Where is our Tipping Point?

Posted on January 21, 2013 by climatechangefork

The spring semester is about to start. I am preparing to teach a new course on Physics & Society. I was chatting about the new course with a friend – a distinguished physicist. His comment was – don’t “forget” to touch on economics. I promised to do as advised.

A few days later, I read the New York Times review of a new book titled, “The Physics of Wall Street” by James Owen Weatherall. Curious, I ordered the book. It arrived in two days and took me a weekend to finish. I found it interesting, even though I was already familiar with many of the cases that Weatherall describes.

The book discusses a number of cases in which people with a background in Physics and Mathematics did well in the financial markets. Its conclusion is that we need more of these types of people in the market, not less. This, in spite of the widely spread belief that the schemes concocted by these “quants” were partially responsible for some of the market’s painful bubble bursts recently.

I think that this would be a great book for my students to read before the course starts, mostly to familiarize them with some of the language. My objective for this course is to discuss man’s role as a part of nature, as well as explore career opportunities beyond the usual boundaries of textbooks physics, to include human activities.

The starting point in the course will be the generalized definition of Physics. One good example is the one given in the Miriam Webster Dictionary:

Physics –  science that deals with the structure of matter and the interactions between the fundamental constituents of the observable universe. Long called natural philosophy (from the greek physikos), physics is concerned with all aspects of nature, covering the behavior of objects under the action of given forces and the nature and origin of gravitational, electromagnetic, and nuclear force fields. The goal of physics is to formulate comprehensive principles that bring together and explain all discernible phenomena.

I am not an economist and I need help here. Weatherall is not an economist either, although he has advanced degrees in Physics, Mathematics and Philosophy. Climate Change should be an important part of this course (see my December 31st blog discussing the American Physical Society’s attitude on this issue). Despite my ignorance, I have included some economic considerations in many of the posts throughout this blog, simply because I felt I had to. I will try to amplify this trend – starting with this post. Hopefully, comments from readers and students will enable me to rectify many of the misconceptions that usually come along with ignorance.

From the start (April 22, 2012), I have described the impact of climate change under a business as usual scenario, as a “self-inflicted genocide.” The reason was the IPCC finding that a reliable, computer generated, average global temperature rise of more than 40C (70F) will result in global climate change that will destroy around 40% of the eco systems. I have assumed that since humans are part of these ecosystems, and their destruction will result in major loss of human life, the situation fits the dictionary definition of genocide. For a short period of time, this characterization (together with Andrew Revkin’s comment on this in his blog in the New York Times) made this blog “viral” with floods of disagreements.

In the September 24 and the December 10 blogs, I showed two IPCC socio-economic scenarios that constitute the base to these predictions – the A2 and B1 scenarios. The A2 represents business as usual, while the B1 represents an example of an environmentally “friendly” scenario that stabilizes the impact to around 2.50C.

There were two main differences in these scenarios: Toward the end of the century, the A2 scenario assumes a global population of 15 billion while the B1 scenario assumes that population will more or less stabilize at present levels of 7 – 8 billion. In addition, the A2 scenario assumes that fossil fuels will continue to be our main energy source at approximately the present level of 85% while the B1 scenario assumes that we replace more than 50% of our energy sources with sustainable sources that will not result in atmospheric chemical changes that impact the climate. Most of the other blogs that I wrote focused on how to achieve such a global energy transition.

I have so far omitted one important element from these discussions. The scenarios also include economic activities.

The IPCC SRES scenarios are listed here (version 1.1 – July 2000). The A2 and B1 scenarios for the global population and economic activity are listed in the table below.

Year

Population, Billions

GDP/GNP(MEX) in Trillion 1990 US$. () – Per person in US$.

A2

B1

A2

B1

2010

7.2

6.9

31.9 (4431)

37.3 (5406)

2050

11.3

8.7

81.6 (7221)

135.6 (15,586)

2100

15.1

7.0

242.8 (16,079)

328.4 (46,914)

MEX is the abbreviation for Market Exchange Rate.

Analyzing these data, one arrives at the astounding conclusion that the A2 scenario anticipates a 1.2% average growth in inflation-adjusted GDP/Capita from 2010 to 2050, with that growth accelerating to 1.6% from the year 2050 to 2100. It gets better with the B1 scenario, which foresees an inflation-adjusted GDP/Capita growth of 2.6% from 2010 to 2050 that decelerates to 2.2% between 2050 and 2100. At the end of the century, in the B1 scenario, an average human will live like an average American today. These averages include large developing countries with a GDP/capita 50 times smaller than that of the US. A dream come true.

These scenarios equate (at least in the case of A2) to “self-inflicted genocides,” with the survivors living like kings. That is very different from my own experience as a Holocaust survivor. One cannot escape the impression that the economic aspects of these scenarios were derived by applying a simple exponential growth equation, not taking into account anything that happens in the projected impacts on the physical environment (December 10 blog).

The most important parameter for projecting the impacts of climate change is called climate sensitivity. It projects the average global temperature rise as a function of the increased concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The uncertainty margin in this parameter is large (see the discussion and graph in the December 10 blog) mainly because it incorporates several significant non-linear elements, which are often referred to in common lexicon as tipping points. These include the melting of long-term ice, such as glaciers and icebergs. The melting of ice on such a scale causes changes in a parameter called “Albedo,” which describes the fraction of incoming solar radiation that is being reflected back to space by the white ice surface. Melting causes changes in the reflection properties of the surface of the earth, thus changing the amount of radiation absorbed that leads to the temperature change.

Another major tipping point is the melting of the permafrost in the arctic. The permafrost captures large amounts of carbon compounds that accumulated before the ground froze. Upon melting, the carbon is released, with a significant fraction ending up in the atmosphere, adding to the concentration of the greenhouse gases there.

One of the main trapped organic compounds is methane, the main constituent of natural gas. Every molecule of methane is 20 times more active as greenhouse gas than a corresponding molecule of carbon dioxide.

Additional, important tipping points are the state of the oceans and land biota as sequesters of carbon dioxide (see the June 25 blog). Right now, for every quantity of carbon dioxide that we emit, only about half ends up in the atmosphere. The oceans are net absorbers of half of the excess while the green biota is absorbing the other half. Both land and sea store large carbon reservoirs and their ability to absorb or emit carbon dioxide depends on the ambient temperature. The tipping points take place when the atmospheric conditions force the land and sea on the planet to convert from net absorbers to net emitters. We don’t fully understand these complex physical processes but we know from basic science that they take place and have major impact on the climate.

