In Cancun, climate negotiators have agreed to some small and non-binding measures. A mitigation fund will begin providing aid to developing nations. Pacific Island nations will receive resources to battle erosion and salt-water intrusion into their drinking water (3 mm/yr adds up quickly when you live on a coral lagoon). The meeting also established a standard for reporting emissions, although there is no legal pact or enforcement for emissions cuts. Still, following the disaster of Copenhagen, any good news is welcome. The group will readjourn in Durban in December 2011.
NY Times Report
Showing posts with label Climate. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Climate. Show all posts
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Cancun Conclusions
Friday, December 10, 2010
Global Temperatures and American Skepticism on the Rise
American belief in global warming is declining. A recent poll by Pew Research shows that just 34% of Americans see solid evidence of anthropogenic warming, down from 50% in 2006. Opinions are largely divided along party lines. Only 16% of Republicans believe in anthropogenic warming.
Much of this skepticism reflects a belief that there is no scientific consensus on climate change. In fact, the IPCC, a panel of the world’s leading climate scientists, found warming to be unequivocal and declared that it was highly probable that humans were responsible. Furthermore, they demonstrated that warming poses a serious risk to standards of living around the world. The science is certainly complex, but error bars should not translate to “erroneous.”
Has scientific illiteracy and media controversy eroded our ability to think critically and act positively? Has the fossil fuel lobby succeeded in its PR campaign? Do these numbers correlate with religious dogma and place the argument outside of the scientific discourse?
Green Tech and our fellow human beings would benefit significantly from a system of inclusive environmental accounting, such as cap-and-trade. A basic prerequisite for climate legislation is public education. Please join the conversation on the new NETG facebook page and everywhere.
Pew Report...
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
The Great Indoors: Climate Change in Your Home
How much time did you spend outside today? One hour? Two hours? If you're like most Americans, odds are that it's closer to the former. That equates to approximately 23 hours indoors. Whether sleeping at home, sitting in a car during the daily commute, or traversing the states in an airplane, we spend a significant amount of our lives indoors. Yet, more often than not, we tend to emphasize the quality of the outdoor air we breathe, paying less attention to what we're exposed to throughout the majority of our daily lives. And there is increasing evidence that even in the most industrialized cities, indoor air quality is more seriously polluted compared to the air outdoors.
Indoor environments have changed significantly in just two generations. Since the 1950s, we have eliminated harmful chemicals such as lead and mercury from use in our homes but we have added many others. Take, for example, your bed's mattress. Chances are it was sprayed with a chemical known as polybrominated diphenyl ether, or PBDE, to help keep you safe in the event of a fire. Unfortunately, these brominated flame retardants also have a tendency to accumulate posing health risks including liver toxicity, thyroid toxicity, and neurodevelopmental toxicity.
PBDE is just one of the many chemicals that pollutes the indoor air environment. Terpenes, a large class of hydrocarbons, also degrade the air we breathe and they are present in all of those scented products we use. They offer that lovely pine, citrus, lavender, and fresh laundry smell but at a cost. While harmless by themselves,they react with ozone to form byproducts that are irritating to the eyes and upper-respiratory system.
Think that you're better off with that vinyl hardwood flooring instead of the carpet that traps all those dust particles? Think again. Vinyl flooring contains a staggering amount - as much as 40% by weight - of phthalate plasticizers to help prevent it from cracking. As you might expect, there's mounting evidence of the harmful effects of such plasticizers.
It wasn't until 1976 that the U.S. first began regulation of chemicals like those mentioned above. With the passing of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), a chemical that is known to be harmful to health is now required to undergo toxicity testing. This is, however, somewhat of a Catch-22 in that a new chemical's risks are not necessarily known before introduction to market. Of the approximately 3300 chemicals produced in quantities greater than 1 million pounds per year in the U.S., only 25% have adequate toxicity information.
Now that you're sufficiently frightened about your indoor air quality, here are a few simple tips to help you reduce the potential health risks:
For even more tips, check out the indoor air quality house interactive over at the EPA's website.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Is Eyjafjallajökull Good for the Climate?
By now you've probably heard about the eruption of a volcano in Iceland by the name of Eyjafjallajökull (pronounced "EYE-a-fyat-la-yu-goot" for all you non-Icelandic speakers out there). And you likely know of the nearly unprecedented effect it has had on European air travel. But what you may not be aware of is the effect it's having on our climate.
