Climate Change 101

Shouldn't snakes still be hibernating?

2012-02-01T21:37:00.000-08:00

This little fella was out and about at Cayuga Nature Center on January 31, 2012!

Upstate New York snakes tend to hide away in winter, but when temperatures warm, they'll come out and sun themselves. And this week has been warm over a broad swath of the country, hitting 56° in Ithaca, tying the record high for the date set in 1956.

Snakes usually stay hidden away until around March. Is this global warming? Or, as a Facebook comment suggests, "Global weirding?"

All we can say is an indecisive maybe. Ok, that's not all we can say, or there wouldn't be a blog post about it, would there? But the maybe has to come first -- these warm days are weather, not climate, and it's really hard to tie an individual case of unusual weather to climate change.

But what the scientific consensus says about climate change indicates we should expect to see snakes coming out earlier than we used to. And other changes that mark the coming of spring will typically come earlier too.

Another commentator noted that some trees are already budding. That's not unusual, quite a few trees normally form buds before winter sets in, as another commentator (my brother-in-law) noted. Those buds get bigger and more noticeable when it warms though, and again, that's tending to happen earlier.

Last week, the United States Department of Agriculture, released an updated Plant Hardiness Zone Map. Check out the interactive map here, where you can click on the map or type in your zip code to find your zone. The Washington Post made a different interactive map of the information -- comparing the 2012 map to the 1990 map it replaces.

Again, things are complicated so not all of the changes here can be attributed to global warming, but the northward shift of hardiness zones is what climate models predict and it's what happened. And, the weirding idea is also evident here -- in some places zones shifted southward, but that's less common as you look across the map.

Something a bit simpler to indicate that we can expect to see more snakes in January is the trend shown clearly in the graph below.

From Joe Romm's post here.

The graph shows that the 1980s were the warmest decade on record until the 1990s came along and were warmer. The 1990s held the record until the first decade of the new century took its place. So, we can't say that snake was out on January 31 because of climate change. But we can say there's a reasonable chance and that there's a good chance of seeing more snakes in the coming Januarys.

Don Duggan-Haas

Trend & Variation + 2011 Climate Anomolies

2012-01-20T14:58:00.000-08:00

Look at the graph below, from NOAA's State of the Climate Global Analysis Annual 2011.

Now, watch this video:

Now, think.

Climate Change Talking Points for Holiday Gatherings

2011-12-23T08:37:00.000-08:00

'Tis the season for uncomfortable conversations!

For the last several days, Climate Literacy Network (CLN) listserv has had an engaging discussion on how to handle holiday conversations that turn to climate change. This post will draw some suggestions from that exchange and bring in additional ideas of my own.

There are a number of different ideas that follow -- hopefully readers will find a few that are useful. I don't suggest applying the full suite in one dinner conversation. I've written a fair amount, but tried to make it skimmable by highlighting key ideas.

In my own family everyone accepts the scientific consensus that climate change is real and primarily human-caused. A family of science geeks, our arguments are more likely to be about which of siblings has the greater surface-area to volume ratio, as I noted in last year's seasonal post. Last year's post describes how to use your Christmas tree in discussions of, and reflections on, carbon. This post will offer up some other discussion ideas.

I'm lucky that my family all gets along and treats each other with kindness and respect. And I consider myself lucky that we're all pretty amusing science geeks. I know that not everyone is so lucky. Civility should be your starting point. If the conversation can't stay civil, figure out how to end it or change the subject. They are family, after all. And, you won't change anyone's mind and they won't change yours if things become too heated. A bit of disagreement is par for the course, and even kind of fun for some of us, but if people start yelling, well, ick. That's not a good way to spend your family time.

Where to Begin?
Well, beyond being civil, where to begin?

Four simple points can open the door for deeper discussions. A study by Ding et al which draws from work by Kosnick et al suggests four key beliefs about climate change are predictors of support for policy grounded in climate science. Those four points can also make for good cocktail party discussion. They are that climate change is:

real
human caused
serious, and,
solvable

Friend, climate educator, and CLN colleague, LuAnn Dahlman, has tried it out (stating these four points) at a few holiday parties and finds that people tend to pick up on one of those four points and dig deeper.

After opening the discussion with those four points, let others in the conversation point you to what's next. The rest of the post should be helpful in the follow up. If it's a dinner party conversation where you might not know the folks very well, this can help you to know your audience. If it's your family, then hopefully you already know them. Keep in mind what you know.

Avoid stating misconceptions -- even if it is to refute them. There is compelling research to indicate that just hearing misconceptions reinforces them. See The Debunking Handbook for more information on the discussion of myth or misconceptions (also referenced below).

These suggestions are not hard and fast rules, so I'm going to break the one above immediately, sort of. The atmosphere operates pretty differently from a greenhouse. While this may not be exactly a misconception, analogies always have limitations, and describing the atmosphere as being like a greenhouse is no exception. Like a greenhouse, the atmosphere allows visible light to pass through it and warm up the surface beneath or inside. Like a greenhouse, those warmed surfaces inside [the greenhouse or the atmosphere] radiate heat to the surroundings and warm the air inside. But a greenhouse warms up largely because the glass stops hot air from rising. The atmosphere doesn't have a glass ceiling and it doesn't shut down convection. When the heat is radiated from Earth's surface, the atmosphere is acting more like a heat-trapping blanket than a pane of glass, and some climate communicators prefer the heat-trapping blanket analogy. You can see it's getting complicated. Know your audience well enough to figure out if you want to slice and dice analogies. If that's too complicated, then...

State the scientific case as simply as you can. At the beginning of the year, I wrote a post laying out just two simple facts along with a tiny bit of grade school vocabulary to make the case that climate change is real and human caused. Those points hold up well and you should know them as background for any discussion on climate change. The post itself is brief, but I'll reiterate the key points even more briefly here:

Know the difference between weather and climate. Weather tells you what clothes to wear today. Climate tells you what clothes you should own.
Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases absorb heat and make the atmosphere warm up. It's very simple to demonstrate, and the post includes a short, sweet video.
Each and every "normal" middle class or wealthy American is putting tons and tons and tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Where do you think the gasoline in your car goes when you burn it?

Energy use is central to the human contribution to climate change. We need energy to make things and to move people, products and information. Almost all of our energy use comes from burning stuff which puts a lot of carbon dioxide (and other stuff) into the air. Reducing energy use not only reduces climate impact, but also saves money, reduces our dependency on foreign countries, and helps keep our air and water cleaner. Aspects of it -- like living closer to where you work and therefore shortening your commute, or telecommuting can also give you more time.

The Joel Pett cartoon below captures this set of issues very, very well.

Let people feel safe in disagreeing with you. Evidence alone is generally not sufficient to change a tightly held belief. Most scientific issues are not just scientific issues. Scientific issues with serious implications about the nature of our economy and our society are never just scientific issues. They also are issues of identity and community. Even the bluntest evidence may not be sufficient for the most deeply committed to their beliefs. But I still favor sharing blunt evidence.

The scientific understandings of climate change have become tightly connected with politics. Perhaps that not a strong enough statement -- for some, what they believe about humanity's role in climate change is a central part of their worldview. That tight connection is problematic as it makes people believe that if they change their position on climate change, then they are also undergoing a conversion experience that separates them from their identity and their community. Seen this way, it's akin to a religious conversion. But it doesn't need to be that big a shift -- one can be of any political persuasion and accept the scientific consensus on climate change. As Kathryn Schulz notes in the excellent book, Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, people are not shunned by their community when they adopt a belief the community scorns, but rather when they abandon a belief the community cherishes.

Adopting climate friendly policies means adopting policies that reduce government waste and take our troops out of harms way. These policies not only reduce our emissions but also reduce or eliminate the need to be in places that provide fossil fuels. Furthermore, resupply convoys are often military targets and the lion's share of what is being resupplied is typically fuel. See Operation Free, a coalition of veterans and national security organizations that recognize the role of climate change and energy dependency in national security.

It's worth stating that the tight connection between climate change and politics is problematic for the reason stated above, but that tight connection is also essential as politics should deal with things that matter. And, as noted above, climate change is serious.

Relevance Helps

Draw on the local and familiar. Polar bears, penguins, and glaciers matter a great deal, but most of the people I know have very limited experience with any of them.

As a native Buffalonian, though, I find it odd that Buffalo had no measurable snow in November for only the fourth time in 140 years of record keeping. Of course, one weird month doesn't equate to climate change. Even though it's now over a month -- the lowest snow totals for a winter on record as of December 23, 2011. However, the fact that the third snowless November on record was 2009, and one begins to wonder.

As the husband of a long-time avid gardner, I know too that the length of the growing season has been creeping longer and longer over the last couple of decades. These kinds of changes were predicted by climate models and when predictions regularly hold up, people should give more credence to the predictors.

Stories are helpful. It's a story that I've got a brand new snowblower and have had no excuse to use it. The story may change as Lake Erie is 40° F in late December. That means lake effect snow will be possible for sometime to come. Lake effect snow has increased over the past century as a result of warmer lakes in winter.

Burnett, et al, 2003

What about the weather where you are? Or where you're from? Chances are fairly good it was a very unusual year -- 56% of the U.S. experienced an unusually dry year (top 10% historically) or unusually wet year (again, top 10% historically). That link includes a list of some cities that have broken precipitation records so far this year. Note that Binghamton didn't merely break its record -- the record was washed away in a deluge.

Climate models predict that climate change will make wet places wetter and dry places drier. While climate science does make this sort of general prediction, how fast these changes will take place is tricky, especially on local and regional scales.

It matters that climate pattens are changing because successful farming (and therefore a dependable food supply) is much easier when the climate is stable. It's a lot easier to do a range of business activities in a stable climate than in an unpredictable one, and climate change brings climate destabilization. And public safety is easier to protect when things are stable.

Resources for Going Further

There are many great resources for deepening understandings. Here are two that include specific attention to how to talk to climate change contrarians:

Earth: The Operators' Manual -- a PBS series with an accompanying website.
The Debunking Handbook -- this short publications offers valuable insights into how to avoid your advocacy backfiring. You may be familiar with the feeling more entrenched in your beliefs after a debate. Chances are fairly good that the person you debated also feels his or her beliefs more strongly.

What suggestions do you have? Please use the comments for sharing ideas.

Marcellus Shale 101: The Science Beneath the Surface

2011-11-11T12:48:00.000-08:00

The second post in a series of two.

The heart of this post is the Prezi used in a session of the same title (as this post) at this week’s Science Teachers’ Association of New York State’s (STANYS) Annual Meeting in Rochester, NY. This is one of two presentations related to the Marcellus Shale done by PRI staff at the STANYS meeting. The other is posted here. The two sessions had some overlapping content, but emphases differ.

This session began with a Google Earth file that includes several Marcellus Shale-related elements. Download that here: http://bit.ly/STANYS2011_Marcellus_kmz . The kmz file includes an overlay showing where the Marcellus is exposed in New York State, images of outcrops of the Marcellus Formation, overlays that allow the comparison of paleogeography with the distribution of the Marcellus Shale, and the locations of the thousands of existing gas wells (not generally Marcellus wells) in Chautauqua County. And more.
See the Prezi below or here: http://bit.ly/STANYS2011Marcellus101

Marcellus Shale 101: The Science Beneath the Surface on Prezi

This is cross-posted on our Marcellus Shale blog, The Science Beneath the Surface.

There's No Such Thing as a Free Megawatt: the Marcellus Shale, energy and the environment

2011-11-11T11:03:00.000-08:00

The first in a series of two.

The heart of this post is the Prezi used in a session of the same title (as this post) at this week's Science Teachers' Association of New York State's Annual Meeting in Rochester, NY. This is one of two presentations related to the Marcellus Shale done by PRI staff at the STANYS meeting. The other will be posted separately. The two sessions had some overlapping content, but emphases differ.

This is also cross-posted on our Marcellus Shale blog: The Science Beneath the Surface.

There’s no such thing as a free megawatt: the Marcellus Shale, energy and the environment on Prezi

A follow up to Musings on Mowing

2011-07-01T05:14:00.000-07:00

A four second follow up to Musings of a Manual Mower.

Untitled from Don Duggan-Haas on Vimeo.

Watch it full screen (or you won't be able to tell the grass is actually being cut). The idea of sharing this is to simply show that it works in much the same way as many of us have long mowed our lawns. You walk back and forth pushing the thing. And I find time lapse kind of amusing.

Don Duggan-Haas

The Musings of a Manual Mower

2011-05-30T13:50:00.000-07:00

Today, Memorial Day, I mowed my yard with a power mower for the first time since we bought our house almost four years ago. The incessant rain of the last several weeks had turned my yard into a jungle and I just didn't have the extra hours this added thickness of grass would add to the work my Great States reel type mower and I have done routinely handled together over our tenure in this house.

My Great States reel-type mower. Other name plates are made by the same manufacturer.

So I borrowed my neighbor Joe's 22 inch mulching power mower. He assured me the Earth would forgive me. Joe's is not a fancy mower -- not self-propelled or bagging or any such fancy stuff, but it seems reliable and started easily on the first pull.

Cutting grass with such a mower for the first time in a few years allows for a fresh comparison. If you're thinking about getting that polluter out of your garage, here's my take on it.

How much of a polluter your lawn mower is depends on its vintage and how well it's running. Since 1995, regulations have reduced mower emissions substantially, and those regulations have been phased in over time. While mowers, of course, contribute far less emissions in total than do cars and trucks, an average mower (in 2008) pollutes 11 times as much per hour according to the EPA.

Today's mowing took a little less time, made a lot more noise, and sprayed grass clippings about in ways I'm not accustomed to. Given the height of the grass, it was also a lot less effort. And, I really, really appreciated the mower and Joe's generosity in lending it. But I hope I can go at least another four years before I feel the need to use a power mower again.

I still had to walk about the same distance, pushing a thingy around that had sharp spinning blades, move things in the yard out of the way (and back), and sweat a bunch. I couldn't listen to podcasts whilst I mowed as I've become accustomed to doing. There are grass clippings strewn about my driveway and up my picket fence (but I figure the incessant rain will take care of that before too long).

I burned up more gas (than the none that I typically burn), and burned off at least a few fewer calories than standard. And I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as my typical quiet little walk about the yard.

It also struck me as being only slightly easier than my typical mowing job, and I've got things slightly out of adjustment on my mower that cost less than $100 new several years ago. I actually inherited it from Dad and I'm not sure quite how old it is. (Click the link to see other reflections on what I inherited from Dad).

I need to work on fine tuning the space between the blades and the cutting bar and stop fantasizing about the new models of reel type mowers that are now available. (Note that the placement of that link doesn't represent an endorsement of the company selling the different models available -- it's only intended to point you to a source of information on what's available).

Looking at what's newly available shows some models that can be raised to a 4" cutting height. Maybe if I had one of those, I'd not have felt the need to use non-human power on the lawn today.

Bottom line: This wet weather let my lawn become more than me and my reel-type mower were willing to handle, but I hope and expect to go at least four more years before using a mower powered by anything but me again. If you're mowing with a walk-behind gasoline-powered mower, consider changing to human-powered mowing.

Don Duggan-Haas

Searching for a deeper understanding of the climate change debate.

2011-05-20T08:09:00.000-07:00

Although the effects of climate change are becoming more evident, action and concern over climate change seem to be waning. Just recently, a Gallup poll reported that only 53 percent of Americans think that global warming is a serious threat to themselves or their family, down from 63 percent in 2007.

Climate Shift, a new report released this spring by American University professor, Matthew Nisbet, aims to find out why climate change policy and understanding has stalled. The report is part of a larger research effort by a network of social scientists, media analysts, and other scholars to tackle the complex issue from a broad point of view, looking at the climate change threat from an economic, social, and even philosophical perspective.

The report is huge in scope and Nisbet tries to tackle many dimensions of the climate change debate, focusing mainly on flaws within the environmental movement and ultimately calling for a shift in strategy. In the report, he reviewed the funding sources and expenditures for the major national environmental groups and compared them to conservative think tanks and their industry allies, the latter of which lobbied against the 2009 cap and trade climate change legislation. He looked at patterns in media portrayals of climate change and the amount of attention this issue receives in the media. He also examined factors that influence how both the general public and scientists/ environmentalists interpret and view climate change politics.

Overall, he argues that the reason science communication over climate change has failed is because it has been communicated in a political context, framed within specific policy solutions that are polarized across the liberal/ conservative spectrum. He points that out that as the Democratically introduced cap and trade legislation became more politically viable in 2009-2010, there was a simultaneous increase in climate skepticism among Republicans. Similarly, Nisbet contends that while Al Gore has been instrumental in bringing the climate change issue to the forefront, he has had a polarizing influence in the climate change debate by pairing the message of climate change with strong criticism of Republicans.

Nisbet calls for the need to present climate change as an issue, similar to public health and poverty, that requires addressing on many levels, not just in the context of single policy solutions. He argues that rather than spending money and resources on countering claims of Republicans and conservatives, environmental groups should invest in a broader range of policies, smaller in scope, and across several levels of government, including towns and counties, to engage people directly. He also proposes the climate change be framed as an opportunity for technological innovation in terms of moving away from an oil-based economy, rather than as a pollution issue.

The report has garnered mixed reactions from the environmental community and the blogosphere. Some find Nisbet's criticism of the environmental movement offensive and accuse him of blaming environmentalists for the death of cap and trade. Others are praising the report for raising valid questions and proposing a fresh take on how to approach climate change communication. Either way, the report has spawned much discussion and is bound to be influential in shaping the future of climate change policy.

