Free, While Supplies Last

Over at Boing Boing, the mother (or should I say mutha) of all blogs, Xeni (Can't possibly be her real name) Jardin reports that the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) turned down an offer of 50,000 free copies of An Inconvenient Truth from Participant Productions. Digging a little deeper, I find this item in the Los Angeles Times, which explains a bit more. Seems the NSTA sent an email, respectfully declining, in which it was explained that, "There is strong consensus that we should pass on this," in part due to concerns about the possible perception that accepting might seem like a political endorsement but also that it would place "unnecessary risk upon the capital campaign, especially [with] certain targeted supporters." In other words, big donors like Exxon Mobil and Shell might yank their support. That seems like a pretty safe bet. The only real surprise here is the NSTA's candor. In any case, here's the public service announcement: The 50,000 DVDs are still up for grabs, free to any educator who wants one for the classroom. Get 'em while they're hot.

U Toob

Those of you who have followed the last two posts about last week's climate panel may be interested to see footage from the actual event. And thanks to the magic of 'the Internets,' you can here.

The Moral Challenge

...[Continued from below] Before he arrived at the Commonwealth Club, Al Gore spoke at the American Geophysical Union's annual meeting at San Francisco's Moscone Center, which had 16,000 earth scientists in attendance. Among the more alarming news items to emerge from that meeting was the projection that the Arctic would be ice-free in summer by 2040; that is, in just 34 years. It was with respect to this news that Gore spoke of a "foreshortening of concern for the future." This is no longer a problem for our grandchildren to worry about. It's playing out now.

To be honest, the former VP seemed tired and, perhaps as a result, his speech was more elegiac than exhortatory. He looked like someone who had worked himself past the point of exhaustion -- both physically and mentally. He closed his eyes at times as he searched for the right wording and his humorous remarks were all bone-dry. At the end of the presentation, I happened to ride down the escalator behind him and his aide. We were the only ones on there and Gore let out a huge sigh. Out on the street, a car was waiting. He was apparently late for a plane.

But I digress.

Despite cries from some corners of alarmism in the media and global warming hysteria, Gore said global warming was a unique case in which public discussion of the subject was, in fact, too subdued. Usually, public concern tends to go beyond anything justified by the scholarship. But in the case of global warming it was the opposite: the scientific community was far more alarmed than the general populace. And that needs to change, said Gore, because we can't afford to be complacent.

He went on to explain that cognitive scientists have shown that our brains are wired to respond to immediate physical threats to our survival -- things with teeth and claws. We see a snake and all our senses are activated. Global warming is not like that. We can read about the Arctic melting, about mega-fires in Australia and the events of Hurricane Katrina without it registering on a gut-level. Not until we are personally faced with the immediate threat are we, as a species, driven to take decisive action.

Global warming thus presents an interesting challenge to our moral imagination. How do we overcome this built-in inertia? This is the heart of the matter, because, Gore said, when the catastrophe comes, it will be too late. He underscored the point by citing T.S. Eliot's poem, The Hollow Men: Between the motion/ And the act/ Falls the Shadow.

"We have to find a way to cross that shadow, that gulf," said Gore.

Deep Thoughts

Yesterday was a big event at the Sierra Club. Al Gore was in the house, along with some other deep thinkers on climate issues. In the morning and throughout the day, they sat down to hash out a near-term action agenda on climate change. At a panel discussion held afterward at the nearby Commonwealth Club, Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope explained that the point was not to come up with hypothetical solutions based on some 30-year timeline but rather to determine what needs to happen in the next two to three years.

The panel was moderated by Pope and, in addition to Vice President Gore, included: Stanford climatologist, Dr. Stephen Schnieder; Duke Energy Chairman, Paul Anderson; President of New Energy Capital, Dan Reicher; Silicon Valley venture capitalist, Vinod Khosla; and California Senator Barbara Boxer, who will chair the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (EPW) in the 110th Congress, replacing Oklahoma Sen. Jim "Global-Warming-is-all-a-big-hoax" Inhofe. In the end, each of the panelists spoke about some facet of the problem of climate change and the immediate ways in which we must address the challenge.

Sitting in the overflow gallery, I scribbled notes. I'll share some of the highlights here, broken down by speaker:

Senator Boxer spoke first. She said she believed climate has finally come to the fore as an issue and that the growing concern among voters on the issue was reflected in the outcome of the mid-terms. However, she warns that there is still much resistance in Washington, as evidenced not only in Inhofe's final hearing on climate change (in which he accused the media of alarmism), but also by the selection of coal-state Senators, Larry Craig and Craig Thomas, to seats on the EPW Committee. (Both Senators get zero percent on the League of Conservation Voters' environmental scorecard). That said, she believes there is room for common ground for the simple reason that, even if global warming turned out not to be a threat of the magnitude we believe it to be, the measures we took to combat it would all be good things for the nation -- in terms of increased energy independence, new business opportunities, cleaner air and water, improved public health, etc.

