Category: Climate Change

As long as fossil fuels remain cheap the use of them will continue at the peril of breaching one or more of the thresholds of physical stability that govern the biosphere.

The Citizen’s Climate Lobby (CCL) has developed the policy of a carbon fee and dividend to internalize the costs of fossil fuels and provide the impetus to move toward carbon-free emissions. Here is how it would work:

1. Place a steadily rising fee on the CO2 content of fossil fuels.

2. Give all of the revenue from the carbon fee back to households.

3. Border adjustments ensure fairness and competition.

4. It’s good for the economy AND even better for the climate.

The producers and largest consumers of fossil fuels will have an incentive to move to alternative fuels. Citizens will receive a dividend check each year as the fees are redistributed to the public. That will put the money back into the economy while creating the incentive for producers of energy to move to other sources of energy that are carbon free.

Fees will be collected on the annual tax return each year.

It is a soft quiet Sunday on the Gulf coast. Downtown the annual arts festival must be a busy,  and the time when artists realize in the last few hours that its time for a sale! Out on the barrier island of Santa Rosa the beachcombers are luxuriating in a November day in the 80s.  Bet the water is tourmaline emerald. King and Spanish mackerel are being hauled out over the Pensacola Beach Pier and dolphins and reds are teasing the fishermen.

I’m home atop my upstairs condo with a view of old oaks and blue sky filling with white stratus clouds. I feel a change.  The last few days of cloudless, warm easy days may be on their way out chased by the Polar Express.

On my mind are friends and family and Americans in the Northeast in devastating circumstances who are trying to heat a cup of coffee, stay warm, and wonder whether they’ll work tomorrow or kids to school. The heavy realizations crowd in on us: we  are naked and unprepared for the storms on our horizon.

It’s a bitter pill to swallow, with our sense of being exceptional, to respond to the call to refrain or curtail our fossil-fuel addiction. We’ve had nearly 50 years to seriously think of it and do something but we have not. Now that sinks into the national consciousness with the familiar boardwalk caving into the sea.

Each time a disaster happens there is an opening, because “things as usual” are paused. Into these moments of suffering and confusion are opportunities for insight and action. We’ve experienced this phenomenon personally when sickness or tragedy sweep aside the normal flow of our work and home lives; we may learn something new…or not.

For years I’ve wondered at America’s poor ability to learn from her mistakes. Great wealth and a land of abundance and a hard working people have staved off this fact. Now it sits with us, an unwelcome guest. Time is running out.

We should welcome this uninvited hulking presence, put on a pot of coffee and have a conversation. Let down the guard and fess up. It would do us good and maybe lead to some moderation in our behavior, and maybe even more.

Scientists have demonstrated that, in the face of climate change, alpine plant populations may sit at cliffs’ edge in more ways than one. Some plants initially compensate for the physiologically taxing effects of persistent warming with increased growth rates or expanded ranges. But new results from long-term studies show that even a gradual climate change can push a species past its tipping point, leading to a sudden population crash.

Determining where trade-offs and thresholds exist helps scientists better anticipate biological responses to climate change. Studies like this will help them predict which species may be able to adapt to increased temperatures and which may be most vulnerable.

Read more at Research.gov

The timing of seasonal events – phenology – is lending evidence of climate change impacts.  In this National Science Foundation report alpine flowers may bloom about two weeks earlier due to both warming and subtle genetic changes.  So what’s the big deal?  That change in flowering may be devastating to insects, birds of animals whose life cycles are in sync with the flowering times of the plant.  The use of phenology to study seasonal changes over time has resulted from the rich records of flowering events by both amateur and professional observers.

Capturing the timing of these seasonal events is the study of phenology. Well-known recorders include Gilbert White who noted events in 18th century Selborne, England and Henry David Thoreau who recorded in Concord, USA in the 19th century. Once, phenological records were perhaps simply considered interesting but of little other value. Now, long-term datasets of seasonal events are widely sought-after for their potential to reveal how the natural world responds to climate change. Historical records have been the subject of recent analysis and several phenological recording networks have been established or revitalized in response to this resurgence of interest.  Read more here.