The Agulhas system may play a key role in ocean circulation and climate change.

2011-05-09T12:37:00.000-07:00

Off the coast of East Africa, the Agulhas current sweeps downward towards the continent's tip and, for the most part, swings back east into the Indian Ocean. Some of it, however, "leaks" out around the cape and into the Atlantic ocean. New research, published recently in Nature, suggests that this "Agulhas leakage" may have a huge impact on climate variability.

The Agulhas system. Credit: Erik van Sebille, RSMAS

While is it not known exactly how much water is leaked into the Atlantic, the salty waters of the Agulhas form giant rings and eddies that ultimately join the Atlantic's main current system, the Atlantic Meridonal Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which includes the more familiar Gulf Stream current. The AMOC carries warm water northwards, keeping parts of North America and Europe several degrees warmer than they otherwise would be.

Under the current climate change prediction models, ice melt from the Arctic and a weakening of the AMOC due to the buildup of greenhouse gases will result in cooling of the North Atlantic. But authors of the Nature article say that the Agulhas leakage could compensate for these changes, helping to keep the North Atlantic warm, in contrast to these current prediction models .

In addition, geologic and modern data provide evidence that the Agulhas leakage increases under a warming climate, thus further suggesting that it could play a leading role in climate variability, as our climate continues to warm.

Researchers looked at the abundance of tropical plankton (Agulhas fauna) preserved in marine sediments corresponding to the late Pleistocene epoch, a period of repeated glaciations during the past 500,000 years. They found less Agulhas fauna in sediments corresponding to glacial periods and more Agulhas fauna in sediments corresponding to periods of a warming climate, thus indicating that the leakage had increased during periods of warming.

Modern data, gathered from satellites, oceanographic instruments, and computer simulations show shifts in wind patterns, a southward expansion of Indian Ocean currents, and a warming of the waters in the Agulhas system that all favor an increase in the Agulhas leakage.

The authors of this study point out that more research into the role of the Agulhas leakage in climate change is sorely needed. Questions such as whether the Agulhas leakage is a potential climate trigger or whether there is a feedback mechanism involved in its variability still remain to be answered. Hopefully, research into the Agulhas will shed a new light on an often overlooked piece of the climate puzzle.

Catch these PBS programs on climate & energy

2011-05-03T09:15:00.000-07:00

Today's post is primarily to draw your attention to other stuff -- two fine programs aired on PBS last month (and now available on the web) about climate and energy. Earth: The Operators' Manual aired April 10 on many PBS stations (but not on mine!). NOVA's Power Surge aired on April 20. You don't even need to go off to the program's pages -- they are available for viewing on this very page!

As a plus, unlike many programs about climate and energy, both of these programs are hopeful in their tone and conclusions.

You can watch Earth: The Operators' Manual by clicking below. This program features Penn State climatologist Richard Alley describing the science of climate change in a clear and easy to understand way. Energy use, on various scales, is compared to the number of 100 watt lightbulbs that energy would illuminate. We humans collectively use 15.7 terawatts of energy - 15,700,000,000,000 watts or 157 billion 100 watt bulbs.

The program also draws thoughtful attention to how and why the US military is reducing its use of fossil fuels, the military implications of climate change, and how China is working to reduce its dependency on fossil fuels. It also notes that the city of Houston, TX is the United States' largest municipal purchaser of green energy.

Watch the full episode. See more EARTH: The Operators Manual.

NOVA's Power Surge investigates the way we use energy, how that's changing, where energy comes from, how we can use less of it, and how we can use energy more cleanly. This quote from the opening is good food for thought as you settle in for the program:

Everyone wants it [energy development] somewhere other than their own backyard. Guess what? If you don't solve the problem, your backyard isn't going to look the same anyway.

Central to the program is the discussion of climate wedges -- Stephen Pacala's idea that we need to reduce emissions by7 billion tons of carbon and we can divide that 7 billion into wedges of 1 billion tons each. Wedges include efficiency and solar, for example. We might use multiple efficiency wedges to reach stabilization. A range of technologies and societal changes are explored.

Also included is an interesting way to visualize your carbon footprint -- using tons of compost as a visual aid.

The program raises many interesting points of consideration, one near it's closing, strikes me as especially important as we move ahead in making energy decisions:

One big nuclear plant is the same thing as 3000 big wind turbines and is the same as about 50 square miles of photovoltaics.

The quote then goes onto end with the one cited above from the beginning of the program. All of these approaches have substantial environmental impacts. Determining which is the worst of the lot makes me like efficiency even more. (Not mentioned here, though, is the idea that those solar panels can go on existing roofs).

Watch the full episode. See more NOVA.

There's overlap between the programs. Both of them substantial attention to efficiency and note that efficiency initiatives are money savers as well as emissions reduction strategies. Both of programs also note that China leads the world in the production of solar panels and at least hint at what that movement means from a political perspective. But the programs have substantial difference as well. And the approaches are different enough that you'll benefit from watching both of them.

Are we in the middle of a sixth mass extinction?

2011-04-29T11:41:00.000-07:00

Throughout Earth's history, there have been five great mass extinctions. In each one, over 75% of all species disappeared within a million years. New research, recently published in Nature, suggests that we may be in the midst of a sixth mass extinction, caused and/ or exacerbated by a variety of human activities, including: hunting, overfishing, deforestation, the introduction of non-native species, the spreading of pathogens, and of course, global warming.

To determine whether a mass extinction is indeed in progress, scientists compared current rate of extinctions to historical, background extinction rates. They determined that the current extinction rates for mammals, amphibians, birds, and reptiles, if calculated conservatlvely over the last 500 years, are well above normal. They estimated that current rates of extinction are faster than, or as fast as, all of the rates that would have produced the past "Big Five" extinctions.

The researchers mention a variety of methods to estimate extinction rates and compare them. One of the most commonly used ways to make this comparison is to estimate the number of extinctions per million species years (E/ MSY). Background rates are estimated from fossil extinctions that took place in million-year time intervals. For current rates of extinction, the proportion of species extinct in a short time interval (a couple of centuries) is extrapolated to predict what the rate would be over a million years.

The authors are quick to point out that measuring mass extinction is not an easy task. There are a number of biases with both fossil data and modern species data that can make comparison difficult and oftentimes, uncertain. However, they point out that even the most conservative analyses still provide evidence that a sixth mass extinction, is indeed, taking place.

**
Sharinne Sukhnanand

These briefs are part of a weekly series of updates to the publication: Climate Change - Past, Present, and Future: A Very Short Guide. The entire series can be found here.

Typewriters are to computers as cars are to: ___________________

2011-04-22T07:22:00.000-07:00

We often write Climate Change 101 blog posts about efficiency, and I think that's great. Today's post takes a different tack, and instead raises questions about doing something else instead of doing something more efficiently. What does that mean?

Consider why someone might want to buy a Hummer, for example. Sure, it will get you from Point A to Point B. In the eyes of some, it gets you there in style. I suspect it's relatively comfortable too. There are certain conveniences provided by having any vehicle -- you don't have to travel on someone else's schedule. You don't have to worry about if a bus or subway stops near your starting and ending points. It gets you there faster than walking or biking and in a climate controlled environment.

There are certain inconveniences too. You have to pay for the thing, to insure it, to fill it with fuel, to maintain it, and to fix it when something breaks. You also have to park it. And it's got emissions, of course, and we know those change the chemical composition of the atmosphere which in turn changes the dynamics of the atmosphere.

Indeed, the climate-controlled environment that it provides for its passengers while en route contributes, just a little on the individual level, to the destabilization of the global climate (which is why I'm writing about it here). Scale it up to the hundreds of millions of vehicle owners the world around, and it's no longer just a little. (See previous posts: Making the Case as Simply as I Can, How can the CO2 released weigh more than the gasoline I started with?, and Interesting Conversations Happen on Facebook for more on how emissions scale up to major problems).

Many of us, myself included, think we want a car. I'm suggesting that we step back from that and consider what services it is we want from cars, and think about if we can get equal or superior benefits in another way at a comparable or lower economic cost while lowering environmental costs.

I don't really want a car. I want to get from Point A to Point B with reasonable convenience, in comfort, and, I admit, I want to get there in some sort of style. Aspects of my family's style are conveyed by our ten year old Prius with its environmentally themed bumper stickers. I also don't want my transportation to cost too much -- for either me or for the environment.

Where I'm going with this might be summarized by an SAT-style analogy question:

Typewriters are to computers as cars are to: ___________*

Making cars more efficient is clearly important, and I'm really glad smart people are working on it. But what I'm wondering is: Can we make something more efficient than (and just as desirable as) cars? Sometimes fundamentally new technologies push away the old. A jet is not a re-engineered canal boat or train.

And, it's not always about more efficient ways of doing the same thing. Trains, planes and automobiles are all instruments for transporting people and goods from Point A to Point B. Part of the idea is also developing ways of meeting the needs and wants achieved by travel without the travel.

I mostly Skype to work. And it allows me to work all over the country and the world without doing nearly as much travel as this sentence implies (though I still do way more travel then I'm comfortable with from an environmental perspective). But it's a step in the right direction, and the technologies are improving at a blazing pace.

It's not just about changing technologies, either. I hope my next car is a rental. Or a car-share. Or improved mass-transit. None of those changes require new technologies, they just require people (my family) to do things differently. I'm part of a two-car family, but at least one of those cars is almost always parked in the driveway. If it was just a little more convenient for me to access a car sharing program or rental car, we'd be able to move to being a one-car family with the primary change in lifestyle being more money in our bank account.

Recognizing that we need a much longer blank line, how will you complete the analogy?

Don Duggan-Haas

----------------------------
*Some of you may recognize this as a favorite question stem of mine. Change "cars" to something else, like "schools" and you can push your brain in interesting directions. And I think you should.

Should we believe the scientists?

2011-04-04T13:58:00.000-07:00

My friend, English teacher, and inspirer of blog entries, Dina, recently asked me if I'd seen a couple of articles about problems of scientific studies. The articles in question are The Truth Wears Off Is there something wrong with the scientific method? by Jonah Lehrer, which appeared in The New Yorker and Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science by David H. Freedman, which appeared in The Atlantic.

A bit of background, and a plug to join our group:
She raised the question in context to an ongoing discussion about teaching climate change that I facilitate for a small group of educators. We meet monthly and share resources and try and work through ways to improve our approach to instruction around issues of climate change. Our meetings are online, via Skype and our next meeting is April 14 at 8:15 pm EDT.

For this coming call, we'll be talking about Greg Craven's book, What's the Worst That Could Happen? The book holds an important message, but Craven's writing style is that of a goofy science teacher. That's off-putting to some, but it happens to resonate with me. And, again, the central message of the book is really important. Through the book, Craven also develops a pair of nice conceptual tools for looking at the question of the title. One of those is a "credibility spectrum" that helps you rate different sources of information.

I talked about some of this at last month's National Science Teachers' Association Annual Meeting, and you can download handouts including the credibility spectrum. It's in two parts -- here and here. You can also see the presentation slides here, but it's not needed to understand the rest of this post.

That context is important for understanding Dina's question.

And, if you're interested in joining in our conversation on 4/14, drop me a note. It's a small part of a larger project called Climate Lifelines. The target population is high school teachers, but anyone teaching about climate change is welcome to join.

Now, back to Dina's questions
Here's what she said after sharing the article links:

Thoughts?

They make me question Craven's credibility scale. As does the increasing prevalence of science that is being funded by corporations with investment in a certain answer.

I am not to the point yet where I am a climate change denier. But I do wonder about the intensity of the predictions involved.

For example. (This is not terribly scientific, but anyway). The incredible ability of ecosystems to repair themselves is well documented. So let us say we do run out of fossil fuel before we reach some kind of climatic tipping point (which as far as I know, is a distinct possibility)-- to the point where it becomes a de facto worldwide carbon-zero reduction program. I don't hear much, if anything, about the possible *positive* impact this may have on climate change.

Here's what I wrote back:

They don't do much to sway me away from thinking that global warming is human caused and I was already leery of putting too much stock in individual studies. I've spent enough time with academics to know that they're human and the process reduces errors but doesn't eliminate them.

I also think the examples used in the two papers are of a different sort than the things that make the general conclusions related to human-induced climate change durable. They're both simpler than the big picture and more complex than the fundamental physics and chemistry.

It's been observed probably thousands of times in the lab that if you add carbon dioxide to air and shine light through it to warm up materials within the contained system that it will heat up more than a similar apparatus with less carbon dioxide in it. That's simple and it would be pretty stunning if it started working differently. The examples used in the paper all deal with stuff more complicated than that. So, that's where the climate change bit is simpler than these examples.

It's more complex in the huge range of observations, studies and predictions based on the idea that changing atmospheric chemistry in the way we're doing seem to fit together so very well. I guess that's both complex (at the level of all the different aspects of the Earth system) and simple (in that the outcomes seem to match (or exceed) the predictions).

I think even if it raises questions about Craven's credibility spectrum, it mostly just makes more room at the top. I don't see what's more reliable than the scientific consensus.

And, it is true that, if you don't cross certain tipping points (like extinction) ecosystems can bounce back pretty impressively. Of course, there's no bouncing back from extinction.

As for running out of fossil fuel before reaching climate tipping points, I'm personally worried that we're awfully close to the tipping point if we've not reached it already, and we're not on the cusp of running out of fossil fuels. They are, however, running out of the low hanging fruit of fossil fuels. Technologies, like horizontal drilling coupled with hydraulic fracturing, however effectively lower that fossil fuel fruit pretty regularly.

Hmmm... Did I just write most of an overdue blog post? What do you think?

Don

Natural gas development could worsen global warming.

2011-03-23T07:10:00.000-07:00

3/23/11

A natural gas drilling rig
in the Marcellus shale region.

Last week, three Cornell University researchers, Robert Howarth, Renee Santoro, and Tony Ingraffea, gave a seminar about natural gas development and its potential contribution to climate change. Overall, they found that the natural gas industry's carbon footprint plus methane footprint was greater than that of the coal and oil based industries, thus increasing the likelihood that global warming will exacerbated by further implementation of natural gas production. Their findings will be published in the upcoming April edition of Climatic Change Letters, as an addendum to the main journal, Climate Change.

Natural gas has long been touted as a "cleaner" fuel than oil, simply because less carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere upon burning. However, the principal component of natural gas is methane, which is a much more potent global warming gas than carbon dioxide. During natural gas production a small percentage of methane is released into the atmosphere, either intentionally through venting, or inadvertently through leaks in the pipeline. While methane does not last nearly as long in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, over the short term (20 years as opposed to 100 years), its global warming potential is estimated to be 72 times greater than that of carbon dioxide.

The researchers looked at the overall life-cycle of natural gas production and compared methane emissions at each stage of production using industry reported data. They also compared emissions between shale gas production and conventional gas. They found that 3.6% to 7.9% of methane from shale-gas production escaped into the atmosphere during venting and leaks, almost two times greater than the emissions from conventional gas. These increased emissions in shale-gas production occured during the hydraulic fracturing of a well and during the drill out following fracturing. Their findings are in conjunction with a November 2010 Environmental Protection Agency report that found that emissions, particularly for shale gas, are larger than previously believed.

As many countries consider the adoption of shale-gas production as an alternative to oil-based energy sources, more research, similar to this study, will become gravely important to asess the true consequences to climate change.

**
Sharinne Sukhnanand

These briefs are part of a weekly series of updates to the publication: Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future. The entire series can be found here.

Get out your tissue box: researchers find that global warming extends the pollen season in northern latitudes.

2011-03-11T15:53:00.000-08:00

3/11/11

Credit: Sue Sweeney/ Wikimedia Commons

Researchers studying ragweed (Ambrosia spp.), one of the worst allergy-causing plants, particularly for the summer and fall season, have found that its pollen season has been extended, due to warming temperatures in the upper latitudes. In northern states, such as Wisconsin and Minnesota, the ragweed pollen season has been extended by roughly two weeks (13-16 days). Further north, in areas of Canada, such as Winnipeg and Saskatoon, the ragweed season has been stretched by almost one month (25-27 days)!

Their findings are consistent with the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment that current and projected increases in global warming are not uniform and depend, rather, on latitude and elevation. The researchers looked at pollen counts and weather data from 10 locations across the North American continent, from as far south as Georgetown, Teaxs to as far north as Saskatoon, Canada over a 15 year period (1995-2009). As latitude increased, they observed an increase in the usual length of the growing season (increase in the frost-free period), as well an a change in the number of days to first frost. Upper latitudes are warming faster than mid-latitudes and the researchers found that changes in the length of the ragweed pollen season were in proportion to these warming differences.

The impact of study goes beyond a couple of sniffles and sneezes. The authors cite that ragweed may cause more seasonal allergic reactions than all other plants combined. And for those who suffer from asthma, allergies can oftentimes trigger asthma or make it worse. With a now longer pollen season and increased pollen counts, the number of people affected by allergic reactions to ragweed could increase dramatically.

Sharinne Sukhnanand

**
These briefs are part of a weekly series of updates to the publication: Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future. The entire series can be found here.

How dry can the Earth's climate get? Researchers discover an ancient mega-drought.

