Northman's Fury

This is sad.

In the "first nationally representative survey of teachers concerning the teaching of evolution," the authors show that one in eight high school biology teachers present creationism as a scientifically valid alternative to Darwinian evolution.

Bad enough in itself, and there is more from the study to be concerned with regarding the time spent on teaching evolution.

The authors show that the disparity in teaching evolution is not linked to differences in state regulations, but can more likely be attributed to differences of religious belief and education amongst teachers. Less than one-third of high school biology teachers believe that God had no part in evolution, nearly one-half believe God had a hand in evolution, and almost one in six believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years. The teachers who hold creationist or intelligent design beliefs spent substantially less time teaching evolution than their Darwinist counterparts. Likewise, teachers with a stronger background in evolution spent 60% more time teaching it than those who had the least education in the subject.

Biology was never my strong suit in science, but even I understand that evolution is the cornerstone of the field. Less time spent teaching it, or time spent pretending creationism is a scientifically valid alternative, is a good way to promote a flawed way of thinking. (I'll spare you my snarky comments regarding how this translates to US politics.)

The study's authors believe that making teachers complete courses in evolutionary biology might ensure that the nation's science teachers actually understand science. It certainly couldn't hurt.

Getting to know Hubbert

Hubbert of "Hubbert's Peak", or "Peak Oil", that is. In simplified terms, Hubbert postulated that for any given geographical area, up to and including the entire Earth, oil discovery and extraction would follow a bell-shaped curve where the easily exploited reserves would be found and consumed first, driving production to a peak, and then plateau and start declining when roughly half of the available resources had been exploited and the remaining reserves were more expensive and harder to extract.

Largely scoffed at when he came out with his theory in 1956, he's since been vindicated, in large part because he predicted the peak of US production in the '70's. Depending on who you talk to, peak oil for the planet is forecast as far out as a couple of decades from now to we're already there. It will be a while before we can determine whether or not production has really peaked, but it's clear from the pricing that demand has caught up, and may be surpassing, the supply.

People looking for places like ANWR or the Alberta tarsands to make up for the lost production are living in a pipe dream. ANWR doesn't hold enough to make much of a difference, and the tarsands, while possessing massive amounts of convertible bitumen, can't increase production fast enough to keep pace even with the inevitable decline in Alberta's traditional oil fields like those around Leduc, let alone deal with the declining production of a place like Russia, or the even more worrisome prospect of Saudi oil production dropping off. The Saudis by the way, unlike certain people in North America, understand that the oil still in the ground is only growing in value the longer they leave it there.

While we haven't yet run out of the black gold, the fact that it's now beginning to be priced at about the same level as the gold gold has finally gotten most people to consider the previously abhorrent thought of not burning so much of the stuff. As David Brin noted a while back, the truly awe-inspiring part of much of the Climate Change debate is that the opponents are generally arguing against measures that would make sense anyway, like efficiency.

As fester noted last week, people are starting to use public transit more and buy smaller, more fuel-efficient cars, even if they don't plan to drive them quite as often. The tragedy of all this is that many people are only now waking up to these facts, and the transition for them is going to be quite painful.

I don’t feel particularly smug when I stand next to my Honda Fit watching some SUV owner near tears as she puts more than $100 of gas into a car she doesn’t need. It just feels sad to think about how long it’s been since it became obvious to anyone who cared to look that we won’t be able to scare off problems like fuel scarcity and climate change by closing our eyes and wishing.

That lead time was an opportunity to make changes. Some would have been painful and some merely sensible, but it would prevent huge numbers of honest Americans get caught with their pants down. Instead we blew it out the tailpipe of cars that average 15 MPG. Now, instead of a planned transition, we get to see what happens when stubborn denial meets inescapable change. It’s simply unsustainable to live in suburban car country with a negative equity on the house, $6-7 gas (wait until you see what that does to property values in outlying suburbs) and expensive SUVs that nobody wants. The saddest thing for me was that most who will get fucked the worst had no idea this was coming. There was that one guy who warned us, but he had a snooty laugh.

Krugman has a vision of American cities turning into more efficient, densely-packed, transit-serviced, European models, but he also notes the another issue pointed out by fester; buildings and infrastructure don't change on anywhere near a short time scale. Buildings are generational investments at the least, and most infrastructure has even longer time horizons, (though I wonder if the fact that it's all falling apart anyway will make it easier to rebuild in a more efficient manner).

In the meantime, people are looking for alternatives for fueling their rides. The most hyped has been hydrogen fuel cells, but they're a long way off from being helpful. Hydrogen also has the issue of requiring energy to produce the hydrogen, which at present means shifting the burning of fossil fuels to power the vehicles to burning them to produce the power needed to produce hydrogen. The same problem goes for plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles. Part of the infrastructure that needs to be refurbished to produce a more efficient and climate-friendly North America is the electrical grid and power generation, particularly if more of the power is to be generated by renewables.

Grain-based ethanol was, and in some cases still is, put forward as a possibility for a fuel alternative. It didn't take too long for people to realize that this wasn't the smartest idea, (though this variation does intrigue me), given that it takes land away from food production to turn it into not terribly efficient fuel production. And food production is another thing we all need to be watching. Oil, after all, isn't the only thing that appears to be in short supply.

