Archive for December, 2009
| Newer Entries »Climate science and moving beyond hackergate
Sunday, December 6th, 2009
By now, everyone has heard of the hacked emails from the British Climate Research Unit (CRU) at East Anglia University. The play-by-play has been getting a lot of press, especially at Dot Earth and Climate Progress. Rather than focus on the specifics, I want to help us keep focused on larger issues, which I think is useful for getting past the heated rhetoric.
Yesterday, Bryan Walsh ran a story, As Climate Summit Nears, Skeptics Gain Traction in Time Magazine in which the following passage appeared:
Even a small amount of doubt is enough to shatter consensus. That is why a number of researchers have suggested in the wake of the CRU e-mail hack that climate scientists be more open with their data and engage with critics in the future. “Climate McCarthyism” — as Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger of the Breakthrough Institute have called the knee-jerk attacks by some climate-change advocates on those who deviate from the green mainstream — must stop. That may not seem fair — industry groups have played dirty for years smearing climate scientists — but researchers will need to be above reproach. “Scientists need to consider carefully skeptical arguments and either rebut them or learn from them,” wrote Judith Curry, an atmospheric scientist and climate researcher at Georgia Tech, on the blog Climate Audit.
There are several things to consider:
The scientific process is a powerful tool—in many ways, the most powerful tool we have. All ideas should be allowed at the table and should be investigated thoroughly. Yes, even the ideas of climate skeptics. The notion that scientists might have attempted to short circuit the peer review process is unfortunate. This should never happen.
However—and this is an important point that has not been stated strongly enough—when a fair peer review process rejects ideas for not standing up to intense scrutiny, as determined by several sources of empirical observations and models, it’s time to move beyond the false ideas for the sake of clarity and efficiency. Climate skeptics and warming advocates alike who lose on the battlefield of peer review need to own their loss, suck it up, and move on. Returning to the table is fine, but do it with new ideas that better help us understand the way the world works, rather than trotting out retreads or, worse, advancing an agenda.
I tell my students that the outcome of science isn’t meant to be fair. However, the process of science is fair. At the starting blocks, it accepts all ideas and sifts through them one by one to see which ones stand the test of scrutiny (data and models and other lines of evidence) and which ones don’t. The ones that don’t are discarded to the dustbin of history. The ideas that survive get to live another day until subject to refined analysis and new data, models, and ways of thinking. Over time, if they continue to survive, they become generally accepted ways of describing our world. Much of what we know about climate warming, such as the role of greenhouse gases in causing warming, fits this bill. Of course, something may come along that could revolutionize conventional wisdom—Einstein did that to Newtonian mechanics with his theories of relativity—but until that happens, scientifically based conventional wisdom that has withstood the test of time is simply the best process we have at getting closer to the truth on climate warming science.
Problems arise when people conflate outcomes and process—equating, for instance, a bad outcome (rejected idea) to an unfair process. This can lead to a rejection of science as a a way of knowing, and that’s unfortunate. People don’t have the choice of rejecting the scientific method simply because they lose. That’s the game of a poor loser. The challenge is for them to come back with a winning idea.
It’s all too easy for climate science to become politicized. Everyone knows this. With regards to skeptics—contrarian for the sake of contrarianism. With regards to warming advocates—overly dismissive of alternative viewpoints. At that point, science crosses the threshold to ideology, which has no place in the peer review process. Fortunately, ideology seldom lasts long in a well-oiled peer-review meat grinder.
So why don’t I worry? Because I return, over and over, to a singularly powerful idea: In the end, a fair peer review process will lead us closer to the truth. The furnace we call the climate warming debate is blistering. This is why we must make sure the crucible of a fair review process is strong enough to withstand it. And so far the peer review process most likely has been fair. There are too many independent research groups studying climate change, involving tens of thousands of scientists worldwide, who are reaching the same basic conclusions about warming. It’s simply impossible for a conspiracy to ever grow that big.
What we need now more than ever is for both sides of the climate debate to consider all ideas and for the losers (of a fair process) to own their loss. Sure, it’s a high-stakes game, and nobody likes to lose. But some will. The question is whether the losers will continue by pushing an agenda rather than useful ideas. History will be a harsh critic of those who do.