Yet – as far as we humans are concerned, by the SRES account, we can continue to live like kings (at least those of us that survive the flooding, droughts, sinking of islands and major coastal cities, collapse of our infrastructure, major increase in extreme events, etc…). It seems to me that the only reason that this is happening is because we still treat the physical environment (including our own bodies) as a completely separate discipline from our socio-economic-cultural environment. We insist on continuing this behavior even though Climate Change no longer allows us to do so.

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Voices from the Farm and Beyond

Posted on January 14, 2013 by climatechangefork

Turkana Farms is a small-scale producer of heritage breed livestock and a wide array of vegetables and berries on just over 39 acres in Germantown, New York. It is run by two friends who have sent me the following message for the New Year:

Hello All and Happy New Year (Peter here):

I think we are all, either from direct experience or reading about it, aware that the year 2012 has gone down in U.S. weather history as being the hottest since records have been kept. And those of us who enjoy local fruit or have orchardist neighbors are also aware that a two week record breaking heat wave last April took the temperatures up to the 90’s, causing apple, pear, and cherry trees to bloom prematurely in Columbia County, only to be followed by a killing frost a few weeks later, effectively decimating about half of the expected fruit crop.

Our sympathies go out to our near neighbors, the Riders, who lost virtually their entire 2012 apple, pear, and cherry crop. And, of course, to our disappointed pigs who usually look forward with great anticipation to the cast off apples that annually come our way from the Riders.

Other problems and disruptions caused by Climate Change are not so obvious but are subtly changing life at Turkana. We are becoming more and more aware of how changes in light and temperature control the life cycles of our livestock. The cues for our peacock to begin and end his mating period, for instance, somehow changed this season. Ordinarily in late spring, when his tail feathers have completely grown back, the peacock begins his displays, which usually continue to the end of July/early August when he molts his tail feathers, and the daily dances end. I was surprised in early spring, three weeks earlier than usual to see him displaying (with partially grown out tail feathers), and then to see him end his gorgeous show three weeks earlier than usual, as his tail feathers began to drop out.

But an even more dramatic disruption of the cycles was evidenced by our sheep lambing in early December rather than in mid January or February. We usually keep our ram together with his ewes and have let him in the past set the mating schedule. He in turn is programmed by weather conditions, and ordinarily would take his cue from the first cool night of around 55 degrees in August or September, the births taking place about five months from this date.

But it is only January 4th and we have already had over twenty lambs—all of these before the time we normally begin lambing. This would mean that the ram began making his conjugal rounds in July. Could there have been, we wonder, a string of changes in the environmental cycle that precipitated his activity? That both the peafowl and the sheep’s normal cycles were disrupted suggests that this is so.

The farm was affected not only by the excessively hot summer of 2012 but also by the almost non-existent winter of 2011-12. Quite early in the spring I began to notice a rat and mouse population moving into our barn and other outbuildings. Inquiring around I learned that this was a common problem at other local farms. Normally this invasion is something to be expected in late fall as the weather turns extreme and food sources begin to dwindle.

At first I attributed this early migration to the extremely wet spring weather, which raised considerably the water table, assuming that the rodents were being driven out of their holes and tunnels by water. But I have since heard a more persuasive explanation: that it was the extremely mild winter that is actually the cause, a mild winter that allowed the rats to, as they say in the Bible, “be fruitful and multiply.” Again a change in the environmental cycle, no freezing period to trigger hibernation and, therefore, more sexual activity, accounts for the early plague of rats.

The rat situation was not helped by the resistance of Mark and our farm helper, whose scruples apparently did not allow them to plant poison rat blocks in the affected places. Since there was no hope of a Pied Piper of Hamlin magically appearing on the scene, it would be up to me, I realized, to be the Darth Vader of the rat population.

Soon rats were not only working their way through the clapboarding of the barn and coop walls but also, amazingly punching holes, through the concrete floors. But the biggest disaster was finding one day that over a third of our chicks had gone missing from the brooder box. Upon inspection I found that the rats had gnawed through the several inch thick boards of the brooder box and been carrying off the chicks at will. The only solution was to move the surviving chicks into wire cages and suspend the cages by ropes from the ceiling.

When the chicks had outgrown the cages it was impossible until they reached a certain size to release them in the coop for fear of what would happen to them in the night. It became obvious that we needed to discover where the rats were nesting. My guess was under the brooder box they had gnawed into. When we moved the brooder box we found a nest of a dozen or so, obviously poisoned rats dead or dying, directly beneath it. How many healthy live ones absconded from there as we moved the box I had no idea. Ultimately I set in motion a determined campaign of setting poison, sealing holes in the concrete floor and walls, and removing food sources. I am happy to report that after my blitzkrieg that at last the rat population seems virtually decimated.

Our experiences this past year make it clear to us that Climate Change is and will be working its strange magic at the farm in all kinds of unexpected ways. Obviously, halting climate change is infinitely more complicated than halting the proliferation of rats, but as we saw with the rat situation, dragging one’s feet only compounds and increases the problem. Are we now that we are starting a new administration in Washington, at last ready to at least talk about addressing Climate Change once again?

They know, as well as most of us, that the variety of impacts that they observed on the farm and attribute to Climate Change, are not necessarily anthropogenic (man induced) in origin. The impact is not specific to their farm and has many contributions from a variety of non-anthropogenic sources. All the impacts that they list can be attributed to attempts to adapt to climate change – some more successful than others. We also know (my June 25th blog post) that our present energy use leads to a disruption of the global energy balance, which leads to major climate changes by way of changes to the chemistry of the atmosphere. The atmospheric changes are fast approaching the levels that trigger non- linear imbalances (tipping points in some jargon) that will leave us helpless to adapt to these changes. So, the local, observable changes in the weather serve (or should serve) as an alarm call.

None of Turkana Farms’ impacts are attributed to the increase in the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events. To show this, we would need more data.

Here is a summary of a very recent report compiled by NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) for the United States on 2012’s extreme weather and climate events:

Today, NOAA released preliminary information on extreme weather and climate events in the U.S. for 2012 that are known to have reached the $1 billion threshold in losses. As of December 20, NOAA estimates that the nation experienced 11 such events, to include seven severe weather/tornado events, two tropical storm/hurricane events, and the yearlong drought and associated wildfires.

These eleven events combined are believed to have caused 349 deaths, with the most significant losses of life occurring during Sandy (131) and the summer-long heat wave and associated drought, which caused over 123 direct deaths (though an estimate of the excess mortality due to heat stress is still unknown).

The eleven events include:

  • Southeast/Ohio Valley Tornadoes — March 2–3 2012
  • Texas Tornadoes — April 2–3 2012
  • Great Plains Tornadoes — April 13–14 2012
  • Midwest/Ohio Valley Severe Weather — April 28–May 1 2012
  • Southern Plains/Midwest/Northeast Severe Weather — May 25–30 2012
  • Rockies/Southwest Severe Weather — June 6–12 2012
  • Plains/East/Northeast Severe Weather (“Derecho”) — June 29–July 2 2012
  • Hurricane Isaac — August 26–31 2012
  • Western Wildfires — Summer–Fall, 2012
  • Hurricane Sandy — October 29–31 2012
  • U.S. Drought/Heatwave — throughout 2012

More from NOAA…

“2012 was warmest and second most extreme year on record for the contiguous U.S.”

“The average temperature for 2012 was 55.3°F, 3.2°F above the 20th century average, and 1.0°F above 1998, the previous warmest year.”

The impact is not localized to the United States: England was flooding, China is freezing and Australia is burning as described  in Sarah Lyall’s January 10, 2013 article in the New York Times,  “Heat, Flood or Icy Cold, Extreme Weather Rages Worldwide.”

A map of the very recent fire distribution in Australia where temperatures have exceeded 500C (1220F) is given below.

 

The official global average temperature and some of the distributional properties of this record are expected in a week. The anticipation is not for a global record breaking because of La-Nina, but a statistical adjustment for La-Nina can probably confirm the trend.

My friend from Turkana’s obvious question was – what can we do about this? As we will see in the coming blogs, we need some help to address it.

 

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Vive La France Part 2 – The Power of Hot Bodies

Posted on January 7, 2013 by climatechangefork

In a New York Times Op-Ed (December 29, 2012), Diane Ackerman described an alternative way to get energy that will not pollute the environment – the power of a crowd. The first paragraph is cited below:

As I waited with a throng of Parisians in the Rambuteau Metro station on a blustery day, my frozen toes finally began to thaw.  Alone we may have shivered, but together we brewed so much body heat that people began unbuttoning their coats. We might have been penguins crowding for warmth in Antarctica’s icy torment of winds.  Idly mingling, a human body radiates about 100 watts of excess heat, which can add up fast in confined spaces.

The article reminded me of another non-polluting attractive energy alternative in the form of power-generating exercise bicycles that were used in Lyon-France to “power” outdoor display devices that I described in my December 17, 2012 blog,  “Vive La France.”

I don’t know whether Ms. Ackerman is French, but it seems to me that the French have the capacity to inspire thinking out of the box.

As it happens, the Op-Ed was published before New Year’s Eve, and my French cousin and her son were our guests in New York. Her son was my source of information for the Dec. 17 blog, so, this time, I had her read the Op-Ed and asked for her opinion.

Her first reaction was that her father (my uncle – a psychiatrist – now deceased) thought about a similar scheme while holding an overactive screaming baby. He mentioned that all this energy could be very useful if channeled to, say, light a house. Reading further, she quietly mentioned that a more acceptable solution would be to hold  a crowded sex party in an enclosed space close to some freezing spaces. It sort of seems logical that moving sex parties to spaces that need heat would be more practical than moving Metro stations.

Similar to the Lyon biking experiment, it seems to be a good opportunity to go to the numbers and to some important physics.  (The physics can sometimes sound like a foreign language and, to many people, it is.  Wikipedia is a great help with the physics concepts that I will talk about, so please feel free to consult it if you need to.)

So – why do we emit about 100 watts of excess heat? 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.

Human bodies are obviously a form of visible matter. The amount of radiation that we radiate as excess heat depends only on the temperature and the surface area of our skin. These two parameters are routinely measured because they are indicative of our health conditions. Our skin surface area obviously varies with the individual but they range between 1.5 – 2 square meters (16.1 – 21.5 square feet). Our skin temperature is more complicated – it protects our body temperature so that it’s kept approximately constant at 370C (98.60F), but it strongly depends on the ambient temperature and the length of our exposure to the ambient temperature. Furthermore, different parts of our skin can be at different temperatures depending on the cover that we provide. The amount of excess heat (the blackbody radiation) that we emit is very sensitive to the temperature. It varies as the 4th power of the temperature but the temperature is measured in scales that we are not used to. The scale is the “absolute” temperature (or more often called the Kelvin scale after William Thomson, the 1st Baron Kelvin). We just take the temperature in Celsius scale and add 273 to get the temperature in the Kelvin scale.

Since the skin temperature is not very well known, for argument’s sake, I will take the 100 watts that Ms. Ackerman took and the average skin surface area at 1.75 meters square (19 square feet) and get a skin temperature of 270C (810F). This number is perfectly reasonable. A small electrical heater that I often use when my heating system is not doing its job is rated at 1.5kw (1500 watts) with an adjustment to lower power. This would require 15 people (crammed into my room) to supply the same heat. This is perfectly doable but a somewhat crowded substitute.

I can also try to calculate the relative environmental impact:  assume that the 15 people are making me “comfortable” for a full day, eating normally, consuming on average 2500 food calories for the day. Their emission of carbon dioxide amounts to approximately 11kg (24 lb) (For details on how to do these kind of calculations from first principles, see my book “Climate Change: The Fork at the End of Now” – Momentum Press – 2011.) My electric heater, at the full power of 1.5 kw and working for the full 12 hours, uses 18 kwh of electrical energy. Electricity is a secondary energy source. It needs a primary source to generate the electrical power. Based on conversion practices, it is limited by physical laws not to exceed an efficiency of around 30% (depends on the conversion temperatures). My electrical company mostly uses natural gas to generate its electricity. Based on this input – the carbon footprint of my electrical heater can be calculated to be 8.1 kg (17.8 lb).

As with the Lyon example, this idea doesn’t look too attractive at the moment.

But here we have an important mitigating element.

The carbon footprint that’s created by burning the natural gas that generates the electricity that’s heating the room with the heater is new carbon dioxide that contributes to the chemical changes in the atmosphere and thus directly contributes to climate change.

However, the carbon dioxide that is being exhaled by our 15 volunteers is generated through the metabolism of the food that they eat. Directly or indirectly (eating meat), the food is produced by processing green products (vegetables, fruit or feedstock for the animals) that grow by sequestering the same amount of carbon dioxide through the photosynthetic process. So, if we calculate the carbon footprints throughout the full cycle, the only net addition of greenhouse gas to the atmosphere should come through externalities such as burning the fuel needed for the cultivation of the agricultural products.  And that number should be considerably smaller than that from the fuel that is needed to generate the needed electricity in the room.

So… if anyone wishes to try using hot bodies as an energy generating alternative, please let me know the results!

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Happy New Year: We are Now Part of Nature

Posted on December 31, 2012 by climatechangefork

My intention was for this to be a very positive blog, focusing on what I have learned during 2012 from my students and all the commentators that posted their comments on this blog, emailed me directly their comments or expressed them in any other form. There has been a lot for which to be thankful. I started this blog in April— I was reluctant to engage and totally inexperienced. The staff of LCG Communications  has encouraged me and held my hand along the way. Some of my students have added their comments here on issues that that were discussed in class, while another class, which was focused on adaptation to Climate Change in New York City, presents their findings on a web page.

A few days ago, my focus changed. I got an unsolicited email from an organization called Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP).

This organization was founded by Fred Singer in 1990 and is privately financed. It can be “safely” categorized as a denier site, even with all the reservations for the term that I wrote about in earlier blogs. The email was basically a solicitation for a contribution. I would have ignored it, however it started with a “quote of the week,” given below:

Quote of the Week:

Is this what science has become? I hope not. But it is what it will become, unless there is a concerted effort by leading scientists to aggressively separate science from policy. The late Philip Handler, former president of the National Academy of Sciences, said that “Scientists best serve public policy by living within the ethics of science, not those of politics. If the scientific community will not unfrock the charlatans, the public will not discern the difference-science and the nation will suffer.” Personally, I don’t worry about the nation. But I do worry about science.

Michael Crichton [H/t Gordon Fulks]

The quote, from Michael Crichton, refers to a quote from Gordon Fulks. Michael Crichton was a productive and great writer. He is a writer of bestsellers such as The Andromeda Strain (1969), Jurassic Park (1990), Rising Sun (1992), Timeline (1999) and Prey. I have read most of his books and greatly enjoyed them. He was a Medical Doctor that graduated from Harvard and did his postdoctoral training at the Salk Institute.  He died on November 2008. In 2004 he wrote The State of Fear, in which he accused scientists of being alarmists about Climate Change in order to increase their research grants. I have recommended that my Climate Change students read this book as an enjoyable entry to the deniers’ world. Crichton taught Anthropology and Writing, but he was not a practicing scientist.

Gordon Fulks was a physicist who served as an academic adviser to the Cascade Policy Institute. The following sentence, which caught my attention, is attributed to him: “Scientists best serve public policy by living within the ethics of science, not those of politics. If the scientific community will not unfrock the charlatans, the public will not discern the difference – science and the nation will suffer.” I don’t want to interpret the statement as a declaration that the ethics of scientists are “naturally” superior to those of politicians so I will interpret it as a call for the two to be separated. This presents a serious problem – if the call is to separate the two – why should the politicians fund the scientists?

One might argue that Michael Crichton  and/or Gordon Fulks have questionable qualifications to speak for science.

Well – I am member of a professional society whose members claim to be the ultimate culmination of science – the American Physical Society. A few weeks ago, I posted a blog (December 10) which described some of the reactions that I got from Physics faculty members during a seminar that I gave on Climate Change. A comment to this post suggested declaring that I would not consider a thoughtful response from anybody that hadn’t published at least two articles on Climate Change in peer reviewed publications. Such a “policy” would create a serious problem. I have argued before (May 7) that the last thing we need is to appoint climate scientists to be our epistemological lawyers. Physicists, regardless of their publication record, should have opinions on such issues and, like everybody else; they have a full right to be listened to.

I will climb higher: The American Physical Society (APS) is the professional home to about 50,000 physicists, me included. On November 18, 2007 they issued a statement about Climate Change, shown below.

Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are changing the atmosphere in ways that affect the Earth’s climate. Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide as well as methane, nitrous oxide and other gases. They are emitted from fossil fuel combustion and a range of industrial and agricultural processes. The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring.

If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now. Because the complexity of the climate makes accurate prediction difficult, the APS urges an enhanced effort to understand the effects of human activity on the Earth’s climate, and to provide the technological options for meeting the climate challenge in the near and longer terms. The APS also urges governments, universities, national laboratories and its membership to support policies and actions that will reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.

Similar statements came from other scientific professional societies to constitute the evidence that “most” scientists do agree with the spirit of the statement.

Most is not all. Some very prominent physicists did not agree. Among them are such towering (but retired) physicists as Freeman Dyson and the Nobel winner Ivar Giaever, who left the Society as a result of the statement. This led to a petition to either retract the statement or to seriously modify it. The petition was overwhelmingly rejected by the membership (One blogger gave it 0.45% acceptance by the membership). However, as a direct result of this interest, a new division of the Society was formed that is dedicated to Climate Change. The new division is the “Topical Group on the Physics of Climate” (GPC). The following paragraph is a centerpiece of the guidelines to this new group:

The objective of the GPC shall be to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge concerning the physics, measurement, and modeling of climate processes, within the domain of natural science and outside the domains of societal impact and policy, legislation and broader societal issues. The objective includes the integration of scientific knowledge and analysis methods across disciplines to address the dynamical complexities and uncertainties of climate physics. Broad areas of initial scientific inquiry are described in the Areas of Interest below. These are expected to evolve with scientific progress, while remaining entirely within the domain of natural science.

The first sentence in this paragraph is for me the key to the thinking:  “The objective of the GPC shall be to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge concerning the physics, measurement, and modeling of climate processes, within the domain of natural science and outside the domains of societal impact and policy, legislation and broader societal issues” – in other words, ignore the human impact – concentrate on the science. This emphasis is being enforced in the guideline for submission of talks in a conference – “Contributed talks should focus on climate physics, without reference to issues of policy, legislation, or society. The Focus Session may include one or more invited presentations (from email distributed to members).”

This still, in my vocabulary, puts them in the deniers category (September 3 blog).

The high point in this saga can probably be found in the December issue of the journal “Physics Today,” the membership journal of the American Institute of Physics. To summarize 2012, the editors have tried to answer the question, “Which items on Physics Today’s website were the most popular in 2012?”.

Here is the direct quote from the email that I received as a member before delivery of the journal:

“The most popular item on Physics Today’s website in 2012 was not our coverage of the discovery of the Higgs boson or the announcement of the year’s Nobel Prize in Physics. The top spot went instead to David Kramer’s short news story, “NASA announces a new Mars mission,” which appeared on 22 August in the Politics and Policy department. Apparently, the story owes its popularity to being picked up by Reddit, a social news site. Of course, the story is also a concise and informative summary of a future mission!

Science controversies past and present

Besides the capriciousness of what gets picked by social media or online aggregators, online popularity lists also reveal what people care most about. The second most-viewed item in 2012 was a feature article from October 2011. In “Science controversies past and present,” Steven Sherwood placed anthropogenic climate change in the same category as Nicolaus Copernicus’s Sun-centric solar system and Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity—that is, as a once-controversial idea that would later become widely accepted. The possibility that anthropogenic climate change might be empirically vindicated riled some online readers enough to comment extensively on the article and to share it with their skeptical friends, acquaintances, and colleagues. The article continued to attract (mostly hostile) comments for months after it had originally appeared.

Richard Somerville and Susan Hassol’s feature article, “Communicating the science of climate change,” appeared in the same issue as Sherwood’s and was the third most viewed article of 2012. The most recent comment was posted last month! In fifth place came Steven Corneliussen’s Science and the Media column about a news story in the 27 April issue of Science magazine. The story’s topic was a claim, published in Physical Review Letters, that the classic formula for the Lorentz force is inconsistent with Einstein’s special theory of relativity. Corneliussen is not a physicist, but evidently his journalistic nose for provocative science proved acute.

More climate change

“You should resign, and if you don’t, I’ll work to see that you are fired” is one example of the threats that climate scientists have received for claiming, on the basis of their experiments, simulations, and theories, that humanity’s emission of greenhouse gases is warming Earth’s troposphere. Physics Today’s Toni Feder reported on those threats and the impact they’re having on climate scientists’ lives for February’s Issues and Events department.

Her story was the sixth most-viewed item in 2012. Like the magazine’s other coverage of climate change, it attracted vitriolic comments, including this one, which, while seeking to downplay the story, inadvertently exemplified the hostility that climate scientists face:

“Oh, puleeeeze…”

I think that being put into the same category as “Nicolaus Copernicus’ Sun-centric solar system and Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity” is a great place to start 2013.

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A Stuttering Energy Transition

Posted on December 24, 2012 by climatechangefork


Figure 1

The EIA (Energy Information Administration) data (see October 15 blog) clearly shows that the US is in the midst of an energy transition. It may not be exactly the one needed to mitigate climate change – but we’re certainly on our way there through some fortunate, market driven, intermediaries. In this case, the transition has mostly been from heavy reliance on coal to a dominant use of natural gas. Parallel to this transition we see a more welcome, not yet market driven, transition away from fossil fuels. Considering that the estimated lifetime of a power plant is about 40 years, we still have many coal power plants to retire, but we at least have time to do so. Such is the nature of a transition. However I don’t expect such a transition to be particularly smooth, consisting of regular replacement of fossil energy sources with less polluting ones. I expect it to be a stuttering transition that requires our full collective ingenuity. Let me try to describe here some of this stuttering.

Recently, the British government did the “right thing.” They announced changes in energy regulations (New York Times – 11/24/2012) that are intended to encourage use of alternative energy sources and nuclear energy while at the same time ensuring that enough power will be supplied to satisfy future energy needs. As reported, the changes increase the levies on consumers and business to help support electricity generation, based on low carbon sources to a total of £9.8 billion by 2020 from the present £2.35 billion. This is, by any other name, a carbon tax that is being collected on top of the Cap and Trade policy that they already share with the rest of the European Union, but with a specification of how the money is intended to be used. This should add about 2% to an average electrical bill. The British government is concerned that the European Union (EU) will raise objections because the EU is against any government support of mature technology (in this case – nuclear).

Direct solar energy, such as photovoltaic and photothermal, don’t show up in the American electricity production in Figure 1. Its share, while still too small to register, is growing fast. Figure 2 shows changes in cost per kWh (kilowatt hour) from 2005 with projections to 2031. The Figure also shows the projected intersection with projected average electricity cost around 2020. Figure 3 shows a major consequence of the price decrease: the global increase in solar cell production over the last 12 years. However, Figure 4, taken from the same source as Figure 3, shows the global distribution of the production effort in 2010. Close to half of the production has originated in the People’s Republic of China.

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4

This distribution and price structure has major consequences.

Solyndra, a California-based solar panel manufacturer, declared bankruptcy in August 2011 after having received $528 million in federal loan guarantee (Story in NYT – 11/30/2012). The loan guarantee was part of the 2009 stimulus package, designed in part to help create jobs in new, non-carbon-based, energy industries. It became one of the loudest focal points of the 2012 presidential elections and subject to congressional investigations that focused on the hazards of the government picking winners and losers in the alternative energy industries. The main reason for the bankruptcy was the sharp drop in price – partially created by the lower cost of Chinese cells, which flooded the market with considerable help from the Chinese government. Solyndra and the American taxpayers were not the only casualties. Figure 5 shows the stock price of one of the better-known American solar cell companies – First Solar. Those who bought the stock at around $50 in February, for example, didn’t do so well – for the same reasons that Solyndra went bankrupt.

Figure 5  

Did the Chinese do better? As it turns out, China’s manufacturing capacity in photovoltaics and wind turbines soared even faster than the world’s demand did, creating a large over-supply and a consequent price drop. Great for a global energy transition, but not so great for the manufacturers, their employees and the State and the banks that helped to finance them (New York Times 10/5 20012).  In the current situation, many of the manufacturers end up loosing $1 for every $3 they sell. The lower costs are still considerably higher per-energy unit when compared to the energy generated by the plentiful coal in China – thus contributing to a global energy transition, but not necessarily to a transition in China.

The dynamics of replacing coal with wind power (another form of solar energy that does show up in Figure 1) went through similar setbacks to those I have explored for photovoltaics. Since the numbers here were greater (and the manufacturers were located in more competitive states for the presidential election), the US has decided to impose 30% duties on Chinese turbines – thus increasing their price and most likely slowing the transition.

Since, to quote Governor Romney, Climate Change is being referred to as Global Warming and not American Warming, price competition in energy sources designed to remedy the situation should be welcomed as important contributions to a solution and not developed primarily as a job creation activity. The same holds for the aspiration, expressed by both parties, for energy independence.

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Vive La France

Posted on December 17, 2012 by climatechangefork

The Festival of Lights in Lyon, France, expresses gratitude to Mary, mother of Jesus, on December 8 every year.

My French 2nd cousin who lives in Paris emailed me that this year, one central display, shown below, was being powered by electrical power generated by visitors exercising on specially equipped exercise bicycles.

The two photographs below were taken from here.

Festival of Lights – 2012 – Lyon – France

What a great idea! I immediately thought about Times Square in NYC, where I live, and how to apply the same concept. My second though was – we need some numbers.

Times Square, NYC

A photograph of a power generating exercise bicycle is shown below. I didn’t do market research, but a superficial inquiry informed me that there are few American manufacturers of such bikes, and presently their main use is as exercise bikes with the generated electricity delivered back to the electrical network to compensate for some of the equipment costs.

 Power generating exercise bike

A top shape athlete can generate up to 500 Watts on one of these bikes, while an “average” patron can generate 200 Watts.

I went to Times Square in NYC for an estimate of what it would take to illuminate some of the displays there. On a previous occasion, for a different use, I tried to find out the electrical consumption of the advertising displays in Times Square. I was not able to get the information. So, for the present objective I have tried to estimate the needs.

The power requirement of a P10 Outdoor SMD LED display is 1200 Watts/m2  (111.5Watts/ft2). A logical place to put the bicycles would be in the heart of Times Square between 45th and 47th streets, along 7th avenue. Since most of this area is traffic free, it could easily accommodate the bikes. The length of this stretch is about 500 ft. If we covered the area with a continuous stretch of 100m2 (1076ft2) displays of 4/3 aspect ratio (37.7ft length and 28.5 ft height) we will need 27 displays. This will amount to 29,050ft2 of display area that will require 3.2MW (Megawatts or million watts) power. This is the approximate power that can be generated by one large wind turbine or 16,000 active, “mediocre” exercise bikers. This is a large crowd for this stretch of New York City. The bikers would have the obvious incentive that exercise would enable them to see a popular great site illuminated, while at the same time keeping themselves in shape and reducing the carbon footprint on the environment.

If I need such a large crowd of sweating bikers for Times Square – how can Lyon pull it off?   My French cousin went to work to get additional information. He was able to contact a person in Lyon’s City Hall, who provided some enlightenment. For the animation, which is named “Magic Cube,” 30 bikes were wired to the cube. Over four days, 10,000 visitors used the bikes. The Cube, like any other display, was plugged into the electrical network, and draws its power from a “conventional” (in France more than 70% powered by nuclear power) grid – not the bikes. The bikes are used instead to change/modify the colors of the Cube.

I found this a bit disappointing, but if nothing else, it re-emphases the need to get more data on what is currently possible, and what could become possible for the future.

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Two Shades of Audience

Posted on December 10, 2012 by climatechangefork

Over the last two weeks, I was invited to give two different talks. One was to take place as part of another school’s Physics Department’s seminar program, and the other as part of an Economics Student Club at my own school. The economics meeting, which was organized by students, was a joint presentation with an Economics professor and was designed to show two perspectives in the need for an energy transition from “green to business” model.

I decided to think about the two talks as a single unit with some symmetry, and design them accordingly. My impression was that the audience at the Physics Department talk would consist of physics students and faculty, while the audience in the Economics Student Club would naturally be comprised mainly of students majoring in economics. I wanted the message to the physicists to be that career opportunities in physics extend well beyond textbook ideas of physics; that they can aspire broadly to be involved in any activity – it is their quantitative outlook that differentiates them from workers with a different background. To do that, I decided to bring my own career choices, present research activities, and life experiences to the forefront. I was also trying to demonstrate to the economics students that they should devote some of their time to the study of the language and fundamentals of the sciences. Given the consistently increasing interactive role humans have in the physical environment (Climate Change is a prime example here—see my June 25 blog), the physical environment will, in turn (in my opinion), take an increasing role in the economic decisions that society must make.

As often happens on such occasions, the reality turned out to be a bit different. The talk for the Physics Department started with the two figures below.

IPCC Equilibrium global mean temperature increase above preindustrialIPCC Ecosystem Risks ForkThese are often used figures that were taken from the last IPCC report (the second figure was already mentioned in my September 24 blog) (I showed much more recent figures, taken from the November 2012 World Bank sponsored report, later in the talk). I regularly use them as a quantitative introduction to my frequent discussion of our much-needed energy transition.

In this particular talk I didn’t go much further in talking about them. I was expecting familiarity with the figures and wanted to get quickly to what I considered the focus of the talk. (I was also working with the probably unconscious expectation that I was not dealing with an audience of deniers) I mentioned the data in the first figure as “simple spectroscopy” – a familiar branch in physics. I did emphasize the uncertainty that is visible in the band of the temperature response to atmospheric consequences of carbon dioxide. The purpose was to differentiate this figure from the second one, which is based on two specific scenarios and represents a projection of the future.

Well – I got a bucket thrown at me (figuratively speaking). The essence of the comments was that this is bad science: much worst science than what physicists are doing for example in figuring out properties of semiconductors— bad science because it cannot be described by a set of differential equations. I was told that in two hours, one of the physicists could come up with his/her own scenario – implying the arbitrary nature of analyzing a future based on projected scenarios. Surely, science with such uncertainty should not form the basis for action that could result in a reduction of our standard of living.

Since I included my Holocaust background (May 14 blog) later in my talk, it was strongly suggested to me to disconnect the two issues, because denying the climate change might lead to denying of the Holocaust.

I ended up in a completely defensive mode that I was not prepared for. In fact, I strongly suspect that what I achieved with the students that were present was the exact opposite of what I had intended.

The dynamics of the second talk were different — calmer. My colleague’s perspective was based on a more general perspective (shared by many economists) that the future, and our ability to predict it, needs to be taken with a large grain of salt. As evidence, he mentioned my data from papers by M. King Hubbert (that I discussed in my October 29 blog post), which showed not only the projected oil supply in the US but also a possible energy transition out of the projected shortage. My colleague did mention the recent advances in technology (Fracking) to drill for natural gas and oil, which are now causing a major shift in our energy usage. An issue that was of great interest to the students was the recent article by Justin Gillis (New York Times, December 5, 2012) titled “To Stop Climate Change, Students Aim at College Portfolios.” I was ambivalent about the tactic, mainly because of its dotted history, but I was admiring the students’ dedication to promote this issue, whose values I share. As far as encouraging studying science, it remains to be seen how effective I was.

Since my objective is to democratize the climate change issue as best I can, it is imperative, at least on my part, to continue to engage with diverse audiences and adapt my response accordingly. This means I will probably meet with varying responses and levels of success in the future, depending on my audience. In any case, it will be a learning experience, hopefully for both my audience and me.

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Tackling Environmental Justice: Sovereign State against the Individual.

Posted on December 3, 2012 by climatechangefork

Last week, I started the discussion of how developing countries can contribute to alleviating anthropogenic (human caused) climate change.  The main goal is to mitigate climate change by achieving a global agreement to transition to more sustainable energy choices. I made mention of the important role efficiency could play for developing countries in using energy resources to enhance their GDP. (Interestingly, the same date that I posted last week also marks the beginning of the COP18 Doha Climate Change Conference to start the continuing efforts to reach global agreements on mitigation and adaptation policies.) Following Sandy’s impact on the most populated region in the States, and President Obama’s recent reelection, there is now some optimism that the United Stated might show heightened leadership in the struggle against climate change. I started the November 26 blog with Governor Romney’s response to a ScienceDebate question about his thoughts on Climate Change. I will repeat the quote here in order to emphasize a different issue:

The reality is that the problem is called Global Warming, not America Warming. China long ago passed America as the leading emitter of greenhouse gases. Developed world emissions have leveled off while developing world emissions continue to grow rapidly, and developing nations have no interest in accepting economic constraints to change that dynamic. In this context, the primary effect of unilateral action by the U.S. to impose costs on its own emissions will be to shift industrial activity overseas to nations whose industrial processes are more emissions-intensive and less environmentally friendly. That result may make environmentalists feel better, but it will not better the environment.

I would like to explore this claim that compares China to the United States in terms of overall responsibility to reduce its carbon footprint by shifting its energy sources. It is important because Governor Romney’s statement can be understood as advocating that as long as China does not reduce its carbon footprint, the US will follow suit, focusing only on R&D in order to not sacrifice economic advantages to China. The argument has a NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) flavor that I discussed in a previous blog (June 18) – we recognize the need to act, but as long as China and other developing countries refuse to get involved, we will deny our own duty.

In the table below I ask undergraduates from my course (General Education – no prerequisites) to use primary sources to collect some relevant data about four countries and the World, and to answer a few questions by evaluating this data. I have filled in part of the table with the appropriate data for 2008 – the last year that data were available for the indicators in which I was interested.  

Fill up the following table:

Rank the four countries in terms of total energy use and CO2 emissions.

  1.   Compare (in %) the top user and emitter with World use and emission.
  2.   Rank the four countries in terms of energy use and CO2 emission per capita, and compare the numbers with global data.
  3.   If the GDP growth continues – how many years will it take China to catch up to the US?
  4.   If the GDP/Capita growth continues – how many years it will take China to catch up to the US?
  5.   What will the World’s GDP be at that time?
  6.   What will the World’s population be at that time?
  7.   If you assume that the last three terms of the IPAT equation will not change – what will the World’s CO2 emission be at that time?
  8.   Assume that only half of the emissions will stay in the atmosphere and that the Climate Sensitivity is 2.50C for doubling the concentration of CO2 compared to the pre-industrial levels – what will the climate consequences of 8 be?

Problems started with the first question – Half of the class has ranked both energy use and Carbon Dioxide emission in the following order – US, Germany, China and India.

Now – try it yourself and make a comment.

Large outcry was heard when answering the second question – “Professor – how it can be that the top energy user (US) is using 417% of the World’s total usage? Isn’t the US part of the World?”

Good question – yes it is. When Governor Romney uses carbon emissions from China and the US as criteria for needed efforts to curtail these emissions – what number should he be using – the number per person or the number per country? For me, it is a simple issue of Environmental Justice – every person is equal in his or her right for economic development, and comparisons should be based on people, not countries.

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Tackling Environmental Justice: a Global Perspective.

Posted on November 26, 2012 by climatechangefork

In a previous blog (November 5) I wrote about Governor Romney’s response to a direct question from ScienceDebate about his thoughts on Climate Change. The elections are now over, but the issues are still with us. I want to discuss here one important and very relevant aspect of his response. I am quoting it below:

The reality is that the problem is called Global Warming, not America Warming. China long ago passed America as the leading emitter of greenhouse gases. Developed world emissions have leveled off while developing world emissions continue to grow rapidly, and developing nations have no interest in accepting economic constraints to change that dynamic. In this context, the primary effect of unilateral action by the U.S. to impose costs on its own emissions will be to shift industrial activity overseas to nations whose industrial processes are more emissions-intensive and less environmentally friendly. That result may make environmentalists feel better, but it will not better the environment

This statement needs to be analyzed carefully, because it holds the key to offering a solution. A year ago (last October) the World population surpassed 7 billion; when I was born in 1939, the world population was about 2 billion. The median UN estimate for 2050 predicts a global population of 9.2 billion, with about 85% of the people residing in what we identify now as developing and less developed countries (this includes China, as singled out by Governor Romney) (Science 333, 540 (2011)).

Here are the 2008 relevant data for China and the US: Carbon Dioxide emissions (in thousands metric tons) – China – 7.031 million; US – 5.461 million; Carbon Dioxide per person (in metric tons) – China 5.3; US – 18; GDP (in current US $) – China – 4.5 trillion; US – 14.2 trillion; GDP per person (US $) – China – 3,414; US – 46,760; GDP growth (in %) – China – 9.6; US – (- 0.4).

I chose 2008, because this was the latest year that World Bank data was available for all the indicators that I chose to post here (I realize that 2008 was the start of a financial crisis in the US and other countries, but not in China).

There is a useful identity that correlates the environmental impacts (greenhouse gases, in Governor’s Romney statement) with the other indicators. The equation is known as the IPAT equation (or I=PAT), which stands for Impact Population Affluence Technology. The equation was proposed independently by two research teams; one consists of Paul R. Ehrlich and John Holdren (now President Obama’s Science Adviser), while the other is led by Barry Commoner (P.R. Ehrlich and J.P. Holdren; Bulletin of Atmospheric Science 28:16 (1972). B. Commoner; Bulletin of Atmospheric Science 28:42 (1972).)

The identity takes the following form:

Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology

Almost all of the future scenarios for climate change make separate estimates of the indicators in this equation. The difference factor of 15 in GDP/Person (measure of affluence), between the average Chinese and average American makes it clear that the Chinese and the rest of the developing world will do everything they can to try to “even the score” with the developed world. The global challenge is how to do this while at the same time minimizing the environmental impact.

The figure below, taken from my book, shows the dependence of the GDP/Person on Energy Use/Person for 26 countries, including both developing and developed countries. The data for this graph were taken from the 2002 CIA World Factbook.

On superficial observation, the dependence in the graph looks linear. Linear dependence indicates that the energy intensity, defined as the ratio of GDP/Energy Use, is constant and independent of the GDP of a country. The energy intensity is a true measure of the efficiency of energy use. The approximate independence of the energy intensity to GDP, directly contradicts the often-heard perception that developed countries use their energy more efficiently than developing countries.

More careful observation shows (Yevgeniy Ostrovskiy, Michael Cheng and Micha Tomkiewicz; “Intensive and Extensive Parametrization of Energy Use and Income in US States and in Global Environments”; International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts and Responses; 12 – 13 July 2012; Seattle Washington) that the energy intensity is weakly dependent on the GDP (inverse square root dependence), not because developed countries are more efficient in their use of energy, but because service starts to play bigger and bigger roles in developed countries and is considerably less energy dependent as compared to heavy industry.

In the next few blogs I will focus on the difficulties in reaching an international agreement on limiting the use of fossil fuel, what China and other developing countries are doing to change their energy use, and how the USA is reacting to these developments.

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Tackling Environmental Justice: a Local Perspective.

Posted on November 19, 2012 by climatechangefork

About a week ago, I went to Stony Brook University, where I am collaborating with Prof. Lori Scarlatos from the Department of Technology and Society, in constructing a simulation/game. Its aim is to allow students (and everybody else) to find out how the world would change based on certain key decisions, and then compare the results with the actual world. The simulation/game incorporates 25 autonomous country agents, interacting with a single world entity. Populated with data from the World Bank, British Petroleum, and the US Energy Information Administration, these countries represent 75% of the world’s population, living in both developed and developing countries around the world. The players are the “rulers” of their respective countries and are engaged in their energy management.

To get to Stony Brook, I took the LIRR (Long Island Rail Road) train. On my way (from Brooklyn) I had to change trains twice. I take this trip frequently, approximately at the same departing time and on the same day of the week. On my way, I noticed that the volume of passengers was considerably higher than I used to observe. It might have been completely anecdotal, but my physicist training was trying immediately to correlate it with recent events. I did make an effort to get real data from the MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority), which runs the trains, but I didn’t get any response. My immediate next thought was to correlate the volume of passengers with the aftermath of Sandy, which had hit the North East about 10 days earlier and had a major impact on all modes of transportation in the region. One of the longer lasting impacts was the fuel shortage, which forced the governors of New York and New Jersey to ration fuel by imposing odd/even day filling times based on the last digit of cars’ license plates. The order immediately had soothing effects on the length of the lines around gas stations.

My cause/effect association was that people that had difficulty getting gas decided instead to take public transportation. My thinking followed with the “dreadful” and “frightening” thought that such a policy might be considered even in calm times as a possible weapon to fight Climate Change.

About the same time, I read a New York Times (November 9, 2012) article by Casey B. Mulligan titled, “Gasoline Lines are Unnecessary.” The following paragraphs from the article summarize the perspective:

Waiting in line is a waste of time. The people there were certainly not helping bring more gasoline to the region and could instead be helping rebuild or could be productive in other ways.

Economists on the right and on the left agree that market prices – prices that reflect both supply and demand location by location – are much better at allocating scarce resources in extreme situations like the storm’s aftermath. But state and local government regulations, in the form of antigouging laws, effectively outlawed market pricing.

If officials had allowed the price system to work, it would have alleviated lines in a number of ways. As suppliers seek the maximum profit, temporary and extraordinary prices encourage them (and make it affordable for them) to go to extraordinary lengths to get the electricity and fuel needed to have gasoline available to customers where it is needed the most.

Were they permitted, high prices would also have encouraged customers to economize creatively on their usage and acquisition of gasoline. If it had cost $10 or $15 a gallon, some people on those lines might have been willing to delay vehicle usage, leaving more for people who were willing to pay that price or who had no other choice.

The net result from both mechanisms to shorten the gas lines should have produced similar outcome. The makeup of the affected populations, however, would have been different. In the first case, people that didn’t want to be bothered with detailed planning and that could freely choose between public transportation and driving, would have shifted to public transportation. In the second case, people that couldn’t afford to pay the higher gas prices, would have had to shift regardless of planning.

The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) defines Environmental Justice as:

Environmental Justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, culture, national origin, income, and educational levels with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of protective environmental… laws, regulations, and policies.

The policy advocated by Prof. Mulligan is a clear example of environmental injustice.

New York City is at the forefront of urban areas when it comes to formulating policies that are designed to monitor the effects of Climate Change. In 2007, the city launched PlaNYC2030, to coordinate sustainability planning. It combines 25 city agencies, in preparation for population increase, strengthening the local economy  and mitigating Climate Change. As part of this effort, a panel was created to evaluate NYC’s adaptation needs with regards to Climate Change. The report was issued in 2010. My students are now trying to determine how the city is implementing these recommendations. It is a semester long effort that can be followed online.

A quick search of PlaNYC2030’s regard for Environmental Justice issues came up wanting. Recently (August 2012), the New York City Council, with support from the Mayor, recognized this omission. In response, they voted in favor of a new bill that would enlarge the purview of the Climate Change Panel and the Climate Change Task Force to focus not only on infrastructure development, but also on populations that are especially vulnerable to extreme weather events – such as the elderly, children and the poor. That legislation also makes the Panel and the Task Force permanent.

In the next blog I will try to show that dealing with Environmental Justice issues on a global scale is not only the right thing to do but is also the key to finding solutions to these problems that affect us all.

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