2011-03-02T13:41:00.000-08:00

3/2/11

Credit: Tomas Castelazo, Wikimedia Commons

Scientists have discovered one of the most intense and far-reaching droughts in the history of early modern humans, according to a new study recently published in Science magazine. The drought, also referred to as the H1 Megadrought, affected large areas of Africa and Southern Asia, shrinking lakes, rivers, and vital freshwater supplies. Lake Victoria, currently the world's largest tropical lake, dried up completely, as did Lake Tana, in Ethiopia. Both lakes are primary water sources for the Nile River, suggesting that the mega-drought had severe ecological impacts on ecosystems and communities from East Africa to the Mediterranean coast.

In addition, the study showed that the regular monsoon rains for these regions didn't just migrate south during the drought, as previously thought. The rains weakened significantly as well, thus revealing that the mega-drought had a much greater geographical impact and was more catastrophic than previously believed.

Interestingly, an analysis of sediment cores revealed that the mega-drought took place roughly 16,000 to 17,000 years ago, which coincided with another major climate change event: the peak of the Heinrich Stadial 1, a massive surge of icebergs and meltwater into the North Atlantic at the end of the last ice age. While it is still unknown whether the massive ice melt contributed or even caused the mega-drought, the study discusses possible ways that the Heinrich event may have influenced atmospheric and rainfall systems in favor of a drought.

The authors mention that the mechanisms that drive rainfall systems in the African-Asian region, which affect more than half of all humanity, are poorly understood and difficult to model. However, as the Arctic continues to melt at an unprecedented rate, the study raises valid questions about whether the current ice melt could, in theory, contribute to a similar drought.

Sharinne Sukhnanand

These briefs are part of a weekly series of updates to the publication: Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future. The entire series can be found here.

Insurance companies gear up for more extreme weather.

2011-02-23T13:09:00.000-08:00

2/23/11

IBHS research facility

This past year, the Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS), the research arm of the insurance industry, unveiled a new research center dedicated to learning how homes survive under weather-related stress. The massive facility, located in rural South Carolina amid dairy farms, can fit up to nine mid-sized houses, and has the ability to simulate torrential rain, hurricane force winds, and even wildfires.

The motivation behind research at the new IBHS center is to learn more about construction, maintenance, and building codes that are conducive towards disaster preparedness.

The research is part of a larger initiative by the insurance industry to respond to the multi-faceted challenge of climate change. As climate change increases the occurrence and severity of extreme weather events, insurance companies will have to cover unprecedented losses. Last year, severe weather events caused $37 billion in insured losses, the sixth-highest total for insurers since 1980, according to reinsurer, Munich Re. In addition, the United Nations reported that natural disasters caused $109 billion in total economic damage last year, three times more than in 2009.

Changes in climate are also compounded by changes in the "built" environment. High-risk areas for extreme weather-related events, such as Florida's coast and most "beachfront" property, can be hotspots for real estate development, oftentimes resulting in a landscape of high-density, high-value properties. Most of these properties are not built with the potential of withstanding natural disasters, such as flooding or a hurricane, in mind.

Insurance companies recognize that raising premiums will not be enough to cover losses. With the research at the new IBHS center, the insurance industry ultimately plans to incentivize ways of putting building codes and construction materials designed to withstand extreme weather, into practice.

Sharinne Sukhnanand

**
These briefs are part of a weekly series of updates to the publication: Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future. The entire series can be found here.

Look at your fish! Look at the world!

2011-02-18T13:05:00.000-08:00

"The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself."

- Henry Miller

Today's entry has to do with looking, really looking, at the natural and human world. I hope it will bring a bit of attention to beauty and intrigue too many of us are missing. I'm tempted to say we're doing that less because of the pressures of this modern world, but I that may be jumping to an unfounded conclusion. We pay attention to what's relevant to us, or what we perceive as relevant to us, and I expect that has always been true. Certainly industrial workers confined to industrial cities have been missing connection to the natural world for generations.

Before going further, I should point to why paying attention to the world around us is relevant to understanding climate. The primary connection is that you don't recognize change if you don't know what a place, a thing, a person, or a climate is like at some earlier time. I've written before about getting to know what your climate is like in a visceral way. As we spend more and more time in climate conditioned spaces we lose touch with our environment and our climate. This is another prod to keep or rebuild that connection.

This modern world allows us to move from climate-conditioned space to climate-conditioned space by way of moving climate-condition spaces. Your GPS allows you to get from point A to point B without paying a whole lot of attention to where you are and what's around you. Attention to landmarks has suddenly become unnecessary as we move about in vehicles that create uniform climates around us. It's great, of course, but it also has its costs. You can use your GPS as a mentor for learning the lay of the land. Or you can use it to ignore the lay of the land.

What do you do to give more attention to your environment? First, remember to do it. That might lead you to walking and biking more and driving less. That's got pluses besides bringing you more in touch with your environment of course. Then, stop and smell the roses. And draw the roses.

Hæmulon elegans, NOAA, Drawing by H. L. Todd

One of my favorite essays describes Louis Agassiz's approach to teaching. Agassiz was the first to present a scientific case for an ice age (and a direct opponent to much of Darwin's work). In the Laboratory with Agassiz, also known as Look at Your Fish! by Samuel H. Scudder, tells the tale of Scudder's first encounter with his mentor Agassiz. And, of Scudder looking at his fish long and hard:

Half an hour passes—an hour—another hour; the fish began to look loathsome. ...

...At last a happy thought struck me—I would draw the fish; and now with surprise I began to discover new features in the creature. Just then the Professor returned.

"That is right," said he; "a pencil is one of the best of eyes. I am glad to notice, too, that you keep your specimen wet, and your bottle corked."

With these encouraging words, he added, "Well, what is it like?"

Scudder gave his reply in terms of what he had seen in his first hours with the fish. Agassiz listened and replied:

"You have not looked very carefully; why," he continued more earnestly, "you haven't even seen one of the most conspicuous features of the animal, which is a plainly before your eyes as the fish itself; look again, look again!" and he left me to my misery.

The tale continues, unearthing how Scudder learned to see more and more about the fish. And about looking.

Of course, I'm partly urging you to go and look with your pencil, but more importantly, I'm just asking you to really, really look. There is so much awe-inspiring stuff in this world that we miss as we rush through it. And, unfortunately, we think much of that beautiful stuff is being flushed away, so we should enjoy it while we can.

And, if you went right past the first link above, it's a powerful example of how we blow by beauty in our rush from point A to point B. Here's virtuoso violinist Joshua Bell playing his Stradivarius in a Washington, DC Metro station and essentially being completely ignored:

Go forth and pay attention!

New York University implements a new "green" power plant as part of its own climate action plan.

2011-02-16T13:15:00.000-08:00

2/16/11

Last month, New York University (NYU) unveiled its new state-of-the-art cogeneration (CoGen) power plant, designed to simultaneously provide heat and electricity to NYU's campus while helping to reduce its carbon footprint.

The upgrade was a central part of NYU's own climate action plan, spurred on by both the New York City Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC Climate Challenge, a directive for all city colleges and universities to cut carbon emissions voluntarily by 30% by 2017, and the American College and University President's Climate Commitment, a larger initiative across many institutions of higher learning to work towards climate neutrality.

The new plant is a marked improvement over NYU's previous oil-fired power plant. It is 90% efficient as opposed to a typical boiler plant, which is only 50-60% efficient, and it produces 13.4 megawatts of electricity, twice the output of the previous system. The new plant helps NYU reduce its overall greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 20%, cutting up to 5,000 metric tons of carbon per year.

Here is a great diagram of how it works. Briefly, natural gas powers two high-tech turbines, which are similar to jet engine turbines. The rotation from turbines generates electricity while the heat exhaust from the turbines is recovered and used to make steam. The steam is then shunted off for a variety of purposes. Some steam is used for heating and hot water, additional steam is used to drive another turbine for electricity generation, and in the summer, steam is shunted off to chiller to create cold water for air conditioning.

While the project was not cheap (price tag of $125 million), the university is expected to save $5-8 million in energy related costs per year.

Sharinne Sukhnanand

**
These briefs are part of a weekly series of updates to the publication: Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future. The entire series can be found here.

Gaining Hope

2011-02-12T07:15:00.000-08:00

This week's events in Egypt give us hope. I have hope for the end of repression both within Egypt and throughout the region. And I have regained some hope for the power of the people. No one knows where it will end, but these events clearly show that if enough people get excited enough and angry enough and connected enough, they can make a difference.

Sometimes I/we lose sight of that fact.

And, I for one, didn't see it coming.

Wow.

What lessons can take from the last three weeks with Egypt on the world stage? Well, I'm no political scientist, but that won't stop me from speculating. And I welcome corrections and clarifications.

It seemingly happened overnight, but it really didn't. The issues have been simmering for decades. Somehow, a tipping point was reached.
Communication technologies helped. Twitter, Facebook, youtube and Al Jazeera all clearly mattered and none of them alone were likely sufficient.
People got off their butts and into the streets. And onto Facebook, Twitter, Al Jazeera and such. Simmering anger alone doesn't do much. Communicating alone does a bit more.
Most of the participants didn't do a lot of planning. But my guess is that a few people did more than we have a sense of.

How does that translate to understanding climate? From the Essential Principles of Climate Science:

Guiding Principle for Informed Climate Decision: Humans can take actions to reduce climate change and its impacts.

What are those actions? They surely vary tremendously in their nature, but it does seem like we ought to be able from Egypt. What do you think?

And, please: Keep hope alive.

Where to focus climate change education efforts?

2011-02-02T20:35:00.000-08:00

I virtually sat in on a bit of the Climate Change Education Roundtable Committee Meeting #2 this afternoon. There was some fascinating discussion that I caught only the tale end of, then it moved into discussions of what to focus the next workshop upon.

There was a resounding endorsement of focusing that upcoming workshop on climate change education at the K-12, or K-16 level. That simultaneously cheered and depressed me.

It cheered me because it's a profoundly important audience -- an audience where the understandings (or misunderstandings) built will have the longest-lasting effect. There's also the possibility of education that trickles up. Kids really do teach their parents important things some of the time.

But I'm also concerned for the very simple reason that K-12 or K-16 education has never worked very well for getting a lot of people to understand important ideas. I want you to pay attention to this point, so I'll inset it and make it bold.

There are no examples of creating a thick description of what everyone should understand about any topic that has led to wide swaths of the population understanding the target content, in spite of countless attempts to do just that throughout human history.

Pretty bold, huh?

Not a single example.

That begs for us to do something different. Pleads for it. Cries for it. Screams for it.

I did raise the issue and it was politely received. Then the next several speakers talked about their agreement of the need to focus on K-12 education.

Yes, this next workshop should focus on the young, as the last one focused upon a variety of adult audiences. But, and this is a really big but, we need to attend to the fact that we've just not been successful in teaching much more than basic literacy to a majority through schooling (or any other approach, really).

Ok, that's a bit of a simplification. Most folks do know some important things and they learned it somewhere. Hygiene, for example. And, most people understand that smoking is bad for you. But only a minority have good understandings of things like the workings of our constitutional democracy, or evolution, or trigonometry, or, well, I could go on and on about the things that almost everyone has been taught that only a slim minority of the population understands.

Wow, does that sound elitist.

How would you do on the

National Assessment of Educational Progress?

But really, how would you do on the NAEP test? Or, if you're understandably not a fan of standardized tests, how would you demonstrate your understandings across the traditional high school content areas? To make myself sound less elitist, I'll note that I was too chicken to try any areas outside of science. Or, I mean, I haven't had time yet.

And now back to our message:

As we work on the agenda of educating young people about climate change, we need to constantly ask ourselves:

What is it that makes this approach more likely to succeed than what we've done before?

If we can't answer that question, we need to pull back and take a different tack.

Our in the box thinking leaves us sitting in the same old box. How are you stepping out of the box? What should we do to make K-12 climate change education effective?

The views expressed herein are those of the author, Don Duggan-Haas, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Paleontological Research Institution.

Making the Case as Simply as I Can

2011-01-27T19:53:00.000-08:00

In the last several months, I've thought a lot about the need to complexify the seemingly simple. Obviously, I think that's too often overlooked, but I don't want to forget the need to cut to the chase. That's what this entry is about.

What is the simplest scientific case that can be made for the fact that humans are changing the climate?

Understanding two indisputable facts and knowing some grade school-level vocabulary makes a very compelling case. That's just three simple things.

Simple Thing #1:
I'll start with the grade school vocabulary. You need to know the difference between weather and climate. Weather is about the state of the atmosphere with regards to temperature, moisture and wind at a given time in a given place. Climate is the weather over a long period of time; typically on a scale that is at least decades long. Knowing what the weather is tells you what clothes to wear today. Knowing what the climate is tells you what clothes you should own.

Oh, and you should understand the meaning of the word "global."

It may be cold in Washington this winter. That's the weather. And it's not global.

Simple Thing #2 (a.k.a., Simple Fact #1):

Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases absorb heat in the atmosphere and make it warm up. We can demonstrate that very, very easily in the laboratory.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0kIaCKPlH4

Get yourself a seltzer bottle and try it at home. It really is that simple. I'd be more inclined to put the jars in a sunny spot than to use the lights, but it will work either way.

Of course, you'd be right to note that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the jar is considerably more than that of the atmosphere. Indeed. But, hello! The atmosphere is miles thick -- it's a heck of a lot bigger than that jar. And Earth is blanketed by all those miles of atmosphere that trap heat in.

Simple Thing #3 (a.k.a., Simple Fact #2):

Each and everyone of us (assuming that us means folks who are sitting in comfortable homes or offices while the chill of winter is outside our walls and that we've been in some sort of vehicle in the last few days) is adding ton after ton after ton of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

Really. Tons and tons. If you burned 10 gallons of gas in the last week or two, the stuff didn't just go away. You turned about 60 pounds of gasoline into about 180 pounds of carbon dioxide. Add to that the fuel to heat your house, to make and transport the things you own and have consumed, build your roads and other infrastructure, and to move your military about and have them do their (our?) business and pretty soon it adds up to lots and lots of carbon dioxide.

And there are hundreds of millions of us living this lifestyle and billions more who aspire to it.

(To refresh your memory on how burning stuff creates more weight of carbon dioxide than the weight of the stuff you started with, take a look back to this post with its nifty animations.)

There's more to it...

Of course you can get complicated pretty quickly, and to really understand climate change you need to read and understand more than the few paragraphs I've put together here. But the above really is beyond dispute. And understanding the above makes it very, very difficult to dispute that the stuff we humans are (and have been) up to is changing how the atmosphere works in ways that are making the planet heat up.

That's it: two little facts and a bit of grade school vocabulary. Is it simple enough for you?

Up close and personal with extreme snowstorms in Oswego, NY.

2011-01-26T13:51:00.000-08:00

The Doppler-on-Wheels in action.
Credit: CSWR

In early January, the National Science Foundation highlighted research that aims to learn more about lake effect snowstorms and how they are formed. Researchers in Oswego, NY are utilizing a new radar tool, the Doppler-on-Wheels (DOW), to take measurements literally inside a lake-effect snowstorm as it forms and travels across the lake.

Oswego, NY and the nearby Tug Hill Plateau region are known as some of the "snowiest" regions in the United States. An average of 300 inches (25 ft!) of snow falls here each year, the largest average snowfall of any non-mountainous region in the United States.

The region's notoriety for snow is due to its proximity to the Great Lakes. As cold Arctic air sweeps down over the warm lake water, water vapor is formed. The water vapor condenses to form clouds that continue to move across the lake and dump enormous amounts of "lake-effect snow" on nearby communities.

The DOW, a portable Doppler radar dish mounted on the back of a flatbed truck, is a blizzard chaser's dream come true. The DOW can reveal information about the inner workings of snowstorm that normally can't be seen with distant radars. In addition to measuring wind and snow intensity, the DOW can analyze fine-scale properties such as the density of the snow, whether it forms pellets, and its snow crystal type. These fine-scale properties can have a huge influence on the severity of a storm, often determining whether it will snow a few inches or a few feet.

Researchers hope that insight into how lake effect snowstorms are formed will help to better predict snowy outcomes in both the short and long term.

Sharinne Sukhnanand

**
These briefs are part of a weekly series of updates to the PRI publication: Climate Change: Past, Present, and Future. The entire series can be found here.

A sampling of things I listen to on my morning commute

2011-01-19T21:06:00.000-08:00

As a telecommuter, I have a loop-shaped morning commute. I take a walk to wake me up, keep me from becoming even tubbier, see the world and listen to podcasts. What podcasts? They vary across a range of topics that my brain sees as connected to the social and natural world and how people learn about that stuff. That's nice and narrow, isn't it?

Sometimes I end up listening to just one particular episode from a series as I'm looking for a particular author talking about her or his book, but most of the time I listen to regularly podcasted programs. In this post, I'll give attention to both categories -- the ones I listen to regularly and one "special" episode. And I'll give you a sentence or two about why I like them.

I'd thought about listing a bunch, but today I'll just do a few with the intention of coming back to the topic with additions when the mood strikes.

I'M A REGULAR LISTENER TO THESE PODCASTS:

None of these are focused exclusively on climate change, though many have the occasional (or, in the case of the first and third, frequent) program dedicated to it. The links typically will take you to the show's homepage. You can generally find a link to subscribe there, or type or paste the name into iTunes search box.

SALT: Seminars About Long Term Thinking (from the Long Now Foundation) Last week's post was partly a plea for thinking beyond tomorrow or next week. The Long Now Foundation strives to push our thinking in that way. The site's blurb describes it this way:

The Long Now Foundation's monthly Seminars were started in 02003 to build a compelling body of ideas about long-term thinking; to help nudge civilization toward our goal of making long-term thinking automatic and common instead of difficult and rare.

