Laboratory Observations of Collective Suicide

Posted on May 8, 2018 by climatechangefork

Rafik, a young, dear, French relative of mine, was born in Algeria. He still has family there that he visits often, occasionally going with some of them to tour the Sahara desert. We discussed his trips and the history of the Sahara desert; his stories fit nicely with the topic of desertification, one of the biggest vulnerabilities of climate change (April 24, 2018 blog). I was just starting to write about the topic, planning to include some of Rafik’s photographs, when my wife showed up with a short piece from the science section of The New York Times: “Fellow Travelers in Eco-Suicide.” It caught my imagination. When I visited the online version of the NYT, I found the article with a different title: “A Population That Pollutes Itself into Extinction (and It’s Not Us).” This change was sufficiently intriguing to motivate me to search for the original paper it described: “Ecological Suicide in Microbes.” The public response was widespread and immediate (as judged by Google’s response to the article’s title). People seemed to recognize the connection between this bacterial suicidal activity and the end result of humans ignoring the long-term consequences of climate change. I have long labeled climate change as self-inflicted genocide (see the November 15, 2016 blog). There is, however, a major difference between bacteria and us. Merriam Webster dictionary defines genocide as, “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political or cultural group.” The key word here is deliberate. One cannot be deliberate without a brain, and bacteria don’t have them. The same problem applies to the term suicidal in the other two titles.

Before proceeding, let’s get some details of the story from the abstract of the original paper that was published in Nature Ecology & Evolution (2018 May; 2(5): 867-872) by Christoph Ratzke, Jonas Denk and Jeff Gore. It is worth mentioning that all three authors are in physics departments: Ratzke and Gore at MIT in the US and Denk in Germany.

The growth and survival of organisms often depend on interactions between them. In many cases, these interactions are positive and caused by a cooperative modification of the environment. Examples are the cooperative breakdown of complex nutrients in microbes or the construction of elaborate architectures in social insects, in which the individual profits from the collective actions of her peers. However, organisms can similarly display negative interactions by changing the environment in ways that are detrimental for them, for example by resource depletion or the production of toxic byproducts. Here we find an extreme type of negative interactions, in which Paenibacillus sp. bacteria modify the environmental pH to such a degree that it leads to a rapid extinction of the whole population, a phenomenon that we call ecological suicide. Modification of the pH is more pronounced at higher population densities, and thus ecological suicide is more likely to occur with increasing bacterial density. Correspondingly, promoting bacterial growth can drive populations extinct whereas inhibiting bacterial growth by the addition of harmful substances—such as antibiotics—can rescue them. Moreover, ecological suicide can cause oscillatory dynamics, even in single-species populations. We found ecological suicide in a wide variety of microbes, suggesting that it could have an important role in microbial ecology and evolution.

The essence of the bacterial suicidal behavior (of which said bacteria is probably unaware) is a lack of ability to dispose of their waste within a relatively small enclosure. To take the human analogy further, Figure 1 shows the global extent of basic sanitation facility usage.

Figure 1 – Percent of global population that uses at least basic sanitation facilities

The World Bank defines the indicator as follows:

The percentage of people using at least basic sanitation services, that is, improved sanitation facilities that are not shared with other households. This indicator encompasses both people using basic sanitation services as well as those using safely managed sanitation services. Improved sanitation facilities include flush/pour flush to piped sewer systems, septic tanks or pit latrines; ventilated improved pit latrines, compositing toilets or pit latrines with slabs.

Not too long ago, humans didn’t use any sanitation facilities. But at that point, human density was low enough that we could move across the land and let nature apply the old dictum, “dilution is a solution.” The bacteria in the MIT-German study didn’t have that option. The bacteria’s waste consisted of various organic acids (developed from the metabolization of the glucose supplied as the source of nutrition). The organic acids produced changed the pH of the medium to values that inhibited digestion and eventually led to collective bacterial death. When the experimenters included a buffer into the medium that was able to keep the pH approximately constant, the bacteria did fine.

We can drive the analogy even further: about 25% of the carbon dioxide that is produced by our consumption of fossil fuels ends up dissolved into our oceans, thus changing the oceans’ pH to more acidic values which in turn inhibit almost all life forms. Since the oceans are so large, complete collective death will take some time.

The untreated waste that humans excrete becomes a poison, just as we saw with the bacteria. We need to improve digestion/processing mechanisms (in the same way that the experimenters added the buffer) to neutralize the problem and increase our chances of survival. (See “Tragedy of the Commons” July 2, 2012 blog).

While the paper itself is only five pages long (including a full page of references), there is a separately published online supplement that spans 25 pages. The supplement includes a suggested outline for a mathematical approach to facing ecological suicide that might be applicable to many other situations. The approach is based on logistic growth (February 4, 2014), which leads to saturation in concentration (carrying capacity). In this case, the saturation level changes with the waste concentration that manifests itself in terms of change in the pH of the medium. This is probably one of the first quantitative analyses of the collective suicide of a living system.

Both titles – that of the important Ratzke paper just published in Nature and the one heading this blog – falsely invoke commonality between humans and life forms that lack, functioning, thinking brains. The tragedy is that even with the advantage of our thinking power, we are in a similar situation to Paenibacillus sp. bacteria.

Stay tuned for next week’s examination of desertification.

