Federal Court Interpreter of Spanish & Russian. Former college language & history instructor. Hiker, cyclist, sea kayaker. I'm especially interested in environmental questions, particularly those relating to climate change and water policy.
Energy Policy Minus Climate Policy Equals Disaster
I'm telling you nothing new when I say that in confronting Climaticide we face both an opportunity and a grave danger. On the one hand, if we change our behavior, we can not only save ourselves from the worst climate catastrophe but also, as a necessary part of the process, make our civilization more sustainable and more just. On the other, if we reject fundamental change and postpone meaningful action we will only travel further down the mistaken path that we embarked on when we decided to tie our fate to the exploitation of fossil fuels. With each missed opportunity and tipping point passed our future becomes more problematic.
That the world still finds itself heading down the road to ruin is in very large measure because America has betrayed its ideals and failed in its responsibilities. The destructive consequences of the Bush administration's refusal to participate in international efforts to combat Climaticide in favor of a jingoistic, nationalistic, energy policy became even more starkly evident this week with news stories about the headlong race to exploit Canadian tar sands and problems with the Australians efforts to establish meaningful cap and trade emissions standards.
Before reading this letter, I recommend that the reader read Andy's piece (and the comments on it) at the New York Times.
Dear Andy,
I'm going to be blunt. This post is a perfect example of why I have so little respect for you as a writer on global warming. Your wishy-washy prose and, worst of all your, failure to provide any context (and I know that you are perfectly aware of the context) for your stories make you a great source of comfort for the denialist ideologues and ignoramuses who frequent this site.
If you hike in the mountain west, chances are that at one time or another, probably while crossing a talus slope, you have heard, if not necessarily seen, a pika. These shy creatures with their bunny-like cuteness (the two creatures are relatives), live camouflaged among the rocks and feed on alpine flowers. Unfortunately, due to rising temperatures at higher elevations caused by global warming (they currently live, on average, 900 higher feet than in the past) over a third of the known populations in the Great Basin region of Oregon and Nevada has gone extinct.
With temperatures in the west expected to rise at double last century's rate, little pika habitat will remain by the end of the century.
The idea of abrupt climate change is only slowly making its way into the popular mind. Although scientists have been aware for over two decades that climate can lurch quickly from one state to another, geological speaking, the average person still has difficulty in imagining climate changing in anything less than millions or thousands of years or perhaps, at best, centuries. This is undoubtedly one of the reasons that many people still fail to feel any sense of urgency about Climaticide.
The 2008 ice melt continues. Researchers at Ohio State University's Byrd Polar Research Center have announced that satellite photos reveal that an 11 square mile piece of ice (about half the size of Manhattan) broke off Greenland's Petermann Glacier in late July of this year. The breakup actually took place just a few days before the collapse of 7 square miles of the Ward Hunt ice shelf off Ellesmere Island west of Greenland that I reported on previously.
David Roberts at Grist and Matt Stoller at Open Left have given Al Gore and We Can Solve It grief of late for not taking a hard enough stance against the wingnuts in their campaign to stop Climaticide. One of their complaints had to do with an early We Can Solve It ad that they thought gave green cred to right wing scumbag Newt Gingrich. Maybe Gore was listening. This new ad definitely hits a better tone.
"We DEMAND that we use them."
Yes! This is how WE we all need to be talking. We're not asking any more. Kudos to Al Gore and the We Campaign for getting it right this time.
You might be surprised to find out that despite being the number three wind producer in the world, Spain is dead last among developed countries in meeting its Kyoto targets. In this diary we'll take a look at how that happened and why Spain (and the rest of the United States) needs a dose of Californication.
According to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the European Union is to cut its emissions of greenhouse gases by 8% relative to 1990 levels by the period 2008-2012. Because at the time the agreement was signed, Spain was considered one of the less developed economies (it currently ranks 5th) among the then 15 European Union members (there are currently 27), its emissions target was set at a 15% rise over 1990 levels. (Greece, Ireland and Portugal were also allowed to grow their emissions.)
However, as of 2007, Spain is 52.3% above its Kyoto target and despite optimistic government promises that it can still meet the target it seems extremely unlikely that the Spanish will be able to reduce emissions by 35% relative to 1990 levels in only 4 years.
In EcoNoticiario #8: In Spain: protests against offshore wind power, and "streamlining" the review process for Environmental Impact Statements. Brazil to help Costa Rica with biofuels. A new study shows that Chile could produce 40% of its power with renewables by 2025. A Colombian editorial on air pollution and the Olympic Games in Beijing and oil-smeared penguins, sea lions and sea birds on the Uruguayan coast.
Today's Spanish words:
Declaración de impacto ambiental--Environmental Impact Statement
Through, No Man's Land, the family wheeled past fields that just been turned, the grass upside down. People in sputtering cars roared by honking, hooting at the cowboy family in the horse-drawn wagon, churning up dust in their faces. The children kept asking if they were getting any closer to Texas and if it would look different from this long strip of Oklahoma. They seldom saw a tree in Cimarron County. There wasn't even grass for the horse team; the sod that hadn't been turned was frozen and brown. Windmills broke the plain, next to dugouts and sod houses and still-forming villages. Resting for a long spell at midday, the children played around a buffalo wallow, the ground mashed. Cimarron is a Mexican hybrid word, descended from the Apache who spent many nights in these same buffalo wallows. It means "wanderer".[pp. 14-15]
Today's news that we may set a new Arctic sea-ice melt record in 2008 is, along with a number of other recent stories, further indication that Climaticide is proceeding full speed ahead the Arctic.