Past volcanic eruptions were reported to have a noticeable global cooling effect. In 1991, when Mount Pinatubo spewed ash for nearly two weeks in the Philippines, it injected about 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide (SO2) into the stratosphere, which decreased air temperatures over the northern hemisphere the following summer by as much as 2 degrees Celsius. Globally, Pinatubo cooled the planet nearly 0.5 degrees Celsius, effectively negating the impact of greenhouse gases emitted from 1991 to 1993.
So what is it that caused Pinatubo to affect the climate in this way? It has to do with the release of SO2 into the stratosphere. Following an eruption, the SO2 emissions are quickly converted to sulfuric acid (H2SO4), which then condenses in the stratosphere to form fine sulfate aerosols. These sulfur rich particles have a long shelf life, sometimes remaining for as much as a few years in the stratosphere. While there, they reflect the energy of the sun back into space, thereby cooling the Earth's lower atmosphere, or troposphere. This is precisely the effect suggested by a variety of controversial geoengineering proposals that are aimed at mitigating the effects of global warming.
Although Eyjafjallajökull still has a large enough plume of ash to be recorded by NASA satellites, it pales in comparison to Pinatubo. Emitting around 3,000 tons of SO2 each day, Iceland's mountain of magma has a long way to go before it even comes close to the 20 million tons released by Pinatubo.
There's another key atmospheric ingredient emitted by volcanoes: carbon dioxide (CO2). But current estimates say that Eyjafjallajökull is ejecting just 150,000-300,000 tons of CO2 each day, placing it on par with the daily emissions of a small to mid-size European economy. For comparison, 42 million tons of CO2 were put into the atmosphere as a result of Pinatubo.
An interesting consideration is not just the toxic gas released by Eyjafjallajökull but its indirect effect on reducing CO2 emissions as a result of grounded flights. Nonetheless, a recent infographic from Information is Beautiful (re-posted below) illustrates that the net effect doesn't drastically change the outlook for our climate.
Some have speculated that it is possible the current cough of Eyjafjallajökull could trigger an eruption of the neighboring Katla volcano as it did in 1823. However, scientists are quick to emphasize there is no evidence linking the two magmatic vessels.
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Eyjafjallajökull will offer any respite from global climate change in the near future.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Chicago Climate Action Plan (CCAP)
Ever wonder what efforts the City of Chicago is taking to curb climate change and promote sustainability? Well look no further than the CCAP.
About a month ago Suzanne Malec-McKenna, the Commissioner for the Chicago Climate Action Plan, gave a great talk at Norris providing a synopsis of Chicago's efforts with regards to sustainability. Launched in September 2008 the CCAP outlines the city’s roadmap for addressing global climate change at the local level and proposes strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to changes already underway. The City of Chicago is currently implementing over 40 different action items that fall into five broad categories: Energy Efficient Buildings, Clean & Renewable Energy Sources, Improved Transportation Options, Reduced Waste & Industrial Pollution, and Adaptation. For more information about the CCAP and all their efforts and progress, please check out their website at www.chicagoclimateaction.org.
For even more information, there is a talk TOMORROW night, March 30th, in downtown Chicago, that will provide an update on the progress of the Action Plan. Check out the NETG calendar for details and a synopsis!
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
A refreshing dose of honesty
A junior senator from Washington state, Maria Cantwell, is is pushing a simpler, more voter-friendly version of cap-and-trade, called “cap-and-dividend.”
Although, like in cap-and-trade, carbon credits are auctioned off and traded, which results in an increase in cost for products made with energy (which is to say, just about everything), under this interesting twist on the old idea, American taxpayers are issued payments from the government as compensation. To quote this article in the Economist, which calls the idea “honest” for its transparency and simplicity (the bill is a mere 40 pages long), “To discourage the use of dirty energy, [the bill] says, it has to be more expensive. To make up for that, here’s a thousand bucks.” This way there is an inherent consumer-driven incentive to purchase less energy-intensive goods, which would translate to an incentive to produce them on the industrial scale. Here is a link to Senator Cantwell's page in which The Carbon Limits and Energy for America's Renewal (CLEAR) Act is introduced.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
'As the World Burns': The Politics Of Climate Change
Check out this 20-minute discussion on NPR's `Fresh Air' with journalist Jeff Goodell, as he discusses his article for Rolling Stone, "As the World Burns: How Big Oil and Big Coal mounted one of the most aggressive lobbying campaigns in history to block progress on global warming"
Read More >>Monday, December 14, 2009
Letting Nature levy taxes
This interesting idea ties the rate of carbon taxation to the temperature of the troposphere: if the Earth continues warming, the tax increases.
