Obama admin: We’re “not giving up” on climate action

From a press conference today at the AGU, with the prez's chief science advisor:

Bud Ward: It seems that over the last two years the momentum on climate change has been lost. The Obama administration came in with climate as one of the adminstration's top priority, and the President is a great communicator. Two years ago it seemed that there was sympathy for the administration's point of view in Congress, and the administration has great scientific credentials, but increasingly the issue seems to have gotten confused, and it's no longer being taken seriously. it seems that things have fallen apart. How could that happen? 

John Holdren, the president's chief science advisor: "To say things are falling apart is an overstatement. This administration has faced a number of challenges, unscheduled developments you might say, including a recession which was far more serious than anyone imagined at the outset. We had the H1N1 flu epidemic, the Gulf Oil spill, which consumed a vast amount of our resources, and North Korea and nuclear proliferation. There's only so many things an administration can give priority to and get done. The choice was made to try and get comprehensive health care legislation done before energy and climate change. That struggle proved longer and more difficult than anyone thought at the outset. I think there are a lot of reasons why we didn't get as far or as fast as we wanted to on climate change, but that doesn't mean we're giving up." 

[Holdren went on to say that there is "a myth out there" that the public has lost interest in climate change, and pointed to data from a Stanford researcher showing that's not so, that there is a climate majority supporting action.} 

Temps-up

Cancun talks do not end in failure

Newspaper headlines by their nature are expected to state what happened, not what did not happen, because what did not happen is not, after all, news. 

Unlike the headline above. 

But the truth of the modest deal that emerged between 190 nations negotiating at Cancun, under the auspices of the United Nations, is that the conference did avoid failure, unlike what happened last year in Copenhagen, in which high hopes for a major new deal went down in flames. 

In this context any victory, no matter how small, still counts. From the start of the conference, when Japan threatened to pull out of the long-standing (if ineffective) Kyoto deal, to the end, when Mexican foreign minister Patricia Espinosa had to move heaven and earth to keep the talks alive, prospects were uncertain, and failure a real possibility.  

The New York Times reports:

The agreement sets up a new fund to help poor countries adapt to climate changes, creates new mechanisms for transfer of clean energy technology, provides compensation for the preservation of tropical forests and strengthens the emissions reductions pledges that came out of the last United Nations climate change meeting in Copenhagen last year.        

Now to see if the developed nations will live up to their promises to the undeveloped nations, to help them with clean energy projects, and to adapt to a changing climate. To date: Not so much. 

Here's a pic of a Greenpeace "demonstration" in the water at the conference: Clever!  

Cancun_1783519c

The tea maker, thirty years later…and Yoko

About ten years ago, astonishingly, I got a call from Yoko Ono.

I happened to have written a magazine story about the time she spent with John Lennon in the little town of Ojai, in the mid-70's, after he and Yoko were driven out of Greenwich Village by FBI and NYPD surveillance and harassment. They bought a station wagon and drove across the country. 

In those blissfully analog days, even a rock star could disappear. That's what I wanted to ask her about, her time with him, living underground in Ojai. Unable to find her number, I resorted to writing a letter to beg her to call — and to my astonishment, about six months later, she did call back!  

She and Lennon stayed on the estate of an acquaintance, a citrus grower by the name of Jim Churchill. By all accounts, Lennon enjoyed his time here, and characteristically let it be known that he was in town. At an open mic night, Lennon even did an impromptu solo version of "Give Peace a Chance" and another song at seafood shack near the beach. I interviewed the proprietor, who told some stories about his funky place, with sawdust on the floor, and beer on tap, and the way Lennon enjoyed it. The star said it reminded him of places in Liverpool, growing up. 

After a year or so, he and Yoko moved on, but their fame lingered. I heard that when they visited a restaurant, the staff afterword would meet to divide up and keep the plates on which they had dined…

Speaking of dishes, here's Yoko, talking about John as a maker of tea…

  Yokoandjohn

In her piece in the New York TImes about John's self-reflective side, she tells a charming little story:

It was nice to be up in the middle of the night, when there was no sound in the house, and sip the tea John would make. One night, however, John said: “I was talking to Aunt Mimi this afternoon and she says you are supposed to put the hot water in first. Then the tea bag. I could swear she taught me to put the tea bag in first, but …”

Charming in part because John was still in touch with his mother's sister, still a part of her life, and she of his. And because he still told the truth about himself. Which comes up later in the piece. 