Posted in Anthropocene, Anthropogenic, Climate Change, Holocaust, Sustainability | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Vulnerabilities: Water Stress

Posted on May 1, 2018 by climatechangefork

Figure 1 in last week’s blog listed key impacts of climate change as a function of increasing global temperature relative to the average temperature between 1980 and 1999. Based on NASA measurements (Figure 2 in the same blog), we have calculated a temperature increase of 0.75oC within that time period. One of the key impacts shown in that figure is “Hundreds of millions of people exposed to increased water stress.” This impact is estimated to occur once the global temperature rises by 3oC. This blog describes the current situation and some possible strategies to alleviate the stress. Here is how the World Resource Institute (WRI) describes the present global situation:

Our analysis finds that 37 countries currently face “extremely high” levels of water stress, meaning that more than 80 percent of the water available to agricultural, domestic, and industrial users is withdrawn annually.

Yet the world’s water systems face formidable threats. More than a billion people currently live in water-scarce regions, and as many as 3.5 billion could experience water scarcity by 2025. Increasing pollution degrades freshwater and coastal aquatic ecosystems. And climate change is poised to shift precipitation patterns and speed glacial melt, altering water supplies and intensifying floods and drought.

Figures 1 and 2 below describe the situation in terms of number of people exposed to water stress and its distribution around the globe.

Figure 1 – Global exposure to increased water stress (Source: “Environmental Outlook 2030” OECD 2008)

Figure 2 – Global map of water stress index

Given that 70% of the planet is covered in water, there is obviously no shortage of it. However, there is a shortage of fresh water that can be used to satisfy the basic human needs summarized in Figure 3. High and low-income countries have different needs, which directly relate to their degrees of industrialization and the fractions of their workforces employed in agriculture (March 27, 2018 blog).

Figure 3 – Global water use

As Figure 2 shows, severe water stress doesn’t have to be on a countrywide level. Good examples of this are the US, Australia, China, and more recently South Africa. One solution for such countries with stress in some parts and abundance in others is to move massive amounts of fresh water from the latter to the former. Figure 4 shows China’s massive water works from the Yangtze River basin to Beijing, which I have discussed before (September 1, 2015):

Figure 4 – The South-North water division project in China

California has a history of developing extensive infrastructure to move water from the north to supply Los Angeles and the California Central Valley, which in turn supplies the US with the majority of the fruits and vegetables it consumes:

In 1979, a balding man with a touch of gray at the temples and glasses like windshields was holding forth on his favorite subject: H2O. Pat Brown, former governor of California — and father of current California governor Jerry Brown (D) — was asking: What’s the value of water?

“You need water,” he told the University of California’s Oral History Program, as recounted in Marc Reisner’s “Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water.” “Whatever it costs you have to pay it. … If you’re crossing the desert and you haven’t got a bottle of water, and there’s no water anyplace in sight and someone comes along and says, ‘I’ll sell you two spoonfuls of water for ten dollars,’ you’ll pay for it. The same is true in California.”

This philosophy — unlimited water for every Californian at any price — was behind Pat Brown’s massive mid-century push for water projects in the Golden State. And it’s a legacy his son, who just announced California’s first mandatory water restrictions, must endure.

We can also address water stress by increasing the efficiency of water use (e.g. by way of a price increase) or “creating” new fresh water through desalination.

Water productivity, according to the World Bank, is calculated as GDP in constant prices divided by annual total water withdrawal. Increase in water productivity means that that less water is needed to produce a unit of economic activity – a balance that is equivalent to saving water. Figure 5 shows the changes in global water productivity. The data are sporadic and do not show a discernible trend but one can see that they can jump close to a full order of magnitude in a short time, providing great opportunity for improvement.

Figure 5 – Global water productivity (GDP in units of 2010 US$ per cubic meter of water used)

Table 1 shows the water productivity in the 12 countries I have used since February as a yardstick for global activity. I have added Israel to this table because I wrote earlier about the successes of its water management policies (March 4, 2014 blog).

Table 1 – Indicators related to water productivity of Israel, the 12 most populous countries, and the world as a whole

Country Water Productivity
Israel 129 (2004)
United States 35.7 (2010)
Nigeria 29.6 (2010)
Brazil 29.5 (2010)
Russia 27.8 (2013)
DR Congo 22.9 (2005)
China 15.0 (2015)
Mexico 14.1 (2015)
Ethiopia 5.0 (2016)
Indonesia 4.0 (2000)
Bangladesh 2.9 (2008)
India 2.6 (2010)
Pakistan 0.9 (2008)
World 5.0 (2016)

Figure 6 shows global water desalination efforts (October 29, 2013). Here is what I wrote in that blog:

The map below shows the “hot spots” for the use of this technology. Unfortunately, the height of the bars is not normalized to any parameter that scales with the size of the country (population, GDP or water consumption) so the visual might be a bit misleading. For obvious reasons (abundance of oil money, great shortage of water) South Arabia and the Gulf States are leading the effort. The effort is visible in almost every continent but, as is so often the case with activities in which available money plays an important role, it is dominated not necessarily by need, but rather, by the ability to allocate the necessary resources.

 

Figure 6 – Global desalination capacities (October 29, 2013 blog)

When I wrote about water management in Israel, I emphasized how the country coordinated all three activities mentioned here with the fluctuation of its external water supply (weather), as well as its practice of recycling water. Most importantly, I underlined the price that consumers have to pay. This also requires optimizing water quality for every application. To successfully achieve this same success on a global scale is a big challenge.

Posted in Anthropocene, Climate Change, IPCC, Sustainability, Water | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Water Cycle Vulnerabilities

Posted on April 24, 2018 by climatechangefork

Happy belated Earth Day and Happy 6th Birthday to Climate Change Fork!

