Everything's JOK

Just another damn quote from a tree hugger! [Good, we need more!]

Mark Boyle over at Just for the love of it posted a useful piece on why he attempts to live a life of zero waste and simplicity.  Here is one quote:

"Because we are so disconnected from the embodied energy, embodied suffering and embodied destruction that goes into the things we buy, the natural ecology of the planet we share is being eroded by the minute, factory farms and horrific slaughterhouses have become insanely 'normal', and we kill millions of people in the middle east just so that us greedy bastards can have the luxurious, built-in-obsolescence gadgetry that oil cheap oil affords us. I am sorry if that sounds harsh, but the truth shouldn't be avoided for fear of offence. One of the problems in the media and the publishing world is that everyone is so cautious that they'll upset the reader and lose some sales, and so the truth is rarely laid bare. We're adults though, so lets all grow up, it's really our ego's that are making this planet inhabitable for many species."

Rich countries working on secret climate treaty that favors them

The US, UK and other rich countries are discussing a secret draft climate treaty for the UN Copenhagen climate talks.  Excluded from the discussion are developing countries, who were rightly upset.  The Guardian reported that the draft treaty would:

• hand effective control of climate change finance to the World Bank;
• would abandon the Kyoto protocol – the only legally binding treaty that the world has on emissions reductions;
• would make any money to help poor countries adapt to climate change dependent on them taking a range of actions [forcing more privatizations so as to enrich they buyers?];
• not allow poor countries to emit more than 1.44 tonnes of carbon per person by 2050, while allowing rich countries to emit 2.67 tonnes.

The last point is quite key since rich countries have produced the vast majority of CO₂ emissions since 1900, as this graph at the World Resources Institute demonstrates:

A climate treaty that does not recognize that rich counties got us into this mess and need pay more to get us to climate stability, will not be accepted by developing countries.

Also, Naked Capitalism has a piece on the effectiveness of Cap and Trade solutions in reducing CO₂ emissions.  It isn't favorable.

An anthropogenic cause for the Little Ice Age?

A bit out of date, but not many have posted on it, so I will mention Steven Stoll's article The Cold We Caused in the November 2009 Harpers Magazine.  Stoll's article makes the case that the Little Ice Age was caused by the world-wide death of millions of people due to the Black Death.  It is worth reading, but isn't available on-line except behind Harper's pay wall.  However, The Disaffected Lib has excerpts of it.

The key point of the article is to demonstrate that humans have long affected our world's climate and continue to do so with all of CO₂ we are pumping into the atmosphere and oceans.  Those who continue to deny that basic fact do so at our collective peril as was pointed out by Peter Watts in his blog post, Because We All Know, The Green Party Runs The World, on the CRU Email break in:

"I went running through Toronto the other day on a 17°C November afternoon. Canada’s west coast is currently underwater. Sea level continues its 3mm/yr creep up the coasts of the world, the western Siberian permafrost turns to slush. Swathes of California and Australia are pretty much permanent firestorm zones these days. The glaciers retreat, the Arctic ice cap shrinks, a myriad migratory species still show up at their northern destinations weeks before they’re supposed to. The pine beetle furthers its westward invasion, leaving dead forests in its wake— the winters, you see, are no longer cold enough to hit that lethal reset button that once kept their numbers in check."

Happy 150th birthday to Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species"

Happy 150th birthday to Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" (outline, text, audio, interactive visualization).  Thanks a billion (years)!

The break in at CRU

The Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the UK was hacked and more than a thousand of its member's email messages were posted on-line.  The global warming deniers are jumping on the emails as proof that global warming is fraudulent.  Wired Magazine's Threat Level blog has an informative write-up on it.

RealClimate, a blog on climate science by climate scientists (some of whom had emails that were released), made some interesting points including:

More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords. The truly paranoid will put this down to the hackers also being in on the plot though.