Ideas: How to Think About Science (from CBC Radio) This series gives a good overview of thinkers in the nature of science. It's a few years old now, and it's been a while since I listened to it, but it's a good course to stick in your pocket. How to Think About Science is really a subset of their Ideas program, which is also quite good.

The Canadian Broadcasting Company has perhaps as rich an array of good podcasts as NPR, and I live within broadcast range to catch some of it over the air. In fact, as I looked at CBC's podcast page (the previous link), I saw a new one which I'll just go ahead and add a new bullet for:

The Bottom Line, with David Suzuki (from CBC Radio) As noted above, I just stumbled across this (it's new!), but I've never been disappointed with David Suzuki's work. He's the pre-eminent Canadian environmental journalist. Wouldn't it be nice if the US had one of those? Or a few that you had to choose amongst? Ah well, at least we can listen to Suzuki's fine work more easily in this digital age.

Here's an episode description to whet your appetite: "David Suzuki goes camping in Haida Gwaai with former Minister Jim Prentice. They discuss the root of the word economics and climate change. David also interviews the former chief economist of the World Bank about the cost of climate change." There's my morning commute for tomorrow.

Radiolab (from WNYC) Radiolab is just a delight. The way the hosts play with ideas and bring life to science is hard to top. Here's a blurb from a show a couple of years ago, Stochasticity, that I really liked:

"Stochasticity (a wonderfully slippery and smarty-pants word for randomness), may be at the very foundation of our lives. To understand how big a role it plays, we look at chance and patterns in sports, lottery tickets, and even the cells in our own body. Along the way, we talk to a woman suddenly consumed by a frenzied gambling addiction, meet two friends whose meeting seems to defy pure chance, and take a close look at some very noisy bacteria."

And, of course:

TED My guess is you already know about this, but if not, follow the link and be prepared to surrender some time to some great talks. I'll also note that I'm pleased that TEDx Buffalo is coming April 7, 2011. TEDx are locally organized TED Conferences. I'm kind of excited about it...

HERE IS AN INTERESTING "SPECIAL EPISODE" PODCAST:

Click on the episode name to get to the identified special episode. Clicking on the podcast name will take you to the series site.

This American Life: Kid Politics (from Chicago Public Media) This episode of one of the most popular podcasts that there is includes a segment on climate change understanding and the resistance to changing one's mind. It's fascinating. And it's got a dash of extra coolness because I know Roberta Johnson a little.

The Year 3000

2011-01-13T10:31:00.000-08:00

I'm a few days late for my weekly posting. I was waiting for some sort of inspiration and I just found it: Global Warming: Dire Prediction for the Year 3000. The timing of this article is ironic because just yesterday I found myself pondering the year 3000. I'm not sure why; it's not something I regularly consider. I'm a young and spry 34 years old and I think about everything that's changed in my lifetime. I started out using a rotary phone and had a tiny black and white TV that had four fuzzy channels: 2, 3, 5, and 9. Now it seems like no one can live without their flat screen TV's with 500 channels, their internet, or their cell phones. When I was in grade school and saw my first computer is was an enormous, imposing machine that most people never used. Now they are the size of a piece of paper and we can't live without them. And our enviroment has changed so much in my 34 years. We've lost so many species and destroyed so much land. Until relatively recently industries were freely allowed to pollute our land, air, and water. On the other hand, we are more aware of environmental issues now. We recycle, we have laws in place lessen environmental pollution, we have NGO's advocating on behalf of animals, plants, ecosystems... It's overwhelming to even comprehend where (or if) we will be in the year 3000. What will Earth be like? From what I've read of this article, computer models show there is little hope for our world, even if we completely stop creating excess carbon dioxide. Luckily, researchers seem a smidge more optimistic and I am too. We can change things for the better. Just think about my 34 years-- where we quickly jumped from low tech to high tech, from mass consumerism to eco-friendly. It's a drop in the bucket compared to the 989 more years we have to go until 3000. The prediction doesn't have to be dire. Things certainly will be different but hopefully not dire.

Geologic Now ≠ Human Now. And, Baby it's Hot Outside.

2011-01-12T21:05:00.000-08:00

I started writing this before today's announcement from NOAA that 2010 tied for the warmest year on record. My original text was funnier, based on predictions that a cool December bumped it out of the top spot. Ah well.

2010 didn't set a new record for the hottest year in human history. 2010 tied 2005 for the warmest year. I guess global warming has stopped. Whew. I'm so glad we can relax now. Not.

Pardon the linguistic structure I used to the irritation of many while I was a teenager.

2005 stands as the warmest year ever. Does that mean global warming is over? Um, well, no. With today's announcement, I guess I need to change the highlighted sentence. I hate it when reality deflates my rhetorical shenanigans. Let me try again.

2010 wasn't the hottest year ever. Does that mean global warming has reached it's peak? Um, well. It kind of was just as warm as the warmest year ever, so probably not. See? That's just not as provocative. Darn it. And, baby it's hot outside.

Baby, it's hot outside.

Click here for high resolution image.

But, if the globe is warming, shouldn't every year be hotter than the last? Shouldn't every day be hotter than the last? Every second?

December was cool (and, hey, it's pretty cold out now where I am) so maybe we've turned a corner! Well, no.

The human now referenced in the title of this post occurs during the geologic now. But the geologic now lasts a lot longer than the human now. The Long Now Foundation does things to help us understand this (and produces really interesting podcasts). They're building the 10,000 Year Clock to help drive the message home. This relates too to the issue I raised a few weeks ago about how I'm not particularly concerned with saving the Earth.

So, the "Baby it's hot outside" line isn't about the human now. It's about the geologic now.

Today isn't the hottest day ever. Does that mean we're cooling off? I think most of us think that's a silly question. At what scale does it stop being silly? Last month wasn't the hottest December ever. Does that mean we're cooling off? Last year may or may not be the warmest year on record. Does that mean we're cooling off?

The last decade was the warmest decade in a few million years. Does that mean we're heating up? That might well be the same kind of error (but in the opposite direction) that I've tried to caution against in the last paragraph.

Is it a mistaken claim? How do we decide?

There are lots of issues to consider. Here they are a few stated very briefly followed by short explanations:

If we chose a different date to start the year, the warmest year on record would have been last year. January 1st starts the year by the historic agreement of a bunch of humans, not because something in nature says so. If we chose a different starting date for the year, we have a couple of different year-long periods that were the warmest on record globally in the immediate past. The warmest 12 months on record and the warmest "meteorologic year" (November to November) both occurred in 12 month periods bridging 2009 and 2010.
A year is but a blip. That's part of the point of this post. Looking at one year tells you something, but with the context of history, it tells you a lot more. Here's looking back to 1880:

Oh, Baby It's Hot Outside.

----------------------------------------

And going back over a millennia:

I, Like, Really Mean It. Baby It's Hot Outside!

Click here for more.

Human history is but a blip. I'm not worried about global temperatures soaring to the warmest temperatures in geologic history, and therefore don't feel the need (or have the time) to go further back in time. I will note that the temperature has varied quite a bit over the 4.5 billion years of Earth history. Right now (in both the human and geologic sense) humanity is at the end of the timeline. And, on most scales, humanity is just a blip on scales where you can envision the depth of geologic time. Humanity -- modern humans; homo sapiens -- have only been around for a couple hundred thousand years. Pause and think about how big a billion really is -- it's a thousand millions; and a million is a thousand thousands. 4.5 billion -- the age of Earth is a whoppingly large number. Blip. I tell you: Blip.

I've got no real idea if, when some sentient beings billions of years in the future, look back at Earth's history they will see humanity as just a blip. And I don't want to get all mushy or philosophical about it.

What I do know is this: Baby, it's hot outside! (Geologically speaking).

The Precautionary Principle

2011-01-05T10:34:00.000-08:00

Every since climate change became public debate, I've encountered people on both sides of the climate change fence and many who are on the fence as well. I respect every one's opinions and their reasons for believing what they do. I never try to enter into a climate change debate because I'm certainly not an expert. But, unfortunately, since people know I'm a biologist, they automatically want to poke me on the issue. With climate change, I always resort to the precautionary principle. Here's a definition from

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/precautionary+principle

Main Entry:	precautionary principle ¹
Part of Speech:	n
Definition:	the theory that an action should be taken when a problem or threat occurs, not after harm has been inflicted; an approach to decision- making in risk management which justifies preventive measures or policies despite scientific uncertainty about whether detrimental effects will occur
Example:	The precautionary principle was adopted by the UN Conference on Environment and Development.
Etymology:	1988

Main Entry:	precautionary principle ²
Part of Speech:	n
Definition:	in environmental matters, the theory that if the effects of a product or action are unknown, then the product should not be used or the action should not be taken
Example:	A comprehensive definition of the precautionary principle was spelled out in a meeting of scientists, lawyers, policy makers and environmentalists.
Etymology:	1988

When people start spewing out statistics and talking conspiracy theories, I just simply state that no matter what, it's always wise to take precautions. Worst-case scenarios should always be considered and planned for. We should never wait until disaster happens to act. In this case, even if climate change turns out to not be as deleterious as originally thought, the precautions put in place will be to our advantage no matter what the scenario. Can anyone say that moving towards sustainable energy is a bad thing? Is changing our consumptive, polluting behavior a bad thing? No. Usually when I break out the precautionary principle, the argument stops and agreement begins. Try it sometime.

A New Decade's Resolution

2010-12-29T14:31:00.000-08:00

A note before we begin:
Some will argue whether or not the new decade is already underway. I really don't care very much, but am casting my lot with it starting in a couple of days so I've got a better rhetorical gimmick. And I know there was no Year 0.

The meat of the thing:

I'll start off by noting that I'm typically not a New Year's resolution kind of guy. There's only been one resolution in my life that I've been pretty good about: Drink beer from a glass whenever practical. You get to taste it more fully that way.

Maybe my problem with the whole resolution idea is that, as an Earth science kind of guy, the scale's too short. But, the New Year is a good opportunity to reflect on the past and plan for the future and the New Decade seems like an even better opportunity. Is it ten times better? I'm not sure about that, but you may have noticed a theme in across many posts about difficulties associated with thinking in the longer term.

If you want to refresh your memory, or if you're just tuning in, see the posts that made analogies between thinking about climate change and thinking about issues of public health (especially smoking) and between climate change planning and planning for retirement. Last week's post on where weight goes when you lose it touches on it too. In fact, so does the post on using your Christmas tree to teach about carbon. All of that deals, at least in part, with thinking beyond tomorrow or next week, and is intended to foster deeper understanding of the Long Now.

To understand climate and climate change, you need to have a grasp of things that take years, decades, centuries or millennia to play out. Or longer. Really.

I learned of this video on Andy Revkin's dotearth blog.

This is where having thought about and taught about the history of the Earth and Universe comes in handy. With the Earth having an age of about 4.5 billion years and the Universe a few times older than that, what happens in the course of a single year doesn't usually amount to much in the grand scheme of things.

For some things, of course a year or a decade is a long time. I am the father of a nine- and a six-year-old, after all. A decade's made a huge difference in my life. But to the Earth me and mine are just a blip. And so are you.

Humanity, to the Earth, is just a blip as well, but we're a blip that's been important, especially in the time since we figured out how to get stuff out of the ground and burn it to give us power to do stuff. We've changed the face of the Earth profoundly. And that idea brings me back to the point of the entry -- to set a New Decade resolution.

Here it is: By the decade's end (12/31/20) I resolve to make an evidence-based case that the carbon footprint of myself and my immediate family will be negative.

How will I/we do that? I'm not exactly sure, but it will certainly involve educating folks and institutions about how to reduce their carbon footprints. And, deciding what's a reasonable cut for me to take of their cut. Can I engage people in the Low Carbon Diet, and claim 1% of their reductions, for example? If I come up with great ideas and post them here, or convey someone else's great idea to the readership of this blog that help people reduce their emissions, maybe than can let me know and I can take just a bit of credit for it.

And it will certainly involve reducing emissions for my household and my lifestyle. It is easier, obviously, to cancel out a small set of climate impacts than a big set of climate impacts. Right now, in spite of thinking about this stuff nearly all the time, I still have way too big a footprint myself. That's highlighted by my travel. In 2010, I've traveled to Chicago, Philadelphia, San Antonio, Smoky Mountain National Park (Tennessee & North Carolina), Monroe, MI, Victoria (British Columbia), and many trips within New York State. One can't do all that travel without having a pretty big footprint, though I've done things on some of those trips to reduce it like carpooling and taking the train where practical. We've done a fair amount to reduce household impacts -- Energy Star appliances, CFLs, and, more importantly, it's a fairly small house that's close to where we work (really close as I work in my home).

And, what do I mean when I say "evidence-based case?" What I mean is that I want my claim to stand up to reasonable review. I want to point to evidence that's compelling. I welcome your help in figuring out what that is.

I think it's a pretty lofty goal, but my track record's not bad. I still usually drink my beer from a glass, you know, and I think I made that resolution about a decade ago.

The Lone Wolf's Guide to a Climate-Friendly New Years

2010-12-28T11:33:00.000-08:00

I hate going out on New Year's Eve. Bah humbug, I say! Here are my (very sound) reasons for always staying at home on the year's most festive occasion:

1. Driving can be a nightmare.
2. I don't enjoy random traffic stops.
3. I don't enjoy not being able to drink because I'm worried about the random traffic stops.
4. I try to avoid situations that will increase the likelihood of me being hit by a drunk driver.
5. Every place is packed with annoying and overly zealous partiers.
6. I don't like occasions where I'm forced to wear something other than my flannel pj's.

All are legitimate reasons and they are unarguably solid. Since I've started helping with this blog, I can also use my interest in climate change as another reason to stay home. I mean, I don't want to needlessly burn fossil fuels just to go out and party. That would be selfish. Plus, a buffet would more than likely find me and I would consume a ton of food that took tons of fuel to harvest and prepare. (When I write 'a ton', I'm nearly speaking in literal terms here. I pride myself on my ability to eat massive quantities of food, which would explain my membership in the International Federation of Competitive Eating. No, I'm not kidding.) So it's better for me and the world to just chill out in my flannel, pour some bubbly into a beer glass, watch the ball drop, maybe put on some Prince and dance around, kiss my dog at midnight, and send out the annual midnight text telling everyone to have a happy new year. Comparatively, this course of action is a lot less harmful to myself, others, and the environment (and my dog will be thrilled). Is it lame? Heck yes. But it doesn't have to be. If you have the room, invite your friends over (and their dogs, of course). Then you won't have to text as many people at midnight and you can have dance partners. Make sure they bring some bubbly (chip in on a case--it's cheaper), pj's and a sleeping bag to pass out in. Just make sure they carpool and pick up a pizza party pack on the way. Now we're talkin! Think of all the gas you're saving, plus you didn't have to warm your stove up to cook anything (neither did your guests), your guests carpooled so that saves in fossil fuel use and emissions, and you are only using your electricity instead of several households worth of lights and tv's being on. Not too shabby for having a good time hangin out at home.

Happy New Year!!!

Where does weight go when you lose it?

2010-12-23T11:26:00.000-08:00

This may seem like a funny topic for a blog on climate change, probably because it is a funny topic for a blog on climate change. But it does have some relevance that I'll tease out before too long. I chose the topic partly because it 'tis the season to gain weight and mostly because I think it will get the gears in your brain spinning in a different direction.

If you lose weight, where does it go? What does that lost weight become? What is that fat the raw material for?

Stop and think about it, and come up with some tentative answers before reading further.

You know I'll wait.

See? I'm waiting.

If you're like most people I've talked to about this, you assume you sweat it out. Or maybe that it goes off as poop and pee. (I hope I'm not being too vulgar for my readership!)

That's a bit of the answer, but just a bit, at least in terms of the stuff that stays gone. None of that describes what most of the weight becomes. If you're a regular reader here, you may be making the correct connection to a more Christmassy post a couple of weeks ago.

Indeed many people include things that make them sweat as part of their weight loss regimen. And, typically, they drink plenty of water along with those efforts, so, that's largely a wash. When you lose weight, you don't really sweat most of it out. And, if you're looking for some way around the basic principle that to lose weight you need to burn more calories than you consume, I can't help you. Sorry.

Have you picked up on where this is going yet?

Another aspect of those things that make you sweat is that they also make you breathe hard. Most of the weight you lose is turned into carbon dioxide.(!) Weight loss is something like photosynthesis in reverse. Instead of taking in carbon dioxide and turning it into the hydrocarbons that make up the mass of a plant, you're taking the carbohydrates that make up the mass of you and turning them into carbon dioxide. It's actually similar to burning fuel, but fortunately respiration is different from combustion, or I don't think many people would intentionally lose weight.

I'm simplifying quite a bit here. If you want more details, here's one good place to look.

Sorry, this doesn't provide an eco-friendly excuse to keep carrying that extra weight around. If you lose that weight, it will indeed turn into carbon dioxide, and, as with gasoline, the emitted carbon dioxide will weigh about three times as much as the weight you lost.

But you'll be emitting less CO2 on a daily basis, and hopefully that addition to the atmosphere (from your weight loss) is a one time deal. So, every time you get in your car or on airplane, there's less of you for that vehicle to lug around so it will use a little less fuel and emit a little less carbon dioxide. And you'll emit a little less directly.

You're also likely to be eating less and the carbon footprint of food is large.

So, if you're a tubbo like me and the majority of Americans, here's another reason to shed some pounds: It's good for the climate.

And, hey, some things that make you breathe hard are kind of fun.

Epilogue:
In terms of reductions of carbon emissions, your own weight loss is really pretty small.