I have repeatedly mentioned that global climate change is driven mainly by our interruption of the energy cycle. Specifically, we use fossil fuels as our main energy source as we aim to increase standards of living throughout the world. However, the biggest immediate impact of climate change that we are feeling relates directly to the subsequent disturbance of the water cycle. Not only does that change already have major effects on our lives, it is projected to accelerate in a business as usual scenario (as the global population continues to grow and we keep striving for higher standards of living).

Projections are abstract and they may be wrong (overestimating or underestimating the effects of present trends). My last series of blogs (starting mid-February) tried to analyze present trends in energy use, carbon emission, population growth, and the average standard of living in the world’s most populated countries as well as a few of the most developed ones. I will continue to look at the same groups of countries in the coming series of blogs with an emphasis on water use. I’m starting with the projections from the IPCC’s 2007 Fourth Assessment Report (AR4).

Figure 1 summarizes the IPCC’s assessments of five categories that are all directly or indirectly connected to water use.

Figure 1

Figure 2 shows an estimate of where we stand now in terms of temperature rise. It displays the annual temperature from 1880, as compiled by NASA, overlaid by a smoothed version using a statistical method known as Lowess Smoothing. Using the timetable from Figure 1, we experienced an average rise of 0.75oC from 1980 to 1999.

Global temperature change 1880-2020Figure –Global temperature change 1880-2020

Figure 3 ranks global concerns about various consequences of climate change. Water impact, specifically with regard to droughts and water shortages, is by far the most pressing issue in most people’s minds.

Global concerns about climate change - highest percentage: water shortages & droughtsFigure 3 – Global Concerns about Climate Change

I have discussed the connections between climate change and global water vulnerabilities in the past (see for example August 27, 2013 – water stress; November 12, 2013 – water desalination; November 19, 2013 – feedback on desalination; March 4, 2014 – Israel and water management).

This series will focus on similar topics including water stress, desertification, floods, the state of the ocean, and the role of water in the amplification of the impact of carbon that of burning fossil fuels. I am continuing my focus on the 12 most populated countries so as to develop a global perspective. This is not about far-future projections but rather present practices, emphasizing steps that are being taken right now to try to make the future a better one.

Posted in Anthropocene, Anthropogenic, Climate Change, IPCC, politics, Sustainability | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

If You Don’t Believe In Climate Change – Try It!

Posted on April 17, 2018 by climatechangefork

This blog is coming out three days after the March for Science and five days before Earth Day and my wife’s birthday. It’s a busy week.

Climate change is an abstract issue. Its main impact is projected to take place in the future and its extent is global. To have any chance at mitigation we needed to start yesterday. Barring that, today will do. Efforts at mitigation include changing energy sources and compromising in many areas that involve our quality of life. In most places, these changes and compromises require political decisions; in democratic societies these decisions need broad public acceptance.

It is not surprising that significant numbers of people worldwide have decided that they do not want to make such compromises. They maintain that the prospects of existential climate change, driven largely by man-made activities, are nonexistent. Well, science suggests that if you don’t believe in someone else’s scientific conclusions, you try to prove your own theory with observations.

Here is a simple experiment for those of you disbelievers:

During a nice summer day (a good spring day will do) get into your car, lock the doors and roll up all your windows and sit there. See what happens.

It turn out that hundreds of people are doing this, most of them inadvertently, with their small children or their pets. Figure 1 records the number of fatalities that result from this neglect in the US. Figure 2 shows the reason – a quick temperature rise that causes cruel death from hyperthermia. Both figures are taken from San Jose State University’s Department of Meteorology & Climate Science. When you are capable of taking care of yourself, you open the car doors and/or all the windows or you start the car and turn on the air conditioning. If you are a baby or a pet that cannot do such things, or the doors and windows are jammed and the car won’t turn on, you die.

Figure 1

 

Figure 2

This mirrors climate change and its consequences on a small scale. Let us try to analyze the similarities.

Figure 3 shows the thermal radiation of a black object such as an iron poker that we put into a furnace to increase its temperature. I discussed this radiation in a previous blog (January 7, 2013):

It turns out that every “visible” object in the universe emits radiation that depends only on the temperature of the object and the surface area of the object. This kind of radiation is called blackbody radiation. “Visible” objects are the regular objects that are all around us and are constituted of atoms and molecules. There are other kinds of objects that don’t emit any radiation – this is dark matter and we can locate it only through its gravitational force. We don’t see this matter around us, but, in the universe, we find five times more dark matter as compared with visible matter and we still have no idea about the structure of dark matter.

The temperatures in the figure are given in degrees Kelvin, where:

oK = oC + 273

The Kelvin temperature scale is about absolutes (the 0 on this scale is an absolute zero, below which you cannot go). Both axes are given in logarithmic terms (December 6, 2016) to best demonstrate the large differences in scale. The wavelengths express colors. The visible part of this radiation is shown in Figure 3 as a narrow band. Blue and violet have low wavelengths so they are on the left side of that small spectrum while red, with a higher wavelength is on the right side of it. Any light on this figure with a lower wavelength than violet is known as ultraviolet and any with a longer wavelength is known as infrared, which we often refer to as heat. The two temperatures that will attract our attention in Figure 3 are 5777oK (the surface temperature of the sun) and 300oK, which is the temperature of ambient light on Earth. We can see that as our object’s temperature drops the radiation peak moves to a longer wavelength with a lower peak value. The wavelength scale in Figure 3 is given in micrometers (μm) – millionths of a meter. 