If global warming is not really happening, and the warming trend proves to be a temporary fluctuation unrelated to man-made carbon emissions, then the tax would decrease or disappear. This approach has appeal in that the tax is self-correcting, but there are some reasons to proceed with caution as well, not the least of which is the politicization of scientific research. Another benefit I can imagine is that we would find out rather quickly "what the market believes" is really happening, as investments should favor either companies that are planning for a low-carbon future, or companies that are betting on a fossil-based model.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Climate Change panel hosted by NUSPAN
Interesting panel discussion on climate change and policy this week. See details below...
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Northwestern University's Science Policy Action Network (NUSPAN) presents "Cutting Carbon: a panel discussion on how to merge good science and good policy."
When: Tuesday October 20th, 5 - 6 PM
Where: Tech LR4
Hear from our expert panelists on how scientific advances and public policy can help mitigate climate change. The interplay between science, public opinion, and economics will be analyzed in regards to the implementation of effective climate change legislation. The panelists include:
* David Archer, Professor of Geophysics from the University of Chicago and Blogger for RealClimate
* Liz Moyer, Professor of Geophysics from the University of Chicago and Member of CIM-EARTH
* David Weisbach, Professor of Law from the University of Chicago, expert in Federal Taxation Economics
* Marisa Martin, environmental lawyer and Northwestern alum
* Mark Witte, Professor of Economics at Northwestern University, expert in Natural Resource Economics
Pizza and refreshments will be provided.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
China Offers Position for Copenhagen
In preparation for the upcoming UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen later this year, the National Planning and Reform Commission of China recently released its position paper.
A short AP article summarizes the paper and highlights the following points about China's stance on emissions:
Despite its rapid growth and construction of coal-fired plants, China has taken a number of bold steps that demonstrate an increasing commitment to lowering emissions. See this recent article by the New York Times for evidence of their intention to limit increasing emissions. Of particular note is a quote by Cao Peixi, the president of the China Huaneng Group, the country’s biggest state-owned electric utility and the majority partner in the joint venture building a plant in Tianjin. “We shouldn’t look at this project from a purely financial perspective,” he said. “It represents the future.” His company's commitment to the project even though it would cost more than conventional plants is a daring statement but represents a growing movement in China that recognizes the need for action. How this plays out at next month's meeting of delegates in Bonn, Germany should be interesting to watch.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Is email spam as bad for the environment as they say?
A news story broke a few weeks ago (courtesy of a study by McAfee, the virus protection software company) pertaining to the global energy costs of email spam. The study outlined a very thorough breakdown of the life-cycle of spam, from creation and dissemination to filtering and viewing. The energy usage per year for each step was analyzed for each major country and also generalized over the global scale. The conclusion: over 33 billion kilowatt-hours (KWh) of electricity are used globally each year as a result of spam. According to McAfee’s numbers, this is equivalent to the electricity usage of 2.4 million homes in the U.S., and equals the GHG emissions of 3.1 million passenger cars. Not a small amount.
This story reflects a burgeoning trend by companies to spin their products in a way that shines favorably on the environment. We probably never thought about the impact of spam on CO2 emissions, but thanks to McAfee, we can now feel good about buying their product. This is all well and good, and simply reflects the very positive cultural and societal movement towards cleaner and more efficient energy production and usage in order to reduce our environmental imprint. However, as with all science, it is necessary to analyze studies like this in detail, and to be cognizant of any conflicts of interest that may exist. In the case of corporate advertising, the vested interest of the company in producing data which leads to more sales is glaring.
The most interesting part of the McAfee study is that about 80% of the energy associated with spam comes from the user end: viewing and deleting spam, manually filtering, and searching for false positives (scanning the spam folder for valuable emails accidentally filtered from the inbox). The energy associated with each of these categories is defined as “user hours,” calculated by multiplying the time spent for these acts by the average power required by the computer.