Paul Anderson followed Senator Boxer. The Duke Energy Chairman, followed up on a remark by Carl Pope that history will be divided into BC and AC for "before carbon controls" and "after carbon controls." Anderson said he preferred to think in terms of costs than controls, noting that while a lot of the world might respond to greater moral good, business doesn't. What leaders in the energy business want to know, then, is: Is my power plant going to be an asset or a liability? As such, he said, government needs to start sending clear signals to the marketplace about what regulation is coming and then act quickly to implement it. As long as there is uncertainty, he said, there is no incentive for business to enact controls. In fact, there may be incentive to increase emissions if there's a possibility that caps would be set based on pre-control emission levels, a situation he likened to musical chairs. "When the music stops and you need a chair, you want the highest one in the room." Anderson said he would like to see the government adopt a carbon tax that would apply to everybody and be "free of political mischief."

Not being entirely sure what he meant by that, I did some further research and came up with this statement Anderson made in the Australian press last year:

I think that the best way to address it [carbon emissions] is with a very broad-based approach that leaves you with no regrets. In my view, a preferred approach would be something like a carbon tax or a carbon fee that would be applied across all fuels and so therefore you would have different fees depending on the carbon intensity of the fuel, but you don't create winners and losers, you merely create economic incentives for fuel choices and economic incentives for conservation and technology development...

Vinod Khosla followed Anderson. He focused on scalability, stressing that "if we solve 10 percent of a problem, we haven't really solved anything." With apologies to proponents of the technology, he went on to characterize both solar photovoltaics and wind as 10 percent solutions, given the current limitations of battery technology. "We need to replace all of our coal, all of our oil and all of our plastics," Khosla said, adding that for the solution to be scalable, it has to be cheaper than the existing technology. As a "free-market Republican" he said he wants government to enact long-term, stable energy policies that will attract more Wall Street investment and require less government interference. Khosla said his personal goal for 2007 is to convince investors in the energy sector that it is simply too risky to build a coal-fired power plant given looming carbon costs. On the other hand, he said, from a venture capitalist's point-of-view, the risks involved in fostering carbon neutral alternatives to coal are "modest to moderate."

Dan Reicher was up next. The former Energy Department staffer and venture capitalist told a story about visiting the Google campus in Silicon Valley. It was a sunny day, and Reicher asked his hosts, 'Wouldn't it be a good idea to have solar cells on the rooftops here?' And they all said enthusiastically that it would be. He surprised them by saying that, actually, that would be foolish, since inside the building they had thousands of inefficient light bulbs wasting energy. The smart thing to do would be to change the lighting. Then, if you want to put solar panels in, you wouldn't need as much capacity. He said this is basically Amory Lovins' idea of "negawatts." It's the low-hanging fruit, he said, adding that, "The low-hanging fruit grows back." It's not a one-time deal. Take, for example, compact fluorescent lighting. Well, once you've replaced your incandescents with CFLs, that's just the beginning. In a few years, you can replace your CFLs with LEDs and get even more energy savings. Reicher said that while the technology to increase efficiency is ready and financial institutions are on board, ready to invest millions, the thing that needs to happen now is "we need put a price tag on carbon." Reicher ended with what he admitted was a Pollyanish thought: He said President Bush could still come around on climate change.

Stephen Schneider began his remarks by noting that he and Al Gore had been "soldiering on the same side of the issue for 25 years," and that while that might seem cause for despair, it hadn't been a waste as the world was very different than it used to be. "Who could have imagined that the biggest radical on this panel would come from a power company," he said, looking toward Paul Anderson. "Now, that's progress." Schneider says the US has lots of climate policy, just not at the federal level. As proof that policy makes a big difference, just contrast California and Texas. California has the lowest emissions. Texas the highest. The change is possible, he said, but "you have to mandate it." "We're poised to make a difference."

And then came Al Gore...

So Long, and Thanks

On his blog, Another Chance to See, Garreth Suddes covers the bases on the profoundly sad news that the Yangtze River Dolphin, or Baiji, has been declared "functionally extinct" after a six-week scientific expedition on the river failed to turn up any signs of one. The news brings to a close 25 million years of existence for the Baiji -- the first species of cetacean to vanish in modern history. You can read more about the news at Baiji.org.

Douglas Adams fans will remember that the late sci-fi author wrote about the Baiji's plight in his book Last Chance to See, written with biologist Mark Cawardine. In fact, he didn't get to see the Baiji either, despite his own efforts to spot one for the BBC.