There have been a rash of stories recently regarding possible rice shortages, and how the near permanent drought in Australia caused wheat prices to spike. Hell, even the price of fertilizer is soaring due to shortages. While for developed nations like the US the main risk is the inflationary pressure of higher food prices, (well, that and crappier beer), crop failures and diversion of food crops to fuel use is causing far greater hardships in countries where life is a lot closer to the edge.

Rising prices for cooking oil are forcing residents of Asia’s largest slum, in Mumbai, India, to ration every drop. Bakeries in the United States are fretting over higher shortening costs. And here in Malaysia, brand-new factories built to convert vegetable oil into diesel sit idle, their owners unable to afford the raw material.

. . .

In some poor countries, desperation is taking hold. Just in the last week, protests have erupted in Pakistan over wheat shortages, and in Indonesia over soybean shortages. Egypt has banned rice exports to keep food at home, and China has put price controls on cooking oil, grain, meat, milk and eggs.

According to the F.A.O., food riots have erupted in recent months in Guinea, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen.

And the situation in Somalia makes those countries look good. War plays a large part of the Horn's troubles, but climate does as well, as a drought has led to crop failures and dying livestock. People point to the situation in Darfur as the world's first conflict caused by Climate Change, as the collapse of the Sahel to drought brought the peoples there into conflict over increasingly scarce water resources. It is unlikely to be the last, as the desperate move to try and escape their fate.

Drought seems to be a more common word these days, and the US is beginning to feel its effects as well, as the situation last summer over the dwindling Lake Lanier show. While Climate Change may be raising the level of the seas, humans are draining the levels of even the greatest freshwater lakes.

Canada is, by most estimates, blessed with an incredibly abundant supply of freshwater, but as with everything else, abundant doesn't mean limitless. Remember I mentioned that tarsands production would never make up for decline in oil production elsewhere? Well a big part of that reasoning is based on the fact that the water use is massive. Even with recycling, it takes between two and three barrels of water to produce one barrel of oil, and most of the water can't be sent back into the ecosystem because of the toxins it picks up.

Indeed, the lack of environmental safeguards in the area means that we are quite probably poisoning the water supply of the relatively sparsely populated north. Of course, we've never paid too much attention to aboriginal rights in the past, why should we worry about those living downstream from the tarsands now?

The energy intensive extraction is currently run mostly with natural gas, but there is talk of putting in nuclear reactors for that purpose. Doing so would suck up even more water from the rivers in the area, which are unlikely to take the strain. And the climate can be blamed again in part. The warmer weather is leaving smaller snowpacks to feed the rivers.

Shortages of resources can be painful. Shortages in food and water are deadly. This is ultimately what makes Climate Change the frightening prospect it is. Being so close to the edge of what human life the planet can support, even a minor disruption can push us over the edge, particularly given the ease with which large numbers of people can move when conditions in their area go bad. As I noted in the first part of this, our cities, our agriculture, our very lives are dependent on the climate remaining relatively stable. Knock that balance too far out of the norm and disaster follows.

It is likely too late to stop or totally reverse the change that's coming, but that doesn't mean that it wouldn't be a good idea to move beyond symbolic protests and work to at least mitigate the effects. At the very least, we would be smart to at least try and slow down the rate we're pumping carbon into the atmosphere to try and delay the changes long enough to give us a chance to adapt to them, rather than barreling full-speed ahead into an uncertain but likely disastrous future. It is still debatable whether or not we'll choose to do so.

And so, interesting times.

The Climate, it is a-Changing

A number of years ago, my sister asked me if I thought we, as in humanity, would do enough to stop global warming. My answer in short, was no. I said my only real hope was that we’d run out of oil before we burnt too much of it to irreversibly damage the planet.

At the time, I figured it would be mid-century before we had an idea about which would be the case. Instead, it seems the showdown is coming much sooner.

The most visible sign of all this right now is the Arctic sea ice, which hit a record low last summer and is being forecast at about a 60% probability of beating that record this summer.

Arctic sea ice, sometimes billed as Earth's air conditioner for its moderating effects on world climate, will probably shrink to a record low level this year, scientists predicted on Wednesday.

In releasing the forecast, climate researcher Sheldon Drobot of the University of Colorado at Boulder called the changes in Arctic sea ice "one of the more compelling and obvious signs of climate change.

If that prediction holds true, it would be the third time in the past five years that Arctic sea ice retreated to record lows, the scientists said in a statement.

Part of what's happening is that the thick multi-year ice, some of it several thousand years old, is breaking apart and being replaced with thiner, annual ice cover that is more easily melted again the next summer.

The major threat though, is the feedback mechanism of albedo. Sea ice, being a nice bright white, reflects 80% of the sunlight that hits it back into space. Open water absorbs 80%. Less ice, means more sunlight absorbed, means higher ocean temperatures, means even less ice. If the predictions are right and the sea ice cover drops even further this year than last, then it is a good indication that we've passed the tipping point on at least one part of the Climate Change equation.

There are other signs as well, such as islands starting to disappear thanks to rising seas, but the Arctic is referred to as the canary in the coal mine of Climate Change, and the canary is in ill-health.

Of course, the reason for all of this is that we're pumping out carbon dioxide at ever increasing rates and raising it's concentration in the atmosphere to record levels.

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached a record high, according to new figures that renew fears that climate change could begin to slide out of control.

Scientists at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii say that CO2 levels in the atmosphere now stand at 387 parts per million (ppm), up almost 40% since the industrial revolution and the highest for at least the last 650,000 years.

The figures, published by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on its website, also confirm that carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, is accumulating in the atmosphere faster than expected. The annual mean growth rate for 2007 was 2.14ppm – the fourth year in the past six to see an annual rise greater than 2ppm. From 1970 to 2000, the concentration rose by about 1.5ppm each year, but since 2000 the annual rise has leapt to an average 2.1ppm.

Now, as stated, part of that increase comes from the fact that we keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, but part of it is due to a different, and far more worrisome reason. You see, the world's carbon sinks, like the oceans, aren't soaking up as much carbon as they used to.

The amount of carbon dioxide being absorbed by the world's oceans has reduced, scientists have said.

. . .

Results of their 10-year study in the North Atlantic show CO2 uptake halved between the mid-90s and 2000 to 2005.

. . .

BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin said: "The researchers don't know if the change is due to climate change or to natural variations.

"But they say it is a tremendous surprise and very worrying because there were grounds for believing that in time the ocean might become 'saturated' with our emissions - unable to soak up any more."

He said that would "leave all our emissions to warm the atmosphere".

Worse for us, if the oceans are hitting their saturation point, things like the bleaching of coral and other pollution caused die-offs could turn the ocean from a carbon sink into a carbon emitter, which truly puts us in dire circumstances.

And because I can't leave well enough alone, that isn't even the worst news. You see, it turns out that in addition to record levels of carbon dioxide, methane levels have been shooting up as well.

Methane, though short-lived in the atmosphere, has about 25 times the heat trapping capability of CO2, so its effects can be felt at far lower concentrations. And it also happens to be the main threat of the other great Climate Change feedback mechanism tied to warming in the Arctic.

You see, there are massive amounts of methane trapped in the Arctic permafrost, ground which by definition is frozen year-round. If, thanks to higher temperatures, the permafrost starts to melt, it releases the heat-trapping methane, which ups the temperature, which melts more permafrost, which releases more methane, and so on.

So what does this all mean for the Earth's climate? Well, as Ron put it a while back, nobody really knows. There are too many variables to be certain what exactly is going to happen. A good example of this is a recent story from the BBC that suggests global warming will actually decrease the number of hurricanes. Such stories are of course followed by the inevitable claims that climate scientists don't know what they're talking about and therefore Climate Change is nothing to worry about. Also predictable is that they've completely missed the point.

You see, the exact change caused by global warming, and even the exact cause of global warming, isn't what we need to be worried about. It's the fact that the climate will become uncertain, and we're not terribly well set up to deal with that.

Over the last several hundred years we have constructed critical infrastructure on the assumption that the climate regime is going to stay more or less constant over time. We’ve done that all over the world, of course, and while there are some technological fixes available to the rich (see the Dutch engineering of their sub-sea level coastal fortifications), more broadly, we’ve got a lot of life, wealth and property invested in the notion that the ocean will stay more or less where it is.

And of course, it isn’t just coastlines we need to worry about. Global warming is not just an issue of sea level rise; it presents, as Postrel does accept, a much broader range of possible consequences.

Climate change affects rainfall, storm severity, longer term patterns of drought and damp and so on. Global agriculture on industrial scales are built on climate assumptions. Land use and distribution reflect generations of dispute and resolution on the question of access to climate resources and so on. Radical change in the climate regime — an expansion of drought areas, shift of rainfall patterns and so on — might not, as Postrel and others have argued, produce a net loss of ecosystem capacity world wide. But such shifts do devastate human constructions built on a set of beliefs about the climate that are no longer true.

Put this another way: Hurricane Katrina was a disaster, but it was not a natural disaster. Rather, it was a natural event — category 3 or 4 hurricanes are going to hit in the western gulf with a certain frequency; that’s just the way that part of the system goes.

What made Katrina a human disaster was the fact that since the last major hurricane came that way, New Orleans in all its modern glory and inadequately engineered levees had grown up in the way. Take that and spread it all over the globe, and you have the reason why modern anthropogenic climate change is scarier than the Little Ice Age was. The broad argument we should do nothing because the climate has always varied fails to take into account this change from then to now.

As it works out, even if Climate Change were a purely natural phenomena, (which only the seriously deluded can believe), it would still be a seriously stupid idea to just sit back and allow it to happen.

That said, as I told my sister several years ago, so long as the oil is flowing freely and cheaply, it's pretty damned unlikely that people are going to actually do anything significant to even try and mitigate the effects.

As luck would have it, oil, among other things, is no longer so cheap or flowing so freely. We'll take that up in Part II.