Click the link on this blog for NASA’s “Vital Signs of the Planet” web site.  I spent sometime on it yesterday.  The National Aeronautics and Space Administration site is actively monitoring climate change indicators such as carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, polar ice melt, and key gases such as methane, which is a more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.  Go to the site and use their interactive tools to study how each indicator has changed over the decades.  A recent study on methane gas levels caught my eye.  Scientists have been puzzled at a leveling off of methane gas in the atmosphere.  The study reports on 30 years of data for ethane/methane and was published in the journal Nature on August 23.  Here is an excerpt:

In results published Aug. 23 in the journal Nature, the team led by UC Irvine chemistry professor Donald Blake reported that the observed leveling-off in atmospheric ethane/methane is largely a result of changes in fossil fuel use – specifically, reductions in fugitive emissions of natural gas that can occur during fossil fuel exploration. Fugitive emissions include venting and flaring, evaporative losses, and equipment leaks and failures, but exclude combustion of fuels. The study finds these measures probably account for up to 70 percent of the slowing growth in atmospheric methane levels observed at the end of the 20th century.

This is pointing to positive steps Americans can take right now in the upcoming election.  A vote for Romney-Ryan team will likely lead to increases not only in carbon dioxide emissions but also methane emissions because the duo plans to open up drilling and other policies (giving states the right to choose how their coal, gas reserves are managed) that will most likely lead to increases in both these gases if history tells the truth .  Obama’s administration has not shown strong leadership in this direction either but the record tends in the right direction, whereas the Republicans will throw us back into even greater emissions of both CO2 and methane.  Voters from both parties will need to be actively engaged with their leaders and representatives to make sure policies are not short sighted (what is not economically feasible in the short-term may be very feasible and prudent in the long-term).

Long ago it was determined that the maximum safe level of heat energy in earth’s atmosphere should be no more than 350 parts per million or less of carbon dioxide (CO2 being the most abundant heat-trapping molecule in the atmosphere).  According to the NASA site, we are at 393 ppm and rising.  Go see for yourself.  Add more methane to the atmosphere and the heating goes up at a faster rate – 20 times greater.  Think of fracking, one of the new technologies that will be unleased by the policies being unveiled on the republican platform.

Right now my state, Florida, is on a path to converting from coal to mostly natural gas for its primary energy source.  This is a trend nation-wide.  Obama is tooting clean fuels.  How clean are they?  NOAA scientists who started measuring air pollution near well-sites in Colorado’s oil and gas fields found they were leaking methane at substantial rates.  The industry representatives they spoke to indicate that measuring pollution from wells is expensive and not economically feasible.

The Republicans and Democrats are concentrating on jobs because the public demands it.  Yet it will be GAME OVER if we reach a temperature threshold that substantially changes the atmosphere.  How will that will be economically feasible?

We are brimming on the edge of that threshold now.  Yet, our leaders are silent about climate change because voters – the American public – in substantial numbers ignore the scientific data.  If you are one such person, ask yourself why you turn a blind eye to incontrovertible evidence that our climate is changing and that the human thumbprint is in large part the reason for dramatic increases in temperature (carbon dioxide emissions the culprit).  We know with certainty that our combined human activities – demands for more and more energy – are creating conditions for environmental degradation on a scale unknown to humankind. (Remember also that Americans per capita are the energy hogs of the planet. Sorry, its just the truth.)

Logic tells us we should look for less polluting fuels, and energy conserving strategies.  WE NEED THAT LEADERSHIP SORELY AND WE MUST DEMAND THAT WHOMEVER IS ELECTED RESPONDS WITH PLANS TO REDUCE THE LEVELS OF CARBON DIOXIDE AND METHANE IN THE ATMOSPHERE.

Yet we are wildcats on the prairie again with hydraulic fracking the earth’s surface to get at the natural gas reserves.  In doing so, we are releasing increased amounts of methane into drinking water in adjacent watersheds and into the atmosphere. Its bad policy and will be judged as immoral in a more desperate future if we choose that path.

Democrats and Republicans both need to check the facts.

The United Nations Climate Change Conference, Durban 2011, will bring together representatives of the world’s governments, international organizations and civil society. The discussions will seek to advance, in a balanced fashion, the implementation of the Convention and the Kyoto Protocol, as well as the Bali Action Plan, agreed at COP 13 in 2007, and the Cancun Agreements, reached at COP 16 last December.

Go to this site throughout the next ten days to keep track of progress toward these goals and to use this information to contact your congressional representatives and local government for energy and economic steps that would contribute toward reduction in greenhouse gases (GHG).  We have an exceptional opportunity to make better decisions today but they are complex, pitting national goals seemingly against one another (jobs versus alternatives to fossil fuels i.e. oil sands, nuclear power, “clean” coal.)

Go to Yes! Magazine to keep a vision of what’s possible and what is already here in new technologies, new ways of knowing, and fresh ideas for sustaining communities with robust local economies.  Improve your ecological knowledge by going to Ecoliteracy Institute  and Small Planet Institute and New Economics Institute.