Warming temperatures resulting from our continued emissions of greenhouse gases are causing sea ice to melt (at both poles) at ever faster rates, ice shelves to collapse, 30 degrees-above-average temperatures in areas of the Arctic, the potential migration of sea creatures from the Pacific to the Arctic and the Atlantic after a 3.5 million year hiatus, and creating a new area for global conflict as the Northwest Passage opens and polar nations scramble to lay claims for both strategic and economic reasons.
If you need to pull an all-nighter tonight, forget the caffeine. Just join me below the fold.
Homeland Security, arguably the most incompetent agency in the astonishingly incompetent Bush Administration, has announced that it wants to spend tens of million dollars fighting hurricanes. That's right, HS, loser by a knockout against Hurricane Katrina, has staggered to it's feet and declared that it wants a rematch, not just against another hurricane but against all hurricanes.
The project has been given an estimated price tag of around $64m (£32m) over six years. Scientists will first conduct tests using models and small scale experiments before the most promising idea is developed for large scale testing.
Among the plans is a scheme to seed hurricanes with microscopic particles of salt that have been released into a storm from an aircraft. Research has shown that such seeding can cause hurricanes to dump large quantities of rain over the sea before it reaches land. The rainfall also carries away the heat that powers the hurricane, weakening it.
The experts over at the National Snow and Ice Data Center reported on August 1st that:
Sea ice extent continues to decline, but we have not yet seen last July’s period of accelerated decline. Part of the explanation is that temperatures were cooler in the last two weeks of July, especially north of Alaska.
Because we are past the summer solstice, the amount of potential solar energy reaching the surface is waning. The rate of decline should soon start to slow, reducing the likelihood of breaking last year's record sea ice minimum.
Lest the denialists get too excited (although generally Arctic ice melt is a topic that they avoid because what is going on is so clear) it is worth noting that the NSIDC analysis went on to say:
In a diary published last week that received 762 recs and 572 comments, there was a great deal of excitement about a supposed "breakthrough" by MIT chemistry professor, Daniel Nocera, that according to the MIT press release "could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source..."
The fact is that Nocera's discovery has been way overblown. While it does represent an improvement in the process of making hydrogen fuel, it is not a miracle cure.
I want to tell you about my wife. Today is our 12th wedding anniversary (although B. and I have known each other for 28 years, and been together for 16).
All those years neatly divide into two sections of very unequal proportions. On the far side are the good years, the ones we remember nostalgically, the ones that sustain us when we're trying to fight off depression. On this side are the last two years, the ones that have transpired since the doctor told me that I had Mantle Cell Lymphoma.
When I last diaried on the breakup of the Wilkins ice shelf there were a great many questions about glacier movement and sea-level rise so I thought that while we are waiting for the Wilkins ice shelf to collapse completely, it would be worthwhile to take the time to take a look at what causes ice shelves to break up and what the consequences of such a breakup are.
We can do this by examining the collapse of the Larsen B ice sheet, which took place in 2002.
The Associated Press has just announced that a 7 square mile piece of the Ward Hunt ice sheet, the largest ice sheet in the Arctic has collapsed. The ice sheet was first noticed to be fracturing in 2002. It was observed in April of this year that the ice shelf has broken into 3 pieces and fears were expressed that it would not survive the year. Ward Hunt is the remnant of a much larger ice sheet that surround Ellesmere Island until the beginning of the 20th century when it broke up into 6 pieces, the largest of which is the Ward Hunt, at 170 square miles and 130 feet thick.
In EcoNoticiario #7 we have (Spain) feuding between irrigators and "hippies" over water, (Mexico) a report of a possible new eruption of the Chaitén volcano in Chilean Patagonia, (Costa Rica) conflict between bicyclists and drivers in San José, (Guatemala) heavy rainfall leads to landslides and loss of life, (Colombia) the Colombian authorities launch a campaign to pick up plastic-bag litter, and (Chile) the Chilean government decides to extend it's restrictions on electricity use for a couple more months.
Probably nobody. Probably, it was just an accident...
My 18-year old son had an unusually serious look on his face when he got home from work last night. "What's wrong?" I asked. "I just got a text message from Mike" he said. "Do you remember, Bobby Chandler, the big guy who played Syria in the United Nations simulation we did this year?" Indeed, I did. The Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, where I am receiving treatment, had not yet given my wife and I permission to go home when the High School held the simulation, so I had watched the two-day performance via choppy, streaming video in a tiny window on my laptop. My son had played Israel in the simulation and he and Bobby had had some rousing exchanges.
"Yeah, I remember him", I said.
"Well, Mike says, he was killed today fighting a fire in California."