Posted in climate change science, climate skeptics deniers and contrarians | No Comments »
If we switch to biofuels, how much do indirect greenhouse gas emissions matter?
Saturday, December 5th, 2009
In this week’s issue of Science, Jerry Melillo and colleagues investigate1 what kinds of impacts might arise from changing land use to grow more cellulosic biofuel crops. If you think about it, the switch to biofuels could have a big impact on greenhouse gas emissions—and not in a good way. For instance, clearing a forest or pastureland to grow a biofuel crop could cause a net release of carbon from the ecosystem, as plant growth changes, biomass is lost, and soil decomposition increases.
Using a model of the world economy coupled to a terrestrial ecosystem model, they considered two cases:
- Case 1: Natural lands (e.g., forests and pastures) are allowed to be converted to meet increasing biofuel demand.
- Case 2: Existing managed lands are managed even more intensely to generate biofuel demand.
What did they find?
Posted in biofuels, technology | No Comments »
High school science teachers: Make it relevant
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009
In this week’s issue of Science, Chris Huelleman and Judith Harackiewicz argue1 that making science relevant lends a big boost to high school students with low expectations of themselves.
In a controlled study, they passed out textbooks to 9th grade science students from a small city in the Midwest. One set of books had questions that asked an experimental group of students to write essays about how the material was relevant to their lives. The other (control) set of textbooks asked students to write essays simply summarizing the material.
Furthermore, they gave students a survey at the beginning of the semester to assess whether students had high or low expectations for success in the course.
The team found that, for the low-expectations students, connecting the material to their lives led to a significant improvement in interest and grades over the semester. There was no difference for students with high expectations. In fact, the students with low expectations who connected the course material to their lives had the highest average second quarter grades among all students.
Bottom line: For high achievers, taking extra steps to make science relevant may not matter as much as it does for students with low expectations or self esteem.
1Hulleman, C.S. and J.M. Harackiewicz (2009) Science 1326: 1410-1412.
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Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/airport/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Posted in behavior, communication and framing, environmental literacy, K-12 | No Comments »
Sustainable food: Who’s it for? Uniting ecological sustainability and social justice
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009
Think of all the reasons why people advocate sustainable food, and the following things probably come to mind:
- Eat organic—to reduce pesticides and nutrient pollution.
- Eat locally—to reducing carbon emissions.
- Eat free-range animal products—to reduce nutrient pollution, energy use, and animal cruelty.
- Eat vegetarian or vegan— to reduce carbon footprints further and eliminate animal cruelty altogether.
- Eat hormone and antibiotic-free animal products— to improve human health.
How about this one?
- Make sure farm workers who grow all of this food and other poor people have access to cheap, healthy, sustainable food.
Not so much.
And that’s probably why Caitlin Donohue wrote the story, “Out of reach: How the sustainable local food movement neglects poor workers and eaters” in today’s San Francisco Bay Guardian Online.
There’s a lot more that can be written on this topic, and there are a growing number of success stories, including
- the urban gardening movement (here, here, here);
- the increasing acceptance of food stamps (now called SNAP—Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) at farmers’ markets;
- the movement to feed kids healthy school lunches.
The introduction to Donohue’s article frames the cultural disconnect:
On a sunny afternoon in Civic Center Plaza, a remarkable bounty covered a buffet table: coconut quinoa, organic mushroom tabouli, homemade vegan desserts, and an assortment of other yummy treats. The food and event were meant to raise awareness about public school lunches, although it was hard to imagine these dishes, brought by well-heeled food advocates, sitting under the fluorescent lights of a San Francisco public school cafeteria.
The spread was for the Slow Food USA Labor Day “eat-in,” a public potluck meant to publicize the proposed reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, national legislation that regulates the food in public schools. The crowd was in a festive, light-hearted mood. There was a full program of speeches by sustainability experts and a plant-your-own-vegetable-seeds table set up in one corner of the plaza.
A bedraggled couple who appeared homeless made their way through the jovial crowd and started scooping up the food in a way that suggested it had been a long time since their last roasted local lamb shish kebob.
Their presence shouldn’t have been a surprise; most events involving free trips down a food table are geared toward a different demographic in this park, which borders the Tenderloin.