Figure 3

Figures 4 and 5 give the transmission spectrum of a 2mm thick piece of glass (Figure 4) and the absorption spectra of water and carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere (Figure 5). The scale in Figure 4 is given in nanometers (nm), such that 1000nm = 1μm. In both figures most of the light from the surface of the sun (5777oK in Fig 3) is transmitted but significant portions of the light at 300oK (ambient) between 1 and 10 μm are blocked, thus raising the temperature of the interior. On Earth, much of this selective radiation blocking is done by the carbon dioxide released when we burn fossil fuels (see discussion of the carbon cycle, June 25, 2012). Additionally, as the temperature warms, a significant amount of additional water evaporates, playing a major role in blocking the infrared radiation from leaving Earth and raising the overall temperature further. This positive feedback amplifies the carbon dioxide impact.

Figure 4 – Transmission spectrum of a 2mm thick piece of glass

Figure 5 – Absorption of oxygen and ozone, carbon dioxide, and water into Earth’s atmosphere

The mechanism of the car heating is obviously much simpler than that of the planet heating. In the car the optical properties of the windows remain approximately constant. The chemical composition involved in transmitting the visible light while other elements block the infrared radiation doesn’t change as it gets hotter. On Earth the atmosphere plays the role of the windows. Human output of carbon dioxide leads to increased amounts of evaporated water, which in turn amplifies the blocking of infrared radiation. In the car, unless we are babies or animals we can get out through the doors and/or open the windows to control the temperature. On Earth, we cannot “open the door”; we cannot go anywhere. The equivalent of opening the windows would be to suck out the atmosphere. We cannot do that and survive. Nor do we have an air conditioner. In principle, we can clear the chemistry of the atmosphere of the infrared blocking elements or at least halt the practices that accumulate them. That’s what we are trying to do. By denying the necessity to actively mitigate our contributions to climate change, we are essentially locking entire future generations inside an increasingly hot car.

Posted in Anthropocene, Anthropogenic, Climate Change, Sustainability | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Vulnerabilities: Local Environmental Displacements

Posted on April 10, 2018 by climatechangefork

Last week’s blog looked at one of the biggest vulnerabilities that anthropogenic climate change has already produced: the dislocation of people from land that is no longer inhabitable. The dislocated people either try to move to safer locations within their countries of origin and become internally displaced persons or cross national borders and become refugees:

An internally displaced person (IDP) is someone who is forced to flee his or her home but who remains within his or her country’s borders. [2] They are often referred to as refugees, although they do not fall within the legal definitions of a refugee.[3]

A refugee, generally speaking, is a displaced person who has been forced to cross national boundaries and who cannot return home safely (for more detail see legal definition). Such a person may be called an asylum seeker until granted refugee status by the contracting state or the UNHCR[2] if they formally make a claim for asylum.[3]

I also provided some key global data indicating that natural disasters are the dominant driving forces for such displacements – far exceeding escape from violence. This is true in spite of the increasing coverage of/attention to those fleeing from the horrific situations in Syria, Yemen, and countries in Africa, as well as the plight of the Rohingya in Myanmar. Most of the natural disasters driving people from their homes are amplified by climate change and are expected to worsen in terms of geographic scope and the number of people directly impacted. US intelligence has shown interest in this growing trend of displacement and considers it a major security risk.

One of the countries at the forefront of this exodus – both with regard to climate and violence – is Syria. Credible accounts and data indicate that the civil war that has been raging for the last seven years originated with the government’s inability to handle the severe impacts of an ongoing drought. Climate change-driven environmental disasters have major political fallout.

Figure 1 shows a global account of the refugee population. The number, which reached its lowest point of roughly 13 million in 2005, has almost doubled since then.

Figure 1 – Global refugee population (2016)

Tables 1 and 2 catalog the countries with the most refugees and internally displaced persons. Most of the refugees in Table 1 are fleeing violence. Table 2 includes more people escaping natural disasters.

Table 1 – Ten countries with the largest total refugee populations (Mid-2017)

Country Total refugees (Mid 2017)
Turkey 3,203,785
Pakistan 1,406,794
Uganda 1,269,758
Lebanon 1,003,076
Iran 978,698
Germany 864,686
Ethiopia 841,285
Jordan 692,240
Sudan 538,797
DR Congo 533,568

 

Table 2 – Ten countries with the largest populations of internally displaced persons and refugees (Mid-2017)

Country Internally displaced persons

(Violence)

 Internally displaced persons

(Disaster)

 Refugees
China 7,434,000 208,000
Syria 6,326,000 5,524,000
Philippines 367,000 5,930,000 400
India 1,244,000 2,400,000 7,200
DR Congo 3,152,000 130,000 537,000
Nigeria 2,456,000 78,000 229,000
Yemen 1,974,000 18,000
Ukraine 1,653,000 239,000
Myanmar 679,000 509,000 490,000
Bangladesh 426,000 614,000 14,000

You can see the full data about the original conflicts and disasters that people were escaping in the CIA World Factbook.

I will follow with the most detailed account I have found of the environmental origins of the raging Syrian conflict. It was published in one of the most prestigious scientific journals, the “Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences” (PNAS March 17, 2015. 112 (11) 3241-3246):

Connection between environmental causality and violence causality: The Syrian example:

“Climate change in the Fertile Crescent and implications of the recent Syrian drought”

Colin P. Kelley, Shahrzad Mohtadi, Mark A. Cane, Richard Seager and Yochanan Kushnir

Significance

There is evidence that the 2007−2010 drought contributed to the conflict in Syria. It was the worst drought in the instrumental record, causing widespread crop failure and a mass migration of farming families to urban centers. Century-long observed trends in precipitation, temperature, and sea-level pressure, supported by climate model results, strongly suggest that anthropogenic forcing has increased the probability of severe and persistent droughts in this region, and made the occurrence of a 3-year drought as severe as that of 2007−2010 2 to 3 times more likely than by natural variability alone. We conclude that human influences on the climate system are implicated in the current Syrian conflict.