Adams is, of course, best remembered for his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the four-part trilogy which ends with the story of how dolphins disappear from the Earth. In Adams's version, the dolphins have, unbeknownst to humanity, been engaged in a long-running "Save the Humans Campaign."

They leave behind a fishbowl inscribed with the words, "So Long, and Thanks."

Fueling the Revolution?

Our friends over at Grist have been doing an admirable job examining the myths and realities of biofuels with their 'two-week crash course' on the subject. If you haven't had a look yet, you should, because like it or not, ethanol is all the rage in Washington, with boosters ranging far beyond the corn lobby. Even President Bush saw fit to drop mentions of switchgrass and cellulosic biofuels into last year's State of the Union address. (Remember? The one where he said we're addicted to oil?)

At first glance, there's a lot to like about biofuels. You mean I can run my surf van on recycled fryer grease? Dude! As cool as it may seem, however, biofuels come with some (depending on who you ask) intractable problems. For starters, there's not enough fryer grease to go around. As for commercial biofuels, some critics (the minority) say you spend more energy growing and refining the stuff than you actually get from burning it. Bummer, dude. Lastly, there's simply not enough land to grow both food and fuel enough to meet all our demands.

Myself, I recently returned from a trip to Brazil, where cane-based ethanol (alcool) is on tap at every gas station in the country. Now the government in Brasilia is moving to add biodiesel to the mix. While I was there, a hard-hatted and newly re-elected President Lula Inacio da Silva was making the rounds, busily inaugurating new biodiesel plants in the hinterlands while touting his nation's energy independence.

For all its success, however, Brazil has been growing its fuel at considerable cost. The Atlantic rainforest is all but a memory, and something like 80 percent of the cerrado (as the vast scrubby savannah is called) has been cleared for cattle grazing and agricultural in the last quarter-century. With industrialized agriculture now encroaching on the Amazon rainforest, one wonders where it will all end.

That said, it seems premature write biofuels off as part (emphasis: part) of the solution to our energy problems. Like most everyone, I stand to be educated on the finer points of the debate, but in some places (namely, close to the feedstock), biofuels would seem to make good sense.

In Brazil, for example, I saw a soy crushing plant being built on a site surrounded by thousands of hectares of soya fields. If all goes according to plan, the crushing plant will be flanked by an industrial-scale chicken operation on one side and a biodiesel plant on the other. Now, here's the beautiful part: The crushing yields two products -- edible oil and soy meal. So, the meal will go one direction -- directly to the chickens -- and the oil will go the other -- to be processed into fuel, which will, in turn, run the farm equipment and the trucks used to grow soy and transport chickens. Putting aside the evils of industrial-scale monoculture, it seems like a pretty efficient way to maximize resources, no?

So, somebody tell me what I'm missing.

Holidays On Ice

He's at no immediate risk, but if Santa wants to stay high and dry year-round, he'll have to spend his summers elsewhere.

At the current rate of decline, the North Pole will be ice-free in summer by 2060, but new computer models suggest it could reach a largely ice-free state two decades earlier. And at least one foremost ice expert feels the thawing of the Arctic could come sooner still.

Dr. Mark Serreze of the University of Colorado tells the BBC:

My gut feeling is that it might be around the year 2030 that we really see a rapid decline of that ice. Now could it occur sooner? It might well. Could it occur later? It might well. It depends on the aspects of natural variability in the system. We have to remember under greenhouse warming, natural variability has always been part of the picture and it always will be part of the picture.

This much is known: the Arctic has not been recovering from summer melt as robustly as in the past. In November, the extent of sea ice was two million square kilometers below historical average. To put the figure in perspective, Dr. Serreze notes that the difference is "an area the size of Alaska."

Melting at the North Pole will not affect sea level as would melting on Greenland or Antarctica (for the simple reason that the ice cap is already floating). However, loss of the vast reflective surface of the Arctic ice cap would have a profound effect on global climate as the dark surface of the exposed ocean would absorb more solar radiation and thus speed warming.

Oh the Urbanity!

The UN says that more than half of humanity will soon live in urban areas. The epochal demographic shift could happen as early as 2008 and shows no signs of slowing. This Reuters report quotes Anna Tibaijuka, head of the UN Human Settlements Programme UN-HABITAT, who says, "We live in an age of unprcedented, rapid, irreversible urbanisation. The cities growing fastest are those of the developing world, and the fastest-growing neighbourhoods are the slums." Already, one sixth of the world's population lives in urban slums, where basic amenities and health services are lacking. With the increasing urban settlement, many hyper-cities will become so-called mega-cities of 20 million or more. Tokyo is currently alone in that distinction, but the UN projects that Mumbai, Lagos, Dhaka and Sao Paulo will all be part of the club by 2015.