Climate Feedback

USA Today has staked out the environmental-news angle on the annual American Psychological Association conference, ongoing this weekend. The behemoth meeting has some 16,000 attendees flocking to talks on everything from Pharmacotherapy to Peace Psychology. Those are actual topic headings in the programme, whereas Green Psychology is not. But the paper’s reporter Sharon Jayson cleverly rounds up a few 'green' presentations - new, unpublished research about how sustainability messages filter through the brain of the poor media-besieged layperson.

For example, scolding doesn’t work - and may lead the scolded to quietly give up on greening up. Though this study surveyed undergraduates, there is preliminary evidence that its findings also apply to presidential administrations.

Continue reading "Undergraduates are rational, and other findings from Green Psychology" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on August 15, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Communicating Climate Change, In the News, Society | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In this week’s issue of Nature, we look into an ongoing debate about research priorities within the National Center for Atmospheric Research, one of the United States’ main climate research facilities in Boulder, Colorado.

Our story follows up on an earlier piece in the New York Times by Andrew Revkin, who initially broke the news that NCAR was laying off the well-respected political scientist Michael Glantz. Revkin also covered the story in his Dot Earth blog.

Such stories frequently peel apart like onions, and this one was no different. Glantz is not alone in his belief that NCAR is turning its back on the social sciences. NCAR management says it respects Glantz work but is in a budgetary bind. University of Colorado political scientist Roger Pielke Jr. questions NCAR’s numbers in his blog.

Meanwhile, other NCAR scientists who have worked in the social science program say they are comfortable with their positions. And some are worried that NCAR is falling behind on its basic sciences and climate modelling. Is this not the foundation for such a scientific institution?

Continue reading "Climate research funding slashed " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on August 13, 2008
Categories: Features, In the News, Jeff Tollefson, Society | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Protests at the climate camp in Kingsnorth, Kent, the site of a proposed new coal fired power plant, reached a climax this weekend, as reported by various news sources. Demonstrators, who promised to reach the site by air, land and sea, reached about 3,000 in number during the course of the week, but – met by some 1,500 police officers - failed to halt business at the site’s existing plant.

There was an excellent article in Saturday’s Guardian on how the outcome of Kingnorth will have implications for similar plants under development worldwide. In total, approx 100 similar plants are in the planning stage – more than half of these are in China, with the others split between the UK, Germany and the US – and governments are watching closely to see what decision is taken in the UK.

The main question is whether the UK government, which has argued for tough international regulations on climate change, will allow the power plant to go ahead without carbon capture and storage (CCS). UK energy minister Malcolm Wicks argues that new coal fired power plants such as the one being proposed in Kent are needed to demonstrate the feasibility of CCS technology, which remains unproven. This may be true, but if demonstrating CCS really is the priority, then why is it that there is no obligation for the owners of Kingsnorth to use CCS, should it be proven?

Continue reading "Debate on coal heats up as climate protests reach climax" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on August 10, 2008
Categories: Energy, In the News, Olive Heffernan, Politics, Society, Technology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A couple of weeks into the early reporting for a story on the prospects for advanced coal use in China, which I wrote for the latest issue of Nature, I started to get nervous. I had already talked to several Western researchers and observers, but our first major contact in China fell through (for reasons that were never entirely clear) and the dozens of emails I sent out to Chinese scientists and policymakers simply disappeared into a void.

But our thesis seemed sound, and everybody I talked to who had experience in China suggested that things would fall into place once I got on the ground, made a few contacts and then started working the network via cell-phone. In the end, we decided to give it a go.

Jane Qiu, a Nature correspondent stationed in Beijing, was able to set up several interviews in advance, and we had a clean coal conference in Shanghai as a backstop. And earlier reporting eventually paid off in a big way as a few key industry and university contacts came through, just days before I hopped on the plane.

Continue reading "Nature takes a closer look at coal in China" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on July 28, 2008
Categories: Energy, Features, In the News, Society, Technology | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A ruling came in yesterday on complaints about the UK documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle. On The Great Beyond, Katharine Sanderson notes that despite very negative headlines about the ruling,

you might say that Channel 4 got off pretty lightly for their documentary that suggested that global warming wasn’t caused by humans burning fossil fuels. Ofcom [the complaint board] charged the programme with misrepresenting certain scientists, which leads to those critical headlines, but ultimately the regulators said that the programme didn’t mislead viewers.

Continue reading "Slap on the wrist for 'Swindle'" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on July 22, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Communicating Climate Change, In the News, Society | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Toyako, Japan-

I finally arrived at the G8 summit this morning after somewhat of an arduous journey. Not that I didn’t think it would be a schlep to Hokkaido from London, but I hadn’t quite bargained on the detour that was in store.