Abstract

Before the Syrian uprising that began in 2011, the greater Fertile Crescent experienced the most severe drought in the instrumental record. For Syria, a country marked by poor governance and unsustainable agricultural and environmental policies, the drought had a catalytic effect, contributing to political unrest. We show that the recent decrease in Syrian precipitation is a combination of natural variability and a long-term drying trend, and the unusual severity of the observed drought is here shown to be highly unlikely without this trend. Precipitation changes in Syria are linked to rising mean sea-level pressure in the Eastern Mediterranean, which also shows a long-term trend. There has been also a long-term warming trend in the Eastern Mediterranean, adding to the drawdown of soil moisture. No natural cause is apparent for these trends, whereas the observed drying and warming are consistent with model studies of the response to increases in greenhouse gases. Furthermore, model studies show an increasingly drier and hotter future mean climate for the Eastern Mediterranean. Analyses of observations and model simulations indicate that a drought of the severity and duration of the recent Syrian drought, which is implicated in the current conflict, has become more than twice as likely as a consequence of human interference in the climate system.

Fig. 2

Six-month winter (November−April mean) Syria area mean precipitation, using CRU3.1 gridded data. (B) CRU annual near-surface temperature (red shading indicates recent persistence above the long-term normal). (C) Annual self-calibrating Palmer Drought Severity Index. (D) Syrian total midyear population. Based on the area mean of the FC as defined by the domain 30.5°N–41.5°N, 32.5°E–50.5°E (as shown in 2). Linear least-squares fits from 1931 to 2008 are shown in red, time means are shown as dashed lines, gray shading denotes low station density, and brown shading indicates multiyear (≥3) droughts.

A short personal testimony:

An abundance of history books on the subject tell us that civil unrest can never be said to have a simple or unique cause. The Syrian conflict, now civil war, is no exception. Still, in a recent interview (45), a displaced Syrian farmer was asked if this was about the drought, and she replied, “Of course. The drought and unemployment were important in pushing people toward revolution. When the drought happened, we could handle it for two years, and then we said, ‘It’s enough.’” This recent drought was likely made worse by human-induced climate change, and such persistent, deep droughts are projected to become more commonplace in a warming world.

The next few blogs will deal with some specific, climate change-connected, vulnerabilities such as water stress and desertification.

Posted in Anthropocene, Anthropogenic, Climate Change, immigration, refugee, Sustainability, UN | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Vulnerabilities: Global Environmental Refugees

Posted on April 3, 2018 by climatechangefork

I am not the only one to predict (February 3, 2015 and October 3, 2017) that continuing our practices in a business as usual scenario will lead to destruction of the physical environment as we know it – as well as what has already been labeled the sixth mass extinction. This extinction will not occur suddenly as the result of one event such as a nuclear war or collision with a large astronomical object; it will happen more gradually. Numerous visible markers strongly suggest that this process is already taking place.

Anthropogenic climate change fueled by the uncontrolled release of greenhouse gases is one of the main mechanisms leading us in that direction. Many now recognize the dangers and the world is trying to take steps to mitigate this process. One of the biggest steps is the transition toward non-carbon-based energy sources that do not change the energy balance of the planet. This should help keep us within the “Goldilocks Zone” – the ideal temperature and abundance of liquid water on the planet’s surface to support life. By all accounts, the transition is a stuttering one (December 24, 2012 blog and more recent entries) because of conflicts between future and present needs. My last few blogs tried to summarize where the most populated countries and the world as a whole stand in this process.

As in any case, people in more vulnerable situations and environments are trying to move to more stable ones. Such moves create major global security issues.

The US intelligence community recognizes the challenge and is required to publish periodic reports on the global situation (every 4 years) warning of some of the challenges. From the January 2017 report, “Global Trends: Paradox in Progress” (May 23, 2017):

Changing climate conditions challenged the capacity of many governments to cope, especially in the Middle East and Africa, where extended droughts reduced food and water supplies and high temperatures suppressed the ability of people to work outdoors. Large numbers of displaced persons from the region often found they had no place to go as a series of dramatic terrorist attacks in Western countries drove those governments to adopt stringent security policies that restricted immigration.

The US intelligence community also issues yearly reports of its observations about climate change and its recommendations for addressing the aspects that directly affect US security. Here are some excerpts from the beginning of the most recent report:

The Center for Climate & Security: Exploring The Security Risks of Climate Change

Program Areas

  • Policy Development: Convening and facilitating public-private collaborative policy development processes and dialogues in critical areas of the climate-security field, such as the role of national and intergovernmental security institutions in addressing climate change.

  • Analysis: Elevating the climate and security discourse through the Center for Climate and Security blog, our reports on the sub-national, national, regional and international security implications of climate change, and other publications.

  • Research: Conducting research to fill information gaps, including assessing the security community’s strategic and operational rationale for addressing climate change risks, examining the role of climate change, water and food insecurity in the security dynamics of strategically-significant regions of the world, and forecasting the potential of disruptive technologies to address climate and security risks.