This post is more important for building a deeper understanding of the Earth as a system of systems, and especially for thinking about the carbon cycle. I'm of the opinion that if you don't understand the Earth from a systems perspective, you can't really have more than a superficial understanding of climate change. It's okay if you don't have that kind of understanding now. I thought about following that up with a snide remark that it's the American way, but it's not at all unique to Americans.

I have a deeper understanding of this stuff than most folks because it's been central to my work for more than 20 years. I assure you if you work on it, you can get up to speed a lot faster than I did! (And hopefully I can help!)

What will our future illnesses be like?

2010-12-22T14:02:00.000-08:00

Usually, I pride myself on being a very healthy person. I eat well, exercise and generally take good care of myself. My immune system has always been very good at its job. Cold and flu season can pass me by without a single cough...until recently. My mother went to a holiday party a few days ago and 10 out of 15 people at the party got sick. I'm not talking about a little cough. It's full on vomiting and diarrhea for several days. I thought I was going to have to take her to the hospital. Apparently the same illness has been spreading through the local colleges. So in my mother's case, the Health Department ruled that the food preparer had the illness and then contaminated the holiday party food. Unfortunately for me, since I've been caring for my mother during her sickness and I ended up getting it as well. It has a very inconvenient incubation period too. I was walking around for about three or four days after my mother became sick before I even felt anything. Think of how many people I unknowingly infected? It's upsetting to think that I could be ruining peoples' holidays.

So what does this have to do with climate change you ask? Last night I was lying, uncomfortably, in bed pondering what to write about when the words of an acquaintance of mine, who's a nurse, ran through my head about how this stomach bug gets worse every year. She said that this particular strain just keeps getting stronger and making more people sick with each passing year. Then I thought about the chytrid fungus in amphibians and how it's wiping out entire amphibian populations and climate change is certainly playing a major role in its spread. (Yes, my mind really is this scattered.). Are we facing a future where climate change will play a major role in the spread of every bacterial, fungal, viral disease? Nevertheless, if there is an ideal incubation temperature for diseases and we are bringing the atmosphere closer to that ideal, aren't we in big trouble? Can I count on being sick with this horrible stomach bug every year because it's being aided by climate change? And can I count on the symptoms being more horrendous with each passing year? It's just a hazy passing thought...

Saving (Civilization) for Our Retirement

2010-12-15T19:01:00.000-08:00

A note before I really dig in: It bugs me a little when people speak about saving the Earth, thus I refer to saving civilization rather than saving the Earth in the title of this week's post. It strikes me as exceedingly unlikely that we'll do away with the Earth through our actions, or even life on Earth. It's not Earth that needs saving. It's about us, and the things we depend upon. We're dependent upon nature and the services she provides, so we should be protective of nature for that reason (and, of course, because it's pretty jerky to destroy stuff).

My title still isn't quite on the mark. I expect some semblance of civilization will live on. I thought about "Saving the Environment," but here too, the environment will still exist, but it might be less able to provide the services we rely on it for, like clean air, clean water, and sufficient food. It's really about:

Saving a Reasonable Quality of Life for Our Retirement
Not quite as catchy, is it?

Now, on with the main attraction:
Yesterday I read The Importance of Risk Perception for Effective Climate Change Communication, a blog post on http://www.climatecentral.org/ by David Ropeik. (I cited a different Ropeik blog post in my post a couple of weeks ago). Ropeik is an expert on risk assessment, and here he's talking about what his title implies, as one might expect. Quoting at some length from his post:

The ho hummers: A majority (albeit fluctuating) believes climate change is real, but when you ask those people how much they’re willing to spend, or do, about it, broad support turns thin. Why?

We worry less about risks that we don’t think can really happen to us. Can you name one way that climate change will seriously negatively impact you in the next 10 years? Most people, even ardent believers, can’t.
We worry less about risks the further off in the future they are. Despite the changes already occurring, the dramatic disruptions of climate change are usually depicted as years, and decades, away. This softens even our extra sensitivity about risks to our kids. The immediate perils of abduction and vaccines (perceived) carry more weight than risks far off in the future.
We worry less about abstract risks, risks that are presented as ideas and “science,” hard-to-get-our-heads-around risks of global scale and centuries-long time spans, and risks depicted impersonally with facts and figures, rather than real human victims.
We worry less about risks caused by choices that also produce benefits. The benefit of the behaviors that cause climate change are enormous – since energy from fossil fuels provides the comfortable way of life in which the developed world currently lives and the way the developing world wants to.
We worry less about risks over which we have some control.

How do we apply these insights to the challenge of encouraging public support for adaptation?

I liked this image with Ropeik's post as well.

And it gives me a nice image to post with the link on Facebook.

And you can do that too, you know.

(Hint, hint).

Reading Ropeik's words got me thinking about a post I wrote a few weeks ago: What can we learn from public health education initiatives? There are some clear parallels here. And it got me thinking about another realm for useful metaphors.

Ropeik's bulleted list applies to climate change, selected health issues, and to saving for retirement.

I'm 47. It will take a while for decisions about saving for retirement to have a huge effect on me.

I'm 47. It will take a while for decisions about climate change to have a huge effect on me.

I wonder what we can learn from effective campaigns to get folks to save for their retirement. Unfortunately, like in realms of public health, there aren't as many successful campaigns to point to as I'd like. My wife reminds me with some regularity that we're not saving enough for retirement. That doesn't make us unusual.

I could snidely say that makes us American. But I won't.

Each of those bullets above applies both to climate change and to retirement saving. Read the list again and think about how they apply.

You know I'll wait.

Are you saving enough money for retirement? If so, what has led you to do that? If not, what's stopping you? What do you think will get you to change your savings behavior?

Know that the most obvious answer, "make more money," tends to bring with it its goofy cousin, "spend more money." Fortunately, you can shoo that goofy cousin away, if you're vigilant. You can probably find some ways to cut spending now even if you can't make more money.

It just so happens, that many of the things you can do to reduce spending also reduce emissions. My colleagues and I have written about programs that can reduce your energy costs in this space before (here's one post of many), and simply being more frugal in many ways also goes to saving a reasonable quality of life for your retirement.

You, acting alone, might save sufficient personal financial assets for the future, but we will have to work together to save the shared environmental assets for our shared future.

So, what can we learn from saving for retirement? What can you teach us about it?

A tree in the living room as an opportunity to teach about carbon

2010-12-09T15:01:00.000-08:00

Don and his tree.

I've got a tree in my living room. It stands a little over seven feet tall, though it was probably closer to eight feet when it stood at the Christmas tree farm out in Clarence. I was easily able to lift it onto the roof of the car, so I'm guessing it weighs less than 40 pounds. You might have a tree kind of like it in your living room. You might use that tree to help you and yours think a bit about carbon.

Perhaps it could be a little fodder for making those family get-togethers a little more uncomfortable, but please be nice as you nurture understanding along. Fortunately for me, holiday discussions in my family are decidedly geeky -- the most notable in recent memory had to with which one of my siblings had the greatest volume to surface area ratio.

But I digress. Let's think about that tree.

A favorite question of mine is, "What's the raw material for a tree?" It started as a little seed within a pine cone and now some eight or ten years later, it weighs in at about 40 pounds. Where did those 40 pounds come from? What did the "stuff" of the tree used to be?

Here's a picture of the tree cookie I cut off after I brought it home. How old is it?

The earbuds are included for scale. It's not really a very big tree.

Lots and lots of people will answer the raw material question with something like, "It comes from the minerals in the soil." Does that make sense? What if that were true? For one thing, it would mean that soil and trees are made of the same stuff. Is that the case? Living things are carbon-based. Is soil carbon-rich?

Um, no. Not so much.

And, if trees got their mass from the soil, wouldn't that mean that really big trees would need to be surrounded by really big pits where they pulled that mass from? Those holes in the ground would grow over time. Have you ever seen that? I haven't but it would make for more interesting walks in the woods.

Darn near every adult in the country took high school biology and was taught about photosynthesis. We all learned that plants take in carbon-dioxide and release oxygen. Then we forgot, or we never really understood it in the first place. If we stop and think about it, and we remember that life is carbon-based, it ought to give us a little pause -- trees are made out of air! That is, of course why, as many of you dear readers already know, that planting trees is a way to offset carbon emissions.

If you already knew that, good for you. Know that you've got at least a somewhat deeper understanding than the average American. That's not surprising since you spend at least some of your time reading blog posts about climate change.

But have you thought about what that 40ish pound tree implies about the scale of tree-planting needed for offsetting emissions? I wrote a guest post before I was regular here on that in 2009. I won't repeat that post here, but I'll briefly hit some relevant highlights. Ten gallons of gasoline weighs about 60 pounds. If you're burning 10 gallons of gasoline a week, you're releasing about three times that much carbon dioxide as the carbon in the gasoline combines with oxygen in the air to make CO2. So, a typical driver might release 180 pounds of CO2 a week just by driving. Photosynthesis does something like a reversal of that process. Photosynthesis, in other words, can take 180 pounds of CO2 and turn it into something like 60 pounds of tree and 120 pounds of oxygen.

Now it's time to remember that the 40ish pound tree in your living room is probably eight or ten years old. So, it doesn't offset a typical driver's week of emissions. Planting a tree is a good thing to do. But planting a whole bunch is better. A bunch of forests is more like what we need. For each of us.

Oh, we can't end a holiday post on such a downer. Then again, maybe we can.

Is climate too much of an abstraction?

2010-12-01T11:26:00.000-08:00

[What is the] extinction of a condor to a
child who has never seen a wren?

Naturalist Robert Michael Pyle

as quoted in Richard Louv's Last Child in the Woods

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkWFZ_LlMiM

What is climate change to someone who never goes outside?
Something that came to Don's mind as he was reading
Richard Louv's Last Child in the Woods

I've been intermittently reading Louv's excellent book, finally.* I'm reading it intermittently partly because it's so depressing that I prefer it in small doses and partly because I'm a distractible boy who just reads books that way.

There's a great deal to ponder about "nature deficit disorder" and much more within its pages.

I read it with some special attention to how our growing detachment from nature contributes to the difficulties of climate change education. I also read Climate Change Literacy Won’t Be Enough, a blog post by David Ropeik this week. Ropeik's post addresses the recent report, “Americans' Knowledge of Climate Change” and notes how that report suggests that one of the reasons that we're not making more progress on climate action is ignorance. As the title of Ropeik's post portends, he doesn't think that's the only reason. Here's a bit of the post:

Some of the psychological characteristics that make a risk feel more or less threatening are common to us all. (This comes from the research of Paul Slovic and Baruch Fischhoff, among others). One of them is the subconscious question we instinctively ask ourselves about any possible danger; “Can it happen to ME?” If not, why worry? Can you name one way climate change might seriously, negatively impact your life in the next ten years? Most people, even the most dedicated environmentalists, can’t. Climate change doesn’t trigger the “ME” factor, so concern about it stays intellectual, and doesn’t hit us in the gut. You can see this in the “Americans' Knowledge” study. Sixty three percent of the respondents said they understand that global warming is real, and happening now, but only 16 percent say they are personally very worried. This mirrors the findings in most surveys of public opinion about climate change — concern about climate change is more broad than it is deep.

For most of us, climate change is an abstraction. I suspect for too many of us, climate itself is something of an abstraction.

As Louv so eloquently describes, we're not connected to nature in the way we once were. He focuses on childhood and, if you read the book (which you should), it will draw memories of your own childhood nature experience. For me, that includes work and play in the backyard tree fort and playing in the several different bits of woods I easily walked to from my childhood home. Some of those woods are gone now. They've become housing developments. The ones that remain don't see as many kids exploring them as fear of various things coupled with the draw of computers and video games keeps kids inside. And schools have less recess time, and more of that time is spent indoors, especially if the weather is very cold or hot. Wimps.

And, if people don't go outside very much, do they really have a deep, visceral knowledge of their own climate? If they don't go outside, do they really know what their climate feels like?

My gut says paying just a bit more attention to that as parents and teachers can be helpful. Watch the weather. Get your kids and yourself outside and talk about how the current weather compares to the typical weather for the time of year. Do this monthly and before too long, you'll build a deeper sense of what you're climate is really like.

Pay special attention to things that make your local climate different from other places. The video at the top of the post highlights one of the things that makes my (Buffalo, NY) climate famous or infamous.

The sky view is looking over the City of Buffalo from my home at the Town of Amherst line.

The time lapse video of lake effect snow from last winter shows one aspect of our climate. The ominous looking lake effect clouds are often visible low on the southern horizon when I look out my office window in late fall and early winter. They often just move like a conveyor belt parked to the south of me and my snowblower sits happily in the garage while folks just a few miles away get inundated. I laugh at them! Ha! Sometimes though, as in the video, those clouds move over me and stop my laughter.

The video was shot using Gawker for the Mac.

I'll note that we ought to also be known for our beautiful summers, where it only fairly rarely breaks 90 degrees F and the hottest day on record was 99 degrees.

What makes your climate special? Get out there and feel it!
-------------------
*Various folks I trust have been recommending that I read it since it came out, and I saw him speak a few years ago. It's about time I got around to it... You should get around to it too.

Teachers: An opportunity to join a learning community focused on climate change education

2010-11-24T13:56:00.000-08:00

I (Don Duggan-Haas, your Wednesdaily Climate Change 101 Blogger), am part of a project that is bringing together teachers who want to work with one another to more effectively teach about climate change, its causes and its effects. That's what today's post is about. It's really intended as a recruitment tool for interested teachers, and I hope you either are one, or know someone who might be.

Climate change is perhaps the most important issue in our curricula, though its place within the curriculum is small. Our students and people more generally commonly hold misconceptions about climate and climate change that are difficult to dispel. How can we be more effective in building our students' understandings of climate change and its implications?

Would you like to talk about these issues with your colleagues, working together to share approaches in a group with access to peer-reviewed resources?

Climate change and its effects aren't limited to science, so this group isn't limited to science teachers.

I am leading Lifelines for High School Climate Change Education for Western NY (I telecommute to Ithaca from Amherst). There are groups doing this around the country, and I can connect you to those groups. There isn't yet a single website listing the different programs. As the meetings are virtual, you don't actually need to be in the geographic region for the group, though there are advantages to being connected to other educators in your region.

Here are the details:

Lifelines for High School Climate Change Education (LHSCCE) is a project to establish professional learning communities (PLCs) to share curriculum resources and best practices for teaching about climate change in grades 9–12. The PLCs meet either in-person or via telecon/webinar (tele-meetings), depending on local preferences, but in light of desire to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, tele-meetings are encouraged. This is a NASA-funded project organized by the Lawrence Hall of Science (LHS) at the University of California, Berkeley.

The program will fund 20 PLC groups across the United States. Each PLC group will have a maximum of 15 members who will work together as a professional learning community over a period of two years. Each PLC will have a leader who will facilitate and coordinate the group’s online sharing activities. Teachers participating in a PLC will receive $100 each year.

Our group will meet on the first Monday of the month at 7:00 pm EST, beginning December 6, 2010.

PLC’s are open to high school teachers teaching in any subject area who wish to collaborate resources to incorporate climate change into their curriculum.

PLC’s are generally geographically located around the home-base of each PLC’s Leader. However, location does not restrict which group a teacher may wish to apply to join.

If interested in applying to join the Western New York State group under the leadership of Don Duggan-Haas click on the link below to apply online:

Lifelines for Western New York State Application

Questions? Contact Don: dugganhaas@museumoftheearth.org.

It's Rebate Time!

2010-11-23T07:15:00.000-08:00

If you are in the market for a high efficiency natural gas furnace, indirect water heater, boiler or duct sealing, please read on. NYSEG and other utility companies are offering a rebate on these items. For example, if you were to purchase a 94% efficient natural gas furnace, you could be eligible to receive a $340 check in the mail. Not too shabby! Plus, add that with the Federal 30% tax credit (see last weeks post) and you can get a nice chunk of money back. As an added bonus, they even give you $15 each for up to two programmable thermostats installed at the same time as the heating system.

It's important to note that even though you can take advantage of both this rebate and the Federal tax credit, you cannot use this rebate with other NYSERDA programs such as Assisted Home Performance with ENERGY STAR. If you are eligible for both, you would have to crunch some numbers and choose between the two (usually if you need more than just a heating system, Assisted Home Performance is the better choice).

Eligibility Requirements:

*Items must meet efficiency standards.
*You must be a residential natural gas customer of a participating utility (such as NYSEG).
*Items have to be installed by a contractor (you will be asked for proof of contractor installation, such as a valid Tax ID number).

You have to reserve your spot in line for this rebate. For more information and to reserve the rebate, click here.

What can we learn from public health education initiatives?

2010-11-17T09:24:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, I attended the fascinating Climate Change Education Roundtable meeting sponsored by the National Research Council's Board on Science Education. A series of papers were commissioned for the meeting that give a picture of the diversity of approaches to climate change education discussed at the meeting. There's some good stuff in those papers -- do give them a look.

One session at the meeting included discussion of what we can learn from successful public health campaigns, noting successful efforts that have substantially slowed the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and decreased the number of unwanted pregnancies. I'm pretty confident we can learn some things from that body of work, but the particular health campaigns used as examples probably aren't the best ones to look to. I suggested as much at the meeting, making the connection to obesity. Unfortunately, I'm a poster child for the failure of that public education campaign, and there are a great many fellow poster children out there.

Me, being fat in front of the White House.

And, unfortunately, I think this largely unsuccessful effort is a closer analog to climate change education.