Having handed over the logistics completely to our trusted travel agent, I sort of hoped I’d end up in the right place. On taking off from Tokyo, though, I decided to plan my journey from the airport (somewhat late, maybe, I know!) and realised I was headed for a remote outpost nearer to Russia than the location of the G8 Summit. Though still in Hokkaido, Wakkanai is a small fishing port known for spotting harp seals and drying kelp; it’s about as far north as you can go in Japan, some 60km from Russia, and a good eight hours overland from my intended destination.

Luckily for me, an Italian reporter and a Nigerian sherpa had found themselves in the same predicament, and so we shared the long trip back, which was fun, if a bit like something from an Aki Kaurismaki film.

It certainly seems that the organisers of this year’s summit went of their way to host it in a remote location where the customary protests that accompany the event could be kept at a distance. Few protestors reached the resort of Toyako itself, where world leaders arrived yesterday, but more than 1,000 marched in Sapporo (the city I should have flown in to!) over the weekend.

The media are for the most part more than an hour away from the actual event in mountain lodges, and security measures for photo opportunities are super tight. Today has largely been taken up with formalities such as meetings between individual heads of states, photo shoots and fine dining experiences (whilst discussing world food shortages, no doubt).

But talks should get down to details tomorrow…

Olive Heffernan

Image: Train station at Wakkanai, Hokkaido

Posted by Olive Heffernan on July 07, 2008
Categories: Features, G8 Summit 2008, In the News, Olive Heffernan, Society | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Development economist Jeffrey Sachs, famous for the economic turnarounds he's helped engineer as an advisor to Latin American and Eastern European governments, is also known for his optimism that the living standards of the world's poorest can be raised much higher without sacrificing either the wealth of the industrialized world or crucial natural resources. But among analysts of global change, optimism is relative. "I believe that there is most likely a path of sustainable development, but we can't quite be sure," Sachs told a sold-out lecture hall at the London Zoo last night. "It's a question mark."

Sachs spoke on big themes from his new book Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet, notably the need for expansion beyond market-based thinking to face problems not dreamt of in Adam Smith's philosophy. Before and after this rousing overview (if you'd bet ahead of time that Sachs would quote John F. Kennedy at length, you'd have won), I had the chance to get some nittier, grittier details on how Sachs wants to deal with climate change.

More and better government investment in foreign aid and green tech is the number-one key for Sachs - only the US presidential turnover seemed to run a close second, and cap-and-trading was off in the distance. So he didn't hesitate to offer a laundry list of projects that he thinks need much more political commitment - among them carbon capture and storage, passively heated and cooled green buildings, and super duper climate computers.

Technological solutions often raise ownership problems, though. If, for example, the agrobiotech industry produces new 'climate-proof' crop varieties that survive floods and droughts - an innovation Sachs welcomed at a recent climate modelling summit - can the developing world afford to buy the seeds?

"One of the things we’ve learned from the battle over access to anti-retroviral medicines," Sachs said - and this was a battle he himself fought - "is that it’s possible to create hybrid systems where you have intellectual property rights applied mainly in the high-income markets and you have access at the cost of production, or on a no-profit basis, in the poor countries."

In the case of African food shortages, he added, simple, readily available remedies like chemical fertilizers and high-yield non-GMO crops had been "sitting on the shelf" until the global food price crisis grabbed headlines. We shouldn't have to wait for disasters before we take the equivalent action on climate change, he said.

What about politics? Since Sachs's talk didn't go much beyond sighing relief at Bush's departure, I asked him afterward about his hopes for the upcoming G8 conference in July. More dubious optimism here: "There are a lot of things I'd hope for. That doesn't mean I'm expecting much to happen."

Honoring commitments to monetary aid and technology transfer is the first step, he told me. To get a global climate agreement out of the UN process, he also thinks we need to start by welcoming the economic growth of rapidly developing nations like China and India. "That's the icebreaker on this first date," he said. From that viewpoint, country-specific emissions targets can be set that correspond to growth along the greenest possible paths.

By 2050, he explained, that might mean that the North cuts its greenhouse emissions by 80% while India's emissions are allowed to double - a contraction-and-convergence plan. Because China and India have even more to fear from climate change than does the wealthier world, he said, it's an ultimatum they'll have to accept: "You're going to develop. But you're going to do it with the best technology."

Anna Barnett

Photo: Sachs working in the Millennium Village of Mwandama, Malawi.