It is in the application of these “user hours” that McAfee confuses and distorts the issue, and inflates the environmentally deleterious impact of spam presumably for its own economic benefit. The energy associated with user hours is only a factor if, in lieu of viewing and filtering spam, the computer would have been off. It is the difference in energy between normal non-spam behavior and behavior with spam, the opportunity cost (to use a business term), that should be used in the analysis. The only scenario where the McAfee analysis is correct would be where the computer is on an extra amount of time due to the user time spent dealing with spam. If you spend 15 minutes a day dealing with spam, do you stay an extra 15 minutes at work, or at home on the computer, AND do you turn your computer on and off each time you use it? It is safe to say that most people’s computing behavior does not follow this pattern.
Here is another way to look at the issue. Most people take time during the work day to go to the bathroom or to take a coffee break. This on average would be about 15 minutes away from your computer. Do you turn your computer off when you go to the bathroom? I know I don’t. Using the same analysis and logic as McAfee, the global energy and CO2 footprint of people simply going to the bathroom would be just as large (maybe I just inadvertently proposed the new advertising campaign for the antidiarrheal industry). The point is, by treating user time as added energy, McAfee has greatly inflated their numbers to their benefit.
I commend McAfee for its efforts to analyze the energy associated with an industry. These types of studies are very useful and often shed light on existing inefficiencies. The references it used and the data it collected were both excellent. However, its representation of the final data fell short. Despite this, they were successful in highlighting a much broader and more important related issue: how much energy is wasted by computers that are on and not being used. I’m turning mine off after I write this.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Use Energy, Get Rich and Save the Planet
This article under this provocative title (follow the link) has as its central argument something called the Kuznets curve. This is a plot of an environmental damage index versus affluence of a society. It is shaped like an upside-down U, meaning that it has a maximum- and for a level of affluence greater than that maximum the environmental damage done by a group begins to decrease. The reason for the shape of the curve is that over a certain level of affluence, people can begin to afford to clean up their act, and offer themselves clean air and drinking water, use carbon-light fuels (coal -> natural gas -> nuclear), and with their more efficient agricultural methods, allow re-forestation since fewer acres are under cultivation. Something like a conclusion is drawn that the best thing we can do for the environment and the atmosphere in particular is to keep our hands off the energy market and let it work its own magic.
My principal criticisms of this way of thinking are as follows:
-The experimental outcome of the American energy policy and the European one disagree with the policy-won't-work approach. Europeans, who have a similar standard of living to us, consume much less energy than we do per-capita, and per $GDP, because unlike us they made conscious and effective decisions about taxing energy in a way that discourage to a degree its overuse. This fact is a direct contradiction of the author's point that “Energy systems evolve with a particular logic, gradually, and they don’t suddenly morph into something different." In fact, France, of which he makes an example as being just past the maximum of a Kuznets curve, made a very deliberate choice a few decades ago to be less reliant on foreign energy. Their nuclear program represents a dramatic and sudden morphing of their energy system through government policy and not in any way from market forces. In a domestic example, wind energy now accounts for a large fraction of our newly built electricity production capacity- made possible by a federal credit to make it competitive with fossil energy. Another policy-driven decarburization the market doesn't yet support.
-The next step our energy system is supposedly poised to make to further decarburize requires technological developments- sometimes evolutionary, but just as often revolutionary. There, is in the latter cases, little market force driving the basic scientific research this requires- much of it is done in national labs or in university labs funded by government agencies (DOE, NSF). The rate of advancement depends to a large degree on availability of government funding, and who is in charge (and whether or not they are pushing for a "green revolution") makes an enormous difference, in contrast to the author's claim. To put it another way, to slide down the Kuznets curve toward a less harmful way of living, we need development of technologies that the market can not provide, because currently there is no market for them.
-There are plenty of externalities (environmental and otherwise) that I think the K-curve analysis neglects. Take for instance the example of reforestation due to more land-efficient agriculture. Sure, fewer acres are necessary, ok, and that's a good thing by this one measure. But how are the ecosystems in the Chesapeak bay doing, a thousand miles from the "environmentally friendly" low-acreage-per-bushel-of-corn farms that drain into it? Is there any bioactivity in the soil, or has it been chemically scorched with fertilizers and pesticides in the name of increased efficiency?
-Finally, I'll wager that the West is benefiting significantly from having priced ourselves out of the manufacturing game for many of our common every-day products. Our affluence coupled with globalization of product streams has resulted in a massive shift in manufacturing capacity from the West to Asia, and with that capacity went the emissions it produces. It is easy to pat ourselves on the back for cleaning up our air and water, but one result has been that some of the burden of that pollution has been transferred to China.