In a flash, an event volunteer was on the case, nervous in an endearingly liberal manner. “Sir,” she began. “This food is for the Child Nutrition Act.” And then she paused, searching for what to say next. I imagined her thinking: “Sir, this food is to raise awareness about the availability of sustainable food to the lower classes, not to be eaten by them,” or, “Sir, this good, healthy, local food is not for you.”
Continue reading here…
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Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/77043400@N00/ / CC BY-ND 2.0
Posted in environmental justice, food and agriculture, organic, race and class | 1 Comment »
In this week’s issue of Nature: What do radar, nuclear power, the Internet, and DNA have in common with technological innovation to decarbonize the economy?
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009
Most of the focus these days is on how we can mitigate climate warming by achieving specific reductions targets like 20% by 2020 and 80% by 2050. Economists from McGill University, Isabel Galiana and Christopher Greene, are going to stir up debate in their latest paper1 in Nature by arguing that the current way of thinking about mitigating warming needs to be turned on its head.
Focusing on rapid emissions reductions, they say, may not be the best way to rapidly stabilize climate as cheaply as possible. They even go as far as to say that climate can be stabilized at a 2 degree C warming even if most of the carbon reductions don’t happen until after 2050.
What’s the basis for their argument? Technology-led approaches. Let’s see what this means…
Posted in climate economics, energy, sustainable development, technology | No Comments »
This week’s good ideas in campus sustainability: 11/30/09
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009
The showcase this week: Eastern Illinois University and the University of California, Merced.
(1) Honeywell and EIU Bring the Heat with Biomass-Fueled Plant
This is an impressive scaling of biomass energy. It sounds like it’s about two times the size of the biomass gasification plant at Middlebury. By displacing 10,000 tons of coal, this will go a long way in helping EIU move towards carbon neutrality (provided that the fuelwood forests are replanted). However, not everyone is going to be able to do this; otherwise, we’ll end up deforesting all of North America!
Honeywell today announced a $79 million renewable energy and building retrofit program with Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, Ill. The program, which combines energy-efficient facility upgrades with one of the largest biomass-fueled heating plants on a university campus, will help EIU address deferred maintenance, improve its infrastructure, and save approximately $140 million in energy and operating costs over the next two decades.
EIU will finance the improvements and use the savings, guaranteed by Honeywell through a 20-year performance contract, to pay for the work. As a result, the program will not place a burden on the university’s budget or require additional taxpayer dollars or student fees.
The upgrades will impact all facilities on the 320-acre campus, and significantly curb the university’s energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. For example, they will reduce electricity consumption by an estimated 6.2 million kilowatt-hours per year — enough energy to power more than 580 homes annually. Carbon dioxide emissions will also decrease by nearly 20,000 metric tons each year. According to figures from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, this is equivalent to removing more than 3,600 cars from the road.
The focal point of the program is the construction of a new steam plant on the southeast corner of campus that will be driven by two large biomass gasifiers, the first application of this technology in the region. The plant will use wood chips sourced from the local logging industry to generate steam and heat buildings on campus. And it will replace the university’s aging steam plant, which is inconveniently located in the center of campus, consumes more than 10,000 tons of coal per year and requires constant maintenance.
(2) UC Merced Unveils New Solar Power System
This is another ambitious effort. Hopefully opportunities like this will become commonplace in the next five years as solar panel costs continue to decline.
The University of California, Merced announced today (Nov. 10) the completion of a 1 megawatt solar power system at the campus, marking the university’s inaugural effort to produce clean, renewable energy as the first American research university of the 21st century.
“We are here today to celebrate a remarkable milestone,” said Mary Miller, vice chancellor for administration. “The solar array project exemplifies UC Merced’s founding vision to become an international model for sustainable development and environmental stewardship.”
The system is located on 8.5 acres southeast of the Science & Engineering Building. It consists of 4,900 solar panels that follow the sun’s movement during the day. The system will supply two-thirds of the campus’ electricity on summer days and 20 percent of the campus’ annual electricity needs.
The solar array will provide UC Merced with an abundant source of clean, renewable power. According to conversion formulas provided by The Climate Registry, the system is expected to remove more than 45 million pounds of carbon dioxide over the next 30 years. That is equivalent to the emissions displaced from removing more than 3,600 cars from California’s roads.
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For more information: AASHE bulletin 11/30/09
Posted in campus sustainability, higher education, sustainability | 1 Comment »
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