Posted by Anna Barnett on June 18, 2008
Categories: Adaptation, Anna Barnett, Climate Policy, Mitigation, Society | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

From claims that obese Westerners are devouring the world's produce to pleas that panicked developing nations stop hoarding it, recriminations were flying at a two-day UN conference focused on soaring international food prices this week - and The Guardian reports that anger ran highest over US policies aggressively promoting biofuels farming. Small wonder: the International Monetary Fund has estimated that the trend toward farms producing fuel instead of food is responsible for 20-30% of recent price spikes, the International Food Policy Research Institute, a US think tank, came up with 30%, and the clean-energy research firm New Energy Research offered a more conservative 8%. But US agriculture secretary Ed Schafer would own up to only 3%.

And while the food riots resulting from price rises are easy to see, the environmental benefits of biofuels are not. Report after report this year has warned that flight from fossil fuels to biofuels could see forests cleared and cropland diverted while both food costs and greenhouse emissions rise.

Ethanol fuel made from corn - big business in the US - has taken particularly heavy blame for food prices, as it uses up grain that could feed people and livestock, and fields that could be planted with other edible crops. Last year's US energy bill included a full-steam-ahead target to quintuple ethanol production in 15 years - a commitment that John McCain and 23 other Senate Republicans last month urged the EPA to ignore because of the food crisis. Across the pond, the EU is still trying to figure out how to insert sustainability caveats into its controversial plan to make 10% of all transport fuel renewable (i.e. plant-based) by 2020.

Aside from the ethanol acrimony, the UN meeting heard another strident message: Ban Ki-moon's call for 50% more agricultural production by 2030 to support a rising global population. To make this much food, the world may not be able to spare many fields for ethanol.

For more on what's driving food prices - including the possibility that we've lost some arable land to global warming and are set to lose more - Grist's breakdown and this International Food Policy Research Institute report are good places to start. And this recent Nature News story (subscription required) has a look over the biofuel industry's horizon.

Anna Barnett

Photo: Harvey Leifert

Posted by Anna Barnett on June 04, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Energy, In the News, Politics, Society | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In debates over how to mitigate the effects of climate change, is the burgeoning human population an elephant in the room? A projected 9 billion people will have to share a warming planet by 2050, yet as Kerri Smith writes in Nature Reports Climate Change this week, the climatic effects of their rising numbers and shifting demographics has received surprisingly little study.

Population is a touchy subject, bringing to mind oppressive campaigns against growth - like China's one-child system, or forced sterilization programs - as well as false past predictions of an imminent catastrophe. But it’s becoming clear that the problem is more complex than a ticking ‘population bomb’. Numbers are exploding in the world’s poorest societies - a trend that CIA chief Michael V. Hayden recently chose above climate or energy issues as one of the key changes facing the 21st century. Because of the low emissions per head in these societies, Smith explains,

Reducing population growth in Niger, for example, where the population size is predicted to triple by mid-century, would not have a dramatic effect on emissions right now. And in many countries in Europe — where reducing emissions levels is more pressing — populations are declining, so a demography-based climate strategy would be ineffective. In a generation's time, however, when developing countries begin industrializing apace, a large population could be bad news.

An aging industrialized world could wrinkle the picture further, as could increasing urbanization. Meanwhile, Hayden fears that the population patterns themselves will precipitate political instability - which climate change is expected to exacerbate.

The solutions to this complex problem could be subtle, or at least subtler than enforcing a small average family size. Fred Meyerson, an ecologist, demographer and environmental policy researcher, told Smith that simply improving access to family planning in the last 50 years has very effectively reduced population growth, and the UN Population Division's Thomas Buettner pointed out the knock-on effect that this has had on greenhouse gas emissions. (A new book by the WorldWatch Institute’s Robert Engelman puts a finer point on it, arguing that in countries where empowerment of women gives them say over the matter, they invariably choose to have two children or fewer on average.)

And this month's headlines show how far-reaching the links are between slowing population growth and preventing climate-induced crises, Meyerson added in an email:

Each million/billion [people] we add puts more people in the path of natural disasters such as the recent Asian cyclone and drought/starvation, some of which are climate change-induced. Adaptation to those changing conditions (including migration, if needed) is obviously much more manageable with 8 rather 11 billion people. And emissions mitigation - for instance, a move from fossil fuels to biofuels - is also much more problematic if the lion's share of the solar energy budget of the terrestrial surface is needed to meet the food needs of a large population and not available for energy production. (That debate is already ongoing with the spike of food prices and the use of corn for ethanol production, but it will surely increase as we add ~75 million people each year to the population over the next few decades.)

Anna Barnett

Photo: Lusi, SXC

Posted by Anna Barnett on May 16, 2008
Categories: Adaptation, Anna Barnett, Climate Policy, In the News, Society | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)