It's an interesting article, and does contain some lessons worth keeping in mind when crafting energy policy, but I think that the call to "Use Energy, Get Rich and Save the Planet" is simplistic, and discourages necessary action.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Digging Deeper: DIY Science
When reading about energy and climate science, I often come across very broad statements regarding the benefits of different technologies. While these statements are supported by competent science, the details of their origins are most often left out. Enter the do-it-yourself (DIY) part of science that people rarely realize is within their grasp.
I’ll give an example that I was thinking about last week, based on the statement “electric cars have lower overall emissions than gasoline cars.” A fairly intuitive, even obvious statement, but I found myself wondering “why is this so obvious?” I haven’t heard any quotes on how much less the emissions are. Being a scientist, it is best to not just take someone’s word for it, and to do a little digging.
There are a number or great resources for looking up data and statistics on energy-related topics, some of which I reference below. In this specific case, we are looking to compare how much CO2 is emitted for each mile driven by an average electric versus by a typical gasoline car. To get this quantity, we must take the CO2 emissions per unit of energy and divide it by the amount of energy required to drive one mile. For the latter statistic, this is simply the energy efficiency of the car, which is expressed as the common miles per gallon (mpg) for a gasoline car, and miles per kilowatt-hour (kWh) for an electric car.
Focusing first on the gasoline car, the EPA estimates that 19.4 pounds of CO2 are emitted per gallon of burned gasoline. Additionally, the U.S. Department of Transportation calculates that the average U.S. vehicle efficiency is 19.8 miles per gallon. Dividing the first number by the second yields a value of 0.98 pounds of CO2 per mile.
For an electric car the calculation is just as simple. While electric cars themselves do not emit CO2, the power plants that produce the electricity used by the car do have emissions (the majority of electricity in the United States comes from coal powered plants and other fossil fuels). According to The Energy Information Administration, 1.33 pounds of CO2 on average were emitted per kWh of electricity production in the US in 2006. Additionally, the current standard for electric vehicles is an efficiency of 4 miles per kWh. Dividing again the first number by the second yields a value of 0.33 pounds of CO2 per mile.
Comparing these two figures, the electric vehicle emissions are 66% less than those of gasoline powered vehicles traveling the same distance. So the original statement is supported, but now we know how much cleaner an electric car is to operate. Having this actual figure also allows us to extract further information, such as the fact that a gasoline powered car with increased fuel efficiency of 58 mpg will have the same CO2 emissions as that of an electric car. By digging a little deeper, our understanding got a lot broader.
The above is a very basic analysis of emissions associated with vehicle use. A full life-cycle analysis would involve more detailed calculations that take into account the entire Production-Manufacturing-Use-Disposal pathway of each type of car as well as their fuel sources (for example, how much energy is required to drill, refine, and transport the gallon of gasoline used?). In either case, the key is to break the problem down and to make sure you use accurate sources of data. People like easily quotable facts and statistics, and sometimes you just have to make your own. All the information is there on the internet. So next time you find yourself wondering “why is that the case,” follow The Home Depot method and do it yourself.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Why Isn’t the Brain Green?
Here is an interesting -- albeit a bit lengthy -- commentary of a study on the apparent disconnect between the importance of addressing climate change and the relatively apathetic public attitude on it.
Read More >>Friday, April 17, 2009
Global Warming vs. Polar Exploring
Many times this winter, during the most bitterly cold days, I heard the sarcastic comment, “Where is this global warming everyone has been talking about?”
Historical minimum polar ice cap coverage.The most noticeable changes in climate due to global warming are occurring on and around the polar ice cap. While far from our sight and minds, the polar ice cap serves as a beacon for melting of landmass ice that could be detrimental to coastal cities in the coming decades. The ice cap is changing rapidly because sea ice is particularly sensitive to sun exposure and temperature changes. Ice normally reflects sunlight, but as the temperature warms and thin layers of water start to form, more sunlight is absorbed instead of reflected, and the warming cycle is accelerated. Under the same mechanism, as the polar ice cap shrinks and is replaced by open ocean, more sunlight is absorbed and the shrinkage rate is accelerated – so much so that, as can be seen in the diagram below, the minimum ice coverage has been cut in half over just a matter of a few decades.
John Huston moves through the ice rubble during day 13 on the polar ice cap.
Expedition progress as of day 45.Read More >>