Instead, there is a peek into how scientists actually interact and the conflicts show that the community is a far cry from the monolith that is sometimes imagined. People working constructively to improve joint publications; scientists who are friendly and agree on many of the big picture issues, disagreeing at times about details and engaging in ‘robust’ discussions; Scientists expressing frustration at the misrepresentation of their work in politicized arenas and complaining when media reports get it wrong; Scientists resenting the time they have to take out of their research to deal with over-hyped nonsense. None of this should be shocking.

It’s obvious that the noise-generating components of the blogosphere will generate a lot of noise about this. but it’s important to remember that science doesn’t work because people are polite at all times. Gravity isn’t a useful theory because Newton was a nice person. QED isn’t powerful because Feynman was respectful of other people around him. Science works because different groups go about trying to find the best approximations of the truth, and are generally very competitive about that. That the same scientists can still all agree on the wording of an IPCC chapter for instance is thus even more remarkable.

More sights of nature from our fair city

Today brought forth new opportunities for interesting sights of nature in the densest city in our fair state. I put them up at my Natural World photo album, but since there are only three good ones, here they are:

Hawk in Davis Square:

Sunset among streaming clouds #1:

Sunset among streaming clouds #2:

Added Photos to my Natural World Photo Album

I added a bunch of photos to my Natural World photo album.  Here are my three favorites:

Clouds:

Flying bug:

Spider guarding tomatoes:

New ways to measure progress

Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen, at the request of the French Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, put out a report on alternative methods for measuring economic performance. Such methods include Gross Domestic Product (GDP) statistics, but the report calls for including social and environmental factors.

Herman Daly and many others in the Ecological Economics community have been calling for better measures of our economic, social and environmental progress for over twenty years.  Indeed, Redefining Progress already releases its Genuine Progress Indicator each year, though at a three year delay.

Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns rightly points out (via Naked Capitalism) that GDP is an inadequate measure of our economic state.  Rather he wants to be sure that our economic statistics include not just income (GDP), but debt.  I completely agree with him and hope that such revised metrics, note the plural,  include measure such assets as our environment, the health & education of our people and other non-market debts and assets.

Hopefully this report will put a pressure on the world's governments to devise and track metrics that better reflect our economic, social and ecological progress.  Until then, we should create and track our own community indicators.

A Cash for Clunkers Review

According to Toyota Tops List of Cash-for-Clunkers Winners (NY Times), 690,000 new vehicles were purchased with money from the Cash for Clunkers program.  On average, new cars got 25 miles per gallon (mpg) while "clunkers" got 16 mpg.  If the average person in the US drives 15,000 miles/year, then new cars will save 337.5 gallons of gas a year (937.5 gallons for "clunkers" and 600 gallons for the newer cars).

So did the Cash for Clunkers program pay off?  Lets try a back of the envelope calculation.

If we estimate that the "clunkers", without the program, would have been replaced within five years on average, then the total gas saved would be:

690,000 cars x 337.5 gallons saved per year x 5 years = 1,164,375,000 gallons saved

or about 1.16 billion gallons of gas saved.

Since about $2.9 billion was spent, that means that for every gallon saved, it cost the federal government about $2.49.  Increasing the average replacement time decreases the cost per gallon, while decreasing the replacement time raises the cost per gallon.

With gas costing $2.62 a gallon on 8/24 (see doe.gov), this is a slight savings.  The savings would grow should the price of gas go back to its high point of $4.00 in July 2008 or even higher when peak oil really kicks in.

Some (1 , 2) have estimated the true cost of a gallon of gas to be significantly higher due to such factors as the subsidies the government gives to gas, protecting the oil supply in the Persian Gulf, lost time in traffic and the environmental cost.  Estimates of the true cost of a gallon of gas vary between $5 and $15.  At those prices, Cash for Clunkers program was quite a good investment. 

However, whether the Cash for Clunkers program was as efficient at cutting our oil usage and pollution as other approaches such as home energy efficiency improvements, or increased ride sharing, public transit or bike paths remains to be seen.

New Natural World Photos

I added a bunch of new photos to my natural world photo album.  I also updated the titles of the existing photos.