  • Resource Hub: Answering frequently asked questions, keeping track of the latest policy developments, and acting as a resource hub for key climate and security documents from governments, international institutions, non-governmental organizations and academia.

Context

Climate change, in both scale and potential impact, is a strategically-significant security risk that will affect our most basic resources, from food to water to energy.  National and international security communities, including militaries and intelligence agencies, understand these risks, and have already taken meaningful actions to address them. However, progress in comprehensively preventing, preparing for, adapting to and mitigating these risks will require that policy-makers, thought leaders and publics take them seriously.

Other countries have their own perspectives on the dangers they face:

Water, Conflict and Cooperation: Lesson From the Nile River Basin

by Patricia Kameri-Mbote:

In 1979, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat said: “The only matter that could take Egypt to war again is water.” In 1988 then-Egyptian Foreign Minister Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who later became the United Nations’ Secretary-General, predicted that the next war in the Middle East would be fought over the waters of the Nile, not politics. Rather than accept these frightening predictions, we must examine them within the context of the Nile River basin and the relationships forged among the states that share its waters.

The iDMC (Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre) report addresses the vast number of displaced persons, an issue that is not relegated to the future but clearly visible now. Figure 1 shows a global picture of displacement:

Figure 1

Figure 1 confirms that displacements associated with disasters have surpassed those driven by conflicts and violence.

Figure 2 specifies the kinds of disasters in question.

Figure 2

Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are not associated with anthropogenic climate change. The rest of the disasters are directly associated with climate change and our disturbance of the water cycle. These disasters are expected to worsen and spread as the global temperature rises, leading to even more displacement:

Climate refugees or environmental migrants are people who are forced to leave their home region due to sudden or long-term changes to their local environment. These are changes which compromise their well-being or secure livelihood. Such changes are held to include increased droughts, desertification, sea level rise, and disruption of seasonal weather patterns (i.e. monsoons[1]). Climate refugees may choose flee to or migrate to another country, or they may migrate internally within their own country.[2]

 

Figure 3 highlights the destination countries for displaced persons.

Figure 3 – Refugees by hosting countries in 2016

A large number of displaced persons do not leave their countries. When storms and sea level rise drive them from their homes, land, and livelihoods, they flock to cities in search of some relief and the hope of new opportunities. Here is an example from Bangladesh:

Cities Swell with Climate Migrants: Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka is struggling to absorb migrants from the countryside forced to move by environmental change, Part 3 of a special series.

By Lisa Friedman on March 16, 2009

Nearly 500,000 people – about the population of Washington, D.C. – move to this city on the banks of the Buriganga River each year, mostly from coastal and rural areas. More than 12 million people live in Dhaka, twice as many as just a decade ago. It’s one of the world’s most densely populated countries on a planet that is seeing rapid urbanization.

In Dhaka, migration experts say, climate change already is fueling urban arrivals. Coastal flooding is occurring with more frequency. Rice crops, in particular, are slowly dying because of creeping salinity levels, and in the worst cases, entire homes and villages are lost to fearsome storms. 

A typical individual story:

Standing among the mazes of corrugated metal shacks with no running water or sanitation services, Omar said he left the town of Sherpur, north of Dhaka, “to earn a living.” He came from a family of farmers, but when floods ruined the crops in his village last year, he borrowed 500 taka (about $7) to take the bus to Dhaka.

Now he, his wife and their two daughters live in a single room and share a flimsy wooden plank latrine with about 35 other families in the Karail slum, across the river from Dhaka’s upper-class Gulshan neighborhood. He isn’t likely to go back to Sherpur.

“I don’t have the means to go home. I don’t have a house or anything over there. It’s not possible,” he said.

Next week I will return to the 17 countries that I have examined in recent blogs.

Posted in Climate Change | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Vulnerabilities

Posted on March 27, 2018 by climatechangefork

My last five blogs (starting on February 20, 2018) have focused on some key indicators of the global energy transition as they relate to climate change and the IPAT identity. I examined the 12 most populous countries, which together represent more than half of the world’s population as well as the full spectrum of economic development. I also looked at five small, developed countries that are at the forefront of the transition into a more sustainable energy mix. I presented almost all of the indicators in this series on a per person basis so that we could compare countries with different populations.

This blog will open a new series that will present both the global picture and the specific data for the same set of countries in terms of vulnerabilities. Over the nearly six years since I started this blog, I have repeatedly mentioned that the main driving force for climate change is our disruption of the global energy cycle through our energy use. Most of the biggest impacts have occurred via our disturbance of the global water cycle. I have also said that this is not just about our future; there are early signs of impacts that are already taking place.

The vulnerabilities that we will talk about are existential but they do not take place uniformly throughout the planet. As a result, many people are trying to escape from vulnerable areas to more stable ones. Since our global governance system relies on sovereign states, the flux of environmental refugees is now awakening jurisdictional issues that never occurred to most of us (especially in light of the increasing number of political refugees). This series of blogs will mix the vulnerabilities to changes in the climate with the rise in people leaving their climate-affected countries in search of safer places for themselves and their families – often against the wishes of their target countries.

I am starting here with four important water-related indicators: employment in agriculture (% of total employment); agricultural value added; annual fresh water withdrawal (% of internal resources); and population living in areas where elevation is at or below five meters above sea level (% of total population). I am sourcing all of my statistics from the World Bank database.

Figures 1 and 2 show the global trend in the first two indicators over the last 20 years. We see a sharp decline both in terms of global employment in agriculture and in the fraction that agriculture contributes to GDP. The trend, coupled with the large increase in global population that took place over the same period strongly suggests that the agricultural industry is becoming much more efficient in feeding the growing global population.

