allow for CO2 uptake during plant growth. As you can plainly see, there are a lot more areas to work on than just transportation and manufacturing. By choosing these two sectors, Corbella skilfully directed attention away from the areas where our own individual initiative could most quickly and painlessly make a difference. If we're merely trying to meet Kyoto targets, the picture is not nearly so bleak as Corbella paints it.

A much more serious criticism of the Kyoto Protocol is that it will merely slow the accumulation of greenhouse gases. Even if all the targets were met around the world, greenhouse gases would continue to rise. And even if we could somehow reverse that trend, and begin to reduce the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, we would still have a long way to go just to bring them back within the range where these gases have fluctuated over the last 650,000 years. We have already drastically altered the chemistry of our atmosphere, and as I have noted previously, climate change may be the least of our problems.