The most important gift we received from him was not words, but deeds. He believed in Truth, and had dared to speak up. We all knew that he upset certain powerful people with it. But that was John. He couldn’t have been any other way. If he were here now, I think he would still be shouting the truth.

Who would deny it? And isn't that a gentle, convincing way to make that idealistic point? 

When Yoko called, unfortunately, I was so surprised I had not the wit to ask her a lot of questions. But she chatted in a friendly way, sent a nice note back after I sent her the piece, and wished me well. 

So I've come to admire her, for her strength…and her sweetness. 

Acceleration of drought in Mexico accelerating illegal immigration?

That's the startling argument advanced by Thomas Elias in today's Ventura County Star:

a new study published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences appears to establish a coming (and possibly a present) link between global warming and illegal immigration from Mexico,..the study led by atmospheric science Prof. Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University and co-written by scientists from China’s Shanghai University and the U.S. Treasury Department, the more global warming dries out farms and water supplies in Mexico, the more Mexicans will head to this country.

The Oppenheimer study predicts anywhere between 1.4 million and 6.7 million current Mexican farmers and farmworkers will emigrate north between now and 2080 solely because their farmlands become too parched to produce.

Here's the study: Linkages among climate change, crop yields, and Mexico US cross-border migration

Haven't yet had a chance to read it, but Oppenheimer will be speaking in about a week at the AGU Fall Meeting: I Will attend and report on his presentation in San Francisco.
Here's a precis from the AGU:
The first annual Stephen Schneider GEC Lecture will be delivered by Dr. Michael Oppenheimer, the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School and the Dept. of Geosciences at Princeton. Prior to joining Princeton, he was Chief Scientist with the Environmental Defense Fund. Dr. Oppenheimer will address the issue of Scientists, Expert Judgment, and Public Policy: What is Our Proper Role?

Here he is, in a picture from Princeton. 
Michaeloppenheimer
This talk isn't on exactly the same topic as the paper, but the point is I think that Dr. Oppenheimer has something to say. Will find out what it is. 

Data-driven journalism: Factory Farm Map

Though newspapers are, blessedly, finding a way to hang on through hard, hard times, the real cutting-edge in journalism is arguably found at the intersection of data and the web, with relatively little writing involved. 

Here's a prime example, via the hard-working activists at food&waterwatch. 

The future: It's much more statistical than the past. (Here's a snapshot of the interactive map, which must be seen to be appreciated.) 

Factory Farm Map_1291617759687

Makes me wonder: Why no factory farms in Ventura County? Just a fluke? Or were questions raised? 

Deal to “fix” the delta collapsing: Dan Walters

In a front-page story last week in the Los Angeles Times, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Bettina Boxall used an oblique structure, gritty detail, and a plethora of conflicting quotes to give a sense of the trouble surrounding a plan to put a massive new straw from the State Water Project into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. 

Here's the crux, from UC Davis scientist Jeffrey Mount, who has been calling for action for years now: 

"I am uncertain about how this will work out," said UC Davis geology professor Jeffrey Mount, who has repeatedly warned of the delta's vulnerability to a destructive earthquake. "The only certainty I have is that if it doesn't work out, we will all get worse together."

The trouble is, as a reporter, Boxall can hint that things are falling apart — by, for example, focusing on a farmer who won't even allow sampling on his land, so inalterably opposed is he to any such deal — but she can't flat-out say it, because that would be predicting the future, which isn't news. 

Dan Walters, a columnist, can flat-out say that things are falling apart. Walters has been covering Sacramento politics for the Bee since I was in college, so when he says that last year's tentative pact between water districts, environmentalists, and state water managers to "fix" the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is coming apart at the seams, it behooves us to listen. 

In a recent column, he wrote: 

[Jerry] Brown’s plan endorses “a peripheral canal or tunnel” and generally supports the Schwarzenegger plan’s goals, but pointedly does not endorse the bond issue, which has been criticized for its pork barrel aspects and its use of taxpayer-supported bonds to finance water projects, rather than user fees.

Brown’s plan says that “beneficiaries — or users — of water infrastructure projects should pay their share of the costs of those projects. … The projects must be cost-effective and make long-term sense.”

Walters doesn't cast stones, but goes on to make his conclusion plain: 

Meanwhile, the huge Westlands Water District has pulled out of an effort to resolve the perennial peripheral canal debate called the Bay Delta Conservation Plan, echoing the farmer-environmentalist alliance that killed Brown’s version 28 years ago.

The peripheral canal conflict and the delay in the bond issue imply that the entire Schwarzenegger plan may be collapsing.

Prediction: Jerry Brown is going to be so overwhelmed dealing with the monster state budget deficit he won't even have time to think about building a monster pipe to carry water out of the Delta. 

Here's Luis Sinco's image, to go with Boxall's story about the "alternative conveyance." 

Luissincodeltaimage

Tells the story, methinks…a pipe in trouble.  

Into the Fossil Intensive future: When could we reach 4C?

It's possible the world will not manage to mitigate emissions of greenhouse gases, and instead stomp on the fossil fuels and speed up global warming.

That's what it looks like right now, with the black diamonds below representing observed emissions, and tracking towards the upper end of estimates:

Emissionsscenarios

Today the world's oldest continuously operating scientific body, the United Kingdom's Royal Publishing Society, published a suite of papers looking at the likelihood of a rise of 4 degrees Celsius (7 degrees Fahrenheit) here on earth this century.

Climate Progress writes it up here, mixing this prospect in with a number of other citations to papers and articles on emissions scenarios, methane release, drought, deforestation, desertification, among other scientific prophecies.  

It's well blogged, but as an alternative for those of us unable to keep quite so many thoughts clearly in mind, this post will focus on a single important paper, called

When could global warming reach 4°C?

and attempt to bring forward just three, or perhaps four, of its central points. 

First, when it comes to assessing the skill of global temperature projections, authors Richard Betts et al point out that we have a history already, from the last thirty years of estimates and observations: 

It is unwise to rely on simulations that are outliers in the distribution—indeed the most extreme members of the ensemble simulated warming of 1°C or above by 2000, while warming observed between 1850–1899 and 2001–2005 was between 0.57°C and 0.95°C, with a best estimate of 0.76°C [1].

In other words, our best estimates to date have been pretty solid, actually. 

Second, a scenario without mitigation cannot be ruled out, given the steady rise of emissions, even in the face of a huge economic downturn: 

While it is still too early to say whether any particular scenario is being tracked by current emissions, A1FI is considered to be as plausible as other non-mitigation scenarios and cannot be ruled out. (A1FI is a part of the A1 family of scenarios, with ‘FI’ standing for ‘fossil intensive’.)

And finally, a plausible scenario calls for a 4 degree Celsius rise by 2070:

Our best estimate is that a temperature rise of 4°C would be reached in the 2070s, and if carbon-cycle feedbacks are strong, then 4°C could be reached in the early 2060s—this latter projection appears to be consistent with the upper end of the IPCC’s likely range of warming for the A1FI scenario.

F7.large
Our children stand likely to see ecological catastrophe on a global scale. 

Frozen in Portland…

James Howard Kunstler, the grim futurist, speaks of Portland, in the present and in the future: 

Portland, on the other hand, has turned itself into one of the finest walkable cities in the USA and the Willamette River Valley is one of the most productive farming micro-regions in the world. Human beings will continue to live and thrive to some extent there. 

Kunstler likes the city, and says he has fans for his bleak outlook there, but doesn't live there.

Nancy Rommelmann, a writer/journalist/equaintance who does live in Portland, reports that the future may be good, but the present is not great for young people in that enviro town.

She quotes an English journalist who moved to town a couple of years ago, named Matt Davis:

I'd heard that Portland was a "livable" place and had a sense from reading about it that it was energetic, on the cusp of some kind of breakthrough, especially where green job creation was concerned. When I arrived I found that "livability" was generally reserved for the majority of white people who score sweet government jobs and that most everyone else is either funding their existence with family money, working for Wieden+Kennedy or barely surviving. 

That's the problem with the future, isn't it? You can't really live there. 


Frozen in Portland…, originally uploaded by Dialed-in!.