If you're healthy and have unprotected sex tonight with an STD-infected partner, you've got a pretty strong chance of having that STD tomorrow. If you're thin today and have an extra brownie after dinner, you're still thin tomorrow. You have to keep up those bad behaviors for a while for it to make a noticeable difference. Likewise, to undo the damage, you've got to drop those obesity-inducing bad habits and hopefully pick up some good ones and keep them going for a while to notice much difference.

That sounds a lot like the problems of climate change. Buying a big house in the exurbs doesn't do much to the climate immediately, but add up the effects of a bunch of people over a bunch of years, and you've made a difference in the climate system. And, as with obesity, figuring out what to do with that big house and killing your long commute won't make much of a difference tomorrow. But it will eventually.

And, unfortunately, obesity prevention programming hasn't worked very well so far.

(As I type this, I'm telecommuting to a birthday party at work. I don't think virtual cake is any part of the answer. It's not very satisfying, and has me thinking of actual cake.)

We should keep watching those efforts and pay attention to what works and what fails to work, and we should look for other analogs.

How about smoking?

Like climate change and obesity, the most serious effects of partaking in the activities that lead to big trouble don't get you in trouble right away. And it takes a while to recover from the damage (if you can recover from the damage). Unlike obesity and climate change, public education has actually decreased rates of smoking in the broad population.

What's worked in anti-smoking campaigns? Importantly, it's not just one thing. Smoke-free workplaces and public places, comprehensive advertising campaigns, increased taxation on tobacco and strong graphic warning labels on cigarette packages quickly reduce tobacco consumption. Additionally, supporting smokers in the quitting process matters. Counseling and pharmaceutical aids help, as do access to toll free support services. Call 1-800-QUITNOW if you're looking for support in stopping smoking. (See more about smoking reduction here).

Most of those strategies (and the idea of using many strategies simultaneously) are translatable to efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Making places smoke-free is akin to regulating emissions, and perhaps more directly to making city centers automobile-free. Advertising campaigns are in existence on some scale already. Taxation on carbon emissions is a direct analog. Support lines are imaginable too.

Graphic warning labels is an interesting proposition. The link above and here takes you to the proposed FDA graphic labels for cigarette packaging. Ick. But maybe it's an effective ick. What would the greenhouse gas reduction parallel look like? Graphics added to the price stickers on new cars? Images of sea-level rise, famine, hurricanes, or drought printing out with your boarding pass? And how about putting such stickers on fighter jets to discourage the government from making those purchases? Hmm...

I don't know about that, and I don't know if we can come up with a pharmaceutical aid to help us wean of carbon emissions, but it does seem that are lessons that can be learned here. What do you think?

Get Credit for Doing Something Good

2010-11-15T13:00:00.000-08:00

If you’ve made energy efficient upgrades to your home in the last two years you may be able to receive a tax credit for 30% of the cost of upgrades (up to a maximum credit of $1,500). Here are the general ins and outs of the credit:

If you already claimed the $1,500 maximum credit on your 2009 taxes, you cannot receive the credit again in 2010--no matter how energy efficient you’ve been in 2010.
All upgrades need to be purchased and installed by December 31, 2010.
Energy efficient upgrades such as windows, doors, water heaters, heating systems, insulation, air sealing materials, air conditioners and biomass stoves are included.
Not all Energy Star products are eligible.
Rental units and new homes do not qualify for this credit; it just pertains to an existing home that is considered your primary residence.
You can claim installation costs on certain upgrades, such as furnace installation, but you will need to check the Energy Star website to see which ones they are. From memory, I can tell you that installation costs are not covered for insulation, air sealing, windows and doors.
You can do the work yourself and still get the tax credit; however, you can’t factor your installation costs into the credit.
Last but not least, if you don’t pay Federal taxes, you cannot take advantage of the tax credit.

To receive the credit, fill out IRS form 5695 and submit it with your 2010 Federal Income Taxes. Make sure you save your receipts (itemized with installation costs separated) and the Manufacturers Certification Statement (most can be found online) in case you get audited (knock on wood that that never happens!).

Click here to find out more.

Complexifying the simple

2010-11-10T20:43:00.000-08:00

There is always an easy solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.

~ H. L. MENCKEN

Educators spend a lot of time simplifying the seemingly complex. That's great -- when it's the right thing to do, but methinks we do it too much. Maybe we need to spend more time complexifying the seemingly simple. An awful lot of things that are really important to understand, like human contributions to climate change, for example, aren't simple, but we seem drawn to seeing things in black and white.

As much as we might want simple answers about where to get our energy, the simple answers aren't really answers. Darn it.

I'm guilty of sometimes oversimplifying: In a bit of frustration at a meeting about a certain energy source under consideration for development in New York State I suggested that we just need to park our cars and turn off our lights. If only.

Of course, our personal energy use is very important and there's a lot of low-hanging fruit in terms of energy and carbon emissions reductions. My wife and I have had a Prius for 10 years. We've upgraded the insulation and replaced the lighting with more efficient CFLs in all five of the houses we've lived in over the last 16 years. And you should do that stuff too.

It's simply the right thing to do.

Efficiency is key to conserving not only energy, but also key to conserving something that approximates many of the things we like about our lifestyles.

If that's as far as you get, that's better than not taking those steps. But what are they steps toward? Well, I'm a strong believer that what you do is what you learn, and working to reduce your energy use pushes you to understand your energy use in the context of the broader world, at least if you let it. It's a way of looking at what you're doing in the right way. And:

"I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated."

~ POUL ANDERSON

How do you judge when to complexify and when to simplify when you're trying to help someone understand something? When is nuance helpful and when is it harmful?

Save Energy, Save the Planet

2010-11-09T13:37:00.000-08:00

Over the past few weeks I’ve been discussing things you can do yourself to improve the energy efficiency of your home. But there will be times when the job is just too big or overwhelming to do yourself. Have no fear! I have an economical solution for all of the big jobs that need to be done. There are state and federal tax credits, rebates, loan programs and grants available to people of all income levels. Yes, all income levels. You don’t have to be considered low income to take advantage of energy efficiency incentives. Every Tuesday I will present you with a new incentive that can potentially save you money.

This week’s incentive is the Assisted Home Performance with ENERGY STAR Program. It’s a subsidy that pays for 50% of energy efficiency upgrades up to $5,000 for single family homes and up to $10,000 for 1-4 unit homes. Covered upgrades include energy efficient furnaces/boilers, hot water heaters, a/c units, insulation, air sealing, programmable thermostats, etc… (Appliances are also covered but not up to 50%.) So, for example, if you received $10,000 worth of work, you would only have to pay for $5,000. The program pays for the other half. Plus, you don’t have to pay the full price and wait for a rebate. You just pay for your half and the contractor bills the program for the rest. There are income guidelines and they vary by county, but eligibility includes 80% of the state or area median income so that covers many of us. Also, you have to be a major utility customer such as NYSEG or National Grid (our Systems Benefit Charge pays for this subsidy).

So how do you go about getting into this program, you ask? First of all, begin the application process. Once you’re approved, a Building Performance Institute (BPI) Accredited Contractor has to perform a home energy audit. An audit consists of checking home insulation levels, testing the efficiency of electrical appliances, testing the draft and efficiency of heating systems and water heaters, performing an air leakage test (blower door test) and performing a general safety inspection. Most contractors have a fee for audits but many discount the audit fee off the cost of work once you decide to do business with them. Once the audit is complete, the contractor will send you the audit report in the mail with their findings and a cost estimate for suggested improvements. Don’t get overwhelmed. You don’t have to do all of the suggested things on the audit report. You can pick and choose as long as the work meets the programs efficiency standards. If you can only do a few things, the subsidy doesn’t go away. For example, if you only use $1,500 of the $5,000 subsidy, you still have $3,500 but you would just have to reapply.

You also get a tax credit on your 50% and there are loan programs out there to help you pay for your half but more on that next week.

County income guidelines
Eligible measures
BPI Accredited Contractors in your area
Assisted Home Performance application

Submit the application to:
Energy Finance Solutions
431 Charmany Drive
Madison, Wisconsin 53719
Phone: 800.969.9322
Email: efs@energyfinancesolutions.com

What's the Worst That Could Happen?

2010-11-03T20:28:00.000-07:00

You may have seen Greg Craven's The Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See. It's been around for a few years and has been viewed millions of times on youtube. In that video he steps through a way for figuring out which risk is greater:

Failing to act on climate change if the dire predictions turn out to be correct; or;
Acting on climate change when it isn't needed (because the dire predictions are wrong)

It redirects the question away from (sort of) whether the scientists are right or wrong to a question of how do you appropriately manage risk.

By attending to the feedback on the original video, he reshaped his argument and briefly simplified it in a newer version of the video. That's the video embedded below. He also wrote a book, What's the Worst That Could Happen? that very nicely helps you to evaluate your own and society's risks.

The book steps you through how to answer the fundamental question of the title, for yourself. It pushes the reader to consider (and reconsider) the positions they hold and evaluate the credibility of the authorities they rely on. You are led to develop your own "credibility spectrum" as well as filling in your own chart, akin to the one in the video. Watch the video to see what I mean by the chart.

Throughout the book he pushes the reader to judge for him or herself, to come to his or her own conclusion about whether it makes sense to act as though the scientists are right or that the economic cost of action is too great a risk to bear. While his own position is clear, his approach should be palatable to any reader who wishes to apply logic to the problem.

He notes that he asked many "skeptics" and "warmers" to read drafts of the book and was told by both that he gave too much credit to the other side. That leads him to believe (and I concur) that his presentation is even handed.

I highly recommend the book, though some may find his approach a bit cheesy, in a science teacher sort of way. I admit to being partial to that sort of cheesiness.

I think the approach works for stepping through various risk-laden decisions -- like deciding what to do regarding the Marceullus Shale, for example.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF_anaVcCXg&feature=player_embedded

Don’t Believe the Hype

2010-11-02T12:26:00.000-07:00

I may not be very popular for saying this but anyone in the market for a new appliance needs to know this; ENERGY STAR appliances are not always the most energy efficient, nor are they always the most cost effective. Last year the following articles came across my desk and I would like to share them with you. This is stuff you should know if you are shopping for a new appliance.

ENERGY STAR has lost some luster

Energy Star Appliances May Not All Be Efficient, Audit Finds

Although ENERGY STAR is an honorable concept, the execution of the program has been less than ideal. I first became suspicious a few years ago when my mother went to replace her old 16 cubic foot refrigerator. She visited several stores hoping to purchase an ENERGY STAR fridge of the same size; however, as she found out, 16 cubic foot ENERGY STAR refrigerators are either not made or extremely hard to find. Her dilemma was to either purchase a larger appliance (18 cu.ft.) than she needed just because it was energy efficient or purchase a 16 cu.ft. non-ENERGY STAR model because that was the correct size for her kitchen and her needs. She went with the 16 cu.ft. model and when she compared the efficiency of both, the 16 cu.ft. model used less energy and was priced less. So basically, the moral of the story is to do your homework before you step into the store. Also, if you're in the market for an energy efficient fridge, never purchase a side-by-side or a bottom freezer, they may have the ENERGY STAR seal of approval but they are 10 to 25% less efficient than a top mounted freezer. These configurations are only considered energy efficient when compared with fridges of the same configuration.

If you do happen to find the ENERGY STAR appliance of your dreams, the New York Appliance Swap Out is still going on. Click here for more information. This program has seen its fair share of disorganization but hopefully, since this has been going on since February, the kinks have been ironed out of the rebate process.

Lazy 20-Something Guide to Sustainability

2010-11-01T16:50:00.000-07:00

Want significant impact for your minimal effort? Vote.

Vote for candidates that will not only support, but champion the kinds of infrastructural changes that we need to become truly sustainable as communities and as a nation.

It's free. You might even get a sticker out of the deal.

I'm Red, White & Blue. And Green.

2010-10-27T20:32:00.000-07:00

I love my country. It's a beautiful land with pride in innovation, independence and individual liberty. I hope to see America stay strong, free and beautiful. Right now that's in jeopardy.

We depend upon despots for too much of our energy. We aren't anything like energy self-sufficient. The chain from the gas pump to Osama Bin Laden's riches is far too short. I don't like the way the governments of most of the oil-rich nations treat their people.

Reducing our dependency on foreign oil is critical to our national security.

We import about as much oil today as we did prior to 9/11. We import about 66% of what we use. Do we we want to keep that up?

We pride ourselves on American ingenuity. Couple that with a historic respect for thriftiness (that sadly seems to have diminished in the last several decades) and one wonders why we don't have well-insulated buildings and a highly efficient transportation system.

That is, why don't we apply the technologies that are available today to do the same things we do now at lower cost in ways that promise to keep more of our dollars in our pockets and in our own country? It's the patriotic thing to do, isn't it? Oh yeah, it's better for the environment too.

A note of explanation:
Last week I attended the Climate Change Education Roundtable, sponsored by the National Research Council's Board on Science Education. The meeting was fascinating and I'm really pleased at how it brought focus to the need think outside of the boxes we live and work in, especially we who have somewhat of an academic bent. Check out the set of commissioned papers:
http://www7.nationalacademies.org/bose/Climate_Change_Education_Workshop1_Table_of_Contents.html

It's got me thinking more about how to reach people who have priorities that are different from, but perhaps complementary to, mine. I'd like you to think about that too. There are a fair number of people who simply tune out discussions of climate change, but reducing climate impacts hold the promise of reducing other problems in tandem.

The above is an attempt at crafting an argument that reaches outside the proverbial choir, and while I believe everything I said, it somehow feels, um, disingenuous? Is there something wrong with this argument? How do you talk with those who aren't in the choir? Or are you someone who is outside my choir? Does this help to convince you that energy efficiency is simply prudent? If not, why not?

More Bang for Your Buck: Weatherizing on the Cheap

2010-10-26T07:41:00.000-07:00

Are you dreading this winter because of high heating costs? Have no fear! Here are some quick and cheap tips to help you cut your heating costs by up to 20%.

Step 1: Insulate your home! (see last week’s post Your Home is a Shell). Estimated DIY cost: $12.50 for 25 ft. of fiberglass insulation (R-30) or $10.76 for 40 sq. ft. of natural fiber blown-in insulation (Home Depot is even offering a free machine rental if you purchase a 20 lb. bag Green Fiber insulation!). Don’t know how much you need or where to start? Lowes has an easy to use calculator and DIY videos.

Step 2: Air seal like it’s going out of style! Remember what you learned in science class: hot moves to cold. This means that all the air you’re paying to heat will rapidly escape by any means necessary into the freezing winter air outside. Trap that warm air by sealing penetrations in the home’s shell. That includes doors, windows, pipes leading into the house and places where different building materials meet (ex. where the cement basement and the exterior walls meet). To seal gaps around windows and doors, use Great Stuff expanding foam in a can (I cannot stress enough--use the kind specifically made for windows and doors!) or install weatherstripping (ideal for getting a tight seal between the door and the door frame). Use caulk for applications directly on glass. For various cracks and gaps that need filling around the house, use Great Stuff specifically designed for gaps and cracks. Estimated DIY cost: $5.40 for one can of Great Stuff (window & door), $3.49 for one can of Great Stuff (gap & crack), $4.99 for a tube of caulk, $2.26 for a caulk gun and weatherstripping kits start at $1.87.

Step 3: Insulate those windows! The manufacturers of window insulation kits say that installing window film can increase the insulation value of a single-pane glass window by 90%. That’s not too shabby! For windows you never use, like those old basement windows, seal them with foam board (aka. insulated sheathing) by cutting it to the appropriate size, securing the board over the window and sealing it with the leftover caulk from Step 2. Estimated DIY cost: a kit for three window films cost less than $6.00 and prices start at $9.23 for foam board.

Step 4: Seal up that chimney and attic! Similar to that never used basement window, seal up the fireplace chimney and attic hatch. First of all, if you aren’t using your fireplace, close your damper. Then cut and secure a piece of foam board to the outside of the fireplace opening. Feel free to decorate it so that it isn’t an eyesore in your living space. Do not insert the foam board into the chimney because someone may forget that it’s there, thus causing a disaster. If you just have a wooden attic hatch door, attach foam board to the back of it. Estimated DIY cost: prices start at $9.23 for foam board.

For step-by-step instructions on how to insulate and air seal, check out this do-it-yourself guide. All of the supplies can be found at most home repair stores (price estimates were found surfing the Home Depot and Lowes web pages). Don’t be intimidated. You can do this!

Where does climate fit in the high school curriculum? Part 3: Some thoughts on social studies.

2010-10-20T08:58:00.000-07:00

For the last two Wednesdays, I've written about where teaching climate fits in the high school curriculum. Two weeks ago, I specifically addressed science, but closed by noting that climate cuts across the curriculum. Last week's post indulged a bit of fantasy about ways we might do something better than school.

When I started down this road, I'd not intended to do more than a couple of posts on the topic. As I've written a bit about it, and thought a lot about it, too much comes to mind to crunch it down that much.

It's probably obvious that I can't be an expert in all high school curricula, but my convoluted past has included work with pre-service teachers in virtually all high school subjects and I once wrote chapter sections on standards for a book on curriculum theory, and that forced me to take a close look across disciplines.

So, I have some background on this stuff, but I still want you to tell me where I'm a loon.

A few ways to address climate change in social studies curricula

There are, of course more than a few ways to bring climate change to social studies curricula, but these examples should be illustrative of more general approaches.

Economic & Political Costs of Action and Inaction on Climate Change
Greg Craven's excellent (but cheesy, in a science teacher sort of way) book, What's the Worst that Could Happen? A Rational Response to the Climate Change Debate is deserving of a full post. I plan to do that next week or week after. The book steps the reader through his decision matrix that compares the consequences of acting on climate change if predictions about climate change whether those predictions turn out to be true or to be false and considering the consequences of not acting, again whether the predictions turn out to be true or false.

His basic question is: What's the greater risk: The risk of taking action or the risk of not taking action?

Of course, I hope that societal and political decisions related to climate change are grounded in science, but it's undeniable that the action needs to come from governments, cultures, individuals and institutions. That's what social studies is all about, right?

The Industrial Revolution & Climate Change
If it weren't for the Industrial Revolution, would human induced climate change be a concern? Would the Industrial Revolution have occurred without the new understandings of Earth science that came at that time? Science of the time greatly improved extraction technologies for fuel and raw materials to build cities and economies that were fundamentally different than those that came before. The actions of the Industrial Revolution were both grounded in Earth science and have led to important changes in the way the Earth systems operate. The Industrial Revolution was, among other things, the kick off of a huge scaling up of movement of carbon from within the Earth's solid surface to the atmosphere.

Geography, Climate, Climate Change, and Culture
I think I'll just leave you with the header here and let your mind fill in the text. And think of more examples of ways to connect climate to social studies curricula. I know you're smart enough.

Finger Lakes Bioneers Conference October 22-24 in Ithaca!

2010-10-20T07:13:00.000-07:00

The Finger Lakes Bioneers Conference is this weekend!

Here's the scoop:

Their second annual conference features three afternoons of interactive community activities in downtown Ithaca and at Ithaca College, designed to engage and empower local participants of many ages to take on climate change, sustainable municipal planning, and the authentic expression of each person as a change agent, ready for action. The national Bioneers Conference plenary sessions are screened at Cinemapolis each morning, with additional day and evening events at nearby locations.

For details on speakers and event locations, visit Finger Lakes Bioneers (http://www.wemakeourfuture.org) or call Sustainable Tompkins at (607) 216-1552. Tickets are only $15/day for the morning and afternoon events. Evening events are free or require modest fees.

Friday October 22, 8:30 am to 12:30 pm: Breakfast with the Bioneers at Cinemapolis, 120 E. Green St. Bagels and beverages welcome you to a morning screening of the national Bioneers Conference first-day plenary speakers: James Hansen, John Francis, Jessy Tolkan, Mallika Dutt and Gary Hirshberg. Speaker profiles at www.Bioneers.org site. ($5 entry fee or free to registered conference participants.)

Friday October 22, 11:30 am: Grab some lunch downtown and head to the Women’s Community Building, 100 Seneca Street, Ithaca, to join our sponsors -- Tompkins County Climate Protection Initiative, Cayuga Medical Center and ASI Renovations -- in welcoming Doug Coward, a St. Lucie County commissioner in Florida, who will talk about the green economy revolution underway on the Treasure Coast. (Free to registered conference participants.)

Friday October 22, 1:30 5:30 pm: The Climate Change Game, Women’s Community Building. This role-playing game was developed by Medard Gabel for students, for you, and for the entire family. Will the Status Quos or the Game Changers prevail? Can reductions be negotiated? The clock is ticking! Come play! ($10 entry fee or free to registered conference participants.)

Friday October 22, 5:30-7:30 pm: Reception and Presentation, Wildfire Lounge, 106 S. Cayuga St. The Sustainable Enterprise and Entrepreneur Network (SEEN) will host a reception, followed by a presentation by Scott Hamilton and Ravi Walsh on the “Paradigm Shift Behind the Triple Bottom Line.” Learn how mindfulness and self-inquiry can lead us toward action in support of social, ecological, and financial success for our business and family, community and planet. ($5/SEEN members, $10/non-members.)

Friday October 22, 8 - 10 pm: Finger Lakes Bioneers Salon at Wildfire Lounge -- Re-Imagining Water: An Evening of Water Wisdom and Art. Watch Mara Alper’s curated films, animations and interviews, Helena Cooper’s riveting close-up photographs of water, with music by Joe Smellow, John Dean and Caroline Manring.

Saturday October 23, 8:30 am to 12:30 pm: Breakfast with the Bioneers at Cinemapolis. Bagels and beverages welcome you to a morning screening of the national Bioneers Conference’s second-day plenary speakers: Elizabeth Lindsey, Peter Warshall, Mary Gonzales, John Warner, Andy Lipkis. ($5 entry fee or free to registered conference participants.)

Saturday October 23, 9:30 am - 1 pm: What Price Development? A free conference from the Cayuga Lake Watershed Network, at the Unitarian Church Annex, corner of Aurora and Buffalo Streets, Ithaca. Speakers, panel discussion, refreshments: Bill Kappel, Hydrofracking and municipal decision-making; Susan Riha, Stormwater runoff in a changing climate; Liz Moran, Status Update: Dredging Cayuga Inlet for Recreational Access and Flood Control. (No charge.)

Saturday October 23, 1:30 - 5 pm: Tompkins Transitions, a role-playing game for the entire community, based on life in Ithaca and Tompkins County. Women’s Community Building. Solve today's problems with the future in mind in a real life board game focused on the issues and players in Tompkins County. ($10 entry fee or free to registered conference participants.)

Saturday October 24, 8 - 10 pm: Water Speaking Water, a multimedia experience combining concert performance by Jayne Demakos and Ephemera with video and nature imagery by Lang Elliott and

David O. Brown. Women’s Community Building.

Sunday October 24, 8:30 am to 12:30 pm: Breakfast with the Bioneers at Cinemapolis. Bagels and beverages welcome you to a morning screening of the national Bioneers Conference’s final-day plenary speakers: Lynne Twist, John A. Powell, Gloria Feldt, Anthony Cortese, Jane Goodall.

Sunday October 24, 1:30 - 6 pm: Awakening the Dreamer Symposium, Emerson Suites in Philips Hall, Ithaca College. This inspiring multimedia, interactive experience was created by the Pachamama Alliance to help North Americans awaken to the reality of our shared stewardship of a jewel of a planet, and a future where our intelligence and love of life can be expressed through creative re-design of our economy, our way of life, and our relationships. ($10 entry fee or free to registered conference participants.)

Sunday October 24, 7:00 8:30 pm: Share Tompkins Service Swap Meet, TC Workers Center, above Autumn Leaves on the Commons, Ithaca. This event offers a chance to barter with others for services such as photography, accounting, health care and anything else that attendees have to offer. Come and find out more. (No charge.)

Registration is ongoing until Thursday, Oct.21 at www.wemakeourfuture.org --- tickets are only $15/day for morning and afternoon activities!

Your Home is a Shell

2010-10-19T08:13:00.000-07:00

Before I ended up as PRI’s Volunteer Coordinator I was an energy auditor and packager for a local non-profit. Working in the energy efficiency field, I saw firsthand how aggressive marketing can convince people to buy items they don’t need. I cringe when I recall the countless phone calls I received from homeowners convinced that in order to cut energy costs they needed to buy new windows. My first course of action was to inquire about the home’s insulation status, which proved to be either nonexistent, settled, damaged or sparse. Yet they thought windows were the solution to their energy problems.

So the tip of the week is to think of your home as a shell. No, I’m not being cryptic here. And no, this doesn’t have anything to do with the Museum’s new bivalve exhibit. I’m being serious. Realize that the outer surface of your home acts as a barrier (a shell) from the elements. The roof, attic, floor and walls comprise most of the surface area of that barrier while windows comprise fairly little (unless you have an entire wall of them). So what issue would you want to remedy first, a leaky window or an uninsulated wall? You’d want to choose the wall because it has the larger surface area--comparatively allowing more heated/cooled air to escape. With that in mind, go exploring. It’s your house so don’t be afraid of it! With a critical eye, venture into your attic (just remember to stay on the joists or you may surprise the inhabitants below). Is there insulation? Is it damaged? Is it lacking in some areas? If there are fiberglass batts, are there gaps between the batts and the joists? Pull back a few of the batts to make sure that there aren’t any open holes leading into the wall cavities. If the idea of performing your own inspection is too daunting, you can hire an energy auditor to do it. If your insulation is found to be lacking, you’ve identified your starting point on the path to energy efficiency. The good news is that adding insulation is a lot cheaper than buying new windows and in most cases you can do the work yourself. Most major stores carry everything you need; you can even rent machines that blow in insulation. Click here for an excellent do-it-yourself guide to insulating and air sealing (including a list of problems that would require a contractor).

Check back next week for another tip. In the meantime, check out Cornell Cooperative Extension’s window repair workshop (see the September 17's blog post for more info).

Super Wal-Mart...

2010-10-18T08:09:00.000-07:00

In Ithaca, NY there is a Super Wal-Mart opening in the next few weeks. Actually, unlike in other communities Wal-Mart just retrofitted a current location to allow for the expansion. Whether you like Wal-Mart and their policies or not - this was a good move. They often times just move locations, leaving a massive space that no other outlet could really ever utilize.

Now, there are lots of reasons to question Wal-Mart, but they have just launched an initiative that will help support local agriculture and local farms. It sounds promising!

Here's a link to the article in the NY Times: Wal-Mart Plans to Buy More Local Produce.

Where does climate fit in the high school curriculum, Part 2

2010-10-13T19:45:00.000-07:00

Last week, I wrote about the need to embed more climate across the high school science curriculum and foreshadowed stepping outside the science curriculum in this week's post. I'd planned to draw some connections to social studies, English, the arts, mathematics and technology. I'm now planning to do that in more detail in next week's post and will use something I wrote for a contest sponsored by Slate.com for the heart of this week's post.

In the article introducing the contest, "The 21st Century Classroom: American classrooms are outdated. Slate seeks your great ideas for how to modernize them," Linda Perlstein gives a nice explanation as to why we need to redesign classrooms, and lays out the basic parameters of the contest. The goal of the contest is to come up with a design for a fifth grade classroom that reshapes education and an explanation of how it does so.

My response for that goes toward how I'd love to see climate science, and, well, I guess most other things, taught. It's admittedly a fantasy for now, but the winner of the contest stands a chance of getting their proposal made, and it does connect to what I wrote last week, so I figured I could get away with using it for this week's post.

If you like it, cast your vote. Here's the link, and I've pasted in the text, plus a slightly different version of the graphic below. Reading the article linked above (and here) will give you some helpful background information.

It's time for something better than schools.

The Wonder Wander Bus

Instead of making schools better, or making better schools, we need to make something better than schools. We're so stuck in the paradigm of schools that we can't see that schooling itself is insane. Putting 2,000 teenagers in one building? Crazy. Asking kids to sit in rows and listen to somebody talk about the Battle of Hastings for 45 minutes and then move down the hall and listen to somebody else talk about parabolas for an exactly equal period of time? Loony. That we expect them to do this hour after hour after hour, day after day after day for years on end is the craziest thing of all.

Schools aren't broken. They just do something fundamentally different than what we pretend they're for. What do you understand most deeply? Chances are you didn't learn it primarily by sitting and listening to someone talk about it. You actively engaged in doing things. What you do is what you learn.

How can we engage kids in doing things that matter? We should realize that such places wouldn't be much like the schools we've had for generations. They also don't need to be homogeneous by age, but I'll use 10 as an average age.

If the classroom is to be a single room, it ought to be a room with wheels; a school bus refurbished by the kids themselves. The image shown is one possible layout. The bus's interior has rows of seats in the front and a lab/studio in the back. Painting the bus will build understanding of art as well as chemistry, craftsmanship, and manufacturing. Use an old diesel bus and engage the kids in the conversion to make it run on waste oil from restaurant fryers. Engage them in the design and construction. Put solar panels on the roof.

The kids will write about everything to educate the community about the hows and whys of the project. Ample storage is needed to haul camping equipment when that's appropriate and supplies for each expedition. Expeditions will initially be day trips, but as the years pass, longer expeditions will be taken. The average age won't go up by much, but it will creep beyond 10. As older kids move on, younger ones will take their place. Older kids will deepen their knowledge of themselves, their world and their bus as they teach the younger kids.

Of course, the bus is equipped with lab equipment, computers, an artist's studio, and Internet connectivity. The kids will be scientists, journalists, historians, and artists who are teaching their community about themselves, the social and natural environment, and their place in that world. Quantitative analysis will be infused into much of what they do, and they'll write about everything.

With this bus, kids can go into the world and begin to figure out what the world is like, how it came to be that way, and why it matters that the world is the way it is. They will also engage in way to change the things that are out of whack in their community and their world.

So, that's my fantasy setting for teaching kids about the world. Next week, in Part 3 of this series, I'll return to reality and try to offer some more concrete ideas about how to actually bring climate and climate change education to the current high school curriculum.

The Maldivians are at it Again...

2010-10-08T12:21:00.000-07:00

You may recall that in 2009 we posted a couple stories on the blog about the President of the Maldives hosting his cabinet meetings under the sea. He was doing this to shed awareness on the continued decline of the coral and other inhabitants. You can check out those posts here and here!

It seems that President Nasheed has continued with his commitment to greening his presidency and has installed solar panels on his official residence. He's even helped in the installation process.

Read more about it here:
Maldives President Nasheed Installs Solar on Official Residence, Knocks Ignorance of Climate Deniers

Where does climate fit in the high school curriculum?

2010-10-06T14:09:00.000-07:00

Here's a lightly modified version of the "Prezi" I presented at last week's North American Association for Environmental Education meeting in Buffalo:

SYNTHESIING EARTH SYSTEM ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES: WHAT EVERY CITIEN NEEDS TO KNOW on Prezi

It was the final presentation in a session about Earth System Literacy Principles. As the presentation notes, and the presentations leading up to it described, there's a series of initiatives aiming to define what it means to be literate in different Earth system sciences (Oceans, Atmosphere, Climate, Earth Science (which is largely geology), and environmental science). The session and presentation also reference the NRC's Conceptual Framework for New Science Education Standards.

That Prezi above (which may be better viewed by visiting the link underneath the embedded version) is central to this post. So, step through it if you haven't yet.

I'll wait.

If we want students to graduate from high school with even basic climate literacy, we need to do things fundamentally differently than we do now.

Right now, climate is vanishingly small in the high school curriculum. Though the NRC's Conceptual Framework for New Science Education Standards promises to bump that up some, it will take years (if it succeeds at all). Most high school students in this country don't take an Earth science class at all, so are unlikely to have a class that focuses on climate for any length of time at all after the eighth grade.

Grumph.

New York State has about 25% of the high school Earth science teachers in the country. I suppose that makes us lucky, or at least not as unlucky as most of the rest of the country. Even in New York, though, the statewide final exam, The Regents Exam, typically has one, two or three questions addressing climate change.

As I hope the Prezi makes clear, I think to be climate literate, you also must be Earth system literate. Without understanding how Earth systems interact, you can't hope to understand climate in a deep and meaningful way. That requires at least basic understandings of systems science including the workings of feedback loops and tipping points (for a couple of examples).

Much as I love Earth science teachers, I don't think they can be our savior here. Darn it. The scores of folks I know with that label are a pretty smart and valiant bunch, but even so I think it's beyond their collective reach.

So, what to do? Well, what does get taught in high school science? The most common courses are biology (by far the most commonly taught high school science), chemistry and physics.

What are the purposes of teaching biology, chemistry and physics? There are lots of reasons, of course, but my bias says most important is that we need these disciplinary understandings to understand the Earth system and humanity's place within it.

That requires recruitment of those folks to our collective cause, and to think much more about how to infuse systems science and Earth systems science across the curriculum. Unfortunately, I don't think systems science generally gets taught very well anywhere, though it applies everywhere.

Hmmm...

It's worth noting that early in my journey to becoming a systems thinker, was a book by a physicist -- Murray Gell-Man's The Quark and the Jaguar.

And then I gradually became more deeply inclined to learn about ecology, where systems are, well, everything.

So, this isn't discipline specific.

But it is, because climate is, well, everything. It defines just about everything I see out my window as I type this. Having a climate (pretty much) like the one we have now made us the way we are. Messing with it stands a very good chance of making us different than we are in unpleasant ways.

So, what are we going to do? Let's start by enlisting teachers across the science curriculum, and indeed across the full school curriculum. (Oops. Did I introduce a new topic in my closing paragraph? I guess I've got something to write about next week.) Will you help enlist?

Nevermind Oil -- Think Atlantic Wind?

2010-10-01T07:37:00.000-07:00

I just read a great blog post on the New York Times website about the 'Atlantic coast having more energy to give via wind than it does from oil or gas, according to a study sponsored by Oceana, an environmental group.'

It was pretty interesting...Read the post here:
Never Mind Oil, Group Says: Think Atlantic Wind

More Things That Make Me Optimistic: The Buffalo Edition

2010-09-29T20:41:00.000-07:00

I've revised this post to include a fourth bullet.

Tonight, I (Don Duggan-Haas) attended the opening ceremony of the North American Association for Environmental Education annual meeting in Buffalo, NY. The nature of the conversations I had with folks there made me optimistic, in largely the same way I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. In short: smart people working hard on things that matter. But, I'm not going to write about that as it's revisiting old ground.

Instead, I'll bring attention to a few organizations that are doing interesting work in Western New York.

PUSH Buffalo is doing exciting work that includes not only performing energy retrofits on low income housing, but also using the the housing stock as an educational laboratory to teach folks how to do that kind of work and construction trades more broadly. PUSH is an acronym for People United for Sustainable Housing. They are also in the process of renovating one home to bring it to a net-zero energy use, meaning that over the course of a year it will use no more energy than it generates. I'll be visiting the Net Zero House tomorrow and expect to write a bit more about it next week.
Buffalo ReUse also engages in training using Buffalo's aging housing stock as both a teaching opportunity and a rich resource of materials. Buffalo ReUse deconstructs houses slated for demolition, saving tons of materials from landfills while preserving historical and often beautiful architectural elements. The picture at the top of the post shows green deconstruction in action. You can buy beautiful and useful things at their store: The ReSource. Pieces of my kids' tree fort came from there.
The Community Foundation of Greater Buffalo is now hosting a web site with information about much of the important work going on in the area. Check that out at http://growwny.org/.
The Massachusetts Avenue Project is another non-profit working in downtown Buffalo. It's tag line is "Building the local community through food, urban farming and entrepreneurship"and they work toward that goal in a variety of interesting ways, including running a small urban farm that includes aquaponics in a hoop house. If you don't know what that means, check out their website.

I'm PRI's only telecommuter and I live just barely outside of Buffalo (in a little place I call PRI West). Ithaca, of course, is famous for the groovy things that go on there -- but you've got some competition out this way...

A Wine Vending Machine?

2010-09-24T07:18:00.000-07:00

I often have dinner parties and everyone brings a bottle of wine. At the end of the night the empty bottles are put in the recycle bin -- making their carbon footprint that much bigger. Imagine being able to go into a store with your own container and purchasing a nice merlot -- just take the nozzle and put it in your reusable bottle/container and fill! Sounds great doesn't it?

It seems that some smart folks in France have been pioneering this process at a few grocery stores, and are planning to bring it stateside in the new year. Not only does this machine cut down on the carbon footprint of your bottle of wine, but it's also a money saver. A liter of wine is about $2! That's enough reason for me to say let's go green!

Check out the whole article and a very cool picture here: French Wine Vending Machine .

Container Gardening: The Aftermath

2010-09-20T13:13:00.001-07:00

Wow! 2010 was a great year for growing yummy and pretty edibles in containers on a deck! I learned a lot about the whos, whats, wheres, and whens of planting, watering, and harvesting from a deck. Its a lot different than gardening right in your backyard. One nice benefit of container gardening, especially around Ithaca, NY, was the fact that I didn't have deer munching on my hard work. Excellent.

But now that the growing season (for my veggies) is over, I've realized one not-so-nice con to container gardening: ridding myself of the soil. Posting about this is tricky, because I have a pretty reasonable landlord who will let me pile my used soil out in the corner of the land. I know not everyone who container gardens has this freedom, and I also know that I have to cart heavy buckets of dirt through my living room and kitchen to do this, so I've been researching a few alternative options.

If you do some composting, a great idea is to store your used soil in some heavy duty garbage bags and mix in fresh compost with it over the winter. If you have the storage space, this will save you $$ for next season, as you'll have some great soil ready to go. You can also do this outdoors. If you can put your pile of soil in corner somewhere, grab a tarp and some heavy rocks to weigh it down, and add compost to it throughout the winter months. Or just save it and mix in some fertilizer in the spring. The soil will stay relatively moist in both cases. I know I just tried to save a bag of potting mix through the winter in an open bag and it dried out, but I think adding to it throughout the winter and mixing it will help maintain the moisture necessary to keep the soil in tip-top shape for spring.

If you don't compost currently, or don't have the outdoor space to do so, you're in luck. Next week my colleague will tell you about her dream of setting up a kitchen compost in her house. I'll be tuning in so I can revive this year's soil by next spring. I hope you'll check back, too. Together, we can compost, container garden, and maybe even succeed at it...even if we're lazy. :)

Fall Energy Tips

2010-09-17T17:13:00.000-07:00

It definitely felt like fall this week in Ithaca, and fall is a great time to start thinking about how to go green and save money on that winter energy bill. For tips on this, see this useful blog post, or consider signing up for free classes taught by CCE called “Repairing and Weatherizing Older Windows" and “Save Energy Dollars”

Save Energy Save Dollars is a free 2-hour program where:

You will learn about low-cost and no-cost energy saving actions;
Energy conservation facts will be shared and myths will be busted with research-based information;
You will learn about financial incentives you may be eligible for to help you afford energy-efficiency improvements;
Each participant will leave with an individualized action plan ; and
Each participating household will leave with an Energy-Saver Kit to help get started on lowering energy bills.

The program is free, but pre-registration is required. Call CCE-Tompkins at (607) 272-2292 to reserve a seat.

Schedule of workshops, all held at CCE-Tompkins, 615 Willow Ave, Ithaca, NY 14850
Thurs, Oct. 7, 6:30 -8:30 pm
Fri, Oct. 15, 12:30 -2:30 pm
Thurs, Oct. 28, 6:30 - 8:30 pm

Repairing and Weatherizing Older Windows
Thurs, Sept. 30th, 7:00 - 9:00 pm at CCE-Tompkins, 615 Willow Ave, Ithaca, NY 14850

In this workshop you will learn:

How to replace worn parting-bead to tighten up a window;
How to repair the sash-cords on your double-hung windows with weights;
How to re-glaze an older window;
About energy efficient treatments you can add to your older windows.

Presented by Mark Pierce, Cornell Cooperative Extension Associate.
The program is free, but pre-registration is required. Call CCE-Tompkins at (607) 272-2292 to reserve a seat.

A few things that give me hope.

2010-09-16T00:02:00.000-07:00

Thinking about the state of things can bring me down. Every now and then I like to draw attention to things that give me hope. In today's post, I'll draw brief attention to three of those things:

Good colleagues, working on things that matter;
Deepening understandings of how to effect behavior change on a broad scale; and;
The fact that young people hold expertise that matters for changing how the world works, and that that expertise and its related infrastructure is growing quickly.

Charismatic Megafauna Aboard the JOIDES Resolution

Smart people are working on things that matter.
I'm writing again from the JOIDES Resolution, an ocean research ship now off the coast of British Columbia. Today we placed a CORK, a remote observatory on the seafloor, not quite a mile beneath where I sit now (and extending into the seafloor enough to reach a mile below me). I've been blogging on the JR's blog over the last week along with many of my colleagues in the School of Rock. I invite you to take a look and see what we're up to.

School of Rock is a program to bring educators into the ocean research programming to deepen the educators' understandings of ocean science and to bring scientists into contact with educators to help deepen the public's understanding of ocean science and its importance.

My School of Rock colleagues, like my colleagues at PRI and its Museum of the Earth give me hope about where the world is headed. Terrifically smart, hard working nice people working on things that matter give me hope that those efforts will make a difference. The Joint Oceanographic Institutions for Deep Earth Sampling program (from which the JR gets her first name), brings together scientists and now educators from around the world to a program that enriches our understandings of how the Earth works.

A reality check is that smart people have always been working on things that matter, so we do need something more than this for our hopes for change to be realized.

The research base for effecting behavior change is maturing.
Joe Brewer, of Cognitive Policy Works, offers a nice summary of how research on fostering behavior change has changed over the past several years. Perhaps the most compelling reason for hope is the growing understanding that self-interest isn't as strong a motivator as long believed. I like to think we know this from our day-to-day experience. Most of the people I know and care about don't have greed as a primary motivator and it turns out that my friends and family aren't freakish for being kind and at least somewhat altruistic (though some of them are pleasantly freakish in other ways).

Also encouraging is the recognition that broad sweeping change happens all the time. Some of that's not been so good (urban sprawl, for one example). But there are many positive changes we can point to -- that overt sexism and racism is no longer socially acceptable in most circles, for example.

Change is possible.

For the first time in history, huge numbers of young people have expertise that really matters and that their seniors do not have.

Don Tapscott's Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World describes how media and young people's engagement with it is changing the fundamental nature of how we communicate. And if we change the way we communicate, we change the way we live.

My interaction with young folks gives me hope too. As an educator and a parent, I get the opportunity to interact with lots of them, and with their teachers from all over the country.

Though the phrasing of that last paragraph makes me feel like an old man, the basic gist of it gives me reason for optimism.

What gives you reason for optimism?

Polar Bears in the City...

2010-09-13T10:38:00.000-07:00

It's not often that I see a commercial that makes me cry, but for some reason this commercial did it for me. It's for the new Nissan "Leaf." An electric car.

Who wouldn't want to be hugged by a polar bear!

Solar Panels and the White House

2010-09-10T13:16:00.001-07:00

Last week we linked to a video of Bill McKibben of 350.0rg on Letterman discussing his new book and his mission to try and convince President Obama to reinstall Carter-era solar panels on the White House. Unfortunately, President Obama and his staff have declined to do that.

Campaigners had hoped that the White House would embrace at least the symbolism of going solar - much like Michelle Obama kicked off her healthy and local food movement by planting a vegetable garden.

"Clearly, a solar panel on the White House roof won't solve climate change - and we'd rather have strong presidential leadership on energy transformation. But given the political scene, this may be as good as we'll get for the moment," McKibben said in a Washington Post comment this morning.

Sailing on the JOIDES Resolution and Pondering Climate Change

2010-09-08T22:07:00.000-07:00

The JOIDES Resolution approaching Victoria, BC

I'm on board the JOIDES Resolution (the JR) and set to head out to sea tomorrow afternoon. I'll be blogging about it regularly on The JR's blog and occasionally here too.

What is The JR and why should we care?

Well, to answer the first question well, you should spend some time poking around on The JR's website, but I'll say briefly that it's one of the most famous geologic ships that there is. JOIDES stands for Joint Oceanographic Institutions for Deep Earth Sampling, and it takes the name Resolution from James Cook's ship of more than 200 years ago. It's also a converted oil drilling ship that now drills for samples of ocean core sediments rather than for oil. It's also a pretty big ship. Look at the picture -- the row of windows across the front of the ship should give you a sense of scale of something familiar. The derrick stands 62 meters (about 20 stories tall) and she's 143 meters long (about one and a half football fields).

More amazing than its proportions (and partly because of them) is the fact that The JR can reach from its derrick to the sea floor and not only drill deeply into the sea floor, but also recover cores from the sea floor, and place instrument packages into the hole left behind. Take a virtual tour here.

Handling a core on The JR's previous voyage.

We won't be coring on this trip. We'll be placing an instrument package called a CORK in an existing hole. More on that later (as I learn more about it).

Ok, so why would we want to do that stuff?
We can use what we find in these sediments to reconstruct the story of how the Earth came to be the way that it is -- in many different ways. The fossils (commonly microscopic) that we find in cores give us hints about what ancient climates were like. Studying methane hydrates found in sea floor sediments can help us understand their role in climate change.

A chunk of methane hydrate looks like ice -- but you can light it on fire.

Pondering them raises a question for me to explore in the coming days with the scientists on board. What, if anything, do the methane hydrates found under the sea have to do with methane bearing shale, like the Marcellus? I also want to deepen my understand of how they fit into understandings of climate change.

If there's more you want me to be pondering (with the help of some scientists who are some of the world's experts in these areas), please let me know. You can do that by posting here, or by sending me an email at my temporary ship's email address (and I only have limited access to my regular email). That address is: jrs_duggan-haas@ship.iodp.tamu.edu.

The Lazy Twentysomething's Guide to Sustainability: Organic Beer

2010-09-06T08:39:00.001-07:00

Organic - Not just for food anymore!

Apparently, Americans drink about 82L beer per capita every year. This places us 13th in the 2004 world rankings behind, well, most of western Europe. The Czech Republic and Ireland are first and second, with 157L and 131L, respectively. We may be woefully behind the rest of the developed world in beer consumption, but that hardly means that we should ignore how the ingredients are grown.

Beer is mostly water and malted grain (usually barley or wheat), with a little yeast for fermentation and hops for flavor. It takes about 336 square feet of barley to produce enough barley for one American’’s entire year of beer. The number of acres under barley cultivation worldwide is dwarfed by maize, wheat, and rice, but the rate of fertilizer per hectare is pretty high (pdf). The rationale for drinking organic beer over conventional is basically the same as with eating organic rather than conventional anything. Namely, a lower pesticide and synthetic fertilizer load in the environment and a lower pesticide load in you. Since “100% local” seems to be an impossibility for brewers outside of Germany, we’ll have to settle for USDA certified organic as our green alternative to conventional beer.

In an act of staggering generosity, members of the PRI Outreach and Development teams have tested a selection of organic beer in order to provide our readers with a little guidance should they wish to purchase some. We were able to find 3 brands of organic beer at the Finger Lakes Beverage Center*: Pinkus, Peak Organic, and Wolaver’s. A more thorough search would probably turn up an even greater variety. From Pinkus, we tried the Pils and the Munster Alt; from Peak Organic,we tried the IPA, the Pale Ale, the Amber Ale, and the Nut Brown; from Wolaver’s, we tried the IPA, the Pale Ale, the White Ale, the Brown Ale, and the Oatmeal Stout.

Here is a summary of the rankings and tasting notes, but the main point is that you don’t have to sacrifice taste to sustainability!

Peak Organic Amber Ale

Darker
Syrup-y
Smells better than it tastes
Unbalanced
Awful start, but a good finish

Avg. = 5.375

Peak Organic IPA

Righteous
Smells like tomato plants
Honey and citrus scents
Darker than I thought it’d be
Deeper than a hoppy finish
I like the way it starts but it’s bitter at the finish

Avg. = 6.25

Wolaver’s IPA

Cleaner than last IPA
Don’t like his one as much – not as much character
Floral and not too bitter

Avg. = 6.625

Peak Organic Nut Brown

A little flat
Smells better than the last one
A little earthy
Not a fan, generally, of nut brown ale
Vanilla on the start
Enjoys the complexity
Brown-sugary sweet

Avg. = 7

Pinker's Original Unfiltered

Yummy smell
Smooth and not a big finish
Summer beer
Not too flavorful
Citrus-y
“…a decent Bud Light”

Avg. = 7.125

Wolaver’s White Ale

Smells like bacon; like breakfast at CNC, like lighter fluid
Citrus-y – more lemon than orange
Needs citrus to be effective
Sweet, and not smoky or salty
Like the highest note on a piano
Too complicated for a beer that you’d put citrus in

Avg. = 7.1875

Peak Organic Pale Ale

Smells like soy sauce or the woods
Coffee taste
Acidic
Herbal, earthen flavor

Avg. = 7.3125

Wolaver’s Oatmeal Stout

“Oh, hello.”
Smoky
Delightful
Tastes like dinner
Not coffee, but espresso
More earthy than other stouts
“Starts sweet, then smoke, then coffee”
It’s like chocolate that’s spent time by a campfire

Avg. = 7.3125

Wolaver’s Pale Ale

Solid
Definitely preferred
Easy to drink
Nice finish – not bitter
Warm finish like a soup
Bread-y

Avg. = 7.75

Wolaver’s Brown Ale

Smells like a good beer
Completely solid
More than just nutty – Mr. Peanut Party Mix
“tastes like beer to me”

Avg. = 7.83

Pinker’s Alt Beer Munster Ale

Molasses and whiskey
Bread-y – pumpernickel
Mellowed out
“I like this. I like this a lot.”
Finishes with depth, and starts like OJ / juice
Smells like grape juice
You can drink this year-round, and all day
Little too sweet overall

Avg. = 8.25

Have you tried any organic beer that we missed? How did you like it?

*Thanks to the Beverage Center staff for pointing us in the right direction.

Labor Day!

2010-09-02T12:27:00.000-07:00

How to throw a green Labor Day picnic…

1. Use natural charcoal or wood for your grill.

Natural charcoal is very basic - it's simply charred wood. It's available by the bag at major retailers and home improvement stores.

Using wood itself is another option. If you have a basic backyard grill (not propane), you can burn fallen sticks and twigs that you can gather yourself with minimal effort.

2. Send out electronic invitations to save paper.

Or, make your own invitations from scrap paper or junk mail.

3. Encourage your guests to walk, bike, carpool, or use public transportation to get to your party.

4. Serve local, seasonal foods.

Labor Day is still within the growing season in many parts of the country.

Corn, tomatoes, peppers, onions and squash are all good options for grilling and are still in season in early September.

Potato wedges cooked on the grill can take the place of packaged potato chips.

Regardless of where you live, there will be something good and grill-able that is in season and grown locally.

5. Serve food on reusable flatware and plates.

Serve drinks from washable cups and glasses. If possible, have drinks in coolers and kegs rather than individual cans or bottles.

6. For those items that are disposable (beverage cans or bottles, for example), have clearly labeled recycling bins set up for guests where they can easily toss their used items.

7. Burn citronella candles or torches around the edges of your party or grilling area if it's all outdoors.

Have citronella candles burning on any outdoor tables where your guests will be eating.

Provide natural insect lotions or sprays for your guests as well.

8. If you want to cook meat on the grill, choose grass-fed, organic, and/or free range meats.

Wild meats are also a good option if the season coincides.

You can still serve traditional burgers and hotdogs - just choose vegetarian or free-range, organic versions of these classic foods.

9. Whole grain flat bread is good on the grill, and with toppings of grilled vegetables and/or meats, it becomes a main course.

10. Make dessert from seasonal, local fruits.

Some berries are still in season around Labor Day - serve them in a cobbler or pie, or raw with sauce or dips.

11. Strings of festive LED lights in appropriate colors provide eco-friendly lighting for your party.

Solar lights are also an option - they are easily obtained these days and can be quite affordable.

--Courtesy of elertgadget.com