Figure 1 – Global employment in agriculture (% of total employment)

Figure 2 – Global agricultural value added (% of GDP)

However, when we refocus our attention to individual countries, the situation changes.

Table 1 – Indicators of water-related vulnerabilities to climate change impact among the world’s most populous countries

Table 2 – Same indicators as in for five small, developed countries that are ahead in their energy transitions

Agriculture is very sensitive to climate conditions, especially when it is dependent on natural precipitation. Rich countries can produce food using many fewer workers and the activity constitutes a small part of the GDP. In poor countries the situation is markedly different. A large percentage of the employment in countries such as India (44%), Indonesia (31%), Pakistan (42%), Bangladesh (41%), Ethiopia (71%), and DR Congo (65%) is agricultural. When long-term droughts hit, people are driven from their plots. They must move to places that give them better chances of survival. In the same line, extraction of fresh water from nonrenewable sources reaches (or exceeds) dangerous levels in poor countries that lack the resources to supplement their water with sources such as desalination. I will expand on the issue of regional water stress in future blogs.

Annual fresh water withdrawal can exceed 100% when extraction from nonrenewable sources becomes significant (this correlates with water stress). The last column maps the percentage of the population that lives below 5 meters above sea level – those most susceptible to climate change-driven sea level rise. Nine percent of the population of Bangladesh amounts to 15 million people vulnerable to perpetual flooding threat. In China the 7% of the population in these circumstances amounts to a staggering 100 million people.

My next blog will focus on some of the global consequences behind these numbers.

Posted in Climate Change | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Energy Transition: Regional Impacts and Highlights

Posted on March 20, 2018 by climatechangefork

I started this series (February 20, 2018) by introducing energy-related indicators for the ten most populous countries (with the addition of two African countries that are projected to join those ranks by 2040). I aim to use these indicators as markers for the ongoing energy transition, revisiting them periodically to inform us on our progress. Hopefully they will also demonstrate steps that can better prepare us for this transition.

The selected twelve countries represent more than half of the world’s population, as well as the full spectrum of economic wellbeing as characterized by GDP/Capita. These tables include only one fully developed country – the US. Most of the other countries are still struggling to offer their citizens the standard of living already enjoyed by richer countries. To balance my checkup on global progress I have also included the performance of five small, wealthy countries that have the resources to mitigate the environmental impact of their energy use. In almost all cases the indicators were represented on a per-capita basis so that we could quantitatively compare different countries regardless of their populations.

Selected indicators include population (from the UN), GDP/Capita (from the World Bank) and the energy and emissions statistics from the most recent British Petroleum (BP) review.

The BP site also features a section on regional impacts that includes projections for 2040 energy indicators. Among those regions are: Africa, Brazil, China, the European Union, Indonesia, the Middle East, Russia, the UK, and the US.

I will try to summarize the series of indicators by using two methods: the first is to encapsulate the global perspective via graphic representation. Second, I will include a direct comparison between BP’s projections for the energy indicators of China and the US in 2040. In a previous blog (February 27, 2018) we saw that China and the US now account for 43% of global carbon emissions. So what these two countries do in the near future is of prime importance from the global perspective.

Figure 1 shows regional non-hydro renewable power generation as compiled by The Economist.

Figure 1

Figure 2 shows a broader picture of global power generation by energy source, as compiled by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Figure 2

Figure 3 shows a detailed examination of distribution of renewable energy use by the countries within the European Union. Here again, The Economist is sourcing its figures from the BP database.

Figure 3 

The two tables below show direct comparisons between BP’s projections of the energy transitions in China and the US.

Table 1 – Summary of 2040 projections of the US and China’s energy indicators

Table 2 – Trends in 2040 projections of the US and China’s energy indicators

Posted in Anthropocene, Anthropogenic, Climate Change, Sustainability | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Fossil Fuel Preferences and BP’s Energy Outlook

Posted on March 13, 2018 by climatechangefork

I started this series on February 20, 2018 to explore the IPAT identity. The last term within that identity that I have yet to cover includes the nature of the fossil fuels used. The popular perception is that use of coal is down while use of natural gas has risen. This blog examines this issue with the same set of countries that I have studied in the last few blogs.

As before, I am using statistical data from British Petroleum (BP). I will end this blog by citing BP’s short summary of how it views the nature of the energy transition that we are undergoing.

Next week I will conclude this series by using graphics from different sources to demonstrate the trends expressed in this series. I will also add BP’s regional summary of trends, including those within Africa, China and the US.

Table 1 illustrates trends in the use of coal and natural gas by the world’s twelve most populous countries (whose combined populations account for more than half the global total and the full spectrum of economic development). Table 2 includes the five much smaller, developed countries that we have used throughout this series as examples of sovereign states farther along in their energy transitions.

The data in both tables are expressed as percentages of the total primary energy use:

Table 1 – Indicators related directly to carbon emissions of the 12 most populous countries

 

Table 2 – Same indicators as in Table 1 for the world and five small, developed countries that are ahead in their energy transitions

BP provides a summary of what it calls Energy Outlook based on present and past performances on its website:

BP Energy Outlook

The Energy Outlook explores the forces shaping the global energy transition out to 2040 and the key uncertainties surrounding that transition. It shows how rising prosperity drives an increase in global energy demand and how that demand will be met over the coming decades through a diverse range of supplies including oil, gas, coal and renewables.

