In his column in Nature this month, Dan Sarewitz gives a very clear assessment of the current foundering of climate scientists. He points out that in the case of climate, we have asked Science to carry out a task that is best left to Politics.
Climate science has made it clear that Earth's atmosphere is warming due to increasing accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere. It is becoming increasingly clear that that same CO2 is changing the pH of the surface waters of the global ocean in ways that will make it harder for the bottom of the ocean's food chain to function. A number of consequences of the increasing heat content of our planet's atmosphere are also beginning to become evident, in particular increases in the variability of weather and climate. Climate science has also established with reasonable certainty that humans have a discernible influence on the atmospheric changes that are currently underway.
Climate science does NOT tell us that these things are bad. The scariness of glacial retreat, sea level rise and other effects in the climate litany is a human response to those things. There is no external reference frame that we can call on that will impose mitigating or adapting actions on the part of humans. We must CHOOSE to do those things ourselves.
Choosing what to do next has at least two components. The first, and most argued about, is the resource component. Should we reallocate resources currently allocated to X over to Y? The second element has to do with norms and values. Is switching from X to Y the right thing to do independent of the associated risks and benefits. Science can help us place boundaries on some of the benefits and risks of switching from X to Y; but it cannot tell us which choice is better.
The choice of better is political and, as we have seen over recent decades, it has time and space varying components. I will reiterate - there is no external framework that can unambiguously impose a choice on how we should re/allocate our resources in the face of human impacts on our planet.
Humans can, and I would say very likely will (albeit through passive rather than active means) , choose to continue to use the atmosphere as a dumping ground for CO2. This choice makes me quite sad, and I think it will prove to be a costly folly with respect to human well being.
But the sooner that we start talking about this choice in the context of political tradeoffs rather than scientific uncertainty and foibles, the better off we will be and the better the decisions we actively make are likely to be.
March 10, 2010
March 01, 2010
Environmentalists as Tea Partiers
Yesterday Frank Rich painted a very sobering picture of the current political populism in the US. He called attention to what I will call the growing instability of a growing segment of our population, a segment which is pretty thoroughly disaffected right now. (Even more sobering was Dave's (who has a lot more patience with idiots that I do) comment that it is going to get worse before it gets better.) Central to the Tea Party movement is a distrust of any government and the idea that all government should be eliminated. In particular Rich calls attention to the invection of violence that can be heard in the rhetoric of people like Glen Beck and Sarah Palin.
The really scary bit of the Tea Party is the following: The very angry people who identify with the Tea Party do not seem to be for anything. But they are very much against many (most?) things. Anger works best against rather than for. Most of the things this populist movement is against are quite complex and I suspect only distantly connected to the real disaffection of the Tea Partiers.
Building the fear for me is the corollary of not being for something. That is, the Tea Party does not have ideas for replacing the Fed or the IRS. They want the government to go away, but there is no discussion of what would replace it. (and note my rhetoric here assumes there is a thing called the Tea Party which of course is not the case). And if Beck and Palin are successful in stirring this angry mob to violence or other sorts of destruction, what will we have left? And will those people's lives actually improve?
It is the absence of being for something that leads me to link environmentalists with the tea partiers. My recent post on the reading of the litany bemoaned the absence of vision regarding a positive environmental (or otherwise) future. We need to replace the nihilism of being against everything and seeing only the bleak aspects of humanity with a positive vision of the future.
The really scary bit of the Tea Party is the following: The very angry people who identify with the Tea Party do not seem to be for anything. But they are very much against many (most?) things. Anger works best against rather than for. Most of the things this populist movement is against are quite complex and I suspect only distantly connected to the real disaffection of the Tea Partiers.
Building the fear for me is the corollary of not being for something. That is, the Tea Party does not have ideas for replacing the Fed or the IRS. They want the government to go away, but there is no discussion of what would replace it. (and note my rhetoric here assumes there is a thing called the Tea Party which of course is not the case). And if Beck and Palin are successful in stirring this angry mob to violence or other sorts of destruction, what will we have left? And will those people's lives actually improve?
It is the absence of being for something that leads me to link environmentalists with the tea partiers. My recent post on the reading of the litany bemoaned the absence of vision regarding a positive environmental (or otherwise) future. We need to replace the nihilism of being against everything and seeing only the bleak aspects of humanity with a positive vision of the future.
February 28, 2010
Life System Proxies: Top Predator Health
All ecosystems include food webs, and many of those webs contain a predator this is a dominant member. Early conceptualizations of predator / prey relations characterized the system as a chain with bigger things eating smaller things in a more or less linear relationship. We now know that the image of a chain is too simple as many species are prey in multiple food relationships and similarly those same species may eat across several of what we formerly referred to as chains.
But I digress. The point is that in these eat and be eaten systems, be they chains or webs, there are a species that pretty much only eat. These are things like bears, wolves, and sharks that for all intents and purposes are not normally food for other species, but do eat a lot themselves. This species is called the top predator.
As we have learned more about how food webs work, we have learned that the presence or absence of a top predator can have a big effect on the functioning of the food system and the related ecosystem as a whole. Sever over-fishing of northwest Atlantic cod and related predators has left huge swaths of the northwest atlantic habitat without a top predator. As a result the food web in those areas has shifted to a very different configuration and it is not clear that the system that supported the cod will be able to re-emerge simply with simply the reduction of the fishing pressure.
So presence, absence, or change in the top predator in a food web can tell us things about how that food web and its associate ecosystem are functioning or may be changing. Following on this a strategy that monitors the health and resilience of top predators might serve as a proxy for the health and resilience of the larger systems that those beings are part of.
But I digress. The point is that in these eat and be eaten systems, be they chains or webs, there are a species that pretty much only eat. These are things like bears, wolves, and sharks that for all intents and purposes are not normally food for other species, but do eat a lot themselves. This species is called the top predator.
As we have learned more about how food webs work, we have learned that the presence or absence of a top predator can have a big effect on the functioning of the food system and the related ecosystem as a whole. Sever over-fishing of northwest Atlantic cod and related predators has left huge swaths of the northwest atlantic habitat without a top predator. As a result the food web in those areas has shifted to a very different configuration and it is not clear that the system that supported the cod will be able to re-emerge simply with simply the reduction of the fishing pressure.
So presence, absence, or change in the top predator in a food web can tell us things about how that food web and its associate ecosystem are functioning or may be changing. Following on this a strategy that monitors the health and resilience of top predators might serve as a proxy for the health and resilience of the larger systems that those beings are part of.
February 27, 2010
Life System Proxies: Forest cover
A few posts ago I noted that I would follow with some specific examples of Earth System proxies. I got distracted, but here is a first one...
A clear indicator of the state of the Life subsystems of the Earth system is the amount of Earth's land surface that is covered by forests. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is that forested land is archetypal in western cultural images of "natural". Forests house ecosystems that are more or less independent from humans; they provide homes to many of our cherished charismatic megafauna and they provide a whole host of ecosystem services ranging from materials to spiritual solace. A couple of less obvious of these include gas exchange with the atmosphere that removes CO2 and releases O2 as through photosynthesis and moderating the hydrologic cycle - the rain forests of Brazil are sometimes referred to as the lungs of our planet.
So changes in the percentage and distribution of forest cover on Earth's land surface will change in very fundamental ways how the Earth system functions. Prior to the Industrial Revolution (say 1776), the distribution of forest cover on Earth changed slowly in concert with other elements of the Earth system (e.g. during glacial cycles). Following the industrial revolution and the attendant increased consumption of energy and expansion of human population that came with it, humans began to have a significant impact on where and how much forest there was on Earth. For instance, much of what is now forest in New England, was cleared for farmland in the 18th century. Those forests began to return as transportation corridors opened up to the west and allowed the much more fertile and easy to work lands of the midwest to take up some of the demand for food on along the East coast.
On a much larger scale (the economy is now global and removal rates are higher), similar economic pressures are driving the removal of rain forests in Brazil, Indonesia and parts of Africa in current times. Rain forest soils and ecosystems are very different from the deciduous forests of New England and it is clear that re-growth of the rain forests will take much longer than those of New England.
If we monitor forests, where they are, how they are changing, we will be monitoring a part of Earth's Life system. The challenge of course is to know what those variables tell us: Are those changes good or bad? and What futures do they signal or eliminate?
A clear indicator of the state of the Life subsystems of the Earth system is the amount of Earth's land surface that is covered by forests. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is that forested land is archetypal in western cultural images of "natural". Forests house ecosystems that are more or less independent from humans; they provide homes to many of our cherished charismatic megafauna and they provide a whole host of ecosystem services ranging from materials to spiritual solace. A couple of less obvious of these include gas exchange with the atmosphere that removes CO2 and releases O2 as through photosynthesis and moderating the hydrologic cycle - the rain forests of Brazil are sometimes referred to as the lungs of our planet.
So changes in the percentage and distribution of forest cover on Earth's land surface will change in very fundamental ways how the Earth system functions. Prior to the Industrial Revolution (say 1776), the distribution of forest cover on Earth changed slowly in concert with other elements of the Earth system (e.g. during glacial cycles). Following the industrial revolution and the attendant increased consumption of energy and expansion of human population that came with it, humans began to have a significant impact on where and how much forest there was on Earth. For instance, much of what is now forest in New England, was cleared for farmland in the 18th century. Those forests began to return as transportation corridors opened up to the west and allowed the much more fertile and easy to work lands of the midwest to take up some of the demand for food on along the East coast.
On a much larger scale (the economy is now global and removal rates are higher), similar economic pressures are driving the removal of rain forests in Brazil, Indonesia and parts of Africa in current times. Rain forest soils and ecosystems are very different from the deciduous forests of New England and it is clear that re-growth of the rain forests will take much longer than those of New England.
If we monitor forests, where they are, how they are changing, we will be monitoring a part of Earth's Life system. The challenge of course is to know what those variables tell us: Are those changes good or bad? and What futures do they signal or eliminate?
Reading the Litany and Counting the Bodies
I have become sensitive of late to what I have come to think of as the "reading of the litany" or if I am feeling more grumpy "counting the bodies". I first became aware of this at the recent NCSE meeting in DC during Gus Speth's acceptance address. While I had heard bits and pieces of the litany earlier in the day, Speth gave a extensive reading of the impacts that humans have rent upon the Earth with their implications of impending doom growing with each entry.
More recently, Dan Brayton generated a similar list for the oceans as part of his argument that literary critics should pay more attention to the oceans than they do. He also showed pictures with the same accusatory message as Speth's list.
I too have done this sort of thing. In the mid-1990s as we were building the Earth Institute at Columbia, I compiled lists of human impacts and was aghast at their implications. My sensitivity now is that litanies are read for and with those who are already in the church. I know that humans now have the upper hand over Mother Nature. I am worried about it and I have plenty of guilt. More to the point, the litany is starting to wear me out. I know things are bad and to a certain extent I have to turn off that knowledge in order to get out of bed each day and attempt to do something about it.
Filling out my title, consider briefly my body count metaphor, which is where this line of thinking actually started. Think about the following: If you are getting your ass severely kicked, which is the better strategy: 1) devoting energy to a thorough and ongoing assessment of your losses; or 2) putting full energy into figuring out how to end the beating. Personally I am going to try to end the beating first and worry about the detail of my losses much later.
I know, part of the reading of the litany is the hope that we can scare people into fighting back through fear of eternal damnation. Against that though, I recently heard someone note that if the only futures we image are dystopic, we are likely to end up in a dystopia. And here in lies a great part of my concern: If the only pictures we paint of the future look like Road Warrior, I am afraid that we are likely to end up in the Thunderdome.
This state of affairs suggests to me that we should spend more time imagining futures that we want rather than obsessing about the futures we don't want. What if our litany included more items like "All children on Earth receive a free education through grade 7", or "All humans on Earth have access to enough clean water to supply their dietary and sanitary needs."
What we need now is not body counts, but vision. And not just any vision, we need strong and powerful visions of positive futures. We need imaginations that are creating and holding on to those visions. And we need institutions that are preparing future citizens who can bring those positive visions to life.
More recently, Dan Brayton generated a similar list for the oceans as part of his argument that literary critics should pay more attention to the oceans than they do. He also showed pictures with the same accusatory message as Speth's list.
I too have done this sort of thing. In the mid-1990s as we were building the Earth Institute at Columbia, I compiled lists of human impacts and was aghast at their implications. My sensitivity now is that litanies are read for and with those who are already in the church. I know that humans now have the upper hand over Mother Nature. I am worried about it and I have plenty of guilt. More to the point, the litany is starting to wear me out. I know things are bad and to a certain extent I have to turn off that knowledge in order to get out of bed each day and attempt to do something about it.
Filling out my title, consider briefly my body count metaphor, which is where this line of thinking actually started. Think about the following: If you are getting your ass severely kicked, which is the better strategy: 1) devoting energy to a thorough and ongoing assessment of your losses; or 2) putting full energy into figuring out how to end the beating. Personally I am going to try to end the beating first and worry about the detail of my losses much later.
I know, part of the reading of the litany is the hope that we can scare people into fighting back through fear of eternal damnation. Against that though, I recently heard someone note that if the only futures we image are dystopic, we are likely to end up in a dystopia. And here in lies a great part of my concern: If the only pictures we paint of the future look like Road Warrior, I am afraid that we are likely to end up in the Thunderdome.
This state of affairs suggests to me that we should spend more time imagining futures that we want rather than obsessing about the futures we don't want. What if our litany included more items like "All children on Earth receive a free education through grade 7", or "All humans on Earth have access to enough clean water to supply their dietary and sanitary needs."
What we need now is not body counts, but vision. And not just any vision, we need strong and powerful visions of positive futures. We need imaginations that are creating and holding on to those visions. And we need institutions that are preparing future citizens who can bring those positive visions to life.
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