The speed of the energy transition is uncertain and the new Outlook considers a range of scenarios. Its evolving transition (ET) scenario, which assumes that government policies, technologies and societal preferences evolve in a manner and speed similar to the recent past, expects:

  • Fast growth in developing economies drives up global energy demand a third higher.
  • The global energy mix is the most diverse the world has ever seen by 2040, with oil, gas, coal and non-fossil fuels each contributing around 25%.
  • Renewables are by far the fastest-growing fuel source, increasing five-fold and providing around 14% of primary energy.
  • Demand for oil grows over much of Outlook period before plateauing in the later years.
  • Natural gas demand grows strongly and overtakes coal as the second largest source of energy.
  • Oil and gas together account for over half of the world’s energy
  • Global coal consumption flat lines with Chinese coal consumption seeming increasingly likely to have plateaued.
  • The number of electric cars grows to around 15% of the cars, but because of the much higher intensity with which they are used, account for 30% of passenger vehicle kilometers.
  • Carbon emissions continue to rise, signaling the need for a comprehensive set of actions to achieve a decisive break from the past.

Looking forward to 2040

  • Extending the Energy Outlook by five years to 2040, compared with previous editions, highlights several key trends.
  • For example, in the ET scenario, there are nearly 190 million electric cars by 2035, higher than the base case in last year’s Outlook of 100 million. The stock of electric cars is projected to increase by a further 130 million in the subsequent five years, reaching around 320 million by 2040.
  • Another trend that comes into sharper focus by moving out to 2040 is the shift from China to India as the primary driver of global energy demand. The progressively smaller increments in China’s energy demand – as its economic growth slows and energy intensity declines – contrasts with the continuing growth in India, such that between 2035 and 2040, India’s demand growth is more than 2.5 times that of China, representing more than a third of the global increase.
  • Africa’s contribution to global energy consumption also becomes more material towards the end of the Outlook, with Africa accounting for around 20% of the global increase during 2035-2040; greater than that of China.

You can compare the BP Energy Outlook with the data in the last four blogs.

Posted in Anthropocene, Anthropogenic, Climate Change, Sustainability | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Electricity Generation

Posted on March 6, 2018 by climatechangefork

This week, I’m looking at the role of electricity in the ongoing global energy transition. Dieter Helm argued (see the February 13, 2018 blog about his book, Burn Out) that our increased usage of electricity is an indicator of our decreasing reliance on oil companies as the main stewards of our energy needs. It seems to me that Prof. Helm came to his conclusions mainly by observing trends within developed countries, emphasizing those countries’ growing focus on electric cars. His book, among other popular media, portrays electric cars as a triumph in decreasing our dependence on fossil fuels. Unfortunately, few of these sources say much about how we generate the electricity to power these cars.

All the data in this blog come from the World Bank database.

Figure 1 – Global electric power consumption in kwh/capita

Figure 1 demonstrates a steady increase in the global use of electricity that far outpaces the population growth, GDP increase, or increase in global primary energy use that I described in last week’s blog. Figure 2 shows the role that renewable energy has played in the global electricity output. It clearly reaches its lowest point around 2003, after which it grows steadily.

Figure 2 – Renewable energy in electricity output (% of total electricity output)

Tables 1 and 2 reference those shown in previous blogs and show us global trends, as represented by the twelve most populous countries (whose combined populations account for more than half the global total and the full spectrum of economic development).

Table 1 – Indicators related to electricity consumption of the 12 most populous countries

Table 2 – Same indicators for five small, developed countries that are ahead in their energy transition and three different global entities

The tables show 100% access to electricity for the high-income countries (the five in Table 2 and the US in Table 1), upper-middle income countries (China, Brazil, Russia, and Mexico in Table 1), and two of the lower-middle income countries (Indonesia and Pakistan). However, just counting within the countries in Table 1 (India, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Democratic Republic of Congo) more than 500 million people don’t have access to electricity. Globally, the number exceeds 1 billion. There is no question that for these countries, providing universal access to electricity and everything else that such access affords is the top priority – ahead of any environmental consideration.

Focusing now on the consumption of electricity in countries that have universal access and correlating it with the wealth of these countries, one can observe interesting trends. Let’s look at the high- and upper-middle income countries from both tables. The full ranges and means of the GDPs/Capita (2016) and electricity consumptions (2014) of both groups can be summarized as follows. Both reference years are the latest available on the World Bank database.

GDP/Capita of high-income countries = $52,800 ±11,000

GDP/Capita of upper-middle income countries = $8,400 ±295

Electricity consumption (in kwh/capita) of high-income countries = 13,000 ± 3,000

Electricity consumption (in kwh/capita) of upper-middle income countries = 3,800 ±200

The electricity consumption per GDP for the high-income countries is 0.25 kwh/US$ and that for the upper-middle income is 0.45 kwh/US$. As in many other circumstances, the US$ is less expensive in lower income countries compared to the rich ones (economists call the exchange rate Purchasing Power Parity).

Hydroelectric power plays a critical role in the variability of individual countries’ abilities to generate electricity using renewable energy sources. This is observable in the countries with a negative difference in the percentage of renewable energy needed to generate electricity. Ethiopia and DR Congo, which are listed as using close to 100% renewable energy, owe that accomplishment to hydroelectricity. Similarly, 67% of Norway’s energy comes from hydroelectricity. The other countries in Table 2 use hydroelectricity for approximately 30% of what they need for their electricity production. While an extremely important renewable source, hydroelectric facilities produce variable units of electric power, depending on changes in climate and weather.

Posted in Anthropocene, Anthropogenic, Climate Change, Sustainability | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments